by Jayne Castle
“You clarified whatever false impression I might have had the day you told me why you fought that duel with Palmer Frazier.”
“About that duel—”
“Forget it. Old history. Let’s change the subject. Speaking of dedicated Guild men, do you ever wonder what really happened to Haggerty?”
He glanced at her, frowning. “What do you mean? Everyone knows that he went down into the catacombs, had a heart attack, and died.”
“Oh, sure, that’s the official story.” She gave a dainty little snort. “But between you and me, I’ve got another theory.”
“Yeah? What do you think happened to him?”
“It occurred to me at the time that he might have been done in by one of his mistresses or an ex-wife,” she said, warming to her personal conspiracy theory. “That possibility makes a lot more sense, if you ask me. Because up until then, Haggerty appeared to be in excellent health.”
“They say that the first warning of heart trouble is often a heart attack.”
“I know, but I’m still convinced that Haggerty didn’t die of natural causes.”
“Where in green hell did you get the notion that he was murdered by an ex-wife or a mistress?”
“Came up with it all on my own,” she said, not without some pride.
He stopped in the middle of the glowing hallway, caught her by the arm, and turned her so that she had to meet his eyes.
“Just how well did you know Haggerty?”
“I told you, he tried to put some pressure on my family to contract a Covenant Marriage.”
“That doesn’t answer my question.”
She shrugged. “We met at several Guild functions. Talked a few times. He thought he could charm me the way he did all of his other female conquests. He made a pass. I told him in no uncertain terms to keep his hands to himself and that I was definitely not interested in marrying him. That was the end of the matter.”
“Haggerty made a pass?”
“Yes. I never mentioned the incident to Dad because I was afraid he might confront Haggerty about it. Besides, as I keep pointing out to everyone who will listen, I’m quite capable of dealing with men who only want to marry me because of my Guild connections.”
“Damn,” he said very softly. “I never heard about that.”
“There’s no reason you would have heard about it. You weren’t even living in Aurora Springs at the time. You didn’t move there until a month or so before Haggerty died.” She frowned. “Try to stay focused here, Cooper. We’re looking for Bertha.”
He exhaled deeply. She got the feeling he was exerting himself to exercise some serious self-control. He started forward again with long, impatient strides.
“One more thing about Haggerty before we leave the subject,” he added.
She had to jog a little to catch up with him. “What about him?”
“That theory of yours? About how he might have been murdered?”
“What of it?”
“Keep it to yourself,” he said.
The mag-steel that resonated in the words startled her. It wasn’t a suggestion, she thought. Mr. Guild Boss had just issued an order.
Hmm. Now this was an interesting development.
She was trying to think of a clever way to question him further when she heard a low rumble of warning in her left ear.
“Rose?” She turned her head quickly to look at the dust bunny.
Rose was no longer a ragged ball of dryer lint. She had gone sleek and wiry again, showing all four eyes, six paws, and wickedly sharp teeth. Her attention was fixed on the upcoming intersection.
Elly opened her mouth to warn Cooper but saw that he had already halted in midstride. He, too, was focused on whatever lay around the corner. The prowling tension in him was unsettlingly akin to what she sensed emanating from Rose.
A couple of battle-ready predators, she thought.
She studied the intersection. It was similar to several they had already passed through. The entrances to five glowing green corridors branched off from a circular point.
“What is it?” she asked.
“Ghost energy.” Cooper said. “A lot of it. Stay behind me.”
She sighed. “Here we go again with the unnecessary orders. Don’t worry. I know the drill. I won’t do anything stupid.”
“Good plan.”
Without warning Rose sprang from her shoulder onto Cooper’s.
“What the—?” Cooper began, then he smiled, showing a few teeth of his own. “Okay, gorgeous, I don’t mind having backup for this one.”
Cooper went forward, Rose on his shoulder.
“Be careful, you two,” Elly called.
She trailed a respectful distance behind the pair, but she wasn’t unduly concerned for their safety. If anyone could handle a catacomb ghost, it was the very powerful chief of the Aurora Springs Guild. Her real worry was that the UDEM up ahead would turn out to be the reason why Bertha had not made it back out of the tunnels.
When he reached the point where the five other corridors came together, Cooper turned into the nearest without any hesitation. She followed with appropriate caution.
Cooper stopped so suddenly that Rose had to use all six paws to keep her perch.
“What is it?” Elly asked.
“Got a problem,” Cooper said softly, looking into the tunnel.
She reached the circular intersection and turned to see whatever it was that had riveted him.
She sensed the new psi energy before she saw the source.
For a few seconds the only thing that registered was the wrongness of the light flooding the passageway. Cooper and Rose were bathed in the odd, pulsating glow. It wasn’t the familiar acid green that she associated with ghost energy and the quartz walls. Instead it was an eerie, unnatural blue that produced a deeply disturbing effect on her senses.
Was this what vertigo felt like? she wondered.
She was looking into a whirling vortex of energy. It was like gazing into the heart of a tornado or a water spout.
The vortex appeared to have opened in the floor. It spiraled downward to an invisible vanishing point. Lightning sparked. The angry, seething light swirled in a wide pool of dissonance energy waves that completely covered the floor of the wide tunnel, wall to wall.
