How to Claim an Undead Soul Page 20

  Linus flushed a shade of red normally reserved for checkered picnic tablecloths. “Grier is lovely as is.”

  “You don’t have to defend my honor with Esteban.” I patted Linus on the shoulder. “He’s not saying anything you haven’t already told me.”

  “See?” Esteban crowed. “Men know what men like.”

  “Men must like this look.” I lifted the hem of my shirt to flash ribs. “It’s on magazine covers everywhere.”

  “Bah.” He swatted the notion of pop culture perfection aside. “Real men know the value in a woman who embraces her curves.”

  “The reason we’re here—” I cut in before he got too wound up, “—is to borrow your kitchen long enough to paint on obfuscation sigils. Do you mind?”

  “What are you up to?” He folded his arms over his chest. “You tend to disappear on old Esteban. I can’t be party to that nonsense. I don’t have so many regular customers I can afford to lose even one.”

  “We’re sneaking onto the Cora Ann, the boat where I’m working.” I pasted on my best sheepish expression. “There’s a ghost boy there I want Linus to see.”

  “Linus,” he echoed. “Clarice Lawson’s son?”

  The son in question inclined his head. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Esteban.”

  “Your aunt was a good woman.” He turned fond eyes on me. “She raised another good woman.”

  “I agree on both counts.” Linus rubbed the skin over his breastbone. “I miss Maud every day.”

  “Me too,” I murmured.

  “All wounds will heal.” Esteban leaned down from his great height to press a kiss to the top of my head. “You will see her again one day. Though not too soon, I hope.” He gestured to his kitchen, a rectangle of canvas panels laced together. “Go do what you must.” He spared a second look at Linus. “Take care of her. She is a precious treasure to me.”

  “I do my best,” Linus assured him. “She is precious to us all.”

  Heat prickled in my cheeks that I rubbed away. “I can’t take all the flattery, guys.”

  “Learn to take a compliment,” Esteban chided. “The older and more beautiful you become, the more men will toss them like flowers at your feet. You must become familiar with the varieties so that you may distinguish between the hothouse stock, the wild ones, and those that are garden-tended.”

  Never would I have classified compliments in such a way, but he knew Maud, and he knew me. Our language was flowers. Or it used to be. “I’ll see what I can do.”

  I scuttled into the small kitchen and pulled out my pen. Linus joined me, and we each drew on our own sigils but for a single line and then, by silent agreement, compared them. The root of the design was the same if you looked hard enough, but they shared few similarities in execution.

  “The way your mind works never ceases to amaze me.” He tapped the cap of his pen against his bottom lip. “I wonder if it would work the same if I drew your sigil on me.”

  “An experiment for another day.” I kept my voice level. “We should get out from under Esteban so he can work.” We completed our sigils then and disappeared from each other’s sight. “Coming through.” I skirted Esteban, who just smiled at empty air in the direction my voice originated. “Thanks for letting us borrow your kitchen.”

  “Anything for you.” He straightened a display placard. “Next time, bring the other boy, the blond one. He spends his money.”

  “I’ll do that.” I chuckled. “Night.”

  The scuff of boots across cobbles told me Linus was near, but gauging distance was hard when you couldn’t see the other person, and they couldn’t see you.

  “Was I rude?” His steps slowed. “Not to make a purchase in exchange for Esteban letting us use his kitchen?”

  “Nah.” The thought never would have crossed his mind. “He was just teasing me for bringing two guys to see him in as many nights.”

  We walked on while he digested this, and in minutes we stood before the Cora Ann.

  “Stick close to me, and watch where you step,” I warned him. “There’s debris everywhere.”

  Prickles marched up my nape when he fell in step behind me on our trek across the gangway.

  “Grier…” he began. “Have you experimented with this sigil over water?”

  “Yes.” Two or three times. “I tested it out while I was at work.”

  “Check your sigil.”

  A quick check of my forearm revealed the problem. The design was flaking. “Fiddlesticks.”

