by Jayne Castle
"Sonofa… Mel, listen to me, I need the number of the guard's office there at Shrimpton's. Do you have it?"
"Hang on, I'll get it for you." Melanie was starting to sound worried. "What's wrong?"
"Just get me the number."
"Here it is." She rattled off a string of numbers. "The new guy's name is Benny Fellows."
"Thanks."
"Emmett, you're starting to scare me. What is this all about?"
"Later."
He severed the connection and tried the guard's number. When he got no answer he tossed down the phone and headed for the door.
"Let's go, Verwood."
Emmett drove, piloting the car through the busy streets with an intensity of purpose that other drivers noticed. Vehicles melted out of the Slider's path.
Night had fallen, the darkness complicated by a gathering fog. The streetlights created small circles of glare but not much in the way of useful illumination.
He parked in front of the entrance to Shrimpton's a short time later. Pounding on the front door brought no response. There was no sign of the guard.
Emmett led Verwood around the side of the building, found the window he wanted, and smashed it open with the heel of his boot. Glass fractured, shattered, and then rained down in tiny shards.
Verwood glanced nervously over his shoulder. "Uh, Boss, that's bound to set off an alarm. Cops will be here any minute."
"You hear any alarm?" Emmett reached through the busted window and unlocked it.
"Uh, no." Verwood's brows rose. "Now that you mention it, I don't hear any alarm. Seems kinda strange for a museum."
"Yes, it does." The lack of clanging bells and sirens was a real bad sign, Emmett thought.
"You'd think a place like this would have a security system."
"It does." Emmett went through the window.
Verwood scrambled after him. "I gotta tell you, Boss, it might not look too good in the papers if you get arrested breaking into a museum. Know what I mean?"
"Relax. The owner owes the Guild a couple of favors," Emmett said, thinking of the dreamstone arrangements.
Verwood brightened. "Oh, well, in that case." He wedged his large frame through the open window.
Emmett did a quick survey of the surroundings. The shelves full of journals, books, and gallery catalogs looked familiar. This was Lydia's office, all right. In the gloom he could see a massive object on top of her desk.
"What the hell?" He crossed the room, flipped on the light, and scowled at the sight of the huge bouquet. "Some bastard sent my wife flowers."
"Uh, Boss, maybe you could worry about the flowers later?"
"I'll bet it was Hepscott." Emmett spotted the card lying on top of the desk and picked it up. "If it was, I'm going to have his head on a platter." He ripped the card out of the envelope. "Your devoted slave. Charles." Emmett tossed the card on the desk. "Charles. Charles. Rings a bell but I can't place it. You know anyone named Charles, Verwood?"
"Know a coupla guys named Chuck," Verwood said. "And one who goes by the name of Chase. Don't think I know anyone who calls himself Charles, though."
"When this is over, I want you to find this Charles."
"No problem, Boss."
Emmett went through the desk drawers quickly. "Her purse is gone."
"Probably means she left for the day and everything's okay."
"Optimism is not a desirable quality in a security expert, Verwood."
Verwood exhaled heavily. "Yeah, Mr. Wyatt told me that once or twice, too."
They went down the hall, past the other offices, and then turned into the corridor that led to the museum lobby. A single fluo-rez tube burned in the empty office used by the museum's tiny security staff.
"Evening-shift guy is probably making his rounds," Verwood offered. "Maybe he doesn't know the alarm system isn't working."
Emmett went back out into the hall. "Or maybe he had something to do with the malfunction."
"You know, you and Mr. Wyatt sure do think alike when it comes to figuring out what folks might be getting up to," Verwood said admiringly. "It's like you both zero right in on the worst-case scenario. Guess that's why you both made Guild boss, huh?"
Emmett decided to ignore that. The observation struck a little too close to home. It was, after all, Mercer Wyatt who had taught him how to analyze the motives and ambitions of others.
"Melanie said the Greenies would be interested in the Tomb Wing relics." Emmett turned in that direction. "We'll start there."
