Labyrinth

EIGHTEEN

I stopped on the sidewalk, still about half a block from the truck. A cluster of névoacria paused in the yard beside me and waited for me to go on—some kind of honor guard sent along by Carlos, or just spies? The whispers in my head were loud in the former graveyard. I didn’t want to hear my own reflections on what Carlos had accused me of. They were too dreadful, and anything, even the shredded and stinging melodies of the Grey, had to be better. It was hard to sort them, to concentrate, but something seemed to answer my question. I could hear it; like someone singing very far away, it dipped and swelled through the mist and magic, buzzing with energy. I closed my eyes and tried to listen for that one line in the clashing harmonies of the grid.

Not an answer, just another question: What if the origin is different from the end? Huh. That didn’t make a lot of sense, but it gave me something else to occupy my mind for the rest of the distance, and that seemed to help push the noise back a bit.

The creeping things of mist and shadow followed me, some coming when others vanished but always there until I reached the edge of the road by the Rover and let myself in. Then they sparkled away.

It was much quieter in the truck. Something about the heavy steel and glass filters out most of the ghosts and lowers the effects of the Grey. That had contributed to my decision to replace the old Rover with another despite the cost. Even so, I didn’t want to linger in Carlos’s neighborhood.

I started the truck and drove, glancing at the clock in the dash. It was eleven thirty. The bar at Louie’s didn’t close until one, but I would have to rush a little if I wanted to spend any time there with Quinton—and I did want to.

But the question in my head started me thinking as I drove, and I poked the last-number redial on my cell phone and put it on the console while I waited through the rings from the speaker until Cameron answered.

“Harper?”

“Yeah. I’ve seen him.”

He didn’t say anything for a moment, the silence growing long and sad.

“He’s all right,” I said, finally getting it.

“Ah. Good.”

“I have a very rude question for you.”

“OK.”

“Becoming a vampire. Is that . . . umm, that is, is it a one-shot kind of process or does it take a few steps?” It was hard to talk like a normal person; the strangeness lingering in my head made me want to scream or babble or just curl in a corner and rock while I muttered to myself. I hope I didn’t sound as unhinged as I felt.

“There’s a lot to it. Over time. It’s . . . complicated.”

The memory of the singing voice pushed me on, as if it were still moving in my head. “I don’t need to know the details, but here’s the real question: What happens if the vampire who finishes the process isn’t the one who started it?”

“That can be a bad thing. Usually you just die . . . pretty horribly. Sometimes other things result.”

“Like the kreanou?”

“No, they’re a different problem. But, yeah, there are bad results, depending on the details. We don’t do that. The . . . umm, community agrees not to. It’s too dangerous.”

“When you next hear from him—you know—ask him if that’s what caused Goodall. He’ll understand. It’s not important, but I’d like to know, just the same and there wasn’t a good chance to ask.”

“Oh. All right.” He paused, but I could hear his fingers rubbing against the surface of the phone, making papery noises. “Harper. Thank you.”

“Don’t. I’ve started something terrible and I doubt you’ll thank me when it’s done.”

“You don’t know what you’re doing.”

“In a nutshell, yeah.”

“No. I mean, there’s a lot more going on and you’re affecting it more than you know.”

“Gods, I hope not because I really don’t know what I’m doing. I’m just improvising as fast as I can and . . . hoping it’s the right thing.”

A car braked hard in front of me to let a couple of kids dart across the road. I tromped on my own brakes and fought the wheel to keep the Rover straight. The rear end tried to slide to the left and I let up, steering into it and rebraking as I cleared the other car, trying not to hit the running teenagers as they bounded across the road to the sidewalk. My cell phone and purse tumbled off the seat and into the footwell as the truck lurched to a halt.

The other driver accelerated away without a glance. I found the phone under my feet, but the call was dead and Cameron’s phone was off when I tried again. I didn’t leave a message. He’d call me when Carlos answered the question and then I could ask him about his portentous words. I had had enough for one night: I was creeped out and all I wanted was a drink in the unhaunted dark with Quinton. I turned the Rover back into the lane and drove with that as my only focus.

