“I don’t wish to coerce you. I want to hire you.”
“Your negotiation skills suck. Give me a reason.”
He was startled. “You would still go now?”
“I never said I wouldn’t. You’re the one who started the hardball tactics. Tell me why you need to send someone like me to look into your business—I assume it is your business—and I might consider it. If the money is good enough.”
“I thought you weren’t motivated by money, my dear.” He was on more comfortable ground now that we were talking—especially talking money. He’d always preferred to solve problems with leverage and charm rather than getting his hands dirty. “It’s not a matter of sending someone like you. There is only one Harper Blaine. I assure you that is no empty compliment but the truth of the matter—I need your skills and your ability to walk both the day and the night. This is a matter of my kind, and Mr. Goodall will not do.”
“Tell me the situation and I’ll tell you if I’ll go.”
“I . . . cannot risk telling you if you then don’t choose to go. You would have the upper hand of me.”
“Edward, I’ve got enough on you to wreck your unlife a dozen times over. But I don’t have any reason to. I’m far better off with you, the devil I know, running this particular show. I’ve never rolled on you. What makes you think I would now?”
He turned away and slid down into his chair again. “Fear. My dear Ms. Blaine, I should trust you, but things that should not have happened have happened. Such things . . . don’t just occur. They come to fruition through enemy action over time. I don’t know whom I can trust.”
“If you didn’t think you could trust me in the first place, why call me at all?”
He drew down his brows in thought and picked up his whiskey glass again. “That is a good question. So you would rather have me in control than, say . . . Carlos?”
“Carlos isn’t likely to want your domain, only your head.”
He raised an eyebrow and went back to his drink, waving at my gun with one lazy hand. “Do put that away and sit down. I swear by blood I won’t attack you.”
“So are we going to discuss your situation now or keep on fencing? Because I’m starting to lose interest in that.”
“I shall tell you, but I prefer not to be literally under the gun. If you don’t mind.”
I let up on the cocking lever and the pistol clicked back into safe mode. I wasn’t quite certain this was a good idea, but I reholstered it and sat back down.
“All right, spill it.”
“Before I came to Seattle, I spent some years in London, where I discovered the importance of an economic base in the daylight world. Leverage to maintain control in the night half. When I left, considerable holdings remained, which also gave me considerable weight with certain people who worked for my interests both among the daylighters and the nightsiders. I was persona non grata, but my money and power were welcome to stay. I turned them over to the administration of a trust headed by a . . . friend.”
“A flunky. You don’t have friends, Edward. Only slaves and sycophants.”
“On the contrary. I have cultivated a few relationships of trust. Maybe not friends but not enemies, either. You . . . perhaps.”
Seeing Edward uncertain was disconcerting. As top dog in the vampire pack, such a sign of weakness would be an invitation to destruction, which was something I didn’t want to be caught up in and surely would be if worse came to worst. If this was typical of his recent behavior, no wonder he was hiding in his bunker. I wanted to know more of what had spooked him, so for now I let it go and waved his comment off. “Whatever. Go on.”
He nodded. “This friend, John Purcell, has vanished. As if he never existed—which is not entirely surprising for one of us. Silence has fallen all around what was John’s. And around what was mine. Queries go unanswered, calls unreturned. I’ve tried to make contact with others in London, but they, too, return only silence. I don’t know what’s befallen Purcell or my assets. Or the others of my kind who controlled the darkness of London. I know they are still there, for the void left by their total destruction would be filled with notoriety and noise. But there is only silence. I must know what’s happened! Have things fallen to another faction, been driven deeper under the ground, perhaps taken by the asetem—another species of my kind—or perhaps some other thing has risen . . . ? I must recover what I can or cover my tracks if nothing can be salvaged. And I want to know what’s become of John Purcell. Is he the victim of some plot or is he the perpetrator? And of this, no one here must know. For each of my enemies in London, there are opposite numbers here. Do you see?”
It was a hell of a story but as plausible as anything coming from a living nightmare. “So what you want, in brief, is to find out why Purcell stopped talking and what’s become of your stuff.”
“Not exactly. I’m more concerned with the situation than the assets. It will hurt to lose them, but the greatest threat is what’s made those assets inaccessible. I suspect a situation is developing in London that does not favor me at best and may threaten my position here as well, and I want that put to a stop.”
“So . . . this is a search-and-destroy mission? I don’t do that sort of thing.”
“I shan’t ask you to. Only to discover what is going on. After that, I can find suitable contractors for whatever may need doing.” He shut up and looked at me, quiet and intense.
I didn’t like the sound of it. But whenever he said “London,” my thoughts flew to Will and my disturbing visions. It would be as good an excuse as any to check on him in person, and I felt an increasing need to do that and discover if there was any connection to the events of my death and the nightmares I’d been having about him. The job Edward was offering wasn’t something I’d enjoy, but it would pay a lot of bills and serve my own ends at the same time.
“All right,” I said.
He blinked, frowned. “Just like that?”
“You’d prefer to have to ‘persuade’ me some more?”
He turned up the heat. “You know how I’d like to persuade you. . . .”
I felt mildly unwell again at the thought. “Save it for someone without a pulse.”
