Vanished g-4

by Kat Richardson

  Michael scowled. “You’re saying you’re a witch or something?”

  “Not even remotely. I just see things most people don’t. And they see me.”

  He still looked very skeptical.

  I sighed. “OK, try this. For the sake of argument, say ghosts exist. Just as a supposition.”

  He nodded reluctantly. Most people do believe there are things they can’t see—whether they call it “magic” or “God” or “quantum physics.” They have some belief in an unseen force that does things they can’t control.

  “So, if there are ghosts and monsters and witches, isn’t it possible they have problems, conflicts that need resolving?”

  I waited to see if he was buying in at all. He gave another nod, a little less incredulous this time. “Okaaaay, maybe.”

  “I solve problems for people. That’s really what my job is: finding answers. Sometimes the answers or the problems—or even the clients—just happen to be ghosts or monsters or magical weirdness. That’s what your brother meant when he said we came from different worlds. Now the worlds are colliding, and Will got caught in the middle.”

  “So, that. back there—that’s your fault?”

  “Yeah. I’m afraid so.”

  “Why!” Michael demanded. “Why would anyone do that?”

  “I don’t know. I only got here yesterday, but that golem’s at least a few days old, maybe a week. Someone knew I’d come looking for Will, but not when. And they didn’t want anyone else looking—not the cops, not you—so they made the golem. If I didn’t come straight to them, I’d come to see Will and then they’d get me.”

  “Why would you come all the way here to see your ex-boyfriend? And why did you? And that phone call—”

  “Bad dreams.”

  “Huh?”

  “I had some awful dreams about your brother—and sometimes you, too—being in danger, hurt, or killed. I don’t have dreams like that; I’m not psychic. But they freaked me out and I had to check in to be sure they were just dreams. So I called.”

  I couldn’t bring myself to tell him how the golem was probably the channel that sent the dreams and what they meant about what must be happening to Will. It was bad enough to think someone had kidnapped him and substituted a fake Will. But why Will, the ex-boyfriend? Why not Quinton? I had to stuff down an instant’s panic and desire to call and be reassured that he was all right. I had to believe he was fine, or I wouldn’t be able to do anything to help Will or Michael or myself. I was sure this was about me, about my father and whatever had started twenty-two years before. How any of it connected to Edward and his problem—if he really had one—I didn’t know, but I’d find out.

  “But I told you everything was all right,” Michael said. He looked distressed.

  I nodded. “You did, but the dreams kept coming, and then I had a chance to come here on business and it seemed too good to pass up—way too good, not just a coincidence. My case had a connection to Sotheby’s, so I thought I’d check on Will while I was there. But I found out he hadn’t been there in a while. That didn’t jibe with what you’d told me, and other information about the case tied up to Will. So I knew he was in trouble and I went to your place. ”

  Michael frowned. “Would they have brought Will back if you hadn’t come around?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “But you don’t think so, do you?” he demanded. He screwed his face up against the emotional pain my nonresponse brought. We were both silent for a while until he said, “Now what?”

  “We find you a safe place to stay while I finish up this case and get Will back.”

  Michael shook his head. “I’m not going to be warehoused somewhere. I’m sticking with you.”

  There was no way I’d include Michael in the further investigation of whatever was going on, but I knew I had no power to order him around. I’d have to convince him to keep out of it in some other way, later. I cut him an irritated glance. “Let’s find a safer place to have this discussion.”

  We picked ourselves up and made our way down to the Underground station. I paid the fare and in spite of Michael’s annoyance we didn’t replace his Oyster card. I wasn’t sure what the nature of the tracking spell had been and it was always better in these situations to leave as little trace as possible. However else the card could be tracked, I was certain the Underground authorities kept tabs on the cards themselves. Every attachment is a potential point of weakness for an enemy to attack, even a piece of plastic with a chip in it. Or a photo, or a loved one.

