Ghost Dance Page 9

  There was a gilt-framed mirror in the hallway. Morgan paused to look in it, but only his own reflection stared glumly back. His talent allowed him to see death - not life.

  Still, Granger's personality remained imprinted on her home. It was there in the neat row of spice bottles on her kitchen counter, in the fridge full of raw ingredients, nothing ready-made, the pots and pans which were heavy-bottomed and expensive. Granger spent a lot of time in this kitchen; she liked to cook. But she lived alone - divorced, the police files said. Morgan thought it was sad, this middle-aged woman cooking gourmet meals only she would eat.

  Her sitting room looked pretty similar to her room in the college, bookshelves crowding every wall. But there was a television too, a stack of DVD box-sets beneath it. Morgan was surprised to see a collection of American crime shows: The Sopranos, The Wire, The Shield. It didn't fit with the image he was building of the dead woman.

  And then there was her bedroom, the pile of unwashed clothes at the foot of the bed, the bed itself unmade and the pillowcases and duvet cover mismatched. It was as if the neat, house-proud woman who lived downstairs wasn't the same one who retreated to this room.

  I am large, Morgan thought, I contain multitudes.

  It was a line from a poem, though he wasn't sure which one. Every week since Tomas had died, Kate had given him a new compilation and he'd read them doggedly from cover to cover, though he seldom understood them. But he thought he understood that line now, trying to fit together the mismatched puzzle pieces of Granger's life into the picture of a whole person.

  He shook his head. It didn't matter who she was. That wasn't why she'd been killed. She'd died because of what she knew - and he could find no evidence of that in her home. He stood in the sitting room, eyes half-lidded as he thought. He couldn't afford to waste time on a dead end. Every second that ticked by saw Lahav free to commit another murder.

  It came to him as he was walking back upstairs to take a final look round the bedrooms. He trotted back down the stairs and into the kitchen. And there it was: a long wooden pole with a metal hook on the end of it. He'd recognised it earlier but not really registered it. They'd used something like it in school to open the high windows in the sports hall.

  But there were no high windows in Granger's house. So what did the hook open?

  He found the trapdoor in the ceiling above the upstairs bathroom. She'd painted the edges to disguise them and the ring was hidden in the light fitting but it was easy enough to see when you were looking for it. He fitted the hook through the ring and tugged.

  The trapdoor swung open and a stepladder rattled as it descended, its base landing on the floor with a thud. The wood of the ladder complained loudly as he climbed, each step bowing a little under his weight. When he reached the top he poked his head into darkness and fumbled for the light. It filled the room with a warm orange glow, chasing the shadows from its corners. And here it was at last - the reason Dr Granger had died.

  His first thought was that it looked like one of the chemistry labs at school. His second was that it looked even more like an illustration from the book about John Dee he'd been reading when Julie was killed. The picture had been a reproduction of a woodcut, a 17th-century artist's impression of what the alchemist's work room looked like.

  A human skeleton hung suspended from the low ceiling, the brittle bones held together with wire. On the wall behind it, there was a poster of - it took Morgan a moment to recognise it - the periodic table. Beside that was another chart, this one looking much older. It was also a list of elements, but even Morgan could tell many were missing, and the symbols beside them were arcane. A triangle-topped cross had been drawn beside sulphur and the sign for mercury looked like a cartoon devil.

  A bench in the centre of the room held glass jars full of liquid, their colours ranging from a clear green to a cloudy, urine-coloured yellow. There were lumps of metal too; copper, rusted iron and a small bar of a buttery yellow metal Morgan was almost certain was gold. Beakers were linked together with networks of glass pipes and rubber tubing. A few sat on retorts above unlit Bunsen burners. And there were sheets of paper everywhere covered in scrawled notes and angry crossings-out.

  Dr Granger wasn't just studying alchemy - she was practising it. But what had she been trying to do? Morgan looked again at the lump of iron and remembered reading something about turning base metal into gold. Or could Granger have found a way to contact the spirit world as Dee once claimed to have done? Julie had certainly been interested in the subject, and Granger was her tutor. Then there was what Coby had told him, that the old alchemist had been studying immortality, searching for a way to live forever.

