CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Gabriel stopped midway along the sidewalk and checked the directions Aiden had given him. According to the map on his phone, they were only half a block from the tuner’s shop.

“Almost there,” he said.

It was late afternoon. He and Lucy were in a shabby neighborhood deep in the eternally gray Shadow Zone. Otis was riding shotgun on his shoulder, evidently having concluded the position gave him a better view.

The neighborhood was run-down even by Shadow Zone standards. The fog seemed heavier in the narrow streets and alleys. There were no sleazy casinos, no cheap motels; just a scattering of empty shops, most of which had FOR LEASE signs in the windows. Several were boarded up.

Half an hour ago, Aiden had come through with a name and an address for a very specialized tuner named Stewart Pitney. Pitney was no longer among the living, having died in a suspicious fire that destroyed his shop.

Gabriel had called Lucy to tell her he was going to be late because he wanted to take a look around the burned-out shop. She had insisted on joining him. Jared had delivered her to the front door of Guild headquarters and briefed Gabriel on the Roxby encounter. Gabriel had immediately gotten a ping that told him something was off.

He dropped the phone into his jacket and started walking again. He resumed the conversation he and Lucy were having.

“I don’t like the way the Roxbys are suddenly pressuring you to join their organization,” he said.

“Relax.” Lucy adjusted her pack. “I’m sure it’s just a business maneuver. Can’t blame them. They know I’ve got a Guild contract. They want in on the action.”

“Got a feeling there’s more to it than that.”

“Jared and I discussed possibilities, but we couldn’t come up with any reasonable explanation.”

“What if they’ve made a discovery in the Underworld but can’t get to it because of bad weather?”

Lucy shook her head. “It’s hard to believe they’re up against something they can’t take care of on their own. They’re both very, very good, Gabriel. What’s more, they can combine their talents and work as a team.”

“Maybe they don’t want to take the risk of tackling whatever it is that they are after,” he said.

“I just can’t see them hiring a bunch of thugs to kidnap me.”

“That failed, so they’re going with a different tactic.”

“Offering me a partnership in their business is more their style,” Lucy admitted. “But still …”

“It strikes me as an act of desperation,” Gabriel said. “They must be under pressure for some reason.”

“Okay, I agree they seemed more than a little anxious today.”

“Do you trust the Roxbys?” he asked.

“Depends on the situation. They wouldn’t hesitate to stab me in the back if they thought it would make it possible for them to get an exclusive contract with the Guild. Actually, that’s probably exactly what they’re trying to do with this move. Even if I took the offer of a partnership, I’m sure they would come up with a plan to ease me out of the way once they had what they wanted. But that would just be business as usual for them. There’s no doubt but that they are very ambitious.”

“Ambition is a very powerful motivator,” Gabriel mused.

Lucy raised her brows. “You don’t say.”

Gabriel opted to ignore that little dig. He had bigger problems.

He stopped at the end of the block and looked at the sign over the boarded-up shop. It had been badly charred by the fire that had destroyed the interior, but it was possible to make out the lettering—PITNEY’S AMBER TUNING. RARE AMBERS OUR SPECIALTY. Beneath it was another sign—CONDEMNED BY ORDER OF FIRE MARSHAL.

“According to Aiden, this is the place,” he said.

Lucy studied the smoke-blackened brick walls. “When did the fire occur?”

“About four months ago. There was an investigation, but they never found the arsonist.”

“So we’re breaking in?”

“I like to think of it as gaining access by unconventional means. I didn’t have time to get a warrant.”

“I don’t think unconventional means will be much of a problem in this neighborhood,” Lucy said. “I don’t see any witnesses.”

“All the same, I’d rather not attract attention here on the street. Let’s try the alley. There’s always a back door.”

They walked to the end of the block, turned the corner, and entered the shadowed alley behind the row of small shops and businesses. There were a couple of rusted-out trash bins, broken wine and beer bottles, and discarded odds and ends.

Otis surveyed the scene and chortled.

“He likes alleys,” Lucy explained.

“Always something interesting in an alley,” Gabriel said.

“Please don’t tell me you like to hang out in alleys.”

“Only on the odd weekend when there’s nothing else to do.”

Lucy shot him a glare. He paid no attention because he was rezzed. His intuition was shooting small, hot sparks through all of his senses. He was on the right trail.

The rear door of Pitney’s Amber Tuning was boarded up. So were the small windows.

“No point crawling through a window when we can just as easily use the door,” Gabriel said.

He slipped his pack off his shoulder, took out the small pry bar, and went to work. It didn’t take long to get inside.

He switched on his flashlight and splashed the beam around the interior of the charred space. It was filled with the remains of workbenches, cutting and polishing machinery, and cabinets that had once held raw amber. Everything but the mag-steel tools had been burned beyond repair.

