I walked into my office to the sound of the ringing phone. It was Quinton.

"Hi," I said. "Something was wrong with the office alarm yesterday. Can you come by and take a look?"

"What kind of problem did you have?" he asked.

I described the alarm's nonfunction during Sergeyev's visit. I had to eliminate the plausible first, before I could go leaping to the impossible.

"That's strange. I'll be up in about half an hour. OK?"

"Great," I said and hung up.

I checked my messages and discovered one from Mara Danziger.

"Hmm, Harper, the problem with magic is getting worse. I'd be grateful for your help. Give me a ring."

Curious, I called her back.

"Hello."

"Hi, Mara, it's Harper."

"Harper, I'm worried. The blockage is worsening. To be shocking honest, Ben's no help with this, nor Albert. I simply must be finding the source. And all divinations keep coming back to you." "Still?" "Yes. Have you any idea why this is happening? Could it be Cameron?"

"I don't think so. But I've been mixing with vampires and there've been a few weird things hanging around."

"I told you they would—"

A knock on the door came a moment ahead of Quinton's face peeking around the doorframe. I waved him in and leaned back in my chair. "Mara, I have to deal with something here, but I have to go out to the Madison Forrest House later and look at a piece of furniture. There's something a little strange about the situation surrounding this thing." I paused, thinking, then sat forward. "Would you be willing to come with me to Madison Forrest? We could discuss this other situation then, too."

"Well… I suppose so. I'll have Ben look after the baby for a bit. Then, what say I pick you up?"

"That'll be fine, Mara. Come by in about an hour. OK?"

"All right. Be seeing you, then."

Quinton had already begun poking around with his Multimeter. As soon as I was off the phone, he asked me to move and ran a check of the computer program. He looked at the video capture that should have shown Sergeyev, but didn't.

"I'm not sure why this guy didn't show up, but there's nothing wrong with this system and the diagnostic says there never was," he said, frowning at the computer screen. "You sure he was here?"

"Oh, yeah."

"It's a head scratcher, but the system's working fine now."

"OK."

"Keep an eye on it, and let me know if it does this again. You might try it on that client of yours, because I'm not really sure what effect some people have on electronics."

I wondered how he knew about Sergeyev. Had I mentioned him? "I'm not following you. Which client?"

"The one with the Camaro. The vampire."

"Excuse me?" I choked.

"Don't expect me to believe that you didn't know," Quinton said.

"Took me a while to be sure, but you've been in much closer contact with the guy."

"Why would you think Cameron was a vampire?"

"Lots of little signs. The weird eyes, the dirt in the trunk, the weird habits. The fangs. I've seen plenty of them around here. I steer clear of those guys. Even if they like you, you can't really trust them. 'Course, you can't trust most people. But drinking blood and turning on your fellow man is a bit worse than the usual sort of trust-breaker."

I blinked at him. He finished speaking and looked at me in silence a moment. Then he asked, "You do a lot of work for vampires?"

I shook my head. "This is my first."

"Thought so. Be careful. They're a tricky bunch. Magic kind of gives me the willies. It's cool to watch, but it's… disorienting to think about. I prefer electronics, physics, stuff I can grab on to and get a good look at myself." He played with the probes of the meter and gave me a nervous glance. "Watch your step around this stuff, all right? I can fix a lot of things, but curses and that stuff I'm not so good with."

I smiled a little. "I'll be careful."

"Good. And if you need anything, call me. I'll be around."

"Thanks, Quinton. I'll do that. I have to get going, though. I have an appointment."

"That's OK. But hey, don't get killed. You still owe me for the car," he added with a forced grin. He packed up his things and took off.

I locked up and walked down to meet Mara.

We drove east toward Lake Washington and found the Madison Forrest House Museum. We pulled into a graveled lot nearby. Mara sat for a moment behind the wheel and looked at the house with a puzzled expression.

We got out of the car in silence and walked. I had no idea who Madison Forrest had been or why his house had become a historic building and museum, but it was an impressive pile. The foundation and ground floor were built of fitted stone. The second floor and the high, pointing gables were all native cedar. Lots of glass windows shone under the wooden overhangs and must have cost a fortune when the house was built. Four gas lamps, now converted to electricity, bracketed the path from the open iron gate to the front doors. Like the Danzigers' house, it glowed, but the glow wasn't so friendly.

Mara stopped and looked at the ground. "I didn't realize there was a nexus of this size on this side of the lake. It's just a bit off the property, about… here, in the street." She stepped out a few feet from the curb. "And I can't even draw on it standing right on top of it. I'm not at all sure there isn't something rather unpleasant going on here. Maybe even the power blockage. Take a look at it sideways, like I taught you. Tell me what you see."

I peered at it from the corner of my eye. The off-color glow of the house seemed to start under her feet, like a fog that wafted toward the house. "It looks… sick to me."

"Funny way to describe it."

I shrugged and tried not to look anymore.

We walked up the path to the massive, carved cedar doors. Mara and I paid the entrance fee and began to wander around. After a while, we found the upstairs parlor and the organ. It was hideous: six feet of tortured wood flecked with ivory, bone, and gilt and upholstered with garish red fabric panels, all of it wrapped in a sucking web of black and red energy I couldn't avoid seeing. I stayed well back from the instrument, feeling ill and threatened.

"Is this it?" Mara asked, staring at it with horrified fascination.

"I think so." I got the description sheet out of my bag and com-pared it as best I could from my distance. It seemed an exact match.

"Oh, my," she breathed. "It's dreadful, isn't it?"

"It's pretty terrible," I agreed, feeling pain and nausea growing in my belly as a familiar anxiety began to rattle on my vertebrae. I closed my eyes, but the sense of the coiling horror in front of me didn't go away.

"No, I mean it's full of dread, though it's terrible, too. It's horrific, really. It gives me the wailing creepies just looking at it."

"What do you think of it?" I asked.

"Interesting." She made a glittering gesture and threw it at the organ. It dissolved as it hit the writhing mass of Grey. "Swallowed it… Very interesting, indeed. I think I've seen enough, what about you?"

I circled a little closer to the thing, like a wary cat, getting a better look at its shape, both physical and paranormal, while trying to keep my distance. It was impossible for me to ignore the warped, twined normal and Grey that had tangled around it, though I couldn't imagine what had caused their knotting up. Sympathetic knots tied up my nerves and muscles with pain, disgust, and despair.

"I've had enough," I gasped, backing off. "Let's get out of here." Mara looked at me and saw my distress. She put an arm around me, which seemed to help. We hurried back to her car and sat in the front seats, staring back at the Madison Forrest House with combined horror.

Mara shook her head. "There's an incredible amount of energy flowing round that thing, but none of it seems to be going anywhere. That must be the source of the blockage. And it's so… dark. I've never seen an artifact that was dark like that one before. Of course, I've rarely dealt with them, so I'm no expert." "Artifact? I don't understand."