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far they wouldn’t be able to find their way back out.”
    Darwina finished her lasagna, picked up Amberella by the doll’s long legs, and hopped down from the window ledge. She tumbled across the wooden floor and vanished into the living room.
    Rachel looked at Harry. “I’m impressed. Most people can’t even get through the energy fence that surrounds the Preserve. I knew Slade could track people who got lost inside and I assumed you could, too, or you wouldn’t have come here to investigate whatever is going on in there. But here on the island everyoneclaims that there is no way to create a useable map of the terrain inside the fence because the energy is too disorienting.”
    “I’ve got a variation of my great-grandfather’s talent, which is what it takes to read his psi-coded map. It’s a matter of some complicated psychic genetics.” Harry looked back at the counter with a hopeful expression. “Any chance of another slice of lasagna? It’s the best I’ve had in a long time.”
    “It’s my mother’s recipe.” Rachel got up and went to the counter to cut another piece. “You know, some of the really old maps of the island show the boundary of the psi-fence with everything inside marked ‘Here There Be Monsters.’ ”
    “The Foundation has an excellent collection of those old maps. There have always been plenty of myths and legends about the island because of the heavy paranormal radiation inside the fence. The energy in the Preserve can induce visions and hallucinations. But over the years we’ve sent several search-and-rescue teams in to pull out the occasional drunken yachtsman or doped-up thrill-seeker who managed to get through the barrier. There have been no reliable or confirmed sightings of monsters or ghosts. Believe me, the Foundation would be the first to know.”
    But monsters were showing up in her dreams lately, Rachel thought. And she was certain that the nightmares were linked to her missing twelve hours—the time she had been lost inside the Preserve. She was not about to mention that to Harry, though. He would think she was crazy. There were enoughpeople on the island who believed she was psychically fragile due to her fugue experience. She did not want Harry to come to the same conclusion.
    She carried the lasagna to the table. “But no one has ever ventured too deeply into the Preserve, right?”
    “That’s true,” Harry said. “The working theory at the Foundation has always been that strong talents can go in for short distances but no one, not even the most powerful sensitives, can go into the heart of the island and make their way back out.”
    She sighed. “You know, don’t you?”
    “About your missing twelve hours inside the Preserve? Yes. Slade told me.”
    She made a face. “Well, it’s not like it’s a secret. Everyone on the island knows I slipped into some sort of fugue state one evening, went into the Preserve, and walked out at dawn the next morning. It’s embarrassing, to tell you the truth. After all my Academy training and meditation exercises I should have had more control. Knowing that something like that can happen is … deeply unsettling.”
    “I understand. But the paranormal currents inside the Preserve have always been very strong, and lately the psi temperature has been rising. That’s more than enough to explain your amnesia.”
    “That’s what I keep telling myself. But getting back to those three stones that Harry One hid in the cave. What did you do with them?”
    “I left them there.” He shrugged. “I saw no reason to move them at the time. I toldyou, according to my great-grandfather they’re dangerous.”
    “In what way?”
    “He didn’t know exactly and neither do I. They’ve been in the family ever since the Late Nineteenth Century, Old World Date, but a lot of the Sebastian family records and archival materials relating to our ancestors back on Earth were lost in an explosion and fire that occurred during Colonial times