Shutter

by Courtney Alameda

  I stepped down from the cab, scanning the chalkboard-black windows for ghostlight. My soulchains shifted and pressed against my skin, spilling shivers through my system. Ryder slid on his hunting pack, his gaze on Bianca and Jude. “She’s scared,” he said under his breath.

  “Of course she is,” I said softly, checking my camera and Colt. “She’s not stupid.”

  “Got a brave face on, though. I think she wants to impress you.” Ryder reached out and took my hand, scissoring our fingers together for a few seconds.

  “Let’s just make sure she gets out okay,” I said, watching her take the med kit from the backseat.

  “She’ll get out alive,” Ryder said, taking the safeties off his Colts. “Can’t promise she’s going to be okay.”

  Fair enough. Ryder and I rounded the truck’s back, removing the reaping panes from the bed. Ryder hitched one over his shoulder on the jury-rigged strap, then handed Jude the other.

  “I know the code to the back doors,” Bianca said, waving us forward. We followed her through a grand stone archway, across a cobblestone courtyard, and up to a set of French doors. While she typed a code into the keypad by the door, I unholstered my camera and loaded up a quartz lens. The locks clicked, the right-hand door cracking open.

  I stepped inside first, the house’s temperature nipping at my skin. The gloom inside accentuated the house’s ornate interior, clinging to the red damask walls and greasing the gilt fireplace. Sixteenth-century artwork stared down at us from the ceiling. The place smelled of gardenia mixed with something ashen, like cigar smoke. No sound rippled down to greet us, rendering the place silent. Eerie.

  For a moment, the claws of some uncontrollable feeling extended into my gut—I wanted to scream Oliver’s name, to raise hell until I found him, the last and closest thing I had left to a brother. Instead, I shoved the feeling into a pocket of my heart and downed a deep breath. Only a cool head and hand could help him now.

  The others flanked me, the beams from their flashlights dwindling into the house’s murk. Camera primed, I took the lead, tiptoeing into the massive room. Despite the ballroom’s size and picture windows, the air seemed tightly tamped, almost as claustrophobia inducing as the bay tunnel had been.

  “It’s colder in here than it is outside,” Bianca whispered, her voice shivery. “Is that a ghost thing?”

  I nodded, but the boys shushed her in concert. We swept the room with light, draining shadows from the corners, then moved into the hallway. Large Gothic windows arched their backs along one wall, illuminating a corridor stretching two ways into the darkness. A few bloody handprints were stamped onto the wall. Jude reached out and scraped some blood off with his finger.

  I looked to Bianca. “Which way?”

  “Well, Dr. Stone’s offices are that way”—she said, pointing right—“but Gemma usually studies in their library, in the mansion’s north wing.” She turned her head left, peering into darkness that seemed perfect and complete. She clutched her coat to her chest.

  “How big’s this house?” Ryder asked.

  “Big enough to get lost in,” Bianca said.

  “You guys check Stone’s office,” Jude said, motioning at Ryder and me. “We’ll take the library.”

  “We are not splitting up,” I hissed through clenched teeth. “If you find him—”

  “We split up, we find Einstein faster.” Ghostlight sparked in his irises. Ah. Jude already knew which direction we’d find Oliver. He intended to lead Bianca away from danger, and send Ryder and me straight into it. Perfect.

  “You find anything, get on the comm,” I said, trying to sound as pissed as possible for Bianca’s benefit. “Don’t engage the entity or any affected persons without me, understood?”

  Jude grinned and saluted, surreptitiously wiping the blood on his pants. “You got it, Princess.”

  “Stone’s office is on the first floor, just past the foyer,” Bianca said. “Be careful.”

  Pretty sure that’s my line.

  We split up. The long hallway led Ryder and me into the house’s foyer. The walls wore mahogany scales, which made the room feel twice as dark. A grand chandelier hung in the middle of the room, its jeweled arms trembling and scattering splinters of moonlight on the walls.

  From somewhere above, I heard a girl say in a singsong voice, “Eye for an eye…”

  My gaze traveled up the two-tier staircase, daring the shadows to move. At the stairs’ head, one shadow seemed more three-dimensional than the ones on the wall behind. Ryder’s flashlight arched up the staircase—and I held my breath until the beam touched on the bare, blood-splattered shins of a girl.

