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this happens.”
    “It’s okay.” He continued to knead her tense shoulders. “You’ve got a right. It’s been a rough day.”
    “You think so? Gosh, I only came across one dead body, went through a police interrogation, and found out that you are now the chief of the Cadence Guild. Just an ordinary day.” She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. “No good reason that I can see to break down in tears.”
    He winced. “It’s the last item on the list that made you cry, isn’t it? The fact that I’ve agreed to take over the Guild on a temporary basis.”
    “Why did you do it, Emmett?” she asked starkly.
    “It’s… complicated,” he said.
    “Tell me one thing. Does it involve Tamara Wyatt?”
    The question surprised him. “Hell, no. Tamara has nothing to do with this.”
    “She’s your ex-fiancee. She ended the engagement and married Mercer Wyatt when she found out that you were going to step down as boss of the Resonance Guild. And now you’ve just taken over the Cadence Guild, her husband’s job. You two have a lot of history.”
    “Whatever Tamara and I had together ended when she made it clear that she wanted to be the wife of a Guild chief more than she wanted to be my wife. I told you that the night you met her.”
    “If this isn’t about Tamara, what is it about? Is the old saying true? Once a Guild man, always a Guild man?”
    “The Cadence Guild is in a very delicate situation right now,” he said, choosing his words carefully. “Wyatt says he’s preparing to step down in another year or two. He claims he is committed to modernizing the organization along the same lines as the Resonance Guild before he leaves office.”
    “You really think he intends to turn the Cadence Guild into a respectable business enterprise with a board of directors and an elected CEO at the top? After running the organization with an iron fist for over three decades? Give me a break.”
    “Wyatt is nothing if not a cold-eyed pragmatist.” Em-mett wondered, even as he spoke the words, why he was bothering to try to defend the boss of the Cadence Guild. Probably because he had just agreed to take over the job himself, he thought. Deep down he had been praying that when Lydia found out what had happened she wouldn’t consign him to the same category as Wyatt, that she wouldn’t conclude that he really was a low-life mobster.
    “I agree he’s probably one heck of a realist,” Lydia muttered.
    “He is genuinely concerned with the future of the Guild. He took a good hard look at the current position of the organization and realized that the Cadence Guild must change if it wants to stay relevant.”
    “Hah.”
    “Wyatt admits that he’s having trouble attracting and keeping good, well-qualified hunters. There was a time when a talented dissonance-energy para-rez signed up with the Guild for life. Now a lot of them join for a few years, make some quick money ghost-hunting, and then get out in order to enter a more respectable profession.” He hesitated. “That’s especially true for hunters who want to marry outside the Guild.”
    “Uh-huh.”
    She didn’t say anything else, but there was no need for further comment, he thought. They were both well aware of the facts. Ever since they had been established during the Era of Discord, the hunters’ Guilds had operated as closed, insular societies with their own traditions and their own rules. Historically, if you were raised in a Guild family, the odds were very high that you would choose a spouse from another Guild family.
    “Wyatt wants to change the image of the Cadence Guild,” he said. “His goal is to turn it into a professional business organization.”
    “The way you did with the Resonance Guild?”
    He wasn’t sure where she was going to go with that. Her tone was a little too neutral for his peace of mind.
    “That’s the general idea,” he said.
    “No offense, but Wyatt seems to be off to a rather poor start, what with nearly getting