“Hold on for a second. Let me talk to the Veil.” Prim pushed to her feet and disappeared into the alley.
There was nothing else to do in the narrow doorway while she was gone but hunker down and take stock of all that had befallen me. I tried, but I wasn’t sure where to start. I remembered being pulled from the rubble of the Seventh Gate weeks before. Twisting free of the trash and detritus of wasted lives had been like a second birth. After closing that hell gate, I’d thought I’d put the horrors behind me. Everything had seemed clean and new and light after that. Or maybe it was just me.
Where had that happy moment in my new home gone? The one that had smelled like oranges and flickered with candlelight. The cottage, the sense of belonging, Grayford—they’d all been ripped from me so easily.
I stared at my empty hands. How did I get here?
“Okay.” Prim padded back up the throughway, holding her shoes in her hand. “I spoke with Baba.” She glanced toward the opening of the alley where the little woman kept watch, then folded her long legs into the shadowed alcove next to me. She tucked in tight then pointed upward. “Sometimes they travel along the roof tops.”
I did my best to make room for her in the cramped space.
“Who?”
“Vampires.”
Suddenly, I felt the weight of the building above me, and above that—the pressing of the vast night sky. Were Mephos and Celene leaping from building to building at that very moment, scouring the city in search of me?
“We can’t stay here.” I gestured to the tiny tomb that we’d be knocked out of the moment a tenant tried to exit the building.
“My place isn’t far from here.” I heard the uncertainty in her voice. “We’ll avoid the wider streets. Stick to the side streets.”
I blew out an exhausted breath.
“I’ve gotten you this far.” She peeked up at the slash of empty sky above the alleyway.
“I’d feel better if I had a weapon.”
Prim frowned in response.
“What kind of weapon would help against vampires?”
“Is there someplace with a lot of dead people?” I knew it was a weird question.
She pursed her lips and turned her head.
“Like a cemetery or a churchyard?” I explained.
“There is a place.”
“Great. Let’s go.” I leapt to my feet.
“Wait. It’s all the way across town, and it’s not a good place to go at night.”
“Is it worse than that?” I pointed toward the market behind us. I was on the verge of hysterical laughter. A small giggling sound escaped from Prim’s curving lips, and that was all it took. The absurdity of the moment shifted a gear in my head, and laughter bubbled out. Prim’s answering laugh started a volley that instantly ballooned out of control. Our amused cackling tumbled out of the alcove and echoed down the slim passageway.
“Yes.” She chortled, gripping her sides.
“Cuz that was a shit show.” I nearly cried. We fought for air, then howled again. How could anything be worse than a pestilent den of curse-dripping, mummified thieves?
“I know.” Prim slapped her knee, convulsing.
“This was not on the brochure,” I assured her, and our tittering started over again.
It took a long minute to get a grip on ourselves. The bout of hysterics left us loose and a little lighter. I turned my head back and forth to work the knots out of my neck.
“I can tell Barcelona has made a good impression on you.” Prim sighed.
“Maybe under different circumstances…” I began, but no, a city of this size with this many centuries of ghosts, was not a good place for me.
“The location I mentioned is a historic graveyard on the southern side of the city. There’s tons of dead people.”
“Sounds perfect.”
What was I saying? I couldn’t walk into a cemetery until I’d gotten some quality sleep. The thought of resting instantly pulled at my eyelids. My head began to droop. No. I jolted upright. No sleeping in doorways in strange cities.
“Maybe I should rest first.”
“Like I said, my place is only a few blocks from here. I think Baba can make it that far.”
Primrose shuffled to her feet, and we made our way down the walkway to the alley’s entrance. Baba, the Veil, nodded as Prim whispered into her ear and we set off at a brisk pace.
A strange song rang through the curving alleys as our party of three crept through the pre-dawn dimness. Islamic voices heralded the coming of a new day in passionate, off-key wails that made my faith cower in pale comparison. I loved the Lord, but not to the point of serenading him several times a day and, suddenly, that felt wrong.