Halfway along the hall, he realized that there was something different about the Tomb Wing. Instead of being darkened entirely for the night or dimly lit with the creepy green lighting used for daytime display, all of the overhead fluo-rez tubes were ablaze.
He halted at the entrance. The guard was inside the gallery, his back to Emmett and Verwood. He was busily sweeping up a lot of broken glass. The headphones he wore explained why he had not heard anyone approach.
"Hell of a way to stand guard," Verwood growled. "We could empty out the place before he even realized there was anyone else around."
"Wonder how he knew that glass display case was broken," Emmett said.
"Maybe he accidentally broke it himself."
Emmett went down the long gallery and tapped the guard on the shoulder.
The man started violently. "What? What?"
He dropped the industrial-sized broom and grabbed at the headphones, yanking them off his ears. Simultaneously he twisted around and tried to back away.
The awkward movement brought him up against a low, wide green quartz bowl that looked as if it had been designed as a wading pool. Emmett had seen it on an earlier tour of the gallery and knew that Shrimpton billed it as an alien embalming tub.
The guard tripped, cried out, flailing, and then toppled backward into the shallow pool. He landed on his back in an awkward sprawl.
Emmett braced one foot on the edge of the quartz pool. "Benny, I presume?"
"Yeah, I'm Benny. What's going on here?" Benny levered himself up to a sitting position and glanced nervously at Verwood. Then he switched his attention back to Emmett. "Who are you? What are you doing here? Wait, I recognize you. Emmett London, right? The new Guild boss? I saw your picture in the papers."
"Then we can skip the formalities. I'm looking for my wife."
Benny's jaw sagged. For a few seconds he seemed truly bereft of speech. Then he swallowed visibly.
"Your… your wife? Miss Smith?"
"She's Mrs. London now, Benny."
Benny froze. "Yes, sir. But what makes you think I know where she is?"
"She had a tour at five o'clock. A bunch of Greenies."
"Sure. Right. The special tour. I remember."
"When did she leave?"
"I'm not exactly sure," Benny spoke quickly. "I was busy supervising the loading of the sarcophagus, you see. That's why the alarm system is shut down. Had to turn it off so that I could open the loading-dock doors."
"My wife left a message at my office telling me that the sarcophagus wasn't going to be moved until Monday and that she had the Greenie tour instead."
"There was some sort of mix-up," Benny said, talking a little more steadily now as if he was on more certain ground. "Miss Smith, I mean, Mrs. London was busy with the tour group when the moving van arrived. So I handled the transfer. I figured Mr. Shrimpton would appreciate me showing initiative."
"Is that what you call it?"
Benny looked offended. "All the paperwork was in order. I've got it in my office. See for yourself."
Emmett looked at the broken glass on the floor. "What happened in here, Benny?"
Benny followed his gaze with a jerky movement of his head. "The movers are responsible, sir. When they picked up the coffin and its lid, they accidentally banged one corner into that display case. Nothing's missing, though. I checked."
Emmett took his foot down off the rim of the pool and crossed to the broken display case. Several tomb mirrors were clu
stered inside.
"I told you, nothing was stolen." Benny grabbed the edge of the pool and hauled himself to his feet. He started to put one foot over the side but stopped when Verwood moved toward him. "The sarcophagus was an authorized transfer. The museum got a lot of money for it."
Emmett glanced down at the pile of glittering glass shards that Benny had succeeded in assembling with his broom. Here and there in the sparkling slivers he caught the unmistakable gleam of polished amber.
He took one of the tomb mirrors out of the display case and used the handle to stir the chunks of glass. Two oval-shaped beads appeared. He picked them up and examined them in the light.
"They were made for a necklace," he said to Verwood.
"Whoever busted the case must have broken a string of beads at the same time." Verwood pointed toward the foot of a nearby pedestal. "There's another one. And I see a couple more over there by that table."
