Downpour g-6

by Kat Richardson

She moved with incredible speed and grace, stopping a hairbreadth from the monsters that worried at the spirit in their circle. She thrust a finger at them and snapped some words at Jin that I couldn’t understand.

  The yaomo waded into the circle of smaller demons, slapping them aside and snarling at them, manifesting his inhuman form as he snatched the ghostly thing away from them. The guai didn’t like that and attempted to bite at him and fight back, but Jin shook them off, letting out a shriek that sent a shudder up my spine.

  Holding on to the struggling mist-shape, he turned back toward the woman while the smaller demons lurked behind him, heads down, but beady eyes watching Jin for any chance to snatch the spirit back from him. The woman reached out and grabbed it from him. Then she tilted her head and let out a thread of sound that gleamed with color, twisting and coiling around the struggling Grey form, binding it and drawing it back toward her body. . . .

  Headlights swept down onto the asphalt and struck across the figures as a car turned onto Highway 101 from East Beach Road. The woman gasped, snatching at the silvery cloud, and the entire group of demons bolted into the bushes on the east side of the highway, the spirit thing wailing as the woman dragged it away and slipped into the darkness in their wake. Her brilliant aura and smell faded swiftly into the distance beyond the edge of the trees.

  I’d had enough. I stepped back into the normal and out to the edge of the tarmac, waving one arm while I clutched the ferret securely inside my coat. A dark red Mercedes SUV pulled to a halt in front of me.

  I walked to the passenger-side window, which was already on its way down, and glanced in. The driver turned on the courtesy light and looked over at me. It was Geoff Newman and I wasn’t even surprised.

  “Get in, Miss Blaine.”

  “Is that an order, Mr. Newman?”

  He fumed. “It’s common sense, woman! You don’t know what sort of things run in the night here.”

  “You mean like those demons that just cleared the road?”

  His eyes widened a little, but he just said, “Whatever they were, wouldn’t you rather not meet them again tonight?”

  “That depends on what other monsters you might take me to.”

  “Goddamn it, I’m trying to help you! Get in and I’ll take you to your car or your hotel or wherever you like, but let’s not just sit here like sheep!”

  The flashes of anxious orange were back in his dim green energy corona. He was genuinely worried. I took a deep breath, making up my mind, and got in.

  Chaos poked her head out of my coat and gave me a dirty look as I buckled the seat belt over her.

  “Jesus! What’s that?” Newman yelped when he saw her.

  “It’s a ferret. Don’t worry—she’s a pet, not some wild animal I picked up on the road.”

  He huffed and forced his attention back to driving. “I know what a ferret is. I just wasn’t expecting one to come bursting out of your chest like an alien.”

  I laughed. I hadn’t pegged Newman for a science fiction fan, though I certainly didn’t know enough about him to have made that leap, anyway. “I’m sorry. I’ll try to keep my aliens to myself.”

  “Well,” he said, but he seemed to switch thoughts as he finished his sentence. “So, where can I take you?”

  “My truck’s at Storm King ranger station.”

  “You drive a truck?”

  I nodded. As far as I’m concerned, the “SUV” thing is a load of marketing crap: It’s either a sport vehicle or a utility vehicle. His Mercedes was more of a luxury utility vehicle while mine was definitely just plain utility, but neither one of them was “sporty.”

  As we rolled down the dark highway, he started to talk, flicking on the wipers as slushy rain finally arrived. “Miss Blaine, I don’t want you to have the wrong impression. . . .”

  “What impression do you think I have?”

  “You may be thinking Jewel’s a little . . . unstable. It’s not true. She’s just . . . put a lot of herself into the community here and she has some odd ideas sometimes.”

  “Trust me, Mr. Newman. Your wife’s ideas are not that far off the beam. There is something very unsavory around here.”

  “Ridenour’s gotten to you.”

  “No. Not the way you mean, at least. I don’t think your wife’s crazy, either, but that doesn’t mean I trust either one of you—or anyone else from this place—as far as I could drop-kick the pair of you.”

  “Is that why you told her no?”

