Will sounded grim. “Good, because I wanted to ask you a favor now.”
I had trepidations. “Sure. What do you need?” “This fake provenance got me to thinking about some thing at work, so I looked into them. And I need to talk to the police.”
“What sort of things?”
“I don’t want to go into it yet. I had the impression you would know who to talk to, though. Do you?”
I didn’t have to think about that. I gave him the number of a detective I knew at SPD—the most honest cop I had ever met. “Thank you.” “Hey. Call me later?” “Sure” He hung up, sounding distracted.
I wondered what Will had found to upset him, but had no time to explore the question. I gathered my stuff and headed to the Danziger’s; I wanted to talk to Mara before we met Carlos.
Mara and I were sitting in the living room about an hour later. Adjusting to the change in the Grey was not easy, and I had just made a hash of the same simple exercise of moving in and out at will.
Dizzy and frustrated, I pounded on the arm of the sofa. “Damn it. Why can’t I do it when I want to? I can fall in and out when I’m not thinking of it, but I can’t do it when I’m trying.” “You’re still fighting.”
“It just looks so different. It feels different.” “But it hasn’t really changed. It’s you that’s changed. When you don’t think of it, you’ve no difficulty. It’s when your mind is in between you and the Grey that you have troubles.” “I can’t not think.”
Mara leaned forward and caught my eye. “You can stop fighting it. You must. We’ve been wrong about so much, but of this I am certain. You must accept what it is and that it’s part of you. When you are fighting it, it’s like a snarled rope that tightens and knots up with every tug. Relax and the rope relaxes, too. I can see it happening.”
I frowned at her.
“I can see that knot in your chest if I try. It ties you to the Grey, and the harder you fight, the more taut it goes. When you simply let it be, it spreads out and you become more Grey.”
“I don’t want to be more Grey!”
She sighed. Shivering spears of honey gold light combed through her hair and lit the wall behind. “I am sorry, Harper. You haven’t that choice anymore. Accept what is and the rest will follow. Then this will all be easy—or at least easier. Coming and going, pushing and peeking—things we’ve not thought of, even—will be as automatic as walking or swimming.” She looked up at the beginning of sunset through the rain outside. “You are meant to be part of that world and you can only exercise the powers you have when you accept that.”
I turned away to look at the soggy sunset, rubbing my hands over my face and wiping off the heavy frown that had settled there. Tension and exhaustion bore on my shoulders. I leaned my cheek on the sofa back, watching the shafts of sunlight that broke through the clouds turn pink, while the vibrant yellows and whites of the house nexus glimmered like a fairy fence between. The low, bleak cloud cover looked like the storm-mist of the Grey.
I heard Mara get up and walk out of the room. I was too tired to follow her. The floorboards sang as she returned and stopped near me.
“It’s almost time to go. I made you something for tonight. I hope it will help.”
I looked up at her.
Mara held out a small leather bag on a long thong. It reminded me a bit of the thing I’d seen peeking over Dr. Skelleher’s collar.
“What is it?”
“It’s a charm against dark things. It should help push back the organ’s monstrousness a bit. Just a little thing, but can’t hurt. Put it round your neck.”
I shrugged and took it from her, dropping it over my head. The little bag plopped onto my sweater, right over the ache in my chest.
I gasped, feeling as if I’d suddenly breathed in clean air after a night in a smoke-filled bar.
Mara grinned. “Any use?” “Yes.”
“Brilliant. Tuck it away, though. I suspect your necromancer shan’t like the sight of it.”
“Why not?”
“Bit of a monster, himself, isn’t he?”
“Maybe I should just wear it all the time.”
Mara showed me a mock frown. “Not too sociable of you—wearing charms against your helper. Besides, it won’t hold long if the artifact is drawing power. It’s just a trinket.”
She looked at the descending sun. “You’d best get going. Wouldn’t be wise to let him get there first. I’ll be along after I check on Brian and hand him off to Ben.”
I braced myself and headed out.