  CHAPTER 28

  We started to come up at Temple Station, but the crowds in the lobby had an unpleasant smell and aura to them. Before we’d reached the upper level, I turned around and pulled Michael along behind me, back to the train platforms.

  “What’s going on?” he asked, bewildered but following without a struggle.

  “More bad guys. I recognized a face or two. We’ll go on to the next station and walk back.”

  The next train gusted into the platform and a familiar figure in a long dark coat and white trousers stepped off, carrying a white cane held out in front of himself. It was Marsden, the unpleasant and uncanny man I’d met in Farringdon Station. He seemed to have an affection for dramatic entrances on Underground platforms.

  Marsden turned his head back and forth as if scenting for me. Then he headed directly for us and hooked his arms through each of ours, turning us around.

  “C’mon, you two. Not safe above.”

  “I had figured that out on my own,” I said.

  “Who’s this guy?” Michael asked.

  “That’s a good question,” I replied as we stepped aboard the next train into the platform.

  Rush hour had faded to a thick trickle and we found some seats at the far end of a car. Michael stared at the blind man and his strange outfit for a moment, making a crooked face. Then he leaned in closer.

  “They’re little pelts!” Michael exclaimed, pointing at the uneven texture of Marsden’s coat.

  “Moleskins,” Marsden replied, spreading his coattails out. “They little gentlemen in velvet weren’t in need of ’em any longer. Not once I’d done with ’em.” He grinned, showing crooked yellow teeth that seemed unusually pointed, and his odd, colorless aura flashed and moved like a kaleidoscope of clear glass. He turned his attention to me. “I’d a feeling I’d find you at that platform, and there you were with a bloody great lot of Red Guard upstairs.”

  “Soviets?” Michael questioned.

  “Vampires’ servants,” Marsden corrected.

  Michael quirked his eyebrows and twisted his face in incredulous disbelief. “Get away.”

  “God’s truth, boy.” Marsden fixed his eyeless gaze on me. “Do I lie?”

  I didn’t want to admit it in front of Michael, but I said, “No.” The crowd that had tried to herd us in Trafalgar hadn’t wasted much time once they realized they’d lost us but had come straight to my hotel and the nearest Underground station. I had no doubt they’d be stationed all around the block and probably at each Tube station nearby. They knew where I was staying. As did Marsden, it seemed.

  “How did you know where to find me?” I asked.

  “As I said, I had a feeling. I always heed those impressions. I imagine you’re much the same, aren’t ya?”

  Michael was watching us both with a wary expression.

  “I don’t take hunches for granted, no.”

  “Your instincts are fine-tuned to the mysterious. Your father wasn’t so good at that.”

  Now I was glaring at Marsden with suspicion. “You knew my father?”

  “Not in person, but we had some enemies in common. Those same as were lying in wait upstairs at Temple. Not that lot specifically, but the same cut of crypt robbers.”

  The speakers in the car blared with the news we were approaching the next station. I stood up. “My father was a paranoid who thought things were watching him. He thought his receptionist was a monster. And right now my instincts aren’t
urging me to believe that the enemy of my enemy is my friend.”

  I beckoned to Michael and started for the doors. I didn’t like speaking so harshly of my dad, but I didn’t trust this creepy man and his coincidental appearances. He had been watching my hotel and now there were others staking it out who didn’t have my best interests or Michael’s in mind. I may have tripped up and been careless shaking off watchers and tails, but I thought it more likely someone else had tipped them off.

  As we stepped off, Marsden’s whisper carried to my ears. “Your father did you no favors in blowing his brains out and making you the Greywalker in the family. Nor did he do any favors for the rest of us, the bleedin’ coward. May he rot in whatever damned hole he’s been locked in.”

  Michael looked at me with wide eyes as I stopped and spun back toward the train car. Had he heard that?

  The doors hissed closed and the train hummed before it swept away, leaving us on the platform with the fast-dissipating crowd.

