Underground

CHAPTER 14

The sun had gone long before we reached Seattle and the road was feeling slicker under the Rover’s tires as I drove. We had fallen silent as we reached the edge of the university, and in the hard sparkle of streetlights on frost, the road had seemed like a tunnel through a mysterious land.

Fish had calmed down a bit by the time I’d dropped him off at his place again, but it was obvious he was still working through some of the hits his worldview had taken. Yet another comfortable reality I’d managed to knock holes in for someone. I hoped Fish would bounce better than Will had. Wistfulness at the thought of my trashed love affair washed over me and faded as we drove away from Fish’s house.

Quinton had moved up to the front seat but was still frowning a little.

“What do you think?” I asked. “About what?” “This monster thing.” “Not sure.”

“All right. What about the guests I had this morning? You think we’re still clear?”

“The Rover is. I don’t know about your office or home. Depends on how much they think you know and if they have the resources to do much about it. I think it’s likely the available resources and time are limited.”

“Why would you think that? Ms. Laguire gave me the impression she was going to put out whatever effort she had to—”

“She may be willing to put herself out,” Quinton interrupted, scowling, “but there is no way the NSA thinks it’s worth unlimited resources. Trust me—it’s Fern alone with whatever assistance she can pull in by leaning on the local Fed office. It’s her personal failure. They’re giving her a chance to redeem it, but that’s all.”

“Then just what the hell is it between you and Fern Laguire… J.J.?”

He turned and glared at me. “I don’t want to discuss it right now.”

“This is nice. Usually I’m the one who gets accused of being all mysterious and closed off, but you—”

“I’m not that jackass you date!”

I pulled the truck over into the nearest parking lot—which happened to be the Group Health hospital’s main entrance lot. I put the car in the nearest empty slot and yanked on the parking brake so I could turn and yell at Quinton directly—I could never be called coy in my anger.

“Not that it’s any of your business,” I spat, “but we’re not dating anymore!”

“Good!” he shouted back and swung out of the truck.

I shut down the engine and scrambled after him.

“What does that mean?” I demanded, catching up to Quinton near the main hospital doors.

He shrugged elaborately, as if throwing something off his shoulders, and turned back. The corona around him in the Grey flared a moment before pulling in tight to a pale line of rapidly flickering colors. “What I mean,” he said, his measured tones coming out in puffs of frozen breath, “is that you shouldn’t be dating someone you have to lie to.”

“Well, I’m not.”

“No. I guess not. Or not anymore at least.” He stood there looking uncomfortable. “Why not?”

I heaved a sigh that made a long white column in the air. “Remember I told you about a zombie I was brought on Thursday?”

“Yeah,” Quinton replied, shuffling his feet against the cold welling from the cement beneath our feet.

“Well…” I was finding the subject difficult to talk about—though not in the same way that I found myself unable to speak of the nature of the magical grid to normal people. “Will was with me at the time and he freaked out a little.”

“I can understand that. Most people would.”

“Yeah. Well. I had to… dismantle it… and he didn’t deal too well with seeing that.”

Quinton stared at me and shivered, though from cold or from his own imaginations conjuring, I wasn’t sure. “Ugh. That would be pretty hard to take. Did he… umm…”

“Dumped me,” I said, nodding. “Not that I don’t understand it, but it still hurts. We tried to patch it, but… You’re right—I can’t date someone who can’t deal with what I am or what I do and has to be lied to or shielded or wrapped in ignorance.”

“I’m, uh…” he stammered, biting his lip.

“Don’t say you’re sorry. Because you aren’t. Things just don’t work sometimes.”

I found I couldn’t look at him and turned my glance off to the side. Something bright flared in the Grey, but by the time I’d turned my head back, it had gone and Quinton was still just standing there, looking a little too bright and too pink.

He grinned and the energy around him went pinker. “OK, I’m not sorry it didn’t work out.” Then the pink faded down. “But I do wish it hadn’t happened that way.”

Zombies and shaggy things “They’re still out there,” I reminded him, feeling somewhat uncomfortable and wanting to change the subject away from my broken love life. “And even if we think we have a likely monster, we aren’t any closer to stopping it or figuring out why it’s doing this.”

A small group of grim-looking people came out from the main lobby, talking about someone’s prognosis and the risks of surgery. It had seemed so late in the frozen dark, we’d both forgotten it was only a little past five.

Quinton caught my eye. “You want to get some hot food and try to figure out where to start looking for answers?”

I gave a crooked smile. “Yeah.”

Dinner was about as un-datelike as you can get: hamburgers at the Kidd Valley across the street from the hospital. But it was hot food and the windows of the building were steamed with moisture. Quinton and I huddled with our food as far from the doors as we could get.

“You think we’re really looking for Sisiutl?” Quinton asked.

“Yeah.” I sighed. “Much as I feel silly saying it.”

“Then we’ll stick to ‘Sistu’ for now, I guess. Even if it doesn’t notice, seems like there’s points in favor of not using the formal name.”

I agreed. “We need to figure out where it’s hiding and what it’s up to—is it just hungry or is there something else going on?”

“Start from where it came from,” Quinton suggested. “Ella Graham said something about a dump. Wasn’t there something else about a dump in one of the papers or something?”

“Yeah. There was a dumping ground south of downtown.”

“Right. About where the stadia are now.”

“Which is where the hotel construction is. Think it’s the same spot?”

“High probability. If the construction broke through to wherever Sistu was imprisoned, he’d escape, and it’s likely he’d eat the first thing he found.”

“Probably one of your missing homeless.”

Quinton nodded. “But is he doing something specific or just rampaging around at random? Right now, the pattern is just homeless people who were down in or near the bricks. The bricks isn’t very far from the breakthrough point, but Jenny was found father north, so he’s moving his territory closer to the Square itself—there hasn’t been anything south of the stadia.”

“Maybe there’s something special about the Square—it never seems to have gone beyond the northern boundary at Cherry Street—or maybe its hiding place is near there.”

“Between the Square and the bricks is where the most activity has been. That puts Oxy Park in the middle of the pattern. I think we should start there.”

“What about the ogress Grandma Ella mentioned? She’s Sistu’s keeper, so she’d have to be nearby, too. Ella said Sistu had been returned to… what was her name?”

“Zeqwa?”

“No… that means ‘monster.’ ” I thought a moment. “Kammits?”

