“Thanks, Michael,” I said, dropping the note on the table as I started past him.
He swallowed a mouthful of sandwich and called after me. “Hey, Ms. Blaine! Harper?”
I turned around. Clutching my note, Michael got up and closed the door between the house and the porch.
“What is it, Michael?” I asked.
“Well, I just… well, I’m trying to say, like, you’re not going to dump him again, are you? My brother, I mean. I mean, I know he’s kinda geeky and all, but he’s a good guy.”
“He’s a very good guy,” I agreed. “And actually,” I confessed, “I think he’s kind of sexy.”
Michael snorted a laugh. “Will?”
“Well… yeah.”
Michael stared at me. “Will can’t be sexy. He’s my brother. You’re sexy.”
The blush swept over me like prairie fire. “Oh, boy. I’ve got to go.” I could hear him sniggering as I retreated.
I sat in the front seat of the truck and stared back at the Ingstrom house for a few moments. The long-haired white cat ambled around the corner and sat on the front walk. It looked at me and yawned, showing its fangs, then raised a forepaw and began to wash as if dismissing me.
Chapter Twenty-Four
It was hard to settle down, but I had a lot to do before I met Will again. Places to go, vampires to see. Once it got dark, I drove to the university district. Since classes were still in session, there were plenty of residents out on the streets. I had to park in a pay lot and walk a ways to my destination.
The U-district has five movie theaters, several all-night restaurants, and a lot of bars. It’s not the easiest neighborhood to find somebody in, since most residents are college students who come and go with the term schedule. I started at the first place on the list: the Wizards of the Coast Game Center.
The street level, filled with a noisy video arcade, owed its theme to science fiction movies, but below lay fantasyland. I walked down the stairs to the lower level, beneath the guardian glower of a giant, ax-wielding minotaur.
Here the walls were painted to resemble ancient stone and the support pillars had been elaborately draped in wine velvet swags. The baronial castle theme was carried out with fake torches and Gothic decorations. Fantastic paintings of mythic heroes and creatures hung on the walls. The lighting was dramatic, but not very practical.
About thirty young men and teenage boys had been paired facing each other at long tables, where they spread cards between them in some kind of duel to the numeric death. There was only one woman playing. Beyond the card players, a sword-and-sorcery film was playing on a gigantic screen in one gauze-draped corner, while a small group of people huddled around a coffee table in another. That was where I headed.
As I approached the role-players, one of them was saying something about casting a spell and several others offered vociferous disagreement.
“No, no, you can’t cast that on a green wyvern.”
“Yes, he can, but it’s not going to work with the zombies there. They’ll just keep coming.”
They were a motley lot. Seven altogether, three women and four men—all in their thirties or so. One of the women was dressed in flowing robes of dark green velvet that didn’t hide the fact that she overflowed her chair a bit as well. Her auburn hair was longer than mine had been before the elevator incident. One of the other women also wore a gown of some sort and a twisted ring of yellow and black fabric around her brow. The third woman and two of the men wore dark jeans and shirts. The other two men wore tunics and narrow trousers under lightweight cloaks. One of the tunic men stood next to the large woman, so that his cape was free to swirl around him when he moved. He was very aware of the effect.
I stopped beside them. “Excuse me. I’m looking for a girl named Gwen.”
They appraised me, then looked around at one another.
The woman in jeans piped up. “You mean skinny Gwen?”
“I don’t know what she looks like. A mutual friend said I might find her down here playing Dungeons and Dragons.”
The standing man rolled his eyes. “You’re a complete noob, aren’t you? Don’t even have a character yet, I’ll bet.”
“I didn’t come to play. I’m just trying to find Gwen.”
“If you mean skinny Gwen,” started the jeans woman again, “she isn’t coming tonight. She said she was going to see a movie at the Grand Illusion. She asked me to play her character for her.”
“OK, I’ll try there. How will I know her when I see her?” I inquired.
