Greywalker (8 page)

"Bogart fan, eh?"

"Big-time. Bogey got all the great tough guys," I said. "Who did it better?"

"Jimmy Cagney, Alan Ladd?"

"Both very good, but not Bogart. Did you know Cagney started out as a dancer?"

"Yes. So did George Raft."

I stared at him.

He shrugged. "I like old movies, old things. That's how I got into the antique business. Sometimes I think I can hear them talking to me." He blushed. "Too much imagination, I'm sure."

"Better than not enough, in my book."

He shrugged, changed the subject, and we finished dinner talking about old furniture and old movies. I didn't want to leave, but I could barely keep my eyes open. He smiled and walked me to the Rover and watched me go. I was glad I would see him the next day. But the warmth of his company didn't stop me from driving home paranoid.

Nothing happened. The drive was ordinary, and the condo and Chaos were waiting in good order. I flopped down on the couch and called the Danzigers.

Ben answered.

"I know I'm calling pretty late, but I have a question."

"It's not too late yet. What do you need to know?" His voice moved away from the phone. "Hang on." I heard him call for Mara. I heard another phone click and clatter.

"Well... tonight a car tried to run me down. I jumped out of the way and fell pretty hard. I was OK, but there is no way the car could have missed me. The space was too narrow and the car was moving too fast for me to clear the area. It was drizzling. But when I was trying to get out of the car's way, I was in mist. That Grey mist. And then I was in here rain again. And the car hadn't clipped me. So, what the hell happened?"

Ben's voice sounded excited. "Wow... for a second, you must have seemed to flicker or even disappear, I think. Oh, that must have scared the driver!"

The ferret scrambled into my lap and tried to steal the phone. I put her on the floor. "I can only hope. You're saying I disappeared?"

"Not completely. You're a physical being and the Grey is an overlap zone, remember? For a moment, you were basically in both places, switching energy states."

I barked over his enthusiasm. "But how? I don't understand how I can be in two places at once or how I get there. I didn't do anything but try to run away!"

Ben fell silent. Mara slipped into the hole in the conversation. "It's the nature of Greywalkers to move through the Grey, which, as I said, is a bit here and a bit there. But as to how you did it without meaning to, I'm thinking that your mind whizzed through the possibilities and latched on to this one."

"You opened a door and went through it. You've done it before, but you never did it voluntarily until now. Now that you know you can do it, you did," Ben added.

Mara resumed. "True. But it worries me that it wasn't conscious. This time it was a good choice, but it might not be so safe next time. You're not hurt, are you?"

"Only where I hit the gravel. And why didn't I get hurt worse?"

"I'm not quite certain. You got off lightly, though. You'll need to be controlling it. You can't go blindly popping in and out of the Grey, or being dragged in and out higgledy-piggledy. Something worse than a car might be on the other side."

I didn't respond. I picked up Chaos and teased her with my fingers.

Ben broke first. "Harper, even if you can't quite buy it, at least try to play along, just in case."

Chaos scampered away to wreak havoc elsewhere. My fingers weren't interesting when they stopped fluttering. "What if you're wrong?"

"If we're wrong, you're no worse off. If we're right, then things get better. It's not surgery. And if you didn't think we might be right, why did you call?"

I loosened my shoulders. "What do you suggest that I do?"

"Let Mara help you. I'll get off the phone so you two can work it out."

I could hear Mara hesitating. "It isn't all that hard, really..."

"Yeah. Well. Let's try it."

"All right. You'll need to recognize the barriers of the Grey first. We can try a concentration exercise to narrow your focus. Ever done any yoga?"

I felt a little silly admitting to it. "A little meditation breathing."

"Then you'll be having no problem. It's a bit like mindful breathing. So sit and breathe like that, then remember the sensations you had just before you crossed to the Grey. They're the clues. When you can recognize the barrier and re-create the sensations at will, you should be able to open a doorway and just step across. Or not. As you wish. Shall we give it a whirl?"

"Hang on." I got comfortable, taking off my shoes and sitting on the couch with a pillow in the small of my back. "OK. Now what?"

"Just breathe and feel. When you have the balance of it, then try re-creating the sensations of the Grey. Then open your eyes and try to spot it. Then close them and push the barrier away again. I'll be right here, on the phone, until you've done."

