Greywalker

Chapter 26

The sound of little claws on woodwork pulled me back from the bloody edge. I picked up the ferret and snuggled her to my face, smelling the warm, corn-chip odor of her fur. For once, she didn't wriggle.

Close to that soft warmth, I relaxed, taking deep, easy breaths. Everything Grey seemed to flow like silk thread, shimmering with strands of energy, and I could feel every movement I made through it. I pushed on it and it bent, stiffening into a reflective curve around me. Even the chill was less now. I tried to push it away completely, but it would not recede below a constant bright softness lying over everything. Grids of energy gleamed on the threshold of light. Peeking side-ways brought it all up to a bright blaze. I did not wish to step inside and see how the normal world looked from there.

But the constant presence was like acid on my nerves. I didn't want to be near it or anything associated with it. I didn't even want to talk to the Danzigers. Then I would have to think about it.

I shoved it back to the limits. I shivered and found myself crying into Chaos's pelt. Shuddering, I carried her off, crawled back under the covers, and hid from the ugly world.

Monday morning Will met me at a cafe near the Madison Forrest House for breakfast. He greeted me with a more-than-friendly kiss and we sat at a table outside. I told myself the thin golden line around him was a trick of the cool spring sunshine.

I smiled at the delicious quivers he sent over me. "When do you have to go to work?" I asked.

"Closed on Mondays," he replied, draping an arm over my shoulders, "and probably forever afterward, too, thanks to Brandon—who's not returning phone calls and seems to be dodging some guys in dark suits, sunglasses, and grim looks."

I raised my brows. "Who do you suppose they are?"

"I don't know. Mikey spotted them hanging around. They didn't bother to introduce themselves, and their cars had rental plates."

"He noticed that? Sounds like Michael could be a detective, too."

"I hope not. I'd rather admire your technique than watch Mike do it." He wiggled his eyebrows at me. "Want to show me your technique?"

I giggled. "Right here? Heck, no. What about Mike?"

"Let him get a girl his own age. I'm not sharing."

"You know what I mean."

"He's fine. Thinks it's funny. He's in school today."

"Does that mean you have nothing to do?"

He ran a finger along the curve of my ear and down my neck. "Mmm. I wouldn't say nothing."

I shivered. "Unfortunately, I have things to do that preclude dancing the horizontal tango with you all day—much as I might like to. Or had you forgotten this is supposed to be a professional meeting?"

"Spoilsport."

I poked him with a finger and made a face. "The curator will meet us in a little over an hour, so take a look at this and give me your professional opinion."

He glanced at the description sheet I offered him. "Without even looking at it, I expect that my professional opinion will be that it's a piece of grot."

"It does make me rather suspicious of the client's motives." I was suspicious of Sergeyev in general, but I wasn't going to discuss that with Will. "I need to know as much about it as possible."

"You think your client is up to something?"

"Something doesn't smell right, if you know what I mean. He said there was no rush, but he's thrown an awful lot of money at the project and he's shown up once, although he said he was in Europe the first time we talked. His check was drawn on a Swiss bank, but the rest of the packet came from London."

"I'm surprised it wasn't an Irish bank," Will commented. "The Swiss aren't as reticent about giving out information as they used to be, and the Irish make them look like pikers."

"Irish offshore banks? I've never heard of such a thing."

"It was on the horizon the last time I was in England," he explained.

"They've tried a lot of things to bring international business to Ireland. Most didn't pan out, but you don't need any special resources to be a banking power, especially if you're willing to buck the bully tactics of the US and the EU and maintain absolute discretion about your customers."

"Really? You're a guy of unknown depths, Mr. Novak."

"Yep. A diamond of the first water. Better grab me while you can."

I laughed. "I'll consider doing that."

We ate and joked around some more, then headed for the museum.

I parked the Rover in the gravel lot across the street. Will pulled his truck in beside mine. The house was forbidding, all its windows frowning and clouded through a thick bank of Grey. Even the glow of the nexus seemed to have died out. We crossed the street, but this time the gate was locked. I rang the bell on the intercom.

