After Glow

Chapter 7

Lydia walked into her small living room and set the milk carton down very carefully on the low table.

"Poor Maltby." She kicked off her shoes. "He was no doubt hoping to make a spectacular antiquities find down in the catacombs and use it to try to regain his professional reputation. I know just how he must have felt."

Fuzz bounced onto the table and leaned forward to sniff cautiously at the milk carton. He backed away immediately, growling.

Emmett slung his leather jacket over the back of an armchair. "It would have been incredibly dangerous for Maltby to work alone underground all those years."

"The risks have never stopped the ruin rats from going into the catacombs, you know that. Besides, Maltby was an excellent trap tangler and a fine P-A in his day."

"Traps aren't the only hazards down below." Emmett stood behind the sofa, strong hands lightly braced on the back. He studied the innocent-looking milk carton. "Wonder how he avoided getting fried by a stray ghost all these years."

"Everyone knows you can outrun a ghost if necessary," she reminded him.

"Only if you see it coming in time and only if it doesn't corner you." He showed her a few teeth in a dangerous smile. "Come on, admit it, you fancy, elite academic types need us low-class hunters when you go underground and you know it."

She made a face. Tanglers, in general, preferred to play down the dangers of the highly unpredictable energy ghosts primarily because of the long-standing rivalry with ghost-hunters. The relationship between the two types of para-resonators often reverted to a brains-versus-brawn thing.

Tanglers considered themselves the scholarly, intellectual side of the research teams. They were usually well-educated, multi-degreed, professional para-archaeologists who took pride in their academic status. Hunters, on the other hand, traditionally had no more than Guild training in the techniques of handling ghosts and other safety issues in the catacombs. In short, they were merely bodyguards as far as tanglers were concerned.

But the truth was that the ghosts, technically known as unstable dissonance energy manifestations or UDEMs, were a serious problem because they appeared at random and with very little warning. It only took the slightest of brushes against the green energy fields to knock you unconscious and land you in an emergency room. A more extensive encounter could kill. Only a person with a natural talent for resonating with the chaotic psi energy that formed ghosts could summon or destroy a UDEM.

"Okay, okay." She sank back into the sofa cushions and flung her arms out to the sides along the top. "I'll agree that ghost-hunters have their uses underground."

He leaned slightly over the back of the sofa. She felt his fingers on the nape of her neck. A shiver of awareness went through her.

"I got the impression somewhere along the line that you find me useful occasionally aboveground as well," he said softly.

She hid a smile. "I've been testing the old saying about hunters being very good in bed. You make an excellent research subject."

"Yeah?" He traced a design on her nape. "Come to any conclusions?"

"I'm still doing the research." The hair was stirring pleasantly on the back of her neck now. "I expect it will take me a while. I plan to do a lot of extensive tests."

He removed his fingers from her skin, walked deliberately around the sofa, and stopped on the opposite side of the low table. He regarded her with a disturbing intensity.

"So long as I'm your only test subject, I don't mind a lot of extensive research," he said. "But if that's not going to be the case, I need to know now."

Something hard and grim had slipped into his voice. She knew him well enough to know that he rarely used that tone, at least not with her. She swallowed uneasily.

"Emmett?"

"Sorry," he said, not sounding sorry at all, just cool and determined. "This probably isn't the right time for this conversation but given the circumstances, we're going to have to have it soon so we might as well get it over with tonight."

She stilled. "Are you talking about a trip to the dentist or our relationship?"

His smile was brief and humorless but at least his hard mouth curved slightly. "Our relationship."

"I see."

It was a subject they had both managed to avoid discussing openly. After all, they were only a few weeks into this affair, she reminded herself. They were still exploring new ground here. There had been no need to rush into decisions or commitments. There were issues. No one had said anything about love. They needed time.

Blah, blah, blah.

But there had also been a couple of underlying assumptions in their current arrangement, at least as far as she was concerned. One of them was that as long as they were seeing each other, neither of them would sleep with anyone else.

Maybe they should have talked about that assumption earlier, she thought.

"The problem is," Emmett continued in that same too-even tone, "because of this situation with Wyatt and the Guild, I'm going to be busy for a while. I won't have time to play the game the way you've got every right to expect me to play it."

Her mouth went dry. "I don't consider our relationship a game, for heaven's sake."

"Bad choice of words. Look, I don't consider it a game, either. But that doesn't mean that there aren't some expectations and conventions that apply to our present arrangement."

She felt the first flicker of temper. "Expectations?"

