Ghost Hunter (20 page)

“Well?” she asked.

“Got it.” He straightened, looking coolly satisfied. “Care to take a spin?”

“You bet.”

She squeezed through the opening with Rose on her shoulder and hopped up onto the passenger seat of the sled.

Plant psi shivered across her senses. Turning in the seat, she surveyed the cargo bed of the sled.

“Sense something?” Cooper asked, getting in beside her.

“Yes. Psi-bright or some form of it. Very faint, but I recognize the buzz.”

“I think we're on a roll here,” Cooper said.

He hit Retrace Route on the locator and rezzed the small motor.

The trip was a short one. The sled hummed through a couple of turns and stopped in front of a vaulted chamber.

Cooper got out and walked to the door of the room. “Nothing in here.”

She went to join him. The chamber was empty, as he had said, but the tingle of psi-bright was stronger.

“The herbs were here,” she said. “And probably quite recently.”

“There's another room off of this one.”

Cooper started across the space. He paused halfway and abruptly changed direction.

Elly saw something glitter in the corner. She watched Cooper pick it up.

“Looks like broken glass,” she said.

“It is. I think it's the bottom half of a beaker, the kind you use to run chemical experiments. There's still some white residue in the bottom.”

“Let me see.” She hurried to join him.

There was no need to touch the shattered glass. Her psi senses flared wildly.

“Enchantment dust,” she said.

“THE SON OF A BITCH HAD A LAB GOING IN THAT CHAMBER
.” Cooper eased open the rear door of Griggs's shop and stepped out into the alley. “The question is, what in green hell happened to it?”

He listened with all of his senses. Fog still swirled in the alley, limiting visibility. A glance at Rose, perched on Elly's shoulder, assured him that there was no immediate threat.

“I can't get over the notion of Stuart Griggs as a big-time drug dealer,” Elly whispered. “It boggles the mind. He must have made a fortune. Wonder what he did with the cash.”

Cooper thought about the two journals he was carrying and the herbal that Elly clutched as though it were a box of amber diamonds.

“Looks like he may have used some of it to buy these books,” he said. “But a few rare volumes wouldn't have put much of a dent in the kind of profits Griggs must have been
pulling in with the chant. Looks like I'm going to have to do some follow-the-money research on him tomorrow.”

“Maybe that's what the intruder was looking for tonight, Griggs's drug money.”

“Or a stash of chant.”

“Well, we know where a lot of that wound up,” she reminded him. “In the basement of The Road to the Ruins.”

“Yes.”

“I'll bet he dismantled the lab and moved the drugs after he realized that Bertha had escaped his vortex.”

“That theory assumes that Griggs was the blue freak I'm chasing,” he said.

“You've got doubts about that?”

“It occurs to me that the odds of Griggs just happening to collapse and die from a heart attack shortly after Bertha Newell discovered his underground lab seem a little long.”

She turned her head quickly to look at him in the shadows. “Are you saying that you think there's someone else involved in this?”

“It crossed my mind. Death by a strong blast of intense blue ghost energy can look a lot like death by heart attack. But if someone murdered Griggs that way, he would have had to do it underground. I told you, blue energy is very weak outside the tunnels, too weak to kill.”

“I suppose the killer could have murdered Griggs down in the catacombs and then dragged his body up the stairs into the back room of the shop,” she said slowly. “It would probably require an autopsy to determine the truth. I doubt if one will be ordered in this case. Neither the medics nor the cop had any reason to think they were dealing with a crime scene today.”

“I'll call Mercer Wyatt first thing in the morning,” Cooper said. “This is his town. He shouldn't have any problem pulling whatever strings it takes to get an autopsy performed.”

She cleared her throat. “Generally speaking, the mainstream media here in Cadence takes a dim view of the quaint practice of referring to the city as a particular Guild boss's
town.
It invites unfortunate comparisons to mob boss rule.”

“Damn. Done in by semantics again.”

They were almost back to the mouth of the alley. The green-tinged mist roiled in the empty street. On the other side of the pavement he could just barely make out the haloed lamps over the back doors of the next row of shops.

Rose rumbled softly. A warning this time.

“Cooper,”
Elly said, voice tight with urgency.

He felt the spectral fingers of awareness on the nape of his neck and reacted instinctively. He pushed Elly into the dense, dark shadow cast by a large metal trash container.

