When he looked toward the corner at the other end of the block, he could see a couple of police cruisers closing in on the front entrance of the Trap Door.
'We've got a little problem here,' he said. 'If we try to approach my car from this direction, the cops will probably stop us. They'll be picking up everyone who happens to be wearing khaki and leather.'
'I've said for years that ghost hunters need to realize that there is a price to be paid for being so desperately fashion challenged.'
He opted to ignore that. 'Our best bet is to circle around and approach my car from another direction. Make it look like we're returning to it from one of the cafe's down the street.'
'Sounds like a plan.'
'How fast can you run in those fancy high heels?'
'Fast.' She let the tote slide off her shoulder and reached inside to extract a pair of sporty-looking athletic shoes. 'But not as fast as I can run in these. Here, hold Rose.'
She transferred the dust bunny to his shoulder, braced one hand on his arm, and bent down to change shoes. Cooper was very conscious of the warm weight of her fingers as she balanced against him and stepped out of one high heel.
He caught a fleeting glimpse of a dainty, elegantly arched bare foot before it disappeared into one of the running shoes. Something low and deep inside him tightened and hardened. It had been a long six months, he thought.
Actually, it had been a good deal longer than six months if he counted from the first time he had seen Elly walking into the Guild Archives. And he was definitely counting from that point, because that was the moment he had decided that she was just what he had been looking for in a wife.
It had been a very long eight months and five days, to be precise.
Elly took her hand off his arm and straightened. 'I'm ready.' She sounded unsettlingly enthusiastic about what they were about to attempt. 'Where, exactly, are we headed?'
'Across this street and through the alley in the next block. When we reach the far end, we'll walk up to the cross street and then mosey back to my car.'
'Just a couple of innocent onlookers.' She retrieved Rose.
'You got it.'
He guided her into the second alley, pausing at the entrance to open all of his senses to the night. The faint green glow from the walls did not reach into the deep shadows of this cramped passage.
He took another look at Rose. Her baby-blue eyes were wide open, but she was fully fluffed and munching contentedly on the last bit of fry.
Cooper dug a flashlight out of one of the flapped pockets of his trousers and gave it a little pulse of psi energy to switch it on.
Elly muttered something he didn't quite catch. She sounded disgusted.
'What's wrong?' he asked.
'These shoes are going to be ruined,' she said.
'They're athletic shoes. They're made for getting dirty.'
'That's beside the point. Do you have any idea how much they cost? I paid a fortune for them, and I never intended to wear them through whatever was in that slimy puddle back there.'
'Now, see, if you were wearing a pair of sturdy hunter boots made out of genuine chroma-snakeskin, you wouldn't have to worry about the contents of alley puddles or anything else you happened to step in. Good boots will go anywhere, I always say.'
She turned her head slightly to look at him. He could not see her expression in the shadows, but he got the feeling that he had surprised her.
'I'll keep that tip in mind next time I shop for shoes,' she said without inflection.
He was brooding on the fact that Elly seemed nonplussed by the possibility that he might have a sense of humor when he noticed the outline of Rose's small body change abruptly.
In the blink of an eye, the shapeless ball of fur thinned into a sleek, taut shadow. The dust bunny opened a second set of eyes and turned to look at one of the doors in the alley wall.
'Damn,' Cooper said softly.
The heavy door crashed open. Cooper caught the unmistakable whiff of ghost energy. He reacted without even thinking about it, halting and spinning on his heel to face the threat. Simultaneously he used his grip on Elly's wrist to whip her to safety behind him. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Rose cling to Elly's shoulder with all six legs.
The ghost materialized swiftly, a small inferno of swirling, seething energy that flared and pulsed. It moved closer, forcing Cooper, Elly, and Rose into a corner formed by a large, rusted-out trash container and the brick wall.
'Big,' was all Elly said.
She was right, Cooper thought, the sucker was large for a ghost generated outside the catacombs. But it was not a very powerful UDEM. Showy, but no real strength at the core.
He studied the fiery green mass for a couple of seconds, probing for the pattern with his psi senses. The waves of dissonance energy in the UDEM were only marginally under control. The hunter who had created this ghost was either rezzed on drugs or a little crazy. It was fortunate that the guy wasn't powerful enough to summon more energy, Cooper thought.
The UDEM drifted closer. Even when they were summoned and manipulated by a skilled dissonance-energy para-rez, standard-issue ghosts were never fast-moving. Top speed was usually somewhere in the neighborhood of a rapid walking pace. But the hunter operating this one knew what he was doing. It probably wasn't the first time he had used a ghost to trap his victims between the trash container and the wall.
This was a classic back-alley mugging.
A skeletal figure loomed in the opening, its bony frame dimly outlined in the weak glow of the light burning behind him.
'Anyone moves, and you're all fried.' The mugger's voice was frayed at the edges. 'I'm not warnin' you twice.'
Definitely a crazy, or an over-rezzed doper, Cooper thought. Sanity had probably become a somewhat remote concept for him.
'Take it easy,' Cooper said quietly. 'Nobody's moving.'
The jittery mugger made his way slowly down the two steps to the pavement. He was so unsteady on his feet that he had to brace himself against the brick wall. In the backwash of the light cast by his ghost, his skull-like features were etched in sickly green.
'Your wallet, rings, amber, watch, anything you got on you,' he muttered. 'I need it all. You hear me? I need money for the chant.'
'No problem,' Cooper said. He sent psi energy through the amber he carried on the end of his watch chain. 'Okay if I reach for my wallet?'
'Do it slow.'
'Sure.' Cooper reached one hand toward his back pocket.
Generally speaking, you fought ghost fire with ghost fire. The problem here, he decided, was that if the mugger realized that a second UDEM was being formed in the vicinity, he was likely to lash out with his own ghost before the new one could be used against him.
One brush of ghost light rezzed all of the victim's senses to the point of extreme psychic pain. That phase was followed by a period of unconsciousness that could last for hours.
He needed a distraction, Cooper thought.
He was about to create one when the agitated robber switched his attention to Elly. In the green glare Cooper saw the skull-like face scrunch up with confusion. A sheen of sweat coated his face.
'What in green hell? You got a rat on your shoulder, lady?'
'Rose is not a rat,' Elly said. 'She's a dust bunny, and you're scaring her with your ghost. Please don't hurt her.'
Elly's voice was gentle and calming. She understood that they were dealing with a dangerous, unpredictable doper, Cooper thought. And whatever else she was, Rose sure wasn't scared. In the pulsing light he could see the