  Any of those secrets - or all three of them - could have been worth killing for.

  Morgan knew he had to tell Kate. He fished his mobile from the pocket of his jeans before remembering that it was compromised. Public call boxes were rare these days, but he thought he'd seen a couple by the parade of shops at the bottom of Granger's road. He'd ask Kate to meet him in the don's attic. He knew she'd want to see what he'd discovered.

  Outside the day had brightened and the streets had filled. The faces that passed by were an anonymous blur, but after a second he felt it again: the sensation of eyes observing him from the shadows. His earlier suspicion hardened into certainty. Someone had been following him, and now they were waiting, watching to see what he did next.

  His foot hovered for a moment of indecision, then he made himself step forward. He tensed the muscles in his shoulders to stop himself looking around, then forced himself to relax and walk with the same easy stride he always did. He couldn't afford to let the watcher know he'd been spotted.

  He heard and saw nothing, but he imagined footsteps behind him. He pictured Lahav holding his knife, the tip burning red as it approached Morgan's unprotected back. Then he remembered that Spalding had taken the knife when he'd arrested Morgan and he pictured the policeman instead, a smug little smile on his face as he raised his hand to kill.

  Morgan's face was dripping with sweat, though a brisk wind stirred up the first fallen leaves of autumn on the pavement. A wad of chewing gum pulled at his heel. There was a faint smell of peppermint as his foot jerked free and then he was at the corner. The building ended in a promontory of elderly fruit crates piled outside the corner shop.

  He turned as naturally as he could, keeping his stride easy and his arms loose at his side. The second he was out of sight of the main road he dropped and rolled, bringing his body between the rows of crates. The shopkeeper stared at him, raising a bushy eyebrow over a hawk nose.

  Morgan could see only a narrow strip of pavement between the crate of browning bananas on one side and the boxes of wilting spring onions on the other. He tensed his legs and leaned his knuckles against the pavement like a runner in the blocks. A moment passed, filled with the pounding of his heart and the muted growl of the traffic. Then, sooner than he'd expected, a shoe dropped into his field of vision, a denim cuff above it. Morgan didn't have time to process the face as he flung himself towards it. The shopkeeper shouted behind him and his target gasped as Morgan hooked an arm around his waist and a foot behind his knee and pushed him to his back.

  Frightened hazel eyes blinked into his out of a face he knew - but not the one he'd expected. It was Coby, Granger's other PhD student.

  "Get away from him, young man. I'm calling the police," the shopkeeper shouted. He had a cordless phone in one hand and a cricket bat in the other.

  Morgan opened his mouth to reply when Coby said, "It's OK, he's a friend. We're just horsing around - sorry."

  The shopkeeper frowned, unconvinced, but when Morgan rocked back on the balls of his feet, releasing Coby from his weight, he muttered and headed back into the shop. Morgan closed a hand around Coby's wrist to tug him to his feet then pull him down the street, away from the shopkeeper's watchful eyes.

  "Well? Why the fuck are you following me?" Morgan said when he was sure they were out of earshot.


  Coby ran a hand through the curly tangle of his hair, pausing with his fingertips caught at the nape of his neck in a gesture that reminded Morgan painfully of Julie. "I know why Dr Granger died," he said. "And if you don't help me, I'm afraid I'm going to be next."

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  When Alex woke her head felt clogged with exhaustion and her body ached like she'd been beaten. She rolled to the side and found herself lying against the warm obstruction of another body. PD slept with one arm flung above his head and another curled on his stomach. He looked almost childlike and she smiled. When she ran a hand the length of his arm, snaking to avoid the bruises which mottled it, he stirred but didn't wake.

  She could tell by the quality of light seeping through the slatted blinds that it was well past sunrise and she knew she wouldn't go back to sleep. After a moment more enjoying the warmth she rolled to her feet and walked to the window. The blinds rattled as she raised them and she heard a mutter of discontent from the bed. She ignored it, leaning her forehead against the cool glass. Her breath fogged the window, blurring the view of downtown and softening the point of the Transamerica Pyramid to a white blob.