  The girl darted left, far faster than human reflexes allowed. Ryder and I sprung after her, leaping up the stairs and scrambling into the hall beyond. She’d disappeared into the darkness, leaving a slammed door and quaking curtains in her wake.

  One door had a crimson handprint wrapped around the jamb. Upon seeing the blood, Ryder swapped his flashlight for his gun and set his mirror down outside the room. He backed against the wall, his left hip inches from the jamb. Beta entry, he mouthed, meaning I’d open the door, but he’d be first in. He pulled the slide on his Colt, chambering a bullet, and he flicked on the gun’s barrel-mounted flashlight.

  Ready? I mouthed.

  He nodded. I turned the knob and shoved the door open. Ryder made a 180-degree turn, pointing his gun into the room. The open door threw a silver arc of light on the floor, veining the shattered screen of Oliver’s cell phone. Beyond that, blindness.

  Ryder’s flashlight washed over a canopy bed with its twisted, lifeless bed sheets. A girl’s white cardigan lay on the floor, speckled with gore. I stepped into the room behind Ryder, sensitive to the tang of copper and salt on my tongue—blood and sweat. Jiggling the light switch, I released a shower of sparks from the chandelier overhead. They fizzled out on Ryder’s hair and shoulders. He twitched, keeping his gaze and weapon trained forward.

  The bedroom was huge—more of a suite, really, and from the frosted layer-cake bedclothes and the photos flickering like candles in the low light, I knew it belonged to a girl. The room, however, appeared empty.

  On our left, the bathroom door hung ajar. Ryder nudged it open, shining his flashlight on something inside. His breath hitched, sharp as a whip’s crack.

  “Come here,” he whispered, stepping right to keep me between his body and the wall. It meant he’d only found one of them.

  I slipped against the bathroom jamb. The broken mirror snarled at me, blood spattered all over the countertops and floor. Small scabs of red rosary glass and slivers of wood gleamed in the low light. My heart made a jagged beat. His rosary … it’s shattered.

  Oliver crouched by the toilet, his back to me, dressed in jeans and his rumpled, ash-and-bloodstained bandages. Soulchains marbled his torso, covering him hip to shoulder and wringing his neck. Something pecked and clawed at his skin from the inside.

  “Ollie?” I whispered.

  “You’ve been very persistent, Micheline.” Oliver’s voice rasped like sandpaper over my skin, but his speech pattern had a languor I didn’t recognize. “All this suffering for naught, simply because you are too obstinate to accept your fate.”

  My spine stiffened. “What have you done to Gemma?”

  “Oh, the girl’s still very much alive, don’t you worry.” Oliver rose, bones groaning, muscles spasming as if they worked at cross-purposes. Blood stained his fists. A face pressed from inside his flesh, its mouth open in a suffocated scream. I recognized the straight nose, his aristocratic cheekbones, and … dear God, that was Oliver’s face. His chest undulated with hands trying to press free of his flesh. I swore I heard Oliver—my Oliver—scream for help inside. I swallowed down a sob.

  “Where’s Gemma?” My voice trembled.

  “Hmph, I think I have a bit of her here.” The entity laughed and relaxed Oliver’s fist, dropping something round. It bounced like a rubber ball over the floor, rolled past my boots, and stopp
ed in our wedge of light.

  A naked eyeball stared at the ceiling.

  I recoiled, my skin ready to scramble straight off my muscles.

  “Where’s the girl?” Ryder stepped forward, leveling his gun at Oliver’s body with both hands.

  Oliver reached out and gripped a dagger of glass from the bathroom countertop. Blood dripped off his fingers, fresh spots blossoming over the floor. The hall door swung shut, chopping off all the light save for Ryder’s beam.

  “She’ll drop in, no doubt,” the entity said, turning. Oliver’s eyes were obsidian shells, cruel as black widow carapaces in Ryder’s flashlight. The ghost possessed Oliver via his soulchains—if it had taken up residence in his body, his eyes would’ve burned with its ghostlight.

  I took a step forward, but Ryder put an arm out as if to corral me. “I’ll ask you one more time, you bastard. Where’s the girl?”

  “How does that old adage go?” Oliver’s lips tweaked into a smile. “Oh, I know—be careful what you wish for, because you just—”

  A wetness tapped my shoulder.

