After Dark

Chapter 17

LYDIA AWOKE TO the ringing of the bedside phone. Her hand smacked the table, groped briefly, found the instrument. She managed to get the receiver to her ear in time to hear Emmett answer on the living room extension.

"London," he growled.

Horrified, Lydia sat straight up in bed. "Hello? Hello?"

"Excuse me," Ryan Kelso said brusquely. "I believe I have the wrong number."

"Ryan?" Lydia said quickly. "Wait."

"Is that you, Lydia?" He sounded confused now.

"It's me. Emmett, I've got it. You can hang up now."

"Sorry," Emmett said easily. "I'll get breakfast started while you two talk. Take your time. I haven't even had my shower yet."

There was a click as he hung up the phone. A short, stark silence ensued during which Lydia knew that Ryan was absorbing the implications of Emmett's having answered the phone in her apartment at this hour of the morning. With a supreme effort of will she resisted the urge to storm into the other room and scream at Emmett.

She composed herself and swiftly considered the possibilities. Maybe Ryan was calling to tell her that the department had decided to give her back her job. Maybe he was calling with the offer of a private consulting contract with the university. Maybe her new career was finally about to take off.

"Sorry," she said crisply. "Someone else picked up the phone by mistake."

"The man who answered, he was the one who was with you the other night at the Counterpoint, wasn't he?"

There was a note of disapproval in Ryan's voice now. It irritated Lydia. As if he had a right to comment on the situation.

"Mr. London is my guest."

A shadow loomed. She looked across the room and saw Mr. London filling her doorway. He was wearing only the jeans he'd had on last night. She waved him off. He did not budge.

"What was it you wanted, Ryan?" she asked.

He cleared his throat. When he spoke this time, his tone was a bit too affable. "As a matter of fact, I was calling to suggest that we get together for lunch."

"Lunch?"

"Seeing you the other night made me realize how long it's been since we had a chance to sit down and talk," he said quickly. "Got a lot of news to catch up on."

"I see." She couldn't decide if he was hinting at a business discussion or just being friendly. "When did you want to do this lunch?"

"How about today?" Ryan said.

Lydia thought about the dreamstone jar that she had to get safely stored in a bank vault this morning and the cabinet of curiosities that she and Emmett were going to retrieve from Bartholomew Greeley. And then there was her job at the museum. She would be going in late today. She probably ought to work through lunch.

"I'm pretty tightly scheduled today, Ryan. How about tomorrow?"

"Damn it, Lydia, I've got to talk to you." He sounded both annoyed and urgent. "Today. As soon as possible. I could come to your apartment."

Ryan was definitely anxious about something. She tried to ignore Emmett, who had propped one shoulder against the doorjamb and was watching her with deep interest.

"What's this all about, Ryan?" she asked.

"It involves a professional matter," he said stiffly.

She tried to conceal her eagerness. "Are you saying you want me to consult for the department?"

There was a slight but meaningful pause. "Not exactly."

Her enthusiasm waned abruptly. "Ryan, I've got a busy day ahead. I don't have time for games."

"Wait, don't hang up, Lydia. This is important. Maybe the most important thing that's ever come along. I don't want to discuss it on the phone. But trust me, we're talking about a major Harmonic find."

Lydia tightened her grip on the phone. "What kind of find?"

"We can't talk about it now. I've got to see you." Ryan hesitated. "There's a rumor. I can't say any more about it, but I can tell you this much. If it's for real, it could remake your career for you."

Lydia felt her confidence return in a rush. Ryan needed her. That meant she was in control here. She had to play her cards carefully.

"Tell you what, Ryan, I'll give you a call later in the day when I've got my schedule nailed down for the week."

"Lydia, wait, don't hang up. Damn it, don't hang up. Both of our futures are riding on this."

"I'll call you later, Ryan." Very gently she replaced the phone. She looked at Emmett.

"What?" he said.

"I have a nasty feeling that Ryan may have heard some rumors about my bequest from Chester."

"You think he knows you've got the jar?"

"No, but I got the impression that he thinks I may know something about it."

"That's bad enough." He came away from the door, walked to the bed, and tossed her robe to her. "Rise and shine, my little sex goddess. We're going to be standing at the door of the bank when it opens. I want that jar in a safe-deposit box before we do anything else."

Lydia clutched the robe and met his gaze. "'Sex goddess'?"

"You prefer the term 'sex kitten'?"

"No, that's okay. 'Sex goddess' will do."

The Cadence City Bank opened promptly at nine. By nine-twenty Lydia had filled out all the paperwork required for a safe-deposit box. The clerk showed her and Emmett into the hushed solitude of the vault room and left them alone.

Lydia removed the dreamstone jar from the paper sack for one last look before she sealed it safely away in the safe-deposit box.

"I still can't quite believe this is real." She studied the small streams of ever-changing colors that encircled the jar like tiny alien seas. "Solid as a rock and yet it's pure dreamstone. How is it possible? By rights it should have melted and splintered into a gazillion different molecules."

"I don't know if it's all that unexpected," Emmett said.

"Unexpected? The ability to work dreamstone is unheard of."

