Grim Shadows (Roaring Twenties) (17 page)

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.

In place of a human head was the head of a lion.

Hadley’s academic mind put two and two together and vaguely recollected seeing photographs of ancient statues bearing lion heads. They all belonged to the Egyptian goddess of fire, Sekhmet.

The creature’s back arched as she took a step toward Lowe, shaking the crematorium trolley with her heavy footfall. And that’s when Hadley saw what fueled it. Hairline cracks in the creature’s skin glowed with orange light, like lava flowing beneath furrowed dry earth. They spelled out some sort of hieroglyphic message—a spell, she reckoned, just like the one on the flesh of the griffin.

Not a goddess, but a magical replica of one.

Mr. Trotter screamed like a child. Lowe merely groaned and reached inside his jacket. But instead of pulling out his curved dagger, he retrieved a pistol.

The gun’s report cracked through the air. The bullet went right through the fire giant and exploded the bricks a few inches from Hadley’s arm. She shouted and stumbled against the cremation trolley, life flashing before her eyes.

“Shit!” Lowe shouted.

Mr. Trotter ducked behind the trolley, using it as a shield. Useless, cowardly man. So much for their passionate funerary bond.

“Shoot it in the heart! In the heart!” she shouted at Lowe, then added, “But don’t kill me in the process!”

Lowe shifted his stance, backing up and rotating his aim.

Bam! Bam! Bam!

He unloaded three bullets into the creature’s torso, and all of them embedded into the wall near Hadley, showering Mr. Trotter’s head with brick dust.

Whatever the creature was, it was different than the griffin. Not only did it make no sound, but at the bullet wounds, where there should be blood, a black substance oozed down its muscles.

The silent creature lunged for Lowe with a fiery hand and grabbed his shoulder. Lowe cried out. Flames erupted over the front of his coat as he growled and tore away from the monster’s hold. The giantess faltered, losing her footing while Lowe stumbled backward and fell against Trotter’s desk—

On fire! Lowe was on fire!

He flung off his hat and wildly slapped at the flames rippling over his arm.

Hadley sprinted for the cremation sink and twisted the rusty handle. Pipes creaked. Liquid spiraled through the rubber hose attached to the tap. She grabbed the end and aimed it toward Lowe. A spray of water arced through the air and doused Lowe in the eyes.

He jerked his head away and shouted obscenities in Swedish. Quickly redirecting her aim, she soaked his clothes and doused the flames.

“Not me!” he shouted as he hurdled himself over the desk. “Her!”

The creature made a grab across the desk, setting a stack of files on fire. Hadley increased the water pressure with a thumb covering half the hose’s opening and pointed the spray at the giant’s face. Flames sizzled and popped. Steam rose.

It was working!

“Brilliant!” Lowe shouted. “Keep it up!”

The creature shuddered, twisting her neck back unnaturally as the water extinguished flames on one side of her head. A foul stench swept through the room, like wet cat and burned grease. Hadley’s mind conjured the image of a rotting animal corpse being roasted on a spit, fur and all. And some chemical note lay beneath it, like a car overheating.

With his half-burned coat steaming and water dripping from his hair, Lowe skittered around the desk and stuck his gun in the waistband of his pants. He circled the giantess and dashed toward Hadley. “Let me have it,” he said, reaching out his hand for the hose.

Lava-red eyes turned in their direction. Blackened flesh and fur shimmered under the hanging lights. Shimmered like oil. That was the chemical scent: motor oil! Was this also what had dripped from the ceiling before the creature formed?

Motor oil wasn’t exactly something she associated with ancient Egypt or magical creatures. But she didn’t have time to puzzle it out. The fire around the beast’s shoulders roared up, spreading flames across its furry lioness crown. It was reigniting itself.

They were fighting a losing battle. The meager flow of water from the tap would never be enough to douse oil-fueled flames. Lowe ripped the hose out of her hands and sprayed the creature’s face with a sharper stream of water. “Get Trotter out of here!”

Trotter could rot in his hiding space behind the trolley for all she cared, the whimpering coward. “I’m not leaving you here,” she told Lowe.

“Believe me, I’m right behind you. Go!”

Begrudgingly, she tugged the funeral director’s arm, shouting at him to stand. Once he was on his feet, he took off running for the basement stairs without a single look back. Good riddance. Hadley raced to Lowe’s side and prepared to help him fight the best way she knew how.

