Greywalker

She turned to look at me and her eyes sparkled. "You must be Harper. I'm Mara. I see you've met Albert, our polygraph." She walked across to the desk and leaned down to kiss Danziger on the cheek. "Hello, love. Sorry I'm late. Brian was being obstinate. Would you pour me some tea?"

She plumped down onto the other end of the sofa with a biscuit and a glass of tea.

Danziger pointed at my own glass. "You should drink your tea while it's still hot, and try the biscuits and jam. The jam goes in the tea, not on the biscuits."

I mucked about with my tea while Danziger picked up a biscuit and studied it, frowning, as he spoke. "I did some reading this morning based on what you told me last night, and Mara and I discussed it. Have you been in some kind of accident recently?"

Startled, I put down my tea, untouched. "Yes. Do I still look that bad?"

He bit the biscuit and chewed, looking at me from under lowered brows.

It was Mara who spoke. "You do look as if someone's smacked you about a bit."

I took a slow breath. "Yes. A man I was investigating."

"Investigating?"

"I'm a private investigator."

"Damn," Danziger muttered.

The Albert shadow slipped behind him, spangling the air around them both with snowy mist. Danziger shivered and asked, "Were you hit on the head?"

"Yes."

"Knocked unconscious or…?"

Over his shoulder, Albert became more clear. The glowering eyes began to look more like glasses. I watched the ghost evolve and the words tumbled out. "Dead. For two minutes."

I told them about the hospital bed, the mists, the thing in the alley, maybe-ghosts, shadow-things, nausea… everything. By the time I was done, Albert looked almost there. "Your ghost is firming up," I finished.

Mara chuckled. "Ah, no. That's just you seeing him better."

I turned to her. "What?"

She gave a small shrug. "Ghosts exist in a place between here and there. When you're open to that world, you see them. When you're not, you don't."

Albert faded back a bit as Danziger spoke up. "When you're engaged with that world, your expectation or acceptance affects your perception and access. You've been fighting it, but when you talk about your experience, you accept certain facts—whether you can explain them or not—and Albert there is reinforcing proof that you're not crazy, that what you experienced is real, so you can see him a little better."

I shook my head. "I don't want to see him better. I don't want this stuff."

Mara sighed. "I fear you're stuck with it, since you can't un-die."

She must have seen me recoil. Her expression softened and she put down her glass before continuing. "That was a bit abrupt of me, but it's plain you can see Albert. There's a limited number of satisfactory explanations for that, plus what you've described. Do you think yourself mad?"

"No I… don't want to think I'm crazy."

Danziger chimed back in. "Unless you think we all share the same delusion—which is statistically unlikely—"

"Then it must be real, or we're all mad as hares."

"All right," I conceded. "Suppose we're not all crazy and that is a ghost." I pointed at the grim column of Albert's ethereal form, wavering between Ben and Mara, as if it was pacing. "Why do we see it? What is happening to me?"

Danziger grinned. "Ah, now that's where things get interesting. You see Albert for a different reason than Mara. Albert, like most ghosts, manifests by bringing an instance of his energy state with him. You're both able to access the energy state at which things like Albert become visible, so you're both able to see him. But you can do more than that; you can move around in that state and directly observe it, operate in it, even though you're not normally at that energy state yourself. It's very rare and really exciting stuff. You don't manipulate the energy state, however—that would be magic. But it's all energy, anyhow. So you experience the energy state of the Grey differently than Mara, but since you both have access to it, you both see Albert." He looked pleased and expectant.

I let him down. "What are you talking about?"

Mara rolled her eyes. "Ah, Ben, jumping right to the conclusion without demonstrating the proof. You must have been the despair of your Math prof." She turned to me. "He'll be rabbiting on about metaphysics and energy states for hours if we let him."

Danziger looked affronted. "I'm not that bad. But maybe we should start from a different perspective. Has anything like this happened to you before?"

I picked up the glass again and looked into the tea. "No." Weird flights of childhood imagination and bouts of the willies weren't relevant. Danziger nodded, but Mara narrowed her eyes at me and looked thoughtful while he went on.

"OK. So sometimes you seem to just walk in and out of these strange places, these mists, but other times, you just see some weird stuff?"

Mara cocked her head and, before I could answer her husband, added, "Sometimes you seem to hold it off and sometimes you don't?"

I glanced from one to the other. "That's exactly it."

Danziger picked up a book and began flipping the pages with a swift finger.

Mara carried on. "You've talked to a creature in the mist, been pushed on by one, but have you pushed anything around yet? Pushed the mist aside or away from you?" "No."

"You have no control over the coming and going?"

"Not really."

"And all of this has been growing more frequent and intense since you woke in hospital?"

"That's why I went to Dr. Skelleher. I thought there was something wrong. He says there isn't."

She sat back. "It's not wrong. It's just quite rare and hardly what they're teaching in medical schools these days."

I clenched eyes and fists. "What is it, damn it?"

Danziger had been running his finger down the pages as she questioned me. Now he paused and answered, "It's the Grey."

"What the hell is that?"

He pointed at my hands. "Don't squeeze so hard on the glass. They really hurt when they break."

I put the glass down with exaggerated care and glared at him. I'd have started screaming if someone else hadn't beaten me to it.

"Oh, God. The baby." Danziger pulled a baby monitor from his chest pocket. "We'd better go downstairs and continue where Brian can join in."

Shaking my head, I trailed behind Mara Danziger and the flickering shape of Albert. Ben brought up the rear, peeling away at the landing as Mara and I continued down the stairs.

"Are you confused yet?" she asked.

"Frustrated. Neither of you has answered my question."

"No, we haven't, have we. The why is, you're a Greywalker. Which means exactly nothing to you, yet."

"Not a thing."

"Stay for dinner and I'll try to explain while I'm cooking. Ben'll be right down, I'm sure, to help out."

Chapter 7

I wasn't so sure this was wise, but I followed as Mara led me into the kitchen and began organizing dinner preparations. Albert shimmered in over her shoulder as she talked. "There's a bit of a place between our world and the next. That's what Ben calls the Grey."

Ben Danziger walked in, carrying a black-haired toddler who was gnawing on the head of a large Russian nesting doll. "Are we ready to talk about Grey stuff now?" he asked. "We'd started on it," Mara replied.

"Aha! I have visual aids to make this easier. If I can just get them away from Brian." Ben put the baby down and wrestled the doll from him. "OK. First, you have to have an overview. Matter, as we know it, is simply a state of energy. Particle physics and so on. It's all just energetic states and interactions. When you strip out the fancy terms, many philosophical and religious beliefs come down to essentially the same thing: being, existence, and consciousness are basically energy states."