Chapter 24

It was hard to settle down, but I had a lot to do before I met Will again. Places to go, vampires to see. Once it got dark, I drove to the university district. Since classes were still in session, there were plenty of residents out on the streets. I had to park in a pay lot and walk a ways to my destination.

The U-district has five movie theaters, several all-night restaurants, and a lot of bars. It's not the easiest neighborhood to find somebody in, since most residents are college students who come and go with the term schedule. I started at the first place on the list: the Wizards of the Coast Game Center.

The street level, filled with a noisy video arcade, owed its theme to science fiction movies, but below lay fantasyland. I walked down the stairs to the lower level, beneath the guardian glower of a giant, ax-wielding minotaur.

Here the walls were painted to resemble ancient stone and the support pillars had been elaborately draped in wine velvet swags. The baronial castle theme was carried out with fake torches and Gothic decorations. Fantastic paintings of mythic heroes and creatures hung on the walls. The lighting was dramatic, but not very practical.

About thirty young men and teenage boys had been paired facing each other at long tables, where they spread cards between them in some kind of duel to the numeric death. There was only one woman playing. Beyond the card players, a sword-and-sorcery film was playing on a gigantic screen in one gauze-draped corner, while a small group of people huddled around a coffee table in another. That was where I headed.

As I approached the role-players, one of them was saying something about casting a spell and several others offered vociferous disagreement.

"No, no, you can't cast that on a green wyvern."

"Yes, he can, but it's not going to work with the zombies there. They'll just keep coming."

They were a motley lot. Seven altogether, three women and four men—all in their thirties or so. One of the women was dressed in flowing robes of dark green velvet that didn't hide the fact that she overflowed her chair a bit as well. Her auburn hair was longer than mine had been before the elevator incident. One of the other women also wore a gown of some sort and a twisted ring of yellow and black fabric around her brow. The third woman and two of the men wore dark jeans and shirts. The other two men wore tunics and narrow trousers under lightweight cloaks. One of the tunic men stood next to the large woman, so that his cape was free to swirl around him when he moved. He was very aware of the effect.

I stopped beside them. "Excuse me. I'm looking for a girl named Gwen."

They appraised me, then looked around at one another.

The woman in jeans piped up. "You mean skinny Gwen?"

"I don't know what she looks like. A mutual friend said I might find her down here playing Dungeons and Dragons."

The standing man rolled his eyes. "You're a complete noob, aren't you? Don't even have a character yet, I'll bet."

"I didn't come to play. I'm just trying to find Gwen."

"If you mean skinny Gwen," started the jeans woman again, "she isn't coming tonight. She said she was going to see a movie at the Grand Illusion. She asked me to play her character for her."

"OK, I'll try there. How will I know her when I see her?" I inquired.

"She's really skinny, like count-my-ribs-through-my-clothes skinny."

One of the jeans-wearing men objected. "She's not that thin."

The green-robed woman weighed in. "Yes, she is. She looks like the ghost of a supermodel who died of malnutrition."

A titter ran through the group.

"All right," I said. "I'll look for the shade of Kate Moss. Thanks."

They were arguing again before I'd gone ten steps. "I still say it's pointless to cast daze on a green wyvern…"

I wondered what Mara's opinion would have been.

I climbed back up the stairs and escaped to the street, still looking for Gwen.

Part art house and part coffeehouse, the Grand Illusion is the northern anchor of the Ave. The southern anchor of this stretch of University Way NE is the University of Washington's administration building. You can walk the gamut from administration to auteurism by way of trendy trash-chic in less than ten blocks, if you don't get run down by an aggressive skateboarder on the way.

When I got to the theater, the film was already rolling. Two student-age couples sipping coffee and chatting in the cafe were the only people in sight. I stared at the ticket counter, trying to decide on my next move.

A young woman in a long batik-dyed skirt and a dark blue sweater let padded up behind me. "Hi," she greeted in a low voice. "Did you want to purchase a ticket? The film started about eight o'clock, so the first feature's almost over."

"I'm looking for someone who said she was coming tonight. Her name is Gwen and she's very… slender."

She gave a rueful smile. "You must mean Lady Gwendolyn of Anorexia. She went in about half an hour ago. If you want, you can wait for her in the coffeehouse."

I bought yet another cup of Java and sat down to wait at a table that commanded a view of the theater door. Twenty-seven minutes later, the film ended and the audience trickled into the coffeehouse. Gwen was easy to spot.

She was a dead ringer for Waterhouse's Lady of Shalott. She was even wearing a long white dress with trailing sleeves. A cataract of strawberry blond hair fell in ripples to her hips, and it appeared that the Lily Maid hadn't dined on anything more substantial than a lettuce leaf and a drop of dew in years. But despite being no bigger around than a pencil, she didn't look skeletal, only whittled away.

As she entered the room I stepped forward to introduce myself. "Excuse me. Are you Gwen?"

The Grey scurried behind her. My skin prickled with cold, unaffected by her watery smile as the dark fog folded around us both. "My name is Gwen." Her voice was as thin as she. "Why were you looking for me?"

"A young man named Cameron Shadley gave me your name. Do you know who I mean?" I asked.

"I know of Cameron Shadley."

"Then you've never met him?"

"Oh, in passing, when he was still in the daylight. We never became friends. He's not with us anymore."

"That would depend on who you mean by 'us, " I said. "He's my client. I'm a private investigator."

"Oh. I didn't know there were any of your profession for our kind. You're not one of us."

"No. I'm the daylight kind."

She giggled a little. "Let me get some tea," she murmured and drifted away to the coffee counter.

In a few minutes, she returned. She toyed with a china pot and a cup, but didn't drink. "I don't know how much help anything you hear from Lady Gwendolyn of Anorexia is going to be. I'm not much use to anyone, you know."

Her use of the nickname in the third person gave me pause. "Maybe you could be more help than you think," I suggested. "Cameron has a little problem with Edward and he asked me to intervene. But I want to know more about Edward first. What do you know about him?"

"Ned? Ned's irresponsible, but he hides it well. I suppose it's easy when you have dozens of underlings to manage the details for you."

"How long have you known him?"

"All my unlife. He made me." Her voice held no rancor, almost no emotion at all, in fact. She spoke in her thin, measured tone, as if she were talking about some other person. "In 1969, I was a carefree little chippy—make love, not war, you know. And Ned was, well, Ned. I didn't know it at the time, but he had just gained control of Seattle, so he got away with a lot. I was a mistake." She paused and sipped her tea, inhaling more of the scent than she swallowed of the brew.

"How is that? Isn't it a deliberate act? I mean, it doesn't happen by accident, does it?"