Shutter (20 page)

“I almost had the ghost,” I said, pulling off my monopod and dropping it on the ground. “All I needed was a few more minutes.”

“We didn’t have a few more minutes,” Ryder said. “We didn’t have the firepower.”

“You want to talk firepower?” I punched him in the arm. “What about the claymore? You almost blew us all to hell.”

Chuckling, he cradled the back of my head in his hand. “Almost as brilliant an idea as tracking a ghost with a Ouija board, hey?”

And then he pulled me close and kissed me.

SATURDAY, 3:48 A.M.

J
UDE CAUGHT UP TO
us as we jogged back to the Humvees.

“That was wicked,” he said, one arm skinned, face flushed, eyes sparking. Adrenaline did that to boy brains. “You guys okay?”

“Never better,” Ryder said, his grin fierce. He spoke too quickly—my world twirled around me, the streetlights kaleidoscopic. I told myself it was shock, but I wasn’t about to assign it a cause, not with the horrors I’d seen, not with the entity still at large, not with the massive download of adrenaline still running my body.

Not with Ryder’s kiss still stinging my lips.

If Jude sensed anything between Ryder and me, he didn’t let on. I examined him as he fell into step with us, waiting for a derisive remark, a raised eyebrow, a short laugh—Jude read faces as easy as he read the front page of the
San Francisco Chronicle
. Perhaps the shift in territory between Ryder and me wasn’t printed on my skin, even if I felt like it burned me up and dyed my cheeks scarlet. Maybe it wasn’t even visible in Ryder’s closeness, or the way our arms brushed as we walked.

Alarms wailed from the museum. Dust fell down in sheets, turning the air to sandpaper and my saliva to mud. I pulled my shirt over my nose and mouth. Bits and pieces of necro gore twitched on the ground, and I winced when I spotted a dismembered scorpion stinger atop a dumpster.

I scanned the PacBell’s windows for ghostlight and saw none. Where the ghost would take refuge now, I couldn’t know; and the thought of daring the Ouija planchette and map again made my arm ache. Could we risk going in a second time, since we had the ghost’s location?

My comm buzzed. “Move it, guys. Police are already on their way,” Oliver said.

Scratch that idea.
Getting caught by the police would just land me back in my bedroom on Angel Island, walking on Dad’s mosaic of broken cameras.

“Glad to hear you’re alive, too, Einstein,” Jude said.

“Save your sentiments for later,” Oliver said. “I tipped off dispatch, so our people are on their way as well. We need to get out of here.”

Ryder shoved our parachute into the back of Jude’s truck. “Where are we headed?”

“St. Ignatius?” I said. “I think we need to talk to Father Marlowe.”

“I don’t trust the guy,” Jude said. “Why go have tea and crumpets with him?”

“Because Marlowe was the first responder at St. Mary’s, and maybe he’ll tell us something we weren’t able to pick up from the crime scene.” I didn’t want to concede a man I trusted like a father could hurt me, but my bruised cheek made anything seem possible. “And if Marlowe is responsible for the attack on St. Mary’s, you’ll know, won’t you?”

Jude hesitated, weighing the cost of what I was asking him to do. “Yeah, okay, I’ll try to get a read on him.”

In the distance, a siren roared. We revved engines and ran.

Ryder and I rode in silence. I didn’t know what to say. We’d almost died at the PacBell, and then he went and kissed me. I bit my lip, trying to press the feeling out with my teeth. Had he even meant it? Or was it a reflex? I swore I heard the empty click of a revolver barrel whenever we touched. How many clicks did we get until we hit the live round, until life as we knew it lost and ended up blasted all over the wall?

At the next stoplight, he leaned back against me, coming down from the rush. I gripped him tighter, and he looked back at me and smiled. He knocked the wind right out of me, despite the stripe of necro gore on his cheek—or maybe because of it.

I looked away too quick, knowing I said too much by it. My blush made my injured cheek ache. What the hell was wrong with me? My heart shouldn’t have been beating so fast, scattering the details of the hunt to the wind. I needed to analyze the details and figure out why the ghost’s energy reacted the way it did when caught between my lens and a reflective surface. I’d never tried shooting ghostlight against a mirror, and could only hope it helped me capture more of the ghost’s energy on film than normal.

