Possession

TEN

I headed upstairs to my office, yanking off my wet jacket as I went and shaking the worst of the water out of my hair. I thought I should make sure I didn’t have mail or messages pending, but what was waiting for me was Olivia Sterling.

She was plopped on the creaking wooden floor of my historic building right outside my office door, doing split stretches, but she bounced up as she caught sight of me, wincing slightly as she put her weight back on her feet. “Ms. Blaine, I’m so sorry—I should have called, I know, and I was going to, but I had the chance and I just dropped in. I was going to leave soon, but I thought I could wait just another minute and—”

She was so preoccupied by her story that she didn’t seem to notice I was wet. I put my free hand up between us to stem the fast flow of her words. “It’s all right, Olivia. You don’t have to excuse your presence and you don’t have to tell me everything in five seconds or less. Slow down.”

She caught her breath, nodding and sending her long blond ponytail bobbing and swaying, leaving trails of color and mist on my Grey vision. “You asked me to call, but I couldn’t,” she said. “I got one of my dad’s scribbling pads, but the reason I didn’t wait is that he did something really, really bizarre today and it freaked my mom out. I had to call the nursing assistant to come and help with my dad and then Mom was still freaking, so the nurse said she’d stay for a while to calm her down, so I snuck out with both pads.”

“Both pads?” I asked as I unlocked my office door and waved her inside.

She nodded again, still seeming breathless in her excitement, and scooped a large shoulder bag up from the floor. She followed me into my office, saying, “Yeah. I picked up some of the more recent ones to bring you, but the thing Dad did today was on a new one, so I wanted to bring that, too, and I had to be kind of sneaky to get it and then leave most of the others so I could get out without anyone noticing I had them. I didn’t want Mom to freak out more and you really need to see this.”

She started digging in her bag, looking down, and stumbled into the client chair, stubbing a toe. She winced again.

“Why don’t you sit down first?” I suggested as I hung my dripping jacket on the coatrack. “Then I can see what you’ve brought without you falling over.” I turned on the heater, which rattled as it started up.

Olivia slid into the chair and put her bag on her lap, then dug back into it. She pulled out two pads of lined yellow paper—one dog-eared and the other still crisp and sharp-edged except for the top few pages, which were bent and creased. She held out both of the pads to me. “This time, I think Dad is writing to us—or to my mom at least. We used to think he was when this started, but then we figured out that he wasn’t and most of what he wrote was just crazy stuff, but this is not like that. Here.”

I took the pads and sat down so I could study them under the stronger light from my desk lamp rather than the diffused room light. I had to hold them at an angle so my hair wouldn’t drip on them while I read. I counted myself lucky that my shirt was only damp and might dry before I had to head out again.

The first two pages of the newest pad were the same mad scribbling I’d seen at the Sterling house, but the third page, written crosswise, read, “Mary. We die by inches in the noisy dark. If not soon, I will not come b . . .”

I looked up from the page into Olivia’s face. Her eyebrows were high and her eyes wide as she bit her lip, trying not to pant. “My mom went crazy when she read it. That’s her name—Mary. And the writing is Dad’s, not like most of the other writing. He wrote it with his right hand. All the other stuff he did with his left.” She watched me for a moment, waiting for my response.

I was stunned and it took a few seconds to figure out what I wanted to say to her. “You’re certain the writing is your father’s?”

“I saw him do it,” she replied.

“No. I meant to ask if you checked the writing against a sample to be certain. You said the rest of the writing on these pads isn’t like his. How are you sure of it?”

“I know what my dad’s writing looks like! But yeah, I did check, because it’s been a while and I . . . was trying to calm Mom down, but it only made her worse.” She hung her head. “He’s trying to talk to us and it’s just making things worse!” She began crying, her ponytail flopping over her face as her shoulders shook with the spasms of her weeping.

I came around my desk and tried to soothe her, but I’m clumsy and self-conscious with kids of any age and I wasn’t quite sure what I should do and what I shouldn’t.

Olivia threw herself against my chest, flinging her arms around me and squeezing hard enough to shorten my breath, wailing her turmoil. “It’s not fair! It’s not fair! He’s dying and there’s nothing I can do!”

She had me trapped, so I put my arms around her waist and let her hold on and cry. I felt her warm tears soaking through my shirt and figured it was just one of those things—I wasn’t destined to be dry today. “Olivia,” I whispered. “Olivia, there’s still hope. Don’t cry. Dying isn’t dead. Not yet. We’ll find a way to help your dad. I promise.”

I knew I’d regret it, but I had to say it, even if it ruined me.

