After Glow

Chapter 1

The tiny burner and the little bowl next to the body told the sad story. Professor Lawrence Maltby had finally managed to kill himself. Judging by the dark residue and the lingering scent of exotic spices, he had done himself in with a common street drug known as Chartreuse.

Lydia Smith left the doorway of the shabby bedroom that Maltby had converted into a study and crouched beside the professor's scrawny, crumpled form. She did not expect to find a pulse, and when she put her fingertips to the throat beneath the scraggly white beard, she proved herself right.

She shivered, rose quickly, stepped back, and reached into her shoulder bag for her personal phone. Her fingers trembled when she punched out the emergency number.

"Yes, that's right," she said to the overstressed operator. "Number Thirteen, Hidden Lane. First floor, apartment A. It's in the Old Quarter near the Wall."

"I'm sorry, ma'am, but that street isn't coming up on my city grid," the operator said brusquely. "Are you sure about the address?"

"Yes, I'm sure. Hidden Lane isn't on most city maps." Lydia took another step from the body. "Probably why they named it Hidden Lane. Look, just tell the medics to take Dead City Way to South Wall Street and turn left at the tavern on the corner. Once they're in the neighborhood, anyone can give them directions."

"All right." There was a short silence before the woman came back on the line. "They're on the way. I'm also sending a police car since you say there's a body."

The operator sounded as if she wasn't at all certain that Lydia could tell the difference between a dead body and the other sort.

"There is definitely a dead man in this apartment. Trust me, I've seen one before."

"Do not under any circumstances leave the scene, ma'am. Since you're the one who found the body, there will be a few formalities."

Formalities. Lydia felt the hair on the nape of her neck stir much the same way it had a few minutes ago when she had walked into Maltby's gloom-filled apartment and realized that something was horribly wrong.

In her experience formalities was not a good word.

Just a few formalities was the phrase the pompous members of the Academic Council had used to describe the farce of a formal inquiry they had staged before they had fired her from her position at the university seven months ago.

We need to go through some formalities, was how the police detective in charge of the investigation into Chester Brady's murder last month had termed the grilling that Lydia had been obliged to endure.

It wasn't her fault that she had been the first person to stumble across Chester's body in that ancient alien sarcophagus, she thought. And there was no reason to hold her responsible for the fact that she had been the first one to find Maltby's body today.

It was just her bad luck that she had walked in on this mess, she told herself. It could have been anyone. The door of Maltby's apartment had been unlocked when she had arrived a few minutes ago, so naturally she had put her head inside to call his name. After all, he was the one who had asked her to stop by his place this morning.

Actually the message that he had left on her answering machine while she had been occupied with a museum tour group had been a demand, not a request.

"… This is Dr. Lawrence Maltby. I must see you immediately, Miss Smith. Please come to my apartment as soon as possible. I have extremely urgent news concerning the incident in the catacombs a few months ago that led to your dismissal from the university.…"

Although he had been let go from his own position at Old Frequency College more than a decade earlier, Maltby had evidently not lost his air of professorial authority. The tone of his voice on her answering machine had been that of a department head summoning a junior staff member to his office.

In spite of the rudeness, Lydia had wasted no time. The magic words urgent news concerning the incident in the catacombs a few months ago had gotten her full attention.

But the expensive cab ride to Hidden Lane had been for naught. She was too late.

She saw no reason to mention the reasons she happened to be standing over Maltby's dead body to the emergency operator, however.

"Look, this isn't a crime scene or anything," she said quickly. "Professor Maltby wasn't murdered. It looks like he OD'd on Chartreuse. There's no point in having me stick around to answer a lot of questions. I don't have any answers."

The operator was unmoved. "I'm sorry, ma'am, but rules are rules. Stay right where you are until the police and the medics arrive."

"Yeah, sure." Lydia ended the call abruptly. She glanced once more at the body and then quickly looked away.

She had not known Maltby personally, but she had heard the gossip along Ruin Row for years. His tragic end had been forecast for some time by all of the gallery owners who had dealt with him. In his heyday he had been a respected, tenured professor of para-archaeology. But his career had foundered after he had sunk into the dark netherworld of drug addiction.

After his dismissal from the staff at Old Frequency College, he had moved here to Cadence City where he had attempted to make a living as a private consultant to collectors and gallery owners along Ruin Row. But the drugs had made it impossible for him to function reliably. Eventually his deteriorating reputation had caused his consulting work to dry up.

In the end, Maltby had descended to the lowest rung in the antiquities trade. He had become a ruin rat, eking out a meager living by sneaking illegally in and out of the catacombs in hopes of turning up the occasional valuable relic.

Several of Lydia's acquaintances in the Old Quarter had told her that, during the brief spells when he was able to kick his habit long enough to go underground, Maltby sometimes showed up with some spectacular finds. No one knew where he did his secret excavating work down in the catacombs and, honoring the unspoken rules that governed the less legitimate side of the antiquities trade, no one asked.

