After Dark

by Jayne Castle

There was no time to respond. Ahead of Emmett the corridor exploded with acid-green energy. The huge ghost flared high and wide, blocking the narrow tunnel.

  Sylvia gave a muffled cry. Everyone froze.

  Fuzz whined softly. A tremor went through his small body, but all six paws remained firmly planted on Emmett’s shirt, facing the pulsing green specter.

  “Just what we needed,” Lydia said grimly.

  “I don’t understand,” Sylvia whispered. “I thought they’d cleared this corridor. The others come through here all the time.”

  Emmett figured this wasn’t the time to explain that this ghost had been deliberately summoned tonight. The unusual patterns of dissonance told him that it was really two smaller ghosts that had been melded into one.

  Two hunters working together at the entrance of the corridor, he thought. But the one he’d singed last night couldn’t possibly have recovered this fast. Besides, whoever was controlling this double ghost was no untrained novice. It took experience and talent to force two dissonant energy fields into one for any length of time.

  Another hunter, then. Matthews?

  The ghost started to drift down the corridor toward Emmett and the others.

  “Uncle Emmett?” Quinn sounded uneasy.

  “It’s okay, Quinn. It’s really a two-in-one. Got to handle it a little differently. Right now it’s shielding us from the two hunters who are behind it. We can’t see them, but they can’t see us either. I’m going to try to take control of the ghost and send it back toward the two guys who summoned it. But if that doesn’t work, I’ll have to de-rez it. Either way, in the end we’ll have to deal with the hunters. They may be armed.”

  “Right.” Quinn eased Sylvia out of the way and moved up to stand next to Emmett. “But without my amber I’m not going to be much help.”

  “Trust me, at the rate they’re using up psi energy, they won’t be able to summon more than a couple of flickers by the time we get to them. But we’ll have to move fast. As soon as the ghost disappears we take them.”

  Quinn nodded in understanding. “Hand to hand, huh?”

  “Probably.”

  “Emmett?” Lydia spoke urgently from directly behind him.

  “Take care of Sylvia,” he ordered softly. “I’ll handle the rest.”

  He probably came off sounding like one of those macho jerk Guild guys she was always complaining about, he thought. But he didn’t have time to be diplomatic. Fortunately, she did not argue. He saw her fall back with Sylvia in tow.

  He concentrated on the conflicting dissolution patterns in the double ghost. The mingled energy was both its strength and its greatest weakness. There was a lot of power in a ghost this size, but it was inherently unstable. That made it vulnerable to a takeover—if he could locate the two main frequencies.

  The ghost picked up speed as it moved toward them, but it still wasn’t moving fast. No green UDEM had ever been known to shift position at a pace that exceeded a man’s moderate walking speed. Furthermore, the bigger the energy field, the more cumbersome it was. But if it backed you into a corner, you were fried meat.

  Emmett searched for the frequency patterns. He found the weaker one first. As he had expected, whoever was driving it lacked firm control. The hunter wielding the dominant ghost had already interfered with the wave pattern to a great extent in order to complete the meld.

  The ghost floated closer, flaring and pulsing with angry green light, herding Emmett and the others back down the passageway.

  Emmett felt the fresh amber in his watch grow warm against the back of his wrist. He poured more psi energy through it.

  The ghost slowed, struggling to maintain its internal rhythms, but it did not stop. Emmett knew the precise instant when his watch fogged. He switched his focus to the backup amber he wore on a chain around his neck.

  The double ghost was in trouble now. It stopped, pulsing wildly. Emmett recognized the signs of imminent collapse.

  “Got it,” he said softly. “I’m going to try to reverse it, but if it fails, be ready, Quinn.”

  “Right.”

  Working with all the subtlety he could command, Emmett took control of the weakening ghost. He prodded it gently until it began to drift back the way it had come.

  There was a shout of alarm from the vicinity of the quartz staircase.

  “Shit! He’s got it.”

  Quinn grinned. “You do good work, Uncle Emmett.”

  “Let’s go.” Emmett started forward. “Whoever put it together will try to de-rez it as soon as he realizes what’s happening.”