The cloud cover contributed to an early darkness and the sky was lumpy black when I pulled into the wet gravel lot across from the Madison Forrest House. The scent of more impending rain thickened the air. I sat in the Rover, waiting and watching the front door.
An orange and green taxi pulled up in front of the museum. Carlos rose out of the backseat and stood looking at the building a moment while the taxi drove off. From this distance, his presence didn’t affect me. He turned his head left and right, then was still. He whirled and walked straight toward me. It startled me and I jerked in my seat.
He strode to my side of the truck and looked in. He beckoned.
Coming to his sign seemed like I was ceding control to him and I’d done quite enough of that lately. I didn’t think it would be a good idea, either. On the other hand, if he wanted to harm me, he’d had plenty of chances before this.
I rolled down the window. “You made it,” I said.
“Yes. Where’s your witch?”
Mara pulled in just as I started to answer. He turned to look and I got out of the truck while his back was turned.
Mara seemed to tumble out of her car. Her hair was a bit wild and her eyes were sparkling. Holding on to her purse, she rushed to the side of my truck.
“Sorry I’m late. Someone didn’t want to go to sleep.” She looked Carlos straight in the eye with no sign of discomfort. “Hello. Ready to go?”
He nodded. Then he looked at me. “No introduction?”
“Carlos,” I started, glancing toward Mara, “this is…” She gave a sharp shake of her head behind Carlos’s shoulder. “…our witch.”
He frowned, making my innards churn. He glanced back at Mara and nodded at her.
She smiled and spoke in a pleasant tone. “Tricky bastard, aren’t you?”
He went still. Then one side of his mouth turned upward. “I am.”
“Shall we go?” Mara suggested. “You can almost see the bloody thing glowing from here.”
We all turned and stared toward the house. The upstairs parlor windows seemed to have become red glass. Shadow-light limned the trees in the yard a gory crimson to my Grey-adapted sight. I did not want to enter that building. I shot a look at Mara, who made a face and took my arm in a warm grip. With a steady stride, she walked with me to the gate. Carlos followed behind.
I rang the intercom and, after a delay, the curator let us in. “You mind if I don’t come up?” she asked. “As long as I’m stuck here, I’ve got some paperwork to get through. Just buzz the intercom when you leave and I’ll lock up. OK?”
Her relaxed attitude surprised me, until I noticed both Carlos and Mara looking very hard at her. More than one tricky bastard in this lot.
Once she was gone, we started up the stairs. At the top, I stopped and swayed, momentarily nauseated. Mara supported my elbow. Carlos brushed past both of us and opened the parlor door.
A rush of horrors poured out of the room. I jerked away before I realized I had seen more than felt them. My heart raced and I felt ice on my spine, but I could stand it.
Mara nodded at me and led the way into the parlor. Carlos was a few feet in front of the organ, staring at it. He turned his head to glance at us. An ugly smile oozed across his face.
“Amazing.”
“Disgusting is more like,” Mara replied. She pushed me into a chair as far from the organ as possible. “Let’s get on with it.”
Carlos shrugged his eyebrows and turned ba
ck to face the organ. Mara stepped back a pace and made a few sparkling signs in the air behind him. They rained a curtain of mist and white pickets. I could hear Carlos muttering, and a thin, sour odor threaded through the room. Mara walked in an arc behind him, creating a shimmering semicircle stretching from wall to wall and cutting off the pulsing miasma of the organ’s aurora of light, shadow, reek, and noise.
Nightmare faces and boiling Grey began to heave into a panorama around the instrument. I saw Sergeyev’s face appear for a moment. His mouth opened in a silent scream and then was sucked backward into the organ. A kaleidoscope of other faces followed, shattered fragments of terror. I didn’t recognize any of them. A weird, muted chorus of grim cries and muttering rang around Carlos. His shoulders heaved once in a while and I saw his hands flicker before him. Otherwise, he was still.
