Possession

EIGHTEEN

With no other leads to chase, I felt there was no option left but to contact Carlos and ask him to “read” the objects I’d collected from the secret cemetery and Kells. I hoped that if I knew who the ghosts were I might be able to contact them and make the connection to Purlis and whatever was happening between them and the PVS patients. By the time I got back to my place, dusk was falling and I was pretty sure I could reach Carlos at one of the phone numbers Cameron had provided, if not his own.

Chaos wasn’t pleased with me for leaving her alone all day, but ferrets have the memory of clams and she forgot to be angry as soon as she was on the living room floor with her favorite toy, a squeaky anthropomorphized eggplant with massive feet and a nose that resembled a ski jump. Quinton had christened it “Nixon.”

While Chaos bit and wrestled Nixon, I took a shower and heated soup for my dinner. Then I put in a call to Carlos’s voice mail. I always find the idea of vampires with voice mail odd, though I can’t really say why; maybe it’s that the idea of something as far removed from the technological world as a vampire just runs counter to the concept. I was barely seated to slurp down my dinner when he called back.

Even over the phone his voice sent an unpleasant crawling sensation up my spine. “Blaine,” he said.

“I have some objects that I believe are connected to the ghosts in this case of mine. And I think I have a line on where your missing assistant is. Can you take a look at these things and tell me about them?” I wasn’t telling him the whole story just yet, but I’d get to it once I had his agreement.

“If you will tell me where Inman is.”

“Afterward.”

He was silent for a moment, thinking about it, I assumed. It was possible for him to get around me—by some magical trick, by force, or by setting another of the vampire community’s helpers on my tail until I showed them the way. But all of those strategies were wasteful and Carlos didn’t approve of waste—necromancy is the ultimate expression of the phrase “Reduce, reuse, recycle.”

“Very well. Where?”

This was a problem. I didn’t want him in my place and I had no desire ever to return to his. “Where are you?” I asked, thinking I could find a location conveniently between.

He was silent. Vampires don’t breathe and Carlos had the trick of being utterly still, so the only sound that came through the phone was a very distant whispering that might have been the voice of the grid or just people in some other room. It was unnerving.

“Ten Mercer. Upstairs.”

“Thirty minutes,” I said.

He chuckled and hung up. I frequently have the impression that he’s humoring me—and considering how easily he could wipe me off the face of the planet, he probably is.

I finished up my soup as quickly as I could without wearing it. Then I rounded up the ferret, put her back in her cage—much to her consternation—and headed out again.

Ten Mercer is one of those places that a lot of people thought would die with the market crash—and yet it is still hanging on, a couple of blocks from the Opera House and Intiman Theatre, on the north end of the Seattle Center complex. One of those undecorated New American cuisine places that manages to seem sparsely elegant rather than empty and barnlike. The upper floor is the dining room, while the larger lower floor is the lounge. Floor-to-ceiling windows on both floors between the exposed red brick of its building front allow the world to see others drinking and yet no one looks, except in a general way. The lowered lights hint that you, too, might be able to come inside, but it would just be uncouth to stand outside and stare. Ironically, there’s a bus stop right in front of it. No one stares in. No one stares out. And it’s rarely busy before ten p.m., when the theaters let out.

When I arrived and told the hostess I was meeting someone for dinner, she gave me a thoughtful little frown and asked whom I was meeting. I gave Carlos’s name and she wordlessly led me up the stairs to the empty dining room. She tucked me into one of the few booths, far from the windows and isolated from the room full of tables by a low, curving wall of slatted wood. The table could have seated six with room for their winter coats. I would have felt conspicuous but for the half wall.

Since I’d had dinner and didn’t really want to linger with Carlos, I didn’t order anything more than sparkling water with lime. It’s never safe to drink alcohol with vampires—even the ones you think you know. Carlos kept me waiting for another fifteen minutes and came up the stairs alone. The hostess didn’t return and Carlos sat down across from me, bringing his cloud of darkness and death. He didn’t speak; he just sat and studied me for a while.

A waiter passed, as if casually on his way elsewhere, but he slid an appetizer plate of smoked sturgeon onto the table before he walked on. I peered sideways, looking for signs that the staff was bespelled in some way, but aside from being preternaturally good-looking, they seemed normal.

Carlos unrolled his silverware and spread the cloth napkin out between us. “What did you bring me?” he asked.