It had been a while. I put the phone on the couch beside me. I closed my eyes and tried to narrow my concentration to one small part of my body, until I was no longer aware of any other part. That went all right. I started clearing my thoughts, putting away every thought and feeling I didn't need this moment, breathing, reaching for poise.

When I felt empty and balanced on that point, I turned my concentration to the feeling of falling through the thick, stinking air, the Seattle mist dissolving from my face, giving way to the Grey. I opened my eyes and looked straight ahead, searching for the overlap of worlds.

It looked like a curtain of clouds and mist—literally gray, the inter-section of the ordinary with the extraordinary rippled with an energy Jitter that sparkled like fat raindrops falling in fog.

I dosed my eyes again and pushed the sensation away. It resisted at first and I started to pant; then I calmed down and tried again. The vertigo, the smell and the chill receded. I opened my eyes to my plain old living room.

I picked up the phone. "It worked."

"Wonderful! Now again. But this time, go in."

"No!"

"It won't harm you. It's you who must be controlling it, not the

other way about. Just open the door, step in, then turn round and step out. Then push it away and we're done. You'll be feeling much better for it. I'm sure of it."

I wasn't. But I tried. I sat up, relaxed, mindful, feeling for the barrier. I floated and felt warm. I opened my eyes and it was there again. I rose and walked toward it, stroking my right hand over the small warmth in my left. The interface got thinner as I moved forward, becoming insubstantial as smoke. I stepped through into the living fog of the Grey.

It surged and pressed on me. My stomach pitched and twisted like spaghetti around a twirling fork. I breathed deep and held on tight. Chaos gave an angry chuckle.

I looked at my hands and the Grey writhed around me. I was holding on to the ferret. She must have crawled into my lap again. I cursed. The ground? the floor? bucked, and I looked around, on the edge of panic. No sign of the big ugly this time, nor of the strange human/not human creature that had spoken to me before. This time, I was alone in the restless mirror-steam mist.

"Slow and easy," I muttered and took a couple of steadying breaths, which did little to steady me. I was queasy with trepidation as well as from the whiff of rot. "OK. OK, little fuzzy, let's get out of here."

I turned around, looking for the edge of the curtain, but couldn't detect it. I couldn't see my living room from here at all, yet I knew here was there, too. I was tired, frightened, and I just wanted out. I was losing concentration, panting. Unthinking, I squeezed the ferret and she screeched, chittering and wriggling.

I felt a breeze, a rippling of the Grey around me. I thought I could see the Grey edge. Close, and very thin. I started for it, then felt a dread cold sweep me, like a wind coming up on the Sound with a noise of storms: cold with an old chill that cuts like glass. I twisted around trying to escape the wind. The edge of the Grey fluttered an arm's length away. Chaos chittered again and dove into my shirt. The weight of something dark and furious was massing behind me.

I lunged forward, thrashing for the edge. The roiling black beast struck me in the back and shook me. Chaos screamed. I yelled and leapt as hard as I could. Something rigid and cold scraped across my flesh as I dove away...

and then I was tumbling onto the living room rug. Exhausted tears streamed down my face as I reached for the ferret, rolling onto my back. Chaos struggled out of my shirt and bolted for her cage. I looked back, ready to grab on to whatever might pursue me. There was nothing to see, nothing to smell. Just the living room like it always was and me lying on the floor, panting.

I rolled slowly to my knees and knelt. My chest ached.

Mara was shouting my name on the phone, a tiny tinny voice of terror. I snatched the phone and yelled into it, "Goddamn it! Something tried to eat me in there! I couldn't get out! It was going to eat me!"

"Harper! Harper. Harper. It's all right, you're out. You're out and you're alive. It's all right." She babbled at me until I stopped freaking. Then she asked me what happened and I told her.

"Oh, my. It wasn't going to eat you. It just wanted to push you out of its territory. Look, you'd better stop by tomorrow and we can discuss this. We'll need to be working out a way for you to protect yourself."

"What is that thing?"

"A guardian beast. But never mind it now. It's gone. You're OK. You got distracted and things went to Halifax, but you did well. Really. You did marvelous. Are you hurt any? Is your pet all right?"

I looked down at myself, feeling weak and stupid. My torso was covered in slime. I crawled to the cage and checked on the ferret. She gave me a dirty look and then snuggled down deeper in her nest of old T-shirts, not deigning to spare me another glance. Fine. I closed the cage door and crawled back to the phone.

