Her big brother kept his mouth shut for once. Both of them retreated from the edge of the stairs. I'd forgotten how they both hated the bas.e.m.e.nt, but I was glad to remember it, even if I didn't understand it. I don't think it's haunted or anything, though I could be wrong, and no, there aren't any windows-but most of the windows upstairs are boarded up anyway, so it's not very different from any other floor.

Whatever the reason, I was glad they avoided it, and I was doubly glad now that I was hiding bodies down there. The odds were low that either child would take a spade and investigate a mushy spot in the wall even if they did find such a hole.

By the time I'd concealed Trevor as well as he was going to get concealed, the kids were getting impatient and I wasn't getting any cleaner. I shuddered to wonder what I looked like. I could take a guess, and that guess was gruesome.

At least my hair was dark enough not to show any splatter-and that was one more advantage to having it short: It stayed out of tasty open wounds.

There was no working washroom down in the bas.e.m.e.nt, but there was one on the first floor, and that was where my purse was still located, anyway. I wiped my face on the back of my sleeve, hoped I wasn't leaving some ghastly clot sitting on my cheek, and took the stairs back up to the cubbyhole where I'd tossed my personal effects.

Pepper was there, solemn and silent, with her hands folded behind her back. She could be a creepy thing sometimes. That's probably why I like her so much.

"Hey." I gave her an awkward greeting. I didn't try to hide the cubbyhole, since it was busted wide open and the kids had surely seen it already. I reached inside and retrieved my bag, then told her, "I'm going to hit the ladies' room. Give me a second, huh?"

Inside the narrow water closet the kids had stuck a piece of broken mirror up over the sink. The mirror told me I'd seen better days, but I wasn't about to instigate widespread panic with my appearance, either. I made a show of washing up and pretending that I was an ordinary, civilized woman who was, perhaps, recovering from a bad date-and who had most certainly not not been hiding bodies in anybody's bas.e.m.e.nt. been hiding bodies in anybody's bas.e.m.e.nt.

My hands had gotten the worst of it. I scrubbed as much of the muck out from under my nails as I could, splashed a little water on my face, and left the restroom with what I hoped was a friendly smile.

"Hey guys," I said to the pair of them, since they were both hanging out right on the other side of the bathroom door like a couple of cats. "You two, uh. Are you all right?"

Domino answered with another question. "What the h.e.l.l happened?" he demanded, his scruffy little almost-gonna-be-facial-hair swirling around on his chin.

My smile dissolved, to be replaced by an eye roll. "Ask your sister," I said.

"I did. She said some guy broke in here. Guys aren't supposed to break in here," he informed me, as if it were a news flash. "Who was he?"

I said, "Trevor. He was just looking around. It's taken care of, and I'd like to consider the subject dropped."

"Where is he?"

"Didn't I just say something about a dropped subject? He left."

The boy fired off a frown that called me a liar. "He left?"

"Yes. I threw him out. He won't be coming back."

"You threw him out from the bas.e.m.e.nt?"

"No," I lied. "I threw him out through the first floor, before you got here. I went down in the bas.e.m.e.nt because I was looking for something. I figured, since Pepper had called me here with an alarm, I might as well be productive."

Domino was not convinced. He folded his arms and acted like he wasn't going to let me past him until I gave him some answers, but I don't take orders from teenage boys, and I moved him aside by twisting his shoulder like it was the hot-water k.n.o.b in the shower. He squealed a protest and said to my back as I walked away, "What was it?"

"What?"

"What did you get from downstairs?"

d.a.m.n him for being so sharp. "Nothing." And that was the truth, wasn't it? "I couldn't find it. That's what took me so long. I was...digging around." More truth. I was practically telling the truth! Look at me, a veritable choir girl.

"What were you looking for looking for?" He tagged along behind me, and Pepper tagged along behind him.

I led them Pied-Piper-style into the stairwell and up to the second floor, where they live. I said, "That's none of your G.o.dd.a.m.n business, and you know it. What are the rules? Do I need to make a list of rules again? I know you thought they were insulting, but you're almost a man now. It's about time you learned how to take an insult from a woman."

I was mostly being flippant, but I got a bit mean because if I could p.i.s.s him off, I could distract him from the original subject.

"You're a b.i.t.c.h," he spit. I told you he was obnoxious.

"So go find another landlord, you little s.h.i.t. Speaking of which, how are the accommodations holding up, my darling illegal tenants?"

