Love's Shadow (Brothers Maledetti Book 2)

by Nichole Van

  I met his gaze over Grace’s head. His hair was down, tumbling around his shoulders. Sleeves pushed up and Jack’s scratches still starkly red on his arms. Jeans and shirt wet from pulling us free.

  “Wow. It was . . .” I laughed, too breathy and stunned. “Remarkable.”

  Two hours earlier . . .

  My blood dripped onto the phone. Just one solitary drop.

  The world telescoped, and I tumbled weightless, only to wake up on my back in the pitch black. I sat up struggling to see as my eyes slowly adjusted to the dim light.

  I found myself in a large hall, like the kind you see in old stately homes with marble columns and an arched barrel ceiling, dimly lit and nearly monochrome.

  Out of the corner of my eye, a sudden movement darted forward.

  I screamed.

  A shriek that turned to a cry of joy half a second later.

  Gracie was running toward me, down the length of the long hall. She launched herself onto me, pushing me to the ground.

  Surely reenacting the vision Tennyson had seen.

  “Aunt Lucy! You’re here!” She sobbed over and over.

  I clutched her small body to mine, crying with her.

  My sweet Gracie was here. She was okay.

  It was only when Grace calmed down that I noticed the Regency gentleman standing behind her.

  Tall, auburn-brown hair, blue eyes, sharp jaw, wide cheek bones . . . Jack Knight-Snow.

  We introduced ourselves.

  “I am sorry and yet not that you are here,” he said. “I have been so long without company. And then Miss Grace, and now you, have arrived.”

  Still holding Grace, I prowled the confines of the hall, Gruncle Jack at my heels. I peered cautiously around each pillar, expecting Chucky to lunge out at me at every turn.

  Not that I had any idea what I would do if he did. Hit him with a blast of my eternal optimism and a pithy t-shirt saying?

  “You okay, Aunt Lucy?” Gracie asked, arms around my neck.

  “Just making sure you’re safe, sweetie.”

  Jack frowned. “If you are looking for anyone else, I am afraid you are out of luck. We are the only people here.”

  “You sure about that?”

  Jack turned to me with a solid Are you crazy, madam? look.

  “I assure you, I have had adequate opportunity to ascertain the true depths of my solitude.” Tone so very dry.

  Got it.

  “We are stuck here, I am afraid,” Jack continued. “I have had far too much time to think about my mistakes. That blasted mirror. I should have never touched it. Let alone picked it up with blood on my hands. It primed the mirror to draw in those of my bloodline. I am positive it holds the key to our escape as well, but I am still not sure how.”

  A bright light about the size of a dinner plate suddenly appeared next to Jack.

  Instantly, he pressed his hand into it. His own arm disappeared nearly up to his shoulder.

  The whole scenario looked Twilight Zone weird.

  Jack’s face was a mask of concentration. “I just cannot quite get purchase on the other side,” he muttered, face strained. “I try to grasp, to pull myself out . . .”

  Ah.

  The light disappeared and Jack staggered forward, his arm reappearing.

  The light returned almost instantly.

  He tried again.

  The same thing happened several times, the light appearing in different places. Grace would chase around, looking for it, squealing when she saw it.

  It disappeared for a while, giving me a chance to think. What if the light was the portal?

  When the light appeared again, I was ready.

  “Wait,” I said, darting forward and thrusting my arm into the light like Jack had done.

  If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em.

  I felt something solid. It had to be Branwell’s arm. Instead of clawing at it, I rested my hand on it. A hand wrapped around my wrist. Held tight.

  Nothing happened.

  The light faded away and my arm fell.

  Dang.

  The light reappeared and I reached in again. This time, I yelled.

  “Branwell.”

  No reply.

  “Branwell, we’re stuck in here. You have to get the mirror and study it and find a way to get us out.”

  Nothing.

  The light faded.

  We sat in tense silence for a while, Grace moving from my lap to Jack’s. He had been perfectly solid inside the hall.

