Possession

TWELVE

I had agreed to have dinner with Phoebe Mason a few weeks earlier and I knew she’d never forgive me if I missed it—not even if I was working on a case she’d sent to me. I took the ferret home first—disappointed that Quinton wasn’t there—and then drove up to the Wedgwood-area restaurant the Mason family owns. I couldn’t remember ever having a meal with Phoebe in her own home, since it was easier to eat at the restaurant, which was always lively with the comings and goings of her large family.

Quinton was sitting in the back at the family table with Phoebe’s father when I came in and I had to admit I was a little surprised. With my boyfriend’s current preoccupation, I’d half expected him to blow this date off in spite of his reassurances. On the other hand, Phoebe would have been as unhappy with him for missing it as with me, so it had probably been no more an option in his mind than it had been in mine. No one risks the wrath of Phoebe lightly—she’s short and curvy and would rather make a joke than an enemy, but woe betide you if you piss her off. But Quinton’s presence still warmed me and sent a tingle of happiness through my whole body. I suspect I was smiling like a fool.

I threaded my way through the busy dining room and slid into a seat next to Quinton. “Hi, there, you,” I said to him, pressing a quick kiss on his ear. “Hi, Poppy,” I added, smiling at Mr. Mason.

“Hey’m, Harper,” Poppy said, raising his glass of warm water in a tiny salute. “Been a while.”

“Yes, it has,” I agreed as Quinton returned the kiss on my cheek.

“What you been doing with yourself?” Poppy asked, his Jamaican accent still thick and musical even after decades in the United States. He never seemed to change, though I’d known him and his family for years—he was still the slim, bent, weathered old black man I’d first met, his bald head shining in the light and the ever-present glass of tepid water in his knobby hand. Still making sly comments, directing the lives of his children and grandchildren with gentle verbal nudges and the occasional good-natured barb. It would be hard to dislike Poppy. He was one of the few people I’d ever seen whose aura remained steady and bright at all times, shining a cool pale blue and sparkling with white lights as if the very air around him was effervescent.

“Oh, just working,” I replied. “You know me.”

Poppy nodded. “I do.” He looked at Quinton and nudged him. “You making her leave them bad things alone, now?”

Quinton shook his head. “I couldn’t if I tried.”

“Where’s Phoebe?” I asked, breaking up the conversation about my work habits before it could get properly started.

“She back in the house, putting babies to bed. They do love a story from their Auntie Phee.”

Phoebe’s oldest brother, Hugh, shared the house behind the restaurant with his parents and it seemed there was always one relative or another dropping by with kids in tow who had to be watched over and tucked into bed by someone who wasn’t busy in the kitchen or the dining room. Since Phoebe was the oldest, the only daughter, and unmarried, she was often stuck with visiting-baby duty, though I don’t think she minded. For a woman who swore she was never, ever getting hitched, she had an unlikely affection for children, as well as a huge mental store of tales to tell them at bedtime. I suspected Phoebe of reading every children’s book that came into Old Possum’s before she put it out on the shelves to be sold.

A few more members of the Mason clan whisked by, set down more glasses of water, or dropped in to sit at the table while we waited for Phoebe, each one offering a smile, a story, or a greeting to Poppy and us. One of the cousins sat down long enough to tell Poppy a joke that got the old man roaring with laughter—he’s past seventy, but hardly shows it and doesn’t find his age relevant except as a wellspring of wisdom and funny stories.

Poppy wiped tears of hilarity from the corners of his eyes without ever putting down his water and shooed the cousin on his way with a grin. “Go tell that to Momma,” he suggested, eyes atwinkle with mischief.

“No way, Poppy,” the cousin replied, jumping up in fake alarm. “Auntie Miranda’d smack me silly and tell me to wash out my mouth. And then supper would taste so bad! ’Sides, I gotta fix the espresso machine.”

Poppy sighed as the cousin escaped to chores rather than risk the disapproval of his aunt over a dirty joke. “I swear, boys ain’t got the heart they used to do. Time was I’d have gone told Miranda that story myself.”

“Yeah, Poppy, but she’s married to you—she’d just flick you with that towel of hers and tell you to get out of her kitchen. Ty would end up wearing curried goat,” Quinton said.

