Shutter

by Courtney Alameda

  I buried my face in my arms and rocked myself. Long minutes spiraled past, drawing me into a barren emotional space. I had nothing to cling to, except the vow that I wouldn’t fail my boys, not this time. Somehow, I’d find a way to trap our entity.

  A light whistling pricked my ears. I lifted my head. Had I imagined it, or had Ryder passed by the basement door? He wasn’t much of a whistler.

  There it was again—eerie notes rising through a minor key, almost like a low howl—coming from the antimirrors outside. Did the basement light attract a spirit?

  With a deep breath, I wiped my eyeliner-smudged tears away and pushed off the floor. Drawing the lightproof lead curtain back, I found the antimirrors lit from within, but dimly. The basement air sank into the darkroom, colder than before, and it smelled as ionized as an electrical storm.

  Something’s loose. I grasped my camera until I realized the mirrors’ surfaces gleamed, unbroken. Safe, or safe enough. With nerves like bowstrings taut and ready to fire, I stepped into the basement.

  Nothing moved in the antimirrors. I couldn’t see much of the basement reflected in them, white-blue light crackling over the Obscura side of the mirrors. That’s weird. I crept closer. My skin bucked as a predatory gaze settled on me.

  “You are shorter than I imagined, nymphet,” a male voice said.

  I spun, but the antimirrors showed only shadows laced with fingers of lightning.

  His laugh breathed up my back. Behind. I pivoted, but those mirrors were empty, too. My blood pounded in my extremities.

  “Show yourself,” I said, turning, keeping my focus wide to catch movement in any of the mirrors.

  “My, my. Are you frightened?” The voice curled around me, as though someone—no, something—circled me, raking me from head to toe with its eyes.

  “I’m not afraid of you.” I fought to keep steady, straightening my shoulders and lifting my chin. A chuckle wound into my ears.

  “How now, little Helsing?” he said. A figure appeared in the room’s center mirror, tall, straight-backed, and square-shouldered. Twenty-something, with bone structure that deserved to be carved in marble and hair the color of hardened lava.

  “Hello, Micheline,” he said. My name sounded odd, wrapped in an accent I couldn’t name. Russian, perhaps? As I stepped into the halo of light cast by his mirror, I noticed he had a long scar dashed down one temple. He wore a long black coat adorned with a wolf fur ruff, black trousers, and boots. He held my gaze, unblinking.

  “How do you know my name?” I asked.

  One corner of his mouth turned up in a grin or snarl, I couldn’t decide, exposing the gums but not the teeth. “I’d recognize a Helsing anywhere.” He reached toward me. Ghostly fingers traced down my cheek, sucking the heat from my body. I drew back; his grin deepened.

  How is he manifesting his energy on both sides of the antimirror? I wondered, but cleared my throat. Badass reaper girls didn’t back down in front of the dead. “Pretty rude of you not to introduce yourself, then.”

  He laughed, throwing his head back, his Adam’s apple bobbing. “Call me Luca. At your service,”—he bowed, catching my eye as he rose—“and you will need my service.”

  I narrowed my eyes. “What’s that mean?”

  He cocked his head to the side, his gaze falling to my navel. My veins iced. I put a hand on my abdomen, covering the soulchains glowing through my shirt. Luca tutted, though he looked anything but sorry for me.

  “What do you know about them?” I asked.

  “Everything, if you are willing to pay the price,” he said, stepping forward and drawing little circles on the mirror with his index finger. Electricity danced off his fingertips. “Nothing if you are not.”

  The electricity … he can charge an antimirror on his own? If so, only a thin layer of glass separated me from a predator, from a ghost whose voice possessed a shape and weight in the physical world. One little shock to an unsealed antimirror, and a ghost like Luca could step through the pane like a doorway.

  I backed away.

  “Skeptical, are you?” Luca said, cocking his head. “If I were the one responsible for your chains, why would I offer my assistance in breaking them? Don’t you think I’d want to”—he eyed me up and down—“keep you?”

  “It could be a way to throw me off track,” I said. “My mother told me that nothing good comes out of an antimirror, so I don’t see why I should trust a ghost who knows my name.”

