Seawitch

FIFTEEN

“Are not ghosts more active at night?” Solis asked as we walked down B dock once again toward Seawitch, with the bell in its canvas bag swinging from my arms.

I smiled. “You sound nervous about this.” We’d eaten lunch on the way to the marina and I was feeling human enough to have something at least approaching a sense of humor.

“I am not nervous. I’m afraid.”

“Of ghosts?”

“For my reputation.”

I shook my head, amused and remembering what a dreadful hardhead I’d been about the whole thing once, myself. “Trust me, no one will ever know except me and obviously I won’t tell. Well, I might tell Quinton.” Solis’s aura flushed an odd bilious yellow. What was that? Embarrassment? Fear? I turned to look at him, serious and as calm as I could manage, considering we were on our way to interview ghosts, a process that doesn’t always go well. “I’m teasing you. I won’t say a word to anyone—including Q.”

He looked relieved. “Thank you.”

I wondered why he would care. Yet he did so I did, too. Enough to keep it to myself unless I had to do otherwise. I turned back and resumed walking and Solis fell in beside me. It was strange to be the lead on this. Yes, the insurance company was the big dog in this case, but I wasn’t used to having a superior position to Solis’s. Parallel or sneaking around him in one way or another, yes, but equal? No. And certainly not the lead dog. As we walked toward Seawitch I noted that the colors and activity near it were brighter and stronger, smoky coils and chains of sparks writhing around the vessel and occasionally reaching out toward the water and other boats, only to be snapped back. I didn’t like it any better than I had the night before. Pleiades appeared dark and empty in my Grey-seeing eyes and I wondered where the energy, or its owner, had gone. Had all the local activity moved to Seawitch? I pointed at the boat. “There’s a lot of energetic activity around Seawitch today. Last night Pleiades was the busy one—some kind of sentry feeler took a poke at the . . . creature that came to talk to me and drove it off. Then it backlashed and almost hit me, but the charge was fading out and the activity was way down by the time I left.”

“I can’t detect such activity,” he replied, peering at Seawitch.

“You’ll have to take my word for it. Something’s happening but I’m not sure what. And I don’t know what happened to the creature that tried to talk to me, though that energy tendril seemed fairly dangerous as long as it was charged up.”

“Do they, then, discharge?”

“Well, this one did. Magic has power limits. You have to have sources to draw on and channels to feed it through, and there’s only so much energy a magic user or spell can pass before it shuts down or burns out, unless they have something to stabilize or store energy. Magic is not immune to the basic laws of physics.” It felt strange to be repeating the things Quinton had explained to me long ago when I’d been the one who was thrashing around blind.

“But . . . it’s magic.”

I cast him a sideways glance, trying to decide if he were making fun of me or not, but his expression was only puzzled, not sly. “Energy is still just energy, even if it’s paranormal,” I said.

Maybe it was having thought of dogs or maybe it was coincidence, but as we walked onto the dock beside Seawitch, something was there. Something like a large dog.

Solis twitched and stopped moving. “What is . . . that?”

Dripping, it padded toward us with a strange, waddling walk on legs too short for its body. A thick tail touched the ground, leaving a wet, serpentine trail behind it.

“That, I think, is the Father of All Otters,” I whispered. “But not the one I met last night . . .” I wondered if the previous one had survived whatever had happened with the magic that had emanated from Pleiades, but I didn’t want to ask this one. I didn’t know if it was as friendly as the other or was more like the woman-eating monster I’d read about the night before. I watched it warily as it approached. No magic seemed to trail from it or reach toward it, though, like many magical things, it had a glow to it that, in this case, appeared as a thin sheen of amethyst and blue, like oil on its pelt.

The creature was dark furred and probably weighed close to a hundred pounds. The guard hairs gathered into wet points along its body, shedding water as it moved toward us. Its thick whiskers bristled forward and I could hear it sniff the air, its lip curled up a little to reveal ivory teeth like the interlocking spikes of a bear trap.

Solis and I stood still and waited to see what the beast would do. It sat down by the steps to Seawitch’s deck. As we continued to stare at it, the beast lowered its upper body and lay on the cement dock, making a huffing sound as if it were mildly annoyed with us for making it wait. I glanced at Solis and he at me. We seemed to come to an agreement without actually saying anything and began forward again together, with caution.

The dobhar-chú—if it was one—jumped back to its feet as we approached and watched us anxiously. Or I took it as anxiety because bright yellow-orange sparks seemed to leap from it and vanish into the air around it with a wet, sizzling sound. But it didn’t move toward us. Perhaps it was afraid of scaring us off. . . . I’m not afraid of dogs, but this creature sent a chill up my spine as it stared at us with inscrutable dark eyes. We closed the gap to the steps slowly, watching the beast as we did.

At ten feet or so, the dobhar-chú took a single pace forward, blocking the stairs, and made a noise that sounded like “Who?”