  While we waited, Jack and I talked about what happened. Upset over Sofia’s defection, Jack had accidentally cut his hand throwing a crystal brandy decanter against the fireplace mantel and, without thinking, touched the ancient mirror. The very scene that Branwell and Dante had seen in my living room.

  Touching the mirror with his own blood had tethered Jack’s bloodline to the shadow world. He was instantly sucked in. His memories of being in the large, monochrome hall were hazy. He remembered floating in a fever-like haze until a light shone in. He reached for the light, clawing at the other side, trying to pull himself out. But the light faded as abruptly as it came. Jack drifted in that odd dream-like state until the next time the light appeared, which it did several more times.

  Then Grace had arrived, shaking Jack out of his lethargy for good. In talking with her, Jack pieced together what had happened.

  Grace’s allergies had given her a bloody nose on the morning she disappeared. She had gone to grab a tissue from the top of her dresser and had touched the Little Mermaid music box with her bloody hand. Like Branwell and me, Jack realized that the music box must have been keyed to the shadow world.

  There was no Chucky, no demonic force.

  Just a man stuck for nearly two hundred years in a shadow world, trying to dig his way free every time Branwell touched a keyed item.

  Jack, Grace and I sat together until an enormous portal opened, and Branwell’s very solid hand reached in to us.

  After listening to the story of my time in the shadow world, Branwell herded us upstairs to Judith’s apartment where the evening had begun.

  Jack constantly swiveled his head, taking in a world thoroughly different from the one he left, his face a strange mix of shock and wonder.

  We all crowded into the great room of Judith and Chiara’s apartment, Gracie clinging to my neck. My first instinct was to call Jeff and Jen and let them know their daughter was okay.

  But Branwell shook his head, placing a hand over my phone before I could call.

  “Let’s think this through first,” he said. “You are one of the prime suspects in Grace’s disappearance. If she suddenly reappears with you, you will most likely be charged with kidnapping, and we have no way to disprove that.”

  That was . . . true. I hadn’t thought beyond finding Grace.

  And though I would do anything for Grace, going to jail unnecessarily definitely crossed a line. Not to mention how terrible orange looked with my pink skin undertones.

  I set my phone down, deciding not to call my brother just yet.

  “Let me rally the troops and see what we can come up with,” Branwell said, brushing his knuckles against my neck.

  I pecked his cheek and left the room to change into dry clothing, taking Grace with me. She chattered on about Gruncle Jack and how nice he was. Once I was done, I wrapped Gracie in a warm blanket and carried her back to the great room, snuggling her on the couch.

  Branwell was on the phone, pacing, talking with Chiara and Judith in Volterra about Grace’s return. I could hear their whoops of joy even across the room. Branwell smiled, holding his phone again in his bare hand. Without anyone in the shadow world, nothing came out of objects linked to the mirror.

  Then Branwell launched into our problem, switching to speaker phone so I could be part of the conversation. How could we return Grace to her parents without casting suspicion on innocent others? After a lot of debate and input from Chiara in particular, we crafted a plan.

  By this
point, it was well past midnight. Gracie had fallen asleep hours ago, and Branwell had situated Jack into one of the guest bedrooms. Branwell kissed me good night and promised to be back first thing in the morning.

  Gracie and I met Branwell and Chiara at the bottom of the palazzo stairwell just after sunrise. Grace was a bit of a mess, hair poking everywhere and still wearing the same pajamas she had on when she vanished. But her ragged looks were part of the plan.

  We were ready. Chiara had everything in place.

  Two of Chiara’s trusted friends picked up Grace and drove her far south of Florence to the Abbey of San Galgano.

  We had debated for hours where Grace should be ‘found.’ It needed to be somewhere touristy where there would be people, but not so touristy that Grace would be in danger or our helpers seen by security cameras.

  San Galgano fit the bill. It was an abandoned abbey turned museum buried in the rural countryside of southern Tuscany. One person would drop Grace off close to the museum and send her walking toward it. Two other friends would be in the museum at the time and ensure that Grace was ‘found.’

