by Krista Walsh
Allegra had heard enough.
With one final twist, she snapped his spine. As he sagged in her arms, she kept her hands on the sides of his head, letting the weight of his torso do the work of tugging it free from his body.
Voices reached Allegra from beyond the flames as people came down the stairs, and she turned to face the doors. Her demon energy ran rampant through her veins, urging her to go after them, to overpower them and drink their souls until she was sated. She wanted to lose herself in her feral mind, never to return to reason.
But Matthew’s dark, empty eyes caught hers through the fire, and her rage evaporated, leaving her frozen and shaking.
Gloved hands forced open the swinging doors, and through the smoke four dark shapes entered in a rush of gas masks and thick clothing.
They hesitated when they saw her, and she imagined how she looked, standing in the middle of the room surrounded by fire and piles of dust with Matthew’s burning body at her feet.
Their pause lasted only a breath before they set to work.
Then Allegra stopped seeing anything.
Numbness seeped in to replace the heat in her body, and she felt nothing. Not the flames or the water, not the bruises from the draugr’s blows or the burns on her skin.
She didn’t even feel the pain of the crack in her heart, though she knew it was there, slowly spreading, threatening to shatter her.
22
Allegra unlocked the door to her condo apartment and pushed it open. On frozen legs, she stepped onto the kitchen tile, then edged the door shut with her foot and threw the bolt.
After the noise and rush of that morning, her home was too quiet.
Everything was exactly as she had left it: the black marble kitchen counters bare, the dining table to her left empty except for the glass bowl with colored beads at the bottom — such a useless piece of decor that she’d hated even when she’d purchased it. The soft cream curtains open against pale lavender walls, letting the cool light stream in over the cream and maple furniture. The shoulder-high fireplace with the clock ticking away the seconds above it on the mantel.
Everything was exactly as she’d imagined it throughout the week, when all she’d wanted to do was escape the hotel’s chaos.
Everything was so normal.
But it no longer felt like home. As though the woman who had stepped out of the Garden Hotel amid the flames no longer fit into the world she’d created for herself over the last six months. The silence was suffocating, and the cleanliness was an insult to the ashes clinging to her hair and draugr dust soaked into her clothing. She had walked through fire and it had burned away her veneer of perfection. She had exposed her wildness, lost herself in its liberating emptiness, and now the orderliness of her previous life mocked her, beckoning her to return to old habits and go on as if nothing had changed.
As if she hadn’t changed.
Allegra wanted to scream, but the gesture would have taken more strength than she possessed.
She kicked off her ruined shoes, then went straight to the liquor cabinet in the corner of her living room. She pulled the decanter of scotch and a crystal tumbler out from the cupboard and poured herself a healthy dose.
The alcohol burned her throat as she knocked it back, so much sweeter than the oxygen the paramedics had pushed on her after they’d carried her out of the inferno of the kitchen and through the blazing lobby.
She rested the cool glass against her forehead — the first time she had taken in any real sensation since that morning.
The previous thirteen hours had passed by in a daze, and even now she wasn’t sure what had actually happened and what her brain had made up to fill in the gaps. She remembered being bundled up by the firefighters and carted out of the kitchen as they set to work with the hose. Tim had been standing in the courtyard, his face red and melting, as though he were made of wax. The police had bound his hands behind his back and were trying to wrestle him toward a paramedic to see to his burns, but he refused to cooperate, struggling to get back inside the burning building.
The hotel itself had been swallowed by fire. The thin curtains in all the rooms on the left side had been swept up in flames, with smoke oozing out of every opening. The gray stone had turned black, and the reek of burning alcohol, cloth, and wood had spilled into the early morning.
The guests and staff had stood across the street watching the beautiful old building smolder, and Allegra had envied their detachment. They had lost a suitcase, maybe a few expensive jewels and outfits. Her own belongings had been left behind in her room, all of the dresses Courtney had provided and that she had ruined gone. But she’d hardly given them a thought all morning. What did they matter? She had lost everything.
It seemed impossible to her that both Courtney and Katie had sat with her on the edge of the ambulance as the paramedics checked her burns and applied more antiseptic, that they had held her hands when Detective Kealey knelt in front of her and tried to ask questions that Allegra had been unable to answer. Apparently, they were better people than she could ever hope to be.
Eventually, after Detective Avery had led Courtney and Katie away to give Allegra some privacy, she had found enough words to assure his partner that the trouble at the Garden had been resolved. Permanently this time.
Detective Kealey would never appreciate the cost of that resolution.
Allegra’s tongue pressed against the roof of her mouth as her throat tightened. She drew in a sharp breath and gulped down more scotch to ease the pain of the expression in Matthew’s eyes the moment he’d died.
Anything but that. She could handle thinking about everything else she’d been through, but not that. The crack in her heart grew wider, and she shut down again.
Holding on to her anesthetized emptiness, she went into the bathroom and considered taking the perfect bath she had longed for all week. Here, she had all of her oils and soaps, her expensive shampoo and the jazz record on the stereo. But the reek of smoke and kitchen grease followed her, and she needed to get rid of it before she lost her mind. She set her scotch on the counter, started the shower, and stepped under the spray.