Phoebe finally bustled in, waving at us before she ducked into the kitchen for plates of food and was chased back out by her mother wielding the snapping towel. Phoebe and her father laughed as she settled down with us at last.

“Hey, girl, you made it! And the handsome man, too,” Phoebe noted, nodding at Quinton. In spite of the friendly atmosphere, there was still a tinge of reserve in her tone to me and her aura was slightly redder than usual. I had a bad habit of leaving Phoebe in the lurch or worse—I’d almost gotten her shot once and she hadn’t quite forgiven me.

“Hey, Phoebe,” I replied, having to turn my head to keep her in my normal sight since she’d chosen to sit on my left, where I was still constantly trying to see through the Grey.

“What you been up to?”

“Work.”

“Not the kind that includes nasty men with guns this time?”

“No.”

“Or ghosts that kill people?”

“So far no killing people, but a few ghosts, yes.”

“What you into this time?” Phoebe said with a sigh.

“Some accidents around Pike Place Market.”

“Oh, now that’s an interesting place for ghosts. You know Chief Seattle’s daughter haunts the place. She used to live there until they built the market and knocked her little shack down.”

“Chief Sealth?” I asked, double-checking that I knew who she was talking about. “He had a daughter?”

“Sealth, Seattle—he’s the man,” Phoebe replied flapping her hands at me. “Yeah. He had a daughter. I can’t remember her native name, but they called her Princess Angeline. She was a very old lady by the time they built the market. There’s a famous photo of her somewhere. . . . I probably got one in a book in the store. You seen a little old Indian lady ghost? Maybe it’s her.”

I shook my head. “No little old Indian ladies yet. Though I did see a little old lady named Lois Brown.”

Phoebe shook her head. “I don’t think I know of her.”

“I guess people called her Mae West. She used to live in one of the apartments around the market. The place seems to be pretty lively where the ghosts are concerned.”

Phoebe snorted. “There’s all sorts of stories about that place. You talked to Mercedes yet?”

“Who is she? Another ghost?”

“No! She runs the ghost tour. She wrote about some of the spirits that haunt the market.”

“I haven’t met her yet,” I conceded. I wasn’t quite sure if Phoebe was making fun of me or offering real information. We’d never quite resolved the question of whether I saw ghosts for real or was just dangerously crazy, even though she’d apparently spoken well of me to Lily Goss. I supposed this dinner was Phoebe’s way of offering me a chance to finally put that question to bed for her, one way or another. She wanted to believe me—there was plenty of evidence in my favor—but it’s a hard thing to swallow.

Quinton and Poppy just watched us chatter. Quinton ate quickly, seeming anxious to get back to whatever nefarious schemes he was executing to cause his father grief. Poppy just drank his tepid water and nodded as if nothing came as a surprise to him—and I was pretty sure it didn’t.

“I think I have a copy of Mercedes’s book at the store. I’ll get it for you,” Phoebe offered. “If you’re talking to ghosts down that way, you should know who they are. Some people get upset when they aren’t treated with respect.” She gave me a significant look I couldn’t miss even through the Grey, raising her eyebrows.

I put down my fork and turned toward her so I could see her better—that is to say without her being half silver mist and tangled light. “Phoebe, I’m sorry. I know I said it before, but I mean it now and I meant it then. I seem to attract bad things and I shouldn’t have put you in the middle of any of them. You’re my friend. I . . . I don’t want any harm to come to you or your family or your friends. Or even the cats. The five million cats.”

It wasn’t really five million cats, but it was at least half a dozen—like Simba—who lived in or around the bookshop, wandering overhead on their own feline expressways and dropping down onto the shelves to file themselves under N for “nuisance” or F for “foot.” Old Possum’s was famous for them.

“Why don’t you like my cats? They like you just fine and I never said a bad thing about that stinky stretch-rat of yours.”

I laughed at her description. Chaos does have a distinctive odor, I admit. But so do six cats. “I prefer to think of her as the carpet shark.”

“She’s a little bundle of trouble. All slinky and sneaky like that. No wonder you see ghosts: She probably knows them all by first name!”

“She might. If only she spoke English, my life would be so much easier. I’d just carry her around everywhere and ask her to tell me who these incorporeal pains in the ass are.”

Phoebe snorted again. “You better take her with you if you go to Kells. That place is so haunted even I get the creeps in there.”