“They are considerably less interesting than you, my dear.”
“I hear that’s a problem with being dead—it’s terminally boring.”
He laughed and rose to his feet, putting out a hand to me. “It does pall. Come with me and I’ll arrange everything.”
I started to rise on my own, but he caught my hand, and this time he didn’t crush it in his grip but brought it to his mouth and kissed the back. I recoiled but didn’t pull my hand away, no matter how much I wanted to escape from the fire and ice that seared into me from his touch. I didn’t have enough energy to fight him again right then, and insulting him wouldn’t be my best move at that moment. Instead I stood up and smiled, taking my hand back as a matter of course.
He smiled back through slightly narrowed eyes, as if he knew I was faking something. Then he led me to the big table and revealed a computer under the surface, from which he extracted information and made various arrangements for my journey and my stay. Everything was to be at his expense, and he saw to it that no expense need be spared, either. I felt a bit mercenary for it all, but that is sometimes the nature of my job. We agreed on a price for my services that would clear my normal expenses for a long time.
“Do you have a passport?” he asked.
“Of course. I keep it up to date, just in case.”
“Very good. When can you leave?”
“I may need to clear some things up, but that won’t take long. Two days will be sufficient. That’s not counting today.”
“And you’ll want to make arrangements about your home and pet, no doubt.”
“No doubt.”
He nodded to himself. “I’ll have the tickets delivered to your office with the relevant information and paperwork.”
“I’ll be waiting.”
He sh
owed me to the door, pausing only to take my hand one more time. He seemed to enjoy my discomfort before letting me go.
In the outer chamber, Bryson Goodall was waiting for me. He didn’t say much and his face didn’t give away anything, but the nimbus of color around his head and body had turned a brighter blue. He saw me safely home and carried my luggage up the stairs to my condo. I didn’t much like his presence as an adjunct of Edward on my literal doorstep, but there wasn’t much I could do. He nodded to me as I turned back from entering my condo and then he left.
As I was unpacking, I realized someone had gone through my things. They hadn’t taken anything or added anything, but that someone—probably Goodall and probably at Edward’s direction—had snooped through my belongings at all was bizarre and disturbing. There couldn’t be anything in my bags that told Edward anything he didn’t know. But it left me unsettled and more anxious than ever to see Quinton.
SEVENTEEN
Quinton tucked me tighter against his body under the covers of his narrow bed. “You’re not going to change your mind and stay home?” he asked.
“No,” I replied. “I took the job; I’ll do the job.” We’d discussed Edward’s proposition twice by now, trying to suss out every possible pitfall and hidden agenda. Neither of us liked the situation and we were both convinced whatever was developing in Seattle’s Grey world wasn’t a coincidence, but if Edward felt the London situation took precedence, we’d have to take his word. Previous upheavals of the local vampire community didn’t go unnoticed; they just got explained away. They hit the human population as crime waves, gang killings, and warehouse fires and took down both the agitators and the innocent. If a power struggle was violent and widespread enough, it would break out into open warfare between the vampire factions and no one would be safe. If the skullduggery in London was the key to the unrest Edward had hinted at in Seattle, then solving the London problem was priority one. I didn’t know how the London vampire community worked or what the problems there might be. I’d have to trust Edward’s assessment.
Quinton nuzzled his nose into my hair and murmured, “I have a bad feeling about this.”
“I’m not exactly getting a vacation-at-the-beach vibe off it myself. And don’t suggest you come with me. I need you to keep an eye on the situation here while I’m gone.”
“And take care of Chaos. I know.”
“Hey,” I said, rolling over to face him, “you’re not just the pet-sitter, you know.”
He grinned and kissed me. “I know. The pet-sitter never gets the girl.”
“The pet-sitter usually is the girl.”
“Not in John Cusack films.”
“Which film was that? The last one you saw, Cusack was an assassin trying to date his old high school sweetheart from Grosse Point, Michigan.”
“Hey, I’d move to Michigan to date you.”
“Does that mean there are still things I don’t know about what you used to do for the government?” I asked, teasing.
“Well . . . yeah, but not that kind of thing.”
“You’re sure, now? Because if I get back and my condo has been used to stash the bodies of victims killed with ballpoint pens, I may be a tad upset.”
“I promise: no bodies stabbed with ballpoints. Maybe just a Sharpie or two . . .”
“Quinton!” I yelled as he tickled me, grinning.
The conversation dissolved into amorous wrestling in the sheets for a while, until an alarm went off somewhere.
“What the—?” I started, jerking up out of the tangled sheets.
For a second, Quinton looked blank, trying to identify the sound. Then his eyes got wide and he pulled in a sharp breath. “It’s the ghost detector. It works! Maybe . . .” He twitched his attention to me. “Do you . . . see anything?”
Not only did I see something, it was looming over the bed. Or rather, they were. The Grey was overwhelming my senses and a crowd of ghosts filled the tiny bedroom of Quinton’s hidden home, leaving smudges of color like smoke in the silvery world around me, colors that ghosts shouldn’t display. Some seemed familiar, others not at all, but they were all staring at me in the humming intensity of the Grey. I shivered.