Quinton brightened up. “Qamaits! Right. Ella said Sistu had been returned to the ogress in 1949. She’s his keeper and she’d keep him down, unless she had some reason to let him run loose.”

“Like punishing someone for pissing off the gods, as Grandma Ella said—or repaying a favor.”

“And the undergrounders aren’t the sort to avoid someone just because they look a little scary—they’re a scary bunch themselves—so it’s not like they’d refuse to give a god a drink or something,” Quinton said.

“So… what do you think? Someone helped Qamaits out of the construction pit and the first thing the monster did was eat someone whose leg was found in the excavation?”

“Seems like a possibility.”

“Even if I were an ogress, I think I’d be more grateful than to let my pet eat my rescuer.”

“Maybe she couldn’t stop him. Ella Graham said Sistu’s a hunter…”

“I guess he’s graduated from seals to people, then. But if he’s hunting for a reason, maybe there’s a pattern to who’s been killed. We’ll have to start at the beginning of this spate of deaths. We need to find out who was at the excavation the night before the leg was found. If they’re still alive and not a monster’s lunch, we need to talk to them.”

“And Qamaits.”

I nodded. “Yeah, but I think she’ll be easy to spot—after all, she’s a legendary monster, too, so like Sistu, she’ll look like one thing to some people, and something else to others.” “Like you.”

I pulled a face. “Probably. But I don’t know what she’ll look like, and a lot of people and things have shadow shapes. She could be anyone. We have to find her, or anyone who saw Sistu come out of the hole—anyone who might have an idea what it’s up to, what it might be hunting, or why.”

“We’d better get downtown before it gets too late and everyone’s asleep.”

“But it’s most likely we’ll get information from people who don’t sleep in the shelters all the time—people like Tanker and Lass.”

“And Sandy—she’s sharp-eyed and crazy enough to sleep rough a lot more often than most women down there.”

I shook my head. “She’s nuts all right, if she’s doing that.”

“More than half of them are—it’s protective behavior.” He slurped up the last of his soda. “Let’s go.”

I regarded my half-eaten food and decided I didn’t need to finish it—the burger was huge—but after talking about the homeless I felt bad about throwing it away.

Quinton saw me looking at it. “Wrap it up. If nothing else, we can give the burger to Bella.”

For a second, I wasn’t sure whom he meant, then I remembered Tanker’s dog. As I hesitated, Quinton reached over, wrapped the burger in its paper and tucked it away in one of his capacious pockets.

We went back to the Rover and drove down to Pioneer Square. I didn’t park in my regular spot, though, just in case the NSA had been doing their homework.

Instead, I put the truck into a slot under the Alaskan Way viaduct and we walked in from the western edge of the historic district. Coming up beside Marcus’ Martini Heaven, Quinton nudged me and pointed into the dark alley on the other side.

“Looks like Tanker,” he said. I recognized the shape of the stocky dog, and as we crossed the street, Quinton shoved the wrapped food into my hands. “I’ll talk, you feed.”

Tanker turned with a jerk as we got close and Bella stiffened for a moment until she recognized Quinton. Then she went all over wags and friskies. “Heya, Tanker,” Quinton said as he knelt to pet the dog.

“Hey Q. Miss Thing.” I guessed he was feeling a little more sociable than last time but hadn’t quite forgiven me for apparently accusing him of lying.

“Hi, Tanker,” I said and held out the packet of leftovers. “Mind if I give this to Bella?”

He eyed the wrapper. “What is it?”

I peeked into the wrapper. “Its a… meatloaf sandwich.” I’d forgotten about Quinton’s unfinished lunch—he’d switched packages on me.

Tanker laughed. “Damn, woman, you gonna spoil my dog.”

“She’s a good dog. She won’t spoil. Can she have it?”

He waved a casual hand at the dog who was looking in every direction, trying to figure out who she should be paying most attention to. “Sure. Go ahead. She don’t like to eat out of hands, though. Gotta put it down in front of her.”

“OK,” I said, crouching down near the dog with a creak from my knee as Quinton stood up and moved closer to Tanker, pulling out the leftover burger and offering that to the man, getting back into his good graces.

“Hey there, Bella,” I murmured. “Got a treat—I think.” I’d never had a dog as a kid and as an adult I’d never had a lifestyle that lent itself to the kind of care dogs need. I took my neighbor’s pit bull for walks once in a while, but that was about the extent of my dog contact. I was just a little nervous of Bella’s powerful jaws as I put the opened wrapper down on the brick alley floor in front of her. The dog licked her lips and wiggled, looking at the food, but didn’t move to snap it up.

“It’s OK, Bella, eat,” Tanker said, eyeing his own leftovers.

The dog let out a happy yip and dove in on the food. I scratched her ears as she ate and I listened to Tanker and Quinton talk.

“Tank, I’m kind of worried. Do you remember when Tandy disappeared?”

“Why’d you be worried about that old drunk?” Tanker asked around a mouthful of burger.

“Just bothered. I mean… bad shits been happening, and I think I haven’t seen Tandy since before it started.”

“Man, Tandy ain’t smart enough to do nothing but raise a bottle.”

“Not much, I agree, but have you seen him—or Bear or Jolene?”

Tanker swallowed a bite of burger. “Hmph! I think I saw Bear a while back before Christmas. Jolene I don’t know—she don’t stand out much. And I don’t give a crap in a paper bag about Tandy. Him and Lass drink together all the time. You should ask that peckerhead where his friend is, ‘cause I don’t know and I don’t care. He could fall down a sewer and drown in shit and I couldn’t care any less than I do.”

Quinton nodded as Bella finished off her sandwich with a joyful smacking of her jaws, her master only a few bites behind on his own food.

“Huh,” Quinton grunted. “I wonder if something could have happened to them. You think anyone would hurt one of them?”

“Everybody likes Bear and Jolene! And nobody give enough of a damn about Tandy to do him hurt. I don’t know why anybody’d kill poor ol’ Jenny, neither. She was kind of a stupid woman, but she wasn’t mean ‘less she was needing a fix.” He chewed the last of the burger and swallowed with a smile.

Bella felt I needed my face washed with meatloaf-scented doggy tongue.

“Bella, off,” Tanker said. “Don’t go slobbering all over the lady.” Apparently the food had bought some goodwill from the owner as well as the dog.

Bella stopped licking me and gave me a half-apologetic look with her tongue hanging out one side of her mouth.

“That’s all right,” I said, getting back to my feet after a final scratch behind the dog’s ears. “She’s a nice dog.”

