Finishing with her son, Mara offered him a bit of plain waffle. "But there are as many theories as there are stars," she warned. "Some'll say it's an early contact with the Grey that keeps your mind open to it. Others that it's passed down by heredity or teaching. Or it's something you catch, like a dose of measles, or build up from contact, like fluoride in the water. You could be after arguing for any of them or all of them. But children do seem to have an affinity for it that adults often lack. And why are you askin'?”
I sipped coffee for a moment. "I couldn't get the hang of moving around to track the thread in the Grey. The whole layers-of-time thing didn't make sense to me," I explained. "I tried asking Carlos about it.”
Mara looked startled and stared at me, for a moment distracted from Brian. "Carlos? Why would you be going to him?”
"Because he has retrocognition—he can look at the past—and I thought he might see the Grey more like I do and know something more about time.”
"Did he?" she asked.
"A little, though he made it clear I was wrong about any similarity in our perceptions of the Grey. He kind of gave me the creeps about it.”
"More than usual?”
I remembered his hungry look and shivered. "Yeah." I shook it off. "Anyhow. I was thinking that I must just be doing it wrong and I needed some idea how. The children of one of the séance members play with the poltergeist. Like Brian seems to play with Albert. So it has to be easier than what I was doing. Or at least it has to be something a child can do. I'm going to talk to the kids' mother.”
"Right now?”
"As soon as we're done here. But that brings us back to genies in bottles.”
"Oh, yes. The ghost-catcher," Mara replied. "How is it?" A glob of sticky apple splattered onto her shoulder. "Oh, Brian!”
Brian's eyes got very large. "Uh-oh." He wriggled down to the floor and bolted for the hall.
Mara growled and closed her eyes. "Do you suppose he's a changeling? Because if so, I'd like a try at having him changed back. I'd walk through Galway and broken glass mother-naked if it would buy me a quiet week.”
"You could just give him more whiskey," I suggested.
"Never again," she moaned, getting up to chase after him.
"You can't just. . cast a spell on him to be quiet and come back?”
" 'Twouldn't be a good idea. Abuse of power and all—not to mention the side effects. I'll catch him the old-fashioned way. With guile and cunning.”
She laughed, then snuck out of the room on silent feet. I turned to look at Ben. He was grinning.
"I suspect she does use a little magic," Ben said. "She's so much better with him than I am.”
"You're not too bad.”
He laughed. "Praising with faint damns. Anyhow. How do you like it?”
He held up the glass vessel. Most of the lower bulb was now covered in a thin, dark blue coating that raised a rainbow sheen. If I peered at it through the Grey, the covered part looked black and solid. In the normal world, I could just see through it if I squinted a bit and got my head at the right angle.
"It's great," I said, a little surprised at how good it was.
Ben smiled. "Thanks. I'm not much good at arts and crafts, so I hope I've done it right. I'll finish up the neck and you can have it.”
I raised my coffee cup. "I hope it works.”
Ben's laugh was a bit rueful this time. "You're not the only one." He concentrated on his work as he continued, keeping his eyes down. "I hope this is a better guess than the last time.”
My heart sank at the memory of how badly I'd misjudged things on my first Grey outing, and I could almost smell the reek of burning again. I was still carrying reminders in the knot of Grey implanted in my chest and the magical resistance that kept me from speaking of certain things.
"There is no fault on your part," I said. "What went wrong at the museum was my fault—just mine. How many times have I said so?
Do I need to speak another language to make you believe that? Quick crash course in Russian—teach me how to say 'mea culpa' and we can stop there.”
He frowned at me. "Why?”
I couldn't say. The words would not come out, corked up with guilt and magical compulsion. I just shook my head and felt heavy. "It's not you," I muttered.
Ben finished the bottle in silence, slipped the black rubber stopper into the neck, and handed the whole thing to me. We could hear Mara and Brian coming back along the hall, the floorboards singing with their steps.
"Be careful with it.”
I took it with both hands. "I will." Then I smiled at him—a big, fat, footlights-to-second-balcony grin. "It'll be fine. Thanks.”
I made my good-byes to Mara in the hall, thanking her for breakfast and avoiding another shin-ramming by Brian with a quick slide to the door.
"Bye-bye, rhino-boy!" I called as I slipped out.
"Graah!" roared Brian. Then I heard him laughing as the door closed between us.
Brian was starting to grow on me and I wondered if I would start to like children by the end of the day, since I was spending so much time with them.
Patricia wasn't thrilled to see me again. I kept intruding on her Saturdays—which she was quick to inform me were the only time she saw her husband.
"I'm sorry, Mrs. Railsback," I said as she let me into the play yard once again. "You do understand, though, that the poltergeist will continue to hurt you and others until it's broken down. Dr. Tuckman called you about that, right?”
She nodded.
"I'm trying to help and I need your kids' help to do that. I'm only asking for a few minutes of their time.”
"I still don't understand how my babies can help you," she whined.
"They play with Celia. They know how to interact with it in ways we don't.”
"I still think it's Mark's ghost—”
"That may be, but it's Celia that killed Mark and it's Celia we have to get rid of.”
She gaped. "Celia killed Mark?”
I looked her in the eye and let the worst moments of this investigation well back up through me, every instant of understanding regarding Celia and what it was. Something of knowledge and horror arced across our shared glance and she recoiled, murmuring, "Oh, no. Did she really?”
"I believe it did.”
She backed away a step. "That's terrible. Terrible." She shook her head, but she seemed to be trying to shake the monstrous images her mind conjured, not to deny their possibility. "All right. You can talk to the kids, but only for a while—they have to get ready for lunch with their daddy.”
"Thank you.”
She called them over.
"OK, you guys, this is Harper and she wants to talk to you for a bit. Are you OK with that?”
They looked at her, squirming with impatience, and nodded. "Uh-huh," they chorused.
"Okey-dokey. Harper, this is Ethan, Hannah, and Dylan," she explained, pointing to each in turn. They looked at me with varying emotion. Ethan was suspicious, Hannah bored, and Dylan confused.
"Hi," I started, bending down to their level. I felt like an awkward giant in their presence, since none of them was even five feet tall yet.
They seemed like miniatures to me—I was sure they'd seem bigger up close. "Umm… I know you have a friend—a special friend—that other people can't see, and I wanted to ask you about her.”
"Him!" Ethan insisted.
"Is not!" Hannah hissed back. She looked at me with clear, earnest eyes. "Our ghost is a girl.”
"Is not!" Ethan fired back. "He's a boy.”
"Oh, boy," I sighed. "Hey, can we go sit down on the swings? I feel like a frog bent over like this.”