“Real promise?” she asked, snuffling against me.

“Real promise. He broke through long enough to leave a note for your mother—and you. He’s just like you and your mom—stronger than he looks. I will find a way. You’ll help me, won’t you?”

She loosened her grip and leaned back to look up at me. Her face was red, swollen, and streaked with tears and snot—she looked frightful, but she wasn’t crying now. “Me? How can I help you more than I did? I don’t understand.”

“You brought me this note. I’ll read the rest of the pages. I know they have clues, but I may need to ask you questions or I might need you to do something to help your dad.”

She looked hopeful, then wary. “Like, what kind of thing?”

“I don’t know yet. Nothing gross or inappropriate. Probably nothing big—it’s almost always something that seems trivial that turns out to be the key.”

“You’re sure?”

“No. I’m making my best guess, but I have done this kind of thing before.”

She let me go and sat back in the chair, wiping her face with the backs of her hands. “You have?”

“Once or twice.”

She stared at me, biting her lip again, and probably trying to decide if I was crazy or not. She started to nod, making up her mind, but squeaked when a sharp little tune squealed from her bag. She dug frantically and found her cell phone. She glanced at it and moaned. “Oh no! I have to go!”

“Do you need a lift?” I asked as she scrambled around, getting up and heading for the door.

She glanced back over her shoulder. “No. I can manage. I have a friend downstairs. . . . I—do you really promise . . . ?”

I nodded. “I do.”

She gave me a trembling smile before she turned and bolted out my door. I could hear her running down the stairs until her footsteps died away. I hoped I wasn’t going to disappoint her—it sounded as if Kevin Sterling was fading, as if he were already a ghost himself. I doubted Julianne and the mysterious Jordan Delamar were any better off. I had to find Delamar and the thing that linked all three patients soon or none of them would ever wake up.

In spite of my discomfort in my damp state, I threw myself at the notebooks and Stymak’s recordings for hours, until I was dizzy and exhausted from fighting my Grey vision and beating my brain against the apparent nonsense of the sounds and the words. I was drier, but no wiser. I gathered up what I had and took it home, hoping I’d find my lover there, teasing the ferret and ready to show off. . . .

Still no Quinton when I got to the condo, nor later that night, and no reply to messages. I was frustrated and starting to worry and only the thought that James Purlis wouldn’t have been shadowing me if he already had his son’s forcibly bought attention gave me any solace. I hadn’t considered how much time Quinton and I spent together these days. We hadn’t for the first two years we knew each other. Even after becoming lovers, we were more often apart than together, since neither of us was comfortable changing our lives to that extent. But since then things had evolved so slowly I hadn’t noticed that we now saw each other nearly every day and he slept with me more often than we slept apart. Without any intention, without realizing how we had changed, we had become a couple and I liked it more than I would have imagined. More than I would have liked it years ago when I felt I needed no one but myself—could trust no one but myself—to make my life what I wanted. The downside was this worry I had over what might be happening where I couldn’t see and shouldn’t intrude in his life. No matter how much I loved him, or how much our lives had become entwined, each of us had our own needs and our own problems that couldn’t be changed by the other’s desire for it. I still didn’t like sitting it out, though. Eventually, I’d have to go looking for Quinton or his father and put a stop to the battle of wills that had me in the middle—and I knew whose side I’d be on.

I played with Chaos for a while and tried to sleep, but did a lousy job of it and got up in the morning grumpy and still half-blind. Besides my work, Quinton and I were supposed to have dinner with Phoebe Mason tonight. Right now I wasn’t sure he’d make it. Uncomfortably aware of my aloneness, I decided to take the ferret with me back to Pike Place Market. The main arcades are, by default, open to animals because it’s impossible to close them—the Sanitary Market Building is called that not because it’s any cleaner than the others but because it used to be the only building people couldn’t take their horses into. These days, horses are about the only animal you won’t see passing through the market from time to time. I doubted anyone would have a problem with Chaos peeping out of my bag as she likes to do. Not to mention, she’s more of a “people person” than I am and today was going to be a long round of talking to strangers. A little edge in the conversation would be welcome.

Last night’s unexpected downpour had already been swept away on the morning breeze—even if the gray sky hadn’t been. The air was cooler, but not enough to frighten off the tourists, so I was reasonably confident I’d be able to find some buskers around if the market office wasn’t able to give me a line on Delamar’s whereabouts. I wasn’t foolish enough to go out without my coat this time, though. I’ve gotten used to getting wet, but that doesn’t mean I like it.

