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summer heat waves, and even then the ground looked as if it was just begging for someone to turn on a garden hose. As if dry was an affront to the natural order of Seattle.
    It took us fifteen minutes to reach our destination: the dead-end brick wall of the Downtown Mercantile. It was the only heritage building in the city I couldn’t stand. It wasn’t just the lack of upkeep that irked me, and the way the walls had settled at weird angles, breaking more than a few building codes I’m sure, but the odd mixof bricks and stones that had been used to build the walls in the first place. It never ceased to amaze me that the Mercantile had managed to drag itself into the twenty-first century. It sure as hell hadn’t deserved to. Adding insult to injury, the store itself sold Chinese-made souvenirs to tourists and served bad coffee….This was Seattle, home of the green mermaid logo; there was no excuse this side of the mirror for serving bad coffee in this city.
    Cameron stared up at the refitted antique flood lamps illuminating the wall, completely fixated. I scanned the nearby windows checking for late night onlookers. Not that I’d ever seen any, but there’s a first time for everything.
    I felt the buzz in my jacket pocket from my regular phone and swore under my breath as I fumbled it out of the pocket. I glanced down at the number. “Shit.” University campus. Probably that frat house calling about Nate. They’d been hounding me for a week to run a seance on Saturday night. I’d have to corner Nate about it later; we needed the money. That is, if he swallowed his pride and showed up at Damaged Goods.
    Cameron broke free of whatever silent communion with the lamppost he’d been caught up in. He reached above me to run his hand along a charred brick, a remnant of the great fire.
    Tactile and visual observation. He might keep forgetting my name, but something was working.
    I made a last scan of the windows around us, and when I was confident that no one was watching, I crouched down and grabbed a corner of a four-by-four sheet of plywood leaning against the wall just below an antique grated window. “Cameron, help me with this,” I said.
    He gripped the other side of the plywood sheet.
    “On the count of three. And make sure you don’t hurt yourself. I don’t know how well you’ll heal.”
    He nodded without looking up.
    “All right, one, two, three—”
    The plywood came free, exposing a pair of cellar doors with rusted hinges and a lock mechanism in the green copper plate thatheld the doors closed. The lock was recessed into the copper plate and looked like a rotating puzzle piece with Chinese characters etched around a central ring. Unless you had the combination, nothing short of a grenade would open it—and I’m not sure even a grenade would do the trick.
    I knelt down, closed my eyes and tapped the barrier, slowly this time, so the nausea didn’t overwhelm me, and funnelled the Otherside into the lock. When the energy bound to the lock arced back, I opened my eyes.
    Three rings of Otherside-etched symbols circled the locking wheel outside the Chinese characters, along with an arrow in the central ring that reminded me of a feather. This was a damn good way to keep people out: not only did you need the combination, you had to charge the symbols too.
    Now, let’s hope Lee hadn’t changed anything in the month since I’d last been here. I began turning the outer wheel, setting the Otherside-etched symbols on the central arrow from memory. Each time the right symbol lined up with the arrow, a new vein of gold Otherside spilled into the shallow metal trough that kept the doors sealed shut. When I reached the last symbol in the sequence, the copper plate groaned and the doors opened with a hiss of air. I pulled my penlight out and used it to illuminate the white cellar stairs.
    “After you,” I said. “Make sure you don’t bump your head.”
    Cameron looked down the steps. “What’s down