“I don’t think it’s so bad . . .” I said, but I hadn’t been in the Irish pub off Post Alley since I’d started seeing ghosts and monsters.

She shook her head as if I were particularly dim. “It used to be Butterworth’s mortuary. Downstairs was the place they fixed up the bodies—or burned ’em into ashes. Now, don’t you tell me that’s no place to find a few ghosts.” She shivered. “Can’t imagine how many dead people be hanging around wondering where their body got off to.”

Butterworth was the oldest and largest funeral home in Seattle. The building the business had moved out of in the late 1990s was now a law office in the front and a bar in the back, so I guess there was some attraction to serving spirits where there might be other spirits lingering. Oddly, I’d always thought that there was no good reason for a ghost to attach itself to a church or a funeral home since they’re rarely places the dead visited in life or died in. Still, I suppose they might be attracted by the presence of friends and family at the funeral. . . .

“That’s the place Dr. Hazzard sent her victims to be cremated, you know—right down there in the saloon,” Phoebe said.

“She had them cremated in a saloon?”

Phoebe smacked the back of my hand lightly—a soft-pedaled version of her mother’s corrective towel snapping. “It wasn’t a saloon then! You know what I mean.”

“All right, all right. Who was this Dr. Hazzard?” I asked. I knew she was dying to tell me.

“Linda Hazzard. She was a starvation doctor. You know how crazy rich Americans were about getting healthy back before the First World War? That’s how Kellogg and Post got so famous—not because of the cereal but because of the health resorts they had where they made people eat the cereal to get healthy.” She scoffed. “They thought all sorts of crazy things then. This Linda Hazzard, she thought people could be cured of diseases by fasting. But then she’d make ’em fast until they died and steal all their valuables. She had an office right there in the market—in a hotel—and when the patients died, she sent the bodies to Butterworth’s to be cremated before the relatives could see what had happened to them. They say she might have killed forty people!”

“Well, that’s a lovely thought,” Quinton said, pushing his plate aside.

I made a face at him. “You never think it’s gross when I talk about dead people.”

“No, but I’m used to it from you. Phoebe’s usually got much nicer things to talk about.”

“You see,” Phoebe interjected. “I am a much better conversationalist than you, Miss Skinny Butt.”

“Not tonight,” Poppy said. “I swear you two gone and spoiled my dinner. And I ate it hours ago. You two talk about something nicer, now. Or I’m gonna tell Momma on you and you won’t get no dessert.”

Not that I had room for dessert, but the idea of being banned from the Mason dinner table was daunting. I turned to look at Phoebe and she looked back at me like a naughty schoolgirl caught in the act with her co-conspirator. For a moment we stared at each other, smiles starting to tug our mouths upward until we spluttered into laughter.

“All right, Poppy. We’ll talk about something nice. Like the weather,” Phoebe said, grinning at me. “It’s been mighty fine weather, lately, don’t you think, Miss Harper Blaine?”

“I agree, Miss Mason. It’s been wonderful. Except for that rainstorm yesterday.”

“Wasn’t that the strangest thing?” Phoebe said, continuing her teasing and giving her father a sly look from the corner of her eye.

Poppy gave us an agreeable nod. “There, now, you two get on just fine. That sure was the strangest thing. Raining in July.”

“Like that’s unusual,” Quinton remarked.

Phoebe leaned over to me and grabbed my hand while the men were nodding to themselves. “I’ll get those books for you—I got a whole bunch at the shop about the history of Seattle and if you’re working down around the market, you’ll want to know.”

“Phoebe,” Poppy scolded. “Now what I just told you?”

Phoebe sat up and gave her father an apologetic smile. “Yes, Poppy. I’ll talk about something nice. Or I don’t get to talk at all.” Then she looked back to me. “Hugh’s wife had twins!”

I flushed with embarrassment: It had been such a long time since I’d last seen the family that I’d lost track of Sonja’s pregnancy. “Ack!” I sputtered, imagining the horror of chasing after two little terrors with her sister-in-law’s brains and her brother’s magic touch for mischief. “The world won’t be safe.”

“Ain’t that the truth!” Phoebe agreed. “Barely crawling around and they already made the house a wreck. But they got the cutest little expressions! Just like those kitty pictures on the Internet—I swear they’ll be saying ‘I can has cheezburger’ before they say ‘momma.’”