A woman's voice spoke from the box. "We're closed on Mondays."

"Harper Blaine. I have an appointment with the curator."

"Oh. I'll be right up."

A few minutes later, a middle-aged woman in a suit, heels, and corporate hairstyle appeared from behind the house. She took one look at Will and knew a kindred spirit. They chattered antiques the whole way up the drive.

"Nobody cares about the national heritage here," she declared as we reached the kitchen door. "You have to drag every penny of funding out of these bureaucrats' hands as if it were their own money. They'd rather spend it on a new baseball stadium. Watch your feet. There's a towel to wipe your shoes on."

We did as she suggested, leaving the mud on the towel instead of the parquet floor. She led us into the main hall and waved her hands around. "Gorgeous, isn't it? It's a damn sight better than it was when I came here. They had the interior all done in high Victoriana. Crammed with horrible gewgaws and junk, bad wallpaper, ugly, ugly colors. Totally out of period for this building."

"Then why did the museum acquire a parlor organ?" Will asked.

"Oh, yes. That's what you came for, isn't it? There was an organ on the original inventory, but it was broken and the first curator threw it out. Come on. It's upstairs. You can imagine what it was like getting it in here!" she added, leading us up the front staircase. Upstairs, she opened the door in front of us. "There you go. Awful, isn't it?"

A small sofa, chairs, and a needlework stand clustered around the hearth, as before, exuding their reassuring odor of age, must, and wood oil. Against the back wall stood the organ, outlined in gleaming red threads and writhing with vile, silent Grey snakes. Will pulled out the description sheet I'd given him and started studying it.

I felt woozy and my heart sped up. I clamped down on the feeling, but the sense of seasickness remained, tickling away, and the room had become hazy and soft like the stink of rot no matter how I tried to resist it.

Will read the sheet as we walked across the polished wood floor. Two feet inside the door, I felt sick. At four feet, my head was pounding with an instant headache of migraine proportions. I put my hand on Will's arm.

"What's wrong?" he asked.

I lied. "I don't know. I just don't feel well." I turned my attention back to the parlor organ.

It was still the ugliest thing I'd ever seen and would have been even if it wasn't cloaked in swirling energy matrices and sucking darkness like a drain. It had grown worse in just a few days. Clear vision in the Grey seemed to have come with Wygan's "gift." Storm-mist pulse around the organ and phantom faces leered and screamed in transient gusts of paranormal wind. Creeping horror played up and down my spine. I dragged myself a step closer to it, hating the proximity. A glowing tentacle struck out and slammed into my chest where Wygan's thread was tied. I gagged and stumbled.

I tried to bend the Grey and push it away. The tentacle rippled and sucked away the strength of my push. My knees folded and I felt the floor rush up as vision went black.

Will grabbed me under the arms. "Harper!"

The tentacle pulled on me, wrapping around my insides like a steel fist. I choked, "Get me out of here."

Will picked me up and ran out. He didn't stop until we were out-side, where he put me on my feet with the care of a collector placing a prized piece.

"Are you all right now? Are you sick? Do you need a glass of water, a doctor…?"

I slumped down on the carriage steps like a dropped sandbag. "No, no. I'm OK now. I just… I just need some air. Go back inside. I'll be fine." I could not face that thing again. It had drained my resources too easily.

"Are you sure? We can go if you want."

"No, it's important that I know about that organ."

Will sighed. "All right. But you'll be OK till I get back, right?"

"Yeah."

He gave me several glances over his shoulder before he was swallowed again by the doorway. I sat a while, panting, and thought I heard something shrieking in the Grey. I felt better as soon as it stopped. I stood on loose legs and walked around to the front of the house.

To my eyes, the windows of the organ's den were dark. They neither shed nor reflected any light. The house that had seemed so pretty on Saturday now looked like something from a horror film, the stone-work overgrown with veins of fire and writhing Grey vines. I felt a scratching along the surfaces of my bones. I slammed a mental door against the persistence of vision and scurried back to my seat on the steps.