“I trained her myself,” Tanker said with pride.

“You did a good job.”

“Dogs like to know who’s boss, else they get in trouble. But if you’re a good boss, they’ll do anything for you. Anything. I swear, I’m gonna let her eat that damned Lassiter next time we see him. Don’t know why I didn’t let her this last time. That damned asshole done something to her and it’s only ‘cause I don’t want her eating on nothing so trashy as him I didn’t let her rip his leg off. Can’t trust no man’d hurt a dog.” Tanker had begun to glower and the aura around him had gone red with his anger.

Quinton patted Tanker on the shoulder. “Bella’d get a stomachache from Lass. Better not let her get a good bite.”

Tanker snorted. “Keeping away from him, for sure.”

Quinton nodded. “You seen Sandy tonight?”

Tanker scratched his head through his hood. “Yeah… Round on Second Ave. Extension by the Quick Mart. She might have gone back to the park, though—it was getting cold and I think she was watching someone.”

“We’ll find her. Thanks, Tank.”

“Yeah. You the same.” Tanker nodded at us awkwardly and clucked at Bella, “C’mon, girl.” We walked back out of the alley as he continued deeper into it.

We slunk around to Occidental Park, staying out of the sight lines to my office building. Quinton pointed at the bear totem.

“John Bear used to like to sleep under that. That’s what Blue Jay meant when he talked about Bear sleeping with the bears. You can see there’s no one sleeping under it now.”

Just beyond the totem, a trash can fire burned to warm the hands of a small circle of homeless. The obese woman at the foot of the other carving scowled at us as we passed and pressed herself into the dark. I couldn’t see much of her in either the Grey or the normal, cowering as she did in the black fold of the totems shadow. It occurred to me it wasn’t a nice totem—Nightmare Bringer. I wasn’t too surprised it cast a very dark shadow and I certainly wouldn’t have wanted to sleep near it with such an association. The woman pulled a black blanket over herself and hunched into a shapeless mass.

We walked on down to the burning trash can and found Zip, Sandy, and the man I often saw pacing and talking to himself. We were offered cigarettes by Zip and drinks from an unseen bottle in a paper bag. Sandy nodded and the talking man told us the voice of the turtle would be heard in the land.

“God, Twitcher. In’t no turtles here ‘bouts,” Zip complained. “In’t likely to be talking noways.”

“Even the End of Days must have an end,” Twitcher replied.

“I think that’s supposed to be the Final Judgment,” Sandy said. “I don’t think we’ve quite got to that yet.”

“Aren’t the dead supposed to rise up and be counted or something?” Twitcher asked.

“Yes,” Sandy replied uneasily, giving him a sideways glance.

“Ah. Then I guess it’s not time after all, or the streets would be full of ‘em.”

Twitcher nodded to himself and settled into nervous jiggling from foot to foot and flapping his arms.

“Perhaps,” Sandy said.

“Hey’m, Harper,” Zip said. A waft of beer and rotting teeth made me turn a little away as I answered.

“Hey, Zip.” I put myself closer to Sandy and upwind of the incredible stench Zip had acquired.

“Hows your case?” Sandy inquired.

“Could be better. How’s yours?”

“Gone to ground for a while I think. Lost him earlier today. Hope to pick up his trail later tonight, maybe tomorrow. What brings you here?”

“Trying to find out who was down by the hotel construction in the last few months.”

“We’ve all been down around the hole,” Sandy said, but she had a thoughtful frown on her face.

“Yeah,” Zip added. “Sometimes t’ey got wood scraps we kin winkle out. Lockin’ up t’garbage since that leg were found, though.”

Quinton poked Twitcher in the ribs. “Hey, Twitcher. You know anyone’s been down there, or who had a mad on for any of the lost?”

“Not to mention all of them,” Twitcher replied. I noticed that he stopped jiggling if he was talking or doing something, but when he had nothing to say, he twitched. His spasms were less controlled when he tried to stand still and I realized he walked and muttered to keep some control over his body’s incessant movement.

“Try that again,” Quinton requested. “Are you saying every one of them was someone someone else wanted to hurt? Who?”

Twitcher shook his head rather violently and bounced on his toes. “No, no. Nobody didn’t like Little Jolene or Jan and we all didn’t like Hafiz. So that’s everybody and nobody. Go-cart got a lot of people mad, but they didn’t usually stay that way. Well, Tanker never did forgive him for running over his foot that time…”

“An’ Bear were good, but he weren’t allus a easy fella t’be friendly wit’,” Zip said. “Him ‘n’ Lass’d go around—you’d think they hated ch’other.”

“Can’t go by Lass—he doesn’t like anybody,” Twitcher said. “You call me twitchy—hah!”

“Lass in’t twitchy, he jes crazy.”

“But…” said Sandy, “I’d rather be on Tanker’s bad side or Bear’s than Lassiter’s.”

“Oh? Why?” I asked.

“He’s sneaky. Tanker and Bear both let you know when they’re mad.”

Zip hooted. “Lass in’t so good at keepin’ his temper on the QT. Remember when him’n Hafiz got into it? Hoppin’ at ch’other like frogs on a griddle.”

“Not that everyone didn’t get into it with Hafiz sometime, the mouthy so-and-so,” Twitcher supplied.

“What about Tandy?” Quinton asked. “Anyone ever get into an argument with him?”

“Nah,” Zip said. “Couldn’t git inta nothin’ with him. He’s allus drunk and happy.”

“Drunk and sloppy,” Sandy corrected. “He’d drink with anyone who could keep him upright enough to tip the bottle.”

“When was the last time anyone saw Tandy?”

The three undergrounders fell silent, thinking.

“Thanksgiving,” Sandy finally said. “Before the windstorm.”

“Where did you see him?” I asked.

“Down near the football stadium.”

“Near the hotel construction?”

“Not that close, but he could have walked there. He wasn’t too drunk at that point.”

“Was he with anyone?”

“Actually, he was with John Bear and Little Jolene.”

I glanced at Quinton, who shook his head. “Bear and Jolene were seen later than that.”

“But Tandy wasn’t,” Sandy added.

“Are you sure?”

“Well, I never saw him after Thanksgiving and I watch.”

“When was Hafiz killed?” I asked.

“He was found the Monday after Thanksgiving, but I think he’d been dead a day or two,” Sandy said, thinking aloud. “The body was under some tree limbs that fell off the plane trees here in the windstorm.”

