He started to turn around, but he was too late. The little ball of green fire grazed him. He jerked once and collapsed.
“Size doesn’t always matter,” Gabriel said quietly.
He focused some heat through his ring and de-rezzed the small dissonance energy manifestation he had pulled. Then he swung around to face the large ghost Tuck had generated. The monster had stopped moving, because it was no longer under Tuck’s control, but it still burned, blocking the tunnel. Left unattended, it might sit there forever, or it might start to drift.
The technique for de-rezzing a powerful ghost was similar to the one that firefighters sometimes used to stop a wildfire—a backfire. As the saying went, it takes a ghost to kill a ghost. He rezzed another compact, tightly controlled ball of fire and aimed it at the chaotic center of Tuck’s ghost.
His hot whirlwind of controlled dissonance energy clashed with the impressive but weakly structured ghost Tuck had created. Control won, every damn time.
Tuck’s flashy ghost disintegrated and winked out.
Gabriel de-rezzed his own ghost and went forward to strip off Tuck’s nav amber. There was a lot of it. When he was finished, he used his captive’s bootlaces to secure Tuck’s wrists behind his back.
He loaded the unconscious man onto the sled and got behind the wheel. He rezzed his personal locator and punched in the coordinates of the hole-in-the-wall beneath Guild headquarters.
The first item on the agenda was to have a long talk with Tuck. Then it would be time to call in the local police and alert Mr. Smith and the members of the Illusion Club.
Public relations.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Lucy was not surprised when the other power brokers who ran Illusion Town filed into Gabriel’s office an hour after receving his request for an urgent meeting. She stood at the window, dressed in her professional Underworld gear. Otis was on her shoulder. Together they watched the VIPs enter the room.
It made for a crowd. Aiden had called the mayor’s office, the members of the city council, the chief of police, and Mr. Smith, the owner of the Amber Palace. Smith had, in turn, summoned the members of the Illusion Club, which consisted of the CEOs who operated the big casinos on the Strip. The dramatic power outage two days earlier had gotten everyone’s attention.
Aiden had somehow managed to produce a couple of dozen folding chairs. He stood at the entrance to Gabriel’s sparsely furnished office, ushering in each new arrival and offering large cups of coffee. He had memorized every face. He greeted each individual by name and introduced the person to Gabriel.
“Thank you for coming on such short notice, Mayor Carson,” he said. “Please excuse the office. We’re in the midst of decorating. This is Mr. Jones, the director of the Illusion Town Guild …”
The mayor, a fashionably dressed woman with silver hair, exchanged pleasantries with Gabriel and took a seat.
Aiden turned to the short man dressed in a tailored white suit.
“Mr. Smith, so glad you could make it, sir. Apologies for the state of the office. We’ve just begun to decorate. This is Mr. Jones, the director of the Illusion Town Guild …”
Smith inclined his head in a gesture of respect. “A pleasure to meet you in person, Mr. Jones. I’m looking forward to hosting you and your companion in my penthouse.”
Startled, Lucy glanced at Gabriel. Companion? Was Smith talking about her? Gabriel did not appear to notice her questioning look. He was busy greeting the next dignitary.
When everyone was seated, a hush fell over the crowd. Gabriel remained on his feet, subtly showing respect for his audience and at the same time conveying an aura of authority and power.
“I asked you to come here today because the Guild is on the brink of closing a case that I believe started out in the Underworld,” he said. “Most of you will recall the three-day disappearance of Lucy Bell, a professional weather channeler. Ms. Bell is with us today.”
Everyone in the room except Gabriel turned to look at Lucy. She nodded politely.
Aware that he suddenly had an audience, Otis chortled and waved his toy dust bunny. There were a few scattered chuckles, but the audience quickly turned its attention back to Gabriel.
“When Ms. Bell was located, she told a story no one believed,” Gabriel continued, “including me. She claimed she had been drugged, kidnapped, and taken down into the Underworld. When I got her back to the surface, I made the mistake of leaving her in the hands of a clinic. She was once again drugged. Knowing no one would buy her version of events, she kept a low profile for the next two months. She had one solid piece of evidence: a pendant made of a rare gray amber that glowed blue when it was in the vicinity of another chunk of amber that had been tuned to resonate with it.”