She listened intently for a few seconds and heard no sirens. She had a few minutes before the medics and the police arrived. Surely there was no harm in looking around.

Trying not to look at the body, she moved to the desk and surveyed the cluttered surface. There were several aging copies of the Journal of Para-archaeology stacked randomly on one corner. Pens, papers, and a notebook were scattered about in a careless fashion.

She unfastened her shoulder bag, removed a tissue, and used it to open the notebook. The scribbling inside appeared to be a series of angry rebuttals to various papers that had appeared in recent editions of the Journal of Para-archaeology; letters to the editor that would never have been published.

She closed the notebook and surveyed the desk. Something about the arrangement of the items on it seemed off. All of the things that one might expect to see on an academic's desk were present, including a small pad of paper, heaps of reference books, a lamp, and a blotter. There was no computer but that was not a surprise. Maltby had probably sold it long ago to buy Chartreuse. Either that or it had been stolen. This was a rough neighborhood.

She took a closer look, trying to figure out what was bothering her. And then it struck her that the blotter was not positioned squarely in the center where it could be properly used. It had been dragged or pulled too far to the right so that one corner hung off the edge. The lamp was in the wrong place, too. The shade was cocked at an odd angle that would send the beam of light straight down, quite uselessly, to the floor.

It was easy to see what had happened. No doubt belatedly aware that he was in serious trouble from the overdose, Maltby had evidently tried to get to his feet, perhaps to call for help. He would have been dazed and unsteady and had probably flailed wildly about, grabbing at the nearest objects in a vain attempt to steady himself. He had knocked the lamp and blotter askew in the process.

She leaned down to open the top desk drawer. What could it hurt to just glance inside to see if Maltby had left any clue to what it was he had wanted to tell her?

She paused in the act of reaching for the drawer knob when she noticed the little sheet of paper lying on the worn carpet. It was just the right size to have been torn off the small notepad that sat next to the phone.

Curious, she crouched down and angled herself under the desk to pick up the paper. When she turned it over she saw that someone had started to scrawl a couple of words in a very shaky hand.

Amber Hil

A knock sounded loudly on the front door of the apartment, shattering the unnatural stillness of the death room. Startled, she started to straighten. Her head collided smartly with the underside of the desk.

"Damn." She scrambled out from under the desk and dropped the paper into her purse.

There was a second knock. A shiver went through her. Whoever was out there in the hall managed to make a simple rap on the door sound like a summons to doom.

She hesitated, uncertain whether or not to respond. She still didn't hear any sirens, which ruled out the possibility that Maltby's visitor was a medic or a cop. Given the character of the neighborhood, that left a lot of unpleasant possibilities.

She pondered the wisdom of simply ignoring the knock. Then she recalled that the door was unlocked.

Whoever was out there in the hall might decide to try his luck with the knob at any moment.

It would probably be a really good idea to go into the front room and lock the door.

She hurried out of the study, went down the short hall, and traversed the dingy sitting room on tiptoe. There was a peephole in the heavily reinforced door. Trying not to give away her presence, she put her eye to the little circle of glass. At the same time she reached out to throw the bolt.

She stopped when she saw the man standing in the shadowy hall. A day's growth of dark beard, scarred boots, rugged khaki pants and shirt, and a battered leather jacket added up to one conclusion. This was the kind of guy who looked like he'd make an interesting date if you were in a mood to take a walk on the wild side, but you would definitely not want to run into him in a dark alley on a moonless night.

His eyes were a disturbing combination of gold and green. He had the hard, implacable features of a man who was accustomed to being in command.

The face of his watch was a circle of amber. She knew this because she knew the man.

There was nothing special about the amber watch, of course. Almost everyone wore amber in one form or another. Two hundred years ago the colonists from Earth had quickly learned that here on Harmony the unique gemstone had a very special property: Amber made it possible for humans to focus their latent psychic energy, paranormal powers that the environment of the new world had somehow released.

Given the fact that, by the second generation, all of the colonists' offspring exhibited some degree of psi talent and could control it with the use of amber, the stuff had quickly become the energy source of choice. Even little children could resonate with amber with sufficient skill to operate a door key or switch on the rez-screen to watch cartoons.

Lydia knew only too well that Emmett London was not into amber accessories because they were fashionable. He was a very powerful dissonance-energy para-resonator—a ghost-hunter. He had the psychic talent and the training required to neutralize the dangerous, flaring balls of chaotic dissonance energy, the so-called ghosts, that drifted at random through the endless underground corridors of the alien ruins.

Ghost-hunters were a necessary part of any excavation team. They were, in essence, professional bodyguards who were hired from their Guilds to protect archaeologists, researchers, and others who explored and excavated the ancient catacombs beneath the Dead City.