Rose, nearly invisible except for her four glowing eyes, started to tumble toward the ground.

“No, Rose,” Elly whispered. “You mustn't.” She caught the dust bunny in one hand and tucked her safely into the crook of her arm.

Two figures moved into the alley opening, silhouetted against the acid-hued fog light. The features of both men were covered by stocking masks. Flickers of green ghost-energy snapped and crackled in the mist around them.

At least one of them was a hunter, Cooper thought. When the adrenaline started flowing, a lot of them unconsciously summoned bits of whatever stray ghost light happened to be in the vicinity.

Unlike a lot of dissonance-energy para-rezzes who generally chose to stick with UDEM energy as the weapon of choice when they went into this kind of work, these two were armed. One carried a gun. Light glinted on the edge of the wicked-looking blade in the other man's hand.

The man on the right rezzed a pocket flash. He was the one with the gun. His stocking cap had a tassel on top.

“Don't move,” Tassel Top ordered. “Either one of you even breathes hard, and you're both dead. You,” he said to Cooper. “You're dressed like a hunter. You the real thing or just a wannabe?”

“It's a fashion statement,” Cooper said.

The other man snickered. “Hey, Joe, the guy thinks he's a stand-up comic.”

“Skip the jokes,” Joe snarled. “Unless you want to feel what it's like to take a bullet.”

“Anyone who knows me well knows I never joke,” Cooper said quietly. “What do you want?”

“Whatever you found back there in Griggs's shop,” Joe said.

“You went in ahead of us, didn't you?” Cooper asked. “That means you know there wasn't anything of value left inside. Unless you count the books.” He held up the one he carried. “But somehow I don't see either of you as big readers.”

“Why'd you take those old books?” the other one demanded. His mask was trimmed with two white circles around the eyes, giving him a rather startling resemblance to a moon-rat. “Somethin' special about 'em?”

“My friend, here, is a librarian,” Elly offered helpfully. “He likes books.”

“Shut up,” Joe snapped. “I don't like mouthy babes.”

“Elly,” Cooper said without inflection.

She went silent, but he could have sworn he heard the simmering. He could almost feel the steam.

He did a quick survey of his options. Neither of the two thugs had noticed Rose. Elly was holding her just out of sight behind the corner of the big trash container. The position blocked the men's view of the dust bunny's four eyes.

Rose, too, had gone quiet, he noticed. He didn't know much about dust bunnies, but he knew a lot about hunting strategy. Some things remained the same across species
lines. When a predator, large or small, stopped growling a warning and went very quiet, it was time for the prey to start worrying.

“We grabbed the books because they looked valuable,” he said aloud, putting a shrug into the words. “Didn't seem to be anything else left that was worth taking. What were you guys looking for? Drugs? Cash?”

“There wasn't any,” Moon-Rat blurted. “We know he must have had plenty of both around somewhere. He always paid us with the chant.”

“Shit, Benny, keep your dumb mouth shut,” his companion rasped.

“Okay, take it easy.” Cooper slowly unfastened his jacket. “I'll show you what we found.”

The small section of the glowing fog in the street behind Benny and Joe started to change color, shifting subtly from green to blue. Neither of the two men noticed.

Cooper probed hard for the blue psi energy he needed. Fortunately, this close to the Dead City there was enough of it around to serve his purpose.

“Hurry up,” Joe said hoarsely. “We ain't got all night.”

Blue flames leaped out of the open trash container.

“What the hell?” Benny jolted backward a couple of startled steps and swung around to stare at the blaze. “There's a fire in the garbage.”

“Shit.” Joe retreated a couple of paces. “We've got to get out of here. Someone is going to see the flames and call the fire department.”

Cooper moved.

“Stay where you are,” Joe snapped. He whipped back around to face the spot where Cooper had been standing a couple of seconds earlier.

But Cooper was already on him, using the momentum of his body to slam him into the side of the heavy metal container. The gun clattered on the stones.

“What the hell?” Belatedly realizing that things were getting out of control, Benny swung around, knife in hand.

Cooper kicked out with one booted foot, catching him high on the thigh.

Benny staggered backward, trying to keep his balance.

Elly came out of the shadows, swinging the heavy herbal. The weighty tome slammed against the side of Benny's skull.

Benny shrieked in pain and sank to his knees. He lost his grip on the blade.

There was a sudden scampering noise on the ground. Four eyes glowed in the night, rushing toward Benny's leg.

