Possession

TWENTY-TWO

I hadn’t liked handling the thing, but I took possession of the shrine of Limos. There really wasn’t anything else to do. Carlos had refused it, saying he had only enough darkness left to deal with Inman’s body, and I wasn’t going to stick Quinton with it. In the end, Quinton found a place for it among his many hidden stashes around town where I could leave it for a few hours in the certainty that it would be undisturbed by anyone, including his father.

Daylight had begun to creep across the sky by the time I drove Quinton home with me, since he and I had also needed to clean a few things up before any of Purlis Senior’s associates turned up for the day. I hadn’t been sure he had any, but Quinton assured me his father had flunkies who would take care of most of the mess and probably squeal to a superior at their earliest convenience that the head of the project had been shot. There wasn’t any sign of Purlis when we’d come up the stairs and at first I was worried, but Quinton had assured me his father was safely off to the University Medical Center—since it was the closest emergency room—having his leg attended to before it got worse. I wasn’t sure how he’d gotten there and I didn’t want to know, but I was pretty sure that Quinton wasn’t lying about the hospital. He’d have needed help with the body if the wretched man had gone and died, and Carlos and I had been the only people around to ask, which he hadn’t done.

“You don’t seem worried he’ll tell someone you’re the one who shot him,” I said as I drove carefully toward West Seattle.

“No. Dad wouldn’t want it to get out. It wouldn’t make him look good to say the ‘top recruit’ he’d been working to bring on board was his renegade son who turned on him. He won’t tell the regular cops on me, either. Though if he did, I guess I could always go to them first, demand to see Solis, and get a sympathetic ear at the very least. No, Dad will keep his mouth shut, I’ll clean up as much of the disaster as I must to keep from being connected to it, and then I’ll have to find the rest of Ghost Division and take care of this problem in person.”

“In Europe? But—” I started. Then I shut my mouth over my objection and kept on driving.

Quinton let it drop and he didn’t say anything even while we were securing the shrine box.

I drove us home and he followed me up the stairs to the condo in silence. I wasn’t angry. I just wasn’t sure what to say or how to broach the subject that was weighing on my mind even more than the idea of a ghost and a god killing off a few hundred tourists so they could eat their souls. The booming silence of it hung between us and I tried to ignore it by doing normal, trivial things: I let the ferret out to romp while I undressed and got into the shower. Quinton followed me into the bathroom and leaned against the wall, playing desultorily with Chaos while the steam built up.

“I don’t want to leave you,” he said once he was completely obscured in clouds of vapor.

“But you’re going to.”

“I have to. What he’s doing is terrible and I feel a little responsible—if I hadn’t called on his help a couple of years ago, he wouldn’t have known where I was or tumbled to what I knew about ghosts and magic and that sort of thing. I wouldn’t have felt I owed him and he wouldn’t have been able to screw with my life again. This is at least partly my fault and I know he won’t fix it—he’ll just try to use the current situation to his advantage. Maybe he’ll spin the destruction of the lab as some kind of breakthrough or something. He’s perfectly capable of it. And he’ll have figured out who—and mostly what—Carlos is, so he’ll also have realized you’re not just a plain-Jane human being. I’m not sure if he saw anything but I think he already suspected you weren’t exactly ‘normal.’ I need to keep him off you.”

I stuck my head out of the shower and gave him a hard stare. “You are not my keeper and you aren’t responsible for fending off your dad as a result of my own actions. I can take care of myself in that regard. Especially now that he might already know I’m a little more than an average PI and I won’t have to pull my punches.”

He walked forward, putting Chaos down on the floor. She danced around our feet as he leaned forward and kissed me softly. “Harper, I know you can look out for yourself, but I have to take care of the situation he’s caused. It’s my responsibility.”

“Would you have shot him? I mean fatally?”

“I think I would have. And I guess I should say thank you for stopping me. That would have been a mistake. This way, he’ll want to cover it up. Otherwise, his bosses would have come looking for me and I’d never have been free again. I am grateful. I love you. And not just because you came to my rescue like a knight in crumpled armor with your trusty vampire sidekick, either. I just . . . I just do.”