She washed her hair three times and scrubbed her skin until it went pink. The blisters on her hands had already burst and healed over, and only the redness on her palms remained. In a few more days, no one would know to look at her that she’d been caught up in a horrible hotel fire that had destroyed one of the city’s gems and cost her lover his life.
Again she forced her thoughts in another direction, and her memory returned to the dim light of dawn outside the smoking hotel. She had been alone in the ambulance, and Detective Kealey had helped her come up with a story for the police report, a version of the truth that fell into the scope of realism, but which covered up most of the details she’d rather people not know. By the tightness around Kealey’s eyes and the blandness of her voice, Allegra recognized her displeasure at having to blur the truth, but the effort had come so naturally to her that Allegra was sure it hadn’t been her first time.
She could barely remember the details of their false story. Something about how she and Matthew had been discussing business late into the night. They’d gotten hungry and called room service, but no one had answered the phone, so they’d gone downstairs to see if anyone was available. The bar had been empty, so they’d gone down to the kitchen. The grease fire had already started, coming from a stove that had been left on, and they’d been trapped when the fire crossed the doors. Matthew had died of smoke inhalation. Allegra had only survived by chance.
Chance. Such a daughter of a harpy.
Allegra climbed out of the shower before her thoughts took a darker turn. She toweled herself dry and wrapped herself in her favorite fleece robe. The temperature had dropped over the course of the day, and with the shock still deep in her bones, her hands wouldn’t stop shaking. She left her hair to air dry and went into the living room to refill her scotch.
The cover story would be good enough to satisfy
the police reports, but it left out so many facts. It left out the words Lee had spoken before she’d killed him — his promise that her pain was only beginning. At the time, she’d dismissed his threat. Her stubbornness had remained firm. She was Allegra Rossi, and she did not feel pain.
But his curse had held true.
If it had just been Cody, he might have been right about her short-lived grief. She would have regretted Cody’s death, but she likely would have soon dismissed it as an unfortunate event that had no real bearing on her life. Her stomach twisted at the thought that she would have turned her back on him so easily.
But that would no longer be a problem. His death was now tied to a course of events that had gutted her. Left her an empty husk. Just like all her victims.
Just like Matthew.
Her cover story also didn’t include the words Lee had spoken that had stripped Matthew of his body. It didn’t take in the pain Matthew had shown as he reached for his chest, so confused about what was happening, and then so lost.
In spite of her best efforts, Matthew’s final expression kept floating in the forefront of her mind whenever she closed her eyes. She’d spent hours that morning working to interpret the final look he’d given her while she waited for people to speak to her, to move her, to check in on her, and when she’d finally figured it out, the pain had sent the crack in her heart shooting outward, splintering into a million more hairline fractures.
His regret hadn’t been for getting involved with her, which had been her first belief. No, it had been grief that all of their plans were now cut short. Lee’s words had stolen their chance to have their adventure and see where they might end up. He had stolen Matthew’s chance to step into the darkness, and Allegra’s to experience the light.
Tears spilled down Allegra’s cheeks, and she wiped them away with the inside of her wrist before inhaling her drink as though it were air.
She shivered and the hair on her arms rose, shock breaking down her natural resistance to the cold. She eyed the gas fireplace and thought about her desire earlier that week to sit on the floor in front of the grate, drink her scotch, and prepare for her next shoot. Now that idea left her nauseated. She didn’t think she would be able to handle the shimmering glow of the flames just yet, even if they were hidden behind a solid sheet of glass. Just the thought of a fire provoked the memory of smoke and the stench of burning meat.
All of her usual methods of relaxation now carried painful connotations, and she didn’t know what to do with herself that wouldn’t put pressure on her shattered heart. She had broken her own rule, and the consequences threatened to break her apart.
This is why Aunt Louisa warned me against it, she realized. She’d always believed it was because succubi were incapable of falling. Now she accepted they were just as weak as any other species in that regard.
She even understood how Antony had gone so far to fight for Jermaine when he’d thought he was losing him. She understood how attaching yourself to someone might drive you to make the most desperate decisions to hang on to them, or slip into insanity if suddenly they weren’t around anymore.
Drink in hand, she padded over to the wall of windows that overlooked New Haven. The rain had fallen off and on during the course of the day, but the lurking clouds had finally let loose in a determined torrent, rain mixed with ice pellets that bounced along the sidewalks below. The storm fell over the city much like the darkness of her dreams, and she wondered if it was another omen of what was to come.
She sensed deep in her bones that the approaching threat, whatever it was, hadn’t finished with the city yet. If anything, it was only getting started.
And why wouldn’t it be? Her life had been a series of unexpected twists since she’d found herself in Jermaine’s locked room. Every step of the way since then, she had fought against the changes, wanting nothing to do with them — not wanting to test her self-control or acknowledge the power of her demon instincts — but now that she’d been forced to take that first step, there was no other direction to go but forward.
