Marked Fur Murder (17 page)

“I see,” I said. “Well, there's just one small problem with that, isn't there? I mean, the marbles aren't Ghostly, are they?”

“
Not,
says Very British Bear,
as such
. But other than that, he thinks it's a very fine theory and absolutely full of plaws.”

[It's certainly full of something.]

“What about you, Theodora?” I asked. “What's your theory?”

Before she could answer, Consuela showed up with the tea. I thanked her and busied myself with all the little rituals that go along with, as the British say, a nice cuppa. When that was all sorted and both of us had steaming cups of Earl Grey in front of us, I asked Theodora again.

“Well,” she said, “my own thoughts on the matter are not
quite
as fanciful as Very's. I believe the marbles are being placed by a human agency, but as to their purpose I remain baffled. There's a registry of which animals are buried here and who buried them, which Mr. Cooper and I are going to peruse this evening. A connection of some sort may make itself evident, though I suspect the truth will prove elusive.”

Theodora started and jerked back in her seat, her tea sloshing over the lip of her cup. Her eyes widened in surprise, then narrowed into a glare.

“What's wrong?” I said. I put down my own cup quickly. “Are you all right?”

“Fine. Other than the fact I have a rather excitable talking jackrabbit in my lap. Doc, you know I don't like it when you do that.” She appeared to be talking to something mere inches from her face, her gaze focused downward. Her slightly exasperated but resigned attitude was exactly that of a parent talking to a misbehaving child. “You almost made me spill my tea.”

Again, she listened before replying. “No, I wasn't going to forget, I just hadn't gotten to that part yet. And don't call me that, it's highly inaccurate and not a little insulting.”

“Tell me what?”

“About the snake.”

Whiskey's ears grew points. [The snake? She saw the snake?]

“You saw a snake?” I said. “Cooper's snake?”

“Well, I'd hardly say it belonged to Mr. Cooper, though he was the one who first reported its existence. But yes, apparently there was one; quite an enormous thing, and just as brightly colored as Mr. Cooper described.”

“Where did you see it?”

“Slithering between the graves, according to Doc. Very was busy admiring some dandelions, so he didn't notice.”

“You didn't see it yourself?”

She shook her head. “I'm afraid not. Doc tried to call me over, but it was gone by the time I got there. He was rather overwrought by that time, what with the bulging eyes and the hopping up and down and the inarticulate cries of horror.”

She glanced down, then snorted. “Oh, you weren't frightened? I see. What I took for overwhelming terror was simply excitement at the prospect of facing a worthy foe. Yes, yes, I'm sure you would. But don't use the word
murderize;
it's vulgar. Besides, you're pronouncing it incorrectly.”

Doc Wabbit then bounded off her lap and back onto the floor—or at least that's what I assumed by watching Theodora's eyes. She turned her gaze back to me and sighed. “Doc's always running off and sticking his nose into everything. Useful as an investigative tool, but he tends to exaggerate details. Sometimes he even makes things up.”

[Imagine that. No, wait, you already are.]

I smiled and took a sip of tea. “Well, this time he might be telling the truth. I've been getting reports that other people have seen this snake, too. Though I have no idea how it might relate to your marble mystery.”

“Really? Others have seen it, too? Tell me more.”

So I did, though I didn't really have that much to relate. In the end, I told her to go see Caroline, who could provide her with details. She said she would, thanked me, and hurried off.

[So now we have a sighting by a figment of someone's imagination,] Whiskey said.

I took a last sip of my tea and put the cup down. “Which means our snake could be a ghost.”

[Or as non-existent as the one who claims to have seen it.]

“It's a mystery, all right. But I don't think it's the one we need to worry about now. Unless…”

[Unless what?]

“Those monsters Teresa Firstcharger mentioned. The Unktehila. She said they came from the depths of the sea.”

[So?]

“So not all giant snakes are land dwellers. In fact, the bigger the snake, the more likely it is to be at least semi-aquatic—like the anaconda.”

