Vanished (19 page)

“They’re still coming!” I yelled, running across a bridge over a swan-dotted pond with Michael now in tow.

“Who? How?”

We dashed off the bridge, and Michael started left as I started right. The ghosts turned toward him and shouted.

I grabbed him and hauled him toward the gurgling song of the Thames. I couldn’t see it, but I could feel its rolling presence in the Grey.

“It’s you,” I panted. “They’re tracking you. You have something . . . on you. . . .”

“I’ve got nothing!”

“Keys, pocket change, bus tokens! Anything Will gave you in the past week!”

We dove out of the park, crossing a road with wide sidewalks and into a narrow defile of stairs.

“St. James’s Tube!” Michael shouted, pointing diagonally right through the buildings beside us.

We stumbled out of the stairs and down a street. I yanked Michael to a stop near a statue of Queen Anne at the intersection, our trackers momentarily behind and blinded by the buildings.

“Empty your pockets.”

Wide eyed, winded, Michael turned the pockets of his jeans inside out, letting everything fall to the pavement. In the pile was a gleaming rectangle of blue and white plastic. I kicked it with my toe.

“Get the rest. Leave that.”

“But—”

“Now!”

He snatched the keys, his wallet, and change from the ground and shoved them back in his pockets, staring at me as if I’d just confirmed I was totally insane.

“C’mon!” I ordered, pulling him around the corner and into the nearest doorway. I pressed him back and we both peered out.

The local spirits stared toward the lonely bit of plastic and screeched as if in pain. A pair of red-crowned men ran down into the intersection and stopped below Anne’s statue, stymied, looking around until one of them spotted the thing on the pavement. I would have sworn the statue glowered at him, though it didn’t move an inch.

“Bloody hell!” he yelled.

The other one had kept on scanning the area, and he spotted our peeking faces. We were much too close—I should have pulled back farther.

“There!” he shouted, pointing.

I jerked Michael out of the doorway and plunged into the street, dodging people and cars to cross the road. We ran into the first street and down the block. Then I tugged him around the corner back toward the intersection we’d just left the tracking device on.

I dragged him up a street, slowing the pace a little as a stream of red flares came toward us, and then turned away into the road we’d been last spotted on. I pulled Michael across the way and through a break between two buildings that left us in an alley lined with parked cars. I let our pace drop to a trot.

“What the hell . . . ?” Michael panted, jogging beside me.

“They can’t track us now, so they’ll head for the Underground station—it must be obvious that’s where we were going. We’ll find another while we still have the lead. They’ll spread out soon and come looking, so we have . . . maybe ten minutes to get to something else,” I explained.

“We can get a bus at Westminster Abbey,” he suggested. “That’ll take us to a Tube, one direction or another.”

“Good. What was that thing?”

“That you made me leave on the street? My Oyster card—thanks a lot!”

“What’s an Oyster card?”

“Transit card—like a MetroPass in Seattle. Bus, Tube, whatever.”

I nodded and conserved my breath as we jogged on. I let Michael lead while I kept an eye out for random vampire minions who might get smart enough to head for the same place we were. I had to pull Michael aside twice to let some pass us.

“I still don’t know how you can spot them,” he whispered.

“Good eyes.”

We caught a bus on Victoria Street that eventually dropped us at Victoria Station. The place was massive, made of stone and iron, and the last stragglers of rush hour going out were meeting the crowds coming into town for the weekend. There were plenty of ghosts, but none of them turned and shrieked in alarm at us, and the only magical things I saw were slinking by quietly, neither wanting attention nor paying any to us.

I called a halt long enough to get some fast food and to clean up from our flight before we carried on.

We both slumped over cups of tea and Cornish pasties by the long-distance train platforms.

“So . . . I mean . . . what the hell?” Michael asked, staring at his food. “I don’t know what just happened. Can I go home now?”

“I think that might be a bad idea,” I replied. “They know you know something’s wrong and they’ll come looking for you—if they aren’t waiting at the flat right now.”

“Why would they do that? They aren’t after me!” he added, glaring at me.

I gave him back a hard look. “Because you’re the guy who thinks I’m a psycho ex who just murdered your brother—that’s why. And they can use that, like they used Will. I don’t leave friends behind. I won’t leave you with them any more than I’m going to leave Will with them. I think they know that.”

Michael bowed his head again, his shaggy hair hiding his face. His shoulders heaved and I wasn’t sure if he was just breathing heavily, trying to control a fit of temper or nerves, or if he was crying. After what we had just been through, he was entitled to either. I left him to it, rooting about in my pockets for the object I’d snatched from the golem.