I dug the objects out of my pockets and put them on the napkin, each separate from the next rather than in a pile. They nearly covered the thick cloth square. Carlos made a thoughtful growl in his throat and leaned forward to look at them. He pushed the plate of food in my direction. “Make this look eaten.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Because I say so.”

“I’d rather not. Food doesn’t seem to be a good companion to me lately.”

He snorted but kept his gaze on the collection I’d presented. “Interesting. Are these connected to your ‘conspiracy of ghosts’?”

“I think so. The artifacts . . . came to me around the market.”

“Hmm. There is a strange thread binding these, yet there should be none,” he said, glancing at me. “There is someone in this. . . .” Then he went back to his examination of the objects on the napkin. He picked them up one by one, muttering over them and to them, peering at each one, holding some close to his face, holding others away. Each one gave off a wisp of color that cast the shadow of someone else’s face on his before disappearing. He put them down again, but not always in the same place he’d taken them up from, segregating them into three piles.

I picked at the sturgeon as he continued. It was delicious, but while I felt vaguely hungry, I also felt a touch queasy. Vampires do that to me, and Carlos worse than most. I had to push the plate aside.

Carlos looked up and gave me a slow, unpleasant smile, glancing from the plate to me. “My mistake.”

“Very funny.”

His expression became serious. “No. It was not my intention to cause you distress. I forget the effect my kind have on you—it’s rare. But I should have given greater thought to what these things”—he waved his hand over the collection on the napkin—“might portend.”

“What do they portend?” I asked, mocking his formal tone.

“Each of these people died of starvation.”

“All of them?”

“Every one. Some quite recently. Others as much as a century and more ago.”

I felt myself scowling as I took that thought in. “But . . . they couldn’t . . . They can’t all be Linda Hazzard’s victims if they died more recently than the early twentieth century. Are they Hazzard’s victims?”

“Hazzard. Yes. The name comes from these,” he said, stroking his finger over the smallest pile, which included the keys, some buttons, and the odd little tool. He touched the pile that included the dolphin brooch. “These are more recent. These are of the same age or older than the first and yet they do not speak that name.” He indicated the last pile. “But they all died of the same cause.”

“All these artifacts came from people who starved to death.”

He nodded. “They did.”

“But not all Linda Hazzard’s victims. Were they all murdered?”

“No. Most simply died. They were too poor or too lost in madness to find food. But they all have the thread of this Hazzard woman binding them.”

“She’s been dead for most of a century. How could she have bound them—especially those who died after her?”

“It is not precisely she who did it.”

“You’ve totally lost me,” I said.

“You call them a conspiracy of ghosts, a cabal haunting these patients, manifesting through them.”

“Yes, but it’s like they’re fake ghosts. You know about the Spiritualist movement, specifically the fad for what they called ‘table tapping’ in the early years of the twentieth century. Most of it was phony—charlatans claiming to speak with the dead or channel them during hokey séances and producing all sorts of ambiguous messages and signs that convinced people to give the ‘medium’ money. People believed ghosts talked to them through these false channels.”

“I’m aware of this diverting human folly. Not all were liars and cheats, however,” he said, giving me a meaningful stare that sent my stomach on a slow roll.

“And I’m aware of that. But the techniques—no, the manifestations these ghosts are using are straight out of the fakery handbook.”

One corner of his mouth rose and brought an unexpected glint of amusement into his eyes. “Do you think they would know the difference between that which is false and that which is true now that they’re dead? Few spirits are aware of the world outside the prison of their unending existence—you know this; why do you question it? If they know that they are dead, that they continue in life only as shadows, how would they choose to speak except as ghosts? As they have been told that ghosts do? By automatic writing, by speaking in tongues, by backmasking, by dermographia, by spirit manifestation of visions and sounds. This is what they knew and all they know. They come to their unwilling channels as the vagrant souls they believe they are bound to be. If Linda Hazzard has, even after death, gathered them, it is her victims who will dictate the path no matter how many other souls they drag in train, like slaves in chains.”

“But how did they come to be gathered up and bound by or to Linda Hazzard?”

Carlos shrugged. “I don’t know. These things don’t reveal that. You will have to ask the spirits. That is not my forte, though it could be done. By blood and magic you would despair of.”

I already despaired of solving this problem in time. “I can’t allow that. There has to be some other way. . . .”

“Of course there are other ways. How have you become so blind? This power is drawn and flows differently for each of us. For the witch, for the mage, for you. Perhaps, knowing the time they occupy, you could go to them.”

