How to Claim an Undead Soul Page 24

  I was debating another light nap, too shallow for the dream to find me, when the door swung open.

  “Ms. Woolworth.” A vaguely familiar nurse bustled into the room. “I have some papers for you to sign, and then you’re free to go.”

  Gingerly, I turned onto my back and used the controls to raise the head of my bed. “Where’s Linus?” I took the clipboard, gave them my blessing to extort me, then passed it back before the nurse set about unhooking me from all the thingamabobs and doohickeys beeping and flashing behind me. “And my, um—” too late I realized I hadn’t asked for a name, “—private physician?”

  “Dr. Lecomte will be along in a moment.” Linus strolled into the room with his hands in his pockets, head angled down like he was unsure of his welcome. “She stopped to visit another patient.”

  “Dr. Lecomte.” I rolled in my lips to keep from laughing. Odette was many things, but a doctor she was not. “I hear you’re to thank for contacting her.”

  His shrug reduced him to the shy boy who used to fumble the butter when I asked him to pass it to me.

  “Ma coccinelle.” Odette swept into the room with her arms wide open, dressed in baggy jeans and a white tank top. Sandals peeked from under the hem she’d had to roll up a few times, and a scarf in seafoam blues fluttered behind her. “Must you insist on fraying these old nerves?” She pulled up short when she noticed the nurse’s incredulous expression. “Why are you looking at me like something you scraped off the bottom of your shoe? Are private physicians not allowed their private time?” Her haughty glare made me chuckle. “Perhaps I should have worn a white coat for the occasion?”

  “Apologies, ma’am.” The nurse paled. “Ms. Woolworth is cleared to leave as soon as she’s ready.”

  “I’m ready.” I swung my legs over the side of the bed then slid until my toes brushed the floor. A cool draft across my backside had me bunching the fabric closed in my hands. “Okay, so pants first. Then we hit the bricks.”

  “Your clothes were ruined,” Linus informed me. “I asked the staff to dispose of them.”

  The whole outfit might have been worth ten dollars, but dang it, those clothes were comfy.

  “I didn’t want to leave you here alone.” He lifted a bag with the hospital’s logo emblazoned on the front. I hadn’t noticed it in his hand. “I bought these to get you home.”

  My mouth seesawed until deciding on a smile. Comparing Linus to Boaz was the same as comparing apples to oranges. The apple might have stood watch over me and bought me new clothes to wear home, but the orange had made certain Woolly knew not to fret, and he had taken time away from his family tragedy to ensure I was okay. So, yeah. There was really no comparison. No matter how my brain scrabbled to tally each of their deeds like friendship was a contest to win or lose, it was a tie.

  “Do you need help?” Odette shooed the nurse from the room, and Linus left with her. “Sit, sit. Let me do this.” I dutifully turned around and let her work the ties free on my gown. “You’re so thin. Bony. Do you eat air?”

  “Not you too,” I groaned. “Last I checked, my name was Grier, not Gretel. Stop trying to fatten me up.”

  “Save your cheek for one of your boys.” She popped my bare bottom, and I yelped.

  “Yes, ma’am.” I accepted the sweatpants she passed me and pulled them on under my gown before letting it slide down my arms. An oversized T-shirt came next. Its front was emblazoned with a drawing of the hospital, but that was it for clothes. “Panties I don’t mind going without, but I have no bra.”

  “You’re like me.” She smoothed her hands over her small breasts. “We have knots on a wooden plank.”

  “Hey,” I protested. “I have boobs.” I glanced down at jutting ribs and protruding hipbones. “Okay, so I used to have boobs.”

  Damn it. I missed having curves. Skeletal was not a great look for me. In my line of work, the last thing I wanted was to be mistaken for a corpse.

  After tugging the shirt over my head, I finger-combed my hair. The final item in the bag was a pair of mesh shoes, almost like slippers with a flexible sole. I tugged them on, grateful for the barrier between my feet and the chill linoleum.

  A knock sounded at the door followed by Linus’s muffled, “Are you decent?”

  “Yes.” I crossed my arms over my braless chest. “You can come in.”

