Illusion Town

by Jayne Castle

  She was sure she had not been wearing a lot of makeup yesterday morning—she never put on much for daytime. But at some point she must have spent some time with a mascara wand and an eyeliner pencil. The results were now badly smudged.

  She looked like she had spent the night in a low-rent nightclub before letting a really bad boy take her back to the kind of hotel that rented rooms by the hour.

  Scratch the bad-boy thing. Elias Coppersmith might be bad—the jury was still out—but he was definitely not a boy.

  For the past two months he had remained simply E. Coppersmith in her files. That, in itself, was rather unusual. It was not uncommon for serious collectors to go to great lengths to protect their identities. Those who traded at the deep end of the hot rocks market—crystals, quartz, and amber—usually preferred to keep a very low profile. But Elias had been up front about his identity right from the beginning. Then again, he hadn’t had much choice. He had asked her to find a long-lost family heirloom—his ring—so it had made sense to tell her as much as possible about the family that had lost it.

  But until very recently he had known her only by her online name—Finder. She owned a storefront shop, Visions, but for the most part, the relics, rocks, and small-time antiquities and collectibles she stocked there were unremarkable. Her real business was conducted anonymously in the murky underground market. It was a market that attracted eccentrics and, occasionally, dangerous people. It was only common sense to protect her identity.

  Her online business was built on confidentiality and anonymity. She worked by referral only. By the time a would-be client got to her online, she was reasonably certain that he or she had been thoroughly vetted.

  But not long ago she had taken the rare step of identifying herself to an online client. Elias had asked her out to dinner. She had a long-standing policy of not dating clients but she remembered breaking her own rules for Elias. The email correspondence of the past two months had evolved from a business relationship into something much more intimate—at least on her end. She had accepted his invitation.

  And given the way she was dressed now, it looked as if they had gone out on a date. But the invitation had been for dinner. How had she ended up in a Marriage of Convenience? Not only that, but the two of them had evidently spent their wedding night passed out in a cheap motel in the Shadow Zone. That was definitely intimate, but not in a good way.

  What happened to us?

  She grabbed the thin rag of a washcloth and got busy scrubbing the smeared makeup off her face.

  She felt somewhat better when she emerged from the bathroom a short time later, but the thought of facing the unknown in a pair of stilettos and the very short, very battered dress was daunting.

  Virgil raced toward her across the floor. She scooped him up and tucked him under one arm.

  She looked at Elias, who was buttoning his white shirt.

  “I’m as ready as I’ll ever be,” she said. “Where, exactly, are we going?”

  He held up his copy of the Marriage of Convenience license. “We’ll start by retracing our steps. We need to find out why we got married last night. There must have been a logical reason.”

  She wasn’t sure how to take that, but he was right about one thing: There had to be a reason for their tacky Marriage of Convenience.

  “Of course,” she said coolly. “It’s not like either one of us is the type to get swept away by the kind of passion that makes two people run off to the nearest wedding mill.”

  She could be logical, too, damn it.

  Elias gave her an odd look. She could have sworn that he was irritated by her perfectly logical observation.

  “Right,” he said.

  He yanked open the door and moved out into the hall.

  “Stairs are at the end,” he said.

  They went quickly along the dimly lit corridor, heading toward a burned-out sign that read EXIT.

  “The Shadow Zone is quite a ways from the Dark Zone,” she said. “I don’t own a car so did we drive here in your car or come in a taxi?”

  “The guy at the front desk said we didn’t arrive in a car or a taxi. Apparently we walked here from the wedding chapel. He also said we looked like we were ready to collapse. Figured we had been flying high on some illicit substance and were about to crash.”

  “If your car isn’t in the motel parking lot, it must still be sitting in the street out in front of my shop. Or maybe you drove us to dinner in it?”

  “Wherever it is, I’m not worried about the car. It can take care of itself.”

  “Good locking mechanism, huh?”

  “Straight out of a Coppersmith lab.”

  “Like that gadget you had in your hand when I woke up?”

  He touched his jacket pocket, as if reassuring himself that the odd piece of tech was still inside. “It’s called a silencer. Temporarily neutralizes the frequencies used in most small firearms like handguns and flamers, but only at very close range.”

  “Cool. Can it neutralize a mag-rez pistol?”

  “Yes, if it’s within a radius of less than twenty feet. The technology is still in the testing phase. Got a few bugs to work out. Ultimately, we plan to market it to law enforcement agencies.”

  She smiled.

  He glanced at her. “What’s so funny?”

  “Nothing. You just sounded, well, proud, I guess is the right word.”

  “The company’s labs are good.”

  A faint memory pinged like a tiny ray of light into the darkness of her missing memories.

  “You’re a para-crystal engineer,” she said. “I remember you told me that your official title was director of the Coppersmith Research and Development Labs.”

  His eyes tightened a little at the corners. “I told you a little about my work over dinner, didn’t I?”

  A few more memories trickled back. Her spirits sank deeper as she pulled up some scattered details.

  “You invited me out for dinner,” she said. “That’s why I’m dressed the way I am. But I remember cancelling my reservation at the Glass House restaurant in the Amber Zone. We went to the Green Ruin Café, instead. At least I think we did.”

