Greywalker - Kat Richardson [118]
“Albert will keep an eye out for us, I’m sure.”
Ben coughed a tight laugh behind his books. “I hope so, but I’m afraid I’m not as convinced of our ghostly boarder’s valor as you are, Mara.”
“Now, be nice, Ben. You remember what happened the last time he got upset.”
I looked at both of them.
“Turned Ben’s desk upside down,” Mara confided. “Terrible mess.”
We both snorted relieved giggles.
Ben glanced at the paper I’d given him and started to chuckle.
“What’s funny?” I asked.
“This guy’s a sly little revenant. Generic Russian name. Basically the equivalent of Greg Stevenson. Not quite Ivan Ivanovitch, but close.”
My brain was running in all directions. “It’s got a Swiss bank account attached. Maybe he . . . stole it, somehow.”
Ben whistled. “Clever. Damn, I wish I knew what he had up his sleeve.”
“Yeah, but we don’t have time, if you’re right about that thing.”
“You’re right. You’re right. I don’t have any suggestions, though. Now we’re starting to tread into the realm of magic, and that’s Mara’s sphere.”
We all got quiet for a while.
“Look,” Ben started again. “We know he wants to gain control of the organ and that can’t be good. He’s a revenant, and although he’s got access to a big store of power, he can’t just go flinging it around. Every time he does anything, he draws power. If he has plans for the dark artifact, he’ll want it fully charged, so he’s not going to do something until he’s ready to play his cards. He already blew some at your office, so I’d guess you have forty-eight to seventy-two hours before he’s going to do anything more.
“In the meantime, be extremely careful, Harper. If you wear yourself down too far, you won’t have reserves to oppose him with, and we don’t know what the purpose of that . . . thing in your chest is. I’m afraid our help has been inadequate.”
I put up one heavy hand. “Ben, stop. Without you and Mara, I think something would have eaten me by now. You haven’t always been right, but that doesn’t mean you’re always wrong. But I’ve got a question. If the organ is drawing power from the nexus and everything else nearby, why isn’t it draining this house, too? The house is as bright as ever.”
“I don’t know.”
Mara smiled at me. “It’s got its own nexus, remember? It’s off the grid, so to speak. Can’t get to us from there.”
“The grid,” I whispered.“The energy structures Wygan showed me—that I can still see—they’re the power grid of the Grey. I think he . . . wired me into the Grey.”
Mara blanched. “If you’re attached to the grid which is feeding the organ, then it’s feeding on you, too.”
I screwed my eyes shut and felt the world pitch. I remembered the draining touch of the tentacle.
Mara continued. “And whatever happens to that nexus will also happen to you and everything else on that quadrant. It must be drawing you down all the time. That thing has to be gotten rid of before it kills you.”
“What about you?”
“I have this house, and I shall be very careful about touching magic outside of it. Shan’t be pleasant, but I’ll survive.”
Eyes closed, still shutting out the overlapping worlds, I asked, “What about the dark beast?”
Ben checked. “The guardian? What of it?”
“You said it would attack a threat. Why isn’t it attacking me or Ser—him? Or the organ?”
Ben’s voice was gruff and ragged. “The artifact is just a storage device. The guardian won’t notice that. Remember the hierarchies of threat. The threat may need to be more immediate, more active. Maybe you or he need to be doing something to draw the beast to you, like a spider down a twanging web.”
I nodded, opening my eyes. “I’ll try not to be a fly. That . . . beast is more than I can handle right now.”
Ben gnawed his beard, and the glare he turned at no one in particular was ashen black. “Be careful,” he repeated. “Theory says most Grey things shouldn’t be able to harm you physically, but—they have. I’m afraid I’m letting you down because we’ve left theory behind, and theory is all I know.”
I glared back at him. “Don’t. Leave blame for later. Let’s just get through this.