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housekeeper, who fainted at some point; and an unnamed woman who was there at the time. That would be you?”

    Abby took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “You seem to have all the facts, Mr. Coppersmith.”

    “Like you, I don’t take every job that comes my way. And I do not have all of the facts, but I intend to get them.” He slipped the printouts back into the envelope. “Any idea what the blackmailer wants from you?”

    “Not yet.”

    “In that case, tell me what he has on you.”

    Abby began to pace the chamber, weaving through the maze of display cases while she composed her thoughts. She had known this was coming, she reminded herself. It had been highly unlikely that she would be able to hire Sam without giving him all the information he might need to find the extortionist.

    “Everything in the police report concerning the Vaughn home invasion is true,” she began.

    “That makes me very interested to know what is not in the report.”

    “Right.” She took a deep breath. “What’s not in those reports is that I’m the one who caused the intruder to collapse that day.”

    Sam inclined his head once, as if she had confirmed a conclusion he had already reached.

    “Thought so,” he said.

    “What?” She stopped and stared at him, slightly stunned.

    “The convenient collapse of an armed intruder in the middle of a home invasion was a bit of a red flag,” he said mildly. “You somehow used your talent to take down the intruder, didn’t you?”

    “Yes,” she said quietly.

    “You knew going in that you could do that.”

    “I knew that if I could manipulate him into touching one of the heavily encrypted books at the same time I was holding it, there was a good chance that I could channel some of the energy into his aura and temporarily destabilize his pattern, yes.”

    Sam looked intrigued. “So do you do that kind of thing on a regular basis?”

    She glared at him, outraged and maybe even scared now, although she was loath to acknowledge it. Show no weakness.

    “Of course not,” she said. She clasped her hands tightly behind her back and resumed pacing. “But for obvious reasons I do not want rumors of my ability to channel energy like that to start circulating in the collectors’ market.”

    “You think it would hurt business?”

    She whirled around to face him again. “Gossip like that could destroy me.”

    “How?”

    “Look, Mr. Coppersmith, I work both sides of the book market, the normal side and the true paranormal side. My normal clients are mostly legitimate private collectors who are interested in the history of the study of the paranormal.”

    “Those would be your non-talent clients?”

    “Yes. But to be honest, a small-time freelancer like me would starve if she catered only to that clientele. Talk about a niche market. The money is in the genuine hot-books world, which is, for the most part, an underground market. Deals conducted in that market have to be kept very low-profile. A lot of the most serious collectors prefer to remain anonymous. If they do invite me into their homes to appraise their collections, as Mrs. Vaughn did, they expect me to be extremely discreet. Generally speaking, the underground market pays well, but the clients tend to be a difficult bunch.”

    “Define difficult, ” Sam said.

    “The spectrum of difficult clients starts at eccentric and moves on through secretive, reclusive and paranoid, all the way to dangerous. But I try to leave that last category of client to my competitors. The true hot-books market is a pool that is very deep at one end. I stick to the shallows.”

    “Sounds like a smart business plan.”

    “There’s less money at my end of the market, but it’s definitely safer swimming. The point I’m trying to make, though, is that in my business, reputation is everything. Aside from the fact that I’m very good at what I do, my most important credentials are that I am considered one hundred percent