Shutter (16 page)

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.

“Y
OU 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.

“You could do more damage if it’s a posterior dislocation—”

“Help out or get out,” Ryder said.

“Fine.” Oliver blew out a breath and scrubbed his hands through his hair, pacing. Jude came in with one of our big med kits, the tackle-box kind used by our EMTs.

“Painkiller?” he asked.

“Yes,” Ryder and I said in unison.

Jude unwrapped a syringe and jammed it into a vial of oxycodone.

“At least let me do the injection.” Oliver sighed and took the syringe from Jude. “I’ve done it outside of class.”

I closed my eyes as the needle punctured my skin. When it slipped back, Ryder carried me into the family room and helped me lie on the floor. Jude pulled pillows off the couch and tossed them to Ryder, who tucked one between my body and injured arm, and one under my knees.

Oliver hovered on the edge of the room.

“Get her something to bite down on,” Ryder said. Jude disappeared and came back a few seconds later with a rolled-up hand towel. He placed it between my teeth.

“Are the meds kicking in yet?” Ryder asked.

“Just do it.” The towel muffled my words.

Ryder nodded at Jude, who secured my left side by pressing his palm into my clavicle. Ryder took my right hand. Every touch, every moment felt like he’d pushed a live drill into my shoulder. I gritted my teeth and balled my good fist, bracing myself.

“Look at me,” Jude said, turning my face to his with a gloved finger. “Remember the time we climbed Half Dome with Damian and your old man, and how on the first night the sunset turned all of Yosemite gold?”

I let Jude divert my attention, closing my eyes and remembering the silence of a sunset seen at three thousand feet up. Ryder lifted my arm with both hands and bent it into a ninety-degree angle over my chest.

“You said it was the most peaceful thing you’d ever seen—”

“Breathe in, Micheline,” Ryder said.

I drew a breath. Ryder rotated my shoulder inward. Muscle and ligaments and bone ground against one another. The towel deadened my whimper.

Jude put a little more pressure on my good shoulder. “And you, me, and Outback here sat on a cot up in the air. You punched me because I sprayed my Coke on you—”

Ryder gripped my hand tight, then turned my arm back out. He put a little pressure on my elbow, then a little more. The pain spiked. A
pop!
detonated in my body, agony impaling my arm. Jude kept me pinned. I bucked, shrieking into the towel, tears leaking through my closed lids.

“It’s back in the socket,” Ryder said, running his fingers over my shoulder.

“First try, too. Lucky,” Jude said, taking the towel out of my mouth. My jaw ached from clamping so hard. “You okay?”

I nodded, not trusting my voice. The words wouldn’t come anyway, not with a pain-soused brain and the nausea turning my stomach into a trampoline. I’d only had a few injuries that hurt so much: a flesh wound from some shrapnel, a compound fracture in my shin, and a bad concussion.

“Find her a blanket, will you?” Ryder asked the boys, pulling me into his arms. I dug the nails of my good hand into his shoulder. Jude hopped to his feet and left the room. Oliver excused himself, saying he’d check on the frame in Dad’s study.

“You okay?” Ryder asked.

I leaned my head against his chest—the world didn’t spin so much when I could focus on his heartbeat. “I’m fine.”
I think
. My pain retreated by degrees. But when I started to push away, Ryder held me tighter.

“Captain Kennedy and I popped a shoulder in for Travis once. The bloke bawled like a littlie.” He rested his chin on the top of my head. “You’re even tougher than him, just remember that it’s not weak to need a soft place to fall sometimes.”

“Okay,” I whispered.

He brushed my bangs out of my eyes, his fingers lingering over the bruise on my cheekbone. “Do you ever think about just—”

Jude interrupted with Mom’s old afghan. She knitted it herself, and I’d curled up with the blanket more times than I could count. Ryder slipped his arms under me, stood and set me on the couch, carefully. I tried to read the rest of what he meant to say in his expression, in the way he tucked the afghan around me, but he’d gone all stone-faced and left me clueless.