Poltergeist

"Then that explains why it sometimes seems too much or too little time has elapsed when I'm in the Grey.”

"Yes, it would," Mara answered. "It would also give you another way to move through the Grey—by digging into the layers of time.”

"I'm not following you," I said, shaking my head in confusion.

"Neither time nor space are exactly the same in the Grey as they are out here—they simply can't be," she explained. "If a bit of time past can stick up through the present time and show itself as a ghost memory, then it seems likely you could dig down to some other fragment of time, if you can find one nearby.”

"I believe that's how ghosts seem to move through walls," Ben put in.

"How?" I asked.

"Moving along the plane of time fragments in the Grey. The ghost exists on his own time plane. When he seems to walk through the wall, what he's really doing is moving through an open space that existed there in his time. The building has changed, or the space has shifted in the Grey, but on his time plane or fragment, there's no impediment, so he just walks on through. You move like a ghost when you're in the Grey. So if you can get to a layer of time where a barrier doesn't exist, you can move through it, too.”

"But I'm not from that time plane.”

"I don't think it matters in your case.”

"So I could dig down to the days of the Duwamish and walk around on the historic mudflats, if I wanted to?”

"Not quite," Mara interjected. "You can only reach what's there. It's not a solid plane. It's fragments and slices all jumbled up. It's memories. If there's no memory or event strong enough to survive in a spot, there'll be no bit for you to access and you might have to move along in space to find the right bit of time. You might even have to emerge from the Grey to move to another location if the Grey is forgetful.”

I rubbed my hands over my face. "I'm having a hard time sorting this out.”

"Why don't you try again, in the Grey," Mara suggested.

I did try. I immersed myself in the shifting world, studying it and looking for the bits of time that they mentioned, catching occasional flashes like the sun on glass, but pushing the Grey around made me dizzy and tired. Every time I emerged, Albert was somewhere nearby, but never too close, and regarding me through his tiny spectacles as if I were doing something rather shocking. By the end of twenty minutes—or that's what the clock said—I was cranky and had managed to move about as far as the living room doorway. It felt like I'd spent hours at it.

I put my hands up in resignation. "I quit.”

"Oh, you can't!" the Danzigers objected.

"Not forever, just for now. My brain aches trying to bend around this and the rest of me feels like I've just danced back-to-back performances of Swan Lake in combat boots. This must be what you guys feel like after a day with Brian in full rhino mode.”

"Oh," said Ben, ru

Mara laughed, but whether at me or her husband wasn't clear. "Don't vex yourself over it. My own poor brain's a bit soggy with it right now. Think on it and it'll come," she added with a sudden yawn. "Oh, my. Surely it's not so late as that?”

"It's almost nine," Ben said.

"Cha! It can't be." She looked at the clock on the mantel. "Oh, it is. I've still got papers to grade!" She jumped up and flung affectionate arms around me. "Forgive the rush, Harper. Must retire to sling stones at my students' essays on sedimentary structures. Most of them can't seem to tell sandstone from cement, much less describe it.”

Mara rushed off, leaving me with Ben.

"You're welcome to stay as long as you like," he offered.

"I should get back.”

"Home, I hope.”

I nodded. "Soon.”

But once I was back in my truck, I sat and let my head droop. I knew I had earned my fatigue that day, but the drag had started before Wednesday's séance. I'd said nothing to the Danzigers, since I knew they would insist my own safety should come first, but unpleasant implications had come through to me. I'd caught the strand of the poltergeist early on, but the co

I needed to gain the ability to stalk the poltergeist, but Mara's technique hadn't worked for me; it was too difficult, tiring, and slow to use in tracking—or evading—Celia's nimble movements through the Grey. The entity had shown enough speed and power to intimidate me. There had to be something I wasn't quite getting and it must have been something simple, since the poltergeist's master had learned it with no prior understanding of the Grey or the power in hand. It seemed to me that whatever that skill was, it was probably related to Greywalking and I'd never learned it. I'd been using so little of what was possible, because there were no other Greywalkers to ask—and I hadn't wanted to know. I was learning everything the hardest, slowest way. I'd overindulged in being stubborn.

Without another Greywalker to ask, the only other source of information was Carlos—whose skills as a necromancer glanced across mine in some obscure way I didn't understand. I wasn't sure he did, either, and the last thing I needed was a vampire mentoring me—and he had a more appropriate protégé already. But I needed help. Any kind of kick in the perspective might be useful.

I drove down to Adult Fantasies and was lucky to find Carlos in the tiny office on the ground floor.

The space was really a storeroom with a desk and chair shoved into a corner. Carlos let me in with a pointed glare that sent icicles tumbling down my spine as my stomach pitched.

I was reluctant to speak under that cloud of disapproval, but I forced the words out. "I have a quandary.”

He growled, keeping his attention directed to some papers on the desk, for which I was grateful. His full attention tended to visit the colder levels of hell on me.

I closed my eyes and started, "I know I've already asked you to help me once, but I need to know more about moving through the Grey. The layers of time—or that's what—" I stopped myself before saying "we." Although Carlos was acquainted with the Danzigers, I didn't want them involved any deeper with Seattle's vampires than they had already been. "Tell me about time.”

He put down his pen and clasped his hands in the pool of light on the blotter. His assessment lay over me like a weight of snow.

"What I know may not help you.”

"It's more than I know." He'd realize soon enough how little information I had, so there was no point in being coy about it.

"Time takes many shapes. You'll have to learn them for yourself. It may be a river or a window, a plain or an impenetrable tor that rises from it.”

"But how do I recognize the shapes? What do I do about them?”

"Past time is hard. It has no wish to bend aside. I don't move in the power. You do. You walk in it, breathe it, swim in it." His eyes blazed and flickered. "For you, I imagine time is like rocks in water and you the fish. Like a fish, you will learn the smell of it, the feel of it in the current.”

My breath was a little fast, as if I'd been jogging, and there was a prickling sensation crawling up my limbs against the chill of his presence. His sudden silence brought a jolt of ice as he studied me from beneath his lowering brows.

"Time is. . just shapes. In water," I repeated, turning the thought over and over. A strange inversion of Einstein's ideas about time being a river.