Jenn Bennett - Grim Shadows

“Much. But I have a feeling you’re about to change that,” he said, eyeing the scoop of salve in her fingers. “Be gentle, Nurse Hadley. I wouldn’t want to faint on you.”

“You aren’t the only one.” She knelt next to the chair. Her eyes darted to his nipples and the dusting of honey hair ringing them. Best to get this over with, and fast. “Take a deep breath.”

As he followed her instruction, she swabbed the ointment over the top of his burn. He jumped, then stilled himself and spoke through gritted teeth. “Your furniture is bolted to the floor.”

She flinched and reached for more ointment. “Yes.”

“Mirror’s bracketed to the wall.”

“Yes.”

“No chandeliers.”

“Mmm.” She gouged out another measure of ointment. Felt the scotch’s pleasant warmth in her belly. Then she sighed and let the words come.

“MY FATHER CALLS THEM Mori specters,” she said. “Shades of death. I suppose they look a bit like ghosts made of smoke and shadow. I don’t know if they are actual ghosts or demons or something else entirely.” The ointment was cool on her fingers. She gently spread it over the rest of Lowe’s burn. “I inherited them from my mother.”

“That was the curse she spoke of when Aida channeled her spirit?”

Hadley nodded. “Once she died, they started showing up. Whenever I’d have temper tantrums, they’d float up from floorboards and attack the cause of my anger. They like to use nearby objects to inflict damage. Glass, wood, metal—whatever they can manipulate. When I called them up to attack the griffin, that was the first time I’d seen them attack something directly.”

“I knew it,” he whispered.

She kept her eyes down and cut a square of gauze with a pair of scissors. “My father says my mother never knew anything about their origins. They just started appearing to her one day after a trip my parents made to Egypt, apparently. He said it must’ve been some bizarre mummy’s curse. I never saw them until they started appearing to me. They’re fueled by negative emotions. When I’m very angry, they are difficult to control. It’s hard to explain. They . . .”

She sat back on her heels, reaching for the right words.

“They don’t speak or communicate with me in any way,” she finally said. “But it’s as though they can pick out my thoughts and act on that information. And I can feel their energy. They’re hungry, I guess you’d say. To be blunt, they want to hurt people. And if I loosened their leash and let them go wild, they wouldn’t stop until they’d killed.”

He didn’t ask her how she’d tested this theory, and she was grateful for that. “So you have some control over them? Oww.” He flinched and hissed as she covered the ointment with gauze.

“Sorry,” she murmured. “And yes, a little. I didn’t send them out specifically to pull that chandelier down, if that’s what you’re thinking. They are, well, I like to think of them as bounty hunters. My mind gives them the target name, and they do whatever they must to bring down the target.”

“Are they here now?”

She shook her head. “Remember how Aida told us she had to summon my mother across the veil? I don’t know for certain, but I feel like they live in another place, and they only come here when they catch scent of my emotional state.”

“And these specters are the reason for your touching phobia.”

Her hand stilled. “When I was thirteen, a family named Price lived next door to my father. Mrs. Price’s cousin moved in with them. The man wasn’t right in the head. He’d been arrested for crimes related to the molestation of children, but beat the charges on a technicality.”

Lowe watched her without comment, so she continued.

“My father was having our downstairs floors polished. The doors were open for ventilation. Mr. Price’s cousin walked into the house without anyone noticing, right as I was getting out of the bathtub upstairs.” She took a deep breath and plunged through the rest of the story before she lost her nerve. “He pinned me to the floor. I was terrified. The Mori came so fast. He was horrible and crazy and I was frightened. Before I knew what was happening, the Mori caused his footing to slip on the wet tile as he was struggling to hold me down. His head smashed against the porcelain tub. He died almost instantly.”

“Oh, Hadley,” he whispered, his face twisting up in sympathy.

“To be clear, he never managed to do anything but hold me down. Had I been a normal girl, I suppose it would’ve played out differently. But it didn’t, and the death was ruled accidental. My father wasn’t angry, nor the Prices.”

“And they damn well shouldn’t have been,” he snapped. The strength of his anger took her aback. “If a man like that lived next door to us, while Astrid was living in the house?” He shook his head. “I guarantee you it wouldn’t be for long. And neither Winter nor I would be feeling any sort of remorse. Neither should you.”

