Showering felt strange: My skin was too sensitive and the water felt effervescent and sharp. Every step of my usual routine was fraught with oddity: scents that were too strong or out of place; sounds that came too clearly to my ears; touches and sensations on my skin and fingers that were too rough, too cold, too hot. Even the taste of an apple I found in the kitchen was too sour and too sweet at the same time. I wore the softest clothes I had and kept the lights low.
I read my e-mail, including Cameron’s instructions for the evening, with the screen dimmed nearly black. Beside the computer, I found a note Quinton had left for me—handwritten on a single sheet of paper—saying he’d gone with Carol to talk to Solis. He thought he’d be back about two. But it was just passing that and he wasn’t back. I tried calling the numbers for Carol on Edward’s phone but only got voice mail and had to leave messages asking for updates. Finally I left a long note for Quinton myself, telling him what had happened the night before and what was going to play out tonight.
Beyond the facts, I had to include my speculation, too. I didn’t know if we had one day left or only tonight until Dru Cristoffer’s deadline for the puzzle balls expired. Guessing based on her personality, I suspected she’d be literal and give me seventy-two hours exactly from when she’d declared it. That meant I’d have to act with Carlos as soon as the matter of vampire succession was settled. I didn’t know where Wygan would stage his Grey coup, but if Carlos was right about the timing, it had to be ready to go the moment I was, so it had to be someplace nearby and already prepped.
I’d already touched the fabric of the grid and bent it to my own designs—badly and in a limited way—but that would be all Wygan was waiting for and I was pretty sure he already knew it had happened. His own connections to the grid weren’t the same as mine, but it was clear to me that he could sense or hear things happening there, too. So far, he’d had only one chance to grab me and that had been too soon after my experiment with the power lines of magic in the walls of Edward’s bunker to give him much time to come for me. The easiest thing for him to do now would be to let Goodall catch me and take me himself to wherever the Pharaohn’s plans were meant to play out. I didn’t like the role of goat, but I didn’t see a lot of options, and I knew that no matter how much Goodall disliked me, his master wouldn’t let him harm me at this stage. I imagined that my presence at the After Dark club would bring someone around if I lingered long enough.
After that, it was a matter of action and, whatever the result, it would be over by morning. Live or die, I had to succeed in stopping the Pharaohn’s plans for good tonight.
I wrote another long letter, folded it, and put it in my purse. Still no sign of Quinton or Carol and the time was now four thirty. I didn’t have much of a window left to get the last of my business done before night fell and things got crazy.
My first stop was Nanette Grover’s law office downtown. I worked for her once in a while, doing backgrounds on witnesses and investigating their stories before Nan went into court. She also acted as my lawyer on the rare occasions I needed one. It was an easy walk to her office from TPM, though I had to wear sunglasses under the overcast sky: The grid was too brightly present without them. Her secretary, Cathy, came out to meet me and it took a little discussion before she agreed to hold on to my holographic will for forty-eight hours. I said I’d come back and tear it up if everything went well, but I didn’t explain why it might be necessary in the first place. Mostly I wanted to be sure the property and pets scattered across Seattle got back where they belonged if I wasn’t drawing breath in the morning.
I had a feeling that I’d bounce back if something fatal happened to me, but that hadn’t been the case for my father. There were a lot of things that could, potentially, go wrong in a permanent way and I didn’t know how to mitigate any of them. The close harmony of the grid, its strange way of taking me over and then leaving me at a distance, only confused my sense of survivability. And there was the seductive call of the grid itself. You didn’t have to be dead to fall away from the world and not return. Or return altered. I thought my father had hinted I could lose these odd powers, but to what extent? And what would my shape be if that were true? For all of these reasons—and for Quinton—there had to be something left behind.
After that long, depressing thought, I found a quiet spot to call my mother.
Funny that a month earlier I wouldn’t have considered calling her for anything—not even a matter of life or death—but here I was, poking her phone number and hoping she had a few minutes to talk. She had been the monster of my childhood, but lately I’d begun to see her differently: as a desperate and lonely person I almost pitied. Almost. She was still responsible for her own misery, but at least she wasn’t truly responsible for mine.
She answered her phone and I wondered if she ever didn’t. “Sweetie!”
“Hello, Mother.”
“I was worried about you! You had to leave LA so quickly and I thought there must be something wrong.”
“Yeah. A little. I went to London on some business, but I had to come back to Seattle to finish it up. While I was gone, my employer was kidnapped.” If anything happened to me tonight, chances were good I’d be connected to Edward’s disappearance in a bad and public way—at least by the press—and, in spite of years of indifference, I didn’t want her to think that badly of me.
She gasped and judging from the dramatic sound, I guessed she had an audience. Probably her fiancé. “Oh, my goodness! Is he all right?”
“Not yet. I’m . . . helping out with something this evening,” I fumbled, uncomfortable with my ragged half-truth. “If it works out, everything will be fine. I just . . . thought I should let you know that I’m fine.”
She was quiet for a moment. “Harper, be careful. Obviously you’re not going to change your mind about doing . . . whatever it is you’re doing. But . . . you’re my baby. And you promised to come to the wedding.” Her voice quivered a little, but she stamped down on that and finished strong. “And I’m holding you to that! You hear?”
I smiled. Gods, she was transparent. “Yes, Mom.” And she had not abandoned me, even when I thought my father had. I was wrong about that, too, but as much as she infuriated me, at least her reasons for the crazy things she did were human.
She sniffled. “You never call me Mom. . . .”
“Well, I do now. And I have to go.” Before I started getting weepy myself and bloodying my clothes in public. “Send the invitations early, OK?”
“All right, sweetie. You take care.”
“I will. And you too.”
I hung up and looked at the phone a moment before I put it away. That had been awkward. . . .
I killed the last of the sunlight eating dinner in a restaurant at the top of a glass tower and staring at the city below as the lights came on, arc-bright in the Grey I couldn’t shake off. The voices of the grid grew louder as the hours passed but less comprehensible, the words chopped up like I was standing in the midst of a large party that jerked in and out of time. It made me irritable and paranoid. Quinton didn’t call. I didn’t like admitting that I was worried, and more than that: I feared I’d never see him again.