  “Crossing from land to water must have broken the seal.” He pressed against me, skin a few degrees shy of normal through the layers of his clothing. “We need to hurry up and get onboard.”

  Nothing prevented us from leaping the locked gate. It was only waist-high, and there were no obstructions on the other side. Mr. Voorhees must have been counting on the boat’s reputation to protect it. In hindsight, I was stunned that I hadn’t heard anyone mumbling about break-ins or fanatics attempting to commune with Timmy. Then again, the answer to both those problems might be found squatting in the bushes a dozen yards away. Voorhees might have hired the Elite to act as extra security. I could see them finessing that type of job to maintain their cover. And that meant they were in a prime position to keep the curious from climbing aboard for a look-see and ruining their dybbuk hunt.

  I led Linus into the first deck parlor responsible for my moldy perfume, and we swiped on new sigils.

  “I really hope there are no hidden cameras,” I mused. “I’m not sure if what we just did made it better or worse.”

  “The Society has plenty of experience burying this type of thing if we do get caught.”

  I was glad he couldn’t see the look I shot him. Had the Society, his mother in particular, been covering for him long? Or was this a recent development? I wanted to ask as much as I didn’t want to know the answer.

  “The boy is upstairs you said?”

  I heard him moving toward the doorway. “Yes.”

  “I’ll go first,” he offered. “In case he starts throwing cutlery again.”

  “That’s not necessary.” He might as well have knifed me in the gut offering to act as my shield. Of all people, I expected Linus to trust I knew my limits. Ironic, I know. “Timmy and I have an understanding.” Okay, so that wasn’t exactly true. “He’ll recognize me, so I don’t think he’ll hurt me. If he does, then that proves your point, and I deserve what’s coming.”

  I’m not sure how he located me, but Linus closed his chilly fingers around my wrist. “You’ve been hurt enough, Grier. You don’t deserve to so much as stub your toe again in this life.”

  “You’re kind to say so, but we both know life doesn’t work that way.” The sentiment was so bittersweet, I smiled, though he couldn’t see. “Come on.” I slid from his grasp. “Time for you to make a new friend.”

  We entered the dining room together and stood close enough our clothes touched at the shoulders.

  “Timmy,” I called. “I brought a friend for you to meet.”

  Linus scuffed a piece of carpet foam from under his shoe. “Does he come when called?”

  I never met a kid who did, let alone an undead one. “Is anything ever that simple?”

  “I suppose not.” Footsteps paced away from me. “What do we try next?”

  “I painted on a sigil for perception then amplified the crap out of it last time.”

  “That’s as good a place to start as any.”

  Pen in hand, I got to work marking up my forehead with the perception sigil. Maud told me once it was a nod to opening our third eye. But she followed that up by claiming it was a bunch of hooey. Considering we were necromancers who turned our own blood into ink capable of resurrecting dead humans, I wasn’t sure she had a leg to stand on. She was Maud, though. No one argued with her. No one ever dared. There was no point. She was always right. Or so it had seemed. Her brilliance had a way of blinding anyone around her. Only after her death had I acquired the ability to stand up to he
r, but glaring at a box on the mantle just wasn’t as satisfying as railing at her in person would have been.

  Goddess, I missed her. I was mad at her. I was hurt. Crushed really. She had lied to me. All my life. And she was so very good at it no one had suspected the truth. The more I tugged on the strings of my memories, the more my past unraveled.

  Maud Woolworth hadn’t spooked easy, but she must have been terrified to bury my identity so deep.

  “I’m ready,” Linus informed me, snapping me back to attention. “I’ll follow your lead.”

  “Hi, Timmy.” I started walking the length of the room. “I came back to visit you earlier, but you had company.”

  No answer.

  “Why are you here?” Linus spoke from the opposite corner. “Why haven’t you moved on?”

  Still no response.

  “I spoke to a friend about the devourer.” I wasn’t sure if sharing that news would terrorize him or spark a hope I had no right to claim, but I was running out of ideas fast. “I might have an idea how to protect you.”

  Right now, that idea involved throwing myself on Boaz’s mercy, but Timmy didn’t have to know that yet.

