He pointed down the alley to the park. “Normally, I’d take you down to the park for a look at the totem statues of sun and raven, the bear, orca, and Tsonoqua—the ogress called “nightmare bringer”—but it’s pretty cold and dark today. They are very interesting sculptures, however, and I urge you to come back when the light and weather are better. Now, follow me across the street and we’ll wrap this up under the Pioneer Building.”
As we crossed the street he told us we’d be going down one of the few original staircases still intact. “Most of these were removed in 1952 when the underground was sealed, but this one was preserved under its cover. When the lower levels of this building were reopened for business, the staircase was restored for our use. The original staircases had no rails, so try to imagine, as you descend, what it was like to use these steep, open stairs every day.” We followed him down the stair and I shivered at the thought of taking those slippery steps without a handrail. Especially if I’d been drinking like a miner or a lumberjack. No wonder people missed them and became “inadvertent suicides.”
We entered the final room of the tour, filled with strange objects that had been found in the underground. The guide pointed out a tin bathtub that had been found inside one of the walls—suspected of being used to brew up literal bathtub gin—and a bored out cedar log from the water system. There was also an early glass plate photo of a Madam Lou Graham and her “sewing circle” with a note attached that said Madam Lou’s brothel—where the photo was taken—had been housed at First and Main, probably in the building that was currently the Bread of Life Mission. Quinton and I both smothered chuckles over it. Finally, the group moved on and followed our guide into the gift shop, where Quinton and I cornered him at the cash counter.
His name was Rick and he was the tour’s historian. I introduced myself and said that we were doing some research into myths and legends of the underground.
“Well, I covered a lot of the more interesting ones on the tour,” Rick said, “but, of course, there’s more than a ninety-minute tour has time for. Some things don’t play too well, so we don’t use them on the tour, and others aren’t exactly family fare. We make light of the vice and crime, but it was pretty rank. For instance, the age of consent was ten and not a few Klondikers disappeared and never showed up again. It’s really safer to talk about toilets, rats, and political corruption in pursuit of the almighty dollar.”
No doubt, but sewage wasn’t my topic of interest. “We’re specifically looking for anything about Indian activity in the underground, any legends about monsters or ghosts that were banished from the area and when those might have occurred.”
Rick shook his head. “Aside from the story I told you about the shaman, I don’t know much about that. The local Indians haven’t had much pull with the city historically, so if they wanted to do anything or thought there was something going on, they were pretty much ignored until the eighties or later. Even the totems in Occidental Park were a pretty late sop to the native population.”
“Was there any activity after the earthquake of 1949?” I asked.
Rick thought a moment, narrowing his eyes so the wandering one seemed to vanish. “Hmm . . . I think there might have been some kind of ceremony by the local Indians then, but I’m not sure. There was a lot in the papers of the time about the buildings that had been damaged and the repair or destruction of them, but the local natives didn’t rate that kind of coverage. Some interesting artifacts were found in the mess, since it was the first time some of that ground had been excavated since the fire. I think they pulled up some of the original wooden sewer pipes then and found a lot of objects in the street fill, since the city dumped anything it could get into the streets to raise them—including dead animals and broken furniture. Most of it was just thrown into a different dump, afterward. People weren’t very interested in the historical value of things dug out of the street then, and the local tribes hadn’t yet convinced the state to treat Indian artifacts as important. If the Indians did some kind of ceremony to placate earth spirits or ancestors, you’d get a lot more information by talking to them.”
I wasn’t sure there was anyone else left to ask. I said as much to Quinton as we climbed the stairs from the tour shop to the Square.
“Not a total bust, though,” he said. “We know the Indians were aware of things going on down there; we just don’t know what they did about it.”
“We’ll have to hope we get some information from Fish on that. And I’m going to have to go to the Danzigers’ and talk to them about something.”
“You think they’ll have some ideas about this?”
“No. I saw something down there that might link up to something else, but I’m not sure. I want to check before I make an assumption.”
Quinton stopped as we got outside the door and looked around. We both spotted Zip and Lass nearby. Lass chattered and punctuated his words with hard slashes at the air while Zip smoked. Across the street, I saw Sandy dragging her cart and watching something ahead of her that I couldn’t pick out. Lass and Zip suddenly turned and started in the direction of the Bread of Life Mission—it was dinnertime—passing Sandy, who ignored them.
Quinton rustled beside me as he pulled his hat down a little farther on his head. The night was coming down with a sharp edge of ice, and we watched the homeless as they drifted toward food and shelter and respite from the short, harsh day.
“All right,” he said. “I’ll do some more asking around. I’ll call if anything comes up.”
“Hey,” I said, putting my hand self-consciously on his sleeve. “Umm . . . This was kind of fun. Aside from the working part.”
“And the creepy parts. What happened down by the bank? It got damned cold down there and you were talking to something.”
“And that’s about all. There was some kind of remnant of whatever the medicine man did at that corner—a real ugly customer. It told me a riddle about where the Sistu was, but it doesn’t make any sense.”
Quinton took one of my hands in both of his and chafed it warm. “What did it say?”
