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“I'll go home and change,” Sierra said. “But forget the cleavage thing. I love the
Curtain
, but I refuse to humiliate myself on the front cover.”

“Spoilsport,” Kay said.

“WHAT DO YOU KNOW ABOUT SIERRA MCINTYRE?” COOPER Boone asked on the other end of the phone.

Fontana walked to the window, phone to his ear, and looked out over the ruins while he thought about the question.

Cooper, the head of the Aurora Springs Guild, was one of his few close friends. The bond between them had been established years earlier when, because of their unusual talents, they had found themselves doing some highly unorthodox jobs for the Bureau.

They were both technically hunters, meaning they could manipulate dissonance energy, but neither of them worked traditional green ghost light. The teams that went underground tended to be traditionalists. Hunters who worked light from other places on the spectrum were not welcome on the exploration ventures. Exotic hunters tended to follow one of two career paths. They either became criminals or they got hired by the Bureau. Once in a while, however, like Cooper and himself, they wound up at the top of one of the organizations.

“What do I know about Sierra?” Fontana repeated. “Well, I think it's safe to say that I'm marrying up.”

“What does that mean?”

“She's the daughter of Jason McIntyre.”

There was a short pause on the other end of the line.

“Any connection to McIntyre Industries in Resonance?” Cooper finally asked.

“She's Jason McIntyre's youngest daughter.”

“You're joking.”

“I'm getting married in two hours. Trust me, I'm not in a joking mood.”

“What the hell is a McIntyre doing working for a low-rent tabloid like the
Curtain
? Women like her sit on the boards of charitable foundations and eat lunch at their clubs.”

“I did a little checking. She comes from a long line of women who do things in addition to the usual charitable foundation and luncheon gigs.”

“Such as?” Cooper asked.

“Her mother teaches philosophy at Resonance College. One of her grandmothers is a doctor. The other one ran a successful architectural design business for several years before she retired. There's an aunt who paints and another aunt who writes. And then there's the male side of the family tree.”

“I know something about them. Father is CEO of McIntyre Industries. Two of her brothers work in the business. The other teaches, I think.”

“Mathematics.”

Cooper roared with laughter. “Sounds like you're marrying into a family of overachievers. Serves you right, seeing as how you qualify as one yourself. Congratulations.”

“You can save the congratulations. I doubt that the marriage will last very long after Sierra's relatives discover that she's married to a Guild chief who also happens to be a genuine bastard.”

“Don't jump to conclusions,” Cooper advised. “From what I've heard, the McIntyres as a clan resonate to a different frequency.”

“I don't care how independent-minded they are. People that rich and that influential don't let their daughters marry outside their social circles, let alone marry bastards.”

There was no need for either of them to comment further, Fontana thought. Although the laws theoretically protected children born out of wedlock and were designed to try to ensure that both parents took equal responsibility for their illegitimate offspring, there was no avoiding the fact that being born a bastard still carried a stigma. In a society that placed a massive emphasis on marriage and family ties, there was little room for someone like him.

His story was one of the oldest in the book. His mother had been a cocktail waitress. His father had been a wealthy man in a Covenant Marriage who had been looking for a little fun.

“Sierra agreed to cooperate with your investigation?” Cooper asked.

“Yes.”

“So this MC is purely a business arrangement?”

“Right.”

“She must be very hungry for the story if she's willing to marry for it,” Cooper said thoughtfully. “Any idea what triggered her interest in Jenner and the drug operation in the first place?”

“It started with some negative pieces she did on the Guild. There were a lot of stories about how many retired Guild men were living on the streets of Crystal and how the Guild ignored their plight.”

Guild men tended to begin their careers early, usually in their late teens; not surprising since dissonance energy para-rez talent was strongly correlated to testosterone and other male hormones. That basic biological fact also went a long way toward explaining the very small number of female hunters in the ranks, although it was considered politically incorrect to point out the connection.

Pensions and so-called “fry pay”—disability benefits—were of vital importance in the Guild organizations. Hunters not only started out early, they usually ended their careers within twenty years; many quit long before that. It was no secret that frying ghosts for a living provided limited long-term career options. In addition, the work took a psychic toll. Guild men who hung around the catacombs too long lost their edge and got careless. Getting careless underground could not only get you badly burned, it put the clients in jeopardy. That was not good for the organization's image.

The end result was that if a hunter did not move up into management within the Guild, he usually retired before the age of forty. That meant that a lot of used-up hunters found themselves unemployed with no useful work skills. The retirement benefit plans were generous, but ex-hunters had a bad habit of blowing their monthly checks on the same traditional vices they had enjoyed during their working years: women, gambling, and booze. And now, here in Crystal, on juice.

“After the attacks on the Guild's failure to look after their retirees, Sierra started doing pieces on the ghost juice problem,” Fontana continued. “She pointed out that most of the addicts were ex-hunters. Then came the stories about the disappearances. The headlines in the
Curtain
claimed that men were being kidnapped off the streets by aliens. Fortunately, the mainstream media ignored the reports.”

“You have to admit it's hard to take that kind of tabloid nonsense seriously,” Cooper said.

“I did a little checking. Sierra's reporting was accurate, at least up to a point. Nearly a dozen ex-hunters, maybe more, have vanished in the past six months. They were all juice heads living in alleys or in abandoned buildings in the Quarter. Not the kind of upstanding citizens who get noticed when they disappear.”

“They sure as hell weren't kidnapped by aliens,” Cooper said.

“No, but something happened to them. They're my men now. I'm responsible for them.”

“Understood.” Cooper was quiet for a moment. “You really think Sierra McIntyre can help you find out what's going on over there in Crystal?”

“She's getting her information from somewhere. I'm pretty sure that she's got contacts on the streets that I don't have. And there's something else.”

