Greywalker (26 page)

He turned his back to me, tugging on his headphones and crouching over the console. Will Robinson pursued Dr. Smith through bars of Led Zeppelin, casting a blue shadow from the video monitor in the shape of a giant reptile, which grinned at me.

I bolted out the door and stumbled, tripping, desperate for distance, toward the door.

"Don't forget me," he called out, a shadow voice gliding on a non-existent breeze. I heard him laughing behind me all the way.

I staggered out to the Rover and leaned against it, bowing my neck to press my face against the cold solidity of the old truck's side. I shivered and gulped mouthfuls of ordinary Seattle air to stop myself howling out loud. There was an ache in my chest where Wygan had touched me, black pain equaled by the tearing horror rampaging through my mind. I hated myself for this trembling weakness, and more so for what had happened. I crawled into the backseat and curled into a sickened ball as my thoughts screamed and raged:

What are you? Raped, ripped, re-formed. What are you, now? Ignorant fool. These are vampires; a monstrous redesign of humans, psychotic by our standard, alien, divorced from humanity. What drives them is not what drives you. It never will be. Never again. They are not human. They are not humans! And neither are you. Not anymore. Insect. Half monster. What are you, now?

I lost track of time, hysterical, quivering in a crumpled wad of misery, despair, and self-disgust. After a while, I noticed I was stiff, cold, and stinking—right after I unclenched long enough to throw up. Hanging upside down, shivering and crying, some kind of common sense reasserted itself. The nearest vampire was just inside the building, laughing still, and I was sitting like a tethered goat.

I had to drive with care, in spite of an urge to speed. I couldn't see well through my swollen eyes and the streets flickered Grey, overlaid in mist and silver, outlined in streaks of neon-bright light. I pulled over a couple of times and tried to breathe slowly and attentively until it stopped. It would not recede. The trip home was very long.

I jerked awake at a sound and cowered under the covers. The beeping continued and the bed shuddered as Will fumbled for his pager on the nightstand.

I hid my face in my pillow and moaned, "Make it go away."

He flopped backward with the pager on his chest. "It's just Mikey, letting me know he's at work." "He works on Sunday?"

"Usually it's me. Mike volunteered to do the paperwork so I could sleep in." He rolled over and grinned at me. "Wanna go back to sleep?" I peeled the pillow aside. "No."

His smile got wider as he felt my toes sliding up his leg. "Feeling better?"

"Much," I replied. If I focused my attention on Will, I didn't have to think about what had happened in the night, didn't have to look at it, shimmering in the verges.

I had forgotten the note I'd left with Michael. The sight of the scarecrow figure in the darkened hall outside my home had made me recoil in fear. When Will stepped into the light, my relief flooded out as a puddle of idiotic tears and shaking. He was very sweet, even when he told me I stank and put me in the shower. I kept sliding down into the bottom of the tub and crying until Will gave up being a gentle-man and got in with me. I clung to him and things improved from there, even though I refused to tell him what had happened.

Now I was disgusted with myself for having blubbered and oozed like a jellyfish.

He caught me frowning as he snatched away my pillow. "Hey. Want to take another shower?" he asked, laying on a wicked grin.

I was slow on the uptake. "Do I need one?"

"From a hygiene point of view, no. But interesting things seem to happen in your shower, so I thought it was a good place to start."

I made a rude noise, grabbed back the pillow, and swatted him with it. He dove under the covers and tickled me.

Will let the horrors of Saturday night lie and kept me too distracted to think about them most of Sunday. After an afternoon of goofing off, he even agreed to come and look at the parlor organ with me on Monday and never speculated about whatever it was we were doing together.

After Will had gone, the misery and uncertainty began to close in again. Typing up my notes sent me into fits of shivering and crying. I thought of quitting. I could not face any more nights like Saturday, but I wasn't sure I'd done enough to destabilize Edward. And if I could not move him in the direction I wanted, neither Cameron nor I stood a chance of seeing another spring. What did I have to offer Edward that was more attractive than the pleasure of taking my head off? I couldn't trust vampires. I wasn't even sure that I could look at Cameron without either screaming or putting a bullet in him—not that it would do any good.

I closed my eyes, trying to think, but only slipping around the edges. The Grey washed against me, chill and nauseating. I felt that I was standing on a dock—a world—afloat on the surface of another world, pitching with the motion of unknown tides. The disconcerting feel of electricity zipped along my nerves, but I kept my eyes closed against those twisting threads of fire. I didn't want them, or anything to do with Wygan's realm or vampires or ghosts or any of the rest of it. I felt the insubstantial ground shivering and thought of stepping oil the dock...

The sound of little claws on woodwork pulled me back from the bloody edge. I picked up the ferret and snuggled her to my face, smelling the warm, corn-chip odor of her fur. For once, she didn't wriggle.

Close to that soft warmth, I relaxed, taking deep, easy breaths. Everything Grey seemed to flow like silk thread, shimmering with strands of energy, and I could feel every movement I made through it. I pushed on it and it bent, stiffening into a reflective curve around me. Even the chill was less now. I tried to push it away completely, but it would not recede below a constant bright softness lying over every-thing. Grids of energy gleamed on the threshold of light. Peeking side-ways brought it all up to a bright blaze. I did not wish to step inside and see how the normal world looked from there.

But the constant presence was like acid on my nerves. I didn't want to be near it or anything associated with it. I didn't even want to talk to the Danzigers. Then I would have to think about it.

I shoved it back to the limits. I shivered and found myself crying into Chaos's pelt. Shuddering, I carried her off, crawled back under the covers, and hid from the ugly world.

Monday morning Will met me at a cafe near the Madison Forrest House for breakfast. He greeted me with a more-than-friendly kiss and we sat at a table outside. I told myself the thin golden line around him was a trick of the cool spring sunshine.

