Greywalker - Kat Richardson [6]
I left it to stew in the back of my head, and my brain bumbled around it like a bee in a rhododendron. Dead.
TWO
Roiling gray mist flooded across the floor, pushing against the walls. Lucent wisps spiraled up from the mass, forming a columned portal supporting a hot-white door. My vision clouded, like snow on a tele-a hot-white door. My vision clouded, like snow on a television screen. Vertigo gripped me.
The door drifted open on an endless whiteout storm, swarming with almost-seen shapes and moving light. I crashed to my knees in the thick cold, gasping in the sickening death smell of it. Hungry fog boiled out, muttering, whispering, clawing. . . .
I started awake with a racing heart.
Nerves vibrating, I stalked through the entire condo, throwing open cabinets and closets, daring the mist to stream out at me. The ferret watched me from the safety of her cage as I found nothing. My head buzzed from getting up too fast, and black dots fringed my vision. I lay back down, but I could not fall back to sleep.
I gave up and stumbled through my morning routine. The sun struggled up through the early-morning Seattle gloom. I looked out the balcony windows, but I couldn’t face the prospect of another fog-haunted run.
I showered and faced off to the bathroom mirror, my pulse ragged as I wiped it clear of steam. In spite of the best efforts of the salon gnomes, I still looked thrashed. Pillow creases and morning puffiness didn’t help, either.
Chaos, the ferret, made a pest of herself as I dressed, rumpling up my impress-the-client suit, stealing shoes, stockings, and jewelry, and throwing dancing fits of sound and fury when I took them back. Finally, I tucked her back into her cage. She glared at me as I slipped my pistol into the clip holster in the small of my back and hid it under a suit jacket that almost matched my skirt. I would not be taken by surprise again.
I was in my office before seven, coffee in hand. I started catching up on old business and billing and prep-ping for my meeting at nine.
My first day out of the hospital, I’d called my answering machine. Most of the messages were old business, crank calls, and hisses, but two had sounded like work.
The first had been a male, accented, bad connection: “Miss Blaine. Grigori Sergeyev. You have come to my attention to recover a family heirloom. I must call again. I have no phone number to give now.”
I’d made a note, but still no second call had come in.
The second was a female, controlled, with a mature, Eastside girls-academy voice: “Ms. Blaine, my name is Colleen Shadley. My son is missing. The police have been condescending but no help. They suggested I hire a private investigator, and Nan Grover recommended you. Please call me as soon as possible.”
I had called her back and agreed to look into it. I’d have preferred later, but Mrs. Shadley had set the time and place for the meeting. I thanked the gods for coffee. At eight thirty, I shut down my computer and locked up the office.
The morning fog hadn’t thinned much, giving Pioneer Square a watercolor look as I headed for the bus stop on First. There was no point in moving my Rover just to pay for parking six blocks away.
As I was crossing Occidental, a man shambled out of the alley toward me. He was draped in layers of dark, shaggy rags that spun vortices off into the mist around us.
He muttered as he approached. “Can you see? Can you see?” He waved his hands, one of them clutching an empty shape, gesturing around like a tour guide.
I could smell him, wafting the odor of dirt and attics. I started around him, peering through the sulfurous mist.
His hand darted out and grabbed my upper arm. He hauled me in and shoved his face near mine. “Dead lady? Are