Poltergeist (30 page)

There was a different clerk at the counter of Adult Fantasies that night: a slim young guy with curly blond hair cut so close to the scalp it had become a riot of cowlicks. As I walked toward him, the chilly reek of vampire hit me. I stopped and squinted at him, seeing a cloud of red-swirled smoke dancing around him through the Grey. His black T-shirt read, "Don't make me send my flying monkeys after you." His violet eyes sparked when he caught me reading the words and he smiled with an expanse of sharp white teeth. "Hey, Harper.”

I hadn't recognized him until I saw the unusual eyes; he'd changed a lot from the crippled newbie vampire I'd found in a parking garage. "Cameron. How's it going?”

"Mostly it's going good—except for the occasional dead guy. Carlos is a demanding teacher, and I…I miscalculated on that one. I really owe you for checking him out." A big, ugly pause swelled between us.

He tilted his head side to side with a wry expression. "It freaks you out that I killed someone, doesn't it?”

"Yeah. I remember when it would have freaked you out, too.”

He nodded, eyebrows rising. "Yeah. Sometimes I forget you're not like me. We went through so much together it feels like you ought to know everything I know.”

"I don't want to.”

"I get that. But this you should know—I didn't kill him, or he'd have sat up again the next night. Its kind of a complicated thing—”

I put up my hand to stop him. "Please don't explain it right now.”

He looked surprised, blinking, then shrugged. "OK.”

"I just need to see Carlos.”

"He's out, but he said you can wait in the office, if you want." Cam pointed, a thick scar flashing white on the underside of his wrist. He noticed my gaze, but said nothing about it, just dropping his hand and giving me a vague smile that kept his paranormal presence in check. "He should be back soon.”

I nodded and headed for the storeroom door, banishing speculation about the weal on Cameron's forearm. What Carlos was teaching him, and how, was none of my business and nothing I wanted to know.

I could hear the thumping of sexually suggestive music from above as I wedged myself into the chair in the stockroom office. It was a few minutes past eight o'clock on a Saturday night and the peep show upstairs was just hitting its stride. I considered propping my foot on one of the boxes to relieve my irritated knee, but thought I'd rather not display such obvious disability to a vampire, whenever Carlos got down to me. Cameron had made no comment on it, though he must have seen it, just as I'd seen his wrist.

I forced my mind from that and wondered what level of trust was implied in being allowed to lurk in the gloom with a safe full of quarters and small used bills, in a room filled with boxes packed with thousands of dollars worth of sex toys and bondage gear. Of course, it could always mean that Carlos had put some sort of necromantic curse on the goods that would reduce a thief to a lump of rotting flesh.

I shivered at the thought and dropped a hand onto my knee to check for heat. If rot was imminent I'd expect it there first.

I closed my eyes a moment, acknowledging the day's exertions. I'd been in and out of the Grey three times since morning, brushed it again just minutes ago in Cam's presence, and felt close to exhaustion now. My knee and shoulder ached, though not much worse than a lot of nights when I'd still been dancing for a living. The mild headache and vague nausea were more upsetting, since I associated those with Grey things, for which there was no pill. The nausea worsened and a chill pressed upon me just before the door opened.

I opened my eyes to see Carlos glowering down at me in speculation. His gaze rested on my knee a moment.

"Your quarry plays rough.”

"You could say that." I paused as he moved inside and closed the door. "Cameron seems well.…”

He waved that aside as he stepped back to the desk but didn't sit. "I have very little time for you tonight." He kept his eyes on me, but without the ire he'd displayed last time. Now he was merely impatient.

"I don't need much. I've found the master of the poltergeist and trapped the thing itself in a bottle. I don't believe that's much of a solution—”

His eyes gleamed. "A respite only.”

I nodded and went on. "In theory, lack of input from the group will weaken it enough to dissipate, but I don't think I can wait that long. It has been suggested that dispersing its property and burning its image will break it down faster, but that's a guess. I have to get rid of this thing as fast as possible and you're the expert. Will you tell me what to do?”

He rumbled, thinking, no doubt sizing the situation up for his advantage. "Dismantling the setting where it was made—its place— will weaken it only.”

"Better than nothing.”

He inclined his head in acknowledgement. "This entity is no true ghost, so I can't help you in this directly. So long as the thing's master continues to feed it, it will maintain its cohesion. Even while it is in your bottle. So long as he finds it useful, it will remain, even if the others withdraw from it. It will be weaker without them, but to get rid of it requires an act of destruction. Its true existence lies in the Grey, so it must be dismantled there. That falls to you.”