  “That fits. I’ve got a receipt from the Green Ruin in my wallet.”

  “It’s just a fast-food place a few blocks from my shop,” she said. “We would have walked.”

  He glanced back over his shoulder, eyeing her stilettos. “With you in those shoes?”

  “I’m an Illusion Town girl. I can walk for miles in high heels.”

  Okay, that was a bit of an exaggeration, but still. In Illusion Town, dressing up for an evening out was a competitive sport for women. And it was not about looking demure and refined. The dress code in Illusion Town was all about showcasing one’s assets, and that generally called for very high heels. It was, after all, a city that prided itself on being the number one destination for those seeking the excitement of casino gambling, spectacular shows, and shadowy nightclubs. Visitors came from all over the four sprawling city-states with one goal—to take a walk on the wild side. As the signs said: Welcome to Illusion Town. The thrills are real.

  She snapped her fingers. “That’s right. You said you wanted to hire me for a job at the new Coppersmith operation outside of town—the Ghost City project. Some kind of emergency, you said.”

  “Yes.” He rubbed the back of his neck, frowning in concentration. “On the drive to Illusion Town to pick you up for our date, I got a call from headquarters. Several members of the advance exploration team are trapped inside the ruins at the portal site. A dreamlight gate closed without any warning. Nine people got caught inside a cavern. They’ve got enough supplies to last for a few days but there’s a lot of unknown radiation in that cave. We need to get the people out as soon as possible.”

  Yep, that was when the hot date had started to go downhill, she thought. Ha
rd to forget that magic moment. That was when cold reality had finally struck and she had realized that the fantasies she had been indulging about E. Coppersmith were probably just smoke and mirrors.

  Really, she should have known better, she thought. After all, she had been raised by two magicians. She knew all about smoke and mirrors. The audience sees what it expects to see might as well have been the family motto.

  “I agreed to take the contract,” she said. “But we couldn’t do anything last night because the portal is in the underground Rainforest.”

  “Can’t travel in the jungle at night. We decided to have a quick meal at the Green Ruin and then you were going to go back to your place and pack your field gear. We planned to drive back to headquarters last night so that we would be ready to descend into the Rainforest at dawn.”

  She looked down at her red dress. The delicate fabric was crushed and ripped in various places. What a waste.

  “So much for Plan A,” she said.

  “I remember working on logistics at the restaurant while you finished your sandwich and coffee,” Elias said.

  “Logistics. Of course.”

  He seemed blithely unaware of the sarcasm in her voice. He went quickly down the stairwell steps.

  She tried to string a few facts together, hoping something would jar loose another memory.

  “I suppose we could have come here by cab,” she ventured. “But I don’t remember a cab ride.”

  “Neither do I.” He paused. “I remember guys on motorcycles.”

  “So do I. At least I think I do.”

  “There was also some very hot psi at some point,” Elias said. “I’m sure of it. I think we got burned. We knew we were going to crash.”

  Something in his tone prompted another little ping in the shadows of her lost memories.

  “Do you think that whatever happened to us, it’s connected to the problem at your company’s jobsite? Maybe someone doesn’t want you to get that gate open.”

  “Given what facts we’ve got, that explanation has the highest probability of being correct,” he said.

  “So why is my necklace missing? And what’s up with the fortune in my purse?”

  “I don’t know. We need more data.”

  She cleared her throat. “Okay, let’s say someone is after us and somehow we got psi-fried last night and decided that we had to go into hiding before we blacked out. That doesn’t explain why we got married. It makes no sense. After all, it’s obvious now that our relationship was—is—strictly business.”

  “You’re not much of a romantic, are you?”

  She glared at him. “Is that supposed to be humorous? Because if so, I have to tell you that your timing is lousy.”

  “You’re not the first person to mention that.”

  They reached the ground-floor stairwell. To her surprise, Elias paused, as though listening intently. But she could feel energy rising in the atmosphere. The stone in his ring heated.

  After a few seconds, Elias nodded, satisfied.

  “The good news is that I don’t think there’s anyone waiting to ambush us on the other side of this door,” he said.

  She looked at his ring. “You can tell that with the crystal in your ring?”

  “It’s pretty accurate when it comes to picking up the vibes of high-tech devices.”

  “Is that all it can do?”

  “I don’t know.” He smiled a little and pushed open the door. “I just got it recently, remember?”

  “I know, but are you telling me that you don’t know much about its properties?”

  “It’s a family heirloom but apparently not many of my ancestors could figure out what to do with it,” Elias said. “There’s hardly any data in the Coppersmith archives. I’m still on a learning curve. Still conducting experiments. Until now, the only use I’ve been able to discover is its ability to detect the frequency of other crystals. That’s handy in the lab but hardly unique. We’ve got lots of other instruments that do just as good a job.”

  “I don’t know about that. You said it alerts you to the fact that someone might be waiting for you with a high-powered weapon. That sounds very useful to me. Especially at the moment.”

