It was as if all the oxygen had been sucked out of the atmosphere and replaced with pure psi. She felt light-headed.
She managed to rally. “Look here, Fontana, if you think for one minute that fake wedding ceremony gives you any marital rights or that I’m interested in finding out if the rumors about hunters who are in the grip of an afterburn are true, you’ve got another thought coming.”
He raised his brows slightly. “What rumors would those be?”
“Forget it.” She bristled. “I’m not going there. This is supposed to be a business partnership, remember?”
He rested one hand on the roof of the Float.
She started to get nervous. Her sixth sense wasn’t picking up any menacing vibes, but there was some serious energy in the atmosphere, and it wasn’t alien psi.
“We’re supposed to be married,” he said calmly. “We’ve got lots of witnesses, thanks to you, and tomorrow morning we’re going to be all over the Curtain.”
“So? That was the plan.”
“The plan isn’t going to work very well if you insist on separate quarters,” he said patiently.
Why hadn’t she considered this aspect of the situation a little more closely? Because she had been rushing around madly all day, that was why. Fontana had given her very little time to think. In hindsight, that had probably not been an accident. He had subtly but deliberately taken charge of their relationship. But, then, that’s what Guild bosses did. They took command.
“I don’t care how it looks in the media,” she said, going for stubborn. “So there’s gossip about our relationship? So what? You said the main point was to make certain that everyone knew that I was your wife.”
“I don’t give a damn about the gossip. After that incident with the Riders this afternoon, we have to assume that not all of the bad actors are inside the organization.”
Jolted, she stared up at him. “You think those guys who attacked me are somehow connected to the conspiracy?”
“I think we have to assume it’s a reasonable possibility. Who else have you managed to piss off lately besides Jenner?” he asked.
She swallowed hard. “Not the Riders. I’ve never done a story on them. The management of Underworld Exploration wasn’t too happy when I exposed their shady business ties with the Guild, but they complained the old-fashioned way. Their lawyers threatened to sue the paper. I can’t see a big company like that hiring a bunch of low-life gang members to get rid of one measly little tabloid reporter.”
“I think you’re in more trouble than you realize. Until we know what’s going on, you won’t be spending the night alone.”
“Why your place?” she muttered.
“You’ll be safer at my house. I installed a state-of-the-art ambertronics security system shortly after I bought it last month. No one can even get on the grounds without triggering the alarms.”
She thought about the strange restlessness that had kept her awake last night. Her intuition had told her that someone was watching. Her intuition was usually right. Maybe the Riders had been stalking her.
She made her decision.
“You’re right,” she said, rezzing the Float’s little flash-rock engine. “I need to pick up a few things at my place.”
Chapter 8
SHE EMERGED FROM THE BEDROOM, AN OVERNIGHT CASE in her hand, and found Fontana studying the miniature star dressing room on the coffee table. He looked deeply intrigued.
“Where did you get this?” he asked.
“An ex-hunter named Jake Tanner built it for Elvis. Poor Jake is a juice addict who lives in an alley a few blocks from here. When he’s not in a juice dream, he makes the most amazing miniatures out of discarded items and materials that he scrounges from garbage bins. Elvis’s dressing room is his latest masterpiece.”
“It’s incredible.”
She smiled. “Yes, it is.”
The dressing room was a marvelously detailed work of art. The walls stood some ten inches high. There was no ceiling, so you looked straight down into it.
The room was complete, right down to the dressing table covered in red velvet and the mirror surrounded by tiny lights. There was also a little guitar. The walls were paneled and set with hooks designed to hold the costumes that Jake had made for Elvis. In addition to his sparkling white cape, there was a short-sleeved shirt printed with exotic tropical flowers. A tiny lei hung next to the tropical shirt.
Elvis popped into the dressing room using the little door. He puttered about briefly, checking to be sure that nothing had changed since he had left it. Satisfied, he came back out and chortled at Sierra.
“The guitar actually works,” Sierra said. “Listen.”
She reached down into the dressing room and used her fingertip to pluck one of the strings on the small instrument. There was a faint but distinct twang.
Fontana smiled. “Amazing.”
She straightened and tightened her grip on the handle of the rolling suitcase.
“I’m ready,” she said.
“You don’t have to look as though you’re going to a funeral.”
“Sorry. It’s been a long day. I’m exhausted.”
He took the suitcase from her and went toward the door. She picked up Elvis and followed.
“So, are you going to work out or something?” she asked, trying to sound casually unconcerned.
“At this hour of the night? I don’t think so.”
If she had any sense, she would keep her mouth shut, she thought.
“I was under the impression that de-rezzing ghosts had some side effects,” she said cautiously. “Or is it different when you manipulate dark light?”
“It’s all dissonance energy,” he said. He opened the door. “Same side effects.”
“I see.” She didn’t know where to go with that.
Fontana closed the door and turned around to face her. She was forced to halt directly in front of him. He did not touch her, but she noticed that it was suddenly very hard to breathe.
“Something you should know,” he said. He used the edge of his hand to tip up her chin.
