After Dark

Chapter 25

MELANIE TOFT PUT her head around the corner of the office door. "Thought this was your day off. What are you doing here?"

"I just came in to take care of some paperwork." Lydia turned away from the bookcase and smiled. "Don't worry, I'm not going to stay long."

"I should hope not. I've told you over and over again, you mustn't give Shrimp the idea that just because you're a genuine professional para-archaeologist, you should put in unpaid overtime."

"I promise I'll be out of here in less than ten minutes."

"Good." Melanie eyed her more closely. "Is there anything wrong?"

"No, Melanie, nothing's wrong."

"Look, I know you've been under a strain for the past several days, what with Chester's death and all. If you need more than just your regular day off, don't be afraid to say so. Shrimp won't mind."

"Don't worry." She picked up a pen and then threw it down, very hard, onto the desk. "I'm not going to crack up under the strain."

Melanie looked instantly abashed. "I never meant—"

"I know, I know. It's okay." Lydia pulled herself together and forced a smile. "Don't worry about me, Melanie. I'm fine." Sheesh, now she sounded like Emmett last night when he tried to tell her he was okay after nearly getting killed.

"All right." Melanie looked dubious. "But just remember, you don't have to prove anything to me or to Shrimp. If you want some time off, just speak up."

"Thanks."

Lydia waited until the door had closed behind Melanie. Then she turned back to the bookcase. She gazed thoughtfully at her volumes of the Journal of Para-archaeology.

She removed the photograph that Chester had stashed in the duffel bag alongside the dreamstone jar and looked at it again. Chester grinned proudly from the photo, his hand firmly clasped around the issue of the Journal of Para-archaeology that contained the article listing him as a contributing consultant.

Fragments of her dream floated through her mind. Along with it came the question she had been asking herself yesterday when Ryan interrupted her.

What if Chester had been on his way out of Shrimpton's the night he was killed?

She took a step forward and trailed her fingertip along the spines of the journal volumes. She paused at the one that contained the article naming Chester as a consulting contributor.

She pulled the volume off the shelf and opened it slowly to the familiar page. The title of the article blazed up at her. "An Assessment of Variations Found in the Para-Resonance Frequencies of Ephemeral-Energy Sources."

A slip of paper fluttered to the floor. She bent down, plucked it up, and stared at it. Chester's handwriting was unmistakable. There was a series of numbers. Beneath each number was a letter.

An hour later, Lydia opened the sheet of paper containing the coordinates and spread it out on the kitchen counter. She put Chester's key down beside it. Then she unfurled the university's official archaeological site map of die Dead City.

"The code is simple enough," she said. "Chester used our birthdays, phone numbers, and the date of the issue of the Journal in which my article appeared. I recognized them immediately. After that it was just a mater of connecting the dots."

Emmett watched as she penciled in the coordinates on the map. Her gathering excitement fairly shimmered in the air around her. She wanted desperately to get back underground, he realized. She wanted to prove to herself that she could still handle the catacombs.

"If Brady's information is solid," he said, "it indicates an unmapped hole-in-the-wall gate into the catacombs beneath the shelter."

She nodded, concentrating intently on her task. "There are dozens of them, of course. The university authorities seal them whenever they find them, but the ruin rats discover new ones all the time."

"Same story in Old Resonance."

She put down the pencil and looked up, her face flushed with anticipation. "Somewhere along the line, someone must have discovered this particular hole-in-the-wall gate. For all we know, it's been found and lost many times over the years. But this time someone discovered the dreamstone down there, somewhere in one of the catacombs."

Emmett thought about it. "At the same time, he must have found the passages clogged with ghosts and illusion traps. Probably realized that he needed to put together a team to help him clear the site so that he could excavate."

"But he couldn't put together a legal excavation team because he would have had to report his finds to the university authorities. They would have claimed the dreamstone."

"But it occurred to him that he was sitting on top of a perfect source of unregistered labor. Street kids come and go from the shelter all the time. Some of them are bound to be untrained dissonance and ephemeral-energy para-rezes. Easy to recruit, especially if you promise them a little free training and a share in the profits."

"And if you don't mind risking their young necks," Lydia added grimly. "Excavation work in the unmapped sections of the catacombs is dangerous, even for expert and experienced tanglers and hunters. When I think of a bunch of young people being sent out to clear the tunnels—"

"Cannon fodder," Emmett said softly.

She glanced at him sharply. "What?"

"It's an old Earth term. I came across it once in a book."

"Oh." She let that pass. "Well, one thing's for certain. If someone is using a hole-in-the-wall gate that is accessed via the youth shelter and if he's recruiting kids out of the shelter, then he almost certainly has to be on the staff at the Transverse Wave. It's the only way he could come and go freely."

"Or the only way she could come and go freely," Emmett said quietly.

"True." Lydia agreed. "Hard to believe that anyone could excavate a catacomb right under Helen Vickers's feet without her suspecting that something out of the ordinary was going on. She's got to be involved in this."

"I told you, I've got my people in Resonance checking out her background. With any luck we may get some info tomorrow."

"We're talking a couple of murders, basic training for some hunters, and some serious illusion trap work. Hard to believe Vickers is handling all that alone."

Emmett thought about the locker key he had found in the pocket of one of the young hunters. "When did Bob Matthews say he started volunteering at the shelter?"

"A few months ago."

He studied the map while he ran through his options. He wished like hell that there was another way, but he knew there wasn't. He needed to get inside the unmarked catacomb passage, and he needed a good illusion tangler to help him. Lydia was one of the best.

He felt her watching him. He had a hunch she knew exactly what he was thinking.

"Like it or not, the job requires a hunter-tangler team, and you know it," she said.

She was right.

"We'll do it tonight," he said.

She glanced at Fuzz, who was munching a pretzel on the counter. "Don't worry, we'll take backup."

"What do you mean?"

"Fuzz." She plucked the dust-bunny off the counter and stroked his scruffy fur. "His night vision and sense of smell are much better than any human's." She hesitated. "I think of him as my good luck charm."