Greywalker (14 page)

"You only billed fifty bucks for labor. I think you spent a little more than the two hours you've got here."

"I spent about an hour here and some time on the program at home."

"It only took you an hour to write the program?"

He shrugged. "It's not as elegant as you think. Mostly I just cut and pasted from programs I'd already developed. Besides, now I've got another routine I can plug into someone else's program down the line. It's paid development time."

I pulled out my calculator. "Let's see here.... parts plus actual time on-site, plus development time, plus consultation..."

"What consultation? Will work for food, you know. You bought dinner."

"OK, but you still shorted yourself by sixty bucks."

"Call it an introductory offer."

I shook my head. "I don't like to end up behind favors."

"Investment in the Bank of Karma?" Quinton....

He flipped his hands up. "Hey, look, I like you. I don't mind doing a little work for friends, cheap. I wouldn't feel right about charging you more." He hesitated. "Unless you want me to charge you a business rate."

I felt like a fool. "Umm... is this the 'just friends' rate, then?"

He smiled and nodded. "Yeah."

"Will you take a check?"

He looked a little uncomfortable. "I prefer cash."

I looked at him sideways a moment and he stared right back.

I shrugged. "OK, but we'll have to go down to my bank."

He grinned and shrugged.

We went. The manager looked a bit askance at Quinton, but didn't say anything. Flush with cash, Quinton headed off for the main library while I went back to the Rover and headed for home for a quick wash and brush-up.

I put on a skirt, blouse, and heels, for a change. I felt much better than I had in the morning, if a bit tired. I played with Chaos for a while and gave her a chance to shed on my clothes until I had to leave. I put her back into her cage with her food dish under her nose, and she hardly noticed.

I stopped at an upscale grocery in Queen Anne. The clerk restocking the wine department actually knew something about the subject and managed to find a wine that was, he assured me, pale green and not bad. I broke down and bought a backup bottle of Chardonnay as well.

Mara opened to my ring of the doorbell. Once again, her hands were floured and she still looked stunning.

"Oh, you're as good as your word, aren't you?" she exclaimed, seeing the wine bag in my hand. "I hope you don't mind the kitchen for a bit, I'm still rolling out crust and I hate to yell at my guests just to have a conversation. I felt I should be making a pie, since you missed the last one." We adjourned to the kitchen, Mara in the lead. "Have a seat, open the wine and we can have a sip while I finish up the crust. Corkscrew's in the drawer of the table, glasses right there on top."

I hung my purse and jacket over the back of a chair and tackled the first wine bottle. With the wine poured and distributed, I leaned against the counter and watched her drape pastry dough into a deep pie plate and cut off the edge.

She started to sip her wine, then held it away, staring at it. "Oh, my! This is green wine. Wherever did you find green wine?" "Larry's. It doesn't seem too bad."

She sipped, then glanced at me out of the corners of her slanted eyes. "It's wicked green, though, isn't it?" Then she let out that wild whoop of laughter, her eyes squeezing to merry slits.

I couldn't help laughing with her. She was more relaxed and outrageous now that we were on a social footing, rather than a.... what? Magical one? Student/teacher?

I noticed she was paying a great deal of attention to the pie preparation and biting her lower lip.

I was about to speak when she beat me to it. "Harper, this morning I was rather too pushy. You're right to be wary and I didn't think of it. You see, I'm used to this sort of thing and I forgot that I'm not like you."

I shrugged and drank wine before answering. "No one's like me, I guess."

"Indeed. And there's quite a lot of guesswork to being what you are. Theory and philosophy are all well and good, but reality can rather rear up and bite you on the bum. It's not a field chock-full of scientific validation, you know—not astrophysics or chemistry, after all—and it attracts sharpers and loonies, if you know what I mean."

"Spoon benders and people who write paperback science about ancient astronauts building the lost city of Atlantis," I suggested.

"Exactly the sort of thing. And that brings me to a point I should make before Ben gets home. You see, he's rather enamored of some theories authored by people who can't be proved wrong any more than they can be proved right. It's impossible to resolve any clash between the theories or practices, or even to sort out the possible from the ridiculous when the scientific world as a whole is skeptical. And Ben, ironically, is just as doubting-Thomas as the rest, at heart. Only someone like you can know for certain—not that science would listen to a word you said—but you'll not know until after one of Ben's pet theories has left you with the baby. Do you see my concern?"

I nodded. "So why don't you just tell Ben that you know some of the theory and philosophy is bunk? You can prove it yourself, can't you? As a witch, I mean. Hell, I would."