She called for the Mori.

They stirred from the darkened corners, pushing their way out of the wall. As they were forming, dark faces turned toward the fire goddess.
Yes,
she thought. Take the damned creature down. She expected to feel their excitement, a sort of buzzing energy they gave off whenever she gave in and unleashed them, but it didn’t come. Worse, she felt them cower, turning away from the creature as if it physically hurt them to look at the fire. Then they did something she’d never seen. They rejected her command and disappeared back into the walls.

If the Mori were afraid of the creature, what the hell were Lowe and Hadley doing standing there?

Lowe seemed to be thinking the same thing. With a grunt, he ripped the hose off the tap and flung the snaking rubber at the giantess. “Go, go, go!”

They raced up the stairs, Lowe urging her forward with a firm hand on her back, and surfaced on the main floor to find Trotter holding a kitchen knife in one hand and a telephone’s earpiece in the other as he recited his address into the mouthpiece on the wall. “Sorry for the urn, Mr. Trotter,” Lowe said, throwing a shower of bills at the man as they ran by. “We won’t be needing your services after all.”

Wood exploded.

Hadley turned to see the fire goddess at the top of the stairs. The basement door dangled on one hinge; flames leapt across the splintered wood. The creature stepped through it and swung her lioness head around, looking toward Trotter. He dropped the telephone earpiece and fled down the hallway and out of sight. The creature immediately fixed her eyes on them.

“She’s after the crossbar!” Hadley shouted at Lowe as she backed away.

“And she’s damn well not getting it—come on!”

LOWE GRABBED HADLEY’S HAND.
They ran through the hall past Trotter’s office, bursting through the front door into cool night air. The hellish lion-headed giantess was dogging them—no mistaking the boom of her feet pounding through Trotter’s house.

Want the amulet piece, don’t you, old girl?
he thought.
You’ll have to catch me first, you sack of flaming shit.

He dug car keys out of his pocket as they raced toward the silver Packard. The giantess smashed through Trotter’s front door. Christ. The sleepy town of Lawndale was going to love seeing this. He unlocked the driver’s door and shoved Hadley inside, practically sitting in her lap before she had time to scoot across the front seat. A moment later, the engine roared to life. Tires squealed as he flicked on the headlights and sped away.

“Good lord,” she said, twisting around to peek out the back window. “She’s still coming.”

Haloed in flames, the creature bounded after the Packard, her bare feet scattering sparks over the asphalt. The Packard’s engine protested when Lowe switched gears and pushed it faster, but she didn’t fail him. And as he put some distance between them and the creature, he kept his eye on the rearview mirror, watching the monster’s frantic pace slow to a lope. Then a hobble. Then one of its legs seemed to give out, and the creature collapsed in the middle of the road and its body disintegrated into a roaring pyre.

“Hurra!”
Lowe shouted excitedly, pounding the steering wheel with his fist. He grinned at Hadley. “Packard beats magic.”

She flipped back around and melted into the seat. “That was a disaster. Poor Mr. Trotter.”

“I gave him money—money that I couldn’t really afford to throw away, at that. You’re only upset because he was drooling over your legs.”

“He was most certainly not.”

“He was ready to drop to his knees and suck your toes.”

“Don’t be crude.”

“Oh, pardon me. I thought you wanted to be treated like a man. Are you now wanting me to sanitize everything for your delicate feminine ears?”

She rolled her eyes and crossed her arms over her coat. Something was bothering her, and it wasn’t him this time.

“You okay?” Lowe asked after a few seconds of silence.

Her eyes remained fixed on the road ahead as they headed back to the city. “You know that was Sekhmet’s form.”

“The breath that gave birth to the desert,” Lowe said. “Yes, I recognized the likeness.”

“And did you see the oil dripping from the ceiling before the creature formed?”

“What are you talking about?”

“I thought I heard someone upstairs right before, then a black liquid leaked from the rafters. The creature formed where it pooled on the floor. It seemed to be the substance on its skin. It was as if she were conjured or created out of that liquid.”

Lowe thought about that for several moments. “At Gloom Manor, when I dropped the jar, the griffin didn’t rise out of the ashes, so to speak. Remember how the parrots were fleeing it? It came from a distance.”