I gave him a tight, insincere smile. "I didn't want to hear that.”

He shrugged, rolling black clouds of cold from his shoulders.

"The guy who controls this thing is a psycho and he's loose in the city somewhere, gorging himself on the thought of revenge as soon as he can get this thing back. I don't know if he realizes it's gone yet.…”

"It isn't gone. Only blocked. But he knows that, the same way you would know if all of this"—he swept his hand around my head, gathering up strands and shreds of ghost and Grey—"were gone from your sight.”

He caught my sour expression and looked amused at it. I shook it off. "Then I hope he's waiting for it to come back and not deciding to go ahead without it. I'm guessing that he's stalking his ex-girlfriend and lying in wait near her home. As soon as he has an opportunity, he'll try to kill her.”

"All the better reason to dismantle this entity soon," Carlos replied. "He gains skill every time he uses it and draws more power, through its connection to the ley line. Here's what you will do.”

He sat down at the desk and dashed notes on a sheet of loose paper, talking as he did. "You control the entity for now and it won't interfere. First, destroy the artifacts—all that pertains to it, everything its contributors have branded as its own. Smash them, break them, burn them. If they cannot be destroyed, they must be separated. Take everything from the room and spread it far and wide.”

"I've got someone to help me with that tomorrow.”

He nodded without looking up. An itching urgency rippled through the Grey to me. "You will have to isolate the weakened entity in the Grey to dismantle it. Talk to your witch friend. Request a charm from her that traps time—she'll know how to make one. With it, you will create a trap for the entity and decant it from the container into the trap. While it is held there, you can dismantle it. This instruction will help you. The charm won't last long. You will have to open the creature and step into its center—this construct appears chaotic but it is not, and only when you are in the center will you be able to see the structure. You must sort through the entity's structure to find the control strand that holds and gathers it. Without its control strand in place, it will have no cohesion.”

He looked up suddenly and caught my gaze with his own. Knives and arctic wind cut me and my stomach heaved. "You should recognize the control—it's like your own connection to power. While the structure is open, the construct will drain more than simple energy if it can. Be very careful of your own connection to this creature—it will attempt to feed on whatever is at hand and it will fight you. There will be limited time. The charm can only hold the creature for a while, so be swift. If you're still inside when the charm expires, the structure will try to return to its original shape, trapping you within. I don't know what will happen to you if it does. It may cripple you. It may drive you insane.”

He paused, thinking again.

"I suppose the worst-case scenario is that I'd be dead," I muttered.

Carlos grinned a wolf's smile of white daggers. "Merely and simply dead might be preferable. But this course is the only chance you have. You can step out of the structure at any time while the charm still works, but once it burns out, the entity will close and return to its master. It will be much wilier the next time you meet—unless you can break its master's control. Then it will be ignorant and easily tricked. But I doubt you'll have another opportunity to take it. Better to attack it now, while it's stupid.”

He finished scribbling and handed me the sheets he'd filled with long, spiked script.

"How am I supposed to dismantle it? I don't see anything about tools here," I said, glancing through his instructions.

He scowled. "With your hands.”

"Grab onto those power strands and just… pull them apart?" I didn't like that idea. "I'm not even sure I can.”

"You can do more than you realize," Carlos stated.

But did I want to? I had a bad feeling that touching the power lines of the Grey—let alone manhandling them—would effect yet more changes, and I'd never been happy with any change the Grey served up to me. A dozen other thoughts occurred to me about the possible repercussions of trailing through the Grey, looking for a place to trap Celia long enough to break it down to its constituent parts.

"I've been ducking in and out of the Grey all week and it's not entirely inconspicuous," I objected. "This may draw a little attention, even if I can find a quiet place with the right kind of Grey landscape to do it in.”

He looked amused. "Tomorrow is All Hallows Eve. No one will find your actions so strange on that date.”

"All right," I acknowledged. "But there is one more problem. Even if I dismantle this one, what's to stop this young psychopath from building up another, or co-opting some loose entity if he runs across one? The Grey's a free-for-all of monstrosities for anyone who knows how to reach in and grab one. And if he doesn't know now, he'll figure it out damned quick.”

