Usually, anyway.
As soon as the door closes behind me, I think I maybe should have taken the elevator. The air here is dank and moldy, the dim lighting worthless. My phone’s flashlight app is a lifesaver. At least now I can see as I make my way down the narrow stone steps.
A relieved sigh escapes as soon as my feet hit the floor. I was half afraid something would push me down the stairs. I keep getting a bad vibe, like something down here is very angry. I dig into my pocket and pull out my iron pocketknife. I’m glad Dan and Zeke both insisted I carry it at all times. Iron hurts a ghost and makes them vamoose long enough for me to get to safety.
The anger vibrating in the very air closes in around me as I walk deeper into the dark corridor. It’s so heavy I can taste it. This thing is beyond pissed off. Three more steps, and it begins to feel like I’m trudging through quicksand. It’s all in my psyche. I know this, but it doesn’t do anything to help me shake it off. Ghosts are vile little creatures when they’re trying to hurt you.
Fingers skim up my bare arm, and I jerk away. My sink burns where he touched it.
“You don’t want to mess with me,” I warn, trying to sound as mean as I can and failing. If I can hear the tremble in my voice, so can the ghost.
A hollow laugh fills the corridor.
Fudgepops.
I take off running, telling myself I’m not mired down in quicksand, but all the while feeling his heavy, rotten breath along my neck.
“Doc!” I shout and hope he can hear me. He tends to get so focused on what he’s doing, he zones out, oblivious to everything else. “Doc!”
Fingers curl in my hair, pulling until I wince. It takes a strong ghost to be able to physically manipulate something on this plane. This ghost has enough anger to move a train if he wants to.
Down the hall, a door opens, spilling light out into the darkened hallway. Doc is standing there, looking alarmed. As soon as I crash into the light, the sense of dread goes away, and the ghost stops. He won’t follow me into the light.
“What’s wrong?” Doc looks behind me, but he can’t see anything. I didn’t see the ghost, but feeling him was more than enough for me to know I don’t want to ever see him again.
“Ghost in the basement trying to scare me.”
“Looked like it worked.” Doc stands back so I can enter the room. The big wooden table across from the door is filled with books, some open, some discarded on the floor. This must be where Doc is working. There are several notepads and a voice recorder on the table too.
“A little.” I rub my hands up and down my arms. It’s freaking cold down here.
“Have a seat, Mattie. I have something I want to give you.”
He looks so nervous it makes me curious. I take a seat in the chair in front of all the notepads. Doc’s usually never nervous, and that makes me forget all about the ghost in the hallway.
Doc opens his briefcase and takes out a small square package. His fingers slide over it reverently. “I thought this belonged to you more than it did me.”
I take the package and rip off the paper. Inside the white box is a framed picture of my mother, Claire Hathaway, AKA Amanda Sterling, holding me and smiling for the camera. I was a little over two in this picture. I know it. It’s the same one I found in Doc’s briefcase the night my best friend Megan died.
“I know you weren’t ready to talk about that photo before, but I’m hoping you’ll hear me out now. Even if you don’t, you should have something of your mother. She loved you.”
“I know she did,” I whisper and trace her face with my fingertip. I remember when she came to save me last year, to help put my soul back together so I wouldn’t die. Seeing her hurt so much because of how much I missed her, but I’d suffer all that pain just to spend one more minute with my mama.
“I wasn’t sure how you’d react to knowing she kidnapped you, but you deserved to know how much she loved you.”
“Thank you for this.” I finally look up at him, and the uncertainty in his eyes is telling. He’s not sure how I’m going to react. Not that I blame him. I reacted badly the first time I saw this photo, and I still haven’t completely forgiven him for lying to me for months. I might not ever, but I’m trying.
“You’re very welcome.”
“Sit.” I gesture to the seat beside me. “I’m listening.”