I got to the market office just a few minutes past opening. Like the rest of the place, the office was thickly haunted and looked fog-bound to my vision. One tall female ghost with a hard face under a pile of dark hair glared at me as I entered and watched me the entire time I was there. I chose to ignore her—I’d have time to figure out her problem later, if I gave a damn.

The office was as busy in the normal plane as in the Grey. When I entered I found a frantic secretary and a handful of other people dashing in and out of the front room with an odd assortment of objects, paperwork, and problems. One of the problems was a monkey at which Chaos took one look before she dove to the bottom of my bag.

The woman holding the monkey tried to put it on the secretary’s desk, but each time she put it down, the monkey jumped back onto her chest and climbed up to sit on her shoulder, wrapping its arms around her head. “Get this damned thing off me!” she yelled. “It’s been crawling all over my stall and throwing fruit on the ground since six a.m. and if I’m stuck with it for one more hour I’m going to drown it. And if that means drowning myself in the process, I will!”

“Where’s Animal Control?” the secretary asked the nearest person passing by. “Didn’t anyone call them?”

“We did, but they said they can’t come for the monkey until they deal with a bear out in Crown Hill,” came the reply as the person vanished behind a wall.

“Oh God . . . is this some kind of hoax? What is this, Animal Planet?”

“City Fish lost a monkfish this morning, and a bunch of shrimp got loose in the main arcade stairway, too,” the absent person called back, accompanied by a lot of rattling and clanging.

The glaring ghost seemed to find the hullabaloo amusing; she smirked at me as if, somehow, this was all a joke I should have gotten. I stared blankly back until she was distracted by something else.

“Please tell me the monkfish wasn’t alive when it went AWOL,” the secretary said.

“It was still flopping. . . . Ah! I got it!”

The woman with the monkey on her head unwound the creature’s arms one more time and held it at arm’s length. “Please let it be a shotgun. . . .”

A man with a pile of cloth in his arms came out from the other side of the wall. “Monkfish was apprehended in the women’s bathroom on Down Under One. And, yes, we have no shotgun—also no bananas—but we do have a tablecloth! Hold the monkey where I can get it. . . .”

“If it were that easy, we’d have wrapped the little bastard up hours ago!”

The man threw the large, dirty tablecloth toward the struggling monkey. The monkey tried to dodge by biting the woman holding it and scrambling up her arms again. It nearly made it, but one side of the cloth got over its head and the woman, now screaming and trying not to move back or sideways, juggled the miscreant up and down, bouncing more of the fabric over the beast’s head. “Get it, get it, get it!” she screeched. “Oh God, just get the little monster off me!”

The man who’d brought the tablecloth grabbed at the wriggling shape under the folds of dirty linen and wrestled it free of the woman, wrapping the extra bits of fabric around and around, imprisoning the monkey in the folds.

“Don’t suffocate it!” the secretary exclaimed.

The monkey, realizing it was trapped, began to howl and let out an unpleasant stench of an origin I didn’t want to think about.

The man fighting with the cloth gave the secretary an exasperated glare. “I don’t think there’s much chance of that. Someone find a damned cage or a box.”

One of the other milling people dragged a large plastic file box into the room, hastily emptying the contents in armfuls onto the secretary’s desk. Once the box was empty, the cloth-bound monkey was dumped into it and the lid slammed down and latched.

“Do you think it’ll be OK in there?” the secretary asked.

“I hope it dies!” said the woman who had recently been its perch.

“Oh, you do not!” The box thumped and rattled, but the lid held tight. “I think it’ll be fine so long as someone punches some air holes in the box,” the man said. “It’s us who’ll be nervous wrecks. Someone get the first-aid kit for Gabby.”

Gabby, the now de-monkeyed woman, looked down at herself. “Oh . . . holy fish guts. It bit me and I’m covered in monkey poo! Gross!”

“I’ve changed my mind,” the man said. “Forget the first-aid kit. Someone get Gabby to a shower.”

The secretary grabbed her desk phone. “I’ll call the hotel—they’ll have something.”

“Good.” The man sat down on the corner of the desk and blew his disheveled hair out of his eyes while another woman came out from behind the wall and ushered the distraught Gabby somewhere less public. The annoying ghost seemed disappointed in the return of relative sanity and the ferret took one peek out of my bag and decided it still wasn’t safe to come into the open—maybe she didn’t like the look of the ghost any more than I did.

The secretary was busy with the phone, so after a moment of my standing there like a stork, the man looked up and said, “I guess it’s all me then, is it?” He held out his right hand. “Hello, how are you? I’m John and I don’t usually wrangle monkeys and shrimp first thing in the morning. What can I do for you? And does it involve livestock, because if so, I’m afraid I’ll have to run screaming from the room.”

