Mean Streets

We sat in the glass picnic shelter beside Ivar's Acres of Clams on the waterfront and talked while we ate our fish and chips. Chaos helped us with the chips and ignored the gulls screaming outside, even in the late-October chill, for their tithe of greasy fast food. Ivar Haglund may have loved those damned birds, but to me they were a nuisance worse than persistent spooks: ghosts don't poop on you.

"Oaxaca?" Quinton questioned. "Why?"

"Some nonsense with a bequest. There's a set of instructions— sorry: conditions—that have to be fulfilled."

"Like in one of those movies where you have to stay in the haunted house overnight or change your name to Gaggleplox?" he asked. "Those usually don't work out well—most of the cast ends up dead or the inheritance turns out to be a stash of counterfeit bills."

I made a face. "That's in the movies. This is just a job. Find the right grave, put the dog on it, and wait for daybreak."

"And in between is when all hell could break loose. Which seems pretty likely considering your talents."

"It's possible," I conceded, "but the money is pretty attractive and I don't get a sense of danger from the statue—just trouble."

He snorted. "Just trouble… And why did this woman pick you? Did you know her?"

I shook my head and pinched off a bit of fried potato for the ferret. "No. I didn't know her and I don't know why she picked me for this job. I assume she somehow knew what I can do, but how she knew, that's the big mystery. And why I agreed to go. Maybe there's some clue to be found about why this happened to me and not to every person who's ever had a near-death experience. There must be someone who knows more about all of this than I do, or the Danzigers do, or every vampire from here to Vancouver seems to." I felt a flush on my face that didn't come from the space heater overhead and realized I was getting angry. Not at Quinton, but at the shifty fate that had yanked the rug out from under me when I'd died only long enough to have my life wrenched into a shape beyond my control.

"But if it was this Arbildo woman, she's already dead," Quinton said.

"Then I'll hunt her down in the Grey." At least my change of life had come with useful skills. I was still figuring them out more than a year later, but I no longer hated and resented them.

My flight was set for 11:40 that evening with a five-hour layover in Dallas before I could fly on to Mexico City and from there to Oaxaca, but even with the delay, I'd still have a few hours once I got to Oaxaca City to find the records office and start looking for the grave of Hector Purecete.

I finished up my food and gave Chaos a final scratch around the ears. Quinton got a lot more than an ear scratch, which annoyed the ferret, judging by the way she kept pushing herself in between us and snagging our kisses for herself. Jealous little furball.

The trip was smooth. Right up to Mexico City, where they broke the dog. The customs agent was going through my bag when it happened. There was the box with the little clay dog inside. He held it up.

"Is this a gift?" he demanded in a crabby, tired voice. I'd have guessed he was near the end of his shift if it wasn't quite noon, but maybe he was aware in his own way of the cranky, dispirited, overexcited motion of the Grey as much as I was. The customs area was aroil in the flashes and clouds of hundreds of passengers' emotional energy giving shape and color to the loose power of the magical grid. It chafed and roared and twisted through the space around us like angry lions in a too-small cage. The sound of the Grey was a strong, steady hum with a sharp edge, like barbed wire under silk.

That sharpness was probably why my response was inappropriately flippant: "No. It's a dog," I said.

One really shouldn't joke with security people of any kind while they are on the job; most have had to leave their sense of humor in their locker with their civilian clothes. He raised his eyebrow and opened the box, rooting inside with his blue-gloved hand—every employee at airport security looks like they're about to play doctor in some very unpleasant way these days. He snorted in surprise and jerked his hand out with the figurine not quite gripped in his sweat-sticky glove. You'd have thought the little dog had bitten him from the way he moved. His hand yanked back, jerking upward a little as the statuette cleared the edge of the box. The black object moved up, popping out of his loose grip, and arced into the air, ripping a slice of glove with one pointed ear as it went. It was like slow-motion film, watching it rise from safety and crash to the hard linoleum beneath our feet.

As it hit the floor, it flashed a panic-bolt of silver white into the Grey. The little clay dog shattered, a tiny bundle of dark fibers bouncing onto the floor amid the terra-cotta shards. With a silvery gasp, the flash rushed back toward the broken figurine and coalesced into the ghost of a dog.