Still Life by Melanie Jackson

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The forgotten past is slowly returning to Nyssa Laszlo, and with the power to project her mind, she is thrust deeper into undiscovered territory-including the territory of her own heart.

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Still Life

Dorchester Publishing

All right reserved.

ISBN: 0-505-52608-5

Chapter One

His body was long and trendily lean, while still being
well-muscled. He was all gaunt angles and hard plains.
Photographers drooled over him. Agents were always trying to
sign him up as a client - model, actor, movie-star. They were
certain they could get him anything he wanted. Had he been
interested in a day job, he might have taken them up on it.
But he had other work to amuse him, what he liked to think of
as his continuing education.

Abrial respected Jack Frost and understood the reasons for the
death fey to forge an alliance among traditional enemies. But
even without that, he would have agreed tothis assignment.
Usually, he preferred dealing with evil people, and he
specialized in invading their sleep. Nothing was quite as much
fun as screwing with the wicked -human or fey- in their dreams
before he executed them.

At the very least, if he had to go after sane and reasonable
humans, he liked something with political ramifications - warning
Caesars of impending doom, giving Charlemagne visions
and making him change religions, scaring Torquemada into a
heart attack - just because he was The Executioner and could
do it if he wanted to. He liked to work on things cataclysmic,
maybe avert a holocaust or two. If only he'd been there when
Eve was being tempted by the serpent! He could have laid some
real fear of God dreams on her. Now that would have been a
genuine kick in the head!

Nice and probably human lady psychics just weren't his usual
gig. But this woman, Nyssa Laszlo, was something different and
she had intrigued him for a long time. For months, he had
shadowed her from a distance, tailing her through her
dreamwalks whenever she stayed in the present day,
metaphysical levels. For some reason, he couldn't follow her
into the past. He had tried, but had found himself shut out by
an iron gate that stretched out and up into infinity.

It had irked him at first that she could elude him this way,
because no one should be beyond his reach in the realm of
dreams, and he had wondered for weeks what she was doing when
she strolled into the past looking excited and returned
looking pleased. Finally he had caught her coming home while
carrying a forgotten mental prop from her visit. She must have
been distracted that night to make such a mistake because it
never happened again. Maybe she had seen Mozart die. In any
event, his question was answered. She was taking piano
lessons.

He was at once reluctantly charmed and disappointed. Humans!
When someone with such a short life was given the chance to
see all of history, why would they choose to waste the
opportunity and only take music lessons?

Unless that was just experimentation, early boot camp for more
serious expeditions? Maybe she was like Prometheus and
planning on snatching someone's divine fire, and she had put
herself into training for the venture.

This seemed a more reasonable explanation and since he enjoyed
hearing her ritual, meditational playing before she journeyed,
he continued to follow her at night. He made every effort to
show up early and hovered just outside the place where she
staged her dream trance, so he could listen to her tinkle the
ivories before she went scouting.

Before he had made up his mind about dropping in on her dreams
for a get-acquainted chat, her pattern of behavior changed.
There were no more happy jaunts to and from music lessons.
Nyssa began traveling later at night and she no longer looked
excited when she disappeared behind the iron gate into The
Yesterdays. She was frightened-nervous going in and often
grim when she came out. He could almost smell the fear
clinging to her at times, but she kept going back. Her hobby
or mission or whatever it was, had become an obsession.

Human obsessions interested him immensely. They almost always
lead to trouble and opportunity.

Then one night while in The Yesterdays, she had found
something that deeply agitated her. Nyssa had bolted through
the gates back into the present with something clutched in her
hands and had suddenly turned her fevered eyes on Cadalach.
She hadn't ventured close to the tomhnafurach on that
dream-walk, but Abrial had felt the moment when the shian
became aware of her astral probing and marked her for
observation.

It was also the moment when the lutins somehow reached out
from behind their own psychic gate and turned covetous eyes
her way. He could feel the ripples from both magical kingdoms
pass by as they sent metaphysical queries and traps her way.
Traps she had so far avoided with the help of ghosts, but they
were getting ever more deadly and devious. She wouldn't be
able to avoid them forever. The lady needed help.

That Jack had approached him the next night with instructions
to intercept this woman on her way back from Mexico and bring
her to Cadalach didn't come as any great surprise. If the
shian knew something, then Jack Frost and Cyra Delphin knew it
too. And once they knew, it would have been only a matter
minutes before Cyra's husband, Thomas, had found out
everything there was to learn about Nyssa in cyberspace.

The situation was in fact fraught with deadly danger. That was
perfect. He did love a challenge and Abrial was quite looking
forward to the assignment. He'd get her that night while she
was busy ransacking whatever library had caught her eye. He
suspected that his interrupting her research into the arcane
wouldn't endear him to her. It never did.

But, if he had to ruin somebody's night, he preferred that it
be hers. Eventually she would figure out that he was saving
her life and be grateful. Besides, it was time for them to
meet - face to face as well as in dreams - and she could start
explaining just what she wanted with one of the nastiest
creatures that had ever roamed the planet. Abrial really,
really wanted to know.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from Still Life
by Melanie Jackson
Copyright © 2004 by Melanie Jackson .
Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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