“Yes.”

“And if someone was upstairs in Trotter’s office pouring some sort of hellish oil into the basement, then the jars aren’t loaded with protective magic. Someone is following us and sending magical creatures—”

“To get the crossbar pieces,” she finished. “Both times, the creatures were after the pieces. Can I please see it?”

Lowe fished the crossbar out of his pocket and handed it to her. She inspected it, reporting that it looked much the same as the first one, and that the magical symbols continued on the back. “It’s real,” she said, handing it back.

“I’ll take it to Adam as soon as possible.”

Oncoming headlights beamed a triangle of slow-moving light across the front seat as a car drove past. Lowe thought of all the trouble he’d had in Egypt when news of his discovery spread. But all of those attacks had been dumb and brute. No finesse. No magic.

Monk was still looking for him. And Lowe was counting on the fact that Monk had heard about the amulet—he needed Monk to trust that Lowe would be offering him the real deal and not a forgery to pay his debt. But Monk would stick a gun in his face or pressure Winter to drag Lowe into his office for a meeting. He wouldn’t bother fooling around with stealth and magic. Especially not Egyptian magic. That significantly narrowed the possibilities.

He supposed it was possible a wealthy Egyptian had sent someone after him to steal the amulet. But how would any of these people know about their search for the crossbars? The only person who knew was Bacall, and it didn’t make sense that he would he pay Lowe to find the pieces, only to go to all this trouble to steal them.

Something else troubled Lowe. Dr. Bacall had never told him why he wanted the complete amulet so badly. Yes, he’d claimed it was an obsession, and that it was something in the middle of a longtime quarrel between him and his old partner.

But he never would say what started the quarrel.

And then there was the warning Bacall’s wife’s spirit had given during Aida’s channeling. She said to keep the amulet away from both Dr. Bacall and “Noel.” Why? Maybe this was a question best put to Dr. Bacall. He made a mental note to do so before pain in his left arm suddenly became unbearable.

“What’s the matter?” Hadley asked.

“Nothing.”

“What?”

“I think I may have a small burn.”

“Where?”

Lowe shifted his hand on the steering wheel and winced. Now that his victory buzz was wearing off, his body decided to tell him something was wrong. “My shoulder.” He ducked his chin to get a better look at it. “Damned bitch burned a couple of holes right through my coat.”

Hadley leaned surprisingly close and tried to inspect it, nearly blocking his view of the road. “When she grabbed you?”

“Apparently. Hurt like hell. Hurts worse now, to be perfectly honest.”

“I’ve got first aid supplies at my apartment. I’ll bandage you up.”

He nearly ran off the road. Well. If he wanted a distraction from the pain, he certainly got one. Her apartment. Him. Her. Touching. Yes, please.

“No sense in paying for medical care if you aren’t badly injured,” she said in a defensive voice that made him want to grin deliriously. Oh, yes, please do argue your point, Miss That-Kiss-Can-Never-Happen-Again. Because a man and a woman didn’t kiss each other like there was no tomorrow and then walk away. That was the kind of kiss that inspired poetry. Just the memory of it was inspiring something beneath the fly of his pants even now.

But another thought sobered his good mood. “If someone’s following us, I don’t want to lead them to your apartment.”

“If someone’s following us, they already know where I live,” she said in a quiet voice.

That certainly didn’t calm his fears.

Half an hour later, with his shoulder throbbing in pain, Lowe pulled into her building’s entrance and parked the Packard in the shadow of a wall covered in climbing bougainvillea. It was nearly eight, and traffic up and down California Street was still brisk. He followed her into a swank lobby, where they entered an elevator.

“Mr. Walter must be on break,” she surmised, looking at the crank mechanism as if it were an unsolvable math problem.

Lowe shut the scissor gate. “I think we can manage on our own. What floor?”

“Nine.”

He flipped a switch and slowly moved the lever until they began ascending. Neither of them said a word, not even when they got to her floor and she unlocked her apartment.

“Mrs. Wentworth?” Hadley called out. No reply came. “My maid must have stayed with her daughter tonight. She only started last week, and we haven’t got her schedule worked out.”

