“Hey, gorgeous.”
I tried not to sound like the ball of nerves that I was. “Hey, yourself. How’s your dad?”
“Apparently he’ll live. What’s up at your end?”
“Oh, you know: Carlos and I get to hold an emergency meeting with the families this evening at my office. I’m there now rearranging things. I don’t have room for the computer so I’m probably going to move it”—I paused, worried that Purlis’s minions might be listening in—“to that other storage unit we visited, just to keep it from being smashed to hell and gone if anything goes awry.”
“Sounds like a pain in the ass. Why your office?”
“I couldn’t think of any other place close enough to the waterfront that we could secure on such short notice. Major holiday and all that jazz.”
“Cameron couldn’t have come up with something?”
I stopped. “I actually hadn’t thought of that. But I’m not sure I’d want to do this in any space that was not really under my control, if you follow my thinking.”
“Yeah, it’s probably best to avoid the entanglements of other people’s agendas.”
“I’m thinking the same thing. Anyhow . . . no one’s trying to kill me today, so this might be easier than I think.”
Quinton laughed. “Don’t be too sure. Do you think you can get any help from Solis with the waterfront problem?”
“No. The only thing I could ask would be that he shut down the Great Wheel, but unless there’s a bomb threat, that’s not going to fly. Not today. And one thing I won’t do is call in a false report—that’s just a little too much since I know I couldn’t dodge it and I’d lose my license at best. Or end up in jail. And then how could I run away with you to Europe?”
He paused, his silence weighty in spite of my teasing tone. “Would you do that?”
“What? Call in the report anyway? No.”
“I meant would you follow me to Europe?”
I scowled at the phone. “Follow? Hell no. I’d be right beside you all the way. You’re—” I found myself without the right word. “Everything” seemed a bit heavy and “mine” too possessive, but both were true.
The silence hung there, stretching, until he said, “Yeah. I feel the same way about you.”
My heart bumped around unevenly in my chest, knocking on my ribs and blundering into my throat.
“Do you want me there . . . tonight?” he asked.
I struggled with it, but I said, “Want and need aren’t the same. I always want you with me. But tonight I think you need to be somewhere else, don’t you?”
He was quiet for a second, then said, “Following the family footsteps—at a discreet distance. But it’s not what I want.”
“I know.”
“I love you,” he said.
“I love you, too,” I whispered back, the phone going silent as he dropped the connection.
I finished up at the office—I even dusted and swept up to make the evening a bit less of a sneezing fest. I’m not much of a housekeeper normally, so the pall of dust I’d raised by my rearrangements was significant and as hard to lay as a recalcitrant revenant. Also, I just needed to be doing something. Traffic was getting kind of crazy as more and more people flooded the area for the fireworks and other entertainments. I was lucky to have a parking space nearby, but it was still nerve-tearingly slow to move on the streets.
I wanted to scream at everyone I saw heading for the waterfront to go away, far away from the Great Wheel and everything close to it. I wanted to warn them but I knew it was futile and at best I’d get arrested, so I shut my mouth and ground my teeth. Finally I fetched Limos’s shrine and tucked it into a corner of the cleaned office, near the door where I was most likely to be able to use it.
I stopped long enough to bolt down some food and noticed it was nearly eight already. I had to scamper back to my building to get there before Goss and Stymak arrived.
Stymak glared at me when Lily brought him upstairs. “This is all your idea, isn’t it?” he said.
“Not entirely, but I think once I explain it you’ll agree that it’s necessary and you’re the only medium I can trust to do it right.”
I waved him and Goss to the client chairs and stuffed down my own impatience and nerves. I didn’t want to frighten them with some of the more gruesome and specific details of what might happen, so I kept my instructions and descriptions deceptively bland as I told them what we needed to do and why and what part I—and Carlos—would play. Stymak wasn’t much mollified.
“I don’t like your friend. He has a very ugly vibe.”