Louie’s is not a real late-night place and the lingering crowd in the lounge was small and quiet. Three regulars huddled at the bar, chatting up the female bartender, while Quinton had a tiny table—and the rest of the room—to himself. The place was dark and done in moody browns and golds straight out of the 1970s. The dim steam-shapes of ghosts and the colors of the grid made the place a little cheerier as livelier times replayed in silent silver loops.

I waved to Quinton and stopped at the bar to order a drink before I joined him. He looked relieved at my appearance, though he gave me a puzzled look as I sat down.

“You look odd.”

“In what way? Do I have blood on my face?” Why did I say that? I didn’t seem to have control of my mouth at the moment.

He scowled and shook his head. “No. Should you?”

“I hope not.”

The bartender strolled over and put down a couple of glasses: a whiskey, neat, for me and a beer for Quinton. We paid up and Quinton glanced at the drinks.

“It was like that, was it?”

I picked up my drink and sipped it, though I had the urge to bolt the alcohol and hope it masked the cacophony in my head. “Yeah. That kind of night. Kind of like last night, but without someone actively trying to kill me.”

“Passively trying to kill you?”

“No, nobody trying to kill anyone, but a lot creepier: I cry blood.”

“That is creepy.”

I nodded and took another drink. “Carlos is going to help me with the Pharaohn problem, but I have to figure out the way to my father first. That’s the back door and that gets me into the Grey without being in someone’s sight. Which would be a good thing since the someone still wants to kill me ’cause he doesn’t know he doesn’t have to. It seems I’m already developing the power he wants; I’m just doing it slower. And I have a better idea of what’s going on but not the details. The usual sort of evil villain, rule-the-world stuff, except this is my world we’re talking about, not some comic book.”

I think I got a little shrill there; Quinton put his arm around my shoulder and pulled me against him. He kissed my temple. “We’ll stop them. Don’t worry.”

“What if we can’t? It can’t be just stop them for now; it has to be stop them forever. And it’s all so complex that it ought to be easy to break it down, but he’s got control of everything. No one can help me until I break that control and if I can’t . . . then what?” I lowered my voice to a whisper, partially because I knew I was too loud and partially because I didn’t want anyone else to hear what I was about to say. “He used to be a god. How do I stop that? How do I stop a god?”

Quinton kept his head next to mine and whispered back. “He’s not a god now. You’ve done harder things than undermining the plans of a megalomaniac.”

“But there’s more. Cameron says there’s more going on and there is: I haven’t even looked at what else is happening. The crime, the killing . . . there’s a blood-mage somewhere out there. There are turf wars between the vampires. With Edward gone, they must be falling apart. And magic is . . . loud. It’s like someone turned the volume up on everything Grey and it won’t shut the hell up! How does Mara stand it?”

“I don’t think she has to, Harper. I think it’s only you who hears that.”

“You think I’m imagining it?” I felt defensive and I didn’t know why; I knew Quinton wasn’t saying I was crazy, but that didn’t stop me.

“No. You see things others don’t—even Mara—so why shouldn’t you hear things they can’t? If your antenna’s more sensitive, you pick up more signal. But with more signal there’s also more noise.”

“It sounds like voices. It sounds like something singing, but I can’t figure out the lyrics. And I need to figure out so much. My father said the song would tell me something—that I need to ‘know’ the song—but if it’s this song, all it tells me is that I’m losing my mind.”

“Stop thinking that. You’re perfectly sane.”

“I don’t feel sane.”

“If you thought all of this was normal, then I’d be worried. Why don’t you finish your drink and we’ll get out of here? There are a lot of other places we could cuddle up and defy the darkness, and most of them don’t smell of chow mein.”

I backed off and frowned at him. “You are a sex fiend.”

“I’m a pragmatist.”

