Read Online Carolyn Jourdan - Nurse Phoebe 03 - The School for Psychics by Carolyn Jourdan - Free Book Online Page A

particular, CR, a mysterious personage who’d last been seen over 250 years ago. An extremely narrow and intense affinity for CR, a guy she’d never even heard of before, combined with her romantic obsession with the long dead handsome genius Nikola Tesla, helped explain why Phoebe was an old maid. But since this eccentric skill was the only one she had, she didn’t want to drop the ball on her task of finding whatever the guy might’ve left in a secret stash somewhere.
    What were the odds anyone else would hire her for something like that? Okay, so she was supposed to locate and follow spiritual contrails laid down in the mid-1700s by a man whose exalted nature was mired in a hopeless muddle of myth, legend, misunderstanding, and speculation of the dumbest kind. There were worse jobs.
    And even this wacky situation made a kind of sense. The Boss had done exactly what any hunter would do with his dog. He transported her to the last known location of the great man and unleashed her, metaphorically speaking, hoping she’d be able to strike a cold trail from there.
    She looked at J.J. What a team they made—a human hound and a blind man who could see through walls. If Phoebe could manage to locate anything, J.J. would be able to pinpoint any secret places inside walls or underneath floors, even caches that had been plastered or bricked over. J.J. also carried a huge reference file of important objects in his expansive memory. That would help, too.
    She hoped it would be enough. She didn’t want to let the Boss down.
    * * *
    Eventually they made it up to the attic on the third floor. The windows in this part of the palace were round, like portholes about three feet in diameter. They gave a view down onto the Marble Courtyard, the entrance to the oldest part of Louis XIII’s relatively modest hunting lodge before it was upgraded and added onto by Louis XIV, XV, and XVI and became the most fabulous dwelling on the planet.
    They stood in Madame P’s first apartment. “Where should we start?” Phoebe whispered. “Here?”
    “This room is as good as any,” J.J. said, smiling, commiserating with her. They spoke in vague terms so as not to alert the Prince to their particular skills. They figured he knew something was up, since he knew Le Seigneur and had been the one to notify him of the impending renovations, but there was no reason to give him any details.
    They slowly made their way through the interconnecting attic rooms that made up the original apartment. J.J. stopped at one point and touched a door built into the paneling.
    “That i s the lift,” Marc said. “It was called a flying chair . It is a private chairlift from the King’s apartment, which is directly beneath us on the floor below. It is a bit like a dumbwaiter. It was built so they could visit each other in privacy without needing to take the public stairs. It is thought to be the first elevator in the world.”
    “Does it still work?” J.J. asked.
    “I believe so, but I do not know when it was last used. It would not be safe to try to ride it.”
    J.J. felt along the panel until it sprang open. There was a tiny room with a padded bench. Phoebe described the interior to him. A rope ran down through the center of the car from a circular opening in the ceiling to a matching opening in the floor.
    “It i s fitted with counterweights and pulleys so a lady could easily travel without needing much physical strength,” Marc added.
    J.J. turned toward Phoebe and asked, “Anything?”
    She stood in the doorway and tried to sense any vibes, but there were none of the sort she was looking for. “No, nothing,” she said.
    J.J. closed the panel gently. “May we visit the apartments she occupied when she left here, the ones on the ground floor?”
    “Of course,” Marc said. “Unfortunately, they have been extensively remodeled, to the point that I am afraid there is nothing of left of her there.”
    Marc took them down two flights of stairs to the ground