Possession

She pursed her lips and scowled, thinking. “How do you know this shit? How do you know what’s happening to my dad?”

I sighed. “I can see them—the ghosts.”

“You’re some kind of psychic, like that chick on TV?”

I almost laughed. “No. I’m not like that at all.”

“You can’t make my dad come back? Like, call him to his body or something?”

“No. That’s not how it works. At least not for me. The human spirit is stubborn. We’re a troublesome bunch. We don’t like to shut up and go away, even when we’re dead. We reshape the whole world to suit us, even the world we can’t see. And something has made these lingering spirits so frantic to speak up that they are bullying people like your dad—the ones who are kind of in between here and there.”

“You said there’s more people like my dad. How many?”

“Just two that I know of, but that’s a lot, if you think about it.”

She gazed at me, her lower lip pugnacious and downturned, thinking hard. Finally she said, “Are you going to help us or not?”

“I’m going to help all of you. But I need help from you, too.”

“What kind?”

“I would like to see some of the papers your dad has written and, if you can remember any of it, a transcript of what he’s been saying. I need to know where he was injured and how long he’s been like this.”

“I’ll get the papers. Mom won’t care if I take them. I don’t know if I can remember the things he’s said but I’ll try. And he was working on a site down near King Street and Alaskan Way when he was hurt. What else?”

Something had been bugging me and I had to ask, “How long has your mom been sick?”

“She’s not sick. She just can’t gain weight.”

“And that doesn’t seem strange to you? Wasn’t she . . . fatter when your dad was hurt?” I chose the word because I knew how dancers felt about the subject of weight and body form. To someone who starves herself, overexercises, and may even do drugs to keep her weight down, any normal degree of plumpness represents the hated “fat.” There’s nothing so cruel as telling another dancer she’s overweight and I couldn’t imagine Olivia had never been angry enough at her mother to shout that mean little word.

Olivia started, tears sparking a moment before she looked horrified at the direction of her thoughts. “Mom was never . . . fat. But she has lost some weight. I’d swear she eats like a pig, but she never gains an ounce—always been jealous of that. We’re all thin in this family.”

“That’s not thin, what your mom is. She’s skinny like someone starving herself.”

“But I told you: She eats all the time!” She threw her hands up in exasperation.

“All the time?”

“Like, five meals a day. I think it’s ’cause she’s stressed over Dad.” Olivia scowled for a moment. Then her face softened as she gave it some thought. “Oh, man . . . that’s so weird. I hadn’t thought about it. . . . Maybe she’s got, like, a parasite or something.”

“Maybe. You need to look after her—and yourself. Do you have brothers or sisters?”

She nodded. “Yeah, two brothers. They’re older than me. They help; they’re just not home right now.”

“Good. Get one of them to help your mom while you come out to bring those papers to me.” I handed her my card. “I promise to do everything I can for your dad.”

“A real promise, or an adult-to-kid promise?”

I wondered what the story was behind that question, but I answered, “I only make the real kind.”

Olivia put out her hand. “Deal. I’ll call when I want to come over. I might have to sneak out. Mom’s freaky about me leaving the house ever since . . . you know.”

“I understand,” I said, shaking her hand. “Don’t do anything risky. If you need my help, or if you can’t come, just let me know. We’ll find another way.”

She smiled at “we.” “Yeah, we will.” She cast a glance over her shoulder, then gave me a conspiratorial grin and a thumbs-up. “Merde!” she whispered, before she turned and closed the door.

I chuckled. It had been a very long time since anyone had offered me one of the dancer’s versions of “good luck.” I suspected I’d need it.

As I walked toward my truck, I got the feeling someone was watching me. I turned back and eyed the Sterling house, but I saw no sign that anyone observed me from there. Still . . . I felt like prey—something I don’t care to be. I considered dropping into the Grey and looking for the observer in the bright mist, but there was no guarantee that would put me at an advantage. If my stalker was paranormal, I might be giving them an opening I’d regret. I kept walking, stretching my senses as far as I could while remaining in the normal world and without making it too obvious that I was aware of my tail. I doubted they thought I was clueless, but I didn’t see a point in putting them on alert.

I was pretty sure they’d have to break for their own vehicle once I got into the truck—or make it obvious there was a second team on me—though I found the idea of a major surveillance team following me around Seattle ridiculous. Who’d be interested in a small-time PI who sees ghosts? I wasn’t working on anything sensitive or significant that I knew of. In spite of Mrs. Sterling’s worries about L&I, there wasn’t any real intrigue about the case in hand. If someone was observing the Sterling house on a fraud investigation, they would just make note of my presence and drop in for a chat if they were really interested. But as I moved away, the sense of being observed persisted. I stopped and dug around in my pockets for my keys, taking a moment to scan the area and peep back over my arm as I gave up on my pockets and began rooting in my bag instead.

Something moved in opposition to the delicate breeze rippling the leaves overhead and left a thin trail of red-gold in the corner of my damaged vision. Yeah, someone was following me. I sighed, annoyed. I don’t have a great tolerance for being tailed, watched, bugged, investigated, or eavesdropped upon. It makes me cranky. The only quandary was whether I wanted to shake them off on general principle more than I wanted to know why they found me so fascinating.

Screw it, I thought. Let them be bored a while; I had more important things to do than wound their feelings by blowing them off now. I’d lose them later and then see where they popped back up—as they would do if they were seriously interested. If it was a casual tail, what did it matter if they dragged along? I was only heading back to my office to see if anything had turned up about Jordan Delamar and to manage some paperwork for other cases. Hardly an exciting afternoon.

SIX

I didn’t get a good look at my tail, but I got enough of a glance as I stepped up into my truck to know it was human—or humanoid at least. The tangled energy around the dark-haired figure in shapeless clothes was a mess of colors restrained in tight white bands that made me think of prisoners bound with rope. The colors weren’t any combination I associated with a specific paranormal creature or magic-user—it certainly wasn’t a vampire of any stripe—but I haven’t seen everything and some ghosts and monsters are complex enough to look convincingly human in such a short sighting. It was more likely to be a normal person than a denizen of the Grey, but if so, whoever it was had an unusual degree of control over their feelings—judging by the strange constraint of the aura.

I got back to the office, half wishing I could stay out in the sun, and keeping an eye out for my shadow as I went. Once I was upstairs, I took a look out of my tiny window, but I couldn’t see anyone on the street who seemed to be watching my building. I gave it up as a waste of time and got on with trying to find further information on Delamar, sorting through e-mails, typing up notes, and generally catching up on the boring necessities of my job.

Still nothing on Delamar. I’d probably have to go stake out the guy’s mailbox at this rate—which is about the least interesting job on the planet. I wondered if the three patients were connected in some way besides their extraordinary medical condition. So far, I had nothing to link them except that they were all vegetative. That in itself was disturbing, since Skelly had said PVS was so rare that the occurrence of three cases simultaneously stretched probability. I thought it was more likely that the ghosts were causing or prolonging the patients’ condition than that they were just lucky enough to have three outlets instead of one. Clearly, the ghosts wanted to be