She leaned back and narrowed her eyes at me over the rim of her glass. "Never been married, I see."

"No. I'm not even very good at dating," I admitted.

"Many of us aren't. We see too much, and it's difficult to dissemble all the time."

For a moment, I could imagine the look that must have been on Will's face when I called him from the police station. "Yeah," I replied.

We both sipped wine and I decided to wade in with both feet. "Why do you glow?" I asked.

"Do I? It's a glamour, I suppose. A habit. I was a spotty, gawky child, and though Ben is always at telling me I'm lovely, it's hard to get over the idea that I'm not just as awful now as I was then. You know how that is, I'm sure."

I nodded. "Oh, yes. I was fat."

She gave me a sober look, then grinned. "Childhood's a bugger, isn't it?"

Mara and I were sitting at the kitchen table, giggling like longtime girlfriends at a sleepover by the time Ben got home. He stuck his head through the kitchen doorway and smiled at us.

"Hi! I see you two are getting on like the famous house on fire."

"Oh, passing fair," said Mara, rising to kiss him. "How were all the budding little linguists?"

"Lugubrious, possibly even mummified."

She tousled his already unruly hair. "Well, go scrub the tomb dust from your hair and dinner will be ready in about fifty minutes, all right?"

"
Sehr gut
," he said and smooched her before ducking out. We could hear him ascending the stairs.

Mara and I drank more wine and chattered while she finished up the dinner preparations. As her husband descended toward the main floor, she turned to me with a look of concern.

"You'll not say anything to Ben, will you? About my doubts."

I frowned at her. "Of course not. Who am I to break up a marriage over a theory?"

She was still laughing when Ben entered the kitchen.

"What's funny?" he asked, patting himself down. "Did I forget something? Hair sticking up, soap in my ears?"

"No, darlin'. Harper's just very funny, you know. Go pour yourself a glass of this green wine our guest's brought us and have a chat, while I set the table."

Mara whisked out of the kitchen, leaving me alone with her husband. He settled himself at the table and poured wine into a glass. "You two seem to be getting along."

"Mara's lovely."

"That she is. First-class researcher, too. We met over research." He made a goofy grin.

"What sort of research?"

"Mara was doing some geologic studies in a dig out in Ireland that I was also on, doing some ancient religions research. She had some religion questions and I had some questions about ley lines, and we ended up sitting in the pub all night, talking about everything under the sun."

He chuckled. "Sometimes, I'm too much the scientist for Mara's taste." He made a rueful shrug. "I get enthusiastic and bury myself in all the squirrelly little details. Probably can't see the forest for the trees half the time, but she keeps me looking up often enough that I don't go completely into the woods. And speaking of being lost in the woods, how are you doing? Getting any more comfortable with the Grey?"

"Yes and no... there is something I need to ask you—"

Mara came back to the kitchen and we moved the conversation to the dining room.

Once we had food in front of us, Ben prompted me.

"What were you going to ask me?"

"Oh. Why does this seem to be getting worse? More frequent?"

"Well, I think it's kind of like gum on your shoe. Every time you go into the Grey, a bit sort of sticks to you and it keeps on building up."

"But if I'm building up this Grey.... covering, why would the guardian beast-thing attack me sometimes and not others?"

He thought about it, and Mara frowned.

"I'm not certain," Ben replied at last. "Maybe you don't appear to be a threat sometimes."

"I don't see how I could have changed."

"I'm afraid I don't know what triggers acceptance or rejection, but there must be something. There isn't much known about this creature— or creatures. We don't know if it's one thing or a bunch of them. But everyone agrees that it's stupid as a rock. It does its job by a set of rules. So...” He leaned his head back and stared at the ceiling.

Mara glanced at me.

"So maybe," Ben continued, "it has a hierarchy to follow. Bigger apparent threats get its attention and it lets small things go, if it has to. So if something is more foreign or threatening than you, it would chase that instead."

"But if I'm a Greywalker, why would I be foreign at all? What kind of threat do I represent?"

Mara looked at Ben, who was stroking his beard in thought. "I'm wondering...," he started. Then he looked at Mara. "Maybe you're bright, for some reason. If you're still not very comfortable in the Grey, maybe that makes you look more foreign and bright to it. What do you think, Mara? Does Harper glow?"

Mara glanced at me. "I suspect she does."

I gave her a sideways look, but she went on. "So long as you're uneasy in the Grey you'll be creating some disturbance. The beast is like a spider and the Grey is like a web, so if you're thrashing about, you probably attract its attention."

