“Don’t want me around anymore, huh?”
“You can stay, if you want to see what happens next. But I’d prefer it if you were quiet. I’m trying to think, here.”
“Why did you bring me in the first place?”
“To verify that one of the Gray Men had taken a shot at you at the convenience store. You identified the finger. That’s why I brought you. Now I’m convinced.”
The Gray Men, I thought. I didn’t like the sound of them. I especially didn’t like the indication that there were a number of them around. After all, they appeared to want me dead.
McKesson checked his watch yet again, and I glanced at it sidelong. I tried to read the dial, but couldn’t. I frowned. Both the hands were pointing in the same direction. The big minute hand was directly on top of the smaller hour hand. I frowned further as I noticed even the second hand was piled up on top of the other two. All three hands pointed at the mansion behind us.
“I get it,” I said. “The watch points toward these events—maybe before they happen? That’s how you always get there first, isn’t it?”
McKesson flashed me a dangerous look. When he spoke, it was in a lower, more menacing voice than I’d heard from him since we’d first met at my burned-down house. “Don’t even go there, Draith. People kill for their objects. Even to keep the details secret.”
I realized he was probably just another rogue with a weak object, like me. “OK, OK,” I said, backing down. “So, what do we do next?”
“We go back down to the cellar and wait for something to happen.”
By the time the vortex showed up, I’d almost forgotten why we were down there. It was about one hour shy of midnight, and I’d consumed most of a bottle of very expensive French wine. McKesson had taken only a single glass. He sat at the bottom of the stairs like a bulldog whose master had died on him. He didn’t budge, but kept eyeing the scorch mark and the finger that lay nearby. The hands of his old gold watch kept shivering and pointing toward the spot, and he seemed to have a lot of faith in that watch.
I’d found him a poor conversationalist over the preceding hours. He seemed to have had series of broken relationships, and he’d given up on women except for the occasional casual hookup when he felt the urge. He drank, smoked, and used recreational drugs now and then—but not while working. Because the man had only one focus in his life: his investigative work. He’d doggedly followed these freaky events around the metro area for the last couple of years. Each month, they’d gotten more dramatic and disturbing. Somehow, he’d gotten himself assigned to handling these impossible cases. After sitting in this spooky, echoing mansion for hours, I could see why no one else wanted the job.
I’d investigated the various vintages during the long hours and marveled at the expensive bottles. Most of the racks were empty, but there were a large number of dusty bottles still present.
The anomaly didn’t take shape exactly over the scorch mark; instead, it appeared atop the Gray Man’s severed finger. It didn’t look like a swirl of dust as I’d expected. It was more of a bending of light and mind. It reminded me of a heat shimmer on a desert highway, seen close-up.
“Whoa,” I said, taking a step backward among the wine racks. “There’s something happening, Detective.”
His gun was already out. I followed his lead and drew my .32 automatic.
The vortex was much closer to the stairway—a good five feet closer—than either of us had expected. Part of the stairway was, in fact, merged with the twisting of space, if that’s what it was. More than anything else, this fact worried me. I felt my heart pound as I realized there was no way out of this cellar if things went badly. The only way past was to walk through the edge of the warped region. I could tell that if I ran up the stairs, I would be forced to touch the border of that blurred area. I had no intention of doing so.
“Is something coming out?” I shouted, although the vortex really didn’t make that much noise. There was as odd sound…a susurration like that of a distant train or a breeze moving through the treetops of a forest.
McKesson peered into the blurred region. “I see something,” he said. “It’s growing bigger—closer.”
I stared into the space and I could see what he was talking about. Something loomed inside that region. I realized we were looking through the vortex into another place. The image was still blurred, as if seen through churning water or rippling smoke. A shadow approached. I wondered about the scene I was peering at. Was it a city street on the other side? I couldn’t tell.