Yet here I was tumbling down a rabbit hole, thinking of bruised lips and blush rather than business. The business of
survival
. Ryder shouldn’t have kissed me—if Dad found out, he’d buy Ryder a one-way ticket back to Melbourne, no questions asked. Dad didn’t pay attention to many things in my life—but I knew he analyzed every little interaction between Ryder and me.

As dangerous as it was to let Ryder kiss me, I thought I might let him do it again. He kissed me like we’d done it a hundred times before, like he’d studied the landscape of my lips and knew them with his gut and not his head, the way he knew throttles and times tables and triggers.

He nudged me with his elbow at the next stoplight, maybe asking if we were okay. I squeezed him once. We were alive, so we were still okay for now—but our
now
might include only a handful of nights, no more. I worried about my future because I’d promised myself I’d survive this nightmare, but the possibility of death in five days or less still weighed on me.

When the cathedral came into view, Ryder and I circled the block, on the lookout for Helsing Humvees. The streets were clear, but I’d bet my best lens Helsing trackers had already paid Father Marlowe a visit, looking for traces of me.

We parked in a dark alley in the University of San Francisco’s student housing and walked two blocks toward the cathedral, keeping our heads down. I felt overexposed on the empty street, the streetlamps dumping too much light on us. Hopefully the PacBell would throw off Dad’s trackers for a few hours—we left a whole lot of Helsing lead in the walls, after all.

Jude and Oliver headed toward us. Oliver waved; Jude pulled off his right-handed glove with his teeth and stuck it in his back pocket.

The boys and I entered the massive cathedral from the east, stepping through a side door and into a darkened foyer—not a public entrance, but I’d been to Marlowe’s offices more times than I could count. The cathedral’s warmth buffered the cold off my skin. The place was packed with people seeking sanctuary, exorcist priests walking down the aisles, reading prayers of protection aloud. Personally, this was the last cathedral I’d seek sanctuary in, since the attacks at St. Mary’s happened a mere two blocks away.

Out of habit, I dipped my fingers in the font of holy water and crossed myself. My soulchains stilled till the water dried on my fingertips.

I didn’t recognize the priest who greeted us. When I asked for Father Marlowe, he nodded and ushered us toward the offices, glancing over his shoulder at the cathedral’s front entrance. Senses prickling, I followed his line of sight but saw nothing but the parishioners.

“There were some men from Helsing waiting here,” he whispered to me. “They left twenty minutes ago and in a hurry.”

No doubt they got called to investigate the PacBell.
I exchanged a look with the boys.

“Best keep out of sight, then,” Ryder said.

We walked parallel to the saints’ alcoves, passing St. Michael the Archangel, patron saint of exorcists and tetrachromats. I usually paused to light a candle for Mom and my brothers, but skipped the devotion for the night.

The priest led us to Marlowe’s door, knocked once, and stepped aside. Marlowe took one look at me and pushed up from his desk, black robes billowing. “Come in before anyone sees you,” he said, beckoning to us, taking me by the arm and sitting me down in a chair across from his desk. “Your father’s hunters are about tonight. Lock the door, Ryder, thank you.”

With the door closed, Marlowe’s office became a sanctuary, still and silent. Father Marlowe and my mother had met while she studied abroad at Rome’s Regina Apostolorum University with one of the world’s top tetrachromats, site of the Vatican’s own unofficial “exorcism school.” Marlowe married my parents, baptized us kids, and called upon my mother whenever an exorcism got too violent for his people to handle. In most cases, words and devotion were sufficient weapons to bind the spiritual dead in the afterlife. But when prayers couldn’t stop an entity, mirrors and lenses would.

The boys looked like they stood on a bed of nails. Marlowe shook hands with each of them, warm as usual; Jude held on a few seconds longer than propriety dictated, his irises flashing with the blue ghostlight. When Marlowe turned away, I caught Jude’s eye and lifted a brow.

Jude shook his head.
He didn’t set us up
. The other boys relaxed; Ryder unclenched his fists and Oliver’s shoulders lost some of their rigidity.

Marlowe sat on his desk in front of me, motioning to my cheek. “That’s a terrible bruise. How were you injured?”

“It’s just a hunting accident,” I said, touching my cheek. “Tonight was—”

“Her old man hit her,” Ryder said.

“Ryder,” I hissed.

“Hey, none of this ‘I was hunting’ crap, okay?” Jude said, making air quotes around the words with his fingers. He sank into the chair next to mine, crossing his legs at the ankle. “Don’t become a codependent freakshow on us.”