“I haven’t had any luck with that so far. The temporaclines are shattered and displaced around the market and I don’t even know where these guys died.”

“Have you tried? Perhaps taking the objects that belonged to the dead with you?”

“Me? I don’t see how that would make a difference with the temporaclines. . . .” But I was thinking. Maybe it would work. . . .

I picked up the odd little tool and edged out of the booth, moving farther from the windows and sinking toward the Grey.

The broken and tilted edges of temporaclines fluttered against my reaching hands, cold and razor-edged. Concentrating on the tool I held, I riffled the edges, looking for one that seemed brighter or more open, but they were all much alike and nothing felt right. I tried simply shoving one open enough to look, but it wasn’t even remotely the right time period and the sheet of frozen time hung without invitation until I let it slide shut.

I tried several more, but even when I found one of the right period, it had no affinity for the object in my hand and stepping into it took me nowhere and into no time that helped me. Frustrated and chilled, I stepped back from the Grey and returned to the booth, where Carlos was watching me, frowning a little, the darkness around him swirling and swelling like ink in water.

I put the tool down with a sigh. “No luck. I couldn’t even find out what this thing is.”

“A very old pipe cleaner.”

“What? No, a pipe cleaner is a fuzzy piece of wire.”

He gave me a look that said he was indulging a particularly slow child. “The narrow end is for clearing the unburned tobacco residue and buildup from the bowl of the pipe and the mouthpiece. The flattened end is for tamping down the new tobacco before igniting it.”

I blinked at him. “I have a hard time imagining you smoking a pipe.”

“So did I. A nasty habit I could not afford when I was alive and had no use for once I died.”

I had never been certain of his age, but if tobacco was still an expensive luxury item at the time of his death, Carlos was even older than I’d thought. I changed the subject. “Let me try another. . . .” I said.

I took one of the keys this time, hoping its connection to such a large object as a house might put more weight into the temporacline it came from, but again I got no response from the planes of frozen time. I wasn’t close to the place where I’d found them, but time—even noncontiguous time—tends to link to objects of significance in the Grey. But it wasn’t happening. The objects must have had no significance for the time they came from. If none of the people who owned them had been important, their weight could be negligible in the well of the Grey. And yet the things had come to me as tokens of the people who had owned them. Surely they were not entirely insignificant?

I tried holding on to all of the objects associated with Hazzard’s victims—assuming that they would occupy a similar time and that the weight of all of them together might be great enough to influence one of the temporaclines to flash or warm to my touch. But there was no such response.

I backed out to the normal world frustrated and ice-cold.

Shaking my head, I sat down again and put the things back on the napkin. “It’s just not working. I think I’d have to be in the right location or know the names of the people each object belonged to. I might be able to make a connection at the market, but I’d rather not go back there until I have to.”

Carlos cocked an eyebrow at me. “Indeed?”

“I’m having a lot of trouble there. Hazzard seems to know when I’m in the area, and the manifestations are uncontrollable there. I can barely stand to be close to the place because the dermographia begins to burn my skin and my hands cramp and convulse. I’m afraid I’ll pass out again or lose control. I need to find a way to contact these ghosts without reentering the market area. At least not until I know what’s happening and have a way to counter it or break it down.”

“The simplest thing would be to bring a medium into this.”

“There’s already a medium involved. I’ve been trying to listen to some recordings he made of my client’s sister—the first patient I encountered—but they’re extremely garbled. She’s doing automatic painting of the bluff where the market currently stands, but she started speaking recently and none of it makes sense. I’ve been able to pick out one phrase, but the rest is total gibberish. Or it seems that way, since I doubt anything about this case is just sound for the sake of sound. It must mean something. The paintings did. The writings probably do, too—both the dermographia and the automatic work the two other patients are manifesting.”

Carlos raised his eyebrows. “Three unconscious patients and each manifests a different phenomenon. This intrigues me. I will go with you to talk to the medium.”

“Why? Not that I’m not grateful for the offer, but I don’t get the attraction.”

He chuckled. “Very little is new to me anymore, but I have never seen spirits behave as you are describing. I could manage the magic myself to discover what they want and what the cause of their distress is, but my way would be destructive and dangerous to you. That I do not want—and nor would Cameron. But I do wish to see this through.” He paused before adding, “If you allow it.”