“No livestock,” I replied.

“Thank God.” He glanced at the secretary, who was putting the phone down. “Emily, make sure you punch some holes in the box for the monkey.”

“With what?”

“I don’t know . . . a letter opener? You can’t let it smother in there.”

The secretary seemed unimpressed with his argument. “Oh . . . all right. But don’t blame me if it gets poked.”

“Just don’t let it out,” John added. He looked back to me as Emily got on her knees wielding a wicked-looking letter opener. She looked dangerous. “What was it you needed again?” he asked.

“I’m trying to find out if a certain person has a performer’s badge. Is there a list?”

He looked blank for a moment, then blinked, pursing his mouth as he thought, and then raising his eyebrows high. “Oh. I suppose there is. Ah, just a minute. I’ll go look it up. What’s the name?” he asked, getting to his feet again.

“Mine or the performer’s?”

“I’ll take both, if you like.” He started toward the back half of the office.

“My name’s Harper Blaine and the guy I’m interested in is named Jordan Delamar,” I said, following him around the obscuring wall. The nosy ghost tagged along and loomed over John’s shoulder. Against the dark wall, the details of her face and clothing were a little easier to see. She had a long, slightly hooked nose and wore clothes from the early 1900s. She was striking, and I imagined that in the right circumstances she’d been considered quite beautiful, though her expression soured that for me. I found her disturbing.

“All right. Let me just get to the computer here . . .” John said, plopping down into a chair at a workstation that was too cutely adorned with photos in Hello Kitty frames for me to think it was his.

He typed a bit and then peered at the old-fashioned CRT screen. “No. Jordan Delamar does not currently have a performer’s badge. He let it lapse in April—that’s when the sign-ups are.”

“But he had one until then?”

“Yes.”

“Do you know if he was involved in an accident at the slabs in December?”

“That?” His aura flushed a sickly green, fading until it was barely visible. “Umm . . . yes.”

“Do you have a contact address or phone number for him?”

“If it’s in connection with the claim, I would prefer not to . . .”

“It’s not something you have a choice about if it’s connected to a public claim,” I said—which isn’t really true, but I leaned a bit on him through the Grey, pushing for his cooperation.

John visibly deflated and looked glum. “All I have is an address.” He rattled it off. It was the same one I already knew, but I wrote it down anyway.

“Thanks for the help and I’m sorry about your animal problems.”

“Oh . . . thanks. I swear this place is getting weirder by the minute lately—and it’s plenty weird to begin with.”

“Really?”

He made a face. “I’d rather not talk about it. Shouldn’t have said anything.” I felt him mentally pushing back against me as he gathered his wits.

I backed off in the Grey and the normal, taking a step away. “I do appreciate the information, though. Best of luck with your monkey.”

John sighed and waved me out. I went, giving the still-rattling box of monkey and the grimly ventilating secretary a wide berth as I passed, and looking to see what had become of the tall ghost.

The apparition stood at the doorway, watching me again, and her finger brushed over my arm as I passed. I shuddered at the touch and felt a pang of hunger and dizziness as if I hadn’t eaten in days. I staggered a little and got away from her as quickly as possible, not turning back to look for her until I was safely standing on the bricks of lower Post Alley. She remained in the doorway, her chin tucked down and her eyes boring into me. She pursed her mouth a little and for a second her face took on a raptor’s aspect with her hooked nose and sharp eyes. Then she turned around abruptly and vanished with an audible swish of her long skirts.

I shivered and declined to pursue her. I had something more pressing to do than being drawn into the games of bad-tempered specters. I now knew something about Jordan Delamar—he was the “boy who played” and he’d been injured at the market—and it seemed the best way to find out where he was now would be to question more of the buskers. I wasn’t thrilled with the prospect of spending precious hours questioning people about his whereabouts, but I had no choice. At least it wasn’t raining at the moment. The tourists were already wandering around, breakfasting on hot pastries from the bakery and paper cups of famous coffee, which meant that the buskers were out, too, hoping to gather some of those tourist dollars for themselves. I just had to find the ones who knew Delamar. . . .

I decided to fend off the lingering sensations of the ghost’s touch by getting some breakfast for myself. There was a busking spot across from Sisters café in Post Alley and another just around the corner from that on Pine Street, so I started there.