Raindrops and ice pattered against her window, and between the glittering droplets, she stared at her reflection against the backdrop of dark clouds. She made out the seams of her robe and the taut lines of her neck. Her face was lost against the growing twilight, but she could see the edge of a shimmery figure as it appeared behind her.
“You’re going to be okay,” Matthew said.
The sound of his voice, layered by the distance between where she stood and a place she could not yet go, tightened the band around her heart even as it soothed the crack within it. Allegra shifted her attention to his reflection in the window, at his ghostly shape wavering in the light that came through from behind the clouds.
She felt no surprise at his presence. On the contrary, she’d closed her eyes to him all morning, too afraid to believe he was real. For hours, hope and sadness had pulled her apart, and she’d worried what would happen to her mind if this projection of him was all in her head. He’d first appeared to her when she was speaking with Detective Kealey, but she’d thought he was just a figment of her shock. Then she’d seen him again as she stood waiting for an officer to take her home. On the drive over, she’d sensed him sitting beside her. She hadn’t taken the chance of looking directly at him, dreading what her reaction might be if she turned toward him and he wasn’t there.
Hearing him speak now should have made her worry that she’d lost her mind, but she’d had time to process what had happened. She knew he was real. And she knew why he was here.
Lee had used him to get at her. She thanked the goddess she had prevented him from carrying out the rest of his plan, because she understood what he had intended to do. It had taken her a while to figure it out, but the answer had come to her as the paramedic’s morphine had drifted through her veins and she’d seen Matthew standing outside the hotel, flames spewing from what remained of the front doors.
Lee had intended to turn Matthew into one of his draugrs. He had killed the body, but kept the spirit intact, trapping Matthew to this plane so he could transform him into one of his siblings. Replace the family that Allegra had stolen from him.
Lee hadn’t gotten everything he’d wanted, but although his spell had been interrupted, the result had still stolen her future and mocked her with what might have been. Matthew stood before her now as nothing more than a ghost. An echo of his human self. She wondered if he was actually processing what was going on around him, or if he was just a light that would gradually flicker out, like the siblings her sister had once controlled.
Having him here in any form offered a faint solace, but she wondered if it was worth it for the pain that would come when he eventually faded away.
It hurt.
She hurt. Something she’d never experienced before and didn’t know how she would recover from. How did human beings function with these emotions crushing their souls? Hate, anger, joy — these made sense to her, the fleeting changes of state that returned to neutral once the cause vanished. But this weight of loss and grief…by their very definition, the cause could never go away. Matthew would always be gone, so how would she stop aching for him?
The answer escaped her, so she hugged her emptiness closer and turned her thoughts back to what Matthew had said. Although she suspected his words were only echoes of things he’d said or believed prior to his death, the act of speaking with him calmed some of her anguish.
“You say that as though you know for a fact.”
He chuckled softly. “I know you, Allegra. You wouldn’t let the death of one human man change the course of your life.”
A sob caught in her throat and she swallowed hard to clear it. “A few days ago, I would have agreed with you about that.”
“Then it’s possible I’m wrong,” he said, teasing gently. “I’m afraid I haven’t gained insight into the future now that I’m on the other side of things.”
The hair on the back of Allegra’s neck rose and she stood up str
aighter as she took a closer look at Matthew’s transparent form. She’d believed him to be a memory of his former self, a spirit that had attached itself to something familiar as it clung to this world. But he was interacting with her. Present. Aware.
Her eyes widened and her fingers around her glass slipped. She caught it before it fell, then set it down on the television stand beside the window.
“Is that really you, Matthew?” she asked.
His smile widened. “As far as I know.”
Allegra blinked once, twice to work through the million thoughts racing through her mind. “What happened to you? What are you? Where are you?”
He looked down at himself. “I’d hoped you might be able to tell me. I know that I’m dead. I felt myself slip out of my body like an oyster from its shell or something. It was cold, but it didn’t hurt, if you were worried. And now…I don’t know. Am I a ghost?”
“I do not know,” she said, full of regret that she didn’t. She needed to understand what was happening. Was his mind, his soul, still here with her as they seemed to be? She wished she had access to Vera’s books so she could find a better answer. “What do you feel?”
Matthew raised his gaze and peered around the room. “Energy. My senses are gone, but it’s like I’ve gained new ones to replace them. I can’t touch you,” he said, the corners of his eyes turning down with grief, “but I still feel you.”
New tears streamed down Allegra’s cheeks as he passed his hand through her chest. The coldness at the contact, the way her skin contracted with goosebumps, was expected, but she gasped as a sudden warmth spiked through her core.
The heat sparked into desire as it spilled down her legs and up into her cheeks.
“My body is gone,” Matthew said, taking a step closer, though he kept an inch between them, “but whatever makes up what I am now can still brush against whatever forms you. It feels…incredible. Like going for a run and then drinking a half-dozen espressos. I know I’m dead, but in some ways I’ve never felt more alive.”