I smiled at the delicious quivers he sent over me. "When do you have to go to work?" I asked.

"Closed on Mondays," he replied, draping an arm over my shoulders, "and probably forever afterward, too, thanks to Brandon—who's not returning phone calls and seems to be dodging some guys in dark suits, sunglasses, and grim looks."

I raised my brows. "Who do you suppose they are?"

"I don't know. Mikey spotted them hanging around. They didn't bother to introduce themselves, and their cars had rental plates."

"He noticed that? Sounds like Michael could be a detective, too."

"I hope not. I'd rather admire your technique than watch Mike do it." He wiggled his eyebrows at me. "Want to show me your technique?"

I giggled. "Right here? Heck, no. What about Mike?"

"Let him get a girl his own age. I'm not sharing."

"You know what I mean."

"He's fine. Thinks it's funny. He's in school today."

"Does that mean you have nothing to do?"

He ran a finger along the curve of my ear and down my neck. "Mmm. I wouldn't say nothing."

I shivered. "Unfortunately, I have things to do that preclude dancing the horizontal tango with you all day—much as I might like to. Or had you forgotten this is supposed to be a professional meeting?"

"Spoilsport."

I poked him with a finger and made a face. "The curator will meet us in a little over an hour, so take a look at this and give me your professional opinion."

He glanced at the description sheet I offered him. "Without even looking at it, I expect that my professional opinion will be that it's a piece of grot."

"It does make me rather suspicious of the client's motives." I was suspicious of Sergeyev in general, but I wasn't going to discuss that with Will. "I need to know as much about it as possible."

"You think your client is up to something?"

"Something doesn't smell right, if you know what I mean. He said there was no rush, but he's thrown an awful lot of money at the project and he's shown up once, although he said he was in Europe the first time we talked. His check was drawn on a Swiss bank, but the rest of the packet came from London."

"I'm surprised it wasn't an Irish bank," Will commented. "The Swiss aren't as reticent about giving out information as they used to be, and the Irish make them look like pikers."

"Irish offshore banks? I've never heard of such a thing."

"It was on the horizon the last time I was in England," he explained.

"They've tried a lot of things to bring international business to Ire-land. Most didn't pan out, but you don't need any special resources to be a banking power, especially if you're willing to buck the bully tactics of the US and the EU and maintain absolute discretion about your customers."

"Really? You're a guy of unknown depths, Mr. Novak."

"Yep. A diamond of the first water. Better grab me while you can."

I laughed. "I'll consider doing that."

We ate and joked around some more, then headed for the museum.

I parked the Rover in the gravel lot across the street. Will pulled his truck in beside mine. The house was forbidding, all its windows frowning and clouded through a thick bank of Grey. Even the glow of the nexus seemed to have died out. We crossed the street, but this time the gate was locked. I rang the bell on the intercom.

A woman's voice spoke from the box. "We're closed on Mondays."

"Harper Blaine. I have an appointment with the curator."

"Oh. I'll be right up."

A few minutes later, a middle-aged woman in a suit, heels, and corporate hairstyle appeared from behind the house. She took one look at Will and knew a kindred spirit. They chattered antiques the whole way up the drive.

"Nobody cares about the national heritage here," she declared as we reached the kitchen door. "You have to drag every penny of funding out of these bureaucrats' hands as if it were their own money. They'd rather spend it on a new baseball stadium. Watch your feet. There's a towel to wipe your shoes on."

We did as she suggested, leaving the mud on the towel instead of the parquet floor. She led us into the main hall and waved her hands around. "Gorgeous, isn't it? It's a damn sight better than it was when I came here. They had the interior all done in high Victoriana. Crammed with horrible gewgaws and junk, bad wallpaper, ugly, ugly colors. Totally out of period for this building."

"Then why did the museum acquire a parlor organ?" Will asked.

"Oh, yes. That's what you came for, isn't it? There was an organ on the original inventory, but it was broken and the first curator threw it out. Come on. It's upstairs. You can imagine what it was like getting it in here!" she added, leading us up the front staircase. Upstairs, she opened the door in front of us. "There you go. Awful, isn't it?"

A small sofa, chairs, and a needlework stand clustered around the hearth, as before, exuding their reassuring odor of age, must, and wood oil. Against the back wall stood the organ, outlined in gleaming red threads and writhing with vile, silent Grey snakes. Will pulled out the description sheet I'd given him and started studying it.

I felt woozy and my heart sped up. I clamped down on the feeling, but the sense of seasickness remained, tickling away, and the room had become hazy and soft like the stink of rot no matter how I tried to resist it.

Will read the sheet as we walked across the polished wood floor. Two feet inside the door, I felt sick. At four feet, my head was pounding with an instant headache of migraine proportions. I put my hand on Will's arm.

"What's wrong?" he asked.

I lied. "I don't know. I just don't feel well." I turned my attention back to the parlor organ.

It was still the ugliest thing I'd ever seen and would have been even if it wasn't cloaked in swirling energy matrices and sucking darkness like a drain. It had grown worse in just a few days. Clear vision in the Grey seemed to have come with Wygan's "gift." Storm-mist pulse around the organ and phantom faces leered and screamed in transient gusts of paranormal wind. Creeping horror played up and down my spine. I dragged myself a step closer to it, hating the proximity. A glowing tentacle struck out and slammed into my chest where Wygan's thread was tied. I gagged and stumbled.

I tried to bend the Grey and push it away. The tentacle rippled and sucked away the strength of my push. My knees folded and I felt the floor rush up as vision went black.

Will grabbed me under the arms. "Harper!"

The tentacle pulled on me, wrapping around my insides like a steel fist. I choked, "Get me out of here."