A young, dreadlocked white man in motley clothes was singing old protest songs from the early 1970s from the tiny stage of a tiled doorway across Post Alley from Sisters. I listened to him while I rushed through some food and fed the ferret crumbs and tried to keep her out of my coffee cup. The musician was an adequate guitarist and indifferent singer. I caught him as he reached the end of his hour and started to put his guitar away. A pair of men with a collection of rough-looking hand drums and harmonicas were waiting to take his place, so I addressed all three of them.

“Hi. I’ve been looking for a performer. Have you guys been playing around here long?”

The men with the drums blinked at each other before they shrugged and one replied, “Since April—technically.”

“Technically?” I echoed.

The guitarist leaned into the conversation as he picked up his case. “They mean they weren’t officially here until April. No badge,” he added, pointing to the small round pin he wore on his own shirt. He cut the men a collective dirty look. “Sneakers.” The silvery mist of the ghost world around him flushed red, spreading over us all like blood in water and in a moment his aura flared the same color. A real “angry young man,” I supposed and wondered what he was so mad about. . . .

The man who’d spoken first rolled his eyes, the energy corona around him flickering as if he were fighting the impulse to respond with equal belligerence. “It’s not like we didn’t try to get a badge before, but you almost gotta wait for someone to die before space opens up.”

“Almost as bad as the vendor list,” the remaining man said.

I held up my hands to slow them down. “Hey, I’m not familiar with the system. Is there a limit on the badges?”

The guitarist kept his eyes on the rival musicians as he answered me. “Yeah, unless you know someone’s badge is going to be up for grabs, it’s pretty hard to get a new act in.”

The first man scowled at the guitarist. “You implying me and him had anything to do with that guy getting hurt just so we could get a badge?”

“Not implying nothing. Just saying,” the guitarist retorted.

The first guy spit and narrowed his eyes at the guitarist. “Maybe you better travel on, Dylan. You’re over time.”

The guitarist huffed and spun away, turning his back on the other act before stalking off.

“Jack-off,” the first man muttered under his breath.

“Shine it on, man. We got music to play,” his partner said.

I wedged myself back into the conversation. “So, you guys didn’t know the guy who was hurt?”

They blinked at me again as if they had forgotten I was there. “Well, yeah, we knew him. We’ve been coming around off and on for a couple of years, trying to get a spot. Always seemed to be too late, no matter how early we went to the office to get a badge.”

“How well did you know him?”

“Just like ‘Hey, man, how y’doing?’ kind of thing. He was a nice guy. He let us play with him a couple few times Down Under ’cause the spot’s good for more than one. We split the take. He was a good guy. Feel kind of bad we got his badge. Kind of.”

Sounded like all the performers I’d ever known: sorry for the misfortune of one of the fraternity, but not enough to refuse the chance to take the spot if it were offered.

“So, you guys wouldn’t know where I could find him.”

They shook their heads. “Nah, sorry,” the first one said.

“It’s OK. Thanks for the help anyhow,” I said, turning to go after the guitarist and leaving them to make the most of their chances.

By the time I’d rounded the corner out of Post Alley and was heading to the next spot half a block downhill, I could hear the two men laying down a complex rhythm on the drums followed by the wail of a harmonica. They were better than the guitarist, but it was strange music with roots that reached to unquiet parts of my mind. I hurried to get away.

The guitarist wasn’t at the next spot—it was occupied by a blond man with a small piano on wheels. He played a jazzy, upbeat tune, keeping his head tucked down a little as if concentrating on the keyboard and avoiding the eyes of the crowd. He was good and a shallow basket of CDs sat on the top of his instrument with the obligatory price sign—this one, however, not claiming any special reason for the offering. I waited for him to finish his piece, but he wasn’t any more help than the drummers had been. He knew Jordan by name, knew about the injury and that he had been in the hospital for a while, but he didn’t know where he’d been moved, only that he was gone. Once again I paid for the information by purchasing a CD and moved on before I took up too much of his time.

I walked toward the next spot, fighting my way once more through ghosts and tourists, and found the guitarist again, playing in front of the original Starbucks shop with its brown sign and two-tailed mermaid. Same song, different crowd. I leaned against the wall, letting Chaos crawl out of my bag and up to my shoulder as I waited for a pause in the performance. I figured that anyone as pissed off as this guy had been about the badge transfer probably knew Delamar.

He noticed me at once when I stepped up on the next break. “You again?”

I nodded and Chaos rumpled around under my hair, making me restrain a twitch. “Yes. I didn’t get to finish our conversation earlier. Do you know Jordan Delamar—the guy who was injured?”

He gave me a wary look, his eyes shifting from my face to the ferret, no doubt thinking I was a bit weird and possibly dangerous. “Who wants to know?”

