She gave me the stare that her daughter, Clarice, calls the “gimlet eye.” “Well, you should keep your shoes on in his office. What if he’s a foot fetishist?”
I blinked several times. “You know,” I said at last, “that idea never occurred to me.”
“That’s why girls have aunts. To warn them about the possibilities.”
At that point, fortunately, she allowed me to change the subject.
Once I’d caught up on all the family gossip, I returned to my office. I found Nathan standing at one side of the window and looking out at an angle.
“See anything interesting?” I said.
“No. Just checking the lines of sight.” He turned back into the room. “We need to move your desk. A sniper on that motorway overpass with the right sort of rifle could take your head off.”
“I’d call that very interesting.” For more reasons than one—why wasn’t I more afraid of this possible assassin? Although I suspected that he’d left town, I couldn’t depend on a suspicion, especially since he might come back at any time.
I shut down the computer and began clearing the clutter off the desk. Once we had the furniture rearranged, I left for the day, but work followed me. In the lobby of the office building, tiled in dirty green, what light there was came from a pair of bulbs in a dust-clogged overhead fixture. In late spring and summer, glare from the street did seep through the glass doors. In winter, only the streetlights outside got through and produced interesting shadows.
When I stepped out of the elevator I saw movement in one of the shadowed corners. I took a few steps closer to investigate and heard a hiss, more like a cat than a snake. The creature I saw, however, looked reptilian—scaly blue skin, wedge-shaped head—as it rose onto its hind legs like a meerkat. It stood perhaps two feet tall and had shiny yellow claws that looked like they could give its prey a good rip and tear. About this apparition I had no doubts at all. I shifted my bag to my left hand and with the right sketched out a Chaos ward. The creature popped like a balloon. A shriveled skin fell to the floor, then disappeared.
The forces of Chaos had found my office and sent one of their spies, constructs modeled on some creature from one of the nastier places in the universe. I could see two possibilities: the Chaos masters wanted to kill me specifically, or they merely knew that an agent of Harmony had appeared in their territory and wanted to kill whomever it was. I disliked both options and got the hell out into the open air.
Back home I took the salad out of the fridge and turned on the TV news to get a quick look at the day before I began working the Internet. The lead story nearly made me choke on my arugula. Another murder that pointed straight to Johnson: a young woman’s body found naked in a deserted area of the Presidio. The news anchor got lurid over the silver bullet that had killed her, and the phase of the moon, just past full, but for a change lurid rang true. It did point to the killer thinking she was a werewolf—or to her actually being one.
The police, damn them, were keeping her name to themselves, pending notification of her next of kin, nor did the news show a picture of her face. They did say that she’d been dead just under twenty-four hours. When I’d Remote Sensed Johnson leaving the Cliff House, he could have been heading to the Presidio to lie in wait for his kill. Maybe he’d already fled the Bay Area or maybe he was hanging around for me.
Suddenly I didn’t feel like eating. I’d just put the remains of the salad back in the fridge when the landline rang. I hurried to the machine and saw that the caller ID had been overridden. I picked up the receiver.
“Nathan?” I said. “What’s up?”
“How did you know it was me?”
“How do you think?”
He made a noise halfway between a growl and a word, then spoke normally. “Did you see the news?”
“Sure did.”
“We need to talk about this. I’ll be right over.”
“How did you get my number?”
“How do you think?” He made a sound that was probably meant to be a laugh. “I know where you live, too.” And the bastard hung up before I could say a word more.
Nathan appeared at my door so fast that I realized he’d been phoning from nearby. I’d only ever seen him in a business suit. The way he looked in a pair of good-fitting jeans, a white shirt, and a brown leather bomber jacket made the danger warning swirl around me like a San Francisco fog, but when he took the jacket off, I saw that damned gun again. I made him wait by the door while I shut the curtains over the bay windows.
“So, this murdered girl,” he said. “She fits Johnson’s way of working.”
“Yeah, she sure does. I wish they’d release her name and picture.”
Nathan tossed the jacket onto the arm of the couch, then flopped down on the middle cushion. I turned my computer chair around and sat down facing him. He looked disappointed, just for a moment, but long enough for the warning to double.