  The pale outline of a boy dressed in a sailor suit appeared before me. “You can’t.”

  I checked the urge to tug one of his blond curls, uncertain if it was even possible. “Will you let me try?”

  The tremor in his little voice slayed me. “How?”

  “I brought someone to meet you. His name is Linus.” I waved him over until I remembered he couldn’t see me. “Linus, I think we better do this next part sans sigil.” He blinked into existence an instant after me. “There. Now we can all see each other.”

  “He looks mean,” Timmy whispered. “Is he?”

  “He’s a teacher,” I whispered back. “They all look that way.”

  The ghost boy wobbled his head in eager agreement.

  “Grier and I grew up together,” Linus said, crossing the room to stand with us. “We were…friends.”

  The slight hesitation shamed me. I should have made more of an effort to befriend him when we were kids. I’d had Boaz and Amelie and Maud and Woolly, and I hadn’t needed anyone else. All Linus had was his mother, and it sounded like he’d learned more life skills from the people in her employ than he had from her.

  “We were friends,” I assured him. “We’re even better friends now.”

  Which explained why burying the hatchet in his back was going to hurt me as much as it hurt him.

  Linus smiled, humanizing him, and Timmy relaxed enough to stop inching behind me. “I’m pleased to meet you, Timmy.”

  “My name’s not Timmy.” His square chin hit his tiny chest. “It’s Oscar Horrigan.”

  Linus and I exchanged a look over the boy’s head before he asked, “How did you end up here?”

  “I don’t remember.” His feet drifted above the floor an inch or two. “I woke up in this room one night, and I can’t leave. I’ve tried.”

  Fascinated, Linus tugged on his ear. “What’s the first thing you recall?”

  “All the fancy people were sitting at tables, but nobody was eating.” Oscar scrunched up his face. “They were all looking at a couple across the room, and I looked there too.” He drifted in the opposite direction until he stood where he had attacked Marit. “A pretty lady was crying that her son was missing. A man was holding her. He told her they were on a boat, and he could have only gone so far.”

  “Oh, Oscar.” His story plummeted my heart into the soles of my feet. The poor kid was remembering his death. The small mercy seemed to be he didn’t recall the event itself, only the aftermath. The specifics he’d shared, paired with a name and his clothing, would make locating his identity easy as pie. But what good would it do him? Or his family?

  “Are you happy here?” Linus gentled his tone. “Do you want to stay?”

  “No.” Oscar hiccupped on a sob. “I want to go home.”

  “Oh, sweet pea.” I squatted to put me at his eye level. “I wish I could make that happen.”

  Tears rolling down his cheeks, the boy flung himself into my arms. I didn’t even try to catch him. There was no point. Unless he used anger to hone his focus, he had no substance. Only his fury enabled him to lift weapons and wield them. Without their rage, poltergeists were impotent.

  So you can imagine my surprise when he smacked into me bodily and knocked me onto my butt. Oscar didn’t miss a beat and curled up in my lap, his arms linked around my neck, sobbing. He was too old to be held this way, but he hadn’t been held since the early 1900s, if his clothes were any indication.

  “Grier,” Linus breathed, his eyes as round as the moon beyond the window. “This isn’t possible.”

  While I held Oscar and rocked him, I stared up at Linus. “This isn’t a loop. He’s not repeating. He’s here with us. He’s aware.” This close his neck smelled of boy and linen. “How do we help him?”

  “We’ll have to report this.” His lips pursed. “There hasn’t been a documented case of a sentient poltergeist in…” He blinked. “I can’t think of a single instance.”

  “Are you sure involving the Society is the best thing for him?” I held Oscar tighter. “I don’t want him to become someone’s science project.”

  The bubbling excitement that had been animating Linus fizzled. “It’s the only way to keep him safe.”

  “I don’t know.” This had all been so much easier before Oscar became a bundle of child in my arms. “What can they do for him?”

  “They’ll give him protected status for starters. I’m sorry, Grier, but they will want to know how he works. I can’t stop that. They’ll confiscate this boat so that his tether is secure.”

