After Dark

Chapter 7

HE'D CHOSEN THE restaurant with the help of the concierge at his hotel.

"The kind of place where the university crowd hangs out, you know, the professors, not the students."

"Don't worry, I know the perfect restaurant, sir. A charming little bistro. It's called Counterpoint. Specializes in New Wave cuisine. Excellent wine list. Very popular with the university crowd."

Lydia said nothing as she followed the maitre d' to a table near the window. Emmett knew that she was fuming. But beneath the simmering anger, he caught the glint of recognition in her expression. He made a mental note to tip the concierge. The guy had nailed it with the restaurant.

Emmett's gaze swept the room, assessing the polished wooden floors, the intimately lit tables, and the waiters dressed in black and white. In recent years he had finally grasped the concept of casual chic. He knew it when he saw it—and Counterpoint was definitely it. The sort of place that served a lot of pasta and did terribly clever, artistic things with miniature vegetables.

Lydia managed to contain herself until after the waiter had taken the order. Then she folded her arms on the table and narrowed her eyes at him over the candle flame.

"Okay, talk," she said. "What's all this about firing me?"

He had given a lot of thought to the problem of how much to tell her. In the end he had decided it would be best to go with at least a measure of the truth. He couldn't think of any other way to convince her that she did not want the job.

"I told you that I came to Cadence to search for a family heirloom that had been stolen from my collection," he said.

Her fingertips did a quick staccato on the table. "Are you going to tell me that your story about the missing cabinet of curiosities wasn't for real?"

"It's for real, all right. What I didn't get around to mentioning was that the person who took it was my nephew, Quinn."

That information made her blink a couple of times. "Your nephew?"

"My sister's kid. He's…" Emmett paused, thinking. "Eighteen as of last month."

"I don't understand. He stole a family heirloom?"

"I doubt if he looks at it quite that way."

"What other way is there to look at it?"

"Technically, what he actually did was pawn it. He dropped a copy of the receipt into the mail to me. Just in case, he said."

"Just in case of what?"

"I'd better start at the beginning. A few months ago Quinn took up with a new friend, a young lady named Sylvia. My sister and her husband did not approve. The long and short of it is that Sylvia came here to Cadence, apparently looking for work. Quinn followed."

Lydia frowned. "What kind of work?"

"Don't know. Quinn told me that she's a fairly strong ephemeral-energy para-rez and she dreams of working in the field of para-archaeology. But she's untrained and uncertified. Unfortunately, her resources are quite limited. No family to speak of. When Quinn met her, she was barely keeping herself off the streets by working as a waitress."

"Okay, so she came here to Cadence, and Quinn followed. With your cabinet."

"Right. And now he's disappeared. No one's heard from him for nearly two weeks. My sister is getting frantic. Her husband is concerned."

Lydia studied him. "So you agreed to come look for him?"

"Yes. As near as I can tell, he sold the cabinet to a dealer in the Old Quarter and used the money to get a hotel room. But he only spent two nights at the hotel, and then he just vanished."

Lydia looked thoughtful. "What about the dealer who bought the cabinet? Have you talked to him?"

"I went to his shop, but he wasn't there. Neither was the cabinet."

She stared at him, understanding dawning in her eyes. "Are you talking about Chester? Was he the dealer who bought the cabinet from Quinn?"

"Yes." He watched her face. "His shop was closed when I arrived. I went in anyway, to have a look around."

"You broke into his shop?"

"I didn't want to waste any time."

"Good grief!"

He reached into the inside pocket of his jacket. "I didn't find the cabinet or any clue to who might have bought it off Brady, but I did find this."

He removed the photo he had found on the wall behind Brady's shop counter and placed it on the table in front of Lydia.

The picture showed a woman with brilliant red hair seated in a booth in what looked like a seedy nightclub. She was smiling ruefully into the camera. Next to her sat an oily little man with slicked-back hair and a cheap, flashy sport coat. The man was grinning from ear to ear.

Lydia glanced down at the photo and then looked up swiftly, her eyes darkening. "That's a picture of Chester and me at the Surreal Lounge. We were celebrating my last birthday. He was always asking someone to take pictures of the two of us together there. It was his home away from home."

"When I couldn't locate Brady, I decided to look for you instead." Emmett picked up the picture and tucked it back into his jacket. "You weren't hard to find. But right after I located you, Brady turned up dead in that sarcophagus."

Anger flushed her cheeks. "My God, it was all a sham, right from the start, wasn't it? You came looking for me because you thought I was involved with Chester. You pretended to be a genuine client, but all along you thought I could give you a lead on your missing cabinet and your missing nephew."

"I didn't have much else to go on," he said quietly.

"I knew it."

"Knew what?"

Her hand tightened into a small fist on the white table-cloth. "You really were too good to be true."

He shrugged and said nothing.

