Kat Richardson: Downpour

Quinton left Willow tucked into bed with an extra blanket over her, against the chill he felt as ghosts began filling the room with swirling fog that seemed to fall from the ceiling. I turned away and preceded him down as he returned to the stairs.

He caught up to me in front of the Franklin stove and pulled me gently back around to face him. “We’re screwed, aren’t we?”

“Well, I wasn’t counting on a breakdown from the only mage on our side.”

“That is not what I meant.”

“I know, but I can’t solve that problem right now and this one, too. This business at the Newmans’ will be happening soon and, without Willow, I’m not sure how it will come out. I can’t let any of them get an advantage before we figure out how to put the anchor stone back in its proper place. Of course, we have to get the stone first, which won’t happen with Willow passed out upstairs. Why can’t the damned Guardian Beast look after this stuff him— it self? It can shove me through a wall. Why can’t it pick up a rock and put it back where it came from?”

Quinton shook his head and made an exasperated face. “Harper, stop. You’re frustrated because you’re too focused on one path instead of on the goal. It doesn’t matter if they all destroy one another. Or not. It’s not up to you to pick the one-mage-to-rule-them-all. You’re already more than half-done with your job: You found out who killed Leung and Strother and you can turn him over at any time. Then we can get the anchor and put it back in the lake. And I have an idea how to find the place for it.” He glanced aside, and then back into my face. “This other thing . . . I guess we’ll have to figure out later what we’re going to do.”

I bit my lip. I didn’t know what would happen and I shouldn’t have anticipated the worst, but I admit that Willow’s hysterics weren’t too far from my own thoughts, and Quinton knew it.

“Then I guess we fall back and punt.”

He snorted. “Please, no football analogies. Now I have an ugly vision of zombies in shoulder pads and tight pants doing wind sprints on the lake.”

I laughed in spite of myself. “Then, so long as we’re at loose ends, tell me your brilliant idea about the anchors.”

“You said it made a high-pitched sound, right?”

“The anchor stone? Yes, when you sparked it, it did.”

“All right. Sound waves travel very efficiently through water, so if we can isolate that sound and get an electronic sample from the anchor stone, I should be able to rig a rudimentary sonophone that will help us physically locate the area where a matching tone is being emitted. That’ll be where we have to drop the rock.”

“How are you going to get the waveguides to sing in the first place?”

“That’s a little trickier. You should be able to see the line of both the intact and broken waveguides. Once we have the line, we can find a place to apply a current to the broken one and then follow the sound into the lake.”

“But . . . ?” I asked.

“But since the sound was emitted in the Grey, I think you’re going to have to apply a Grey current. You’ll have to pull a bit of energy to the waveguide.”

“I can’t do that anymore. I don’t have that ability to simply . . . pull the grid around.”

“We don’t need a grid line. Just a thread. Like an extension cord. You managed threads last night. We don’t need more than that.”

“I broke them—I didn’t put them together. I can’t make things of the Grey—I can only . . . break them.”

Quinton sighed and put his arms around me. “I don’t think that’s true. You don’t just break things; you fix them. We’ll figure out a way to fix this, too.”

“We?”

“Hey, we’re bound together, babe. Remember?” He struck a noble stance, showing me his profile as if posing for a dramatic movie poster, and declaimed, “Soul to soul, heart to heart, together forever!” He looked like Val Kilmer in Real Genius when he introduced the student beauticians.

I scoffed and shoved him gently backward. “Goofball.”

He exaggerated his loss of balance and fell on his ass, taking me with him, laughing all the way down. I landed on his chest and he let out his breath with an oof! Then he pulled me hard against him, wriggled a little, and caught my legs with his so I was pressed against him full length. “Mmm . . . That’s nice.”

A voice floated down from above. “You have no time for that.”

It wasn’t Willow’s voice, exactly, but it was something like it. More resonant, but not loud, as if the speaker were standing in a hollow place that reflected the sound slightly out of sync. A small cloud descended from the ceiling, filtering straight through the floor from the master bedroom rather than coming down the stairs.

Quinton didn’t quite focus on it, but he had turned his head in the right direction and was squinting like a man trying to see against the glare of the sun. He kept his arm around my waist as we struggled back up to our feet to face the apparition. His breathing was a little fast, and I could feel his excitement and apprehension tingle across my skin and shorten my own breath. I worked to keep my own emotions calm.

“Ghost?” he whispered.

I nodded.

The mass of Grey-stuff billowed and tumbled, changing shape on its surface, but staying about the same dimensions—a tapering column about five feet tall and two feet at the widest point in the center. It sank to within a foot of the floor and stopped, floating and churning in front of us. A broad-cheeked, almond-eyed face pushed out of the mist and was replaced by another and then another—a company of spirits taking turns looking us over. A dragonlike head extruded from the cloud for a moment and thrust toward us, its ghostly jaws agape. Quinton flinched.

The first face returned. “She is leaving.”

“Willow?” I asked. “But—”

“We awaken to our own. We have told her she must talk to your policeman. It is right.”

“Ancestors,” I whispered.

Quinton nodded. He wasn’t scared, just excited. I would have interrogated him to find out what he was experiencing, but the spirits of Sula’s family spoke again.

“When the stone was here, we could not be heard. Our daughter died without our voice in her ear. Our granddaughter lost her way. It must be made right. Willow will help you. Go to the sister’s house and tell what you know.”

The collective spirit began fading, sparkling into dust and water vapor wafting on curls of colored smoke that rose off the grid. I felt I was supposed to do something, but I couldn’t think what.

“Bow,” Quinton whispered. “Be polite.”

Hastily, we bowed together, his arm still around my waist. “Thank you,” I murmured.

The house flickered and seemed to dim into ghostlight and fog, leaving us an instant’s impression of being surrounded by hundreds of ghosts who looked at us and laughed. “Love has brought power back to our house.” They bowed to us in return and vanished in the sudden drawing of a breath.

Quinton staggered against me as we found ourselves alone and back in the small house at the lake’s edge. I wasn’t so startled; I’d gotten used to the sudden comings and goings of ghosts.

“Did we actually move or did I imagine that part?” he asked.

“Not physically,” I replied. “Did you see them?”

He seemed a little dazed, nodding. “I—I certainly did. They were kind of vague at first, so I wasn’t sure.... I could hear them better than see them, and even that was kind of lousy. And then they were . . . they were here . Or we were there. I’m a little confused.”

“No, you’re spot-on. It’s here and there at the same time. Makes you a little seasick at first.”