"That's one possible explanation." Emmett rose to his feet and turned toward Benny. "The other is that the necklace was broken in the course of a struggle."
Benny blanched. "No," he whispered. "Nothing like that happened, I swear it."
Verwood picked up the headphones that the guard had ripped off a few minutes earlier. A long cord connected them to an audio player. He held the right phone up to his ear.
Emmett watched him. "Music?"
"Nope." Verwood lowered the headphones, his expression grim. "Don't think you're gonna like this, Boss. It sounds like one of those Thirteen Steps to Bliss lectures. Lot of stuff about that Amatheon guy."
"Wo." Benny gave a choked cry and leaped out of the quartz pool.
He dashed toward the entrance of the gallery.
Emmett stuck out a foot and grabbed his arm as he went flying past. Benny stumbled and went down heavily. Verwood moved in to anchor him to the floor.
Benny thrashed violently. Verwood was obliged to use some force. In the course of the struggle, the buttons of the guard's uniform gave way.
A string of amber beads gleamed on Benny's hairy chest.
Emmett walked forward and stood looking down at him. "Let's try this again from the top, Benny. I'll run through it. You tell me if I get anything wrong. Those Greenies kidnapped Lydia this evening, didn't they? Took her out of here in that damn sarcophagus."
Benny's eyes darted from side to side. He twitched a few times but he held his silence.
"You were the inside man, weren't you, Benny?" Emmett continued gently. "You turned off the alarms. The paperwork that authorized the transfer of the coffin was supposed to let you off the hook if anyone got suspicious, wasn't it? Your alibi was going to be that you were busy supervising the loading of the relic when Lydia disappeared."
"It wasn't… it wasn't like that," Benny squeaked.
"But something went wrong. Lydia wouldn't have gone without a fight. In the process, the case got broken and somebody lost his amber necklace."
Benny just stared at Emmett, mouth open, bottom lip trembling.
Verwood was staring, too. "Well, damn," he declared. "If that don't beat all. Only other hunter I've seen pull a ghost this far outside the Wall is Mr. Wyatt."
Emmett became aware of the tiny wisps of psi energy snapping and cracking in the air around him. A small ghost had coalesced. It promptly disintegrated only to reform and fall apart over and over again. He was standing in the center of a light shower of green fireworks.
Benny finally pulled himself together. "It's a trick."
Emmett glanced at the small ghost hovering off to his left, exerted enough concentration to keep it together for a moment, and sent it floating toward Benny.
"No, please." Benny tried to scuttle backward but Verwood pinned him. Sweat bathed his forehead. "Stop it. Stop it. Don't let it touch me."
Emmett tightened the grip on the urgency and rage that was fueling his para-rez abilities. There was no point terrorizing Benny. The guard was barely out of his teens, a young man who somewhere along the line had been emotionally or physically damaged to such an extent that he had become easy prey for a cult.
It was unlikely that Benny knew anything helpful, anyway. He was obviously a low-ranking member of the organization. No one would have entrusted him with hard information.
Annoyed with himself, Emmett de-rezzed the ghost.
Verwood tilted his head slightly, angling his gaze up at Emmett. "Guess we go talk to that guy who runs the Greenies, right, Boss?"
"That's one approach," Emmett said, thinking about other possibilities.
Benny shook his head. "You can't just go barging in on Master Herbert. He spends most of his time meditating and communicating with the spirit of Amatheon. It requires a tremendous amount of his time and an enormous degree of psychic energy. He needs rest between his sessions with the Philosopher. Nobody gets to see Master Herbert without an appointment."
Emmett closed his fist around the amber beads. "Don't worry, Benny. Got a hunch Master Herbert will see me this evening."
Chapter 25
Lydia opened her eyes to the familiar green light of the catacombs. Relief swept through her. A moment ago, when awareness had begun to creep back, she had been terrified that she was coming awake inside a closed coffin. In those first few seconds all she could think about was how long it would take her to go mad.
