“You’re mad!” Mara protested. “Y’haven’t even got a plan what to do when you get there.”
“I can’t have much of a plan since I don’t know what they are doing. That’s the point. If I shake them now, I may be able to find out or even stop them. But if I just sit here and let them do whatever they like, they remain in control and I have no choice but to be driven where they want. I will not let them do that any longer. I’ll find out what I can, by whatever method I can.”
Ben chimed in on the same tune with Mara, squelching by sheer volume my attempts to tell them I wasn’t crazy, just willing to take a risk now, while the odds were not so stacked against me in exchange for a better position later.
Before the noise could wake Brian, Quinton pulled me around to meet his stare. “I’m going with you.”
“Oh, no, you aren’t. I already told you”—I shot a quelling glare at the Danzigers, too—“I’m not taking my backup into danger with me. That’s why you’re called ‘the backup.’ You stay out until I need you.”
Quinton grabbed onto my shoulders so I had to focus on him. “
They’re
the backup; I’m the partner. And I
am
going because I have the key.”
ELEVEN
“W
hat? A key? To what?” I demanded. “To the radio station,” Quinton replied. “You may be sneaky and ghosty and all that, but you still have to get past the gate and into the building without setting off any alarms, magical or mundane. I can work the mundane side, which leaves you just the magical side to worry about. And I can take care of myself even with the vampires and ghosts, remember? I did it for years.”
“The asetem aren’t your regular vampire. Didn’t we just discuss that?”
“Yes, we did. That does not change the tactical problem of getting into the bastard’s lair, just the details. You are not going to play Rambo—even if you
are
a lot better looking and smarter. You don’t have to go alone and there’s no advantage to it, so you won’t be doing that.”
The Danzigers were both giving me pointed stares, plainly on Quinton’s side now that he’d spoken up.
“You’re making a hell of an assumption.”
“Yup. I’m assuming you haven’t totally lost your mind or your sense. And, well ...” He blushed and his gaze cut aside for a moment before returning, softer, to my own. He continued in a whisper. “There is that I-love-you thing....”
My throat tightened and I felt tears prick my eyes. I couldn’t get words out of my mouth; they just knotted up on my tongue.
“I didn’t just say that to get you home. I mean it. If you are determined to do something crazy-ass stupid because you have to, I won’t be a macho jerk and try to talk you out of it. But I’m going to do everything I can to keep it from killing you. If staying here really would make you safer, I’d stay put. But it won’t. Greasing electrons and lying to locks might. So I’m going with you.”
“Quinton—”
Mara cut across my protest. “He’s right. Aside from your being utterly barkin’—and I still say you’re madder than a March hare—you have no hope of this plan workin’ without help. Your wantin’ to protect us has gotten ahead of your sense. You won’t be any safer keepin’ us
all
behind the barricades and Quinton does have skills you could use.”
“So do you.”
“But you don’t need them. Anything I could be doin’ for this situation, you can do yourself. I truly am the backup.”
“I don’t think you should go at all,” Ben added. “Why should you? You could set a trap and wait for them to come to you. Bide your time, stay safe.”
“Ben, you haven’t listened to a word I’ve said. That only buys more time for
them
,” I retorted. “I cannot let them have any more advantages. It’s risky for me to walk into Wygan’s lair, but if I’m bold enough and fast enough, I can keep them off-balance and possibly get through to my father, get some information, or break Goodall’s loyalty to Wygan. Any of these would be worth the risk.”
“What if they’re already waitin’ for you?” Mara asked.
“I’ll burn that bridge when I come to it and call in the cavalry: you.”
“But you
will
be takin’ Quinton along, shan’t you?”
I looked at Quinton, who gave me half a smile that was more rueful than smug. I guess he didn’t like having contradicted me in front of other people, but I could live with it. I’ve had worse, usually from my mother.
“Yes.”
“Good. We’ll give you an hour and if y’haven’t called or come back, we’ll come after you both. Shan’t we, Ben?”
He nodded, adamant and a bit tense. “With the dog.”
“Maybe you should leave the dog to Brian-sit,” I suggested, hoping to lighten the mood.
“Better than the ferret, I suppose,” Mara added.
Ben refused to laugh, though we could all see his mouth twitch.
There was a bit more discussion, none of it really going anywhere, before I put the ferret into her cage and walked out of the house, heading uphill toward the broadcast towers on the top. Quinton strolled along with me, holding on to a paperback-sized silver box containing his latest Grey detector.