  “Then to prove my good intentions, I will answer a question about your soulchains, gratis.” He beckoned me close. When I hesitated, he lifted a brow. Turning, he stepped out of one mirror and into the next. Watching me. Circling. “All predators must know how to hunt their prey.”

  Don’t trust him, I told myself. Something about his smile seemed off, too tight and without any teeth, familiar and foreign all at once. Yet I had no leads, no way to track my entity. Even if Oliver hacked Investigations’s servers and located the St. Mary’s case, I had no assurance he’d find anything useful. With no psychological profile on the ghost, no motive beyond seeing the boys and me dead, and only one known haunting, I had no way of triangulating the entity’s location; however, negotiating with a ghost as powerful as Luca brought me to the edge of my ethical code.

  Helsing doesn’t bargain with the dead.

  Did I have a better option?

  How many rules will you break to win? I asked myself.

  Six days. My soulchain already had enough links to wrap around my waist once.

  If he’s right …

  I caught myself chewing on the side of my fingernail again, made a face, and dropped my hand.

  “What will it be?” Luca asked.

  So be it. Nobody else would die on my watch. “Why help me?” I asked, stepping toward him.

  “It entertains me. Ask your question.”

  He’d baited me, and we both knew it. “Can I break the soulchain by exorcising my entity?”

  “Yes.” But Luca’s voice lilted on the edge of the word, toying, teasing, as if such a simple phrase contained a multiplicity of meanings. He leaned down, almost as if he could slip through the mirror and kiss my cheek. The air stirred by my ear. I gritted my teeth so as not to flinch. “Would you also like to know how to find him?”

  My breath caught; I couldn’t bottle it back. Luca smiled wider.

  “Ask for my help, nymphet,” he crooned.

  “Tell me how to track my ghost.”

  “Say please.”

  My lip lifted in a snarl. “Tell me how to track my ghost … please.”

  A smile slicked his face. “You will be able to track your captor using a Ouija planchette and a map of the city.”

  “I don’t believe in Ouija.”

  He chuckled, and ghostly fingers danced up my arm. I rubbed off the sensation. “Try it, little huntress, then return to me.”

  With a wicked grin, he vanished, taking the light in the room with him.

  “That’s your answer?” I yelled at the dark mirrors. “A Ouija board?”

  Another chuckle wound between my legs, cat-like, languorous. I kicked at the sensation and took the basement stairs two by two, not even bothering to turn off the light. Once closed, I put my back to the basement door and shut my eyes, crossing myself and counting backward from ten.

  The front steps creaked, followed by a set of heavy footfalls in the foyer. “You feeling okay, Princess?” Jude asked. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

  “Funny,” I said, in no mood to spar with him. No way could I tell the boys about Luca—if I didn’t trust him, Ryder definitely wouldn’t. No doubt the boys would question the Ouija board, too, but what the hell? We didn’t have any other leads.

  In the kitchen, I found Oliver unpacking shopping bags. Fluffy plastic clouds held more food than we’d eat in three weeks, even with boy-size appetites. I counted at least seven boxes of cold cereal in the bags, a stack of salsa containers, corn chips, energy bars, and two liters of soda with multicolore
d labels. They bought the things on my list, too—pita bread, goat cheese, avocados, Greek yogurt. Lots of good coffee. I’d probably end up feeding them all by default, or else they’d nosh on processed crap for a week. Particularly Ryder, who loved junk food the way he loved rules, his motorcycle, and reaping.

  Then I saw something weird sticking from a bag—a long, glossy box. I gasped as I peeled the plastic bag away and revealed a Ouija board.

  I snatched it up. “Why did you buy this?” The box’s edges buckled in my grip.

  Oliver gestured at Jude with a box of dry spaghetti. “I followed this idiot around for twenty minutes looking for that board. He swore you’d want one.”

  “How did you know?” I asked Jude.

  He shrugged. “A hunch.”

  “You actually need it?” Oliver asked, lifting a brow. “You know those boards are controlled by an unconscious ideomotor effect, don’t you? They don’t do anything.”

  I ripped the plastic off the box. “For once, Oliver, you’d better hope you’re wrong.”

  SATURDAY, 12:02 A.M.

  “YOU TWO HAVE FUN playing board games,” Oliver said, swinging his messenger bag over one shoulder. “But don’t get too cozy—I’ll need to measure your soulchains’ growth in a few minutes, as I’d like to make some projections about how many days we really have left.”