I frowned at her and she made a "sorry" face. My pager went off, jittering against my hip. I glared at it and excused myself to use the phone in the kitchen.

My friend at the SPD had left a message: Cameron's car was about to be impounded from a garage near Pioneer Square. He couldn't hold the call. I had thirty minutes to get there ahead of the tow truck.

Yet another great dinner down the tubes. I went back out to the dining room to excuse myself to the Danzigers.

"Something's come up that can't wait. I seem doomed to miss that pie."

Mara smiled at me. "We'll put some aside for you. If you've finished by ten, come back and join us again. We'll still be up."

I exceeded the speed limit, but the old Rover took the twists and turns of Queen Anne Hill nimbly and roared down the Viaduct to Pioneer Square in ten minutes.

There was no sign of the tow truck when I pulled into the garage. I circled down to the lower level, searching for the dark green Camaro, and spotted it in an isolated, dark corner. There were more cars than I'd expected and I had to go around the ramp looking for a place to park. I ended up farther away than I would have liked and had to walk back up.

As I approached, I noticed two young men moving around near the car. I stopped and looked them over from the shadow of a pillar. Neither of them was Cameron. One was black, the other white. Both looked unkempt and dangerous. The black guy, the slimmer and shorter of the two, was hanging back, crouched, acting as the lookout as the taller, white guy tried jimmying the trunk open with a crowbar. I didn't like the look of it, so I hung back, slipping my hand toward my pistol.

The trunk lid flew up with a sudden jolt and a pallid blur exploded out of the dark hole beneath. With a scream of rage, a pale whirlwind descended on the man with the crowbar. I darted forward, hand closing around the grips of my gun, not quite sure who was in more trouble: the two car breakers or the willowy apparition that had erupted from the trunk.

The taller thief dropped his crowbar with a howl of pain as he was grabbed and flung backward. His smaller companion, darting panicked glances between the sudden assailant and me rushing toward him, snatched up the crowbar and tried to smash it into the skull of his attacker. He connected with a forearm instead.

I heard the bone shatter. The chalky one let out a shriek and doubled over, vanishing under the open trunk lid. I had my gun out and started to bring it up.

The dark-skinned man whirled toward me with the crowbar raised. I put the sights on him and held. His eyes met mine for a nanosecond.

He panted a moment, then flung the crowbar at me and spun away, running like a scalded dog. I ducked and the crowbar hit the cement with a clang that echoed long after the thief had vanished up the ramp. I could have chased after him, but I wanted to get a look at the guy with the broken arm a lot more.

I edged toward the Camaro. "Hey. You OK?" I called out.

He moaned.

"Cameron? Cameron Shadley?" I led with my left hand out and the gun pointing straight up. I didn't want to take any more damage, but I was prepared to dish a little out, if I had to.

The pale violence leapt at me with a yowl of pain. Hands like a raptor's talons flashed at my face. I backpedaled as fast as I could, turning, my right arm swinging down, left reaching to lock my grip.

"Hal—" I didn't get to finish the warning.

A clawed brick struck my shoulder and scraped up under my hair, yanking out a few strands. Losing my balance, I squeezed on the gun and felt it buck in my hand.

The fury shrieked and flopped onto the ground. He sat there, a haystack of fair hair, cradling his limp right arm in his left hand. Even through the ringing in my ears, I heard him. "You shot me?" he wondered. "Ow! Oh, fuck, that hurts! It's not supposed to hurt!" He lifted his face and glared at me between matted strands of hair. "Why did you shoot me?"

I stayed my distance, the gun firmly gripped, muzzle pointing at the oil-stained cement between us. "You attacked me. I fight back." Everything sounded a little distant to me, still.

"With a gun?"

"It's a much better tool than a stick. Are you Cameron Shadley?"

"Yes," he moaned. "Who the hell are you?"

"Your mother suggested you were a gentlemanly, soft-spoken boy. Now I discover that you swear and hit women," I mused aloud.

"You'll have to excuse me. I'm not at my best when I'm sick and scared out of my socks," he growled. "So, who the heck are you?"

Sarcasm usually indicates a drop in threat level. I put my gun away. "My name is Harper Blaine. I'm a private investigator. Your mother hired me to find you. Are you bleeding badly?"

"It's not too bad now." He winced. "It's closing up already. The bullet must have gone all the way through."

"Let me take you to a hospital."

"Oh, yeah." He started laughing. It didn't sound too rational. "A hospital's going to love me. 'Excuse me, Mr. Shadley, are you aware you haven't got a pulse?'"