“Then the person who helped her out is still alive.”
“And using their monster-on-loan to settle scores. But Sistu needs to eat more frequently than his hunting buddy wants to whack someone, so… he grabs a snack and takes it to his lair for later.”
“So Felix was a snack, but Jenny or Go-cart were revenge?”
I nodded. “That’s what I’m thinking. Separate the zombies from the disappeared, and the ones who were found dead are the key to finding out who’s responsible. We’re not looking for anything supernatural on that score—just a human with a grudge.”
I shuddered and thought about the necessities of the normal world. “This isn’t going to fly with Solis. He might buy the idea that someone killed some of the undergrounders, but the chances are good whoever it was has an alibi for at least one of the deaths—he doesn’t have to be nearby if Tall Grass was right about Jenny’s death. I’m not sure how I’d point the finger, either. Solis is not my biggest fan since the poltergeist business.”
“It’s more important to get rid of the monster than to lock someone up for it.”
I nodded. “We’ll have to catch up to whoever it is first since the monster must be hanging around him… or her. It won’t be easy, since the monster might decide we look like lunch and whoever’s directing it might not even know what’s going on if they don’t speak Lushootseed or whatever the thing speaks. I wish I knew what it was saying last night…”
“What who was saying?”
“Sistu. Didn’t you hear it yelling at us?”
“I couldn’t make anything out of it. It sounded like screaming or speaking in tongues.”
“Many tongues. I think I caught a few words, but the rest was mush. It talks. And it flickers through a whole closetful of shapes as it does. Ella Graham said it was clever and sneaky. Maybe we can slow it down if we can just figure out how to talk to it…”
CHAPTER 16
Mara let us in. She nodded to Quinton and gave me a keen look that wasn’t a smile but wasn’t anything else, either. I didn’t know what had brought on this distance—unless she was still upset about Albert—but her invitation inside was distracted and formal. “Do come in. Ben’s upstairs. I’ll be keeping Brian busy down here, so he’ll not trouble you.”
I gazed hard at her, trying to figure out what was wrong, but she’d cloaked herself in deliberate blankness. I glanced deep into the Grey for any sign of Albert—thinking he might be the cause of her coolness—but I could find no sign of him in the house and only the hard, red ball of the trap Mara had wrapped him in the last time, still clinging to the roof under the twisting gold lines of her protective spells.
“Thanks. Mara,” I started, but she waved the rest of my words aside.
“Not now, Harper. I’ve a lot to think on,” she said, and hurried off, worrying her bottom lip. I looked at Quinton and shrugged. We headed for the stairs and up to Ben’s office beneath the eaves.
Ben was doodling and drinking tea when we entered the attic. He jumped up from the desk, not quite knocking his head against the low ceiling.
“Oh, hello! Sorry, sorry—kind of jumpy since the Albert incident.”
“Why?” I asked. “Has he done something else?”
“No, no, no,” Ben babbled. “But I keep thinking he will and I’m a little stircrazy anyhow. I feel like I’m in Mara’s way. I thought I’d rework my lesson plans since we’ve lost almost a week of classes, but… I just can’t concentrate on them. Oh, who’s this?” he added, finally turning his attention to Quinton.
“This is Quinton. He brought me a… an interesting case and we could use your help. It’s likely to be dangerous, though.”
Ben seemed to perk up. “Is it a Grey thing?”
“Yes. We’ve been looking into the deaths of some homeless in Pioneer Square—”
“I saw some news articles about that,” Ben said.
I nodded. “The ones that said bodies had been found apparently chewed by dogs, right?”
“Yeah. Not dogs, I take it?”
I shook my head and sat down on a clear spot on the office sofa. “Not dogs.”
“Tea!” Ben exclaimed.
Quinton and I both stared at him, startled by the outburst.
Ben blinked back. “Sorry. Tea. Would you guys like some? I have a pot up here; I can get more glasses.”
I considered saying no, but it was a little chilly in the office and Ben seemed to want to do something. “Tea is great, Ben. We can wait.”
“I’ll be right back,” he said, clucking out and bounding down the steep steps so the stairwell rang behind him.
I tugged at the elastic knee brace under my jeans as Quinton cleared some space beside me. He looked at the spines of the books as he lifted them off the seat.
“I can’t even read half these titles and its not just because they’re in German and Russian and… I don’t know what language that is… He’s got some really old books here.” He had a gleam in his eye as he flipped opened a venerable leather-bound tome stamped in faded gold Cyrillic. “Wow. The publication date on this is 1789. That was a hell of a year.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah. The French Revolution started in 1789—among a lot of other events that changed the world.” He caught my bemused look. “Hey, I was always good with dates and numbers. Mom was an engineer and Dad was a spy—you pick up skills,” he added with a shrug.
“So, the spy thing… that’s the family business?” I asked.
“Dad’s side,” he said, putting the book down with care and sitting next to me. “I was kind of my mom’s kid and I got into computers and science and math early on because of her—got the nickname because of her, too. I didn’t see my dad much, so the spy thing seemed sexy and exciting—which you can’t say for engineering—and that’s how I ended up working for the government in the first place. I wish I’d stuck to electronics.”
The sound of Ben’s heavy feet on the stairs cut the conversation short before I could ask, “What nickname?”
It took a bit of faffing about to get everything distributed and settled again—Ben’s Russian tea habits being almost as fussy as any formal Brit’s—before Quinton and I could get Ben’s attention.
I curled my hands around the hot glass in its metal holder and noticed the scabs and scrapes from the previous night’s narrow escape. It seemed strangely distant until the memory of fear rushed back in for a moment and made my gut twist. I sipped my tea and caught my breath as Quinton cast a questioning glance my way.
I shook him off with a small, reassuring smile. Ben was watching me, too, but his look was more plainly curious.
“All right. So. These poor homeless folks,” he prompted.
“Aside from the dead, there are several missing and they all seem to be victims of the same thing. They’re being eaten by a legendary Native American monster and, aside from killing people, it also makes zombies,” I said. Ben was capable of rambling for hours, so I figured I’d better nip that tendency in the bud by cutting straight to the bone of the matter.
Ben’s face lit up. “Really?” Then he shook himself and his face went white under his dark beard. “Oh my God, that’s horrible!”
“There’s a lot more to it,” I said. “This monster, Sisiutl, seems to be under someone’s control—partial control. We need to catch both the monster and the man and get rid of the monster. But we’re here because we got up close and personal with Sistu—it’s a safer name to use—last night and it seems to talk in a whole glut of languages, bits and pieces all at once. I think we’d be a lot safer if we can talk to it. It’s clever enough to pull pranks and make deals to hunt in exchange for food, so if we can talk to it there’s always a possibility we can bargain with it—if it doesn’t eat us first. It also seems to cast illusions of shape-shifting. I’m not sure what’s going on and I’d like to be better equipped the next time we run into it. So I thought we should ask you for any ideas about the nature of the beast.”