  “—might—”

  A second droplet hit my hair, too heavy to be water. I turned my face toward the ceiling.

  “—get it.”

  Gemma stared down at me, blood dripping from her empty eye sockets.

  “Heads up,” I shouted.

  She lunged with a cry, slamming me into the floor. We skidded toward the door, my camera skipping away from me, our limbs tangling, her nails scrabbling on my eyelids. My training kicked in—I trapped one of her arms to her chest, but I couldn’t get my leg around hers for a flip.

  A crash echoed from the bathroom, porcelain or glass shattering. Ryder grunted in pain.

  Screw careful, cheap shots saved lives. I struck Gemma’s windpipe, stunning her, then busted the heel of my hand into her nose. Cartilage cracked. Her growl gurgled, blood gushing from her nose. She palmed my face, dug her nails into my skin, and rammed the back of my head into the marble tile. Pain rang from the back of my head to my frontal lobe. The world darkened. Time slowed.

  Gemma straddled my chest and pressed my shoulders into the floor. The flare of pain in my injured arm woke me, sped my thoughts back up. When I opened my eyes, I looked straight into her empty sockets, her thumbs positioned by my tear ducts. Her hollow gaze had weight, pressure. Malice.

  “Eye for an eye,” she whispered, cocking her head at an inhuman angle. But as she pressed her thumbs against my eyes, Ryder and Oliver stumbled out of the bathroom. Distracting her. Ryder had Oliver by the shirtfront and whipped his handgun across Oliver’s cheek. The blow rocked my bones.

  Gemma growled and shifted her weight to try to grab Ryder’s leg—big mistake. I rolled my hips, getting enough leverage to dump her on the ground. With a savage kick, I slammed her into the wall. She hit so hard, something cracked inside her. Instead of collapsing, she pushed up to her hands and knees and began to heave, the ghost’s smoky miasma frothing from her gouged sockets and gagging mouth.

  Ryder smashed Oliver’s hand into the bathroom door, shattering his makeshift weapon. Oliver groaned. Pivoting, Ryder grabbed him by the face and slammed the back of his head into the wall. Oliver dropped into a heap on the floor, his blood pumping out onto the white marble. He didn’t move, save for the occasional twitch of his injured hand.

  Gemma convulsed as a ghostlit hand shot from her mouth, its fingers curling around her chin. The miasma gushed from the holes in her head, billowing over the floor like the smoke off dry ice. I grabbed my camera, but she pushed to her feet and fled into the hallway.

  I darted after her and chased her down the stairs. She ran with inhuman speed, straight for a large gallery window, and—

  “No!” I shouted, but Gemma jumped right through the pane. Light fractured. A great glassy crash stabbed into my ears, along with the sound of bullets in the courtyard. I leapt through the broken window, spotting Gemma streaking into the darkness of the grounds. Gunfire drew my attention left, where Jude and Bianca lost ground against a group of staggering, miasma-laced corpses.

  No time to decide. Cursing, I turned my back on Gemma, holstered my camera, and pulled the Colt. Dad’s favorite rule of reaping came back to me as I took aim at a corpse’s leg:

  Save the living first;

  Then kill the dead.

  * * *

  BY THE TIME WE subdued the entity’s puppet-corpses—the bodies belonging to the housekeeping staff, and a woman Bianca identified as Mrs. Stone, Gemma’s mother—we couldn’t find any sign of Gemma or the entity on the property. Jude and I searched the mansion’s grounds for Gemma while Bianca attended to Oliver’s hand and Ryder’s lacerations.

  I was relieved not to be needed by Oliver’s side—the sight of him broken on the floor had scoured the adrenaline out of my system. The glass shards embedded in his skin reminded me of the ones sticking out of Fletcher’s cheek on the night he died, and the connection made something snap inside me. Only the crispness of the night air kept me from doubling over and dry heaving on the grass.

  Did Oliver watch his own hands rip the eyes from Gemma’s head? Is he conscious of this bodily hijacking? Guilt sliced me deep and almost bled out my eyes. I blinked fast to keep the tears from spilling down my cheeks.

  “Hey, you listening?” Jude said, nudging me. “How’d you know? About the rosaries keeping us from getting possessed, I mean?”