  Jude made a face. “Have fun with that.”

  “You’ll thank me later,” Oliver said as he walked out of the family room.

  Jude muttered, “Nerd,” under his breath. Leave it to Oliver to cope by studying and analyzing the monsters; I coped by hunting them down. If we wanted to be free of our soulchains, we needed to hunt and exorcise our entity—we wouldn’t win by studying the monster to death.

  I punched Jude in the arm, careful to hit the part of his shoulder covered by his shirt. “Help me with something?”

  “Hell no,” he said, rubbing his arm as I slid past him. “Do I look like your Australian?”

  Pausing at the kitchen’s threshold, I turned and batted my lashes at him. “No, but I guess you’ll do.”

  “Don’t bat your eyes at me, Princess”—he smirked—“you don’t do girly so well.”

  “Would you rather I punch you in the face?”

  “Sure, ’cause you still hit like a girl.”

  He won that round. I motioned for him to follow me into Dad’s study, a secluded space just off the dining room. All my father’s furniture had been handed down from generation to generation, the chairs dressed in worn leather, the desk supported by clawed feet, and an old-school flue fireplace took up most of one wall. The lights glowed golden as honey. I’d liked this place as a child and used to study on the bearskin rug while Dad worked—kicking my feet in the air, careless. One touch of my bruised cheek, and I could compare just how different his home office felt now.

  “So what are we doing, exactly?” Jude asked.

  I gestured to the silver-framed map of San Francisco on the wall. “Take it down, please?”

  “What’s it for?” Jude stepped on a chair to pry the map off the wall.

  “You’ll see.” I removed the Ouija planchette from the box and set the other materials aside. Once Jude managed to get the map free, we maneuvered the frame over Dad’s desk, pushing lamps and photo frames out of the way. I set the planchette over the city’s heart. Part of me couldn’t believe I was doing this, taking advice from the dead.

  Jude looked at me squint-wise. “Is this how you’re tracking the ghost?”

  “Pretty much.” I rounded Dad’s desk so I could approach the map from the shorter side—my arms weren’t long enough to reach across the map lengthwise.

  “Is the house screwing with your head?” he asked.

  “I’m fine.”

  “This isn’t really your thing, superstitious stuff.”

  “You’re the one who bought the board.” I put my hand on the planchette.

  He grimaced, covering my hand with his gloved one. “You’re the one who’s using it.”

  “Desperate times, desperate measures.”

  “God-awful logic if you ask me, which you won’t.”

  “You’re right, I—”

  The planchette trembled. Jude gripped my hand tighter.

  “Relax,” I said. My soulchain clinked inside my body, like ice cubes shifting inside a glass. My teeth chattered as my body temperature dropped another degree, and I swore when my hand moved without my consent. I forced myself to remain loose, to let the soulchain guide me—but surrendering even a small part of my will made me nervous.

  My hand jerked again, dragged by the planchette.

  “Are you moving it?” Jude asked, a hitch in his voice.

  “No, not exactly.”

  The lights suffocated, then died and doused us in shadow. Something crashed upstairs. Our soulchains’ glow lit the map beneath us. My eyes closed of their own volition, the image of a high-rise building projected itself on my lids. Hundreds of empty-socket windows stared back at me, with slate-gray eagles keeping watch over the roof.

  The planchette stopped, quivering beneath my hand.

  “It’s an abandoned skyscraper,” I said. The vision cut to inside the building, like a movie changing scenes, its soundtrack nothing more than a low whistle over static. I found myself standing in a huge room, grimy chandeliers hanging from a dingy gold-leaf ceiling. Chains whistled and clanked in the dark. The air throbbed, lifting my hair and tearing at my clothing, driving shudders into my body.

  A maelstrom twisted at the room’s center. I saw wisps of the ghost—an arm, a foot, a knee—through the swirling miasma. An androgynous voice sang in the darkness, Hand for a hand, and tooth for a tooth …

  The entity reached one bright arm through its shadows and beckoned to me, just as Luca had beckoned.

  “Micheline, let go.” Jude’s hand broke away from mine.

