Spirits White as Lightning

by Mercedes Lackey

  "Neatly put," Wheatley said. "And what would you say those phenomenal manifestations are?"

  "I can't say," Travis pointed out. "No one knows. I can say that at various times in history, these same phenomena have been classed as gods, demons, various forms of non-deific supernatural beings, and, most recently, as space aliens, of which the Alien Grey is the most commonly recognized, but certainly not the only type. Whether there's really anything there—and if there isn't, why people keep seeing them with such peculiar consistency—isn't something I can tell you."

  "Well, then, Travis, let me put the question I asked you earlier in a different way: would you like to go and see for yourself?"

  Put that way, it had been an offer he couldn't refuse, one which had led him, over the course of nearly a year, to standing around a Las Vegas airport in the ugliest green suit imaginable, looking for . . . what the rest of the PDI was looking for: Spookies.

  Travis hated the green suit, but the stealth technology woven into the fabric didn't take dye very well, so Headquarters said, so the field teams were stuck with looking like a bunch of forest-green fashion plates. Fortunately, in a town like this, they didn't stand out, and Travis had to admit that the cut itself was stylish.

  Las Vegas was far from PDI's usual beat, but Headquarters had gotten a tip that some Spookies might be showing up at Comdex, so he'd been tasked to keep an eye out at McCarran International to see if he spotted one coming in through the airport. Spookies could look like anything, but the black box on his wrist impersonating a watch didn't lie. It was designed to respond to the presence of parasympathetic energy, and PS waves always meant Spookies.

  Nevertheless, he'd been as surprised as anyone to see his watch light up when the tall woman passed him. He would have stared at her regardless—she was well over six feet tall, even without the high-heeled black boots, and had long red-streaked black hair that hung straight to her waist. He slipped on his sunglasses to take a better look. Their special filtering technology was supposed to cut through Spookie illusions as if they weren't there, and for the first time, Travis'd had a demonstration of what that meant. His quarry's business suit and porn queen boots vanished. Now she was wearing what looked like a black velvet riding habit, and she had the ears.

  Gotcha, babe. You may run, but you can't hide. His heart raced with excitement—he knew the Spookies were dangerous, often savage, and totally unpredictable, but he was actually seeing one up close! He hurried to follow her as she headed out the front of the airport toward the waiting line of cabs.

  The cab ride to the Strip was short, and he had no trouble keeping hers in view. She pulled up at one of the casinos; he stopped his cab at the next one and walked back, following her inside. His black box promptly lit up again, and this time the entire face went red, unable to give him a directional indicator. The whole place was loaded with PS energy!

  He shook his head, suddenly dizzy. He had an urge to go back out onto the street, back to the airport, but a sense of duty stopped him. He'd tagged a Spookie, and he wasn't going to stop until he chased her down. PDI was always hoping for the pot of gold: a live Spookie capture, not just a bunch of glimpses and second-hand reports. If he was involved in a capture, it could mean promotion, maybe even a bonus.

  Maybe I'd better report in, he thought, worried. The GPS locator all field agents wore would let the local office know where he was, but no more than that. Just then he spotted her again, over at the Reservations Desk.

  And she was surrounded by Spookies. Half the people behind the desk looked just like the ID sketches he'd seen—the long pointed ears and brilliant overlarge hypnotic eyes. He swept a glance around the rest of the casino. More of them. The place was crawling with Spookies—a whole nest of them!

  He started to panic, then controlled himself. They didn't know he was here, and they didn't know about the PDI. He was safe for the moment. And he needed to find out as much as he could about what they were up to before he made his report.

  * * *

  Roderick Gallowglass—his name was Rhydderich, but Roderick was close enough—was a happy elf. He'd been security chief for the casino for the last three years, and he never tired of watching humans. They were so endlessly inventive, so passionate. A joy to work with, really—and with the whole place loaded to the gills with Trouble Begone spells, he rarely had to do anything more taxing than point out the bathrooms to bewildered tourists.

