by Jane Kindred
“Lucien told me about it this afternoon. Apparently, he used to be involved with Polly, the owner. He wanted me to know because he’s not the creep you’re trying to make him out to be.”
“He dated her?”
“And she’s a siren. So stick that in your Valkyrie pipe and smoke it.”
“I don’t even know what that means.”
“Neither do I. It just came out.”
“Go back to the part where Polly is a siren.”
“Yes, he dated a siren. They’re real. Apparently, everything is real. That shouldn’t really surprise you. You’re hooking up with the Chieftain of the Wild Hunt.”
“Aren’t you a little concerned that Lucien is popping off to visit his ex-girlfriend the siren on a Saturday afternoon?”
“She gives him information. That’s how he confirmed his erroneous intel on Leo. Which he originally got from some anonymous source who’s been tipping him off about our family.”
There was a brief pause before they said the name together. “Carter Hanson Hamilton.”
Rhea growled. “That absolute dirtball. It wasn’t enough that he sent an actual Nazi after Leo to steal his soul, now he’s setting up Lucien to send Leo to hell?”
“I don’t have any proof that it’s him.”
“It’s totally him. You know you’re going to have to tell Ione about this.”
As much as Theia hated the idea, Rhea was right. Which meant she was going to have to tell Ione everything about Lucien.
* * *
The haunting ought to have been routine. No over-the-top Ghostbusters-style vanquishing, no silly beeping REM pod tech and primitive blinking flashlight communications. A haunting usually consisted of a simple soul collection. Easiest job on the books. Ordinarily, opening a portal wasn’t even required. The haunting in the NICU last night had been an exception. As with Lupe Ramirez, often all that needed to happen was to convince the spirit or shade that it was in the wrong place, and it would go on its own. A forcible crossing, whether done with electrical current or by a practicing witch through spell casting, was generally considered undesirable and could be dangerous if not done right.
Lucien arrived in Litchfield Park west of Phoenix at ten after five, expecting to meet up with Lucy, who’d been in Phoenix already when the call came in. Her car was parked in front of the client’s property. She’d gone in without him. Lucien swore to himself as he got out and approached the door. If she was going to handle it herself, why had she bothered to call him in on the job? He could be spending the evening with Theia.
The client, a young black man about Lucien’s age, opened the door to his knock, looking frightened and harried. “You Lucien?”
Lucien paused. Something wasn’t right. “Where’s Lucy Smok?”
A hand reached from around the door and opened it wide. “Hi, sweetie! I’m right here.” It was Lucy’s voice and Lucy’s body, but it was the most un-Lucy-like greeting he’d ever heard.
Lucien narrowed his eyes. “You’re not Lucy. Don’t bullshit me. Who am I speaking to?”
Her face broke into a grin. “And Lucy thinks you aren’t the brainy one. Daisy Fox, at your service.” She looked him up and down as she stepped around the client. “And you are absolutely dreamy.” She stroked Lucien’s cheek, and he stepped back with a shudder. “Guess you’re not those kind of twins, huh?”
“What do you want, Daisy? My organization can help you without you having to resort to body theft.”
“I doubt that. Besides, this is infinitely more fun.” Daisy stroked Lucy’s hands over her body before turning around to go back into the living room and flopping into an armchair like she owned the place.
Lucien addressed the client as he closed the door. “What happened?”
“My fiancée was acting weird—like your sister is now—and I worked out that she was possessed. So I called you people on the advice of a lawyer friend. Your sister showed up and tried to reason with the spirit. Next thing I knew, Sherrell—that’s my girl—had collapsed, and the ghost was in your sister.”
Across the room, Daisy beamed at Lucien out of Lucy’s face.
This wasn’t a simple haunting. It was a step-in, a forcible takeover of a living person by the deceased, unwilling to give up a life on the physical plane. And the shade had apparently hopped into Lucy when she’d attempted to compel it to release the body it occupied. As with a demon possession, this shade seemed to have the ability to move through the ether—and through hosts—at will. It was a rare shade that had such control, and Daisy’s didn’t fit the profile. Someone else was controlling it. They had a necromancer on their hands.