  He entered, pushing a contraption unlike any wheelchair I had ever seen. Flowering vines crawled down the sides, engraved into the silvery metal I suspected might be sterling. Each lush petal was accented in gold so rich I suspected they were twenty-four-karat inlays. Those touches I could stomach slightly better than the honest-to-Goddess red velvet cushion for my sitting pleasure, complete with gilded tassels. This chair screamed High Society, and I wondered how my transportation would have looked had I not been Maud Woolworth’s daughter.

  “It’s not that bad.” Linus crossed to me, cupped my elbow, and helped me get into position. He also palmed the brass button so I could grip the armrests and lower myself. “You only have to survive the ride down two floors.”

  “This chair is ridiculous,” I grumbled. “Riding in this is embarrassing.”

  “Then you’ll love this.” He leaned over me and spread the matching red velvet lap blanket across my knees. His icy fingers skated over my nape, and I started at the unexpected contact. “I also bought you this from the gift shop. It cost me ninety-nine cents. I’ll add it to your tab if I must.”

  The necklace was a length of black rubber cord with a brassy clasp that almost matched the antique button dangling between my nonexistent boobs. I closed my hand over the talisman, and suddenly the throne on wheels wasn’t so bad. Still, I couldn’t resist adding, “You couldn’t have splurged on a hoodie?”

  “Hoodies were thirty-six dollars. The T-shirt was only fifteen.” He took position behind me while Odette held the door open for us. “I decided it was safer to buy a lot of cheap items than invest in one expensive one.”

  Thirty-six dollars was pocket change to him, to me too, really. But I appreciated that he honored my budgetary restraint. “I don’t mean to sound ungrateful.” I reached up to brush his fingertips with mine where they gripped the handle. “Thanks for being here.”

  Odette looked on with a twinkle in her eyes I chose to ignore. Whatever she was seeing, or had seen, ignorance was bliss as far as I was concerned. And with Odette, there was always more to the picture than the rest of us saw.

  Once we hit the hallway, I propped my elbow on the armrest and braced my forehead against my open palm. I hoped people would assume I was shielding myself from the harsh overhead lights and not trying to hide my mortification over riding in a gilded throne pushed by the equivalent of a High Society prince.

  “The night birds are calling, calling, calling,” Odette sang softly. “The princess she’s falling, falling, falling.”

  I twisted to better see her from the corner of my eye, but wherever her vision had taken her, she was no longer with us for all that her body kept pace with the wheelchair. She snapped out of her fugue as we exited the sliding glass doors and placed a hand over her heart. Though I had been taught it was rude to ask, I couldn’t help wondering. “What did you see?”

  “A hard road and worn shoes at the end of it,” she murmured. “Poor little feet.”

  As usual, I was sorry I’d asked.

  Until we hit the circular drive out in front of the hospital, it hadn’t occurred to me to ask how we were all getting home. My tender gut roiled as I waited for the familiar Lincoln Continental Linus favored to pull around, but it was a white van that stopped in front of us. The driver was a grungy young man dressed in pajama bottoms and a dirty tee. He leaned across the passenger seat and flashed us his phone. “You guys call for a lift?”

  “We did.” Linus worked to suppress the curl of his lip and mostly succeeded as he wheeled me closer. “Let’s get you settled in the back.” He pulled open the sliding rear door, and a sigh moved through his shoulders. Pizza boxes
and empty soda bottles littered the floor, but he swept them aside then helped me climb onto the bench seat where he fastened me in as snug as a bug. “Where do you want me?”

  The rear seats had been removed to make room for stereo equipment, so that was out. There was room on the bench seat beside me, or the front passenger seat was empty. “I hate to do this to you, but can Odette sit with me?”

  “Of course.” He eased out of the van and took her hand, helping her settle in beside me. “This was the right thing to do?”

  Unsure which of us he was asking—himself or me or even Odette—I answered, “Yes.”

  I couldn’t believe it. Linus Andreas Lawson III had downloaded a ridesharing app and used it to get me home.

