entrance or the men following them. Below him, Celinda was almost at the foot of the stairs.
He saw her stumble about three steps before the bottom. She managed to catch her balance by reaching out for both sides of the stairwell, but the action caused her to lose her grip on the tote.
The large bag sailed to the foot of the steps ahead of her, spilling its contents. Two clear plastic boxes containing leftover wedding cake and crackers topped with pink cream cheese tumbled out onto the quartz floor. The food was followed by a leather wallet, a package of tissues, a variety of feminine toiletries, including a brush and lipstick, a small note pad, a pen, and a pair of sunglasses.
“Oh, damn,” Celinda said.
She bent down and frantically began scooping up the fallen items.
“Forget it,” Davis said, reaching the last step. “We don’t have time.”
“But Araminta—”
“She either stays behind with the tote or she comes with us. Her choice. This isn’t negotiable, Celinda.”
Mercifully, she did not argue this time. She started to straighten. Then she froze.
“Davis.”
“What?”
She scooped up one of the objects that had fallen out of the tote. It was a familiar chunk of what looked like crimson plastic.
“Son of a bitch,” he said softly. “The relic.”
Chapter 25
“NO WONDER ARAMINTA WASN’T CONCERNED ABOUT leaving it behind in Cadence,” Celinda said. “She must have hidden it inside my tote before we left for Frequency. That’s why she wouldn’t let me leave the tote in the car a few minutes ago.”
“Let me have it.” Davis reached for it.
Araminta went wild, just as she had last time, bouncing up and down on Celinda’s shoulder and chortling fiercely.
“I think I’d better hang on to it,” Celinda said. “We don’t want Araminta racing off with this thing again. Once was enough.”
Davis studied Araminta, who looked adamant. “I think you’re right. Okay, let’s get going.”
Celinda looked around. Seven glowing tunnels, each marked with a high, vaulted entrance adorned with cryptic engravings, radiated away from the round chamber at the bottom of the staircase.
“Which way?” she said.
Davis indicated a tunnel that opened up behind the stairwell. “That one. Those guys will come out of the stairwell facing in this direction. I’ll be behind them. It will give me a small element of surprise.”
She turned back to him, dismayed. “I thought the plan was to hide in the tunnels until they leave.”
“They’re ghost hunters,” Davis said. “Have to assume they’ve got the new generation of amber-rez locators that will enable them to pick up any signals from tuned amber, whether or not they have the frequency. You and I are both carrying amber, and we can’t risk discarding it. If we got out of sight of that staircase, we might never find it again.”
She didn’t argue. The legends of people who lost their tuned amber and ended up wandering in the green maze until they died of thirst or went mad were familiar to everyone. To be without tuned amber underground was to be doomed.
Gripping the relic, she moved briskly ahead of him into the tunnel he indicated.
“How do you intend to deal with those men?” she asked.
“Carefully.”
“One against lord only knows how many doesn’t strike me as good odds. You need help, Davis.”
“I’ve got Max.”
“You’ve also got me and Araminta.”
He looked thoughtfully at Araminta. “She might be useful, especially if she thinks she’s protecting you.”
“Hey, I can be useful, too,” she said tightly.
“You can be useful by staying out of sight until this is over.”
She was suddenly furious and frustrated. He was right. What did she know about fighting a band of thugs?
He brought his mouth very close to her ear. “There isn’t any time left. I can hear them on the stairs. Stay here and swear to me you won’t panic, no matter what you think you see.”
He did not wait for her to respond to that strange order. Releasing her, he went toward the vaulted entrance with Max on his shoulder. There he stopped, flattening himself against the wall.
She realized that he was still holding the mag-rez gun, but it was reversed in his hand.
She could hear voices and heavy boots on the stairs.
“Put the mag-rez away, you damn idiot,” one of the hunters said angrily. “We’re underground now. You’re more likely to kill yourself or one of us than you are to nail Oakes.”
“Remember, whatever happens, we need the woman alive,” a second man growled. “If she goes down, Landry will be furious.”
“She won’t be a problem,” the first man said. “Oakes is the only one we need to worry about. You heard Landry, he’s no ordinary hunter, but he is some kind of nonstandard freak who can de-rez a ghost without using ghost heat.”
“He may be a freak,” a third man observed coolly, “but there are five of us. No way he can take down five ghosts at a time. No one can do that, not without melting amber. Once his amber is shot, he’s ghost bait.”
So it was five against one, Celinda thought. It was definitely not going to be a fair fight. Davis needed help.
“I’m getting a reading,” one of the hunters said. “Tuned amber. Less than twenty feet away. They’re hiding inside one of these tunnels.”
Another raised his voice. “This is over, Oakes. We all know that. Give us the woman, and you’re free to go. We don’t give a damn about you. Just send her out here. Landry isn’t going to hurt her. He just wants some information from her. This doesn’t involve you. This is Guild business.”
Rage shot through Celinda. Guild business. The universal excuse for anyone connected to the Guilds.
She looked at Davis, who was still positioned flat against the glowing green wall, gripping the barrel of the mag-rez gun. Surely he didn’t intend to use it, she thought. But perhaps he was desperate enough to take the risk.
She sensed his psi energy pulse in a sudden surge of power.
An instant later, Davis and Max both disappeared.
She stared at the entrance of the tunnel, unable to believe her eyes. The pair had vanished. Literally. Not as in moving so quickly she hadn’t been able to follow them. They were both simply gone.
Except Davis wasn’t gone. She could still sense his psi pattern resonating as strongly as ever.
She realized that she was having trouble focusing on the place where he had been standing with Max on his shoulder only a second ago. The air seemed to waver and shimmer a little.
The patch of air that was not quite in focus suddenly moved, flowing out into the stairwell chamber. If she had not been looking directly at the slight distortion at the entrance of the tunnel, she would never have seen it.
That was when it dawned on her. Davis had just made himself and Max invisible.
Impossible.
Before she could wrap her brain around the mixed messages her senses were receiving, Araminta uttered a low, rumbling growl and tumbled from her shoulder to the floor of the tunnel.
The dust bunny raced after the silvery, shimmering patch of air. As she ran, she went into full hunting mode, all eyes and teeth.
Celinda hurried after her.
