Greywalker - Kat Richardson [114]
The tickling, nascent knowledge erupted into full form. In a short burn of energy, I scrambled for the fax of the corporate structure. Wygan had said it. The real estate lawyer had gone stone silent the moment I asked for it. But it was there on the fax: Edward Kammerling was TPM’s founder and chairman of the board.
I lay back in my chair, burned out, eyes closed, and put it together. Only Gwen had said anything about TPM—she’d said it was his toy. The vampires found Edward’s business activities uninteresting, or boring, but they were the key to his power base. A very sweet deal Edward couldn’t afford to lose: only he had power in both the daytime and nighttime worlds, and that kept the other vampires in check. And that was why Alice wanted me—a daylighter with a foot in the dark—to take him out.
In the daylight world, he was at his weakest: just a businessman who had to hide from the light. But he might as well be in a fortress for all that the vampires could do to him there. Though I had a foot in each world, I had nothing to lose in the nightside, where his strengths were greatest. I had disturbed his foothold in the dark, and now I could threaten his foothold in the light as well. His ambition had bought him enemies, and it would allow me to move Edward any direction I pleased. So long as he didn’t kill me first.
And supposing that Sergeyev didn’t beat him to it.
I rolled my head, glanced at my watch and knew I was running late for my date at the Danzigers’. By the time I got to the Rover, I was dragging. My whole body ached as if I had the flu, a drawing fatigue radiating from my chest and through my limbs. Driving was not fun.
Mara answered my ring of the doorbell. “Harper!” She stopped and goggled at me. “You look done in. What’s happened?”
“I—” was all I could get out. Then I stood there with words stoppered in my throat and couldn’t think of what to say.
Mara blinked at me, then dragged me through the doorway. “Oh, my. Come into the kitchen, then. And don’t be telling me this is tea-sized trouble. You look like you need a drink.”
I stumbled after her into the kitchen. The house was quiet, warm, and welcoming. Only when the sensations were gone did I notice that I’d been cold, my ears numbed with a distant susurration, since Saturday.
Mara scrambled through a cupboard. “Just let me find the whiskey. . . .”
I flopped into a chair at the kitchen table while Mara uncovered a bottle of Powers and poured us each a glass. She didn’t offer water.
We both sat there and sipped our whiskey in silence a while as the kitchen beamed warm energy on us. The sick knot in my chest eased a little. Mara put her drink down and looked at me.
“All right. Tell me what it is.”
I looked at my drink. “I think I need about three more of these first.”
“Ah, no. Drunken revelations just leave you feeling worse during the hangover. Is this about ghosts?”
I hesitated, helplessness surging under my skin. I nodded and tried to wash the feeling down with the last of the whiskey. “Ghosts, vampires . . . all that Grey crap.”
Mara sat still, giving me an encouraging face.
“Why are they coming to me? These monsters, these . . . whatever they are. My client—remember the guy with the organ?”
“Yes. You said he was Grey.”
I nodded. “Some kind of ghost, I think. We had an argument in the Grey. He said he knew I could ‘see the world.’ He was furious at me for not doing what he wanted. Why do they think I can do something for them? How did I end up with every ghostly freak in Seattle?”
“Because you’re a Greywalker. I warned you they would come. They hope that you can help them because you can see them and speak to them when others can’t. As you can with Albert. Your arrival in the Grey must have woken a lot of creatures.”
“Woken? Some of them have been lying in wait! As if I was late to an appointment.” I found myself shivering.
Mara bit her lip. “Something worse than your ghost?”
I nodded, swallowing hard. “Saturday . . . ,”