"What made you decide to end the charade tonight?" she demanded fiercely.

"The scorch marks that ghost burned into your bedroom wall."

Confusion defused some of her outrage. "What in the world does that have to do—"

She broke off as the waiter returned to the table with the appetizers. Emmett looked at the dish that was set in front of him. The menu had listed it as Prawns in Three-Part Harmony.

None of the three perfectly cooked prawns sitting atop the bed of thin-sliced radishes appeared to be singing, in three-part harmony or otherwise, but he decided not to make an issue of it. New Wave cuisine was a state of mind, he reminded himself.

Lydia leaned forward impatiently as soon as the waiter had vanished. "All right, explain yourself, London. What did you mean about my scorched wall changing things?"

"The mark that ghost left on your wall was not a random design, Lydia. If you looked at it closely, you could make out three wavy lines. It was a sloppy job. The hunter obviously didn't have complete control of the ghost, but I'm sure about the lines."

"So?"

"I think someone may have tried to leave you a message."

She looked wary now. "You're saying that you recognized these three wavy lines?"

"Yeah." He took a bite of one of the prawns. "I've seen them before."

"Where?" Her voice was very tight.

He put down his fork, opened his jacket, and removed the scrap of notepaper he had found on Quinn's desk. Without a word he handed it to Lydia.

She snapped it out of his fingers and glanced at the three wavy lines. She raised her eyes. "I don't get it."

"I found that mark on a pad of paper next to the phone in Quinn's room. I think he made the notation after taking a phone call from Sylvia. He disappeared a few hours after he got that call."

"Do you know what the lines signify?"

"No. I'm looking into it. But the fact that someone used a ghost to burn them into your wall tells me they're probably important. And possibly dangerous."

Absently she tapped the piece of paper on the table-cloth. "It also tells you that I probably don't know what happened to your cabinet or to Quinn after all, right?"

He shrugged. "It did strike me that if someone had risked warning you off with an illegal manifestation, you might be in danger because you'd started asking questions. And if you had to ask questions, you probably don't know where my cabinet or my nephew is."

"Guess that explains the phone call I got at work this morning," she said reluctantly.

"What call?"

"I thought it was a crank call." She moved one hand in a dismissive gesture. "It was a man's voice. A young man, I think. I didn't recognize it. All he said was, 'No more questions. Then he hung up."

"Damn it, why the hell didn't you tell me?"

She glared at him. "I just finished explaining that I thought it was a crank call. It didn't make any sense. I didn't connect it to my inquiries about your missing cabinet."

"The hell you didn't. You're too smart not to have figured out the connection."

Annoyance strained her voice. "Okay, okay, I admit the possibility crossed my mind. But I was afraid that if you thought I might be in danger, you'd fire me."

"That's exactly what I'm going to do. It's pretty clear now that I miscalculated. You weren't involved in this until I involved you."

"You think you can uninvolve me be reneging on our contract? Is that it?"

"I want you out of this, Lydia."

He was prepared for the stubborn anger that blazed in her face. What surprised him was the flash of something else. Desperation?

"Even if you're right, it's too late," she said quickly. "I've talked to some dealers. The word is out that I'm looking for the cabinet."

"Tomorrow morning you can put the word out that your new client fired you and you are no longer looking for his heirloom."

"What makes you think that will work? The word is already out in the antiquities community. I can't cancel it just like that. If someone knows anything about the cabinet, I'll be contacted, whether or not you fire me."

"Tell your contacts to get in touch with me."

"The ones who are most likely to know anything useful won't want to talk directly to you." She leaned forward, determination vibrating around her in an almost palpable energy field. "I know this crowd. They trust me, but they don't trust outsiders. You need me, London."

"Not badly enough to put you at risk."

"You didn't mind putting me at risk when you thought I might be in cahoots with Chester."

"That was different," he muttered.

"It was a very small ghost."

"Even the weak ones can cause a very unpleasant reaction. They can freeze you, knock you unconscious for as long as fifteen or twenty minutes."

"Fainting or temporary paralysis are common, transient side effects of direct contact with a weak UDEM," she said primly. "Permanent damage is rare."

"You sound like you're quoting from a textbook or an emergency room pamphlet. Do you know what it really feels like?"

"Yes." Her eyes were cool. "I know what it really feels like. It feels like all of your psychic senses have been rezzed to the breaking point. Everything is too bright, too hot, too cold, too dark, too loud. Sensation overwhelms you and you pass out. Unless, of course, you're a very strong ghost-hunter, in which case I understand you have some limited immunity."

He drew a deep breath. "Okay, so you do know what it feels like."

"Let's get something straight here. I spent most of the past four years of my working life in the Dead City. No para-archaeologist, regardless of how effective the team's hunters are, can spend that much time in the field without brushing up against a few small ghosts."