"Some kind of slime all over me . . ."

"Heavens! That's unusual."

"I didn't want to hear that."

"Come for breakfast tomorrow. We'll have to talk. Now you need to rest. Sleep is the best cure."

"All right. All right." I hung up. Shaking, I crept to the bathroom. I loathed the feel of my skin where the slime touched me. Even exhausted, I couldn't face sleeping in that feeling. I peeled off my gooey shirt.

As I turned my back to the mirror, I noticed the redness: a large semicircle of small punctures, starting into shallow scrapes across my right side. It looked like an unsuccessful bite by a very large animal with needle teeth. I shuddered at the thought of legions of hungry Grey things, waiting to rend me. Tears of frustration and fear scalded under my eyelids. I wanted to give up and hide.

"Stop that," I gulped. I glared at myself in the mirror. "You can't quit," I hissed. "You can't quit." A lot of ugly memories crashed past my mental eye. I had no choices and no place to retreat to. There was no place to hide from a creature who stalked the edges of death itself. I would have to learn my way around it, and I would have to watch my back.

I slept in fits and woke to a Saturday morning clear and blue and mild. I argued with myself all the way up to Queen Anne. What was I doing? Did I really believe in ghosts now? Monsters, witches? It was nuts. But the bite on my side itched and even the hottest shower had not washed the eerie marks off my skin.

I parked in the same place and stared at the Danzigers' house. Ben Came out onto the porch with the baby in a backpack and trotted down the steps. The baby squealed in ear-piercing delight.

Ben spotted me and waved, shouting, "Brian and I are going to the park for a while."

I gave a token wave back. Couldn't get out of this now. I forced myself out and up the steps to the door. Mara let me in.

We went into the living room, a bright, warm space lit by a bank of windows, and sat on matching sofas facing each other across a low table. A tang of lemon oil and recent baking floated on the pale green light filtering through the spring leaves outside. Mara tucked her feet up under her skirts and looked at me, biting her lower lip a bit. "Last night wasn't such a grand success, was it?" "No."

"Still. Not a complete disaster."

"I don't see it that way. I got attacked by some... thing and chewed on like a rawhide bone. I don't even know what happened. Or how."

"You got stuck because you lost your concentration. You were fine up till then. You found the Grey on your own, instead of slipping, and you pushed it back, as well. It was the second time things went badly."

I snorted. "Tell me something new."

Mara narrowed her eyes at me. The air felt a touch chillier. "That is part of the problem."

I looked askance. "What is?"

Mara shook her head and made a motion with her hand. Albert filtered into view. He almost looked like a whole person this time, wrapped in a buffer of swirling mist, like a cloud of impending snow. "You're looking at a ghost. And you know it's as real as... as that sofa. But you've closed your mind to it, telling yourself you'll not believe it. When you dig in your mental heels, that's when things go bad. Ceasing to believe and panicking when you're in the thick of it, that's dire. You lose control, for how can you control something you'll not believe in? And so long as you're fighting it, you'll not be able to protect yourself or control your slipping."

"Slipping?"

She nodded. "Moving in and out of a magical field, rather side-ways, without meaning to. I used to know a young fella at home who did it all the time he was thirteen. Disconcerting, seeing him popping about. People made up all sorts of explanations for themselves, claiming he was just so quiet you'd not hear him sneak up on you, or he was so quick, you'd not see him go. But they didn't like it."

"He was a Greywalker?"

She laughed, an unexpected whoop of laughter. "My, no! He was just a witch like me."

I leaned forward, bemused. "But he stopped slipping eventually, didn't he?"

Her face blanked and she looked down. "Yeah. He slipped in front of a lorry on the N59." She squeezed her eyes shut, swallowed. "So. You see why I'd not like you to keep on slipping."

Slipping away from a car, slipping into the path of a truck— all the same thing as far as the Grey was concerned.

I nodded. "Yes, I do."

"All right then. Shall we try that exercise again? Albert and I will be here to help you."

I bridled. "Albert?"

She grinned. "Of course. You see him and he can go into the Grey, just like you. He'll be your spotter, so to speak."

I started to object. "But—"

"You'll see. We'll not let anything harm you." She tilted her head, raising her brows. "Give it a go?"