  Today, however, might be different.

  He'd spotted the Unseleighe the moment she walked in the door, of course—that "you are all peasants" arrogance would have been a dead giveaway, even if she weren't swaddled in glamouries that rendered her true seeming invisible to humans (though not to Roderick)—but the Tir-na-Og was a neutral zone, protected by truce. So long as they didn't make trouble, members of the Dark Court were as welcome here as were the Bright.

  The man who'd followed her, however, was a different proposition. There was something odd about him—not quite magic, but odd nonetheless. Roderick could see the casino's wards swirl around him, unable to get a good grip, and felt an urge to rest his own eyes somewhere—anywhere—else. As he watched, Roderick saw the man hesitate, staggering a little as the magics did their best to push him out the door. But Tir-na-Og's gentle wardings were not designed to combat a determined will, only to turn aside those who could be encouraged to go elsewhere. Obviously the young man in the green business suit thought he had business here—and with the Unseleighe lady, at that.

  The lady picked up her registration and headed for the elevators, and the nervous young man moved to follow.

  Ah, laddie, the likes of her isn't for the likes of you. Time for me to save you from yourself.

  Roderick moved forward to intercept the young man as he attempted to follow the lady into the elevator. He nearly didn't make it—for some reason, the green suit was particularly hard to see in the casino's misleading illumination.

  "Excuse me, sir. Those elevators are for guests only. May I help you?"

  The young man turned toward him, anonymous in his sunglasses, and Roderick saw his mouth gape with shock. "You're one of them too!" he gasped, reaching into his jacket.

  He sees me as I truly am, Roderick realized, equally stunned. Not so stunned that he didn't take the young man's arm gently but firmly, keeping him from whatever he was reaching for—and hustled him through a door marked "Staff Only."

  The nervous young man did his best to put up a fight, but Roderick's greater strength put paid to that airy notion, and by the time the lad thought of shouting, they were well away from public eyes. A small spell opened the door of one of the Quiet Rooms, and Roderick dragged his charge inside, plucking the object the lad had been reaching for from his pocket as he did. On the streets of Victorian London, Roderick had been an accomplished pickpocket, and he liked to keep up the old skills.

  His fingers tingled and burned with the presence of Cold Iron—none of this new-fangled steel or alloy, but the pure deathmetal itself. The device resembled an old-fashioned zip gun, but instead of bullets or darts, it held a clip of inch-long iron spikes. It might annoy a human, but it would kill or cripple one of the Sidhe. He tossed it quickly into a containment bin for later examination, and rubbed his blistering fingers together. A nasty piece of work that, put together by someone who knew more about Roderick's kind than was strictly comforting.

  "Now. What can we do for you?" he asked pleasantly. It was still difficult to keep an eye on his young guest—baffling that, as Roderick could detect no magic, though the force acting upon him certainly wasn't physical. Still, whatever power the young man had of avoiding the eye, it would do him little good in a small locked room.

  "You can let me go. I've done nothing wrong," the lad—little more than a boy, really, even by human standards—said sullenly.

  "Au contraire. You were on the verge of annoying one of our guests, and you just tried to kill me, as well you know. Best make a clean breast of things, lad. If you're in trouble, we can h
elp you."

  "Help us? We've had more than enough of your kind of help! I— I have nothing to say." The lad backed away, putting the table in the center of the room between them. His expression was hard to read through the mirrorshades, but he sounded terrified.

  As well he might, did he have dealings with the Dark Court, Roderick thought philosophically. Still, that didn't mean he had to bring his vendetta here.

  "Nothing to say? Let me help you," Roderick said. He cast a simple glamourie, one that would make the young man see him as a trusted friend.

  Nothing happened.

  Roderick frowned, moving toward the boy, who recoiled. "I'll call the police!"

  "From here? A good trick, that. I rather think you ought to tell me who you are, first—and if you canna do that, then you'll have to show me."