“She’s really skinny, like count-my-ribs-through-my-clothes skinny.”
One of the jeans-wearing men objected. “She’s not that thin.”
The green-robed woman weighed in. “Yes, she is. She looks like the ghost of a supermodel who died of malnutrition.”
A titter ran through the group.
“All right,” I said. “I’ll look for the shade of Kate Moss. Thanks.”
They were arguing again before I’d gone ten steps. “I still say it’s pointless to cast daze on a green wyvern…”
I wondered what Mara’s opinion would have been.
I climbed back up the stairs and escaped to the street, still looking for Gwen.
Part art house and part coffeehouse, the Grand Illusion is the northern anchor of the Ave. The southern anchor of this stretch of University Way NE
is the University of Washington’s administration building. You can walk the gamut from administration to auteurism by way of trendy trash-chic in less than ten blocks, if you don’t get run down by an aggressive skateboarder on the way.
When I got to the theater, the film was already rolling. Two student-age couples sipping coffee and chatting in the café were the only people in sight. I stared at the ticket counter, trying to decide on my next move.
A young woman in a long batik-dyed skirt and a dark blue sweater let padded up behind me. “Hi,” she greeted in a low voice. “Did you want to purchase a ticket? The film started about eight o’clock, so the first feature’s almost over.”
“I’m looking for someone who said she was coming tonight. Her name is Gwen and she’s very… slender.”
She gave a rueful smile. “You must mean Lady Gwendolyn of Anorexia. She went in about half an hour ago. If you want, you can wait for her in the coffeehouse.”
I bought yet another cup of Java and sat down to wait at a table that commanded a view of the theater door. Twenty-seven minutes later, the film ended and the audience trickled into the coffeehouse. Gwen was easy to spot.
She was a dead ringer for Waterhouse’s Lady of Shalott. She was even wearing a long white dress with trailing sleeves. A cataract of strawberry blond hair fell in ripples to her hips, and it appeared that the Lily Maid hadn’t dined on anything more substantial than a lettuce leaf and a drop of dew in years. But despite being no bigger around than a pencil, she didn’t look skeletal, only whittled away.
As she entered the room I stepped forward to introduce myself. “Excuse me. Are you Gwen?”
The Grey scurried behind her. My skin prickled with cold, unaffected by her watery smile as the dark fog folded around us both. “My name is Gwen.” Her voice was as thin as she. “Why were you looking for me?”
“A young man named Cameron Shadley gave me your name. Do you know who I mean?” I asked.
“I know of Cameron Shadley.”
“Then you’ve never met him?”
“Oh, in passing, when he was still in the daylight. We never became friends. He’s not with us anymore.”
“That would depend on who you mean by ‘us,’ ” I said. “He’s my client. I’m a private investigator.”
“Oh. I didn’t know there were any of your profession for our kind. You’re not one of us.”
“No. I’m the daylight kind.”
She giggled a little. “Let me get some tea,” she murmured and drifted away to the coffee counter.
In a few minutes, she returned. She toyed with a china pot and a cup,
but didn’t drink. “I don’t know how much help anything you hear from Lady Gwendolyn of Anorexia is going to be. I’m not much use to anyone, you know.”
Her use of the nickname in the third person gave me pause. “Maybe you could be more help than you think,” I suggested. “Cameron has a little problem with Edward and he asked me to intervene. But I want to know more about Edward first. What do you know about him?”
“Ned? Ned’s irresponsible, but he hides it well. I suppose it’s easy when you have dozens of underlings to manage the details for you.”
“How long have you known him?”
“All my unlife. He made me.” Her voice held no rancor, almost no emotion at all, in fact. She spoke in her thin, measured tone, as if she were talking about some other person. “In 1969, I was a carefree little chippy—make love, not war, you know. And Ned was, well, Ned. I didn’t know it at the time, but he had just gained control of Seattle, so he got away with a lot. I was a mistake.” She paused and sipped her tea, inhaling more of the scent than she swallowed of the brew.
