I could hear some murmurs from the room off the middle of the upstairs hall. I assumed that was Brian’s room and tapped on the door.
“Come in!” Ben called back.
I opened the door and took a step inside. The room looked like fairyland after an explosion. Toys and books and clothes were everywhere in the room that was painted with pale streamers of blue, green, and violet on one wall, trees and meadowlands on the next. Tiny faces peeked from corners and hid in the grass of the field—including a less-pleasant face that glowered at me from behind Ben’s shoulder: Albert. I ignored him and gazed around the room. A merry ceramic sun cast twisted copper rays over the railed bed where a giggling Brian lay listening to Ben read a story from a huge, leather-bound book. Brian looked toward the door and laughed, waving at me. “Harpa!”
I don’t know why Brian likes me but I assume his tendency to throw himself bodily at me and shriek is supposed to demonstrate that. His parents say so, a least. I’m not a fan of children as a rule, but even with the head butting and howling, Brian was starting to grow on me a bit. Like mold.
“Hi, Harper. Come in and help us read a story,” Ben said. Ben’s curly black hair was standing up in static waves—a pretty good sign he’d had a long day of Brian-herding.
I came over to the side of the bed and waved at Brian. “Hi, rhino boy.”
Brian stuck out his tongue and made a raspberry noise. “No rhino.”
I twitched an interrogative eyebrow and looked at Ben. He sighed. “We’re done with animals for a while. At the moment, we are an intrepid prince of Russia—no thanks to baba Irina, my mother.”
Brian spouted something I didn’t understand and Ben translated. “His highness wants his wolfhounds. No wonder they call this age ‘the terrible twos.’ ”
“Does that make him Brian the Terrible?” I quipped.
Ben rolled his eyes. “Too true. Here I thought a break from the budding linguists last term was going to be a vacation. I’m supposed to be back in the classroom this quarter, but the cold is keeping the university closed.”
Brian made a demanding Russian noise and patted the book in his father’s hands.
“I’m to get back to reading Ivan Tsarevitch or suffer the consequences. Better tell me what you wanted before his highness has us thrown to the wolves.”
“Mara and I are going to do some work downstairs. Just wanted to warn you it won’t be Brian-safe until we’re done. You probably want to stay out, too.”
“Ah. OK. I’ll finish up here and go upstairs for a while, then. Mara can fill me in later.” Ben was too tired to argue, even if there was a speculative gleam in his eye about what his wife and I might be doing. Ben’s fascination with magic and ghosts was certain to get him in too deep someday.
“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 druggist’s 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?”
“No. I dropped goods. I only worked the One-oh-Seven.”
“That’s the place under Occidental, right?”
He peered at me. “Where?”
I racked my brain a moment. “Second Avenue.”
“Correct. I had to recoup my losses on the shop—I bought an interest in a drugstore upstairs, but it wasn’t going so well, what with Bartell and all, and my partner and I talked about opening a saloon instead.” I knew Bartell Drugs was a major chain, but I hadn’t realized it had started in Seattle.
Albert talked over my ruminations. “When the dry law came in, we busted. We tried a refreshment parlor, but everyone tried that—you can only sell so many phosphates and flips. I was stuck with half a bad bargain. So we brewed up some goods and sold them downstairs, where it was harder for the dry squad to raid us. That’s how I met Roy—he was in on a raid and he told me I was a chump for going it alone. He said the way to make money was to run the liquor like a business—which is what he did.”
“He also got caught.”
Albert shrugged. “Small beer. He was back right after. Business as usual.”
“I meant the Thanksgiving raid.”
“What Thanksgiving raid?”
An incredulous chuckle escaped me that he didn’t know and I did. “Roy Olmstead was arrested in 1924 and did four years at McNeil Island—it was the largest successful raid in the history of Prohibition. He appealed on a cause of unconstitutional process because the Federals tapped his phone. It’s a very famous case—Olmstead v. United States. I’d think even a ghost would have heard of it.” With my interest in mystery and crime novels, I had gobbled up the details of the case in a college law course.
Albert stared at me. “They jugged Roy?”
I gave him a bemused look to cover a sudden wash of tiredness and an urge to shiver. This interrogation was more draining than I’d hoped. “When did you die, Albert Wallace Frye? When did you die that you didn’t know the Feds nabbed Roy Olmstead?”
“I don’t know.”
“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 wire-rimmed 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 lingerin’ 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.”
Underground (Greywalker, Book 3) Page 21