Shifting Shadows: Stories from the World of Mercy Thompson

by Patricia Briggs

  “Nicole,” I said.

  She looked at me—and then straightened when she could meet my eyes. “I can’t leave,” she said.

  I nodded. “What are you doing?”

  “I can’t leave,” she told me sadly, running her hand down his arm.

  “He didn’t kill you?” I asked.

  She looked at him, bewildered. “I can’t leave.”

  There wasn’t a lot of intelligence left. The kind of haunting that Rick had described, brutal and powerful, just seemed beyond her.

  “Rick,” I said, still looking at her, “did you kill your wife?”

  “What do you think?” he said bitterly. “Do you think she’d haunt me otherwise? The case against me was dismissed, you know, because my money ensured that no one could prove my guilt.”

  Sometimes people learn to lie so well I can’t hear it in their voice, especially if they’ve had years to practice or even come to believe their own lies. But I had to get a yes or no answer even to try.

  “Did you kill your wife, Mr. Albright?” I asked again.

  “I can’t leave,” his dead wife said again, and leaned her head against his shoulder. “I can’t leave.”

  He shivered, but I don’t think he felt her. “Yes,” he said coolly. “Of course I killed her.” He looked at Lisa when she gasped. “You have to know it,” he said harshly. “If I hadn’t been filthy rich, I would’ve rotted in prison for the rest of my life—or sat on death row until someone decided to pull the lever.”

  “Werewolves and Mercy,” Zack said conversationally, “can tell when you are lying.”

  “What Zack means to say, Lisa,” I told her, “is that that was a big fat lie. Not the part about being rich having saved him—but the part about his having murdered his wife. Which leads to the question—why, then, is she haunting you, Rick? All she can tell me is that she can’t leave.”

  Zack stared at me as if I were speaking Greek, but Lisa took a big shaky breath. “I knew it,” she said. Then she walked over to Rick and shoved him. “That’s for trying to make me think you’re a murderer. Stupid.” Then she turned back to me. “So why can’t she leave?”

  I shrugged. “I’ve run into a few different kinds of ghosts.” I used to think there were only three kinds, but I’d expanded my knowledge a bit over the past few years. There are more things in Heaven and Earth and all that. But some things still held true. “One of the most common kinds that I’ve seen are repeaters—ghost that seem to reenact the same events over and over.”

  “Traumatic events,” said Zack.

  I nodded. “Usually. But sometimes just everyday things. Habits. They don’t interact with the real world much. The appearance of body parts—that fits with a repeater, except that she didn’t die here in the hot-tub room, right? And repeaters are usually tied to places, not people.”

  “It’s his fault,” the ghost said.

  “No,” I told her. “He didn’t kill you.”

  “It’s his fault,” she said again. “I can’t leave.”

  “Is he holding you here?”

  She stared at me. “It’s his fault. It’s his fault I died.”

  I don’t know if the dead can lie or not. I just didn’t think that this ghost had enough . . . personality left to lie.

  I looked at Rick. “How could it be your fault that she died?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t know.”

  The hair on the back of my neck started to tingle, and my ears popped like I was on an airplane in rapid descent. A sweet scent from my childhood drifted to my nose as well as the sharp scent of ozone—lightning just before it strikes. I didn’t know what it was, but it didn’t feel like anything very healthy. And the first rule in my sensei’s rules of combat is—run.

  “Everyone out of the house,” I said.

  I followed my own advice and started for the door. I grabbed Lisa’s upper arm as I moved. I didn’t run, but I wasn’t waiting for flies to gather, either.

  Zack took my lead and, as he walked by Rick, he put a hand on his shoulder and pushed him along. Rick didn’t struggle so much as hesitate, but Zack was a werewolf—so Rick came with us.

  So did Rick’s dead wife.

  Even with the ghost tagging along, I felt better with the door closed behind us. Which meant whatever was unnerving me, it wasn’t Nicole Albright.

