"You're right," he said. "It's not unique, but it's definitely valuable. Whoever our prankster is, he must be a wealthy collector if he could afford to use an artifact worth a couple of grand just to pull off a Halloween stunt."

An illusion trap had to be anchored to an artifact or to old green quartz from the ruins.

"Probably too drunk to realize what he was doing." Virginia carefully lifted the top of the jar and peered into the dark interior. "Okay, here we go. It's a simple pattern. This won't take long."

"Easy for you to say." He looked down into the shadows inside the little unguent jar. The darkness there was not normal. There was a dense quality to it, the only visible warning of the tiny trap. In the eerie glow of the green catacombs of the Dead City it was all too easy for a member of an excavation team to mistake illusion dark for ordinary shadow, but here in the brightly lit kitchen, the difference was obvious to the trained eye.

Obvious, but no less dangerous.

He had seen other tanglers work, but this was the first time he had watched Virginia in action. She'd only had a handful of clients during the time she had been renting office space from him, and she had dealt with them on her own.

He felt psi energy spark and shiver in the air. Very high-rez. He was impressed. She was as powerful as her academic credentials claimed.

Technically speaking, she was an ephemeral-energy para-resonator; a tangler in common parlance. With the aid of the specially tuned amber that she wore in her earrings, she could focus her particular type of paranormal energy in a way that allowed her to neutralize the vicious and sometimes deadly illusion traps. The wicked snares were one of the hazards of para-archaeological work in the alien ruins. The vast majority of tanglers became para-archaeologists. It was one of two natural career paths, the second being the illegal antiquities market.