Poltergeist

Its action was sporadic as it stabbed and grabbed at me. I assumed other things distracted Ian's attention or the poltergeist's assault would have been relentless, but Celia was stupid enough to be single-minded even without his direction. It drew back after each attack, then pressed in again. I searched for exits and grabbed the first upward route I spotted, pulling myself without looking through a hole that felt like a mouth lined with raking teeth.

Icy fluid rushed over me and I found myself standing in a culvert of filthy water. An old storm drain. I'd come back up into a more recent time shard. I jumped for the rungs of an access ladder as Celia smashed against my flailing legs, tossing me back down into the water. I rolled to cushion the glass and came up panting and dizzy.

The bloodshot yellow whirlwind of energy and knife-blade time pulled back, a little dimmer and smaller than before. I realized it was losing energy with each sally. But it was still powerful enough to kill me if it got a good chance and until then, it would drain my energy with every assault. I held the flask out and ran at it, hoping to catch it, but it slewed up and vanished into a fold of history.

I took the opportunity to climb to the surface and out a manhole.

I tumbled into the path of a beer wagon. I dodged out of its way, skidding onto the sidewalk to be cut through by the heedless ghosts of long-dead pedestrians. I shuddered as they passed through me and my legs went weak. Celia hadn't reappeared yet and I was grateful for that.

I kept my feet and caught my breath, staring around, looking for a sign of the time or the place. I couldn't recognize the location. A massive building rose to my right and below me was a steep hill cut with streets of narrow, Victorian row houses, more like something from San Francisco than Seattle. I stared at the large building beside me on the crown of the hill. It was a massive structure, five or six stories with gabled roofs and corner turrets. There was a bell tower sort of thing in the middle of the main wall and a sign—

Celia smashed into me from behind, but with nothing to crush me against, I flew forward, curling myself into a ball around the precious ghost-bottle and somersaulting into the base of the building—which felt as solid and hard as anything I'd ever fallen against in the normal world. I peeled my eyes open, feeling the container still whole against my chest and belly.

Now I could read the sign. Washington Hotel. I'd never heard of a Washington Hotel, and this corner, towering over the Sound, wasn't familiar at all. The cornerstone near my head had a list of names, among them Arthur De

I shook myself and got to my feet, rubber-legged. This was the old De

Now I knew where I was, the Pacific Place Mall somewhere deep in the historyless soil beneath me, and knew how I might trap the entity and force it into the flask. I began staggering down the ghost hill, feeling for a slot in the sediment of time. I could hear Celia shrieking and buzzing as it came on.

The edge of history fluttered under my groping right hand. I riffled through the knife-sharp edges of memory, pushing and scrambling for the harsh light of my own time. When it canted up like a whale broaching, I heaved myself onto it, careening through the Grey to be spit out into the normal.

I fell a few feet onto hard cement steps, keeping the bottle intact at the expense of my own limbs. Something wrenched in my left knee and shoulder as I landed on the upper steps of the Convention Center transit station. A scruffy kid with a long skateboard and two days' worth of unshaven barbed-wire beard grabbed my right elbow and helped me back to my feet.

"Oh, man, that was a real header! You OK, lady?”

"Yeah, yeah," I panted.

I took off before he could say more, feeling a hot stab in my left knee with every jolting, pounding step. I made for the corner of Seventh and Pine, just a couple of blocks west.

Four on a Saturday afternoon. Traffic was heavy, but slow enough for me to barge through. I could feel Celia's pressure against my back the whole time, but the entity was growing as tired as I, and I managed to stay ahead—I had more to lose.

A clerk in the upper lobby of the Barnes & Noble yelled at me to slow down as I rocketed through the doors and down the escalator. I didn't have the breath to tell him I'd only be a minute or I'd be dead. I slalomed through the crowd and back to the deep cell-signal death zone where science fiction shared space with romance novels.

A whey-faced teenager with long, lank hair squatted on the floor reading English-translation manga when I skittered to a halt at the end of the freestanding shelves that faced the book-lined basement walls. I backed myself up against the romance novels, facing the hard corner of SF. The shelf shuddered and rocked against my spine. My chest heaved and my throat felt raw and lined with corroded brass. There was no history to cut through here. Celia would have to play on my turf and come down the aisle just like a human.

The hot yellow knot of energy whipped around the corner and slammed down hard enough to shake the stacks. I didn't have the energy to taunt it. I pointed the open neck of the silvered vessel at it and braced.

It rushed. I tipped the bottle. One edge of the mass caught on the silvered glass and the thing smacked me hard on the side as it was whipped around like a leaf caught in a vortex and sucked into the trap. I snatched the stopper from my pocket and slammed it home.

I slumped to the floor against the corner of the shelf, a small cascade of novels pattering to the floor around me. The kid with the manga stared at me, gaping.

"What?" I asked. She shook her head.

From my other side a voice said, "Miss. I'm going to have to ask you to leave now.”

I looked up into the clean-shaven face of a security guard.

"OK," I replied. "I'm ready to go now. Can you give me a hand?”

He seemed a little confused, but put out a hand and helped me back to my feet. He appraised me, his eyebrows in a quizzical W. "What. . what happened to you?" he asked, leading me toward the downstairs doors.

I limped forward, my knee and shoulder throbbing. "I was hit by a car," I lied. I wasn't going to say I'd been smacked with a fake poltergeist.

His expression escalated to terrified. "Oh, no! Do you want to sit down?”

"No. No, I'll be all right. Just get me out of here." He escorted me all the way onto the street, leaving me under the mall's Pine Street portico. A dirt-crusted man with a hand-lettered sign harangued the automotive traffic against trusting the police or a certain apartment manager while a combo of electric violin and ordinary sax played jazz to a gri