Possession

by Kat Richardson

  “Son—”

  Quinton stood up and away from him. “Call me that one more time and I’ll kick you so hard, they’ll have to look for your head in Japan. You gave up the right to call me your son. You almost fed me to that thing in the box—Limos or whatever it’s called. You believe you’re a patriot and the end justifies the means. Well, justify this: I’ll see you in Europe, where you won’t be threatening my friends, or I’ll see you in hell. You choose.”

  Whatever he saw in his father’s eyes convinced him of something and he stooped, picked the older man up, and carried him out of sight.

  I turned back to look at Carlos, who had gone so still and quiet I was afraid he’d slipped away.

  “We will find Limos,” he said. “Her shrine must be here. . . .”

  “My head’s still reeling. How can she be here if she was with us earlier? And you said she’s a goddess of hunger, but a few minutes ago you said something about disease . . . ?”

  “She is the goddess of famine. She brings the blight, the failure of crops, the drought, hunger everlasting. Death by starvation. Purlis brought her with him from Europe—I don’t know where he found her—and he meant to take her back when he was done here. Somewhere among all these effects is her container, her shrine. She rides Hazzard, uses her ghost to her own ends. To Purlis’s ends as long as they coincide.”

  I closed my eyes, thinking, remembering. . . . “Pandora’s Box.”

  I opened my eyes, sure now. Carlos quirked an eyebrow at me, but said nothing.

  “Quinton told me about it. He called it ‘Pandora’s Box’—something Purlis brought here from Europe. When Quinton found it, it had dirt from the tunnel project on it, which is how I connected it to the ghosts and the PVS patients. Remember Quinton said, ‘You tried to feed me to that thing in the box’? He meant Limos’s shrine. Well, I’ll bet that’s what’s at the end of these cables.”

  We looked around the room we were in first, carefully skirting Inman’s remains. I tried to follow the cables, but they ended in a coupling at the wall. Carlos followed me out and around to the previous chamber where we’d seen the body of the blue-green creature.

  The box of skin and bone was still there, on its own table, surrounded by the glimmer of lives swallowed up in its folding doors. The cable ran to a plate—some kind of resonance emitter, I thought—on which the box stood. I slid the panels open and looked at the miniature shrine within and the glittering wreck of tiny figures, carved in bone and decorated with delicate gems and gold leaf, now all tossed about by the glut of suffering that had been pumped into the box through the device I’d shot in the other room.

  “What do we do with it now?” I asked.

  “We must entrap Limos in it and then destroy it. Otherwise she will be unbound, and while that will reduce her power, she still holds Hazzard and the tribute of souls. She would have no reason to stop her plans to ruin the Wheel, and every reason to go forward at once.”

  “Then that’s what we’ll do. How are we going to catch her?”

  Carlos looked amused. “I suggest we lure her to us once again through the offices of your friend Mr. Stymak.”

  “Why can’t you do it?”

  “This will be much more complicated than our little chat with Hazzard and her mistress. You and I must be free to act, so others will have to occupy the séance circle. We’ll need a circle of protection for them while you and I remain outside it to capture Limos and Hazzard.”

  “So . . . we need sitters—at this time unknown—to be bait for Hazzard and Limos and we need a medium who doesn’t want to be associated with this for a séance we aren’t actually going to be part of. Oh, that’s going to be a piece of cake,” I added in a sarcastic tone.

  Carlos laughed—damn him. “I’ll leave the arrangements to you on that score.”

  TWENTY-TWO

  I hadn’t liked handling the thing, but I took possession of the shrine of Limos. There really wasn’t anything else to do. Carlos had refused it, saying he had only enough darkness left to deal with Inman’s body, and I wasn’t going to stick Quinton with it. In the end, Quinton found a place for it among his many hidden stashes around town where I could leave it for a few hours in the certainty that it would be undisturbed by anyone, including his father.

