by Jayne Castle
He went toward the shadowed stairwell.
Dr. Metford looked at Alice.
“He’s going to remove the crystal contacts and put on the other pair of special sunglasses that he brought with him today,” Alice explained.
Dr. Metford’s brows rose. “He knew that Zara Tucker would demand that he destroy his first pair?”
“He knew how she would stage her big scene today. He’s got a talent for business negotiations.”
“Obviously there’s a reason the business world calls him the Magician,” Dr. Metford said.
Alice smiled. “Yes.”
Chapter 48
“YOU KNEW THAT IF SHE SAW ONE LAST OPPORTUNITY TO take revenge that she would try, even if it meant her own death,” Alice said. “That’s why you stood so close to the edge of the roof.”
“I thought there was a high probability she would risk everything at the end, yes,” Drake said.
He drank some of the whiskey in his glass. Alice swallowed some more of her wine. They were on the sofa in the living room of Drake’s town house in the Old Quarter, feet propped side-by-side on the low black lacquer table in front of them.
It was late. Midnight was approaching. Drake was not wearing his sunglasses. The glow of the Dead City Wall was at full force, illuminating the narrow streets and rooftops of the Quarter. The eerie green radiance flooded the living room with paranormal shadows. The only other light came from the fire that burned in the hearth.
The remains of the rich, chunky soup and the sandwiches that Drake’s housekeeper had prepared earlier were on the table in front of the sofa. Houdini had done his best to deal with the leftovers but now he was sprawled flat on his back on the sofa between Alice and Drake.
“You could have been killed,” Alice said. She took a meditative sip of her wine. “You were standing very, very close to the edge.”
“I should have done something permanent about Zara on Rainshadow,” Drake said. “But it would have involved too many other people. Harry, Chief Attridge, Charlotte, Rachel, you.”
“We would all have kept your secret.”
“I know,” Drake said. “But I did not want to put that burden on others who have enough secrets of their own to protect.”
“Now I’m the only one who knows for sure that what happened to Dr. Z was not entirely an accident.”
“Are you okay with that?”
“No,” Alice said. “No, I am not okay with that because you could have been killed with that damn fool bit of strategy out there on the rooftop.”
Drake looked briefly startled by the fierceness of her reaction. “It wasn’t that risky.”
“Yes, it was, and I want your promise that you will never, ever do anything that dumbass again.”
“Dumbass?”
“Yes, dumbass. I’m sure there were other ways of taking out Tucker. You did not have to put your own life on the line.”
“It seemed like the simplest and most effective strategy at the time.”
“Don’t you dare talk to me about strategy. We were staging a trick. Magicians don’t like it when the box-jumper decides to improvise.”
“When I saw Tucker there on the roof, I knew that she would keep coming at you until she was stopped,” Drake said. “She realized that if she could hurt you, she would have her revenge against me. Sooner or later she might have been successful. I could not allow that.”
“I realize you felt an obligation to protect me. I appreciate that. However—”
“Don’t say that.”
She frowned. “Don’t say what?”
“Don’t say that you appreciate my need to protect you.”
“But I do appreciate it,” she said earnestly. “It’s very nice of you.”
“Nice?”
“Gentlemanly. Heroic. Whatever. You feel a sense of responsibility toward me, and you are the type of man who takes his responsibilities seriously. I admire that, really.”
Drake took his feet off the table. He leaned forward and put his whiskey glass down with enough force to make a loud clink. He reached out, took Alice’s wineglass from her unresisting fingers, and set it down beside his.
“Something wrong?” Alice asked, bewildered.
“I do not want to hear that you admire me,” he said. His unshielded eyes burned. “I did not do what I did today because I am nice. I did it because it was necessary. That’s how I work, Alice. I examine a situation, define the goal, and then design a strategy to achieve that goal.”
Alice stilled. Something had changed quite drastically in the atmosphere. She was not at all certain where things were going.
“I understand your approach to life and business,” she said. “Why don’t you want me to admire you for it?”
“Because I want you to love me instead,” Drake said, “the way I love you.”
A great sense of warmth and wonder welled up from some place deep inside Alice. She looked into Drake’s silver eyes and saw the silver fire that burned in the depths. She touched his cheek.
“I thought you knew,” she whispered. “You’re the one who sees what others don’t see.”
“What did you think I saw?”
“That I love you,” she said. “That’s what I was going to tell you today when we left Ethel Whitcomb’s mansion. Took me a while to recognize the feeling. I’ve never been in love before.”
“Alice.”
He started to pull her into his arms.
Evidently fearing that he was about to get squashed, Houdini stirred abruptly and bounded down to the floor. He whisked across the room, heading for the open slider. At the door he paused for a cheerful chortle before dashing out onto the balcony and hopping up onto the railing. Alice caught a glimpse of his small, furry frame silhouetted against the green light of the Dead City Wall before he took off into the night.
And then she stopped thinking about Houdini because Drake was kissing her in the luminous psi-and-fire-lit night.
A long time later they lay together, stretched out on the sofa in front of the fireplace. They were both still fully clothed, although Alice’s pants and blouse were rumpled. Her initial sense of wonder had worn off. Reality came crowding back.
