After Glow

by Jayne Castle

  Lydia had been waiting for this very moment. “I regret that I will no longer be a major attraction here at Shrimpton’s House of Ancient Horrors, sir, but I think I can guarantee that this museum will get a bit more than a footnote out of this affair.”

  He blinked a couple of times. “How’s that?”

  “Mr. Shrimpton,” she said very earnestly, “you gave me a job when no one else in the city would even consider of hiring me because they thought I’d been burned out. In addition, you have been very generous about allowing me to develop a private consulting business outside my duties here. And then there was all that time off you gave me to prepare for the Restoration Ball. I owe you a great deal.”

  “Nonsense.” Shrimpton turned an odd shade of red and flapped a hand. “You’ve been an excellent addition to the staff. Happy to have you with us.”

  Lydia sniffed a couple of times and managed a watery smile. “The point I’m trying to make is that, regardless of my outside activities, I consider myself first and foremost a member of this, uh, institution’s staff. My professional loyalties lie here at Shrimpton’s, not up at the university.”

  Shrimpton dug a handkerchief out of his pocket and dabbed at his cheeks. “Very touching, my dear. Very touching, indeed.”

  Melanie sighed. “If you two are going to burst into tears, I’ll have to leave.”

  Lydia wiped her nose and quickly got to her feet. “Because of my allegiance and affection for this museum, I wouldn’t dream of allowing it to come out of this business with nothing but zip-squat.”

  “Yeah?” Melanie began to look interested.

  Shrimpton put his handkerchief back in his pocket. “What do you mean?”

  Lydia reached down, opened her bottom desk drawer, and took out the large cardboard box she had placed there when she had arrived at the office that morning. Setting the box on the desk, she removed the lid with a flourish.

  Shrimpton shuffled forward to take a closer look. Melanie leaned over the desk. They both stared at the book that Lydia had brought out of the alien library.

  “Oh, my goodness,” Shrimpton whispered. “Is that for us?”

  “For a while,” Lydia said wryly. “Sooner or later we’ll have to let the university experts examine it. But they’re going to be very busy for quite some time inside that library. I figure we can put this book on display as soon as we get the Guild to arrange security, say, this week. We should be able to exhibit it for at least a month or longer before the crowd up at the university realizes what’s going on and starts screaming bloody murder.”

  “Well, well, well.” Melanie grinned. “I do believe Shrimpton’s House of Ancient Horrors has got its next big attraction.”

  Shrimpton was dazzled. “People will be lined up all the way to the river to see this book.”

  “They sure will,” Lydia said. “Especially when they find out it has pictures.”

  “Pictures!” Melanie exclaimed. “Are you serious?”

  “Oh, my,” Shrimpton said, aghast at the prospects. “Oh, my goodness gracious. Pictures?”

  “There is a tiny bit of psi-energy coming from it,” Lydia explained. “I wanted to be sure it was safe. Yesterday I took it to a private lab to get it checked out. The techs did some fiddling and testing. They figured out that anyone who can rez a lightbulb or a door key can operate this thing.”

  Very carefully she opened the quartz covers and turned to the place she had marked.

  Melanie and Shrimpton looked at the small section at the bottom of the page where the quartz paper seemed to shimmer and waver.

  “It’s easy enough to do once you get the hang of it,” Lydia explained. “Watch this.”

  She sent out a small pulse of psi energy. The shimmering section snapped into focus. A clear holographic picture formed in midair above the page.

  “Isn’t he adorable?” she said. “He looks just like Fuzz.”

  They all gazed in wonder at the life-sized picture of a dust-bunny. There were two versions; one showed the creature with just its baby blues open. The other showed it with all four wide open.

  “We rezzed each of the photos in the book at the lab,” Lydia explained. “Every single one is a picture of an animal commonly found here on Harmony. The lettering seems large for the size of the page.”

  Melanie’s face lit up with sudden comprehension and delight. “Oh, my goodness. A children’s picture book of animals.”