A gust of black and red light burst from the organ above the key-board. Carlos ducked, and it shattered on the circle of Mara’s magic. Her shimmering sigils faded and the room was filled with a sudden howling and chittering. Carlos stepped forward and laid both his hands on the keyboard.
The organ shrieked in agony. Then came a roar, growing around the organ, pushing against Carlos like a bodiless wind. A fetid stink rose with the sound. I started up again, ready to bolt, the pulse of the Grey in my chest fluttering with my racketing heartbeat and twisting like a knife. Mara backpedaled and grabbed me by the shoulder. Her eyes were wide, and I thought she was on the verge of breaking and running herself. Her breath was loud.
Carlos raised his hands and slashed out to both sides. Silence. The Grey aura around the instrument faded, collapsing to its writhing red and black gorgon’s corona again. He eased back until he had crossed the line Mara had made; then he turned and walked to us. His eyes were ablaze with a frightening excitement.
“Up,” he ordered.
I got up, and he herded us to the door and stood on the threshold. “Now go,” he said.
I started to turn, feeling exhausted and ill and wanting to leave.
Mara held on and remained facing him, a rock against his wave of influence. “No.”
He raised an eyebrow, and the force of his demand hovered like a black swarm.
Mara glared at Carlos. “You can’t push me as easily as that, Carlos. I’ll not let you have it.”
“You can’t stop me.”
“Common sense will stop you. It is necromantic, isn’t it?”
His bladed half grin came back. “Why else would I want it?”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Standing in the hall, Mara glimmered as she opposed Carlos. “If you try to take it, you’ll uncork the bottle and let the genie out. Even you couldn’t put the cork back in fast enough. You saw the size of the power nexus it’s feeding on. It’s stuffed full of energies just wild to escape. You can’t use it here, so you’d have to move it. But you can’t move it without unleashing the energy stored in it. It’s too ripe.”
He glowered and gleamed black. Something shimmered between them. I was too drained to try to see it or understand.
Mara continued. “I imagine there’s only one person who can control the energy cascade that will start the moment it’s disturbed. Am I right?”
Carlos stilled.
Her voice glistened and resonated, throbbing through my bones. “Answer me!”
He bared his teeth and snarled at her. His immaterial black cloak billowed ire. “Don’t try to command me, witch.”
“Don’t be stupid!” she snapped back. “Do you want to destroy the whole fabric of energy here? That would be worse for creatures like you than for me, and I don’t care to contemplate how bad I’d have it.”
Carlos snarled one last time and took a step back from her, his blackness subsiding. He cast a glance over his shoulder toward the organ.
He growled. “You’re right. It’s too dangerous. But we can’t let it remain for someone else. We’ll have to get rid of it.”
Mara objected. “We don’t have enough reserves to contain and control it right now.”
“Of course not.” Carlos reached back and closed the parlor door, then brushed past both of us and headed down the stairs. I rocked back from the force around him.
Mara led me away. I felt muzzy-headed, dazed, sore, and sick. The cold ache in my chest had returned.
As we reached the foyer I asked, “Are we leaving?” “Yes.”
I gave a wobbling nod, so tired I wanted to lie down and whimper.
Out the side door, we walked back to the parking lot. Mara pushed me down into the Rover’s passenger seat while she ran back to ring the curator to close up. A cool drizzle cleared away some of my nausea with the last whiff of the organs stink as the night breeze blew gusts of soft rain into my face.
Mara returned, looking concerned. “Are you going to be all right, Harper?”
I nodded, taking slow breaths to hold down my dinner.
She looked at her watch. “We’ll have to make this quick. I have a class in the morning. So,” she added, turning to Carlos, “tell us about it.”
Carlos folded his hands and began to speak in a low voice. The rain brushed around him.
“It is necromantic. A much older artifact has been incorporated into the structure, behind the mirrored panel.”
“The old wood,” I mumbled.
Carlos made a small motion of his head. “That is a box. The bones and teeth have been built into the decoration, making the substance of the deceased part of the instrument.”
