“But with so many other players—”

  “I’m not trying to put this on Uncle Andre.” Heath leaned forward over the island. “It’s his style, and it was a way to show me that he can send a possession so good I won’t notice it until I have to. Besides. We’ll know for sure when I talk to the ghostie.”

  “Why do you keep calling it a ghostie?” said Colin. “I’m not used to you using that word.”

  “’Cause I’m ninety-nine percent sure that’s the zombie astral of one of my uncle’s zombies.” Heath shrugged. “Calling them by their official term makes them sound too cool.”

  Nariko snorted.

  Heath pulled up a locally handmade ash stool and sat. He closed his physical eyes and focused on his spirit eyes. Colin and Nariko shone brightly, but Heath relaxed to their presence through a series of slow breaths. Then he dismissed them from his attention. Next he had to tune out the wards, followed by the other little spells Colin had running around the house. And there were more of those than Heath expected.

  Once Heath cleared his attention of the background magic, he focused instead on the symbols and words drawn and written all over the bottle. He knew every one of them. Had drawn them by hand from memory, following all the right steps in their proper order to give those “decorations” the power to trap and hold a spirit. None of the flexibility of a proper skull candle trap, but that would have been for binding the spirit, and this little ghostie was already bound. All Heath could do was contain it and, to an extent, constrain it.

  Those words and symbols glowed a bright green to Heath’s spirit eyes, and they’d continue to glow so long as they continued to work.

  Inside the boundaries created by the bottle, Heath could just make out a small orange wisp. It didn’t quite move, but didn’t quite stay still enough to form a coherent sphere. Instead it seemed to ebb and flow around itself. Like a penlight shining through a bottle of orange soda.

  Was this what a person’s soul looked like? Or was this what became of a soul that had been trapped and abused by someone like Uncle Andre?

  “I can’t free you,” said Heath to the wisp. “I don’t know where Uncle Andre keeps the govi that houses you, and even if I did it’s likely a long, long way from here. But know this. I want to free you from service to him. If I do find your govi I’ll smash it into little clay splinters and you can go on to whatever’s waiting for you on the other side.”

  Heath nodded once, slowly.

  “Taste those words, and if you find a lie in them you can tell me right now. With Damballah as my witness, if I just lied to you I’ll stop talking on your honest say-so.” Heath waited the length of a single breath. “So you tell me now, do you taste any lie in what I told you?”

  “No.” The voice was clear, and very like the clear tones that had come out of poor Mr. Beauregard while the ghostie rode him. “You have not yet lied to me.”

  “And by that truth I bind you. By my words I bind you. And by my heart I bind you. I can speak no lie or deception to you during this conversation, but you can speak no lie or deception to me. And by the bottle I’ve tied you to, you may speak only to me during this conversation, which ends when I say it does.”

  The ghostie flared a little brighter in agreement.

  “Are you sure that’s wise?” asked Nariko.

  Heath ignored her.

  “Was it my uncle who sent you into Mr. Beauregard?”

  “It was. May I ask you questions too?”

  “Answer all of my questions fully and completely and I’ll allow you to ask three of your own, provided you promise not to share that information with my uncle.”

  “Your uncle can compel me to tell anything I know, but I can promise to mislead him about what I know to keep your secrets about those three questions.”

  “Fair enough.” Heath shifted on the stool and straightened up. He’d bent forward again. He always did that when talking to bound spirits. “Where is my uncle staying?”

  “He spent last night in the riverfront Marriott. But he planned to change hotels after seeing you. I don’t know which one was next.”

  “How long has my uncle been in town?”

  “He arrived last afternoon. But he has had servants like me in Portland for three days.”

  “What did he have you assigned to do in that time?”

  “My job was to investigate the places of power. There were too many to cover. I focused on the parks. I—”

  “That’s enough on that topic for now.” Heath scratched his chin. “Who does my uncle consider his three biggest competitors for the Black Book of Saint Cyprian?”