“He was killed by the falling boughs?”

“Oh, no. They just hid the body.”

We kept chatting with the three until our toes were numb in our boots and we couldn’t feel our faces, but nothing else useful emerged. As Quinton and I walked on to find more undergrounders, he said, “Tandy and Lass used to drink together a lot—but Tandy did drink with pretty much anyone, as Sandy said.”

“So he could have been with Bear and Jolene or he could have been with anyone else whom we haven’t talked to yet.”

“But the fact that he disappeared just before the leg was found makes him prime suspect to be the owner of that leg.”

I shivered. “Ugh. So that would make Tandy the first to disappear, then Hafiz was killed—but he seems universally disliked—then what?”

“After that, Jan and Go-cart were both found dead—in that order. But there was a good lag between Hafiz and Jan.”

“Who disappeared between those?”

“I’m not sure. I’d guess the order was probably… Jheri, then Jolene… then Jan was killed… then Bear and Felix disappeared, and Go-cart died. And Jenny.”

“That’s about one a week, average. Pretty hungry monster.”

“Yeah.”

I paused, frowning and thinking there had to be a connection I wasn’t making. “I want to talk to Lass. His name keeps coming up. Then we might want to go back to Tanker.”

“You think Tanker knows something he hasn’t told us?”

“Someone knows something, and the only people who can be ruled out are the confirmed dead.”

We walked around the area for a while but didn’t have much luck finding Lassiter, so we went below.

Down in the bricks, we found Tall Grass, raging in a corner and waving a soft brown object in the air. When he spotted us, he raced down the crumbling floor and shoved the object into my hands. “You wanted it! You take it! Take it away!”

He shook me, shouting into my face.

“Grass, Grass, calm down,” Quinton murmured. “They’ll hear. Be quiet.”

Tall Grass turned on Quinton. “You brought her down here. She wanted the hat. It’s your fault! It’s your fault Jenny’s dead!”

Quinton pulled his face back from the other man’s. “Grass, you’re out of your head. It’s not our fault. Something or someone killed Jenny, but it’s not me or Harper. And it’s not you.”

“It’s that hat!”

“Damn it, Grass, get a grip. It’s not the hat.”

“It was Bear’s hat. Bear’s dead. It was Jenny’s hat. Jenny’s dead,” Tall Grass babbled, his voice cracking toward hysteria.

“Grass. How do you know Bear’s dead? We don’t know Bear’s dead. He’s just—”

“I saw it! I saw his spirit! And the creature—the monster—I saw! I saw!” He was hyperventilating. Then he began to scream, staring at nothing at all, bellowing in terror, his eyes rolling up to show too much white.

“Damn it,” Quinton muttered. Then Tall Grass gulped, fainted, and slumped to the floor.

Quinton looked down at him. “I was never glad to see someone faint before.”

“Hey…”

We both looked around. Someone had stuck their head around the corner. When we caught sight of it, the head pulled back.

“Don’t run off, Lass!” Quinton hissed. He motioned with his head for me to catch Lass.

I sprinted down the rough walkway, feeling sudden twinges in my bad knee, and collared Lass less than ten feet down the Occidental side. “C’mon and lend a shoulder, Lass,” I suggested. “We have to get Tall Grass out of here.”

Lassiter goggled at me, shaking. His hands crabbed for his pockets.

“Don’t reach for that,” I told him. “I don’t go down easily and I’ll take you with me. Not going to hurt you if you come help Quinton and me out.”

He shuffled reluctantly ahead of me to where Quinton was trying to get Tall Grass up. The Indian was unconscious and limp.

Quinton looked hard at Lass and told him, “Put your shoulder under his armpit and get him up. We’ll have to carry him up the Cadillac stairs and hope we can find a place to leave him.”

“Why not here?” Lass whined. “Who cares? Why are we risking our necks for him?”

“Because if he stays down here while he’s like this, he might die. I helped you. Now you help me. Or I won’t be doing you any favors in the future, Lass. Get me?”

“OK, OK. I got you.”

Lass helped lift Tall Grass and the two men carried him like a sack between them to the bottom of the stairs that came up beside the Cadillac Hotel. I scouted up the stairs and peeked out, waiting until I was sure the street was empty to hiss at them to come up.

Tall Grass was making noises and trying to move by the time we reached the street. Quinton set him on the sidewalk and hunched down beside him. I grabbed Lassiter’s wrist before he could hare off.

While Quinton checked on Grass and muttered to him, I interrogated Lass a bit.

“What were you doing down there?”

“I–I live down there.”

“Not right there…”

“Not all the time, no. I–I heard something. I heard Grass talking to himself. He’s on drugs, man!”

“Surprise, surprise. He thinks he saw a monster eat John Bear.”

“I told you—he’s flipped out.”

“I’m not sure he didn’t see a monster down there.”

“What?”

“You see monsters. I heard you say so.”

He looked startled and glanced around but I was blocking his only line of escape.

“Did you see the monster that ate Bear?”

“I seen things…”

“What did you see and where did you see it?”

“I seen—I seen a… lot of scary dudes. They hurt us… That’s what Q-man gave me the stunner for.”

“Yeah, but I’ll bet you’ve seen more than that, or you wouldn’t be so scared.”

“I seen… a snake. Big snake.”

I looked skeptical—not that I didn’t believe him, I just wanted to make this insecure man talk, and nothing starts some people off like the idea that others don’t believe them.

“I did! It was as big as a car! It had a whole man in its mouth—like when a rattlesnake tries to swallow an egg.”

“Where did you see it?”

“Uh… Under the Square.”

“You can’t get under the Square.”

“Yeah, you can! Behind the Pioneer Building there’s a grate down in the alley. You just lift it up and go in the hole!”

“When did you see the snake there?”

“I can’t remember! Leave me alone!” He shoved at me and bolted past my shoulder.

I could have stopped him, but he needed to salvage some pride and I didn’t mind letting him think he’d gotten away with it. I thought I knew where to find him later.

I turned back to Quinton and Tall Grass, who was fighting his way back to his feet.

“Get away,” Grass snapped.

“You gonna be all right?” Quinton asked him.

“I’m fine.”

“You were pretty hysterical…”

He glared at Quinton and stared around. Seeing me with the hat still in one hand, he darted over and snatched it from me. “That’s Jenny’s hat.”

“You said it was Bear’s hat.”

Tall Grass looked trapped, his eyes shifting restlessly between us. Its not.

