"What are you planning to do about it?" Ben asked.
"I assume you concocted some plan with Carlos, then," Mara added.
"Yeah," I replied. "It's already started. I got one of the assistants to help me break down the séance room and spread everything around. When I burned Celia's portrait, we saw a face in the flames.”
"That would be the artificial personality—the sort of soul the artist put into it—going. That's good and bad, though, as it now has no personality of its own, but only what its master lends it.”
"Which will be as smart and as crazy as he is—and there's no doubt the guy is smart," I said. "I'm hoping that he's getting arrogant, though. He certainly seemed to be. He makes mistakes when he's feeling cocky.”
"So it's definitely one of the young men?" Ben asked.
"Yeah. Solis said the whole thing revolved around a woman and for a moment I thought that might mean it was one of the women who controlled it, but the person who threw it at me was one of the guys.”
"So what are you going to do about it? Do the cops know?" Ben grunted as Brian squirmed around.
"Solis knows who and I'm pretty sure he's keeping a close eye on the next potential targets—he didn't say so, but he'd be stupid not to, and Solis is far from stupid. But he's not going to be looking for the entity and I'm not sure how close the controller has to be to use it the way he did on Mark. It's possible he'd be outside any surveillance area. I think I can track him down, though—he still has a connection to the entity that will tend to point to it, like a compass. Mine does, so I assume his does, too," I explained. "He's got to be in one of two places—he likes to be near the victim. He gets a kick out of seeing what he can do. If I take the bottle with Celia in it to both those areas, I should be able to spot his control thread trying to hook up to the entity even through the container—it's not a perfect trap, after all.”
"Then what?" Mara asked.
Albert drifted over to Brian, and the little boy laughed too loudly to speak over.
"Down now," he demanded.
As Ben was settling him back on his feet, I started to answer Mara.
"Once I've found him, Carlos will help me distract Celia's controller while I dismantle the entity.”
"Carlos is going to help you? I can't say I'd fancy another round of workin' with him myself.”
Brian took off, chasing after Albert and making his rhino roar.
"I'm not expecting to enjoy it, either," I replied, "but he can't take out the entity—it's never been alive, so it's never died. That means he can't get a handle on it, unless someone else attached to it dies or we kill something, and I think that would be a bad idea. Mark didn't hang around to leave a convenient connection. According to Carlos, his life was snuffed out so fast there was very little residue. He's told me how to take the thing apart in the Grey. I seem to be the only person with the right skills for the job. What I need from you is a charm that will stick the ghost in one spot for a while.”
Ben followed his son out into the hall.
"A tangle," said Mara.
"What?”
"There are several ways to bind something, but most are spells you cast on the person or thing. A tangle's a portable sort of charm—rather like flypaper. Where you drop it becomes sticky for a while.”
"That's it," I said. "How do I get it to work?”
"In this case, you'll want to create a time loop with the tangle, to hold the ghost a while, so you'll have to be dropping the tangle on a repeater ghost to create the trap and then pouring your poltergeist onto that time loop. That loop's like a bear trap—as soon as your poltergeist enters the loop, it'll grab on to it and hold it still in time until the energy of the ghost is dissipated, or burns through the loop.”
"How long is that?”
"Usually an hour or so—depends on the strength of the ghost and the tangle. I'll make a good one, though.”
"How long will it take to make it?”
"A few minutes. I'll have to go fetch some cuttings from the garden. I'll nip out. You keep your feet up—that knee still looks a mite tetchy.”
I snorted. "I'll stay put—I'm conserving my pain threshold for later.”
She laughed a single whoop and left me alone in the living room.
For a few minutes, all was calm, wrapped in the protective spells of the house. I took several long, slow breaths, letting tension flow away on the exhale. I closed my eyes for a moment. Which was a mistake.
Shouting a "Graaaaahh!" the rhino-boy galloped into the room with Albert right behind. Ben was several feet farther back.
Albert circled Brian, who tucked his head down and charged.
Albert wafted backward into the end table by my elbow.
Brian rammed his head against the polished blond oak.
The table rocked.
I swung my arm to grab. .
the bottle. .
fell. .
crashed. .
smashed.
A storm of mirrored glass whirled into the air with a shriek that shook the house. Hot yellow and bloodred, the entity gathered itself and sped toward the door.
Brian dropped to the floor with a yowl.
Mara rushed in holding a small circle of greenery in her hand and stopped, wide-eyed, in the doorway, looking back and forth between the shattered glass in which her son had plopped himself and the blazing shape that roared past her.
I jumped up and started after the entity, my knee throbbing in protest of the sudden movement. I made it to the sidewalk before I lost all sight of the entity.
"Goddamn it!" I spat.
The thin yellow strand of energy that linked me to the entity sprang taut, pointing southeast. Toward Chinatown.
I dashed back into the house, grabbing for my bag and jacket.
"I have to follow it!”
Mara shoved the little circlet of plant material into my hands. "It's not as good as I'd like—it'll only last about half an hour—but it'll do. Be careful of the thorns.”
But it was too late; they'd already pierced into my palm. I shoved the ring of blackberry vine into my coat pocket and whirled to pursue the ghost that wasn't a ghost to Chinatown.
CHAPTER 32
I had parked the Rover on Jackson and started on foot into the real heart of Chinatown. The thin yellow strand in front of me pointed mostly south and a bit east. I came down Maynard, past the red-and-yellow painted front of the Wing Luke Asian Museum, to Hing Hay Park on the corner of King Street. This short stretch of King, from the railroad terminals at Fourth to the current freeway overpass that soared over the remains of Ninth, was the place the Chinese had resettled after the Seattle Fire and the end of the Exclusion Act. The whole stretch of buildings ahead and to the east had been built by Chinese businessmen between 1890 and 1930.1 paused a moment to get my bearings and watched a troupe of kids—black, brown, and yellow, wearing Halloween masks—playing on the wet, rust-colored bricks of the park, ducking in and out of the red-pillared pavilion, to the annoyance of a couple of old men playing checkers on the stone tables inside. I heard the kids whoop and chatter, skipping away as the men waved impatient hands at them. Teenagers and young men grown too old too fast gathered in clutches around the benches and stone tables at the edge of the park, talking trash in half a dozen languages.
The stores and restaurants—shabby, but proud—were busy with the Sunday dim sum crowd. Visiting Caucasians goggled along the streets, standing out, pale in the mixed throng, to the China Gate, Four Seas, Sun Ya; ducked into Pink Godzilla for Japanese video games; carried tinted bakery boxes or bags from Uwajimaya and the Kinokuniya bookstore bulging with imported food and manga, or clever bribes for the evening's invasion of trick-or-treaters. The odor of food and fortune cookies, garbage and wet asphalt mingled with the sounds of Sunday chatter and random music in snatches from every opening door.