She managed to rez up a bright, polite smile. “Yes?”
“A man doesn’t get very far in the Guild if he can’t handle a little afterburn.”
Heat suffused her face. “I didn’t mean to imply that you were, uh—”
“That I might be crazed with lust because I rezzed those five little ghosts?”
She blushed. “Never crossed my mind.”
“Is that right? It crossed mine. The answer is yes, by the way.”
“Yes, what?”
“Yes, I’m crazed with lust. Doesn’t mean I’m out of control.”
“Oh. Good. Well, that’s just great. Glad to hear it.”
“I’ll prove it,” he said.
She was transfixed. “How?”
“Like this.”
He bent his head and took her mouth. Heat flashed through her, just as it had in the registrar’s office. Energy crackled in the atmosphere. Dazed from her own volatile response, she swayed a little, leaning into him. She felt Elvis scramble up onto Fontana’s shoulder so that he wouldn’t get crushed. It was a smart move. Fontana’s chest was quartz-hard, and she was pressed very tightly against him.
She wanted the kiss to go on forever, but Fontana ended the reckless plunge into passion a moment later. He raised his head and set her gently away from him.
“Time to go home,” he said.
Chapter 9
FONTANA EASED THE RAPTOR TO A HALT IN FRONT OF A pair of massive gates and punched a code into a small device on the dashboard.
The gates were fashioned in an elaborate design that made them appear more like large works of metal art than a security feature, but Sierra had a hunch they were probably made of mag-steel. A high stone fence surrounded the property.
The gates swung open, and she saw the mansion. It loomed like a fairy-tale castle in the glowing green fog. Not the home of the handsome prince, she decided, more li
ke the ominous domain of a sorcerer.
“Must take a big staff to run this place,” she observed, trying to make herself focus on small talk.
“I believe in delegating. I have a household manager. She comes in five days a week and oversees whatever is needed. I let her take care of hiring gardeners, housekeepers, and any other services she thinks are necessary.”
“But she doesn’t live here?”
“No. I like my privacy. When I come home at night, I want to be alone.”
The drive was so choked with luminous mist she could barely make out the dark shapes of the trees that lined the approach to the big house.
Fontana eased the Raptor along the paved lane and into a garage. The door of the garage locked behind them with the rumbling clang of a bank vault. Sierra collected Elvis and got out of the car. Together they waited while Fontana extracted her small suitcase from the trunk.
He used another code to rez a second vaultlike door.
“Okay, I see what you mean about your security system being a bit more elaborate than mine,” she said. “Do all Guild chiefs feel that it’s necessary to invest in such sophisticated equipment, or is there something about being the boss of the Crystal Guild that makes it a good idea?”
“Are you implying I might be a trifle paranoid?”
“Just a touch.”
“It’s a good character trait in a Guild boss.”
“I’ll take your word for it,” she said.
They entered the mansion through a back hall. Fontana turned on a few lights. She looked around as they moved into the house.
“It’s beautiful,” she whispered.
“Not quite the kind of place you expected a Guild man to own?”
“Don’t start with me, Fontana. I’ve had a very long day.”
“Sorry.”
He paused. She got the feeling he was regrouping, searching for a way to get the conversation back on track.
“The house dates from about fifty years before the Era of Discord,” he said. “The inlay work and the mosaics are all original.”
“Beautiful.” She studied one of the dark blue, yellow, and white mosaics on the floor. “There is so much history in this house.”
“That was the attraction,” he said. He looked at her. “I don’t have a family history of my own, so I bought one.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m a bastard.”
“You mean your father never married your mother.” She brushed that aside with a small move of her fingers. “Yes, I know. I found that out when I did my research on you.”
She could tell that she had finally caught him off guard, but he covered his reaction swiftly with a wry smile.
“Ray did warn me about the dangers of marrying a journalist,” he said.
“It wasn’t the circumstances of your birth that I found interesting,” she continued. “It was your reputation. When hunters talk about you, they always cite Fontana’s First Rule: Never leave a man behind for ghost bait.”
He shrugged. “It’s an old story.”
She watched his face in the shadows. “I gather it goes back to your work in the tunnels. There was an incident. Someone tried to hijack a shipment of artifacts. You were in charge of the expedition that was attacked. You and your men fought off the pirates and got the civilians out of harm’s way, but some members of your crew were taken hostage by the hijackers. You went back down and single-handedly rescued your men.”
“That was a long time ago.”
She smiled. “That’s the thing about reputations, isn’t it? They hang around for a long time.”
He led her into a room lit with faint, luminous green light. She recognized the source of the illumination. It came from the array of alien antiquities massed inside. Countless vases, urns, and exquisite little jars were displayed on various tables and pedestals. Most of the artifacts were crafted of the ubiquitous, indestructible quartz that the craftsmen of the vanished civilization had used to build everything from their utensils to great cities. The psi that emanated from the quartz was the source of the eerie green glow.
Having concluded that they were going to hang around awhile, Elvis scampered down from her shoulder and began exploring. He soon disappeared into the deep shadows of the gallery.
Sierra went to stand in front of a selection of quartz plaques engraved with strange designs.
