Jayne Castle: After Dark

Lydia frowned. "What kind of work?"

"Don't know. Quinn told me that she's a fairly strong ephemeral-energy para-rez and she dreams of working in the field of para-archaeology. But she's untrained and uncertified. Unfortunately, her resources are quite limited. No family to speak of. When Quinn met her, she was barely keeping herself off the streets by working as a waitress."

"Okay, so she came here to Cadence, and Quinn followed. With your cabinet."

"Right. And now he's disappeared. No one's heard from him for nearly two weeks. My sister is getting frantic. Her husband is concerned."

Lydia studied him. "So you agreed to come look for him?"

"Yes. As near as I can tell, he sold the cabinet to a dealer in the Old Quarter and used the money to get a hotel room. But he only spent two nights at the hotel, and then he just vanished."

Lydia looked thoughtful. "What about the dealer who bought the cabinet? Have you talked to him?"

"I went to his shop, but he wasn't there. Neither was the cabinet."

She stared at him, understanding dawning in her eyes. "Are you talking about Chester? Was he the dealer who bought the cabinet from Quinn?"

"Yes." He watched her face. "His shop was closed when I arrived. I went in anyway, to have a look around."

"You broke into his shop?"

"I didn't want to waste any time."

"Good grief!"

He reached into the inside pocket of his jacket. "I didn't find the cabinet or any clue to who might have bought it off Brady, but I did find this."

He removed the photo he had found on the wall behind Brady's shop counter and placed it on the table in front of Lydia.

The picture showed a woman with brilliant red hair seated in a booth in what looked like a seedy nightclub. She was smiling ruefully into the camera. Next to her sat an oily little man with slicked-back hair and a cheap, flashy sport coat. The man was grinning from ear to ear.

Lydia glanced down at the photo and then looked up swiftly, her eyes darkening. "That's a picture of Chester and me at the Surreal Lounge. We were celebrating my last birthday. He was always asking someone to take pictures of the two of us together there. It was his home away from home."

"When I couldn't locate Brady, I decided to look for you instead." Emmett picked up the picture and tucked it back into his jacket. "You weren't hard to find. But right after I located you, Brady turned up dead in that sarcophagus."

Anger flushed her cheeks. "My God, it was all a sham, right from the start, wasn't it? You came looking for me because you thought I was involved with Chester. You pretended to be a genuine client, but all along you thought I could give you a lead on your missing cabinet and your missing nephew."

"I didn't have much else to go on," he said quietly.

"I knew it."

"Knew what?"

Her hand tightened into a small fist on the white table-cloth. "You really were too good to be true."

He shrugged and said nothing.

"What made you decide to end the charade tonight?" she demanded fiercely.

"The scorch marks that ghost burned into your bedroom wall."

Confusion defused some of her outrage. "What in the world does that have to do—"

She broke off as the waiter returned to the table with the appetizers. Emmett looked at the dish that was set in front of him. The menu had listed it as Prawns in Three-Part Harmony.

None of the three perfectly cooked prawns sitting atop the bed of thin-sliced radishes appeared to be singing, in three-part harmony or otherwise, but he decided not to make an issue of it. New Wave cuisine was a state of mind, he reminded himself.

Lydia leaned forward impatiently as soon as the waiter had vanished. "All right, explain yourself, London. What did you mean about my scorched wall changing things?"

"The mark that ghost left on your wall was not a random design, Lydia. If you looked at it closely, you could make out three wavy lines. It was a sloppy job. The hunter obviously didn't have complete control of the ghost, but I'm sure about the lines."

"So?"

"I think someone may have tried to leave you a message."

She looked wary now. "You're saying that you recognized these three wavy lines?"

"Yeah." He took a bite of one of the prawns. "I've seen them before."

"Where?" Her voice was very tight.

He put down his fork, opened his jacket, and removed the scrap of notepaper he had found on Quinn's desk. Without a word he handed it to Lydia.

She snapped it out of his fingers and glanced at the three wavy lines. She raised her eyes. "I don't get it."

"I found that mark on a pad of paper next to the phone in Quinn's room. I think he made the notation after taking a phone call from Sylvia. He disappeared a few hours after he got that call."

"Do you know what the lines signify?"

"No. I'm looking into it. But the fact that someone used a ghost to burn them into your wall tells me they're probably important. And possibly dangerous."

Absently she tapped the piece of paper on the table-cloth. "It also tells you that I probably don't know what happened to your cabinet or to Quinn after all, right?"

He shrugged. "It did strike me that if someone had risked warning you off with an illegal manifestation, you might be in danger because you'd started asking questions. And if you had to ask questions, you probably don't know where my cabinet or my nephew is."

"Guess that explains the phone call I got at work this morning," she said reluctantly.

"What call?"

"I thought it was a crank call." She moved one hand in a dismissive gesture. "It was a man's voice. A young man, I think. I didn't recognize it. All he said was, 'No more questions. Then he hung up."

"Damn it, why the hell didn't you tell me?"

She glared at him. "I just finished explaining that I thought it was a crank call. It didn't make any sense. I didn't connect it to my inquiries about your missing cabinet."

"The hell you didn't. You're too smart not to have figured out the connection."

Annoyance strained her voice. "Okay, okay, I admit the possibility crossed my mind. But I was afraid that if you thought I might be in danger, you'd fire me."

"That's exactly what I'm going to do. It's pretty clear now that I miscalculated. You weren't involved in this until I involved you."

"You think you can uninvolve me be reneging on our contract? Is that it?"

"I want you out of this, Lydia."

He was prepared for the stubborn anger that blazed in her face. What surprised him was the flash of something else. Desperation?

"Even if you're right, it's too late," she said quickly. "I've talked to some dealers. The word is out that I'm looking for the cabinet."

"Tomorrow morning you can put the word out that your new client fired you and you are no longer looking for his heirloom."

"What makes you think that will work? The word is already out in the antiquities community. I can't cancel it just like that. If someone knows anything about the cabinet, I'll be contacted, whether or not you fire me."

"Tell your contacts to get in touch with me."

"The ones who are most likely to know anything useful won't want to talk directly to you." She leaned forward, determination vibrating around her in an almost palpable energy field. "I know this crowd. They trust me, but they don't trust outsiders. You need me, London."

"Not badly enough to put you at risk."

"You didn't mind putting me at risk when you thought I might be in cahoots with Chester."

"That was different," he muttered.

"It was a very small ghost."

"Even the weak ones can cause a very unpleasant reaction. They can freeze you, knock you unconscious for as long as fifteen or twenty minutes."

"Fainting or temporary paralysis are common, transient side effects of direct contact with a weak UDEM," she said primly. "Permanent damage is rare."