Jayne Castle: After Dark

For all their pompous-sounding pronouncements, Lydia knew that the rez-shrinks didn't have a clue about the true state of her mental and psychic health. Neither did she, for that matter. She remembered almost nothing about the forty-eight hours that had passed after she fell into the illusion trap.

The doctors said she had repressed the memories. They claimed that, given her high-rez psychic profile, it was probably better that way.

The paranormal ability to resonate with amber and use it to focus psychic energy had begun to appear in the human population shortly after the colonists came through the Curtain to settle the planet of Harmony. At first the talent was little more than a curiosity. It was only gradually that the true potential of the phenomenon became apparent.

Today, almost two hundred years after the discovery of Harmonic amber, it was routinely used for everything from switching on car engines to running dishwashers. Any child over the age of four could generate enough psychic energy to "rez" untuned amber. Few people, however, could summon enough psi power to do more than use it to drive cars or operate a computer. But there were exceptions.

In some people the ability to para-resonate took odd, extremely powerful twists. Lydia was one of those people. In technical terms, she was an ephemeral-energy para-resonator. The common term was "trap tangler." For some unknown reason she could use tuned amber to resonate with the dangerous psychic illusion traps that had been left behind by the long-vanished Harmonics. Being able to de-rez the nightmarish snares practically guaranteed that a person would end up in the field of para-archaeology. The alternative career path was dealing stolen antiquities.

Until six months ago, she had been advancing quickly through the hierarchy of the academic world. It had been only a matter of time before she made full professor in the Department of Para-archaeology.

And then came the disaster.

Her only clear recollection of what she privately called her Lost Weekend was that of coming to in a Dead City catacomb and discovering that not only was she alone but she had somehow lost her amber. Without it she faced the nearly impossible task of finding her way to one of the exits.

But Fuzz found her. She had never figured out how he got out of the apartment, let alone prowled the Dead City until he discovered her. But he had. He had saved her life.

She was not the first strong para-archaeologist to lose control and be overwhelmed by the alien nightmares enmeshed in the traps, but she was one of the few who had not wound up in an institution after the ordeal.

Lydia removed Fuzz from her shoulder and dumped him on the bed while she changed clothes. If it weren't for his bright blue eyes he could have been mistaken for a large ball of lint sitting on the quilt.

"Bad news on the client front today, Fuzz. Looks like we won't be moving into that spiffy new apartment at the end of the month after all. And I may have to cut back your pretzel ration."

Fuzz rumbled again. He watched without much interest as she kicked off her low-heeled shoes and climbed out of her business suit.

She pulled on a pair of well-worn jeans and an oversized white shirt, then resettled Fuzz on her shoulder.

Barefoot, she padded into her pint-size kitchen, poured herself a glass of wine from the twist-cap jug she kept in the refrigerator, and fixed a plate with a couple of crackers and some cheese. She removed the lid from the pretzel jar and grabbed a handful of munchies for Fuzz.

When that was done, she carried the makeshift hors d'oeuvres and the wine out onto the minuscule deck. Sinking into one of the loungers, she fed a pretzel to Fuzz, propped her feet on the railing, and settled back to watch the sun go down behind the great green quartz wall that surrounded the Dead City.

Her small apartment was overpriced, considering its size, the outdated kitchen, and the bad section of town in which it was located, but it had two important features. The first was that it was within walking distance of Shrimpton's House of Ancient Horrors, which meant she did not have to buy a car. The second, and in some ways more important, feature was that it was located in the Old Quarter, near the western wall of the Dead City. From her balcony she had a tiny sliver of a view of the ruins of the Dead City of Old Cadence.

It seemed to her that the ancient, mysterious metropolis was at its most hauntingly magnificent when it was silhouetted against the light of the dying sun. She contemplated the narrow wedge of the wall that she could see from the balcony and watched the last of the daylight illuminate the emerald glow of the stone. The nearly indestructible green quartz had been the Harmonics' favorite building material. The four dead cities that had been discovered thus far—Old Frequency, Old Resonance, Old Crystal, and Old Cadence—had all been constructed of the stuff.

Aboveground the architecture of the various alien buildings assumed a dazzling variety of fanciful shapes and sizes. No one knew how the Harmonics had actually used any of the structures that were being painstakingly uncovered by the archaeological teams contracted to the university.

The only thing para-archaeologists could be sure of was that whatever had gone on aboveground in the eerie ruins, it was nothing compared to what had gone on underground. By several estimates, less than twenty percent of the catacombs had been explored. Illusion traps and energy ghosts made the work slow and fraught with danger.

She had told the doctors that she had no memories at all of what had happened during the forty-eight hours she had spent in the glowing green catacombs, but that was not entirely true. Sometimes, when she sat on her deck like this and watched night descend on the Dead City, fleeting images came to hover at the farthest corners of her mind. The wraiths always stayed just out of sight, disappearing whenever she tried to draw them into the light of day.

A part of her was more than content, even eager, to leave them in the shadows. But her intuition warned her that if she did not eventually find a way to expose them, the phantoms would haunt her until the end of her days.

She sipped her wine, gazed at the green wall, and felt the familiar little shivers go down her spine.

The knock on her door startled her so profoundly that wine sloshed over the edge of her glass.

Fuzz rumbled in annoyance.

"Could be Driffield." Lydia sucked the drops off her fingers as she got to her feet. "Maybe he got my last letter threatening to call a lawyer and decided he'd better do something about the elevator. Naw, I can't see him climbing five flights of steps to tell me he's going to get it fixed."

With Fuzz on her shoulder, she went back into the apartment and crossed the miniature living room. When she reached the door she stood on tiptoe to peer through the peephole.

Emmett London stood in the hall. He did not appear to be breathing hard after the five-story climb.

For a few seconds she just stared, unable to believe her eyes. Emmett gazed calmly back. He was not exactly smiling, but there was a trace of amusement in his expression. He was obviously aware that he was being observed.

She noticed that he had picked up the evening edition of the Cadence Star, which had been left on her doorstep, and held it absently in one hand. She could read the headline of the lead story: museum assistant questioned in MURDER.

She wondered if London had stopped by to tell her just how much he disliked being connected to a murder investigation.

Taking a deep breath, she summoned up enough bravado to open the door.

"Mr. London." She gave him her best professional smile. "What a surprise. I wasn't expecting you."

"I was in the neighborhood," he said dryly.