“Where’s Sherrell now?”
“She’s upstairs resting. She doesn’t remember any of it. But I can’t get this lady to leave. I mean, your sister. Or not her. Whatever it is.”
“So Daisy Fox isn’t someone you know?”
“Never heard of her.”
“And when did this start, Mister...” He’d forgotten the client’s name. Bad form.
“Mitchell. Jesse Mitchell.” He held out his hand, and Lucien shook it. “Sherrell came home from work early yesterday acting funny. I thought she was sick. She didn’t let on she wasn’t Sherrell until this morning. That’s when I called my friend. He represents some unusual clients, and I figured he might know what to do. He gave me your number.”
That wasn’t the usual method of client referral. Neither was the referral for the reanimation of Lupe Ramirez.
“Did your friend happen to explain how we work? I mean, he told you about the cost?”
Jesse stuck his hands in his pockets and swallowed before he nodded. “Your office explained it to me. I agreed to the terms. Your sister gave me a finger prick to sign the agreement.” Traditionally, contracts for souls were signed in blood, but that was really just for show. They only needed a drop of blood, impressed with the signatory’s thumbprint, to seal the deal.
Lucy-Daisy sighed loudly from the living room. “You boys are boring me to death.” She laughed at the pun.
Lucien ignored her for the moment. “Thank you, Mr. Mitchell. I’ll take care of the rest. It may take me a little while to get her to leave, but we’ll get rid of her.”
“Stop talking about me in the third person. It’s very rude.”
Lucien walked into the living room. “You’re lecturing me about manners? You’ve violated at least two people intimately in the last forty-eight hours. That, Ms. Fox, is exceedingly rude.”
“Violated. That’s a very strong word. Ask our Jesse here. His girl is none the worse for wear.”
“Just because someone can’t remember what happened to them doesn’t mean doing whatever you like with their body is okay. That’s what violation is.”
“You think I don’t know what violation is? You think I don’t know what it’s like to wake up somewhere and not know what happened?”
“I don’t know anything about you, Daisy. Why don’t you tell me why you’re doing this?”
“Why don’t you go fuck yourself? I don’t need you to condescend to me.”
“Mr. Smok?” Jesse held out his phone with the browser open. “I found out who she is.”
Lucien took the phone. A picture of a smiling young Navajo woman appeared. Lucien read the headline aloud. “Body Found in Phoenix Dumpster Identified as Daisy Fox, Missing From Window Rock Since April.”
“Congratulations.” Daisy gave them a slow clap. “You know how to use the internet.”
Lucien handed back the phone. “I’m sorry that happened to you, Daisy.”
“I don’t need your pity, either.”
“What do you need?”
“I’ve pretty much got what I need. Maybe some less stuffy clothes would be nice.” Daisy rose, glancing out the window. “That my car? The black convertible?”
“You’re not going anywhere with
Lucy’s car or Lucy’s body.” Lucien blocked her path to the door. “Why don’t you tell me how you were able to step into her? She’s not exactly inexperienced with people in your state.”
Daisy laughed, an unnerving sound coming from Lucy’s mouth. Not that Lucy didn’t laugh, but it was usually a very dry laugh, indicating how deeply unamused she was by something.
“Did you have help?”
The laughter stopped. “What do you mean by help?”
“Is someone controlling you, Daisy?” If a necromancer was responsible, it was probably her killer—or at least someone with access to Daisy’s bones. “Is it the person who hurt you?”
A flash of rage distorted Lucy’s features. “He’s not going to get me to give up this body, and neither are you.”
“He will, Daisy. If he induced you to enter Sherrell, and he helped you hop from Sherrell to Lucy, he can make you do anything. But I can help you. I can make him stop.”
