Jenn Bennett - Grim Shadows

“Robbery?”

“Nothing was taken, so we don’t really know why it happened. Only that she wasn’t a well-liked person, to be honest. Always shooting her mouth off. There was no love between the three of us.” He grasped Hadley’s hand on the armrest; she had to fight every instinct not to jerk it back. “Ruby and I are close. We felt an obligation to take care of Esmerelda, even though she’s only our half sister. But I won’t lie—it’ll be more pleasant around the house now that we can keep her contained, so to speak.”

Good heavens. Lowe was telling the man a version of his own father’s myth—Hugo Trotter’s siblings were bludgeoned and stabbed.

“I hope you don’t find my honesty off-putting,” Lowe added.

“Not at all, Mr. Smith. Not everyone who walks in this door is wracked with grief.” He gave Hadley another glance. Or her legs, at least. She crossed them in the opposite direction and rearranged her dress over her knee.

Lowe cleared his throat. “Since I don’t want to waste your time, I’ll get right to the point. Esmerelda’s body isn’t viewable, which is why we’d like her cremated. But she did leave us a great deal of her father’s fortune, so we’d like to”—he gave Hadley a secret smile—“shall I tell him, dear?”

“Please do.” She had no idea where he was going with this ruse.

“Well, we’d like something extravagant to hold Esmerelda’s ashes. A showpiece—not your usual fare. Something we can put on a shelf and raise a glass to now and then. Money is no object, God rest her soul.”

Trotter brightened. “I’m sure we can find something to meet your needs. I have several unique pieces in stock. Would you like to see them?” He gave Hadley a hopeful smile. And another glance at her legs. Maybe he really was smitten with her.

They followed Mr. Trotter into a small showroom that featured a variety of urn options lined on shelves. Small paper placards provided pricing. A few of the urns were gaudy, but no strange energy, and no canopic jars.

“These are nice,” Lowe said, running his hand along the marble of the most expensive urn on the wall. “But what we had in mind was something exotic. Maybe something Roman or Greek. Something classic.”

“Something sculpted,” Hadley added.

Trotter’s brow lifted. “You know, my aunt Hilda’s urn sounds a little like that. Only, it’s sculpted in an Egyptian fashion. I—”

“O-oh, Egyptian,” Lowe said, as if it were the most intriguing thing in the world. “That’s very exotic. What do you think, Ruby?”

What she thought was that she wanted to brain him over the head with the marble urn he was stroking. “Egyptian would be perfect.”

Trotter chuckled. “Well, I can’t exactly dump out her ashes and sell it to you.”

“Of course not,” Lowe said with a smile. “But would it be too much trouble for us to take a look at it? Might give us a better idea of what we want. As I said, money is no object.”

Trotter jingled change in his pocket as he rocked back on his heels. “Well . . .”

Lowe elbowed Hadley discreetly. She looked up at him and elbowed him back. He made an urgent face, dramatically flicking his eyes toward the funeral director when the man wasn’t looking. She took a guess as to what he wanted her to do.

“Oh, please, Mr. Trotter,” she said, trying her best to sound like a fetching young girl with nothing inside her head. “It would mean so much to us. So much to me.”

Two pink circles blossomed on the man’s cheeks. “The urn is downstairs in the basement, though. It might be upsetting to see my work area. Maybe I should bring it up.”

“I have a strong stomach,” she told him. “Nothing shocks me.”

He smiled at her as if she’d just unlocked the key to his funeral-director heart. “This way, then.”

THE BASEMENT WAS ONE large room, lit by two rows of hanging bulbs that weren’t bright enough to chase away shadows in the corners. The cremation area took up one side, where a large iron door protruded from the brick wall lined with steel gurneys, rubber tubing, and ash shovels. Across the room near a desk, a wooden display cabinet held three objects on a single shelf. And even though age and smoke had discolored the glass front, obscuring the view, Hadley knew the Hapy canopic jar was one of the contained objects; she’d felt its eerie energy the moment Trotter opened the creaking basement door.

“Here’s the urn,” he said, unlocking the cabinet. “My father kept all the family urns here, and I just haven’t bothered to move them somewhere else.” He opened the doors and stepped aside to let them have a look.

The sand-colored canopic jar sat right in the middle, a baboon’s head crowning the top.

“It’s exquisite,” Lowe praised.

“Perfect,” Hadley agreed. “Exactly what we were looking for.”

“Are you sure you won’t sell it to us?” Lowe asked. “I feel just plain rotten for asking, but if you don’t have any attachment to it, can’t the ashes be transferred to another container?”

