Shadowman (15 page)

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Authors: Erin Kellison

BOOK: Shadowman
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Layla turned back to the door, frustration near bursting within her. “Right. Not your problem. Happy times with the gun.”
“Wait,” Zoe said with a long-suffering eye roll. Khan wondered why everything about the girl was at odds: her body was young, but her soul was old; she expressed one thing, but felt another; she said she hated Segue, but she clung to its security. If she weren't standing there in mortal flesh, he'd think she was fae. “What did June and Ward Cleaver do to get you all worked up? Must've been good, whatever they told you.”
Layla faced her. “Basically that I'm related to them. I just need to know if they're screwing with my head. Because if what they say is true . . .”
“It's true.”
“But . . .”
“It's true.”
“Why should I believe you?” Layla's frustration gave way to acute anxiety, but Khan didn't put a stop to the conversation. If he couldn't convince Layla, perhaps this contrary woman could. “Maybe you're in on it,” Layla continued.
Zoe's eyebrows went up. She put a hand to the bedroom door, pushed it open. “Because I didn't actually mean to shoot at you, I'll help you out. Then we're even.”
Layla looked inside. The ailing sister lay slack on the bed. She was aged beyond her youth, hair thin and colorless, wrinkled skin hanging loose and dry on her bones. Her lips were cracked, Shadow filmy on the whites of her eyes. But Khan knew Layla could see deeper than an illness of the flesh. For Layla, the veil was as thin as a membrane, and just as transparent. She looked on an oracle for the ages. Layla would see the trees of Twilight looming darkly at the woman's back. She'd see how Shadow breached the matter of the oracle's body, impregnating the pitiable mortal with its capricious and jealous churn.
“That's my sister,” Zoe said. “She basically knows everything about everyone, which is why she's so sick. Add Adam and Talia's fucked-up business and she's ready to die.”
Layla was silent, her breath stopping as she looked on. Wonder and horror and sadness flooded out of her and into Shadow, and Khan knew she was ready to believe.
Finally.
“I'm so sorry for bothering you,” Layla said to the oracle, stepping back.
The oracle's eyes cracked open. “You've finally come,” she rasped. “I've been waiting for you.”
“Me? Why me?”
“You started all this. You and your fae lord.”
Khan caught the rheumy shift of the oracle's gaze as it flicked up at the ceiling of the room, where he watched.
“You mean Khan?”
The oracle grinned. “Khan.”
“What about Talia?” Layla asked. “Are we—? Is she—?”
Yes.
Khan very much wanted the oracle to answer this question. It would settle everything.
The oracle's smile faded. A tremor went over her body, but she breathed a response. “Why do you ask what you already know to be true?”
Shadow rolled into the room, and the oracle's eyes darkened, the lids widening in horror at a pressing vision. “Rose is coming,” she choked. “Watch yourself.”
Confused, Layla looked to Zoe. “I don't know a Rose.”
Zoe shrugged, murmuring. “The visions overlap sometimes and don't make sense. Did you get what you came for, or what?”
Shadowman was tempted to see into the oracle's Shadow himself and witness this Rose who frightened her so. Could she be the devil? But Layla was backing out of the room, saying, “Yeah, I think I did.”
Zoe closed the door again. “If Abigail says you're related to those bastards, then you are. Goody for you.”
“How long does she have?”
Zoe studied the floor. “I don't know. She's all I've got. As long as I can hold on to her, I guess.”
A similar conviction rose in Layla, painful in its sharpness, so sweet in its fast-rising hope. She looked to the outer door, as if seeking her daughter, Talia. “Yeah, me too.”
And Khan knew, for the moment, all was well. And it would be better still tonight when he could go to her in her dreams. In the meantime, he had work to do.
 
 
Someone was cooking, and it smelled like Heaven. Bacon, coffee, fresh bread. Rose wanted to cry, she was so happy. After twelve years of being hungry and deprived, tortured without reason, a home-cooked breakfast was just the thing to start the day, and a new life.
All she had to do was take care of a Ms. Layla Mathews. And Rose would, right after she ate.
The B&B had been a godsend. A sweet Victorian in the middle of downtown Middleton. The inside was meticulous, woodwork gleaming, and the hand-sewn quilts decorating the walls reminded Rose of her mother. Braided rugs kept the cold off the polished floors. The owner, Grace, was a woman after her own heart.
“How's your hand this morning?” Grace asked when Rose came downstairs and sniffed out the dining room, ready to dig in.
Rose glanced at her bandage handiwork. The proportions were a little off since her hand had lengthened and thickened. Underneath, the yellowish cast to her skin had turned to a bruised, unsightly green.