  “I’m right behind you.”

  “So am I,” Lydia said firmly. “And Sylvia’s here too.”

  The woman did have a way of picking the worst possible times to disobey orders, Emmett thought. He opened his mouth to issue fresh instructions.

  But at that instant the fading ghost pulsed one last time and winked out.

  “Now, Quinn.”

  Two figures stood silhouetted in the green glow of the staircase. They were less than ten feet away. As Emmett and Quinn closed on them, they both turned and fled back toward the staircase.

  Emmett recognized one of the two young hunters who had attacked Kelso in the alley behind the Green Wall Tavern. The other was Bob Matthews. If either had an illegal mag-rez gun, he was too psi-rezzed to use it.

  The two pounded up the staircase, into the gloom of the unlit storage closet.

  Emmett dashed through the opening after them. The young hunter had already vanished, fleeing out of the shelter office toward the safety of the street.

  But Matthews moved more slowly. Emmett knew that the other man’s senses were probably badly jangled from the experience of having had his own ghost turned against him. It hurt when that happened. Really hurt.

  Emmett caught him, whirled him around, and slammed him up against the nearest file cabinet.

  Matthews’s face twisted with rage and fear. He made a fist and threw a wild punch. Emmett managed to shift barely enough to avoid taking the blow in the groin. It caught him on his side, however, and sent him reeling backward.

  Matthews closed in quickly, carrying both of them to the floor.

  “Sonofabitch,” Matthews roared, straddling Emmett. He shoved his hand into his jacket. When he pulled it out, a knife gleamed in his fist. “Sonofabitch, we almost had it all, you freaking SOB.”

  Emmett grabbed Matthews’s knife arm at the wrist. Matthews yelled again and dropped the knife, point first, straight toward Emmett’s left eye.

  Emmett whipped his head to the side, heard the blade clatter to the floor beside his ear.

  He jerked hard and forced Matthews off of him. There was a sharp thud. Emmett felt the jolt of the impact and realized that the other man had struck his head against the edge of a cabinet. Matthews slumped and went still.

  Two figures dressed in stained rags that reeked of spilled alcohol materialized in the storage closet doorway that connected to the outer office. Emmett gave them a sour glance as he got to his feet.

  “Where the hell have you two been?” he asked.

  “Sorry we’re a little late, boss,” Ray Derveni said cheerfully. “We ran into a little trouble outside. The woman set an illusion trap at the front door after you and your lady friend went inside.”

  “Damnedest thing you ever saw,” Harry Adler added. “Didn’t think you could set one of those babies aboveground.”

  Emmett frowned. “How’d you get past it?”

  “A kid came runnin’ out a minute ago. Guess he didn’t know about the trap. Ran straight into it. Got nailed. Once it had been sprung we were able to get around it.”

  “Emmett,” Lydia said urgently, “we’ve got a problem.”

  “Sylvia,” Quinn shouted. “She’s got Sylvia.”

  Emmett swung around. He saw Lydia standing at the top of the staircase next to Quinn. Both were peering through the opening.

  “Let her go,” Lydia shouted.

  Emmett went to where the othe
rs were gazing down the green staircase. He saw Helen Vickers at the bottom. She was not alone. She held a mag-rez gun to Sylvia’s head. He wondered how she’d gotten her hands on one.

  “Where the hell did she come from?” Emmett muttered.

  “She was hiding in the shadows of the staircase,” Lydia said quietly. “She grabbed Sylvia while you were dealing with Matthews.”

  “I’ll kill her if anyone comes after me,” Helen warned hoarsely. “I swear I will.”

  “No one will follow you,” Lydia promised in a soft, coaxing tone. “You have my word.”

  “You think I believe that for one minute?” Helen’s face was contorted with rage. “You’ve ruined everything, you stupid bitch. I’m the one who found that dreamstone. I de-rezzed the first traps. It’s mine.”

  Emmett watched her move back another pace. Her foot brushed against what looked like a small heap of refuse.

  “Please,” Quinn said desperately, “let Sylvia go.”