“What?” I asked, appalled.
His mouth quirked. “A necromantic artifact incorporates the substance of the dead, both body and spirit. The revenant is commanded by whoever controls the artifact built with its mortal remains. A door in the structure allows the spirit to enter and leave at its master’s bidding.”
“Could the mirror be the door?” I asked.
“Yes. It’s closed now, but it was open and the sprit escaped while his last master was unaware or helpless. While the sprit was at large, the artifact was moved. The spirit killed his master and stole his name, but then he became lost. Now he wanders, still bound to the artifact, unable to be free, but also unable to return unless he’s summoned or comes face-to-face with his body’s prison. There’s no one to summon the spirit, so he tries to find the artifact and become his own master.
“But the museum owns the organ…”
“Ownership is nothing.” Catlos frowned composing his thoughts “The box is the original vessel, transferred from object to object, wrapped in layers of spells and wood, to hid the spirit from himself and others. He’s strong and autonomous, he was a man of power while he lived and his masters rightly feared his spirit. When the instrument came to the museum, he gained the power it absorbed from the nexus. He couldn’t find it directly, but he had the energy to manipulate the world again. He began to hunt the owners down and kill them.”
My stomach heaved. “All of the owners?”
Carlos nodded. “Every one but this one. He killed most of his masters, as well. Each time he thought he might be free at last, and each time he was wrong. His bitterness runs deep. His future plans are dark with more deaths.”
Mara put a steadying hand on my shoulder. “Who was the spirit when he lived?”
Carlso gave her a narrow look. “A mage. It would be foolish of me to say his name here. Even his adopted name is strong enough to summon him while we’re this close to his artifact.
“Then how old is the artifact?”
“The box is about seven hundred years old. The rest doesn’t matter. The spells and rituals worked into the artifact protect the remains from degradation until they’re removed from the structure,” Carlos explained. “Then they decay at once. If all the remains were removed, the spirit would be to free to leave this world. But even then, so long as a single angle of the structure remains intact, the artifact retains its stored energy, which is considerable now.
“Undirected, the energy will burst outward, like water from a dam, and
destroy anything that resists it. It will blast anything that draws upon or constrains these energies. For you, witch, it would mean pain, loss of powers for a time—maybe forever.”
Carlos looked at me. “For you…” He reached toward me and I leaned away. His hand came close; then he jerked back as if burned and pulled away with a glare at Mara.
“You dared?”
“Yes, I did,” she shot back. “And you know it’s not against you, but that thing up there.”
Carlos nodded a sort of bow to her.
Mara nodded back. “And what about Harper?”
“I don’t know.” He looked at me again. “It might kill you. It might just wash through you, or it might burn you to a husk. It will be interesting to find out, if I survive.”
I shivered and balled a fist over my sternum. “How funny that this thing I don’t even want—that one of you stuck in me—is going to kill me. But what if your theoretical dam doesn’t break?”
The darkness in Carlos’s eyes raked me as he shook his head. “It can’t be stopped without dismantling the artifact.”
“What happens if the ghost gets to the organ first?”
“Then he’ll execute his plan.”
I dragged my feet up onto the seat in front of me and huddled like a struck child.
“We’ll have to destroy it,” Mara said.
Carlos chuckled, the sound of bones rattling. “As if it were that simple. It must be done with great control. You and I together, witch, would not be sufficient.”
“How many more would you need?” she asked.
Carlos thought aloud. “We require mages adept at unweaving the strands of death. Of necromancers, we’d need only one more—but there are no more nearby. Witches’ strength runs in the wrong direction. One could hold it, but we’d need a dozen to break it.”
My brain wasn’t entirely frozen, however cold I felt. “How many vampires would it take?”
Carlos and Mara both stared at me.
“What?” Mara asked.
“How many vampires?” I repeated, my mind filled with a shape of information but not the information, itself. “They must have some powers over death, since they’re the undead,” I reasoned.
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