Carlos inclined his head and the desk lamp's sickly glow unveiled the monster's mask. And then he smiled one of his ice-light-on-steel smiles. "He'll have to be broken of the habit.”

I shuddered at the sound of that. I might have no choice but to let Carlos at Ian, but I had to try to maintain control. Starting now. "He'll have to be distracted first," I reminded. "Once the genie is out of the bottle, he'll know and he'll try to use it.”

Carlos had narrowed his eyes and acquired an unpleasant Mona Lisa quality. "I'd like to meet this young man.…”

"That doesn't surprise me. If you can get to him, you're welcome to try.”

He chuckled and the room rolled. "Show me where he is." He stood up, expectant and looming over me like a storm.

I kept my seat. "I don't know that yet. And I am too tired to fight this thing again tonight. You may have just crawled out of the crypt at sundown, but I've been up to my ass in alligators for twelve hours. Besides, there are other things to do first.”

He lowered his unpleasant gaze. "True. Tomorrow will be…strange.”

I couldn't—and didn't wish to—imagine what Carlos considered strange. "No doubt. Give me a direct number to call you when things are ready—telephone tag through Cameron is annoying.”

Another seismic chuckle moved the room and he handed me a card from the pocket of his leather jacket. I refused his offered hand and got out of the chair myself. I had no wish to visit hell, and touching his hand would have been the express route for me. He found that amusing, too, but he walked me to the door and let me out.

"I look forward to tomorrow.”

"I'll bet," I replied.

His mouth quirked, and he plucked the bright strand of Grey that linked me to Celia. "Take care, Blaine." Then he turned away and returned to the home of live girls and undead clerks.

The PNU campus had an eerie quiet on a Sunday morning, a wrong sort of emptiness, as if even the ghosts had gone to chapel and the buildings held their breath. Frankie was more punctual for subterfuge than work and we were in room twelve of St. John Hall on the dot often with an equipment cart standing in the corridor. We disturbed the breathless stillness with directed intensity.

Frankie—almost unrecognizable without makeup and wearing plain brown jeans—stood in the room and surveyed it with expert speed. "OK. Table first. It doesn't fit through the door, so we'll have to take off the legs. Luckily, I have tools.”

She darted to the cart and snatched a pair of large screwdrivers that she stuffed into her back pockets. Then we flipped the table onto its back on the rug, crushing a thin, pulsing wad of energy lingering there. For a while, we struggled with the legs until Frankie lost her temper.

"You are a very bad table," she muttered, standing up. Then she heel-kicked the nearest leg with a blow that knocked the wooden piece right off its bracket. Wires and bits of twisted metal bracket trailed from the break like entrails. "Ha! So much for you, table!" she crowed. She proceeded to kick the rest of the legs off with vicious glee. We carted the parts down to the back door and loaded them into the bed of a borrowed pickup truck.

Back upstairs, Frankie unloaded the bookshelves and sorted the contents into two piles. PNU property went on the cart; the rest went into Dumpsters in the parking lot or into either the pickup or my Rover. The end tables by the sofa met the same fate as the table legs— kicked to splinters and carried away.

"You're enjoying this a lot," I observed as we puffed back upstairs again. My knee was still a bit out of sorts and I was noticing the exertion more than usual.

"You bet! I feel like I'm finally freeing myself of Tuck. It feels great, tearing up this stuff.”

"How's Tuckman going to take it when he finds out?”

"Oh, he can French-kiss a whale for all I care. I'll tell him the dean ordered it and he can go argue with old baggy-pants himself. That'll win him all kinds of points." She cackled. "He is so on thin ice since his last evaluation. He said something snippy to the dean's wife at the psych association dinner the other night, too, I hear. I am reveling in his imminent downfall.”

A prime example of a woman scorned. Frankie had never said what Tuckman had done to lose her respect, but it sounded like he was going to regret it.

We tore the electronics out of the rug, hauled away the couch, and redistributed the chairs to needy rooms. Frankie hauled the monitors and machines out of the observation room and stacked them on the cart. At last we were down to the photos and posters on the wall and Ken's portrait of Celia. I collected them and put them into a metal trash can.

"Do you have a cigarette lighter?" I asked.

"No," she replied. "That's a bad habit I don't have. Besides, you don't want to burn those here. It'll set off the smoke alarm. There's probably some matches in the kitchen, though.”

We carried the rug and the trash can downstairs to the parking lot.