“What about your family?” she said quietly. “Will they accept me?”
“Accept you?” Drake laughed. “Get real. When they find out you’ve agreed to marry me, they’ll fall all over themselves in gratitude. They were afraid that I was never going to get past what Tucker did to me, that I would never find the right woman.”
Alice twisted a little in his arms. “When did you decide that I was the right woman?”
“I knew that the first night we met. Why in hell do you think I rushed you into that Marriage of Convenience the following morning?”
“What?” Alice struggled to a sitting position. “Are you telling me the MC wasn’t about protecting me from Ethel Whitcomb?”
“I told myself that it was a good strategy for keeping her away from you. And it was true, up to a point. But there were other ways of handling people like Ethel Whitcomb.” Drake tangled his fingers in Alice’s hair. “From the moment I saw you in the alley behind the theater dodging those thugs, I wanted you. When you kissed me in that parking garage after we got the MC, I figured I had a chance. After we spent our wedding night in the cove watching each other’s backs in that damn fog I knew I would do whatever was necessary to keep you close.”
“I kept telling myself not to mistake sexual attraction for love,” she whispered. “But I knew from the beginning that what I felt for you was not just physical in nature. It’s as if I’ve been waiting all my life for you to show up.”
Drake smiled. “We’ve both waited long enough. What do you say to a quick, quiet Covenant Marriage and another honeymoon on Rainshadow?”
“A third honeymoon on Rainshadow? Sure, why not?” Alice smiled. “A romantic island paradise teeming with escaped sea monsters living in flooded caves, giant mutant insects, and ancient ruins full of dangerous Alien
technology—not to mention an underground labyrinth of uncharted catacombs. What could possibly go wrong?”
“We were made for each other. We can handle anything that comes along.”
A sparkling tide of knowing and a sense of profound certainty flowed through Alice.
“Yes,” she said. “Yes to everything, Drake Sebastian.”
He kissed her for a very long time. After a while he got to his feet, picked her up in his arms, and carried her into the lingering shadows of the bedroom.
* * *
HOUDINI AND THE OTHERS PLAYED THE NEW GAME OF hide-and-seek among the ruins inside the great Wall that surrounded the Dead City. The centuries-old ethereal quartz towers glowed in the night, offering virtually unlimited hiding places for dust bunnies. They raced around, darting in and out of the ancient structures until shortly before dawn.
When the first light of the new day illuminated the sky, they left the long-abandoned ruins. They dined on leftover pizza that had been discarded in a trash container in the alley behind a nearby Old Quarter restaurant. A good time was had by all.
The ruins left behind by the long-vanished Aliens held many ancient secrets. But the future on Harmony was with the humans and their games and their pizza.
KEEP READING FOR AN EXCERPT FROM
After Dark
A Ghost Hunter Novel by Jayne Castle
Available from Jove Books
IF IT HAD NOT BEEN HORRIBLY OBVIOUS THAT CHESTER Brady was already dead, Lydia Smith might have strangled him herself.
Her first assumption when she rounded the corner into the shadowy Dead City Tomb wing of Shrimpton’s House of Ancient Horrors was that Chester was pulling another scam. It had to be some bizarre con tactic designed to steal her new client prospect right out from under her nose before she could get his name on a contract.
It was so typical of the little sneak. And after all she’d done for him.
She came to a halt and stared at the leg and arm hanging limply over the side of the ancient sarcophagus. Maybe it was just a weird gag this time. After all, Chester’s sense of humor did lean toward childish pranks.
But there was something a little too realistic about the way he was slumped in the not-quite-human-shaped coffin.
“Maybe he just fainted or something,” she said, without much hope.
“Don’t think so.” Emmett London glided around her and walked forward to gaze down into the green quartz burial box. “He’s very dead. You’d better call the authorities.”
She took another cautious step forward and saw the blood. It had drained from Chester’s throat into the bottom of the coffin.
The reality of what she was staring at hit her with a numbing jolt. She could not believe it. Not Chester. He was a thief and a con artist, the kind of shady character who gave a bad name to all legitimate antiquities dealers and respectable para-archaeologists, but he was a friend, too. Sort of.
She swallowed heavily. “An ambulance?”
Emmett looked at her. Something about his gaze made her uncomfortable. Maybe it was the eerie gold-green hue. It was a little too close to the color of her pet dust bunny’s second pair of eyes, the ones it used for hunting.
“There’s no rush on the ambulance,” Emmett said. “I’d start with the police if I were you.”
Easy for him to say, Lydia thought. The problem was that the first person the cops would want to talk to would probably be her. Everyone on Ruin Row knew that she’d had a furious argument with Chester last month because the little creep had snaffled off her first potential client.
Oh, God, Chester was dead—genuinely dead. It was difficult to grasp the concept. This wasn’t another one of his convenient disappearing acts designed to keep him one step ahead of an enraged client. This time his death was for real.
She suddenly felt light-headed. This could not be happening.
Deep breaths, she thought. Take some deep breaths. She would not fall apart. She would not lose it. She was not going to crack under stress the way everyone expected her to do.
