Guild Boss (Ghost Hunters #14)(8)

“Don’t worry,” Lucy said softly. “There were consequences. Lots of consequences. I can give you a list.”

But no one paid any attention. They were too busy hurrying off the bus to meet Gabriel.

The last member of the tour group lumbered down the steps and joined the others clustered around Gabriel.

The perky blonde smiled at Gabriel. “Hi, Mr. Jones. My name is Amie. Do you know who is going to play you in Guild Boss?”

“Play me?” Gabriel said.

“In the movie.”

“I didn’t know there was a movie,” Gabriel said.

“They’re casting for it now,” the blonde informed him. “The title is Guild Boss.”

“I see,” Gabriel said. He looked at Lucy across the heads of the crowd. “That’s interesting.”

Another young woman studied Gabriel with an assessing look. “What happened to the woman you rescued?”

“Good question,” Gabriel said. He did not take his eyes off Lucy.

She pretended not to see him and climbed back onto the bus to make the sweep of the seats. Someone always left something behind.

Fortunately, none of the tour group so much as glanced back at her. People saw what they expected to see, and no one expected to see the drunk, drugged-up, irresponsible woman Gabriel had carried out of the Underworld driving a tour bus.

It helped that she had cut her hair and now wore it in a sleek, sharply angled bob. In addition, she was dressed in the Storm Zone Adventure Tours uniform: khaki trousers, white shirt, and boots. Her dark glasses and the brim of a rakish expedition hat partially obscured her face.

In the news videos and the photos that had hit the front pages of the papers after she had returned from the Underworld, she had been wearing the bridesmaid gown and her stilettos. Her long, dark hair had been a tousled tangle. All in all, she had been the perfect picture of a silly woman who had gotten drunk at the wedding reception, done some drugs, and wandered into the Dead City, where she had proceeded to get lost in the tunnels.

For once she did not find a pair of sunglasses or a kid’s backpack under the seats. That was a good thing, because she would not have to leave the bus and find the owner of the lost item in the crowd around Gabriel.

She had not received a single tip. Just one more thing to blame on Illusion Town’s new Guild boss. Her only hope now was that most of the people who had taken the tour would pick up a souvenir in the gift shop. She got a small commission from the sale of toy dust bunnies.

The crowd around Gabriel was finally thinning. Luckily, several people headed for the gift shop. That would mean at least a few sales. Otis, however, was perched on Gabriel’s shoulder and showed no sign of abandoning his position.

“Traitor,” Lucy muttered.

Apparently, unlike humans, dust bunnies did not know how to hold a grudge.

She sat down behind the wheel and rezzed the engine. The tour she had just escorted through the Storm Zone was the last one of the day. Time to park the bus for the night.

She reached for the lever that closed the doors.

Gabriel and Otis were suddenly on the bottom step. So much for trying to shut the doors.

“Hello, Lucy,” Gabriel said.

His voice was exactly as she remembered it—compelling, thrilling. It was a voice she heard in her dreams. She also heard it in her nightmares.

“Oh, hello.” She managed her brightest smile, the one she reserved for the tourists. “Welcome to Illusion Town, Mr. Jones. Congratulations on the promotion. I understand you’re the director of our new Guild. As you can see, we’re all terribly excited. We’ve never had our very own Guild headquarters.”

“This town hasn’t needed the Guild until recently.” Gabriel lounged in the doorway. “The discovery of the Ghost City has changed the situation. Lot of work going on in the Underworld near here now. That requires increased security.”

The Ghost City—the ruins of yet another Underworld metropolis that had been built and later abandoned by the long-vanished Aliens—had changed a lot of things in the area, mostly because big money was involved. Access to the vast and largely unexplored complex was via liquid crystal portals in the underground Rainforest. One such portal had been located below the surface a few miles outside of town. Coppersmith Mining, Inc. had acquired the mining rights to the Ghost City, but word on the street was the company had its hands full dealing with rogue prospectors, smugglers, and other unpredictable hazards, to say nothing of the wild and violent paranormal storms that swirled through the empty streets of the ancient city.

“And as we all know, when it comes to security in the Underworld, the Guild has a monopoly on the business,” Lucy said politely.

“It’s what we do,” Gabriel said, equally polite. “It’s why the Guild was founded. You could say we’re mission focused.”

“No shit. Well, a monopoly is a monopoly. Would you mind getting out of the doorway? That was my last run for the day. I’m going home now, but first I have to park the bus.”

“Sure.”

Gabriel did not step back down to the ground. Instead, he moved into the bus. Lucy stifled a sigh. There was no way she was going to get rid of him. She yanked hard on the lever, shutting the doors, and put the heavy vehicle in gear. Without a word, she drove toward the bus barn a short distance away.

Gabriel leaned against the handrail and appeared to contemplate the view through the double-pane windows. The ominous ochre-yellow light that bathed the Storm Zone night and day was growing more luminous as darkness approached. The dilapidated two-hundred-year-old buildings of the old Colonial-era town were steeped in strange shadows. Soon the fog would coalesce—the same kind of eerie yellow fog that had been waiting the night Gabriel had carried her out of the ruins and into the glare of the cameras.