  “Second thoughts?” came Marsden’s voice from a shadowed corner.

  “This is seriously wigging me out,” Michael muttered to me.

  “Just stick with me,” I replied.

  Marsden was lurking in his corner, gleams of ghostly white the only sign of him in the darkness. “You and me, we’re the same ruddy thing,” he hissed, furious. “Should have been your dad’s job, but he bunked it and that left you. That monster what’s been stalking one of us for his own all these years, he’s coming for you now. I can see his marks on you—and yes, I see. Clear as you do in this half-a-place.” He stepped forward into a slice of light that silvered his face as if it were made of ice. He folded his cane and tucked it into a pocket of his long moleskin coat. Then he closed the distance between us, growing misty and indistinct as he did.

  Implications and connections rushed together in my head. His shattered aura, his almost ghostly appearance on my phone camera, “. one of us,” “same ruddy thing. ” Marsden was a Greywalker.

  Michael jerked beside me and I put my hand on his arm to stop him bolting. “You’ve seen worse today. Don’t let him scare you.” Immersed in the Grey as he was, Marsden was no physical threat to us so long as we stayed on the corporeal side of the line.

  “Your father thought he’d gone mad—as do we all at first. I gouged me own eyes out, thinking it was them what made me see things that couldn’t be. But it’s not these eyes,” he added, jabbing a phantom finger at my face, “that sees this place. It’s another set entirely, and I didn’t stop seeing monsters, no more shall you, girl. At least you’re not runnin’, but you’re trailing your coat and you don’t even know what manner of thing may be stalking you or what it means to do. You are in enemy territory. It called you here, it forced you, it dangled bait. And you came. Now what will you do? Pitch yourself into its arms?”

  He stepped through me, giving a bitter laugh and sending bone-deep cold through my body. My chest ached, and I choked on some frozen terror that exploded through me and then passed as quickly as Marsden stepped away.

  “You are a babe in the woods.”

  I would not give him the satisfaction of fear or even anger. I turned with deliberate care to face Marsden’s new position. Michael shook beside me and I held his arm in a tight grip at my side. I hoped it reassured him, but more than that, I couldn’t risk him running.

  “Do you practice to be such an asshole? Or does it come naturally?” I sneered.

  Michael giggled without sounding hysterical. Good: I was defusing the situation. He’d had more than enough freak show for one day.

  “Marsden, you want to talk to me, do it like a human.”

  The man firmed up, sliding back out of the Grey. “Are you ready to listen, then?”

  I nodded. “After I put this kid somewhere safe.”

  “Hey!” Michael objected, squirming in my grasp. “I’m eighteen!”

  “Old enough to drink doesn’t make you adult, boy,” Marsden said.

  Michael bridled in my grip. “Don’t argue,” I advised. “This is not the time to split hairs.” He grumbled under his breath but stopped wriggling, and I let go of his arm. “Where can we go?”

  Marsden shrugged. “It’s not me they’re after and I doubt you’d feel safe enough in my abode. You’re not entirely sure about me, are you?”

  “You got that right.”

  “Where are we?” Michael asked, looking around. No more trains or passengers had come through since we’d stepped onto the platform, which seemed a little odd until I looked around.

  The platform hadn’t been in use in ages. The only lights were safety lights in the tunnel and an occasional gleam from something above us. I could hear trains nearby, but when one did finally rush though, it didn’t even slow. The station had an arched roof and sides that were tiled in soft greens and brown. The signs were all tiled in place, too, but they’d faded badly with time. It looked like something from a WWII movie, and the ghosts in it were dressed in the clothing of the early twentieth century, ignoring us without a care.

  “Oh, wow,” Michael started, answering his own question, “it’s a ghost station.”

  “A what?” I asked, startled.

  “An abandoned station on the Underground. I’ve heard of them. How—?”

  “You’re in the company of two people for whom the paranormal is the normal, and you can ask a cloth-eared question like that?” Marsden hooted.