  “You, of course. A Brazilian woman known to many as Neighbor. An Italian man called The Lammergeyer.”

  “Neighbor?” asked Colin as he poured coffee for the trio.

  “Vizinha,” said Heath, adding plenty of fake sugar to what he knew would be a strong cup. “That’s what it means.”

  “I’ve heard of The Lammergeyer,” said Nariko, adding cream and just a little real sugar to her coffee. “He’s from Vancouver. Usually stays north of the Columbia.”

  “What kind of magic?”

  Heath intended that question for Nariko, but Nariko and the ghostie answered it at the same time.

  “I think he’s a Thelemite…” started Nariko.

  “Your uncle says she claims Candomblé, but actually practices Quimbanda.”

  “…but I’m not sure. Might be Golden Dawn, or Silver Star, or worse, maybe one of those Red Sky yahoos.”

  “Where is my uncle looking for the Black Book?”

  “He skims, not hunts. His plan is to take it from whoever claims it before they master its powers.”

  “I don’t know, guys,” Heath said, turning to his friends. “If that… wait.” He turned back to the spirit in the bottle. “How much will your loss inconvenience my uncle? Will it change his plans?”

  “Very little, and it won’t. He brought a dozen of us with him.”

  Heath straightened up in his chair and smiled. “Do you mean he brought your govis?”

  “Yes. He keeps them in a satchel.”

  Nariko and Colin started talking in hushed, furtive tones, but Heath’s focus was on the bottle. He put both hands on the cool white marble and leaned forward eagerly.

  “Where is this satchel right now?”

  “I last saw it in his suite in the riverfront Marriott.”

  “It has to be with him then,” said Nariko. “If he’s changing hotels it’s probably in the limo.”

  “We could steal it,” said Nariko. “While you—”

  “No,” said Heath. “I don’t doubt how good you two are at spotting and diffusing wards, but you don’t know the way my uncle thinks. I have to go along for this.”

  “If you are done asking questions,” said the ghostie, “is it my turn?”

  Heath blinked, then shrugged and sipped his coffee. Hazelnut. He’d chug this whole cup in a moment if he let himself.

  “All right,” said Heath, “but I may want to ask you more questions later.”

  “First, you have never sent a serious attack at your uncle, despite provocation. Why?”

  Heath spared a glance at Nariko who, from the set of her jaw, did not like this news and would have words for him about it later.

  “He’s still my father’s brother.” Heath shrugged and drew a deep breath. “And I still love him. Not the man making zombies, the uncle I knew as a child.”

  “Second, what will you do with the Black Book of Saint Cyprian when you have it in your hands?”

  “I don’t know.” Heath shook his head, the questions making him feel as though he didn’t have his life together at all. “Destroy it, if I can? I don’t want to use it, and I know I don’t want it to go to someone like my uncle, or Vizinha.”

  “Finally, if you inherit your uncle’s power, what will you do with it?”

  “My uncle’s the kind of man who’d boil a live black cat for the bones, and I’m not. I don’t think inheriting his power is really a possibility—”

  “Assume it is.”

  “I … I think he has a lot of bound spirits. Most of them I’d want to set free.” Heath shuddered. “But I get the feeling that not everything my uncle has bound is an innocent victim, and I just don’t know what I’d do with the bad ones, apart from trying to keep them from harming anyone.”

  Heath shrugged helplessly.

  “I just don’t know what more I can say than that.”

  “You’ve said enough. Thank you, Heath Cyr. I taste no falsehoods in your speech.”

  “Then this conversation is over,” said Heath, standing up. “You are to hear nothing more until I address you directly with the phrase, ‘hey, ghostie.’”

  No response, which was as it should be.

  “Free it,” said Colin.

  Nariko gave Colin a raised eyebrow and put her fists on her hips, but before she could speak, Heath asked, “Why?”

  “Just a feeling. I think you’ll be glad you did.”

  Heath ran his lips around while he pondered that. He pulled the cork, and the spirit rushed out of the bottle, through the ceiling, and off to return to its master.