  Daylight had begun to creep across the sky by the time I drove Quinton home with me, since he and I had also needed to clean a few things up before any of Purlis Senior’s associates turned up for the day. I hadn’t been sure he had any, but Quinton assured me his father had flunkies who would take care of most of the mess and probably squeal to a superior at their earliest convenience that the head of the project had been shot. There wasn’t any sign of Purlis when we’d come up the stairs and at first I was worried, but Quinton had assured me his father was safely off to the University Medical Center—since it was the closest emergency room—having his leg attended to before it got worse. I wasn’t sure how he’d gotten there and I didn’t want to know, but I was pretty sure that Quinton wasn’t lying about the hospital. He’d have needed help with the body if the wretched man had gone and died, and Carlos and I had been the only people around to ask, which he hadn’t done.

  “You don’t seem worried he’ll tell someone you’re the one who shot him,” I said as I drove carefully toward West Seattle.

  “No. Dad wouldn’t want it to get out. It wouldn’t make him look good to say the ‘top recruit’ he’d been working to bring on board was his renegade son who turned on him. He won’t tell the regular cops on me, either. Though if he did, I guess I could always go to them first, demand to see Solis, and get a sympathetic ear at the very least. No, Dad will keep his mouth shut, I’ll clean up as much of the disaster as I must to keep from being connected to it, and then I’ll have to find the rest of Ghost Division and take care of this problem in person.”

  “In Europe? But—” I started. Then I shut my mouth over my objection and kept on driving.

  Quinton let it drop and he didn’t say anything even while we were securing the shrine box.

  I drove us home and he followed me up the stairs to the condo in silence. I wasn’t angry. I just wasn’t sure what to say or how to broach the subject that was weighing on my mind even more than the idea of a ghost and a god killing off a few hundred tourists so they could eat their souls. The booming silence of it hung between us and I tried to ignore it by doing normal, trivial things: I let the ferret out to romp while I undressed and got into the shower. Quinton followed me into the bathroom and leaned against the wall, playing desultorily with Chaos while the steam built up.

  “I don’t want to leave you,” he said once he was completely obscured in clouds of vapor.

  “But you’re going to.”

  “I have to. What he’s doing is terrible and I feel a little responsible—if I hadn’t called on his help a couple of years ago, he wouldn’t have known where I was or tumbled to what I knew about ghosts and magic and that sort of thing. I wouldn’t have felt I owed him and he wouldn’t have been able to screw with my life again. This is at least partly my fault and I know he won’t fix it—he’ll just try to use the current situation to his advantage. Maybe he’ll spin the destruction of the lab as some kind of breakthrough or something. He’s perfectly capable of it. And he’ll have figured out who—and mostly what—Carlos is, so he’ll also have realized you’re not just a plain-Jane human being. I’m not sure if he saw anything but I think he already suspected you weren’t exactly ‘normal.’ I need to keep him off you.”

  I stuck my head out of the shower and gave him a hard stare. “You are not my keeper and you aren’t responsible for fending off your dad as a result of my own actions. I can take care of myself in that regard. Especially now that he might already know I’m a little more than an average PI and I won’t have to pull my punches.”

  He walked forward, putting Chaos down on the floor. She danced around our feet as he leaned forward and kissed me softly. “Harper, I know you can look out for yours
elf, but I have to take care of the situation he’s caused. It’s my responsibility.”

  “Would you have shot him? I mean fatally?”

  “I think I would have. And I guess I should say thank you for stopping me. That would have been a mistake. This way, he’ll want to cover it up. Otherwise, his bosses would have come looking for me and I’d never have been free again. I am grateful. I love you. And not just because you came to my rescue like a knight in crumpled armor with your trusty vampire sidekick, either. I just . . . I just do.”

  I grinned at him. “Then why don’t you get your clothes off and get in here?”

  He looked shaggy and dirty, his clothes were stained with some things I didn’t want to think about, and we were both at less than our best, but I couldn’t think of anyone I would rather share a shower with. He glanced down at himself, back at me, and broke into a wicked grin.