“How can you help?” Lucy’s face crumpled, another expression he’d never seen on his sister. “He took my body. I tried to get back in. I couldn’t get back in.”
A disturbing idea occurred to him. “Are you saying your body was still alive when you left it?”
Tears were streaming down Lucy’s face. “He gave me a drug. Said it was just going to make me feel good. And then suddenly I was outside and I couldn’t get back. He’d put something around my neck. Like a collar.”
The necromancer had used a blocking object, something the shade couldn’t cross to reenter her unconscious body.
“He said he wouldn’t do anything to me—to my body—as long as I did what he asked. And I did. I went where he said. And now you’re telling me my fucking body is a corpse!”
“You didn’t know.” Lucien touched Lucy’s arm, and Daisy flinched. “I’m so sorry, Daisy.”
Daisy jerked away from him. “So now he doesn’t have anything on me and I don’t have to give this one back.”
“I’m afraid that’s not how it works. He probably kept...a souvenir. A small bone is all he would need. That’s how he could continue to dictate your actions. When you jumped into Lucy, was it a conscious thought? Or did you just find yourself here?”
Daisy shook her head, turning and looking around as if trying to find a way out. “I don’t remember.” She turned back to Lucien, her expression pleading. “Can’t I just keep it? Can’t I stay? I don’t want to go.”
Before he could answer, before he could even tell her it would be okay if he released her, that she could go where she pleased, Lucy’s body collapsed.
Lucien caught her before she hit the ground. “Daisy?”
Her eyes fluttered erratically. “Fuck. Me. Goddammit.”
Lucy was back.
She opened her eyes in a squint and glanced around. “Little bitch jumped me without warning. Did you vanquish her?”
“No.”
“No?” Lucy pushed away from him, getting to her feet. “Then where the hell did she go?”
Lucien straightened. “Someone else appears to have forced her out. She was pleading to stay.”
“Well, isn’t that special?” Lucy gripped her head. “Ow. She gave me a damn migraine.”
“I’ve got some ibuprofen.” Jesse hurried upstairs to get it.
Lucy watched him go. “We should probably check on his girlfriend. Make sure the shade didn’t just get pulled back into the original host.”
“I doubt that’s the case. Looks like you were the target. Daisy knew who you were. I think this whole thing was staged for our benefit. Whoever’s controlling the shade was obviously trying to get our attention, letting us know we’re vulnerable to their magic.”
“Speak for yourself. She just caught me off guard.”
Lucien folded his arms. “Lu. You’ve never been caught off guard in your entire life.”
Jesse reappeared with the pills and a glass of water.
“Thanks.” Lucy downed the pills. “If you don’t mind, Mr. Mitchell, I need to look in on Sherrell. Just to make sure the problem is fully resolved.”
Jesse nodded. “She’s upstairs in the first bedroom.”
Lucien nodded to Lucy. “I’ll handle it. You take care of the business arrangements.” He was being a coward, passing the responsibility of soul collecting back to Lucy after one attempt to do the right thing. But this wasn’t a pay-on-receipt situation. There was time to remedy things if he found a way to later.
Lucien paused at the top of the stairs. Was that what he wanted to do? Was he going turn everything on its head and refuse to collect souls? The idea made him slightly heady. But the anxiety that followed immediately overshadowed the feeling. If he refused to fulfill the earthly duties of the Smok heir—what would it mean for the infernal ones?
Chapter 18
Lucy’s post-step-in headache was still severe, so Lucien left his car and drove her back to Sedona in hers.
After several minutes, he glanced over at her, eyes closed as she leaned back against the seat. “You awake?”
Lucy scrunched her eyes together. “Unfortunately.”
“I wanted to talk to you about something that happened at the job I went on earlier today. The reanimation reversal.”
“Yeah, that sounded like a fun one.”
“I gave the client the requisite dose for the payment, and she was prepared to pay in full that evening, but something happened to it. She found it in her mother’s room. The old woman had taken it.”