I grinned at him. “Then why don’t you get your clothes off and get in here?”

He looked shaggy and dirty, his clothes were stained with some things I didn’t want to think about, and we were both at less than our best, but I couldn’t think of anyone I would rather share a shower with. He glanced down at himself, back at me, and broke into a wicked grin.

He was pretty quick at getting out of his clothes, though dropping them on Chaos wound her up and we could hear her chuckling and dancing around in miniature ire as Quinton joined me under the stream of hot water. We stayed until the water got tepid and then fought our way past the furious ferret to roll into bed and make love until we were both too tired to try anymore. We even forgot to put Chaos back in her cage.

A brush of whiskers on my face woke me at noon. Quinton was already gone, but a note said he’d be back. I picked up the ferret and showed it to her.

“What do you think?” I asked. “Truth or lie?”

She sniffed the paper and snorted. Then she tried to eat it, leaving neat sets of puncture marks in the corner of the page until I took it from her. “I’ll take that as a vote of confidence, since you didn’t turn up your nose.”

Talking to the ferret made me feel less alone, but it probably would have given most people the impression I was completely off my rocker. I put her down and got dressed, then took her out to the kitchen while I made some breakfast and thought about what I’d have to do next.

Carlos and I had determined that we needed another séance in order to capture Limos. The only practical bait would be the families of the patients, since they would attract the ghosts bound to Hazzard and through her to Limos. We’d have to use them to get the goddess to her shrine, then capture her in it and disperse whatever hold Hazzard had established over the ghosts. Once that was done, we’d have to get rid of Hazzard and hope that allowed the ghosts the freedom to rest and leave their unwilling hosts alone.

Not a very detailed plan. We would have to wing it a lot and I’d have to be the one to talk Stymak into trying one more time. I knew Lily Goss would join me in cajoling him, but I really needed someone representing each of the patients to make the circle work. Carlos and I would have to stand aside from the circle to do our work in the Grey once the ghosts and their hungry handlers were present. It wasn’t going to be fun and it had to be tonight—before Purlis could make any efforts to get the shrine back or more harm could be done to Julianne, Sterling, and Delamar.

I started with a phone call to Lily Goss. She answered, sounding very harried, and I could hear Julianne’s babbling in the background.

“Hello? What? I’m sorry, we’re having a crisis, could you call back?”

“No. This is Harper Blaine. I’ve got a solution to the problem. I think. But it will require a séance with Richard Stymak.”

“What? Séance? I’m not sure. . . .”

In the distance I heard Julianne scream, “Somil, somil! Throuf eeluge lew eth drag! Lew eth drag!” I couldn’t figure out what she was saying on the fly and that frustrated me, but first I needed to concentrate on persuading her sister to do as I asked. If Julianne wanted me to get the message, she’d repeat it, I was sure.

I said, “I believe we can fix the whole problem, in one effort, tonight, if we can just do this. But I need you to persuade Stymak. He’s afraid and I need him. I need you, too—I can’t do this on my own.”

“But Julie is so agitated. I’m afraid to leave her. She may hurt herself. . . . Her vital signs are very strange. She keeps saying—screaming—that phrase—‘throuf eeluge lew eth drag’—over and over since yesterday morning.”

“Did you write it down? Why didn’t you call me?”

“I . . . I couldn’t break free. She’s been so bad, I felt I had to stay with her and do what I could for her. But she’s getting worse and she started throwing things. . . .”

“I know about the throwing things part,” I replied, touching my eyelid. It stung just a little and I thought of the eyedrops I’d been neglecting. The Grey connection may have been severed but the physical damage was still there. “Repeat that phrase for me? What Julianne is saying.”

She stuttered, started, stopped, and finally got it out. “‘Throuf eeluge lew eth drag.’ Or that’s what it sounds like. She’s been screaming it and then she . . . passes out. When she wakes up, she starts again.”

I wrote the phrase down and stared at it while Julianne continued to raise a ruckus in the background.

“Oh, please . . . Julie, sweetie . . .” Lily said, turning aside from the phone for a moment. “Please calm down. I’m trying to help. . . .”

