Illusion Town Read Online Free Page B

voice. He went quickly down the stairwell steps.
    She tried to string a few facts together, hoping something would jar loose another memory.
    â€œI suppose we could have come here by cab,” she ventured. “But I don’t remember a cab ride.”
    â€œNeither do I.” He paused. “I remember guys on motorcycles.”
    â€œSo do I. At least I think I do.”
    â€œThere was also some very hot psi at some point,” Elias said. “I’m sure of it. I think we got burned. We knew we were going to crash.”
    Something in his tone prompted another little ping in the shadows of her lost memories.
    â€œDo you think that whatever happened to us, it’s connected to the problem at your company’s jobsite? Maybe someone doesn’t want you to get that gate open.”
    â€œGiven what facts we’ve got, that explanation has the highest probability of being correct,” he said.
    â€œSo why is my necklace missing? And what’s up with the fortune in my purse?”
    â€œI don’t know. We need more data.”
    She cleared her throat. “Okay, let’s say someone is after us and somehow we got psi-fried last night and decided that we had to go into hiding before we blacked out. That doesn’t explain why we got married. It makes no sense. After all, it’s obvious now that our relationship was—is—strictly business.”
    â€œYou’re not much of a romantic, are you?”
    She glared at him. “Is that supposed to be humorous? Because if so, I have to tell you that your timing is lousy.”
    â€œYou’re not the first person to mention that.”
    They reached the ground-floor stairwell. To her surprise, Elias paused, as though listening intently. But she could feel energy rising in the atmosphere. The stone in his ring heated.
    After a few seconds, Elias nodded, satisfied.
    â€œThe good news is that I don’t think there’s anyone waiting to ambush us on the other side of this door,” he said.
    She looked at his ring. “You can tell that with the crystal in your ring?”
    â€œIt’s pretty accurate when it comes to picking up the vibes of high-tech devices.”
    â€œIs that all it can do?”
    â€œI don’t know.” He smiled a little and pushed open the door. “I just got it recently, remember?”
    â€œI know, but are you telling me that you don’t know much about its properties?”
    â€œIt’s a family heirloom but apparently not many of my ancestors could figure out what to do with it,” Elias said. “There’s hardly any data in the Coppersmith archives. I’m still on a learning curve. Still conducting experiments. Until now, the only use I’ve been able to discover is its ability to detect the frequency of other crystals. That’s handy in the lab but hardly unique. We’ve got lots of other instruments that do just as good a job.”
    â€œI don’t know about that. You said it alerts you to the fact that someone might be waiting for you with a high-powered weapon. That sounds very useful to me. Especially at the moment.”
    â€œTrue,” he agreed. He hesitated, glancing down at the ring. “I think that may be why we escaped whoever was gunning for us last night. We had some warning. Not much, but evidently enough to get away.”
    â€œSo why didn’t we run straight to the cops?”
    â€œGood question. Maybe we didn’t have a chance. If we got chased into the tunnels we would have just kept going until we lost whoever was chasing us.”
    They walked out into a mostly empty parking lot illuminated in the dull light of a fogbound dawn. The weather was hardly a surprise. The Shadow Zone was always locked in psi-infused fog.
    The fog was something of a mystery. After all, Illusion Town was a vast, sprawling city in the middle of a desert. Theoretically, it shouldn’t experience a lot of fog. But the normal