“I’m a private investigator. I’m working for another patient.”

“I didn’t hear that anyone else had been hurt. . . .”

I just gave him a thin smile and repeated myself. “Do you know Delamar?”

He heaved a sigh. “Yeah. I know Jordy. Look, I don’t have time to chat. I need to make some money here.”

“Understood. Can I meet you later? I can pay for your time.” Chaos stuck her nose out from under my collar and wiggled her whiskers at him.

His expression brightened. “Oh. Well, then yeah. Um . . . I’m going to work my way around to Lowell’s in a couple of hours. See you up in the loft? Noon?”

I agreed and moved on. As I passed near the slabs, I looked across the street for Twitcher, but I didn’t see him this time, so I crossed the road and asked a few of the guys hanging out near the memorial if they knew him. None of them did and none of them recalled seeing him in the area. I’d have to go down to Pioneer Square later and find out what he’d been doing up here the day before.

I continued to ask around, killing a couple of hours with the same questions, but I didn’t have a lot more luck. But then I got one more “meet me at Lowell’s” offer from a woman in a ridiculously large hat whose act involved a talking parrot and a stuffed cat. Chaos had been very interested in the parrot, which had forced me to cut the interview short even though the woman seemed to know something.

“I’ll see you at Lowell’s,” I said, backing away.

“I’ll be there when I’m done here,” she replied, tossing the stuffed cat into the air.

I hadn’t realized how quickly time had passed—it was nearly eleven thirty already. I worked my way through the crowd to a washroom to clean up and then onward through the lunch crush to the restaurant inside the main market arcade. They’d filmed some scenes for Sleepless in Seattle there and the photos were still displayed near the entrance. Tourists always seemed to cluster around the doors, staring at them for a moment or two, though I imagined many had no idea what film they were from or who the people in the photos were. I felt old thinking of it.

I smuggled the ferret into the upper dining room at Lowell’s and found the woman with the stuffed cat—but no sign of the parrot this time—sitting with a cup of tea at a table near the windows with a vertigo-inducing view of Elliott Bay and the waterfront. I could see the Great Wheel—a giant Ferris wheel similar in design to the London Eye, but about half the size—revolving slowly at the end of Pier 57 and the aquarium’s roofs just across the road from the Hill Climb immediately below us. I couldn’t see down to the tunnel construction, but I knew it was there, just beyond the edges of the window. I wondered if Julianne Goss had turned to admire the same view on the day a mosquito had bitten her and wished I could figure out the connection between the three patients who might be running out of time as I sat and drank coffee with buskers and fabric cats.

I took a seat on the other side of the table from the woman and was about to say hello again when two more people approached us, carrying trays of food from downstairs. “Hey, Mindy! Can we sit with you?” the male of the pair asked.

The Cat Lady waved graciously for them to join us and then reached up to remove her hat, which she put down with care so it stood flat against the wall. Her revealed hair was faded strawberry blond and she appeared older without the shade of the hat brim on her face.

She looked at me and started to speak but was cut off one more time by the arrival of the guitar player I’d met in Post Alley. “Hey, make some room for me, too,” he said, pulling a chair over from another table and wedging himself between the unnamed lady and myself. I scooted my chair next to Mindy to make room for him.

Mindy rolled her eyes. “Sure thing, Fuso. Don’t mind us.”

“Ah, don’t be such a bitch, Mindy. I need to talk to the Private Eye, too.”

The couple to whom I’d not been introduced yet gave me a startled look and seemed about to pack up and leave, but Mindy patted the man’s nearest hand and they settled back into their seats.

“I thought your name was Dylan,” I said to the guitar player.

He shrugged. “Nah, they were just making remarks.”

“As is only fitting, considering how often you do the same,” Mindy said.

Fuso blew a raspberry.

I leaned forward and said, “I’m sorry for the inconvenience, but I did promise to meet . . . umm . . . Fuso here, too.”

“That’s all right,” Mindy said. Chaos stuck her head out of my bag and sniffed at the odors of food. Mindy noticed her and smiled. “Better keep that under the table, just in case,” she suggested. “I leave Beaker with the folks who run the bird store on Western. They spoil him, of course.” Then she looked at the couple who had joined us. “Are you two comfortable? You don’t mind . . . ?”

“No problem,” the woman of the couple said. “Fuso’s always a rude pain in the ass.” Then she stuck her tongue out at the man named when he looked as if he would object.

Mindy looked around the table while I closed the zipper on my bag to keep the ferret from running amok in the restaurant.

