Seawitch

closer I saw he had a long ponytail tied low at his neck. It reminded me of Quinton’s now-cropped queue, which hadn’t yet regrown long enough to gather into a proper tail so it just stuck out awkwardly, revealing cowlicks neither of us had known he had. A touch of chill seemed to reach from Seawitch and I momentarily wished I was at home with Quinton, teasing him about those cowlicks, instead of here, walking toward a haunted ship.

The man on the near boat turned to watch us as we walked toward Seawitch’s boarding steps. I stopped and looked up at him and he returned my stare with a slightly out-of-focus gaze from eyes red rimmed and gummy due to lack of sleep. I remembered what the yard manager had said and called out, “Are you Stu Francis?”

He gave an affirmative grunt and nodded. “Who’re you?” His voice sounded rough, as if he’d been smoking unfiltered cigarettes since grade school.

“My name’s Harper Blaine. This is Detective Sergeant Solis. We’re investigating Seawitch.”

Another affirmative grunt and nod from Francis. “Wouldn’t want to be you guys. Damn thing’s spooked.”

“Spooked?”

“Got ghosts like a freighter’s got rats.” Several heavy splashes spattered water onto the end of the dock. “Damn fish! Crazy-ass salmon!” Francis shouted at the water. “Get the hell out of here!” Then he fixed his watery stare on me. “It’s this damned boat, I’ll betcha. Got the fish acting crazy. Saw two otters and a harbor seal in here, too.”

“Is that unusual?” I asked.

“You betcha. Salmon follow the water scent up the river; they don’t pause to rest until they clear the locks. They never come in here on the way up, only on the way down. But this year they’re in here like a swarm of cockroaches. Kept me up all night, banging on the hull, chattering.”

I must have looked skeptical because he added, “And don’t tell me fish don’t talk. They make all kinds of noise up against the hull. Sounds just like a bunch of teenagers whispering in class. ‘Blah, blah, blah, yak, yak, yak.’ Man can’t get any sleep! Talking about a shipwreck in Spain. What are salmon doing in Spain, anyway?”

Spain? I thought, something tickling at my brain. I reconsidered the origin of his rheumy eyes—they might have resulted from consuming a considerable amount of alcohol regularly as well as from a handful of sleepless nights.

“Mr. Francis,” Solis interrupted. “Why do you believe the Seawitch is haunted?”

“Screams. Couple of nights ago she started screaming.”

“You heard screams from inside the boat?” Solis clarified.

Francis glared at him and shook his head adamantly. “No, sir. I said she screamed and I meant it. The noise inside came later. Boats make noises all the time—when the wind comes down off the point in winter and plays on the masts and rigging, it can sound like a chorus of wolves and lost souls. But this wasn’t the north wind. There wasn’t any wind! I never heard nothing like this before.” He jabbed a finger at Seawitch. “That thing screamed.”

Francis made a noise in his throat that could only be called a harrumph and swung on his heel to stomp away into his own boat. Somehow he managed to slam the hatch as he did.

Solis and I exchanged puzzled frowns, then turned around to face Seawitch.

The boat looked less inviting than ever, especially when contrasted with the boats we had just come from; it was neither shiny nor homey and I could not imagine anyone wanting to hang out with friends on the dock near it, either. In just a single day the boat had gone from sad and spooky to outright nasty, the coils of Grey that hung on it now churning and billowing like a nest of angry snakes. For a moment I thought of Jacque Knight’s grasping aura and shivered.

Solis watched me. “You have changed your mind?”

“No,” I answered. “But I think this is not going to be as much fun as the last time.”

“You have an odd idea of fun, Ms. Blaine.”

I don’t know why that torqued me, but it did. Maybe it was the malevolent energy bleeding off Seawitch, Francis’s weirdness affecting my thoughts, or just my own discomfort left over from the day before and Solis’s reserved silence on matters freaky, but I turned and glared at him. “I think you can drop the ‘Ms.’ now, since we’re stuck together on this. I don’t expect you to like or respect me—or even believe me—enough to be friends, but I’d appreciate it if you didn’t mock me.”

Solis raised his eyebrows and looked genuinely surprised. “I find you strange but I do not mock you. What would you have me call you?”

I bit my tongue; I was being unreasonable. I was good at my job and I’d helped him out plenty of times— sometimes more than he knew—but I was worried that my revelations about just how “strange” I was were straining the relationship when I wanted it to be smoother, not harder. So if I overreacted now, any breakage would be my own fault. I took a long, slow breath and replied more evenly, “I’m sorry. Just Blaine, or even Harper, will do. What do you call the cops you work with?”

“I call them by their last names—it’s written on their badges.”

I laughed. It just came over as amusing that he implied he couldn’t remember people’s names without a label on them. Solis flushed a little and looked aside. He cleared his throat and waited for me to wind down. When I stopped chuckling he glanced at me and then at the boat again.

“Shall we proceed, M—” he caught himself and restarted. “If you’re ready, shall we proceed, Blaine?”

I grinned at him. “Yes, we can, Mr. Solis.”

“I like ‘Sergeant Solis,’” he replied with the hint of a smile. “It makes me feel taller. Which, beside you, is a feat. And my wife likes it.”

“I didn’t know you were married,” I said. Apparently we had broken some serious ice.

Solis nodded. “Sí.”

I raised my eyebrows, but he didn’t volunteer any more. He only gestured toward the boat and waited for me to precede him.

We started up the stairs to Seawitch’s aft deck. On the third step I felt cold and the pressure in my lungs increased as if we were diving into deep waters. I made the last steps and paused, catching my breath with an effort. Solis watched me and started to raise his hand as if to take my arm, but I waved him off and headed for the interior. He followed wordlessly, a frown of curiosity on his face.

Just inside the salon I turned back to him. “This is where things get . . . weird,” I said. “You ready?”

He gave it a moment’s serious consideration—he wasn’t taking this lightly and I felt a wash of relief, pretty sure that before replying he was recalling what I’d shown and told him yesterday. I didn’t push him to find in my favor; he had to do it himself. He seemed to brace himself, then gave a tiny nod. “Yes.”

“If . . . you can’t see me, call out. I don’t want to get separated.” Then I let myself slide a little closer to the Grey without getting too thin in the normal world. I would be glad of Solis’s presence if things got too rough but he’d be no help if he couldn’t see me. And I did expect it to get rough: The slice of the energetic world within Seawitch was aboil with colored mists, not just the thin threads I’d noticed the day before. A volume of foggy shapes seemed to battle in knots and whorls of green and red and blue that tangled and roiled against one another. It was like walking through the fringe of a war zone where the fighting had broken down to small but desperate skirmishes.

I stepped forward with care, resisting the urge to sink to a more elemental level and dodge some of the mist world’s turmoil. Streamers of animate fog buffeted me like ropes cut loose in a wind. The slender, bright thread of purple energy that had led down the stairs the first time I’d been aboard was missing this time. Shredded or removed, I wasn’t sure, but I had the strong impression that the energetic conflict up here was only a diversion from whatever was waiting in the engine room. I glanced around to spot Solis, seeing him as a ghostly version of himself with his carefully contained energy much brighter and more colorful than I normally saw it: a vibrant yellow with swirling sparks of blue and gold. Interesting . . .

I eased out a little and motioned to Solis to follow me down the stairs to the lower deck. Then I slid a bit back into the Grey and pursued the sense of something waiting. Through the crew quarters and down the passageway to the engine-room doors, the writhing smoke let me know I was taking the right path. I considered slipping through the doors in the Grey, but I didn’t want to lose Solis, so I stepped back to the normal plane one