Quinton rustled beside me as he pulled his hat down a little farther on his head. The night was coming down with a sharp edge of ice, and we watched the homeless as they drifted toward food and shelter and respite from the short, harsh day.
“All right,” he said. “I’ll do some more asking around. I’ll call if anything comes up.”
“Hey,” I said, putting my hand self-consciously on his sleeve. “Umm… This was kind of fun. Aside from the working part.”
“And the creepy parts. What happened down by the bank? It got damned cold down there and you were talking to something.”
“And that’s about all. There was some kind of remnant of whatever the medicine man did at that corner—a real ugly customer. It told me a riddle about where the Sistu was, but it doesn’t make any sense.”
Quinton took one of my hands in both of his and chafed it warm. “What did it say?”
“It said I’d find death where there was no comfort, between the tides, in a pool that is not a pool. Whatever that means.”
“Why would it be all cryptic like that?”
“Because it can. Ghosts want to talk to me, but that doesn’t mean they want to say anything nice. The nastier the spirit, the more likely it is to want something equally nasty or just to want to do someone some hurt. Most ghosts don’t know we’re here. Of the ones who do, some are angry enough to want to do us harm. They’re pissed off because they’re dead and we’re not.”
Quinton nodded, making a thoughtful grunt and rubbing my other hand. “I get that. I might be pretty ticked off myself if I were a ghost.”
“You’d certainly not be able to do that,” I said, nodding at his hands around mine.
He blushed and let go. “No, and that would be a pity. God, it’s cold out here,” he added, looking around again, uncertain of himself for a moment. “I’ll give that riddle some thought and I’ll try to find some other information for you.”
“Thanks,” I replied. I admit I was thinking about his stealth kiss the previous night and wondering if he’d try it again.
Instead he blushed a bit more—thinking the same thing? — nodded, and walked off after Zip, Lass, and Sandy. I went back to the Rover, a little disappointed, and headed toward Queen Anne.
CHAPTER 12
It was about seven when I called the Danzigers. Dinner was over with and their son, Brian, was winding down toward bedtime—of which Ben was in charge. Mara was happy to have another adult in the house for a while, though I didn’t think she’d be as thrilled once she knew the nature of my visit.
For once, Albert did not show himself when I arrived. I wondered if he knew why I’d come, though I didn’t see how. Ghosts didn’t seem to be any better at reading minds than anyone else. Mara answered my ring of the doorbell.
“Harper!” she greeted, her Irish voice almost turning my name to laughter. “Come in, come in! Seems a while since you’ve visited.”
I stepped into the entry hall, saying, “I got a little distracted over the holidays.”
“Not surprising.” She took my coat and hung it on a peg before leading me into the living room where a bright fire burned in the grate with the scent of pine needles. I could see a sparkling screen of blue energy in front of the fire. I wondered if it was the source of the odor or if Mara had put it there for some other reason. The interior of the Danzigers’ house was always much calmer than outside, being cleansed of magical residues and protected from intrusions by Mara’s witchcraft.
I still wondered why she hadn’t banished Albert when they first moved in, but then I seemed to be the only person in his current acquaintance who didn’t find him charming.
“What was it you were wanting to discuss?” Mara asked, plumping down onto one of the pale green sofas that flanked the fireplace. Her coppery curls reflected the firelight as if born from it.
I looked around but still saw no sign of the resident ghost. “Is there a way to talk without your houseguest hearing us?” I asked.
Mara looked puzzled. “Well, yes. Why?”
“I don’t want to say where he can listen in, but as I need your help and—in a way—his, I’d like to talk here and now, if we can.”
Mara lifted her shoulders in a resigned shrug. “All right. How much time do you want?”
“I think thirty minutes will be enough to explain it.”
“That’s easy enough.” She sat up very straight and began muttering under her breath in lilting musical phrases accompanied by the gleaming blue of magic that she caught on her fingertips and painted on the air in curling, vinelike shapes.
As the creepers of energy took shape, she rose from her seat and began to walk around the outside of the twin couches counterclockwise, still singing a little and passing her hands through the air, leaving gleaming trails of blue. The bramble followed her, growing around the couches faster than kudzu. She circled the couches three times, and the sparkling shapes of magic grew higher and denser with each pass until they were more than head high and beginning to arch over us as if they grew on some invisible arbor. Mara made one last gesture and the magic arbor closed over our heads. I heard a distant bubbling and murmuring, as if the magic were alive and talking to itself as we sat beneath it.
“All right, then,” Mara said, sitting back down. “What has Albert done?”
“I’m not sure what he’s done or what he intends, but I know he’s been up to something and he may have information that will help me with a problem.”
Mara leaned back and made herself comfortable, ready to listen. “Go on.”
“A few days ago I was brought a zombie, for lack of a better word—literally a walking corpse. How it was animated I’m still not entirely sure and that’s less important than this—when I broke it down, there were two spirits in the shell of the body. I’ve talked to Carlos about this and there should be only one. One of the entities seemed to be the spirit that had inhabited the body in life—and that was a while ago, considering the state of decomposition. But the other was Albert, and I’m pretty sure he hasn’t been in a body of his own in a while.”
Mara was appalled. “Heavens, no! Albert animating a corpse? Are you sure? I wouldn’t have thought him capable—he’s not terribly strong.”
“But he is unusually strong-willed.”
“Is he?”
“You don’t think so? He comes and goes, he moves things as big and heavy as Ben’s desk, he eggs Brian into all sorts of trouble, he got me to follow him into the Grey once before I even knew I could do it…”
Mara bit her lip a moment in thought. “Yes… He does have an unusual activity level. He can do all that, yet he never speaks to anyone but Brian—I’m not even sure he speaks, so much as plants a suggestion, which is rather a strong action of itself. But it would take a necromancer to animate a corpse. Or some very black magic.”
“I don’t think Albert animated the corpse,” I corrected. “I think the restless soul of the body is what kept it moving—although something else was keeping the body intact and causing the original spirit to be imprisoned in it. Albert just went along for the ride I think. Then I saw a memory loop of him in a speakeasy under Pioneer Square and that got me thinking that Albert may know more about the creature that caused the zombie. The walking corpse is connected to that creature, as are a spate of recent deaths of the homeless in the historic district. It also seems likely this creatures been loose in the area in the historic past, including the time since Prohibition, when Albert died. I need to talk to him about that creature. And just because I’m like that, I want to know what he was doing riding a zombie at all, but especially one of these zombies.”
“And you think he’s up to no good or you wouldn’t have wanted this privacy spell.”
“Yeah, I do. I just don’t see how there’s a benign explanation for what he was doing. And I’ll need your help to question him. I may be able to talk to him and I may be able to hold him, but I’m not sure I can force him and I can’t do all three at once. You made a tangle for me to capture the poltergeist with. Can you do something like that to hold Albert while I try to make him answer my questions?”