Besides, as I keep pointing out to everyone who will listen, I'm quite capable of dealing with men who only want to marry me because of my Guild connections.'
'Damn,' he said very softly. 'I never heard about that.'
'There's no reason you would have heard about it. You weren't even living in Aurora Springs at the time. You didn't move there until a month or so before Haggerty died.' She frowned. 'Try to stay focused here, Cooper. We're looking for Bertha.'
He exhaled deeply. She got the feeling he was exerting himself to exercise some serious self-control. He started forward again with long, impatient strides.
'One more thing about Haggerty before we leave the subject,' he added.
She had to jog a little to catch up with him. 'What about him?'
'That theory of yours? About how he might have been murdered?'
'What of it?'
'Keep it to yourself,' he said.
The mag-steel that resonated in the words startled her. It wasn't a suggestion, she thought. Mr. Guild Boss had just issued an order.
Hmm. Now this was an interesting development.
She was trying to mink of a clever way to question him further when she heard a low rumble of warning in her left ear.
'Rose?' She turned her head quickly to look at the dust bunny.
Rose was no longer a ragged ball of dryer lint. She had gone sleek and wiry again, showing all four eyes, six paws, and wickedly sharp teeth. Her attention was fixed on the upcoming intersection.
Elly opened her mouth to warn Cooper but saw that he had already halted in midstride. He, too, was focused on whatever lay around the corner. The prowling tension in him was unsettlingly akin to what she sensed emanating from Rose.
She studied the intersection. It was similar to several they had already passed through. The entrances to five glowing green corridors branched off from a circular point.
'What is it?' she asked.
'Ghost energy.' Cooper said. 'A lot of it. Stay behind me.'
She sighed. 'Here we go again with the unnecessary orders. Don't worry. I know the drill. I won't do anything stupid.'
'Good plan.'
Without warning Rose sprang from her shoulder onto Cooper's.
'What the-?' Cooper began, then he smiled, showing a few teeth of his own. 'Okay, gorgeous, I don't mind having backup for this one.'
Cooper went forward, Rose on his shoulder.
'Be careful, you two,' Elly called.
She trailed a respectful distance behind the pair, but she wasn't unduly concerned for their safety. If anyone could handle a catacomb ghost, it was the very powerful chief of the Aurora Springs Guild. Her real worry was that the UDEM up ahead would turn out to be the reason why Bertha had not made it back out of the tunnels.
When he reached the point where the five other corridors came together, Cooper turned into the nearest without any hesitation. She followed with appropriate caution.
Cooper stopped so suddenly that Rose had to use all six paws to keep her perch.
'What is it?' Elly asked.
'Got a problem,' Cooper said softly, looking into the tunnel.
She reached the circular intersection and turned to see whatever it was that had riveted him.
She sensed the new psi energy before she saw the source.
For a few seconds the only thing that registered was the wrongness of the light flooding the passageway. Cooper and Rose were bathed in the odd, pulsating glow. It wasn't the familiar acid green that she associated with ghost energy and the quartz walls. Instead it was an eerie, unnatural blue that produced a deeply disturbing effect on her senses.
Was this what vertigo felt like? she wondered.
She was looking into a whirling vortex of energy. It was like gazing into the heart of a tornado or a water spout.
The vortex appeared to have opened in the floor. It spiraled downward to an invisible vanishing point. Lightning sparked. The angry, seething light swirled in a wide pool of dissonance energy waves that completely covered the floor of the wide tunnel, wall to wall.
Aside from the occasional crackle of the miniature lightning strikes, the blue tornado made no audible sound. But Elly's psi senses were rattling and shaking like win-dowpanes in a violent storm.
'What's wrong with the floor?' she asked, dumbfounded.
'Blue ghost,' Cooper said.
'No.' She shook her head, uncomprehending. 'It can't be. There is no such thing. Blue ghosts are just old hunters' tales. Everyone knows that.'
But it was definitely a form of dissonance energy, she thought. There was no mistaking the wild, flaring power.
'Is that your friend's sled?' Cooper asked.
She managed to jerk her gaze off the vortex and spotted the familiar shape of Bertha's aging utility sled. It was perched on the far rim of the pulsing, rippling vortex. The energy storm lapped at one rear wheel, as though trying to suck it down into the heart of the whirlwind.
There was no sign of Bertha.
'Dear heaven,' Elly whispered. Horror threatened to close her throat. 'That ghost got her. No one could survive a close brush with that thing. But where's the body?
Chapter 7
COOPER LOOKED AT ELLY'S HORRIFIED FACE. IN THE pulsing blue light she looked a little like a ghost, herself, the old-fashioned, supernatural kind.
'Don't panic on me,' he said, automatically falling back on the tone of icy command that he had learned to use in the days when he had worked the catacombs as a hunter. 'Save the hysterics for later. We don't have time for them now.'
'I am not panicking,' she snapped, irritated. 'I'm worried sick about what has happened to Bertha. There's a difference.'
The cold anger in her voice reassured him. 'Good to know. All right, there's not much option here. I'm going to de-rez this thing. Then we'll look for Bertha.'
Elly's eyes widened. 'You can handle this monster?'
'Yes.'
'Wow. Okay, I'm impressed, Mr. Guild Boss.'
He was privately amazed that she had accepted his statement as fact. In her shoes, a lot of people would have refused to believe his claim.
'Cooper?'
He studied the blue ghost, probing carefully for the patterns. 'Yeah?'
'Do you… do you think that blue UDEM somehow swallowed up Bertha and… and
'Ghost energy doesn't burn hot enough to destroy flesh and bone. It can scorch and singe, but that's about the limit. Mostly it fries the psi senses. You know that as well as I do.'
'But this is a