He moved one hand in a negligent, open-handed gesture. "Flowers, dinners out, theater tickets, long walks by the river. You know, all the stuff that goes with being involved in an affair."

"Sure. Right. Expectations." It only went to show how little she knew about having affairs, she mused. She hadn't even thought about their relationship in terms of expectations. Maybe she had been afraid to look at it in such specific terms because some part of her had been afraid that it wasn't going to last very long.

"What I'm trying to get at here," Emmett said, "is that I won't be able to spend a lot of time with you until Wyatt takes back his old job. I'm going to be tied up in meetings during the day and I'll be working late most evenings."

She sat up on the edge of the sofa, knees pressed tightly together. "For goodness sake, Emmett, I don't expect you to entertain me constantly."

"I know that." He shoved a hand through his hair. "I'm not talking about entertainment, damn it. I'm talking about making sure that you and I have the same understanding of our current arrangement."

"Arrangement," she repeated neutrally. Something told her that she was going to learn to hate that word.

He gave her a brooding look. "I'm not handling this very well, am I?"

"You do seem to be floundering. Why don't you try being a little more direct? You're usually pretty good with direct."

"All right, I want to be sure we both agree that what we've got going between us is an exclusive—"

"Arrangement?" she finished icily.

"Yes."

"Hey, no problem, London." She gave him her brightest, most polished smile. "As it happens, I'm pretty busy myself these days. I've got my new private client and I'm still working full time for Shrimpton. And then there's this business of trying to figure out why Professor Maltby sent for me the day he died. Yep, I think it's safe to say that I won't have a lot of spare time available to hop into bed with other men."

He rounded the table in two long strides, clamped his hands over her shoulders, and hauled her to her feet.

"If you give a single, solitary damn about me," he muttered, "you won't joke about sleeping with other men."

Stunned by his fierce reaction she splayed her fingers across his broad chest and searched his face. A sense of wonder unfurled within her.

"Are you telling me that you would be jealous if you found out that I was seeing someone else?" she asked cautiously.

"I won't share you with another man," he said in a low, rough voice. "I can't. I'm pretty sure it would make me crazy."

She touched his face with her fingertips. "Oh, Emmett."

"While we're involved in this arrangement," he said evenly, "it has to be all or nothing."

She stood on tiptoe and kissed him lightly on the mouth. "Same goes for me, London. All or nothing."

The battle-ready tension eased out of his shoulders. He smiled slowly and raised his hands to cup her face. "No problem. You're the only woman I want in my bed. Sounds like we've got a mutual understanding here."

He pulled her close and kissed her before she could get too depressed about semantics. When his mouth closed over hers she felt the hot, urgent need that flowed through him, a need that was harnessed by the self-mastery and control that was so much a part of his nature.

A low rumble made Emmett raise his head. They both turned to look at Fuzz, who was still on the table, circling the milk carton, tatty fur alternately bristling and going flat.

Emmett released her reluctantly. "You'd better do your thing with that trap before your dust-bunny accidentally triggers it." He glanced at his amber watch. "If you hurry, we can still get a couple more hours of sleep tonight."

So much for that passionate interlude. She was jolted by the swift, efficient manner in which Emmett had just changed the subject. Apparently having achieved his objective—assuring himself that she would be true to him while he worked long hours at his new job—he was ready to move on to the next item on the agenda.

It occurred to her that the ability to switch his focus so quickly was probably one of the character traits that had helped him rise to the top echelons of Guild leadership. The skill no doubt made him a terrific CEO but she had a feeling it would prove disconcerting in a relationship.

Make that an arrangement.

But he did have a point, she thought. Time to find out what Maltby had concealed in the milk carton.

"I doubt if Fuzz could spring the trap," she said, turning toward the table. "Back in the early days of underground exploration there were some attempts made to use animals to identify and trigger the illusion snares, but they failed. The psychic vibes of the traps seem to resonate only with humans. Some experts think that's because the aliens set them to resonate with minds that had evolved to the point that they were vulnerable to the downside of creativity and imagination."

"In other words, minds that could be overwhelmed by nightmares, but you don't need him tipping over the carton while you're working on the trap." Emmett picked up Fuzz. "I'll keep him out of your way."

"Thanks." She opened the milk carton again and studied the dark shadows inside. "You know, we're very lucky those intruders we surprised didn't think to check Maltby's refrigerator."

"My guess is they did check it but never thought twice about the milk carton."

