Jenn Bennett - Grim Shadows

Hadley’s sixth sense told her that they were getting closer to the piece of the amulet.

“What’s that door, there?” Lowe asked.

“You know, I thought it was a closet, but there’s a keyhole, isn’t there?” the man answered, and proceeded to sort through a ring of keys, mumbling to himself as he shuffled toward the locked door. “Just a moment.”

“I feel it,” she whispered to Lowe as they hung back.

“Me, too.” He rooted around in his pocket.

“Stronger up here. Maybe there’s storage space in the attic? Because the”—she took another mint he offered—“only other logical place would be on a mantel or inside a glass case, I suppose. Maybe I’m just thinking of the urns on display at the Columbarium.” She glanced down at Lowe’s fingers, which were headed toward her chest. Bare fingers. When had he removed his gloves?

“You’re buttoned up all wrong,” he murmured, much closer to her face than she expected. So close, she could smell his minty breath, which distracted her from what his fingers were doing: unbuttoning her coat.

She wanted to protest, but he was right. How long had she been walking around with misaligned buttons? And why hadn’t he said something sooner?

“One second, let me just . . .” Cool air drafted against the skin over her breastbone before warm fingertips brushed the same spot. Oh, God. The dress with the low neck. Terrible mistake. He made a low noise. Chills danced across her arms. She didn’t dare glance up at his face as his fingers threaded the right button into the right hole. “There we go.”

“Ah-ha! Success!” Farnsworth said at the same time from across the landing.

Hadley bit down on the mint and rapidly crunched it into dust as they made their way over to the real estate agent.

“Looks like a small storage room,” the man said. “Electricity’s out, so it’s hard to see in the dark, but might be five by ten feet, I’d guess.”

A distant knock turned their heads toward the stairs, from which floated up a tentative, “Hello?”

“Now, who could that be?” Mr. Farnsworth said. Clearly it was the real Davidsons, but Hadley wasn’t going to offer this up. “I’ll just be a moment,” he said as he hurried toward the stairs. “Wait until you catch the view from the tower. Can see straight over to Angel Island and Alcatraz.”

“Nothing quite like the pastoral elegance of a prison yard and an ill-managed immigration station,” Lowe mumbled. “Help me. Hurry, before we’re caught.”

Hadley stumbled behind Lowe, practically running into him. “What?”

“Can’t you feel it? The damned thing’s practically screaming at me. Somewhere in here, I’d wager.” He retrieved a small brass flashlight from his coat and flicked it on, shining it down the length of her coat. “Always prepared to explore small, dark places.”

Dear God. Was he flirting with her? Now?

As Farnsworth’s patent leather shoes tapped across the foyer, Lowe flicked the flashlight’s beam into the closet and disappeared behind it. “Christ, this room is packed,” he complained.

He wasn’t wrong. Old crates, hatboxes, and stacked chairs lined one wall. They didn’t have enough time to riffle through all this junk. But maybe they didn’t have to.

“You feel it?” Lowe asked.

Maybe stronger than she had ever felt the base. “Right here.” It was emanating from one of three crates sitting in front of her. “They’re nailed shut.”

Lowe handed her the flashlight. “Hold this. Let me just . . .” A charming syncopation of Swedish and English curses filled the closet as he wiggled the corner of the middle crate. A second later, the shrill whine of wood pulling away from nails made Hadley wince.

“Come on, come on . . .” Lowe dug through excelsior wood wool packaging until he uncovered two things at once: an old Victrola and the sand-colored matte glaze of Duamutef, the jackal-headed son of Horus.

Her mother’s canopic jar! It was lovely. Long, clean lines and perfectly painted details. Modern, yet ancient.

The front door squeaked closed on the floor below.

“Hurry!” Hadley said.

“Hurrying,” he answered, hefting the urn out of the crate.

She flicked off his flashlight and pocketed it. “The real Davidsons sound confused. How are we getting this out of here? Back door?”

“Rule number one: never take the back door,” he said, cradling the urn under one arm. “Better to talk your way out of a bind than run. Come on.”

They bounded down the stairs. Mr. Farnsworth met them at the bottom, a stern look on his face. “Sir,” he said sharply, as a middle-aged couple ghosted into the foyer behind him.

“Cousin!” Lowe announced, with a supremely joyous smile stretching his cheeks.

The cousin in question looked startled and confused.

“I see you’ve met the real estate agent. I wasn’t sure if you were going to make it today and didn’t want to miss a chance to make an offer.”