  Lydia touched the page reverently. “So unimportant and insignificant that it was overlooked and left behind when the aliens packed up the contents of that chamber and left town. But the clear connection between the pictures and the lettering will give the experts a crack at decoding Harmonic writing at last.”

  Shrimpton beamed. “Our very own Rosetta Stone,” he whispered.

  Lydia and Melanie both looked at him.

  “What’s a Rosetta Stone?” Melanie demanded.

  “I don’t understand, sir,” Lydia said. “It’s not a stone, it’s a book.”

  “Bah, that’s the trouble with the modern educational system,” Shrimpton declared. “They don’t teach the history of Old Earth archaeology in school the way they did when I was a lad.” He grinned with benign satisfaction. “Never mind. The important thing is that Lydia is right. This is going to be an even bigger draw than having the Guild boss’s wife on the staff.”

  32

  EMMETT DELIVERED THE news when he walked through the door of the town house that evening.

  “They found Herbert’s body this afternoon,” he told Lydia while he peeled off his jacket. “Or maybe I should say Troy Burgis’s body.”

  “Dead?”

  “Suicide. He used a mag-rez gun. Messy.”

  Fuzz hopped from Lydia’s shoulder to Emmett’s and settled down to finish a pretzel that he had been munching.

  “I’m not surprised, if you want to know the truth.” Lydia handed Emmett a glass of wine. “The destruction of his underground operation meant the end of his driving obsession with Vincent Lee Vance.”

  “He probably would have been real disappointed to find out that there was no tomb after all, just a library with only one book.” Emmett took a swallow of wine and followed Lydia into the living room. “I can’t say that I’m sorry the son of a bitch is dead, but it would have been nice to get some more answers out of him first.”

  “The answers will come eventually. It’s going to take the authorities a while to sort it all out.”

  Emmett unfastened the collar of his shirt and dropped onto the heavily cushioned sofa. He took off his shoes and stacked his heels on the coffee table. Fuzz scampered down to his knee and perched there contentedly, nibbling on his pretzel.

  It was good to be home, Emmett thought, raising the glass to his mouth. Good to smell dinner rezzing on the stove. Good to think about the night ahead.

  Good to be married to Lydia.

  He watched her walk toward him carrying a small plate of crackers and cheese and wondered how she felt about being married to him.

  She put the plate down on the table and dropped lightly onto the sofa beside him. “Any news about Burgis’s three pals?”

  “Not yet. Martinez thinks they probably all had emergency escape plans in place and used them to disappear. They’ll show up eventually in one of the other cities.”

  She curled one leg under herself. “It’s hard to believe that those four really thought that they could establish their own private army of fanatics down in the catacombs.”

  “Burgis was obviously mentally unstable and dangerously obsessed right from the start. His friends were very likely equally unbalanced. But after fifteen years underground searching for Vance’s lost chamber, all four of them must have become raving lunatics. They had probably lost all touch with reality.”

  “How’s Mercer Wyatt doing?”

  “Recovering nicely. He’s as tough as old quartz. He’s going to start coming back into the office part time next week. He should be back full time at the end of the
month.”

  She watched him with deep, serious eyes. “What about you, Emmett?”

  “Me?” He helped himself to a cracker and some cheese. “I go back into private consulting next week.”

  “So soon? You don’t have to wait until Mercer returns to work full time?”

  “Nope. Mercer plans to employ another consultant to help him run the Guild for a while.”

  “For heaven’s sake, who?”

  “Tamara.”

  Lydia’s jaw dropped in surprise. “Oh, my.”

  “Mercer has finally given up trying to convince me to be his handpicked successor. He told me that he has a scheme to get Tamara onto the Council. An advisory position at first, naturally. But I’ve got a hunch he intends to find a way to make her the next president of the Cadence Guild.”

  “Oh, my,” Lydia said again. She shook her head in wonder. “A female Guild boss. Talk about taking the organization into the modern age in a hurry.”

  “If anyone can pull it off, it’s Wyatt.”

  “Whew. It’s finally over.”