"Think about it." Emmett studied the jar in her hands. "We humans have only been here a couple of hundred years, but we've already developed ways of resonating psychically with rez-amber. We use the stuff every day to do everything from turning on the rez-screen to cooking dinner and hunting ghosts. The Harmonics probably evolved on this planet."

"We don't know that for certain," Lydia said quickly. "They may have come through the Curtain thousands of years ago, the same way we did two centuries ago. The experts say there's no telling how many times the Curtain has opened and closed in the past or which planets it linked when it was open."

Emmett shrugged. "Whatever. Any way you look at it, the Harmonics could have been here for thousands of years, right?"

"Right."

"Plenty of time to get psychically tuned to the basic harmonic frequencies of the planet. Who knows what they could do with rez-amber? Hell, we still can't even figure out how they created ghosts or the illusion traps. Some of us can manipulate them, but no one has come up with a way to create a ghost or a trap from scratch."

"True."

Lydia looked at the jar she held. She could feel the weight of the centuries and the echoes of a creativity that was not quite human but that nevertheless resonated on a very human frequency. "Maybe they discovered or invented something even better than rez-amber to help them focus their psi talents."

"Wouldn't be surprised. Given a couple of thousand more years here, we'll probably come up with something more efficient, too." Emmett glanced at his watch. "It's almost nine-thirty. Greeley will be waiting for us."

"Yes." She could come back here later to look at her fabulous jar, Lydia reminded herself. She started to rewrap it in the paper sack. Midway through the process she paused.

"What's wrong?" Emmett asked.

"I'm not sure." She removed the jar from the sack again and hefted it in her bare hands. She sent out a gentle psychic probe. Her amber bracelet grew warm against her skin. Cautiously, she felt for the harmonic pulse of the energy that emanated from the jar.

The amber grew warmer. A small chill went through her. "Oh, jeez."

Emmett moved closer, intent on her face. "What are you picking up? The age of the thing?"

"No. Something else. Remember, last night I told you it felt strange? Almost like a bit of illusion trap energy. I thought it was just something unique to dreamstone. But now I'm not so sure."

He glanced at the jar, and then his eyes lifted swiftly to meet hers. She saw that he understood the implications of what she had just said.

"Not ghost energy," he said with absolute certainty. "I'd sense it more clearly than you would."

"No," she whispered. "Illusion energy."

"Illusion traps are very rare outside the catacombs."

She nodded mutely. He was right. Even so, she could not help looking around the vault room. She studied every corner intently, amplifying and focusing her para-resonating senses through the amber bracelet. She saw no pools of darkness in the corners. There were no inexplicable shadows under the table or near the ceiling.

Of course there weren't any illusion snares in here, she thought. They were standing in the middle of the Cadence City Bank, for crying out loud.

But the amber in her bracelet was very warm against her skin. Traces of energy shimmered in the room.

She looked down at the jar. Then she looked at Emmett.

"Something to do with worked dreamstone, maybe?" Emmett asked. "Some property that we don't know about because no human has been able to manipulate the stuff?"

She held the artifact up to the light. "There's a lid, I think. It really should be removed in a lab. I don't want to risk damaging the jar."

"It's lasted this long," Emmett reminded her. "It can't be too fragile."

"I'll give it a try."

She set the jar on the table and very gingerly pried at the tightly closed lid. To her surprise it came off easily. She found herself looking down into the dark—very dark—interior of the little artifact.

"Hmm."

She picked up the jar and angled it so that light from the overhead fixture shafted into the interior. It could not penetrate the darkness. There was no gleam or sparkle from the dreamstone inside the jar. Just thick, impenetrable, black mist.

There were two possibilities, she thought. She was either losing it, para-rez-wise, just as Ryan and the others suspected, or she was holding a jar filled with an illusion trap.

"Uh-oh," she said.

"The real thing?" Emmett asked quietly.

"Yeah. Not much of it. Just enough to fit inside this jar."

He hadn't questioned her judgment, she thought. He'd accepted her verdict even though he had every right to doubt it.

He watched as she very carefully set the jar back down on the table. "What do you think?"

"I don't know. Like everyone else, I've never seen much of this stuff outside the Dead City. The very fact that it exists inside this jar may mean that this trap is different from the others I've worked with. It must be anchored somehow to the dreamstone. Only one way to find out."

He looked at her over the top of the jar. "Go for it."

"Might be better if you stepped into the other room. Just in case."

"Not a chance. I'm staying right here."

"Suit yourself."

She took another breath and concentrated on sending psi energy through the amber on her wrist. The stones warmed quickly again. The unmistakable pulse of resonating energy vibrated through her. Weak, but steady and clear.

"It's such a small trap," she whispered. "It's only giving off a trickle of energy."

"Even a trickle can cause some very unpleasant effects," Emmett warned.

She said nothing. They had both worked in the catacombs. They knew what the ancient Harmonic snares could do. Alien dreams. Alien nightmares.

She channeled psi energy steadily through the amber while she gazed down into the palpable night inside the jar. After a few seconds she saw something stir in the depths. The dark itself appeared to be condensing and coalescing. It was reacting to the pulses of energy she was forcing through it. If she screwed up at this stage, she could all too easily spring the trap.