Aside from the occasional crackle of the miniature lightning strikes, the blue tornado made no audible sound. But Elly’s psi senses were rattling and shaking like windowpanes in a violent storm.
“What’s wrong with the floor?” she asked, dumbfounded.
“Blue ghost,” Cooper said.
“No.” She shook her head, uncomprehending. “It can’t be. There is no such thing. Blue ghosts are just old hunters’ tales. Everyone knows that.”
But it was definitely a form of dissonance energy, she thought. There was no mistaking the wild, flaring power.
“Is that your friend’s sled?” Cooper asked.
She managed to jerk her gaze off the vortex and spotted the familiar shape of Bertha’s aging utility sled. It was perched on the far rim of the pulsing, rippling vortex. The energy storm lapped at one rear wheel, as though trying to suck it down into the heart of the whirlwind.
There was no sign of Bertha.
“Dear heaven,” Elly whispered. Horror threatened to close her throat. “That ghost got her. No one could survive a close brush with that thing. But where’s the body? There’s no body.”
Chapter 7
COOPER LOOKED AT ELLY’S HORRIFIED FACE. IN THE pulsing blue light she looked a little like a ghost, herself, the old-fashioned, supernatural kind.
“Don’t panic on me,” he said, automatically falling back on the tone of icy command that he had learned to use in the days when he had worked the catacombs as a hunter. “Save the hysterics for later. We don’t have time for them now.”
“I am not panicking,” she snapped, irritated. “I’m worried sick about what has happened to Bertha. There’s a difference.”
The cold anger i
n her voice reassured him. “Good to know. All right, there’s not much option here. I’m going to de-rez this thing. Then we’ll look for Bertha.”
Elly’s eyes widened. “You can handle this monster?”
“Yes.”
“Wow. Okay, I’m impressed, Mr. Guild Boss.”
He was privately amazed that she had accepted his statement as fact. In her shoes, a lot of people would have refused to believe his claim.
“Cooper?”
He studied the blue ghost, probing carefully for the patterns. “Yeah?”
“Do you . . . do you think that blue UDEM somehow swallowed up Bertha and . . . and incinerated her?”
“Ghost energy doesn’t burn hot enough to destroy flesh and bone. It can scorch and singe, but that’s about the limit. Mostly it fries the psi senses. You know that as well as I do.”
“But this is a blue ghost. No one knows much about them. They’re not even supposed to exist.”
“Let me get rid of it, and then we’ll see what we’ve got.” He lifted Rose down off his shoulder and handed the dust bunny to her. “Here, take gorgeous. Things might get a little tricky here. I don’t want her to get caught in the backwash.”
“No.” She took Rose, cradling her protectively in her arms.
“Go stand in one of the other tunnels,” Cooper added. “It will give you some protection in case things get out of hand.”
She obeyed, retreating to the cover of a vaulted passageway.
When he decided she was safely out of the reach of the blue storm, he went to work, using his psi senses to snag ambient blue dissonance energy out of the air.
The stuff was invisible to the eye at first, but as he forced it to coalesce into a tight, flaring ball, it took on a blue hue.
He manipulated it into a vortex. For some reason, that was the way blue ghost fire came together most naturally. He adjusted the dissonance wave patterns, emphasizing those that resonated in opposition to the patterns of the one that swirled on the floor.
The level of psi power in the confined space rose swiftly. He had to concentrate harder and harder to keep it contained. If it escaped his control, the fierce waves of energy would swamp not only his senses but possibly reach as far as where Elly waited, partially sheltered.
When he had achieved the shade and patterns that he needed, he began the process of merging his ghost with the blue vortex that blocked the corridor.
This was the most dangerous part of the process. The idea was to use his ghost to cancel out the energy patterns of the one on the floor. A mistake could easily result in an explosion that would send violent waves of psi power splashing outward, swamping his senses.
There was so much flaring light in the passage now that it was difficult to see. He squinted against the glare. Should have brought along a pair of dark glasses, he thought. He’d have to remember that the next time he went out on a date with Elly. His new motto was be prepared.
The two ghosts came together in a senses-jarring flare of light and energy.
The flames winked out with a suddenness that was disorienting.
“It’s gone,” Elly whispered. “That was absolutely amazing.”
“You okay?” he asked.
“Yes. Rose and I are fine.” She moved quickly toward him. “What about you?”
“I’m all right.” For a while, he thought. And then I’m going to be in real trouble. Got to get out of here before the burn-and-crash hits me.
He did another quick frequency check. “According to this, we’re almost on top of your friend.”
“But she’s nowhere in sight. There’s only the sled.”
“At least we now know why its frequency didn’t resonate on the locator. The blue ghost fried it.” He looked around. “We’ve got fifteen minutes, no longer. After that, we have to start back toward our entry point.”
Elly looked at him with sudden concern. “You melted amber to deal with that blue ghost?”
“Yes.”
Tuned amber didn’t physically melt when you pushed an unusual amount of power through it, but if it was overworked, the stuff lost much of its ability to sustain an intense, highly concentrated psi focus.
