things and I don’t think we led any here. The spell on the back gate didn’t get a chance to alert its caster when I dismantled it, so no one should be coming to check, either.”
Mara made a face. “So things are bad, then.”
“If the normal level of ‘bad’ is something like ‘oh darn, we’ve blown up the house,’ this bad comes with its own small but unattractive mushroom cloud. I’m kind of behind on the news in Seattle since I’ve been out of town, but a little Columbian birdie came by this morning to tell me that the homicide rate in town doubled in the past two weeks and I hear there’s been a lot of purported gang activity downtown, which probably isn’t really gangs. Our favorite vampire king, Edward, has been kidnapped. And it all comes together in some unpleasant plan with me as the bow on the package.”
Ben scowled. “I’m sorry, I think I’m missing something. Is this related to the ghost you were trying to find, the one you called us about a couple of weeks ago?”
I nodded, keeping my gaze on the plate in front of me. “That was my dad.”
“Your da?” Mara questioned. “I thought he died when you were small.”
“It turns out,” I said, feeling something cold and miserable knot up in my gut, “that he blew his brains out. I didn’t know this. I thought it was an accident. I was twelve. But . . . well ...” I stopped talking. This wasn’t going well at all: I felt like crying. Just tired, I told myself. Just too damned tired.
I lifted my head. They were all watching me, and you’d think after more than a decade of professional dance and almost as much in surveillance and snooping, I’d shrug it off, but this time I froze.
Quinton pushed his knee up against mine under the table and dropped his near hand to rest, still and warm, on my leg. “Maybe you should start with the phone call,” he suggested.
The Danzigers huddled closer to the table and leaned in as if I were about to tell a ghost story around the campfire. In a way, I suppose I was.
I shifted my gaze away from them, unhappy about this necessity, and started in. “All right. About three weeks ago I got a phone call from a dead boyfriend. He said things weren’t what I thought they were and that there were . . . things lying in wait for me. Since he died in Los Angeles eight years ago, I thought that might be the place to start looking. It seemed to me that whatever he was talking about must be related to my past—and to my abilities as a Greywalker—since I couldn’t imagine anything else a dead guy might think I needed to be warned about. So I went.”
I glanced around to see how they were reacting. Quinton knew this part, but the Danzigers didn’t. Mara looked wary, her head half turned so she regarded me sideways with narrowed eyes. Ben just looked intrigued. I stifled a yawn and went on.
“I thought I should visit my mother and see if she had any ideas—though of course she doesn’t know about the . . . paranormal connection. A lot of what she revealed isn’t relevant, but she is the one who told me my father hadn’t died in an accident, as I’d believed, but had shot himself.”
Mara flinched back into her seat, catching a sharp breath through her nose. She looked out into the yard, watching her son a moment before she spoke. “Had she any inkling why he did it?”
“That’s the creepy part. My mother claimed he was depressed, crazy, and having an affair with his receptionist. She said he’d been kind of crazy for a long time and finally, he just . . . lost it. But she let me look through his things, including his old diaries, and . . . at first I thought he might just be nuts, too—those diaries are pretty freaky.” I didn’t say his suicide note had been addressed to me, that just seemed too personal and gruesome, even for this group, and especially with three-year-old Brian playing nearby. “It was obvious that he had some kind of contact with the Grey, although he didn’t
Mara made a face. “So things are bad, then.”
“If the normal level of ‘bad’ is something like ‘oh darn, we’ve blown up the house,’ this bad comes with its own small but unattractive mushroom cloud. I’m kind of behind on the news in Seattle since I’ve been out of town, but a little Columbian birdie came by this morning to tell me that the homicide rate in town doubled in the past two weeks and I hear there’s been a lot of purported gang activity downtown, which probably isn’t really gangs. Our favorite vampire king, Edward, has been kidnapped. And it all comes together in some unpleasant plan with me as the bow on the package.”
Ben scowled. “I’m sorry, I think I’m missing something. Is this related to the ghost you were trying to find, the one you called us about a couple of weeks ago?”
I nodded, keeping my gaze on the plate in front of me. “That was my dad.”
“Your da?” Mara questioned. “I thought he died when you were small.”
“It turns out,” I said, feeling something cold and miserable knot up in my gut, “that he blew his brains out. I didn’t know this. I thought it was an accident. I was twelve. But . . . well ...” I stopped talking. This wasn’t going well at all: I felt like crying. Just tired, I told myself. Just too damned tired.
I lifted my head. They were all watching me, and you’d think after more than a decade of professional dance and almost as much in surveillance and snooping, I’d shrug it off, but this time I froze.
Quinton pushed his knee up against mine under the table and dropped his near hand to rest, still and warm, on my leg. “Maybe you should start with the phone call,” he suggested.
The Danzigers huddled closer to the table and leaned in as if I were about to tell a ghost story around the campfire. In a way, I suppose I was.
I shifted my gaze away from them, unhappy about this necessity, and started in. “All right. About three weeks ago I got a phone call from a dead boyfriend. He said things weren’t what I thought they were and that there were . . . things lying in wait for me. Since he died in Los Angeles eight years ago, I thought that might be the place to start looking. It seemed to me that whatever he was talking about must be related to my past—and to my abilities as a Greywalker—since I couldn’t imagine anything else a dead guy might think I needed to be warned about. So I went.”
I glanced around to see how they were reacting. Quinton knew this part, but the Danzigers didn’t. Mara looked wary, her head half turned so she regarded me sideways with narrowed eyes. Ben just looked intrigued. I stifled a yawn and went on.
“I thought I should visit my mother and see if she had any ideas—though of course she doesn’t know about the . . . paranormal connection. A lot of what she revealed isn’t relevant, but she is the one who told me my father hadn’t died in an accident, as I’d believed, but had shot himself.”
Mara flinched back into her seat, catching a sharp breath through her nose. She looked out into the yard, watching her son a moment before she spoke. “Had she any inkling why he did it?”
“That’s the creepy part. My mother claimed he was depressed, crazy, and having an affair with his receptionist. She said he’d been kind of crazy for a long time and finally, he just . . . lost it. But she let me look through his things, including his old diaries, and . . . at first I thought he might just be nuts, too—those diaries are pretty freaky.” I didn’t say his suicide note had been addressed to me, that just seemed too personal and gruesome, even for this group, and especially with three-year-old Brian playing nearby. “It was obvious that he had some kind of contact with the Grey, although he didn’t
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