  He cornered the boy quickly, and plucked the glasses from his face. As Roderick touched them, he felt a tingle of not-quite-magic, from the glasses and the suit as well. It was they which held the interference to his spells, not the lad. Possibly not a private vendetta, then.

  Ruthlessly—and with little cooperation—he searched the boy, removing all loose objects from his person. No other weapons, and not much in the way of the gadgetry and paperwork humans carried with them everywhere they went. He tossed the items to the table and looked through the wallet.

  "Well, now, Travis Booker, what business is it that you have with the Sidhe?"

  * * *

  "The what?" Travis clung to one hope only—that the months of hypnotic conditioning he'd undergone would protect him from the Spookie's alien psionics. Without his special glasses, the Spookie looked like anyone else—a big blond bodybuilder type, well over six feet—but Travis knew better. It was one of them—the enemy—and now Travis was a prisoner in an undeclared war. He owed it to humanity to reveal as little as possible about who and what he was. Only the PS detector he was wearing could possibly implicate the PDI, and its components would fuse if it were taken from him; it was designed to self-destruct within a few minutes if its ambient temperature dropped below 98.6. He pulled it off and tossed it to the table. "There. You've got everything. Now can I go? I'll leave—I won't make any trouble for you."

  "You've already made a certain amount of trouble, young Travis. Why not spare us both the rest? You already seem to know a bit more about us than would ease my mind, but we've always been on good terms with your folk. What business do you have with that lady? I warn you, she's no one to be trifled with, but if she's done you harm, perhaps we can mend it."

  "Is she your queen?" Travis asked, probing for information even though it did not look as if he'd ever be able to use it. They had so little hard information about the Spookies that any crumb was valuable. He asked what business I had with the Shi—is that a personal name, or a tribal designation? Oh, Lord, if I could only sit him down and ask him some questions. But Travis—and the other field agents—had seen the morgue photos of people who'd tried that, their bodies burned almost beyond recognition by a combination of hard radiation and corrosive poison. By nature and inclination, Spookies were merciless predators, using their mental power to trick and destroy their prey.

  But weirdly, his question only made the Spookie laugh. "My queen? Not bloody likely, young Travis. Nay, she's nowt but trouble for your kind and mine, if she takes it into her head to make it. But she's here peacefully, and so should you be."

  "I . . . all right. I won't make any trouble." Could escape be this easy? The briefing book said that Spookies didn't think like humans. Maybe a promise—even if one he had no intention of keeping—would be enough to get him out of here.

  "Now how am I to believe you, when a moment ago you were so hot at hand?" the Spookie protested, smiling his inhuman smile. "Perhaps if you were to tell me all about yourself, we could come to some accommodation."

  The Spookie looked into his eyes, and Travis found himself unable to look away. He felt a pressure in his head, as if the air had grown suddenly dense, holding his skull in a soft yet merciless grip. But the conditioning held, and he said nothing.

  The Spookie sighed, pretending disappointment. "Ah, Travis, you're being less than forthcoming with me, aren't you, coming here as you have with armor and weapons? Still, we can settle this peaceably, can we not?"

  * * *

  "Kill me, you mean?" the young cockerel blustered, still full of fight.

  Roderick sighed inwardly. Too much television, that's what it was. Everybody thought that violence settled things, as if it didn't just put off the trouble to a future time. And the lad seemed to be able to resist all Roderick's encouragements to confide in him—worrisome, but a certain percentage of humans were naturally resistant to mind-magic, and Travis might be one of that happy few.

  Ah, weel, there's more ways to skin a cat than by buttering it with parsnips.

  If the lad couldn't be induced to tell why he was here, surely making him forget all he'd seen would serve nearly as good a purpose? Let him hunt elsewhere—in vain—for his vengeance.

  "Kill you?" Roderick asked. "Nay, you'll live out your years in quiet content. But you'll trouble us no more, Travis Booker."