I felt stronger by the time Will returned, smiling and chatting to the curator as they parted company at the door. She stayed on the porch.

I looked up at Will. "Well?"

He dropped onto the steps beside me, folded like a paper crane, and made a face. "Well… it matches the description technically, but…" He shook his head. "It's not worth whatever your client's put into finding it. A lot of the decoration is bone and ivory that's… nonstandard. Modifications and repairs aren't unusual for an item like this, but…" He chewed his lower lip and looked at the ground. "My gut says there's something wrong. It doesn't even play, really. The whole thing's kind of unsettling. But it doesn't matter, because the current museum board won't sell."

"Why not?" I asked. I looked back at the woman on the porch.

She shook her head and called out, "It's the only Tracher parlor organ they could find, and current policy won't allow us to sell anything that matches original inventory. They're freaking out over the idea of permanent reductions. Though after what Will said, I think we'd be better off without it."

I hung my head, worn out, and sighed. "I know it's an imposition, but can I bring one more expert to look at it?"

"Sure, if you think it'll help. Especially if it covers the board's butt."

"It'll have to be after hours. This guy's not available during the day."

"Oh. Well, get in touch with me and we'll work it out. I'd like to hear we didn't buy a screaming fake."

We both thanked her for her time and we left the museum. Crossing the street, I turned for one more look at the organ's resting place. The ground seemed to roll beneath my feet as I looked a little side-ways of normal. The Grey snapped open, showing me an angry tangle of burning lines and shapes, boiling in a restless, sobbing mist. I jerked myself away from it, feeling a biting pain in my chest, and stumbled against Will. He held tight to my arm as we let ourselves out the drive-way gate.

We stopped beside the Rover. "Are you sure you feel OK?" Will asked.

"I'm fine. Probably just something I ate."

"Bull. We ate the same thing and I feel fine." He noticed the hard set of my mouth. "You don't want to talk about it."

"No, I don't."

He sighed. "All right. We'll keep this professional. I'll see if I can dig up anything about this organ. I got numbers off the action and case, and Tracher may still have some records I can start with. I'll let you know what I find."

"Thanks, Will."

He looked me over again, shook his head. "You know Mikey's going to grill me about you this evening, don't you?"

I gave a weak laugh. "Poor Will. Terrorized by a sixteen-year-old."

"Hey, there's a sixty-year-old Jewish mother in that sixteen-year-old body. Mike's not sure you're good for me."

"Oh, I'm sure I'm very bad for you. Very bad indeed."

"Mmm… very bad," he agreed. He leaned forward and kissed me, nibbling my lower lip. He murmured against my mouth, "I won't ask if you're OK, 'cause you're just going to stonewall me some more if I do."

I nodded. "Yep."

He sighed and backed off. "All right. But I will worry and you can't stop me. Be careful, Harper."

"I will."

"No—" he started.

"Yes, I know—you Will, me Harper."

He laughed. "You caught me!" He kissed my cheek this time and opened the Rover's door for me.

I got in and buckled up. He closed the door and watched me for a moment; then he backed away and waited for me to pull out of the lot before he started back to his own truck.

I didn't even get all the way through my office door before the client was in the office and normalcy was out.

I was startled. "Sergeyev. You're back."

"You have made progress to locating my furniture."

I sat down at my desk, buying time. "Yes, I have." I put my mouth on autopilot as my mind leapt around like a terrified monkey. "I've seen the organ at the museum and it seems to match your description—"

"Which museum? Tell the name. They must let me have it."

Some warning instinct in the monkey brain made me stall. "That may not be possible."

Sergeyev loomed over me, exuding a Grey reek and a flutter of colorless energy which didn't surprise me. "You shall make them give it," he demanded. "It is mine."

"No," I answered, my voice going hard as my stomach flipped over. The Grey pressed like a weight on my chest. I strained against it and wouldn't allow it to break through any further. "You may believe you have a moral claim, but the owners can't be forced to sell." "It is mine!"