I glanced at Solis, who wasn’t quite as calm as he was trying to project. His gaze met mine in a jump that turned away again before it returned more steadily.

The creature barked again, “Who!”

I waved my hand at the policeman. “This is Rey Solis. He’s a police detective. He’s supposed to find out what happened on board—if there was a crime when the boat was . . . lost.”

The dobhar-chú made a derisive laughing noise, then turned and dove into the water, vanishing in a flurry of bubbles.

“I guess that means you’re cleared to come aboard.”

“And if I was not?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. And we don’t have to find out today.”

We went aboard and even Solis shuddered at the touch of the boiling, sparking energy that engulfed the boat and reached inside with streamers of smoke like diseased fingers. All the way down to the engine room the air, thickened with magic and must, seemed to resist us and press into our noses with the odor of corruption beyond mere rot. I touched the engine-room door and hoped the ghosts hadn’t dissipated.

Inside they rushed toward us, a swarm of darkness and whispers that swirled up from the bell hanging from my hands and seemed to burst from the floor. I saw Solis flinch from the feel of them, like trailing cobwebs. I let myself sink down a bit into the Grey, where they had more substance and appeared as a group of half-formed human shapes rather than an amorphous mass of shadow. They obviously had some freedom here that they didn’t have away from Seawitch.

They were individuals but still connected in a writhing knot of blackness that muttered of misery and horrors beyond death. I reached out for one of them, certain that engaging one engaged them all. “You are the ghosts of Valencia,” I started, knowing it’s always better to present knowledge before you start asking for favors.

“Harper Blaine,” they whispered, nodding collectively.

I was a little taken aback. It’s rare for a ghost to know who I am—it’s not as if they have the ectoplasmic Internet to look me up on. I dropped deeper into the Grey, to a level where the ghosts began to have more individual substance and the hull of the boat faded to mist. Strange shapes rose with the ghosts: twisted metal, glimmering rods that seemed to fall from the sky, broken steel spars and cables that whipped the air in an unseen gale. I touched one of the rods and felt icy wetness; the rods were streamers of rain and fog catching momentary lights in the storm. They had brought Valencia’s last moments with them. I shuddered and pulled back my hand, chilled.

“We came to you,” the mass whisper said.

“How did you know of me . . . ?”

“The water hounds.”

“The dobhar-chú? Those otterlike creatures?”

They sighed assent. I wanted to turn to Solis and see his reaction, but he was masked by the mist and memory the ghosts had brought with them. I wasn’t touching him this time so he wasn’t anchored to my experience of the Grey. I hoped he could see or hear any of what was happening, but I wasn’t sure—his ability to see the Grey seemed extremely limited outside my influence, and I felt lucky he was going on trust as much as he was.

“They have hidden us from the water folk and their witch in the cove. We helped the otter man, who offended the siren, but can do no more. Now is the time we can flee.”

“Flee? How did you get here? What are you fleeing?”

“The witch. The otter man brought us here. But we are tired and the gap in the world is narrow. Bring us forth from our enslavement!” The boat shook with their sudden roar. “Bring us forth!”

“How?” I demanded, but they’d spent their allotted energy and they seemed to implode, crushing into a dark point at the center of a ripple of outward-rolling force that shoved me out of the Grey and rammed me back against the nearest hard surface. A sharp pain snapped across my back as one of my ribs cracked against the sudden stop of falling. Breath rushed from my lungs and I doubled over, slumping forward as I rebounded from the hit.

The engine room was shadowed, lit only by the floor-scanning swing of Solis’s pocket flashlight as he crossed to me. We hadn’t even had time to turn on the lights. . . .

Solis started to stoop and help me up, but I waved him off, sipping at the air, trying to refill my lungs without hurting so badly that I spent all my new breath on crying. If I gave it a moment’s thought I’d notice I’d banged my knees and elbows a bit, too, but they didn’t hold a candle to the spiking discomfort of my rib. I hoped it wasn’t really broken, but that was probably a forlorn hope. I was ridiculously happy I had left my pistol in my coat pocket instead of putting it in the usual low-back holster, where it could have broken more than one of my ribs.

I managed to get enough breath to tell Solis I was OK, which was true enough since I wasn’t dead, dying, or catastrophically broken this time. But, damn, it hurt!

“I saw you fall,” Solis said. “I heard something, like someone muttering, but I could not understand all the words. What happened?”

“Ghosts are . . . really angry,” I panted. “Blew their budget . . . to yell at me.”

“Yell what?”

“Later,” I said, waving off his question. I was too uncomfortable to linger and tell the tale that minute.

“How badly are you hurt?” he asked, putting out a hand for me to grab if I wanted the support.

I did and accepted the boost all the way back to my feet. I forced myself to stand straight in spite of the ache in my side and back. “A little dented. I think . . . I cracked a rib.”

“Ah,” he said. “Left side?”

“Yes,” I hissed.

