I sighed and exhaled the sensitive tendrils of the Chorus, letting them taste the ethereal record of the room. Wisps of glimmering light clung to the handles of the faucets and the knob of the paper towel dispenser, and the steam drifting from the bowl of the nearest urinal told me the last guy in the room hadn't flushed. The Chorus glided through the partition between the corpse and me, brushing over the spatter of blood on the inner wall of the stall. They circled the dead man's head and dove into his slack mouth. The flesh was hot but it was an empty shell. They could taste the lingering imprint of two souls: one a faint shadow, the other a deeper discoloration.
The traveler was gone. He had influenced the old man down into the bathroom where he could force the other's spirit out in private. Their fight for dominance had been too much stress, and something had broken inside the old man. The traveler had fled, and the innocent had recovered the use of his body in time for it to expire from the heat damage.
I left the bathroom. There was nothing I could do for the old man. As I reached the landing, the Chorus snapped to the approach of a quartet of lights from the upper deck. Three diffuse, one hard. I drifted downstairs, slipping away from the mid-deck toward the car hold below.
Four men came down from the common room: two in the business armor of expensive suits and precise haircuts, one in the blue jersey of the Washington Department of Transportation, and one with a gold star hanging around his neck on a chain-link lanyard. Seattle Police.
The detective-a wide-shouldered bull wearing an out-of-season jacket beneath an open overcoat-spotted me on the stairs. His eyes were quick, the flitting movement of hummingbirds, and they rapidly digested my physical appearance. I fought an instinctual reaction to hide behind an obscuration, and let him look at me. In a minute, I wouldn't be the focus of his gaze and I could disappear; but for an instant, I just had to stand my ground and appear to be as innocuous as the plant in the hallway.
They were heading for the men's room. One of the two suits was babbling, strings of words that were making the state employee nervous and the cop curious. They clattered off the stairs and disappeared down the hall toward the dead man in the restroom. I glided down the stairs, leaving them to their grisly discovery.
The astral traveler was still on the boat. He had ravaged one body already. I had to find him before he attacked another soul, before he wreaked havoc on someone else.
II
The cold air was a hard kiss on my face as I emerged into the open bay. Eight rows of cars waited under the exposed vault of the ferry, and I felt like I was inside a gargantuan whale. Steel spans colored green and orange by rust and weather framed the ferry's open throat. The wind wailed through this gullet, its outrage channeled by the curve of steel over the flat teeth of the cars ordered in precise rows along the bottom. The stink of brine mingled with the pervasive odor of oil and wet machinery, the decaying halitosis of this metal whale.
He was down here, searching for another host. Some ferry passengers stayed with their cars, comfortable and oblivious in their metal and plastic cocoons-their favorite morning talk radio on the dial, their personalized Starbucks beverage in the drink holder, the climate inside their isolated biospheres mimicking the weather at their dream vacation destination. They would be drowsy, distracted, half-awake: easy targets for an aggressive spirit.
DOT maximized the use of space down here, packing the cars tightly together. While the bumpers of many cars touched, rubber kisses between strangers, others kept a discrete eight inches or so apart, just enough room to sidle between. I wove a random pattern through these gaps as I checked passengers.
Through the silver filigree of the overlay supplied by the Chorus, I searched for conflicts on the spirit level. Hot spots glowed like fallen meteors within rectangular shapes, while thin ribbons of mist streamed between cars. The wide ribbon of a man-laid ley throbbed beneath my feet.
In the driver's seat, sitting still as a stone, was a middle-aged businesswoman. Her head vibrated nearly imperceptibly, a rhythmic tic like a worn second hand on an old watch, and her hands were clenched about the steering wheel. A wide wedding band with a myriad of tiny diamonds was the only jewelry on her fingers. A thin thread of blood dripped over the curve of her lower lip, the result of an involuntary collision between tooth and skin. Silver light sparked in her eyes.
He didn't have control yet. He was a foreign element in her body; he could be extracted without damaging her, without rupturing the integrity of her shell. Physical damage would heal itself-in time-but a tearing of the sheath would be. .
I lashed the Chorus into my knuckles, and drove my hardened fist through the window. Glass exploded into the car, ice crystals raining into the woman's hair. She flinched, but not enough to avoid my hand. I wrapped my fingers around the side of her head.
She screamed, a harsh cry of a soprano imitating a tenor, as the Chorus sparked through the physical contact. The invading spirit felt me coming, and dove deeper into her flesh.
She released her death grip on the steering wheel, and started to beat the covered leather in a frenzied rhythm. She could feel the biting hunger of the Chorus, and knowing what they wanted, she instinctively fought to give up the invader. He just burrowed deeper into her psyche.
I let go. She was aware enough now to fight her own battle. By right of ownership, she had the advantage. One soul, one body-the spiritual anchors gravitated to the relationship they knew.
The bawling note of the boat's horn reverberated through the hold. We were in Elliott Bay, the jagged skyline of Seattle visible in front of the ferry. Through the rain, the buildings were limned with the faint orange and pink glow of dawn. We weren't more than five minutes from the pier. I had a little time yet-five, maybe ten minutes-but, judging from the flickering of red, orange, and blue lights coming from the edge of the pier, the situation was about to get very complicated as we arrived.
The dead body in the bathroom stall. The detective had called his friends. Police and fire waited for the ferry's arrival. I had to be done wrestling with the spirit when the boat docked.
In the Acura, the woman's hands went to the steering wheel again, knuckles bone white on the leather. Her head snapped back, smacking the headrest hard enough to rock the entire seat, and then forward as she vomited a stream of silver light.
The amorphous cloud of silver light was lit in the center by the quivering spark of a soul. The diaphanous cloud drifted through the windshield of the car, and the Chorus tightened around my neck as they touched the trailing edge. The woman's soul. He had forced her out of her own body.
The ferry horn blew again. As the subsonic echo rattled the loose metal of the cars around me, the traveler forced a bloody smile onto the woman's lips. I reached for her head again, and he lurched against the side of the car. His hand found the interior handle and he shoved the door open
The metal frame rammed into my legs. A smear of pain wiped across my thighs, and I fell against the car behind me. He shoved the door open again, trying to catch my kneecaps with the edge of the frame. I pivoted away, rolling along the panel of the car beneath me, and the tip of the Acura's door cut into the rear passenger door of the other car. I dimly heard a voice shouting at me incoherently from within the damaged car.
He tried to pull the door free, and finding it stuck, tried to get out of the car instead. He got one foot down and slipped, unaccustomed to the heel of the woman's shoes. As he struggled to walk-forget running-I scrambled onto the hood of the Acura and leaped over the open door. My fingers caught at the fabric of her jacket, and the Chorus lunged through the wool like bloodhounds through thin underbrush.
There was only one soul inside the woman's flesh this time, and the Chorus' hunger nipped at the alien spirit. Kaleidoscopic splinters spewed into my head-a riotous burst of the soul's memories. Buried within the chaotic ghosts was an imprint of his identity. Douglas, son of Frederick and Amber, family name of Rassmussen.
'Hello, Doug.' I got a hand on an elbow and pulled her to me, so that I could touch her head again. The full flood of the Chorus roared into her body. Doug screamed, his spirit malforming her vocal cords.
'Let her go.' It took a second to find the source of the voice. Two cars back, standing in the aisle, legs apart. The detective, his gun held steady on me.