If she triggered the illusion trap, she would have only about one second to realize she was in trouble. There would be no time to do anything about it. The darkness would snap back along the psi-frequencies that she herself had provided it. The stuff would swamp her mind before she could react.

If it was sufficiently powerful, the snare would not only plunge her into a disorienting illusion that her human mind could not accept for long but it would use her own psi energy to trap anyone else who had the misfortune to be standing nearby. Emmett, for example.

How long the nightmare would last or what form it would take was anyone's guess. Given the size of the trap, one could only hope that the dream it produced would be correspondingly limited and short-lived.

But she knew that even if it lasted for only a few minutes, it would take days to recover.

Using her para-rez senses, she edged deeper into the little patch of darkness. She sifted through the cloaking ephemeral energy until she caught the telltale echo of resonance. She fine-tuned her probe, found the hidden design inside the masking pattern, and fed energy into it, dampening the wave motion.

Slowly, carefully, she began to adjust the resonance frequency of the trap. It grew weaker, flattened.

The darkness inside the jar winked out abruptly.

Lydia released the breath she had not realized she was holding. She looked up and saw Emmett grinning at her.

"Nice work," he said.

It was then that the elation ripped through her. This was the first time she'd had a chance to work illusion trap energy since the Lost Weekend. The first time she'd been able to prove to herself that she still had her harmonic pitch. She hadn't lost her edge.

She tried to stay cool, tried not to let her bubbling excitement show. "It's been a while," she said offhandedly. "I was afraid I might be a little rusty."

"Rusty, hell. Screw the whole damn University of Cadence Department of Para-archaeology and the ghost they rode in on. You haven't lost your touch."

She gave up trying to squelch the delight and relief that were surging within her. With a small shriek, she flung herself into Emmett's arms. They closed swiftly around her.

"I'm okay," she whispered into the fabric of his jacket. "I really am okay. I can still handle the stuff." She was laughing now.

He hoisted her off her feet and laughed with her. "You can say that again." He slid her back down the length of his body and kissed her hard.

For a moment she clung to him, savoring the triumphant, congratulatory embrace. She knew then that there was no one, no one else at all, with whom she would rather have celebrated that moment.

When the initial blast of euphoria finally began to subside, she became conscious of the fact that she was kissing Emmett in the middle of a bank vault. Reality returned with a jolt. Slowly, reluctantly, she stepped back, flushed and breathless. She was supposed to be a professional, she thought. Professionals didn't behave this way.

Emmett seemed unaware of her chagrin. He glanced at the jar on the table. "Anything else inside besides the de-rezzed trap?"

Lydia hurried back to the table. She picked up the jar and angled it once more toward the light. "I don't see anything. No, wait—there is something. It looks like a piece of paper."

"Paper?"

"Yes." She lowered the jar and tipped it upside down.

They both stared at the slip of paper that fell into her palm. It was ordinary, everyday paper. It certainly was not thousand-year-old paper. No one had ever found anything that resembled paper in the ruins.

"Chester," Lydia whispered. "He could have de-rezzed the trap, stuck the paper inside the jar, and then reset the snare."

She put down the jar and carefully unfolded the paper. A familiar scrawl sloped across the page. There were three lines of jumbled letters and numbers. They were followed by a short message:

Dear Lydia:

Hell of a retirement plan, isn't it? Just wish I was there with you to enjoy it. I promised you that one day I'd surprise all those bastards up at the university. The really big news is that I think there's more where this came from. The bad news is that some other ruin rats are already excavating the site illegally. But it's going to take them weeks, if not months, to get all the dreamstone out. From what I could tell, every damn corridor in that catacomb branch is crawling with illusion traps and ghosts. I've never seen anything in the underground city that was this well guarded. Whatever you do, don't go in alone. You'll need a ghost-hunter to help you, and even then it will be dangerous. Whoever you choose, make sure you can trust him or her with your life. There's enough dreamstone involved to make your best friend contemplate murder.

The coordinates above are in code. Sorry. Had to do it this way. I can't be sure that someone else besides you won't find this jar first or that whoever it is won't get past the little trap inside. Nasty little bugger, wasn't it? It's anchored to the dreamstone. Amazing.

You'll need a key to the code. I didn't want to leave it in here with the coordinates for obvious reasons. But don't worry, I'll make sure you get it.

Be careful when you go after the rest of the dreamstone. The other ruin rats at the site are real SOBs. I don't think they'd hesitate to cut your throat if they caught you.

Love, Chester

"My God!" Lydia whispered. "There's a whole site full of this stuff."

Emmett studied the three lines of letters and numbers Chester had written. "He says he'll make sure you get the key to those coordinates."

Lydia's jaw dropped for a few seconds as lightning struck. "Emmett, maybe that's what Chester was doing in the museum the night he was killed. Maybe he came there to leave the key in my office. The killer must have followed him, murdered him, and taken the key."

"Okay, I'll buy that. But getting the key didn't do the bastard any good, because the coordinates were hidden inside the jar." Emmett glanced at his watch. "Let's go. We've got an appointment with Greeley."