Read Online Eye of the Beholder by Jayne Ann Krentz - Free Book Online Page B

too long in Avalon.”
    â€œDepends.”
    â€œOn what?” she snapped.
    â€œOn whether I find something else besides the scenery and the tea here. Something that won’t leave me cold.”

7
 
    The Guardian drank the last of the herbal tea and watched the rays of the setting sun paint the canyons and spires of Avalon in shades of rust and blood.
    Night descended. After a while, the outlines of reality shifted, altered, and took on new dimensions.
    Here in this realm of enhanced consciousness the power and direction of the energy vortices were clear and easy to analyze if one was gifted, as the Guardian was, with the ability to see the deeper truths.
    The vortices were in flux, as expected. Trask’s arrival, after all, had been anticipated for months. The harmonic balance of powers in the region had shifted violently. The negative energy fields were surging to the surface.
    It was a dangerous state of affairs, this imbalance in the vortices. But the Guardian reveled in it, drew power from it.
    The Guardian went deeper into the trance, foundthe place where the most volatile energy pulsed and seethed.
    After a while, when the time was right, the Guardian surrendered to the swirling forces with a shuddering cry of raw, sexual release that reverberated endlessly against the cavern walls.
    The climax was a real mind-blower. But then, it had been twelve years since the last really good one.

8
 
    She kept her promise to Edward. She wore black to the opening night gala at the resort, and as soon as she was inside the lobby, she made every effort to fade into the woodwork.
    Alexa drifted, ghostlike, along the fringes of the crowd and listened to the scraps of conversation around her. She was careful to keep a watchful eye on Trask, making certain that they were separated by a sea of people or a jungle of potted palms.
    There were several familiar faces in the throng. She exchanged nods with some friends of Vivien’s and Lloyd’s and smiled at a couple of Elegant Relic customers. Although all the local VIPs were present, including the mayor and her husband, many of those in attendance were from out of town. In addition to the architect, design, and construction teams that had worked on the resort project, there were representatives of various sectors of the tour industry.
    Travel writers from the Tucson and Phoenix papers were among the invitees, and the reporter from
Twentieth-Century Artifact
had arrived.
    The sheer numbers present made it easy to remain unobtrusive. Alexa told herself that all she had to worry about was staying out of Trask’s path.
    It was not difficult to know where he was in the room at any given moment. Some sixth sense warned her whenever the natural ebb and flow of the crowd brought him too close.
    The odds of accidentally stumbling into him were minimal, she thought. Even if she had been trying to get close, she would have had to work at it. As the host for the occasion, he was constantly surrounded.
    A tall, statuesque, middle-aged woman wearing a pair of red-framed reading glasses and a no-nonsense haircut hovered constantly at Trask’s elbow. Alexa concluded that she was Glenda Blaine, the Avalon Resorts, Inc., PR person Edward had mentioned.
    Center of attention though he was, Trask was not the only major attraction in the room tonight. Many of those who could not get close to him formed a tight cluster around the charismatic figure of Webster Bell, the head of the Dimensions Institute.
    Alexa halted near a pillar and watched Bell for a moment. She had spoken with him on occasion when he had visited his half-sister, Joanna, at her shop in Avalon Plaza. He had always been gallant and charming.
    Webster would have been hard to miss in any gathering. He had what, in the theatrical world, was called
presence
. Tall and dynamic, he was endowed with a rugged, handsomely weathered face that would have done credit to one of the legendary gunslingers of old