“How is that? I’m worried about monsters and gods destroying the world as we know it and you want to shag.”

“Well, yes. If the world’s going to end, I’d prefer to go out with a bang.” He grinned and winked at me.

I sputtered. Something about his stupid jokes always disarms me. “All right, Roger Rabbit,” I said, finishing my drink.

“Roger Rabbit?”

“Yes. Don’t you remember why Jessica said she loved him?”

“Um . . . no.”

“Because he made her laugh.”

“So this is why statuesque beauties fall for geeks. Hm . . . I’ll take it.” I stuck out my tongue—yeah, very mature of me, I know—but at least I was smiling and I thought I’d forgotten what that felt like.

Quinton caught my hand and squeezed it gently as we headed for the door. “I love you even when you don’t make me laugh.”

That made me feel like crying and my smile got a little crooked, because running bloodred tears was the last thing I wanted to do.

Quinton had barely touched his beer, so he got to drive. I had to talk. Concentrating on something and forcing it into a neat procession of thoughts and words helped keep the noise from overwhelming me.

“All right. So,” I started, organizing my thoughts as much as I could.

“There’s a back door into the Grey according to my dad as clarified—sort of—by Carlos. This door leads to Dad, but it also leads into the Grey in a way that keeps me hidden from Wygan. Dad probably knows exactly what Wygan has in mind—after all, there’s no reason to hide that information from my father and every reason to torment him with it and Wygan likes to make people squirm. So, have to get to Dad, have to find the back door.

“Dad said something about keys, puzzles, and labyrinths. I need to find a labyrinth. But I have a key and a puzzle—a puzzle ball actually, but it’s kind of Grey, so it seems like we ought to start there.”

“Maybe it’s not a physical labyrinth but a magical one,” Quinton suggested.

“Possible. Dad said the puzzles were doors. Maybe the puzzle ball and the key make some kind of door into the labyrinth.”

“Worth a try. Where are the puzzle ball and the key?”

“The key I have with me. I got it in Los Angeles and I’ve been carrying it ever since. It was my dad’s. It looks like one of those pocket puzzle things—the wire kind—but when I shuffle it around, it sometimes becomes a sort of magical key. I used it on a door in the Grey while I was in London. A prison door. I had a run-in with a ghost there. It . . . stabbed me.”

“Stabbed you? How?”

“I don’t quite understand it myself. It was a wraith, really, so kind of a special case, and we had to be in the Grey to get out of the prison—it’s condemned now and the only way out from where we were was blocked in the real world—so . . . a little Greywalking was in order.”

“Who is ‘we’?”

“Marsden and me. And Michael.”

“Michael Novak . . . can do that?”

“No. Not normally. But I guess when you have a critical mass of Greywalkers and enough plain old-fashioned fear behind you, you can drag someone normal into the Grey. Kind of. Enough at least. I wasn’t stopping to analyze it at the time. Maybe it was Marsden’s ability—I don’t know. Apparently I have the gift of persuasion. People and things do what I want—at least more often than usual.”

“That’s useful. Go on.”

“So we needed out and the door was locked—”

“No, about being stabbed. I get the rest. This ghost cut you.”

“Wraith. Not a ghost of a person, really. A kind of evil remnant of something. A Grey thing. Anyhow, yeah, it cut me with this knife it made out of the Grey, and apparently that’s all it took to start . . . infecting me.”

“With what?”

“According to Carlos, I can—or will—bend magic. I don’t do magic; I just might be able to move the conduits of it around. Shape the weft, he says. And that, according to him, is what Wygan is after. It makes sense to me as much as anything since Wygan clearly wants some kind of power and is doing something the Guardian Beast opposes—it attacks him whenever it can—so it has to be something in or affecting the Grey. He’s figured out how to confuse the Beast by using colored light. That’s why I shot out the lightbulbs in the studio—those were the gunshots you heard.”

