Soundbite

WE MADE IT BACK TO TORONTO BY EARLY AFTERNOON AND headed for Cabbagetown.

When I walked toward the crime scene, it was Jeremy at my side. Clay would keep watch.

At the end of the street there were no obvious signs of trouble-no police cars, no ambulances, no fire trucks. Yet something was wrong. Residents were out in their yards and on the sidewalks, talking in pairs and trios. Gazes skittered up and down the road, and the clusters disintegrated at the first sign of an unfamiliar face, people making beelines for their front doors, as if suddenly remembering they’d left the kettle on.

The cause of their unease? Probably something to do with the small swarm of journalists buzzing along the street. Across the road, a camera operator was getting setting shots, filming the other side of the street, the peaceful side, preparing for the “Today, in this quiet Toronto neighborhood…” intro. As for “what” had happened in this particular quiet Toronto neighborhood, I wasn’t so sure I wanted to find out.

I steered Jeremy toward a scattering of print reporters, all scouting for contacts and sound bites. We stopped on the sidewalk.

“It looks like something happened,” I said in a stage whisper. “Do you think it has anything to do with our power going out last night?”

It took less than five seconds for a reporter to bite.

“Excuse me. You folks live around here?”

We turned to see a potbellied man in serious need of a hairbrush, razor, clothes iron and eye drops. I’m sure he cultivated that look-the rumpled newshound, always on the hunt, low on sleep, coasting on caffeine-but it was about fifty years out of date. Almost certainly not a representative of Toronto ’s journalistic constellations, the Star, the Globe or even the Sun.

“We’re a few blocks over,” I said with a vague wave.

“Did you know Mrs. Ashworth?” he asked, pen poised above his paper. “She lived right down there, in the green house. Old-older woman. Lived by herself.”

“I believe we met her at the barbecue last month,” Jeremy said. “You talked to her for a while, hon, remember? About her roses?” He frowned at the reporter. “She isn’t hurt, is she?”

“No one knows. Disappeared this morning. And I do mean disappeared. Neighbor claims he saw her crossing the road and then…poof.”

“Poof?” Jeremy’s frown deepened.

“Gone. Just like that.”

We stared at him. He leaned back on his heels, relishing the moment.

“She probably wandered off,” I said, then lowered my voice. “We have a lot of…older residents here.”

The reporter scowled, as if he’d already come to this conclusion, but would really rather be writing the “poof” story than another sad tale of Alzheimer’s.

“Still,” I said. “It is strange, coming right after those fireworks with the transformer last night.” I glanced at the reporter and tried to look nervous. “There’s no connection, is there?”

A smug smile. “You never know.”

Jeremy rolled his eyes. “No, hon, there’s no connection. A blown transformer and a missing elderly woman, just two random events, not uncommon-”

“Plus, the woman in petticoats,” the reporter said. “You did hear about that, didn’t you?”

“Petticoats?” I said slowly.

“The cops got two calls last night, right after that transformer blew, people seeing a woman in petticoats running down the middle of the road. This very road.”

“Probably a lady in her nightgown, running out to see what the fireworks were,” Jeremy said. “I hear it was quite a show.”

The reporter muttered something about a deadline, and stomped off to find a more receptive audience.

We’d returned to Toronto to reassure ourselves of two things: that the bowler-hatted man had been the only “portal escapee,” and that nothing else had happened as a result of last night’s events. The possible disappearance of the elderly woman thwarted our hopes of a hasty resolution on the second count. And now a sighting of a woman in petticoats suggested we weren’t going to have any more luck with the first. Something told me we wouldn’t be sleeping in our own beds tonight.

Jeremy and I spent the next hour discreetly scouting the area for a second trail with that distinctive rotting smell. Bad enough I couldn’t change to wolf form, but having the area under media and police scrutiny made the search twice as hard or, more aptly, twice as large. Instead of scouring the road where the bowler-hatted man had appeared, I had to search all the perimeter streets, while trying to look like a restless pregnant woman and her doting husband out for a prolonged neighborhood stroll.

We’d made it almost all the way around when I found a second trail. A woman’s scent, mingled with rot.

I bent and retied my shoes-a simple act that was getting increasingly difficult.

“Definitely a woman,” I said as I took a deep breath.

“We’ll pick up the trail after dark and find her, see what she can tell us.”

In the supernatural world, it’s sometimes tricky to know who to call when things go awry. Take a portal. It could be magical, in which case we’d want to contact a witch or a sorcerer. Or it could be connected to the nether realms, and then it would fall under the jurisdiction of a necromancer. The last time we’d been peripherally involved in a case with a portal connection, Paige and Lucas had been in charge, and they’d turned to a necromancer. So we did the same, and called Jaime Vegas.

We phoned from the hands-free setup in the Explorer so Jeremy and I could both hear Jaime. Clay waited outside, standing watch.

“Hey,” she said when she answered. “Let me guess. You’ve got that other matter settled, and you’re ready to work on my film.” Last time we’d spoken, she’d been returning my message, ready to meet to discuss her documentary, only to hear that I’d made other plans in the meantime.

“Mmm, not quite yet. Seems we ran into complications. Something you might be able to help with.”

When I described what had happened last night, she barely let me finish.

“Dimensional portal,” she said.

“That common, huh?”

A small laugh. “No, definitely not, thank God. But given the choice between that or a time tear, odds are way better on the dimensional. Time travel makes great fiction, but in real life, that’s where it stays.”

“Pure fiction.”

The connection crackled, as if she was getting comfortable. “I wouldn’t go that far. Never say never in this world. My Nan used to tell me stories about time tears, but even she said they were just that: stories. Anyway, you have the classic signs of a dimensional portal. I wouldn’t go looking for horse-drawn carriages to start galloping through downtown Toronto anytime soon.”

“And what are the classic signs?” Jeremy asked.

Silence.

“Jaime?” he said.

“Uh, Jeremy. Hi. I…didn’t know you were right there. You’re so…”

“Quiet?”

She gave a nervous laugh. “Umm, right. So, what did you ask? Oh, the classic signs. Well, zombies would be the big one.”

“Zombies?”

“That guy you dusted.” She laughed, more relaxed now. “I’ve always wanted to say that. You see it happen in movies all the time, but real life? Vamps don’t explode in a shower of dust.”

“But zombies do?”

“Er, no. Well, not usually. But any zombie I’ve ever met was raised by a necro. When a spirit materializes through a portal, you’ve got something a bit different. Probably shouldn’t even call them zombies but…well, we have enough beasties out there without inventing new names. When a formerly-human entity manifests in the living world, we call it a zombie. You get that rotting meat stink, which is a dead giveaway…pardon the pun.”

“But this thing didn’t act like a zombie,” I said.