  I made a show of thinking about it. “Yep. That would be it.”

  “Jewel didn’t kill her father. If—if anyone were to say she had, they’d be wrong, and if either of us were to have done it, it would have been me,” he babbled.

  I sighed and rubbed the ferret’s ears. “Mr. Newman, I’m not the one you need to convince, and I’d advise you not to say anything that stupid when Ridenour—or whoever gets the case—comes around with questions. I cannot be involved in an active homicide investigation and especially not one that might end up on the feds’ plate. I could lose my license.”

  He chewed his lower lip. “What about the rest . . . ?”

  “Were you eavesdropping on our conversation?”

  “No, but if it were just about the homicide thing, you’d have said so to Jewel just like you did to me. So that’s not what’s put your tail in a twist.”

  “Do you believe in ghosts, Mr. Newman?”

  He stared at me. “What?”

  I pointed out the windshield. “Deer.”

  He looked up and slammed on his brakes. The phantom herd of long-dead deer ambled across the road, through his front bumper. He stared at them; then he turned his head and stared at me.

  “It rubs off after a while,” I said. “When you spend enough time with someone who sees ghosts and works magic, even a normal person starts to see the freak show. And then you start to think like them, too. You might want to drive on now.”

  Newman got the Mercedes moving again.

  “The problem I have here, Mr. Newman, is that the unsavory elements are running the show, and I don’t know the players or the play, but I’m reasonably sure I can’t do what your wife wants without becoming as bad as the rest of them. Now, why would I want to do that?”

  He turned in at the ranger station and said nothing until he’d pulled up next to my lonely Rover. Then he looked at me, keeping his hand on the automatic door lock, holding me in the Mercedes until he’d said his piece. His aura went an ugly chartreuse shade. “You kicked over the wasps’ nest; it’s up to you to clean it up.”

  I unbuckled my seat belt, but I didn’t try to leave yet. “I didn’t kick over anything. This rotten situation was already brewing, and it was what killed Steven Leung as much as any person did. All I did was bring a light.”

  “And now that you’ve shined your flashlight on the problem, you think it’ll go away.”

  I shook my head, disappointed. “Not exactly. See, when I said ‘a light,’ I meant something more like a match to gunpowder. You don’t want to see what will happen if I accept your wife’s proposal. Because I won’t be dictated to about my methods; I’ll do it my own way, and that way is not pretty. Now, please unlock the door and let me go.”

  “No.” He looked sick and scared, but I had to give him credit for balls.

  What I didn’t have to do was give in. I rolled my eyes and reached under my coat for my pistol. “Let me out or I’ll have to shoot your car.” I let him glimpse the hard shape of the slide and sight as I drew it, carefully keeping it pointed away from him. I placed the P7’s muzzle against the passenger window. It made a hard clink as the metal touched the glass. I glanced back at him.

  He looked about to faint. Then he pushed the lock release. I had to keep one arm across the ferret—which was tricky—as I opened the door and stepped out. Once I was standing on the ground between the two vehicles, I reholstered the gun—I hadn’t even cocked it, but Newman didn’t know the difference. I turned and started unlocking the Rover as half-f
rozen rain worked into my collar and hair. I refused to hurry, to give him the impression I was afraid or anxious, but I was still relieved when I got into the seat and closed the door on the weather.

  Newman watched me the whole time, rolling down the window as I started to pull out. He shouted, “A quarter of a million dollars!”

  I just drove away.

  It wasn’t that I wasn’t tempted by the money, but I didn’t want to think about it right then. I wanted to go home. I didn’t even want to stop at the hotel and pick up my things. I certainly didn’t want to spend another night here. I could still catch a ferry and be home before midnight. I could even drive all the way down to Olympia and back up the other side of the Sound if I had to. In my gut I knew I wasn’t going to escape, but for now I’d do whatever it took to get home and away from Blood Lake.

  TWELVE

  Between the packing, checking out, and waiting for the ferry, I reached home about eleven o’clock. Quinton was hunched over my computer, typing madly, when I came in. Even though he’d said he’d see me when I got back, I hadn’t really expected him to be right in my living room. He shut his session down and came to greet me as soon as I closed the door.