I puzzled at the words. I knew they were backward but knowing and translating aren’t instantaneous. “‘Throuf . . . fourth . . . eeluge . . . july . . . lew . . . well’ . . . no, ‘Wheel . . . eth’ . . . that’s got to be ‘the’ . . . ‘drag . . . gard’ . . . ‘guard.’” I rewrote the phrase in proper order, just to be sure . . . Guard the Wheel July Fourth. “Oh shit . . . It’s tonight.”

Julianne fell silent.

“What?” Lily asked in the sudden quiet.

A surge of fear squeezed my heart and my ears sang with the pressure. “Please, Lily. Get Wrothen to sit with her—she’s a dragon, but she’s a good nurse. She’ll take good care of Julianne and if things work out, you’ll never need her help again after tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow? You want to do this tomorrow?”

“No. Tonight. Please talk to Stymak. I’ll call him, too, but he’s going to say no to me at first. I need you to persuade him. We can do it at whatever time he wants, but it has to be tonight. Please, Lily.”

She hesitated. “I—I’ll call him. Tonight. All right, I’ll call right away. Oh, dear God, I hope this works. Julianne’s so weak when she isn’t . . . doing things. I’m so scared.”

“It will work. Call Stymak. Then go to church as soon as some relief comes. I want you to go and pray as sincerely as you know how. If God is going to say anything, now will be the time. Trust me.” It certainly couldn’t hurt to have a god on our side, if he was taking any. Lily believed, and I knew just what the power of a believer could do. Purlis’s belief—as twisted as it was—had brought Limos here in a box. Maybe it could fight her, too. I wasn’t a Christian, but I didn’t think Lily’s god would turn a cold shoulder to her for that. Even if there was no divine intervention, it would help Lily focus and that would help me. Yes, I’m that hard—I would use someone’s religion to my own ends if I had to. I would have prayed myself, if I’d thought anyone was going to listen to me.

“I . . . I will. All right, I will. I’ll talk to Richard. I’ll be there.”

“Thank you, Lily. Thank you. I’ll see you there.”

I didn’t even know where “there” was yet, but I’d be there.

My next call was to the Sterling house, but I couldn’t get through to Olivia. I would have to go there and see if I could catch her in person.

I tried the care center Jordan Delamar was in, but the staff told me Levi hadn’t arrived yet. I’d have to make that visit in person, too. Damn it! I needed to get a lot coordinated in a very short time and people weren’t taking my calls. At least I didn’t have to worry about Papa Purlis at the moment, since he was probably still in the hospital for that leg wound and if not, I guessed that Quinton’s continued absence was so he could keep an eye on his frustrating father and make sure he didn’t come after me before he cut out for Europe and whatever he’d have already put in motion there. For a second I found myself hoping Purlis’s wound wasn’t as bad as it had looked. Then I forced my mind away from it—I couldn’t spare sympathy for my almost-father-in-law right now. I suspected that he was much like the proverbial cat that always landed on its feet one way or another. I still didn’t like him and I wished he were long gone without dragging Quinton along for the crash, but that was another thing I’d have to worry about later.

I tucked Chaos into her cage with fresh food and water—I wasn’t sure when I’d be home and I didn’t want her to breed too much of her namesake while I was gone. I checked and reloaded my gun and headed out the door.

I drove to the Sterling house first, thinking it was going to be harder to catch up to a high school kid on summer break than it would be to find Levi Westman. The neighborhood was busier than it had been before. I saw quite a few families loading ice chests and folding chairs into SUVs and minivans, and there was a surfeit of small humans dashing around on lawns and sidewalks.

As I walked up the driveway to the Sterling house with its tarped-over construction, someone in the street let off one of those annoyingly loud whistling fireworks. I turned around to find the culprit and discovered a smiling young man coming up the driveway behind me, flipping a Zippo lighter open and closed in his hand.

He was as blond as Olivia Sterling, but his face was plumper and less prematurely aged with worry. Which is not to say he wasn’t slim; he had the slender, flexible look of an athlete and the confident stride to go with it.

“Hey there,” he said as he closed with me. “You here for Olivia?”

I was startled, but played along. “Yeah. Is she in?”