“Wasn’t the old woman the one who was reanimated?”
“That was her mother. Rosa was the one who hired the reanimator. She has Alzheimer’s, so someone must have taken advantage of her. She couldn’t have had the presence of mind to think about how to bring her mother back from the grave. And now she’s dead, too. I think the cleaning crew gave the meds to her.”
Lucy opened her eyes in a squint. “The cleaning crew? They wouldn’t even know what it was.”
“Normally, I’d agree, but the client swore she’d put it in her own room in preparation for taking it that evening, and the old woman was still knocked out from the sedative I had to give her in order to vanquish the revenant.” Lucien had meant to tell her about driving back with the intent of giving Mrs. Castillo her reprieve, but the story worked without the extra detail. Lucy would just assume the client had called him later. God, he really was a coward.
“Maybe the client’s lying. Maybe she chickened out and didn’t want to pay. It wouldn’t have been the worst decision to give it to an old woman with Alzheimer’s, after all.”
“That’s what I told her when I was there, but Mrs. Castillo was insistent that the payment was hers to make.”
“I can’t imagine why anyone from the cleaning crew would interfere in that. I suppose we can call the contractor tomorrow and ask.” She closed her eyes again, and Lucien drove the rest of the way in silence, but his conscience was still nagging him as he dropped her off at her villa.
“Hey, Lu?”
She was already out the door, but she turned and leaned into the passenger window. “Yeah?”
“Have you ever...let a client off the hook on a deal like that?”
“Off the hook? You mean like the ghost girl the other night? Pro bono?”
“Sort of. I mean for the pay-on-receipts. Have you ever told them they didn’t have to pay until the normal expiration of the contract?”
“Why would I do that?” Lucy peered at him with a suspicious expression. “Lucien. Did you tell that woman she didn’t have to pay?”
“It didn’t seem right. I drove back after I got home, and I asked for the pentobarbital back. I told her there had been a clerical error. You should have seen the joy in her face.”
“We don’t do this for joy.”
“Why the hell do we do it?”
“You know why.”<
br />
“Because of the curse.”
“The curse?” Lucy laughed—the unlaugh he was used to hearing. “We do it because it’s business. We offer a very important, needed service for a fee. Everyone goes into the agreement knowing full well what they’re agreeing to. No one forces them to sign.” She straightened and frowned. “This is that little empath’s influence, isn’t it? She told you it wasn’t fair and said you were a bad man, so you defied centuries of protocol, jeopardizing our entire operation for some pussy.”
“Don’t talk about her like that.”
“I notice you’re not denying it. You’d better straighten up, Lucien. Edgar indulged your rebellious phase, and he turns a blind eye to the mystery archer who just happens to have all the same client information we do. But you start messing around with the business and he’s going to rain down hell on your head.”
Lucien laughed, copying Lucy’s sharp sound of disdain. “What’s he going to do, put me over his knee?”
“I’m not kidding, Lucien. Do not fuck with the business.” Lucy slapped the hood of the car as she went around it. “And get your own damn ride home. This one’s mine, and it’s staying right here.”
* * *
It was after ten by the time he got a car. He really wanted to see Theia, but he was bone tired. He’d have to call her and tell her he’d see her tomorrow at the lab. He had the driver take him home.
Lucien undressed on the way to the bedroom, looking forward to at least sexting with Theia for a few minutes before he passed out. She’d left him a message with pretty much the same conclusion he’d come to about the late hour and asking him to call when he got in. With his phone in his hand, he climbed into bed—and nearly sat on a brand-new laptop someone had placed there.
He smiled tentatively. Had Theia gotten him a gift? He opened the cover, which triggered some kind of automatic video messaging system, and found himself staring at his father, seated at his desk.
“Lucien.”
“Edgar. I’m not really dressed for face time.”
“Are you entertaining?”
“Not at the moment.”
“Then put something on and sit down.”