She had a feeling that the image of the lid of the sarcophagus descending downward, blotting out the light and sealing her into the quartz burial box, would provide her with an ample supply of nightmares for the rest of her life.
As if she didn't have enough weird dreams already.
She sat up cautiously. Her stomach swam and her head spun. Whatever they had used to put her out had some unpleasant side effects. Just like last time.
After a moment she decided that she was not going to throw up. Her head cleared a little. She started to shift positions again and discovered that she was on a pallet, not the hard quartz floor of the small chamber.
The space in which they had confined her was about the size of her office at Shrimpton's. But given that it was a lot bigger than the sarcophagus she decided that she would not complain too loudly about the accommodations. At least not yet.
There was a comforting familiarity about the chamber. She had spent a lot of her professional life underground in these catacombs. The walls, ceiling, and floor were oddly proportioned to the human eye but they were not uncomfortable. Every surface in the space glowed with a soft green radiance just like all of the other passages and chambers and hallways that the aliens had built below ground. As with the proportions, the light took some getting used to but after a while it felt natural, like sunlight or moonlight.
The experts had never been able to figure out the source of the luminous glow. It seemed to be a property of the particular type of green quartz that had been used to construct the catacombs. So far as anyone knew, the illumination had never so much as flickered or dimmed anywhere in the endless miles of underground corridors that had been explored thus far. Nevertheless, para-archaeologists, hunters, ruin rats, and everyone else who went down into the tunnels always carried spare flashlights, just as they carried spare amber and spare water.
The eerie light and the design of the room weren't the only things she found comforting, she thought, pushing herself to her feet. Psi energy pulsed heavily everywhere down here in the catacombs. It was invigorating.
Her stomach settled and her mind cleared. She looked toward the entrance of the chamber and saw a row of human-engineered steel bars and a lock. The aliens had not used doors or gates to seal their rooms. They had re-lied on various types of illusion traps to ensure privacy and security. But someone had obviously decided to go low-tech here to make sure that she did not escape. A smart move, given that she had never met a trap she couldn't untangle.
That thought made her glance at her wrist. She was relieved to see that her kidnappers had left her with her bracelet.
There was a tiny room off the main chamber, its entrance closed b
y a curtain. She pulled the drape aside and found that someone had thoughtfully installed a portable rest room, complete with commode, shower and basin. It was the same make and model as those that were standard equipment on most professionally run excavation sites.
She made use of the facilities and felt even steadier after she washed her face.
When she was finished, she went to stand at the bars of her cell and looked out into the corridor. A short distance away down the hall three people with shaved heads and green robes were seated at a long folding table. There was a stack of sandwiches and several cans of Curtain Cola in the middle of the table.
One of the Greenies, a woman, noticed her and quickly pushed back her chair.
"She's awake," the woman announced excitedly. "Acolyte Martin, go and tell the assistants. They said that Master Herbert wanted to see her as soon as she was alert."
"I'm on it." Martin took off, sandwich in hand, and disappeared around a bend in the corridor.
The third Greenie, another woman, peered at Lydia. "How do you feel?"
"Like I could dance until dawn." Lydia leaned heavily on the bars and tried to look as wan as possible. "Too bad I didn't bring my new dress."
"Hey, don't get smart mouthed with us," the first woman snapped. "We're just doing our job."
"Are you going to tell me why you went to all this trouble to grab me?"
"We don't know why the Master wants you here," the second woman said.
Lydia nodded. "Well, that's a real conversation stopper, isn't it?"
The first woman hesitated. "My name is Acolyte Frances. You want something to eat?"
Lydia did a quick status check on her stomach. Things appeared to be under control in that department. Maybe it would be a good idea to take some nourishment. She might need energy later.
"Got any rez-tea?" she asked.
"Sure."
"I'll take a large cup and one of those sandwiches, please."
By the time Acolyte Martin returned to inform everyone that she was to be escorted into the "Master's Chamber" Lydia felt almost normal, assuming she ignored the fact that she was both very mad and very scared.