My words popped in the thick air like water on hot oil. "Not legally. I cannot work miracles. Can't simply make it yours. I have to work within the law."

He ground his teeth, or I told myself that was the sound. "Laws of men! Who has more right to it than I? It is in every bone, every sinew. It is mine. You must loose it to me."

I glared at him, seeing his shape slip and firm again, silver and Grey. Fury burned over me. "Don't. Push me."

He jerked his head back and glowered. "I expected better. You who can see the world should sympathize. I felt you and came for your help. But you are a silly, ignorant girl."

Now he'd pissed me off. "I am getting damned tired of being insulted by things like you. And nobody calls me 'girl' in my own office."

"You do not know with what you toy… girl."

My heart slammed around my chest like a basketball in a box and I kept smelling something like a whiff of harsh tobacco smoke. I was too mad to feel ill or to think clearly about what I was about to do. I held off my fear and revulsion in a cold, dark place and braced myself.

"Really? Why don't you show me?"

He stepped back and raised one hand, as if catching hold of the air itself. The worlds began to vibrate and hum. I threw myself across the immaterial mist of the Grey, feeling the same cold scream rip through me as brilliance burned me away. I lunged up to my feet, my office swamped and throbbing with the mirror-mist and aglow with lines of light and force. The ache in my chest grew hot.

Grey things trailing fire darted in and swarmed me, trying to cocoon me in their glowing threads. I struck at them, bending the edge of the Grey around me, and flung them back into Sergeyev's face.

"Get out!" I shouted, lashing my fists against the swarming Grey between us. A swollen blue arc spanned across my thrumming chest and arms, bowing outward as I raised my arms again and brought them down against the cloud of fiery creatures.

I felt as if I'd smashed my arms against a cement wall which reverberated, then dissolved to gritty, unstable brick. Two masses of force collided between us, shook and toppled with a crack of thunder and a stink of burned sewage. Then it crumbled away, the flames dying in an instant. Sergeyev's eyes glared at me though the haze and vanished. The world crashed back into its normal shape, thinly blurred at the edges.

I collapsed forward, landing half in my chair and half across the desk. My forehead smacked against the blotter. My arms and chest ached and burned and I swallowed again and again, tamping down the urge to be sick. Broken glass tinkled in the hall and outside. I forced myself to breathe in and out with care, settling myself around the dissipating ache centered in the knot of Grey between my breasts. Cool air coursed over my back from the broken window behind me. In a moment—or maybe it was ten minutes—I looked up and saw a face peeping around the edge of my shattered door glass. The receptionist from Flasch and Ikenabi. I waved a flopping hand to her.

She squeaked, "Are you OK? Sounded like an explosion out here."

"Uh… one of my clients… slammed the door pretty hard on his way out."

"Oh. OK. You sure you're all right?" She probably thought I was crazy, or that my clients were. I expected I'd see their offices up for lease inside six months.

"I'm fine. Honest. I just—I need to get the glass fixed," I finished.

She perked up at the thought of familiar action. "Oh! I know a board-up service. Should I… should I call them for you?"

I raised my eyebrows. "You would do that?"

"Well, yeah. If you want." A phone burred. She looked around. "Oh, no! Ohmigod, that's my phone!" she exclaimed, dashing away.

Alone, I slumped onto the desktop and tried to reorganize my brain. I was shaking. I felt torn apart and put back together with cheap glue and a lack of attention to detail. Everything seemed to ache or itch. My job was going straight to hell. But I didn't know what else to do, so I shut off the gibbering part of my brain and did what I'd been trained to do: I made phone calls.

I called the Danzigers and arranged to see them later—I had a lot of questions. Then I called Sarah, who said she'd talk to her brother as soon as she saw him and have him call me.

Twenty minutes later, men with plywood arrived to fix my door and window until I could get the glass replaced. The office felt close and dark without the windows.

