"I was pretty sure my little problem had to be Melinda, but I needed you here to make certain. That's why I asked Walker to contact you, on my behalf. Because your tal­ent to find things holds her in one place, one shape. All you have to do is hold her here, and my laser light will disrupt her, take her apart so thoroughly she'll never be able to put herself back together again. Do this for me, John, and I'll make you a partner in Prometheus Inc. You'll be wealthy and powerful beyond your wildest dreams."

"They were my friends, too," I said. "And there isn't enough money in the Nightside to turn me against a friend."

"Be my friend, John," said Melinda. She'd drifted very close now, and I could feel the cold of the grave radiating from her. "Be my friend and Quinn's, one last time. Find the source of Vincent's power. His secret source."

Vincent fired his laser at her. The light beam punched right through her shimmering form, but if it hurt her she didn't show it.

I called up my talent again, focusing my inner eye, my private eye from which nothing can be hidden, and immediately I knew where the secret was, and how to get to it. I turned to the steel door and punched in the correct entry codes. The heavy door swung slowly open. Vincent shouted something, but I wasn't listen­ing. I walked through the opening, Melinda drifting after me, and there in the underground chamber Vin­cent had made specially for him, was the reason Vincent had been able to produce power so easily. It was Quinn, the Sunslinger.

He still looked a lot like he had in his wedding photo, but like Melinda, he had been through some changes. Quinn still wore his black leathers, though the steel and silver were dirty and corroded. His body was contained in a spirit bottle, a great glass chamber de­signed to contain the souls of the dead. Electricity ca­bles penetrated the sides of the bottle, plugging into Quinn's eye sockets, his wedged-open mouth, and holes cut in his torso. Quinn, the Sunslinger, whose power had been to channel and direct energies from the sun, had been made into a battery. The spirit bottle trapped his soul with his dead body and made him con­trollable. The cables leached his power, and Vincent's machines turned it into electricity to feed the Nightside.