Vanished

CHAPTER 27

"We’re going the wrong way!” Michael objected. “The Tube’s to the right!”

“Hush!” I snapped.

I dragged him up a street, slowing the pace a little as a stream of red flares came toward us, and then turned away into the road we’d been last spotted on. I pulled Michael across the way and through a break between two buildings that left us in an alley lined with parked cars. I let our pace drop to a trot.

“What the hell.?” Michael panted, jogging beside me.

“They can’t track us now, so they’ll head for the Underground station—it must be obvious that’s where we were going. We’ll find another while we still have the lead. They’ll spread out soon and come looking, so we have. maybe ten minutes to get to something else,” I explained.

“We can get a bus at Westminster Abbey,” he suggested. “That’ll take us to a Tube, one direction or another.”

“Good. What was that thing?”

“That you made me leave on the street? My Oyster card—thanks a lot!”

“What’s an Oyster card?”

“Transit card—like a MetroPass in Seattle. Bus, Tube, whatever.”

I nodded and conserved my breath as we jogged on. I let Michael lead while I kept an eye out for random vampire minions who might get smart enough to head for the same place we were. I had to pull Michael aside twice to let some pass us.

“I still don’t know how you can spot them,” he whispered.

“Good eyes.”

We caught a bus on Victoria Street that eventually dropped us at Victoria Station. The place was massive, made of stone and iron, and the last stragglers of rush hour going out were meeting the crowds coming into town for the weekend. There were plenty of ghosts, but none of them turned and shrieked in alarm at us, and the only magical things I saw were slinking by quietly, neither wanting attention nor paying any to us.

I called a halt long enough to get some fast food and to clean up from our flight before we carried on.

We both slumped over cups of tea and Cornish pasties by the long-distance train platforms.

“So. I mean. what the hell?” Michael asked, staring at his food. “I don’t know what just happened. Can I go home now?”

“I think that might be a bad idea,” I replied. “They know you know something’s wrong and they’ll come looking for you—if they aren’t waiting at the flat right now.”

“Why would they do that? They aren’t after me!” he added, glaring at me.

I gave him back a hard look. “Because you’re the guy who thinks I’m a psycho ex who just murdered your brother—that’s why. And they can use that, like they used Will. I don’t leave friends behind. I won’t leave you with them any more than I’m going to leave Will with them. I think they know that.”

Michael bowed his head again, his shaggy hair hiding his face. His shoulders heaved and I wasn’t sure if he was just breathing heavily, trying to control a fit of temper or nerves, or if he was crying. After what we had just been through, he was entitled to either. I left him to it, rooting about in my pockets for the object I’d snatched from the golem.

It was a photo of me. The usual ghost-laden image, but I stared at it, barely recognizing myself with my waist-length ponytail of straight brown hair. It had been a long time since my hair had been so long. I’d sliced it off to save my life in the elevator when I’d been beaten. to death. I felt strangled and I shuddered: The picture had been taken two years ago, a few minutes before I’d gone inside the building in the photo and upstairs to confront the man who killed me. I stared at the photo, trying to understand why it had been in the golem, in Will’s kitchen in London two years later. Where had it come from? What was it doing there? Could that be Alice’s connection? I was just turning that idea over when I heard Michael snuffle and blow his nose into his napkin.

I put the photo down on the table and looked up at Michael, who was swiping moisture from his face and trying to look less like he’d been crying.

I poked the photo toward him. “Is this Will’s?” I asked.

He shook his head and pushed the photo away, his mouth still a bit shaky and his eyes not meeting mine. “I don’t get it,” he rasped, a little teary but putting his man face back on. “What was that. thing?”

“Can’t say I’m an expert, but I’m guessing some kind of golem. A kind of magical automaton.”

“I know what a golem is,” he snapped. “Rabbi Loeb and the Jews of Prague and all that stuff. I do read books.”

I pressed my lips together. He wasn’t mad at me; he was just mad, and there wasn’t any point in taking it personally. At least not yet. I put the photo back into my pocket and tried to steer the conversation in a more useful direction.

“Michael. Do you know why your brother and I broke up?”

He shook his head. “Not really. He said you guys just came from different worlds. He said you had to do things he couldn’t live with. I thought he meant. like. your job was too weird for him. I still don’t get that. What’s so weird about what you do? You follow people, you look into records, you tap phones—”

“I don’t tap phones. That’s a federal crime. The rest. yeah, that’s what I do, but. umm. that different worlds thing. ”

“What?” he scoffed, leaning back in his flimsy seat and crossing his arms over his chest. “You saying you’re an alien or something?” He snorted.