“All right. So you’re getting more powerful in the Grey, and you have some ability to shape things, even if you don’t actually cast spells or anything. And this is useful to Wygan in whatever his plan is. So you want to know the plan before you get stuck in it and that means talking to your dad . . . who is in some kind of magic prison Wygan made?”

“Basically. Not precisely, but close enough. If I can find this back door, I can get to Dad. But I need the puzzle ball. Which is in the condo.”

“Well, that’s going to be fun.”

“We’ll have to break in.”

“You have keys: You don’t have to break in.”

“I’m sure there are still asetem watching the place.”

“For you, yes. Not for other people.”

“But they will be watching for you, so no go on that idea.”

“What about your neighbors?”

“Rick’s probably still staying at his sister’s.”

“Other neighbors?”

“Not really friendly with them.”

“Friends you could ask?”

“Not many. The Danzigers are on the watch list, too, so that’s them out of the picture. And there aren’t a lot of other people I trust in my home . . . except Phoebe.” My shoulders slumped a little and I sighed. “She’s not going to like this.”

Phoebe was my oldest friend in Seattle. I’d met her on a rainy afternoon when I’d hidden in the back of her used bookshop to look through the rental listings. Short and round and fierce as a mother wolverine where her friends and family were concerned, she’d kind of adopted me on first sight. I still had no idea why. We’d had a rough time of our friendship when I’d ended up investigating the death-by-poltergeist of one of her employees, but she was still the closest nonmagical female friend I had.

“She’ll do it, though,” Quinton said.

“Yeah, and if she has any trouble, I’ll hear all about it.”

“Yes. But she’ll still let you come to dinner because that’s how she is. You should call her.”

I was doubtful and frowned. “It’s pretty late.” And I was both tired and afraid I’d babble something inappropriate.

Quinton shot me a disbelieving glance. “It’s Friday and the shop stays open all night. If anyone’s up keeping the drunks from sleeping in the Sociology corner, it’ll be Phoebe.”

I know when to stop fighting and, well, he was right. Unless she was sick or mourning a dead friend, Phoebe never missed Friday Happy Hour at her bookstore, Old Possum’s Books and Beans. I hunted my phone out of my bag and poked the speed-dial button for the shop.

Of course it wasn’t Phoebe who answered the phone but one of the minions; Phoebe was busy stalking the stacks. I waited on hold for a minute or so, trying not to listen to the whispering chorus in my head.

Phoebe’s words danced out of the phone on an island rhythm. “Hey, girl! Where you been? Poppy told me t’have you come t’dinner last week and you weren’t home.”

“I was in London on business.”

“So, you back now. When you comin’ up here?”

“Uh, well . . .”

“Don’t be sayin’ you’re not comin’—and you bringin’ dat man of yours, too. Or Poppy’s gonna skin us both.”

“I would love to accommodate your father, but I am currently in a bit of a jam.”

“Oh? So you’re callin’ me to get you unjammed?”

“Yes, I am. See—”

She cut me off. “No, no. No, you don’t. You come up here and ask my face. I’m not lettin’ you sweet-talk me over the phone. ’Sides, I got some things to show you anyhow.”

“All right. We’ll be there in . . .” I glanced at Quinton, not sure where we were.

“Fifteen minutes,” he said.

I told her.

“All right then. See you both,” Phoebe answered before hanging up.

“She’s in a mood,” I warned.

“I guessed. What’s up?”

“I have no idea. So long as it’s not vampires, I think we’ll be OK.”

“I haven’t heard of much weirdness in Fremont—beyond the usual kind.”

I hoped that was true.

We looped around and got back to Fremont in a reasonable time, but finding a parking space on a Friday night was a bit trickier and we were a little late. Phoebe wasn’t in a condition to notice, though: She was glaring at a guy in a trench coat and blocking the door when we arrived—she’s not very tall, but Phoebe’s evil eye can stop rampaging elephants in their tracks.