  "You're drifting," a voice said, and for a second she thought it was in her head. But when she spun around, Raven was there, black feathers glossy in the light. The orange disc of the sun reflected in its eye as it cocked its head.

  She squeezed her own eyes closed then blinked them slowly open again, but it was still there. She'd taken the peyote more than 16 hours ago. She couldn't still be tripping.

  "A child thinks when she shuts her eyes the world disappears," Raven said. "But the adult knows the world existed before her and will exist after. The world is permanent and the child is temporary."

  "You sound like a fortune cookie," she said.

  The bird couldn't smile, but its eye twinkled. "Would you like to hear your fortune, Alex?"

  "No," she said. "Please, just leave me alone."

  "Too late," it said. "Too late."

  There was a rustle of wings as it took to the air and she saw that PD was standing behind it. The graze on his face had begun to congeal into a scab. It looked diseased in the pale morning light. His eyes narrowed as he stared at her. "Alex," he said, "who are you talking to?"

  Raven settled on her shoulder and its weight felt like an anchor, tethering her to a place she wanted to escape. Her eyes twitched, wanting to look at it, but she kept them focused on PD. Reality is what you want it to be, she thought. The world you live in is the world you choose to see.

  "Sorry," she said. "Just thinking aloud."

  She reached out a hand towards his cheek, but he flinched away from it, turning his back on her as he scooped his clothes from the floor. "We should grab breakfast," he said. "And decide on our next move."

  Heat rose in her cheeks that was part shame and part anger. "So we're just going to ignore last night?"

  He laced his shoes as he spoke, leaving her nothing to look at but his mussed black hair. "We're partners, Alex - we shouldn't have. And we can't again."

  "You knew it all along," Raven cawed in her ear.

  She shook her head, but there was nothing to say, nothing that wouldn't humiliate her further. Her dress was wrinkled and dirty when she picked it up from the floor. She pulled it on, then followed PD out of the door.

  Raven flew beside her as she walked the length of the corridor and a figure walked ahead of her, curly brown hair looking almost black in the subdued lighting. In the elevator car, Raven's reflection blinked at her from every surface but the figure who'd preceded her was gone. PD avoided her gaze and left her nothing to concentrate on but the spirit realm, still there no matter how hard she wished it away. Sixteen hours already. How long would she have to endure before it faded and the mundane world returned? Would it return?

  Outside it was worse. San Francisco was on fire, orange flames licking at the rubble of a city in ruins. The streets were crowded, but there was something wrong with the image, like a film that had been double-exposed.

  Half the people sauntered casually, tourists with nowhere important to go and in no hurry to get there. The other people ran and screamed. Some faces were blackened with soot while others ran red with blood. Alex saw the terrified people pass through the calm - or maybe it was the other way round. Neither group seemed more or less real than the other, and she dodged both, weaving madly across the sidewalk. PD gave her a puzzled stare but his eyes slid away from hers when she tried to meet them. And Raven flew above it all, floating like a burnt-out ember on the wind.

  She knew what she was seeing. Years ago, back when this whole nightmare had first begun, Hammond told her that the future and the past had no meaning in the realm of spirit. A hundred years ago, San Francisco had shaken and then burnt to the ground - and in the spirit world, it was burning still.

  She stumbled against PD, tripping on a paving slab that both was and wasn't torn from the ground. He grabbed her arm to steady her, then dropped it immediately and turned to go inside a small diner. Here she saw nothing but the burnished chrome counter and tastefully abstract paintings on the walls. She guessed the earthquake had left this building standing and felt a little of the tension leave her as she slid into her seat.

  But Raven remained. The bird perched on the edge of their table, beak poised to peck at their food.

  "Alex," PD said, finally looking at her. "You've got to get your head in the game. I'm sorry about last night, but let's move on."

