“What’s it say?” Ryder whispered.
“I can’t tell.” I leaned closer to the antimirror, trying to decipher the words on the wall behind me, backward as though they appeared:
I promised you then
My revenge had just begun.
I spread it over centuries,
And took you one by one.
The lines seemed familiar—a famous poem, perhaps? If so, Oliver would probably recognize them. I almost called him in before I caught sight of a figure in the glass, standing in the shadows, still as a tombstone. Watching me. A cold fist coiled around my heart.
“Go dark,” I said, flipping the antimirror around and setting it against the wall. When I was done, I backed toward Ryder, watching, waiting to see an ooze of ghostlight around the mirror. It never came—the only sound I heard was a soft, low whistle, one that almost sounded like a faraway howl.
“Micheline?” Ryder asked. “You okay?”
“Yeah,” I said, turning toward him. He put a hand on the small of my back, then pulled me against his chest when he found me trembling. I barely had the words to say, “Now I’m sure I know what the ghost was after.”
“And what’s that?” he asked.
I looked back at antimirror. “Us.”
FRIDAY, 8:02 P.M.
“SO YOU THINK THE attack last night was a trap?” Jude asked, much recovered now that we were far, far away from St. Mary’s. “That just seems kind of … I don’t know, off.”
“Farfetched, maybe?” Oliver offered.
“This thing’s dead,” Jude said, twisting a straw wrapper around his index finger. “It can’t just go down to the local library and Google us, Einstein.”
The four of us whispered over a chipped Formica table, sitting alone in a used-up cigarette stub of a diner. The boys and I came here often—we’d saved the owner’s daughter from a reaver dog last year and had a free meal ticket since. The food wasn’t great, but the plates came out heaping. Nothing made the boys happier than conquering small mountains of protein and carbs.
Oliver’s notebook lay on the table between us, pages covered in his precise handwriting. I traced the lines of the ghost’s macabre song with a fingertip, bruising the paper with ink. He’d already written down the lines I’d read on the wall in the Obscura—I circled the words I promised you then, wondering who had been promised what kind of revenge, and when.
“We’ve already determined the St. Mary’s attack wasn’t random,” Oliver said, leaning forward, tapping the mussed lines. “These words are familiar to me, though I can’t recall from where.”
“It sounds like a poem,” I said.
“No, that’s not quite it,” Oliver said with a frown. “You said the lines were accompanied by both a distressed Helsing insignia and what looked to be a dragon symbol. Can you sketch what the dragon looked like?”
“You got a pen?” I asked, taking the blue ballpoint Oliver offered me. I wasn’t much of an artist, but the dragon emblem I’d seen hadn’t been complicated—a winged, snake-like creature curled in a circular shape, with the tip of its tail wrapped around the base of its head.
Jude cocked his head to look at my drawing. “I’m not sure if that’s a dragon or a bad case of ringworm.”
Ryder chuckled. “Sick, mate. We’re about to eat.”
Jude grinned and shrugged.
I sketched the Helsing insignia inside the dragon’s ring, then wrote the poem’s lines in a circle around both emblems. When I finished, I pushed it into the center of the table for everyone to see.
“Obviously, our target’s all about revenge.” Oliver steepled his fingers under his nose. “Eye for an eye, ‘my revenge has just begun,’ and a dragon that almost looks like an ouroboros.”
“A what?” Jude asked.
“An ouroboros,” Oliver said, as if repeating the word would help us understand. “You know, the snake that eats its own tail? It’s linked with medieval alchemic practices and is a symbol for infinity.”
“How do you know all this weird stuff?” Jude asked, squishing his features together in his what’s-wrong-with-you? face.
“It’s my job to know weird stuff,” Oliver said. “In this case, the symbolic link to the ouroboros may indicate that the entity’s revenge is coming full circle, or … perhaps that its revenge is infinite and unending?”
“Reassuring,” Jude muttered.
“How will this stuff help us take our target out?” Ryder asked.