“Yep. She’s probably still trying to get out from under Mom’s clucking like a hen, but she’s ready to go. When are you going to bring her back?”

“Oh. Not too late.”

“After the fireworks, though, right? I know Mom was trying to get her home earlier, but I think Ollie needs some more time out of this place, y’know? She’s stuck here all the damned time taking care of Dad. So, you’re good to go?”

“As soon as I see Olivia.”

He gave me a thumbs-up much like Olivia had the first time I’d parted from her and headed for the door. “You wait here. I’ll get her and send her out. Mom will be all over you if I don’t and you guys will never get out of here.”

I stood at the edge of the walkway to the front door, a little stunned and wound up with nerves as the young man went inside the house. In a few minutes, Olivia came trotting out with a backpack in one hand and a tote bag slung over her shoulder. She stopped short when she saw it was me and I watched the conflicting emotions storm over her—surprise, disappointment, excitement, worry. . . .

“Hey,” she said. “What are you doing here?”

“I know you’re expecting someone else, but I need to talk to you.”

She closed the distance to me and bit her lip as she looked up into my face. “I’m sorry—I didn’t have a chance to bring you more of Dad’s notebooks. Mom hasn’t let me out of her sight.”

“How’s your dad doing?”

“He’s . . . well, not good. Really restless. It’s been harsh and it makes my mom kind of crazy. She’s been really wound up and I swear now she’s not even eating—she looks like a skeleton. I’m worried about her. And don’t say I need to watch my own weight—I know I’m too thin. I didn’t used to be. . . .”

That was a detail I’d let slip my mind again until she mentioned it: All the patients and their caregivers were dangerously skinny. They were all starving, like Hazzard’s victims. Even the ones who ate regularly were being drained by the proximity to Limos. That situation would only worsen and spread if Limos and Hazzard were successful. “It’s not your fault, Olivia, but I think it’s one of the side effects of what’s happening to your dad. And that’s one of the reasons we need to stop it as soon as we can.”

“I’m trying. I kind of feel guilty that I’m going out. . . . My brothers, Peter and Darryl, are here, though, so they’re going to hang with her and Dad for a while. Let me, y’know, get some sun.” She lit up suddenly. “Hey! I could get one of those notebooks for you now! Peter could help me. That’s my big brother, who you met just now—he’s totally cool.”

The sudden flip in her attitude was something I’d seen before when people try to deny the horror of a situation they can’t seem to get out of. I put out my hand to stop her from turning and running back into the house. “I didn’t come about the notebooks. I figured it out. What I need is for you to come to a séance tonight. I don’t know the time and place yet, but if you can come, I think we can fix this problem. For good.”

“Tonight?” She looked stricken. “But . . . it’s the Fourth of July! I practically had to sell my soul to get out of the house. Mom’s going to freak. . . .”

I felt a stab of panic as I thought of what an excellent opportunity Independence Day offered to Hazzard and Limos, with the hundreds or even thousands of people who would be all over the waterfront to hang out at the park, eat junk food, ride the carousel on Pier 57, and watch the fireworks display over Elliott Bay. No doubt there would be a long line to get on the Great Wheel and see at least a few minutes of the display from the unobstructed height, through the Wheel’s swinging glass gondolas. I swallowed my swelling fear before it could infect Olivia and said, “Don’t tell her. Do you have a cell phone?”

She rolled her eyes. “Yeah.” She gave the word two syllables, somehow.

“Give me the number and I’ll call you when I have the details. It’ll be later, maybe after the fireworks. But this is important and I’m sorry it’s messing up your plans—you need to come when I say. This is the key to everything.”

She sighed, her jaw muscles bunching as she fought her fear and disappointment. Then she rolled her eyes and sighed again, settling. “All right. For my dad. But this has to work. Please say it’s going to work. . . .” Tears lined the bottom of her eyelids, swelling on the pale fringe of her lashes.

I wasn’t sure—I never am—but I lied for her. “It will. With your help.”

She bit her lip and then launched a hug-tackle at my midsection. “We’re going to save him. Thank you! You’re the best!” Then she backed off self-consciously. “Oh. I’m sorry. That was, like, really overboard, wasn’t it? Oh, God . . .”

