Poltergeist (Greywalker, Book 2)

by Kat Richardson

“Oh, he can French-kiss a whale for all I care. I’ll tell him the dean ordered it and he can go argue with old baggy-pants himself. That’ll win him all kinds of points.” She cackled. “He is so on thin ice since his last evaluation. He said something snippy to the dean’s wife at the psych association dinner the other night, too, I hear. I am reveling in his imminent downfall.”

  A prime example of a woman scorned. Frankie had never said what Tuckman had done to lose her respect, but it sounded like he was going to regret it.

  We tore the electronics out of the rug, hauled away the couch, and redistributed the chairs to needy rooms. Frankie hauled the monitors and machines out of the observation room and stacked them on the cart. At last we were down to the photos and posters on the wall and Ken’s portrait of Celia. I collected them and put them into a metal trash can.

  “Do you have a cigarette lighter?” I asked.

  “No,” she replied. “That’s a bad habit I don’t have. Besides, you don’t want to burn those here. It’ll set off the smoke alarm. There’s probably some matches in the kitchen, though.”

  We carried the rug and the trash can downstairs to the parking lot. While Frankie wrestled the partially shredded rug into the truck bed, I snooped through the kitchen.

  I returned with a couple of strike-anywhere wooden matches. I picked up the portrait and gave it one last look. It was remarkable how much life Ken had put into the picture. Celia looked vibrant. I set the corner of the portrait on fire, muttering a few words Carlos had written down for me.

  The paper wouldn’t catch fire at first; then flame leapt bright onto the inks and smoked, sending tendrils into the air that were not entirely normal, glimmering with sparks of uncanny light.

  I dropped the page into the can and the fire flared higher, catching on the other papers with a gasping sound. Then something wailed, a high-pitched keening that spiraled upward into pain. A shaft of yellow shot from the burning pages, smoky and tortured, writhing. I recoiled in unpleasant surprise. A figure flickered in the burst of eldritch illumination, screaming in horror and pain, twisted in panic as the flames ate at it—a young blond woman, dressed in a uniform, her hair rolled back off her face. The fire roared and burned red, then subsided, taking the terrible vision with it.

  Frankie gaped at me over the thin curls of subsiding smoke. I thought I looked the same. We both turned away from the trash can. Frankie returned to the building to fetch the equipment cart. I picked up the can and walked to the far side of the parking lot to empty the ashes into a different Dumpster. I carried the can back up to the room.

  Frankie had just picked up the potted plant from the windowsill when I walked in. She brushed past me awkwardly, avoiding my gaze, and went into the hall. I looked around the empty room. Only dust and a faint, fading trail of yellow energy remained. Deeper, I could just glimpse the regular blue and yellow power lines of the grid, subsiding at Nature’s pace into their normal shapes, pulling back from their unwonted displacement.

  Frankie preceded me downstairs with the keys and the potted plant in her hands. Once back in the lot, she started loading the equipment from the cart into the cab of the truck.

  “OK,” she said at last. “I’m going to take the equipment to Tuck’s office and stack it there so he can’t say his data was destroyed. Then I’m going to dump this stuff in a couple different places, right?”

  “Right. At least two, as far apart as possible, more if you can.”

  “Got it.” She started to get up into the truck, then swung back down. “Hey, what was that thing in the fire?”

  I felt an involuntary shiver. “I . . . guess it was Celia.”

  She looked young. “Is she gone, then?”

  “I think she will be soon,” I answered.

  Frankie nodded. “Good. I definitely don’t approve of Stygian nightmares. And hey—I’ll call you and let you know what happens with Tuck, OK?”

  “OK. Be careful, Frankie.”

  “I’m the invincible queen of the coffeepot,” she said, climbing behind the wheel of the borrowed pickup. “I can’t be routed by a hamfisted Narcissus of a psychologist—or his fakey poltergeist. Sterner men than Gartner Tuckman tremble at the thought of my wrath—or they ought to.” She slammed the door and started up the engine. A wave, a manic grin, and she was gone.