In the new gloom, I picked up the Edward file and stared at it, resisting the work, aching all over. Unthinking, I reached up to rub the spot on my shoulder where Wygan's claws had dug into my flesh. The skin felt raw and hot as a sunburn. I winced as my stomach curdled around my lunch.

I'd been dancing in a minefield and was lucky to still have all my limbs. Alice scared me, but I understood what she wanted and how she wanted to use me to get it. As dreadful as Carlos was, I understood him a little, too. But Wygan I could no more understand than I could understand whales singing, and that frightened me most. I did not know what he wanted of me, but I suspected he was finished for a while.

He didn't think much of Alice, but I feared her ambition. I wasn't sure I could hold up against her a second time. I had to admit that challenging Sergeyev had been a mistake, and combined with the strange attack by the organ, whatever strength I had was near exhausted. I didn't know if it would return or if I wanted it to.

I knew my time was running out with Edward. Alice wouldn't hold off much longer. I had to use her agitation to my advantage and not be caught in the blast. But my ideas all assumed Edward's motivations were, essentially, human, and I knew that wasn't true. Ambition, power, and hate were the tools the vampires had lent me—all I had of my own was hope and a detective's steady plod. I didn't like my chances.

I buried myself in paper, trying to shut off my bodily aches and scratch the mental itch of almost-knowing. Much of the TPM file made no sense to me. I started looking for patterns, familiar words, oddities, pretty much anything that hooked to other information. TPM had fingers in lots of pies. It owned businesses and real estate all over Seattle and the near communities on the western side of Lake Washington, though TPM had nothing on the Eastside.

I started reading the list of businesses and something finally jumped out at me: TPM owned Dominic's nightclub.

Steve had said he was helping out the owner the day he spotted Cameron—except TPM wouldn't have asked him to come move furniture. Steve had given me the information just when I was also snooping around TPM's business. And Cameron had claimed Steve lied about knowing Edward, who had to work for TPM. So why had Steve called? Was he assuaging a prickly conscience, or had someone told him to give me Cameron? It had certainly pulled my attention off of TPM, and if Cameron hadn't had the insane idea to hire me, I'd never have looked further.

The tickling, nascent knowledge erupted into full form. In a short burn of energy, I scrambled for the fax of the corporate structure. Wygan had said it. The real estate lawyer had gone stone silent the moment I asked for it. But it was there on the fax: Edward Kammerling was TPM's founder and chairman of the board.

I lay back in my chair, burned out, eyes closed, and put it together. Only Gwen had said anything about TPM—she'd said it was his toy. The vampires found Edward's business activities uninteresting, or boring, but they were the key to his power base. A very sweet deal Edward couldn't afford to lose: only he had power in both the daytime and nighttime worlds, and that kept the other vampires in check. And that was why Alice wanted me—a daylighter with a foot in the dark— to take him out.

In the daylight world, he was at his weakest: just a businessman who had to hide from the light. But he might as well be in a fortress for all that the vampires could do to him there. Though I had a foot in each world, I had nothing to lose in the nightside, where his strengths were greatest. I had disturbed his foothold in the dark, and now I could threaten his foothold in the light as well. His ambition had bought him enemies, and it would allow me to move Edward any direction I pleased. So long as he didn't kill me first.

And supposing that Sergeyev didn't beat him to it.

I rolled my head, glanced at my watch and knew I was running late for my date at the Danzigers'. By the time I got to the Rover, I was dragging. My whole body ached as if I had the flu, a drawing fatigue radiating from my chest and through my limbs. Driving was not fun.

Mara answered my ring of the doorbell. "Harper!" She stopped and goggled at me. "You look flailed out. What's happened?"

"I—" was all I could get out. Then I stood there with words stoppered in my throat and couldn't think of what to say.

Mara blinked at me, then dragged me through the doorway. "Oh, my. Come into the kitchen, then. And don't be telling me this is tea-sized trouble. You look like you need a drink."

I stumbled after her into the kitchen. The house was quiet, warm, and welcoming. Only when the sensations were gone did I notice that I'd been cold, my ears numbed with a distant susurration, since Saturday.