  A long time later, he opened the door of the steamy bathroom. Lydia stood in front of the mirror, a large, fluffy towel secured around her breasts. Her hair was pinned up in a careless knot on top of her head. She had just finished showering and brushing her teeth.

  She turned off the water in the sink and met his gaze in the mirror. She frowned. “Emmett? Is something wrong?”

  He moved to stand behind her and put his hands on her shoulders. She was warm and damp from the shower. Little tendrils of red-gold hair had escaped the pins.

  “Earlier this evening, you said something about it being over. It’s not.”

  She went very still beneath his hands. “What’s not over?”

  “Our marriage.”

  She tensed. “It’s only for a year.”

  “I’m well aware of that.”

  “I told you, I’m sorry I got you into this mess.” She waved her hands. “I just couldn’t think of anything better at the time.”

  “I can,” he said.

  She watched him warily. “You can what?”

  “Think of something better.”

  She swallowed. “Oh.”

  “I love you, Lydia.”

  “Oh.”

  He raised his brows. “Is that all you can say?”

  “No.” Her smile was radiant in the foggy mirror. She turned to face him. “No, it isn’t all I can say. I love you, too.”

  “Enough to consider a Covenant Marriage to a hunter who is about to become an ex–Guild boss?”

  “Oh, yes, yes.” She put her arms around his neck. “I do love you so.”

  Happiness and certainty whirled through him. He kissed her forehead. “Let’s make it as soon as possible.”

  She raised her head quickly, frowning a little as she concentrated. “If we skip all the expensive stuff like the big church wedding and reception, we can probably arrange it within a couple of months. There’s still a lot of paperwork, of course.”

  “But we’re not going to skip the expensive stuff,” he said firmly.

  “Really, Emmett, there’s no need to spend a fortune on a fancy wedding.”

  “I’ll take care of everything.”

  “You will?”

  He started to remove the pins in her hair. “I’m not trusting you to arrange another marriage for us. The last time you handled things we ended up with a tacky, five-minute Marriage of Convenience at the registrar’s office. No fancy clothes, no great food, no dancing, no presents. I learned my lesson. This time things are going to be different.”

  She blinked. “They are?”

  Her hair tumbled down to her shoulders. Satisfied, he unknotted the towel. It fell to the floor. He surveyed her from head to toe, taking his time. She turned very pink under his gaze.

  “Yes,” he said eventually. “Things are going to be very different this time.”

  She started to giggle. He kissed her until she stopped laughing and started making the sweet little murmurs of pleasure and anticipation that set fire to his blood.

  After a while, he picked her up and carried her into the bedroom and put her down on the turned-back bed. She watched him from the shadows as he got out of his clothes.

  He lowered himself beside her and pulled her into his arms. The curve of her bare thigh was perfect under his palm. He slid one leg between hers and bent his head to kiss her breast.

  He took his time making love to her. When she shivered in his arms and whispered his name, he entered her, sinking deep and savoring the connection on every plane from the physical to the paranormal.

  In the end he surrendered to the pounding satisfaction, embracing the release in a way that he had never been able to do with any other woman.

  He covered Lydia’s mouth with his own in a kiss that was as hot as ghost fire.

  33

  IT WAS POURING rain. Lydia fumbled with the umbrella getting out of the cab. The driver watched her drag her purse and large portfolio case out of the vehicle.

  “You sure this is the right address, lady?” he asked, doubtful.

  Okay, so she didn’t look like the kind of person who hung around with the upscale crowd here on Ruin View Hill. There was no need for the cabbie to point it out.

  “Yes, it’s the right place.” Irritated, she paid him and stuffed her wallet back into her purse.

  “Want me to wait?”

  “No, thanks. I’ll call another cab when I’m ready to leave,” she said icily.

  “Suit yourself, I was just trying to help.” The driver’s eyes widened. “Hey, wait a second, I know you. Saw your picture in the papers. Didn’t recognize you because of those big dark glasses and that scarf. You’re the new Guild boss’s wife, aren’t you? The tangler who was with London when he found the skeleton of Vincent Lee Vance.”

