He got to his feet and went to stand in front of the fire. “The Foundation experts say the problem with weaponizing paranormal energy is that to be effective, each individual gun or pistol would have to be tuned to the aura of the user. In addition, only someone with a very powerful aura could operate such a device. The risk of blowback would be extremely high.”

“Blowback?”

“Similar to the recoil you get when you fire a conventional weapon. Except that in the case of a paranormal device, the energy recoil will tend to destabilize the aura of the user over time—unless the shooter is strong enough to handle the shock. It was a technical problem that supposedly was never solved while the Bluestone Project was in operation. But there have always been rumors that toward the end of the project, one lab might have made a breakthrough.”

“Vortex?”

He looked up suddenly. “What do you know about Vortex?”

“Very little. But it’s a legend in the underground market. There’s no limit on the price of any artifact that has a Vortex provenance. But to my knowledge, none has ever come on the market.”

North glanced at the machine sitting on the table. “Given what happened to my father and the fact that someone tried to kill us with that light grenade, we have to assume that there is some truth to the legends about paranormal weapons. But maybe they didn’t all come from Vortex.”

“You’re sure Griffin Chastain and Crocker Rancourt didn’t work in the Vortex lab?”

“There’s no record of their being connected to that lab. According to the Foundation files, they were doing research at the Fogg Lake facility. But who knows? Maybe that was just a cover. Everything about Vortex was top secret. The thing is—”

He broke off as a tidal wave of nightmares screamed silently out of the darkness. You must wear the glasses. You will go mad without them.

It took everything he had to suppress them.

He became aware of a frisson of gentle energy. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the mirrored crystal in Sierra’s locket spark.

The nightmares receded. He took a deep breath.

“I feel like a junkie trying to get through withdrawal,” he said.

“No, you’re recovering from a sickness induced by poison. What were you about to say?”

“What?” He had to concentrate to remember where he had been going with the conversation. “Right. Vortex. Everything connected to it was highly classified, so it’s not impossible that Griffin Chastain and Crocker Rancourt were involved with it. But I’ve been studying my grandfather’s private logbooks and the various experiments he performed in his lab at the Abyss—”

“His Vegas mansion?”

“Right. I moved in almost a year ago. I’ve had a chance to see what he was working on there. What I was about to tell you is that there is no indication that he was ever interested in creating paranormal weapons. His work was all aimed at gaining a greater understanding of the energy of light from the dark end of the spectrum.”