Greywalker - Kat Richardson [62]
“Oh. Why does this seem to be getting worse? More frequent?”
“Well, I think it’s kind of like gum on your shoe. Every time you go into the Grey, a bit sort of sticks to you and it keeps on building up.”
“But if I’m building up this Grey . . . covering, why would the guardian beast-thing attack me sometimes and not others?”
He thought about it, and Mara frowned.
“I’m not certain,” Ben replied at last. “Maybe you don’t appear to be a threat sometimes.”
“I don’t see how I could have changed.”
“I’m afraid I don’t know what triggers acceptance or rejection, but there must be something. There isn’t much known about this creature—or creatures. We don’t know if it’s one thing or a bunch of them. But everyone agrees that it’s stupid as a rock. It does its job by a set of rules. So . . . ” He leaned his head back and stared at the ceiling.
Mara glanced at me.
“So maybe,” Ben continued, “it has a hierarchy to follow. Bigger apparent threats get its attention and it lets small things go, if it has to. So if something is more foreign or threatening than you, it would chase that instead.”
“But if I’m a Greywalker, why would I be foreign at all? What kind of threat do I represent?”
Mara looked at Ben, who was stroking his beard in thought. “I’m wondering . . . ,” he started. Then he looked at Mara. “Maybe you’re bright, for some reason. If you’re still not very comfortable in the Grey, maybe that makes you look more foreign and bright to it. What do you think, Mara? Does Harper glow?”
Mara glanced at me. “I suspect she does.”
I gave her a sideways look, but she went on. “So long as you’re uneasy in the Grey you’ll be creating some disturbance. The beast is like a spider and the Grey is like a web, so if you’re thrashing about, you probably attract its attention.”
I frowned at her and she made a “sorry” face. My pager went off, jittering against my hip. I glared at it and excused myself to use the phone in the kitchen.
My friend at the SPD had left a message: Cameron’s car was about to be impounded from a garage near Pioneer Square. He couldn’t hold the call. I had thirty minutes to get there ahead of the tow truck.
Yet another great dinner down the tubes. I went back out to the dining room to excuse myself to the Danzigers.
“Something’s come up that can’t wait. I seem doomed to miss that pie.”
Mara smiled at me. “We’ll put some aside for you. If you’ve finished by ten, come back and join us again. We’ll still be up.”
I exceeded the speed limit, but the old Rover took the twists and turns of Queen Anne Hill nimbly and roared down the Viaduct to Pioneer Square in ten minutes.
There was no sign of the tow truck when I pulled into the garage. I circled down to the lower level, searching for the dark green Camaro, and spotted it in an isolated, dark corner. There were more cars than I’d expected and I had to go around the ramp looking for a place to park. I ended up farther away than I would have liked and had to walk back up.
As I approached, I noticed two young men moving around near the car. I stopped and looked them over from the shadow of a pillar. Neither of them was Cameron. One was black, the other white. Both looked unkempt and dangerous. The black guy, the slimmer and shorter of the two, was hanging back, crouched, acting as the lookout as the taller, white guy tried jimmying the trunk open with a crowbar. I didn’t like the look of it, so I hung back, slipping my hand toward my pistol.
The trunk lid flew up with a sudden jolt and a pallid blur exploded out of the dark hole beneath. With a scream of rage, a pale whirlwind descended on the man with the crowbar. I darted forward, hand closing around the grip of my gun, not quite sure who was in more trouble: the two car breakers, or the willowy apparition that had erupted from the trunk.
The taller thief dropped his crowbar with a howl of pain as he was grabbed and flung backward. His smaller companion, darting panicked glances between the sudden assailant and me rushing toward him, snatched up the crowbar and tried to smash it into the skull