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“I see.” She considered her next question carefully. “Exactly how many ghosts, demons,
and spirits do you know?”
B shrugged. “It’s not like I’m friendly with them. But when I need to know something, I
can usually find someone—some thing—to ask. So lots, I guess.”
Marla crossed her legs at the ankle and leaned away from him, her arms still holding the
grab-rail overhead. She looked at B, trying to activate her spirit eyes, but a headache
blossomed just behind her forehead right away—she’d been peering too closely at too
many improbable things lately. It was unlikely she’d see anything in him anyway. He
really was just a low-grade seer…but maybe he was something more, too. It was
possible that B had a kind of power she’d only heard about secondhand, something her
spirit eyes wouldn’t be able to discern anyway. If she was right, Bowman could be very
useful to her. But that could wait. The first thing she needed to do was find out about
the frogs.
After several stops, and a dark journey through the tunnel under the bay, B stood up and
said, “This is it.” They stepped off the train and took an escalator up a level, into a
domed area, and then exited the train station. As always when Marla emerged from an
underground place into the light, she felt a sense of new possibilities, as if she’d
returned from the underworld and brought back secrets. There was power even in
symbolic journeys.
B led them outside, to a paved parking lot bordered at the far end by a busy street.
“Welcome to Berkeley.”
“Huh,” Rondeau said, making a great show of looking around. “Where are the hippies?”
“On Telegraph Avenue, up by the university,” B said. “Nowhere near here. This is
North Berkeley. And we’re headed to West Berkeley, so I hope you like walking.”
“I do,” Marla said. “And Rondeau will do it anyway.”
“Don’t you people believe in cabs?” Rondeau said.
“Anybody could be driving a cab,” Marla said, and Rondeau sighed; it was a very old
argument between them. They walked in silence, Marla falling into pace with B’s easy
gait. He was a good walker. Marla decided to pry a little. “When did you start hearing
things, seeing things, having dreams?”
“After I quit working in the movies.” He laughed. “When I stopped making illusions, I
started to see the truth. I thought I was crazy at first, but eventually I got tired of
thinking I was crazy. It seemed like insanity should be more…volatile. Mostly I just
wandered around, seeing stuff, talking to things. It freaked me out, but it’s not like
aliens were telling me to kill politicians or kidnap children, you know? The things I
talked to just answered my questions. So I decided I wasn’t crazy.”
Marla grunted. Most seers were crazy, by any conventional standard, and B was
something both more and less than a seer. “There wasn’t any trauma that might have
triggered your powers? Something physical, or emotional, some upheaval?”