I gave her what I hoped was a reassuring smile. “It’s just fine. You’re fine. It’ll all be good. Now—phone number?”

She was startled, then she gave a nervous laugh and dug a card out of her tote bag. It was a tiny slip of heavy, plasticized paper with her name and phone number on one side and a close-up black-and-white photo of a ragged toe shoe on the other. I DANCE, THEREFORE I AM was printed in white script over the shoe. She handed it to me. “There. That’s the number.”

I looked the card over with a curious frown.

“I had them made when I thought I was going to be doing a lot of auditions and stuff,” Olivia explained, blushing with a touch of embarrassment. “Kind of silly, huh?”

“No,” I said. “I’ve just never seen such a small card before—we didn’t do these in my day.”

She shrugged and looked uncomfortable. “Umm . . . well, anyway . . . It’s going to be really loud out on the pier, so you maybe better text me as early as you can, to be sure I get the message in time.”

“The pier? Are you going out to the waterfront?”

“Yeah, to the park with a couple of the girls and one of the instructors from the ballet studio. Mom wouldn’t let me go without ‘a responsible adult’ to watch us. But it’s really just Delphia’s mom and she’s cool.”

Now this was a quandary: I didn’t want to frighten her or her friends, but I also didn’t want to ignore the danger if things didn’t go as I thought they would—I didn’t know what time Hazzard and Limos would move their ghosts toward the Wheel. I bit my lip for a second and Olivia noticed my hesitation.

“Yeah? Something wrong?”

“No. But there could be a problem with the Great Wheel tonight. Were your friends planning on riding it?”

“I don’t know. Delphia’s scared of heights, but that doesn’t mean the rest wouldn’t want to go up. If the line’s not, like, horrendous. Do you know something . . . ? Is it bad?” She looked scared now.

I wanted to tell her the truth and I wanted to lie, too. I wanted her to be safe—which she might not be with or without me. “I don’t know,” I said.

She studied my face for a moment or two, then she nodded. “If they really, really want to go, I don’t think I can stop them, but I’ll get them to go early, not later, if that makes a difference.”

“It could,” I said, thinking an attack on the Wheel would be more likely later, when the crowds were thickest.

“Then that’s what we’ll do. And I’ll come whenever you tell me to—unless I need a ride. Then it might take a while.”

“I can pick you up if you’re OK with that.”

She shrugged. “Hey, I’m already going out ghostbusting, so I guess I’m pretty good with all kinds of crazy stuff. Don’t tell my mom, though. She will freak.”

I laughed a little. “Believe me, I won’t tell her.”

She glanced around me and grinned. “There’s Delphia! I’m gone! See you later!”

And she darted off before anything could change, embracing the momentary freedom, running from home as much as toward her friend. I had to swallow hard to keep on breathing normally as I watched her go. I hoped with every fiber of my being that I wasn’t lying, that it would all be OK.

I trudged back to my truck and headed for the care home where Delamar was. I hoped talking to Levi wouldn’t leave me in knots like this. I hadn’t thought that Lily would be the easy one. Even convincing Stymak to try again had to be less uncomfortable than telling half lies to Olivia Sterling.

I drove back into central Seattle and parked a few blocks from the hospital so I could walk for a while outdoors in the patchwork sunshine. The weather was typical for Seattle—neither hot nor cold, with clouds that rolled over the sun and then cleared away again after dropping a smattering of rain. It was such a common phenomenon here that the weathermen had a name for it: sun breaks. I was wearing a light jacket and didn’t mind the sun’s game of hide-and-seek; my confidence was suddenly staggering and even with time seeming to fly away from me, I felt the need to be in the normal world with all its mess and inconvenience for just a while longer before I plunged back into the darkness of the situation and faced the séance and everything that went with it. A misty drizzle came down for a minute or so, then dissipated in sudden steam as a hole broke in the cloud cover and the sun stuck a beam of light through to warm the sidewalk.