I laughed, though it wasn’t my best laugh. It came out weak and shaken. “No. I’m not from outer space. I just end up working around a lot of things most people would call magic or myths. Things like that golem.” The golem was creeping me out even more now that I’d seen the photo. That was a channel. like Ezra’s ring. I tried not to go any farther in that mental direction. I’d scare Michael as much as myself if I let on what I was thinking.

Michael scowled. “You’re saying you’re a witch or something?”

“Not even remotely. I just see things most people don’t. And they see me.”

He still looked very skeptical.

I sighed. “OK, try this. For the sake of argument, say ghosts exist. Just as a supposition.”

He nodded reluctantly. Most people do believe there are things they can’t see—whether they call it “magic” or “God” or “quantum physics.” They have some belief in an unseen force that does things they can’t control.

“So, if there are ghosts and monsters and witches, isn’t it possible they have problems, conflicts that need resolving?”

I waited to see if he was buying in at all. He gave another nod, a little less incredulous this time. “Okaaaay, maybe.”

“I solve problems for people. That’s really what my job is: finding answers. Sometimes the answers or the problems—or even the clients—just happen to be ghosts or monsters or magical weirdness. That’s what your brother meant when he said we came from different worlds. Now the worlds are colliding, and Will got caught in the middle.”

“So, that. back there—that’s your fault?”

“Yeah. I’m afraid so.”

“Why!” Michael demanded. “Why would anyone do that?”

“I don’t know. I only got here yesterday, but that golem’s at least a few days old, maybe a week. Someone knew I’d come looking for Will, but not when. And they didn’t want anyone else looking—not the cops, not you—so they made the golem. If I didn’t come straight to them, I’d come to see Will and then they’d get me.”

“Why would you come all the way here to see your ex-boyfriend? And why did you? And that phone call—”

“Bad dreams.”

“Huh?”

“I had some awful dreams about your brother—and sometimes you, too—being in danger, hurt, or killed. I don’t have dreams like that; I’m not psychic. But they freaked me out and I had to check in to be sure they were just dreams. So I called.”

I couldn’t bring myself to tell him how the golem was probably the channel that sent the dreams and what they meant about what must be happening to Will. It was bad enough to think someone had kidnapped him and substituted a fake Will. But why Will, the ex-boyfriend? Why not Quinton? I had to stuff down an instant’s panic and desire to call and be reassured that he was all right. I had to believe he was fine, or I wouldn’t be able to do anything to help Will or Michael or myself. I was sure this was about me, about my father and whatever had started twenty-two years before. How any of it connected to Edward and his problem—if he really had one—I didn’t know, but I’d find out.

“But I told you everything was all right,” Michael said. He looked distressed.

I nodded. “You did, but the dreams kept coming, and then I had a chance to come here on business and it seemed too good to pass up—way too good, not just a coincidence. My case had a connection to Sotheby’s, so I thought I’d check on Will while I was there. But I found out he hadn’t been there in a while. That didn’t jibe with what you’d told me, and other information about the case tied up to Will. So I knew he was in trouble and I went to your place. ”

Michael frowned. “Would they have brought Will back if you hadn’t come around?”

“I don’t know.”

“But you don’t think so, do you?” he demanded. He screwed his face up against the emotional pain my nonresponse brought. We were both silent for a while until he said, “Now what?”

“We find you a safe place to stay while I finish up this case and get Will back.”

Michael shook his head. “I’m not going to be warehoused somewhere. I’m sticking with you.”

There was no way I’d include Michael in the further investigation of whatever was going on, but I knew I had no power to order him around. I’d have to convince him to keep out of it in some other way, later. I cut him an irritated glance. “Let’s find a safer place to have this discussion.”

We picked ourselves up and made our way down to the Underground station. I paid the fare and in spite of Michael’s annoyance we didn’t replace his Oyster card. I wasn’t sure what the nature of the tracking spell had been and it was always better in these situations to leave as little trace as possible. However else the card could be tracked, I was certain the Underground authorities kept tabs on the cards themselves. Every attachment is a potential point of weakness for an enemy to attack, even a piece of plastic with a chip in it. Or a photo, or a loved one.