  “Tell me,” I said, “about the times you saw your wife when you weren’t here. When was the first time?”

  “If you’ll tell me why I just got hustled out of my own home,” Rick said.

  “Something happened,” Lisa said. “I don’t know what, but a whole marathon of people were jogging across my grave.”

  “Did you feel anything?” I asked Zack.

  “The spike of emotion from you and a moment later from Lisa,” said Zack. He was kind enough not to say that what he’d smelled was terror. “But I smelled something different . . . not sure what it was. Sweet.”

  “Bubble gum,” I said.

  And Rick’s pupils contracted.

  “That means something to you?” I said.

  “My mother.” He half laughed. “She had this shampoo that was supposed to be pomegranate or something. She paid a fortune for it. But to me it always smelled like pink bubble gum.”

  “Tell me,” I said, “about your mother.”

  “I’m not in the habit of opening my personal box of poor-little-rich-boy stories to everyone who asks,” he told me. I think he meant to sound affronted or cold because he ended up somewhere in the middle—and I could smell his refusal. His pain.

  Lisa put her hand on his and squeezed.

  He looked at her, and I remembered what he said about intuition. He must know how she felt—even without intuition, Lisa’s face was open and honest.

  He turned his hand over until he held Lisa’s. “But I’ve already agreed to this, haven’t I? She was a real piece of work, my mother. Psycho of the Year who was married to the Worst Husband of the Year. But it’s not my mother who is haunting me, it’s my wife.”

  But his dead wife touched his cheek, looked at him with her big, sad eyes, and said, “It’s his fault. It’s his fault. I can’t leave.”

  He flinched and let out a gasp—and I couldn’t see her anymore.

  “Did you see something?” asked Lisa.

  “She was here,” he said, “just for a moment.”

  “But you didn’t see her.” I double-checked with Lisa.

  “No.”

  “Me, neither,” Zack said. “But I smelled something. Just for a second.” His mouth twisted a little, and I knew that whatever he smelled hadn’t been pleasant.

  “Did you hear what she said?” I asked Rick.

  He shook his head. Beyond that quick gasp, he hadn’t reacted at all.

  “I’ve heard her say two things, over and over,” I told him.

  “It’s your fault,” he said tiredly. “I can’t leave.”

  “When I saw the head in the hot-tub room, she said, ‘It’s his fault,’” Lisa told me.

  “That’s what she tells me, too,” I said. “You didn’t kill her. So why isn’t she haunting whoever did?”

  Rick looked around as if he’d never been out on his porch before. Then he walked over to the steps and sat down. He patted the stairs beside him, and Lisa joined him.

  Zack folded his arms, nodded to them, then turned away. His body language was a promise to stay in the background. He was right; Rick would talk more if I was the only stranger he was talking to.

  I hopped over the porch railing and walked in front of the stairs. The porch was high, so sitting on the top step as they were put their heads and mine on a level.

  “First,” I said, “you know who my husband is—so you know that if I wanted fame and glory, I wouldn’t have to use you to get it. I am not about to sell your
story to the newspapers or tabloids. Second, Zack and I have very good noses—and for me scent is sometimes the first indication that there is a ghost in the room. Third, your wife doesn’t have the . . . energy it would require to follow you for all these years. If I hadn’t known that she was this active, I’d have told you she’d leave in a few months.”

  I paused and waited. Lisa patted his hand, and he turned his over and grabbed hers hard.

  “You think my mother is behind this?”

  “I know that there was something else in that room when I pulled us all outside. I know it was not Nicole—it didn’t have the same feeling at all. It felt like some weird combination of fae magic”—some fae magics smell like ozone to me—“and danger. And Zack and I both smelled bubble gum. You say your mother smelled like bubble gum, and she committed suicide two days after your wife died.” Even I remembered that headline. I paused for effect. “Tell me, Rick. How did she and your mother get along?”

  Lisa whispered, “You think his mother killed his wife, then killed herself?”