“C’mon, Grass,” Quinton went on. “We all know it was Bear’s hat. You said you saw him get eaten by a monster.”

“I didn’t say that!”

“Yes, you did. We want to stop it. We want to find the thing that ate Jenny.”

“I didn’t see the S-s — … I didn’t see it eat her!” Grass wailed. He leaned against the nearest wall and buried his face in the cap in his hands. “We were sleeping and it came in the dark. Like rushing water. And she made a noise and then… then I felt something cold and it smelled rotten and stinking. I opened my eyes and saw it swimming away through the walls. It swam through rock! All I had left was this stupid, stupid hat! And tonight I saw John Bear. Bear’s ghost. Walking through the bricks and he stopped and looked at me and said, ‘You keep the hat.’ Then he left. He left me with this hat. He cursed me with it.” Even with his voice muffled by the fur of the hat, I could hear him sobbing, and his shoulders shook with the spasms.

“Its not the hat, Grass. Believe me, that’s not what got either of them killed,” Quinton said. “Bear wouldn’t curse anyone. He just wanted to make sure his things went to the right people. You know how Bear was.”

Tall Grass shivered and raised his head. He didn’t look at us, but he spoke to us nonetheless, stuttering as he caught his breath. “The z-zeqwa… took her. S-s—”

“We know what it was. We want to find it and find out why it came.”

“I don’t know,” Grass whispered fiercely. “If someone sent it to eat Jenny, I’ll tear his head off!”

“We’ll find out. You go find a fire to sleep near tonight. Don’t sleep in the bricks. Don’t sleep in the skid at all. Hear me?”

Tall Grass nodded mutely, still dazed at his own outburst of grief and anger. We walked him up to Occidental Park and left him with a scowling Sandy while we went on to try to find the grate that led under Pioneer Square.

“Why would he say that?” I asked. “That someone sent it?”

Quinton shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe he believes it came hunting her.”

I frowned and let that tumble in my head.

We discovered a grille loose in the alley floor between the Seattle Mystery Bookshop and the back of the Pioneer block. A steel frame and hinge marked where it had been embedded at one time, but now had been twisted out of its frame and laid back on top of the hole. To my eyes, the whole area was clogged with cold silver mist, the grating outlined and blazing in neon red and yellow—not the most comfortable combination.

Quinton glanced around as if making a mental note of the place. “I never knew there was anything under this.”

“Me, either.” I bent and pulled on the grille. It swung up and revealed a narrow vault, barely one person wide, that led to a tunnel angling down sharply to the west, leading tinder the Pioneer Building. Narrow steel-clad doors stood shut before what proved a steep metal staircase. We eased down the ancient stairs by the beam of Quinton’s flashlight. Something about the location and disposition of the narrow stairs made me think of a servants’ or workers’ entrance, even though we’d reached it through the alley. It looked as if the area had been rebuilt at some point, cutting off the original access, but I couldn’t decipher the tangled time planes of the Grey at that location to see what had once been there. The Grey was in complete disorder here, as if layers of time and memory had been heaved about by magical earthquakes.

At the bottom of the stair was a very short corridor that logic told me dove under the edge of the sidewalk in front of the Pioneer Building. And ended abruptly in a wall.

“Dead end,” I said, but there was something wrong about the wall…

I let everything normal slide away from me as I stared at the wall, moving deeper into the Grey until the wall was a black shape crazed with red and yellow energy threads and wisps of pale gray. I crouched down and inspected the gently waving pale threads.

As my face drew near, I felt the thin breeze that animated them, thick with age and mud, salt water, and things gone rotten. The threads weren’t just gray in color, they were Grey in substance. I grabbed onto the web of it and pulled it apart.

A hole had been chewed through the real wall, leaving a narrow tunnel. I turned back to Quinton, who looked more like a bulk of steam around a bright tangle of energetic strands than a person at that moment.

“I guess its time to get dirty,” I said.

He looked nervous and his eyes shifted from a spot just above my head to the rift in the wall that had been hidden by the Grey threads. I realized he was looking where my head would be if I were still standing—he couldn’t quite see me in the gloom as I crouched near the energy grid of the Grey, just as I wasn’t seeing him normally, either. I wondered if this was how ghosts saw us, but I doubted it, since most of them don’t seem to exist as close to the grid as I did.

I pushed my way back up to the world as I normally saw it: the normal, living world, slightly misty, shot with gleams of energy and ghostlight and the watery currents of time and memory.

Quinton jumped a little and adjusted his gaze down to me. “Where did you go?”

“Not far, just far enough to find this. Want to see what’s at the other end?”

“Yes, and no. It gives me a creepy feeling.”

“Can’t say I’m thrilled with it myself, but Lass said he saw a ‘snake’ down here, and the camouflage is the same material I found before.”

Quinton took off his hat, rolled it into a tube, stuffed it into a pocket, and started to climb into the hole.

“Hey,” I whispered, feeling a little oppressed by the place—even a touch scared—and protective of my companion. “I see better in this stuff. I should go first.” I didn’t want to, but it was smarter. If there was something otherworldly waiting at the end of the tunnel, I’d have a better chance of seeing it than Quinton would.

I crawled into the hole, getting unhappy signals from my shoulder and knee that no amount of working out would compensate for stupidity. I took a deep breath and crept forward into the silver-skinned gloom of the burrow. I felt the ghostly material brush against me as I went, and I could hear Quinton rustling along behind me.

The rough bore was wide enough for us to pass through without squeezing, but the dank, dark feel of it and the smell of watery decay ahead lent our journey the feeling that we were crawling through the closing grip of a stone fist. I could hear the gentle slosh of water ahead, echoing as if we were approaching a subterranean swimming pool. A low moan, like distant wind, came and went in the hollow tone ahead and sent a shiver over my skin that left goose bumps in its wake that had nothing to do with the cold.

I could see a hard line ahead at knee level—just a micron of harsh yellow energy against the Grey-swathed blackness of the tunnel. I felt forward with one hand, a few inches at a time, patting at the chewed floor of rubble, dirt, and crumbling cement and sliding my knees along to keep pace. My hand found a smooth platform that ended in an abrupt squared-off edge. Reaching down, I felt another smooth face and another platform… Steps.

I dragged myself forward until I could tuck my hips under and sit on the edge of the first step. My boots made a tiny splash as they touched the surface farther below me.

