The face murmured and began to dissolve. "Shhhh… be patient." The formlessness distorted and writhed as if unseen snakes rolled within it, dragging the face back into its depths. I was alone in my pocket of the haze-world.

A shriek and a moaning howl ripped the thickened light. Shudders racked my spine. Something screamed back. A shape bulged out of the mist, brushing hard against me, spinning me.

A maw of dripping teeth snapped at my head, rushing ahead of a toiling blackness that drove a wave of shock through the mist. It turned, drawing a shape to it, gathering itself—massive, dark, with a snarling, eyeless head. A mane of bone spines whipped the smoky light. It screamed, lunging.

I caught its scream and stumbled backward. Then I felt a touch on my head and another on my chest that resolved into a shove. The unseen force flung me away.

I fell hard onto the cobbled alley. Something roared, and the bright darkness vanished with the sound of a door slamming.

I thrashed around, looking for the black thing or the vile mist. Just an alley, stinking slightly of urine and garbage and spilled beer. Thin wisps of ground fog danced across the surfaces of tiny puddles between the stones, but nothing else.

A door hinge squealed, then trash cans clattered as a busboy heaved bags into a Dumpster next to Merchants Cafe. I swallowed the urge to heave, myself, and slowed my breath. I pulled myself up with one hand pressed on the rough brick wall of the cafe and brushed at my backside, shaking. Pedestrians went past the ends of the alley. There was no crowd of onlookers. No one had seen or heard what I had.

I wobbled across the alley, found my purse, and faltered away.

I quivered as I drove home across the West Seattle Bridge. What-ever had happened was not a momentary visual aberration from a head injury. What was the thing that had lunged at me? Where had I gone? The only word I had for the creature I'd spoken with was "ghost," and I didn't like that word at all.

At home, I scrabbled up the business card that Skelleher had given me from the bottom of my bag. It was ten o'clock, but I couldn't wait.

A cheery male voice answered. "Danzigers'. This is Ben."

I don't know what I'd expected but it wasn't this.

Shivering, I bumbled into speech. "Uh, my name is Harper Blaine. Dr. Skelleher suggested you or… Mara might be able to help me."

"Skelly! Yeah. What kind of help do you need?"

I hesitated. "I… don't know. He thought… you might have some ideas. Maybe I'm seeing ghosts or something…"

"Oh. I see. Yeah, they're annoying, pesky things when you're not sure they exist in the first place."

"Yes! And there's this living mist…"

"Ah. That's interesting. This—these occurrences are new to you?" Yes.

"Hmm." He turned from the phone and I heard a muffled conversation. Then he came back. "Well, I think we can help—at least a bit. Maybe we can help you figure out what's going on, maybe make you a little more comfortable about it. Could you drop by for an hour or two?"

"Now?"

He chuckled. "No, no. Tomorrow. Could you come about. four? Mara will be home by then."

I leapt. "Four is fine. Where?"

"Upper Queen Anne, above the Center. Let me give you directions…"

Chapter 5

As I walked toward my office the next morning, I saw the rude man in the hat who had bumped into me the night before. He paid me no attention this time and strode away toward First. Despite the sunlight diluted by a high, thin cloud cover, the day seemed shadowy and dark. I was inclined to write off the vaguely human shapes where no humans stood as an insufficiency of caffeine in my morning-shocked system. I hustled upstairs and wrapped myself in still more paperwork and phone calls, sending Cameron's picture out to be copied.

I detected no watchers in alleys or elsewhere, but couldn't banish the unease itching at the back of my neck. Even in my office, I felt observed.

I was interrupted when an express service messenger knocked and entered my office. She shoved a clipboard at me and I asked what it was for.

"Letter pak from a G. Sergeyev," she answered. It was a large express envelope. Tearing it open, I found a few sheets of cheap, typed paper, and a cashier's check drawn on a foreign bank. I looked that over carefully, but never having seen a European check before, I couldn't tell if it was legitimate or not. The express routing slip gave a London origin, far from the origin of the check. I figured my bank would know what to do with the check, and I took a break to walk it over.

Coming out of the bank, I pulled my jacket close against a sudden bluster of wind. The air seemed to be getting darker and thicker, misting up despite the thinness of the cloud cover, and my ears were ringing a little. The wind between the buildings whispered, and my hair blew into my face, flickering in the edges of my vision. I hunched a little deeper into my jacket, tucking my chin down into the collar.

As I strode along with my head down, something smacked into my chest. The impact made me catch my breath, stumbling back a step. I stared down, trying to figure out what had hit me. There was nothing lying nearby, but the object, whatever it was, had struck with the force of a thrown ball and left a cold ache in my chest. This was no hallucination; hallucinations don't hurt. I raised my head and felt queasy.

The cold steam-mist was back, rendering the world into pale colors and soft focus. Workers on their lunch hour bustled obliviously through the cloud-stuff, like projections on a deteriorated screen. A shadow with no object moved along the sidewalk away from me. I shook my head, but nothing changed.

A few of the passersby glanced at me, moving out of sync, as if the projectionist had several films going at different speeds. My legs went shaky and I stumbled toward a pink splash in the mist. It was a gigantic metal tulip I knew was painted bright red and green. Public art. I sat down on the granite base and stared.

Stray shapes swarmed among the passing humans. I wanted to jump up and run from the shadow-shapes. The dimmed world of my normal Seattle seemed as oblivious to the shadows as they were to it, plunging through each other without regard. The thin sunlight did not penetrate the mist, but still touched buildings and people, somehow. The other things felt it not at all, moving to a constant thrumming cut with clangings and distant voices.

Even as ice crawled over my skin, I berated myself. I took a deep breath, then another. That seemed to help. What was I afraid of?

Nothing was coming for me, this time. The shadows were just going about their business, whatever it was. I shook my head and glanced around A dark columnar form seemed to be watching me. I stood up and started to walk away. It turned to track me. I ran for my office.

But the historic district enclosing Pioneer Square was thronged with shadow-things. I squeezed back against a building and vertigo shook me as I looked out at the street. Real and past traffic mingled in the misted road. Ghostly horses and motorcars moved heedlessly across the center of the Square about a foot lower than the modern pedestrians strolling there. Spectral shapes rose and sank along the sidewalks, and the shade of a giant tree that hadn't existed in a hundred years whipped its branches a foot from the bust of Chief Sealth.

I felt ill. I needed to negotiate this maze of the solid and the incorporeal and make it to some safety—someplace they couldn't come. Shuffling my feet along the concrete and asphalt of the real world, I crossed the street with a crowd of visitors and their tour guide. I flinched as a horse and rider passed right through the crowd with no discernible effect, then staggered as I refocused on a lamppost menacing my path. Concentrating on objects of the present helped hold the past back for a moment. I thought of lampposts and bus benches and fought my way through the insistent mist-world toward my old Rover. I scrambled into it.