local, which kind of surprised me, since I know the thing came from Europe. Whatever was in the box or attached to it is gone, but it looks like Dad put the container in the tunnel dig for a while—that’s where the dirt came from, according to Fish—and I’d guess that Dad set the thing from the box loose there, or it escaped. He doesn’t seem very worried about it, so I imagine he let it go himself. Anything new running around town aside from your pushy ghosts?”
“There is definitely some strange stuff going on, but neither I nor the vampires have spotted any new paranormal players in the area. Doesn’t mean there isn’t something, though, and that might be the connection between your dad’s project and my case. . . . Quinton, please be careful. You’re focusing on your father, but there are a lot of other interests watching this.”
“You mean Carlos and Cameron.”
“Not just them. And not just the paranormal end of the spectrum. What your father is doing is only barely on the reservation, so when it goes wrong—as you are bent on making sure it does—there’s going to be a lot of fallout. I don’t want you to be in the blast.”
“I’ll be all right.”
I wanted to argue with him, but it wasn’t going to do any good and I’d only be doing exactly what I didn’t like done to me. I settled on “Be careful.”
“I will. And I’ll try to stay on top of the messages.”
I made a face. “‘There is no
He laughed. “I’ll bear that in mind, Master Yoda.” Then he slunk off and left me to extricate myself from the trash bins.
I wished I had Quinton’s skill with electronics—not to mention his ever-ready stash of parts—and could leave some kind of monitor behind, but I would just have to make an opportunity to come back later. At least I knew I’d found the secret lair. Now I just had to find out what Purlis had let loose on my city and what the hell it was doing to so terrifyingly empower the ghosts in the market. Mentally cursing, I crawled back over the fence and took myself home for cleaner clothes.
EIGHTEEN
With no other leads to chase, I felt there was no option left but to contact Carlos and ask him to “read” the objects I’d collected from the secret cemetery and Kells. I hoped that if I knew who the ghosts were I might be able to contact them and make the connection to Purlis and whatever was happening between them and the PVS patients. By the time I got back to my place, dusk was falling and I was pretty sure I could reach Carlos at one of the phone numbers Cameron had provided, if not his own.
Chaos wasn’t pleased with me for leaving her alone all day, but ferrets have the memory of clams and she forgot to be angry as soon as she was on the living room floor with her favorite toy, a squeaky anthropomorphized eggplant with massive feet and a nose that resembled a ski jump. Quinton had christened it “Nixon.”
While Chaos bit and wrestled Nixon, I took a shower and heated soup for my dinner. Then I put in a call to Carlos’s voice mail. I always find the idea of vampires with voice mail odd, though I can’t really say why; maybe it’s that the idea of something as far removed from the technological world as a vampire just runs counter to the concept. I was barely seated to slurp down my dinner when he called back.
Even over the phone his voice sent an unpleasant crawling sensation up my spine. “Blaine,” he said.
“I have some objects that I believe are connected to the ghosts in this case of mine. And I think I have a line on where your missing assistant is. Can you take a look at these things and tell me about them?” I wasn’t telling him the whole story just yet, but I’d get to it once I had his agreement.
“If you will tell me where Inman is.”
“Afterward.”
He was silent for a moment, thinking about it, I assumed. It was possible for him to get around me—by some magical trick, by force, or by setting another of the vampire community’s helpers on my tail until I showed them the way. But all of those strategies were wasteful and Carlos didn’t approve of waste—necromancy is the ultimate expression of the phrase “Reduce, reuse, recycle.”
“Very well. Where?”
This was a problem. I didn’t want him in my place and I had no desire ever to return to his. “Where are you?” I asked, thinking I could find a location conveniently between.
He was silent. Vampires don’t breathe and Carlos had the trick of being utterly still, so the only sound that came through the phone was a very distant whispering that might have been the voice of the grid or just people in some other room. It was unnerving.
“Ten Mercer. Upstairs.”
“Thirty minutes,” I said.
He chuckled and hung up. I frequently have the impression that he’s humoring me—and considering how easily he could wipe me off the face of the planet, he probably is.
I finished up my soup as quickly as I could without wearing it. Then I rounded up the ferret, put her back in her cage—much to her consternation—and headed out again.
Ten Mercer is one of those places that a lot of people thought would die with the market crash—and yet it is still hanging on, a couple of blocks from the Opera House and Intiman Theatre, on the north end of the Seattle Center complex. One of those undecorated New American cuisine places that manages to seem sparsely elegant rather than empty and barnlike. The upper floor is the dining room, while the larger lower floor is the lounge. Floor-to-ceiling windows on both floors between the exposed red brick of its building front allow the world to see others drinking and yet no one looks, except in a general way. The lowered lights hint that you, too, might be able to come inside, but it would just be uncouth to stand outside and stare. Ironically, there’s a bus stop right in front of it. No one stares in. No one stares out. And it’s rarely busy before ten p.m., when the theaters let out.
When I arrived and told the hostess I was meeting someone for dinner, she gave me a thoughtful little frown and asked whom I was meeting. I gave Carlos’s name and she wordlessly led me up the stairs to the empty dining room. She tucked me into one of the few booths, far from the windows and isolated from the room full of tables by a low, curving wall of slatted wood. The table could have seated six with room for their winter coats. I would have felt conspicuous but for the half wall.
Since I’d had dinner and didn’t really want to linger with Carlos, I didn’t order anything more than sparkling water with lime. It’s never safe to drink alcohol with vampires—even the ones you think you know. Carlos kept me waiting for another fifteen minutes and came up the stairs alone. The hostess didn’t return and Carlos sat down across from me, bringing his cloud of darkness and death. He didn’t speak; he just sat and studied me for a while.
A waiter passed, as if casually on his way elsewhere, but he slid an appetizer plate of smoked sturgeon onto the table before he walked on. I peered sideways, looking for signs that the staff was bespelled in some way, but aside from being preternaturally good-looking, they seemed normal.
Carlos unrolled his silverware and spread the cloth napkin out between us. “What did you bring me?” he asked.
I dug the objects out of my pockets and put them on the napkin, each separate from the next rather than in a pile. They nearly covered the thick cloth square. Carlos made a thoughtful growl in his throat and leaned forward to look at them. He pushed the plate of food in my direction. “Make this look eaten.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Because I say so.”
“I’d rather not. Food doesn’t seem to be a good companion to me lately.”
He snorted but kept his gaze on the collection I’d presented. “Interesting. Are these connected to your ‘conspiracy of ghosts’?”
“I think so. The artifacts . . . came to me around the market.”
“Hmm. There is a strange thread binding these, yet there should be none,” he said, glancing at me. “There is someone in this. . . .” Then he went back to his examination of the objects on the napkin. He picked them up one by one, muttering over them and to them, peering at each one, holding some close to his face, holding others