  Something bony grasped me, fingers settling over my wrist like shackles. Static sparks danced over my arm, kissing and nipping at my skin.

  “Micheline!”

  Jude’s voice barely registered. In my mind’s eye, I circled the entity. Getting closer. Wishing I could see through its dark veil and into the monstrous heart that wanted me dead. The ghost kept one hand extended, curling its index finger. “Tell me what you want from me,” I said to the entity, but it only laughed.

  The hand tightened around my wrist.

  Then yanked.

  Hard.

  The vision snapped like a dry bone. I slammed into the desk. The pain hit like a reflex: I screamed as my shoulder popped loose, nerves exploding from my shoulder to my wrist. I couldn’t think or breathe or omigod, the thing’s pulling my arm off.

  My fight kicked in. I grabbed hold of my elbow and pulled back. A black, skeletal hand reached through the map’s silver frame and wrapped itself around my wrist, dragging me down. I melted into the frame to my forearm. My elbow. More dark hands bubbled out, their fingers writhing like worms and grasping for me, leaving dark streaks on the metal.

  “Camera!” I shouted at Jude.

  “Where?”

  Gritting my teeth, I propped my boot against the desk, pulling up and away. “Basement—bring the flash!” He turned and ran from the room. The hand dug its nails into my wrist, peeling off strips of skin. I shrieked, kicking the frame, losing the game of tug-of-war. The miasma dragged me closer, deeper. A second hand gripped my forearm, a third my elbow.

  “Micheline? What’s wrong?” Oliver stumbled into the office, using his laptop screen to light the way. He’d looked at me, shocked, uncomprehending, before Jude shouldered him aside, my camera in hand, bag in the other.

  “Use the flash!” I barely thought to close my eyes before the world lit up. The hands dissipated and the lights burst back on, shattering bulbs and shoving the room back into darkness. Glass rained down as I fell to my knees, cradling my arm. Shaking. My shoulder felt too loose—I’d been ripped like a rag doll.

  Jude rushed over, grabbed me,
and half dragged me from the study. Oliver slammed the door behind us. Ryder’s heavy footsteps thumped down the stairs.

  “What the hell happened?” Ryder asked, coming into the hall. Oliver knelt in front of me, checking my eyes with a penlight on his key ring. I tried to move my arm, but the pain just made me gasp.

  “Something reached out of the frame and grabbed her,” Jude said, his voice an octave higher than normal.

  “What do you mean ‘something’ grabbed her?” Ryder asked, hitting his knees and touching my injured arm, which was covered in black soot and blood. I winced; Ryder saw. He scooped me into his arms and carried me into the kitchen, my shoulder screaming with each step. I bit down on my lip to keep from crying out.

  “A dark hand reached out of the map frame and grabbed her,” Jude said, following us. “It looked just like that black stuff Dr. Montgomery was talking about.”

  “Don’t tell me you were using that stupid board,” Oliver said.

  “It wasn’t my idea, Einstein—”

  “Shut up, you bastards.” Ryder set me on the island and started squeezing the bones in my arm. “Get me a med kit.”

  When Ryder touched my right shoulder, pain axed my arm and I almost blacked out. I shrieked and folded forward. Bile burned my throat and made my eyes water. My breaths came in sharp hiccups.

  “Dislocated shoulder.” Ryder braced my cheeks in his palms and put his forehead against mine. “You’re hyperventilating, breathe deep. I know it hurts. Breathe with me—four in, hold for four—that’s my girl.”

  I breathed in time with Ryder, funneling all my energy into drawing breath for four full seconds, holding it, expelling it. Into watching his chest rise, into feeling his breath on my skin.

  “We need to take her to an ER,” Oliver said.

  “No.” I hiccupped the word. “Hospitals … they’ll report us, we can’t—”

  Ryder stroked the side of my face. “Shush, we can reset your shoulder here, okay?”

  I nodded, gulping.

  “You aren’t a doctor,” Oliver cried.

  “We don’t have a choice,” Ryder said. I leaned my head against his chest, and he rubbed his palm up and down my good arm. “I’ve done it a bit in the field. She’ll be okay, she’s tough as.” Aussies often dropped the noun in their similes—he’s rough as, she’s hot as—and I’d tease him for it if I hadn’t just had my arm ripped from its socket.