  "Sorry?" she said, voice shaky.

  "I know what happened yesterday freaked you out. Last night was... a reaction to that."

  Raven laughed in her ear and she felt her spine stiffen. "It's not last night that's bothering me. It's today. It's still here. Or I'm still there. Christ, I don't know!"

  "What's still here?"

  "The spirit world. I'm..." She gulped a breath. "I'm trapped in it. I can't get out."

  "You're not trapped, kid - you're right here."

  Her feelings had been teetering all morning between panic and anger. Now they settled firmly on fury. "What the hell would you know about it? You made me take that peyote, and now I'm losing my mind!"

  Her words left silence in their wake, and she realised she'd been shouting. People sitting at the tables around them shifted their chairs. One couple near the door slapped down two twenty dollar bills and left with their eggs Benedict and French toast congealing half-eaten on their plates.

  PD shifted uncomfortably. "You're not going crazy. You had a big scare yesterday. You've got to expect some after-effects."

  "Jesus Christ, you think I'm imagining this? I'm tripping! That damn Raven's still there. He's sitting on the table right by your hand."

  PD shot a short startled glance at the table, frowning when he saw nothing.

  "I know it's not really there," Alex snapped. "Which means even though I've taken no drugs, I'm still hallucinating. Which means I'm clinically fucking insane, no matter what you say."

  He opened his mouth, then closed it again, and she could see his mind whirling behind his eyes.

  "Didn't expect that, did you?" she said. "What's the matter, your last tame spirit traveller just toed the company line and didn't complain?"

  "There was no other spirit traveller." He squeezed his lips together, as if realising he'd said something he shouldn't. But after a moment, he continued, "We've got some people who can visit the place when they're dreaming, but that's it. You're the first we've ever managed to recruit who can go there in the waking world. That's what makes you so valuable."

  "The first?" She thought back to what Hammond had told her. He'd said something about her being the first traveller of her generation, and let her assume that the CIA had worked with others. She knew why he'd lied. "Which makes me what, your guinea pig? You bastards. You're making me take all this stuff and you don't even know what it's doing to me.

  "It's not like that, Alex," PD said. "We wouldn't... I wouldn't treat you that way."

  "You are."<
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  They stared at each other for a moment of silence. PD looked pained and Alex felt a flash of hope. "Please," she said. "If last night meant anything, you've got to help me get away from this."

  He clenched his hand and when she saw the flash of undisguised rage on his face, she thought for a moment that he was going to hit her. But he brought his fist down to the table with deliberate gentleness. It lay between them like a warning. "Oh, I get it. Nice plan, kid. Seduce me into doing what you want. I've got news for you - it was good, but not that good. And your poor little rich girl act doesn't cut it with me. You're like the player who gets dealt a pat straight flush, then complains that the deck's stacked. You have no idea, do you, how lucky you are?"

  "I used to," she hissed. "I used to have the sort of life other people envied - and then you took it away from me."

  "The self pity... Your life was empty. It meant nothing. And now..." Between them on the table, his fist was clenched so tight that his knuckles stood out white against his brown skin. "Did you ever wonder why they recruited me? No, of course not, because you never think about anyone except yourself. Well, I'll tell you. They recruited me because I'm a direct male-line descendant of Wovoka - Jack Wilson to your people. If you'd bothered to study what you were meant to study, you'd know who he was."

  "I know who Jack Wilson is. He was the prophet who invented the Ghost Dance. He claimed it could bring paradise on earth."

  "And drive the white man from our lands." PD's voice was soft but his anger burned behind his eyes. "He was a spirit traveller like you. Our employers hired me because they hoped I'd inherited his powers. Every test they've done on you, they did on me first - only with me it never worked. I know exactly what you're going through because I went through it too. I wasted years of my life. And now some pissy little white bitch has everything I always wanted."

  It was the most honest she'd ever heard him, and it made her feel small and cold and hard. "So you're punishing me because you turned out to be such a failure? You only want what I've got because you don't know what it is. It's killing me, don't you understand?"