Mara scrambled through a cupboard. "Just let me find the whiskey…"

I flopped into a chair at the kitchen table while Mara uncovered a bottle of Powers and poured us each a glass. She didn't offer water.

We both sat there and sipped our whiskey in silence a while as the kitchen beamed warm energy on us. The sick knot in my chest eased a little. Mara put her drink down and looked at me.

"All right. Tell me what it is."

I looked at my drink. "I think I need about three more of these first."

"Ah, no. Drunken revelations just leave you feeling worse during the hangover. Is this about ghosts?"

I hesitated, helplessness surging under my skin. I nodded and tried to wash the feeling down with the last of the whiskey. "Ghosts, vampires… all that Grey crap."

Mara sat still, giving me an encouraging face.

"Why are they coming to me? These monsters, these… whatever they are. My client—remember the guy with the organ?"

"Yes. You said he was Grey."

I nodded. "Some kind of ghost, I think. We had an argument in the Grey. He said he knew I could 'see the world. He was furious at me for not doing what he wanted. Why do they think I can do something for them? How did I end up with every ghostly freak in Seattle?"

"Because you're a Greywalker. I warned you they would come. They hope that you can help them because you can see them and speak to them when others can't. As you can with Albert. Your arrival in the Grey must have woken a lot of creatures."

"Woken? Some of them have been lying in wait! As if I was late to an appointment." I found myself shivering.

Mara bit her lip. "Something worse than your ghost?"

I nodded, swallowing hard. "Saturday…," I started. "Saturday night I interviewed vampires." "For Cameron."

"Yes. And one of them—one of them dragged me into the Grey. He was—something worse." I couldn't get any more words out as I drowned in memory.

I sat at the kitchen table, pushing back an upwelling wail, gulping down air to force back the hard lump in my throat. It wrenched down into my chest and dissolved at a slow trickle when I caught my breath at last. My left hand hurt. I looked down and found Mara clutching it, staring at me and whispering curling blue charms under her breath. I tried to pull my hand away, but she wouldn't let go.

"What are you doing?" I demanded.

"Just holding on. Helping you hold on. You're doing much better now, aren't you? You look better."

I shuddered. "I'm all right."

"No, you're not. But you don't have to live through it again right now. Once was quite enough."

"Yes, but you don't know—"

"I don't need to," Mara stated. "Let's go find Ben. You'll not want to tell this story twice, and he needs to know."

She started to pull me up with her, but I winced in pain.

"You're hurt?"

"My skin feels roasted and I think I'm…. broken somewhere."

"How did that happen?"

"I'm not sure. But I guess I need to talk to Ben about that, too."

I got to my feet, stiff as an arthritic spider, and crept after Mara. We went upstairs to beard the scholar in his den. Ben bustled about moving papers and books and getting us settled on the sofa, which sent up a puff of dusty book-scent as we sat down. Then he retired behind his desk and looked at us like an owl.

"Harper, you don't look so good," he said.

I nodded in slow motion. "I know."

If I'd felt better, I'd have laughed at the concerned look he gave me. "What's happened?"

I couldn't get an answer together at first. Ben looked at his wife with alarm. She shook her head.

"Is this a ghost thing?" he asked. "This problem? There is a problem, isn't there?"

"Yes," I said. "Yes. Something's wrong. The Grey isn't quite what we thought. And—and now there is a piece of it inside me."

They both jerked forward. Ben's desk restrained him, but Mara grabbed my hand again and drove an intense stare into me. I felt the track of her eyes.

"There is something there," she murmured. "But it shouldn't be. It shouldn't be like that."

Ben rose from his seat. "What is it?"

"It's sort of a knot," she answered, hesitating, then shaking her head in frustration. "I can't tell more. It isn't easy to look at. And I'm not really good at this sort of scrying." She leaned back and frowned into my face, still holding my hand. "Harper, how did this happen? What is this?"

I bit my lip. Ben teetered on the edge of moving forward, waiting. Mara squeezed my hand a little. She was doing it again and I wished it irritated me, but I was grateful.