“When’s the next newscast?” he said.
“Nine o’clock, but I can get the news faster from the Net.”
“Assuming your Net news has a reporter down at the police station.”
“Well, true. The TV people will.”
He glanced at his watch. “Only seven now. That chair doesn’t look comfortable enough for a two hour wait.”
“It’s fine, thanks.”
He grinned at me, a warm smile that made me feel like melting. Fortunately, I remained solid. I was just thinking up a suitably cold remark when my cell phone rang. I took it out of the pocket of my jeans and flipped it open. Aunt Eileen.
I got up and went into the kitchen to take the call. I looked back through the open door in case Nathan had gotten up to snoop, but he kept his nice little behind on the couch. I moved away into the kitchen as far as I could get and kept my voice soft.
“Hi,” I said. “Did you see the news?”
“I certainly did.” Aunt Eileen’s voice ached with worry. “Michael’s just sick about it.”
“Did he know that girl?”
“I doubt it. He’s terrified that the same thing could happen to him.”
“Don’t tell me he’s managed to transform!”
“Not yet, but the stubborn little darling doesn’t want to stop trying. He really needs you to talk him out of it, but I haven’t even told him you’re back.”
“I’d call him, but I don’t want Mother—”
“I understand that. He’s living here again. The same old problem, and it really seemed like the only way he was going to stay in school and not run off somewhere was to get him out of that house.”
“My dear mother. Dear, dear Mother.”
“Well, yes. Heaven knows I’ve tried to talk to her, and Father Keith has tried, but—well.”
“Is he still at Riordan? Michael, I mean, not Father Keith.”
“No, I’ve put him in public school. For someone in our family, I think it’s healthier to be around a good mix of people.”
“Yeah, I agree.” An idea struck me, a good way to avoid the temptation to cuddle up to Nathan on my couch for a couple of hours. “Hang on.”
As I walked back into the living room, Nathan slipped something into his shirt pocket. I suspected the worst.
“Do you have a car?” I said.
“Yes.”
“Okay, can you do me a favor? I need to get over to my aunt’s house.” I paused, struck by one of those thoughts that come out of nowhere, or the Collective Data Stream, as the Agency calls it. “Someone there has something that relates to our job. I don’t know what it is yet, but it’s waiting at my aunt’s.”
Nathan rolled his eyes, but he spoke in an ordinary tone of voice. “I can drive you, certainly.”
“I was thinking about just borrowing the car.”
“You’re not on the insurance I got from the rental agency.” He smiled, more than a little smugly. “Sorry.”
“Aunt Eileen?” I spoke into the phone. “I’ll be right over. I’m bringing a friend—well, it’s Morrison, actually. He’s here and has a car.”
“Nola! Honestly!”
I switched off the phone. I didn’t need to be psychic to know what she was going to say next. Nathan got up and grabbed his jacket from the arm of the couch. As he shrugged into it, the white shirt stretched tight against his chest, just enough for me to see the suspicious shape in his shirt pocket.
“You were listening in, weren’t you?” I said.
“Oh, yes. It’s my job.” He grinned at me. “I just can’t help myself sometimes.”
“Self-control is a wonderful thing. I recommend it.”
He opened his mouth, then shut it again. I hurried into the bedroom to get a jacket before he could think of anything to say.
Driving with Nathan took my breath away, and I don’t mean from the beauty of the view. As long as we picked our way through the traffic around the Ninth and Judah neighborhood, I noticed nothing unusual, but our route took us to Seventh Avenue and up over Twin Peaks, a four-lane road through trees and what almost appears to be open country around the city reservoir. Nathan hit the accelerator and drove like a fiend out of hell, or at least, what a fiend would drive like if a necromancer were stupid enough to let one take the wheel.
I yelled at him, I begged him, but we swerved around cars, changed lanes at top speed, and generally screeched along uphill and down, with me screaming directions and curses alternately. How we avoided being stopped by cops or mangled in the cross traffic by Laguna Honda, I do not know. All the way down O’Shaughnessy like an out-of-control bobsled—but we lived. Maybe Father Keith is right about guardian angels.