I sat on a cement bench beside a little triangle of lawn and closed my eyes for a moment, feeling the sun warm me. It was three o’clock on Independence Day but I didn’t feel particularly celebratory or patriotic. I especially felt no connection to James Purlis’s idea of patriotism, which had moved him to do horrible things not for his country’s sake but for the government and some twisted idea about worldly power. Surely that wasn’t what “love of country” was supposed to be?

If some act is wrong it is simply wrong, no matter who tells you to do it or for what grand motive. It seemed to me that a true patriot and decent human being rejects doing wrong and puts the ideals on which the country is founded ahead of the directives of government bureaucrats. If the government is off the rails, you don’t keep on riding the train to destruction—you certainly don’t push it there on your own; you start hauling the other way as hard as you can. That was what Quinton was doing, quietly and without any help or recognition, trying to pull things back toward that delicate state of balance. It was a strange and huge undertaking, but whether I approved of his Don Quixote way of going at it or not, I had to let him do it. Where would I be if Purlis’s ideas won? Branded a monster—a nonhuman with no rights—and put in a cage to be experimented on? That flew in the face of what I’d always taken for granted here—all that high-flown Founding Fathers business about people being inherently free and self-determined, endowed with rights just because they were human. I shuddered, imagining the alternative—the end result of what Purlis would do, starting first in Europe and then back here.

As loony as it sounded, it meant I had to do a Don Quixote act myself and dismantle this conspiracy of ghosts. I turned my mind to that, trying not to dwell on my own bizarre and complicated family problems instead of the more immediate situation. I only hoped Hazzard and Limos would hold off tonight until Carlos was available. I thought it was likely that they would, since the ghosts would be exhausted from their exertions the previous night and, although Limos and Hazzard were also drawing strength through the rest of the patients’ families, their energy would be low for a while after their last effort. If they were going to have the strength to do something drastic to the Great Wheel, it would probably be after dark, but I didn’t know how long after sunset they would come.

And I still needed to talk to Levi Westman.

I got up and walked on, banishing the sense that I was taking on more than I could manage. I probably was, but I didn’t feel there was an alternative to trying. And I didn’t have time to formulate a better plan. I’d just have to make the one I had work.

I walked into the building and had no trouble getting up to Jordan Delamar’s room. It was a holiday, so I wasn’t surprised to find Westman sitting next to Delamar’s bed once again. He had the television on, but wasn’t paying any attention to it. Instead, he was bending over to study Delamar’s arm.

“Hello,” I said from the doorway.

Westman jerked upright and turned around, eyes wide. He relaxed when he saw me. “Oh. It’s you.”

“Yeah, just me. How’s Jordy today?”

He shook his head, looking worried. “I’m not sure. He’s restless and the . . . rash is pretty bad today.” He motioned me in and pointed at the welts on Delamar’s arm. “What is that?” he whispered.

I looked at the angry red lines that ran from the edge of the pajama sleeve Westman had pushed up to the shoulder all the way into Delamar’s palm where a Ferris wheel had been scribed. Along the arm what looked like clouds boiled and rushed toward the wheel. The coils of the clouds looked disturbingly like anguished faces. Westman lifted the other sleeve to reveal another picture—this one stylized waves with tumbling tops that looked uncomfortably like teeth also facing toward the palm. There was the number ten in this palm. If he had cradled his hands together, the clouds and water would have been converging on the tiny wheel at ten. I didn’t need to be very clever to figure that one out.

My expression clearly revealed my dismay. Westman stared at me as if on the verge of tears. “What is it?”

Here was another of those times I debated whether I should lie, but as I needed his help, I thought it would be better not to. “I . . . it’s a sort of warning.”

“About what? Is something going to happen to Jordy?”

“Something is going to happen to a lot of people, including Jordy,” I said. From what Carlos had said about the effect of being forced out of their bodies, I knew there had already been damage done to the living souls of Delamar, Sterling, and Goss. I doubted that they would be able to just slip back into place while the ghosts were busy doing the bidding of Hazzard and Limos. They might even be dragged along and destroyed by the psychic carnage that would reign over the Great Wheel if I couldn’t stop this horrifying plan.

My fears surely showed on my face. Westman looked panicked as he said, “Why? Why Jordy?”