Masculine voices raised through the air as we threaded around corners and down winding stone walkways. Their unabashed divulgences both pleaded and proclaimed in a tongue I didn’t understand. What they said was a mystery, but how they said it, how their voices stretched to the point of breaking to convey the contents of their hearts…that I understood.
I moved quickly through the shrinking shadows buffeted by their songs of faith. They were already convinced the Lord was with them, even before the day had started. Was the Lord with me? St. Jude’s kiss tingled on my forehead like a promise. I wished I knew what that meant.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Rasmus of Gomorrah
Grayford
The basement of the Canterbury Cathedral wasn’t a basement at all, but a crypt. The enormous space stretched away in low Norman arches that curved down into squat, lightly engraved columns. Electric chandeliers chased the gloom from the center of the room, leaving the roped-off edges dark and unwelcoming. I stood in the shadows of an alcove shaking with cold and perhaps a touch of trauma. A collection of five druids ringed me, staffs at the ready.
“I demand the immediate release of Miss Melisande Blythe into my custody.” I straightened to my full height and looked each man in his eyes. This wasn’t how I’d imagined my rescue operation playing out. I’d hoped to slip among their numbers unnoticed, but there was no help for that now.
“I have heard of no such person,” the man with the storm cloud beard exclaimed. His bushy brows bent low over translucent eyes.
“She was taken from her home in America by a man named Rasmus. If he is among you, I demand you deliver him to me at once.”
“Rasmus?” he croaked. The other druids exchanged a look among themselves. “Rasmus of Gomorrah?”
“The Rasmus that can translocate.”
The gruff man’s eyes twitched to the druid behind me. I reached for my missing sword. The blinding end of a staff connected with my temple, and someone extinguished the lights.
Chapter Thirty
The Longitudes of Misfortune and the Latitudes of Ruin
Melisande
“No!” I came awake with a shout. My lungs hyperventilated automatically to get the oxygen flowing to my brain again. Sleep paralysis quivered down my arms and legs, causing me to tremble like a chihuahua. The clock on the wall of Prim’s well-decorated studio apartment said I’d only been asleep for roughly thirty minutes. Not enough to refresh my failing synapses.
“Who’s William?”
“What?” I slurred.
“You were talking in your sleep.”
The nightmare was fresh in my mind. Grayford was trapped in darkness with water that wanted him dead. I could still feel the weight of an otherworldly presence pressing him down into the water. He fought back with an invisible fire, but it burned him to do so. Just when I thought the dream was changing and he would fight free, something hit him from behind and he died.
Tears slid down my cheeks as I tried to shake the swell of emotions the nightmare had called to life. It was just a dream. It wasn’t real. Grayford was safe at home and waiting for me.
“Here.” Prim handed me a glass of water and took a seat on the sofa across from me. Her dark eyebrows knit together in concern. I must have looked like a drug addict sprawled ac
ross her expensive-looking loveseat. To her credit, there didn’t seem to be any judgement on her face. If my sudden separation from Grayford was any indication of what substance withdrawal was like, my heart went out to anyone who’d suffered that particular torment. Nevertheless, I felt the need to clarify.
“It’s not detox. I’m narcoleptic.”
“So you said. Is that the thing where someone falls asleep suddenly?”
“Yes, kind of. There are sleep attacks in the package deal, but cataplexy is about losing control of muscle groups. It looks like we’ve suddenly gone to sleep, but it’s just our brain paralyzing our body because it thinks we are already asleep and trying to act out our dreams.”
Prim gave me a confused look.
“Yeah. It’s complicated.”
“Is that why you stumbled so much when we were in Los Ladrones’ reception room?”
“Yeah. I slipped into the hypnagogic state. It’s like dreaming while I’m awake. Sometimes, I see ghosts. Sometimes, it’s just a hallucination. For instance, when I looked at you, I saw these big, amorphous wings filled with color and changing images. And your eyes…”
“That was real,” Prim stated matter-of-factly and leaned back into the plush embrace of the couch. I wasn’t sure how to respond.