“I met your mother in Philadelphia. She’d just moved there, and when she saw my name listed on a flyer for my first lecture, she thought it was my brother. He had a bad habit of telling people he was me.”
“She knew your brother?”
He nods and takes a seat. “She’d gotten to know him while she was employed by the Cranes. He told her his name was Lawrence Olivet.”
That makes no sense. “But…”
“Just let me get through this, okay?”
My mouth snaps shut. I’m confused, but maybe if I hold the questions, he can clear all that up.
“When she came to see me after the lecture, she confessed she’d met a man who claimed to be me and looked a lot like me. My brother and I are very similar, but different enough not to be confused as twins. We got to talking, and I got the whole story out of her.”
He fiddles with his notepad, falling silent. Whatever is eating at him is causing him to sweat. I can see it trickling down his face.
“I have a confession to make, one I’m afraid will push you farther away from me, but I swear to you, Mattie, all I want is for you to be safe and happy.”
That doesn’t bode well. “Spit it out, Doc. Prolonging the torture doesn’t help either of us.”
“My mother met a man when she was seventeen. He put her up in a nice house, and she became his mistress. She bore him two sons and a daughter. It was years later when she ended the affair, deciding she had more self-worth than settling for being a mistress to a married man. She later married Harold Olivet, who adopted all three of us.”
He clears his throat and takes a sip of his bottled water. I’m beginning to put this together, but part of me refuses to believe it.
“I never wanted anything to do with our father. Neither did my sister, but Luke was a different story. He was fascinated by the supernatural, same as I was, but he took it farther. He started practicing the black arts and tried to get in touch with our father, who rebuffed him. He wanted nothing to do with any of us, but that didn’t deter Luke. He was determined and went looking for our half-sister, Georgina, who was more than happy to entertain him. She loved to disrespect her parents. She blamed them for the mess she was in with a demon.”
“Deleriel.” Even saying his name makes me shake. I may have won that fight, but at a great personal cost.
“Yes. You know that story, though. Georgina never let Luke come around when your father was home, but Ezekiel traveled frequently for work. Luke had unfettered access to your nanny. He introduced himself to both Georgina and Claire as Lawrence or Larry, as our sister called him.”
“And Mom just told you all this? Told you she kidnapped me?”
“No, not at first. It took several months for her to trust me enough to confess everything that happened. She explained to me how Georgina was afraid for you, how she feared Zeke was going to hurt you and begged her to take you away. Knowing what I already did about the Cranes, I believed her.”
“Only it wasn’t Georgina who did that. It was my real mother who possessed her.” The anger was starting to burn in the pit of my stomach. Doc had lied, but he’d kept the biggest lie to himself. For two years.
“I’m aware of that now,” Doc said, his voice soft. He knew I was mad, but what did he expect? “You’re upset, and you have every right to be.”
“I’m beyond upset, Doc. You’re telling me you’re my uncle, and you thought it was okay to keep that from me?”
He lets out a heavy sigh. “I was going to tell you, but then everything snowballed out of control. You saw the photo, then had to deal with your friend’s death, and you almost lost Dan. There was so much go
ing on. You weren’t in any condition to hear the truth after you almost died defeating Deleriel. There was never a good time, Mattie. I didn’t withhold the information from you deliberately or for any ulterior motive. You needed time to heal, and I was afraid dealing with this information would cause a setback. From the moment I held you in my arms when you were just a little girl, I knew my only goal in this life was to protect you. That’s what I was doing this last year, protecting you as best I knew how.”
The anger burns hot. I’m guessing I inherited it from both my parents. I knew if I said something right now, I’d lash out, and it would hurt him. Part of me knew he spoke the truth. Telling me before now would have caused a setback. I couldn’t have dealt while trying to stitch my soul back together enough for Dan to go home to Charlotte. I would have come apart at the seams, and I might not have ever gotten any better.