How provoking of Grace to mention it.
“Just fine,” Rose answered and approached the table. The lace runner had been removed and several dishes were set out. The mix of savory and pastry scents made her dizzy. “This looks delicious.”
Rose tried not to be annoyed by the woman's thoughts. Right now Grace was thinking,
Just ask her. She's got to be expecting it.
Grace smiled. “Wait till you try the blueberry pancakes. They'll keep you warm all day. But before we start, how about we settle up? I can run it real fast, and we won't have money hanging over our heads while we eat.”
The woman had the nerve to congratulate herself.
There. That wasn't so hard.
Rose looked at the steaming plate of cakes. She didn't have any money. Not even a credit card. She'd been dead twelve years. Besides, Mickey used to pay for everything.
“I really should've taken care of it last night, but you came in so late and seemed so tired,” Grace said, then to herself,
Don't let her weasel out of it
.
Weasel?
Rose's bad hand itched and ached, the binding suddenly too tight.
She flashed her dimples. “I don't have my purse with me. When I come down again, I'll take care of it.”
No. You'll sneak out.
Grace put a hand to the back of Rose's chair, keeping it tucked under the table. “It's just, you didn't have your purse last night either.”
A red haze swept over Rose's eyes. She really, really wanted to do something to Grace. Her hand was burning with it, and her ears were pounding with the urge to act. But the gate had warned against further bloodshed, even if it was warranted. Said she could and would be tracked by it.
Inconvenient. The food was getting cold. Her belly was rumbling.
“How about you just run up and get your wallet.”
“How about you put a fork in your eye?” Rose snapped.
No one was more shocked than Rose when Grace did just that. Opaque fluid mixed with blood spurted, then ran down her hostess's cheek. Grace held the fork's weight up, hand shaking, and covered her oozing eye with her other hand. Goop leaked between her fingers.
The screams that followed made Rose ball up one of the nice linen napkins and stuff it in Grace's mouth. Too bad the screams went on in Grace's head.
Helpme, please, ohgodohgod, pull it out! Ohgod, hospital, helpme helpme . . . !
Rose pushed Grace into the kitchen pantry, shut the door, lodged a chair under the knob, and took her breakfast to go. She wore Grace's coat, a classic wool in royal blue, and had Grace's wallet in her pocket.
The old lady in the antique store was harder to push, but after a few forceful suggestions, she handed over the money in the cash register and danced around her store naked like a monkey.
There really wasn't anything Rose couldn't do.
Chapter 9
“What the hell did you think you were doing?” Adam yell-whispered at Zoe as he removed the magazine from the gun. He waved away the soldiers who arrived at the apartment door, and they moved out in short order.
“It's my fault.” Layla kept her voice low, too. No one wanted to bother Abigail. “And my gun. I was just showing Zoe how it works.”
“Shut up,” Zoe said to her. To Adam she stuck up her chin. “I can have a gun if I want.”
“Not at Segue, you can't.” He tucked the barrel into the back of his pants. “You almost killed Ms. Mathews.”
Layla waved. “Still alive, though.”
Adam ignored her. “I can't be bothered about what's going on inside when I've got wraiths on my doorstep.”
“Then give me the gun, and you won't have to worry about me.” Zoe smirked and held out her hand.
Reluctantly, Adam gave both the gun and the magazine to her. “I want you trained. No exceptions. Today.” He left cursing under his breath. He shut the door softly, with excessive control.
“You can leave, too,” Zoe said, transferring her gaze to Layla. “We're done.”
What a piece of work. Layla could've been ticked, but she chose to laugh. “You mean we're not going to braid each other's hair?”
Zoe made a face, and Layla let herself out.
The elevator door at the end of the hall was closing, which was just as well. Layla needed time in her own head before she faced her long-lost family. This next reunion could only be awkward.
She took the hallway at a slow walk, shaken by what she'd seen in Zoe's apartment and the implications for herself. Layla had seen some disturbing things over the course of her life, but nothing compared to the raw transparency of Abigail's condition.
Abigail's body had been limp in her bed, like an old woman waiting to die. She seemed bird brittle, used, her limbs loose. And in her unblinking eyes lurked Shadow, smoldering with knowledge. Whatever Abigail witnessed in the dark churn of her vision about Rose must have been terrifying, the horror of it in the O of her open mouth. And behind her were Khan's trees stretching out of nightmare while the rest of the room was solid, mundane. Abigail wasn't ordinary. There was no denying that she'd been cursed with a gift. And somehow Layla knew Zoe couldn't save her, no matter how hard she might try.