“I’m aware of that and I’m sorry, but you won’t have to touch him. He won’t even be in the circle. He’s mostly helping me with what I need to do. The only people you’ll have actual contact with are Lily here, and the representatives of the other two patients. They’ll be here about nine, so we need to get any setup done before then so we can get to work as soon as they arrive.”
“It’s not that easy with . . . civilians,” Stymak said, giving Lily a contrite glance.
She shrugged it off. “You mean nonpsychics? We’re not as useless as you think.”
“I don’t mean that. I just mean it’s not easy to get into the right state of mind if you haven’t practiced. And this is going to require a very clear initial state or we might not get anywhere—or not fast enough to . . . do what Harper wants to do.”
Goss made a face at Stymak. “I know how to clear my mind to listen to God. I think the others will know what that’s like by now, since we’ve all had to live with this . . . stress. I think you’re underestimating our willingness and ability, Richard.”
Stymak nibbled his lower lip. “I don’t know. . . .”
She put her hand over his. “Trust, Richard. That’s the first thing God asks of us. That’s the only thing you need to do.” She smiled at him. “It’ll be fine.” She kept his gaze in hers for a moment longer, still smiling gently. I guess she saw what she wanted eventually, because her smile broadened and she patted his hand. Then she stood up. “Then let’s get to it.”
I thought I had just caught a glimpse of what Lillian Goss had been like before her sister’s illness, before she became thin and nervous and somewhat lost.
Stymak apparently couldn’t ignore her charm. He got up, too, said, “OK,” and looked around. “I don’t think we can work with the desk, but maybe the typing table, if that’s all right with you, Harper. We’ll have to move the desk and other stuff aside.”
I was tired and I found it ironic that I’d already moved it all, but I had no real issue with moving the furniture yet again. We quickly rearranged the room to Stymak’s satisfaction, although we had to bring in one more folding chair and put my work chair out in the truck—we didn’t want anyone to end up sliding out of the circle if the chair rolled under the pressure of ghosts.
I returned from locking up the chair and met a nervous Levi Westman in the lobby. He looked almost ready to bolt until I put my hand on his shoulder like a friend I was pleased to see and said hello, leading him up the stairs to my office.
“Are you all right?” I asked as we went up.
“Fine. No. Scared. Worried. I’m not fine, but I’m not . . . not-fine, if you know what I mean.”
“It’ll be OK,” I said, opening the door to my office.
When he saw Lily looking solid and calm and Stymak looking slightly nerdy and very unthreatening, he relaxed, the color flooding up higher in his aura, which had closed so tight to his body I’d barely been able to see it.
They were standing and chatting quietly, comparing horror stories of what their loved ones had undergone, when Olivia clattered up the stairs.
She was limping a bit and I could tell her foot hurt, but she looked windblown and red-cheeked—happy and livelier than I’d seen her before. Her quick smile convinced me I wasn’t doing the dumbest thing in the world—not if it freed her to wear that look of hope and happiness afterward.
Now we just needed Car
los. . . .
I don’t know why vampires don’t or can’t go out in daylight—I’ve never asked and I’ve never discovered the answer on my own, but I’ve never known a full vampire to be active before sundown or after sunrise. Yet, the sky was only barely black when Carlos arrived and I wondered if I’d just gotten lucky and he’d been sleeping nearby or if he had some strange magical way of moving that I didn’t know about. The rest of the group didn’t seem bothered by his sudden, silent appearance, but Stymak recoiled and made sure he was as far from the vampire as possible. The rest stared and seemed to sway toward him—pulled by the sexual charm that vampires exude to cover their aura of death.
I turned my head and made a disapproving face at him. He returned the barest smile and seemed to dial down the reach and intensity of his glamour.
I hesitated for a moment about introducing him. Names are powerful things, but in this case I wasn’t sure if it was better to have the extra energy or the extra protection. Carlos took the decision for himself and inclined his head slightly, almost like a bow, saying, “I’m Carlos. I’ll remain outside the circle with Blaine. We should begin, now that we’re all here, yes?” he added, glancing at Stymak, but keeping the contact short.