I turned my head and whispered back to Quinton, “There’s a room here. It’s big, from the sound of it, and there’s water on the floor. There might be something moving around in here, but I can’t tell yet.”

“Right behind you.”

I stood and moved forward, sliding my feet gingerly on the slick floor. I felt liquid lap over the tops of my boots and wet my ankles. Something muttered and sloshed off to my right. Peering into the depths of the Grey, I saw the room seem to brighten with the filmlike light of ghosts and the flicker of energy.

The floor stretched away under the water, showing marvelous geometric patterns in colored marble and stone. The walls were white marble streaked with veins of pink and gold, dividing the space into rooms and corridors of stalls with polished wooden doors. The wreck of an old oak chair bobbed slightly in deeper water way across the room. The murmuring thing lurched toward me and I caught a sharp breath in surprise.

It was a zombie. Before it could make its way closer, I shot a fast glance around, looking for any shape that might be Sisiutl, but there was nothing above the surface that looked like a snake or a sea serpent. I shuffled farther into the water until it was up to my thighs and, wincing at the thought of what was in it, ducked my head down to look below the surface of the brackish, smelly water.

Dimly I could see how the marble floor had subsided, allowing water to seep in at high tide through the cracks that must have formed over time. One end was misshapen by a mass of cement—probably the stabilizing material that had been poured in when the pergola above had been rebuilt. But even with the best concentration I could expend, I couldn’t see any sign of Sistu in the depths of the water and I couldn’t hold my breath much longer. I stood back up, soaking wet, and threw my hair back, gasping for air. The “subterranean comfort station” was festooned in webs of Sisiutl’s Grey stuff, as was the once-human creature that struggled nearby. Where the soft Grey strands hung, the shapes and colors of the surfaces beneath were hard to see clearly. I could see the gleam of the dead man’s life tangled in the Grey web that held his flesh in form, but I couldn’t see deeper. The moisture had attacked his skin, and where his legs had been soaking in water, they were bloated and soft, the rest of the body being slack, darkened, and exuding the rotten smell I’d whiffed in the hole. In the corporeal dark, I couldn’t make out more than its form—no face was visible—but it definitely wasn’t as close to total decomposition as the last one I’d been this close to.

“Quinton,” I said in a low voice, “there’s a zombie here. I need light.”

He didn’t hesitate but swished through the water to my side, clicking on his pocket flashlight and finding the sad, dead thing with its beam.

He caught his breath in shock and his footsteps faltered a moment before he finally stopped beside me. “That’s Felix. He was the last to disappear before Go-cart and Jenny were killed.”

“If Si—the monster had Felix, why did it kill the other two?” I wondered.

“I don’t know. Maybe… this is sick… maybe he’s saving him for a snack? Maybe he’s like an alligator and he prefers his meals… aged?”

“He didn’t really eat the others…” I said, thinking aloud. “He just killed them and left the bodies behind.”

Felix’s ambulating corpse stumbled toward us, making low noises in its decayed throat. An idea was struggling to form in my mind but crumbled away as the zombie seemed to cry out and fall to its knees, tangled in the mess of Grey threads and mud that spun across the flooded floor.

Quinton’s light wavered and moved off the weakly struggling zombie. “Harper! Do something!”

I admit I hesitated. Once again, I’d have to deconstruct a zombie in front of a man I liked. The last one hadn’t handled it very well…

“Get the light back on him,” I snapped. “I can’t see what I need to do.”

Quinton directed the light onto the moving corpse and I closed the distance between us. I squatted down in the water and, shuddering with disgust, I put a hand out to touch the remains of the man. It was soft but solid, and even with the light I couldn’t see any way to hook out the trapped threads of its life. I did not want to hack the poor thing apart with a pocket knife—revulsion made me turn my head aside and gag at the idea.

“There has to be a way,” I muttered, shivering in the chilly water that had set my damaged joints to aching. I studied the zombie as I shoved it back into a more upright position.

The dead thing slumped against the wall, possibly exhausted, but making no more large movements and few sounds now. Where it leaned against a drapery of the Grey threads, it seemed to vanish into the wall. That was interesting. The neutral Grey stuff must have been as much a form of camouflage as of holding its victims. Or was the trapping just incidental?

The more I looked at it, the more I thought the latter was the case: the Grey web stuff was Sisiutl’s camouflage. It probably spun a web of the stuff over itself and that was how it seemed to change shape as it slithered across time and space. It was smart enough to use the same material to cover the door to this place.

“This is its lair,” I gasped.

“What?” Quinton asked.

“This webby stuff—”

He interrupted, “What webby stuff”

“There’s some magical material I’ve been finding around the Sistu’s sites. I told you about it. It’s all over the place here, and all over this poor bastard. I think we must be in the lair. Sistu’s hidden it with the webbing—that’s why you couldn’t see the hole until I tore the web away. And that web is all over this guy—Felix. I think that’s why his spirit can’t leave—the magical web has his energy trapped in his dead body.”

“Well, get it off him then!”

I really didn’t want an audience, but we had no way of knowing when Sisiutl would be coming back for his dinner and I couldn’t stand the idea of leaving Felix to be released from his prison of rotting flesh only by the bite of the monster’s jaws.

“Damn it, damn it, damn it,” I muttered, shivering in the cold water. I needed to get the web stuff off of him and get a better look at the threads of his energy. I tried pulling it off with my hands, but the web was thicker and more reluctant to part than the other examples had been. It was as if the stuff had been knotted together, not just spun like spider silk. I’d have to untie it or find a way to cut through it… My mind ground through possibilities for a moment…

Something about knots… Then I thought of Ella Graham’s feather: She’d said it would help to untie the dead—no, she’d said “unpick” the dead things. She’d lived through the Depression and raised grandkids during the war, and she’d learned frugality the hard way, remaking clothes and salvaging bits and pieces by picking them patiently apart with a bodkin or needle. Maybe I could use the pheasant feather the same way to loosen the knots of the Sisiutl’s snare? Pheasants had one eye on death and one on life, so maybe the feather did have some affinity for the Grey, as Ella had implied. It was nuts but so’s the Grey and, when in doubt, crazy sometimes works.

I still had the feather in the pocket of my jacket and I pulled it out. It was a little bent and wet, but it seemed OK. Feeling like an idiot, I held it by the quill and brushed it at the zombie’s head.