Benny screamed. “Get it away from me. Get it away.”

“Rose, no,” Elly said quickly. “You mustn't bite anyone else, sweetie. Someone may call the pound.”

To Cooper's surprise, the dust bunny halted, albeit reluctantly, and dashed back to Elly, who grabbed her with both hands and tucked her close.

“Are you all right?” Cooper said, bending down to scoop up the gun.

“Yes.” Elly took a deep breath. “I'm okay.”

Joe was on the ground, moaning. Cooper yanked off Benny's ski mask and discovered that the disguise had been an apt one. The guy actually did resemble a moon-rat.

“Now, why don't you tell me exactly how you came to be acquainted with the deceased,” Cooper said.

Benny's faced scrunched up in confusion. “Huh?”

“What was your connection to the florist?”

“I'm not tellin' you nothin',” Benny stated.

“Let me put it this way,” Cooper said. “You can talk to me, or you can talk to Mercer Wyatt.”

Benny looked horrified. “Hey, all we did was a little off-the-books work for Griggs. This isn't Guild business.”

“It is now,” Cooper said quietly. “Talk to me, Benny.”

“Me and Joe are a team,” Benny whined. “Freelance. The florist hired us to take him down into the catacombs. Paid us with chant. We knew he was making the stuff, but we never found his stash, y'know? Anyhow, it was a good deal. We resold the chant and turned a nice profit. But this afternoon, word went around that Griggs was dead.”

“So you and Joe conducted another search in hopes of finding his supply of the drug?”

“Figured it was worth a shot,” Benny muttered. “But we couldn't find the drugs or the money. There's a rumor going around that the florist had started working with someone else to sell the chant. We decided to hang around and keep watch tonight to see if anyone showed up. When you went inside, we thought maybe you were the new partner. That's all, man, you gotta believe me.”

“Oddly enough, I do, Benny.”

The small green ghost Cooper had summoned floated up behind Benny and touched him lightly on the back of his head.

Benny crumpled to the ground, unconscious.

Cooper maneuvered the ghost toward Joe. Joe moaned one last time and passed out.

“Now what?” Elly asked.

“This is Mercer Wyatt's town. We'll turn these two over to his people for questioning.”

Elly cleared her throat. “I think I mentioned that it is not considered appropriate to refer to Cadence as Mercer Wyatt's town.”

“I'll try to remember that the next time the subject arises.”

THEY WAITED IN THE ALLEY UNTIL THE LONG, DARK CAR
arrived. Two hunters dressed in khaki and leather got out and loaded Benny and Joe into the backseat.

One of the pair nodded respectfully toward Cooper.

“Mr. Wyatt says to keep in touch,” he said.

“I'll do that,” Cooper said.

Elly was still feeling shaky from the aftereffects of adrenaline when she unlocked the back door of her shop a short time later.

Cooper followed her into the fragrant back room and turned to rez the lock. “You sure you're okay?”

“Yes.” She headed toward the stairs with Rose and the Jordan herbal. “But I could use a nice hot cup of Harmonic balm tea.”

“I was thinking of something a little stronger, personally.”

“All I've got is some leftover white wine.”

“Not exactly a real Guild boss drink, but a Guild boss is nothing if not adaptable. I'll take it. Remind me to
pick up a bottle of First Generation whiskey tomorrow, though.”

He was certainly making himself at home, she mused. She paused halfway up the stairs and turned to study him over her shoulder. “Are you sure
you're
all right?”

He looked grimly amused. “Don't worry, I'm not going to lose control and climb all over you. I just summoned a little stray blue and green energy tonight. Didn't even melt amber.”

She glowered. “I wasn't thinking about sex.”

“Huh. I must have been the one thinking about it, then.”

“Enough with the teasing, Boone.” She went on up the stairs and into the kitchen, put Rose on the floor, and reached for the kettle. “This isn't the time.”

“Whatever.” He opened the refrigerator and took out the half-empty bottle of white.

“Herschel, one of the local neighborhood ruin rats, mentioned that Griggs occasionally hired a freelance team to take him down into the catacombs,” she added. “Now I know why. Griggs was looking for Jordan's Jungle.”

“Tomorrow I'm going to chase down more information on the florist. He's the key to this thing.”

She spooned the tea into a mug. “A dead key, unfortunately.”

