We stood and Solis bent down to ask Plant to keep him in the loop; then we walked toward the exit together.
“Who murdered Reeve?” Solis whispered to me as we neared the door.
“Why ask me?”
“I hoped you had seen something.”
“Nothing you didn’t. We got only a glimpse at the scene before we had to go down to see Plant.”
“But what did you see that I did not? You have that look on your face, so no evasions. We are partners on this case, remember.”
“All right. I saw the same gray-green color around Reeve’s bed that I saw around him when he had the original heart attack, and I’d bet the description of the dog people claim to have seen here would match the thing I saw at Reeve’s place. Whoever killed Reeve is involved with Seawitch.”
“That is my thought, too.”
We walked on through the hospital without another word. Solis walked like something heavy and morbid had settled on him. I stopped him just outside the lobby doors in the dim greenish light of the emergency room driveway.
“Are you really ready for this? I don’t think we can pretend this whole business, from the boat to Reeve’s death, isn’t paranormal. And it’s going to get worse now that someone with the stink of magic on them is willing to risk exposure by coming into a hospital to kill an old man who was probably dying, anyhow.”
“This was not something accomplished from a distance?”
“No. There wasn’t enough magical residue or a spell circle around his bed for Reeve to have been killed by magic at a distance. Someone or something came here in person to do it.”
“If this person has magic at their disposal—”
“It costs. Magic is not free, especially not this kind. The farther you want to reach, the harder you want to hit, the more you have to pay one way or another. Both the spell circles we’ve seen were drawn in blood. That has to come from a live person or animal, not a plastic container stolen from the hospital blood supply, which means our spell flinger is powerful but has a major crutch and can’t do much without literally spilling blood. Smothering wouldn’t pay the piper. No blood here, but the residue was otherwise the same, so no major spell was cast but something or someone magical was in the room and they killed Reeve—or made sure he couldn’t be saved, at the very least.”
Solis looked troubled.
I sighed and felt like I was kicking a puppy. “Up to you to believe it or not,” I said, “but I am telling you the truth where magic is concerned, and I don’t see any other explanation or any other way of solving this without heading into the weirdness.”
“I am sorry I’m . . . difficult. Forcing my mind to go in these directions is . . . is like changing religions.”
“Have you tried that?” I asked.
“No. I think it wiser to challenge only one ingrained practice at a time.”
“You might find that some changes just come along with the package.”
He nodded. “That may be true. Your . . . partner. Mr. Lassiter? Mr. Purlis? Which does he prefer?”
Ah, so Solis did know the whole long, strange tale of Quinton. “I’ve never asked him,” I replied, which was true. I’d just assumed he was content with the nickname and didn’t really like either his alias or his real name much. One he’d adopted on the fly and the other he’d tried to walk away from. “I just call him Quinton and we go on from there.”
“Ah. How does he cope with this . . . blindness? I assume he is not like you. . . .”
“You assume correctly. He trusts me—most of the time,” I added, thinking of his unexplained discomforts and alarms lately. “And he has enough personal experience with things that don’t fit the standard paradigm that he’s developed his own Theory of the Invisible by observation and deduction. Most of the time he’s right. Sometimes he’s not. Some things you can’t see still leave observable traces—like, say, gravity. Some leave nothing concrete behind to prove your experience was anything other than imagination. Well, I have some unexplainable scars, but I’m strange that way.”
He seemed intrigued but he didn’t ask. He grunted to himself and nodded. “I see.”
I had the urge to put my hand on his shoulder, but I stifled it. I wasn’t sure this tiny, forced bud of acceptance could withstand any ham-handed gestures on my part yet.
“Just don’t go slamming any mental doors. If you can do that for a while I think you’ll figure the rest out. And I . . .” I hesitated, then finished, “I’m here.”
“So you are,” he said. “And I should return home. To see how things are.”
I smiled. “Understood. I’ll call you tomorrow if you don’t call me first. Then you can tell me if you’re still on board this crazy investigation or not.”
He nodded and turned away to find his car. I went to mine and started back toward home.
It was only ten minutes from Highline to my place in West Seattle, but when I reached the turn that would put me irrevocably on track for the condo, I went the other way, heading up to Ballard and back to Seawitch.
When I got to the marina, I didn’t go straight back to the boat, though I had thought I would. Instead I found myself walking up and down B dock as the last rays of our late-setting sun faded into purple and umber smears on the horizon. I wanted to confirm something I hadn’t been able to get a good look at before, and with the evening closing in, my ghostly act would be less noticeable than it would have been earlier. C dock and Pleiades were just across the water. . . .
I sank into the Grey, the chilly mist and ghostlight washing up over me until the world was a dim shape beneath shadows of memory and bright lines of energy. I walked out to the end of the finger dock closest to the big blue sailboat and sat down in the slow-pressing cold at the edge of the blackness that was water. From here the power grid of the Grey was easy to see in all its burning color and searing light. Pleiades looked like the cold shadow of a boat surrounded like Sleeping Beauty’s castle by a magical hedge of waving emerald and aqua vines spiked with fury red thorns that rose from the water in a tangled pillar. And over it all lay a coiling cloud of gray-green smoke. The same color and misty snakelike form I’d seen around John Reeve when he collapsed at his home and again lingering around his empty bed at the hospital. Was it attacking Jacque Knight or was it protecting her? I was pretty sure I didn’t want to attract the attention of our murderous magic user, even if he or she was depleted after killing Reeve. I eased back from the Grey, feeling as if I were swimming upward through thickened silver steam as cold as Siberian graves. I broke free, back to normal, and found myself gasping for air, not realizing I’d been holding my breath.
Something splashed and nudged my foot where my toe overhung the edge of the dock. I glanced down, looking for the surface ripples left by a leaping fish, and caught the limpid brown stare of a furry, whiskered face. I froze, hoping not to frighten it off before I could see what the creature was, but there was no danger of that when the beast heaved itself up, throwing the bulk of its upper body onto the dock beside me.
It bared its fangs, like the gigantic version of Chaos panting in excitement. I started at the creature, all wet, dark fur and compact, muscular body. Much too big to be a harbor seal and too hairy to be a sea lion. An otter of tremendous size but with a head bizarrely large and misshapen. It pawed at me and rubbed its weird head on my calf, soaking my jeans leg instantly. I thought about reaching out to pet it, but another glimpse of those teeth changed my mind. Whatever this thing wanted, I wasn’t going to tempt it to lose its temper by patting it on the head. Especially since that head was nearly the size of mine, to accommodate the finger-length incisors it flashed. It wriggled and the dying light flashed on its wet back.