I wasn’t thrilled at the prospect of spending more time in Carlos’s presence, but I wouldn’t say no to the extra magical muscle he represented. I’m no mage or medium, so I would need help no matter what the solution was. I could probably recruit other assistance, but, to be honest, Carlos was about the most powerful that I could hope for. He’s dangerous and occasionally unpredictable, but we’re friends of a sort and I wasn’t fool enough to throw his offer aside lightly. I hoped he would have no temptation to go further than necessary, though; Carlos’s whims tended to have horrifying consequences.

“All right. I’ll call the man in question and see if he’ll play along.”

Carlos curved his mouth into something less a smile than a smirk.

I got my phone out of my pocket and called Richard Stymak. When he answered I could hear Peter Gabriel’s “Games Without Frontiers” playing in the background. “Hey,” he said.

“Hi, Stymak. This is Harper Blaine. I’m working on the Goss case. . . .”

“Yeah, I know. Hi. What for you can I do?” His words came out a bit slowly and with an odd flourish of inversion, as if he were a little high or quite tired.

“I’ve found some objects I think belong to the ghosts manifesting through Julianne and other patients—”

He interrupted me with an odd, drawling excitement. “You did find them? The other guys? I knew there had to be some.”

“Yes. But the thing is, Stymak, I can’t seem to make any contact with these spirits, even with the objects in my hand. I was hoping you might be willing to help me.”

“Sure! When?”

“Tonight.”

“Like . . . now?” His voice squeaked and I could hear him scrambling about. “Umm . . . I’m not exactly ready for this.” He sounded less dreamy now that he was panicking.

“How long would it take for you to get ready and where would you like to do it?”

“Um,” he started, still making shuffling noises and possibly shaking himself to greater clarity—I could hear something being whisked about that passed over the phone in sudden whispers. “I could probably do it in an hour or so. I’m . . . well, I’m naked at the moment and while that’s a good guarantee I’m not faking anything, I’m guessing you don’t really want to see that.”

“I’m quite sure I don’t and neither does the other guy.”

“Other guy?”

“Independent witness. He’s helping me out with the identification of the objects.”

“Oh, like . . . a psychometrist? Never met one of those . . .”

“Yes. I’d like to bring him, too, so we have corroboration.”

“Oh. OK. Well, definitely don’t want to be wagging my willie in that case. I . . . uh . . . um, do we have to do it at my place? It’s small and kind of a mess.”

“If you’re comfortable elsewhere and can get set up by”—I glanced at my watch—“say, ten o’clock?”

“Ten? Yeah. I can do that. Umm . . . we could meet at the Goss place. . . .”

“I would prefer not to,” I said, thinking it might not constitute neutral ground for all the spirits and I didn’t want to introduce Carlos to Lily and let him into her house. Vampires don’t really need permission to enter your home, but it’s just better to keep them at a distance when you have the option.

“Oh. Oh! Hey, do you know the CalAska Pub in West Seattle?”

I certainly did, since I lived just a few miles from it. “Yes, I do.”

“The owner has a back room he’d probably let me use for an hour or so. He’s an old roommate of mine. He’s cool with the occult and all that. Kind of owes me.”

“If you’re sure you can get the space . . .” I replied, a little wary, but since I was asking Stymak for a favor on short notice, I wasn’t going to fuss much.

“Sure, sure. I’ll call him and call you straight back, all right?”

“OK.”

“Cool.” Stymak hung up.

Carlos gave me a questioning look.

“He has to check on his work space. He doesn’t want us in his home.”

I assumed Carlos understood the idea of not letting magical strangers into your private space. He nodded and made a silent “ah.”

In a few minutes Stymak returned my call.

“Yeah, Harper, so . . . yeah. John says it’s good to go. Meet you at the bar at ten.”

“Will do. Thanks, Stymak.”

“My pleasure. Want to get to the bottom of this thing myself. And I wouldn’t mind meeting your psychometrist—that’s a cool skill.”

“I’m not sure how much you’ll like it once you’ve seen it up close,” I warned.

“Man, as long as we’re not sacrificing puppies, I’m good.”

I gave Carlos the eye and said, “No. No puppy sacrifices.”

“Cool. See you at ten,” Stymak replied and hung up again.

Carlos returned a long, thoughtful look and then cocked his head with an amused half smile. “Puppy sacrifice? Some people have the strangest ideas.”

“You’re talking about a guy who plays telephone with ghosts. Strange won’t even start in this race.”