Once Mambo Moon had fought clear of the rocks and currents, the rest of the trip up Haro Strait was easy enough. But even with the current now in our favor, once we turned southeast above Henry Island the trip down Spieden Channel was a bitter fight for every yard in the teeth of a cold and adverse wind that sprang from nowhere and rushed up the narrow passage like a fury. Ragged white lines appeared where current-driven wave tops were whipped into foam by the wind coming from the opposite direction. The water in the channel became a choppy ribbon of dark blue crossed with white that sent the boat lurching up and then banging down like a hobbyhorse with a squirrely front end.
We each took a turn at the bow—mine cut a bit short by the swooning pain in my ribs—clipped safely in place with lines from our flotation vests to the rails. We kept a lookout for anything that might come under the boat as it reared up, but nothing significant did and we all got chilled in our damp, borrowed slickers as the sun started its slow summer crawl to the horizon. With the bulk of Vancouver Island far behind, the channel was cast into shadow long before dusk.
As we bowed and reared, the Valencia’s bell gave out occasional muffled chimes that sent a frisson through me and plunged the world into a dark cloud of the Grey for a few moments. The noise seemed to be folding reality, layering the normal and the Grey into a pleat where both appeared equally solid and real for the fleeting moments that they remained aligned. Between the motion, my cranky rib, and the fluttering of the worlds, I felt distinctly seasick by the time Mambo Moon finally exited Spieden Channel. Directly ahead lay Jones Island, shining gold in the westering sun between purple shadows lying on the water from San Juan and Spieden islands, closing on the little nub of land with their encroaching darkness like the pincers of a giant black crab.
Within a minute of the boat’s leaving the channel, the wind died down and the swells smoothed out as we hit the wider, more populated water. I was the last on lookout duty and I slogged my way along the deck sideways, bent and favoring my aching side. The bridge had its own doors that opened onto steps down to the side decks and I climbed them at a snail’s pace to leave my moist coat on a hook just inside the starboard door. The three men were in the pilothouse when I entered, panting.
“You look done in, Harper,” Zantree said from his post at the wheel.
I nodded. Quinton stepped close to draw me in tight against his chest so my back pressed to his heat while his arms circled my waist. Since I’m taller than he is, it was a little awkward, but I didn’t care. Warmth is warmth and when it comes from an attractive man who loves you, you don’t quibble about the way his chin hits your shoulder.
“How much longer?” I asked.
Zantree scrubbed at his damp hair with one hand as he answered. “Well, assuming we’re in the right place and all, maybe forty minutes at this pace. But I don’t get how we’re going to see anything but the park service dock and a few tourists.”
“I’ll have to get our hosts to come out and open the gate to Neverland,” I said.
I tried ringing the bell, but inside the confines of the pilothouse I couldn’t generate a solid peal, only an anemic clank or ping that shuttered the world in darkness for a moment before it fell away again. The men all flinched as the overlapping world flickered in and out of view.
I looked at each of them. “What are you seeing or hearing that’s making you cringe like that?” I knew what I was experiencing, but none of them were Greywalkers or even particularly sensitive to the Grey, though Solis seemed to take it in a bit more. Did the bell actually have some power to call up an entrance or was I imagining—hoping for—more than was possible?
“It’s fast,” Quinton said. “For just a second . . . it’s like seeing the world in the light of an eclipse.”
“Bleak,” Solis said. “It is not just a darkness but . . . a loss.”
“Storm light’s what it looks like to me,” Zantree said. “Like we’re on the edge of a hurricane or a blow coming down.”
“Do you feel something or is it just visual?” I asked.
“It’s cold,” Quinton said, and Zantree nodded.
But Solis frowned, shaking his head a little. “There is . . . expectation. Something waiting in the cold.”
Maybe it’s a cop thing—that intuition the good ones develop—that was giving Solis that extra bit of knowledge, but whether it was from his background, his family, his job, or being dragged in by me, he was picking up more than either of the other men. It was strange that Quinton wasn’t getting more, considering how much time he spent with me, but perhaps the difference in perception was in kind rather than in degree. Either way, I guessed I needed a louder, longer tone before the phenomenon would hold steady.
“I guess I have to take it outside,” I said.
“Why?” Quinton asked.
“The bell seems to resist ringing indoors. At a guess, I’d say the ghosts are deliberately muffling it and all I can think of is to try it outside. Don’t know why they’d care but they do seem to.”
“It doesn’t have to be you who takes it,” he said. “You’re tired already and chances are good that a lot of whatever has to be done next will fall on your shoulders. So why don’t you sit down and I’ll do it?”
I didn’t get to reply. Solis cut me off. “I will take it. You and Zantree know the boat. Blaine needs rest. I have been almost useless so far.”
It looked as if Quinton would have argued but Zantree talked right over him.
“So long as you don’t go overboard again,” Zantree said. “If we’re as close as Harper thinks, I doubt we’ll be able to haul you back if those fish-tailed man snatchers drag you over this time. Get the harness on and clip in soon as you’re out the door. Or I’ll toss y’down below and lock you in till we’re heading home. Not having any more rescue drills on this cruise, damn it.”
Solis cocked one eyebrow but all he returned was a sardonic, “Aye, Captain.”
Quinton helped Solis with the safety harness and the flotation gear, giving him a funny look. “Not wearing a red shirt under there, are you?”
“What?”
“Star Trek—the red shirt guys always get the ax.”
“Ah. No.”
“You only need to ring it once,” I said. “I’ll know if it works.” I wanted to tell him to be careful but that seemed condescending. Instead I shut up and watched with a double flutter of anxiety—both mine and Quinton’s—in my chest as Solis stepped outside with the bronze bell clutched in his hands and secured to his life vest by a line and clip through the loop on top. I hoped it wouldn’t drag him down if he was again swept overboard.
Solis didn’t go all the way out to the bow as I’d half expected, but stopped at the side deck, attaching his safety line to the nearest rail. He didn’t need more room and it was foolish to go farther than he had to—a choice I mentally applauded. He didn’t take any chances with grabby monsters this time but hooked his left arm around the hand rail on the stairs he’d just descended. Then he held the bell out and let it swing from its loop until the clapper struck hard against the body.
A loud, round peal rolled out from the bell like the report from a cannon, visible in the Grey as a rushing wave that rippled the material of the world and spun a hollow bubble of ghost-stuff around us, encapsulating Mambo Moon in a sphere that was both Grey and normal at the same time. The walls of the overlapping worlds shimmered and wavered like the skin of a soap bubble riding a paranormal breeze.