Greywalker

"Yeah."

He gave me several glances over his shoulder before he was swallowed again by the doorway. I sat a while, panting, and thought I heard something shrieking in the Grey. I felt better as soon as it stopped. I stood on loose legs and walked around to the front of the house.

To my eyes, the windows of the organ's den were dark. They neither shed nor reflected any light. The house that had seemed so pretty on Saturday now looked like something from a horror film, the stone-work overgrown with veins of fire and writhing Grey vines. I felt a scratching along the surfaces of my bones. I slammed a mental door against the persistence of vision and scurried back to my seat on the steps.

I felt stronger by the time Will returned, smiling and chatting to the curator as they parted company at the door. She stayed on the porch.

I looked up at Will. "Well?"

He dropped onto the steps beside me, folded like a paper crane, and made a face. "Well… it matches the description technically, but…" He shook his head. "It's not worth whatever your client's put into finding it. A lot of the decoration is bone and ivory that's… nonstandard. Modifications and repairs aren't unusual for an item like this, but…" He chewed his lower lip and looked at the ground. "My gut says there's something wrong. It doesn't even play, really. The whole thing's kind of unsettling. But it doesn't matter, because the current museum board won't sell."

"Why not?" I asked. I looked back at the woman on the porch.

She shook her head and called out, "It's the only Tracher parlor organ they could find, and current policy won't allow us to sell anything that matches original inventory. They're freaking out over the idea of permanent reductions. Though after what Will said, I think we'd be better off without it."

I hung my head, worn out, and sighed. "I know it's an imposition, but can I bring one more expert to look at it?"

"Sure, if you think it'll help. Especially if it covers the board's butt."

"It'll have to be after hours. This guy's not available during the day."

"Oh. Well, get in touch with me and we'll work it out. I'd like to hear we didn't buy a screaming fake."

We both thanked her for her time and we left the museum. Crossing the street, I turned for one more look at the organ's resting place. The ground seemed to roll beneath my feet as I looked a little side-ways of normal. The Grey snapped open, showing me an angry tangle of burning lines and shapes, boiling in a restless, sobbing mist. I jerked myself away from it, feeling a biting pain in my chest, and stumbled against Will. He held tight to my arm as we let ourselves out the drive-way gate.

We stopped beside the Rover. "Are you sure you feel OK?" Will asked.

"I'm fine. Probably just something I ate."

"Bull. We ate the same thing and I feel fine." He noticed the hard set of my mouth. "You don't want to talk about it."

"No, I don't."

He sighed. "All right. We'll keep this professional. I'll see if I can dig up anything about this organ. I got numbers off the action and case, and Tracher may still have some records I can start with. I'll let you know what I find."

"Thanks, Will."

He looked me over again, shook his head. "You know Mikey's going to grill me about you this evening, don't you?"

I gave a weak laugh. "Poor Will. Terrorized by a sixteen-year-old."

"Hey, there's a sixty-year-old Jewish mother in that sixteen-year-old body. Mike's not sure you're good for me."

"Oh, I'm sure I'm very bad for you. Very bad indeed."

"Mmm… very bad," he agreed. He leaned forward and kissed me, nibbling my lower lip. He murmured against my mouth, "I won't ask if you're OK, 'cause you're just going to stonewall me some more if I do."

I nodded. "Yep."

He sighed and backed off. "All right. But I will worry and you can't stop me. Be careful, Harper."

"I will."

"No—" he started.

"Yes, I know—you Will, me Harper."

He laughed. "You caught me!" He kissed my cheek this time and opened the Rover's door for me.

I got in and buckled up. He closed the door and watched me for a moment; then he backed away and waited for me to pull out of the lot before he started back to his own truck.

I didn't even get all the way through my office door before the client was in the office and normalcy was out.

I was startled. "Sergeyev. You're back."

"You have made progress to locating my furniture."

I sat down at my desk, buying time. "Yes, I have." I put my mouth on autopilot as my mind leapt around like a terrified monkey. "I've seen the organ at the museum and it seems to match your description—"

"Which museum? Tell the name. They must let me have it."

Some warning instinct in the monkey brain made me stall. "That may not be possible."

Sergeyev loomed over me, exuding a Grey reek and a flutter of colorless energy which didn't surprise me. "You shall make them give it," he demanded. "It is mine."

"No," I answered, my voice going hard as my stomach flipped over. The Grey pressed like a weight on my chest. I strained against it and wouldn't allow it to break through any further. "You may believe you have a moral claim, but the owners can't be forced to sell." "It is mine!"

My words popped in the thick air like water on hot oil. "Not legally. I cannot work miracles. Can't simply make it yours. I have to work within the law."

He ground his teeth, or I told myself that was the sound. "Laws of men! Who has more right to it than I? It is in every bone, every sinew. It is mine. You must loose it to me."

I glared at him, seeing his shape slip and firm again, silver and Grey. Fury burned over me. "Don't. Push me."

He jerked his head back and glowered. "I expected better. You who can see the world should sympathize. I felt you and came for your help. But you are a silly, ignorant girl."

Now he'd pissed me off. "I am getting damned tired of being insulted by things like you. And nobody calls me 'girl' in my own office."

"You do not know with what you toy… girl."

My heart slammed around my chest like a basketball in a box and I kept smelling something like a whiff of harsh tobacco smoke. I was too mad to feel ill or to think clearly about what I was about to do. I held off my fear and revulsion in a cold, dark place and braced myself.

"Really? Why don't you show me?"

He stepped back and raised one hand, as if catching hold of the air itself. The worlds began to vibrate and hum. I threw myself across the immaterial mist of the Grey, feeling the same cold scream rip through me as brilliance burned me away. I lunged up to my feet, my office swamped and throbbing with the mirror-mist and aglow with lines of light and force. The ache in my chest grew hot.

Grey things trailing fire darted in and swarmed me, trying to cocoon me in their glowing threads. I struck at them, bending the edge of the Grey around me, and flung them back into Sergeyev's face.

"Get out!" I shouted, lashing my fists against the swarming Grey between us. A swollen blue arc spanned across my thrumming chest and arms, bowing outward as I raised my arms again and brought them down against the cloud of fiery creatures.

I felt as if I'd smashed my arms against a cement wall which reverberated, then dissolved to gritty, unstable brick. Two masses of force collided between us, shook and toppled with a crack of thunder and a stink of burned sewage. Then it crumbled away, the flames dying in an instant. Sergeyev's eyes glared at me though the haze and vanished. The world crashed back into its normal shape, thinly blurred at the edges.

I collapsed forward, landing half in my chair and half across the desk. My forehead smacked against the blotter. My arms and chest ached and burned and I swallowed again and again, tamping down the urge to be sick. Broken glass tinkled in the hall and outside. I forced myself to breathe in and out with care, settling myself around the dissipating ache centered in the knot of Grey between my breasts. Cool air coursed over my back from the broken window behind me. In a moment—or maybe it was ten minutes—I looked up and saw a face peeping around the edge of my shattered door glass. The receptionist from Flasch and Ikenabi. I waved a flopping hand to her.