Read Online The Adept Book 2 The Lodge Of The Lynx by Katherine Kurtz, Deborah Turner Harris - Free Book Online

containing nothing overt to suggest that it was anything more than a simple house blessing and dedication. When Christopher had finished, Adam nodded his approval.
    “I think that will answer the purpose very well,” he told the priest. “Let’s wake our young lady and acquaint her with what you have in mind.”
    Helena roused easily in response to Adam’s prearranged cues, Christopher once more holding her hand.
    “Hullo, m’dear,” the priest said, smiling and lifting the back of her hand lightly to his lips. “Nice to have you back with us again. How do you feel?”
    “I-I do feel better,” she acknowledged, with a tremulous smile. Then a small shadow of anxiety crossed her face. “Did you, were you able to find out anything?”
    Adam smiled and sat back casually in his chair, toying with the crystal he had taken up before waking her.
    “Indeed, we did. And you were a most cooperative and useful subject. After reviewing the evidence, I think we may safely say that these nightmares of yours owe their origin to influences outside your own psyche.”
    Helena blinked at him owlishly, as though she hardly dared believe him.
    “Then, it wasn’t just me!”
    “Not at all,” Adam said. “Not unless you count having more than your share of womanly intuition; and that has nothing to do with causing such things, just perceiving them.”
    At Helena’s puzzled look, he went on.
    “It’s a fact that physical objects—even whole houses—can and do act as psychometric receptors, storing up emotional resonances from past events,” Adam explained. “Anyone who happens to be sensitive to such things can be adversely affected as seems to have been the case with you.”
    Seeing that Helena was still looking a bit bewildered, Christopher gave her hand a sympathetic squeeze and smiled.
    “What Dr. Sinclair means is that there must have been a lot of bad feelings connected with some of the people who used to live in this flat, Helena. Bad vibes, if you like—a bit like a nasty smell. Once it gets into the woodwork, it tends to hang about till you give the place a good clean-out.
    “So that’s just what we’re going to do,” he went on decisively, echoing Helena’s hopeful nod. “We’re going to give this place a metaphysical house-cleaning. Only we’ll use spiritual fortitude instead of ammonia solution.”
    Helena giggled in spite of herself.
    “That’s the, ticket, m’dear,” said Christopher. “Now, I know you have both a Bible and a prayer book. Thought you probably wouldn’t mind giving me the loan of them, so I didn’t bother to bring mine. Could you fetch them for me, while I get my other things? That would be splendid.”
    He opened his briefcase and lifted out a clerical stole of green silk, along with a small plastic bottle of what Peregrine assumed must be holy water. Helena brought the required books from the bookshelf and sat down beside him as Christopher laid the stole around his neck and began leafing through her small, leather-bound copy of the Scriptures. While the girl’s attention was focused on her pastor, listening to his murmured instructions on the passages to read, placing the colored ribbon markers, Adam drew Peregrine into a corner of the room by the door.
    “Stand here and watch,” his mentor told him. “You’re the one who can see what we’re after. I want you to be certain we get it all.”
    “But, how—”
    “Just watch,” Adam insisted, shaking his head to belay any further argument. “You’ll know, when we’re done.”
    They both were out of Helena’s line of vision. Even so, Adam was careful to shield what he withdrew from his coat pocket, so that even Peregrine caught only a fleeting glimpse of it.
    Adam called it his toothstone—dark and oblong, curved like a wolf’s fang, all but hidden in the cradle of his palm—but it was, in fact, a piece of lodestone, spiritually as well as magnetically polarized for drawing off malevolent psychic energy. Peregrine