I began again, feeling a bit anesthetized. "Saturday. I was working Cameron's case. Talking to vampires. One of them was—something I can't describe. Something beyond vampires and ghosts. Something worse. He shoved me into the Grey. He wants something from me and he called this a present. He tore me open and he put this thing inside me." I covered the ache with my free hand. "All tied up and tangled all over me. And the Grey things crawled all through me, ate me, t-touched—" I covered my face, shuddering at the remembered feel of the cold, hungry things sucking away everything. "They ripped me up, but I'm still here, and now I can't turn it off!"

Ben fell back into his seat and hung his head. "Harper. I—oh, God, is this my fault?"

Mara gave him a sharp look. "Oh, do shut up, Ben. Of course it's not your fault." She turned her eyes back to me. "And the other client, too. I told Ben about the dark artifact."

I nodded. I no longer felt like howling in pain and grief. "I went to look at it again today. It's gotten worse. It extruded some kind of tentacle toward me and I felt so sick I couldn't stand it. There's a set of red lines all around it now. It hurts to be in the same room with it. My client wants it. He threatened me if I couldn't get it for him, and he backed it up by trying to throw something at me in the Grey. And I—this thing inside me—batted it back and I screamed at him. There was sort of an explosion and then he was gone. Just gone. But not forever. He'll come back."

Mara raised her hand and started to bring it toward my chest. I shied from her, curling my shoulders forward.

"I shan't hurt you."

Wary, I let her touch me. I gasped when her fingertips pressed against me, pushing prongs of dense stillness into the center of the hard Grey knot. She looked at me a while, blank and thoughtful. When she sat back, pulling both her hands into her lap, her withdrawal left a void in the ache.

"It feels… heavy, but elastic and smooth, like some kind of muscle— a diaphragm, perhaps. It bends if I push gently, but it won't yield to me, and the harder I push, the more it resists. It seems benign, if a little weak at the moment, but who knows what it does? It doesn't like to be probed."

Ben gave us both an incredulous look. "'Doesn't like'? How can you say what it likes?"

"I don't know," Mara replied.

But I did. "It's alive in some way. I can feel it full of the things that live in the Grey."

Ben shuddered.

I shook my head. "I can't do this. I can't live with this. This is a nightmare. Cameron's case… it's only going to get worse and I am not sure I can stand it. I believed he was a good guy, in spite of this. But he's a monster. They are all monsters. Inhuman, vile…"

Ben spoke up. "Not vile. But the rest goes without saying, doesn't it? They're ghosts. They're vampires. But they look like us, so we think they are like us. And then they do something horrible, because they aren't like us. Ghosts are much closer to us, because they remember what it was like. Memory is all they are, really. And memory can hurt."

"But a vampire, I imagine, must learn to forget," Mara added. "Or surely they'll go mad. How could they live with themselves if they didn't change?"

"And Cameron is one," I said.

"Yes, but he's at the beginning," Mara reminded me. "He's still a nice boy who has a problem. You were right about that. He'll change, but you will probably never have to see it. Someday, when he's as old and twisted up with his new culture as those others, then he will be a monster. But do you want to make the decision to let him die now, confused and miserable? That's your choice."

"That's not fair," I said.

"No, it's not. You'll have to work that one out for yourself, I'm afraid. Can't put the apple back on the tree. So, what are we going to do now? That's the question."

"It's my problem," I said. "Not yours. I'm drowning. I've felt like something's sucking me dry ever since my client—ex-client, ghost, whatever—came to the office."

Ben perked up with a scholar's zeal for a puzzle. "Really? Before or after your argument?"

"After."

"Let me think, let me think…." He began shuffling through his papers and riffling books. "His attraction to the organ… physical manifestations and volition… action…. Hmm." He glanced up at me from the pages of a thick tome and cringed a bit. "I'd say this guy's some kind of high-level willful spirit—that's a ghost who has volition and exercise of will—so he must be a revenant."