While Frankie wrestled the partially shredded rug into the truck bed, I snooped through the kitchen.

I returned with a couple of strike-anywhere wooden matches. I picked up the portrait and gave it one last look. It was remarkable how much life Ken had put into the picture. Celia looked vibrant. I set the corner of the portrait on fire, muttering a few words Carlos had written down for me.

The paper wouldn't catch fire at first; then flame leapt bright onto the inks and smoked, sending tendrils into the air that were not entirely normal, glimmering with sparks of uncanny light.

I dropped the page into the can and the fire flared higher, catching on the other papers with a gasping sound. Then something wailed, a high-pitched keening that spiraled upward into pain. A shaft of yellow shot from the burning pages, smoky and tortured, writhing. I recoiled in unpleasant surprise. A figure flickered in the burst of eldritch illumination, screaming in horror and pain, twisted in panic as the flames ate at it—a young blond woman, dressed in a uniform, her hair rolled back off her face. The fire roared and burned red, then subsided, taking the terrible vision with it.

Frankie gaped at me over the thin curls of subsiding smoke. I thought I looked the same. We both turned away from the trash can. Frankie returned to the building to fetch the equipment cart. I picked up the can and walked to the far side of the parking lot to empty the ashes into a different Dumpster. I carried the can back up to the room.

Frankie had just picked up the potted plant from the windowsill when I walked in. She brushed past me awkwardly, avoiding my gaze, and went into the hall. I looked around the empty room. Only dust and a faint, fading trail of yellow energy remained. Deeper, I could just glimpse the regular blue and yellow power lines of the grid, subsiding at Nature's pace into their normal shapes, pulling back from their unwonted displacement.

Frankie preceded me downstairs with the keys and the potted plant in her hands. Once back in the lot, she started loading the equipment from the cart into the cab of the truck.

"OK," she said at last. "I'm going to take the equipment to Tuck's office and stack it there so he can't say his data was destroyed. Then I'm going to dump this stuff in a couple different places, right?”

"Right. At least two, as far apart as possible, more if you can.”

"Got it." She started to get up into the truck, then swung back down. "Hey, what was that thing in the fire?”

I felt an involuntary shiver. "I…guess it was Celia.”

She looked young. "Is she gone, then?”

"I think she will be soon," I answered.

Frankie nodded. "Good. I definitely don't approve of Stygian nightmares. And hey—I'll call you and let you know what happens with Tuck, OK?”

"OK. Be careful, Frankie.”

"I'm the invincible queen of the coffeepot," she said, climbing behind the wheel of the borrowed pickup. "I can't be routed by a ham-fisted Narcissus of a psychologist—or his fakey poltergeist. Sterner men than Gartner Tuckman tremble at the thought of my wrath—or they ought to." She slammed the door and started up the engine. A wave, a manic grin, and she was gone.

I drove the Rover to two different transfer stations to get rid of the detritus of the séance room. Then I went home and put some ice on my knee and let the ferret out for a romp. Satisfied tiredness settled on me—a pleasant change from the slightly drained and weighted feeling I'd been having since I'd gotten tangled up in Celia.

It seemed as if the first half of Carlos's instructions had worked as described. Now I only had to find Ian so Carlos could distract him while I tore apart the remains of the entity.

I was cozily snuggled into one of the sofas in the Danzigers' living room a few hours later while Ben lay on the floor in front of the mantel with his feet up in the air. Brian was "flying" by lying on his fathers upraised soles and making whooshing noises, interspersed with giggles.

Mara came into the room with the stoppered flask in her hands. "I'm sorry. We had to stash it. Brian and Albert have been fascinated with the thing and they've been at all sorts of pains to get it. Can't imagine what they want it for, but I thought it best to move it somewhere secure. It's been in the old dry sink on the back porch since bedtime with a wallopin' great spell over the top. Someone"—she cut a glare toward Albert, who was flickering nearby—"was tryin’’ to levitate it until I put a stop to that. It's a good thing we'll be seein' the last of it soon. I'm done in by keepin' these two away from it.”

"If this goes right, you'll never see it again," I said, putting the flask down on the table next to me. The grim substance inside seemed smaller already, simmering with less violence than the day before.