“This was one very hot fire,” Lucy said, flashing her light around the space.

Gabriel prowled slowly through the room. “Whoever set it wanted to destroy evidence.”

Otis abruptly vaulted down from Gabriel’s shoulder. He landed on a workbench and hopped down to the floor. Ash billowed around him. He opened all four eyes and bustled about, churning up more ash as he explored the room.

Lucy groaned. “He’s going to need a bath when we get home.” She looked down at her clothes. “We will, too.”

When we get home. She spoke casually, but Gabriel reran the words in his head as he searched the burned-out room. The phrase hummed through him like a line from a song he couldn’t quite remember. For him, home still meant his parents’ house. He hadn’t lived there since he had joined the Guild, but none of the apartments he had rented during his climb to the top had ever felt like home.

His current situation—spending his nights at Lucy’s apartment—was as temporary as things could get, but for some reason he found it natural to use the word home.

Lucy cautiously checked what was left of a cabinet. “What are we looking for?”

“Every tuner I ever knew kept the best specimens stashed in a vault in the Underworld. I’m betting Pitney had a hole-in-the-wall. The problem will be trying to find it. Everything is covered in ash and grit.”

Lucy took a step. The floor squeaked and groaned beneath her boot. She jumped back quickly.

“Stay where you are,” Gabriel said. “There’s a reason the fire marshal put up that condemned sign out front.”

He dug the pry bar out of his pack again and used it to probe the ashes.

He found what he was looking for beneath the wreckage of what had once been a small bathroom.

“Here we go,” he said.

He applied the pry bar to the trapdoor in the floor. Otis rushed over to see what was going on. Gabriel got the trap open and aimed his flashlight down into the darkness. A flight of cracked concrete steps led to the basement. Tendrils of a familiar energy wafted upward.

Otis chortled excitedly.

“Did you find Pitney’s hole-in-the-wall?” Lucy called from the alley door.

“Looks like it. There’s definitely a lot of Underworld heat. Come on over, but follow my footprints.”

“On my way.”

Lucy picked a path through the ash and soot. When she reached his side, he got a pleasant little shiver of awareness and knew she had heightened her senses.

“Definitely tunnel heat,” she said. “But even if Pitney had a secret vault down below, how can we find it? We’d need the coordinates.”

“Finding things is what I do, remember? If Pitney frequently came and went from a chamber in the tunnels, there will be a trail.”

“How will you be able to recognize it?”

Gabriel took one of the pendants out of his jacket. “If Pitney was the tuner who worked this amber, his vibe will be infused into it.”

Lucy smiled. “Excellent.”

“Let’s go.”

He went down the steps, senses at high rez. Otis scampered ahead of him. Lucy followed.

Pitney’s hole-in-the-wall was easy to locate. He had secured it with an impressive mag-steel door and a serious-looking lock. Green quartz energy seeped around the edges.

“I don’t think your pry bar will work on that door,” Lucy said.

“It’s a frequency lock. I’ve got a jammer that could open it, but we’re not going to have to go to any trouble.”

“Why not?”

Gabriel grabbed the steel handle and hauled the door open. “Because whoever went through this door last either did not know how to reset the lock or wasn’t worried about locking up. I think we can assume that person was the killer. He was looking for Pitney’s vault. The question is, did he find it?”

The heavy vault-style door swung open. Acid-green energy spilled through a ragged, two-foot-wide crack in the quartz wall. A shivery thrill rezzed his senses. He had spent a lot of his life in the Underworld, but he still got the rush.

He glanced at Lucy. There was a gleam in her eyes that told him she felt it, too.

Otis fluttered through the opening first. Gabriel and Lucy followed. Once inside, they stopped to double-check their nav amber and the locator. Otis could always be counted on to lead the way to an exit, but years of professional training and experience ran deep. You never went into the Underworld without well-tuned nav amber and a functioning locator.

“All set?” he said.

Lucy touched the amber in her bracelet and nodded. “Yes.”

He gripped the pendant in one hand and focused on the unique frequency of Pitney’s tuning vibe. A thread of identical energy appeared on the green quartz floor.

“Got it,” he said.

Lucy gave him a curious look. “You can sense Pitney’s vibe in here?”

“I can see prints on the floor. It isn’t usually this easy, but it looks like Pitney spent a lot of time down here. He left a clear trail, and it’s hot.”

“Hot?”

“The last time he came this way he was … agitated. Scared, maybe.”

He started walking, concentrating on the path he was following. If he stopped focusing, the prints faded immediately. Lucy fell into step beside him. After a couple of moments Otis seemed to realize what was going on. He dashed ahead.

“He must have figured out we’re following Pitney’s vibe,” Lucy said.