“Okay, I admit that's a problem.” Cooper grabbed a glass out of a cupboard and sat down at the kitchen table. “But we've got a couple of other angles to work here.”

“Such as?”

“I'm still waiting for another shoe to drop at The Road to the Ruins. Now that Griggs is dead, I don't think it will be too much longer before we find out what our blue freak had planned for that stash of dope he hid in the club's basement.”

The kettle whistled. She picked it up and was not surprised to see it tremble a little in her hand. She poured the hot water quickly into the mug.

Rose hopped up onto the windowsill and hunkered down beside the green flower. Cooper took a long swallow of the wine and watched the dust bunny.

“I guess things haven't gone quite the way you planned since you arrived in Cadence, have they?” Elly asked, carrying her mug back to the table.

“No.” He drank more wine and lowered the glass with a reflective air. “They haven't.”

He did not offer anything more.

“What about your other business?” she pressed cautiously.

He looked at her. “Other business?”

“The business that brought you here in the first place.” She motioned with one hand. “You know, the
private
business you said you had here in Cadence.”

“Oh, that.” He exhaled slowly. “Well, I hope to get around to that eventually.”

She blew on her hot tea. “Cooper?”

“Yeah?”

“Mind if I ask you a personal question?”

“Depends on the question.”

“I just wondered if the reason you haven't had a relationship with anyone else in the past six months is because you were too busy.”

He raised his brows. “Here's a flash for you, Elly. Men who like sex are never too busy to have it. Where there's a will, there's always a way.”

“I see. You like sex.”

“Oh, yeah.”

“So, why haven't you had any for the past six months?” she asked.

“Eight months, five days,” he corrected. “And the answer is that I didn't consider our engagement terminated.”

“I don't understand. I gave you back your ring. What was your interpretation of that move?”

“Figured we'd just put things on hold for a while. I thought if you had some time away from Aurora Springs and all the pressures of your situation there, you might change your mind about marrying me.”

“I see.”

No “I love you desperately and I can't live without you,” or “Please come back to me; I'll do anything including give up my job as a Guild boss for you,”
she thought.

Cooper was still locked into his fully focused executive mode. At the age of nine he had set out to become the chief of the Aurora Springs Guild, and he had stayed on track until he had achieved his objective. Eight months and five days ago, he had concluded that she would make the perfect wife for the head of the Aurora Springs Guild, and he was still pursuing his objective.

“I've got a question for you,” he said.

“What is it?”

“I get the feeling that
you
haven't gone to bed with anyone else during the time we've been apart.”

“I've been awfully busy,” she said quickly. “Running a small business is extremely time-consuming.”

“Try again.”

She put her mug down, got to her feet, and went to stand at the window. Maybe it was all they had been through together in the past few days. Or maybe it was late and she was weary and her guard was down.

Or maybe it was because he hadn't slept with anyone else since she had left Aurora Springs.

Whatever the reason, she decided to tell him the truth.

“Ever since the day I met you, I haven't wanted to go to bed with anyone else,” she said quietly. “But in Aurora Springs you didn't seem all that interested. And lately, well, you haven't been around.”

There was no sound, but suddenly he was behind her, his hands resting on her shoulders.

“I'm here now,” he said.

She caught her breath and turned to face him, her hands flattening on his shoulders.

“Cooper.”

He kissed her, taking his time about it. She closed her eyes beneath the waves of emotion that swept through her.

She was vaguely aware of him reaching around her to pull down the window shade. The next thing she knew he had picked her up in his arms and was carrying her out of the kitchen.

She heard him de-rez the light switches as they went down the hall, allowing the small apartment to fill with intimate shadows.

The drapes were open in the bedroom. The reflected glow of the green-tinged fog illuminated the bed in an otherworldly aura.

Cooper stood her on her feet and used his powerful hands to angle her face so that he could kiss her again. There was no mistaking the force of his desire. It thrilled her senses. Maybe he didn't love her, but without a doubt, he wanted her.

All the midnight dreams and fantasies that she had tried so hard to ignore, resist, and suppress were springing to life with a vengeance.

He caught the hem of her pullover and eased the garment up over her head. The instant her arms were free, she wrapped them around his neck.

“Cooper,” she repeated very urgently.

“No,” he whispered. “Not so fast. Not this time. Don't get me wrong, the car sex was terrific, but it wasn't what I'd had planned for our first night together. I'd like to get it right tonight.”

