Greywalker - Kat Richardson [51]
A ghost, staring at me with a long and dour face, stood against the wall beside the prosaic RESTROOMS sign. He was thin and weedy, dressed in a suit long out of fashion.
I stared and whispered, “Albert?”
He beckoned to me with an impatient gesture.
I looked up at Will, who was frowning down at me. “Excuse me. I’ve just remembered a client I needed to call. I’ll only be a minute.”
Curiosity quirked the corner of his mouth, but he didn’t ask. “OK. I’ll wait right here.”
I smiled and slid out of the booth, grabbing my purse, and headed for the restrooms.
As I walked down the hallway across the back of the building, I looked for Albert.
FOURTEEN
What was the Danzigers’ ghostly housemate doing here? My stomach was flipping and roiling as if the fish I’d eaten had come back to life, but I forced my concentration toward looking for Albert without being sucked into the Grey completely.
I spotted him stopped ahead in a doorway of dragon smoke. I didn’t want to go in there, but he motioned me forward. I gritted my teeth and caught myself hyper-ventilating. Then I stepped across into the cold and the smell of the Grey.
I staggered and Albert flickered solid, then rain-thin, beckoning impatiently. I felt the fluttering edge of the Grey nearby. The world seemed darker and overlaid with a wavering silver projection on fog. I groped after Albert, pushing through smoke doors and down stair-cases built of dry-cold mist, holding myself as close to the normal world as I could. Albert was a flickering match light in the down-drawing darkness ahead.
I must have left the restaurant, because the space sounded like a tunnel now—wet and dank and lit only by ghost lights that came and went. There was noise ahead of me, a distant, raucous clamor and a roar of music.
Reality wavered and pitched. I hesitated and my concentration stumbled. Couldn’t panic now. I had to keep going, had to keep chasing Albert, concentrating only on Albert, because it was the only thing I could think of to do. I didn’t know what would happen if I jolted out of the Grey into some unknown place: the middle of a wall or three inches from a speeding truck. And I hoped that the presence of a ghost—a creature who belonged here—would keep that dark beast away. I held on to the idea of Albert and kept going, quivering inside and wet with ice-water sweat.
I followed a flight of twisted steps down a dim shaft to a heavy door and along a short, narrow tunnel. I trudged on, tight with fear.
The dim flicker ahead winked out. The sounds died.
“Albert? Where are you?” My ears throbbed in the silence.
“Albert!” I howled, whipping around. I lost my balance in the shifting world and yelled, falling . . .
And crashed into a solid wall. I tumbled and sat down hard. I huddled on the cold ground and panted and held back tears of relief and exhaustion, and a desire to throw up.
Finally I looked up and around. I was in a basement storage area. There was a sound now, one I had been ignoring for a while: a burglar alarm going off.
I swore and promised under my breath, “Albert, I’m going to get you for this.”
I crashed around in the dark for a minute or two before someone opened the exterior door to the basement. I breathed a thankful sigh and moved toward the shaft of streetlight illumination striping the floor. A body cut off most of the light and I slowed my steps.
“Police. Stop where you are and leave your hands in plain sight.”
My relief soured to resignation and I raised my hands to shoulder level, open and empty.
The arresting officers were quite polite until they found my gun. Then the chill came on. They drove me to the downtown police station for processing, without a word beyond Miranda. The booking officers weren’t happy, either, but they did concede that I had all the proper paperwork. They still put the gun in an evidence bag before they would let me use the