Until she had met Emmett last month, she had held an extremely low opinion of hunters in general. She considered most dissonance-energy para-rezes to be little better than high-end mobsters. There was a hunters' Guild in every major city on Harmony and as far as she was concerned they were merely legalized criminal organizations run by ruthless bosses.

Emmett was the mysterious ex-boss of the Resonance City Guild. Shortly after his arrival here in Cadence last month, rumors had begun to circulate in the tabloids to the effect that he was the handpicked successor of the current boss of the Cadence City Guild, Mercer Wyatt.

Emmett denied any interest in assuming the leadership of the local Guild, but Lydia was not so sure he could avoid the job—not if Wyatt put pressure on him. There were a lot of old sayings about the hunters and the Guilds, one of which was, once a Guild man, always a Guild man. Granted, the conventional wisdom over-looked the fact that there were some female hunters but that was beside the point.

In the past few weeks she had tried very hard not to think about the fact that she was sleeping with the man Mercer Wyatt had chosen to take over as the boss of the Cadence Guild.

She yanked open the door and threw herself into Emmett's arms.

"You don't know how glad I am to see you," she said into his shirt. "How did you find me?"

"I called your office. Melanie told me you were here." He put an arm around her shoulders and glanced back to check the grimy hallway. Satisfied, he moved both of them into the apartment and closed the door. "What the hell are you doing in this part of town?"

"Maltby, the man who lives here, said he wanted to see me. When I arrived I found him lying on the floor of his study." She took a deep breath. "He's sort of dead."

Emmett looked pained. "Not another one."

She frowned. "This isn't like the last time. It looks like Maltby took an overdose of Chartreuse. I called for an ambulance." She sighed. "Not that it will do any good."

"Where is he?"

The stoic resignation in his voice annoyed her. "You don't have to act as if I make a habit of finding dead bodies." She waved a hand toward the study. "He's in the room down that hall."

Emmett walked to the doorway of the study. She trailed after him, clutching her purse.

"This is not good," Emmett said.

"Yes, well, it's a lot worse for Maltby."

"That's not what I meant. Some complications have come up. The last thing we need right now is a dead body."

He disappeared into the study.

Alarmed, she hurried to the doorway. Emmett was standing over Maltby's remains, surveying the small space with a considering expression.

"What complications?" she asked. "Don't get me wrong, I'm glad to see you, but what are you doing here? When did you get home from the camping trip with Zane and his buddies?"

It was not at all surprising that Emmett looked a little rough around the edges today, she thought. Her young neighbor, Zane Hoyt, and his pals were all budding dissonance-energy para-resonators from a part of town where good male role models were decidedly scarce. The boys in the neighborhood were growing up fast with more psi power than any of them knew how to handle. It was a recipe for disaster. They desperately needed guidance and a firm hand.

The Guild-sponsored Hunter-Scout troops were a useful community resource for boys in Cadence but there had been none in the section of the city where Lydia and Zane lived. Emmett had taken care of the problem a couple of weeks ago when he had quietly prodded the Guild into establishing a troop in the neighborhood. He had even gone so far as to take an active interest in the newly formed group.

All of the boys, Zane included, idolized Emmett. He was, after all, one of the most powerful para-rezes in the city. Young males, Lydia had discovered, were very impressed with raw power.

"Got in around three o'clock this morning," Emmett said. "Dropped the boys off at their homes and went to my place to crash. Didn't want to wake you up. The phone rang just as I was walking in the door." Absently he rubbed his jaw. "I haven't been to bed yet."

Sirens wailed in the distance. About time, Lydia thought.

"Who called you?" she asked. "Why didn't you get to bed?"

"It's a long story. I'll explain later." He eyed her closely. "Meanwhile, please tell me this dead guy doesn't have anything to do with your new consulting job?"

"Oh, no, things are going great with the Hepscott project," she said, relieved to be able to give a positive, upbeat answer for once. She cast an uneasy glance at Maltby. "This was a, uh, private matter."

"Yeah, I was afraid of that." Emmett's expression hardened a little more. "This is connected to those questions you've been asking along Ruin Row for the past couple of weeks, isn't it? The ones about your so-called Lost Weekend?"

She should have known that he was aware of the discreet inquiries she had begun making here in the Old Quarter. Emmett was an ex-Guild boss. He had connections.

"Maltby called me," she said briskly. "I didn't call him."

"You just can't let it go, can you? You're determined to prove that you were the victim of some kind of ghost-hunter conspiracy. You won't accept that what happened to you was a really bad accident."

She narrowed her eyes. "This is precisely why I didn't tell you I was doing some investigating on my own. I knew I'd get a lot of rez-static."

