I wondered how he knew about Sergeyev. Had I mentioned him? "I'm not following you. Which client?"
"The one with the Camaro. The vampire."
"Excuse me?" I choked.
"Don't expect me to believe that you didn't know," Quinton said.
"Took me a while to be sure, but you've been in much closer contact with the guy."
"Why would you think Cameron was a vampire?"
"Lots of little signs. The weird eyes, the dirt in the trunk, the weird habits. The fangs. I've seen plenty of them around here. I steer clear of those guys. Even if they like you, you can't really trust them. 'Course, you can't trust most people. But drinking blood and turning on your fellow man is a bit worse than the usual sort of trust-breaker."
I blinked at him. He finished speaking and looked at me in silence a moment. Then he asked, "You do a lot of work for vampires?"
I shook my head. "This is my first."
"Thought so. Be careful. They're a tricky bunch. Magic kind of gives me the willies. It's cool to watch, but it's… disorienting to think about. I prefer electronics, physics, stuff I can grab on to and get a good look at myself." He played with the probes of the meter and gave me a nervous glance. "Watch your step around this stuff, all right? I can fix a lot of things, but curses and that stuff I'm not so good with."
I smiled a little. "I'll be careful."
"Good. And if you need anything, call me. I'll be around."
"Thanks, Quinton. I'll do that. I have to get going, though. I have an appointment."
"That's OK. But hey, don't get killed. You still owe me for the car," he added with a forced grin. He packed up his things and took off.
I locked up and walked down to meet Mara.
We drove east toward Lake Washington and found the Madison Forrest House Museum. We pulled into a graveled lot nearby. Mara sat for a moment behind the wheel and looked at the house with a puzzled expression.
We got out of the car in silence and walked. I had no idea who Madison Forrest had been or why his house had become a historic building and museum, but it was an impressive pile. The foundation and ground floor were built of fitted stone. The second floor and the high, pointing gables were all native cedar. Lots of glass windows shone under the wooden overhangs and must have cost a fortune when the house was built. Four gas lamps, now converted to electricity, bracketed the path from the open iron gate to the front doors. Like the Danzigers' house, it glowed, but the glow wasn't so friendly.
Mara stopped and looked at the ground. "I didn't realize there was a nexus of this size on this side of the lake. It's just a bit off the property, about… here, in the street." She stepped out a few feet from the curb. "And I can't even draw on it standing right on top of it. I'm not at all sure there isn't something rather unpleasant going on here. Maybe even the power blockage. Take a look at it sideways, like I taught you. Tell me what you see."
I peered at it from the corner of my eye. The off-color glow of the house seemed to start under her feet, like a fog that wafted toward the house. "It looks… sick to me."
"Funny way to describe it."
I shrugged and tried not to look anymore.
We walked up the path to the massive, carved cedar doors. Mara and I paid the entrance fee and began to wander around. After a while, we found the upstairs parlor and the organ. It was hideous: six feet of tortured wood flecked with ivory, bone, and gilt and upholstered with garish red fabric panels, all of it wrapped in a sucking web of black and red energy I couldn't avoid seeing. I stayed well back from the instrument, feeling ill and threatened.
"Is this it?" Mara asked, staring at it with horrified fascination.
"I think so." I got the description sheet out of my bag and com-pared it as best I could from my distance. It seemed an exact match.
"Oh, my," she breathed. "It's dreadful, isn't it?"
"It's pretty terrible," I agreed, feeling pain and nausea growing in my belly as a familiar anxiety began to rattle on my vertebrae. I closed my eyes, but the sense of the coiling horror in front of me didn't go away.
"No, I mean it's full of dread, though it's terrible, too. It's horrific, really. It gives me the wailing creepies just looking at it."
"What do you think of it?" I asked.
"Interesting." She made a glittering gesture and threw it at the organ. It dissolved as it hit the writhing mass of Grey. "Swallowed it… Very interesting, indeed. I think I've seen enough, what about you?"
I circled a little closer to the thing, like a wary cat, getting a better look at its shape, both physical and paranormal, while trying to keep my distance. It was impossible for me to ignore the warped, twined normal and Grey that had tangled around it, though I couldn't imagine what had caused their knotting up. Sympathetic knots tied up my nerves and muscles with pain, disgust, and despair.
"I've had enough," I gasped, backing off. "Let's get out of here." Mara looked at me and saw my distress. She put an arm around me, which seemed to help. We hurried back to her car and sat in the front seats, staring back at the Madison Forrest House with combined horror.
Mara shook her head. "There's an incredible amount of energy flowing round that thing, but none of it seems to be going anywhere. That must be the source of the blockage. And it's so… dark. I've never seen an artifact that was dark like that one before. Of course, I've rarely dealt with them, so I'm no expert." "Artifact? I don't understand."
She turned to me. "It's a dark artifact. That's an object that's acquired an energy aura. They store some of the energy, and if you know what you're at, you can use it—directly or indirectly, depending on your skill and the object. You can tell a great deal about the object and what's happened to it by looking at the color, size, and activity of the energy corona around it. 'Dark' is usually a misnomer.
"But that one is dark in fact. Means there's been something rather nasty associated with it for a long time. Bleak things, grim doings. Dreadful, as I said."
I sighed. "And my client wants it. He claims it's a family heirloom, but having seen it—and him—I'm starting to wonder."
"He must be a rather unusual person."
"I don't know if he's a human being. He's… Grey, but I don't know what. Not a vampire, though."
"That would explain why signs point to you. I don't like the idea of a thing like that on the loose with someone Grey. Why does he want it? I mean really?"
"It's certainly no sentimental heirloom. I have a bad feeling there's a purpose for that thing."
Mara thought a moment. "We'll have to do something about it, if for no other reason than that it's blocking magic that could be useful other places." She wrinkled her brow and toyed with the steering wheel. "If we could discover why it's a dark artifact, we might be able to figure out what to do about it. I don't usually care for them, but a necromancer would be useful here."
"What? Why?"
"A necromancer manipulates magic through the auspices of death."
"Hang on. They kill things?"
"Not necessarily, though a large number of their rituals can only be effective in the presence of death, and the easiest way to get that is to kill some sacrificial animal. When I say death, I mean not just dead bodies or something of that ilk, but the change in the power state that happens when someone or something dies. Y'see, the force, or energy, of a living thing becomes free at the moment of death—it's one of the things which causes ghosts, too. The right kind of magical attractor in the immediate area can capture the energy, and a great deal of energy and information are available for a little while to anyone who can manipulate that attractor. It's terribly dangerous stuff, though, to those who can touch it at all. Many of us feel it, but necromancers are among the few who can use it. The necromancer exchanges some of his own life-force energy for control of the new energy source, so long as it lasts—giving up life for the knowledge and power of death, for a time."