“What do you want?” I tried.
“Har-per!” it barked. “Booooad!”
“Boat?” I asked. “Which boat?”
The noises it made didn’t make any sense to me this time; they were hisses and grunts cut off by a harsh barking scream as it thrashed back into the water, apparently dragged or shocked by a sudden eruption of energy from Pleiades that started with a whistle and a rising cry of sound, then flashed out in shades of red and searing white like lightning bolts directed by an angry god. The otter creature dove and dodged through the water, breaching the surface and cutting back down and around, faster and more nimble than the slickest fish. A trail of phosphorescent bubbles twisted through the water in its wake, the strange sound of it making ripples on the surface until the creature disappeared from view, tangled up in a gleaming creeper of jade and sapphire energy that faded into the depths as the gigantic mustelid swam away. Then the twining energy flashed bright and lashed through the surface in a shout of strange harmonies, recoiling toward me. I threw myself down on the dock and with a shriek, a crackle, and a whir of angry wasps, the bright line of energy whipped through the space my head had occupied. Then it reeled, fading as if exhausted, back to Pleiades, sighing like a broken wire pulling through a hole in a steel wall—a wire drawn too taut and snapped by a sudden flick of a giant’s wrist.
I converse with ghosts and work for vampires; one freakish, talking otter was barely a blip on my personal radar of the weird. That said, the short, swift violence of the moment startled me far more than having even a truncated and garbled conversation with a giant seagoing ferret. Not much fazes me anymore, but the sudden blink of magical conflict did leave me a little unsettled and mildly abraded on my palms and knees.
I sat up with care and peered sideways into the Grey, looking for a sign of what had happened to the otter creature, but the cold depths of the bay were obscured by a scree of visual noise—like the Grey version of a dust devil kicked up in the otter’s wake. I turned my Grey-tuned sight toward the sailboat, but that, too, seemed hidden in a flurry of dimming energetic particles writhing in the water like clouds of agitated, dying krill. I muttered some curse words under my breath and backed away from both the Grey and the precarious, wet end of the dock. I considered walking over to Pleiades to investigate the apparent source of the magical flash, or down to Seawitch to see if I could get more out of the ghosts, but the fallen night, ringed around with sudden, creeping fog, made me think I’d rather return with Solis in the daylight than face the ghosts of Seawitch or, possibly worse, the resident of Pleiades alone.
Rattled, I walked back to my car, paged Quinton, and went home.
Quinton had arrived first. Even before I got inside I could sense his frustrated annoyance. He was muttering to himself and swiping at the dishes in the sink as if they had done him wrong. Every angry swish of the scrubber felt like a slap. We’ve had this strange emotional tie for about a year, but while the intensity had faded, the worst sensations apparently still bled through. Quinton was royally pissed and a touch scared and I felt every secondhand stab of it.
“Hey there,” I said, putting down the bell and my bag with care so as not to squish the ferret, and coming over to kiss him on the cheek.
He flinched.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“Nothing,” he snapped, throwing down the scrubber.
I raised my eyebrows. “I don’t think so.”
He glared at me. Then he turned away with a jerk. “This hasn’t been as easy as I’d thought it would be—the things I feel, the things I try to shut off in my own head. I didn’t even realize I was this . . . angry about so many things until I started trying to turn it off.”
I watched him and I hurt—my very own ache of sadness and pain for him, not just his upset turning inward and stabbing us both. “It hasn’t been a problem at my end. I don’t want you to shield me from your bad parts; I want you whole—bad things and all. You know I’m not any good at keeping my own horrors at bay. Is that the problem?” I was all too aware of Solis’s worries about his family to discount such a risk to what counted as mine. “Is being privy to my feelings driving you crazy? I’m sorry if that’s the case,” I said. It was so much easier to apologize now than it had been a few years ago. I knew it wasn’t a weakness to own up to causing distress or having made a mistake, or even to take a share of the blame whether you did something blameworthy or not.
“No. No, that’s not it at all.” He still sounded angry, but the fluctuating colors around him told me it was frustration as much as anything. His shoulders were stiff and the set of his head and a ghost pain in my jaw made me think he was clenching his teeth. He kept that posture for a moment, still turned away from me; then he took a deep breath, held it . . . and deflated, the orange sparks around him dying out to only sparking glimmers as his aura settled down. “I’m sorry. I’m overreacting and I’m making this worse. I’m not sure how it could get worse, but I’m pretty sure it will.”
“No. You’re still getting used to a strange situation. It took me a while to accept what I am and what that does to me. Although it’s still hard for me to take what it does to you.
“And what could get worse?” I thought of his hints the night before. “Is it connected to Fern Laguire?” Laguire, his former boss at a government agency people don’t like to talk about, had finally retired and given up her search for the computer geek that got away when she had been persuaded that Quinton—or, as she knew him, J. J. Purlis—was dead. Her obsessive focus and fury went well beyond the normal profile for government spooks as long as her retirement had been at stake, but it appeared she’d let it go once her financial security had been assured by the removal of the threat she had seen in Quinton’s unresolved disappearance from her fold.
He stiffened and swore. “Oh yes. Much worse than Fern. I forgot I mentioned it.”
“You thought I wouldn’t remember what you said earlier? That your past is leaking back?”
“Not just the business past. It’s not Fern this time. It’s my dad.”
“I thought you’d dealt with your dad. . . .”
“I thought I had. But I continue to be wrong every time I think I’ve got the upper hand at last. I saw him today. Or, rather, I heard from him. . . . That’s not quite right. It was a meeting, but it wasn’t a meeting. Telepresence, but I know he was actually nearby. I’ve seen him around Seattle recently.”
I went to him and put my arms around him. “You’re sure? Why would he be in Seattle?”
“Because he’s figured out some of the same things I did—that there are people like . . . well, not like you, but like some of your clients. People like the late Edward Kammerling. And didn’t he make hay out of that. . . .”
“Excuse me? I’m not following you.”
He rubbed his hands over his face, then turned and put his arms around me. The embrace felt a little desperate and more in need of comfort than I had expected. I tightened my hug. “Try again,” I whispered. “What did he want?”
“He’s in charge of a new project. He calls it the Ghost Division and he thinks that’s funny because it’s the sort of project no one wants to admit exists. And it’s looking for . . . paranormals.”
“I see.” Actually I wasn’t sure I did. Various governments have looked into psychic phenomena and other paranormal topics in the past and in the end they all give up or the projects get canceled. It was hard to believe anyone was green-lighting a project like that again. But maybe enough time had elapsed for the collective memory of the government to fade. “How did your father manage to persuade anyone to go down that road again?”