“Not seeing anything here,” he muttered.
“Not surprising. Wygan won’t have staked out the whole route—it’s pretty public—only the Danzigers’ and the station. Nothing else is really important and would spread his resources too thin.”
Quinton grunted acknowledgment. “Sounds like he’s got a limited supply of cronies.”
“Limited numbers, yes. Unfortunately, his assistants
aren’t
limited to the asetem and Goodall. Any vampire who’s not aligned with Edward could be working for Wygan. I don’t know how many vampires there are in Seattle, or how many might be persuaded to come from somewhere else, if that’s possible. So I admit I’m only making a best guess based on the activity I’ve seen and what you’ve reported.”
Quinton sighed. “I hate Heisenberg. We can know where the vampires are but not how many.”
“Not that it matters. We will get in one way or another. Or I will. If things go pear-shaped, you get the hell out and fetch the Danzigers.”
He nodded and we walked on in silence, each scanning for enemies or pitfalls but finding nothing. Even outside the station, in the darkness at the edge of the parking lot, there was nothing to find except the uncanny bloodred trace of vampires past.
We went around and came up on the tower from behind, pausing in the shadows of overgrown hedges that skirted the now-abandoned parking lot of the old Queen Anne High School gymnasium across the narrow road on the east side. The gym building was locked, the nearest doors secured with a loop of chain and a padlock, keeping them closed in spite of evidence of recent vandalism. The windowless concrete refugee from the 1970s was the ugliest building on the whole hill—and would have been standout grotesque almost anywhere—but it was still unusual to find any sort of petty destruction or tagging in the area that was sometimes called Nob Hill. But the snippet of narrow road we stood on was rarely traveled, even sitting as it did across from a newer school building and next to a graciously renovated old one. The odd isolation of the old gym made it a perfect target for anyone angry enough to kick in the doors. I took it as a sign that the area wasn’t too well patrolled at night or monitored by any video cameras, which was good news for us.
There was a bit of open park on the west side of the tower and some impressive houses across the main street running in front. Nothing but trees and bushes to the north. The chain-link fence around the tower and its building was pierced by gates on the front and side. The side gate, facing us, stood open.
“Seems too easy,” Quinton whispered.
“The bad stuff ’s inside.”
“Yeah....” He studied the rear door with a monocular from where we stood. “Looks like one old-style CCTV security camera on the door and an electronic combination lock. Bit behind the times, technology-wise.”
“I don’t think Wygan is too worried about that sort of thing.”
Quinton snorted. “Makes my job easier.” He scrambled in his pockets and brought out a small flashlight in place of the monocular. “Do you see anything in the Grey between here and the door?”
“Nothing significant.”
“Then get ready to run when the next car comes over the hill.”
We both crouched in the shadows of the plants at the edge of the street and waited. After a few minutes, an SUV came up the road, its headlights momentarily flicking upward and over the building as it crested the rise. Quinton flicked on his powerful flashlight, aiming for the camera and flooding the lens with bright white light under cover of the headlights’ glare. We bolted forward for the few seconds that the camera was blinded and stopped directly under it, where it had no view. Whoever had set it up had assumed that no one inside wanted to see the lock keypad or the intercom as much as they wanted to see the face of someone standing on the porch to use them, leaving a nice human-sized hole in the view if you stood right under the camera or up against the door. I took the door position so Quinton could work on the lock, putting my back to it and scanning the area in the Grey, just in case.
An unusual number of ghosts seemed to wander near the building, thin vaporous things even in the Grey, loops of memory drained of all intelligence, but lingering. Or perhaps drawn in, I thought as I peered harder at one: the ghost of a railroad worker, wearing an antique coverall and cap with the Great Northern’s mountain goat logo on the front. What was he doing here? What little I could make out of the rest was equally hodgepodge and as I started to examine them the ringing in my ears returned, rising to a whining chatter. I shook my head.
“Not ready?” Quinton whispered.
“Huh?”
“I said I’m done and you shook your head. Aren’t you ready to go in?”
“Oh. Yes, I think it’s safe to open the door and see what’s on the other side.”
Quinton quirked an eyebrow at me, catching the pun. A heavy click sounded from the lock mechanism and, remaining crouched outside the threshold, he pushed the door open. I looked in through the Grey.
Just beyond the door, the hallway to the broadcast booth looked like a red-and-black version of a funnelweb spider’s trap. I could barely spot a surface on the walls or floor bigger than my hand that wasn’t thick with the filaments of magic. They caked the narrow corridor, converting it into a tunnel that led to the monster’s lair at the center of the web: the booth where I’d first met Wygan.
