“Las Vegas is calling,” she yelled over the roar of the shower.

“Hang on. I’ll be right there.”

The shower abruptly fell silent. Sierra held the phone through the narrow opening. North’s damp fingers closed around it. She caught patchy glimpses of his reflection in the steamed-up mirror. His aura looked much more stable. The rest of him looked interesting. Extremely interesting.

He angled his head around the door and smiled faintly. Light glinted on his mirrored glasses. She was stunned to realize that he even wore them in the shower.

“Seen enough?” he asked a little too smoothly.

She felt the heat rise in her cheeks. Hastily she turned away and hurried back toward the kitchen.

North arrived in the kitchen a short time later. He didn’t appear to be a new man, but he was certainly in much better shape than he had been yesterday. It helped that he’d shaved and showered, of course, but the real change was in his overall vitality. She knew he was no longer drawing on his psychic senses to keep himself awake and alert.

He wore a fresh pair of dark cargo trousers and a black crew-neck T-shirt that emphasized his sleek, strong shoulders and flat belly. He sat down on the other side of the counter. She poured a mug of coffee and pushed it toward him. He put her phone down on the counter and wrapped both hands around the mug.

“That was Victor,” he said.

“I know.” She sprinkled coarse salt across the avocados and arranged them on large slices of toasted sourdough bread. “Was it about your father?”

“In part.” North’s jaw tensed. “The doctors think that Dad’s condition is deteriorating.”

“Oh, no. I am so sorry, North.”

“He’s still able to communicate a little through my mother but he doesn’t seem to know any more about what happened to him than he did when I saw him at the airport. Mom says she thinks he’s afraid of losing his mind. He feels trapped.”

“He is trapped,” Sierra said gently. “He’s probably terrified and trying not to show it to your mother. His anxiety levels must be through the roof.”

“The doctors are afraid to medicate him until they know what’s wrong. Dad is strong but time is running out. No one knows what will happen. He might die or remain in a coma forever. The Halcyon experts are convinced the only hope of reversing the damage is to find the artifact that caused it in the first place. They need to know how the damage was inflicted. They have been able to establish that he was not drugged.”

Sierra gave that some thought while she used a spatula to lift the four fried eggs out of the hot pan. She placed one egg on each avocado toast.

“Call Victor back and tell him he needs to get my mother to Las Vegas as soon as possible,” she said.

North lowered his coffee mug, startled. “Why?”

“My mother’s talent is the energy of singing. She does a lot of music therapy. She might be able to help stabilize your father’s aura and buy us some time to find the artifact.”