In those first few weeks after I killed Deleriel, I was so fragile I didn’t even recognize myself. Every minute of every day, I felt raw, like I’d been put through a meat grinder and then dragged for miles behind a car on hot asphalt.
Doc’s right. I couldn’t have handled the truth then.
But I’m not sure I can handle it right now either.
“I’m sorry I hurt you, Mattie, but that was never my intention. I only wanted you safe.”
“I am safe.”
“Your father…”
“Loves me and would kill anyone who tried to hurt me.”
Doc flinches, and I don’t feel bad about it. By trying to protect me, he hurt me, even if he didn’t mean to. Everyone’s always hurting me that way, everyone but Mary, Eric, and Zeke. I guess I should include my grandparents in that, but I need to get to know them a little more. I run when they’re around. It freaks me out having so many people care about me.
“I need time to think, Doc. I need to process…”
“Of course,” he quickly agrees. “I understand that, and I can work with it.”
“Tell me what you found out about the case.” I sweep my hand over the open books. I can’t talk about him being my uncle. Not right now. Better to focus on Miss Piggy than let my anger burn out of control. I learned to hit first and ask questions later in foster care, but over the last two years, I’ve slowly learned to temper my first instincts and my anger.
I need to talk to Dan about this. He—no. I came to New Orleans to learn to depend on myself. Running to Dan every time something comes up defeats the whole purpose. I will deal with this on my own and then tell him.
“I went to the Historical Society first.” Doc shuffles through his papers until he produces a notepad. “Ah, here we are.”
His voice is rough with emotion, but he’s doing better at bottling it up than I am. Brownie points to Doc for that.
“It appears the fire had two casualties, one of the household maids and her infant son. These records were not here at the library when Seth completed his search. They may have been destroyed in the hurricane. The Historical Society moved all the valuable information out of the city three days before the flooding began.”
“Her name is Matilde.”
“How do you know that?” He peers at me from behind his glasses. When did he start wearing glasses?
I tell him about my dream last night and everything I thought I’d learned from it.
“That certainly explains her anger, but not how to stop her.” Doc runs a hand through his hair, which has more white strands than I remember. Now that I’m looking, he appears older than when I first met him by, like, a good ten years.
My grandmother once told me Zeke caused her to age quite a bit faster because of all the worry he caused her. Granted, my Gram doesn’t look a day over forty, but I’ve seen pictures of her when she was younger. She was and still is a looker.
Doc is always telling me how much he worries about me. Maybe I’m the cause of his rapid aging.
“I called Caleb Malone earlier. He put me in touch with some local hunters who are coming to help tonight.”
Doc frowns. “I could have done that. I know several.”
“Caleb’s a hunter, Doc. I wanted someone he would trust to watch his back. He knows more about hunters than any of us, including you.”
“You trust Caleb more than you do me.”
I don’t say anything, simply look at him. What is there to say? The truth is I don’t trust him. He’s given me more reasons to warrant my mistrust of him.
“Who are these hunters?” Doc finally asks after several awkward moments of silence.
“The guy I talked to was Cass Willow.”
“I don’t know him or his family personally, but I’ve heard good things about them.”
“We need to get Wade and his crew’s cameras out of the house. I don’t want any of this to end up on their YouTube channel. It’ll put Cass at risk too.”
“I’m not sure if they caught anything on tape yesterday or not.” Doc leans back in his chair. “I can take the cameras down today, but we need to worry about what they recorded last night.”
Well, dang. I hadn’t thought about that. I know we turned the cameras away before I did my thing, but they might have picked something up before then.
“I’ll talk to Zeke. He should be able to fix it.”
“Mattie…”
“Don’t Mattie me, Doc. My dad isn’t as bad as you think he is, and I’m betting he can fix this, even if it’s with a bribe. He doesn’t just kill people, you know.”
Doc starts to say something but closes his mouth instead. He shakes his head and turns back to the pages in front of him. Smart choice. “I’ve searched through everything I can find, but there is nothing here that might help us.”
