Sizzle and Burn Read online

  Sizzle and Burn

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  JAYNE ANN KRENTZ

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  BY JAYNE ANN KRENTZ

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  BY JAYNE ANN KRENTZ WRITING AS JAYNE CASTLE

  Silver Master

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  Amaryllis

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  Sizzle and Burn

  Jayne Ann Krentz

  G. P. Putnam’s Sons

  New York

  G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS

  Publishers Since 1838

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA •

  Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.) • Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England • Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd) • Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd) • Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi–110 017, India • Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd) • Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices:

  80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  Copyright © 2008 by Jayne Ann Krentz

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Krentz, Jayne Ann.

  Sizzle and burn / Jayne Ann Krentz.

  p. cm.

  ISBN: 978-1-1012-1534-0

  1. Psychic ability—Fiction. 1. Title.

  PS3561.R44S54 2008 2007028161

  813'.54—dc22

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  While the author has made every effort to provide accurate telephone numbers and Internet addresses at the time of publication, neither the publisher nor the author assumes any responsibility for errors, or for changes that occur after publication. Further, the publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  For Frank

  As always, with all my love

  Thanks for the sizzle and burn!

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Chapter Thirty-six

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-one

  Chapter Forty-two

  Chapter Forty-three

  Chapter Forty-four

  Chapter Forty-five

  Chapter Forty-six

  Chapter Forty-seven

  Chapter Forty-eight

  Chapter Forty-nine

  Chapter Fifty

  Chapter Fifty-one

  Chapter Fifty-two

  Chapter Fifty-three

  Chapter Fifty-four

  Chapter Fifty-five

  Chapter Fifty-six

  Chapter Fifty-seven

  Chapter Fifty-eight

  Chapter Fifty-nine

  Chapter Sixty

  One

  Burn, witch, burn….

  The voice was a dark, ghostly whisper in her head. Raine Tallentyre stopped at the top of the basement stairs. Gingerly she touched the banister with her fingertips. That was all the contact she needed. The voice, thick with bloodlust and an unholy excitement, murmured again.

  …Only one way to kill a witch. Punish her. Make her suffer. Burn, witch, burn….

  It was the same voice she had heard when she brushed against the counter in the kitchen a few minutes before. It whispered of darkness, fear and fire. The psychic traces were very fresh. A deeply disturbed individual had come through this house in the recent past. She could only pray that the freak was the type who limited himself to twisted fantasies played out in his head. But she’d had enough experience to know that probably wasn’t the case. This bastard was the real thing, a human monster.

  She shuddered, snatched her hand off the banister and wiped her palm against her raincoat. The gesture was pure instinct, a reflex. The coat, long and black, was wet because it was pouring outside but no amount of water could wash away the memory of the foul energy she had just sensed.

  She looked back at Doug Spicer and heard another voice, her aunt’s this time. The warning came straight out of her teenage memories. Never tell them about the whispers in your head, Raine. They’ll say you’re crazy, like me.

  “I just want to take a quick look around the basement,” she said, dreading what lay ahe
ad.

  Doug peered uneasily down into the darkness at the foot of the stairs. “Do you really think that’s necessary, Miss Tallentyre? There will probably be mice or maybe even rats or snakes. Don’t worry, I can take the listing without a thorough examination of the basement.”

  Doug was the proprietor of Spicer Properties, one of three real estate companies in the small town of Shelbyville, Washington. She had contacted him when she arrived that morning because he was the only agent who had bothered to get in touch with her after learning of Vella Tallentyre’s death. He had inquired delicately about taking the listing. She was more than happy to give it to him. It was not as if she had been besieged by enthusiastic agents. For his part, Doug was relatively new in town and struggling to establish his business. They needed each other.

  Dressed in a crisply tailored dark gray suit and a pale blue tie, a handsome brown leather briefcase in one hand, Doug looked every inch the professional real estate agent. Sleek, designer glasses framed his pale eyes. His car, parked in the drive, was a Jaguar.

  She guessed him to be in his late thirties. His hairline was starting to recede and he had the solid, well-fed look of a man who, while not yet overweight, had definitely started to put on extra pounds. He had warned her that the gloom-filled house with its aging plumbing and wiring would not be an easy sale.

  “I’ll be right back,” she assured him.

  She couldn’t tell him that she really had no choice now that she had picked up the psychic whispers of a man who fantasized about killing witches. She had to know the truth before she could leave the house.

  “I did a little research and called Phil Brooks after I spoke with you,” Doug said. “He told me that your aunt cut off his pest control service shortly before she, uh, left town.”

  Shortly before I took her away, Raine thought. She curled the hand that had just touched the railing very tightly around the strap of her purse. Shortly before I had to put her into a very private, very expensive sanitarium.

  A month before, Vella Tallentyre had died in her small room at St. Damian’s Psychiatric Hospital back in Oriana on the shores of Lake Washington. The cause of death was a heart attack, according to the authorities. She was fifty-nine years old.

  It dawned on her that Doug probably didn’t want to get his pristine suit and polished shoes dirty. She didn’t blame him.

  “You don’t have to come with me,” she said. “I’ll just go to the foot of the stairs.”

  Please be a gentleman and insist on coming with me.

  “Well, if you’re sure,” Doug said, stepping back. “I don’t see a light switch up here.”

  “It’s at the foot of the stairs.”

  So much for the gentlemen’s code. What had she expected? This wasn’t the nineteenth century. The code, if it ever existed, no longer applied. After what she had just been through with Bradley, she should know that better than anyone.

