North did not appear to be unnerved by what was happening inside the chamber. Just the opposite. She sensed he was riding a high like no other, glorying in the rush of controlling the powerful currents of paranormal energy.

The abyss was suddenly illuminated in a thousand bolts of paranormal lightning. A fiery aurora appeared.

“You said the night was filled with light,” Sierra whispered. “You were right.”

“No other magician was ever able to duplicate Chastain’s abyss. No one could figure out how it was done.”

“Because it wasn’t really stage magic at all,” Sierra said. “Your grandfather used his talent to manipulate energy from the dark end of the spectrum. But it’s not just a trick of the light, is it? There’s real danger in that energy. I can feel it.”

“No one can enter this chamber without going mad or possibly dying—not until the abyss is gone.”

“So, uh, how do you plan to do this?”

North raised both hands in a grand, theatrical gesture.

“Shazam,” he said.

Sierra felt a powerful wave of energy shift in the atmosphere. As she watched, enthralled, the endless well of night abruptly winked out of existence. The sense of dread and doom vanished at the same instant. She found herself looking at a vintage research laboratory. Over the years the walls, ceiling and floor had absorbed enough background paranormal radiation to illuminate a half dozen workbenches covered with old-fashioned, clunky-looking instruments and machines.

She smiled. “Show-off.”

North flashed her a triumphant grin. “Not my first abyss.”

She moved closer to the entrance and looked around. “This is incredible. There isn’t even much dust. It’s as if whoever was working in this lab just went down the hall for a meeting and never came back.”

“Not everyone,” North said. He moved through the entrance and walked toward what appeared to be a bundle of old clothes on the floor. “He never left.”

Sierra followed North. When she got a little closer she could see what remained of a white lab coat and a green uniform. The front of the lab coat was stained with old blood.

The bones inside the clothes shifted and rattled when North gently turned the skeleton onto its back. The skull gazed sightlessly up at the ceiling.

North picked up the lanyard that had once hung around the dead man’s neck and read the ID.

“Griffin Chastain,” North said. He reached gently into the bone pile and picked up a couple of bullet cartridges. “He didn’t sell Bluestone secrets to the Soviets and get executed behind the Iron Curtain. He died trying to protect whatever he and Rancourt invented in this lab.

“He was trying to keep it out of the hands of his research partner, Crocker Rancourt.”

CHAPTER 34

North got to his feet and crossed to a wall where a badly yellowed lab coat dangled from a hook. He took down the coat and returned to the skeletal remains of his grandfather. He arranged the coat as a makeshift shroud to cover Griffin Chastain.