Poltergeist (25 page)

I put my hands up in resignation. "I quit.”

"Oh, you can't!" the Danzigers objected.

"Not forever, just for now. My brain aches trying to bend around this and the rest of me feels like I've just danced back-to-back performances of
Swan
Lake
in combat boots. This must be what you guys feel like after a day with Brian in full rhino mode.”

"Oh," said Ben, running a hand through his curly black hair in sympathy until it stood up in crackling peaks.

Mara laughed, but whether at me or her husband wasn't clear. "Don't vex yourself over it. My own poor brain's a bit soggy with it right now. Think on it and it'll come," she added with a sudden yawn. "Oh, my. Surely it's not so late as that?”

"It's almost nine," Ben said.

"Cha! It can't be." She looked at the clock on the mantel. "Oh, it is. I've still got papers to grade!" She jumped up and flung affectionate arms around me. "Forgive the rush, Harper. Must retire to sling stones at my students' essays on sedimentary structures. Most of them can't seem to tell sandstone from cement, much less describe it.”

Mara rushed off, leaving me with Ben.

"You're welcome to stay as long as you like," he offered.

"I should get back.”

"Home, I hope.”

I nodded. "Soon.”

But once I was back in my truck, I sat and let my head droop. I knew I had earned my fatigue that day, but the drag had started before Wednesday's séance. I'd said nothing to the Danzigers, since I knew they would insist my own safety should come first, but unpleasant implications had come through to me. I'd caught the strand of the poltergeist early on, but the connection seemed to have become stronger on Sunday when I floundered through it in full flood. I'd been feeding it energy ever since without knowing—and in spite of Carlos's statement, I wasn't sure I hadn't contributed more than a coincidental strand to the power that had killed Mark. I couldn't let this feeding go on, but I couldn't pinch off the only handle I had on the thing.

I needed to gain the ability to stalk the poltergeist, but Mara's technique hadn't worked for me; it was too difficult, tiring, and slow to use in tracking—or evading—Celia's nimble movements through the Grey. The entity had shown enough speed and power to intimidate me. There had to be something I wasn't quite getting and it must have been something simple, since the poltergeist's master had learned it with no prior understanding of the Grey or the power in hand. It seemed to me that whatever that skill was, it was probably related to Greywalking and I'd never learned it. I'd been using so little of what was possible, because there were no other Greywalkers to ask—and I hadn't wanted to know. I was learning everything the hardest, slowest way. I'd overindulged in being stubborn.

Without another Greywalker to ask, the only other source of information was Carlos—whose skills as a necromancer glanced across mine in some obscure way I didn't understand. I wasn't sure he did, either, and the last thing I needed was a vampire mentoring me—and he had a more appropriate protégé already. But I needed help. Any kind of kick in the perspective might be useful.

I drove down to Adult Fantasies and was lucky to find Carlos in the tiny office on the ground floor.

The space was really a storeroom with a desk and chair shoved into a corner. Carlos let me in with a pointed glare that sent icicles tumbling down my spine as my stomach pitched.

I was reluctant to speak under that cloud of disapproval, but I forced the words out. "I have a quandary.”

He growled, keeping his attention directed to some papers on the desk, for which I was grateful. His full attention tended to visit the colder levels of hell on me.

I closed my eyes and started, "I know I've already asked you to help me once, but I need to know more about moving through the Grey. The layers of time—or that's what—" I stopped myself before saying "we." Although Carlos was acquainted with the Danzigers, I didn't want them involved any deeper with Seattle's vampires than they had already been. "Tell me about time.”

He put down his pen and clasped his hands in the pool of light on the blotter. His assessment lay over me like a weight of snow.

"What I know may not help you.”

"It's more than I know." He'd realize soon enough how little information I had, so there was no point in being coy about it.

"Time takes many shapes. You'll have to learn them for yourself. It may be a river or a window, a plain or an impenetrable tor that rises from it.”

"But how do I recognize the shapes? What do I do about them?”

"Past time is hard. It has no wish to bend aside. I don't move in the power. You do. You walk in it, breathe it, swim in it." His eyes blazed and flickered. "For you, I imagine time is like rocks in water and you the fish. Like a fish, you will learn the smell of it, the feel of it in the current.”

My breath was a little fast, as if I'd been jogging, and there was a prickling sensation crawling up my limbs against the chill of his presence. His sudden silence brought a jolt of ice as he studied me from beneath his lowering brows.

"Time is…just shapes. In water," I repeated, turning the thought over and over. A strange inversion of Einstein's ideas about time being a river.

"To you. Yes.”

I got up and left without another word between us.

Now I was puzzled, but no less frustrated. Maybe there was something in what he'd said, but it didn't help me with the immediate problem of Celia. Thinking in dismaying circles, I found myself parking the truck outside my office. Shaking my head, I considered that if my subconscious wanted to wander, I would take the rest of me out for a drink in the thronging weirdness of Pioneer Square. But I wasn't going to do it alone. The historic district was too ghost-riddled for comfort in my current state. I picked up my phone and made a call.

Quinton met me with a hug outside the Owl and Thistle—a noisy Irish pub tucked under a pretentiously Irish stepsister in what used to be a bank on First. How often does a bank go out of business to become a bar? At ten on a Friday night, the little pub was roaring. A "Celtic metal" band—they weren't quite metal, but you couldn't call it folk in spite of the fiddler—contributed to the general clash and thunder of a crowd already drunk on beer and rugby.

Quinton wangled a table in the back near the dartboard and far enough from the band to avoid having any of the people who insisted on dancing in the tiny space land in our drinks. Our conversation was underscored by the thunk of darts and the thock of pool balls as we leaned toward each other to be heard over the wailing of the band covering the Pogues' "Bottle of Smoke.”