“The more we know about the entity’s motivation and psychology, the easier it will be to profile and track,” I said. Though even I had to admit, this new information didn’t help us define the entity’s haunting pattern. If anything, it only created more mysteries, more questions.
Jude hunched over his mug. “So you really think this thing set a trap for us, don’t you?”
“I do,” I said softly. “I didn’t mention this to your dad, Oliver, but the St. Mary’s ghost didn’t just recognize me as a Helsing reaper. It called me by name.”
The boys startled, but Oliver recovered first. “It knew who you were? Why didn’t you tell us this earlier?”
Because it means the dead are just as aware of me as the living are. But I didn’t say those words aloud, bucking them off in a simple lift of my shoulders.
Oliver’s eyes narrowed. “What else haven’t you told us?”
“That’s it,” I said. “I swear.” Before I could explain further, the waitress came with our food. She leaned lower than necessary when placing the plates on the table, and I swear her blouse’s top button hadn’t been undone before. If I saw the lacy pink edge of her bra, so did the boys.
When her gaze lingered on Ryder, Jude elbowed him. Ryder gave her a wan smile, no teeth, which she took the wrong way and winked at. I turned up my nose and tried to ignore it—I was used to this. Anyone with a pulse tried to flirt with Ryder, and even if they didn’t, it wasn’t like Dad would let me date anyway. The minute I hit eighteen, I’d be put on a platter for the highest bidder—if a man could bid with his old-blood genes, reaping record, and loyalty to my father, that is. It was so medieval it made me sick.
It’s the way our family has done things for centuries, Dad said.
You’ll do it for the corps and for your family, Dad said.
I loved your mother more than life itself, Dad said.
Suddenly, everything on my plate looked toxic, the sausage pasty, and the eggs were big boils of yellow pus. My stomach flipped over and squished my appetite. I pushed my plate away. Why worry about that future when my whole life might only consist of six more days?
I stared out the window, wishing the restaurant’s heat would chase the chill from my bones and guts, or that I could cut the ghostlight out of my skin. We’d found no real leads at the hospital, which meant Oliver would need to hack Investigations’s network and download their findings. Failing that, I’d need to talk to another Obscura ghost.
We had to find a way to track our captor, and fast.
Jude kicked me in the shin. “Are you listening, Princess?”
I blinked, shaking my thoughts off. “Sorry, what?”
“I asked if you could get a statement from Marlowe,” Oliver said. “I’ll get the security tapes from my father. We should identify the person responsible for breaking the antimirror, if possible.”
Jude’s fork squeaked as he stabbed a piece of sausage off my plate. “Marlowe could’ve planted the antimirror in the hospital himself, guys.”
“Jude, he would never,” I said, narrowing my eyes. “He’s an exorcist and a priest.”
“Religion doesn’t stop a guy from screwing around, it just makes him pay for it.” Jude’s grin pricked my composure like a hot poker. My head understood he was goading me, but my heart still caught fire.
I pressed my palms into the table and rose. “Marlowe wouldn’t put innocent lives at stake—”
“Dracula,” Oliver said softly, but the word—no, the name—had mass and force, vehemence enough
to feel like a blow. I paused, and everything I’d meant to say fled.
“What are you talking about, Ollie?” Ryder asked, his brows knitting together.
Oliver blinked as if stepping out of a dream … or a nightmare. “I know where I’ve seen these lines before”—he tapped the words I’d inscribed on his notebook—“Dracula spoke these words to Van Helsing’s original hunting party, but it’s not a direct quote.”
“So … what?” Jude asked.
“I don’t know,” Oliver said. “Vampires aren’t supposed to have souls, so Dracula hasn’t come back as a ghost to torment us. But there are organizations who claim an affiliation with Dracula, none of whom bear love for the corps or the Helsing family.”
“Any of those blokes have an emblem like this?” Ryder asked, tapping the dragon symbol.
“It could belong to any number of organizations,” Oliver replied.
More questions with no answers. I leaned forward. “For now, let’s focus on finding a place to hide for a few days, preferably somewhere I could set up a darkroom.”
“The safe houses are out,” Jude said.