Mr. Trotter scratched his ear. “I really hate to tell a customer no—”

“I’ve got three hundred in cash in my pocket,” Lowe added.

Trotter coughed, his face reddening. A strong temptation, to be sure—the amount was likely a solid three months’ salary for a man of his class, and the most expensive urn upstairs was priced at twenty-nine dollars.

“It’s very generous, but I’m sorry, Mr. Smith,” he finally said. “I really can’t, not for any amount. If my father were alive, he’d never forgive me. It was even mentioned in his will—he requested that I be a steward to these urns in exchange for inheriting the business.”

Lowe sighed. “Can’t blame a man for trying.” He turned toward the case and slung an arm around Hadley’s shoulders. “Maybe we can have one sculpted,” he said, hugging her closer. “You’re not crying are you, dear?”

Before she could think of a response, he kissed her cheek and whispered in her ear, “Distract him. Flirt.”

Hadley’s stomach knotted. Firstly, he was clearly planning on stealing the jar. She didn’t see this going as well as it had at the house on Telegraph Hill—and that had gone terribly. Secondly, she was an awful flirt. George once told her that she wouldn’t even be able to lure a child into a carnival if she held an oversized lollipop in one hand and cotton candy in the other.

She gave Mr. Trotter a forced smile over her shoulder and nervously turned around.

“I’m certain I can have another one made,” Trotter assured her, studying her face as if checking for tears.

“If you could, that would be marvelous,” she said. How in the world was she supposed to do this? She glanced at the oven in the far corner and fixed on the only topic of conversation she was comfortable pursuing. “Ah, so that’s where it’s done,” she said, crossing the cement floor to inspect it. “Rather a solid-looking workhorse.”

He followed her. “Yes. She’s thirty years old, but still works wonderfully.”

“Why, that’s exactly my own motto.”

Trotter’s mouth opened. He sucked in a breath and chuckled. “An excellent one to have,” he said, sweeping a glance over her body. “And no doubt it’s true.”

Perhaps this was easier than she’d feared. She gave him a coy smile and nodded to the oven. “I hope you don’t think I’m macabre, but I’m quite interested in how it works.”

“What a fascinating woman you are. I’d be happy to show you.” Trotter enthusiastically pointed out where the bodies were placed, and when she begged to see the inner workings of the oven, he gladly turned on the pilot and struck a match. Orange fire roared inside the dark tunnel.

“Oh, my,” she said. “How very—”

A crash behind them made her jump.

They both swung around to find Lowe crouching inside a cloud of dust in front of the cabinet. His coat was pulled up over his face.

“What in God’s name?” Trotter shouted.

Hadley’s pulse hammered inside her temples. She spied Lowe snatching up something from the broken shards on the floor and stuffing it inside his coat. He’d gotten the crossbar.

“I don’t know what happened,” Lowe said, waving away ash as he stood. “It slipped off the shelf.”

“Oh my lord, my lord,” Trotter said, reaching for a shard. “My father would never forgive me—this is terrible. Just terrible.”

“I’m so sorry.” Lowe glanced around the room, searching. “I’ll compensate you.”

“How?” Trotter stood, a look of fury tightening his face. “Just how in heavens do you plan on doing that? This can’t be repaired. And you are stepping on my aunt’s remains!”

Lowe gingerly stepped out of the ash pile, shaking out his pant legs and kicking his heels against the floor. “Let me give you the three hundred I’d offered previously.”

“Your money won’t fix this.” The man was verging on hysterics.

Lowe reached for his wallet. “But it’s a start, yes?”

A floorboard creaked above Hadley’s head. Was someone upstairs? She glanced at the ceiling and spotted something dripping onto the floor. Something dark and viscous. It pooled on the cement in the middle of the room as a burning stench filled her nostrils. A strange heat warmed her back. She swiveled around to see a ball of flames shoot from the oven and arrow across the brick wall until it leapt on the pool of black liquid.

Uh-oh.

She watched in horror as flames roared, climbing several feet high in a flash. But this wasn’t a simple fire. The strange inferno coalesced into a distinctly human shape—a shape which took a step forward, detaching itself from the floor, a fiery shadow come to life.

Like something out of an infernal hellscape, a behemoth of a figure solidified before them. A female. One that was a good two feet taller than Lowe, with tree-trunk legs and shoulders as big as a barge. The giantess stood in the center of the room, a monstrosity of blackened naked flesh with fire licking around its shoulders, hands, and feet.