  “True,” he agreed. He hesitated, glancing down at the ring. “I think that may be why we escaped whoever was gunning for us last night. We had some warning. Not much, but evidently enough to get away.”

  “So why didn’t we run straight to the cops?”

  “Good question. Maybe we didn’t have a chance. If we got chased into the tunnels we would have just kept going until we lost whoever was chasing us.”

  They walked out into a mostly empty parking lot illuminated in the dull light of a fogbound dawn. The weather was hardly a surprise. The Shadow Zone was always locked in psi-infused fog.

  The fog was something of a mystery. After all, Illusion Town was a vast, sprawling city in the middle of a desert. Theoretically, it shouldn’t experience a lot of fog. But the normal meteorological rules didn’t apply whenever there were a lot of Alien ruins in the vicinity. And in the case of Illusion Town, the ruins were underground as well as on the surface. And those ruins were weird, even by Harmony standards.

  The city consisted of eight zones, each corresponding with one side of the vast octagon-shaped wall that enclosed the aboveground ruins. Each zone had its own unique characteristics. Two of the zones—the Storm Zone and the Fire Zone—were considered virtually uninhabitable due to the intense paranormal radiation that infused those regions.

  Most of the upscale, opulent casinos and nightclubs were located in two of the so-called gem zones: the Amber Zone and the Sapphire Zone. The lower-rent gambling establishments and the racier shows and entertainments were found in the other gem zones—Amethyst and Emerald.

  The Dark Zone, where Hannah had been raised, was more of a neighborhood community. There were plenty of small gaming establishments and a smattering of clubs, but it was where many of the people who worked in the big gem zone casinos, hotels, and clubs made their homes.

  The Shadow Zone, however, was the least prosperous side of a generally prosperous town. Whatever glamour it aspired to project was only evident after dark. By day it looked almost deserted. The casinos and clubs were dingy and unwelcoming. Most were actually closed during the daylight hours. A closed casino was unheard-of in the gem zones.

  The oppressive, paranormal fog of the Shadow Zone gave people a significant buzz, especially after dark, but few visitors hung around after sunrise, not if they could afford to take their business into the brightly lit gem zones.

  “According to the desk clerk, the Enchanted Night Wedding Chapel is just a block away,” Elias said. “He said to turn left when we got to the corner. ‘Can’t miss it,’ he said.”

  “Slow down. I’m carrying Virgil, remember? He’s heavier than he looks. All muscle.”

  Virgil chuffed at the sound of his name.

  “Here, give him to me.” Elias plucked Virgil from Hannah’s arms and plopped him down on his shoulder.

  Virgil was thrilled with the higher perch.

  “How did you and the dust bunny find each other?” Elias asked.

  “He just showed up at my back door one evening.” Hannah smiled at the memory. “I thought maybe he was hungry so I put some of the quiche I had made on a plate and set it on the step. He ate the quiche and disappeared. The next morning I found a lovely little piece of green amber on the step. He came back the following evening and I fed him again. Things went on like that for a few days and before I knew it, he had moved in with me.”

  “My brother’s wife, Ella, has a dust bunny companion. Her name is Lorelei. No question but that they’ve got some kind of psychic bond.”

  “I think that’s what happened with Virgil and me. I admit I felt a certain connection with him right from the start.”

  “T
hat fast?”

  “We had something in common. He showed up on my doorstep pretty much the same way I showed up on my aunts’ doorstep. Well, technically, they aren’t my aunts, and he wasn’t wrapped in a blanket and he wasn’t in a basket, but you get the picture.”

  Elias looked at her, evidently fascinated. “Someone left you on a doorstep?”

  “My mother. She was a friend of my aunts. They were all working in a show in the Emerald Zone. My mom was in love with a magician. They were in an MC. Anyhow, shortly after I was born, Mom left me on Clara and Bernice’s doorstep with a note saying she and my father had to take care of some important business. The note said that they would come back for me. Only they never did.”

  “Do you know what happened to them?”

  “They were found shot to death in a cheap hotel room. The police declared it a drug deal gone bad.”

  “Did your aunts try to find any of your blood relatives?”

  “Yes, but they gave up after a while. Mom and Dad were alone in the world. So Clara and Bernice made a pact to raise me themselves. It was either that or put me into the foster care system.”

  “That is an amazing story,” Elias said softly. “No wonder you’re worried about losing that necklace.”

  “It’s all I’ve got left from my mother. In her note to my aunts she said that it was important and that if anything happened to her and my father, they should hide it until I was old enough to understand that it was my inheritance.”

  Elias nodded but he didn’t say anything.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” she said. “You’re thinking it was just a cheap crystal necklace. But you’re wrong.”

  “Yeah?”

  “It turned out to be exactly what my mother wrote in her note—the key to my inheritance. The problem was that it was missing a single crystal. Two weeks ago I finally found that stone. A week later it led me to my inheritance.”

  He gave her a considering look. “Something in the Underworld?”

  “Yes. Naturally, I kept quiet about it until I could file a claim on the sector where it’s located. But the paperwork was completed a few days ago.” She smiled with satisfaction. “My inheritance is safe. I plan to sell it to the highest bidder.”