I was half down the first pint before it occurred to me I'd had no dinner and we'd just missed the last of the pub grub. "Oh, damn," I muttered.

"What's wrong?" Quinton asked.

"Missed dinner. Oh, well. 'Guinness is good for you,' I guess," I added, pointing at a tin sign nearby that featured a comic toucan eyeing the pair of pints balanced on its prodigious beak.

Quinton laughed, then peered at me. "Hey. Really. What's wrong? You never just call and say 'Buy me a drink.' “

"Are you saying we never just have a drink?”

"No. I'm saying you never insist. It's always 'Hey, let's shoot pool,' or 'Hey, you wanna get a beer?' And I noticed that you don't want to shoot pool tonight and I don't think it's because you stink at it—which you do, but that's never stopped you.”

"You started it," I countered, suddenly awkward about how to continue this conversation. "I never shot pool until I met you.”

"Some people would say you still don't shoot pool. And you don't usually evade questions, either. So…what's the matter? That case for the ego-hound?”

I found myself rolling my eyes without meaning to. "That case…It's not even a case anymore. It's done. I'm paid. I'm out—and I owe you money, I know. But I cannot let this damned thing go. It won't let me go.

"That thing—the ghost they made—it's a serious problem. I've gotten tangled up with it, somehow, and now it's causing me trouble. It's vicious. I believe it killed one of the project members.”

Quinton choked on his stout. "How does a ghost kill someone?”

"The ghost was just the weapon. One of the remaining subjects controls it.”

I backed up and gave him a fast overview of how the poltergeist functioned and what seemed to have caused its jump to a different level of power and autonomy, how it had become cruel and vindictive as one disturbed individual gained control of it, growing even worse since Mark Lupoldi's death.

Quinton grimaced, shaking his head. "That's freaky.”

"It's deadly. Whichever of them controls it killed Mark. I don't think he or she is going to be content to stop now that they know what they can do—and I'm sure the killer knows by now.”

Quinton nodded and rested his elbows on the table as I went on. "The poltergeist's been raising havoc with everyone connected to it, but it doesn't have endless power. I've been thinking about the activity pattern and it appears that the poltergeist burns energy every time it does anything. If it's been doing a lot—like flinging tables around and breaking people's ribs—it seems to deplete its energy and have to wait for it to recharge a little. That's what it's doing right now. Once the power is at peak, someone else is going to die and this thing will pull on the energy of everyone that feeds it when it goes after that victim. It draws off me, too, and I almost feel complicit in the harm that's already been done. I feel like I ought to stop it, but it's not my job— it's up to Solis to arrest the killer. But Solis is not going to arrest a ghost. He doesn't think in those terms, but there's no evidence linking the method to the murderer. No clues that he'll accept or that a court would, either. Well, there's Mark's keys, but no one knows where they are. The killer must have them, but how do I or Solis get to them?”

Quinton finished his beer and signaled for another round. "Why do you have to?" he asked, digging in his ever-present backpack for his wallet.

I let the waitress take my glass, then leaned forward again, pushing his wallet back into the bag. "You are not paying to listen to me talk this out. Look, this ghost is not going to fade away. It may get weaker if its collective stops believing in it—or if they're killed—but it has plenty of other power to draw on and its master is a psycho who's already done a lot of harm. This thing is not going to stop. And I don't know anyone else who can go after it but me.

"But I don't know how. I've tried to learn some way to follow it, but I can't figure it out. I don't know what to do when I catch it, or how to catch it in the first place. I seem to be stuck with the job of figuring out who controls the thing—which is the same as solving the crime I'm not even supposed to be investigating—and of convincing Solis of the murderer's identity. The real murderer, not the ghost.”

Quinton made a scoffing noise. "Why? Why are you stuck with doing this job for them? They can't understand that a ghost did it, but why does it matter? So long as it stops.”

"The family of the dead guy might not agree.”

"I'm not callous, but they're not going to buy this story and it's not up to you to sell it. You have to consider your own position first— 'cause you can't help anyone if you're dead. It's already taken potshots at you—those bookends you told me about could have knocked your head off. Whoever controls it is crazy and isn't too good at sharing his toys. Since the thing has another power source, at some point—even if it means weakening the thing a little—the killer is going to start picking off the competition—everyone who has a connection to the poltergeist and everyone who's a threat. When it does, you'll be on that list, and the more trouble you make for the guy, the closer you'll be to the top. So your sense of duty is a little backward here. You need to be free of this ghost and that needs to be done before it does any more harm to anyone. That's the important thing." He paused for more beer, then went on.

"You're fixated on a path to a possible solution, not on solving the problem. You're thinking of saving other people from the monster, not of getting rid of the monster for everyone's sake, including yours. That's what you need to be working for. It seems to me that you'll be able to find this ghost-thing hanging around its controller or its next victims. If you're going to keep it from being used, you need to separate the killer from control of the ghost. Once you've got the controller removed, it'll be easier to break the ghost. It's like unplugging the power before you start messing with the machinery. It may not be perfectly safe, but the other way is a lot worse.

"It's pretty obvious from what we saw on those early recordings that the ghost isn't very clever on its own and doesn't make decisions for itself. It gets a lot of its smarts from the group that contributes to it. If it's cut off from that, it'll get pretty dumb and be a lot easier to take out. If you can keep the controller distracted from the ghost, the ghost won't have that source of smarts or viciousness.”

I stopped him, studying him a moment in amazement. "How do you know this?”

"Just compiling the information and following the logic thread to the end. I don't usually do it out loud, though, so I probably sound like a moron.”

"You sound brilliant.”

He grinned. "I like that. Tell me that again sometime.”

"OK. Now, go on being brilliant a little longer. I think I'm getting this part.”