"No. I'm not even very good at dating," I admitted.
"Many of us aren't. We see too much, and it's difficult to dissemble all the time."
For a moment, I could imagine the look that must have been on Will's face when I called him from the police station. "Yeah," I replied.
We both sipped wine and I decided to wade in with both feet. "Why do you glow?" I asked.
"Do I? It's a glamour, I suppose. A habit. I was a spotty, gawky child, and though Ben is always at telling me I'm lovely, it's hard to get over the idea that I'm not just as awful now as I was then. You know how that is, I'm sure."
I nodded. "Oh, yes. I was fat."
She gave me a sober look, then grinned. "Childhood's a bugger, isn't it?"
Mara and I were sitting at the kitchen table, giggling like longtime girlfriends at a sleepover by the time Ben got home. He stuck his head through the kitchen doorway and smiled at us.
"Hi! I see you two are getting on like the famous house on fire."
"Oh, passing fair," said Mara, rising to kiss him. "How were all the budding little linguists?"
"Lugubrious, possibly even mummified."
She tousled his already unruly hair. "Well, go scrub the tomb dust from your hair and dinner will be ready in about fifty minutes, all right?"
"Sehr gut," he said and smooched her before ducking out. We could hear him ascending the stairs.
Mara and I drank more wine and chattered while she finished up the dinner preparations. As her husband descended toward the main floor, she turned to me with a look of concern.
"You'll not say anything to Ben, will you? About my doubts."
I frowned at her. "Of course not. Who am I to break up a marriage over a theory?"
She was still laughing when Ben entered the kitchen.
"What's funny?" he asked, patting himself down. "Did I forget something? Hair sticking up, soap in my ears?"
"No, darlin'. Harper's just very funny, you know. Go pour yourself a glass of this green wine our guest's brought us and have a chat, while I set the table."
Mara whisked out of the kitchen, leaving me alone with her husband. He settled himself at the table and poured wine into a glass. "You two seem to be getting along."
"Mara's lovely."
"That she is. First-class researcher, too. We met over research." He made a goofy grin.
"What sort of research?"
"Mara was doing some geologic studies in a dig out in Ireland that I was also on, doing some ancient religions research. She had some religion questions and I had some questions about ley lines, and we ended up sitting in the pub all night, talking about everything under the sun."
He chuckled. "Sometimes, I'm too much the scientist for Mara's taste." He made a rueful shrug. "I get enthusiastic and bury myself in all the squirrelly little details. Probably can't see the forest for the trees half the time, but she keeps me looking up often enough that I don't go completely into the woods. And speaking of being lost in the woods, how are you doing? Getting any more comfortable with the Grey?"
"Yes and no… there is something I need to ask you—"
Mara came back to the kitchen and we moved the conversation to the dining room.
Once we had food in front of us, Ben prompted me.
"What were you going to ask me?"
"Oh. Why does this seem to be getting worse? More frequent?"
"Well, I think it's kind of like gum on your shoe. Every time you go into the Grey, a bit sort of sticks to you and it keeps on building up."
"But if I'm building up this Grey…. covering, why would the guardian beast-thing attack me sometimes and not others?"
He thought about it, and Mara frowned.
"I'm not certain," Ben replied at last. "Maybe you don't appear to be a threat sometimes."
"I don't see how I could have changed."
"I'm afraid I don't know what triggers acceptance or rejection, but there must be something. There isn't much known about this creature— or creatures. We don't know if it's one thing or a bunch of them. But everyone agrees that it's stupid as a rock. It does its job by a set of rules. So…" He leaned his head back and stared at the ceiling.
Mara glanced at me.
"So maybe," Ben continued, "it has a hierarchy to follow. Bigger apparent threats get its attention and it lets small things go, if it has to. So if something is more foreign or threatening than you, it would chase that instead."
"But if I'm a Greywalker, why would I be foreign at all? What kind of threat do I represent?"
Mara looked at Ben, who was stroking his beard in thought. "I'm wondering…," he started. Then he looked at Mara. "Maybe you're bright, for some reason. If you're still not very comfortable in the Grey, maybe that makes you look more foreign and bright to it. What do you think, Mara? Does Harper glow?"
Mara glanced at me. "I suspect she does."
I gave her a sideways look, but she went on. "So long as you're uneasy in the Grey you'll be creating some disturbance. The beast is like a spider and the Grey is like a web, so if you're thrashing about, you probably attract its attention."
I frowned at her and she made a «sorry» face. My pager went off, jittering against my hip. I glared at it and excused myself to use the phone in the kitchen.
My friend at the SPD had left a message: Cameron's car was about to be impounded from a garage near Pioneer Square. He couldn't hold the call. I had thirty minutes to get there ahead of the tow truck.
Yet another great dinner down the tubes. I went back out to the dining room to excuse myself to the Danzigers.
"Something's come up that can't wait. I seem doomed to miss that pie."
Mara smiled at me. "We'll put some aside for you. If you've finished by ten, come back and join us again. We'll still be up."
I exceeded the speed limit, but the old Rover took the twists and turns of Queen Anne Hill nimbly and roared down the Viaduct to Pioneer Square in ten minutes.
There was no sign of the tow truck when I pulled into the garage. I circled down to the lower level, searching for the dark green Camaro, and spotted it in an isolated, dark corner. There were more cars than I'd expected and I had to go around the ramp looking for a place to park. I ended up farther away than I would have liked and had to walk back up.
As I approached, I noticed two young men moving around near the car. I stopped and looked them over from the shadow of a pillar. Neither of them was Cameron. One was black, the other white. Both looked unkempt and dangerous. The black guy, the slimmer and shorter of the two, was hanging back, crouched, acting as the lookout as the taller, white guy tried jimmying the trunk open with a crowbar. I didn't like the look of it, so I hung back, slipping my hand toward my pistol.
The trunk lid flew up with a sudden jolt and a pallid blur exploded out of the dark hole beneath. With a scream of rage, a pale whirlwind descended on the man with the crowbar. I darted forward, hand closing around the grips of my gun, not quite sure who was in more trouble: the two car breakers or the willowy apparition that had erupted from the trunk.
The taller thief dropped his crowbar with a howl of pain as he was grabbed and flung backward. His smaller companion, darting panicked glances between the sudden assailant and me rushing toward him, snatched up the crowbar and tried to smash it into the skull of his attacker. He connected with a forearm instead.
I heard the bone shatter. The chalky one let out a shriek and doubled over, vanishing under the open trunk lid. I had my gun out and started to bring it up.
The dark-skinned man whirled toward me with the crowbar raised. I put the sights on him and held. His eyes met mine for a nanosecond.
He panted a moment, then flung the crowbar at me and spun away, running like a scalded dog. I ducked and the crowbar hit the cement with a clang that echoed long after the thief had vanished up the ramp. I could have chased after him, but I wanted to get a look at the guy with the broken arm a lot more.