  He slipped his arms around me and hauled me close for a kiss and a lingering hug before either of us said a thing. “Hey. You’re back,” he started.

  “I brought my front, too.”

  “Mm . . . I could tell,” he said, squeezing me a little closer so my breasts flattened against his chest. I gave him a smile, but it was a little less enthusiastic than usual. He noticed. “Are you OK? You seem wrung out.”

  I shrugged it off. “Oh, yeah. Just tired. Long day watching a bunch of guys haul a sunken car out of a lake.”

  He leaned back, loosening his hug, and gave me a curious look. “Sounds weird. What was the car doing in the lake?”

  I tucked my chin and pressed the top of my head to his shoulder. “What cars usually do—sink. I really don’t want to talk about it right now. Can we go to bed?”

  He pulled me close again. “Sure, sweetheart. Sure we can.”

  Of course, we had to unpack the ferret first and she wasn’t ready to go back to bed, so our desires had to wait on her pleasure. But we did manage to fall into bed around midnight. Not that we did a lot of sleeping....

  In the morning, we both got up earlier than we wanted to, but I had work to do and Quinton had some mysterious project he had to get back to, so we gave up on attempting to unmake the bed from the inside out and returned to work.

  From the office I started on the business that was still hanging over my head from before I’d left. First I called Nanette Grover and, once I had her on the line, she argued that having found the car and body and turned further investigation over to the sheriff ’s department, I was now free to come back to work for her. I hadn’t found anything on Shea, though; he was still as much a blank as ever. I needed more time on him and, much as I’d have liked to, I couldn’t walk away from the broader problem of the lake, its monsters, and its magicians. I knew the police wouldn’t get into it—it wouldn’t even register in their minds and whatever motive they eventually found for Leung’s murder would be as mundane and sordid as for any other normal-world homicide. And there was the matter of the Grey itself.

  There wasn’t much doubt in my mind that Jewel Newman’s job was at least akin to the best interests of the Grey and the Guardian Beast. There might have been a loophole to get me out of the situation, but ignoring Grey jobs tended to be a lousy idea. Like the proverbial bad penny, it would keep turning up and causing problems until I gave in and dealt with it, anyway. I was also a bit on the fence about the quarter of a million dollars. Certainly it was a tempting amount, but taking the money would imply my doing Jewel’s bidding, and what she demanded in the heat of grief and anger—or in cold calculation—might not be so wise once things began coming apart under my prodding. Her avowed preference was that I kill the competing mages, but I was no assassin. Her second choice—to drive them away—was more to my taste; better still if I could get them to turn on one another.... I was still a little unsure of my powers in the Grey now, but I was reasonably certain I could make a damned fine mess if I tried. And after a night to think about it, I wanted to try, no matter how much I despised Jewel.

  Even with these twisted thoughts, I carried on talking to Nan. “I still don’t have any information on Shea’s background, and the family of the dead man is still very concerned about the situation at the lake. It’s complicated by the overlapping jurisdictions. There’s still a lot of information to be found on both cases. I’d like to go back out and work them both some more. You know how the family becomes the last concern when agencies start bickering over who’s stuck taking out the garbage,” I said.

  Nan made a noise of disgust. “Yes, I do, but that’s a distraction, and it doesn’t make me any happier about this. Stick on Shea and make sure I have something before we hit trial or I will start contracting with Feldman in the future. Don’t let this become a habit, Harper.”

  “I understand, Nan.”

  “I hope you do. I hire you because you’re reliable. Whether we’re friends or not makes no difference to me.”

  If we had been friends, that would have hurt, and it stung more than I liked to admit, but I nodded at the phone, repeating, “I understand.”

  “Good.” She hung up.

  I wasn’t sure if I was burning a bridge or opening a door to something else, but I didn’t have a lot of time to ponder it. My phone rang within seconds of my putting it down.

  Wishing I’d stopped for coffee on the way in, I picked up the phone again. “Harper Blaine.”