With the stopper in place, I couldn't see the connecting threads and count them; I was sure there would be fewer now than a few days ago. I had seen Patricia's thread crumble away, and the absence of the Stahlqvists at the funeral made me think they, too, had broken their connection to the entity. I had entertained the small hope that the construct would have broken down with the destruction of the séance room, but it hadn't. It had always been able to operate with as few as four participants and the way it had harassed the individuals the past few days convinced me it no longer needed that critical mass to hold together. Even though the original power line was drifting back to its proper place, the entity was still connected to the grid and to Ian's control.

"What are you planning to do about it?" Ben asked.

"I assume you concocted some plan with Carlos, then," Mara added.

"Yeah," I replied. "It's already started. I got one of the assistants to help me break down the séance room and spread everything around. When I burned Celia's portrait, we saw a face in the flames.”

"That would be the artificial personality—the sort of soul the artist put into it—going. That's good and bad, though, as it now has no personality of its own, but only what its master lends it.”

"Which will be as smart and as crazy as he is—and there's no doubt the guy is smart," I said. "I'm hoping that he's getting arrogant, though. He certainly seemed to be. He makes mistakes when he's feeling cocky.”

"So it's definitely one of the young men?" Ben asked.

"Yeah. Solis said the whole thing revolved around a woman and for a moment I thought that might mean it was one of the women who controlled it, but the person who threw it at me was one of the guys.”

"So what are you going to do about it? Do the cops know?" Ben grunted as Brian squirmed around.

"Solis knows who and I'm pretty sure he's keeping a close eye on the next potential targets—he didn't say so, but he'd be stupid not to, and Solis is far from stupid. But he's not going to be looking for the entity and I'm not sure how close the controller has to be to use it the way he did on Mark. It's possible he'd be outside any surveillance area. I think I can track him down, though—he still has a connection to the entity that will tend to point to it, like a compass. Mine does, so I assume his does, too," I explained. "He's got to be in one of two places—he likes to be near the victim. He gets a kick out of seeing what he can do. If I take the bottle with Celia in it to both those areas, I should be able to spot his control thread trying to hook up to the entity even through the container—it's not a perfect trap, after all.”

"Then what?" Mara asked.

Albert drifted over to Brian, and the little boy laughed too loudly to speak over.

"Down now," he demanded.

As Ben was settling him back on his feet, I started to answer Mara.

"Once I've found him, Carlos will help me distract Celia's controller while I dismantle the entity.”

"Carlos is going to help you? I can't say I'd fancy another round of workin' with him myself.”

Brian took off, chasing after Albert and making his rhino roar.

"I'm not expecting to enjoy it, either," I replied, "but he can't take out the entity—it's never been alive, so it's never died. That means he can't get a handle on it, unless someone else attached to it dies or we kill something, and I think that would be a bad idea. Mark didn't hang around to leave a convenient connection. According to Carlos, his life was snuffed out so fast there was very little residue. He's told me how to take the thing apart in the Grey. I seem to be the only person with the right skills for the job. What I need from you is a charm that will stick the ghost in one spot for a while.”

Ben followed his son out into the hall.

"A tangle," said Mara.

"What?”

"There are several ways to bind something, but most are spells you cast on the person or thing. A tangle's a portable sort of charm—rather like flypaper. Where you drop it becomes sticky for a while.”

"That's it," I said. "How do I get it to work?”

"In this case, you'll want to create a time loop with the tangle, to hold the ghost a while, so you'll have to be dropping the tangle on a repeater ghost to create the trap and then pouring your poltergeist onto that time loop. That loop's like a bear trap—as soon as your poltergeist enters the loop, it'll grab on to it and hold it still in time until the energy of the ghost is dissipated, or burns through the loop.”

"How long is that?”

"Usually an hour or so—depends on the strength of the ghost and the tangle. I'll make a good one, though.”

"How long will it take to make it?”

"A few minutes. I'll have to go fetch some cuttings from the garden. I'll nip out. You keep your feet up—that knee still looks a mite tetchy.”

I snorted. "I'll stay put—I'm conserving my pain threshold for later.”

She laughed a single whoop and left me alone in the living room.

For a few minutes, all was calm, wrapped in the protective spells of the house. I took several long, slow breaths, letting tension flow away on the exhale. I closed my eyes for a moment. Which was a mistake.

Shouting a "Graaaaahh!" the rhino-boy galloped into the room with Albert right behind. Ben was several feet farther back.

Albert circled Brian, who tucked his head down and charged.

Albert wafted backward into the end table by my elbow.

Brian rammed his head against the polished blond oak.