“How can you not know when you died?” I demanded, giving a mental push against the black needles and feeling them prick me, too.
Mara leaned close. “I’m not surprised—dyin’s traumatic. Who’d want to be remembering that?”
I nodded and backed off. I’d try a different tack. “All right. What is the last date you remember?”
“I can’t recall a date.” He seemed to think, his eyes behind the tiny wirerimmed spectacles shifting as he considered. “It must have been May. The weather was nice, but not summer-hot in the attic—I lived in the attic then. Nineteen twenty-two. The bar had been raided again and the supply was short. I didn’t want to wait for the next run and my partner and I didn’t want to close the speakeasy, so I was ‘stretching’ the booze.”
“What does that mean?”
“I was cutting it with carbinol—legal stuff from the pharmacy stock. It smells sweet and no one would notice—they certainly wouldn’t complain,” he added with a laugh, “and I wasn’t using a lot, just enough to eke a couple of extra bottles out of the lot we had to make it through till Sunday—that’s when I’d have the next shipment. I’d done it before when we ran the speak on our own, but you have to be careful with carbinol—it’s got nasty effects if you sauce it up too much.”
Mara was choking on outrage. “Carbinol? That’s methanol—wood alcohol. It’s toxic!”
“I know what it is, Mara. Sit tight.” I turned my attention back to Albert. “So you cut the whiskey with carbinol. What then? You sold it to someone who died?”
Albert radiated confusion. “No… I don’t think I did. I can’t recall what happened… A couple of Roy’s boys dropped in to see me. Things get a little fuzzy here… I remember T.J. saying something about the whiskey in the sink, the carbinol… and then… and then… I can’t remember.”
“They drowned him in it,” Mara said, her voice icy and her accent thickening under suppressed rage. “I cleared that memory from the place when we moved in. I didn’t want a murder lingering in my house.”
“But you let the victim stay.”
“I thought that’s what he was,” she replied, her face and voice gone hard. “A victim.”
“Apparently a worthy one.”
“The lieutenant was a businessman and this was just business. He wouldn’t have had me killed,” Albert objected. “He didn’t. I’m sure of it.”
“No, you’re not,” I corrected. “You don’t even remember.”
“Roy didn’t let his men go armed! He said he’d rather lose the liquor than a life!”
“That may have been Olmstead’s rule, but his underlings seemed to have decided it was too big a risk to let you poison people on his booze. It wasn’t good business to let that happen. They held you under and drowned you in your own sink.”
Albert looked shaken and I could feel his distress in waves through the Grey.
“No! Those skunks! Those rat bastards! I’ll kill them!”
“They’ve all been dead for years, Albert.”
“I’ll find their descendants. I’ll make them pay for killing me. I knew I’d been murdered. I knew it wasn’t an accident!” If he could have, he’d have stomped his foot and thrown a fit. “When I get a body of my own again, I’ll hunt them down and pay them back for what their fathers and grandfathers did.”
“Ah. That’s the thing I want to talk to you about.”
“What?”
“The body. Is that why you’re still here? Looking for a body to take over?”
“Of course! I was murdered, you dingy broad! I deserve to get my life back one way or another.”
“So you caught a ride on a zombie.” “They don’t last long enough to keep. I thought I could set a few things in motion, but the damned redskin fought me and then that hairy thing meddled and brought you in and that was the end of that idea.”
I felt tired and stiff with cold but went on. Now we were getting to what I needed. “You’ve tried to get into one of those before?”
“Couple, few times, yes. They turn up in the tunnels after earthquakes or construction. There were a lot of ‘em for a while after the bootleggers broke through some of the walls down below to make escape routes and to stash barrels from the dry squads.”
“Do you know where they come from? What causes the dead to walk like that?”
Albert rolled his eyes. “They come from the snake thing that lives down there.”
“What snake thing? How does it make them?”
“I don’t know! Why ask me? I only borrow them when I can. The snake comes up into the tunnels sometimes when there’s a hole in the right place—and don’t ask where because I don’t know. It came up when I worked the speak. It stays away from crowds, but its a hungry bastard and sometimes we’d find its leavings in the sidewalks or tunnels we’d cut between the basements and have to bury ‘em quick or have the cops all over the place. You don’t want the customers to know there’s a monster downstairs, so we tried to chase it off. We couldn’t do it, but the old Indians could. When we came up with enough firewater and cash, they made it go away.
“I thought I’d never see another one of those walking dead, but they came again after the big quake and that’s when I thought I’d try to get one. But either I didn’t have the strength or it didn’t and it fell apart, but I knew I’d find a way.”
“Have you found one?”
“I might have,” he said, going cagey and avoiding my gaze. I could feel him wriggling in the Grey. “Why d’you think I wanted that bottle you had?”
Mara whispered, “I think he means the flask Ben made for you that Brian broke.”
I nodded. “Why’d you make Brian break it?”
“Because I didn’t want the witch to use it on me. I didn’t like seeing that other one in there and it didn’t like being in there. It wanted out and it said it would help me get the boy. But you killed it before it could help me.”
“What do you mean, ‘get the boy’?” I asked, and leaned on the black needles of the compulsion until Albert winced, feeling them against my own skin as burning cold that spread into my flesh.
“The witch’s son,” he babbled. “He listens to me. Since I’ve gotten stronger, I can talk to him—his mind’s more like yours—but he’s pliable. Even if I can’t have him, he can help me find a body I can have. He’ll be powerful when he’s older. Don’t look at me like that. It’s her own fault. She made the house stronger. She made me stronger. It’s only fair! I was robbed of my life!”
Mara made an angry, snatching gesture, shouting, “Take yer-self off, y’toad!” and a string of furious epithets I didn’t understand. Startled by Mara’s outburst, I jerked back from Albert, ripping the black threads that lay between us and feeling the cold flood away. Then the net that contained Albert flushed furious red and collapsed into a hard knot of magic that was flung up through the ceiling, dragging the ghost, screeching, into the ether. Mara muttered after him for a minute, glaring up at the ceiling where he’d disappeared. “Y scheming gobshite! Shaggin’ bastard!”
I slumped into the couch, gulping warm air into my frosted lungs and shivering until the chill faded. Without thinking, I rubbed at my stiff knee. I felt drained and the injured joint ached, but I got better as I warmed up.
A clatter sounded on the stairs and Mara swallowed her curses before a befuddled Ben trotted into the living room blinking and wondering what had happened.
“Something came through the floor upstairs and went out the roof! I couldn’t see it but it felt like acid on the wind it made. What have you been doing down here? Are you OK, Mara? Harper?” He took a good look at his wife’s face and leaned back. “Uh-oh… What did I do?”
“Nothing!” Then she bit her lip and stood up, sighing. “Oh, love, I’m sorry. Nothing you’ve done. ‘Tis that wretched Albert. He’s—well, I’ve made a terrible mistake letting him stay. He’s not a good thing to have about. I’ve sent him off for a while until I can collect what to do with him.”