Labyrinth

SEVEN

I wavered when Simondson howled in rage at me. I wasn’t intending to torture him, but I couldn’t let him go yet. There were still too many answers missing. I had an idea and I hoped I could make it work. He clutched at me with incorporeal hands that still had the power to do me hurt. His fury and pain were a whirlwind around me, tearing and pulling at my own substance as if he could rend me to pieces and scatter me to the etheric winds of the Grey.

Faint and distant noises intruded and became recognizable : Grendel growling and barking, Quinton calling to me, Chaos chuckling like something demented. The thread of their familiarity kept me anchored against the storm of noise and emotion. I backed further out of the Grey, not quite gone—still present enough to keep a hand on Simondson but much harder for him to harm. I needed a container, silvered if possible. . . .

“Stop, Simondson!” I yelled, crouching. “I’ll let you go, but you need to do a few things for me, first.”

“No! Why should I?”

“Because I can let you go and no one else who can will. I’ll set you free when I’m done.”

“How can I trust you? Why would you do it later if you won’t do it now?”

I put out my hand, slipping it into the tangle of his angry energy. I ached like the bones of my arm were burning, but I did it, working into the weft of his shape and pushing a bit of it aside, loosening his form for a moment. Then I just held still as long as I could stand it, letting him sigh and dim in relief. Something of his mind brushed against mine and I shivered, gagging a little at the sensation, but it should have been enough for him to know what I was thinking. Ghosts aren’t psychic, but if they can crawl inside your skin for a while, they can seem that way. I concentrated on my intentions and hoped he was picking it up.

“I will let you go,” I said between clenched teeth. The red storm of his emotions was tearing across my nerves. “I swear. But you’ll have to come with me. I swear it,” I repeated, feeling my legs tremble with the effort of remaining upright.

He eased back, the ire of his presence draining away. I crouched down, putting my hands to the ground as I slipped back toward the normal. I clenched the bloody sand beneath my palms into my fists, feeling Simondson’s presence as a dull heat in the compressed grains.

As soon as I was back in a more visible state, Quinton and the animals converged on me. “Stop!” I yelled. “Don’t touch me yet. I need a metallic container, a shiny one. Any size.”

Quinton scrabbled through his pockets, displacing the ferret, and dumping a handful of mints out of an Altoids tin. He buffed the interior quickly with a handkerchief and held the tin out to me, open.

I dumped the handful of stained sand into the tin. Then I reached back into Simondson’s tangled, dim form, and twisted off a thread of his energy, which I shut into the tin with the sand. As long as it stayed closed, I should have a way to call on Simondson’s spirit for a little while at least. Simondson and I both breathed easier then. I slipped the tin into my pocket, careful to keep it closed.

Quinton helped me to my feet. I shook my head before he could start asking questions. I still had a few things to do while we were here. The rest could wait, but not this.

“Simondson,” I started, “show me where you died.” He grew hotter and the humming pain around him increased. “No. No, don’t think of it. Just go there. Go slow enough for me to follow. Don’t think, don’t remember, just move.”

The ghost drifted back the way he had come originally, south, across the parking lot that was now pitch-black between the scattered bars of light falling from the freeway and the cones from rare streetlamps. His color flushed and faded again and again as he moved, as if he couldn’t stop the sparks of memory that haunted him with pain. Stumbling a little on my still-trembling legs, I followed him. Quinton and Grendel stayed by my side while Chaos crawled up into my collar, as if she meant to comfort me by her presence. Or just lick the sweat off my neck—who knows?

At last, Simondson stopped and flared bloody red before his shape darted through the brick and glass of the nearest building. I could see that he’d stopped inside, but he was fading now, his energy ebbing. Even ghosts need rest. “All right,” I murmured to his thin shade. “I’ll take it from here.” He dimmed into the raw sparkle of the Grey.

As soon as he was gone, I plopped down onto the steps of the building he’d led us to. It had a covered porch with a short set of marble stairs on each side. The brick-and-stone porch led to three arched windows with French doors in two of them. I wasn’t quite high enough up the steps to look through the glass. I hung my head a moment while I caught my breath.

Quinton must have been studying the building. “It’s the old brewery office.”

I raised my head, shaking it a little to dispel the tinnitus that had started up—my descent into the Grey after Simondson seemed to have muffled my hearing, as if I’d gone swimming and now had water stuck in my ears. Quinton was looking past me into the darkened building.