[Wonderful. Not only do we have to catch a killer and deal with a rogue Thunderbird, now we have to factor in a sea serpent, as well…]

*   *   *

I smuggled Whiskey into the hospital in a gym bag; sometimes it's extremely useful to have a shape-shifting partner, especially one who can keep quiet and doesn't need to breathe.

But when I got to Ben's room, he wasn't there.

I called Shondra. “I'm at the hospital,” I told her. “But Ben isn't.”

“He was there twenty minutes ago,” she said. “Not conscious, though. I stayed for a while, talked to hospital security, and then went back to the house. Not much for me to do until he wakes up.”

“There is one thing. Can you take a look at the footage of the security cameras and tell me if any of the guests left the estate last night?”

“You think one of them is responsible?”

“Not necessarily. Just checking out a hunch.”

“Okay, I'll call you back.”

The nurse down the hall told me Ben had gone for some fresh air—they had a balcony on the next level down where patients could step outside without going all the way to the ground floor. I found an old man in a tattered bathrobe there, tethered to an IV pole by a plastic tube in his arm, sitting on a plastic chair and looking morose. From the collection of soggy cigarette butts on the concrete floor, I could tell that most of the patients who came out here were after air that was not so much fresh as smoked.

“Uh, excuse me,” I said. “Have you seen a man out here in the last little while? Sandy-blond hair, kind of rugged looking, bandaged shoulder? Might have been a little spacey.”

The old man gave me a sour look. “Nah, ain't been nobody out here but me. I only been here a little while, though—was too windy, before.”

I squinted up at the sunny sky. “Seems nice now.”

He shrugged. “Sure. But you shoulda seen it fifteen minutes ago—blowin' like a mother. No way to get a smoke lit, that's for sure.”

I glanced down at the discarded butts on the floor. There was something strange about them—they were arranged in a pattern. A
circular
pattern. As if they'd been put there on purpose …

Or blown there.

“Oh, no,” I said. “He wouldn't have. Why would he? Unless…”

The old man saw the look on my face and how I was staring at the butts on the floor. He chuckled. “Hey, don't take it so hard. Everyone sneaks out here for a smoke, no matter how bad off they are. I seen people with cancer puffing away like chimneys. Can't say I blame them—it ain't like quittin' is gonna do 'em any good now.”

I barely heard him—I was already on my way back to Ben's hospital room. I'd stashed his cell phone in the drawer beside the bed, and I hoped he hadn't taken it with him. It wouldn't do me any good if he had; I doubted his phone plan covered other dimensions.

But it would tell me who the last person who'd called him was.

When Ben traveled to Thunderspace, he did it via a mystic vortex, one that looked like a whirlwind to an outside observer. It left little circular drifts of detritus in its wake, just like a real whirlwind—just like the circular pattern of butts on the smoking balcony. If Teresa Firstcharger had learned Ben's cell number, she might have tried to sidestep me by pitching her idea to Ben directly. And from the looks of things, he'd taken her up on it.

But when I got to Ben's room and found his phone, the last call on it was from me. A trip to the nurses' station and a few questions determined that Ben hadn't gotten a call from one of the hospital's landlines, either, or received any visitors other than Shondra. And then Shondra herself called back. “Okay. Teresa Firstcharger, Efram Fimsby, Hayden Metcalfe, and Keene all went out for a few hours in the evening. I'm texting you the exact times; you'll note that none of them was accounted for when Ben was shot.”

“Thanks, Shondra. I'll talk to you later.” I hung up.

Ben wasn't here. He'd gone to Thunderspace on his own. Why?

Instinct, maybe. If what Firstcharger told me about a Thunderbird healing faster on their own turf—or rather, above it—was true, then Ben might have gone there without understanding why. He'd had enough presence of mind to step outside first, though I didn't know how conscious he'd been at the time; I had visions of him staggering down the hospital hallway, his wound reopening under the strain, blood staining the fresh bandages …

I shook my head. That hadn't happened—the nurses wouldn't have let it. He must have walked out there under his own steam and reasonably alert, and without hearing from Firstcharger.