“What?”

“She's just about the only person besides Ray that I can trust here in Crystal at the moment.”

Ray Takashima was one of them, another former Bureau employee. The bonds between all of them had been forged in ghost fire and would never be broken.

“You and Ray always made a good team,” Cooper said. “But if I were you, I'd keep a close eye on your new bride. You don't really know that much about her. Sounds like getting the scoop and bashing the Guild are her top priorities, not playing Guild wife.”

“If I thought I could convince her to walk away from the story, I would. But she's sunk her teeth into it, and I can tell she's not the type to let go. My only other option is to try to protect her by throwing the mantle of the Chamber around her.”

“Sounds like a solid foundation for a marriage, if ever there was one,” Cooper said. “Can't wait to see the cover of tomorrow's edition of the
Curtain
. Don't forget the ring.”

THE UNNERVING WHISPER OF ENERGY FEATHERED THE FINE hair on the nape of Sierra's neck the moment she parked her battered little Float at the curb. The fog had lightened somewhat in the afternoon, but the Quarter was still wrapped in a ragged gray blanket. She could see only as far as the intersection.

She got out cautiously, Elvis perched on her shoulder. He muttered a little.

“You sense it, too, don't you?” she asked softly.

Elvis seemed alert but not unduly alarmed. His calm response reassured her. If there had been an imminent threat, he would no longer look like something that had come out of the inside of a vacuum cleaner. He would be sleeked out in full battle-ready mode, his second set of eyes, the ones he used for hunting, wide open.

She stood on the curb for a moment, surveying the narrow street. There was the usual ambient alien psi that permeated the Quarter, but it was a pleasant, lightly stimulating sensation. That wasn't what was ruffling her intuitive senses. What she was experiencing was the same sensation that had made it impossible to sleep last night; the creepy feeling that she was being observed from the shadows.

She looked around but saw nothing out of the ordinary. By day Jade Street was always imbued with a slightly seedy, down-at-the-heels atmosphere. The impression was magnified this afternoon because of the ominous gloom of the relentless fog. Nevertheless, this was not a dangerous section of the Quarter.

The two-hundred-year-old Colonial-era buildings that loomed on either side housed a mix of what the newspaper ads like to call “affordable” apartments, such as the one she lived in, a number of low-end antiquities shops that specialized in alien and First Generation relics, a convenience store, and a tavern called the Green Gate.

Unlike some of the other streets in the Quarter, there was no obvious drug dealing going on in the doorways, and no hookers lounged or strolled beneath the old-fashioned streetlights. The women of the night preferred the sleazier neighborhoods on the east and west side of the towering green wall that enclosed the ruins.

“Okay, pal,” she said to Elvis. “Here we go.”

Elvis chortled happily and leaned forward when she stepped off the curb and hurried toward the entrance of her apartment building. He liked to go fast. Actually, he got excited about anything that promised a bit of an adrenaline rush. Probably all the caffeine, Sierra thought. Then again, maybe it was the predator in him. Underneath all that adorable gray fuzz beat the heart of a natural-born hunter. Dust bunnies, she had discovered, were omnivorous, but they were definitely not vegetarians.

She rezzed the security lock, opened the door, and moved into the small, dark hallway. The manager, Sacker, or the Slacker, as he was known to the tenants, still had not replaced the overhead light. The only illumination came from the dim wall sconces on the landings above. She paused again, waiting to see if the sensation of being watched faded now that she was indoors. It didn't.

“You think maybe I'm going over the edge and getting downright paranoid?” she said aloud to Elvis. “I'd hate to think that when I look at the Runt, I'm seeing my future.”

Elvis mumbled something. He was either offering reassurance or asking for a treat. It was hard to tell the difference sometimes.

She went quickly up the shadowed stairs to the third-floor landing and rezzed the lock of her own door. The tiny one-bedroom apartment was tranquil and welcoming. Once inside, Elvis bounded down from her shoulder and disappeared into the kitchen. By the time she arrived, he was on the counter in front of his treat jar.

She raised the lid and waited. Elvis liked to make his own choice. He fluttered up to sit on the rim of the jar. Maintaining his grip with his hind legs, he leaned down and selected a chocolate cookie from the little heap inside.

“That's it for now, King.” She replaced the cookie jar lid. “I've got to go change. I wonder what a girl's supposed to wear to a tacky MC wedding. That wasn't covered at Miss Pendergast's Academy for Young Ladies. Guess I flunked out before we got to that subject.”

Her short term at what her mother had called a “silly finishing school” had been her own idea. It had seemed like a good one at the time. Several girls in her class had spent a year getting “polished” at Miss Pendergast's. As the notoriously unsuccessful, unfocused underachiever in a family of successful, focused overachievers, she had been lured by the promise of instant sophistication. In her seventeen-year-old fantasies she had seen herself emerging from the academy with elegant social skills and a worldly attitude that would instantly catapult her into a successful,
achieving
life.

But boredom had set in after the first week. She had quickly discovered that devising themes for elegant parties and paying exquisite attention to the details of interior design and table settings had an extremely limited appeal. She had been “counseled out,” as the saying went, at the end of the first quarter. She suspected that the only reason she hadn't been asked to leave sooner was because of her family name. The director had been very reluctant to offend a McIntyre.

The entire episode had become just another family joke, one of many founded on her inability to find her passion, as her grandmother Larken liked to say. Grandmother Larken, from whom Sierra had inherited her intuitive talents, was the only one who had ever really understood her. When things went wrong, as they inevitably did, Sierra knew she could turn to the older woman for comfort and advice. But there was no point calling her this afternoon. Like everyone else in the family, Grandmother Larken disapproved of MCs.