  I drove the Rover to two different transfer stations to get rid of the detritus of the séance room. Then I went home and put some ice on my knee and let the ferret out for a romp. Satisfied tiredness settled on me—a pleasant change from the slightly drained and weighted feeling I’d been having since I’d gotten tangled up in Celia.

  It seemed as if the first half of Carlos’s instructions had worked as described. Now I only had to find Ian so Carlos could distract him while I tore apart the remains of the entity.

  I was cozily snuggled into one of the sofas in the Danzigers’ living room a few hours later while Ben lay on the floor in front of the mantel with his feet up in the air. Brian was “flying” by lying on his father’s upraised soles and making whooshing noises, interspersed with giggles.

  Mara came into the room with the stoppered flask in her hands. “I’m sorry. We had to stash it. Brian and Albert have been fascinated with the thing and they’ve been at all sorts of pains to get it. Can’t imagine what they want it for, but I thought it best to move it somewhere secure. It’s been in the old dry sink on the back porch since bedtime with a wallopin’ great spell over the top. Someone”—she cut a glare toward Albert, who was flickering nearby—“was tryin’ to levitate it until I put a stop to that. It’s a good thing we’ll be seein’ the last of it soon. I’m done in by keepin’ these two away from it.”

  “If this goes right, you’ll never see it again,” I said, putting the flask down on the table next to me. The grim substance inside seemed smaller already, simmering with less violence than the day before.

  With the stopper in place, I couldn’t see the connecting threads and count them; I was sure there would be fewer now than a few days ago. I had seen Patricia’s thread crumble away, and the absence of the Stahlqvists at the funeral made me think they, too, had broken their connection to the entity. I had entertained the small hope that the construct would have broken down with the destruction of the séance room, but it hadn’t. It had always been able to operate with as few as four participants and the way it had harassed the individuals the past few days convinced me it no longer needed that critical mass to hold together. Even though the original power line was drifting back to its proper place, the entity was still connected to the grid and to Ian’s control.

  “What are you planning to do about it?” Ben asked.

  “I assume you concocted some plan with Carlos, then,” Mara added.

  “Yeah,” I replied. “It’s already started. I got one of the assistants to help me break down the séance room and spread everything around. When I burned Celia’s portrait, we saw a face in the flames.”

  “That would be the artificial personality—the sort of soul the artist put into it—going. That’s good and bad, though, as it now has no personality of its own, but only what its master lends it.”

  “Which will be as smart and as crazy as he is—and there’s no doubt the guy is smart,” I said. “I’m hoping that he’s getting arrogant, though. He certainly seemed to be. He makes mistakes when he’s feeling cocky.”

  “So it’s definitely one of the young men?” Ben asked.

  “Yeah. Solis said the whole thing revolved around a woman and for a moment I thought that might mean it was one of the women who controlled it, but the person who threw it at me was one of the guys.”

  “So what are you going to do about it? Do the cops know?” Ben grunted as Brian squirmed around.

  “Solis knows who and I’m pretty sure he’s keeping a close eye on the next potential targets—he didn’t say so, but he’d be stupid not to, and Solis is far from stupid. But he’s not going to be looking for the entity and I’m not sure how close the controll
er has to be to use it the way he did on Mark. It’s possible he’d be outside any surveillance area. I think I can track him down, though—he still has a connection to the entity that will tend to point to it, like a compass. Mine does, so I assume his does, too,” I explained. “He’s got to be in one of two places—he likes to be near the victim. He gets a kick out of seeing what he can do. If I take the bottle with Celia in it to both those areas, I should be able to spot his control thread trying to hook up to the entity even through the container—it’s not a perfect trap, after all.”

  “Then what?” Mara asked.

  Albert drifted over to Brian, and the little boy laughed too loudly to speak over.

  “Down now,” he demanded.

  As Ben was settling him back on his feet, I started to answer Mara.

  “Once I’ve found him, Carlos will help me distract Celia’s controller while I dismantle the entity.”

  “Carlos is going to help you? I can’t say I’d fancy another round of workin’ with him myself.”

