Kat Richardson - Labyrinth

I refused coffee once it was offered, which got me some raised eyebrows, but I’d already had more caffeine than I needed if I was going to get any sleep soon. I played with a couple of the small biscuit-like scones Mara put in front of me along with a glass of water. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to tell the story—that was a big part of the reason we’d come—but I needed to put my thoughts in order before I started in. Quinton wouldn’t tell the tale for me, even if he’d known it all. It was an insane story, if you considered it. It was only because it had all built up over time, a bit here and there, that I could believe it myself.

“There’s a bit of a problem at my place and . . . I hoped we could presume on your hospitality for a day or two,” I started, keeping my voice low so as not to alarm Brian. “I haven’t had a lot of sleep lately and my condo isn’t safe for us to stay in right now. We need someplace secure to catch up and do some planning until things get better. I can’t imagine any place safer from Grey 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 understand what it was or what was going on. It was upsetting him even before Wygan started prodding—”

Ben cut in, staring. “Wait a minute. Wygan? The DJ on Radio Freeform?”

I nodded, catching each pair of eyes in turn. “Vampire. He’s the one who stuck the knot of Grey into my chest two years ago. You remember.”

Mara and Ben nodded, recalling, I imagined, the long, uncomfortable session in their kitchen when Mara had tried to untie it from me. Quinton looked quizzical. It wasn’t a point of my history I’d discussed with him since we hadn’t been close at the time. I caught his eye and gave a minuscule shake of the head. I’d explain it to him later. He returned a quick, reassuring smile.

Ben was scowling. “You mean, right up the hill ...?” I knew he was thinking of the proximity of the broadcast towers on the crown of Queen Anne, just about fifty feet straight up and a hundred yards over from where we sat. I caught his gaze also creeping toward his son.

I nodded. “Yes. But he’s not the same type of vampire as Edward and his bunch. He’s the Pharaohn-ankh-astet.”

“What?” Mara let out a startled squawk.

Ben was appalled. “Asetem? Here? But ...”

“What? They shouldn’t be in the New World, or something?” I asked.

“Well, basically, yes. I mean . . . at least according to legends, they’re rare and very clannish. Why would they be here?”

“Because I am.”

They all stared at me again and their collective expressions, ranging from confusion to disbelief, made me a little sick to my stomach. I hated this and wished I could just go to sleep and somehow dream it all away, never have to talk about it, never live through it again in speech or nightmares. Or at least be able to magically give them the skinny on the situation without having to think about it, sort and select relevant facts, shape it into coherent speech, and blurt it all out. Just the act of speaking made me weary and I wasn’t sure I was making sense.

“I didn’t know Wygan was any different from any other vampire,” I explained. “I mean, I knew he was different, but I didn’t think it was something like this. While I was in London—”

Mara shook her head. “London? When was that?”

“Last week. I just got back yesterday and I went to see Edward ...” I realized I’d lost them all completely. The Danzigers didn’t know I’d been in London or why and Quinton had no idea what the asetem-ankh-astet were. I’d told him to be careful of Wygan, but I hadn’t had time to explain why. I shook my head, more to clear it of the muddle I was making than anything else. “Let me try this again.” I was making a hash of this. . . .

The Danzigers nodded. “Yes, do,” Mara requested.