  “Back off him, Marsden,” I started, but Michael closed with the older man and glared at him.

  “Step off, sunshine. I thought I saw my brother hacked to pieces today. Then I found out he was a golem. Then I got chased by creep azoids, and now you want to rag me for being a little freaked? Well, bugger you!”

  Marsden gave him a feral grin. “You’ll do,” he said.

  “Fine,” I said. “Now, where can we go from here? I doubt there’s going to be another train stopping for us.”

  CHAPTER 29

  Michael had been looking around while Marsden and I talked and now said, “This says Down Street Station.” He pointed to a sign tiled into the wall. “The only M Down Street I know is near Green Park. But. that’s the Piccadilly line. We were on the Circle line. ”

  “Weirder things have happened today than that,” I reminded him. “Do you think we can get out of here?”

  “Yeah, I think so. There’s a sign for an emergency exit. We can try it.”

  We headed for the steel mesh door Michael indicated at the end of the platform and pushed. It opened with a mild complaint of hinges onto a steep staircase that looked a lot newer than the station. We started up and kept climbing for what seemed a very long time. Finally we came to another door and had to push very hard. It creaked open reluctantly, and I poked my head out first, scanning for vampires and other things that might lie in wait.

  Just the usual ghosts, Grey, and humans lay beyond the door, and we emerged onto Piccadilly with the door clanking locked behind us. Michael pointed to our right.

  “That’s Hyde Park Corner! Hey, we’re close to my garage!”

  “Garage?” I questioned. I knew most people didn’t have private cars in London, except for the collection I’d seen in Clerkenwell that the vampires shared.

  “Yeah, where I keep the bikes—well, it’s Loren’s, really. It’s just an old horse stall, but he might have left the key to his boat there. We can borrow it—he won’t care.”

  “A boat,” I said doubtfully.

  “On Regent’s Canal. No one would look for us on a narrow boat!”

  Marsden and I had to agree that it was unlikely anyone would stumble upon us in such a place—especially since it was on water, which vampires tend to dislike and ghosts rarely haunt unless they are on the shore or on a boat themselves.

  Michael led the way north and a bit west.

  Marsden turned his head toward him as we went, as if he were peering at the boy with his empty eyes. “Your mate has a horse stall in Mayfair?”

  “It’s his sister’s place.�
� Michael blushed, keeping his eyes averted from the disconcerting face beside him. “Loren’s family has money—like the kind of money even rich people think is a lot of money.”

  We went a few more blocks into a very nice, old residential neighborhood until Michael stopped in front of a long row of connected houses with tiny yards in front. Then he led the way up a short alley to a green-painted door in what looked more like a shed than a stable. The door certainly wasn’t wide enough for any sort of car. Michael dug his keys from his pocket and used one on the padlock attached to the door’s hasp and handle assembly. The door swung open to show a tiny space packed full of motorcycles and repair gear. There was barely room to step in and move the bikes.

  “The Ducatis and the Enfield are his. Mine are the BSAs,” Michael said, rummaging through a rack of keys on the wall. “I meant to take the Comet to a rally in a couple of weeks, but I’m guessing that’s not going to happen.”

  “Why not?” I asked. “This should resolve in a day or two. It’s not the end of the world. At least not yet.”

  Michael goggled at me. “If Will’s skipped work for a week, they can deport us both. I mean, they might not, but who’s to say? He’s on work contract and he has to show up for work at the job that brought him here or he has to leave. Keeps people from coming at an employer’s expense and then ducking out for some other job or just slacking around on the dole.” He found the key he wanted and held it up with a shout. “Got it!”

  “Where’s the boat?” I asked.

  “Last time he left it in St. Pancras Basin. It’ll have to be somewhere between there and Islington. That’s only a mile or so to walk on the towpath, and we can take the Tube to Pankers to start.”

  “St. Pancras will do quite nicely,” Marsden said.