  “I don’t know anything about his mother,” I said.

  “I’ve thought about it before,” Rick said starkly. “She could have done it. My mother was . . .”

  “Batshit crazy,” said Lisa, and moved until her body leaned against his. She looked at him for permission, and he nodded for her to continue. “She pulled Rick out of school when he was twelve because she thought he was associating too much with the wrong kids. He was playing with one of the groundskeeper’s kids a few years before that, and she shredded the kid’s face with her fingernails—” Lisa made a claw out of her free hand. “Kid had to have cosmetic surgery, which Rick’s dad paid for.”

  Rick cleared his throat. “My mother was sixteen when she met my father, and he was forty. Her father had abandoned her and her mother when she was thirteen. Her mother committed suicide when my mother was fifteen. She told me that her father’s family took care of her—but I can’t confirm that because no one, and I mean no one, ever talked to them but her. She was too rich to go into the foster system, so she was left in her home and watched over by a series of caretakers who were hired by trustees and lawyers.”

  He took a breath. “My father was handsome, rich, and far older than she was. She was beautiful, rich, and young, and had no one. If my father had been a different man, it might have worked. He really loved her at first—and she adored him. Adored being his wife and adored being the mother of his child. When she was pregnant with me, she found out he was having an affair. And our home was a battle zone from then on.” He smiled one of those smiles that mostly point out that the person wearing them is not happy, and said, “For most of my life, she alternated between being Supermom and a crazy woman. Sometimes both in the same ten minutes. So, do I think she could have killed my wife and cut her into pieces?” He looked over my shoulder at nothing and swallowed. “Yes. I’ve always thought so.”

  He returned his gaze to me. “She found Nicole for me. Introduced us, encouraged me to ask her to marry me, then after the wedding, the day my wife was murdered, Mother came to my office with a folder. She showed me proof that my wife had been sleeping with another man throughout our engagement.” He cleared his throat. “Nicole got a butterfly tattoo on her shoulder blade two weeks after we started sleeping together. The photos clearly showed her tattoo.” He grimaced. “My mother had had Nicole followed. She knew about the affair before Nicole and I married. She chose to show the photos to me that day and told me that it was for my sake. So I would understand that my mother was the only one I could trust.”

  “Crazy bitch,” growled Lisa.

  “And that night your wife was killed,” I said.

  “Murdered,” Rick corrected me like it was important. “If anyone had known that my mother had showed me that file that afternoon, I wouldn’t have walked out of the trial a free man. I was always pretty sure my mother had done it—it had all the marks of one of her frenzied, violent moments. Though as far as I know she’d never killed anyone before. I could never have convinced anyone she’d done it, not once she was dead. Only my father and I ever saw her at her worst. Most people thought she was this little porcelain doll.”

  “And Lisa is the only one besides you to have seen your wife’s ghost,” I observed. Lisa, who was beside herself because of how much she loved him, who had gone into the house and was treated to a gruesome sight.

  But Rick was still caught up talking about his mother. “My father said she was a psychic vampire,” he said.

  I blinked at him. “Hold that thought,” I said, and pulled out my phone.

  “Mercy?” Samuel answered his wife’s cell phone. “You know we’re in Ireland, right? And we don’t want to be bothered.”

  Belated honeymoon.

  “Yes. Sorry. But I really need to talk to your wife,” I told him. Ariana was a very old fae. If what I was worried about was possible, she would know. Maybe she’d know what to do with it.

  “Life and death?” Samuel sounded resigned.

  “Death, anyway,” I told him. I would have felt worse, but I knew Samuel. If he and Ariana really hadn’t wanted to be disturbed, they wouldn’t have had the cell phone on.

  He handed me over eventually. I explained the situation to Ariana, taking my time so I didn’t miss any of the details that might or might not be important.

  “So,” I asked her, “is there any way someone of fae blood could kill themselves and make arrangements to haunt someone for the rest of their lives?”