It was a sorry situation, one that Zoe shut everyone out of as she simultaneously grieved for and clung to her sister. To her only family.
And it seemed now that Layla had a family, too, though she had no idea how to handle the revelation. The thought made her chest tight with strange, contradictory emotions that threatened to unravel her. Best thing to do was head back and go through the motions of the day until it felt normal again. Gauge Talia's reaction. Conduct her interviews. Layla already knew what Khan wanted.
“He's gone now. You can play with me,” a child's voice said.
Layla stopped dead in her tracks, the fine hairs on her body standing on end. The little girl ghost, ringlets perfectly in place, stood before her. Pinafore pressed. Bows perfect.
“Who's gone?” Layla managed.
The ghost put a hand up to her mouth to tell a secret. “The dark man. He follows you.”
Layla looked at Zoe's apartment door. But then she remembered ghosts couldn't act on the world. She should move on down the hallway and get back to her side of the building, and as quickly as possible.
“Play a game with me?”
Layla ignored her. She sidled by the apparition, trembling with cold sweat, and headed for the elevator,
hating
the west wing. How anyone could live there was beyond her.
Then she stumbled to a stop again. The hallway was morphing before her eyes. Green striped paper appeared in place of the beige paint on the walls and the floor darkened, the carpet replaced with a brown runner. Light in the passage dimmed to a soupy murk. Layla glanced back. The ghost girl, strangely, appeared more solid. Layla could almost smell the sticky sweetness of her.
Not act on the mortal world?
What the freak did they call this?
Layla took two steps forward, but doing so seemed to enhance the effect of the change. She turned back, uncertain. If she screamed now, would anyone hear? “Zoe!”
“Play with me.” The little girl sat cross-legged in the middle of the hallway, and she tucked her skirt over her knees.
Layla retraced her steps to Zoe's apartment, as if she could adjust time by where she stood in the passage, but the illusion didn't shift. She was stuck. “Khan!”
The girl shook her head, curls bouncing. “The dark man isn't here.”
Layla swallowed hard and finally acknowledged her host. “What's your name?”
“Therese. Sit down, silly, so we can play.”
Layla didn't want to, but the child might be her only way back. Even as Layla lowered herself to the floor, her stomach turned. She sat cross-legged, too. “I'll play just as soon as you return me to my time.”
“Do you know the words?”
Layla wasn't going to get sucked in to her game. “I want to go back to my time. Can you help me?”
“Say the words.” Therese gave her sweet smile, then shrieked, “
Now!
”
Scuttling back, Layla said, “I don't know the words.”
Therese leaned forward, intently. “Yes, you do. Dead man, dead man, come alive . . .”
Oh. Layla
had
heard that somewhere before.
“Come alive by the number five.”
Layla recoiled from the madness in Therese's expression. Sitting had been a mistake. She stood, headed for Zoe's apartment. Anywhere was better than the company of the ghost child.
“Say it!” Therese screamed behind her, then added in singsong, “I'll let you go. Just say: Dead man, dead man, come alive!”
Not likely. Layla wasn't stupid enough to go along with anything about a dead man coming alive, especially on the instruction of a disturbed ghost of a child in a haunted hotel that imprisoned wraiths. There had to be other options.
Layla's skin crawled as she rapped on what had to be Zoe's door.
Please, open.
Her heart hammered, tripping over its rhythm. She flushed with heat, then cold. The rhyme was bad news, had to be.
In an overlap of time, a translucent version of Zoe flung open her door and looked both ways down the hallway. She didn't acknowledge Layla.
“Zoe!” Layla called, right in her irritated face.
But Zoe cursed and shut the door again.
“One, two, three-four-five!” Therese chanted.
Okay, Zoe was oblivious, but maybe a fae would be different. If Layla could just find Talia or Khan, maybe one of them would see her and get her out. Right? Was there another way? Fear fuzzed her mind like electricity, her thoughts almost breaking apart into panicky, incoherent bits, but she held on. She couldn't stay here. Here was bad. Real bad. She had to get back to the elevator and the east side, where the ghost couldn't follow. Then find help.
Therese was up on her feet. She stamped her foot, hard. “Dead man, come—”
The space in front of the elevator suddenly punched black. Shadow reached, swirling into the long hallway, like octopus arms in a swim of darkness.
Oh, thank goodness. Khan.
But the voice that spoke was female and shattering. “Lady Amunsdale!”
“She's mine!” the child screamed back.