“Looks like the tenant left in a hurry; the carpet’s been torn out. I don’t think that’s the latest in corporate decor, though it looks like someone’s been using it for something.”

“How can you tell?”

“Footprints in the dust and lots of power cables on the floor.”

I put one hand on the brick wall beside me so I could stand up and then jerked away from the building as the energy streams running through it snapped at me like static. I peered at it, glancing sideways into the Grey to see what was going on.

Coils of red power encircled the base of the building, crosshatched in blue, as if someone had erected a kind of magical insulation between the interior and the rest of the world. I couldn’t be sure of the magical nature of whatever had been going on without more information, but the gory crimson lines gave me the impression vampires had been involved. Not too surprising, since Simondson had died inside. Taking care not to touch the walls again, I walked up the short flight of steps and looked through the glass panes of the nearest window.

Squiggles of industrial glue and motes of sand and sawdust defaced the once-gleaming marble floor. Black and orange snakes of electrical cable ran across the mess, disappearing through the doorways in the white-plastered walls. Glancing up, I could see a chandelier that had captured shreds of translucent plastic and white gauze on its curled arms. I would have bet the missing carpet had a hell of a bloodstain on it and more than minor traces of Simondson’s DNA. Solis hadn’t mentioned the office building. I guessed the police were still trying to get a search warrant, even though an office wouldn’t seem much like the site of a hit-and-run, and Solis hadn’t been entirely sold on that idea anyhow. The right kind of beating might look a lot like a car accident until the autopsy report was in. . . .

A year or two earlier, I might have been perversely mollified by the manner of Simondson’s death, if my idea was correct. Back when the damage he’d inflicted on me was still fresh and seemed to be nothing but mindless fury unleashed on my undeserving self, it might have seemed poetic justice. Now it left me stunned and angry. Yeah, he’d killed me, but he hadn’t done it strictly from his own desire; he’d been led to it, tricked and used like everyone else Wygan had touched in his scheme. Not that I was feeling sorry for Simondson; I just didn’t feel the need to cause him any additional hurt anymore.

“I should go in there,” I mumbled, trying to convince myself.

Grendel whined and shifted to stare toward the street. The ferret was more interested in the building as she wormed her way back up to my shoulder. The scrape of footsteps on the gritty sidewalk pulled my attention around in the same direction as the dog’s.

A police officer on foot, his light-blue uniform shirt glowing under a moving shaft of light from the freeway, strolled toward us. He checked his radio on his shoulder and I spotted his partner coming across the street from the direction of Nine-pound Hammer. Both cops kept their hands in sight, not worried about us, just keeping an eye on things.

The first one called out as he came close. “Evening, folks. How y’doing?” He might have thought we were drunks who’d left the club to get some air, except for the dog. Quinton twitched the leash and the dog sat down to his whispered command as the two cops got within talking range.

I knew Quinton didn’t want to chat with them. I didn’t either, but chances were good they’d make a note of our presence and Solis would see it, so I leaned out the nearest arch in the front of the dark office porch and returned the greeting.

“Hi, guys.” I didn’t recognize either of them and they didn’t seem to know me, which was fine.

The first cop noticed Grendel, who was cocking his head and looking at the dark legs of his uniform trousers with some speculation. “Nice dog.”

“Yeah, except for all the peeing,” I replied. “I swear he has to sniff everything and leave a puddle every fifty feet.”

The second cop laughed, casually hitching his thumbs into his equipment belt. “Mine’s the same way. Gotta read his pee-mail and leave a reply, I guess.”

The first officer was looking us over but seemed satisfied we were just a couple out walking their dog. I was grateful Chaos was keeping still in the darkness under my collar—no one would believe we were out walking the ferret. We needed to keep up the illusion and negate their interest by moving along. Investigating the site of Simondson’s death would have to wait.

I glanced at Quinton as if I were irritated by the delay. “Is he ready to go?”

“I think he’s done for now.”

I nodded and walked down the other set of steps, the one farthest from the cops and more shadowed by the freeway ramp overhead. “All right, then. Let’s go.”

Quinton shrugged and twitched the leash again. Grendel stood up, wagging his tail at the prospect of moving; his doggy grin broke out and he panted in excitement. Quinton just nodded to the cops and walked past to catch up to me, the dog trotting alongside. We strolled off under the freeway as the patrolmen gave us one last look and dismissed us from their minds to go back to their beat.