  “Shut up. I should have gotten rid of you the day you walked through the front door. I thought I could use you if the Guild came around, but you’ve been nothing but trouble. I should have had one of the others fry you and dump you in the catacombs.”

  “Helen, he reasonable. You’ll get lost in those tunnels,” Lydia said. “You don’t want to die underground, do you?”

  “I won’t get lost. There are other ways out of this branch. I’ve spent months down here. I know my way—”

  She broke off on a shattering scream as the little heap of refuse she had nearly stepped on moved. Fuzz thinned himself into the sleek predator he was and scampered up the leg of Helen’s trousers in the blink of an eye.

  Helen shrieked and batted wildly with her free hand. “What is it? Get it off me! Get it off!”

  Fuzz reached her throat. His small teeth gleamed just above her jugular.

  Helen screamed again. With a convulsive movement she released Sylvia and dropped the gun to claw Fuzz away from her throat.

  “Fuzz—” Lydia started down the staircase. “Jump!”

  Fuzz leaped off Helen’s neck and landed on all six paws. He raced toward Lydia, who reached down to scoop him up into her arms.

  Sylvia grabbed the gun off the green floor and dashed toward the stairs. Quinn reached for her. She tumbled into his arms. Emmett discovered that the staircase doorway was suddenly clogged with people. He could hear footsteps as she fled down the corridor.

  “Would everyone kindly get the hell out of the way so I can get her?” he snarled.

  Quinn swung around to stare into the tunnel. “She’s getting away.”

  “It’s all right,” Lydia said softly. “She won’t get far.”

  “What are you talking about?” Quinn demanded. “You heard what she said. She knows her way around down there.”

  “It won’t do her any good.” Lydia caught hold of Emmett’s arm. “Trust me.”

  Another scream echoed off the quartz walls, a cry that came from the heart of a nightmare. It reverberated for a long moment and then went deathly silent. Emmett decided he now understood the true meaning of the word “bloodcurdling.” He looked at Lydia.

  “I reset one of the little dreamstone traps while you were dealing with the ghost,” she said quietly. “I left it in the corridor behind us, just in case. I thought it might give us some cover if we had to retreat.”

  He looked at her for a long moment. Then he smiled slowly. “Always nice to work with a pro.”

  28

  ALICE MARTINEZ TOSSED a file down onto her desk with a tight, angry movement. “You should have filed a missing persons report.”

  “My nephew was eighteen, and there was no indication of foul play.” Emmett lounged against the wall of Martinez’s office. “I didn’t think the cops would take the case very seriously.”

  Alice gave him a disgusted look. “With your Guild connections? Give me a break. We’d have been all over the Transverse Wave Youth Shelter.”

  “That kind of high-profile investigation could easily have convinced Vickers and Matthews to get rid of Quinn. They would have killed him and dumped his body in an unexplored tunnel. As it was, they only kept him alive to use as a hostage in case anyone from the Resonance Guild came looking before they finished excavating the dreamstone.”

  Martinez was not happy, but Emmett knew there was very little she could do about it. As far as he was concerned, she had no grounds for serious complaint. He and Lydia had, after all, dumped the whole thing in her lap. Thanks to them, the detective had tied up the loose ends of two murders, made several arrests, and exposed the illegal excavation of legendary dreamstone. Talk about a career-making case, Emmett thought. But some people just couldn’t look on the bright side.

  It was easy enough to dismiss Martinez’s irritation, but Lydia’s cool withdrawal had him worried. He watched her as she answered Alice’s questions with clipped responses. She sat stiffly in the chair, her face angled so that she did not have to meet his eyes. She had retreated behind a veneer of icy reserve. Something was simmering under the surface, but he did not understand it. She had been like this since they had emerged from the catacombs last night. He was starting to wonder if going back underground had triggered some kind of delayed psychic trauma for her after all.

  Alice opened the report on her desk. “According to this, your investigator in Resonance City discovered that Helen Vickers was a strong tangler.”