She tried to explain. “I’m not sorry I did it. It’s just that my brain mixed up the fear I felt at the time with the guilt that came later. And I logically understand why, I suppose. But understanding something and changing it are two different things.”

“Asking for help isn’t weakness.”

“It’s more a matter of trust. Not just trust in someone else, but in myself.”

“Maybe fixing one also repairs the other,” he said with a soft smile.

“Perhaps.” Neither one of them said anything for a long moment. She snipped off a longer strip of gauze and wound it around his arm to hold everything in place.

“And you’re the only person who sees them?” he asked.

“Pardon?”

“The Mori.”

“Every once in a while, I run across someone else who can. One of my maids could. She quit after she saw them—was terrified out of her mind. My father used to see them, before the blindness. Oh, and Oliver Ginn saw them at the dinner party.”

He growled. “Moneypants?”

“He seems to believe they’re a kind of trickster spirit created by Set.”

“The Egyptian god?”

She nodded. “Apparently there’s a myth that Set harvested a group of soul shadows to wreak havoc in the underworld.”

“Sheuts.”

“You’ve heard about this myth?”

“Not just a pretty face, you know,” he said, and her eyes involuntarily flicked over his muscled chest. She looked away and busied herself with taping up her bandaging while he continued. “The Nubi workers at the site used to tell stories of spirits that would change into black dogs to trick wandering strangers into losing their way in the desert. Some said they were made out of shadow. Called them Sheuts.”

“So Oliver might be on to something?”

“Oliver,” he said, as if it were a bad word. “You’re talking to him about this? What is he to you, Hadley?”

“And I might ask what Ruby is to you.” Now finished with the bandage, she pushed herself up to stand.

“I already told you.”

She threw the roll of tape down in frustration. “You told me you were going to take her dancing, and then you used her name for my disguise in front of Mr. Trotter. Probably half of what you tell me is a lie—how am I supposed to separate fact from fiction when it comes to you?”

His hand grabbed hers. She jumped and tried to pull away, but his grip was like steel. “Let go! You’re hurting me.” He wasn’t, really, but panic had a way of scrambling things in her head.

“Goddammit! Stop struggling and listen to me for one second.”

The exasperation in his voice startled her. She stilled, her breath coming fast and hard.

“You’re right,” he said, lessening the intensity of his grip. “I’m a liar, and we both know it. But even if I weren’t, I’d never be an upstanding man. My family are immigrants. I grew up poor. I’m not part of your circle of society and never will be, no matter how much money and power we have.”

“Money and power don’t make a man trustworthy.”

“And not everything I say is a lie. Let’s make a deal, you and me, ja?” His voice softened. “Remember when we stood in the courtyard by the gazing pool? I told you the truth about my injury. No one else—only you. And I said I was worried that women would find this hand repellent, and you told me the right woman wouldn’t care. Do you remember?”

“Yes.”

He pulled her closer. “See, I’ve got this funny idea in my head that you might be that right woman. Someone who won’t reject me when I touch her.”

Raw emotion tightened her throat.

“See this hand?” He gently squeezed her fingers, drawing her attention to the scarred skin where his missing finger once was. “Just like I told you the truth that night about my injury, from now on, whenever I hold your hand with this one, you can trust what I’m telling you is the truth. I promise to give you that. Do you believe me?”

Hadley’s heart drummed inside her breast. She lifted her gaze to his. “I can try. I want to.”

“That’s all I’m asking.” He lifted her hand to his lips and kissed her knuckles, sending a chill up her arm. Blue eyes squinted up at her with disarming intensity. “Now, let me prove it. I’m holding your hand, so tell me what truths you need from me right now. You need to know that I won’t tell anyone about your secrets? I won’t tell a soul. But you already knew that, or you wouldn’t have confessed.”

“You aren’t afraid of me, now that you know?”

“Afraid of whatever it is you call up? Abso-goddamn-lute-ly. Every man’s afraid of the unknown. But I’m not afraid of you, and that’s the difference. What else, Hadley?” He pulled her closer, until her legs brushed against his. “You brought up Ruby. You want to know about her? Because there’s nothing to tell. I’m not interested in renewing anything with Ruby, which is partly why I haven’t answered her calls. But mostly, I haven’t had time. Seems lately I’ve spent most of my days with you, and I’ve spent most of my nights thinking about the days.”