“Richard,” the man’s wife mumbled. “What’s going on?”

Lowe clapped Mr. Davidson on the shoulder and walked him toward the front door. “Now that you’re here, old man, I’ll let you handle it. I wouldn’t take the missus through the main floor, though. Our dear agent here gave my wife quite a shock with all the lewd drawings scribbled on the walls.”

“Now, you see here, sir—” Mr. Farnsworth started.

Lowe leaned closer to Mr. Davidson. “Looks like there’s been some occult business going on here as well. Probably devil worship.”

“Oh my goodness,” Mrs. Davidson said as she rushed to keep up.

“True,” Lowe said conspiratorially.

The real estate agent’s face reddened. “It absolutely is not true.”

Lowe stopped near the open door. “Occultists, perverts, drinking—God only knows what kind of wicked debauchery has been conducted in this house. And that’s not to mention the ghost. Call me crazy, but I felt something cold upstairs in that closet.” He nudged Hadley and held out his hand. “What do you think, darling?”

Hadley popped the proffered mint into her mouth. A funny sort of reserved panic made her head feel bright and empty. “I think that’s why the neighbors call this place Gloom Manor.”

A warm weight fell across her shoulders. Hadley looked up as Lowe tugged her against his hip. “Exactly right,” he praised with the briefest of twinkling in his con artist eyes. “Gloom Manor, indeed. Now, we won’t take up any more of your time. But it was good to see you. Please call your uncle. He’s a lonely old man.”

Lowe hurried Hadley around the murmuring couple and headed through the open door.

“Wait!” Mr. Farnsworth called. “What do you think you’re doing with that?”

Lowe glanced at the urn under his arm. “This?”

“You can’t just take whatever you please from this house. It belongs to the bank.” In a startling show of nimbleness, the real estate agent lunged and grabbed the sculpted lid of the canopic jar. The scrawny man was outmatched by Lowe in every possible way: size, strength, age. But, unfortunately, he had the element of surprise.

The lid separated from the jar with a terrible grinding sound. The men fell apart as a cloud of black ash billowed into the air between them. Hadley stumbled backward. Pottery crashed.

“Richard!” Mrs. Davidson shouted, as Mr. Farnsworth crashed into her husband.

“I’m all right,” the man answered.

Lowe was, too, and he’d managed to avoid the bone dust. The downwind real estate agent, however, was doubled over coughing. Oh, and the poor canopic jar! Smashed to bits all over the front steps, nothing recognizable.

“What in the world is going on?” Mr. Davidson said to no one in particular. “Was that an urn?”

“Poor Mrs. Rosewood,” Lowe mumbled.

Hadley spotted something sitting in the ashes accumulating on the walkway. Acting quickly, she snatched it up with gloved fingers: another beige nest of excelsior shavings. Cradled in the packing material was a slender rectangle of bright red-gold.

The crossbar!

“Got it,” she mouthed to Lowe as a flash of bright spring-green zipped by her face. “What was that?”

“Feral parrot,” Mrs. Davidson said. “There’s a wild flock of them on Telegraph Hill. No one knows where they came from—oh, goodness!”

More green. A dozen or more parrots with red heads buzzed past, madly flapping their wings and squawking. “How odd. You’d almost think they were fleeing something,” Mr. Davidson mumbled.

They were.

Something a lot bigger and stranger.

LOWE’S LEGS WEAKENED AS he gaped at the impossible creature that had landed on the bracketed cornice above the house’s entrance.

Like the Sphinx, it had a feline body, albeit more the size and shape of an alley cat than some majestic lioness. But its head was that of a hawk—curved beak, beady gold eyes. And it had enormous, feathered brown wings that were gilded at the tips.

A giant cat with wings. Or a giant bird with paws.

He must’ve inhaled some of the bone ash.

But the ragged screech that blasted from the open beak of the beast wasn’t an illusion. And neither were the terrified shouts circling around him. Part of him wanted to join them.

Only one voice was calm. Firm. Steady. And it said, “A griffin.”

He darted a glance at Hadley.

“Chimera,” she elaborated. “Mythical beast.”

“Egyptian?” he choked out.

“Maybe the canopic jar was warded with some sort of magic.”

“Magic,” he repeated. The Davidsons were running into Gloom Manor with Mr. Farnsworth. Perhaps Hadley and he should be doing the same.

Hadley wasn’t paying attention. Her calm and collected scholar’s gaze was fixated on the fantastical creature flapping its wings on the roof. “Or perhaps the crossbars are cursed, and that’s why my mother—”