He went forward quickly, watching the readout on the locator. When he passed a narrow doorway he got a sharp ping.
He stopped and looked into the room. Like all of the myriad rooms that branched off the endless corridors, the proportions felt a little off, not quite human. This particular chamber was too high and too narrow. The angles where the walls met didn’t look right.
The motionless figure of a woman lay sprawled on the glowing floor. She was somewhat past middle age, dressed in a long-sleeved sweater, overalls, and sturdy boots. She had a stocking cap pulled down over her short, gray hair.
“Here she is,” he said. He went into the room and crouched beside the still form to check for a pulse. “She’s alive.”
“Thank God.” Elly rushed across the room. “Bertha.” She went down on her knees. “She’s unconscious.”
“Not surprising. Probably got brushed by that blue before she made it into this room. Lucky the burn didn’t kill her.”
“She didn’t get fried, or at least that wasn’t her only problem.” Elly gently touched the stocking cap that covered Bertha’s head. “Look. It’s wet with blood. She must have hit her head when she fell. We’ve got to get her out of here.”
He checked his watch. Time was slipping away fast.
“We’ll use her sled,” he said. He paused at the doorway and met her eyes. “One more thing. Very important.”
“What’s that?”
“When she wakes up, she probably won’t have any clear memory of what happened just before she hit her head. And if she did get brushed by that ghost, it’s a sure bet she’ll have a case of amnesia that will wipe out the events of the past several hours.”
“I know. So?”
“So we’re going to tell her that she had an encounter with a ghost. But we’re not going to tell her it was a blue. Let her think it was a routine UDEM.”
Elly got slowly to her feet. “She probably wouldn’t believe she ran into a blue, anyway.”
“Something else,” he added quietly.
“What’s that?”
“It’s okay to tell her that I’m from Aurora Springs, but I don’t want her to know about my connection to the Aurora Springs Guild.”
Elly wrinkled her nose. “It’s not just a connection. You’re the Guild boss.”
“I don’t want her or anyone else here in town to know who I am. From now on, I’m Cooper Jones.”
“Why?” she asked.
“It’s complicated.”
“Let me guess,” she said. “Guild business?”
“Yes.”
“Gosh, what a stunning surprise.”
He ignored that and went out into the hallway to get the utility vehicle. The blue was more than just routine Guild business. It was a potential public relations disaster, one that could threaten the future of all of the Guild organizations.
As far as the public was concerned, blues did not exist, and neither did hunters like him, who could de-rez them. Ever since their founding, the Guilds had gone to extraordinary lengths to keep the secrets of the blues buried deep in the archives. The effort had paid off. Over the years, the unusual blue ghosts and those who could summon them had receded into the realm of myth and legend.
There was a good reason for concealing the truth, he thought. People were inclined to get nervous when myths and legends came to life.
Chapter 8
BERTHA STIRRED AND OPENED HER EYES. ELLY EXHALED A sigh of relief.
“Bertha, it’s me, Elly. You’re safe.”
“Elly?” Bertha’s voice was hoarse. Her gray eyes were dazed. “What are you doing here?”
“My friend, Cooper, and Rose and I came looking for you. You’re okay. You had a brush with a ghost, and you must have hit your head when you went unconscious.”
Bertha screwed up h
er face. “Can’t remember . . .”
“Don’t worry about it.” Elly patted her shoulder. “You know how it is after an encounter. You’ll be all right in a day or so. That’s all that matters.”
Cooper de-rezzed the engine and got off the vehicle. His face was hard and taut. “Let’s get her into the sled.”
“No problem,” Bertha said, sitting up cautiously. She put a hand to her head. “Got a headache, but that’s all that’s wrong. Be right as tuned amber tomorrow.”
Cooper helped her to her feet.
“I think you should go to the emergency room,” Elly said.
“No,” Bertha replied. “No doctors. I’m okay, I tell you. Got some supplies in the sled. Just need to clean up the mess and put a bandage on my head.”
They got Bertha into the back of the sled. Elly climbed in beside her and opened the first-aid kit. She was relieved to see that Bertha’s wound, although bloody, was not as bad as she had feared.
Cooper started to get into the driver’s seat. She saw him hesitate, and then step down from the vehicle.
He walked swiftly to where the blue vortex had been whirling a few minutes earlier. She watched him lean down to pick up a small, narrow object that was lying on the floor. Sliding it into a pocket, he loped back to the sled.
Before she could ask him what he had found, he was rezzing the engine.
She could question him about whatever it was he had picked up some other time, she thought. Right now she had to focus on cleaning Bertha’s wound.
TEN MINUTES LATER, SPORTING THE BANDAGE THAT ELLY had applied over the disinfected wound, Bertha managed to stagger up out of the cellar and into the darkened back room of her shop. She swayed a little, but she stayed on her feet.
“Need to sleep it off,” she mumbled, rubbing her temples with her thumbs.
“If you won’t go to the ER, you’re going to come home with me,” Elly said firmly. “I’m not leaving you here by yourself tonight.”
For a few seconds she thought Bertha would refuse.
“Okay, okay,” Bertha finally grumbled.