“Thanks, Ben,” I said, heading back out the door as Ben’s voice, rolling Russian consonants like the sea coming to shore, continued with the story.
I could feel the cold presence of Albert at my back as I descended the stairs.
The ghost followed me into the living room. I was careful not to step on Mara’s hidden marks but to pass very close to them nonetheless. I stopped on one side of them and turned sharply.
“Hello, Albert,” I said.
It’s rare for me to startle a spirit, but he came to an abrupt halt and floated back a bit, stopping just over the afghan. Mara had once said she didn’t see him but rather had an idea of where he was and what he was doing. I hoped it was a pretty precise idea.
A hostile approach wasn’t my first choice, but if Albert fled, I’d lose my chance. I’d give him one opportunity to volunteer. “I need to talk to you about Friday night.”
I saw the flicker of his shape and knew he was running. I pointed at Mara. “Grab him.”
She flipped the corner of the afghan up and said some sharp word that plucked on the energy grid of the Grey like a harp. A gust of unfurling magic shot up from the floor and tangled over the invisible shape of Albert with the motion of a hurricane. Mara grabbed hold of the edge of it and nailed it to the floor with her chalk, marking one last sign in the revealed circle. The afghan drifted to the floor behind her as the net sang in the Grey, its almost-human sound raising goose bumps on my skin.
I sat down on the couch I’d occupied before and looked toward the shape beneath the net of magic. “Is this all right, Mara?”
She got up and sat next to me on the sofa. “Yes. It should hold him as long as I want to leave it there. I’m sorry, Albert, but you’ve got to stay and talk to Harper. I’d not have thrown the net if you hadn’t tried to scarper off.”
Albert’s form sifted back to visibility. I supposed he didn’t see the point in wasting energy to hide when he couldn’t move. He glared at me.
“Knock it off, Albert. I just need information,” I said. “Can you talk to me?”
He glowered.
“OK. I guess the mountain comes to Mohammed.” I reached out and riffled through the layers of time, feeling for one that would have Albert in it as strongly as possible. Wherever his presence was strongest, that was where I thought I’d be most likely to get him to talk. Though it was also where—or when—he’d have the most power and latitude to cause me trouble. I hoped the net was enough. I found a hard, cold plane of time and slipped into it… and fell back out.
“What—?”
Mara turned a curious frown on me. “What’s wrong?”
“I can’t stay in the time plane Albert’s occupying.”
“But… you didn’t slip at all. You stayed right here.”
I puzzled on that a moment. “Then… this is the same place…?”
“It must be a loop or a bridge of some kind that connects him to both that plane where his energy was strongest and to this one. I don’t think I care for that…”
I turned my eyes to Mara. “Then why isn’t he talking?” Something cold brushed across my knee.
“Maybe he needs—”
“A voice.” It was a reedy tenor and it came from Albert. I looked toward him and saw a thin line of the net touching my knee, connecting me to Albert. “It comes from you,” he confirmed. “If you want me to talk, you have to lend me this.”
“I’d rather not, but I guess I don’t have much choice.”
Mara stared at me. “I can hear you both! But Albert’s so quiet…”
I peered into the darkness of the grid, seeing Albert as a haze of light floating above the blazing energy lines. I thought I might be able to push a thin strand of that energy to him and boost his voice…
“Yes!” Albert’s thin voice urged in my head.
I yanked back to a more normal level where the Grey was ever-present, the neon lines of power and force dim glimmers that clung to the shapes of the world.
“No. I don’t think that would be a good idea—giving you power.”
The light silvered his glasses and hid his eyes. He moved restlessly in his mesh of magic.
“Mara, can you tighten that net up a little?”
“I can, but why?”
“Albert is playing games.”
Mara gave a twitch of her hand and the reticulated spell cinched down, binding Albert into stillness. The illusion of light on his glasses faded.
“Better,” I said, moving my foot so it touched the edge of the net to maintain my connection to Albert. I felt it like a static charge passing over my skin.
“I won’t help you,” Albert warned.
“You will if you want to get out of that net. Let’s start with something easy. What’s your full name?”
He was stubbornly silent. I didn’t know if a geas—a magical compulsion—would work on a ghost, and I wasn’t thrilled about trying it, but Albert wasn’t cooperating. I plucked at a bit of the Grey and stared at Albert, catching his gaze as I pulled the buzzing, energetic material in front of me, forming the power connection that would allow me to make a binding demand on the ghost. Then I gave a mental push in Albert’s direction and said, “Talk freely and we’ll be done sooner. Then you can go.” I could see the fast-multiplying black lines of pressure build and press on the ghost, forcing my demand against him. He jerked his head back, then he shuddered. The tiny black lines clung to him and sank into his form like needles, knitting a compulsion between us. I felt instantly cold to the bone—the chill of lonely death. Compulsion runs two ways, and I’d have to take care to remove the connection completely when I was done with Albert. But I’d have to maintain the pressure as long as we were connected; I didn’t want him to push back and I didn’t want the feel of unquiet graves lingering in my mind.
“Very well!” he snapped.
“What is your full name?” I asked again. I wanted to see what he did when the answers were nonthreatening. It would make it easier to know when he was lying—which I was sure he’d try. Unlike most of the people I saw, Albert had no aura to act as a tell of his emotions.
“Albert Wallace Frye,” he answered, sighing a little with resignation.
“Any relation to Frye of the Frye Museum and Frye Meat Packing?”
“None. Had I call upon the fortunes of Charlie or Frank Frye, I’d hardly have been serving bootleg whiskey to whitter-brained flappers in a speak south of the skid.” His tone stung with resentment, and I found I didn’t need to push him to speak now that he was started. He wanted to spit out the lost story of his life.
I might have more trouble keeping him to the point.
“Is that how you made your living—bootlegging?” I asked. I’d let him run a while, get comfortable, before I asked about zombies and monsters.
“I made what you call a living in the pharmacy trade. I made money by distributing booze—which I’d started out making myself when the bluenosed fools of Washington state voted in their goddamned dry law. A better day for a dollar never was had until the Volstead Act made the booze business a crime.
Don’t believe them when people tell you crime does not pay—it paid better than propriety. I only kept to the druggists counter to give myself a front from which to dole out the bottles.”
Mara looked shocked at this venomous recitation. I guess even Irish witches have foolish romantic notions about American bootleggers as some kind of alcohol-running Robin Hood and his Merry Men. It was no revelation to me that they were in it for the money and not for the thrill of twitting a stupid law.
“So you couldn’t keep up with demand,” I prompted. “Then you went into distribution on your own?”
“Hell, no. I partnered up with Olmstead.”
“Roy Olmstead?”
“The same.”
“I see. You did the distribution for Roy’s boys. That explains why you walked me into a speakeasy on the bluff that time. Did you work that one, too?”