  Brian took off, chasing after Albert and making his rhino roar.

  “I’m not expecting to enjoy it, either,” I replied, “but he can’t take out the entity—it’s never been alive, so it’s never died. That means he can’t get a handle on it, unless someone else attached to it dies or we kill something, and I think that would be a bad idea. Mark didn’t hang around to leave a convenient connection. According to Carlos, his life was snuffed out so fast there was very little residue. He’s told me how to take the thing apart in the Grey. I seem to be the only person with the right skills for the job. What I need from you is a charm that will stick the ghost in one spot for a while.”

  Ben followed his son out into the hall.

  “A tangle,” said Mara.

  “What?”

  “There are several ways to bind something, but most are spells you cast on the person or thing. A tangle’s a portable sort of charm—rather like flypaper. Where you drop it becomes sticky for a while.”

  “That’s it,” I said. “How do I get it to work?”

  “In this case, you’ll want to create a time loop with the tangle, to hold the ghost a while, so you’ll have to be dropping the tangle on a repeater ghost to create the trap and then pouring your poltergeist onto that time loop. That loop’s like a bear trap—as soon as your poltergeist enters the loop, it’ll grab on to it and hold it still in time until the energy of the ghost is dissipated, or burns through the loop.”

  “How long is that?”

  “Usually an hour or so—depends on the strength of the ghost and the tangle. I’ll make a good one, though.”

  “How long will it take to make it?”

  “A few minutes. I’ll have to go fetch some cuttings from the garden. I’ll nip out. You keep your feet up—that knee still looks a mite tetchy.”

  I snorted. “I’ll stay put—I’m conserving my pain threshold for later.”

  She laughed a single whoop and left me alone in the living room.

  For a few minutes, all was calm, wrapped in the protective spells of the house. I took several long, slow breaths, letting tension flow away on the exhale. I closed my eyes for a moment. Which was a mistake.

  Shouting a “Graaaaahh!” the rhino-boy galloped into the room with Albert right behind. Ben was several feet farther back.

  Albert circled Brian, who tucked his head down and charged.

  Albert wafted backward into the end table by my elbow.

  Brian rammed his head against the polished blond oak.

  The table rocked.

  I swung my arm to grab . . .

  the bottle . . .

  fell . . .

  crashed . . .

  smashed.

  A storm of mirrored glass whirled into the air with a shriek that shook the house. Hot yellow and bloodred, the entity gathered itself and sped toward the door.

  Brian dropped to the floor with a yowl.

  Mara rushed in holding a small circle of greenery in her hand and stopped, wide-eyed, in the doorway, looking back and forth between the shattered glass in which her son had plopped himself and the blazing shape that roared past her.

  I jumped up and started after the entity, my knee throbbing in protest of the sudden movement. I made it to the sidewalk before I lost all sight of the entity.

  “Goddamn it!” I spat.

  The thin yellow strand of energy that linked me to the entity sprang taut, pointing southeast. Toward Chinatown.

  I dashed back into the house, grabbing for my bag and jacket.

  “I have to follow it!”

  Mara shoved the little circlet of plant material into my hands. “It’s not as good as I’d like—it’ll only last about half an hour—but it’ll do. Be careful of the thorns.”

  But it was too late; they’d already pierced into my palm. I shoved the ring of blackberry vine into my coat pocket and whirled to pursue the ghost that wasn’t a ghost to Chinatown.

  THIRTY-TWO

  I had parked the Rover on Jackson and started on foot into the real heart of Chinatown. The thin yellow strand in front of me pointed mostly south and a bit east. I came down Maynard, past the red-and-yellow painted front of the Wing Luke Asian Museum, to Hing Hay Park on the corner of King Street.