“How is that? Isn’t it a deliberate act? I mean, it doesn’t happen by accident, does it?”
Her voice floated like petals. “No, it doesn’t. What I meant is his choice of me was a mistake and his timing was poor. Long-range planning isn’t his best skill. He’s an opportunist and very good at it.”
“What about you?”
“What about me? I’m nobody. In a community so small that every member counts, I’m only barely a member. I go to movies, because I can like those celluloid people and care about them and they never grow old and die, or stay young and become monsters. They’re so nice. Even the bad guys. I like celluloid people.”
“What about your role-playing friends?”
“They’re not my friends—they’re warms.” She blinked in slow motion. “Oh. That was rude of me.”
“I’m not ashamed to be warm. But if you don’t like them, why do you spend time with them?”
“I like them well enough. It’s the game that’s interesting. I’ve been with the same game for three years now, but the people change. It’s wonderful to feel like life and death and adventure and honor are important. It’s better than just drifting along in limbo and feeling like nothing matters. Sometimes it’s better than movies. It’s almost like being alive. And I matter so much more than I ever did.”
“What else can you tell me about Edward?”
“Not much.”
“What about TPM?”
“TPM? One of his little projects. I don’t know what ever became of that. He liked to play with things, buildings and businesses and things like that. It’s a game. To Ned, most of the world is just a big game. He likes to win—he’ll even cheat to win, but not if it breaks his own rules. He has rules, you know, they’re just not the ones everyone else knows. That’s all.”
“Tell me about you and Edward, then.”
“Me and Edward. I wish there had been a me and Edward. There was just Edward. And then, there was just me. I wasn’t a very amusing plaything, I guess. He dumped me. But I get along all right, I suppose.”
“You said his timing was poor.”
“He was so busy that being a responsible mentor just wasn’t a priority,” Gwen murmured. “He let me drift a lot. Finally, I just drifted away. He takes care of me when he thinks of it, but mostly he doesn’t. But poor Cameron… Ned doesn’t like him anymore. He makes things hard for him. Cameron should learn to drift, like I do. It’s safer. Do you mind if I go now? The second feature is going to start. It’s Jean Renoir. I love Renoir. So lovely and strange.” She rose and glided away, disappearing into the dimness of the theater.
I sat and finished my coffee. This case owed more to John Carpenter by way of Fellini than Renoir, as far as I could see.
I walked back along the Ave through the still-thick throngs of college students, panhandlers, and drug dealers hanging out on the street. In some places, their conversational knots blocked the sidewalk and forced me into the street to pass. Despite the cry of the fashionable that grunge was dead, it was difficult to tell the middle-class students from the destitute street people. Scraggly beards, dirt-colored clothes, and lank hair abounded. The Goths and preppies stood out like buzzards and peacocks in a flock of sparrows. And the noise level rivaled that of any migratory-avian watering hole in spring. My ears were ringing by the time I turned off University Way
and walked several long blocks to a twenty-four-hour Italian restaurant.
It was nearly ten thirty and my stomach was putting up quite a fuss over missed meals. I ordered food and drank more coffee. I thought about Gwen. Her Grey presence was almost nil; she left barely a ripple and affected me not at all. Was that what Carlos had meant? Would Cameron fade down to the same sad shadow, a memory that remained only because it hadn’t yet forgotten itself?
I sighed. She hadn’t been as useless as she thought, at least. Gwen was an instance of bad mentorship, too—foolish risks to the community. And she had confirmed Edward’s connection to TPM back when the company was young. How deep was he into TPM’s structure and how much of TPM’s wealth and influence were wielded at Edward’s discretion? I feared that answer as much as I needed it.
After dinner, I wasted some of my time with an undead gentleman in Fremont. I left him angry at Edward, but gained nothing directly. As I was leaving, a different and familiar sense of disquiet brushed my back. Hot and cold. I let my senses sink toward it, watching the world become hazy with the shadows of the Grey. I turned, searching.