  As Heath watched it go, he hoped he wasn’t making a terrible mistake.

  Heath stared at the eggshell white paint on the ceiling of Colin’s photo-ready kitchen. Specifically, he stared at the spot where his uncle’s little ghostie had departed the grounds.

  “Brilliant,” said Nariko, fists still on her hips and anger in her eyes. “Bad enough we’re flailing around for resources – and we still haven’t gotten to start looking for this stupid book – but you have to keep giving away what little we do gain.”

  Heath slumped back down onto his kitchen stool. The hazelnut promise of the coffee in his cup didn’t seem so encouraging as it had a moment ago.

  “Tone it down a little,” said Colin, softly. “He—”

  “No,” said Nariko. She slapped one hand down on the cold marble. “Heath, you need—”

  “I need you to stop yelling at me,” he said, his chin rising into a firm jut. “If that had been your intuition saying to let the ghostie go, and you got to make the call, would you have done it?”

  “Yes,” she said, without losing an ounce of challenge in her tone.

  “So would I. Because doing what we do means trusting our own intuition. And I trust you two, which means I have to trust you to monitor your own flares of intuition against wishful thinking. You wouldn’t tell me to turn right when every instinct screamed to turn left. Colin’s told him letting that ghostie go would be better for us than holding onto it. Didn’t it, Colin?”

  “Yes,” said Colin, sounding like he wished he were anywhere else, “though I can’t explain—”

  “That’s why it’s intuition,” finished Heath, eyes still meeting Nariko’s. “Now I’ve been dealing with a lot of assaults from the outside, and I’ve given both of you ample opportunity to tell me to go to hell and let me deal with this bullshit on my own. Haven’t I?”

  Nariko’s eyes narrowed slightly in the manner that meant get to the point.

  “No,” said Heath. “You answer the question. Haven’t I given you ample opportunity?”

  “You have,” she said, though her tone conceded nothing.

  “But you both say you’re willing to stand with me, and I appreciate that more than I can say. But it’s still my neck on the chopping block. That means I still get the final call about how things get done. That’s how it has to be, and you know it.”

  A single nod from her, which was as much concession as he expected. They did, after all, break up for a reason.

  More than one, really.

  “Good. So no more bullshit. No more lectures. I don’t mind being questioned, but I can’t fight the forces out there if I’m constantly fighting in here.”

  “I think you made a mistake letting that spirit go.”

  “I get that. But it’s done now, so we’ll just have to wait and see.” Heath drew a deep breath. “So will you ease the fuck back?”

  Suddenly Nariko started blinking. Rapidly. She pulled back. “I’m sorry. I just…”

  Heath had the sudden sinking feeling that he’d said exactly those words before in exactly the same tone.

  Nariko started to turn away, but Heath hopped off the stool and grabbed her by the shoulders.

  “I need you for this, Nari,” he said softly. “I don’t want that to be true any more than you do. But there it is. You’re smart, cautious, and you know me better than anyone. Besides, I’m seriously outgunned, and you’re a heavy hitter. But if I have to second-guess everything I do, I’ll be a corpse before this day is over. Or worse.”

  “He’s definitely too pretty to be a zombie,” said Colin.

  That got a chuckle out of her, though Heath just shook his head.

  “Everyone talks about my looks,” he said, “but I do have a brain, you know.”

  “Yes,” said Nariko, “but you’re—”

  Colin finished with her. “—dumb in all the wrong ways.”

  “Wow. I get more respect from my landlord than from my friends. That’s a sad state of affairs.”

  “True,” said Colin, “but on the other hand, if Nariko used two spikes she could keep her hair up even when she needs a weapon.”

  “She’d just draw both of them anyway.”

  “All right, Brainiac,” said Nariko. “What’s the plan?”

  “Well, assuming a freaking meteor strike doesn’t interrupt us this time” – Heath looked up, ducking his head slightly because the last couple of days had been just that bad, but all he heard was the rain on Colin’s back porch – “I think we need to see about getting our hands on that book before someone else does.”

