What had she done?

She forced herself to take a couple of deep breaths. When that did not block the tide of uneasiness that was doing such strange things to her insides, she tried another sip of the wine punch.

Just a marriage-of-convenience. They were common enough. It would end in two years unless she and Sam elected to renew it for another two-year period. There would be no reason to do that, she assured herself; no excuse to convert the MC into a more formal and far more binding covenant marriage.

Adeline was right; she had to project a little more good-natured enthusiasm here, Virginia told herself. She had agreed to the MC, after all. It was a terrific business move. And she certainly could not blame her friends for throwing a party. They meant well. And she was genuinely fond of most of them.

She was surrounded with a representative sprinkling of the professional and not-so-professional types involved in the many legitimate and not-so-legitimate businesses that had grown up around the excavation of the Dead City of Old Cadence. There were a number of academics from the university who were in the process of building distinguished careers studying the alien ruins. There were also several contract and freelance para-archaeologists, such as herself, and a few of Sam's ghost-hunter buddies who provided security to the excavation teams. In addition, there was a colorful assortment of gallery owners, hustlers, and ruin rats who worked the fringes of the trade in alien artifacts.

It was a mixed lot, to say the least, but they were all bound by their mutual interest in making their livings from the exploration and excavation of the ruins left by the long-vanished Harmonics.

It should have been a cheerful occasion, but she could feel the panic nibbling at her stomach.