Read Online Possession by Kat Richardson - Free Book Online Page B

one of the curving streets on the north end of the hill that overlooked the shoreline and Leschi Park. Not as swank as the south end of the hill near the marina, but certainly not a slum. The Sterling house was one of the few that had no lake view to speak of, being set back on the slope by a twist in the road. There wasn’t much parking to be had on the street, so I ended up a few blocks away and walked back. My eye was still giving me some trouble and I appreciated the leaf-dappled shade on the streets, since the sun had decided to pop in for a short visit to un-sunny Seattle that afternoon, just to prove that it was, technically, summer. I could hear distant children in the park and down the shore, though I couldn’t see them, and the Grey’s energy grid shone through the landscape in pulsing lines of azure and jade, frosted here and there with the memory of old trolley lines that had cut imperiously over the hill until 1940.
    I came up the driveway and looked at the house. One end was unsided and looked as if a renovation project had been given up in midwork and temporarily weatherproofed until it could be completed at a future date that had come and gone some time ago. The Tyvek and plastic were beginning to fray from friction under wind and soaking by rain for longer than they’d been meant to be so exposed. I wondered when the work had stopped—before or after whatever had put Sterling into his current state of lingering ill health.
    On my way to the door, the persistent Grey vision on my left became more pronounced until I was seeing the world as two partially overlapped layers—one of the normal sphere and the other of chilly silver fog and ghostlight. The house seemed to melt away on the left, becoming a gleaming wire frame of light and emptiness through which the mist of uncanny things played around knots of colored energy. I knocked on the door that was half there, half memory. Something flickered at the edge of my vision and I started to turn to look for it, but it fell back before I could pick it out from the general psychic noise of the street and a neighborhood full of kids on summer break. Once again I thought I heard the distant rattle and roar of the Guardian Beast, but I saw no sign of it nearby.
    My attention was jolted back around as the door opened with the scrape of loose weatherstripping over quarried flagstone. A blond girl, about fifteen years old, stood in the doorway. She was too thin for her gangly height, barefoot, her hair hanging loose almost to her waist, dressed in ragged cutoff jeans and two layers of T-shirts so thin and clinging that I could count her ribs through them. A pall of surly red and dull olive green energy hung on her. I remembered being that thin at her age and cast a glance down, to see the same kind of knobby, bruised, and calloused feet I still had.
    She held on to the door and the frame, making a barrier, and shot one hip, tucking her chin down and staring at me as she did. “Yeah?”
    “Are you a dancer?” I asked.
    Her head came up and interest sparked in her eyes. “Yeah.”
    I nodded. “Thought so. Ballet?”
    She returned my nod. “And Irish step.”
    I pointed at the scar on her right foot that gleamed too white in one world and jagged red in the other. “FHL release?”
    “Yeah. About a year ago.”
    “Still hurts, doesn’t it.”
    “Like a bitch. I’m trying to keep it limber by going barefoot, but sometimes it still hurts.”
    “Your PT doesn’t make you wrap the arch?”
    She gave a bitter shrug. “Can’t afford to go anymore. Dad’s been sick and it’s eaten all the insurance and most of the cash.”
    “Your dad’s Kevin Sterling?”
    “Yeah.” She frowned. “Who are you?”
    “My name’s Harper Blaine. I’m a private investigator.”
    She rolled her eyes. “Oh fuck. I can’t believe you people. Dad’s sick. I mean totally ill. He’s not sneaking around doing shit behind your backs. He’s not faking a coma, y’know!”
    She