  “They would have to have some sort of power source,” she said. “You told me that when you walked into the house, both you and Zack noticed a drop in the emotional intensity of the humans.”

  “Yes.”

  “There aren’t a lot of ways this could work,” she said after a moment’s thought. “The easiest way would be to quench an object in her death.”

  I’d heard that word before. “Like when a weapon is quenched and takes on the personality traits of the person who dies.”

  “Like that, yes,” she agreed, “but it doesn’t have to be a weapon.” She gave me a detailed explanation and several possible solutions.

  “Okay,” I said, tucking my phone back into my pocket. “There are some fae who can feed on emotions. Literal emotional vampires. Zack and I both felt something odd happen when we walked into the house. Rick was ticked off, and both of you”—I pointed at Lisa and Rick—“were so hot for each other it was uncomfortable.”

  Rick looked at me, but Lisa sucked in a breath and looked at Rick. I shouldn’t have done it, but I just couldn’t bear watching them not watch each other anymore. Four years, she’d been in love with him—and he with her, if I were any judge.

  I continued as if I hadn’t noticed anything. “But all that dropped when you walked through the doorway. It didn’t seem important at the time. Death magic is not something that the fae are much involved in—that’s a witch thing. But there are some magics that the fae can use to tie the essence of a person to objects—they used to use it to power their blades or some of their magical items.” The essence or spirit was different from a soul. A person’s soul, except for thankfully rare instances, was mostly beyond the touch of magic.

  “Your mother, if she learned magic from her father’s family, might have learned how to do that. Or maybe she contacted someone and asked. My expert friend says that usually the . . . the personality fades from such objects. But if your mother could feed herself on your emotions, then she could keep her personality intact indefinitely.”

  “You think my mother killed my wife, then decided that she’d kill herself, so she could follow me around and, what? Take care of me?”

  “Run off anyone who might compete with her for your affections,” I told him. “Or maybe just anyone who might harm you. You don’t really seem like a hermit at heart—but here you are, living isolated from everyone.”

 
“Because anytime I went out, anytime I brought anyone home, my wife would make an appearance,” he said. “I thought I was going mad. I worried someone would notice.” He looked at Lisa. “You don’t know. It was horrible for you, I know. But you don’t know what it meant that someone else saw it. I—” She leaned over and kissed him.

  Which was lovely and sweet. A second later, the window in one of the upstairs rooms blew out and poured glass all over them. I leaned forward to help, but Zack tackled me around the middle and ran fifty feet before he put me down.

  I stepped back from him and opened my mouth.

  “I am your bodyguard,” he told me, almost angrily. “You are still limping, and you almost died. I am doing my job.”

  “Okay,” I said. The one thing you didn’t want to do to a submissive wolf that you cared about at all was put him in the middle of contradictory orders. Adam had told him he was to guard me. I wouldn’t yell at him for it like I would have any other wolf. Probably one of the reasons Zack had been my bodyguard a lot lately.

  Rick and Lisa joined us. Rick had a good-sized wound on his hand, and they both had a few cuts that looked nasty. They’d be feeling them for a few days—but they’d survive. If a big chunk of glass falling from the second story had caught one of them wrong, it could have killed them.

  Ghosts are seldom truly dangerous.

  The key word is “seldom.”

  “If I told you that I think your mother killed herself in a ritual that would put her essence in some object and is, from that object, influencing your wife’s ghost—tried to scare Lisa away because Lisa loves you, and your mother wants to keep you to herself—what object comes immediately to mind?” I asked Rick.

  He looked at me.

  “That one,” I said. “The one that puts that look in your eyes.”

  “But it wasn’t hers,” he said.

  “What wasn’t hers?”

  “A jade pendant. My father died in a car accident right before I was acquitted. He drove off a cliff with his latest girlfriend—she was seventeen. When I was going through the bag the morgue gave me, I found it. I don’t ever remember seeing him wear it. But I liked it, so I kept it.” He reached up, then looked puzzled. “I still wear it most days.”