Self-conscious, I sat back into the couch and closed my eyes, breathing carefully until I relaxed and felt quiet.

"Open your eyes," Mara murmured.

I lifted my eyelids. A man in a plain, dark suit stood in the table. His hair was parted in the center, slicked back on each side around his long, angular face, and a pair of small wire-rimmed spectacles teetered on his nose. I could almost see through him. A snowfall of Grey hung around him and spread as I stared.

"Close your eyes. Push it back, and come back here."

And that's what I did.

Mara was grinning at me when I opened my eyes again. "That was grand!"

Albert was still standing in the table. I shuddered. "That's disturbing."

"Is it?"

"Albert looks like he's been cut off at the knee and is standing on the table on stumps. You can't see that?"

"No. He's quite a bit less corporeal to me. I imagine you see him better than almost anyone. When you're in better touch with the Grey, ghosts and some of the other things may look quite normal and solid to you. You'll be seeing them both here and there at the same time. Two partial images superimposed. The farther you are from the Grey, the thinner they'll look. Try it again, but keep your eyes open as you get near this time."

I felt a little dizzy and tired, but I tried.

As I slid closer to the familiar cold queasiness of the Grey, Albert looked more and more present. The details of his face and clothing grew surreally clear as the hungry pall of cloud-stuff around him expanded. I cringed from it. The Danzigers' living room shifted and faded to pale smears of gold and sage in the thick, desert-cold haze. A sharp whiff of alcohol and organic rot bloomed in the air.

Distantly, I heard Mara. "You've slipped. You'd better come back now."

Albert moved and I jerked to watch him. My head spun from the motion in the directionless roil of the Grey. I flailed out a hand to catch my balance. I didn't recall standing up. My fingers dug through Albert, a shock bolting up my arm to ring my skull with a stench of raw chemicals. I pulled my arm back against my chest, appalled.

Albert blinked at his arm, then knitted puzzled brows at me. He mouthed a word and patted the mist between us. I could no longer hear Mara. I stared at Albert, my eyes wide and too afraid to blink.

The word was "sit." He made it again and again, until my ears caught the faint sound in the roar of my fear. I sat. He motioned me to be quiet and close my eyes. Cold electricity tapped my shoulder. My stomach lurched.

But I could hear Mara now, far away. "Just breathe and balance. Then push it away. Just breathe..."

Her voice got stronger and I felt the queasy chill and smell slide away. Then a little push...

I felt as if I had plunged from the ceiling into the couch and I lurched back, panting, opening my eyes.

Mara looked flustered, her hair a bit disheveled and her face white. I "That was a mite rough. Do you feel all right?"

I swallowed bile and croaked, "I'm OK." I swallowed again. "I think."

"You look flah'ed out."

I shook it off. "I'm fine." I got to my feet and looked at my watch. "But I have to go."

Mara gave me a shrewd look. "Don't push yourself. And please be careful. You know how to come and go now, but you're not strong or steady at it yet. You need practice."

I nodded and started for the door. "I know. Trust me. I won't be bungee jumping off any Grey cliffs, if I can help it." A flurry of shivers scurried over my skin and I kept my eyes turned away from Albert.

Mara followed me and caught me at the door. She gave me a hard, sober look. "Be sure you don't. Lorry grilles are unforgiving."

I returned a wan smile and said I'd be careful, then hurried away, cursing myself.

Immersion in the Grey induced a panic in me I hadn't experienced since grade school. I just had to get far away from it, into the comfort of the familiar, for a while. The longer the better, though I doubted it would be long.

I got to the Ingstrom warehouse after the auction had started. Michael grinned at me and waved as he registered new bidders. I headed for the sound of Will's amplified voice, breathing normal dust and dirt and feeling relieved.

Bidders' paddles flapped in the air as Will spieled on. He knew how to gauge a crowd. In minutes, he'd closed a set of wooden file cabinets at seven hundred dollars. It was still early in the day and already the crowd was catching bidding fever.

The buyers were the usual assortment of shop owners and auction

addicts. But there was a knot of blank-faced men and women huddled

in depressed passivity near the back wall. I guessed they were former Ingstrom employees gathered to watch the carrion birds fight for the bones their livelihood. The buyers pressed forward, ignoring them, impatient for the choice lots.