  “Rey Solis. I wanted to ask you a few more questions.”

  “Can it wait a few hours? I have a ton of paperwork to catch up on since I spent the weekend out on the Peninsula.” He rarely called—usually he just showed up if he wanted to grill me—so I guessed he wasn’t yet ready to arrest me for making Will Novak disappear, but I still thought maybe I ought to be considering the money end of the Newmans’ offer a little more seriously. If I had to dodge Solis until I could find a plausible way to convince him I wasn’t a good suspect, a quarter of a million dollars would certainly come in handy. . . .

  “So I understood.”

  “Understood what?”

  “That you have been busy around Lake Crescent finding sunken cars with human remains in them.”

  I sighed in annoyance. “It wasn’t exactly a plan.”

  “So Steven Leung was your missing person case.”

  “Yes, and now he’s found—I’m assuming it is Leung’s body in the car. But how do you know about the car and Leung?”

  “The Clallam County sheriff ’s investigator called me this morning to vet you.”

  “To vet me? Why?”

  “Professional courtesy. And I suppose he is curious what a King County–based PI was doing in his territory.”

  “I think I told you it was a coincidence. I was in the area on some pretrial work for Nanette Grover. I assume you know her.”

  “Professionally only.”

  “Not surprising; she’s not a social butterfly.”

  “How did you come to be involved in this case?”

  “One of the witnesses I was looking for mentioned a car accident in the area a few years earlier. It just sounded odd, so I looked it up, but there wasn’t any record of the accident and . . . you know how I like to poke my nose into anything weird,” I said with a heavy dose of sarcasm. “The more I looked at the information on Leung, the more it seemed like he’d simply disappeared, and with that and the accident information, I thought I should find out if they were connected, since no one else seemed to give a damn. The more information I got, the more it looked like I was right. So I poked around the lake a bit on the weekend and found the car. That’s all. I’m more than glad to turn over my research on Leung’s financial and property situation to the investigator if he wants it.”

  “I’m sure he w
ill.”

  “Then I’ll be sure to send it over, if you give me the investigator’s name and office address.”

  “I would also like to speak with you myself.”

  “Why? What business is Leung’s death or his family’s misery to you?”

  “They aren’t. But I am still concerned with the matter of William Novak.”

  There it was. I wanted to swear, but I held back. “Solis, I’ll talk to you all you like in a few hours, but I have to get some work done here first. We can meet after lunch if you like. Wherever you want.”

  “That will do. One o’clock here at the police department. I’ll meet you in the west lobby.”

  I would have objected—if I had any intention of turning up—but I’d already given him the choice of place and time; throwing a fit wouldn’t change anything. “All right,” I replied. I think I sounded snappish and I didn’t care. Nor did I put the phone down politely. I just dumped it into the cradle and got ready to go out.

  Before I could go on with anything else, I needed to talk to Michael Novak. I’d let it slide, and now with Solis breathing down my neck, apparently thinking I was somehow responsible for Will’s disappearance, I had to face up to it. I also had to find out what Michael had already told Solis and if there was any hope that I didn’t have to duck and run.

  The pressure from Nan and my own sense of paranoia about both the situation at the lake and Solis’s sudden interest in Will’s disappearance swamped my brain, and I dove into the nearest of the impending disasters without noticing I’d forgotten all about meeting with Ben Danziger.

  It didn’t take very long to hunt Michael Novak down. He and Will had been in London for almost two years and he’d been back in Seattle for less than one, so he’d gravitated back to the parts he knew best and the jobs he understood. I found him at a motorcycle repair shop in the industrial part of Ballard. I recognized his shaggy head of blond hair even streaked with grease and at a distance. The shop was noisy, full of metallic bangs and loud engines, but in spite of the cacophony, the energy around the place flowed in calm blue lines and concentrated swirls. I didn’t think I stood much of a chance of being heard over the din and I didn’t want to pick my way through the work area nor yell my business at full volume, so I walked to the customer counter and waited for one of the men in coveralls to come talk to me.