“Can you see when your eyes are like that? They looked like black holes.”
“I’m seeing inward when I’m like that, but if you want to talk about black holes…” She trailed off as she stood and pulled a small, golden-framed mirror off the wall and handed it to me. I held it up and stifled a scream. I almost dropped the mirror.
“Holy shit!”
“You looked a little rough at the dance club, but I assumed you were on a bender. Now…I’m not sure a little rest is going to fix that.”
I braced the mirror against my knees and took a close look at myself. Vestiges of Celene’s makeup still clung to my skin, but rivulets of sweat and smudges of alley grime had morphed it into a mask of menace. Dark purple shadows had collected under my feral eyes forcing the whites to glow with a cannibalistic intensity.
This isn’t me.
“I need a bath.”
“And a transfusion,” she joked, but that’s exactly what it looked like. Did one of the vampires…bite me? I swiped at my neck, running a hand up and down my skin. I couldn’t feel any puncture wounds.
“Do you think…?”
“They bit you?” Prim finished my thought. “I’d see it if they had.” She tapped her temple.
“So?”
“No. I don’t think so. But something is wrong.” She leaned forward, bracing her elbows on her knees. “You feel wrong,” she said gently.
“I always feel wrong.” I tried for levity, but I could sense what she was talking about. It was as though the crack in my brain was widening, and the things that whispered on the other side of that crack had noticed.
“Can you…I mean…what you did for Los Ladrones…”
“Can I doomsay for you?” Her shapely eyebrows shot up. “Is that what you’re asking?”
I nodded. If something bad was going on with me, she’d see it. I stared at my shadowed reflection. I didn’t dare speak my biggest fear out loud. Even as it peered at me from the crisp, clear surface of Prim’s mirror.
“I don’t think you understand what doomsaying is. It’s not good news.”
“I’m used to bad news.”
She shook her head.
“It’s not just the news that’s bad. Part of portending…” She seemed to struggle for an explanation. “When you speak the future, you cement it in place.” She blinked long lashes over her unique eyes. The hazel pattern of blue and brown blotched like continents and flowed like oceans. Sitting that close to her in the bright light of day revealed her eyes as the maps they were. Prim saw the world in all its darkness. She saw the longitudes of misfortune and the latitudes of ruin.
“So, before you told the Thief Lords about the attack tomorrow, it might not have happened?”
“The probability was high, but…yes…now it will happen for sure.”
She watched me while that information sunk in. I’d always figured God was the only one who could make something happen. That wasn’t a power a mortal should have.
“I see what you mean,” I said at last.
“I can help you better if I don’t doomsay. The small things I can see allow me to take certain actions, alter events in little ways. But I can only see the whole picture when I speak it. By then, it’s too late for me to do anything about it.”
“Is that why you helped me?”
“Yes.”
“And there’s more people with your…ability?”
She nodded.
“House Harbinger?” I remembered the mummy mentioning it.
Prim’s eyes went cold.
“That’s my…was my guild, but I no longer consider them clansmen.” My host leaned back again, letting the soft cushions of her modern white sofa absorb her tension. “Their job is to doomsay. They take their clients’ money and their ill intentions and make them manifest.”
I could definitely see how that was a bad thing.
“It doesn’t always work out the way the clients might want, but more times than not, it does.”
“You’d think people would want your help avoiding catastrophe.”
“You’d think.”
I knew what it felt like to be weaponized. Of all the souls embroiled in the battle at the Seventh Gate, I was the only one sent in to close it. I’d placed my own feet on that path, but I remember looking out at the soldiers’ faces. They’d known I was going to die but they’d hoped my “magic” would close the gate in the process.
