In fact, the only thing that looked familiar about her attire were the amber-and-gold earrings. He remembered them well. She had never been without them back in Aurora Springs. She had told him once that they had been a gift from her parents and had great sentimental value.
The biggest shocker though, was the smile. Damn. If he hadn't been sitting down, he probably would have fallen flat on his face. It wasn't just the dazzling brightness of those pretty little white teeth she had flashed at him; it was the attitude, the sheer female challenge.
And now he knew that the only reason she had tracked him down tonight was because she needed a bodyguard to accompany her on a somewhat less than legal trip into the catacombs.
It was a depressing end to a long day that had been filled with anticipation.
He paused to survey the alley. It appeared empty, but given the poor lighting and the fog, it was impossible to be certain. The shadows coiled heavily in several places between the back door of the tavern and the alley exit.
Cooper tightened his grip on Elly's wrist. 'Where are you parked?'
'I took a cab. Didn't want to risk leaving my car on the street.'
'I can see why you'd hesitate,' he said grimly. 'This isn't exactly an upscale section of town, is it?'
'Speaking of which, I was a little surprised to learn that you were eating at the Trap Door tonight,' she retorted coolly. 'Guild bosses usually dine in classier establishments.'
'I told you, I'm not here in my official capacity. I came to Cadence on a private matter. Thought that if I stuck to places like the Trap Door, no one would recognize me.'
'Oh, right. I keep forgetting your private business here. I have to tell you, though, it's awfully hard to imagine you involved in anything but Guild business.'
'Are you saying I'm a workaholic?'
'I'm saying that you have no life outside the Guild.'
'No life? What the hell is that supposed to mean?'
'Never mind. Let's get going. I want to find Bertha.'
He wanted to argue about his life. He had spent years crafting it, shaping its course, and preparing himself to reach his goal. But he wasn't sure how to defend himself against a charge that he didn't completely understand in the first place, so he focused on the more immediate problem.
He looked down at her strappy, high-heeled sandals. He could see her toenails. She had painted them a brilliant shade of scarlet. They gleamed in the glow of the light above the door. Back in Aurora Springs, he had never seen her wear such blatantly sexy, open-toed shoes like the pair she had on tonight. Classic pumps had been more her style.
He thought about all of the hunters back in the bar who must have noticed her toenails when she had walked through the crowd to his table.
'You can't go down into the catacombs in those shoes,' he said. 'If you sprained an ankle, I'd have to carry you out.'
She gave him a frosty smile. 'I wouldn't want you to strain anything.'
'Thanks. I appreciate the thought.' This was not going well.
'As it happens, you have nothing to worry about,' she said. 'I've got a second pair of shoes in my tote.' She tapped the large bag she had slung over one shoulder. 'We'll go straight to Bertha's shop and use her hole-in- the-wall to go into the catacombs.'
'She showed you the location of her private gate?' He started toward the barely visible mouth of the alley, drawing Elly with him. 'Never met a ruin rat who wasn't obsessively secretive about his or her hole-in-the- wall.'
'Bertha trusts me, probably because she knows I'm not potential competition. I'm not a tangler or a hunter. I'm not even in the antiquities trade.'
The words were spoken a little too evenly, he thought. He could hear the faint trace of wistful resignation in them.
Unlike everyone else in her family, Elly possessed only a normal amount of psi talent. Like the average person, she could rez a door lock or activate a dishwasher, but she lacked either of the two types of powerful para-rez talents that would have enabled her to make a career in alien archaeology. Without such talents, she had no need of genuine, highly tuned amber to focus her psi senses.
It could not have been easy growing up in a family of strong hunters with a mother who was a tangler, he reflected. Elly must have envied the freedom the others enjoyed to explore the strange underground world of the catacombs. More crucially, by watching the others in her clan, she would have understood intuitively that she was missing out on the satisfaction and sheer exhilaration that came with the exercise of strong psi senses down in the catacombs.
It had to be the equivalent of knowing intellectually what an orgasm was but not being able to achieve one, he decided. Damned frustrating.
'Have you got your friend's amber frequency?' he asked.
'Yes. I've also got the frequency of her sled's amber-rez directional locator. She gave both of them to me in case of an emergency.'
'Are you sure this is an emergency? Those old ruin rats sometimes spend days down in the catacombs.'
'I may be overreacting,' she admitted. 'It's true, Bertha is a pro. But this morning before she went underground, she ordered her usual month's supply of amber-root tisane and told me that she would pick it up this afternoon when she got out of the tunnels. When she didn't show up by closing time, I became concerned.'
'You checked around to make sure she wasn't sick in bed or visiting relatives?'
'Yes. I called her antique shop and got the answering machine. I asked the florist who runs the shop next door to hers if he'd seen her, but he said no. She's just disappeared, and I'm afraid that means she ran into trouble down in the catacombs. She's tough, but she's not a young woman, Cooper.'
Sirens wailed somewhere in the night.
'Someone called the cops,' he said, 'Just what we do not need.'
He urged Elly to a faster pace. The heels of her stylish sandals echoed on the old paving stones.
'Guess it would be a little awkward to explain why the boss of the Aurora Springs Guild got picked up at a bar brawl, wouldn't it?' Elly said, ghoulishly cheerful.
There was just enough light to allow him to see that she was smiling again. It was a real smile this time, not that flashy, full-rez ray beam she'd used on him back in the tavern.
'If they pick me up, they'll probably grab you, as well,' he warned.
'Good point.' She increased her pace. 'We certainly can't afford to be delayed explaining things to the cops tonight. Let's hurry.'
'You know,' he said, 'there was a time when you would have been horrified at the idea of getting arrested. Now the only thing you're worried about is wasting the time it would take to converse with the police.'
'Back in Aurora Springs I had to worry a lot about embarrassing my family and shocking the sensibilities of those pompous, narrow-minded blowhards on the Academic Council. But here in Cadence, I'm happy to say, those are no longer considerations.'
'Is that right?'
'Yes.' She was a little breathless now. 'Here in the city I'm free in a way I've never been before in my life.'
One by one, Cooper thought, the premises upon which he had constructed his master strategy were crumbling before his very eyes.
The sirens were closer now. He heard the rear door of the tavern slam open. He glanced back over his shoulder and saw a heap of men in khaki and leather briefly jam the opening. A few managed to squeeze through. Boots thudded on the old stones. Luckily, the fleeing hunters chose to run in the opposite direction.
He brought Elly and Rose to a halt at the juncture of the alley and the street. To the left the massive green quartz walls of the Dead City rose into the night, bathing the scene in a faint chartreuse glow. The aliens had vanished centuries ago, but they had left the lights on.