I was pondering it when Ben walked through the door, still in his hospital gown. Physically, he looked a lot better than the last time I'd seen him; he carried himself without wincing, his back straight and his eyes clear. Clear—but very, very troubled.

“Ben? Are you all right? What happened?”

He closed the door behind him, then came over and sat down on the bed. “I went home,” he said. “To the Thunderbird dimension. Feels funny, calling a place that strange home, but that's what it feels like. And I was sure. So sure.”

I put my hand on his injured shoulder, gently. He didn't wince. “How's the injury?”

“What? Oh, the shoulder. Fine. I can barely feel it. Guess it wasn't as bad as we thought.”

“You had a steel-tipped rod embedded in your body. Kind of hard to exaggerate that.”

He turned toward me, and the pain on his face had nothing to do with his shoulder. “She wasn't there, Foxtrot. Why wasn't she there? I don't understand.”

“What, Firstcharger? Did she contact you, after all?”

“Not Firstcharger.
Anna
.”

“Your sister? But she's…”

And then I got it.

Sure, Anna was dead. But she was also a powerful entity with supernatural abilities, descended from a tribe that communed with gods. Beings that could travel from one afterlife to another, and had a whole dimension all to themselves that they called home. Where else would her spirit go?

“Oh, Ben,” I said. “I'm sorry. I didn't think—that just didn't occur to me—”

“I couldn't find her. It's such a big place, though—like the whole world if there was nothing but sky. Nothing but wind and clouds and sun during the day, and the moon and stars at night. I flew around the whole thing, Trot. Faster and higher than I've ever gone. And when I couldn't find her up there, I dove down. I really thought I'd just go right through to the other side, like crossing through the middle of an empty bubble, but I was wrong. There
is
something, right in the middle.”

“Ground, you mean? Actual land?”

He shook his head. “Not exactly. It's more like a forest, except up and down are all mixed up. The trees grow out of big jagged splinters of rock, and none of them seems to pay attention to gravity, either—they just hang there in space. It's sort of like someone took a few thousand acres of woods and a mountain range and jumbled them all together. It's on a really large scale, too—all the trees are massive, but there's lot of room between them to fly. I didn't go in, just flew around the outside—it looked like a giant maze in there and I was afraid I'd get lost. Do you think I should have gone in? Is that where she is?”

“Take it easy. I don't know exactly how all the afterlife stuff works—but if that's where dead Thunderbirds go, wouldn't the place be a little more populated?”

“I don't know. Maybe they were hiding. Maybe there's something about being a Thunderbird I haven't learned yet. Maybe…” He stopped himself and clenched both his fists. “I wish Anna were here,” he said quietly. “She was always the one with all the answers.”

I didn't know what to say. If I told him about Teresa Firstcharger's proposal, he'd be back in Thunderspace before I could blink. But I couldn't keep it from him, either. “Listen to me, okay? I have learned a few things since I started this gig, and the most important one is that nobody's gone forever. If cats and dogs and parakeets and turtles and fish and birds live on, then so do people. And Anna most definitely was a person.”

“Then where is she, Foxtrot?” His eyes were brimming with tears, and his voice was breaking. “Where's my
sister
?”

I took him in my arms and held him as he cried. “It's okay,” I whispered. “It's going to be okay.” Outside, rain began to spatter against the window.

As I held him, I realized that there was only one way to get the answers he needed, and that was to talk to someone who knew more than we did: Teresa Firstcharger.

Eventually he pulled himself away, wiping his nose against his sleeve in that way men do when they're trying to shift from heavy-duty emotional release back to being manly men. He smiled at me and said, “Got a Kleenex?”

“Of course. We're in a hospital room, after all.” I plucked a few from the box on the bedside table and handed them over. He blew his nose and wiped his eyes.

“I have something to tell you,” I said. “But you have to promise me two things first. One, that you'll think hard about the possible consequences; and two, that you'll take me with you.”

He studied me for a second, then said, “Okay. Where are we going, and why?”