The Grey web split a little. I brushed more and the web began to loosen and fall away. I could see seams opening up in the fabric of it, like faults or runs in a nylon stocking. I swiped and swabbed until the web was loose. Then I tore the last of it away with my free hand. The dead man’s form grew softer and slacker as the web fell away, but it was still knitted together too strongly to pull apart as I had the first time.

Quinton’s light wavered. “I think…” he started.

A distant swishing sound had started up.

“I think something’s coming…”

Hurry, hurry… My mind felt jellied by the cold—I needed to finish and get the hell out of the water before I got hypothermia. The feathery end wasn’t doing any more work. My heart pounded and, in spite of the cold, I’d begun to sweat.

If there were any gods watching, I hoped they were on my side. Desperate, hoping the picking-apart analogy would keep working, I flipped the feather over and teased the quill over Felix’s slumping shape until the tiny ridges on the tip caught on a thin yellow strand of energy. I resisted the urge to panic and dragged it toward me with a steady pull. A visible loop of energy sprang up out of the density of his form and I snatched it on the little finger of my free hand. Then I reeled it in against the growing pressure of the knot inside him.

The strand popped free and I rocked backward as the hot yellow skein of Felix’s trapped life spun out faster than film from a runaway projector. There was an odd shushing sound and the body fell down, boneless and loose.

A flash of white shot from the body and cut the gloom in two.

The swishing sound stopped and something hissed. Then it roared, and the swishing became a hailstorm sound of scales on stone.

I cast one last glance at the rotten body at my knees. Gone, dead, nothing but decaying matter now. Felix no longer inhabited his corpse.

Quinton grabbed my elbow and yanked me to my feet, my knee protesting with a ratcheting sound I felt through my whole body.

“C’mon!” he shouted, dragging me toward the fissure in the wall through which we’d come.

A gigantic head with a pair of horns like a Japanese war mask’s thrust from the hole, roaring and flicking a forked tongue as long as my body into the air in front of us. The horrible sound shook through my chest and rattled us both back a few steps as adrenaline lit a fire in my sluggish blood.

“Other side!” I shouted, pulling Quinton at a right angle to the monstrous head that was coming deeper into the room on a neck as thick and shaggy as a hundred-year-old cedar. A jaw full of glittering teeth snapped at the air where we’d been.

We bolted south across the floor, staying out of the deep water to the west. But any door there had been buried in a cascade of cement, and we found ourselves in a dead end.

“There’s no way out of here!” Quinton yelled.

“We can’t get out until the hole’s not full of monster! We just have to get out of its way until the tunnels empty. Then we can bolt for it,” I gasped back, dragging him around the edge of a marble toilet stall.

The hailstorm sound of the creature entering the room petered out and we could hear it thrashing the water near Felix’s body. It shouted something and I thought I recognized the sound of Lushootseed, though I didn’t know what it had said. We peered out.

At the far end of the room coiled Sisiutl, gleaming in the Grey. In the dark, I judged it about thirty feet long and thicker than the totem pole outside. Its shape flickered and melded from one serpentine thing to the next—Medusa’s coils, a dragon, Cerberus with three heads on snakelike necks… Something moved a bit at one end and, with a slithering sound and a splash, a monstrous serpent head reared up and turned our way. I could see the curving shape of its horns and some kind of frilled shape just behind the jaws. The forked tongue that had almost tasted us before shot out and the snake end hissed. Another shifting snake head rose and the whole, huge creature settled into a solidly ophidian form that lay in both realms at once. Then it flipped itself violently into a sort of W shape, and the booming voice shrieked again, coming from the center of the body that now looped toward us like a sidewinder, splashing and hissing through the water at a furious speed.

“Rur! Thief! Ladro! Vohr!” it roared, flickering through its many shapes.

“Light!” I ordered Quinton. “Let’s see if we can blind it for a moment.”

Quinton snapped on the beam of his flashlight and waved it at the beast. At its center we caught sight of a horrid face with dripping fangs and strands of fleshy hair around a wide mouth that shouted the words as the serpents at each end hissed and spit in rage. The center face yelled as the light caught in its dark-adapted eyes. Two clawed hands pawed at the dazzled eyes and the face screamed a cacophony of languages as we dashed past it.

One of the snake ends whipped after us and I yanked a bit of Grey shield between us, my shoulder protesting the quick movement. The snake head thrust through the shield but let out a sharp hiss and recoiled, shaking as if confused and raising its frilled ruff in a lightning-quick motion that cracked the air with a boom.

The hole lay just past Sisiutl’s body. I shoved Quinton ahead of me as the next head came around and snapped at us with a mouth full of needlelike teeth flanked by venom-dripping fangs. I shoved the point of the pheasant feather at it, hoping it would have an effect, but the thing just pulled back, shadows of its varied seemings wavering over its body like a heat mirage for a moment. Then it firmed again to Sisiutl, the head drawing back in confusion. But the human face with its slash of a mouth shouted some more and the two snake heads writhed as the massive body whipped about, trying to track us.

Quinton dove into the hole as I unholstered my pistol. If the feather didn’t work, I was willing to try anything. The HK made a hard click as I squeezed on the cocking lever.

As the first of the serpent heads darted in, I fired at its eye. In the speed of the moment, I missed the plunging orb, but the bullet hit the head’s nose and the central face shrieked as the whole creature jerked back from us.

I leapt for the crack in the wall and scrambled up, ignoring the complaints of my limbs as Sisiutl screamed and threw itself against the hole in fury, shaking the wall. It appeared I’d done no more than piss it off, but I was still ahead and I ape-scrambled up the tunnel as fast as I could, tearing my shoulders, knees, and gun-filled hand on the rough surfaces of the rift. I heard the hardrain sound of its scales and the furious hissing of one of the serpent heads as Sisiutl shoved itself back into the tunnel.

“Its on my heels!” I shouted to Quinton, buzzing from the fight-or-flight chemicals flooding my system. “Get out into the alley and hold the grate for me!”

Fangs bit at my boots and I kicked free viciously.

Ahead, Quinton pounded up the metal stairs and through the steel doors.

I flipped out of the tunnel and into the open space at the base of the stairs. I rolled onto my back, bringing my gun up as I tried to gain my feet. A snake head shot out of the hole and I kicked it hard as I got up.

It recoiled only an instant and then whipped forward again and met a volley of lead as I fired at it as fast as I could. Shrieking, it fell back a little, and I jumped and ran up the steps, kicking the doors closed as the bleeding head snapped upward from the pit.