She tilted her head back so that she could see his face. “Wait a second. You
planned
our first time?”

“Sure.” He found the fastening of her small, satiny bra
and slipped the straps off her shoulders. “Until the day you gave me back my ring I had every move in our relationship planned down to the smallest detail.”

“Good grief.” She gripped his shoulders, holding him inches away from her. “And just when did you do all this detailed planning?”

He kissed her ear. “Started that first day when you came into the Guild Archives to see if your father was there. I had started working there the week before. It was the first time I'd met you.”

He was cupping her breasts in his warm palms now. She shivered when his thumbs glided across her nipples.

“Wait,” she gasped. It was getting hard to talk, but she needed some answers. “What made you think you had to
plan
things?”

“It's the way I work,” he said simply. “It was a good plan, too. There was only one problem with it.”

“What?”

“You.” He brushed his mouth deliberately across hers. “You didn't respond according to plan.”

“Maybe you should have discussed your scheme with me before you tried to implement it.”

He traced the line of her jaw with his forefinger. In the emerald shadows she could see his faint, wry smile.

“I'm not used to talking about my plans with anyone else,” he said. “I've always worked alone.”

“Got news for you, Boone.” She started unfastening the buttons of his shirt. “You're not alone anymore. You're working with me, at least for now.”

“Elly.”

He picked her up and fell across the bed with her in his arms. She landed on top, feeling shaky and excited. He tugged off her running shoes, and then he unzipped her pants.

She fought a sensual battle to undress him. It was not an
easy task. In the end, Cooper had to sit up to yank off his boots and get rid of his trousers.

For a moment he stood looking down at her, drinking in the sight of her lying there in the light that angled across the bed. Under his intense, hungry eyes, she felt incredibly sexy and powerful in her femininity.

When he moved to come back down onto the bed, she reached up to draw him close.

He made love to her with a slow, ghost-hot passion that rezzed all of her senses. Taking his time, he found the most intimate places on her body with his mouth. His fingers explored parts of her that she had never before considered erogenous zones.

Sweet heat and a greedy need built within her. The same delicious tension that she had experienced when they had made love in the front seat of the Spectrum was back, gripping her insides in honeyed talons.

She braced her hands against his chest and tried to push him onto his back so that she could settle herself astride him.

“Not yet,” he whispered, anchoring her beneath him with one heavy leg across her thighs.

“Can't wait,” she panted, twisting impatiently.

“You were in charge last time. Ruined all my plans. This is my night. This time we do it my way.”

“Okay, okay, as long as you hurry up about it.”

He laughed softly and reached across her and down over the side of the bed. She realized that he had picked up an object, but she could not see what it was.

He loomed over her again, reaching back toward the elaborate headboard. She heard a faint click and then the soft slide of leather being fed through a belt buckle.

She opened her eyes very wide. “What are you doing?”

He caught one of her wrists and then the other. He put the end of the leather belt into her hands.

“Giving you something to hold on to when the going gets interesting,” he said against her mouth.

“Uh, Cooper?”

“Just hang on tight and don't let go, not matter what happens.”

“I'm not sure—”

He started working his way down her body, dropping kisses as he went. When his tongue touched her nipple she gasped, instinctively tightening her grip on the belt.

“That's it,” he whispered.

He slid lower on her body, separating her thighs. When he found the excruciatingly sensitive spot between her legs she nearly screamed.

And then his mouth was on her
there
and he was doing something incredible with his fingers just inside her and she could see little flickers of ghost light dancing in the air around the bed and she knew that he was closer to the limits of his self-control than he would ever admit.

Energy pulsed through all of her senses. Her need was fierce and hot and compelling.

“Hold on,” he ordered in a low, husky voice. “Melt amber for me.”

And she did.

As the last of the shattering release rippled through her, she was vaguely aware of Cooper changing position. His broad shoulders blocked the exotic green light coming through the window.

He entered her, pushing deep.

She let go of the belt, sank her nails into his shoulders, and wrapped her legs around his waist.

“The belt thing is okay,” she whispered. “But I'd rather hold on to you.”

She bit him very gently on the shoulder.

He muttered something dangerously explicit and incredibly erotic.

She laughed at the sexy threat and clung harder to his powerful frame.

His release roared through both of them with the force of ghost fire.

Dancing waves of energy lit up the night.