brighter for a moment, lighting into a spreading spiderweb with me at the center, radiating unevenly in several directions. I imagined I would see more if I turned around, but I didn’t want to put my back to Carlos and Cameron.
Carlos held up his other hand, a small blade gleaming in it. “If you would oblige me, I can show you more.”
I narrowed my eyes at him in suspicion. I knew what his knives were capable of.
“Only one drop.”
“No sucking up my soul or anything like that.”
“I would find it a particularly sweet token, but no. I have no need for that. Today.” I had the distinct impression he was teasing me and I had to give it some thought before I held up my left hand and offered him a finger—one particular finger, which he found amusing, but he still pricked it quickly with the tip of the knife.
A tiny drop of blood welled on my fingertip. He caught it on the edge of the knife’s blade, whispering to it, and touched the blood to the dulling gleam of the web he had drawn from my chest.
The web flared bright, glittering with sparks of rose and gold that raced into the distance of the reaching splines. More than I would have thought, yet so few, and stretching in so many directions. . . .
“That is family.” Carlos said. He pointed his finger at the pink strands. “These are ties of affection. And these,” he added, pointing to rare thinner, darker strands that wove among the brighter ones, “are ties of blood. You have tried to cut these, but some persist. They are not like the ones you forge yourself but they are as strong, and each binds you, flows from you and back to you. That is family, this web, this complexity. This binding. Yours burns with the power of what you are, and cutting those strands sends shocks throughout that web and everything it touches, calling darkness to fill the voids. There are always forces opposed to order and control, opposed to the Guardian and to you. They will revel in that darkness and use it for their own ends.” He moved his hand with care, not touching any of the complicated, twisted threads of light, until he pointed to one that was brighter than the rest, hot pink, glittering, twisted with other parts that spun away in perpendicular and obtuse directions, fading faster than the rest as they stretched away from me. “There is your beloved and the filaments of his own family, his blood kin, that bind to him and through him to you. You see the intricacy of it all. How twined and knotted as it grows closer to you. How beautiful and terrible.”
His gaze was soft, lit in the glow of this strange display, and then he flicked his fingers and the light show vanished. “You see.”
I nodded, but part of my brain was trying to rebuild parts of that web, to burn a permanent vision of the ties and clues, the hints of things that had momentarily burned so clearly and now were gone again.
“We haven’t been able to stop him,” Cameron said, breaking the shivering moment of dazzled darkness. “We don’t know his plans, but he sent Inman back to spy on us—”
I had to shake myself back to the conversation at hand, remembering that it was Purlis he was talking about. “Probably to find a way to grab a full vampire for his project—whatever it is,” I said.
“You don’t know?” Carlos had fallen back again, letting Cameron take the lead, but he continued to watch me with that unsettling stare. I refocused on Cameron—it was easier, if more cowardly.
I shook my head. “Not really. He calls it the ‘Ghost Division’—which I think is as much an Intelligence- community pun as it is serious—and it’s something to do with studying paranormals and possibly using them but I don’t know how. Maybe as spies, maybe as assassins, maybe as guinea pigs for developing something else. . . . Quinton knows and he says it’s horrifying, but he’s busy staying out of his father’s hands while doing all he can to monkey-wrench the whole thing, so he hasn’t been forthcoming with details. I suspect the project protocols include some rather gruesome practices, since Quinton’s father doesn’t consider most paranormals to be anything but dangerous lab animals and he thinks of humans who display paranormal ability as ‘freaks’ to be studied, analyzed, and used as he sees fit—which probably includes killing them and taking a look at their brains and insides. Do you think he’s taking the homeless, too?”
“How or if they are connected to Mr. Purlis is still a mystery. I have the name correctly, don’t I?”
I nodded. “Yes, James McHenry Purlis—I had to pick at Quinton for quite a while to get that information, though it hasn’t done me much good. He’s very deeply buried in the Intelligence machine and I haven’t been able to make any connections to him—he’s a deliberate blank.”
