Seawitch

life. I don’t want to move back up on the hard like a bug crawling on a tabletop. I never even knew she was unhappy. I guess she told me, but I must not have listened. . . .” He looked more shaken and sad than I would have expected, even for such a revelation.

“Where is she now?” I asked in a soft voice.

“She died last year. Complications after surgery. She had cancer, but she didn’t tell me about it and she asked the kids not to, either, so I never knew till it was over. That’s why I like to spend as much time with the kids and grandkids now as possible; I don’t want to miss anything else.”

We took the copied photos and left behind a much sadder pirate than we had met.

NINE

Pleiades was impressive. It shone like its namesake; every inch of paint and trim gleamed. Even in the Grey the big blue sailboat had a sheen to it that exuded a low hum of self-satisfaction. We stood on the finger dock and admired it for a few moments before Solis tried knocking on the hull as he had with Mambo Moon. This time there was no answer except the tiniest of shivers in the Grey. The moment of waiting silence passed and he glanced at me.

I shrugged. “If she’s in there, she’s not going to come out.”

“And we may not board without permission. Do you believe Miss Knight is inside?”

“I don’t think so. But I think she’s probably got some kind of alarm system, so even with permission from the owners, we still wouldn’t catch up to her.”

“If we entered under a warrant, the alarm would be directed to the police. We would already know the situation and ignore the call.”

I shook my head. “That’s not the sort of alarm system I meant.”

He eyed me askance. “You imagine something . . . extra?”

“I’m not imagining anything. I can see it, remember? When you knocked, it sent out waves and I don’t mean in the water. There’s something not normal about that boat.”

Solis stood still and studied me a moment in silence. Then he turned away, saying, “What do you suggest now?”

“I suggest you leave,” answered a voice from the main dock, a strange harmonic vibrating under the tone.

We both looked up. A pretty young woman stood at the beginning of the finger dock with her arms crossed over her chest and glared at us belligerently. She was a dead ringer for Shelly Knight except that her hair was red. I’ve known blondes who dye their hair red to combat brassiness or a tendency to go green from chemicals in water, but this didn’t look like a bottle job: It looked like her hair was alive in some strange way I couldn’t put a finger on that turned it the vibrant red of oxygenated blood. I didn’t dare sink deeper into the Grey right in front of her and everyone who might be looking this way, but even restricting myself to a mere glance, I saw her energy corona as a huge, writhing, barbed tangle of green, blue, and red that stretched out to each side and down toward the dock and the water like a thirsty vine run amok, rustling with the sound of talons on glass.

She narrowed her eyes as Solis produced his badge and ID card and walked toward her. I kept a step behind, letting him partially hide me from her view; I didn’t like the cold, squirming sensation that her scrutiny brought and I’m not always sure how much a paranormal creature can tell about me from a glance, so I preferred she get as short a glance as possible. The fish didn’t seem to like her, either, raising a drumroll of splashes just out of sight. The corner of her mouth twitched in irritation at the sound but she didn’t turn her gaze from us.

“I beg your pardon for the intrusion,” Solis began, drawing closer. “We’re seeking Shelly Knight or any relatives or friends here who may have known her twenty-five to thirty years ago.”

“I don’t know her.”

“Is not your name Knight?”

He didn’t say anything else, just looked at her with that bland, inquiring glance that tricked people into talking just to fill the silence.

“Jacque Knight. Not Shelly.”

“Related?”

“She’s not my mother or whatever it is you imagine.” Her voice swooped like poetry.

“I do not imagine. I only ask, since you bear a striking resemblance.” Knight tossed her head and the coiling strands of her aura flexed and tightened like snakes constricting on prey, throwing off a cloud of gray-green mist. “How lucky for her. Now shove off.”

Solis shrugged and cocked his head slightly. I couldn’t see his expression, but I thought he’d probably raised his eyebrows in an expression that needed only a muttered “meh” to imply her anger was a meaningless inconvenience. He’d pulled it on me often enough. “I apologize for taking your time.” He stepped around her and I followed him, cutting only the swiftest peek at her as we passed. I caught a disconcerting glimpse of something only half-human with hair that reached and coiled the same way as her aura. . . . I shivered, my skin instantly clammy.

A chilly whisper song and an urge to move on and forget I’d ever met Jacque Knight blew over the raised hairs on my arms and neck but I refused to give in to it. And I could tell by his stern posture that Solis wouldn’t, either—which made me frown in thought, pushing the unnatural suggestion out of my mind.

“You feeling . . . disinclined to loiter?” I asked under my breath.

“Yes, but I won’t run.”

We walked along the dock toward the gate in silence and spoke only once we’d stepped out onto the public promenade. We both shivered a little and exchanged uncomfortable glances as the pushy sensation faded.

“You felt that,” I said. “That insistent ‘Get the hell out of here’ sensation.”

“Only the desire to put distance between myself and that young woman—who’s too young to be Shelly Knight,” Solis observed, continuing to stroll along the pavement at an easy stride no longer edged in restraint. So he’d felt it but he didn’t want to discuss it, at least not yet.

I took the hint. “But definitely related, in spite of what she said,” I added, staying on the case. Two women with such similar names couldn’t look so much alike and have no family in common—no matter how distant. But there was the small matter of her aura, which boiled with energy. I’d met plenty of magic users and strange creatures whose power let them live long beyond a single human lifetime—hell, I’d been told I probably would, too, and I would bet my abilities weren’t even a flickering match light compared to Jacque Knight’s, whatever she was. And that, of course, made me wonder more about Shelly. . . .

Solis paused on the walkway and turned to lean against the railing, his back to the docks. “I agree. I shall have to look into her records—and Shelly’s—once I’m back in the office. We’ll have to wait for the log pages so there is no point in pursuing that at this moment. I could put some time in on other cases. . . .”

“If you like. I’m actually slow right now, so this is the only big thing on my agenda; I’d still like to close it as soon as I can, though. So right now I want to take one more look at Seawitch. You don’t have to come along if you prefer to avoid my weirdness. Or, you know, you want to get back to those other cases.”

He turned his head and regarded me with that odd silent glance of his. Then he shrugged. “I prefer not to leave you alone in my crime scene. My other cases can wait a little longer.”

I caught myself starting to laugh at the absurdity of it but I didn’t let it slip out. “All right. Time for act two of the Harper Blaine Creep Show. I should have brought my tap shoes,” I muttered to myself.

Solis accompanied me to Seawitch without any further comment. He was back to inscrutable and I wasn’t sure how I felt about that. On the one hand, it was normal for him; on the other, it was so normal, I wasn’t sure whether it was a sign of acceptance or rejection.

As we neared the boat I saw a man standing on the bow of the boat in the slip across from it. He had his hands on his hips as he faced Seawitch. With the sun lowering toward the water ahead of us, it was difficult to see anything but his shape: average height with ropy-looking limbs and a hard hemisphere of belly that defied gravity. The shape of his head in shadow was curiously elongated at the bottom and, as we got