“More likely ‘I can has Auntie Phoebe wrapped around my little finger,’” said Poppy. “You such a soft touch, girl, and even the babies know it. We all going to be their slaves before long.” He gave me a sideways look. “Even you, Harper. Even a old spinster like you.”

“I am not a spinster, Poppy. I have Quinton.”

Poppy looked at the man beside him. “When you going to make a honest woman of this girl, boy? Don’t you know she’s one of the special ones? You let her get away, you going to regret it.”

“I’m afraid I’m not capable of making Harper into an ‘honest woman’—she’s honestly all the woman I can take already.” He winked at Poppy and the old man guffawed, elbowing him in the ribs as he rocked back and forth in his mirth.

I found myself blushing as the whole table full of Masons laughed. It was goodhearted laughter, not unkind. I had to turn my head to glance again at Phoebe, who was laughing just as hard as the rest. She grinned and winked at me. “We’re going to be all right, girl. I knew we would.”

I felt a prickling under my eyelids and had to bite my lip to keep from making a bigger spectacle of myself by crying over having my friend back—really back. I’d have to work harder to make sure I kept her this time.

Dinner was delicious and we enjoyed ourselves. Phoebe promised to call when she’d found all the books she’d mentioned, which I hoped would throw some light on what I might be dealing with and why the tunnel construction was causing such havoc. But things went a bit sour as Quinton and I said our good-byes and headed out the door.

Quinton paused on the stoop outside the restaurant to kiss my cheek and swing his backpack on. “I’ll see you later, sweetheart.”

I blinked at him. “Later? You’re not coming home now?”

“No. I have to get out to Northlake and fix a few things—or more to the point, break them. It will probably take most of the night. I don’t want to disturb you, so I’ll catch some sleep on my own and see you tomorrow. OK?” he added, turning away to walk off into the settling summer night.

“No.”

He turned back, looking genuinely puzzled. “What?”

“It’s not OK. I haven’t seen you in two days and I think we need to talk.”

“When did my being independent become a problem?” Through the Grey side of my vision, I could see he was letting off annoyed red sparks.

“It’s not. But your father is. You have put him at the top of your priority list to the degree that you aren’t paying any attention to anything else. You’re not acting independent—you’re acting obsessed. And I haven’t even had the chance to tell you he popped up on my trail yesterday.”

“He what? Where? What did he want?”

“He didn’t exactly say, but I got the impression he was taking my measure to see if he could use me against you. Or drive me off if he thought I was a threat. We had a little argument. With fists. Did you know he carries a combat baton and isn’t shy about using it?”

Quinton was appalled, his energy corona jumping with bolts of red, orange, and green, and he grabbed my shoulders. “Jesus, Harper! Are you all right?”

I nodded, pulling back from him so I could keep an eye on his face. I felt fatigued by my vision and our argument and my voice was sharper than I’d intended. “I’m fine. It wasn’t that much of a fight—he wasn’t trying very hard and, like I said, he was mostly taking my measure.”

“Did he say anything about the project . . . ? Did he know about you?”

“You mean the Greywalking stuff? He didn’t seem to. I didn’t give him any cause to find out, but if he’s still following me around or has set someone on me, he may twig to it, especially if the friends-with-fangs get me involved. The current case is pretty deep into ghost country and you’ve said that all things paranormal are his current interest. If he’s even half as savvy as you were when we met, he’ll figure out my connection.”

“You have to stay away from him.” His anxiety was turning the air around him fiery orange.

“That is not up to me. If he wants to follow me, or if Cameron and his people call me in, all I can do is try to shake the tails off when they appear. I can’t go into hiding. He has to back off on his own.”

Quinton started to say something but was interrupted by a couple of restaurant patrons trying to get out of the door we were blocking. He took me by the arm and led me a few feet down the block, out of sight of the restaurant and into a shadow where we would be hard to observe. “Harper, my dad is dangerous. I know you can’t take him out, but you need to be wary of him.”

I had to close my eyes for a second, the injured one uncomfortable and itchy from my straining to see without the veil of Grey fog between me and the world. “I’m well aware of that,” I said as I reopened my eyes. “But short of going straight at him and putting an end to this—which would signal an escalation on our part and make him more anxious to either control us or break us up—there is little I can do to stay out of his way. I’m not asking you to do anything about it. I’m only telling you what happened, since I haven’t had the chance before now. If you’re working on some way of getting out of his reach permanently, you need to have all the facts about what he’s up to.”