I’d never thought of myself as having magic. I had an autoimmune disorder. I had a brain injury. Did that amount to magic? If so, where did that fit in God’s plan? Where did Prim’s abilities fit? Where did vampires fit, or cursed thieves?
I put the mirror down and placed my swimming head in my hands.
“If you’re awake for a while, how about some eggs?”
“That would be great,” I muttered toward the shaggy white and tan rug. The fibers were long and thick and pettable.
“Can I help?”
Prim laughed as she disappeared around a partition.
“Nice of you to offer, but no, I’ve got it.”
****
Okay, I admitted, the orange juice was much better in Spain, but there was no way those tiny eggs or weird chorizo sausages would hold up to an American breakfast. My mouth watered as I waited to find out.
I practically hugged the steaming ceramic pan Prim had set on the thick woven placemat before me. I waited at the two-person dining table until she joined me with her pan, then I tore into it. Red peppers, crushed tomatoes, and garlic mixed with perfectly sautéed onion and a sprinkling of Parmesan cheese. The chorizo was thinly sliced and turned into the mixture so that it added to but didn’t overpower the dish. I ripped at the buttery bread she’d placed between us.
“I’m glad you like it.” Prim gave me the banked smile I was starting to realize was her default expression. I chuckled at my complete lack of manners.
“It’s delicious. Are you a chef?”
“In another life,” is all she offered, then poured me more juice. “This dish is called Eggs in Purgatory.”
“Fitting.” I fanned my mouth. The red pepper flakes stung my lips and tongue, but it was worth it.
I finished the breakfast in record time and stood to clear the dishes, but Prim placed a hand in the air to stop me. She slid her cell phone toward me on the table and took the dishes to the kitchen.
The relief at having been saved from that chilling predicament washed over me again. Doomsayer or not, Prim was a godsend.
I looked down at the phone as my eyes pricked with unshed tears. I dialed Grayford’s number and waited for the ring, but it went instantly to voice mail.
“Gray, are you okay? Please call me at this number. I got away from
them. I found help, but I need a plan to get out of this mess.” An image of his sharp blue, calculating eyes sank into my chest like a dagger. My voice hitched. “I don’t have anything. No ID. No money. No passport. If I go to the embassy, I don’t even know what I’d say.” I cringed at the weakness in my voice. “I…I love you. Please call.”
I hung up the phone and waited for it to ring back. It would ring right back, I assured myself. I placed it on the table with its display screen pointing up and stared at the dark rectangle.
Josh. I’ll call Josh.
I picked up the phone and dialed Josh’s number.
“What’s up?” Josh’s low, gravelly voice greeted me casually as if the world had not been turned upside down. For a fraction of a second, I remembered when Josh had been my true north. His strong, fixed presence had been a constant in my life. Then I’d met Colonel William Grayford, and my entire compass changed. Grayford was my magnetic north. I would always pull toward him.
“Josh! Thank God.” I sucked in a relieved breath and blew it out. I wanted to scream for help, but I knew Josh. He’d call the police, the government, the Pope. He’d move heaven and earth to get me help and, right now, I needed heaven and earth to stay where they were.
“Josh...”.
Be specific. Calm. But specific.
“I need your help.”
“What’s wrong?” There it was, that reliable, protective savior complex.
“I’m out of town and I can’t get hold of Grayford.”
“You’re out of town? We’re filming at the Poplar Grove Estate tomorrow night.”
“Yeah, I don’t think I’m going to make that. Can you just go to my apartment and see if Grayford is there?”
“Where are you?”
Fuck. I’d kept the truth from Josh once before and I’d hated every minute of it. There was no need to protect him from the darkness of the world. He knew. He’d seen it. God had a plan for him in that endless conflict between good and evil, but maybe now was not the time for the full upload.
“I’m in Spain.”
“What?”
“I’m…I’m in Spain. I’m in Europe.”
Silence.
“Something bad happened and I was taken against my will, but I’m okay now. I’m safe.”
A Shiver of Shadows Page 14