I shrugged, tired and wishing I had another glass of whiskey. "You'll have to explain that."

"Well, for instance, Albert's a sort of garden-variety willful spirit— some volition, but very limited will and action. But a revenant is literally that which survives. Most ghosts are kind of like etheric recordings. They don't have any will or personality—they just keep going through the motions of their lives or their message until they are released, or run down like clockwork. They're just shadows and echoes. A lot of them are just retrocognates."

I peered at him and interrupted. "Retro whats?"

"It means to know or be aware of something from the past. A medium can also retrocognate, under the right conditions. Some of them actually retrocognate when attempting psychometry."

"Ben," Mara broke in, "I'm sure Harper'd appreciate the layman's version, if you don't mind."

He looked sheepish. "Oh. Umm… Psychometry—well, I guess I'll get to that another time. But retrocognition… if you see a ghost walking through a place that no longer exists in this time and space, you're probably retrocognating, seeing stuff from the past. Do you ever experience that?" His eyes glittered.

"Sometimes," I responded, feeling more drained every second.

He nodded, then shook himself and continued. "All right, so the right medium could study the object and attempt retrocognition to tell you exactly what the connection is between your client and the parlor organ, but it would be very dangerous if it is as powerful a dark artifact as you two think."

"It's tangled up in the Grey and it seems to be drawing energy from the nexus nearby, like a battery charging up or something."

"Yes, Mara told me about it." He stopped to look at his wife, who smiled a tight smile and nodded for him to go on. "I wonder what the things purpose was."

"Not nice," I said. "It's black and red and very unfriendly. I think it sucks the energy out of everything that comes near it."

"Couldn't have been doing that for very long. Someone would have noticed."

"I noticed it," Mara muttered.

"You didn't say anything."

She shrugged and looked unhappy.

Ben made a rueful face. "I should call some of my contacts and see if they've noticed anything else."

I shook my head. "There's no time, Ben. I'm not doing very well, my ex-client is dangerous, and Cameron's problem may not be solvable. By me. The organ is getting worse. It's been drawing on the energy below the museum for ten months. And I don't know, but things seem to be accelerating."

"Good God! If it really is a battery, it's loaded. Anyone with control of it could wreak all sorts of havoc through the Grey."

"You're scaring me, Ben. I don't need to be any more scared than am.

"I'm scaring me!" His eyes had grown wide. "Do you know anything about this ghost? Any guesses?"

"I don't know much. The last three owners of the organ, at least, are dead—all suddenly—and I suspect more. I have someone looking into its history, but…" I tossed up my hands feebly. "I don't know."

"A murderous ghost? That would require some big expenditures of energy and will."

"But with the organ acting as a collection and storage device, he'd have it, wouldn't he?" I asked. "And it seems to be getting worse since he arrived in my office. Just like I seem to be getting worse."

Mara looked between Ben and me and kept quiet, though her face was white and her eyes had turned dark.

"Presupposing he could access that power," Ben stipulated.

My brain engaged in the puzzle again, though I felt shredded. "If he could tap the power, why would he need me? Wouldn't he know where it was already?"

Ben waved his hands through the air. "Not necessarily. There are lots of cases where seeking ghosts can't locate even the most intimate items on their own. If he didn't know, was blocked from knowing, or had to establish some kind of path to the object before he could get to it, he could still benefit from its intimate connection to him, without being able to find it or go near it. But he wants it… Tell me everything you know or guess about him."

"I think he's European, judging from his speech. Russian or Slavic, if his name is any indication."

"He told you his name?" "Yes, it's—"

"No! Wait! Write it down." Ben scrabbled around the cluttered surface of his desk for paper and pencil, then pushed them across to me, sending several cataracts of books and papers tumbling to the floor. "We'll just play it safe on this one, shall we?"

I shrugged and wrote the name down. "What do you mean, 'play it safe'?"

"I'm probably being paranoid, but some ghosts are attracted to their names. I don't think we want this guy looking over our shoulders, do we?"