  * * *

  It had taken a great deal of Power to set the spell, to wipe the lad's mind clean of the day's events and cast him into slumber, but in the end, Master Roderick was well satisfied with his work. When Travis lay asleep on the floor, he examined the items on the table, but found nothing odd about them, and tucked them back into Travis's pockets. As for the suit itself, perhaps he'd been mistaken, for the heavy cloth held no trace of magic or spellcraft that Roderick could sense—and in any event, he could hardly take it and leave young Travis to foot it home in socks and smallclothes, now, could he? But the strange glasses—and the lethal little weapon—would remain here. Roderick would show them to Prince Gelert, and see if his lord could make any more of them than he had. But young Travis would trouble them no more.

  And the puir laddie had broken his wristwatch, as well, for it lay cold and dark and unresponsive in Roderick's hand. He shrugged, and buckled it back onto Travis's wrist. Now to put him in a cab, the slumber spell timed to lift as Travis reached the hotel whose key had been among his things. With any luck at all, he'd just think he'd fallen asleep on the way to his destination, and with a little time, the boy's own mind would create a plausible tale to fill in the missing hours.

  Another crisis solved. But I do wish I knew what had set him on.

  THIRTEEN:

  YESTERDAY UPON THE STAIR

  The Las Vegas Convention Center was the largest single-level convention facility in the United States, containing 1.9 million square feet in its 102 meeting rooms and 12 exhibit halls—so the literature in the package she and Kory had received at check-in said—and after a morning spent trying to find the displays of the people she'd talked to last night, Beth Kentraine was inclined to believe it. This was the first day of Comdex, and the place was crammed with convention-goers.

  It wasn't that she'd never been to a trade show before. When she'd still had a mundane job in television (though that time now seemed as if it belonged to someone else's life), Beth had attended ShoWest and a number of other conventions, some of them even held in this very place. But Comdex outstripped them all—there were hundreds of vendors, offering everything to do with computers that was even imaginable, including products that wouldn't reach the wider market for years, if ever. In just the short walk from the main entrance, Beth had seen wraparound computer monitors as wide as a Cinerama screen, 19-inch screens that you could hang on the wall like a picture, laptops that would fit in your purse but whose monitor and keyboard unfolded to the size of a desktop system. She'd seen servers the size of shoeboxes, computers so small the CPU was built into the keyboard, solar-powered computers, and computers on which you could surf the net from the heart of the Amazon jungle, no phone lines, electricity, or cables required.

  It was dizzying.

  Their first stop was Haram Technologies. Haram'
s business was shielding and buffering equipment, and they were picking up the Faraday Cage here. It had been Azrael who'd suggested they just order the stuff and pick it up at Comdex. For one thing, everyone they would want to deal with would be here. For another, if the components were shipped to Comdex as part of the trade show paraphernalia and then sold off the floor, there'd be no detailed paper trail leading back to who bought them. And that, Beth considered, was a very useful thing.

  The sales rep at Haram had the slightly-unbelievable name of Mike Fright. He and Beth quickly checked over the component list for the cage (the directions said it was easily assembled; Beth personally doubted that), and Beth paid with a certified check drawn on the Elfhame Misthold account. The equipment would be shipped to the Tir-na-Og at the end of the show—just as well, as it came in a crate weighing several hundred pounds.

  Their next stop was a small Seattle-based company called Orion Power and Light, where they took delivery of solar charging arrays and LION battery packs to run both the Faraday Cage and the computer system that would be set up inside it. The two booths were a serious distance apart, and Beth and Kory still had several more stops to make—computer, monitor, printer, software—before they'd have taken care of their shopping list. They could carry some of the smaller items with them, but the cage and the batteries were too heavy.

  It was while they were looking for Hesperus Microsystems that Beth realized that the same guy had been behind them, just a few feet away, every time she'd looked for the last forty minutes. Even in a trade show full of eccentrics he was easy to spot—how many people wore business suits in that shade of green? He looked as if he'd mugged a sofa to get it.

  "Kory," she said, stopping to nudge him. "See that man? Over there? The one in the green suit? Don't let him see you looking. I think he's following us."