My stomach heaved and a flash of hot fear broke a sweat on my skin that went instantly clammy. I had to go ahead, even though my mind and body balked. In all the rushing to examine my past and the why and how of my Greywalker status—even though I knew it would come to this—I hadn’t considered the visceral horror that returning to confront Wygan here would hold for me. In this building, at the end of the spell-hung hall, was where he had broken me, where I’d been forced to knowledge I didn’t want.
The buzzing in my ears crescendoed to a screeching of ghostly voices calling out to me: “darling,” and “Harper,” and “monster,” and “bitch.” They cried for my attention in every way imaginable, pleading, cursing, cajoling, flirting, and even in the din a thin voice called me “little girl” and sent a flare of dying fire scurrying toward me on the spider’s web of magic. That was my father—this time I was sure—and he was trying to reach me. I’d hoped there might be a way to him if I was close to Wygan and it seemed I might be right. And no matter how half-formed my plan, now I had no choice; I had to go to him, somewhere ahead in this web-bound maze.
The tangle of energy that festooned the hall pulled away from the weak flare, making a path too narrow and coiling to tread but pointing the way deeper into the heart of the gyre. I could see there were other holes in the uncanny fabric, now that I was looking for them. A difficult string of stepping-stones, rising normal and dry in the flood of Grey energy. It was going to be tricky, but I thought I could do it. . . .
I braced myself, catching my breath and straightening my spine as much as I could. I hadn’t been
en pointe
for decades and I didn’t have the shoes for it, but I still knew how to move with the precision and balance required. I hoped. I shed my boots and socks and started to step over the doorsill.
Quinton caught my near elbow, steadying my movement. “You’re going?”
“Yeah,” I whispered back, digging in my pocket. “Here, hold on to Simondson while I’m gone. I don’t want Wygan to sniff him out.”
Quinton accepted the tin that held the thread of my dead assailant and tucked it away, adding, “Forty minutes and I’m coming after you.”
“You damn well better.”
I took a long, storklike step into the thick nest of magical threads, arching my foot into a slender point that slid through a hole in the crimson tangle until I could touch the floor. As I stepped away from Quinton, I eased deeper into the Grey, becoming less solid, more fluid, and closer to death. I lost contact with his warmth but didn’t look back as the sound of the Grey roared in my head.
Tunnel-like, the center of the hallway was clear enough for me to stalk down without much bending to avoid the energy threads. I plotted each step with care, certain that like a real spiderweb, one inappropriate twitch of the magical mesh would bring its master rushing to capture me. It was difficult finding the right spot for each step, but the thin, blazed trail of my father’s sending remained, though slowly closing, hinting at the way ahead and leaving clear spaces on the walls to put down an occasional steadying hand.
Progress was slow and miserable. Each step sent a new shout of sound through my head, as if I were treading on unseen wounded beneath the fire and fog of the Grey. I controlled a shudder and went on toward the chromatic flashing of lights at the end of the hall.
I remembered that light from the first time I’d met Wygan: a rack of simple, colored bulbs strobing random combinations of blue, red, and yellow. I didn’t understand it then, but now I knew the Guardian Beast had difficulty with certain colors of light and shied away from them, confused that they looked like magic but didn’t act like it. Wygan, plotting something it wouldn’t like, had learned the trick of hiding himself from the Beast with the random lights. But it meant he couldn’t go far without risking its attention. No wonder he’d sent Alice to England: He couldn’t leave Seattle unless he took his light show with him. I nearly stumbled as I thought that perhaps he’d needed them two years ago to keep the Beast away as he’d planted a piece of the Grey in my chest. And now he was too far advanced into his plan for the Beast to ignore him. Which meant that killing Simondson—for which he’d left his lair, at horrendous risk—had been the last stage before he became an active threat to the Grey. Now I knew what the coils of electric cable in the brewery office had been for: to run the light show under which Wygan hid from the retribution of the Guardian Beast. Whatever I was going into, it was extremely unpretty.
As I neared the door I began to see hints of a dark-blue thread in the red-and-black warp of magic in the hall: Goodall was nearby or had had a hand in making the web. Either way, it seemed likely I would find him in the room with Wygan. I wondered how long the funnel web had been in place and what it meant. It could have been a trap just for me, but it had the feel of something built up in layers over time.