A box full of glass gewgaws came up and an intense bidding war developed between a thin, blond woman and a pudgy man with bad hair transplants. I couldn't recall names, but they were familiar to me from other auctions. Rival antiques dealers. She, I remembered, was unpopular with some of the other dealers for her sharp ways. I wondered if the man bidding against her merely wanted to drive the price up—he didn't look like the glass curio type.

The price had risen to ridiculous when I saw her hesitate. Will called for another ten dollars. Both bidders looked around. The man grimaced.

Will leaned into the microphone slightly and scanned the crowd. "Antique deck prisms in perfect condition. Highly collectible in today's market," he stated, letting his eye rest on her. "Last chance. Do I hear any more?"

Biting her lip, the woman flicked her paddle up. Will's gavel came down so fast you'd have thought the building was collapsing, though there was no chance of anyone taking pity on her and making a last-minute bid. A sigh and a ripple moved over the crowd as the lot closed. Will moved on to the next one. I could see a scowl spread across the woman's face as she began to suspect she'd been cooked. Then she turned and pushed through the crowd to the door.

About a dozen lots later, Will declared a forty-five-minute break for lunch. I followed him to the back of the warehouse and caught up to him at the registration table in a clutch of the grim men and women.

He looked down at me and beamed. "Hi! Nice to see you again." He slipped his arm around a deflated-looking woman of sixty-and-some and drew her forward. "This is Ann Ingstrom—the senior Mrs. Ingstrom. Mrs. Ingstrom, this is Ms. Blaine, the investigator I mentioned this morning."

She was wearing a well-made navy wool suit that hung on her as if she had lost twenty pounds overnight. Mrs. Ingstrom looked at me with watery eyes, but said nothing. I offered her my hand and she folded her own around it with a stiff, jerking motion. Her touch felt like fine sandpaper.

"I'm pleased to meet you, Mrs. Ingstrom. I want to ask a few questions. Maybe we could get some lunch and chat?" I suggested.

She answered very softly. "Oh. Yes. That would be pleasant. All right. There's a... a sandwich shop just down the road..."

I glanced at Will. He shook his head. "They're going to be very crowded. People from the auction, you know. Why don't you two go up to Speedy's? It's only a couple of blocks away and you can have a table, if you hurry."

She looked blank, but nodded. I got directions from Will and drove the two of us in my Rover.

Speedy's was the sort of workingman's cafe that could easily have been called a diner or a dive. We did manage a table near the back and got some coffee while we waited for our food. Ann Ingstrom looked a bit better after a few sips of very sweet, white coffee.

"That William is a very nice man, isn't he?" she offered in her thin voice.

"Yes. He's very nice. I hope I'm not disturbing your day by taking you away like this."

"Oh, no. I... it's good to get away. I've been practically living at warehouse since all this happened." Her voice wavered, but held. "Since.... since Chet and Tommy were drowned. There. I've said it, haven't I?

"Yes, ma'am. I'm so sorry," I murmured. No matter how much of I've seen, other people's grief leaves me feeling embarrassed, as if I've peeked through their bedroom windows.

"Well," she said, sitting back to let the waitress slide plates onto the table, "fishermen and sailors. The sea takes them away. They don't come back. You just... you know, you don't expect it to hap-pen to you."

"It's terribly sad," I offered.

She nodded. "It stinks. But you wanted some help. What was it wanted to ask?" "I'm trying to find a parlor organ the company might have salvaged from a damaged ship in the late seventies or early eighties. Do you remember anything like that?"

She chewed slowly and swallowed, chasing the mouthful down with a gulp of coffee. "A parlor organ. I think—well, I'm not sure how we got it, but we had one in the house for a while. I hated it. We finally got rid of the nasty thing when we redecorated. In 1986, I think. I'm not sure of the date, exactly. But it's long gone now."

"What did you do with it?" I asked.

"Oh, I'm not really sure. Chet took care of it. I was just glad to see it go. It always made me feel... unsettled. Isn't that funny?" she asked. "It worked all right. Chet played it a couple of times." She shuddered. "But it always sounded to me like the old thing was screaming and crying." Then she coughed out a laugh. "Silly of me, wasn't it? To be afraid of a piece of furniture? So I never asked him what he did with it."

"Could you find out?"