I would have asked what was going on or where in Seattle he was, but I could tell he didn’t have time for that. “What is the name and business address of Will’s friend here who breaks down antique houses?”
“Breaks—? Oh. Charlie Rice. Rice House Antiques—it’s under the viaduct on Alaskan Way. Not the aquarium end of the row, but the ferry dock end. Big warehouse space. Look for a red London phone box on the loading dock.”
Something hard crashed against something made of wood and the background noise rose again. “Gotta go!” Michael shouted and cut the connection. I blinked at the ground in a fog of sudden disquiet while a bitter sensation curdled my stomach. Something was askew with Michael and Will. . . .
As I worried that thought, Quinton dug a small device out of his pocket and detached the clinging ferret, which he handed to me. Chaos wriggled into my shirt and went back to sleep, while Quinton flipped the little box open and turned it on: some kind of tiny palmtop computer.
“OK, what did you get?” he asked, poised to type on the miniature keyboard. I told him, and he had the address and map location in seconds. “Should we just go, or should we call first?”
“We?” I asked. It didn’t sound like a dangerous trip, but I was feeling off-kilter and wasn’t sure I should drag anyone else deeper into this mess if I could avoid it.
“You, me: intrepid investigator and faithful sidekick—who still has the keys to the truck.”
“Ah. Well, in person is usually better.”
“Then we’d better pack our stuff into the Rover, just in case there’s a hot lead to follow up.”
I pointed at the ferret in my shirt. “What about the furry knee sock?”
Quinton and I both looked toward Mara. She shrugged. “Another day or two with the weasel won’t hurt us. Brian’s too taken with the dog to bother her much and she hasn’t been any trouble. Except for the smell and stealin’ shoes.”
“Wait until she notices the key chains and cell phones,” Quinton said.
It took us longer than expected to get things into the Rover and clear off since we had to scout for any remaining friends of Goodall’s and any new spells that might have been laid. We got down to the waterfront near Rice House Antiques about forty minutes later.
The building was an aging brick warehouse a block from the seawall and just at the edge of the tourist zone. I’d been there back when I was more active in hunting up interesting old things for my place, but the average size of the inventory items—from carved entryways and massive chandeliers to whole fieldstone fireplaces—was too large for me and I’d taken the place out of my mental directory. The loading area under the viaduct faced the old, disused municipal dock that lay just south of the ferry terminal across the double row of city parking under the elevated roadbed. Rumor had it the old stacked highway was going to be replaced with a tunnel someday, but so far, the crumbling concrete structure was still in place and still dropping bits of cement and road dirt at irregular intervals. The location had a lonely feel, despite traffic near enough to see; even the glow of the grid seemed a bit tired here.
Rice House Antiques was painted once-cheery yellow and green that made it look like a faded and forgotten carnival building. An old red British phone box stood on the loading ramp, adding another splash of aging color to the frontage. Quinton and I left the Rover in a parking space beside the loading ramp and walked up. Being nearly noon on a Saturday, the business was open—literally. One of the two huge freight doors was rolled all the way up to expose some of the treasures inside. But of customers, there wasn’t a sign.
Once inside the door, we could hear someone talking and moving around near the back of the shop, but the words were indistinct, muffled by racks full of carved doors and leaded windows between the massive pieces of architectural whimsy. Failing to see anyone else, I headed for the sound. Quinton trailed a bit, staring at the odd collection.
I came around a corner to a room that was built of antique half-glass doors—they looked a lot like the door to my own office—and could see someone moving around inside beyond the frosted glass, between hazy shapes that stood here and there inside. “All right, all right . . . it’s got to be here. . . .” It was a masculine voice, but not one I recognized. Elderly and quavering.
I rapped lightly on one of the doors that seemed most likely to be functional and not just nailed in place. The man inside scuffled around and pulled the door open.
He was stocky, shorter than average, with round, heavy shoulders and legs slightly bowed. His thin gray hair was brushed down more in hope that it would cover his scalp than with any real expectation. He jumped a bit at seeing me and blinked hard, making a chewing motion and a snort. He stayed in the doorway with one hand on the door and the other on the frame as if he thought I was going to rush inside if he didn’t. The energy around him was a nervous shade of orange shot with green.
“What? Hello. What can I do for you?” he asked, his voice was low and scratchy, like a conspirator’s.
I matched his volume—there was no need to be louder standing so close. “Are you Charlie Rice?”
“I—yeah. Yeah, I’m Charlie.”
“I wanted to talk to you about a pair of puzzle balls you had about sixteen or eighteen months ago. They came from a house. . . .”
Rice scowled. “Don’t have ’em.”
“Yes, I know. I have one of them. I wondered where they came from and what happened to the other one.” My eye was caught by something else moving inside the office. Something tall and thin. A cold feeling bolted through my gut, stopping my breath. I felt a warm thing looming behind me as well, but I kept my eyes forward.
He blanched. “You have one? Oh, God—”
The shadow inside leaned toward Rice’s head and I started to reach for him, to pull him away, but the door jerked open, yanked out of Charlie’s hand, making him stumble a bit.
Will Novak stood just behind Rice’s shoulder, the door creaking as it swung wide, nearly off its hinges. “Harper!” He clapped Charlie on the shoulder with one crabbed hand covered in livid scars and scuffed bloody across the knuckles. “See: I told you she’d come.”
I was shocked to see him.
Will looked horrific. For a moment I couldn’t believe he was there, much less upright in such a state. He hadn’t regained any weight—possibly he’d lost even more in the week since I’d seen him last. His skin was slack over unpadded bones and it had a raw, dry look, as if it had been scrubbed too much. He hadn’t replaced his glasses and his eyes glinted out of shadowed pits beneath his brow without seeming to blink. Energy rioted around him in clashing colors and sparks with no cohesion or harmony except for a single black line that ran steady and unmoving through the mess, more like a lack than a presence. A spike of fear—for him or of him, I wasn’t sure—struck through me as I looked at him.
A shrieking disharmony of voices battered inside my skull, and I had to concentrate on calm, on normalcy. “Will, what are you doing here?”
“Wanted to see you.”
“You don’t need to see me right now. You need to rest and get better.” But I feared he was never going to get better, that his broken, sickening discord was permanent, and that twisted in my gut. “How did you even know I was coming?”
His aura flickered with antifreeze-green lightning. “Michael told me.”
The mad chorus in my head chimed, “Liar, liar . . .” as Will drew his hands together, rubbing the bruised knuckles of one hand in the cupped hollow of the other. A prescient flash struck me like a physical blow. “You hit him.”
He blinked as if wounded. “He wouldn’t have told me otherwise. And I needed to see you. I owe you . . . everything. Everything.”
The worshipful sound in his voice sickened me. “No, you don’t. All I did was get you in too deep in the first place.”
He shook his head. “No. No. You saved my life.”