Mindy waited until I was done, glancing at me one more time before saying, “Well, I’m Mindy Canter. Fuso you know—Ansel Fuso. And these are Nightingale and Whim Sonder.”

The male Sonder reached across the table and put out his hand to shake mine. “William, really, but it’s Whim to most.”

I had seen their names on flyers around town—Whim and Nightingale created children’s shows with all sorts of puppets, mimes, musicians, and wild costumes. “I thought you two were big-time producers,” I said.

Nightingale pulled a rueful face. “Unfortunately, puppetry is not the easiest gig to make a living at if you’re not willing to travel. Whim is utterly terrified of planes.”

“Not terrified, just not convinced they’re going to stay aloft,” Whim said. “And we can only afford to mount one show a year—the Christmas show at the Children’s Theatre.” He glanced away. “Our son would have been six this year. . . .”

I looked at Nightingale, who bit her lip as tears welled in her eyes. She met my gaze and shook her head. She didn’t want to talk about it. Silvery faces boiled around her in the Grey, one in particular whispering something I couldn’t catch.

Into the awkward silence, Fuso blurted, “But you want to know about the Banjo Guy, not Whim and Nightie’s kid.”

Mindy gave him a cold glare. “Yes, she wants to talk about Jordy, Fuso. You could be a little more sensitive.”

“Me? I’m the most sensitive guy in the world. Didn’t I give those two guys who snaffled Banjo Guy’s badge the rush? I’m not running around acting like he was never here.”

“No one acts like Jordy was never here. We just don’t use it as an excuse to be mean to other people.”

Fuso rolled his eyes and blew a noisy breath into his hair. “You say so.”

Mindy gave him one more hard look, then turned her attention back to me. “What did you want to know?”

“Well, I have a mailing address for him, but I really need to talk to his caregivers or family in person. I need an actual address where I can find him.”

“Why?” Nightingale asked.

“He may have something in common with a client of mine who’s also in a coma,” I said. “I’m trying to find out what happened to him and other patients with the same symptoms and see if there’s a connection that might help us understand and possibly correct their conditions. So far all the patients’ injuries seem to have some association with the tunnel construction zone, but that’s very vague and the longer it takes to find Jordan and possibly a common cause, the worse each patient’s chances become. I need more information and I think I can get it if I can see Delamar and talk to the people who are taking care of him. Do any of you know his address or anything about his condition or his accident?”

They exchanged glances before Mindy looked at me as if they had elected her their representative. “I have Jordy’s address. He’s been unconscious ever since the awning fell on him. Whim and Nightingale and I went to see him while he was in the hospital, but when Levi couldn’t afford it anymore, they moved him to a different facility and it’s been hard to go see him. We all work long hours in the summer. I have another job as well as this one. So do Whim and Night.” She cast an exasperated look at Fuso. “Ansel is just a bum who sponges off his mother.”

“Hey! I do my bit. Don’t go dissing me.”

Beside him, Nightingale gave his shoulder a token smack. “Don’t be such a whiner, Fuso. Learn to take a joke.”

Fuso grunted and snatched a handful of French fries off Nightingale’s plate and shoved them into his mouth in a wad. Nightingale shook her head and Whim made an exaggerated face of disgust. “You’re such a delicate flower, Fuso. I’m going to make a puppet just like you: Its mouth will reach all the way around to the back of its head.”

They poked fun at Fuso for a few minutes, diffusing the tension that had risen between them earlier. I waited for them to wind down. Then I said, “Tell me about Delamar. What’s he like? What did he do?”

“You mean his act?” Mindy asked. “He plays banjo.”

“He also makes them,” Whim said. “It’s part of the shtick. He has a real nice Gibson resonator, but he’s always got a couple of specialties around. Like . . . he has one made out of a dried gourd and a yardstick and another he made out of a cooking pot.”

“I remember that one!” Nightingale said. “He sold it to some guy from a restaurant supply company. Remember the cigar box?”

Whim laughed. “I do. That was a classic.”

“He made them all himself?” I asked. “So his act is some sort of gag?”

The Sonders looked appalled. “Oh no!” Nightingale said. “He was just so talented he could make a playable instrument out of almost anything. He made a three-hole chicken-bone whistle once, but he wasn’t a very good wind player, so he gave it away. He made things all the time—mostly out of junk he found around the market. He’d play them for a while, but if someone liked the instrument, he’d sell it to them. He was probably better at making instruments than playing them, but he only really liked banjos. I think selling the instruments brought in more money, but he liked to play. He thought of himself as a musician, not an instrument maker.”

“You speak of him in the past tense,” I noted.