"And this is why you would have gotten the static from me." He pointed at the body. "Things like this happen in this part of town. At the very least, you should have called me before you came to ask your questions."

"I knew that you would be getting back very late last night. I assumed you'd be sleeping late this morning."

"Would you have called to invite me along if you had figured I'd be up?"

She was starting to feel cornered. "I know my way around the Old Quarter, Emmett. I've lived here all my life. I don't need an escort."

"Maybe not in the district where you live, but that's over on the other side of the Quarter. In this neighborhood, you need an escort."

She tightened her grip on the strap of the purse. "You know, this really isn't the time for a lecture on personal safety."

"On my way to this flophouse I passed three drug dealers who offered to score me some high-grade Chartreuse, a couple of hookers, a guy who tried to sell me a hot rez-screen, and one of those smiling idiots in green bathrobes who promised to reveal the secrets of true bliss if I would buy a book. And that was just in the half block between here and where I parked the Slider. I'll be lucky if the car's still there when I get back to it."

"I'm sure you'll find the Slider right where you left it. No one would dare touch it. Everyone knows who you are, now, Emmett, thanks to that stupid article in the Cadence Tattler last week."

Much to Emmett's disgust, the popular supermarket tabloid had featured a photo of him on the front page. The picture had been accompanied by some breathless prose questioning the real reason for his presence in Cadence. The headline, Next Guild Boss? had said it all.

Emmett fit his hands to his hips. "You scare the living daylights out of me, Lydia."

"Nah. You're a ghost-hunter. Nothing scares you."

She spoke lightly but deep down she was relieved that he was backing off the argument. They were only a few short weeks into this very complicated relationship and things were unsettled enough as it was. They did not need a major confrontation.

They listened to the sirens halt abruptly outside in the lane.

Emmett raised his brows. "Mind if I ask what you plan to tell the cops?"

She winced. "I'm hoping they won't ask too many questions."

"This is the second time in a month that you've reported a dead body. Got a hunch there are going to be a few questions."

Someone pounded on the door of the apartment.

"I'll go let them in," Lydia said. She turned and went down the hall.

When she opened the front door of the apartment she found two medics, a uniformed police officer, and an all-too-familiar face crowded together in the dark hall.

"Hello, Miss Smith," Detective Alice Martinez said. "You do turn up in some interesting places." She switched her tough cop's gaze to a point beyond Lydia's left shoulder. "So do you, London. What is it? The two of you can't think of anything more romantic to do on a date than find dead bodies?"

One of the medics looked at Emmett. "Where's the dead guy?"

"Down that hallway," Emmett said.

The two medics and the officer headed for the study.

Lydia did not like the dark cloud she sensed gathering over her head. "What are you doing here, Detective?" she asked warily. "This isn't a homicide."

Alice did not take her attention off Emmett. "Actually, I was looking for you, Mr. London. I called Miss Smith's office to see if she knew where you were and was told that both of you were probably at this address. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that Miss Smith had just phoned in a report about a dead man."

"Detective," Emmett inclined his head politely.

Lydia got the impression he was not surprised to see Alice Martinez. The cloud overhead got darker and more ominous. There would be rain any minute.

"Why do you want to talk to Emmett?" she asked sharply.

"I need to ask him a few questions," Alice said. "Just a formality."

"What?" Lydia was outraged. "You can't be serious. Surely you don't think that Emmett had anything to do with Professor Maltby's death? I'm the one who found the body. Emmett is not involved in this. He just happened to be here when you arrived."

Alice and Emmett both looked at her. Lydia got a nasty feeling that she had overreacted. Not the smart thing to do around a cop, she told herself.

"I hadn't planned to talk to Mr. London about Maltby's death," Alice said calmly. "Although, I may have to revisit that decision. But we'll let that go for now. The reason I tracked him down this morning was to ask him some questions concerning another problem that I'm handling at the moment."

"Problem?" Lydia glanced from Alice's face to Emmett's and then back again. A fresh wave of dread ruffled her nerve endings. "What problem? What is going on here?"

"Someone tried to kill Mercer Wyatt early this morning," Emmett said quietly.

"Whoever it was nearly succeeded," Alice added. "Wyatt is in intensive care at Cadence Memorial Hospital under an armed guard. The doctors finished operating a couple of hours ago. His condition is listed as critical."

Lydia relaxed slightly. "I see. Well, that's unfortunate but I can't say that I'm terribly surprised. Wyatt is a Guild boss, after all. No one rises to that position without making enemies. Guild politics are notoriously messy. At least they are here in Cadence."

"True," Alice agreed in a very neutral tone of voice.

Lydia frowned. "So, why do you want to question Emmett?"

"Because the word on the street is that he's the new acting head of the Cadence Guild." Alice's smile was ice cold. "The way I heard it, he will take over permanently if Wyatt doesn't make it out of intensive care."