He was not going to get far with logic and reason, he realized. Might as well cut to the chase. "You don't seem to get the picture here, Miss Smith. I'm firing you."

"You're the one who doesn't get it, Mr. London. You can't fire me. We've got a contract."

"Don't worry. I'll compensate you for your time."

"There's more than money involved now. If what you say is true, it's possible that poor Chester was killed because of your cabinet—" She broke off abruptly.

He realized she was looking at someone who was approaching the table.

"Hope I'm not interrupting anything, Lydia. Saw you from across the room and had to say hello."

The voice was easy, refined, masculine. The kind of voice that projected well, Emmett thought. The voice of a man accustomed to the lecture hall. An educated voice.

"Hello, Ryan." Lydia forced a chilly smile. "It's been a while, hasn't it? This is Emmett London. Emmett, this is Professor Ryan Kelso. He's head of the Department of Para-archaeology at the university." She paused delicately. "A former colleague."

And formerly something more than a colleague, Emmett thought. He didn't consider himself the intuitive type, but even he couldn't miss the undercurrents swirling around the small table. A disturbing tendril of possessiveness uncoiled deep inside him. Probably not a good thing. He could have done without the added complications.

He took his time getting to his feet, absorbing the salient points of Ryan Kelso in a single glance. Tall, athletically fit, dark hair, gray eyes. Chiseled features.

Ryan looked every inch the fashionable academic in a brown turtleneck, a tweed jacket, and a pair of trousers that rode low on his hips. He wore amber in a chunky wristband on his left arm.

Emmett shook hands briefly. "Kelso."

"A pleasure, London."

Ryan gave Emmett a quick, assessing survey and then switched his attention back to Lydia. "What's this about finding a murder victim in that peculiar little place where you work? Saw something about it in the papers."

"His name was Chester Brady," Lydia said stiffly. "I doubt if you knew him."

"Can't say that I did." Ryan's mouth curved with amused disdain. "The papers implied that he was a ruin rat who had probably been killed by one of his criminal associates. What was he doing at Shrimpton's? Trying to steal one of your acquisitions?"

"Chester was a friend of mine. A very strong trap tangler," Lydia said in a steely voice. "One of the most powerful I've ever met. Who knows? If he'd had access to a decent education, he would have been a first-rate para-archaeologist. Probably could have been chairman of the department at the university by now."

Ryan dismissed that with a chuckle. Then his eyes softened with concern. "It must have been very traumatic for you, finding the body and all. I mean, the shock of that coming on top of what happened six months ago—"

"Not everyone thinks I'm fragile," Lydia said with conviction. "Believe it or not, the detective in charge of the case put me on her list of suspects. Apparently she believes I'm fully capable of handling the stress of murdering an old pal and stuffing his body into a sarcophagus."

"Uh—" Ryan floundered briefly, clearly unable to figure out where to go with that.

"I have to tell you, it was almost flattering in a way," Lydia continued.

She was on a roll. Emmett was amused. Nevertheless, it was time to intervene.

"Cops always question the people who find the victim," London said easily. "Naturally they talked to Lydia. They also talked to me. I was with her when she discovered the body. But the detective in charge made it clear that she's not seriously interested in either of us. We both have alibis."

"Some of us have better alibis than others," Lydia murmured.

Emmett ignored that. He kept his attention on Ryan. "Apparently Brady had a lot of disgruntled friends, clients, and associates. The police think one of them did him in."

"Makes sense." Ryan seized the opportunity to change the subject. "Anyway, it's great to see you looking so well, Lydia."

"Amazing, isn't it? I managed not to go stark-staring bonkers after all. At least, not yet. But never fear, there's always hope. I might still go over the edge one of these days."

Ryan had the grace to turn red. "You can't blame your friends for worrying about you."

"If my so—called friends had been genuinely worried about me, they would have seen to it that I got my old job back after the doctors turned me loose," she said much too sweetly.

She was not going to let up, Emmett realized. He wondered how Ryan had ever come to the conclusion that she was too delicate to continue in her archaeological work.

Kelso managed an expression of polite confusion. "I'm not sure what you're implying, Lydia. The decision to, uh, release you from your university contract—"

"You mean fire me."

"The decision was made by the administration," Ryan said quickly. "You know that. It wasn't a departmental decision."

"Give me a break." She made a small but unmistakably disgusted sound. "We both know the administration takes the recommendation of the department heads. Why don't you just be honest about the whole thing? You figured I was a candidate for the funny farm, and that's what you told the academic council."

"Lydia, we were all devastated by what happened to you."

"But not devastated enough to let me come back to the department."

"As chairman of the department, I have a grave responsibility. I couldn't take the risk of sending you out with the team after what happened. I had to keep your best interests in mind."

"If you were really that nervous about my para-psych profile, you wouldn't have had to send me back out into the Dead City right away. You could have let me work in the labs for a while until everyone was convinced that I wasn't going to freak under stress."