"They suck," he complained.

"They don't suck," Pepper argued. "They're fine. Everything's fine, like you said."

"Good to hear, baby. Heat's still running all right?"

"No," Domino groused. "It's freezing downstairs."

"But it's warm enough on this this floor, right?" I asked. floor, right?" I asked.

"Yeah, it's okay," he sullenly confessed.

"Then I don't care about the rest of the place. I can see that the power's still working, though I owe you a new lightbulb," I noted. The heat didn't work anywhere else in the building, by my own design. For one thing, heating that monster of a place was f.u.c.king expensive. For another, I kept my least interesting stuff on the second floor, so the less time they spent wandering the other levels, the better. If there weren't so much of it, I'd just haul it all down to the bas.e.m.e.nt and trust that they wouldn't touch it, but it's so hideously damp that nothing will keep. I already have to run half a dozen dehumidifiers upstairs to keep the contents from moldering into oblivion. That's where the rest of the power bill goes.

I put my hands on my hips and looked around, trying to see what-if anything-Trevor had disturbed. I didn't see anything opened or tampered with, and then I remembered that there was a short, beady-eyed witness standing right behind me.

"Peps, what did our uninvited guest seem most interested in?"

She shrugged and said, "I don't know. He was just looking around. And climbing around. He could climb real good."

"Yes he could," I agreed. I hadn't seen him do anything special, but he hadn't made it to the machinery rail by teleporting. "I wonder what he wanted."

"You didn't ask him?" Domino said, naked skepticism dripping off his words.

"He wasn't very forthcoming," I murmured.

Pepper asked, "What does that mean?"

"It means I asked, but he wouldn't tell me. Listen, hang on, would you? Let me go get another lightbulb. I'll swipe one from downstairs." I trotted back down there, removed the bulb, then returned, pushing a crate underneath the contractor's cage with the long orange cord. I crawled on top of the crate and screwed the bulb into the groove. It came on, searing my eyes with the suddenness of its glare.

I looked away, and then back at the room underneath me.

Off in the corner, a mattress was lying on the floor, covered with a gorgeous silk and feather-down duvet that was intended for use on my bed, only it never made it there. I'd bought it in India a couple of years before; I'd been indulging in some retail therapy in an attempt to unwind from a difficult case when I spied the blood-red bedding with pretty, understated swaths of gold threadwork. I bought it, boxed it up with some other goodies for yours truly, and shipped it back to the States to the storage facility via a museum contact of mine.

That museum contact is another story. I'll get around to telling it later; I'm wandering far enough off topic as it is.

Anyway, I got home to Seattle and went looking for my box of goodies, and when I found it, it had been opened. It had been raided. And the culprits were still in the building. I rounded up Domino and interrogated him, because I couldn't find Pepper-who back then was just plain tiny tiny, and who has always had a gift for hiding in unlikely and inaccessible places.

Domino clearly didn't know s.h.i.t. I figured out he was only squatting so I made plans for better locks and prepared to evict him...but I couldn't. He wouldn't let me, and he had a good excuse. His little sister was somewhere in the building and he couldn't find her. He couldn't leave without her, could he? No, no of course not.

I gave him twenty-four hours to shoehorn the kid out of her hiding spot and told him that when I came back, they'd both better be gone.

But when I came back, she was still hiding-or she'd gone into hiding again, whichever. Domino begged another twenty-four hours off me, and when I came back yet again, I couldn't find either one of them. To this very day I don't know where they were hiding. They won't tell me, in case I get a wild hare up my a.s.s and decide to throw them out again.

How did they know I wouldn't call the cops and force an eviction? My guess is that they'd done enough exploring and/or opening of boxes to gather that I wasn't exactly jonesing for civic scrutiny. Or maybe they were just stubborn enough not to care, I don't know.

From then on out I started treating them-to abuse the comparison again-like stray cats. I tried to coax them out of hiding with food, and that didn't work. So I tried to coax them out with money, and that didn't work either. Then I tore the place apart trying to find them and fling them out onto the streets with my bare hands, if necessary, and I failed royally at this attempt also.

It took me more than a year to figure out that I was taking care of them. All that time, I thought I'd been trying to eliminate some pests. But no. I'd been feeding the strays, and now they belonged to me.

