Underground

The house collapsed on itself, dragging the rift and the Grey sphere with it, folding into a sad pile of dirty vinyl and cardboard again, dull, discarded, and sparkling with only a dim Grey light. The normal world crashed back into us with a roar of modern noise.

Quinton pulled me back to my feet, wrapping me in his coat and drawing me away from the dollhouse on the bricks. I shuddered and gulped air before I shoved my weakness aside to look back at the abandoned toy.

Grandpa Dan shuffled forward and picked up the house, folding it down until it was flat. Then he carried it, a procession of his people—material and incorporeal—forming around him as he went to the nearest fire and carefully dropped it in. The flames rose up in a rush of white and yellow and red, and the Indians watched the dollhouse burn, whispering songs until it was a white drift of ash.

I looked around, seeking a sight of the animals, but they were gone—every one but a dog that limped from the darkness, shaggy coat matted with mud and head hanging.

“Bella?” Quinton called. The dog turned and ran to him, whimpering in relief. He gathered her up and took us both home.

EPILOGUE

I slept more than I worked for the next few days and didn’t notice that Seattle had returned to normal temperatures and normal business while my attention was turned aside. Quinton had kept a covert eye on Fern Laguire and Detective Solis, and their actions were about the only thing—aside from rushing through work for Nan Grover and wrestling with the insurance company over my destroyed truck—that I was aware of for a while.

Laguire had managed to wrench all investigation into the deaths of the homeless and any possible monsters in the sewer away from Solis and bury it in a national paperwork tomb from which I doubted it would ever emerge. Solis had kicked at first, but a spate of shootings pulled him into other work that no one wanted to hide or interfere with. He didn’t forget about the bizarre deaths, but he let them lie for the time being and roused no stink about me or the mysterious “Mr. Lassiter” I was spending a lot of time with.

In spite of worries that his cover was dangerously rickety, Quinton remained in his Seattle hideaway and in my life. He stayed in the condo for three nights after patching me up and clearing my office and home of bugs, further ingratiating himself with Chaos in the process—the fickle little beast—before returning to his own place. We were both loners at heart and Quinton was still wary of Laguire’s local radar, so playing house was out of the question.

But we found plenty of other things to do in between cleaning out the last of Sisiutl’s zombies.

Quinton kept Bella with him for a while, but eventually he handed the miserable, orphaned dog over to Rosaria Cabrera of Women in Black. The dog became her constant companion. Though prone to bristle and growl at strange shapes in the fog, Bella proved to be a fine mascot.

Of Tanker there was never a sign, dead or alive.

Ben survived Sisiutl’s attack, though not without scars. Being Ben, however, he was downright ecstatic about his tussle with an eldritch beast. Mara felt differently and took him to task about foolish risks while she struggled with the question of what to do with Albert. Eventually, the net full of ghost vanished from the rooftop of the Danzigers’ home, but Mara didn’t reveal what she’d done with it.

Chaos forgave me for stinking of monsters after a while and went back to climbing the bookshelves, stealing my shoes, co-opting my breakfast, and attacking my toes anytime they were bare. One day, she dumped the wooden puzzle ball Will had given me onto the floor, making her victory chuckle as she chivvied it around and stopped to dance about it in mustelid glee. I’d put Will forcibly out of my mind, and seeing the thing gave me a pang. I was happy with Quinton, but I would always have a soft spot for Will, in spite of our harsh breakup.

As Chaos played with the puzzle ball, the battered pheasant feather slipped from the shelf, caught a draft, and drifted, spiraling down to land quill first against the ball with an otherworldly chime. The puzzle shifted and the Grey rippled with a hush like someone cracking the seal on an airtight door that I could feel in every hollow of my body. The feather fell away and drifted to the floor, but the breathlessness in the Grey remained. Chaos leapt and spun, waving her toothy maw at the disturbance before she declared victory over whatever unseen thing had ruffled her fur. Then she bumped the ball back into motion and continued with her game, chuckling.

I watched the Grey-gleaming thing trundle across my floor and wondered what fresh hell might be contained at its core.

Author’s Note

In this book I’ve played faster and looser than I usually do with Seattle’s real-life geography. In fact, the underground is mostly condemned, inaccessible by anyone but utility workers, or in use by the tenants of the various buildings that rise over it. If you aren’t on the Underground Tour or don’t have legitimate access to a building’s cellar, you won’t get into it without breaking a law or perpetrating a miracle. But the idea of the underground—with monsters—was so intriguing that I threw a lot to the wind and plunged into it anyway.

I did try to keep as much of the reality intact as possible, however, and I got a lot of help with the history and the layout of the area from Rick Boetel, the chief historian of Bill Speidels Underground Tour. I’ve presented the history and fact of the underground as truthfully as I could: toilets really did flush backward at high tide before the streets were raised; people really did fall to their deaths from the streets to the sidewalks; a shaman really did exorcise the ghosts of native spirits from the underground corner at Yesler and First; and prostitution and other crimes and vices really did thrive in the darkness below the city streets right into the 1970s. There really was a Roy Olmstead (though I hope not an Albert Frye), who really was both a policeman and a bootlegger. And, yes, there really was a dumping ground near where Occidental crosses Royal Brougham.

Rick’s help was invaluable, but I was also able to get additional information from books and Web sites. Surprisingly, one of the most useful books was Distant Corner by Jeffrey Karl Ochsner and De

With some idea of the history and geography of the underground in mind, I then needed a monster. It’s harder than you might imagine to find a really good maneating monster that isn’t already working its fangs off in a half-dozen other series or films or TV shows. After several false starts, I settled on the Pacific Northwest Native American legend of the Sisiutl. And promptly got teased by both my agent and my editor. No one, they said, could take seriously a monster with such a goofy-sounding moniker. Being a stubborn cuss, I swore I’d make it work. I hope I did, but if nothing else, I got a great argument out of it that made it into the book as the discussion between Harper, Quinton, and Fish as they drive away from the Tulalip reservation. That’s not quite how it happened in real life, but it makes much better reading.