Oliver massaged the bridge of his nose. “Real soft touch there, Jude.”

“Shove it, Stoker,” Jude said.

“It’s not what you say but how you say it,” Oliver said under his breath.

Jude opened his mouth to snap back, but Ryder kicked his chair. “Just don’t protect him, Micheline. That’s all we’re asking, hey?”

I stared them down until Father Marlowe tutted, “That’s enough.” He turned my head to inspect my cheek. Maybe I didn’t want anyone else to know Dad hit me, so what? I needed drama-free time to sort out my insides.

“Leonard’s temper is legendary, but I never imagined he’d harm you physically,” Father Marlowe said, releasing my chin. “Is this why you ran away from home?”

“Is that the story Dad’s passing around?” I half laughed, half snorted. “That I’m some runaway with a chip on my shoulder?”

“Well, his trackers certainly weren’t forthright about any abuse,” Marlowe said, rising. “If you didn’t leave because your father struck you, why did you run?”

I rose from my chair. “You won’t believe me unless you see the chains.”

“Chains?” Marlowe asked.

“You’ll need your chromoglasses, Father.” I gestured to the barrel lenses that lay half hidden beneath some papers on his desk. If I’d felt uneasy exposing my abdomen in front of the boys, the awkwardness multiplied in front of a priest. But my self-consciousness melted away quick, especially as Marlowe crossed himself and murmured a prayer under his breath.

Soulchains now belted my waist twice, flickering and bucking as Marlowe repeated the lines I knew so well. But when he got to the part about forgiveness—
forgive us our debts, as we have also forgiven our debtors
—my chains rocked up and whipped my insides. The boys’ gasps told me I hadn’t been the only one affected by the prayer.

Marlowe paused. “Your flesh actually rippled in response to the lines on forgiveness, Micheline. May I repeat them?”

“I’m okay with that.” I glanced back at the boys, who nodded.

Marlowe drew a breath, and made the sign of the cross over me as he said, “Forgive us our debts, as we have also forgiven—”

“Stop,” I gasped, pressing a hand into my stomach. The soulchains scoured my insides, grating them like I’d swallowed a handful of steel wool. I sank back into the chair—even Ryder looked a shade too pale, a sheen of sweat on his upper lip, the back of his head resting against the office door.

After a moment, Marlowe pulled out a voice recorder and set it down on the desk. “Tell me everything. Start at the beginning.”

“And then?” I asked.

He was dead serious when he said, “Then I send the audio file to Rome.”

*   *   *

M
ARLOWE’S INTERVIEW TOOK ALMOST
an hour. Once we’d told him everything, starting from our bout with the ghost at St. Mary’s all the way up through tonight’s fiasco (omitting my conversation with Luca, of course), he stopped the recording.

“My God,” Marlowe said, rubbing his temples with long, thin fingers, his cassock sliding back to expose Lichtenberg-figure burn scars, which were common among exorcists and tetrachromats. Lightning strike victims got the scars, too—they almost looked like feathery brands. “I must apologize to the four of you—”

“Don’t,” I began, but he quieted me by lifting his hand.

“As inexcusable as Leonard’s actions were, I have condemned you to this fate. My offense against you is greater than his. I am sorry.” Marlowe’s words had a physical presence in the room, real and true and heartfelt, the kind of apology I’d never hear from my father. “We will find a way to free you from this curse, I promise.”

I wish I could say his vow brought me a measure of comfort; but in my heart, I knew this thing was so far beyond the church’s power to exorcise, so far beyond even Helsing’s expertise, I couldn’t place my faith in either organization.

“We can’t stay much longer, it’s almost dawn,” Ryder said. It was only a matter of time before our paths crossed with a tracker’s, and I doubted the crews would linger at the PacBell Building once they realized we weren’t there.

“Very well”—Marlowe rose and opened a desk drawer—“but you should not leave without some form of protection.” He took out three small black-lacquer presentation boxes, and handed them to the boys. “These have already been blessed. I always keep a few on hand for new exorcists, or anyone who needs additional protection.”

Ryder popped his box’s lid, revealing a small rosary, a type popular with exorcists as the wood and glass beads wouldn’t conduct electricity. “Thanks,” Ryder said, snapping the box closed and slipping it into his pocket. Jude and Oliver did likewise, and I made a mental note to make sure the boys put them on—especially Oliver, who put God on a par with Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny in terms of his beliefs.