  He was pretty quick at getting out of his clothes, though dropping them on Chaos wound her up and we could hear her chuckling and dancing around in miniature ire as Quinton joined me under the stream of hot water. We stayed until the water got tepid and then fought our way past the furious ferret to roll into bed and make love until we were both too tired to try anymore. We even forgot to put Chaos back in her cage.

  A brush of whiskers on my face woke me at noon. Quinton was already gone, but a note said he’d be back. I picked up the ferret and showed it to her.

  “What do you think?” I asked. “Truth or lie?”

  She sniffed the paper and snorted. Then she tried to eat it, leaving neat sets of puncture marks in the corner of the page until I took it from her. “I’ll take that as a vote of confidence, since you didn’t turn up your nose.”

  Talking to the ferret made me feel less alone, but it probably would have given most people the impression I was completely off my rocker. I put her down and got dressed, then took her out to the kitchen while I made some breakfast and thought about what I’d have to do next.

  Carlos and I had determined that we needed another séance in order to capture Limos. The only practical bait would be the families of the patients, since they would attract the ghosts bound to Hazzard and through her to Limos. We’d have to use them to get the goddess to her shrine, then capture her in it and disperse whatever hold Hazzard had established over the ghosts. Once that was done, we’d have to get rid of Hazzard and hope that allowed the ghosts the freedom to rest and leave their unwilling hosts alone.

  Not a very detailed plan. We would have to wing it a lot and I’d have to be the one to talk Stymak into trying one more time. I knew Lily Goss would join me in cajoling him, but I really needed someone representing each of the patients to make the circle work. Carlos and I would have to stand aside from the circle to do our work in the Grey once the ghosts and their hungry handlers were present. It wasn’t going to be fun and it had to be tonight—before Purlis could make any efforts to get the shrine back or more harm could be done to Julianne, Sterling, and Delamar.

  I started with a phone call to Lily Goss. She answered, sounding very harried, and I could hear Julianne’s babbling in the background.

  “Hello? What? I’m sorry, we’re having a crisis, could you call back?”

  “No. This is Harper Blaine. I’ve got a solution to the problem. I think. But it will require a séance with Richard Stymak.”

  “What? Séance? I’m not sure. . . .”

  In the distance I heard Julianne scream, “Somil, somil! Throuf eeluge lew eth drag! Lew eth drag!” I couldn’t figure out what she was saying on the fly and that frustrated me, but first I needed to concentrate on persuading her sister to do as I asked. If Julianne wanted me to get the message, she’d repeat it, I was sure.

  I said, “I believe we can fix the whole problem, in one effort, tonight, if we can just do this. But I need you to persuade Stymak. He’s afraid and I need him. I need you, too—I can’t do this on my own.”

  “But Julie is so agitated. I’m afraid to leave her. She may hurt herself. . . . Her vital signs are very strange. She keeps saying—screaming—that phrase—‘throuf eeluge lew eth drag’—over and over since yesterday morning.”

  “Did you write it down? Why didn’t you call me?”

  “I . . . I couldn’t break free. She’s been so bad, I felt I had to stay with her and do what I could for her. But she’s getting worse and she started throwing things. . . .”

  “I know about the throwing things part,” I replied, touching my eyelid. It stung just a little and I thought of the eyedrops I’d been neglecting. The Grey connection may have been severed but the physical damage was still there. “Repeat that phrase for me? What Julianne is saying.”

  She stuttered, started, stopped, and finally got it out. “‘Throuf eeluge lew eth drag.’ Or that’s what it sounds like. She’s been screaming it and then she . . . passes out. When she wakes up, she starts again.”

  I wrote the phrase down and stared at it while Julianne continued to raise a ruckus in the background.

  “Oh, please . . . Julie, sweetie . . .” Lily said, turning aside from the phone for a moment. “Please calm down. I’m trying to help. . . .”

  I puzzled at the words. I knew they were backward but knowing and translating aren’t instantaneous. “‘Throuf . . . fourth . . . eeluge . . . july . . . lew . . . well’ . . . no, ‘Wheel . . . eth’ . . . that’s got to be ‘the’ . . . ‘drag . . . gard’ . . . ‘guard.’” I rewrote the phrase in proper order, just to be sure . . . Guard the Wheel July Fourth. “Oh shit . . . It’s tonight.”