“I asked Zeke about it, and he’s not sure what to do either. I threw Jonas in The Between, but that’s not an option this time. She’s stronger than he was, and there’s no way the wraiths will get the jump on her. I’m hoping the hunters will be able to come up with something.”
“If there was something we could find to remind her who she was, to make her remember her child, then we might stand a chance.” Doc sighs and sits back.
Part of the reason I decided to major in psychology is so I can help the ghosts understand they’re not only dead, but that they have to move on. Doc is right in that if we can find a way to reach her and ground her in who she was, we could get through to her. My psych degree will help me, but this is my first year of college, and I’m taking beginning courses. I don’t have the tools I need yet.
And it’s frustrating.
“Well, unless we can time travel back to before the fire, we have zero chance of finding something of Matilde’s.”
Doc snorts.
My sentiments exactly.
“At this point, I don’t know what else to do. I hate to pin all our hopes on hunters who may or may not know how to deal with a soul eater.”
“There’s not much else to do, Doc. I think we need to go rest up and prepare for tonight. We both need sleep.” I pause and glance toward the door, remembering the creeper out there. “They need to fix the lights down here.”
“I’ll walk you out. The ghost didn’t bother me, so I’m guessing you’re safe as long as I’m there.”
“You gonna get some sleep?”
Doc starts packing his things. “Yes, but I want to check on Seth first.”
“How is he?”
“He’s in a coma the doctors can’t explain.”
“She took part of his soul.” I hand Doc his notebooks for him to pack into his briefcase. “It traumatized him in ways the doctors can’t treat. He’ll wake up when his soul is well enough, and not until.”
This is something I know about all too well. Last year, when I smashed my own soul to kill Deleriel, I slept for weeks afterward. It was several days before I even opened my eyes. My dad gave me something to keep me awake long enough for Eli’s funeral. Whatever potion he gave me was also a booster to my strength, and I was able to help carry his casket to his final resting place.<
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“Mattie?”
“Huh?” I blink at Doc’s question. I must have zoned out.
“You okay?”
“Yeah, just old memories.”
“Eli?”
I nod, not really wanting to talk about it anymore. There is something I should tell him, though, since he confessed his secret to me.
“I need to tell you something about Nathaniel.”
He shuts his briefcase and looks around, making sure he hasn’t left anything behind. “Hmm?”
“He’s my brother.”
Doc’s gaze snaps back to me. “Your what?”
“He’s Georgina’s son. His grandparents, the Dubois, raised him.”
The color slowly drains from Doc’s face. His brown eyes, usually sharp and full of curiosity, dull. “Say again?”
“He came here to meet me.” I fiddle with the button on my shirt, not wanting to meet his eyes, knowing they’ll hold the same suspicion and fear Zeke’s do. “I know better than to trust what he says, so you don’t have to lecture me.”
“Mattie, it’s not that you can’t trust him.”
That gets my attention. “You’re saying I can trust him?”
“No, of course not.” He looks horrified at the very thought. “That came out wrong. What I meant is it’s not only that you can’t trust him. The Dubois family makes the Cranes look innocent. There’s no telling what that boy is capable of.”
“So far, he hasn’t done anything, Doc, and he had a chance earlier today. He didn’t try to steal my power while I was out. He carried me to safety. I’m not saying I trust him, because I don’t, but I do want a chance to get to know him. He is my brother.”
Doc starts pacing and muttering about foolishness under his breath.
“I don’t want to worry you, but I thought you should know since he’s Georgina’s son.”
“He’s my nephew.” The realization hits him like a punch straight to the gut. “Dear God. My nephew is a Dubois.”
Well, he makes it sound like Nathaniel is the son of Satan. Wonder what that makes me.
“He’s only here until his flight leaves tomorrow.” I check my phone and see three missed texts from Dan. If I don’t text him soon, he’s going to start calling, or worse, he’ll call Zeke.
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