He picked up the bag full of bell and came around to my right to give me something to lean on if I wanted it. I did and we worked our way back to the door. Moving away, I realized I’d fallen against one of the engines. They were built as sturdily as the proverbial brick outhouse. No wonder I’d bent a part of myself.

“You need a hospital,” Solis said, as we negotiated the doorway.

I snorted and regretted it. “They won’t do anything but tell me to take painkillers and rest,” I panted. “I can do that at home.”

“First tell me what they said. The ghosts.”

“You didn’t hear it?” I asked, starting carefully up the steps, trying not to twist my body, move too fast, or bang into the close walls of the stair shaft. Every step jolted a bit and I clenched my teeth, drawing breath in hasty snorts through my nose. I regretted my height that gave me the sensation I was about to bash my skull on the low ceiling and thus compelled me to bend forward even when I knew I shouldn’t.

“I heard something. I prefer to know what you heard before I claim I understood any of it.”

I cleared the stairs and stepped out into the main salon. I drew a careful breath, straining it through my teeth as the rib protested the expansion of my left lung. Not caring how decayed the upholstery was, I sat down on the edge of the nearest chair and worked on catching a proper breath before I replied.

“Does this mean . . . you believe?” I tried to make it light, but it just came out thin.

Solis worked his lips between his teeth a moment before he nodded. “I do.”

“All right, then. They do seem to be the ghosts from Valencia—they brought the set dressing with them.” My words came out in little rushes between flinching and taking small, nibbling breaths. “Lots of them, but kind of one unit. Tied together, I’d say. They said the water hounds told them I could help them . . . and have protected them from seafolk—not sure what they mean there. The water hounds—or one of them—brought them here in the boat. They said ‘otter man’ for that one. They indicated . . . that time is relevant. They said, ‘Now is the time.’ And something about a narrow gap closing—I had the impression . . . they meant both time and space. They said they are fleeing from a witch in a cove and the otter man is involved. They also used the word ‘siren.’ I think they mean . . . like a mermaid? Not sure. They’re very angry and scared. No, they said . . . they helped the one . . . who offended the siren. And now is the time to flee. From the seafolk’s witch. That’s right.” It was harder to keep things straight in my head when I had to breathe so raggedly. Just sucking in air took more concentration than I had imagined it could and broke up my thoughts almost as much as the stabbing feeling from my rib broke up my breathing. “That sounds . . . like total gibberish, doesn’t it?”

Solis was looking at me askance, his head tilted as if he were trying to see me in the Grey. His brows were quirked into uneven Vs and he appeared unnerved. “That is what I thought I heard.”

“Good ears. Now, aspirin? Rib is killing me.”

“Could this cove be the one the logs mentioned? Where Fielding was taking the boat?”

“That would be my guess.”

“I would like to know where that cove is.”

“Me, too. Whatever is going on with the ghosts . . . it’s there.”

“Was Seawitch hidden there all this time?”

“I don’t know but I think we’ll find the answers there, even if it wasn’t. Get Zantree . . .”

“Do you suppose Mr. Zantree might be able to tell us where the cove is?”

“Maybe. I can look up the lat and long online . . . but what we really need is a navigator . . . someone who knows the waters and the lore—I don’t know much about what creatures we’re dealing with. . . . Zantree had a crush on Shelly. He has a stake in finding out what happened to her. He knows the area and he knows the legends. Stories . . .” I squeezed my eyes shut against a sudden welling of nausea tears brought on by talking so much against the prodding pain of my rib.

I could feel sweat break on my face and the world reeled a bit while I tried to swallow down the urge to puke or pass out. “Stories sometimes tell the truth,” I muttered.

Solis dug into his coat pocket and offered me a tube that rattled with ibuprofen capsules.

“You have pockets like Quinton,” I said, accepting the pills with a quivering hand.

“Thank you. I have great respect for Mr. Purlis’s pockets.”

“Quinton,” I corrected without thinking, shaking capsules into my palm.

“Truly?”

“He prefers it.” I swallowed the capsules dry and gagged a little, but held back my lunch.

Solis waited, frustrated at being unable to thump my back with my broken rib, until I stopped choking. “I don’t understand the meaning.”

I gasped a little and handed him the pill tube. “Nickname from his mother’s maiden name.”

Solis frowned.

“Quinn’s son,” I explained. It wasn’t as if he couldn’t look up J. J. Purlis and get that info for himself. If he hadn’t already.

He mulled it for a moment and then he laughed. “I see.”

Had I ever heard Solis laugh before? I wasn’t sure. It was a sharp sound, short and rough, like something rarely used that had rusted and broken along the edges. I smiled back at him and stood up. A plume of mold and dust swelled into the air around me and I gave a sudden, violent sneeze.

Big mistake. The rib stabbed me and the world wavered and went black around the edges for a moment before the darkness closed in entirely. I could feel myself falling even as my sight blanked and then . . . nothing except the sudden fear of hitting my injured rib again before I lost consciousness.