“She's mine,” Talia answered from the void. There was no mistaking the authority with which she spoke. That voice was power, awesome in its cadence.
Darkness pounded down the corridor. It rushed over Layla, cold and slick, and finally she could see Talia. Her pale hair whipped in the dark wind of her Shadow, her skin glowing with a weird light, eyes full-black.
Fae, Layla identified, and stopped breathing.
Shadow grumbled over the walls, wrecking them and battering Therese in its wake. Layla felt a pang for a child harmed, though she was a mean little brat. Therese was tossed, and when she reemerged, she wasn't a child at all, but a rag of a woman, bitterness lining her expression.
“I need her!” Therese the woman called.
Her reach was perversely long. She grabbed at Layla's shirt with bone hands. On instinct, Layla whirled around to tear off the ghost, but gripped only air, though the ghost's touch clawed at her still.
Layla felt as if her soul was slipping from the moorings of her body. Felt a sudden distinction between flesh and spirit, and she knew she was grasping after the wrong thing. Her soul lifted like a balloon, and she let go of Therese and grabbed hold of herself instead. Two spirits, one body, its heartbeat stalling.
“Leave her be, Lady Amunsdale.” Talia's voice had lowered, but its power still sent currents through the warping dark. “Now!”
And Layla slammed back into her body again.
“Dead man, dead man . . .” Therese chanted again, but she lost her scraping grasp on Layla's shoulder.
Layla looked back just in time to see Shadow harry the ghost off on the tide of its storm. The ghost reached toward her, straining in desperate misery, but was swallowed by the abyss at the end of the hallway. In a static suck of sound, the hallway was returned to its modern appearance, Layla at one end, Talia at the other, now looking more human, if very disconcerted.
Forget Khan. What the hell was Talia? Her, uh, daughter? More like Khan's.
“Lady Amunsdale is a pest,” Talia said, breathing heavily. “Don't let her get to you.”
Layla stammered for something to say. “She pulled me back in time. She wanted me. Why?”
And what the hell had Talia just done? An ocean of Shadow? That bone-shattering voice? Those fae were some serious mothers.
“I don't know. Might be a complication of your reincarnation. We'll have to ask Custo, or maybe my father. I'm more concerned about
how
.” Talia inclined her head toward the elevator. “Let's get out of here, have lunch. Puzzle it out together.”
Layla's drying perspiration sent a chill down her back, but she boarded the elevator. Talia had to know about the mother-daughter thing. The word
reincarnation
hung in the air between them, but Layla had no idea what to say, so she decided to remain quiet.
“I freaked you out, didn't I?” Talia bit at her bottom lip but kept her gaze on the doors.
“No, no,” Layla lied. “We're good. I'm surprised, but good.”
“Come on now. I freak everyone out.”
“Well, everyone doesn't know Khan. And he spoke to me from a painting today.”
Talia laughed, but it seemed forced. “I told him to go easy on you, and here I . . .”
“Don't worry.”
“But . . .”
“Really. I've seen crazy stuff all my life and no one ever believed me.”
The tension didn't leave Talia's eyes. “Lunch, then, and you can tell me about it.”
“Sure.” Chances were, Talia would believe every crazy thing Layla had seen.
“Oh, and for the immediate future,” Talia said, “it's probably best for you to stick to the east side of Segue.”
Layla choked a laugh. “Ya think?”
 
 
Khan laid a peace offering at the foot of Layla's bed: her bag from her apartment, so she could be more comfortable, and a pile of fragrant red roses, forced into extravagant bloom. Mortal women were supposed to like those, and he was under his daughter's instruction to court when he wanted very much to take.
For the moment, he left Layla to Talia, who knew better how to settle her into this new life, and lifted out of Segue and into the weak winter sunshine. With Death hanging over the land, the temperature dropped, a hush silenced the afternoon skitter of leaves, and movement slowed. The Reaper was on the hunt again.
The devil was being careful, growing wise to the ways of the mortal world. No smears of wrongful death marked its path, yet it lurked somewhere within the streets. Khan loomed over the village of Middleton. Only an occasional soul was about. They hurried inside, drawing their coats more tightly about them, and glanced over their shoulders as if Death stalked the streets. And so he did.
He checked each house, set children wailing with his passage. He made the dogs howl and the cats arch their backs. The leaves fell more swiftly from the wintery trees as he blackened the streets with his icy search, and he paused only when he chanced upon an angel, leaning on a lamppost in the now failing light.
“She's here somewhere,” the angel said, with a wry expression. “Had a little trouble this morning with her. She's been messing with people's heads. We almost had her, but she got away.”

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