A chilly whisper song and an urge to move on and forget I’d ever met Jacque Knight blew over the raised hairs on my arms and neck but I refused to give in to it. And I could tell by his stern posture that Solis wouldn’t, either—which made me frown in thought, pushing the unnatural suggestion out of my mind.
“You feeling . . . disinclined to loiter?” I asked under my breath.
“Yes, but I won’t run.”
We walked along the dock toward the gate in silence and spoke only once we’d stepped out onto the public promenade. We both shivered a little and exchanged uncomfortable glances as the pushy sensation faded.
“You felt that,” I said. “That insistent ‘Get the hell out of here’ sensation.”
“Only the desire to put distance between myself and that young woman—who’s too young to be Shelly Knight,” Solis observed, continuing to stroll along the pavement at an easy stride no longer edged in restraint. So he’d felt it but he didn’t want to discuss it, at least not yet.
I took the hint. “But definitely related, in spite of what she said,” I added, staying on the case. Two women with such similar names couldn’t look so much alike and have no family in common—no matter how distant. But there was the small matter of her aura, which boiled with energy. I’d met plenty of magic users and strange creatures whose power let them live long beyond a single human lifetime—hell, I’d been told I probably would, too, and I would bet my abilities weren’t even a flickering match light compared to Jacque Knight’s, whatever she was. And that, of course, made me wonder more about Shelly. . . .
Solis paused on the walkway and turned to lean against the railing, his back to the docks. “I agree. I shall have to look into her records—and Shelly’s—once I’m back in the office. We’ll have to wait for the log pages so there is no point in pursuing that at this moment. I could put some time in on other cases. . . .”
“If you like. I’m actually slow right now, so this is the only big thing on my agenda; I’d still like to close it as soon as I can, though. So right now I want to take one more look at Seawitch. You don’t have to come along if you prefer to avoid my weirdness. Or, you know, you want to get back to those other cases.”
He turned his head and regarded me with that odd silent glance of his. Then he shrugged. “I prefer not to leave you alone in my crime scene. My other cases can wait a little longer.”
I caught myself starting to laugh at the absurdity of it but I didn’t let it slip out. “All right. Time for act two of the Harper Blaine Creep Show. I should have brought my tap shoes,” I muttered to myself.
Solis accompanied me to Seawitch without any further comment. He was back to inscrutable and I wasn’t sure how I felt about that. On the one hand, it was normal for him; on the other, it was so normal, I wasn’t sure whether it was a sign of acceptance or rejection.
As we neared the boat I saw a man standing on the bow of the boat in the slip across from it. He had his hands on his hips as he faced Seawitch. With the sun lowering toward the water ahead of us, it was difficult to see anything but his shape: average height with ropy-looking limbs and a hard hemisphere of belly that defied gravity. The shape of his head in shadow was curiously elongated at the bottom and, as we got closer I saw he had a long ponytail tied low at his neck. It reminded me of Quinton’s now-cropped queue, which hadn’t yet regrown long enough to gather into a proper tail so it just stuck out awkwardly, revealing cowlicks neither of us had known he had. A touch of chill seemed to reach from Seawitch and I momentarily wished I was at home with Quinton, teasing him about those cowlicks, instead of here, walking toward a haunted ship.
The man on the near boat turned to watch us as we walked toward Seawitch’s boarding steps. I stopped and looked up at him and he returned my stare with a slightly out-of-focus gaze from eyes red rimmed and gummy due to lack of sleep. I remembered what the yard manager had said and called out, “Are you Stu Francis?”
He gave an affirmative grunt and nodded. “Who’re you?” His voice sounded rough, as if he’d been smoking unfiltered cigarettes since grade school.
“My name’s Harper Blaine. This is Detective Sergeant Solis. We’re investigating Seawitch.”
Another affirmative grunt and nod from Francis. “Wouldn’t want to be you guys. Damn thing’s spooked.”
“Spooked?”
“Got ghosts like a freighter’s got rats.” Several heavy splashes spattered water onto the end of the dock. “Damn fish! Crazy-ass salmon!” Francis shouted at the water. “Get the hell out of here!” Then he fixed his watery stare on me. “It’s this damned boat, I’ll betcha. Got the fish acting crazy. Saw two otters and a harbor seal in here, too.”
“Is that unusual?” I asked.
“You betcha. Salmon follow the water scent up the river; they don’t pause to rest until they clear the locks. They never come in here on the way up, only on the way down. But this year they’re in here like a swarm of cockroaches. Kept me up all night, banging on the hull, chattering.”
I must have looked skeptical because he added, “And don’t tell me fish don’t talk. They make all kinds of noise up against the hull. Sounds just like a bunch of teenagers whispering in class. ‘Blah, blah, blah, yak, yak, yak.’ Man can’t get any sleep! Talking about a shipwreck in Spain. What are salmon doing in Spain, anyway?”
Spain? I thought, something tickling at my brain. I reconsidered the origin of his rheumy eyes—they might have resulted from consuming a considerable amount of alcohol regularly as well as from a handful of sleepless nights.
“Mr. Francis,” Solis interrupted. “Why do you believe the Seawitch is haunted?”
“Screams. Couple of nights ago she started screaming.”
“You heard screams from inside the boat?” Solis clarified.
Francis glared at him and shook his head adamantly. “No, sir. I said she screamed and I meant it. The noise inside came later. Boats make noises all the time—when the wind comes down off the point in winter and plays on the masts and rigging, it can sound like a chorus of wolves and lost souls. But this wasn’t the north wind. There wasn’t any wind! I never heard nothing like this before.” He jabbed a finger at Seawitch. “That thing screamed.”
Francis made a noise in his throat that could only be called a harrumph and swung on his heel to stomp away into his own boat. Somehow he managed to slam the hatch as he did.
Solis and I exchanged puzzled frowns, then turned around to face Seawitch.
The boat looked less inviting than ever, especially when contrasted with the boats we had just come from; it was neither shiny nor homey and I could not imagine anyone wanting to hang out with friends on the dock near it, either. In just a single day the boat had gone from sad and spooky to outright nasty, the coils of Grey that hung on it now churning and billowing like a nest of angry snakes. For a moment I thought of Jacque Knight’s grasping aura and shivered.
Solis watched me. “You have changed your mind?”
“No,” I answered. “But I think this is not going to be as much fun as the last time.”
“You have an odd idea of fun, Ms. Blaine.”
I don’t know why that torqued me, but it did. Maybe it was the malevolent energy bleeding off Seawitch, Francis’s weirdness affecting my thoughts, or just my own discomfort left over from the day before and Solis’s reserved silence on matters freaky, but I turned and glared at him. “I think you can drop the ‘Ms.’ now, since we’re stuck together on this. I don’t expect you to like or respect me—or even believe me—enough to be friends, but I’d appreciate it if you didn’t mock me.”