“Lets assume it is,” said Quinton from the backseat. “For the sake of discussion. A legendary, three-headed sea serpent that likes to pretend to be a canoe and eats people, and he lives in a pond outside the house of some kind of goddess ogress who has a staircase to the gods.”

“That sounds pretty damned dumb to me,” I said.

“You’re just stuck on the name.”

“Its silly.” I realized that it really bugged me. “Something that eats people and gnaws on the remains, leaves zombies in the underground and breaks through four-foot-thick cement walls ought to have a scarier name than ‘Sisiutl.’ ”

“Its up there with ‘Son of Sam’ and ‘Baby Face Nelson,’ right?”

“All right, Mr. Physics—what about the shape-shifting? You’re the guy with the ‘there are no werewolves’ conviction. If Sisiutl is responsible—if we accept that this legendary, three-headed sea serpent is eating homeless people and spitting out the parts—don’t we have to accept that it turns into a canoe, or a dog, or a… rat the size of Cleveland, too? How does that fit?”

“It doesn’t change shape.”

“Whoa! Come back?”

Fish wrenched his head around to stare between the seats at Quinton. “What?”

“It doesn’t actually change shape,” Quinton reiterated. “Not if it has a corporeal form. It can’t—or at least not quickly and safely. We have to assume a corporeal form, since it makes holes in things and has teeth that can and do rend flesh. It eats people—doesn’t seem to be much doubt it gnaws on them, so the missing have probably taken a visit to the literal belly of the beast. So if we assume ‘Sisiutl’ as the cause, we assume ‘corporeal’ as the default expression. With me?”

“Yeah,” said Fish.

“Since it cannot change shape, it follows that it does not change shape, but it may create the illusion of shape change. It wants you to see a self-propelled seal hunting canoe and, if you’re the right kind of person to see Sisiutl at all—and it probably knows if you are—then you see a canoe.”

“What if you’ve not the right type to see Sisiutl?”

“Then you see death. It eats you while you’re freaking out about seeing a giant two-headed, three-faced snake god with horns and a mustache like a bottomfeeder.”

“Sisiutl isn’t a god…” Fish objected.

“No, but if you weren’t a Tulalip Indian—”

“Tulalip is the name of the reservation,” Fish corrected. “There’s a group of Salish tribes on the rez, but it’s named for the bay, not the tribes. All the tribes from Vancouver Island down to the middle of Oregon are some kind of Salish—even Sacajawea’s tribe back in the Lewis and Clark days—so you can’t call the place ‘Salish’ or the other tribes would be pissed.”

I could see Quinton nod in the rearview mirror. “All right. Sorry.”

“No problem. Go on.”

“OK. So, what would you think Sisiutl was if you were like me and it came slithering down an alley looking hungry and saying ‘I’m a canoe!’ in Salish?”

“Lushootseed—that’s what we call our language. Hm…” Fish mumbled, thinking. “Yeah, I see your point. I’d think I was seeing a giant mutant snake, probably, ‘cause that’s what I know—snakes, not sea monsters and not Sisiutl.

Huh. But no one’s said anything about giant mutant snakes in the alleys around Pioneer Square.”

“No, they haven’t,” Quinton agreed. “Because the people who see it either die or think they must be hallucinating. It only comes out at night when there aren’t a lot of people and it hunts in the tunnels under the streets or in the alleys where it’s dark. Grandma Ella said it was clever. It must be clever enough to stay away from high-risk conditions.”

“What if it’s not Sisiutl?” I asked.

Both men frowned.

“Hm…” Quinton muttered. “That could be, but there haven’t been any leads to other monsters and Sisiutl as Ella Graham described it fits the facts we have without throwing any out—two big steps in the right direction. Its appearances match the pattern we noted in the paper and that Fish found in the morgue records and the fact that the patterns of deaths halted when Indians took action lends a lot of credence to the Sisiutl theory. And the ghost said it was Sistu.”

I nodded this time. “She did.”

Fish goggled at me and I feared he was getting a little hysterical. “A ghost told you about Sisiutl? You called me because a ghost told you to?”

“No. I called because an Indian told me there was a monster that ate people during the right outbreak of historic deaths. She happened to be a ghost and I find ghosts to be very unreliable sources—they lie a lot. I needed a living Indian to tell me what a Sistu—that’s what she called it—was and what it was capable of, so I could decide if I thought the lead was viable.”

“She wouldn’t call Sisiutl by name where he might hear her!” Fish cried, on the verge of panic. “Didn’t you get what Grandma Ella said? If you call him by the wrong name, he won’t come, but if you use his real name…”

I glanced at him and then through the mirror to Quinton. “Maybe we shouldn’t then.”

We found ourselves casting nervous looks at each other and out the windows, suddenly paranoid that we’d attract our death.

CHAPTER 14

The sun had gone long before we reached Seattle and the road was feeling slicker under the Rover’s tires as I drove. We had fallen silent as we reached the edge of the university, and in the hard sparkle of streetlights on frost, the road had seemed like a tunnel through a mysterious land.

Fish had calmed down a bit by the time I’d dropped him off at his place again, but it was obvious he was still working through some of the hits his worldview had taken. Yet another comfortable reality I’d managed to knock holes in for someone. I hoped Fish would bounce better than Will had. Wistfulness at the thought of my trashed love affair washed over me and faded as we drove away from Fish’s house.

Quinton had moved up to the front seat but was still frowning a little.

“What do you think?” I asked. “About what?” “This monster thing.” “Not sure.”

“All right. What about the guests I had this morning? You think we’re still clear?”

“The Rover is. I don’t know about your office or home. Depends on how much they think you know and if they have the resources to do much about it. I think it’s likely the available resources and time are limited.”

“Why would you think that? Ms. Laguire gave me the impression she was going to put out whatever effort she had to—”

“She may be willing to put herself out,” Quinton interrupted, scowling, “but there is no way the NSA thinks it’s worth unlimited resources. Trust me—it’s Fern alone with whatever assistance she can pull in by leaning on the local Fed office. It’s her personal failure. They’re giving her a chance to redeem it, but that’s all.”

“Then just what the hell is it between you and Fern Laguire… J.J.?”

He turned and glared at me. “I don’t want to discuss it right now.”

“This is nice. Usually I’m the one who gets accused of being all mysterious and closed off, but you—”

“I’m not that jackass you date!”

I pulled the truck over into the nearest parking lot—which happened to be the Group Health hospital’s main entrance lot. I put the car in the nearest empty slot and yanked on the parking brake so I could turn and yell at Quinton directly—I could never be called coy in my anger.

“Not that it’s any of your business,” I spat, “but we’re not dating anymore!”

“Good!” he shouted back and swung out of the truck.

I shut down the engine and scrambled after him.

“What does that mean?” I demanded, catching up to Quinton near the main hospital doors.

He shrugged elaborately, as if throwing something off his shoulders, and turned back. The corona around him in the Grey flared a moment before pulling in tight to a pale line of rapidly flickering colors. “What I mean,” he said, his measured tones coming out in puffs of frozen breath, “is that you shouldn’t be dating someone you have to lie to.”