  “She was also an opportunist,” Emmett said. “She went to work for Anderson Ames two years ago and quickly made herself indispensable to him. Read, took advantage of him. He was getting senile, apparently. In any event, she managed to get herself into his will. But when he died—a death, by the way, that probably warrants further investigation—she suddenly discovered that there was no money after all.”

  Lydia took up the tale. “She went to the shelter to see if there were any assets she could sell off before she closed the place down. Quinn overheard her mention that she found the old illusion trap guarding the hole in the wall. She de-rezzed it and started exploring the catacombs. She discovered the first piece of dreamstone sitting in the tunnel next to the skeleton of the last ruin rat who had tried to excavate. She realized there might be more. She decided to keep the shelter open as a cover, but she called an old lover and offered to make him a partner.”

  Alice arched one brow. “Bob Matthews.”

  “Right. The two of them had worked together in the past. But there was a problem,” Emmett said. “Not only was the site filled with ghosts and traps but the dreamstone pieces were all individually trapped. Apparently they both had a couple of close calls. They needed cheap, expendable labor.”

  Alice’s face hardened. “Young, untrained hunters and tanglers from the shelter.”

  Emmett nodded. “Quinn’s friend Sylvia heard about the jobs here in Cadence. Quinn got worried after she phoned him, and he went after her. I followed Quinn.”

  “Straight to Chester Brady’s shop in the Old Quarter,” Lydia said. “Chester bought the cabinet from Quinn. But he must have gotten curious and followed him around while he asked questions about Sylvia. Vickers got nervous and had Quinn kidnapped. At the time, she probably didn’t know he had Guild connections. Afterward it was too late.”

  “We figure Brady must have witnessed the kidnapping,” Emmett said, “and followed Quinn and the kidnappers into the catacombs. That’s probably when he stole the piece of dreamstone.”

  Thanks to Matthews, who had talked freely after his arrest, they all knew the rest of the story, Emmett thought. Matthews had been in favor of killing Quinn out of hand. It was Vickers who reasoned that they might need him for insurance. In the meantime they could use him to help with the excavating.

  But then they found the claim check in Quinn’s pocket and realized he had sold a valuable object to Chester Brady. That left a trail, and they knew it. Matthews and one of the hunters followed Chester. When he went to Shrimpton’s, they assumed he had gone there to steal an artifa
ct. It looked like a golden opportunity to get rid of him so, they seized it.

  But while they were about the business of killing Chester, Helen Vickers discovered that one of the pieces of dreamstone was missing. She knew enough about Chester’s shady dealings and his tangler abilities to realize that he might be the thief. But it was too late to question him. He was dead. She sent Matthews to search Chester’s shop and his apartment, but he found nothing.

  Vickers and Matthews had no idea that Chester had left a clue to the cache of dreamstone in Lydia’s office.

  When they learned that Emmett was in town and that Lydia was asking questions about the cabinet, they panicked. They sent one of the hunters to her apartment to try to scare her off. When that didn’t work, they decided to get her tangled up in a murder investigation. Hence the search of Lydia’s apartment. It had been made to look like a routine burglary, but the hunter had gone there to find something that could be used to tie her to a crime scene. He had grabbed one of her personalized amber bracelets.

  Martinez looked at Lydia. “They assumed that you and probably London too would, if not actually arrested for Greeley’s murder, at least be kept very busy trying to talk yourselves out of charges.”

  “At that point they were just trying to buy enough time to get the rest of the dreamstone and get out of Cadence,” Emmett said.

  “When their plan bombed, they made one more at tempt to find out what we knew by dragging a colleague of mine into the situation,” Lydia explained. “And then they tried to murder Emmett.”

  “They only needed a few more days,” Emmett said quietly.

  At six o’clock that evening someone pounded forcefully on Lydia’s front door. It was not Zane’s distinctive knock, so she chose to ignore the summons.

  She finished pouring herself a glass of wine and reached for the lid of the pretzel jar.

  The knock sounded again. She paid no attention.

  “At the rate you’re going through these,” she said, feeding a pretzel to Fuzz, “I’d better buy stock in the company that makes them.”

  Fuzz rumbled happily from her shoulder and started to crunch with his usual enthusiasm.