Quinton grabbed my hand and we bolted down the narrow tunnel to the vault beneath the alley. My shoulders throbbed from the effects of recoil and my weak knee dragged me sideways. Quinton reeled me back in and hauled us both forward.

With Quinton holding my hand, I couldn’t reload, but I wasn’t sure how much good shooting Sisiutl was doing. It seemed to shock it, but it certainly wasn’t more than that.

We flung ourselves out of the vault and slammed the grille down over the hole, hearing the rush of the monster behind us. Panic-driven speed pumped heat into my limbs and I ignored the twinges of joints, didn’t even notice my soaked clothes as we tore out of the alley and onto the street.

“It’s fast,” Quinton panted.

“Then run faster!”

We dashed into Pioneer Square and down Yesler. “Stay in the open,” Quinton yelled. “Its keeping to the alleys! If we can force it into the dead end of Post at the Fed Office Building, we might be able to slip it!”

We ran past Post and turned at Western, keeping the tall old brick warehouses between us and Sisiutl. My knee protested every step, but I didn’t dare slow or limp and Quinton seemed to be having more trouble than I was, since he kept looking back to keep an eye out for Sisiutl.

I didn’t need to: the roaring and hissing of the zeqwa was as loud as traffic to me. I could hear its enraged babble as it pursued us, spitting words in dozens of languages. We had a lead of about a block, since it had had to go several blocks out of the way to stay out of sight while we just ran as straight and hard as we could. The cold air burned my lungs and I could feel the instability of ice forming on the bricks of this stretch of road. Sisiutl had kept to Post, as we’d hoped, but we couldn’t know if we’d be able to keep ahead long enough to lose the monster at Marion.

We shot out of the narrow confines of Western at Marion and into the open ground behind the Federal Office Building. We heard Sisiutl’s shriek of frustration and the ground shook as it slammed into the buildings wall at the end of the cul-de-sac. Quinton’s tugging on my wrist didn’t let up.

“He’ll avoid the open. He’ll dive for the sewer.”

“He’ll be pushed toward the bay,” I gasped.

“Right!” Quinton yelled, and jerked me in that direction, up Madison on the other side of the federal block, and then body checked me to the left onto Post.

We pounded along for one block before pausing.

“We lose him?” Quinton panted.

I couldn’t hear the roaring of Sisiutl’s curses so well, but they weren’t gone and they seemed to be getting closer under the street. “No,” I gasped back.

Quinton nodded and dragged me out of Post Alley and up Spring Street to the door under McCormick and Schmick’s side entrance without even checking for observers.

He wrenched the faked lock open and shoved me through the door, pausing only long enough to close the door properly behind us before we were pelting down the ghost-thick passage under First Avenue to the last wall at Seneca—the wooden wall between Quinton’s lair and the rest of the underground.

Quinton grabbed something from his pocket and pointed it at the wall, which twitched and sagged a little as we dashed closer. Quinton dug his hand into a crack in the wooden structure and heaved his back door open, throwing me through and following just as fast before slamming the door closed again and slapping at a few bolts and switches to secure it.

My knee started to fold and Quinton slipped one arm around my waist, drawing me close as he leaned against the wall and stared at his security monitor.

Both our chests were heaving as we panted for breath, trying to keep our noise low and not alert the monster if it should find the passage. Quinton kept me pulled to his chest and I noticed one or both of us were shaking. I kept my ears cocked and my sight tuned to the Grey—just in case.

But the roaring and multilingual cursing had moved away and was fading toward the waters of Elliot Bay.

“He’s not coming,” I panted.

“Looks like you’re right,” Quinton replied, pulling his gaze away from the monitor. He leaned his head back against the wall, his chest still heaving. “I thought we were gonna buy it. Holy crap…” He looked back at my face and wrapped both arms around my shoulders like he didn’t plan to let go for a long time. “I thought he had you. I thought that thing was going to eat you. You kept pushing me out of the way and I thought you were too worried about saving me to get out of its way.”

“You had to save me at the end. Lets not get stupid here,” I admonished, at least as much to me as to him. I was trembling and it wasn’t all from flight adrenaline and imminent chill. Some people get a rush of excitement from surviving a near brush with death. I’d never been one before, but this time I was sweating and restless and throbbing with heat.

Quinton’s eyes in the dim safety lights of his refuge looked smoky and hooded as he looked at me, still breathing too fast. “Oh, no. Lets,” he said, and brought his mouth hard against mine.

I clutched him and pushed into him, kissing back and feeling the quickening of desire between us and some tiny voice telling me to stop stop stop…

“Stop,” I panted, pushing back.

“What?”

I looked him in the eye, terrified I wouldn’t see the mate to my own emotion, and tried not to laugh with delight. “I want to be sure this time…”

“I was sure the minute I met you.”

Catherine wheels of pink and gold sparks spun off of him, lighting my world with the glow of his affection and desire. I laughed and dropped my mouth back onto his, pulling and shoving at his wet clothes and warm body, wanting him against me and in me and right now, damn it!

We staggered as my knees gave out and tumbled onto the narrow pallet of his bed under the stairs, tearing each other’s damp clothes off and scattering the pieces everywhere as we fought our way to bare flesh. We tangled together roughly at first in demanding sexual frenzy, relieved to be alive and frantic to be together. Crying out and laughing ran one into the other as we gentled, finally, into making love, coming to a shattering peak, and falling, finally, against each other, exhausted and wet.

Then we rolled apart and blinked at each other, my sight filled with the afterimages of flashbulbs and fireflies. Before I could get cerebral about it, I stumbled off the bed and grabbed his clothes, throwing them to him. Then I started snatching and donning my own, grinning like a maniac, even as I fought to stay upright on my abused knee.

“Lets do that again. At my place,” I said.

Quinton dropped the wet things I’d thrown on the floor and yanked on dry jeans from a pile by the bed. He grabbed me by the shoulders as I went by, a blaze of gold and pink around his sweat-gleaming body.

“What?” he asked, shaking his head, bemused.

I leaned over and kissed him. “I want to take you home and ravish you, idiot.”

“When?”

“Now!”

I did not care that my clothes were damp, torn, and dirty, that I ached all over, or that the drive to West Seattle was long enough to restart the chill on my skin. Quinton didn’t let me keep the wet things on once we were inside my condo and I heartily approved of his methods of warming me back up. The electricity of our coupling lit my world in giddy swirls of hot pink and gold light until we both curled into my devastated bed, quivering with happy exhaustion that dropped us into deep, contented sleep.