Underground

by Kat Richardson

  I wasn’t sure there was anyone else left to ask. I said as much to Quinton as we climbed the stairs from the tour shop to the Square.

  “Not a total bust, though,” he said. “We know the Indians were aware of things going on down there; we just don’t know what they did about it.”

  “We’ll have to hope we get some information from Fish on that. And I’m going to have to go to the Danzigers’ and talk to them about something.”

  “You think they’ll have some ideas about this?”

  “No. I saw something down there that might link up to something else, but I’m not sure. I want to check before I make an assumption.”

  Quinton stopped as we got outside the door and looked around. We both spotted Zip and Lass nearby. Lass chattered and punctuated his words with hard slashes at the air while Zip smoked. Across the street, I saw Sandy dragging her cart and watching something ahead of her that I couldn’t pick out. Lass and Zip suddenly turned and started in the direction of the Bread of Life Mission—it was dinnertime—passing Sandy, who ignored them.

  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.

  TWELVE

  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 w
hat 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 creature’s 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?”

  “Compelling a ghost seems a little extreme. . . .”

  “Mara, I know you and Ben think he’s a good guy, but I don’t. I think there’s something unpleasant about Albert and that he’s got an agenda separate from yours. It’s not just my personal grudge. Whatever he’s up to may not be bad for you and your family, but I doubt it’s good. I haven’t met a revenant yet who thought the ends didn’t justify the means.”

  “True . . . They don’t really think like we do—when they think at all.”

  “You and Ben know that the willful ones are manipulative by nature, and Albert is willful.”

  “You could try asking Carlos for help,” Mara suggested reluctantly.

  I shook my head. “Carlos and Cameron absented themselves on this, and I wouldn’t want them involved anyway, now that I consider it. I think you and I can do this ourselves. Especially since I don’t want to pay whatever price Carlos would be asking for the service. And this is your house and I won’t be a bad guest in it by attacking and interrogating your pet ghost. But I have to talk to Albert.”

  “Pet!” Mara objected.

  “You treat him like he’s part guard dog and part favorite uncle.”

  Mara frowned. “Do I . . . ?” she murmured, and I knew she was reviewing the past at high speed, thinking hard about every interaction she’d had with Albert.

  “I didn’t come to accuse you of anything,” I said, bringing her mind back to the problem at hand. “I just need to talk to Albert so that he has to answer. Can you help me do that?”

  Mara glanced around. “I’d better work fast. This spell’s almost used up. A tangle won’t work so well this time—he’ll see it coming. I’ll have to use a net. This shan’t be fun and we’ll have to do it right here, since I can start the spell under this one, where he can’t see it. If I cast too many spells, he’ll be suspicious—he’s always interested in my magic and comes poking in to see what I’m up to.” She slid off the couch and dug in her apron pocket for a bit of chalk, beginning to make marks on the floor between the two sofas. She jerked her head up to stare at me. “I hope I shan’t regret this.”

  “So do I.”

  “When I say so, go upstairs and tell Ben we’ll need privacy in the living room for a while. He’ll understand and stay out. And he’ll keep Brian out, too, if the boy hasn’t gone to sleep yet. Albert will probably follow you down, so when you come back here we’ll see what happens.”

  I nodded and she went back to chalking diagrams that began to glow a dim gold as she advanced. When she chalked one that flickered to black, she sent me to talk to Ben. As I stepped through the fading blue vines of the privacy spell, they fizzed and fell away. Mara put one of the afghans from the couch over the markings on the floor and remained whispering over it for a moment as I left the room and went up the musically creaking stairs.

  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 . . . ?”