“Obviously,” Oliver said. Jude wagged a tongue full of half-chewed food at him. “Close your mouth, Drake, your IQ is leaking out again. Hotels or motels in the city aren’t an option, either. It’s risky for us to be seen, even here.”
“The waitress won’t talk,” Jude said. “Outback here just needs to wink and give her his number.”
Ryder scowled at Jude, who laughed.
“What? It can be a fake number,” Jude said.
“Piss off, mate.”
“Perhaps we should leave the city,” Oliver said. “I have connections in Sausalito and Palo Alto who might be willing to give us a place to stay.”
“Ghosts aren’t nomadic, so I’m sure our target will stay here in San Francisco,” I said. “No use in leaving.”
Jude shoved a sausage in his mouth. “I know some people, underground types who won’t talk—”
“Not your Tenderloin mates,” Ryder said. “Not with Micheline.”
“We don’t have a lot of options,” I said.
“And they definitely don’t have any ties to Helsing,” Jude said.
Oliver pointed his fork at Jude. “Are they the idiots who think they’re living vampires? The ones who seduce girls and—”
“Yeah,” Ryder said, his tone so conversation over we just let it be. He knew I could take care of myself, right?
“There is one place we could go,” Oliver said after a long moment. “It has a darkroom, and I’m pretty sure it’s the last place anyone will look for us.”
A chill swept through me, making everything dingier, sharper, more real. Our unused utensils looked grimy, our plates chipped. I swear those cracks hadn’t been in the vinyl seat before, either, or the names of a pair of lovers scratched into one corner of the table, then inked out: Alex and Cara, heart, forever. Psych.
Ryder set his fork down and leaned back, crossing his arms over his chest. Jude stared into his coffee mug. We all knew what Oliver meant: home. Our home, the old compound at the Presidio. A place I hadn’t been since the night my mother died, reanimated, and killed my brothers. The first night I failed to be worthy of my father’s love.
Dad and I left everything behind that night. He’d carried out my mother’s and brothers’ corpses himself, let the Helsing hazmat team disinfect the house and cover the furniture, locked up, then walked away. The house died and rotted with the rest of my family, and Dad and I swore to never return.
The old Micheline Helsing died in that house. I rose from her ashes.
I couldn’t—
I wouldn’t—
Desperate times, desperate measures.
Ryder shifted in his seat. “Bad idea, mate—”
“No, he’s right,” I said. “The Presidio’s one of the last places they’ll think to look for us. It’s been sealed up for months now.”
“Nobody wants to go back there,” Jude said, his gaze still sunk in his mug. He’d made the mistake of holding my hand at Mom’s funeral, sans gloves. Jude drank himself stupid that day; even now, the skin at the corners of his eyes tightened, perhaps trying to un-see the vision. To forget.
I wished I could forget, too. That night remained with me, its gory images splattered across the film of my memory. I’d never escape it—not with therapy or drugs or even time—a girl can’t outrun her own mind, not for long.
“Helsing still monitors the Presidio, but not closely,” Oliver said, pulling out his laptop. “I’ll hack the servers and put the cameras on a continuous loop. We’d have access to everything we’d need—archives, laboratories, armories—”
“Antimirrors,” I said, thinking of Mom’s gallery in the basement of our old house.
Ryder looked at me, gauging my strength, my desperation. “Maybe the dorms, then.”
“No, it has to be the big house,” I said. My house.
Jude flinched and hunched over the table, pinning his discomfort under his elbows. He’d have problems of a different sort in that house—Jude didn’t like to stay in any place old enough to have its own memories.
“The big house isn’t the only place to crash at the Presidio, Micheline,” Ryder said, glancing sideways at Jude. “It’s not a good move, not for either of you.”
“It’s our safest bet,” I said. “I’ll have access to both a darkroom and an antimirror gallery there. You guys can stay where you want, but I’m going there.”
“Damn your stubbornness,” Ryder said.
“It’s my signature trait.” I pretended to bat my lashes.