Aunt Eileen lives in the Excelsior district, which rises from outer Mission Street on a long sweep of hillside, terraced over the years into city streets and crammed with modest houses. About halfway up the hill toward McLaren Park, she and her husband have a rambling old house that started life as a cottage on a double lot around 1910. Generations of Houlihans built onto it, sometimes according to a plan, usually not. By the time Eileen married into the family and went to live in it, it contained ten bedrooms and a collection of odd hallways and corners as well as the usual living arrangements, all piled together, two stories high in some places, three in another, and only one in the middle, which gave it the look of a couple of houses shuffled like cards and then fanned onto a table.
Nathan parked his rented gray Audi across the street, a modestly nice little car, suitable for his cover persona, utterly wrong for his real nature.
“Next time,” I gasped, “I’m driving.”
“Why? What’s wrong?”
“Don’t tempt me! Listing what’s wrong could take hours. And would you lock that damned gun away? Like in the glove compartment? My aunt always keeps her house really warm. You’ll roast if you have to leave that jacket on.”
Nathan turned toward me, his eyes narrow, his mouth set. He started to speak, then shrugged. “All right,” he said. “I don’t believe in carrying a gun around children, anyway. I take it that your brother qualifies as a child.”
“I’d say so, but never tell him that.”
We hiked up the steep brick stairs that led to the front porch. Aunt Eileen opened the door before I could ring the bell. She was wearing a leopard print blouse, a pair of turquoise blue capri pants, and fuzzy pink slippers. Nathan did his best not to stare. He smiled pleasantly even when she fixed him with the gimlet eye.
“Good evening, Mr. Morrison,” she said. “Do come in.”
Aunt Eileen’s house always smells of scented chemicals: room freshener, dishwasher soap, rug cleaner, with a tang of ammonia from the windows under it all. Her front door opens into the middle of the big white living room, which runs across the entire front of the house. To the left as you step in she has a matching pair of chairs and a curved sectional sofa, all covered in pale gold brocade. I don’t remember anyone ever sitting on any of them. Over the fireplace on the end wall hangs a portrait of Father Keith O’Brien, her oldest brother (and my mother’s, too, of course) in his Franciscan robes.
Eileen steered us toward the other end of the room, the one with the collection of sagging armchairs that people actually use. Tattered Navajo rugs covered that section of white wall-to-wall carpet to guard against soft drinks and snacks.
“Boys?” she said. “Turn that thing off, will you? We’ve got company.”
Eileen’s youngest, Brian, and my brother Michael sat on the floor in front of the enormous flat-screen TV, but rather than watching a show, they were playing a video game. They looked enough alike to be brothers, not cousins—skinny sixteen-year-olds with dark hair and blue eyes, both of them with thin straight noses and thin mouths, though Brian was a head taller. Michael’s hair fell just above his shoulders, while Brian kept his short. The family inbreeding runs deep, though some of us, like me, have hazel eyes—witch eyes, as we call them—to go with the wavy black hair. They both wore jeans and black T-shirts, though each did have a different rock band logo across the chest.
Brian muttered something that sounded like “hello” and went on clicking away at the game. I got a glimpse of what seemed to be zombies staggering around a room before Michael grabbed the controller from his cousin and pressed a couple of buttons. The game disappeared. Michael scrambled up and ran over to throw his arms around me. I caught the scent of cheap marijuana.
“Boy, am I glad to see you,” he said.
“You look pretty good yourself.” I returned the hug. “I guess things have been kind of hairy at home.”
“Yeah, like, you know.” He let me go. “Are you really back?”
“For the foreseeable future.”
Everyone laughed at the family joke but Nathan, who manfully continued smiling.
“There’s some cookies in the kitchen,” Aunt Eileen said. “Why don’t you two go get them? Put them on a plate, will you, Nola?”
“Sure,” I said. “C’mon, Mike.”
We went down the long hallway, which bent at an odd angle, probably about sixty degrees off straight, before it reached the kitchen. When I was a child, visiting my aunt and uncle, turning into that angle had always given me an odd sensation, not quite fear, but close, and I could never figure out why. My brother Sean, who’s about eighteen months older than I, always called that portion of the hall the ghostwalk, because he claimed he heard people talking when no one was nearby.