“Could their appearance be related to the spate of disappearances and deaths among the homeless?”

“Certainly! I wouldn’t be surprised in the least. Now you mention it, I think the first one turned up a few weeks after they found that leg at the construction site on Occidental South. I’ve found a few bits and pieces since then.”

“What sort of bits and pieces?”

“Body parts. Let me think. A few fingers, a toe, a hand, a foot, most of an arm.”

“Where did you find them?” I asked, leaning forward.

“Some of the fingers I found in the alley behind the kite shop. The arm was down under Jackson Street. The foot… I think that was up against the wall by the Grand Central Bakery’s glass porch, though that might have been the hand—I’d have to look at my notes. The toe I found on Yesler in a stairwell. No—I’m confusing that with the hand. Definitely. I found the hand in the stairwell by Bud’s Jazz Records. The toe was on Yesler, but it was just next to the door the Underground tour uses when they come up from the bank. The tourists probably walked right past it and didn’t notice—it looked like a piece of dog dropping.”

“Surely a toe looks like a toe?”

“Not really. Even fresh they don’t look too impressive, and you might not notice if they’re dirty and bloodless. That’s a thing to note—the bodies and the parts have all been quite bloodless. The scenes aren’t cleaned up, so the perp isn’t wiping up afterward. There just isn’t much blood.”

“Which bodies are you referring to?”

“Hafiz and Jan. I didn’t see Go-cart’s body, but I heard it’s the same way—not enough blood. Believe me—when you cut into arteries there’s a lot of red, even when the body’s been dead a while. Saw a man hit by a train once—God, what a mess that was.”

I put a lock on my imagination and pushed that vision aside. “Any ideas on why there’s so little blood?”

She frowned and finally turned to study me. “I don’t like to advance theories without more evidence, so I’d rather just say something is draining the blood or keeping it from flowing. Could be a lot of factors. You need an autopsy report to know for sure.”

Her attention shifted over my shoulder and the bright energy around her slammed down to a narrow yellow outline that hugged close to her body. Sandy stood up in a rush and grabbed her bag. “I have to go. My suspect is on the move.” She darted off through the crowd and ducked out the front door before I could see who she might be following as her energy shadow vanished in the sea of homeless diners. I couldn’t decide if I thought she’d been incredibly helpful or incredibly nuts.

I scanned the room and caught sight of Quinton talking to someone who was hidden from my sight. I eased toward him and came level with Quinton as he squatted down in front of an old, rough-skinned native man.

“No, don’t think I’ve seen him in a while,” the man was saying in a tired mumble as I arrived. He poked the food on his tray with a fork in a desultory way and didn’t meet Quinton’s eyes. He had a round face graced with a mouth that folded in over mostly toothless jaws, making his chin thrust forward. His hair was coarse gray strands that brushed his shoulders. The aura around his head was small and pale, as if even the energy of the Grey was running low here. “Aside from them what died, I’d guess there’s a few gone missing.” Cheap, hoppy beer clung to his breath and his coat had a scent of garages and motor oil to it. He looked up as I came to a stop beside them, jerking his head over to peer at me from one eye and going silent and scared.

“She’s OK, Jay. This is Harper. You’ve seen her around the Square,” Quinton said. “I’m not sure…”

“You like to sit near the first tree on the Square, near the Pioneer Building’s door,” I said as I recognized him. “You remember back in October when I gave Zip back his lighter when he dropped it?”

He hesitated, licking his lower lip as he thought about it. Then he grunted.

“Uh. Yeah. I do know you. You gave him money, too. We had some good smokes that day, me and Zip.”

“That’s good. May I sit next to you?”

Jay grunted and slid over, dragging a stained blanket patterned in gray, red, and black along the bench under his legs. I sat down in the tight space between him and the next diner, who shot me a glance and hunched over his tray possessively.

Guessing, I asked, “Are you Blue Jay?”

Another grunt and a nod. “Yeah. Not a good name, but it’s my name.”

“Oh? Why isn’t it a good name?”

“Jays. They’re talkers, braggarts. Too smart for their own good, but lazy.”

“You don’t seem that way.”

“Oh, I was. I was.” He nodded to himself. “I try to be better now I’m old.”

“Jay,” Quinton said. “Stop flirting.”

Jay blushed. “Not flirting.”

“You are too, you old fox.”

“No, foxes are bad—they mean danger and death are nearby. I seen a fox last night, running through the alley behind that fancy bar.”

“Which bar?” I asked. It was too odd a coincidence that we’d both seen a fox on the same night.

“Oh. That martini place—with the devil on the sign.”

“Marcus’ Martini Heaven?”

Jay nodded. “I guess.”

The bar was about three blocks from where Will and I had been confronted by the hairy creature and the zombie. At the reminder, I felt my gut wrench and had to swallow hard and clasp my hands together against a sudden cold frisson of memory and a lick of anger at Will for abandoning me there. I must have looked as upset as I felt, maybe I’d gone pale—I certainly felt chilled enough—because Quinton gave me a worried glance. I shook him off.

“I don’t think anyone else died last night,” he said.

“Not that I heard of,” Jay replied. “But could be something else. Could be… another gone somehow.”

“You mean missing? Like Tandy?” Quinton continued.

“Could be.”

“Who’ve you noticed missing?” Quinton asked.

“Well, Tandy and, uh… Little Jolene. What’s his name… The guy always has a forty going…”

“Prankerjheri.”

Jay slapped his thigh and nodded. “Jerrycan Jerry.”

“What about Bear?”

“I told you I haven’t seen Bear.” He plucked at the blanket and lowered his head further. “I found his blanket, though.”

“I thought I recognized it. Where did you find it?”

“In the bricks.” He stood up. “I’ll show you.”

We followed Blue Jay back out into the cold, he wrapping himself in the dirty blanket and us making due in the icy air with just our coats. As we headed back toward Pioneer Square, I glanced up and saw a ring around the moon—ice in the air. I shivered and followed Quinton and Jay through the freezing darkness and the streets empty of life but thick with the shades of the dead.

CHAPTER 6

We staggered and slipped our way west on the frosted sidewalks of Jackson Street—my knee twinging—until we were a half block from Occidental where Jay took a sharp right turn into an alley beside the newly rebuilt Cadillac Hotel. Parts of the brick frontage had tumbled down in the earthquake of February 2001 and the old place had been slated for demolition. Like the titular phoenix—or “Fenix”—of the nightclub that had once graced its basement, the building had somehow risen from the ashes and reopened as the new Klondike Gold Rush National Historic Park in 2005. How a museum entirely contained in a building was a national park still confounded me, and I wasn’t sure how they’d rebuilt the place from the wreck that had stood on the corner of Jackson and Second for years.

I was pretty sure that there were no unguarded openings on the building, but Jay ducked down in front of a sunken window on the opposite side of the alley, glancing up and down the brick roadway, and pulled a bit of grillwork loose.

Then he disappeared into the resulting hole as slick as an eel. Quinton waved me forward and showed me the tiny ledge at the bottom of the window frame on which to place my foot. From my half-sunk position it was easy to slide down into the dark gulf below the buildings.