The paper wouldn't catch fire at first; then flame leapt bright onto the inks and smoked, sending tendrils into the air that were not entirely normal, glimmering with sparks of uncanny light.
I dropped the page into the can and the fire flared higher, catching on the other papers with a gasping sound. Then something wailed, a high-pitched keening that spiraled upward into pain. A shaft of yellow shot from the burning pages, smoky and tortured, writhing. I recoiled in unpleasant surprise. A figure flickered in the burst of eldritch illumination, screaming in horror and pain, twisted in panic as the flames ate at it—a young blond woman, dressed in a uniform, her hair rolled back off her face. The fire roared and burned red, then subsided, taking the terrible vision with it.
Frankie gaped at me over the thin curls of subsiding smoke. I thought I looked the same. We both turned away from the trash can. Frankie returned to the building to fetch the equipment cart. I picked up the can and walked to the far side of the parking lot to empty the ashes into a different Dumpster. I carried the can back up to the room.
Frankie had just picked up the potted plant from the windowsill when I walked in. She brushed past me awkwardly, avoiding my gaze, and went into the hall. I looked around the empty room. Only dust and a faint, fading trail of yellow energy remained. Deeper, I could just glimpse the regular blue and yellow power lines of the grid, subsiding at Nature's pace into their normal shapes, pulling back from their unwonted displacement.
Frankie preceded me downstairs with the keys and the potted plant in her hands. Once back in the lot, she started loading the equipment from the cart into the cab of the truck.
"OK," she said at last. "I'm going to take the equipment to Tuck's office and stack it there so he can't say his data was destroyed. Then I'm going to dump this stuff in a couple different places, right?”
"Right. At least two, as far apart as possible, more if you can.”
"Got it." She started to get up into the truck, then swung back down. "Hey, what was that thing in the fire?”
I felt an involuntary shiver. "I. . guess it was Celia.”
She looked young. "Is she gone, then?”
"I think she will be soon," I answered.
Frankie nodded. "Good. I definitely don't approve of Stygian nightmares. And hey—I'll call you and let you know what happens with Tuck, OK?”
"OK. Be careful, Frankie.”
"I'm the invincible queen of the coffeepot," she said, climbing behind the wheel of the borrowed pickup. "I can't be routed by a ham-fisted Narcissus of a psychologist—or his fakey poltergeist. Sterner men than Gartner Tuckman tremble at the thought of my wrath—or they ought to." She slammed the door and started up the engine. A wave, a manic grin, and she was gone.
I drove the Rover to two different transfer stations to get rid of the detritus of the séance room. Then I went home and put some ice on my knee and let the ferret out for a romp. Satisfied tiredness settled on me—a pleasant change from the slightly drained and weighted feeling I'd been having since I'd gotten tangled up in Celia.
It seemed as if the first half of Carlos's instructions had worked as described. Now I only had to find Ian so Carlos could distract him while I tore apart the remains of the entity.
I was cozily snuggled into one of the sofas in the Danzigers' living room a few hours later while Ben lay on the floor in front of the mantel with his feet up in the air. Brian was «flying» by lying on his fathers upraised soles and making whooshing noises, interspersed with giggles.
Mara came into the room with the stoppered flask in her hands. "I'm sorry. We had to stash it. Brian and Albert have been fascinated with the thing and they've been at all sorts of pains to get it. Can't imagine what they want it for, but I thought it best to move it somewhere secure. It's been in the old dry sink on the back porch since bedtime with a wallopin' great spell over the top. Someone" — she cut a glare toward Albert, who was flickering nearby—"was tryin’’ to levitate it until I put a stop to that. It's a good thing we'll be seein' the last of it soon. I'm done in by keepin' these two away from it.”
"If this goes right, you'll never see it again," I said, putting the flask down on the table next to me. The grim substance inside seemed smaller already, simmering with less violence than the day before.
With the stopper in place, I couldn't see the connecting threads and count them; I was sure there would be fewer now than a few days ago. I had seen Patricia's thread crumble away, and the absence of the Stahlqvists at the funeral made me think they, too, had broken their connection to the entity. I had entertained the small hope that the construct would have broken down with the destruction of the séance room, but it hadn't. It had always been able to operate with as few as four participants and the way it had harassed the individuals the past few days convinced me it no longer needed that critical mass to hold together. Even though the original power line was drifting back to its proper place, the entity was still connected to the grid and to Ian's control.
"What are you planning to do about it?" Ben asked.
"I assume you concocted some plan with Carlos, then," Mara added.
"Yeah," I replied. "It's already started. I got one of the assistants to help me break down the séance room and spread everything around. When I burned Celia's portrait, we saw a face in the flames.”
"That would be the artificial personality—the sort of soul the artist put into it—going. That's good and bad, though, as it now has no personality of its own, but only what its master lends it.”
"Which will be as smart and as crazy as he is—and there's no doubt the guy is smart," I said. "I'm hoping that he's getting arrogant, though. He certainly seemed to be. He makes mistakes when he's feeling cocky.”
"So it's definitely one of the young men?" Ben asked.
"Yeah. Solis said the whole thing revolved around a woman and for a moment I thought that might mean it was one of the women who controlled it, but the person who threw it at me was one of the guys.”
"So what are you going to do about it? Do the cops know?" Ben grunted as Brian squirmed around.
"Solis knows who and I'm pretty sure he's keeping a close eye on the next potential targets—he didn't say so, but he'd be stupid not to, and Solis is far from stupid. But he's not going to be looking for the entity and I'm not sure how close the controller has to be to use it the way he did on Mark. It's possible he'd be outside any surveillance area. I think I can track him down, though—he still has a connection to the entity that will tend to point to it, like a compass. Mine does, so I assume his does, too," I explained. "He's got to be in one of two places—he likes to be near the victim. He gets a kick out of seeing what he can do. If I take the bottle with Celia in it to both those areas, I should be able to spot his control thread trying to hook up to the entity even through the container—it's not a perfect trap, after all.”
"Then what?" Mara asked.
Albert drifted over to Brian, and the little boy laughed too loudly to speak over.
"Down now," he demanded.
As Ben was settling him back on his feet, I started to answer Mara.
"Once I've found him, Carlos will help me distract Celia's controller while I dismantle the entity.”
"Carlos is going to help you? I can't say I'd fancy another round of workin' with him myself.”
Brian took off, chasing after Albert and making his rhino roar.
"I'm not expecting to enjoy it, either," I replied, "but he can't take out the entity—it's never been alive, so it's never died. That means he can't get a handle on it, unless someone else attached to it dies or we kill something, and I think that would be a bad idea. Mark didn't hang around to leave a convenient connection. According to Carlos, his life was snuffed out so fast there was very little residue. He's told me how to take the thing apart in the Grey. I seem to be the only person with the right skills for the job. What I need from you is a charm that will stick the ghost in one spot for a while.”