It was a photo of me. The usual ghost-laden image, but I stared at it, barely recognizing myself with my waist-length ponytail of straight brown hair. It had been a long time since my hair had been so long. . . . I’d sliced it off to save my life in the elevator when I’d been beaten . . . to death. I felt strangled and I shuddered: The picture had been taken two years ago, a few minutes before I’d gone inside the building in the photo and upstairs to confront the man who killed me. I stared at the photo, trying to understand why it had been in the golem, in Will’s kitchen in London two years later. Where had it come from? What was it doing there? Could that be Alice’s connection? I was just turning that idea over when I heard Michael snuffle and blow his nose into his napkin.

I put the photo down on the table and looked up at Michael, who was swiping moisture from his face and trying to look less like he’d been crying.

I poked the photo toward him. “Is this Will’s?” I asked.

He shook his head and pushed the photo away, his mouth still a bit shaky and his eyes not meeting mine. “I don’t get it,” he rasped, a little teary but putting his man face back on. “What was that . . . thing?”

“Can’t say I’m an expert, but I’m guessing some kind of golem. A kind of magical automaton.”

“I know what a golem is,” he snapped. “Rabbi Loeb and the Jews of Prague and all that stuff. I do read books.”

I pressed my lips together. He wasn’t mad at me; he was just mad, and there wasn’t any point in taking it personally. At least not yet. I put the photo back into my pocket and tried to steer the conversation in a more useful direction.

“Michael. Do you know why your brother and I broke up?”

He shook his head. “Not really. He said you guys just came from different worlds. He said you had to do things he couldn’t live with. I thought he meant . . . like . . . your job was too weird for him. I still don’t get that. What’s so weird about what you do? You follow people, you look into records, you tap phones—”

“I don’t tap phones. That’s a federal crime. The rest . . . yeah, that’s what I do, but . . . umm . . . that different worlds thing . . .”

“What?” he scoffed, leaning back in his flimsy seat and crossing his arms over his chest. “You saying you’re an alien or something?” He snorted.

I laughed, though it wasn’t my best laugh. It came out weak and shaken. “No. I’m not from outer space. I just end up working around a lot of things most people would call magic or myths. Things like that golem.” The golem was creeping me out even more now that I’d seen the photo. That was a channel . . . like Ezra’s ring. I tried not to go any farther in that mental direction. I’d scare Michael as much as myself if I let on what I was thinking.

Michael scowled. “You’re saying you’re a witch or something?”

“Not even remotely. I just see things most people don’t. And they see me.”

He still looked very skeptical.

I sighed. “OK, try this. For the sake of argument, say ghosts exist. Just as a supposition.”

He nodded reluctantly. Most people do believe there are things they can’t see—whether they call it “magic” or “God” or “quantum physics.” They have some belief in an unseen force that does things they can’t control.

“So, if there are ghosts and monsters and witches, isn’t it possible they have problems, conflicts that need resolving?”

I waited to see if he was buying in at all. He gave another nod, a little less incredulous this time. “Okaaaay, maybe.”

“I solve problems for people. That’s really what my job is: finding answers. Sometimes the answers or the problems—or even the clients—just happen to be ghosts or monsters or magical weirdness. That’s what your brother meant when he said we came from different worlds. Now the worlds are colliding, and Will got caught in the middle.”

“So, that . . . back there—that’s your fault?”

“Yeah. I’m afraid so.”

“Why!” Michael demanded. “Why would anyone do that?”

“I don’t know. I only got here yesterday, but that golem’s at least a few days old, maybe a week. Someone knew I’d come looking for Will, but not when. And they didn’t want anyone else looking—not the cops, not you—so they made the golem. If I didn’t come straight to them, I’d come to see Will and then they’d get me.”

“Why would you come all the way here to see your ex-boyfriend? And why did you? And that phone call—”

“Bad dreams.”

“Huh?”

“I had some awful dreams about your brother—and sometimes you, too—being in danger, hurt, or killed. I don’t have dreams like that; I’m not psychic. But they freaked me out and I had to check in to be sure they were just dreams. So I called.”

I couldn’t bring myself to tell him how the golem was probably the channel that sent the dreams and what they meant about what must be happening to Will. It was bad enough to think someone had kidnapped him and substituted a fake Will. But why Will, the ex-boyfriend? Why not Quinton? I had to stuff down an instant’s panic and desire to call and be reassured that he was all right. I had to believe he was fine, or I wouldn’t be able to do anything to help Will or Michael or myself. I was sure this was about me, about my father and whatever had started twenty-two years before. How any of it connected to Edward and his problem—if he really had one—I didn’t know, but I’d find out.

“But I told you everything was all right,” Michael said. He looked distressed.

