She squeaked, "Are you OK? Sounded like an explosion out here."
"Uh… one of my clients… slammed the door pretty hard on his way out."
"Oh. OK. You sure you're all right?" She probably thought I was crazy, or that my clients were. I expected I'd see their offices up for lease inside six months.
"I'm fine. Honest. I just—I need to get the glass fixed," I finished.
She perked up at the thought of familiar action. "Oh! I know a board-up service. Should I… should I call them for you?"
I raised my eyebrows. "You would do that?"
"Well, yeah. If you want." A phone burred. She looked around. "Oh, no! Ohmigod, that's my phone!" she exclaimed, dashing away.
Alone, I slumped onto the desktop and tried to reorganize my brain. I was shaking. I felt torn apart and put back together with cheap glue and a lack of attention to detail. Everything seemed to ache or itch. My job was going straight to hell. But I didn't know what else to do, so I shut off the gibbering part of my brain and did what I'd been trained to do: I made phone calls.
I called the Danzigers and arranged to see them later—I had a lot of questions. Then I called Sarah, who said she'd talk to her brother as soon as she saw him and have him call me.
Twenty minutes later, men with plywood arrived to fix my door and window until I could get the glass replaced. The office felt close and dark without the windows.
In the new gloom, I picked up the Edward file and stared at it, resisting the work, aching all over. Unthinking, I reached up to rub the spot on my shoulder where Wygan's claws had dug into my flesh. The skin felt raw and hot as a sunburn. I winced as my stomach curdled around my lunch.
I'd been dancing in a minefield and was lucky to still have all my limbs. Alice scared me, but I understood what she wanted and how she wanted to use me to get it. As dreadful as Carlos was, I understood him a little, too. But Wygan I could no more understand than I could understand whales singing, and that frightened me most. I did not know what he wanted of me, but I suspected he was finished for a while.
He didn't think much of Alice, but I feared her ambition. I wasn't sure I could hold up against her a second time. I had to admit that challenging Sergeyev had been a mistake, and combined with the strange attack by the organ, whatever strength I had was near exhausted. I didn't know if it would return or if I wanted it to.
I knew my time was running out with Edward. Alice wouldn't hold off much longer. I had to use her agitation to my advantage and not be caught in the blast. But my ideas all assumed Edward's motivations were, essentially, human, and I knew that wasn't true. Ambition, power, and hate were the tools the vampires had lent me—all I had of my own was hope and a detective's steady plod. I didn't like my chances.
I buried myself in paper, trying to shut off my bodily aches and scratch the mental itch of almost-knowing. Much of the TPM file made no sense to me. I started looking for patterns, familiar words, oddities, pretty much anything that hooked to other information. TPM had fingers in lots of pies. It owned businesses and real estate all over Seattle and the near communities on the western side of Lake Washington, though TPM had nothing on the Eastside.
I started reading the list of businesses and something finally jumped out at me: TPM owned Dominic's nightclub.
Steve had said he was helping out the owner the day he spotted Cameron—except TPM wouldn't have asked him to come move furniture. Steve had given me the information just when I was also snooping around TPM's business. And Cameron had claimed Steve lied about knowing Edward, who had to work for TPM. So why had Steve called? Was he assuaging a prickly conscience, or had someone told him to give me Cameron? It had certainly pulled my attention off of TPM, and if Cameron hadn't had the insane idea to hire me, I'd never have looked further.
The tickling, nascent knowledge erupted into full form. In a short burn of energy, I scrambled for the fax of the corporate structure. Wygan had said it. The real estate lawyer had gone stone silent the moment I asked for it. But it was there on the fax: Edward Kammerling was TPM's founder and chairman of the board.
I lay back in my chair, burned out, eyes closed, and put it together. Only Gwen had said anything about TPM—she'd said it was his toy. The vampires found Edward's business activities uninteresting, or boring, but they were the key to his power base. A very sweet deal Edward couldn't afford to lose: only he had power in both the daytime and nighttime worlds, and that kept the other vampires in check. And that was why Alice wanted me—a daylighter with a foot in the dark— to take him out.
In the daylight world, he was at his weakest: just a businessman who had to hide from the light. But he might as well be in a fortress for all that the vampires could do to him there. Though I had a foot in each world, I had nothing to lose in the nightside, where his strengths were greatest. I had disturbed his foothold in the dark, and now I could threaten his foothold in the light as well. His ambition had bought him enemies, and it would allow me to move Edward any direction I pleased. So long as he didn't kill me first.
And supposing that Sergeyev didn't beat him to it.
I rolled my head, glanced at my watch and knew I was running late for my date at the Danzigers'. By the time I got to the Rover, I was dragging. My whole body ached as if I had the flu, a drawing fatigue radiating from my chest and through my limbs. Driving was not fun.
Mara answered my ring of the doorbell. "Harper!" She stopped and goggled at me. "You look flailed out. What's happened?"
"I—" was all I could get out. Then I stood there with words stoppered in my throat and couldn't think of what to say.
Mara blinked at me, then dragged me through the doorway. "Oh, my. Come into the kitchen, then. And don't be telling me this is tea-sized trouble. You look like you need a drink."
I stumbled after her into the kitchen. The house was quiet, warm, and welcoming. Only when the sensations were gone did I notice that I'd been cold, my ears numbed with a distant susurration, since Saturday.
Mara scrambled through a cupboard. "Just let me find the whiskey…"
I flopped into a chair at the kitchen table while Mara uncovered a bottle of Powers and poured us each a glass. She didn't offer water.
We both sat there and sipped our whiskey in silence a while as the kitchen beamed warm energy on us. The sick knot in my chest eased a little. Mara put her drink down and looked at me.
"All right. Tell me what it is."
I looked at my drink. "I think I need about three more of these first."
"Ah, no. Drunken revelations just leave you feeling worse during the hangover. Is this about ghosts?"
I hesitated, helplessness surging under my skin. I nodded and tried to wash the feeling down with the last of the whiskey. "Ghosts, vampires… all that Grey crap."
Mara sat still, giving me an encouraging face.
"Why are they coming to me? These monsters, these… whatever they are. My client—remember the guy with the organ?"
"Yes. You said he was Grey."
I nodded. "Some kind of ghost, I think. We had an argument in the Grey. He said he knew I could 'see the world. He was furious at me for not doing what he wanted. Why do they think I can do something for them? How did I end up with every ghostly freak in Seattle?"