Ryan's frown of earnest concern darkened into annoyance. He glanced hastily around the restaurant, clearly uncomfortable, searching for an excuse to get himself out of what had become an awkward situation.

"Policy is policy," he said stiffly. "What you've got to remember, Lydia, is that your para-psychological health is the most important element in the equation. You went through a brutal experience. Got to allow yourself plenty of time to recover."

"I'm fully recovered, Ryan."

"Tell you what," he said a little too heartily. "Give yourself another six months and then reapply to the department. I'll make sure your application gets special consideration."

"Gee, thanks, Ryan. But six months from now I won't need my old job. I expect to have my own full-time consulting business up and running."

He looked slightly disconcerted. "You're going private?"

"That's right. I'm already working at it part-time."

"I hadn't realized—"

"Two months ago I registered as a private consultant in para-archaeology with the Society." Her eyes gleamed. "Mr. London here is my first client. Isn't that right, Emmett?"

He had to hand it to her, Emmett thought. She had backed him rather neatly into this corner.

"Lydia and I signed a contract two days ago," he said.

"I see." Ryan frowned at Emmett and then looked at Lydia. "What about your job at Shrimpton's?"

"As soon as I build my private business into a full-time enterprise, I will, of course, resign my position at Shrimpton's. In the meantime, I need the money. I was pretty well wiped out financially after losing my job at the university, you know."

"I see," Ryan started edging back. "Well, that's great. Just great. Say, the department occasionally uses private consultants and outside experts. Maybe we'll have occasion to call on you one of these days."

"I will, of course, be happy to consider contracts with the university," she said with grand aplomb, "but bear in mind that the private sector commands very high fees. Just ask Emmett."

Emmett managed not to choke on the swallow of wine he had just taken. He shot her a warning look across the top of the candles. Don't push your luck, lady.

"Worth every penny," he said aloud, with what he thought was commendable gallantry under the circumstances.

Lydia rewarded him with a triumphant smile that outshone the candles.

Ryan studied him with wary curiosity. "What do you collect, Mr. London?"

Emmett saw Lydia's mouth open. But he'd had enough of her reckless conversation. Beneath the table, he brought his shoe down on the toe of one of her sexy little black evening sandals with enough force to get her attention. Her eyes widened, but she closed her mouth.

Emmett looked at Ryan. "I'm into tomb mirrors."

"Tomb mirrors." If the amused condescension in Ryan's voice had been any thicker, it would have dripped onto the table. "Well, that's very interesting."

"Got a room full of 'em at home in Resonance City," Emmett continued expansively. "Had the walls lined with real mirrors, put the tomb mirrors on little stands in front and then lit the whole gallery with green lights. Really impresses guests."

Across the table, Emmett caught Lydia's attention and knew that she was torn between irritation and laughter. She knew even better than he did that tomb mirrors were among the most common and least valuable Harmonic artifacts. They were also among the most commonly faked. Reproductions and frauds abounded in the shops near the Dead Cities. Only novices and the most unsophisticated private collectors bothered to acquire them.

"Green lights?" Ryan looked pained. "How original."

"Cost a bundle, but I'm pleased with the effect," Emmett said. "The lights and the wall mirrors give the gallery a real weird feel, know what I mean?"

"I can imagine," Ryan murmured dryly. Lydia smiled blandly.

"Sounds like you've achieved exactly the sort of creepy effect that we strive for at Shrimpton's, Emmett."

"'Creepy—that's the word." Emmett looked at Ryan. "I need a few more pieces to fill out the collection, though. That's why I'm here in Cadence. Lydia thinks she can turn up some choice mirrors for me."

"I'm sure she will." Ryan glanced over his shoulder. "If you'll excuse me, I'd better get back to my companion. Nice to meet you, London."

"Sure," Emmett said.

Ryan turned to Lydia. "It's great to see you getting out again, Lydia."

He leaned down with the obvious intention of giving her the sort of casual peck on the cheek that constituted a friendly farewell between old friends, but he missed his target. At the last possible instant, Lydia, acting as though she was entirely unaware of his intent, reached out to pick up her fork, and her elbow somehow connected with his groin.

"Umph." Ryan took a hasty step back, started to put a hand gingerly on his crotch, then apparently thought better of it and took some shallow breaths instead.

"Oh, sorry." Lydia paused with the fork in midair. "Didn't realize you were standing quite so close. It was terrific seeing you again too, Ryan. Give my regards to everyone at the lab."

"Right." He backed away from the table. "Catch you later, Lydia. Good luck with the consulting work."

Turning on his heel, he moved quickly off through the maze of small tables. Emmett watched him go and decided that Ryan had the air of a man making a strategic retreat. Or maybe it was more of a desperate flight to safety.