“If you know where the lab is located, why did you come here?” Lucas asked.
“Because he doesn’t know where it is,” Victor said slowly. He did not take his gaze off Harlan. “He needs us to find it.”
“Not you, specifically,” Harlan said. “I need an oracle.”
Victor’s brows shot upward. “You make it sound as if there is more than one.”
“The talent is not common, but yes, there is more than one. I need the right one.”
Decision time. He took his phone out of the pocket of his rumpled trench coat and started toward Victor’s desk. He stopped when one of the paintings caught his eye. A chill of knowing iced his blood. The hair on the back of his neck lifted. He stared at the picture, riveted.
“Where did you get this?” he asked.
For a heartbeat he thought Victor would not answer.
“I picked it up at an auction,” Victor said. “It was cheap. There were no other bidders.”
The painting was unique in that it was not a traditional version of the oracle theme. Instead of a cavern, the hooded figure stood in the foreground of a vintage mid-twentieth-century laboratory. The instruments and devices on the workbenches looked clunky by modern design standards. They were studded with dials and switches. There were no computer keyboards, no monitors, no bright screens.
Several of the machines appeared to have been modified. A large paper chart on the wall was labeled Paranormal Light Spectrum.
The handful of men and women gathered around the oracle were dressed in classic lab coats, complete with plastic pocket protectors that held pens and small spiral-bound notebooks. Everyone in the scene stared at the oracle with expressions that ran the gamut from shock and disbelief to outright horror.
The oracle’s features were obscured by the hood. She was not perched on a three-legged stool. She stood, one arm raised, finger pointing at a strange structure in the middle of the room—a crystal pyramid enclosed in a glass chamber. The pyramid was large enough to hold a human figure standing upright. The door was a dark blue mirror.
The oracle’s prophecy was written in flowing script across the bottom of the painting. Here there be monsters.
Harlan managed to wrench his gaze away from the picture. “It’s the Vortex lab. It must be.”
“I agree,” Victor said.
“It was done by someone who was there,” Harlan said.
“Or by someone who saw a photograph,” Lucas suggested.
“I think the oracle was the artist,” Harlan said.
“Or else she took a picture and had someone else paint it,” Victor said.
“The question, of course,” Lucas said, “is why go to the trouble of creating a painting of the scene? If there was a photograph, why not preserve it? You could make as many copies as you wanted. And why use the iconography of the Delphi oracle?”
“Someone wanted to leave a message that had a shot at surviving,” Harlan said quietly.
“Exactly.” Victor grunted with satisfaction, as if Harlan had just confirmed his own conclusion. “Photographs are fragile. In the era of the Bluestone Project you couldn’t put them online. You dumped them into boxes along with hundreds of other pictures that got tossed into the trash when you died. Even if they did last, they deteriorated. A properly done oil painting, on the other hand, can last for hundreds of years.”
“And people hesitate to throw away an interesting work of art,” Lucas added. “The artist who did that picture was good. The subject is unusual and, therefore, intriguing. It makes the viewer ask questions. Art like that has a shot at surviving.”
“That was what it was designed to do,” Harlan said. “But only those who know something about Vortex would ask the right questions. I assume you examined the back of the canvas?”
“We took the frame apart,” Victor assured him. “Checked everything. No hidden signature. No date. Nothing. Looked at every object in the picture with a magnifying glass. Didn’t find any clues to the location of the lab.”
“The oracle,” Harlan said.
Victor fixed him with an intent gaze. “What about her?”
“I need the oracle who is a direct descendant of the one in that picture.”
“We’re aware of only one true oracle,” Victor said. “Harmony, the librarian in Fogg Lake. She doesn’t have any connection to Vortex. She’s been predicting storms and destruction for months now. We think the prophecies are Vortex-related, but she hasn’t been able to come up with anything concrete that we can use to find the old lab.”
Harlan brushed that aside. “I’m not talking about the Fogg Lake oracle. I need the one in Seattle. Olivia LeClair.”
Lucas and Victor exchanged bewildered glances.
Lucas shook his head. “Olivia isn’t an oracle. She’s an aura reader—a very good one, but that’s her only talent. She’s co-owner of a private investigation agency, Lark and LeClair.”
“Let’s hope for everyone’s sake you’re wrong,” Harlan said. “Because if she doesn’t have her grandmother’s talent, we don’t stand a chance of finding the Vortex lab in time.”
“In time for what?” Lucas asked.
“That’s the bad news,” Harlan said. “I don’t know exactly what will happen if we don’t find Vortex. Whatever it is, it will not be good.”
Victor’s eyes burned. “You’re in a rush because you think someone else has picked up the trail.”
“And is closing in fast,” Harlan said. “The chatter among the collectors, raiders and dealers who work the paranormal artifacts trade has been increasing for a year, but in the past month it has become so intense that something must have changed.”
Victor sat quietly, not speaking.
Lucas glanced at the warning written on the painting. “If even some of the stories about what went on inside the Vortex lab are accurate, we have a problem.”
“They were playing with forces they did not understand in that damn lab,” Victor said. “Forces they could not control.”
“My grandfather and my father were convinced they were trying to create enhanced talents—super soldiers and spies—that could be used for military purposes,” Harlan said.
Victor sighed. “They got monsters instead.”
“That’s not the worst part,” Harlan said. “After all, you can kill monsters.”
Lucas raised silver brows. “You should know.”
Harlan looked at him.