“It said I’d find death where there was no comfort, between the tides, in a pool that is not a pool. Whatever that means.”
“Why would it be all cryptic like that?”
“Because it can. Ghosts want to talk to me, but that doesn’t mean they want to say anything nice. The nastier the spirit, the more likely it is to want something equally nasty or just to want to do someone some hurt. Most ghosts don’t know we’re here. Of the ones who do, some are angry enough to want to do us harm. They’re pissed off because they’re dead and we’re not.”
Quinton nodded, making a thoughtful grunt and rubbing my other hand. “I get that. I might be pretty ticked off myself if I were a ghost.”
“You’d certainly not be able to do that,” I said, nodding at his hands around mine.
He blushed and let go. “No, and that would be a pity. God, it’s cold out here,” he added, looking around again, uncertain of himself for a moment. “I’ll give that riddle some thought and I’ll try to find some other information for you.”
“Thanks,” I replied. I admit I was thinking about his stealth kiss the previous night and wondering if he’d try it again.
Instead he blushed a bit more—thinking the same thing?— nodded, and walked off after Zip, Lass, and Sandy. I went back to the Rover, a little disappointed, and headed toward Queen Anne.
TWELVE
It was about seven when I called the Danzigers. Dinner was over with and their son, Brian, was winding down toward bedtime—of which Ben was in charge. Mara was happy to have another adult in the house for a while, though I didn’t think she’d be as thrilled once she knew the nature of my visit.
For once, Albert did not show himself when I arrived. I wondered if he knew why I’d come, though I didn’t see how. Ghosts didn’t seem to be any better at reading minds than anyone else. Mara answered my ring of the doorbell.
“Harper!” she greeted, her Irish voice almost turning my name to laughter. “Come in, come in! Seems a while since you’ve visited.”
I stepped into the entry hall, saying, “I got a little distracted over the holidays.”
“Not surprising.” She took my coat and hung it on a peg before leading me into the living room where a bright fire burned in the grate with the scent of pine needles. I could see a sparkling screen of blue energy in front of the fire. I wondered if it was the source of the odor or if Mara had put it there for some other reason. The interior of the Danzigers’ house was always much calmer than outside, being cleansed of magical residues and protected from intrusions by Mara’s witchcraft. I still wondered why she hadn’t banished Albert when they first moved in, but then I seemed to be the only person in his current acquaintance who didn’t find him charming.
“What was it you were wanting to discuss?” Mara asked, plumping down onto one of the pale green sofas that flanked the fireplace. Her coppery curls reflected the firelight as if born from it.
I looked around but still saw no sign of the resident ghost. “Is there a way to talk without your houseguest hearing us?” I asked.
Mara looked puzzled. “Well, yes. Why?”
“I don’t want to say where he can listen in, but as I need your help and—in a way—his, I’d like to talk here and now, if we can.”
Mara lifted her shoulders in a resigned shrug. “All right. How much time do you want?”
“I think thirty minutes will be enough to explain it.”
“That’s easy enough.” She sat up very straight and began muttering under her breath in lilting musical phrases accompanied by the gleaming blue of magic that she caught on her fingertips and painted on the air in curling, vinelike shapes.
As the creepers of energy took shape, she rose from her seat and began to walk around the outside of the twin couches counterclockwise, still singing a little and passing her hands through the air, leaving gleaming trails of blue. The bramble followed her, growing around the couches faster than kudzu. She circled the couches three times, and the sparkling shapes of magic grew higher and denser with each pass until they were more than head high and beginning to arch over us as if they grew on some invisible arbor. Mara made one last gesture and the magic arbor closed over our heads. I heard a distant bubbling and murmuring, as if the magic were alive and talking to itself as we sat beneath it.
“All right, then,” Mara said, sitting back down. “What has Albert done?”
“I’m not sure what he’s done or what he intends, but I know he’s been up to something and he may have information that will help me with a problem.”
Mara leaned back and made herself comfortable, ready to listen. “Go on.”
“A few days ago I was brought a zombie, for lack of a better word—literally a walking corpse. How it was animated I’m still not entirely sure and that’s less important than this—when I broke it down, there were two spirits in the shell of the body. I’ve talked to Carlos about this and there should be only one. One of the entities seemed to be the spirit that had inhabited the body in life—and that was a while ago, considering the state of decomposition. But the other was Albert, and I’m pretty sure he hasn’t been in a body of his own in a while.”
Mara was appalled. “Heavens, no! Albert animating a corpse? Are you sure? I wouldn’t have thought him capable—he’s not terribly strong.”
“But he is unusually strong-willed.”
“Is he?”
“You don’t think so? He comes and goes, he moves things as big and heavy as Ben’s desk, he eggs Brian into all sorts of trouble, he got me to follow him into the Grey once before I even knew I could do it. . . .”
Mara bit her lip a moment in thought. “Yes . . . He does have an unusual activity level. He can do all that, yet he never speaks to anyone but Brian—I’m not even sure he speaks, so much as plants a suggestion, which is rather a strong action of itself. But it would take a necromancer to animate a corpse. Or some very black magic.”