  After Grace left, Branwell and I waited an hour before calling Inspector Paola to tell her that I had returned. I had apparently been upset and needed to get away. Paola insisted we both come down to the police station to answer some questions.

  Bless Paola. She played right into our hands.

  Branwell and I were sitting with Paola when she got the call that Grace had been found.

  The timing could not have been better. Not to mention the comical look on Paola’s face when she realized that we were not, in fact, her prime suspects.

  From there, everything exploded.

  Reporters and cameras were everywhere. Jeff and Jen rushed to the station, crying. We all went to the hospital where they had taken Grace as a precaution and watched my niece be reunited with her parents.

  As expected, the police were baffled by Grace’s strange reappearance and had no leads. Grace herself was no help, as she just babbled excitedly about being with Gruncle Jack, an ancestor who had died two hundred years ago. The media dubbed Grace’s safe return the Miracle of San Galgano.

  It took several days, but everything eventually calmed down.

  I returned to Prato with Jeff, Jen and Grace, but I hung out with the D’Angelos when I could. We talked endlessly about Branwell and his strange ability to open the portal using the mirror. Who knew why he had that particular gift. Without understanding the exact nature of the D’Angelo curse, it was hard to say. Chiara was absorbed in researching it. But it could be years before we had a solid answer.

  We did determine that the mirror was a portal to a shadow land, a place in between life and death. The longer a person stayed in the shadow world, the more their body drifted toward death. This explained why Dante had seen Jack and then Grace. He was seeing the portion of their soul that had crossed over, so to speak. It also clarified why Jack was transparent: he was neither fully in this world or the next.

  For herself, Grace was fine after a day or two—no longer squishy.

  Kids.

  They’ll bounce back from anything.

  Jack, however, was not so lucky. He remained ghost-like, unable to touch things. We worried that he would need to eat or do something to survive, but he said he was fine.

  When he first met Chiara, he stared and stared. And then stared some more.

  “It is like seeing Sofia reborn,” he whispered.

  Dante assured us that Chiara was not, in fact, Sofia reincarnated but simply a distant relative who happened to look similar.

  For her part, Chiara made some crack about Jack being a man of little substance and went about her day.

  Things with Tennyson were still tense, and I saw Branwell less and less as he was wrapped up in family matters. We texted and talked on the phone, but we both knew that in a few days I would be returning to the States, and Branwell would get on with his life in Florence.

  Tennyson, as he ever had been, stood between us.

  I cried my heart out over it and ate too much therapeutic gelato.

  It should have helped more than it did.

  Branwell texted me ten days after Grace’s return, two days before I was set to fly home.

  Lunch tomorrow?

  I stared at his words, knowing that seeing him would only make everything that much harder.

  But . . . things were already awful. How much worse could seeing him make me feel?

  We met at a swank cafe just off of Piazza della Repubblica in downtown Florence. My eyes instantly finding him in the crowded room.

  Broad shouldered. Trimmed beard. Gloved hands. Long sleeves. Fierce eyes drinking me in like I was his raison d’etre.

  Right back at you, my love.

  Lunch was painfully lovely. Full of the lighthearted things we did say and heavy with the aching ones we didn’t.

  The refrain kept running through my head—‘Tis better to have loved and lost/Than never to have loved at all.

  I had finally looked up the author of that quote.

  The irony of ironies?

  Alfred, Lord Tennyson.

  Tennysons everywhere tormented me with what could never be.

  Forty Seven

  Florence, Italy

  2016

  Branwell

  Lunch with Lucy was an exercise in masochistic torture.

  Seeing Lucy, being with her, hearing her voice, knowing she wanted to be with me as much as I wanted to be with her . . . my heart shattered.

  Guilt swamped me.

  I couldn’t fix this, no matter how hard I tried.

  Tennyson was doing better. Better than I would have hoped, actually. Mom was staying with him in Volterra, helping him get back on his feet. That said, he was still too fragile to even consider broaching the topic of Lucy.