  So much for her pitiful disguise, Lydia thought. It was Melanie who had suggested the large scarf and the oversized dark glasses so that she could walk the streets without being asked for an autograph every five steps. It had worked, up to a point, but clearly it wasn’t enough to fool the cab driver.

  Lydia had been desperate enough to try any tactic to evade reporters and autograph seekers. The glowing accounts of the Guild’s heroic role in the discovery of Vance’s remains and the destruction of the Greenie empire were still making headlines daily. While most of the attention had been directed at Emmet, who coolly referred all inquiries to the Guild’s public relations department, she had been accosted on the street every time she left Shrimpton’s.

  Today, in addition to the scarf and glasses, she had taken the extra precaution of slipping out of the museum through the loading-dock entrance before she had hailed the cab on a side street.

  “Mr. London is going to be the ex–Guild boss very soon,” she said crisply. “You won’t be seeing my picture in the papers much in the future.” Thank heavens, she added silently.

  “You sure you don’t want me to wait? Don’t mind doin’ London’s wife a favor.” The cabbie winked. “Never hurts to be on the right side of the Guild.”

  “Not necessary, thanks.” She made to turn toward the high gates that barred the drive of the huge estate.

  “Could I have your autograph for my wife?” the cabbie asked. He thrust a blank receipt and a pen out the window. “Here, I’ll hold your umbrella for you. If you could just sign this for me, she would be really thrilled.”

  Lydia hesitated and then surrendered the umbrella. “I’ve got a better idea,” she said, digging into her purse to pull out one of her business cards. She scrawled her name and a short note on the back and handed it to him. “Take your wife to Shrimpton’s House of Ancient Horrors to see the Harmonic book. This will get you in through the VIP entrance so you won’t have to stand in line.”

  “The VIP line? Oh, man, wait’ll I tell Betty.” He bobbed his head. “Thank you, ma’am. This is gonna make my Betty’s day.”

  “May I please have my umbrella back?”


  “Oh, sure. Sorry. You’re sure you don’t need me to wait?”

  “I’m sure.”

  “Okay.” He rezzed the engine. “You have a good day now, Mrs. London.”

  “Thank you.”

  She waited until the cab was gone before she tromped through the rain to the high gates and pressed the buzzer.

  “May I help you?” a graveled voice asked politely.

  “Lydia Smith . . . London to see Mr. Hepscott. I have an appointment.”

  “Yes, of course, Mrs. London. I see you are on foot. There’s a sheltered area just inside the gates. Please wait there after you come through the gates. I’ll pick you up in a moment.”

  “Thanks.”

  The massive gates swung open. Lydia walked through them and along the drive to a small stone gazebo. A moment later a tall, distinguished-looking, gray-haired man dressed in formal butler attire arrived in a cart.

  She was whisked to the grand entrance of the mansion and ushered into a vast reception hall. Her dripping raincoat and umbrella were taken from her and she was shown into a handsomely appointed library.

  “Mr. Hepscott will be with you in a moment,” the butler assured her before retreating from the room.

  As soon as she was alone, Lydia set her purse and portfolio case down near a low table and went to stand at the wall of windows. The views from the big estates along Ruin View Hill were generally acknowledged by real estate agents to be the finest in the city. The claims were true, she thought. But as spectacular as the sight of the Dead City was from up here on the ridge, she much preferred to live in the Old Quarter where she could pick up the wispy traces of psi power.

  Speaking of stray bits of psi energy.

  She could feel some right here in this room. Curious, she opened her senses more fully. Small currents of power definitely hummed in the atmosphere. It was rare to pick up traces this far from the Old Quarter.

  She searched the room, looking for the source. Then she saw it: a wide, gleaming glass case filled with a large number of alien artifacts. Even a cursory glance from across the room assured her that it was an excellent collection. The remnants of psi energy clinging to so many ancient relics massed together was enough to stir her senses.