I nodded. “You did, but the dreams kept coming, and then I had a chance to come here on business and it seemed too good to pass up—way too good, not just a coincidence. My case had a connection to Sotheby’s, so I thought I’d check on Will while I was there. But I found out he hadn’t been there in a while. That didn’t jibe with what you’d told me, and other information about the case tied up to Will. So I knew he was in trouble and I went to your place. . . .”

Michael frowned. “Would they have brought Will back if you hadn’t come around?”

“I don’t know.”

“But you don’t think so, do you?” he demanded. He screwed his face up against the emotional pain my nonresponse brought. We were both silent for a while until he said, “Now what?”

“We find you a safe place to stay while I finish up this case and get Will back.”

Michael shook his head. “I’m not going to be warehoused somewhere. I’m sticking with you.”

There was no way I’d include Michael in the further investigation of whatever was going on, but I knew I had no power to order him around. I’d have to convince him to keep out of it in some other way, later. I cut him an irritated glance. “Let’s find a safer place to have this discussion.”

We picked ourselves up and made our way down to the Underground station. I paid the fare and in spite of Michael’s annoyance we didn’t replace his Oyster card. I wasn’t sure what the nature of the tracking spell had been and it was always better in these situations to leave as little trace as possible. However else the card could be tracked, I was certain the Underground authorities kept tabs on the cards themselves. Every attachment is a potential point of weakness for an enemy to attack, even a piece of plastic with a chip in it. Or a photo, or a loved one.

“More bad guys. I recognized a face or two. We’ll go on to the next station and walk back.”

The next train gusted into the platform and a familiar figure in a long dark coat and white trousers stepped off, carrying a white cane held out in front of himself. It was Marsden, the unpleasant and uncanny man I’d met in Farringdon Station. He seemed to have an affection for dramatic entrances on Underground platforms.

Marsden turned his head back and forth as if scenting for me. Then he headed directly for us and hooked his arms through each of ours, turning us around.

“C’mon, you two. Not safe above.”

“I had figured that out on my own,” I said.

“Who’s this guy?” Michael asked.

“That’s a good question,” I replied as we stepped aboard the next train into the platform.

Rush hour had faded to a thick trickle and we found some seats at the far end of a car. Michael stared at the blind man and his strange outfit for a moment, making a crooked face. Then he leaned in closer.

“They’re little pelts!” Michael exclaimed, pointing at the uneven texture of Marsden’s coat.

“Moleskins,” Marsden replied, spreading his coattails out. “They little gentlemen in velvet weren’t in need of ’em any longer. Not once I’d done with ’em.” He grinned, showing crooked yellow teeth that seemed unusually pointed, and his odd, colorless aura flashed and moved like a kaleidoscope of clear glass. He turned his attention to me. “I’d a feeling I’d find you at that platform, and there you were with a bloody great lot of Red Guard upstairs.”

“Soviets?” Michael questioned.

“Vampires’ servants,” Marsden corrected.

Michael quirked his eyebrows and twisted his face in incredulous disbelief. “Get away.”

“God’s truth, boy.” Marsden fixed his eyeless gaze on me. “Do I lie?”

I didn’t want to admit it in front of Michael, but I said, “No.” The crowd that had tried to herd us in Trafalgar hadn’t wasted much time once they realized they’d lost us but had come straight to my hotel and the nearest Underground station. I had no doubt they’d be stationed all around the block and probably at each Tube station nearby. They knew where I was staying. As did Marsden, it seemed.

“How did you know where to find me?” I asked.

“As I said, I had a feeling. I always heed those impressions. I imagine you’re much the same, aren’t ya?”

Michael was watching us both with a wary expression.

“I don’t take hunches for granted, no.”

“Your instincts are fine-tuned to the mysterious. Your father wasn’t so good at that.”

Now I was glaring at Marsden with suspicion. “You knew my father?”

“Not in person, but we had some enemies in common. Those same as were lying in wait upstairs at Temple. Not that lot specifically, but the same cut of crypt robbers.”

The speakers in the car blared with the news we were approaching the next station. I stood up. “My father was a paranoid who thought things were watching him. He thought his receptionist was a monster. And right now my instincts aren’t urging me to believe that the enemy of my enemy is my friend.”

I beckoned to Michael and started for the doors. I didn’t like speaking so harshly of my dad, but I didn’t trust this creepy man and his coincidental appearances. He had been watching my hotel and now there were others staking it out who didn’t have my best interests or Michael’s in mind. I may have tripped up and been careless shaking off watchers and tails, but I thought it more likely someone else had tipped them off.