“It’s not because he’s Jordy; it’s because he’s been . . . occupied by ghosts. And the ghosts are tied to this event. If it goes off as someone plans, a lot of people will die, and the ghosts will be burned up like fuel.”

“Jordy’s not dead. He’s not a ghost.”

I was relieved that he seemed to have no problem with the concept of ghosts and possession, but it was a lot to swallow anyhow, and the news didn’t get better. “No, he’s still here, but . . . without control of his body, he’s not really anchored anymore and he may not be able to resist being taken along in this storm.” I pointed at the clouds of faces. Then I looked at Westman. Did he believe me? It certainly sounded crazy.

He peered at me with narrowed eyes, his lips pursing and unpursing as he thought about what I’d said. But remarkably, he didn’t reject it or me. “You’re saying that this . . . this stuff that’s been happening to Jordy is ghosts, trying to warn us about something. This event? Whatever it is.”

I nodded, giving the smallest of mental pushes to incline him to believe what I was saying. It was cheating and I felt bad about it, but I needed his cooperation and understanding. Was that as bad as what Quinton’s dad did? Not in degree but in kind? I wasn’t sure, but I hoped it wasn’t. I couldn’t claim to have no agenda, but I did think mine was better than Purlis’s.

“Crazy,” Westman said. He sat down, shaking his head. “I’d say it couldn’t be true, but I’ve sat here every day since . . . I don’t even know when anymore, and watched this stuff happening, these words showing up on his skin, this restlessness, the helplessness . . . and I know he’s begging for help, but I can’t seem to give it to him. And you come along and say it’s ghosts. And I don’t even think that’s impossible anymore. But how can I do this? How can I keep on sitting here and watching this when it’s not even my Jordy there, reaching out?”

“But it is, in a way. It’s not just because Jordan is injured, but because he allows them to come through him,” I said. I didn’t really know if this was true, but I hoped it was. “He may have had no choice originally, but I think he wants this to end as much as they do, so he lets them come. Look at how clear this is. This writing isn’t even like it was a day or two ago—it’s stronger and more fluid. We need to help him.”

“What am I supposed to do? I’ve already done everything!” Westman said, his voice thick with frustration and mental anguish.

“I have a plan. It is going to sound totally nuts, but I believe it will work.”

Westman gazed at me as if I’d promised him the earth and heaven, too. “What is it? What do I do?”

“You come to a séance tonight.”

He pulled back from me, scowling. “Séance?”

“If there are ghosts, doesn’t it make sense that a séance is the way to talk to them, to force them to let go of Jordan and change their plans?”

“I . . . I guess,” he said with a conflicted shrug.

“This message on his arms,” I said, carefully pointing to the whole stream of information leading to his two upturned palms, “appears to say that two forces will converge on this object at ten o’clock. That’s my best guess and it fits with information I’ve had from other sources. This event could kill hundreds of people. And we can stop it if you will come and help me and the other families of these patients to talk to the ghosts. Please.”

He seemed dazed and exhausted, blinking at me as if he didn’t quite see me. “Family,” he murmured. “I wish . . . we had a family. Were a family. This . . . this is killing me, to be cut off from him and from being together by such incomprehensible things, such wild insanity I can’t conceive or contain.” A tear escaped from his eye and rolled down his cheek. “You have me at your mercy. I can’t fight anymore. I’ll try anything. Tell me where to be and when and I’ll be there.”

I felt no elation, only hollow pain at his complete lack of resistance. The situation had broken him and anyone could have used him to their own ends at this point. I hated what I was doing to him and I had to do it. If it worked, maybe he’d get his lover back. I hoped that would be the case and despaired that it might not. And time felt so short, so very short. . . .

“It will be nine o’clock,” I guessed, judging from the number in Delamar’s left palm and giving us an hour to reach into the Grey and put a halt to this before the situation became too dire to stop. “I’ll call you and tell you where in Seattle. Can you work with that?”

He nodded. “I’ll do it.”

I got his phone number and extracted his listless promise to answer when I called. He let me take photos of the message on Delamar’s skin for reference. When I left, he was staring down at Delamar, slow tears falling down his face. He didn’t even notice my departure.