Illusion Town Read Free Page B

records.”
    â€œThey call this side of town the Shadow Zone for a reason,” Hannah said. “It’s hard to get a connection.” She sounded oddly numb, she realized. It was the shock. She was having a very hard time trying to wrap her head around the word
marriage
.
    â€œThe desk clerk let me use his computer,” Elias said. “A Marriage of Convenience was recorded for Hannah West and Elias Judson Coppersmith forty-seven minutesafter midnight at the Enchanted Night Wedding Chapel here in the Shadow Zone. The desk clerk says it’s just down the street.”
    â€œI can’t believe it.”
    â€œI was a little surprised myself.” He did not smile. “Your first MC?”
    â€œWell, yes. Yes, it is.”
    â€œMy first, too.”
    â€œGood heavens.” She clenched her fingers around the doorjamb. “What happened to us last night?”
    â€œThat’s what we’re going to find out just as soon as you get moving.”
    He sounded as if he was losing patience. She reminded herself that he couldn’t be any more thrilled by the situation in which they found themselves than she was.
    She made it into the bathroom and closed the door. One glance at her image in the mirror was enough to make her wonder if she was still asleep—maybe trapped in one of her own dream-walking dreams.
    Grady Barnett’s words slammed through her. “
Your profile is extremely unusual, so unusual that I’m afraid it’s borderline unstable. You must be careful to avoid stress.”
    Grady had said something else about her, as well, but not to her face. He had made the comment to his research assistant.
“It’s no wonder she’s single and lives alone. Her dreamlight patterns would give any normal man the creeps. Thinks she’s having out-of-body experiences on a regular basis.”
    â€œGo to hell, Grady Barnett,” she whispered to the mirror.
    She pushed thoughts of Grady aside. He was old history, and bad history at that. She had walked out of his lab and she had no intention of ever returning. There were other para-psych profilers in Illusion Town.
    She focused on her image in the mirror and concluded that she looked like she’d been caught outside in a thunderstorm and zapped by lightning. She had a vague memory of her hair being done up in a flirty little twist the last time she had checked a mirror. But now it was down around her shoulders in a tangled mane.
    She was sure she had not been wearing a lot of makeup yesterday morning—she never put on much for daytime. But at some point she must have spent some time with a mascara wand and an eyeliner pencil. The results were now badly smudged.
    She looked like she had spent the night in a low-rent nightclub before letting a really bad boy take her back to the kind of hotel that rented rooms by the hour.
    Scratch the bad-boy thing. Elias Coppersmith might be bad—the jury was still out—but he was definitely not a boy.
    For the past two months he had remained simply
E. Coppersmith
in her files. That, in itself, was rather unusual. It was not uncommon for serious collectors to go to great lengths to protect their identities. Those who traded at the deep end of the hot rocks market—crystals, quartz, and amber—usually preferred to keep a very low profile. But Elias had been up front about his identity right from the beginning. Then again, he hadn’t had much choice. He had asked her to find a long-lost family heirloom—his ring—soit had made sense to tell her as much as possible about the family that had lost it.
    But until very recently he had known her only by her online name—Finder. She owned a storefront shop, Visions, but for the most part, the relics, rocks, and small-time antiquities and collectibles she stocked there were unremarkable. Her real business was conducted anonymously in the murky underground market. It was a market that attracted