She flipped a switch and a pair of etched sconces came to life on the nearby walls, casting light into the room. It was spacious and elegant, just as he suspected, all polished marble and clean, modern lines. It was also very formal. Not exactly a welcoming place to cozy up.

“I’ll just get my supplies,” she said, hanging up her coat and hat.

He glanced out the window while she rummaged in one of the back rooms. No new cars at the entrance. Nothing suspicious. Carefully peeling his wet coat off his injured arm, he surveyed the apartment. Very little furniture. No decor but a mirror and two paintings, which were fixed to the wall with corner brackets, as if she were afraid someone would try to steal them. Odd.

A radiator beneath the windows felt hot enough to dry his clothes. He shrugged off his vest and long sleeves and hung them over the radiator’s fancy silver fins. His undershirt was mostly dry, but it wasn’t every day that he found himself with a believable excuse to rid himself of clothes inside a woman’s apartment. So he stripped to the waist and admired himself in the mirror for a moment—not bad at all, if he did say so himself—before turning to the side to wince at the burn on his arm. Then he plopped down onto a gray velvet slipper chair and stilled when he felt something brush up against his leg.

 • • • 

Hadley strode into the living room with her hands full and nearly dropped it all when her gaze landed on Lowe. Dear lord. He was half naked.

Yellow lamp light spilled over his bare torso. His body was strong and tightly muscled—a body that knew labor. Her gaze crept over burnished arms to an impossibly well-constructed broad chest and broader shoulders. Muscles everywhere. Muscles on his stomach—his
stomach
!
And the middle of it was covered in golden hair that darkened as it arrowed beneath his belt buckle.

George certainly didn’t look like that. In fact, she was quite sure every unclothed male torso she’d ever seen—and there weren’t many, including her own father and the occasional movie star in the theater—were all lumps of dough and loose skin held up by a few bones.

They weren’t
this
.

If her mind was impressed, her body was ecstatic. A tremor started in her chest and ran through her center, until she was hot all over. She licked dry lips and swallowed nothing. Tried to remember what she’d been doing before her knees had gone weak.

Deep breath.

She calmed down enough to notice Number Four. The damn cat was on his back, stretched out lengthwise on the seam between Lowe’s closed thighs, all four paws in the air. Lowe slowly scratched the beast’s belly.

“I guess that means you’re welcome.” She marched toward them, as if it were the most normal thing in the world that a beautiful man with the body of a god sat in her living room wearing nothing but his pants and shoes. “Though I should warn you that he’s got a nasty biting habit. The building superintendent thinks he’s a demon in disguise.”

“Animals love me.”

“Of course they do,” she mumbled irritably. Animals, secretaries, her father. Lowe had everyone wrapped around his finger. She supposed she could add her name to the list.

“I wouldn’t have taken you for a cat lover. What’s his name?”

She set her armload down on the nearby end table. “Number Four.”

He squinted for a moment before chuckling. “A curious cat, is he? Did he go through those first three lives before or after he came into your possession?”

“I didn’t choose him. He chose me. Now I can’t seem to get rid of him.” She reached to scoop him up, but hesitated when she realized where her hands were headed. “How’s the pain?”

“Fine.”

“Liar.”

“I thought we’d established that as an invariable fact.” He groaned and plucked Number Four out of his lap, setting the cat down on the floor. “All right, if you want to know the truth, the pain’s pretty goddamn awful.”

Easy to believe when she tilted her head to get a look at the burn. Nasty. His left biceps were splotched with an angry red patch of blistered skin. “My God,” she murmured. No telling how much he was hurting. “Would you like aspirin or whiskey?”

“Both.”

She screwed off the cap and poured him a couple of fingers of scotch. “Would be funny if this was your brother’s booze,” she said, handing him several aspirin and the liquor. He downed it in one gulp.

“Didn’t envision you as a big drinker.” He handed her the empty glass.

“I’m not.” But liquid courage might be needed if she was going to be near so much bare skin. Skin she’d have to touch if she was going to do this. So she poured herself a drink and tipped it back, shaking off the burn. Malted warmth spread through her stomach. “Every once in a while I can’t sleep, and this does the trick. Though, I do try to avoid drinking while sawing.”

His laugh sounded pained. “Wish I’d taken that advice. Don’t be stingy.”

She poured him another and opened a tin of ointment while he tipped the glass back a second time. “Better?”

“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.”