Underground

“Well, I’m not.”

“No. I guess not. Or not anymore at least.” He stood there looking uncomfortable. “Why not?”

I heaved a sigh that made a long white column in the air. “Remember I told you about a zombie I was brought on Thursday?”

“Yeah,” Quinton replied, shuffling his feet against the cold welling from the cement beneath our feet.

“Well…” I was finding the subject difficult to talk about—though not in the same way that I found myself unable to speak of the nature of the magical grid to normal people. “Will was with me at the time and he freaked out a little.”

“I can understand that. Most people would.”

“Yeah. Well. I had to… dismantle it… and he didn’t deal too well with seeing that.”

Quinton stared at me and shivered, though from cold or from his own imaginations conjuring, I wasn’t sure. “Ugh. That would be pretty hard to take. Did he… umm…”

“Dumped me,” I said, nodding. “Not that I don’t understand it, but it still hurts. We tried to patch it, but… You’re right—I can’t date someone who can’t deal with what I am or what I do and has to be lied to or shielded or wrapped in ignorance.”

“I’m, uh…” he stammered, biting his lip.

“Don’t say you’re sorry. Because you aren’t. Things just don’t work sometimes.”

I found I couldn’t look at him and turned my glance off to the side. Something bright flared in the Grey, but by the time I’d turned my head back, it had gone and Quinton was still just standing there, looking a little too bright and too pink.

He gri

Zombies and shaggy things “They’re still out there,” I reminded him, feeling somewhat uncomfortable and wanting to change the subject away from my broken love life. “And even if we think we have a likely monster, we aren’t any closer to stopping it or figuring out why it’s doing this.”

A small group of grim-looking people came out from the main lobby, talking about someone’s prognosis and the risks of surgery. It had seemed so late in the frozen dark, we’d both forgotten it was only a little past five.

Quinton caught my eye. “You want to get some hot food and try to figure out where to start looking for answers?”

I gave a crooked smile. “Yeah.”

Di

“You think we’re really looking for Sisiutl?” Quinton asked.

“Yeah.” I sighed. “Much as I feel silly saying it.”

“Then we’ll stick to ‘Sistu’ for now, I guess. Even if it doesn’t notice, seems like there’s points in favor of not using the formal name.”

I agreed. “We need to figure out where it’s hiding and what it’s up to—is it just hungry or is there something else going on?”

“Start from where it came from,” Quinton suggested. “Ella Graham said something about a dump. Wasn’t there something else about a dump in one of the papers or something?”

“Yeah. There was a dumping ground south of downtown.”

“Right. About where the stadia are now.”

“Which is where the hotel construction is. Think it’s the same spot?”

“High probability. If the construction broke through to wherever Sistu was imprisoned, he’d escape, and it’s likely he’d eat the first thing he found.”

“Probably one of your missing homeless.”

Quinton nodded. “But is he doing something specific or just rampaging around at random? Right now, the pattern is just homeless people who were down in or near the bricks. The bricks isn’t very far from the breakthrough point, but Je

“Maybe there’s something special about the Square—it never seems to have gone beyond the northern boundary at Cherry Street—or maybe its hiding place is near there.”

“Between the Square and the bricks is where the most activity has been. That puts Oxy Park in the middle of the pattern. I think we should start there.”

“What about the ogress Grandma Ella mentioned? She’s Sistu’s keeper, so she’d have to be nearby, too. Ella said Sistu had been returned to… what was her name?”

“Zeqwa?”

“No… that means ‘monster.’ ” I thought a moment. “Kammits?”

Quinton brightened up. “Qamaits! Right. Ella said Sistu had been returned to the ogress in 1949. She’s his keeper and she’d keep him down, unless she had some reason to let him run loose.”

“Like punishing someone for pissing off the gods, as Grandma Ella said—or repaying a favor.”

“And the undergrounders aren’t the sort to avoid someone just because they look a little scary—they’re a scary bunch themselves—so it’s not like they’d refuse to give a god a drink or something,” Quinton said.

“So… what do you think? Someone helped Qamaits out of the construction pit and the first thing the monster did was eat someone whose leg was found in the excavation?”

“Seems like a possibility.”

“Even if I were an ogress, I think I’d be more grateful than to let my pet eat my rescuer.”

“Maybe she couldn’t stop him. Ella Graham said Sistu’s a hunter…”

“I guess he’s graduated from seals to people, then. But if he’s hunting for a reason, maybe there’s a pattern to who’s been killed. We’ll have to start at the begi

“And Qamaits.”

I nodded. “Yeah, but I think she’ll be easy to spot—after all, she’s a legendary monster, too, so like Sistu, she’ll look like one thing to some people, and something else to others.” “Like you.”

I pulled a face. “Probably. But I don’t know what she’ll look like, and a lot of people and things have shadow shapes. She could be anyone. We have to find her, or anyone who saw Sistu come out of the hole—anyone who might have an idea what it’s up to, what it might be hunting, or why.”

“We’d better get downtown before it gets too late and everyone’s asleep.”

“But it’s most likely we’ll get information from people who don’t sleep in the shelters all the time—people like Tanker and Lass.”

“And Sandy—she’s sharp-eyed and crazy enough to sleep rough a lot more often than most women down there.”

I shook my head. “She’s nuts all right, if she’s doing that.”

“More than half of them are—it’s protective behavior.” He slurped up the last of his soda. “Let’s go.”

I regarded my half-eaten food and decided I didn’t need to finish it—the burger was huge—but after talking about the homeless I felt bad about throwing it away.

Quinton saw me looking at it. “Wrap it up. If nothing else, we can give the burger to Bella.”

For a second, I wasn’t sure whom he meant, then I remembered Tanker’s dog. As I hesitated, Quinton reached over, wrapped the burger in its paper and tucked it away in one of his capacious pockets.

We went back to the Rover and drove down to Pioneer Square. I didn’t park in my regular spot, though, just in case the NSA had been doing their homework.

Instead, I put the truck into a slot under the Alaskan Way viaduct and we walked in from the western edge of the historic district. Coming up beside Marcus’ Martini Heaven, Quinton nudged me and pointed into the dark alley on the other side.

“Looks like Tanker,” he said. I recognized the shape of the stocky dog, and as we crossed the street, Quinton shoved the wrapped food into my hands. “I’ll talk, you feed.”

Tanker turned with a jerk as we got close and Bella stiffened for a moment until she recognized Quinton. Then she went all over wags and friskies. “Heya, Tanker,” Quinton said as he knelt to pet the dog.