As we stepped off, Marsden’s whisper carried to my ears. “Your father did you no favors in blowing his brains out and making
you
the Greywalker in the family. Nor did he do any favors for the rest of us, the bleedin’ coward. May he rot in whatever damned hole he’s been locked in.”

Michael looked at me with wide eyes as I stopped and spun back toward the train car. Had he heard that?

The doors hissed closed and the train hummed before it swept away, leaving us on the platform with the fast-dissipating crowd.

“Second thoughts?” came Marsden’s voice from a shadowed corner.

“This is seriously wigging me out,” Michael muttered to me.

“Just stick with me,” I replied.

Marsden was lurking in his corner, gleams of ghostly white the only sign of him in the darkness. “You and me, we’re the same ruddy thing,” he hissed, furious. “Should have been your dad’s job, but he bunked it and that left you. That monster what’s been stalking one of us for his own all these years, he’s coming for you now. I can see his marks on you—and yes, I see. Clear as you do in this half-a-place.” He stepped forward into a slice of light that silvered his face as if it were made of ice. He folded his cane and tucked it into a pocket of his long moleskin coat. Then he closed the distance between us, growing misty and indistinct as he did.

Implications and connections rushed together in my head. His shattered aura, his almost ghostly appearance on my phone camera, “. . . one of us,” “same ruddy thing . . .” Marsden was a Greywalker.

Michael jerked beside me and I put my hand on his arm to stop him bolting. “You’ve seen worse today. Don’t let him scare you.” Immersed in the Grey as he was, Marsden was no physical threat to us so long as we stayed on the corporeal side of the line.

“Your father thought he’d gone mad—as do we all at first. I gouged me own eyes out, thinking it was them what made me see things that couldn’t be. But it’s not these eyes,” he added, jabbing a phantom finger at my face, “that sees this place. It’s another set entirely, and I didn’t stop seeing monsters, no more shall you, girl. At least you’re not runnin’, but you’re trailing your coat and you don’t even know what manner of thing may be stalking you or what it means to do. You are in enemy territory. It called you here, it forced you, it dangled bait. And you came. Now what will you do? Pitch yourself into its arms?”

He stepped through me, giving a bitter laugh and sending bone-deep cold through my body. My chest ached, and I choked on some frozen terror that exploded through me and then passed as quickly as Marsden stepped away.

“You are a babe in the woods.”

I would not give him the satisfaction of fear or even anger. I turned with deliberate care to face Marsden’s new position. Michael shook beside me and I held his arm in a tight grip at my side. I hoped it reassured him, but more than that, I couldn’t risk him running.

“Do you practice to be such an asshole? Or does it come naturally?” I sneered.

Michael giggled without sounding hysterical. Good: I was defusing the situation. He’d had more than enough freak show for one day.

“Marsden, you want to talk to me, do it like a human.”

The man firmed up, sliding back out of the Grey. “Are you ready to listen, then?”

I nodded. “After I put this kid somewhere safe.”

“Hey!” Michael objected, squirming in my grasp. “I’m eighteen!”

“Old enough to drink doesn’t make you adult, boy,” Marsden said.

Michael bridled in my grip. “Don’t argue,” I advised. “This is not the time to split hairs.” He grumbled under his breath but stopped wriggling, and I let go of his arm. “Where can we go?”

Marsden shrugged. “It’s not me they’re after and I doubt you’d feel safe enough in my abode. You’re not entirely sure about me, are you?”

“You got that right.”

“Where are we?” Michael asked, looking around. No more trains or passengers had come through since we’d stepped onto the platform, which seemed a little odd until I looked around.

The platform hadn’t been in use in ages. The only lights were safety lights in the tunnel and an occasional gleam from something above us. I could hear trains nearby, but when one did finally rush though, it didn’t even slow. The station had an arched roof and sides that were tiled in soft greens and brown. The signs were all tiled in place, too, but they’d faded badly with time. It looked like something from a WWII movie, and the ghosts in it were dressed in the clothing of the early twentieth century, ignoring us without a care.

“Oh, wow,” Michael started, answering his own question, “it’s a ghost station.”

“A what?” I asked, startled.

“An abandoned station on the Underground. I’ve heard of them. How—?”

“You’re in the company of two people for whom the paranormal is the normal, and you can ask a cloth-eared question like that?” Marsden hooted.

“Back off him, Marsden,” I started, but Michael closed with the older man and glared at him.

“Step off, sunshine. I thought I saw my brother hacked to pieces today. Then I found out he was a golem. Then I got chased by creep azoids, and now you want to rag me for being a little freaked? Well, bugger you!”

Marsden gave him a feral grin. “You’ll do,” he said.

“Fine,” I said. “Now, where can we go from here? I doubt there’s going to be another train stopping for us.”