After Glow by Jayne Castle

heart was pounding. Something very frightening had just happened but she could not remember what it was.
    She stumbled and fell headlong on the green quartz floor. Terrified that she had just brushed
    against some object that might contain an illusion trap, she scrambled to her feet and turned to see what it was that had tripped her.
    A human skull stared back. The eye sockets regarded her without pity or remorse.
    The jaw moved. The death’s head spoke…
    She came awake in a cold sweat, sitting straight up in bed. “The words.”
    Emmett stirred beside her. “What’s wrong?”
    At the foot of the bed, Fuzz raised his head. She could see all four of his eyes, the green set as well as the blue glowing in the shadows.
    “The words on the scrap of paper I picked up off the floor of Professor Maltby’s apartment,” she whispered.
    Emmett levered himself up off the pillows. “What paper?”
    “I dropped it into my purse just before you and Detective Martinez arrived.” She pushed aside the covers and stood beside the bed. “I got distracted after that and forgot about it.”
    She grabbed her robe and hurried down the short hall to the small table where she had left her purse. Emmett pulled on his khakis and followed at a more leisurely pace, yawning. Fuzz perched on his shoulder, no doubt hoping that this midnight expedition would include a raid on the pretzel jar.
    Lydia got the purse open and groped inside. “It’s in here somewhere.”
    “Take it easy, honey.” Emmett switched on the hall light. “What made you pick up that paper?”
    “Because it looked like the last thing Maltby wrote.” Irritated when she could not locate the scrap of paper, she turned the purse upside down and dumped the contents onto the table. “It was unfinished.”
    Emmett began to look interested. “You think he was trying to write a message just before he died?”
    “Maybe.”
    “You didn’t say anything about this to Martinez.”
    “There wasn’t much to say. The message might have been the start of a grocery list, as far as I know. Besides, Martinez was only interested in you and Mercer Wyatt. I doubt that the death of one more down-and-out Chartreuse addict is a high priority for the Cadence cops.”
    Emmett watched her sort through the array of items that had tumbled out of the purse. The mix included her wallet, a small jewelry case containing one of the several spare amber bracelets she had purchased after her Lost Weekend, a comb, her business calendar, and a packet of tissues. He studied the round, green quartz object on the bottom.
    “What the heck are you doing with a tomb mirror in your purse?”
    “Zane found it the other day. He gave it to me.”
    Tomb mirrors were among the most common of alien antiquities. No one knew how the aliens had used them but since one side was usually glass smooth and produced a clear, green-tinged reflection, the experts concluded they might have actually been mirrors. One school of thought held that the mirrors had had religious significance.
    Tomb mirrors came in a variety of odd shapes and sizes but like most of the other antiquities that had been discovered on Harmony they were made of the same ubiquitous green quartz that the ancient alien colonists had used to construct almost everything. The stuff was virtually indestructible. As far as the experts could tell it was almost completely impervious to the elements and the biological processes that nature used to recycle everything else.
    Emmett picked up the little tomb mirror and studied the ornate carvings that surrounded the reflective surface.
    “Nice one,” he commented, turning it over in his hand to examine the elegantly worked design on the back.
    “Yes, it is.” She finally spotted the scrap of paper trapped in the fold of her wallet. “Thank goodness. For a minute there I thought I had lost it.”
    Emmett put the mirror down on the table and studied the torn bit of note paper she held up to the light.
    “Amber