  The thought of Detective Bradley Mitchell proved bracing. The ensuing rush of feminine outrage unleashed a useful dose of adrenaline that was strong enough to propel her down the stairs.

  Doug hovered at the top of the steps, filling the doorway. “If the light isn’t working, I’ve got a flashlight in my car.”

  The ever helpful real estate agent.

  She ignored him and descended cautiously into the darkness. Maybe she wouldn’t give him the listing, after all. The problem was, neither of the other two agents in town was eager for it. It wasn’t just that the house was in such a neglected state. The truth was that it was unlikely any of the locals would be interested in purchasing it.

  For the past couple of decades this house had been the property of a woman who was certifiably crazy, a woman who heard voices in her head. That kind of history tended to dampen the enthusiasm of prospective clients. As Doug had explained, they would have to lure an out-of-town prospect, someone interested in a real fixer-upper.

  The old wooden steps creaked and groaned. She tried to avoid touching the railing on the way down, and she was careful to stay close to the edge of each tread so that she would be less likely to step in his footsteps. She had learned the hard way that human psychic energy was most easily transmitted onto a surface by direct skin contact but bloodlust this strong sometimes penetrated through the soles of shoes.

  As careful as she tried to be, she couldn’t avoid all of it.

  Make her suffer. Punish her the way Mother punished me.

  The scent of damp and mildew intensified as she went down. The darkness at the foot of the steps yawned like a bottomless well.

  She paused on the final step, groped for and found the switch. When she touched it she got a jolt that had nothing to do with electricity. Burn, witch, burn.

  Mercifully, the naked bulb in the overhead fixture still worked, illuminating the windowless, low-ceilinged space in a weak, yellow glare.

  The basement was crammed with the detritus of Vella Tallentyre’s unhappy life. Several pieces of discarded furniture, including a massive, mirrored armoire, a chrome dining table laminated with red plastic and four matching red vinyl chairs, were crowded together. Most of the rest of the space was filled with several large cardboard boxes and crates. They contained many of the innumerable paintings Vella had produced over the years. The pictures had one unifying theme: they were all dark, disturbing images of masks.

  Her heart sank. So much for taking a quick look around and retreating back up the staircase. She would have to leave her perch at the foot of the stairs and tour the maze of boxes and crates if she wanted to be certain there were no terrible secrets buried down there.

  She really did not need this. She had problems enough at the moment. Settling Aunt Vella’s small estate had proved remarkably time-consuming, not to mention depressing. In the middle of that sad process she had been forced to face the fact that the one man she thought could accept her, voices and all, found her a complete turn-off in the bedroom. On top of everything else, she had a business to run. Late October was a busy time of year for her costume design shop, Incognito. No, she did not need any more trouble, but she knew all too well that if she ignored the whispers, she would walk the floor until dawn for days or even weeks. For some reason she could never understand, finding the truth was the only antidote for the voices.

  Stomach clenching, she stepped down onto the concrete floor and put out a hand to touch the nearest object, a dusty cardboard box. There was no help for it now. She had to follow the trail of psychic whispers left by the freak.

  “What are you doing?” Doug called anxiously from the top of the staircase. “I thought you said you were just going to have a quick look around down there.”

  “There’s a lot of stuff here. Sooner or later I’m going to have to clear it out. I need to get an idea of how big a job it will be.”

  “Please be careful, Miss Tallentyre.”

  She pretended not to hear him. If he couldn’t be bothered to accompany her into the darkness, she was not interested in his platitudes.

  There was nothing on the cardboard box but when her fingertips skated across the laminated surface of the old table she got another vicious jolt.

  The demon is stronger than the witch.

  Gasping, she jerked her fingers away from the table and took a quick step back. No matter how she tried to prepare herself, she would never get used to the unnerving sensation that accompanied a brush with the really bad whispers.

  She looked down at the floor, searching for footprints. If there were any, they were undetectable. In the poor light the gray dust that covered everything appeared to be the same color as the concrete. In addition, the deep shadows between the valleys of stacked boxes left much of the floor in pitch darkness.

  She inched forward, touching the objects in her path in the same tentative way she would have tested the surface of a hot stove. Psychic static clinging to the dusty armoire mirror made her flinch.

  She looked around and realized that she was following a narrow path that snaked through the j
ungle of crates and boxes. The trail led to the closed door of the old wooden storage locker. A heavy padlock secured the sturdy door.

  A very shiny new padlock.

  She knew before she even touched it that it would reek of the freak’s spore.

  She came to a halt a step away from the locker, held her breath and put out her hand. The edge of her finger barely grazed the padlock but the shock was nerve-shattering, all the same.

  Burn, witch, burn.

  She sucked in a deep breath. “Oh, damn.”

  “Miss Tallentyre?” Doug sounded genuinely alarmed now. “What’s wrong? Are you all right down there?”

  She heard his footsteps on the stairs. Evidently her small yelp of pained surprise had activated some latent manly impulse to ride to the rescue. Better late than never.

  “I’m all right but there is something very wrong down here.” She fished her cell phone out of her purse. “I’m going to call nine-one-one.”

  “I don’t understand.” Doug halted on the last step, clutching his briefcase. He peered around and finally spotted her near the storage locker. “Why in the world do you want the police?”

  “Because I think this basement is about to become a crime scene.”

  The 911 operator came on the line before Doug could recover from the shock.

  “Fire or police?” the woman said crisply.

  “Police,” she responded, putting all the assurance she could muster into her voice in an effort to make certain the operator took her seriously. “I’m at fourteen Crescent Lane, the Tallentyre house. Tell whoever responds to bring a tool that can cut through a padlock. Hurry.”