  This short stretch of King, from the railroad terminals at Fourth to the current freeway overpass that soared over the remains of Ninth, was the place the Chinese had resettled after the Seattle Fire and the end of the Exclusion Act. The whole stretch of buildings ahead and to the east had been built by Chinese businessmen between 1890 and 1930. I paused a moment to get my bearings and watched a troupe of kids—black, brown, and yellow, wearing Halloween masks—playing on the wet, rust-colored bricks of the park, ducking in and out of the red-pillared pavilion, to the annoyance of a couple of old men playing checkers on the stone tables inside. I heard the kids whoop and chatter, skipping away as the men waved impatient hands at them. Teenagers and young men grown too old too fast gathered in clutches around the benches and stone tables at the edge of the park, talking trash in half a dozen languages.

  The stores and restaurants—shabby, but proud—were busy with the Sunday dim sum crowd. Visiting Caucasians goggled along the streets, standing out, pale in the mixed throng, to the China Gate, Four Seas, Sun Ya; ducked into Pink Godzilla for Japanese video games; carried tinted bakery boxes or bags from Uwajimaya and the Kinokuniya bookstore bulging with imported food and manga, or clever bribes for the evening’s invasion of trick-or-treaters. The odor of food and fortune cookies, garbage and wet asphalt mingled with the sounds of Sunday chatter and random music in snatches from every opening door.

  I checked the compasslike thread of Grey.

  Ana and her parents lived a block to the southwest, as the crow flies, but the thin strand of yellow pointed southeast. I went east along King and stopped again on the next corner.

  Now the strand looped around and pointed back toward Maynard. I turned, looking up and down the street. I spotted a narrow alley behind an apartment building. A sign at the mouth of the alley on the south side of King directed traffic to an aquarium and pet store. CHILDREN WELCOME it declared.

  I started to stroll across the street against the light and drew up short as a blue and white SPD patrol car rolled around the corner from Maynard. I watched the car come toward me, then turn south again onto Seventh, its occupants looking intense and stern.

  I crossed the street and strolled back toward the alley, pausing again at the door to an import store beside the pet store sign. I pretended to read the sign on the door as I checked the yellow strand again.

  Due south. Ian was down the alley somewhere. I poked my head around the corner. The alley was only half the length of the block on the west side, the far end being a parking lot for one of the restaurants. Only a few back doors opened on the rest. It seemed an unlikely place for a pet store.

  I started down the alley. It was just wide enough for a delivery truck to get down and I could see a gouge
high up in the green-painted tile on my left from where one hadn’t been careful enough. A gold carp wind sock fluttered over the door to the pet shop, flicking a desultory tail over the alley with each gust of food-scented breeze. Silvery shades of Grey flickered in the shadows of padlocked doorways as I walked toward the fish.

  From the green wall on my left, a deep doorway with once-impressive double doors—secured with a rusty chain and aging padlock—and a rank of glass brick gave up an unpleasant gleam in shadow. I walked past and entered the pet store.

  Pretending interest in a tank of goldfish, I looked down at the Grey tether around my neck. It pointed back toward whatever lay behind those chained doors. I started to sink toward it and felt a ghastly wash of emotions and deadly cold.

  “Can I help you?”

  I jerked back from the repulsive sensation and turned to face the man behind me. He was slender, about fifty-five to sixty, and wore a faded green bib apron over his clothes. Thick, unfashionable glasses magnified his eyes so he seemed to stare through me.

  “I’m just looking,” I said.

  He inclined his head. “Well, we have lots of fish, lots of aquarium equipment, if you like. I have some new goldfish in the back, some little birds, too. Do you keep fish?”

  “No. I have a ferret. I’m afraid she’d eat them.”

  “Oh, yes. Curious and hungry. That’s the ferret.” He started to walk deeper into the narrow little shop, into a half-gloom lit by the glow of the fish tank lights.

  I followed him.

  “How long has this shop been here?” I asked. “Looks like it’s been here forever.”

  “Oh . . . almost thirty years. Fish and birds are good pets for apartments. Fish are very beautiful.” He stopped beside a tank full of brilliantly spotted fish with bulbous bodies and bulging eyes, trailing long fins that floated in the water like the garments of drowned women.

  I stopped to admire them. Or try to. They floated, serene, then swam in sudden, wiggling bursts: startled fishy geishas flouncing their kimonos. The sign beside them read VEILTAIL DEMEKIN. They were very expensive.