He did not look pleased. 'Someone else is involved in this thing?'
'Yes.' She opened the large tote, reached inside, and gently lifted out a ball of shapeless gray fluff. 'This is Rose.'
Rose batted her baby-blue daylight eyes. The second set of eyes, the ones she used for hunting at night, remained discreetly hidden in her tatty fur.
Cooper looked at the small beast. 'You've got a pet dust bunny?'
'She showed up on my back doorstep shortly after I opened my shop. She came back every day around closing time. I fed her. We've become roommates.'
'What's she got around her neck?' Cooper asked.
'One of my bracelets. Turns out Rose has a thing for jewelry. Like any good roommate, she borrows my stuff.'
'Not sure the Public Health Department would approve of allowing a dust bunny into an eating establishment, even a hunter bar.'
'That's why I carried her in the tote,' Elly explained.
Rose rumbled in an inquisitive manner and made it clear that she wanted to be put down on the table. Elly looked around to be sure that no one was paying any attention to the booth at the rear of the tavern, and then she released Rose.
The dust bunny scampered halfway across the table, her six legs invisible in her lintlike fur. She paused and sat up to examine Cooper with great interest.
'Does she bite?' Cooper asked.
'Of course not,' Elly said quickly. 'She's just a little thing. If you provoked her or scared her, she might nip your finger, but that's all.'
'I've always heard that by the time you see the teeth, it's too late.'
'That's just an old story. There is very little known about dust bunnies, so ridiculous tales like that have tended to be perpetuated.'
Cooper extended his fingers. Rose sniffed delicately and appeared satisfied. She switched her attention immediately to the sandwich and fries.
Cooper picked up a fry and then paused to look at Elly with polite inquiry. 'Okay to feed her one of these, or are you worried about her arteries?'
'There isn't much information available about dust-bunny nutrition, so I let Rose eat whatever she wants,' Elly admitted.
'Lucky bunny.'
Rose accepted the fry with great delicacy and started munching.
Somewhere behind Elly a barstool crashed to the floor. Glass shattered. A man roared in outrage.
'Son of a bitch. I saw her first.'
'She doesn't want to dance with you. Can't you get that through your thick skull? She wants to dance with me.'
'The hell she does.'
There was a sickening thud, followed by a howl and several drunken shouts. Chairs scraped the floor. Small flickers of acid-green ghost energy lit up the gloom. Elly sighed. When ghost hunters got excited, they tended to unconsciously summon little bits and pieces of whatever stray dissonance energy happened to be in the vicinity. There was plenty of the stuff available here in the Old Quarter. Like other forms of psi power, it leaked from the invisible cracks and crannies in the massive walls that encircled the Dead City of Old Cadence and seeped upward from the underground tunnels.
'Looks like it's time to leave,' Cooper said, getting to his feet.
'Very observant of you.' Elly slung the strap of her tote over one shoulder. She scooped up Rose, plunked the dust bunny down on her other shoulder, and slid out of the booth. She grabbed her coat.
Cooper wrapped his fingers around her wrist and hauled her toward the back door.
'So, do you come here often?' he asked as they went past the rancid-smelling kitchen.
There was another loud crash and a lot more yelling. Elly saw two cooks in heavily stained aprons grab heavy pots and charge toward the front of the tavern. They looked like they'd had some experience breaking up bar fights.
'My first time,' she said. 'But, gosh, if I'd known how much fun I was going to have, I'd have stopped in sooner. You know, until I moved here to Cadence, I had no idea just how boring life was back in Aurora Springs.'
Chapter 3
IN HINDSIGHT, ALL HE COULD SAY WAS THAT IT HAD seemed like a good idea at the time, Cooper thought, hauling Elly past the restrooms and out the rear door. But things were not going as planned.
He should have known better. If recent history had taught him nothing else, it was that his best laid plans never worked the way they were supposed to when Elly was involved.
This latest strategy gone bad was a perfect case in point. It had looked so simple, so foolproof, when he'd concocted it six months ago. All of them, her parents and her brothers included, had agreed that it was nothing short of brilliant. Give Elly six months in the big, bad city, and she would have a change of heart.
Let her kick over the traces imposed by her small-town, academic life for a while. Give her a chance to find out just how hard the world outside the ivory tower really was. Let her discover how difficult and exhausting it was to run a business with its endless paperwork, long hours, difficult customers, and precarious financial issues.
To say nothing of her career. She was devoted to the study of botany. She would soon come to miss the intellectual challenges of the classroom and the stimulation of her colleagues' conversation and the attractive, tranquil grounds of the college campus.
And what about her precious personal greenhouse? he had reasoned. In Aurora Springs the private conservatory attached to her quaint post-Era of Discord cottage was larger than the house itself. You couldn't have a greenhouse that size in the Old Quarter of a big city. There wasn't room.
In the opinion of everyone involved, Elly had been born for the academic realm, not the tough, ghost-fry- ghost world of small business. After six months on her own in Cadence, she would be more than happy to come home, resume her position in the Department of Botany at Aurora Springs College, and marry him.
He had planned to surprise her by walking into her shop first thing in the morning when he was rested, showered, shaved, and dressed in the new shirt and jacket he had bought for the occasion. He had wanted to make a good impression.
It had surprised the hell out of him when she had phoned while he was eating a late dinner to say that she wanted to see him immediately. He had told himself that was a good sign. Okay, the first meeting after all these months wasn't going to go quite as he had planned it, but he had nevertheless experienced a surge of satisfaction bordering on triumph. The let-Elly-rez-her-untuned-amber-in-the-big-city strategy had worked, just as he had intended. She couldn't wait to see him.
When she walked into the Trap Door tonight, though, he had gotten a real bad feeling about his so-called brilliant strategy.
For starters there were the sexy clothes. Elly had never worn her skirts that short back in Aurora Springs. The minuscule black number splashed with exotic green leaves cut so high he was sure he could have fit both of his hands in the space between knee and hem.
She had never worn any tops as snug-fitting as the black knit thing that she had on, either. He would have remembered. The garment framed her elegant, apple-sized breasts in a way that had made every hunter in the room want to take a bite.
Her dark brown hair still glowed with natural amber-colored highlights but, like the skirt, it was cut a lot shorter than it had been back in Aurora Springs. She no longer wore the conservative, academic-looking twist she had favored back home, either. Instead, the new look was sleek and sassy. It skimmed her jawline and accented her delicate features and exotic green eyes.