  “Meaning Cricket will lose out on her haunted cruise idea.” I attempted to unclasp my poltergeist necklace and settled him more firmly in my lap. “She won’t be happy, but she’ll live.”

  The more he expounded on the protective measures for Oscar, the lighter I became, until I should have drifted off the floor with him.

  This fixed the problem. The Society would stamp their name on Oscar and the boat. The Elite couldn’t touch him now. They would have to find another ghost to…

  Blasting out a sigh, I had to stare the truth in the eye. This fixed nothing. This might save Oscar, in a way, but it would condemn him to living in a test tube for the Society. Would he prefer that to acting as dybbuk bait? And who got to pick the replacement sacrifice? Who was to say the next spirit was any less worthy of salvation? Not to mention this threw a monkey wrench into the works as far as the Elite were concerned. How could I say this boy, who was already dead, was more valuable than a vampire living an equally undead—if a substantially more normal by our standards—life?

  Philosophy had never been my best subject. All this noodling was giving me a headache.

  And then there was Linus. He hadn’t smacked his lips or licked his chops once. He was intrigued. He was fully invested in Oscar’s future, and not as a main course. So what did that mean? That dybbuks were great actors? That Linus had no idea about its murderous leanings? Or that Boaz and I were wrong about him?

  Except I had seen Ambrose wearing his shirts, and the resemblance to Linus was uncanny.

  A clatter below yanked me out of my head, and I set Oscar on his feet. Or I tried to, but it turned out he was stickier than the saltwater taffy sold in Savannah Candy Kitchen, and he clung to me even as I stood. The kid weighed nothing. I was boosting ether onto my hip, but it was super clingy ether. His arms never left my neck, and his face burrowed against my shoulder.

  “Linus,” I hissed. “We have to disappear.”

  “Allow me.” He leaned over and swiped an obfuscation sigil on my forearm before doing the same to himself. “Hide in the alcove. I’ll stand guard at the door.”

  The sound of approaching footsteps ruled out further conversation, so I tiptoed into position and hid, trusting the sigil to do the rest. Linus was nowhere in sight, and I had to believe his skill
would keep us safe.

  “No,” Oscar whimpered. “No.”

  I stroked his hair, soothing him as best I could without using my voice. It was too late for whispered reassurances. Holding him tight, I rocked a little, the way you calmed babies. It seemed to work for six-year-olds too, until the footsteps entered the dining room with us.

  Up to that point, I’d had control of my pulse, but one glance at the doorway had my heart galloping right out of my chest. It was a miracle Ambrose wasn’t leveled in the stampede. But there he stood, clearly not trampled. The twisted version of the Lawson scion, hewn from midnight and flame, licked his berry lips as his nostrils flared. Shutting my eyes, I sent up a prayer to Hecate.

  We were going to need all the help we could get.

  Fourteen

  “Come here, child,” Ambrose crooned. “It’s time. I spared you for as long as I was able.”

  Chills dappled my arms as the power in his voice swept through the room.

  Suddenly facing the dybbuk alone didn’t seem like such a hot idea.

  Had Linus engineered the noise downstairs to throw me off his scent? Once we both agreed to be invisible again, there was no telling what the other was doing. He could have transformed into a slavering beast and been steadily prowling toward me. I wouldn’t find out unless the sigil failed, or his jaws snapped closed over me.

  “No,” Oscar yelled. “I won’t go with you.”

  “No?” The clarion ring of Ambrose’s voice twisted my heart until it seemed my blood would be wrung out on the floor. “Who are you to say no? Who are you to say anything at all? You’re a bit of inconsequential energy the universe has yet to consume. You’re a snack is what you are, and no one likes it when their food talks back.”

  The boy struggled until I set him on his feet. “I’m going to be safe.” His tiny hands formed equally miniscule fists. “Grier told me so.”

  The sound of me smacking myself in the forehead with my open palm got devoured by Ambrose’s silken laughter. Thank the goddess for small mercies.