  This latest thoughtfulness had spared me from stepping into his hired car. I would take pizza stains on the seat of my gift-shop pants and gunk on the bottom of my water shoes over that misery any day.

  Seventeen

  Arriving home beat any medicine the hospital could have prescribed. Woolly welcomed us, her glow the beacon I remembered from childhood, our link so ironclad I didn’t require extra perception or contact with her to discern her mellifluous wards. The old girl beamed out at us, and I couldn’t help smiling back.

  I hobbled onto the porch unassisted, looped my arms around the nearest of Woolly’s columns, and sagged with relief as her magic swept over me, absorbing me in the protection of home. Odette stood on the bottom step, allowing Woolly to perform a risk assessment, but Linus kept his feet planted firmly in the grass. I was about to ask Woolly if she might reconsider granting him porch access when the crimson car I had been expecting at the hospital glided into the driveway.

  Mr. Hacohen, my quasi-lawyer, a man employed by the office of the Grande Dame if not by the woman herself, popped out and held open the door. “Hey, ladies and gent.” He tossed our gathering a wave. “Hate to be a drag, but your presence is formally requested at the Lyceum.”

  “Can I change first?” I tugged on the front of my T-shirt. “I can’t attend a trial dressed like this.”

  “The other parties are all assembled.” He spread his hands in an apologetic plea. “We have to get you there yesterday.” He nodded at Linus. “You two are our star witnesses.”

  Bile rose up the back of my throat as he cheerily ushered me on toward Amelie’s doom.

  “Odette is a friend,” I reminded the house quietly. “Let her in if she asks.”

  The planks under my feet grumbled in reluctant agreement.

  “What happened with Volkov isn’t your fault. Your wards were failing, and they caused you to make a bad call.” I curled my toes against the wood. “Do you trust Odette?”

  Woolly flicked the curtains in the nearest window in a shrug.

  Clearly, I wasn’t the only one still suffering trust issues. “I have to go.” I took the first step. “Do what you think is best.”

  That earned me a flicker of doubt from the porch light that made my chest hurt. I hated her uncertainty.

  “Go on.” Odette ushered me toward the waiting car. “Woolly and I are old friends. We’ll sort out our differences and be sipping tea over gossip before you get home.”

  After a quick embrace that made me grimace when she squeezed me around the middle too hard, I left her to win or lose Woolly’s endorsement on her own. I stepped into the grass and joined Linus, who held his phone to his ear. I huddled in his shadow like it might protect me from the car, and when Mr. Hacohen blanched and retreated inside the sedan, I realized the shadow was Cletus, and he had reacted to my fear.

  The squeal of breaks heralded the return of the pizza van. The driver lowered the passenger window, leaned out and grinned. “You guys call for a lift?”

  “We did,” Linus passed the man a fifty-dollar bill before turning to me and offering his hand. “Grier?”

  I accepted his chill fingers and kept going until I was hugging him. “You’re not half bad for an enemy spy.”

  “There was no whooping.” His hands settled on my shoulders, as light as feathers, the safest part of me given my injuries. “Your early-warning system failed.”

  “Sorry about that. I’m too tender for whooping and hopping around. You’ll just have to give me a pass this time.”

  “All right.” He disentangled us then opened the sliding door and tucked me back on the bench. “Are you sure you wouldn’t like Odette to come along?”

  “No.” She made a point not to make waves, and arriving with me was more along the lines of a cannonball. Linus had the door closed halfway when the walls started pressing in on me. “Linus?”

  He held still, like any sudden movement might startle me out of the vehicle. “Yes?”

  “Sit with me?” I patted the bench. “I really don’t want to be alone with my thoughts right now.”

  After a quick exchange with the driver, he joined me and sealed us in the back of the van.

  We didn’t talk during the short drive, and he kept a polite distance between our bodies, but it was a comfort having him there. Maybe it had to do with how students viewed their teachers as protectors, or maybe it had to do with how all his small kindnesses were adding up, or maybe it had to do with the fact there was a yawning void in me I was looking to fill. Whatever the reason, I was as grateful for his presence as I was terrified of what came next.