"Mmm." She peered into the carton, studying the shadows within. The amber she wore on her wrist warmed slightly as she used it to tune into the psychic frequencies of the little trap.

It was small, but the resonating patterns were extremely complex.

"Maltby was a real pro," she murmured. "This is not a simple trap. He probably found it somewhere down in the catacombs and managed to de-rez it without destroying it. Then he reset it inside this carton. Couldn't have been easy."

"Can you see what he used to anchor it?"

"Not yet."

An illusion trap had to be anchored to some material of alien construction, usually an object fashioned of green quartz or the far more rare dreamstone.

She probed with the sure, firm touch required. A tentative approach was often disastrous because the effort resulted in a disturbance of the trap's pattern that could trigger it.

Picking up the rhythm of the underlying currents she sent out a few psychic pulses designed to dampen the waves of psi energy.

This was the most dangerous part of the operation. One misstep at this juncture and the energy pulses would rebound, overwhelming her and locking her into an alien nightmare that would last until she went unconscious. It might take her brain only a few seconds to shut down but it would feel like an eternity.

The uncoiling energy waves would also catch anyone else who happened to be standing too close when the illusion snare snapped. The fact that Emmett had not bothered to retreat several discreet steps said a great deal about his respect for her skills as a tangler.

She felt the energy of the trap gradually subside and then cease altogether. She held the frequency for a moment longer until she was certain that the trap had been destroyed permanently and could not be reset.

"Got it," she said, struggling to suppress the little flash of euphoria that always followed a successful untangling. It was considered uncool, not to mention extremely unprofessional, to let anyone see you getting off on the small rush.

"You're good," Emmett said softly.

"Thanks." The praise made her smile. Hunters were notoriously churlish when it came to giving credit to tanglers. "Coming from a Guild boss, that is praise, indeed."

"Credit where it's due, I always say." He leaned closer, trying to get a view of the interior of the carton. "What's inside?"

She looked down and saw a tiny green quartz tomb mirror and what appeared to be a piece of paper that had been folded into a square. "I'm not sure."

Picking up the carton, she upended it. The mirror clunked when it hit the table. The folded paper landed on top of it.

"He used a mirror for the anchor," Emmett said.

"Uh-huh." She picked up the paper and unfolded it with care.

"It's a copy of an old newspaper article," she said.

She spread it out on the table. Together she and Emmett studied the piece.

Local Student Disappears Underground; Feared Dead

Troy Burgis, a student at Old Frequency College, vanished into an unexplored underground passageway sometime late yesterday. A search team was sent down but reported no trace of Burgis. He is presumed lost.

College authorities said that Burgis and two companions had gone into the catacombs beneath Old Frequency without official permission. Evidently the unauthorized venture was instigated by Burgis.

Jason Clark and Norman Fairbanks, the two students who accompanied Burgis on the illegal expedition, said that they became separated when Burgis insisted on trying to untangle a large illusion trap that blocked access to one of the corridors.

Burgis failed and in the process accidentally triggered the trap. Clark and Fairbanks said that they were standing as far away as possible but when the illusion energy rebounded on Burgis, they felt some of the effects. They were unconscious for almost an hour. When they awakened, Burgis was gone.

College officials reported that Burgis's parents died when he was very young. He had no siblings. The authorities are still searching for next of kin.

"The date of the article is nearly fifteen years old," Lydia said. "Why on earth would Maltby have gone to all the trouble of copying it and protecting it with an illusion trap?"

"Beats me." Emmett picked up the small tomb mirror and studied it closely. "Maybe this was what he wanted to hide. Looks pretty ordinary, though."

She glanced at the quartz mirror, assessed the simple carving that surrounded the reflective surface, and shook her head. "There's nothing special about it. I'm sure he only used it to secure the trap." She tapped the paper. "It was this article he wanted to conceal. But I can't imagine why."

"Lydia, I think you should keep in mind one very important fact about Professor Lawrence Maltby."

She raised her head, frowning. "What's that?"

"He was a Chartreuse addict," Emmett said. "That means that his brain probably got badly de-rezzed a long time ago. If I were you, I wouldn't try to make too much out of this newspaper article or the fact that he left you a message in the first place. He no doubt heard you were asking questions around the Old Quarter and it sparked a couple of delusions."

"I'm not the only one who took him seriously. What about those two guys we surprised in his apartment?"

"I told you, they were most likely looking for his stash, not an old newspaper story about a student who went missing underground."

She tapped the copy of the newspaper clipping lightly against her palm. "Hmm."

"I really hate when you do that," Emmett said.