“I appreciate that, Harper. But I’m going to worry and freak out, anyway. You don’t want to see some of the things that he’s doing to the paranormals he’s managed to get hold of.”

“Like what? And how did he ‘get hold’ of anything?”

“I don’t know how he got most of them. Some he brought back from some other project in Europe—don’t ask about it because I don’t know. Here he’s directing experiments. It’s like something out of a horror movie. And he’s not alone—he has a support unit. He’s a monster and I don’t want him near you.”

I was taken aback for a moment, but that didn’t change the situation. “Then find a way to stop him. He’s not going to give up keeping tabs on me as long as I’m of any potential use to him—which will be as long as he still wants to force you to work with him. I’m trying to give him no reason to tag me, but it’s unlikely, given his interests, that I can dodge him completely. And I certainly can’t lower my profile as a person of interest while I’m hanging out with ghosts and people who are manifesting mediumistic behavior. He wants to know more about ghosts and monsters and, sorry to say, I’m one of the resident experts. When he figures that out, he’ll press you even harder.”

“He might not figure it out.” His aura had gone an uncomfortable shade of green.

I gave him a disbelieving stare. “Right. He’s going to be stupid and blind where I’m concerned. Because he’s been such a big blind idiot up until now. Gods, I’m tired,” I added, not really meaning to say so aloud as I put one cold hand over my injured eye. “So tired of this . . .”

Quinton put his hands on my shoulders and tried to pull me to him, but I resisted. “Harper . . . what’s wrong?”

“Aside from this whole situation with your dad . . . ? I can’t see normally out of my left eye at the moment. It’s all Grey all the time, which is making my life and my work a lot more complicated than usual.”

“You didn’t say—”

“You haven’t been around enough.”

He threw up his hands and glared up at the sky in exasperation. “I’m never around! You’re acting like an abandoned spouse! That’s not how we operate, is it?”

“It wasn’t. But for the past six or eight months, you’ve been at my place more often than on the street like you used to be. Didn’t you notice that’s where your dad found you? And I am your damned spouse. May not have the paper, but we have the relationship and the magical tie to prove it.”

He seemed to ignore the deeper implications of my statement. “Are you saying you’re a liability . . . ?”

My turn to thrash my head in exasperation. “No! I’m just trying to get you to recognize the pattern we both established. I don’t want it to change—I’m annoyed at how little I’ve seen of you while acting as if it’s my due when I know it isn’t—but we have to factor that into any plans for stalemating your father.”

Quinton took a deep, angry breath, the energy around him turning dark red before it bled away on the exhale. “I’ll take care of him.”

“Don’t do anything foolish,” I warned, a chilly sense of doom settling over me.

He pressed his lips tightly together, stubborn and not willing to discuss it further with me.

“Quinton, I’m with you, no matter what. Just . . . respond to messages more often, will you?” It wasn’t what I wanted to say, but anything else was either stupid or a waste of breath. For all that he seemed an easygoing guy, Quinton was as devious and stubborn as his dad and wouldn’t take kindly to any demands of mine where that sneaky bastard was concerned.

He relented a little and gave me a hug, whispering into my ear, “I’ll take care of this. I love you. And I’ll stay in better touch. I promise. Just be careful, sweetheart.”

I kissed his cheek, unenthusiastic about the situation. “I’ll be as careful as you are. And I’ll come after your ass if you get yourself in dutch with Daddy.”

“Don’t you dare,” he whispered.

“You won’t have any say in the matter.” I backed away from him, my face feeling stiff with a lack of warmth. “I’ll see you later.”

He just looked at me a moment, then shrugged—not a truly insouciant shrug, just a faked one—and turned away.

I wanted to cry or scream, but I wasn’t going to. Sometimes you have to let your other half be a stubborn fool. He’d let me do it often enough.

I shook my head with disgust all the way back to the Land Rover—weaving a little as the Grey flitted in and out of my vision—and decided I was too keyed up to go home yet. Work was about all I had to distract myself and since it was night, now might be the time to visit a haunted bar. . . .