  Thanks to Ambrose, I’d learned I had a new secret. Making vampires, true immortals or not, was one thing, but awakening ghosts? And, if Cletus was any indication, wraiths? That was quite another.

  The dybbuk had shined a spotlight on my new talent, and the glare had caught Linus right in the eyes. His zeal had overtaken his expression, the rush of a new discovery animating his features, and I worried. He could betray me. Or he might choose to study me himself. While I couldn’t see a way to monetize my new talent off the top of my head, I was certain the Grande Dame would have compiled a list a mile long by the time the words left Linus’s lips.

  Before I had time to work myself into a panic attack, Pizza Dude cozied up to the curb a block away from city hall. “Keep my number handy.” He grinned at Linus in the rearview mirror. “For the right price, I can be anywhere you need me to be.”

  “We appreciate your availing yourself to us.” Linus passed him another fifty before helping me out of the van. He waited until the taillights flashed before taking my arm. “Well, that was an adventure.”

  “At this rate, he’ll be able to buy an all-new van.” I leaned on Linus a little since all the bending and shuffling getting in and out was pulling on my stitches. “You can’t keep dropping money on me.”

  “You’re Dame Woolworth,” he reminded me. “The Society is responsible for any and all expenses resulting from travel required to attend mandatory functions. I’ll fill out a voucher for reimbursement if you like. Make sure you do too going forward.”

  From his tone, it was clear he valued his time more than the hundred dollars he’d dropped on our ride. I wasn’t a fan of paperwork myself, so I sympathized. Besides, he probably used fifty-dollar bills as tissues when he got allergy eyes, so the expense meant nothing. The thought behind a gift mattered far more to me than its cost. When you grew up able to ask for and receive anything, a quick debit of funds for a bauble soon forgotten amid towering piles of the same, you learned appreciation when people proved your worth by spending time with you instead of money on you.

  Linus was still figuring out my preference. He spoke the language of plastic best, but there was hope for him yet. All good friendships changed the people within them to a better version of themselves. Maybe he would bring me a step closer to embracing my heritage. Maybe I would impart my couponing skills on him.

  The massive limestone building towered over us, its clock tower a distant shadow swallowed by the darkening night sky. We entered together and made our way toward the bank of elevators. Linus ushered me inside the first booth then used a key from his pocket to open the control panel. He pushed the button for the subbasement that held the Ly
ceum and let the doors close before pulling the emergency stop.

  “Tell me you’ve got a good reason for stopping the elevator, because I’ve got to tell you—” I swallowed hard. “There’s literally never a reason good enough for stopping an elevator.”

  “I was going to offer when we arrived at Woolly, but there was no time, and I couldn’t risk our driver getting curious.” He removed a pen from his pocket. “Would you like help closing those wounds?”

  I touched my side. “The doctor said—”

  “Allowing you to heal naturally would be best, but the doctor had no idea what awaits you.” He spun the cap with his thumb. “The choice is yours, but you need to be at your best. Amelie’s freedom depends on it.”

  “That’s a low blow.” I lifted the hem of my shirt, careful to keep the edge from exposing the underside of my breasts. “But you’re right. It’s bad enough going in there looking like what the cat dragged in.” Though that was becoming a norm for me. “I don’t want to have to lean on you if I can manage on my own.” I winced at how that sounded. “No offense.”

  “None taken.” Linus dropped to one knee in front of me. One cool palm spanned my left side and held me still while the other rested against the puckered, angry edge of my stitches and began to draw a perfect set of interconnected sigils that washed relief through me. “The only way to survive the Society is to conceal who you are, what you love, how you feel, beneath your title. Never let them glimpse the real you. Show them what they want to see, tell them what they want to hear, and keep your ears open. Collect their weaknesses like cards to play against them at a later date.”

  The urge to balk against his advice was tempered by his absolute concentration. “Is that what you do?”

  “It’s what we all do.” He examined his work then nodded and capped his pen before rising. “Mother was a strict tutor.” He hit the button again, and the elevator shuddered back to life. “The Pritchards will come after us both.” He adjusted his clothing and hair before we hit bottom. “However this ends, remember none of it is your fault.”