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say about the members of the Society, we’re respected professionals, not members of an organization that is only one step above an underworld mob.”
    â€œI believe that we were discussing Chester Brady.”
    Lydia blinked a few times, scowled, and then subsided back into her chair. “Yeah, Poor Chester.”
    â€œYou said he never gained admission to the Society?”
    â€œHe preferred to work the, uh, fringes of the antiquities trade.”
    â€œMeaning he was a thief?”
    â€œWell, yes. But I sort of liked him anyway. At least, when I wasn’t mad as hell at him. He really was an incredible tangler, you know. Very few could resonate with the ephemeral energy in the illusion traps the way he could. I once saw him de-rez a whole series of vicious little traps in one of the catacombs.” She broke off abruptly and dabbed surreptitiously at the corner of her eye with the sleeve of her shirt.
    â€œHow did you become friends?”
    â€œHe runs—ran—a little shop in the Old Quarter near the east wall. Sort of a combination pawnshop and antiquities gallery. Small-time stuff. Anyhow, a couple of years ago he ripped off a little tomb vase from the lab where I was working. I traced it to his shop. Confronted him. We got to talking, and one thing led to another.”
    â€œYou bonded with a small-time thief? Just like that?” Emmett said in surprise.
    Her jaw tightened. “I got my tomb vase back first. As a gesture of thanks for not handing him over to the authorities, Chester did a small favor for me. As time went on, he did other favors.”
    â€œWhat kind of favors?”
    She turned her glass between her fingers. “He knew everyone involved in Dead City work, legal and illegal. He knew who could be trusted and who would rip you off without a second thought. He also knew who was hiding a major find and who’d just secured funding from questionable sources. There’s a lot of competition among the excavation teams, you see. Inside information is useful.”
    â€œThere’s always a lot of competition when there’s a lot of money at stake.”
    â€œIt’s not only the money. Careers are made and broken out there on the sites.”
    â€œSo good old Chester clued you in on the players in the business?”
    â€œSomething like that.”
    Emmett looked at her. “What did you do for him in return?”
    â€œI…talked to him. And once I listed him as a consulting source in a paper I published in the Journal of Para-archaeology .” She smiled sadly. “Chester really got a kick out of that.”
    â€œYou said you talked to him.” Emmett paused. “What did you talk about?”
    â€œLots of things. Chester spent years underground. Illegally, of course, but he sure knew a lot of stuff. Sometimes we talked about how it felt to go into para-resonate mode with the really old illusion traps. The kind that can suck you into a nightmare before you know what hit you.”
    â€œI see.”
    â€œChester was a loner, but even loners get lonely occasionally. And tanglers need to talk to other tanglers sometimes. The Society provides more than just decent career opportunities for ephemeral-energy para-resonators. It functions as a club. A place where you can meet and talk to other people, share experiences.”
    â€œBut Brady wasn’t a member of the club.”
    She shook her head. “No. So he talked to me instead.”
    In other words, Brady was an outcast tangler who sometimes pined for company, and you provided it?”
    â€œThat about sums it up.”
    â€œAny idea who might have wanted to kill him?”
    â€œNo. But there was always someone around who was unhappy with Chester.” She made a face. “Including me. I’ve been struggling to get a private consulting business up and running. Last month he lured away my first important client. I was furious with him for a while. But it was