Campbell threw a few necessities into an overnight bag. I called Eli, got his voice mail, and let him know I’d found Lou. Ten minutes later, we were in Campbell’s old Land Cruiser, headed to San Francisco. By the time we made it back to my place it was just past nine.
Campbell unpacked her travel bag and settled in. Lou was still dead to the world but I had managed to catch a few winks on the way back, so I was awake enough that we could go out and grab a late bite to eat. Lou attempted to come along with us, bleary-eyed and yawning, but it didn’t take much convincing to get him to go back to sleep.
Dinner was fun, even with the specter of the second shape-shifter hanging around the corners of my mind. We talked about this and that, nothing heavy, comfortable and at ease, connected in that way you can sometimes be with an old girlfriend when the post-breakup tension is finally gone.
When we got back to my place, I did wonder if it was going to lead anywhere, but the inevitable ringing of the phone made the issue moot. It was Victor, and he had news.
SEVENTEEN
“WE’VE GOT A LEAD,” VICTOR SAID. “GET OVER here.”
“Right now?”
“Yes, now. Why else would I call?”
“What have you got?” I asked.
“Never mind that. Just get over here.” He hung up the phone before I could ask anything else.
“Who was that?” Campbell asked.
“Victor. Duty calls.” I looked over at Lou, dead to the world again. “I hate to go out without him, but he doesn’t look in shape to do much.”
“He’s not,” she said. “Something dangerous, I assume.”
“Maybe. You going to be all right here?”
“Of course. I’ll keep an eye on Lou.” She shook her head in resignation. “Hanging out with you is like Ground-hog Day, Mason. Monsters. Midnight missions. Death-defying feats.”
“It’s all Victor’s fault,” I said.
“Of course it is. Be careful, will you?”
WHEN I REACHED VICTOR’S HE WAS OUTSIDE waiting for me, pacing impatiently up and down. Eli was leaning against the side of Victor’s Beemer, looking tired.
“Took you long enough,” Victor said. It had been all of twenty minutes.
“Where’s Lou?”
“He’s home, recovering. He got hurt.”
“Ahh,” said Eli, looking at me strangely. I waited for some further elucidation, but that was all he said.
“Get in,” Victor said, opening the passenger-side door. I got in and sank into the comfortable seat.
“Where are we going?” I asked.
“Telegraph Hill. By Coit Tower. “
“You think it’s up there? How do you know?”
“We have information,” said Eli, “from Bertram.” He lapsed into silence. This was odd. Neither one of them asked anything about what had happened to Lou, or how he was doing. They were focused and intense.
Bertram. I didn’t know how I felt about that. He had been an enforcer for a while, but after a number of unfortunate incidents, Victor had stopped using him for anything. Bertram had a take-no-prisoners attitude, and could easily escalate a minor situation into a major one. Cops have a phrase for that-“badge heavy.”
Eli had already vetoed his involvement once before, when we trapped the Wendigo. But apparently things had got desperate. Bertram could come in handy when results were needed and the methods used to get them weren’t a primary concern. His specialty was intelligence, which in his case meant leaning on people in creative ways until they told him what he wanted to know. I didn’t like him much.
Victor pulled up at the Pioneer Park lot, right next to Coit Tower. Coit Tower is an iconic San Francisco landmark, and although the surrounding Pioneer Park is small, it could provide plenty of cover for something to be lurking in the dark.
Before Victor got out of the car, he checked his fanny pack, the one he carries on many magical sorties, a mini version of his usual black doctor’s bag. Most of the stuff it contains is for magical forensics, but it also contains objects for enabling those spells that need magical props. It contains crystals, small bars of different pure metals, things I can’t identify, and other, more prosaic items such as duct tape and a hunting knife. Finally satisfied, he zipped it shut and exited the car.
“No shotgun?” I said.
“We won’t be needing it.”
Again, no explanation, no conversation. I shrugged and followed him out of the car. I’d seen him like this before, but never so bad. There wasn’t any point in pestering him with questions; he’d tell me what was going on when he was good and ready.
We headed down Greenwich Street in the direction of Bertram’s place over on Montgomery. Victor led the way and Eli brought up the rear. I had a sudden sense of déjà vu. Of course. Morgan’s dream, the one where she had seen Victor, Eli, and me walking down a darkened street. And no Lou. She’d felt an overwhelming sense of dread and danger, but she couldn’t see anything. All she had seen was the three of us.
I hadn’t been feeling very comfortable anyway, but now I was filled with my own sense of foreboding. I kept glancing left and right, expecting something to leap from out the shadows at any moment. When Victor suddenly stopped, I almost ran up on his heels.
“What is it?” I whispered, unwilling to make any noise that might bring something down on us.
He held up a hand for quiet. We had just passed an al leyway, and he turned back to examine something lying on the ground, hidden in shadow. He squatted down to examine it more closely, then whistled softly.
“I’ll be damned,” he said. “Look at this.”
I walked up obligingly, and that was when Eli grabbed me from behind in a bear hug and lifted me off my feet. Once you’re off your feet, you have no purchase and there’s nothing you can do, especially when your opponent is bigger and stronger. You can try a head butt, snapping your head back with as much force as you can muster, but that’s easy to counter just by keeping your head tucked down behind the other guy’s shoulder. None of that mattered, though. I was too stunned to even struggle.
“What the fuck!” I yelled, but that was all I got to say. Victor had his handy roll of duct tape out and whipped a few turns around my head and mouth in no time flat. Eli pushed me facedown onto the pavement, knocking the wind out of me, and Victor looped more turns around my hands and feet. I was neatly trussed up like a Thanksgiving turkey, and all I could do was glare and make muffled sounds.
I stopped making even those when Victor put a knife blade up to my throat.
“Not a sound,” he said. “I’d as soon cut your throat as not, and the minute you start to change, that’s exactly what I’ll do. Understand?”
Now it started to make sense. Victor and Eli thought I wasn’t me-that I was the shape-shifter. But where in God’s name had they got that idea? However they’d come to that conclusion, I was in trouble. With the duct tape over my mouth I couldn’t explain, and I doubted that Victor would listen anyway. Since the shape-shifter could do an almost perfect copy, complete with memories, nothing I could say would convince him. No wonder Morgan had seen only the three of us. There wasn’t anyone else, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t in serious trouble.
Eli hoisted me up and tossed me over one broad shoulder. With his professorial demeanor, it’s easy to forget just how strong he is. I felt a tickling sensation as Victor laid a slight illusion over my body to make it look like an innocuous pile of coats or some such.
“Bertram?” Eli asked. Victor nodded.
This was getting worse by the moment. Obviously they wanted some information from the shape-shifter. Bertram was notorious about getting answers, but his methods were not for the squeamish. And I was in the unenviable position of having no answers to give. No matter what he did to me, I couldn’t give information I didn’t have, and any insistence that I was really me would just be taken as stubborn intransigence, inviting further unpleasant interrogation.