The more I thought about it, the more accustomed to the idea I became. After all, if homeless people were going to make themselves comfortable on my property, they might as well be homeless people who answered to me me. Eventually I gave them a prepaid cell phone (for emergency use only, thank you, Pepper, good girl) and turned the power on so they wouldn't freeze to death during the winter. Could I do more for them? Probably. But remember what I said about not keeping pet people? This factory isn't my doll-house, and those kids aren't my Barbies.

But I let them keep the duvet. They'd already been sleeping all over it anyway; I'd have had to dry-clean it, and I hate the smell of dry-cleaning chemicals. So it was just as well.

I asked Pepper, since she was more pleasant to talk to, "You guys still doing all right for food?"

She nodded. Domino answered. "Duh. Yes, we're fine for food. I bring in plenty."

He meant he stole plenty, but what was I going to do, lecture him about it? "Okay," I said instead. "As long as you're covered, I won't worry about you. Good job on the lookout, Peps. Keep up the good work."

She beamed up at me, and I gave her a wink.

I told the pair of them to keep their eyes peeled in case Trevor had any friends, and I barred the place up behind me as I left. I wasn't worried about locking the siblings inside. They'd get out if they wanted to. They always did.

I finally convinced myself that future intruders would have a tougher time gaining entry, and that the kids would hardly sleep the rest of the night anyway, for all the excitement.

I pinched my purse and felt Ian Stott's envelope distorting the bag's shape from within. Morning was coming in another couple of hours, and I had some reading to do.

3.

Back at the homestead, I was too wound up to settle in for the day-even though the first light streaks of dawn were working their way up over the mountains. I shut all the blinds and drew down the curtains, closing myself up in my little cave. I flipped on a couple of lights for the sake of ambience and booted my laptop.

It was too late in the evening (or too close to morning, however you look at it) for me to get much work done, but thanks to the wonders of the Internet I could still get prepped and ready for the next night's business.

Ian Stott's envelope sat on the desk beside the computer. The blind vampire was a paying client and I should've started with his case, but floating somewhere in my purse were two sc.r.a.ps of paper relevant to Trevor, and they were fresher in my memory.

I retrieved the business card and the torn sheet of notepaper. The card had a handy-dandy URL listed on it: www.northwestparcoursaddicts.com. Sounded manly. I plugged it in and let it load, and yes, the testosterone reeked out from the digital window.

The home page looked like a high-school boy's idea of a good time on the weekend. Lots of black, lots of bulky guys wearing gray-scale camo, lots of gear, lots of posing in an adventuresome fashion. Up top there was a link "About Parcours, Parcours," and on that page I learned that my idiot trespa.s.ser might well have been telling the truth after all.

If I was feeling uncharitable, I might call parcours parcours a French martial art designed around the skill of running away. But I was forced to admit, some of the videos looked pretty cool. It consisted mostly of running, jumping, and climbing around on stuff in odd places. a French martial art designed around the skill of running away. But I was forced to admit, some of the videos looked pretty cool. It consisted mostly of running, jumping, and climbing around on stuff in odd places.

And oh, look. Another link.

"Two great tastes that taste great together: Urban Exploration and Parcours. Parcours."

Oh dear dear. The more I read, the more it appeared that the dumb-a.s.s had been on the up-and-up. He belonged to a club of people who liked to (a) poke around in abandoned buildings, and (b) climb around on stuff while dressed like commandos from a video game.

Even so, I couldn't beat myself up about it too much. After all, he wasn't just unlucky to pick my building-he was stupid, too. As I understood the rules on the website, you don't explore anyplace that people routinely visit, occupy, or presently utilize. My old factory may look like a dump from the outside, but once he got in, he should've known he'd blown it. He should've turned around on the heels of his faux army boots and left the way he'd arrived.

It was his own fault that he was dead.

Something still felt "off" about it, though. The rules on the website were clear, and when I clicked through the image galleries, all the posted pictures depicted places that had been visibly empty for decades. All the other boys were playing by the rules. So why not my supper?

The other piece of paper drew my eye. Major Major, said the one legible word. Major Major as in "British slang for important"? Or as in "British slang for important"? Or major major as in "ranking military official"? I didn't imagine that a five as in "ranking military official"? I didn't imagine that a five AM AM phone call would please anyone waiting at the other end of the line, so I didn't do any dialing yet, but on the off chance it might tell me something, I plugged the digits into a search engine and came up with nothing. phone call would please anyone waiting at the other end of the line, so I didn't do any dialing yet, but on the off chance it might tell me something, I plugged the digits into a search engine and came up with nothing.