With an effort she pulled herself together.
She glanced up from Chester’s body and found Emmett London watching her. His expression was oddly thoughtful, even mildly curious in a detached sort of way. It was as if he was waiting to see how she would react, as if her response to the sight of a dead body in a sarcophagus was merely an interesting academic puzzle.
Unconsciously, her gaze went to his wrist. She had caught a glimpse of his watch a few minutes ago. The dial was set in an amber face. No big deal, she thought. Amber accessories were fashionable. A lot of people wore amber simply because it was stylish. But some people wore it because amber was the medium that powerful para-resonators used to focus their psychic talents.
Another shiver went through her.
“Yes, of course, the police,” she whispered. “There’s a phone in my office. If you’ll excuse me, Mr. London, I’ll go call them.”
“I’ll wait here,” Emmett said.
So calm and unruffled, she thought. Maybe stumbling across dead bodies was routine for him.
“I’m really very sorry about this.” She didn’t know what else to say.
Emmett regarded her with that unwavering expression of polite interest. “Did you kill him?”
The shock of the question left her momentarily speechless.
“No,” she finally gasped. “No, I most certainly did not kill Chester.”
“Then it’s not your fault, is it? There’s no need to apologize.”
She got the distinct impression that he would not have been especially troubled if she had admitted to murdering poor Chester. She wondered uneasily what that said about him.
She turned away to walk back along the gloom-filled display gallery to her office. Her glance fell on Chester’s foot propped on the edge of the green sarcophagus. The foot was encased in a boot made of some sort of cheap imitation lizard skin.
Chester had always been a flashy dresser, Lydia reflected. To her surprise, she felt a pang of wholly unexpected sadness. True, he had been a sleazy, opportunistic hustler. But he was only one of many who eked out a living on the fringes of the booming antiquities trade here in Cadence. The eerie green quartz ruins of the long-vanished alien civilization that had once flourished here on Harmony provided a variety of profit niches for industrious entrepreneurs. Chester had not been the worst of the lot who worked in the shadow of the Dead City wall.
He had been a nuisance, but he had been colorful. She was going to miss him.
* * *
At five o’clock that afternoon, Melanie Toft stood in the doorway of Lydia’s tiny office, her dark eyes alight with curiosity. “What did they say? Are you in the clear?”
“Not entirely.” Exhausted by the hours of police questioning, Lydia sagged back into the depths of her chair. “Detective Martinez said they think Chester was murdered sometime between midnight and three A.M. I was home in bed at the time.”
Melanie made a tut-tutting sound. “Alone, I suppose?”
Melanie was never loath to bring up the subject of sex. Six months ago she had terminated her third, or maybe it was her fourth, Marriage of Convenience. She made no secret about the fact that she was open to the notion of a fifth.
On the basis of her considerable experience, Melanie had appointed herself Lydia’s personal sex advisor. Not that she had any great need of the expertise, Lydia thought. Her sex life, never what anyone would term lively, had become downright moribund in the past year.
Lydia absently fingered the amber stones in her bracelet. “How does a person verify that she was innocently asleep in her own bed when someone got murdered?”
Melanie folded her arms and leaned against the door frame. “It would certainly be a whole lot easier to prove if you had not been alone in said bed. I’ve been warning you for months about the dangers of not having a more active social life. Now you see the risks of being celibate for extended periods of time.”
“Right. A person neve
r knows when she’s going to need a good alibi for murder.”
Concern replaced some of the fascinated interest on Melanie’s face. “Lydia, are you—you know—okay?”
It was starting already, Lydia thought. “Don’t worry, you don’t have to call the folks in the white coats yet. I’m not going to have a nervous breakdown in front of you. Thought I’d save it until I get home tonight.”
“Sorry. It’s just that you told me that the para-rez shrinks had advised you to avoid stressful situations.”
“What makes you think I’ve had a stressful day? All I’ve done so far is find a dead body in the Tomb Gallery, spend a few hours being grilled by the cops, and probably lose my shot at signing up a private client who could have single-handedly elevated my financial status into the next tax bracket.”
“I see your point. Nothing stressful about a day like that. Not in the least.” Melanie straightened away from the door frame and moved into the office. She sat down in one of the two chairs in front of the desk. “Just a walk in the park.”
A new worry descended on Lydia. She could not afford to lose this job. “I wonder what Shrimpton will say when he gets back from vacation tomorrow and finds out what happened.”
“Are you kidding? Shrimp will probably give you a raise.” Melanie chuckled. “What better publicity for Shrimpton’s House of Ancient Horrors than the discovery of a murder victim in one of the exhibits?”
Lydia groaned. “That’s the sad part, isn’t it? If this makes the evening papers, there will probably be a line of people around the block tomorrow morning.”
“Uh-huh.” Melanie’s expression turned serious again. “I thought the police questioning was strictly routine. Are you really a suspect?”
“Beats me. I’m still sitting here behind my desk, which means no one’s arrested me so far. I take that as a positive sign.” Lydia drummed her fingers on the arm of her chair. “But the cops knew about my flaming row with Chester in the Surreal Lounge last month.”
Melanie frowned. “Not good.”