“Umm . . . yeah . . . about fifty of them,” I said, staring back. I feared to blink in case they rushed the bed. I don’t know why I thought that, but the feeling of imminent motion pressed on me like an incoming storm front.
Quinton rolled out of bed and darted through the assemblage of specters to one of his workbenches. He didn’t even twitch and I envied him that oblivion for an instant. He plucked a small LCD display out of a nest of wires that clung to it like fur and squeezed the rim, silencing the alarm while he studied the screen. Unconscious of his nudity, he turned slowly, treading the cold floor on bare feet as he swept the room with the ghost detector.
“They—” I started.
“Sh-h-h. I want to find them. Let’s see if this works. . . .”
If he’d just looked at me I was pretty sure he couldn’t miss the direction I was staring. I pulled the covers up to my neck. So long as the phantoms weren’t moving I could stand to be patient with Quinton, but I didn’t have to let them ogle me. Maybe clothes made no difference to them, but it made me feel better.
He pointed the messy hash of wires and readouts around the room until the wires were pulled too taut between the detector and a big box of mysterious purpose on the bench. He looked a little crestfallen. “Oh. It’s you.”
“No. Trust me. It’s them.”
“Are they . . . between us?”
“Oh, yes.” I stared at the ghosts. “Stay right there,” I told them. Then I crept out of the bed while keeping my eyes on them, reluctantly leaving the sheet behind, and backed to Quinton. The spectral mob turned as I went, tracking my movement like hunting hounds, but didn’t come closer. That was strange; ghosts don’t usually give much of a damn what I want, much less follow my orders. “Anything change?” I asked, still keeping my gaze on the ghosts.
“Only a little. The big reading is still by the bed.”
“What is it measuring?”
“A low segment of the high-energy band—a little more energetic than photons, not as hot as neutrinos. I figured that’s where the ghost energy had to lie. It’s not very specific, though. I get a lot of interference.”
“Oh.” It didn’t mean a lot to me but I trusted Quinton to have a handle on his subject. Either he was actually measuring ghosts or he’d found something else equally strange.
I strengthened my attention on the phantoms and slipped deeper into the Grey. “What do you want?” I demanded, feeling the cold of the magical world pierce my skin.
Most of them just stared. I had the feeling they weren’t very strong willed, so something beyond their own desire was directing them to me.
A collective sigh replied and about half of the ghosts faded away into sparks and random swirls of mist.
“Reading’s down to almost nothing . . . What’s happening?” Quinton asked.
“They’re leaving, but only about half are gone. I think your detector isn’t sensitive enough to pick up a single ghost on its own.”
He grunted and peered at the display. “That sucks.”
“Uh-huh. You mind if I get rid of this bunch now? They’re giving me more than the usual creeps.”
Quinton cast a startled glance at me and noticed we were both still naked. He blushed. “Oh, God, I’m sorry.”
He started to put an arm around me, but I shook him off. I was searching the remaining crowd of spirits for the cause of their bright colors. Aura energy is colored by emotion, habit, and magical associations, the trappings of life and action, which aren’t exactly common traits among the memory shadows that are ghosts. Somewhere in the writhing soup of the phantom mob there had to be an emotional kernel that had drawn them together. That ghost would be the dangerous one—the one who’d dragged the rest to me for whatever purpose.
There: One hot, orange spike, like the stamen of an exo
tic flower, gleamed in the silver spirit fog. I fixed my eyes on it.
“You. You dragged your preternatural posse to see me for a reason, I presume. So what do you want?”
I hated it, but I stepped though the curtain of colored energy and into the depths of the swirling crowd of ghosts, shoving them aside with the edge of the Grey one by one as I advanced through them to their core. But there was nothing; only the burning orange glow of frustration from someone or something that couldn’t come any closer, a shell of emotion with no apparent source. I pushed my left hand into it, trying to find any substance at all, Grey or real or merely transient, to clutch and confront. My fingers closed on nothing. The orange gleam flashed white and hot. I jerked my hand back with a yelp of pain.
Quinton dropped his gadget and leaped forward, throwing his arms around me. “Harper!”
“It’s all right. It’s OK,” I panted. “I don’t think it wants to hurt me. I . . . think I just startled it.”
“What? What is it? What is it doing to you?” he asked, wrapping himself around me like a protective shield.
“Nothing,” I said, amazed. “It reacted to my grabbing at it, but it’s not doing anything. It’s not a ghost; it’s . . . just . . . some kind of emotional energy drawing other ghosts in like a magnet. I don’t know what it wants or why it’s here, though. It can’t seem to communicate any better than this.”
The energy around us faded to blue and pale yellow—colors I thought of as neutral or low-threat at least. It drew together and moved toward the workbench, leaving the ghosts huddling into a pale mass of cold steam and twisting into a tighter, denser rope of energy. It streamed toward the fallen detector, drawing the spirits into thin strands of silver within the elongating cable of power. The luminescent stream surged into the device and a squawk came from the alarm speaker.
The big black box on the bench rattled and steamed, the speaker pinging and squealing for a moment before it gave out a more coherent sound. “Not.”
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