“You callin’ me a liar, Mr. Thief?” she demanded. “You sayin’ you ain’t smugglin’ some pussy in your coat?”

The patrons of the shop giggled and the miscreant blushed in shame. He wasn’t very old and I guessed he was a college student doing something foolish on a dare or a drunk.

Phoebe softened her scowl and put out her hands, beckoning with her fingers, palm up. “Hand it over, before the poor thing suffocates.”

Slump-shouldered, the guy pulled a black-and-white kitten out of his pocket and gave it to her. Phoebe snuggled the kitten, who was purring nonstop, and stood aside to let the cat-napper make his escape. “Next time, try da pound!” she shouted after him.

She saw us standing outside and waved us in. “Come on in da back,” she said, handing off the kitten to the minion behind the counter. The kitten was shelved in “returns” and went back to purring mindlessly between the books as we followed Phoebe into the back of the shop, toward the espresso machine.

Phoebe’s accent was thicker than usual from her annoyance. “I swear, dem boys steal anyt’ing and Beenie’s too stupid not t’go along. He been in dat boy’s pocket twice now. Usually dem snatchy-hands jus’ take da books—now dey takin’ da cats, too!”

She stopped at the espresso machine and grabbed three cups of coffee off the back counter, muttering to herself. She shoved two of the cups at us. “You’re late, so it’s cold.”

It wasn’t very cold, and I decided I didn’t care so long as it was coffee and took the closest chair in the nook. Phoebe plopped down into another beside the fake fireplace that hid the door to the office. Quinton seemed to think standing was safer and kept on his feet. None of us doctored the coffee.

I waited for Phoebe to settle in and calm down before I said anything, but she beat me to it. I suppose she wasn’t quite so angry about Beenie’s near kidnapping as she seemed. It only took her two long sips before she asked, “So, what sort of trouble you want me to get you out of?”

I had to swallow quickly to reply. “I need someone I can trust to go fetch a puzzle ball from my place.”

“And you can’t go . . . why?”

“Because some guys I really don’t want to tangle with are staking the place out, waiting for me. You they don’t know, so they won’t give you any hassle if you show up.”

“You think they aren’t gonna notice some black woman ain’t you sneakin’ into your place and not think that’s kinda strange?”

“They aren’t watching the inside of the building, just the outside.” I hoped. “They won’t know which condo you go into.”

“Uh-huh. They any kind of observant, they will notice I wasn’t in there very long.”

“They won’t care. You could be any one of my neighbors or one of their friends dropping something off. Take a box of books with you and leave it if you think that’ll fool them better.”

Phoebe looked thoughtful. “Hm . . . I could do that. I could take the safes.”

“The whats?” I asked.

“Safes. That’s what I wanted to show you. I got a bunch of these ‘book safes’—they’re those hollowed out books that people hide stuff in—in a box of books I bought at a big sale on Capitol Hill. Some of the book safes have things inside and I thought you might help me find out who they belong to. No one from the sale knew. So. I help you out and you help me.”

That was a no-brainer. “OK. I’ll give you my keys and if you can go tomorrow, I’ll meet you here when you’re done.”

“Fine. I’ll leave the safes at your place, say . . . tenish. Where’s this puzzle ball?”

“On a bookshelf by the TV. It’s wood, about eight inches across. You can’t miss it: There’s only one.” I handed over the condo keys, showing her which one was for the exterior door and which the interior.

Phoebe took them and nodded like the deal was done. “Dinner next Sunday. And you’re both comin’ or Poppy’s sendin’ da braas for you—don’t think he wouldn’t.”

Intimidating as they look, Phoebe’s brothers don’t scare me except in terms of sheer bulk. Phoebe is the oldest but she’s also the smallest, and you could lift three of her for one of her brothers. But the oldest brother, Hugh, would do anything for her, so I like to stay on his good side. And Poppy’s, because I sometimes suspect he sees a lot more than he lets on.

“Sunday. All right,” I agreed, hoping I’d be alive to see it.