Ryder rubbed the back of his neck and sighed. “I should say no.”
“You should say hell no,” Jude said. “But you won’t, not to her.”
“Says who?” Ryder said, shooting Jude a look.
Jude snorted.
“So it’s a plan, then?” Oliver asked, looking back and forth between Ryder and Jude.
“Guess so,” Ryder said. While I was glad for his concession, the thought of home added torque to the tension in my chest. Half of me wanted to run home; the other half wanted to run away. Far, far away.
The waitress sauntered up to the table, swinging her hips. “The boss lady says you guys eat for free,” she said, popping her gum, looking straight at Ryder. “Says you saved her kid.”
“Micheline’s bullet stopped the necro,” Ryder said. “Not mine.”
She looked at me, her Popsicle-red smile melting a little. “Oh,” she said, her lips making a perfect O shape. “Well, aren’t you the little hero?”
I held her gaze for three full, silent seconds, waiting for the rest of her smile to slide off. “Give Greta our regards and thanks.” I slid out of the booth and headed for the door, chased by the waitress’s snotty remark of “What’s her problem?”
Ryder caught up to me, pushing the door open for me. “This is why people think you’re intense, Micheline.”
“I have no problem being intense,” I said, stepping past him.
“Obviously,” he muttered.
We decided to split up—Oliver and Jude would head to the store for supplies. I sent them with a list of things we’d need, in hopes they would come back with more than cold cereal, several gallons of milk, and ramen noodles. As for Ryder and me, we’d face down the house I’d seen in nightmares these past eighteen months, the place he carried me from on a frigid March morning, bitten, bleeding, broken. We’d break in the house, and I’d have the chance to develop my photographs from St. Mary’s and hopefully find some clues in them. Failing that, I’d try to summon a ghost into Mom’s antimirrors.
Someone, somewhere, had to have answers for me. As I kicked my leg over Ryder’s bike and held on to him, I wondered how many rules I’d have to break to do this.
How many lines I’d have to cross,
How intense I’d have to be—
To survive.
FRIDAY, 9:35 P.M.
THE HELSING COMPOUND AT the Pr
esidio used to be sealed up tighter than Fort Knox: a twenty-foot-tall concrete wall enclosed the old base, Helsing crosses molded on its face, razor wire spooling around its top. Cameras and motion sensors watched every inch of the wall, so if anyone—or anything—approached within a few yards, dispatch sent out a crew. Nowadays, the five-foot-high reflective-red signs reading NECROTIC QUARANTINE: KEEP OUT probably deterred more break-ins than the cameras and faux gun turrets; the speculation and urban legends that arose after Mom’s death bolstered people’s fear of the place.
Oliver knocked out the compound’s security systems on the drive over, placing the cameras on an infinite blind loop and impairing the motion sensors. Now we just needed to get in.
Ryder and I waited, motorcycle idling, while Oliver hacked into the gate computer. Mist wound through the trees on the other side of the twelve-foot iron gate, obscuring the road and the buildings beyond. From the absence of graffiti, refuse, and human decay, I guess this place scared people stupid. It sure scared me.
“You don’t have to do this,” Ryder said, quietly enough so that Oliver wouldn’t hear him. He leaned back. “There are places we can go that won’t make you…” The engine muttered and growled, saying what Ryder couldn’t or wouldn’t.
“Freak out?” I asked, leaning into him.
“Why face this hellhole now?”
“You know why.”
He blew out a breath and looked back at the road. I put a hand on his biceps, which wasn’t a safe, neutral zone. My fingers paled against the richness of his skin, overlaying the second Helsing tattoo he wore, the one he got for saving my life. A shiver rippled under my touch, and I wondered for the thousandth time why he refused to wear the leather jacket stowed in his saddlebag.
I squeezed his arm. “I’ll be okay.”
“Swear you’ll tell me if the place gets to be too much?” He held his pinkie finger out and I laughed. We’d done this dozens of times over the years, made promises to watch every George Romero movie together, or to only eat Vegemite for a month (I broke that one within hours; the stuff grossed me out).
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