  Julianne fell silent.

  “What?” Lily asked in the sudden quiet.

  A surge of fear squeezed my heart and my ears sang with the pressure. “Please, Lily. Get Wrothen to sit with her—she’s a dragon, but she’s a good nurse. She’ll take good care of Julianne and if things work out, you’ll never need her help again after tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow? You want to do this tomorrow?”

  “No. Tonight. Please talk to Stymak. I’ll call him, too, but he’s going to say no to me at first. I need you to persuade him. We can do it at whatever time he wants, but it has to be tonight. Please, Lily.”

  She hesitated. “I—I’ll call him. Tonight. All right, I’ll call right away. Oh, dear God, I hope this works. Julianne’s so weak when she isn’t . . . doing things. I’m so scared.”

  “It will work. Call Stymak. Then go to church as soon as some relief comes. I want you to go and pray as sincerely as you know how. If God is going to say anything, now will be the time. Trust me.” It certainly couldn’t hurt to have a god on our side, if he was taking any. Lily believed, and I knew just what the power of a believer could do. Purlis’s belief—as twisted as it was—had brought Limos here in a box. Maybe it could fight her, too. I wasn’t a Christian, but I didn’t think Lily’s god would turn a cold shoulder to her for that. Even if there was no divine intervention, it would help Lily focus and that would help me. Yes, I’m that hard—I would use someone’s religion to my own ends if I had to. I would have prayed myself, if I’d thought anyone was going to listen to me.

  “I . . . I will. All right, I will. I’ll talk to Richard. I’ll be there.”

  “Thank you, Lily. Thank you. I’ll see you there.”

  I didn’t even know where “there” was yet, but I’d be there.

  My next call was to the Sterling house, but I couldn’t get through to Olivia. I would have to go there and see if I could catch her in person.

  I tried the care center Jordan Delamar was in, but the staff told me Levi hadn’t arrived yet. I’d have to make that visit in person, too. Damn it! I needed to get a lot coordinated in a very short time and people weren’t taking my calls. At least I didn’t have to worry about Papa Purlis at the moment, since he was probably still in the hospital for that leg wound and if not, I guessed that Quinton’s continued absence was so he could keep an eye on his frustrating father and make sure he didn’t come after me before he cut out for Europe and whatever he’d have alre
ady put in motion there. For a second I found myself hoping Purlis’s wound wasn’t as bad as it had looked. Then I forced my mind away from it—I couldn’t spare sympathy for my almost-father-in-law right now. I suspected that he was much like the proverbial cat that always landed on its feet one way or another. I still didn’t like him and I wished he were long gone without dragging Quinton along for the crash, but that was another thing I’d have to worry about later.

  I tucked Chaos into her cage with fresh food and water—I wasn’t sure when I’d be home and I didn’t want her to breed too much of her namesake while I was gone. I checked and reloaded my gun and headed out the door.

  I drove to the Sterling house first, thinking it was going to be harder to catch up to a high school kid on summer break than it would be to find Levi Westman. The neighborhood was busier than it had been before. I saw quite a few families loading ice chests and folding chairs into SUVs and minivans, and there was a surfeit of small humans dashing around on lawns and sidewalks.

  As I walked up the driveway to the Sterling house with its tarped-over construction, someone in the street let off one of those annoyingly loud whistling fireworks. I turned around to find the culprit and discovered a smiling young man coming up the driveway behind me, flipping a Zippo lighter open and closed in his hand.

  He was as blond as Olivia Sterling, but his face was plumper and less prematurely aged with worry. Which is not to say he wasn’t slim; he had the slender, flexible look of an athlete and the confident stride to go with it.

  “Hey there,” he said as he closed with me. “You here for Olivia?”

  I was startled, but played along. “Yeah. Is she in?”

  “Yep. She’s probably still trying to get out from under Mom’s clucking like a hen, but she’s ready to go. When are you going to bring her back?”