  “Excellent,” said Colin. “I think a locator spell would—”

  “Nope,” said Heath, smiling as he pulled the bookmark out of his wallet. “We aren’t going to chase it. We’re going to call it to us.”

  “Um,” said Colin, “not that I mind using this place as our base of operations, and goodness knows the two of you improve the décor, but I’m pretty sure my homeowner’s insurance doesn’t cover mayhem.”

  “Don’t worry then,” said Heath, with a smile. “We won’t be calling it here. No, I think for this we need to go to one of those places of power the little ghostie mentioned.”

  “Heath, it’s pouring down rain,” said Nariko, more disbelief in her voice than suspicion. She probably already knew where he had in mind.

  “Yes, it is.”

  “You mean that nice, dry spot under the I5 bridge, right?” asked Colin. “The one that troll haunts all winter?”

  “That’d be fine for you and me, but for Nariko…”

  “Wait, really?” Nariko practically bounced. She looked even happier at the prospect than she’d been to watch Heath work with poppets. “I think I still have your old hiking boots at my place…”

  “You don’t mean…” Colin let his words trail off.

  “Yep,” said Heath. “We’re heading for the Witch’s Castle.”

  10

  So far as Heath knew, no actual witches had ever lived in what the locals called the Witch’s Castle. Rumors said it was the site of the first hanging in the state of Oregon, which had something to do with star-crossed lovers or some such. Officially it was built in the 1950s to be a bathroom, though it was mighty big for that purpose, and Heath had never seen any signs of plumbing. Either way it was abandoned decades ago.

  Since then all sorts of haunted activity was attributed to it, from ghostly visages to “plasma orbs.” Whatever those were. Of course, an abandoned stone ruin in the heavily hiked and biked Forest Park was pretty much guaranteed to get rumors of hauntings.

  In this case, however, those rumors happened to have some basis.

  Forest Park itself was aptly named. Acres and acres of trees and trails in the hills of Portland. Even a determined hiker would need days to see it all. Miles of Douglas firs and hemlocks, cedars and maples, black cottonwood and even western yew. And in between all those trees a vast swath of ferns and bracken, and more thimbleberry, salmonberry, and blackberry than anyone could want.

  The place dripped with life on its driest day, and Heath knew every trail well. He harvested many herbs near the trails of this park, no few of which grew because he had planted them.

  In the pouring rain like today the wet and green looked as though Heath were hiking into the essence of life itself. Heath’s ears worked with his eyes toward this image, with creaks and rustles everywhere as the wildlife scurried about its business and the rain splished and splashed the creeks and rivers that ran through the park as though replenishing the lifeblood of the earth.

  But Heath’s nose was the first to warn him of the lie, and its warning came on the biting teeth of a cold wind. Heavy, the smell of mud and decay. Not the simple, clean smell of wet dirt he enjoyed from his porch, but the thick aroma of the full cycle of life, from the dead trees and plants, and from the dirt of the trail that had been overwhelmed to a muddy mess.

  A muddy mess that forced Heath to use Colin’s spare set of trekking poles. The three of them must have looked quite a sight. Translucent white rain ponchos over their clothes, calf-high hiking boots. Two of them struggling with their poles and footing for every yard they gained up the hill, while Nariko practically danced along the way.

  Heath had known that her Shugendō practice had meant lots of climbing and some kind of bond with hills and mountains. But until he had to follow her up the trail in the driving rain, he had no appreciation for her ability to make mountain goats look klutzy.

  Heath had no idea just how long took him to churn mud into the right amount of distance covered, but by the time Nariko called back, “We’re there,” he had long since regretted coming here. Yes, this was one of the best possible locations for Nariko’s magic without leaving Portland – and probably the only one he and Colin could have reached in current conditions – but there was no way giving her that magical leg up was worth wearing both himself and Colin to the bone.