  “Call it a hunch,” I said, wiping my upper lip with the back of my hand.

  Jude was silent a moment before he said, “Liar.”

  I didn’t have the mental energy to spar with him or to lie to someone so canny, so I let the accusation stand. We searched the rest of the property in silence, finding nothing but a creaky gate with gore-smeared bars to tell of Gemma’s—and therefore the entity’s—flight. This is my fault. I should never have sent Oliver out alone, and never into a house full of innocents.

  All my fault.

  We returned to Bianca and Ryder empty-handed. They’d bandaged Oliver’s wounds and put a tourniquet on his arm, then secured him to the bed.

  “We called Marlowe,” Ryder said. “He’s on his way with a couple of reaper ambulances.”

  “They’ll only need one,” Jude said, and the words echoed in the room and clattered in my heart. Bianca sank into one of Gemma’s overstuffed chairs, tremors starting in her lower lip and moving into her shoulders. She put her face in her hands, and I turned away to let her grieve.

  By the time Marlowe arrived, I’d gone numb from the pain. While Bianca and Jude helped the EMTs get Oliver secured on a gurney and downstairs, Ryder and I spoke with Father Marlowe.

  “I’ll need your father’s help to find the girl.” Marlowe put a hand on my shoulder and squeezed. “You mustn’t linger long, but before you go, I managed to learn something new from my associate in Rome.”

  My heart skipped. “What’s that?”

  He looked down at Oliver’s broken rosary, which he’d wrapped around his hand. “Just this: Banishing your ghost to Purgatory alone is not enough—you must subdue its spirit and force it to cross over. Permanently.”

  “But that requires a rite, doesn’t it? I-I can’t perform—”

  “I’ll call you at dawn. And I’m sorry this didn’t protect your friend.” He closed the broken rosary in my hand. “The wearer must have some faith for these to be effective, Micheline. Do you understand?”

  I nodded, biting my lip to stop up the tears.

  “Use it for fuel,” he said, and kissed my forehead. “Now go. I’ll call six-one-one in five minutes.”

  Ryder took my hand and gripped it hard, like he needed to hang on to me to keep his own sanity intact. I followed him down the hall, down the stairs, and out the front door, Luca’s words taunting me the whole way.

  The problem with a cross is …

  The problem with a cross is—

  It fails the unbeliever.

  SUNDAY, 6:10 A.M.

  AT DAWN, EVERYONE RETREATED to the anesth
esia of sleep: sick of talking about what happened, sick of trying to make sense of everything, sick of it all. We’d faced desperate odds before—but nothing ever dropped Jude on the floor with a bottle of something clear and hard that he’d lifted from Dad’s old liquor cabinet. Nothing bruised Ryder under the eyes before and left him mute, not like this. They don’t teach a bloke to fight monsters that look like his best mates was all he’d said all morning.

  Whenever I closed my eyes, nightmares shadowboxed in my mind. Gemma’s torn eyelids hanging over empty sockets. Hands pressing against Oliver’s skin from the inside. Saffron blood spilling over milk-white marble. Oliver’s hand twitching, palm sliced, bones exposed. Glass shattering. Girls vomiting ghosts. So long as I kept my eyes open, I stayed sane. But even if I left my headphones in with the volume high, I still heard Luca whispering:

  The problem with a cross is …

  Or Dad shouting through my memory:

  You can’t save anyone.

  Those words had edges sharp as Ginsu knives and cut me up. How had I managed to live up to Dad’s declaration again, despite all my efforts? Lately, this whole world just wrapped my stomach around my spine—or maybe it wasn’t the world, maybe it was just me and my own failures.

  You can’t save anyone.

  Not even yourself.

  My phone jangled in my pocket. When I tugged it out, Father Marlowe’s name popped up on the screen. Cursing, I tried to compose myself before I answered, “Hello, Father.”

  I didn’t expect the voice on the other line: “Micheline, don’t hang up,” Dad said.

  Wrong father. “I want to speak to Father Marlowe,” I said.

  “You’ll speak to me first.”

  I clenched my empty fist. “You have thirty seconds to explain what you want.” I’d give him the same “courtesy” he’d given me back at home.

  “Listen to reason, Micheline, the situation has spiraled out of your control—”