“This is a very fine collection,” she said. “Museum quality.”
“It came with the house.” He walked toward her and halted directly behind her, not quite touching. “The former owner was a collector. When he died, the heirs wanted to sell the collection to a museum. I offered to buy it instead.”
“That must have tacked quite a bit onto the purchase price.”
“Yes.” He rested his hands on her shoulders. “But it was worth it.”
A case full of artifacts that were not made of green quartz caught her eye. It was the one cabinet in the room that had artificial lighting.
“Good heavens,” she whispered. “Is that real dreamstone?”
“Do you really think I’d have any fakes in here?”
She flushed. “No. My father has a couple of pieces, but I’ve never seen that much of it outside a museum.”
No one knew why the aliens, who had used quartz for virtually everything else, had fashioned some items out of the mysterious dreamstone. The experts could not even decide if the exquisitely beautiful substance was native to Harmony. No naturally occurring deposits had ever been found.
Unlike quartz, dreamstone did not glow with its own natural illumination, but in the subdued case lighting, each item shimmered and shifted and swirled with fabulous colors that had no names. Dreamstone was solid to the touch, but to the eye it had the properties of a liquid, ever changing and endlessly, fascinatingly beautiful.
She looked at Fontana, a little awed in spite of herself. “I take back what I said about you being a trifle paranoid. The dreamstone alone justifies all your security.”
Another kind of energy shimmered through the room.
“I protect what is mine,” Fontana said.
Chapter 10
HIS NAME WAS HANK, AND HE HAD BEEN LIVING ON THE streets in the old Quarter for nearly a year. Before that he had spent nearly two decades as a Guild man working underground until he’d been ghost-fried so bad he’d been forced to retire. He had seen a lot of weird things in his time but never anything like the four-foot-wide beam of ultraviolet energy sweeping slowly down the alley.
The beam appeared impenetrable at first, but as it got closer, he could see shadowy shapes moving about on the other side. It was impossible to make them out clearly, but he thought he caught glimpses of dark figures that resembled two-legged, fishlike beings with bulbous heads.
He crouched behind the large metal trash container, knowing it would provide no protection from the moving beam. Dissonance energy crackled invisibly in the atmosphere, a lot of it. His para-rez senses had been dulled by a steady diet of Green Ruin for a long time now, but the hunter in him could still recognize alien psi when it was this heavy. It was ghost energy but not like any he had ever encountered down in the tunnels. For one thing, it was the wrong color. For another, it was too well-controlled. No hunter could shape and focus ghost light that cleanly. The stuff usually flared and flashed in violent waves, no matter how good you were at handling it.
He should be on his feet, running for his life. Hunters had some natural immunity to green ghost light, but he was sure that no one could survive a brush with this ultraviolet monster. Nevertheless, some instinct warned him that his only chance was to remain concealed behind the trash container.
The beam halted a short distance away near the doorway where Jake Tanner had his crib. There was no sound from Jake. The guy was probably lost in a juice dream.
The fish-headed shadows on the other side of the wall of energy moved about with a purposeful air. He couldn’t see what they were doing. But after a few seconds, the wide be
am of ultraviolet shifted.
He figured there was some important stuff a man ought to think about at a time like this, but he couldn’t seem to recall anything he really wanted to dwell on in his last moments. He’d said his good-byes to the real world and his life when he’d crawled into the endless bottles of Green Ruin.
Might as well go out on a rush of heavy diss light. Probably as good a way to die as any.
But the energy beam was no longer moving toward him. Instead, it retreated swiftly back toward the opposite end of the alley. After a moment it suddenly vanished, as if someone had rezzed a switch to turn off a flashlight.
Hank realized his heart was pounding harder than it had the time he’d encountered his first big ghost down in the tunnels. He started to reach for another bottle of Green Ruin with shaking fingers and then hesitated.
After a moment he made himself get to his feet. He didn’t want to do this, but Jake had been the closest thing he’d had to a friend since he’d discovered the magic of Green Ruin.
He picked up his flashlight, switched it on, and made his way toward Jake’s crib. He wasn’t surprised by what he found. Some part of him had known that the bedroll would be empty.
The bastards had taken Jake.
Chapter 11
FONTANA SAT ALONE IN THE DARKENED BEDROOM, A glass of brandy in one hand, and contemplated his wedding night. Sierra was asleep two doors down the hall. This was the first time since he had bought the mansion that anyone other than himself had slept here.
It felt good to know that she was in his house. He would have preferred that she slept in this room; nevertheless, she was under his roof, and that was enough for now.
The stunt with dark light at the party had been a dumb-ass move. Why the hell had he done it?
Because he had been unable to resist the hunters’ traditional wedding night challenge, that’s why. Damn it, for a while there tonight he’d actually let himself believe that he really was a newly married man.
Growing up a bastard, his mother dead in a car accident when he was fifteen, he’d had very little in the way of traditions. When he joined the Guild, it was as if he had finally found a family. He had embraced the organization and everything about it, including all the old traditions, with the fervor of a new convert.
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