Alice was standing in the doorway I’d just exited.
“Hard at work?”
“Hard enough,” I answered, holding down a quiver of revulsion as the fever-flash heat and chill of her overt sensuality crawled over me.
She glowered. “Not quite.” I felt her pressure on me increase and her voice seemed to ring deeper. “You need to move more directly against him. You should be attacking, not nibbling around the edges like a mouse.”
I pushed back against Alice’s demands and felt them crumble away into the cloud-swirl between us. I smothered my relief and felt sweat on my skin, panting as if I’d just done a sprint from standing.
“No. A direct attack is not what I agreed to and I’m not going to march up to Edward and make myself a target just to make you happy.”
The red corona around her flared into a spire of rage. Her hands crooked into claws. “You think you can defy me? I can remove you with a flick of my hand.”
I locked down a shudder. “What good does that do you, Alice? You just mop up Edward’s problem without him raising a finger. He’s not going to thank you for it. As long as I’m out here, Edward’s got trouble, but if you really want him to hurt, you’ll have to get a little dirty. Fan flames, spread rumors. That’s your part of the job. Remember? If things aren’t going to plan, it’s not because of me.”
She settled a little. “Don’t overstep yourself. Lack of forgiveness is a trait Edward and I share.”
“I’m not so forgiving myself. And I don’t appreciate being attacked by undead thugs or having my place tossed.”
She narrowed her eyes and my breath went cold. “What? You think I had anything to do with that?” She laughed flaming shards of ice through my skin. “You’re not worth the expense.”
“Then maybe it’s Edward. If he’s onto me, he’ll be onto you next. You need to start covering both our backs, as you promised, or you won’t have much chance to put your plans into action.”
Alice glared in silence, thinking.
I took my time, breathing with care to avoid the lump of ice in my throat. “Alice, you know that if Edward thinks I’m the only source of his troubles, he’ll swat me and then you’ll have no opportunity to move. So let’s just get on with it. You’ll get your chance.”
“I had best to.” Alice faded back into the doorway, vanishing into the dark.
It would have been more dramatic if I couldn’t see her slipping through the Grey. And that confused
me. Because, if Alice didn’t know what I could do or see, why had she been tailing me so long?
I shook my head, turned my back, and started walking again, looking at the list. There was only one name left, added in Alice’s unpleasant purple ink.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Part of the corrupt charm of big cities is their acceptance of the wacky, weird, and outrageous within business as usual. But I doubt there were many other venues that hosted something as unpredictable as Radio Freeform. Format varied wildly from minute to minute; you could be scratching along with an old Bill Broonzy blues tune and smash into a cut from Lunchbox next. Your brain and ears might feel assaulted, but it would hold together. Wygan, the overnight man, had a deft touch with the mix. It was his name Alice had inked at the bottom of the list.
Late-night DJ was a pretty good gig for a vampire, I thought, and a well-known local voice wasn’t likely to attack me. I drove to the row of red and white broadcasting towers on top of Queen Anne Hill and parked in the small, deserted lot outside the tiny building. I was glad that this phase of the project was nearly over. I was tired, felt low-level ill and ready to call it quits, no matter how much Alice threatened. I was a little jittery from her threats and too much caffeine, but I figured this one would be easy. Nothing could be as bad as Carlos.
Beside the steel security door was an intercom with a switch. I pushed it. A cautious voice answered. “ ‘Ello?”
I leaned toward the box and spoke. “Hi. My name is Harper Blaine. I’m a private investigator. Alice Liddell told me to contact Wygan. Can I talk to him?”
I heard a guffaw. “Alice sent you to me?” I recognized the soft slurring of Wygan’s working-class English accent. “Sure. Why not? Hang on. I’ll buzz you through. Just us chickens here tonight.” The low electronic burring of the latch cut off any reply.
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