Cameron gave a thoughtful grunt. “We’ve had no better luck. We can’t seem to track him except in general directions. If his mind is set on taking others of mine captive, we may have to strike, even though the fallout won’t be pleasant.”
“And it appears he’s temporarily redirected Inman to harass you,” Carlos added.
“Inman won’t be as much of a problem now that I know he’s out there. Don’t make a move yet. Purlis thinks I’m obstructing him—which is probably why he’s set Inman on me. He doesn’t seem to know what I am. Yet. Once he figures it out, though, we’ll be in some deep kimchee. Well, I will. Your kimchee remains about the same.” I shut up and thought for a moment. The vampires stayed preternaturally still and let me.
As my brain ground on, trying to put pieces into place, my skin began to itch and burn, my eye stung, and my left hand ached. I tried to shake the sensation off, but it grew quickly and I felt like I was falling out of my body. I groped for the arms of my seat and could see the spiked and bloody darkness of the two vampires flash and flow toward me as my vision darkened. I tried to tell them not to touch me, but it came out garbled. The blacker shape reached toward me. . . .
I jerked in my seat as cold rushed over me, pushing back the burning sensations and easing the pain in my hand. Carlos lifted his own hand away, but hovered, waiting for my momentary debility to return.
I shook my head and took several deep, quaking breaths, feeling hollow and chilled inside while my skin itched. I didn’t want to look, but I pushed back my cuff and saw curls of reddened script swelling on my arms. I swore under my breath and hoped Delamar was not conscious enough inside his sleep-imprisoned body to feel the same sensations I’d just had. If this kept up, I’d start to lose my mind. I didn’t even want to know what the writing on my flesh said—especially since that would involve taking off my shirt in front of Cameron and Carlos, which creeped me out.
“That should not have happened here,” Carlos rumbled. I’d forgotten how close he was and I jumped at the sound.
“I’m not sure it’s bound by location,” I said.
“One of these strange things has attached itself to you. These injuries allowed a spirit to tie itself to you. The protections on this house should have been proof against such an attack.” He glanced at Cameron. “I apologize—this ward is failing.”
Cameron shook his head and I spoke up before they could go off on a discussion of who had screwed up and how to fix it. “It’s something I brought with me, I think. No fault of yours.”
Carlos glowered at me—he doesn’t take correction well. “Where does it come from to attach itself to you?”
“I think a ghost touched me at the market yesterday and somehow brought this on. It’s the same kind of manifestation I’ve seen recently on a . . . not quite a client. He’s one of three vegetative patients displaying old- school seance effects, but these aren’t happening during fake telephone calls to the dead. All the patients are connected to one another in some way that’s also related to the tunnel project and Pike Place Market.”
Carlos nodded. “The case that took you to Post Alley and the spirit whose conversation with you Inman disrupted.”
“Yes,” I replied. “That particular . . . thing also seems to have some relation to the case, but—again—I’m not certain of what it is. What I am sure of is that the anomaly of three patients with the same incredibly rare condition is not a coincidence. I believe that whatever magic links them is also keeping them in their current state or may have brought them to that state to begin with. I don’t think they’re supposed to be locked in this coma-like condition—and the longer they stay that way, the less chance they have of awakening. One of the patients seems to have broken in long enough to express that fear and the idea that he’s weakening to the point of some kind of nonbodily death. I think time is running out for all of them. They aren’t in their own bodies, but they’re dying.”
Carlos glanced at Cameron, who was frowning in concern. Then he turned his gaze to me and said, “I’m unfamiliar with your case, but the principle is correct. When a living soul is unnaturally separated from its proper vessel, it dwindles and dies out like a flame without fuel. It would be beyond the realm of chance that your displaced souls have no common cause with the magical disruptions I’ve noted.”
“I have to agree,” I said, “but what is the cause and what the effect? What I’ve seen so far, aside from the