Nightingale drew in her breath as if to rebut me, but stopped. “I—guess it’s just been so long . . .”

Whim put a hand on her shoulder. “It’s been a long time since we saw him and every show’s yesterday’s news. Once you go home for the day, it’s over and past.”

Fuso rolled his eyes. “What he really means is no one thinks he’s coming back.”

Mindy jabbed a finger into Fuso’s arm. “Fuso!”

He turned to her. “It’s true! You can pretend all you want, but we all know it. He was a good guy, but there ain’t no Prince Charming going to come along and wake him up.” He glared at the Sonders. “You know that better than anyone.”

Nightingale turned in her seat and slapped him. “Shut up, Fuso. Shut up.”

Fuso stood up with more self-possession than I’d have expected, and walked quietly away. Nightingale pushed her tray aside and got up from the table. She looked down at Whim, her face white and the energy around her flaring red, then yellow, then green. “I need to leave.” She looked at me. “I’m sorry I can’t help you. Jordan is a very nice man. He deserves better friends than Fuso. And us.”

She turned and walked off, Whim hopping up to follow her without looking back.

Mindy closed her eyes and shook her head. “I should have known better than to let Fuso open his mouth.”

“I get the impression he’d open it anyhow and you couldn’t have stopped him.”

“He’s such a brat.”

I thought that was too mild a sentiment, but Fuso wasn’t my problem. “I’m sorry to have raised such a stink.”

“It happens. Especially if Fuso is involved. He liked Jordan. I think he’s a little jealous, really, because he wants to be liked just as much, but he doesn’t know how. He’s immature and even younger than he looks, so he hasn’t learned to keep his temper in check. He’s not very good at making friends.”

I wasn’t either and I felt a niggle of shame since I was older than I looked and should have learned better by now. “I do know how that goes.”

Mindy gave a tight smile. Then she picked up a napkin and asked me for a pen. “I’ll give you the address where you can find Jordy. He won’t be able to talk to you, but someone there may.”

As she wrote the information down I watched her. “I have one other question,” I said.

She nodded without glancing up.

“Have things been . . . strange around the market lately?”

“Strange? This place runs on strange.” She raised her head. “What sort of thing are you really after?”

“I mean has it seemed haunted or like there have been more accidents or that things are unsettled lately?”

“Oh,” she said, her eyes lighting with recognition. “There has been more . . . disturbance than usual. It feels like . . . something’s broken. People are snappish, strange events have become more common—it’s always odd here and some people won’t work in the main arcade when that sort of thing starts happening. I won’t, for one.”

“Why?”

Mindy studied my face in silence before she answered. “Spirits. You can feel them, sometimes, watching you. All the people who lived on the bluff before the market was here, all the people who’ve been here since. Usually they’re just there, and it’s no problem. But sometimes—lately—they seem . . . agitated. Ever since Jordan was hurt. Do you think the ghosts are mad about that?”

“I don’t know. But there was a monkey in the office this morning and I was told things have been going badly a lot. I just wondered if that was a widespread impression.”

She peered at me, her half smile holding steady. “It’s not an impression. It’s true. What made you think of it?”

“I met a woman named Mae. . . .”

“Purple skirt, beer can hat?”

I nodded, watching her closely. She returned my intense gaze.

“That was Lois Brown. They called her Mae West because of her bosom and her salty language. She used to be a regular in the market and she lived in one of the low-income apartments here until she died in 1995. Her ashes were buried under the white plum tree in the secret cemetery. The tree put out purple blossoms after that until they pulled it up in 2007. There were a lot of other people buried there—Indians, other market people. Since they started working on the tunnel, the tree they planted there hasn’t bloomed. If you saw Mae, maybe she’s not the only one of those buried in the market who can’t rest.”

“Where is the secret cemetery?”

“Across from Kells, in the Soames-Dunn courtyard.” She handed me the napkin she’d written on. “If they’re unhappy, maybe it’s the ghosts who are causing these problems—like the one that hurt Jordan.”

The idea hadn’t crystallized to that degree in my own head until Mindy spoke it, but it had been forming there. I wasn’t certain, but it did cast an interesting light on the relationship between Sterling, Goss, and Delamar: They’d all been injured in ways associated with the tunneling under Pike Place Market and both Sterling and Delamar had been in contact with the dirt from the tunnel. I wondered if the same was true of Goss. . . .

I took the paper with a frisson running down my back. “Thank you.”

Mindy nodded and picked up her hat. “You’re welcome. Come back and tell me how Jordy’s doing, won’t you?”

I said I would and watched her go, discomfited by my thoughts.