“He’ll probably get us there faster than I can.” Gabriel kept his attention on the faint path of energy. It was just barely visible in the glow of the quartz. “The next question is whether the arsonist got there first.”

“I doubt it. Not many people can do what you do,” Lucy said.

“The killer might have forced Pitney to reveal the location of the vault before he murdered him.”

“So whether or not we find something useful is what we here in Illusion Town like to call a crap shoot.”

“Trust me, there’s always something left at a scene.”

Otis disappeared around another corner and then reappeared, chortling.

“He thinks we’re playing a game,” Lucy explained. “Dust bunnies, I have discovered, are big on games of any kind. They excel at hide-and-seek.”

The trail led into a vast rotunda. There were over a dozen arched openings marking the entrances to more tunnels. Otis was waiting for them at one of the openings. He waved his miniature dust bunny and bounced up and down.

Gabriel studied the energy path on the floor. It led straight to where Otis stood on his hind legs, barely able to contain his glee.

“Got it,” Gabriel said. He went forward to join Otis. “Now to see what’s left.”

Pitney’s vault was a small chamber to the right inside the tunnel. It had not been cleaned out. Glass and steel cases held heaps of unpolished, untuned amber.

Lucy came up to view the interior of the chamber. “And this is what we here in Illusion Town call hitting the jackpot.”

Otis scampered toward a glass case and hopped on top, apparently trying to figure out how to open it.

Gabriel walked slowly through the space, pausing here and there to examine the collection. “This is incredible. I’ve never seen examples of some of this amber except in museums or in the vaults of the big amber-mining companies. Pitney must have spent his life collecting rare rez amber.”

“Probably because he had a talent for working it.” Lucy studied the pink amber in one of the cases. “You know how it is. Once you become aware of a psychic ability to resonate with a particular form of energy, you can’t resist it. You feel like you have to use the talent, the same way you use your other senses.”

Gabriel looked up from a small pile of uncut purple amber. She was studying the pink rocks very intently. Her energy whispered in the chamber. He responded to it in ways he could not describe.

A thumping sound made him turn around. Otis was jumping up and down on top of a small steel lockbox, apparently annoyed because he could not get inside.

Gabriel walked toward the lockbox. He took the old-fashioned lock pick out of his pack. The lock on the box was mechanical, not high-tech.

“Let me see what I can do, pal,” he said.

Otis muttered encouragement and hopped off the top of the case. He watched intently as Gabriel went to work on the lock. A few seconds later there was a sharp click.

Gabriel raised the lid. Two velvet bags and an envelope were inside the box. Otis chortled exultantly, as if to declare he had won the game.

“Thanks,” Gabriel said. “You saved us a lot of time.”

Satisfied with his victory, Otis waved his dust bunny and bounced across the chamber to continue his explorations.

“What did he find?” Lucy asked, hurrying across the room.

“Let’s see.”

Gabriel picked up the larger of the two velvet bags, rose, and went to a nearby workbench. He loosened the cord and emptied the contents of the bag onto the bench. A dozen chunks of uncut gray amber tumbled out.

He took the pendant from his pocket. It was glowing because it was still in close proximity to the other pendant and to the one that Lucy wore. None of the raw, gray amber stones illuminated in response.

“It’s the same kind of gray amber, but it hasn’t been cut or tuned,” he said.

Lucy picked up the other velvet bag and the envelope. She carried both to the workbench and opened the bag.

There was a piece of cut and polished amber inside. It glowed a deep, dark blue. She plucked it out and set it on the workbench.

“Pitney had one tuned rock left,” she said. “I wonder why it wasn’t sold to whoever commissioned the pendants?”

“Good question.” Gabriel picked up the stone and kicked up his talent. Awareness flashed across his senses. “This one is different.”

“How?”

He tightened his grip on the stone. The energy in it pulsed, strong and steady. “It’s more powerful than the pendants. I think it’s doing more than just sending out a short-distance recognition signal.”

“What?”

“I have no idea. Open the envelope.”

Lucy unsealed the envelope and glanced inside. “It’s one of those small video recorders that journalists use.”

“Journalists aren’t the only people who like those gadgets. The police and blackmailers are fond of them, too. Easy to conceal. They’re sophisticated devices. We won’t be able to rez it down here in the tunnels. Let’s get back to the surface and see what we’ve got.”

Lucy put the recorder in her pack. “It will probably be password protected.”

“That shouldn’t be a problem. My administrative assistant is good when it comes to tech security issues.”

Lucy glanced around the chamber. “Otis? Where are you? We’re going home. Time for dinner.”

Otis emerged from behind a crate, made enthusiastic sounds, and fluttered toward the door.

“He’s very keen on dinner,” Lucy said.

Gabriel watched the dust bunny hustle out into the corridor.

“So am I,” he said.

He switched on the locator. I’m also big on the idea of going home. With you.