Que sera.

Oh well. I could sit and obsess about the intruder all day, or I could use the residual energy from feeding on him to be productive.

I reached for Ian's envelope.

It'd become battered while riding in my purse, but everything inside was intact. There wasn't much to mess up-mostly just some photos and negatives, and some doc.u.ments that had been decla.s.sified, though only in the loosest sense. Long black bars blocked out huge chunks of text for the sake of national security, a.s.s-covering, or G.o.d knew what else.

The photos were grainy black-and-whites, with coordinates listed on the back and time/date stamps in yellow. The dates roughly matched Ian's incarceration ten years previously. At the center of each picture was one building in particular-amid several others, with what appeared to be a wall around the whole compound. It could certainly be a small military base.

What I could see of the surrounding terrain wasn't very helpful. There were trees, some of them quite bushy and dark, as if the base was smack in the middle of a jungle. Had Ian mentioned from whence he'd escaped? I was a moron for not asking, but I had his number. I'd call him come evening and clear up a few things.

Beside my laptop I kept a pad of paper, and in a drawer underneath the desk I store enough pens and pencils to last an innercity school for months, but it took me a couple of minutes to find a functional writing implement. Everything was broken or dried up, and I don't own a pencil sharpener, which is ludicrous, I know. You'd think I could throw some of that old junk away, but perhaps by now you've realized that I'm a bit of a h.o.a.rder at heart.

So. I found a pen that didn't tear up the paper with its spinster-dryness, and I made a little list: 1. Ian escaped from base; he must know where it is. Find out.2. How did he escape?3. What does he remember from the procedures?

That was all I could think of for the moment. I took the paper and working pen with me into the bedroom and left them on the nightstand while I washed my face and stripped for bed.

Finally I slipped in between the sheets and pulled my (sadly, not red silk) duvet up across my chest. I leaned over and turned on the electric blanket because I don't care that I'm not technically so much alive anymore-that's no excuse to be cold all the time. Then I turned on the tiny bedside lamp, put my pen in my mouth, and began to read between the black bars.

It was an eyelid-punishing task. Every time the content was about to get good, some a.s.shole would black it out with a Sharpie and I'd spend a few ridiculous seconds squinting madly at the black boxes, trying to make them tell me something.

No such luck.

But this is the condensed version of what I was able to ascertain about Ian Stott's mysterious capture and incarceration: In the mid-nineties, the army inst.i.tuted Project Bloodshot. At least four subjects (and maybe as many as seven) were acquired and relocated to a base that was so small and so secret that there was, in effect, no record of it at all. One of the subjects died within the first week; another one died some months later, both of unspecified causes. Of the remaining two subjects, one ceased to be mentioned in the doc.u.mentation-but whether he (or she) had died or gone missing, the black lines refused to divulge. And as for the final subject-Ian, I a.s.sumed-he broke out of the facility and disappeared, doing some damage on the way out. After his flight, the doc.u.mentation abruptly ended and there was a final note saying that the program had been sc.r.a.pped by the higher-ups.

I picked up my pad of paper again and added more questioning notes: 4. Were the other subjects vampires?5. What other experiments were being performed? If Ian only went blind but a couple of the subjects died, something else must've been going on, too.6. What did Ian do to the compound when he left?

Inside the folder I only had one more stapled clump of papers to read, and even though the sun was fully up outside-gold and runny like a frying egg-I was still riding high from my first meal in ages so I kept on reading. This last batch of paperwork had fewer strokes of the obfuscating marker.

It was a letter from one blacked-out name to another, discussing Project Bloodshot as an expensive failure and a potential PR nightmare. This letter urged discretion. It suggested in no uncertain wording that the recipient of the missive should shut up about the project, already, and turn his (her?) attention to a different line of scientific inquiry, because Uncle Sam wasn't going to pony up the bill for any more of this nonsense-especially not after what happened at Jordan Roe. Furthermore, the note's author made abundantly clear that he (she?) expected all paperwork on the matter to be shipped to the facility at St. Paul.

Cal's exquisitely bad handwriting coiled sharply in the margin. If I read it right, his addendum said, "Stored at Holtzer Point, St. Paul. Mr. Stott's serial number: 63-6-44-895."

"Okay," I said out loud.

Tomorrow night, I'd look into the security system at Holtzer Point and see about letting myself inside.

I set the aggravatingly and minimally decla.s.sified doc.u.ments aside and turned in for the day.