This was our dance then: good cop versus malingering veneficus, how schooled was each of us, and how long would we try to hide our knowledge from the other? I assumed his folder contained the results of a database crawl. The mundane information known about me: my ancient and puerile police record, what financial holdings I had in US-controlled banks, my recent spending patterns, my out-of-date political party affiliation, and a scattered list of entry and exit dates at international airports. What would make him more inclined to consider me as one of his "poisonous sorcerers" was the dearth of real estate holdings or vehicle ownership, a lack of rental history, and a seeming indifference to cell phone technology: the signs of transience, the lack of hooks that tied one to a single location. How he interpreted these two classes of data would reveal what he thought about rogues-adepts who had no clear affiliation with organized temples-and that outlook would temper his amenability.
"You've been in town two weeks, Mr. Markham." He returned to his notes. "Your room at the Monaco-let's see, room 605, is it? — is booked through the weekend, though the folio has been tagged as open-ended. The rental policy on your car is good through the end of the month. You seem to be in a state of flux, caught in some indecision about your plans. Are you planning on staying in Seattle long?"
"It depends."
"On?"
"How long you plan on keeping me cuffed to this table."
He sighed, and traced a long finger across his forehead as if to alleviate some pressure building in his skull. His lips twitched again-downward this time-and he gestured toward the bands circling my wrists. The pulse of his spell was precise and focused. The cuffs clicked open and fell off, clattering on the table like cheap jewelry. It was a simple physical manipulation spell, one we were both very capable of executing. It had simply been a matter of who would show their Will first.
Small victory. It meant nothing really, but it told me we were past the stage of sparring about the existence of magick.
I sat up and swung my legs to my right and hopped off the table. I stood with my back to him, making a show of rubbing my wrists.
"What happened to Gerald Summers?" he asked.
The old man on the ferry.
"Who?" I feigned ignorance as I turned back to the table and my interrogator.
Pender took out a crime scene photograph from the folder. "Mr. Summers," he said, sliding the photo across the table so I could examine it more closely. If I actually needed to, that is. It had been taken from the front of the stall on the ferry, a tightly framed shot of Mr. Summers' head and shoulders.
Summers' wide eyes stared up toward the top of the photo; his mouth gaped in a crooked cry of incomprehension and panic. Doug had only relinquished his grip after Summers' heart had started to collapse. He left the old man with a second of life, just a single tick to feel the shuddering collapse of the failed heart muscle.
"Psychoanimist possession," I said. "Burned him from the inside out." I looked at Pender. "But you knew that, didn't you?"
The skin around his eyes tightened.
"Did you find any of my prints at the scene?" I asked. The single item on my police record was from college. I had made a poor decision at a University of Washington frat party one night. While I had never regretted my actions, the resolution of the evening had involved the police. A full set of fingerprints had been taken. Once in the system, they never came out.
Pender lifted his shoulders. "The forensic investigation hasn't been completed."
"I'll save you the trouble. You won't find any other prints on him. Not mine. Not anyone's. His body walked into that stall, and that was the last thing it ever did. Summers' heart gave out shortly after he sat down. He only had control of his body for a few seconds."
Pender was still holding up the picture. "Possession," he mused. "Mr. Summers was possessed by another human spirit? Is that the psychobabble you expect me to believe?" Testing me: Was he unaware of such techniques or was he probing the integrity of my story, trying to catch me in an inconsistency?
"Ask your detective how much nonsense it is."
His mouth worked a minute, finding the right sequence of words. "Detective Nicols says he has no recollection of the events."
"Does he? He's probably still trying to figure out what happened." If the detective had any recollection of Doug being in his body, it would be vague-fleeting memories detached from his own personal history. They would fade, dissolving into a general unease, touched off by these ghostly fragments. This disorientation would persist at the edge of his consciousness for a few weeks, then it would vanish like wisps of a bad dream.
Though, he could try to hang on to them. Try to attach them to his own storage schemas. He might. He seemed like the persistent type.
"What are you going to do if he keeps thinking about this morning?"
"That's not your problem."
"No, I suppose not. I have a different problem, don't I? What do you want to accomplish here, Lieutenant?" I gestured around the room, indicating the lack of standard interrogation room accoutrements. No two-way mirror. No cameras. No digital audio recorders.
Just two magi, talking.
"I want to understand what happened on the boat."
"I told you: psychoanimist possession. I was following an astral traveler. He started jacking bodies."
"But how did you two get on the ferry? Why were you tracking him?"
I didn't answer.
Pender sighed. He retrieved the picture from the table, and slipped it back into his folder. His attention went to the other pages. "Landis M. Markham," he read. "What does the 'M' stand for?"
"Michael," I told him. "My mother's Catholic heritage. Not my father's favorite." While I preferred it to my given name, that preference was only known to a handful of people. I had been through too many places that believed in the power of names to not protect myself.
"Born and raised in Idaho," he continued. "Moved to Seattle in the early 1990s where you attended the University of Washington. Studied archaeology, though you didn't stay long enough to get a degree."
"There was a scandal," I offered. "Involving hominid skulls."
He ignored my flippancy. "Where did you go, Mr. Markham? You quit your job at REI that same year. Struck by a bit of wanderlust, were you? You've been to a lot of places since then." His finger ran down a list on the page. "TSA provided an interesting list: France, Hungary, Italy, Morocco, China, Indonesia, Ethiopia, Kenya, Brazil, Argentina, Jamaica. Quite the intrepid traveler, aren't you?"
"It's the nature of my business," I said. "It requires me to, uh, travel." My voice stumbled on the word. I realized the question underlying his emphasis on the word.
Traveler.
It was a code word, not just a descriptive noun but a title. A rank. He was asking me to identify myself: to recognize his word and reply with some acknowledgement, some secret passphrase known to initiates like himself. He was asking me for confirmation that I, too, was a Watcher.
Shit.
This explained our private conversation. Why he dangled the carrot about cleaning up this mess. Pender's offer to make the situation evaporate was honest, if I was one of his brothers. If I flashed him the secret hand signal, he would do exactly what he was here to do: keep the secrets hidden, and make sure the interests of the Watchers were maintained.