  Lucy walked home with me after lunch, winding slowly through the streets of Florence. Shamelessly, I pulled her into every dark doorway for a kiss. Across the Piazza della Signoria. Down dark alleyways to Piazza Santa Croce. And then several more twisty streets to our family palazzo.

  Lucy wanted to say goodbye to Chiara and check up on Gruncle Jack. He had taken up residence in our place. Nonna had always said the palazzo needed a ghost. Jack was a fine house guest, once he got through his creepy-staring-at-Chiara phase. Who knew what the long term outcome would be for him.

  I waited in the kitchen while Lucy said her goodbyes and then took her hand as we walked back downstairs. I would drive her to Prato and then . . . that would be that.

  My throat felt tight and scratchy. How could I let her go?

  “This isn’t goodbye for forever.” She pulled me to a halt at the bottom of the stairs.

  “Lucy, love, we’ve been over and over this—”

  “I know, but I refuse to say I’ll never see you again. What we have, Branwell . . . it feels too right.”

  I wrapped my arms around her, kissing her with quiet desperation. Trying to find a way forward through the jumbled emotions flying around my brain.

  “I’m going to wait for you,” she whispered between kisses. “I don’t care how long it takes, you’re worth the wait.”

  This woman.

  “Love, you know I’ll wait for you too, but Tenn . . . I don’t know—”

  “Shhh, you can’t say that. Things might change. I love you too much—”

  I silenced her with a kiss, and she responded, hands in my hair, pushing me back against the wall opposite the door. How could bear losing the one person who completed me? Despair and sadness laced every touch of our lips.

  I really should have been paying better attention. Listening.

  Anything.

  But kissing Lucy felt so right. Like I had been born for this alone . . . to be her anchor in the storm.

  Ah, my darling Lucy.

  Dimly, I noted the car drive by. The slam of a car door. The crack of the portone opening.

  I didn’t register Tennyson’s casual words for anot
her second after that—

  “Sheesh, you two. Get a room already.”

  He was a up a flight of stairs, prosthetic leg tapping, before it all sank in.

  Lucy and I jumped apart, scalded.

  What?!!

  I blinked. Gazed down at Lucy.

  Yep. Just as surprised as me.

  We both looked at the stairs where Tennyson had disappeared.

  Then back at each other.

  Stairs.

  Each other.

  “Uhmm, did he just say what I think he did?” Lucy’s tone decidedly matter-of-fact.

  “Yeah.” I replayed the scene in my head. “I’m pretty sure he did.”

  “I thought he was in Volterra.”

  “Me too.”

  Hand in hand, we bolted up the stairs after him. Three flights later, we found Tennyson, hunched over, raiding Mom’s fridge for a Coke.

  He stood up and shut the fridge as Lucy and I walked into the room, still holding hands.

  “Hey.” I gave him a solid wassup lift of my chin.

  “Hey.”

  I reached out for Tennyson’s emotions, trying to get a read on him.

  Love. Determination. Amusement.

  Wait . . . amusement?

  I cocked my head in question. “You . . . wanna tell me . . .”

  “What’s up?”

  “Yeah.”

  Tennyson’s eyes flitted to Lucy and then down to our joined hands. Wistful. Pensive. But not anguished. Not the serrated pain I had been feeling from him lately.

  Hope nudged in, a tiny tendril.

  “Hey, Luce,” he said with a soft smile, raising his eyes to hers.

  “Tenn. It’s good to see you.” Lucy clutched my hand tighter. “I’m glad you’re doing better.”

  Tennyson nodded. And then looked at me.

  His jaw went up a notch. Daring me to challenge him. Over what, I wasn’t sure.

  “You love her?” He nudged his chin at Lucy.

  What to say? I opted for the truth.

  “More than life.” I paused. Swallowed. “But not more than your life.”

  Tennyson bit his lip and angled his head.

  “My life?” he asked, puzzlement and confusion. “What does my life have to do with you and Lucy?”