“Jason Chan,” Sonata repeated, then began a quiet, oddly respectful litany of the young man’s history on earth. His full name, Jason Matthew, and his birth date, the nineteenth of September. He’d been barely twenty- four. His family’s names, the towns he’d lived—all information available from his work record, and all of it meant to draw a dead man closer to the living’s world.
All of it meant to draw him closer to life, when there was an ancient, magical cauldron pouring warped vitality back into the dead, and when we already knew that it could help a ghost latch on to mortal magic and gain corporeal form.
Wow. I’d had some really bad ideas, but right then, this one was the prizewinner. I said, “Oh,
I wasn’t at all sure it was safer for me to go traipsing around the Dead Zone than it was to call ghosts back from the dead, not when the cauldron was doing its thing. I was, though, very sure that letting Jason Chan or any other ghost get a foothold back in the real world was a mistake, and the only way I saw to have my cake and eat it, too, was to fling myself into another plane of existence and hope like hell it worked.
My general impression of the Dead Zone was a bit
Jason Chan stood right on the edge of infinity, about to dive over into the living world. Space and time and eternity spread out, all that enormous emptiness somehow unquestionably behind him, and the only thing standing between him and a twisted unlife was me.
I sprang at him, catching him in the middle with my shoulder, and we skidded halfway across the universe before coming to a stop. The edge of the Dead Zone disappeared, thankfully and familiarly an endless distance away. I flopped over, trying to calm a rabbit-fast heart.
Jason, upon whom I’d flopped, said, “Jesus Christ, lady, what the hell is your problem?” He flung me off in a tangle of elbows and knees, and I skittered onto my backside.
“Sorry. Sorry, I—”
“Are you crazy? What’re you doing tackling people like that? Are you—” He broke off, panting for breath and staring at me. After a couple of seconds his ire faded, leaving him with a little grin. “Okay, so this isn’t usually how I meet girls, and you’re nuts, but maybe I shouldn’t bitch if women are going to literally throw themselves at me.” He offered a hand. “Jason Chan. You always tackle guys when you want to meet them?”
It probably said something about my life that I actually had to think about it before saying, “I don’t think so,” and shaking his hand. “I’m Joanne Walker. Sorry about that.”
“Nothing to be sorry for.” His grin broadened and we finished getting untangled from one another. “I’ve seen you before.”
Dude. Even the dead used the worst pick-up line in history. I said, “Er, no, I don’t think so,” again, and he shook his head.
“Yeah, I have. You were at the museum yesterday with that cop who was asking me about the cauldron. You were the other cop!” He scooted back a few inches and looked me over. “I didn’t recognize you right away. You look better now, if you don’t mind me saying so.”
He’d been
Because yesterday he’d had his head bashed in, which hadn’t been such a good look for him. Today his self-image was what he’d looked like alive: young, broad shouldered, short black hair, quick smile. He was cute, the kind of guy you’d bring home to Mom. “How’s your head? Billy said you had a migraine.”
“It’s gone,” he said with a mix of astonishment and satisfaction, then laughed. “The migraine’s gone. My head’s still here.” He clapped both hands against it, making sure of that, and grinned again. “So, did you guys have any luck with the cauldron? The other detective said he’d clear my going home with Sandburg, but he’s gotta be pissed. You’d think he’d given birth to that thing, or something.”
“We’re still looking for it. That’s…” Ice crept over my arms and made me shiver. Jason Chan apparently had no idea he was dead. I didn’t know what would happen if I pointed it out to him. “That’s why I’m here. I hoped I could ask you a few more questions.”
“Sure.” He glanced around, then came back to me with a smile. He smiled easily, this dead young man. I wondered if he had when he’d been alive. “Would it be unprofessional if I took you out for a drink while I answered your questions? This isn’t the greatest place to get to know each other.”
There were many aspects of my bizarre life that I was coming to accept. Getting hit on by a dead guy was not one I was eager to mark up as commonplace, or, in fact, as anything less than seriously creepy. “Maybe we’d better keep it professional. If you could concentrate on your surroundings, it might help you remember details that escaped you earlier due to your migraine.”
“Oh, sure.” Jason frowned, glancing around again. I had no idea what he saw, but I was pretty sure it wasn’t the rolling endless gray of the Dead Zone. “Like I said to the other detective, I came in to work with a low- grade migraine. Seemed like I’d had one all month, so my focus wasn’t at its best.”
“I’ve only had a migraine once. I thought I probably had a brain tumor and was going to die.” Embarrassingly enough, that was true. It certainly gave me sympathy for somebody who suffered them regularly.
Jason shot me a rueful look. “Yeah, basically. It wasn’t that bad, but—you know, it was weird, but I swear it got worse around that cauldron. I always get a light show when a migraine comes on, but just looking at that thing was like staring at the sun.”
The ice that had settled over my skin melted suddenly, turning to a trickle of interest down my spine. “Really? I know it sounds odd, but that might be important. Can you describe exactly what you saw?”
He hesitated, eyebrows drawing down. “I hadn’t thought about it, but now that you ask, it was always the same. That’s not what usually happens. Usually the patterns change when I looked away from something. Anyway, usually it was—” He broke off with a sheepish laugh. “You’re going to think this sounds stupid.”
“You wouldn’t believe some of the things I’ve heard, said and done in this job. Try me.”
Chan rolled his eyes and looked away, then glanced back. “I said it was like looking at the sun, and it was. All kinds of flares and loops in really bright white and gold. But it was dark in the middle of it, like there was a black hole in the center of the sun. And the way the loops wove around it, moving all the time, it was like they were constantly retying themselves around the darkness in the middle.”
“The warding spell.” I dropped my face into my hands, rubbing a thumb over the scar on my cheek. Lots of people got migraines. I wondered how many of them were at least occasionally seeing, but not recognizing, auras or magic being done. Hoping Jason hadn’t picked up on the spell comment, I looked up again. “Is that what it looked when you came in Saturday?”
“Shouldn’t you be writing this stuff down?”
“Oh. Yeah. Thanks.” I reached for my back pocket, where, in real life, I never carried a pad of paper. But this was the Dead Zone, an astral plane, and if I needed paper, it would be there. And so it was, a little spiral- bound blue notebook with a puffy Mustang sticker on the cover. My subconscious not only thought I was still employed as a mechanic, but also that I was nine years old. Great. At least there was a pen stuck through the spirals. “Sorry, go ahead.”
“It’s Jason Chan, C-H-A-N, and my number is 216—”
I laughed, cutting him off. “I have all your particulars back at the station, Jason.”
He snapped with a melodramatic sweep of his arm. “Can’t blame a guy for trying.”
“I guess not.” Too bad he hadn’t had the opportunity to try when he was alive. “So, Saturday night?”
“There was nothing weird. Archie and I always trade off which wing we’re doing. He did the special-exhibits wing first while I did the permanent wing, and then we’d switch. The place is so quiet we never thought we