Stymak nodded, shaking with nerves, and started directing the other three to sit so the small typing table was in the center of their circle, though it barely had room for his equipment.
“We’ll have to hold hands around the table, but it’s OK if your hands are resting on the chair arms instead—this tabletop’s kind of small,” Stymak explained. He glanced at me. “The electric lamp died. . . . Are you OK with a candle? Otherwise we’ll have to do this in total darkness.”
“A candle’s fine,” I said. I supposed it was possible the typing desk could be set aflame, but I’d live with the risk. One candle was unlikely to catch the whole building on fire even at the worst and the small flame would help the rest of them focus.
He set a squat white candle in the middle of the table and lit the wick. When he was satisfied that it was properly alight, he asked me to turn off the lights, leaving the area illuminated only by the candle’s flame and the pale diffusion of distant neon through my window. The scent of vanilla drifted into the room. I felt a weak charge in the air and glanced sideways into the Grey, noting a thin, soft mist rising from the floor near where Carlos stood and spreading quietly, mingling a slight flower smell, like fields of chamomile in the sun, with the candle’s sweet smoke. Without any direction to do so, the four people seated at the table fell silent, no longer wiggling in their chairs or shuffling their feet as their breathing slowed and they stared into the tiny flame of the candle. I caught myself smiling at Carlos’s subtle aid in spite of the precarious situation. He’d never bothered with such charms when working strictly with me, but I supposed he never felt the need.
They began, again, with a prayer and no one objected, letting the final “amen” fade into the dark as they settled themselves to the task at hand. At first, Stymak just sat still, letting the silence pool and deepen, but as I inched closer to the Grey, keeping watch on both worlds, I noticed that he, too, was adding energy to the room, his cloudy white aura expanding as before, white light seeking outward, while the misty element curved around the room’s perimeters, creating a bubble around the séance. All the living people in the room but me appeared enclosed in gossamer webs of color that knitted into one another and wove with the white mist of Stymak’s energy. A few illegal fireworks went off outside, making the calm surface of the enchanted sphere shiver, but it didn’t break. In the distance of the Grey I heard the rattle of the Guardian Beast, prowling the edges of the world between worlds, but keeping its distance, as it had since the beginning. I wondered for a moment if it would close in if things became dire, but the thought was chased away as Stymak began to speak, his voice low this time but strumming on the threads of the Grey.
“We call on the presence of our loved ones who are lost, but not passed beyond, on the spirits that have come to us through them. We call on you to attend and help us restore order and peace. We call on those who have gathered these spirits against their will. We call on you, Linda Hazzard, and upon the hunger you have brought. We call you to come to us, to bend to our will. Come to our circle.”
The floor buzzed and the vibration grew, the walls singing with a tumult of ghosts. The air around the circle grew brighter and thicker, filling with faces of shadow and mist. Among the host, three were brighter and more colorful than the rest, though one flickered and fought to stay alight—the living souls of the three patients. In the rising sound I heard sighing and sobbing, and the howl of a wolf closing in, stalking toward us.
In the Grey distance I could see it coming, loping nearer on its skeletal legs, jaws agape and full of sharp teeth, the shape of Linda Hazzard dragged with it like a cloak trailing across dirty snow. With a roar, it leapt over the edges of the circle, tearing a hole in the protective dome, and the ghosts around the circle cried out.
The four people at the table gasped in unison, shuddering as the wolf landed on the table, raveling upward into the cloaking form of Linda Hazzard, her face as sharp as ice shards pulled from the mist of the Grey. At the edge of my vision I could see the red-hearted darkness that was Carlos reach out and tangle its own slim thread, unnoticed, around the trailing gleam of Hazzard and Limos where they had broken through the circle.
“Why do you call me here again, pest?” the ghost of Linda Hazzard demanded as the slavering jaws of the Limos wolf moved under the mist-skin of her discorporate face.
