He walked past me and left the den, heading for the exit. Cameron started to follow him.
“What the hell, Cameron?” I asked.
He stopped and glanced down at me. “I’m sorry, Harper. There’s literally no power we can use on this… whatever it is. It’s not even making enough of a stir in the Grey to bother any of us. We’ve got no power other than the physical in this situation, and that won’t help you now. If you find this thing and need some muscle, that’s another story, but this isn’t something we’re any help on.”
“What are you afraid of? I can’t believe you’re scared.”
“I can’t tell you. But it’s not your monster—whatever that is. Believe me. And don’t ask about the… others. Please. Carlos is going to make me hurt for that one as it is, and you really truly don’t want to know more.”
Cameron slipped past and followed his master.
Dumbfounded, I sat and stared at the untouched wine and the spilled martini. I bolted my whiskey and left, knowing I would never catch them. Even if there was more they could tell me, they wouldn’t, and it was pointless to waste what remained of my evening in that hope.
But what in hell or out of it had made them clam up? I sent silent prayers to any god who might listen that I wouldn’t regret the lack of that knowledge.
CHAPTER 9
I don’t get hysterical at the sight of a spider, but I admit, even the hint of something arachnoid prowling the tunnels under Pioneer Square and snaring its victims like flies sent a frisson skittering down my spine. Carlos hadn’t confirmed the idea of a monstrous spider, but the image was strong in my mind.
I cursed Edward for planting the idea in my mind, but I still wanted to ask a few questions of Quinton. He’d said enough about his reasons for going underground that my sudden suspicions of him earlier had been allayed, but Edward’s hints bugged me. I thought Edward was just throwing shadows, but I needed to know for sure. And it wasn’t yet so late that Quinton would be unavailable.
Not knowing where he might be, I paged him and he called me back as I was returning the Rover to its customary slot in the “sinking ship”—the tilted triangular parking structure across the street from my office building, which reared from the block like the prow of a doomed liner. “Hi, Harper. What’s up?”
“I’m done with Edward—and Carlos and Cameron, too. I need to talk to you.”
“I’m at the Double Header with Rosa and Tall Grass—he’s a bit freaked about Jenny…” He paused. “Where should I meet you?”
“Not a bar.”
“Only place still open is Starbucks. I’ll be there in ten minutes.”
I doubted the conversation would go well, but it wouldn’t be any better in private and at least I’d have a hot drink. I trudged down the street to the coffeehouse and ordered a very large drip coffee “with room” for cream. You have to be specific, or the baristas fill the cup to the rim with the crude oil they call coffee. He’d just gotten my drink doctored with cream and sugar when Quinton joined me.
“Do you want coffee?” I asked.
“Not really.”
“It’s cold outside.”
He blinked at me. “Yeah, it’s twenty degrees out there.”
“Do you want to talk about this business in here?” I tipped my head toward one of the patrons reading a newspaper in the front window corner. To my view he was cloaked in a swirl of blackness, and I knew he was a vampire without even seeing the fangs. “Some people have friends everywhere.”
He sighed and shrugged. “OK, I’ll get some coffee and we’ll go to your office.”
My turn to shrug. I waited while he collected a cup of something hot and then we crunched along the frosty sidewalk to my office building. I had to use my key on the outer door since none of the ground floor businesses were open after six. As I unlocked, I noticed that the shadows nearby moved and reshaped themselves around furtive watchers. It appeared that Edward was keeping an eye on me, though it seemed he didn’t realize I could see his minions even when they thought they were hidden.
I’d assumed all vampires understood the Grey at least as well as I did—certainly Carlos and Wygan seemed to know a lot more—but it occurred to me that Cameron had once been surprised he was unable to hide from me by sliding into the Grey. Maybe most vampires didn’t know what I did… It was an interesting thought and it distracted me enough that Quinton had to elbow me and remind me to get inside out of the cold. I locked the door behind us and we went upstairs to my office.
It was chilly, but the space was small and would warm up quickly enough. I put my coffee on the desk and sat down behind it while Quinton took the better of the two client chairs and leaned back in it with his steaming cup cradled in both hands. He looked tired, the aura around him reduced to a small blue glow. I studied him for a few moments, wondering.
He returned a bland gaze and said nothing. Quinton was always good at silence.
Well, I thought, might as well get it over with. “Are you a werewolf, Quinton?”
He snorted a laugh, frowning at the same time. “No! Werewolves don’t exist. What would give you that idea?”
I ticked them off on my fingers. “Vampires, ghosts, monsters in the sewer, why not werewolves, too? And the mutual dislike between you and Edward—who refers to you as a ‘lone wolf’ and warns me to check into your ‘oddities.’ ”
He sipped his coffee and remained reclined in the chair. “You’ve been reading too many bad horror novels. Or playing dumb-ass RPGs if you buy the idea of a deep-seated, traditional animosity between vampires and werewolves. It’s fantasy. Werewolves don’t exist,” he repeated.
“So you say, but a year ago I’d have said ghosts and vampires didn’t exist, either. Do you have proof?”
“I have logic. And I’ve never found any evidence of real lycanthropy. Vampires, magic… yeah. Weres? No. It’s not possible. At least I think not, from observation. Maybe I missed something, but so far, no evidence to the contrary.”
I picked up my own coffee. “OK, then. Elucidate.”
“All right. Everything I’ve seen tells me that magic tends to respect the laws of physics—kind of freaky physics, but lawful physics. For total form-shifting to happen in less than, say, a couple of days, max, it would have to break conservation of mass, conservation of energy, and the laws of thermodynamics at the very least. If shape-shifting does exist, then it’s an illusion, not an actual form change—unless it happens very slowly, which doesn’t seem to be the case. If someone were to change from human to wolf, he’ll have to make a whole lot of physical changes very rapidly, shedding or gaining mass and using up a ton of energy. There just isn’t enough elasticity in the system to allow it—he’d burst into flames from the heat of the energetic change alone.
“I’ve never burst into flame that I’m aware of. Besides, you’ve been out with me plenty of times when the moon was full and I don’t even get hairy palms. QED, not a werewolf.”
He drank more coffee and gave me his bland look again.
I had to chuckle at the perverse sanity of it—and at Quinton’s expression.
There was a hint of merriment in his eyes that made me feel a touch foolish but not enough to mind. It was kind of sweet, in a way, to be gently teased after the emotional whirlwind of my failed love affair. I smiled a little as I asked, “All right, but why does Edward call you the lone wolf?”
Quinton shrugged. “You’re the one who calls him the leader of the pack. Early on he discovered I was useful, but Edward doesn’t like contractors. If you’re not one of his kind, he prefers you to be either cattle or chattel, and I won’t play that game. I’m the stranger with teeth who won’t roll over and show my belly. Since I know how to hurt him, he can’t come at me directly. So he makes a show of being unworried and immune. It raises his stock with the rest of the pack and we have a sort of uneasy truce. That doesn’t stop him from making attempts to control me, and he’s not above making trouble for me if it’s not out of his way—which is what he’s doing with you. His time scale is much longer than mine, so he doesn’t try very often, but he does try.”