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what her fate would have been had he not appeared when he did. The only question was whether she would have died of thirst before she went mad wandering aimlessly through the endless green night of the alien catacombs. The odds of being found by a search party were almost zero.
    No one had been more surprised to see her reappear than her colleagues on the excavation team who had given up hope. There had been great joy and celebration all around—for about three days.
    And then the reality of her new situation had sunk in: Everyone assumed that her experience underground had shattered her para-rez pitch. The shrinks who had checked her out afterward quickly filled her medical file with such ominous phrases as sustained para-psych trauma and para-amnesia . Typical aftereffects of an encounter with an illusion trap or a large energy ghost.
    The most amazing aspect of the case, as far as the para-psychologists were concerned, was that she was able to function with any degree of normalcy after the experience. She was certainly not the first ephemeral-energy para-resonator to lose control of one of the nightmarish traps or blunder into a powerful energy ghost. She was, however, one of the few who had gone through such an experience and not ended up in an institution.
    She was labeled extremely fragile , psychically speaking, and therefore unreliable on a professional excavation team. No one wanted to work with a tangler who had been badly fried.
    At the formal inquiry the two ghost-hunters who had been charged with responsibility for protecting the team had blamed Lydia for taking off on her own without due regard for the very strict safety rules. She, in turn, had accused them of failing to do their job properly.
    The findings of the investigation had been pretty much a foregone conclusion. Officially, the disaster was deemed to be a result of Lydia’s failure to follow established procedures. She had been dismissed from her position at the university.
    For her part, she had vowed never to trust a ghost-hunter again.
    Life had certainly changed a lot in the past few months, she reflected. Instead of working on an academic research team, she was now employed at a third-rate museum, Shrimpton’s House of Ancient Horrors, and she was dating a ghost-hunter.
    On the positive-rez side, her sex life had definitely improved.
    On the negative-rez side, she knew that she had fallen in love.
    She was aware of Emmett sprawled heavily on the bed beside her, one arm flung around her waist in a casually possessive grip.
    She stared up at the ceiling. “I can’t believe that I’m sleeping with a Guild boss.”
    “Temporary Guild boss,” he mumbled into the pillow. “Acting Guild boss. No, wait, let’s make that consulting Guild boss.”
    “I’m sleeping with a Guild boss.”
    “ Former Guild boss?” he tried.
    “Guild boss.”
    He rolled over onto his back and folded his arms behind his head. “You can be a little too literal-minded at times, you know that?”
    She levered herself up on one elbow. “Probably a result of my academic training.”
    “Probably.”
    For a few seconds she allowed herself to savor the sight of him in her bed. He still wore his shirt but that was all. The shadow of his untrimmed beard enhanced the stark, uncompromising planes and angles of his hunter’s face.
    “You didn’t even get a chance to shave this morning, did you?” she said. “You must be exhausted.”
    “Like I said, the phone was ringing when I walked in the door around three a.m.” He took one hand out from behind his head and rubbed his jaw, grimacing. “The doctors didn’t know if Wyatt was going to make it so I just dropped the camping stuff and got back in the car.”
    “There’s something I don’t understand here. Why did the hospital call you? You’re not even a member of the Cadence Guild.”
    He exhaled heavily. “Like I said, it’s complicated.”
    “I’m listening.”
    “Wyatt was barely conscious when he dragged