“We ask you to release the souls of our loved ones to return to their fleshly homes,” Stymak said, his voice still soft, but not pleading.
The ghost and its dread mistress laughed, letting out a howl and the chatter of teeth. “After tonight we shall have no further use for them.”
“But we do and we will not allow you to use them. Release them now, as we speak.”
“Paltry man, I have no use for you and your petty demands. You cannot hold me and I have much to do.”
The combined shapes of Hazzard and Limos turned to go back through the hole by which they had entered, but as the creature leapt up, the scent of chamomile shifted to the smell of burning hair and the void slammed shut with a grille of gleaming blackness. The wolf-thing continued through, striking sparks from the contact as if Carlos’s magic tore into its energy, but the ghost of Linda Hazzard remained imprisoned in the bright bubble of Stymak’s talent.
“No!” Hazzard shrieked as the two entities separated with a short spark of energy arcing and then blinking out between them.
The wolf form bounded away, snarling. The white light around the circle wavered, the colors of the sitters’ auras separating and flushing with panicked shades of yellow and green as the ghosts around them suddenly wrenched sideways and began flowing after Limos as if drawn with her like a ribbon through a keyhole.
Carlos pushed harder on the black energy reinforcing the enclosure of light. “Hold hard,” he muttered. “Don’t let her escape.” He turned his head toward me—a blackness denser than the rest—and said, “I hold dominion over the dead, but not gods. Pursue Limos.” Only Hazzard and the three bright flames of the living souls remained in the circle.
“Stymak, keep that ghost here!” I shouted, snatching up the shrine and turning to fling open my office door.
Stymak was pale and the candle on the table was flaring upward impossibly high, nearly scorching the ceiling as the wax sputtered and flowed like water. He wouldn’t have long to hold Hazzard and his knuckles had gone white as he clutched the hands of Lily on one side and Olivia on the other.
“Hold them,” he whispered to the circle. “Hold on to them and don’t let them go.”
I rushed toward the Grey to chase Limos as the colors of the circle struggled to close again, gathering around the three bright shapes that remained behind as the goddess of famine dashed away with the rest of the ghosts—her tribute—in her drooling jaws. Hazz
ard, trapped in the circle, dwindled to a thin spark, screaming for rescue.
I dove deeper in the Grey, clutching the shrine to my chest. It felt unusually solid, whereas most normal-world things became as hard to hold as smoke. The Limos wolf rushed toward the waterfront and the hot energy clouds of thousands of revelers, pushing her vanguard of ghosts in front of her now.
The wedge of spirits tore through the mist and light of Grey Seattle, shoving the brightness of living things aside like chaff before wind. The bright shapes fell and rolled and I could not pause to help them or even to confirm that they were people, bowled over by the ravenous force bearing down on the brilliant wheel of dangling soul fire over the blackness of cold water. I was falling behind, relying on my human speed in the Grey while she had no such limits. She was Hunger and moved like a prairie fire.
I concentrated on the Guardian Beast’s distant rattle of spines and shouted to it, “Now would be the time, you useless collection of bones! Come and help me catch this bitch or I’ll wash my hands of you and your stinking job forever.” Not that I could but I’d certainly want to after this. Ugly as it was, I had to rely on the friends and family that I had and the Guardian Beast qualified as much as anything.
It had never answered me before, never come when I wanted or needed it, but this time it let out a roar like a train wreck and swept through the silver mist world toward me, a wave of force and power that pushed me forward faster than I could run.
We raced toward the Great Wheel, tumbling everything aside before us. . . .
A fireworks shell boomed and a rain of red and blue stars spread over the night sky. Another boom and pink planets ringed in green bands appeared in the air, followed by whistling that erupted into showers of gold. Music poured from distant speakers, eerie and thrilling.
I drew even with Limos, barely keeping upright in the eldritch wind, and snatched at the thin coil of silver that bound the ghosts to her. She growled and snapped at me, cutting a gouge in my left forearm.
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