Shutter (25 page)

I gathered up the panes and clutched them to my chest. The voices inside them grew fierce, and fingers strained against the fabric, groping my arms, my chest, and my stomach. Turning, I ran back to our stash of antistatic Gore-Tex and wrapped both panes up tight, muting the voices.

They whispered to me the whole way home.

SATURDAY, 9:07 P.M.

“W
HAT THE HELL WAS
that?” Ryder asked as we pulled up to the house. I swung my leg off his bike, grabbed the Gore-Tex-wrapped panes, and headed for the stairs. “Micheline?”

“I don’t know.” I stuck my keys in the front door, hands shaking.

The stairs squeaked behind me. “How’d the ghost know where we were?” Ryder asked. “Can it track us with the chains?”

“I don’t know, Ry.” I shouldered the door open and set the panes against the foyer wall.

“Does this mean the ghost can show up any bloody place it wants?” he asked, closing the door behind us.

I stalked into the family room and started to pace. Ryder’s questions streaked through my head in a pack, chasing answers made of shadow and fog. I followed a worn-in path I’d seen my father and my grandfather take while deep in thought—the rhythm should’ve soothed me, but not tonight. Not now.

“Are we even safe in this house?” Ryder asked.

I chewed on my thumbnail, staring at any space not occupied by Ryder whenever my path forced me to face him. What if Oliver and Jude were attacked? We were vulnerable, separated, and it would be my fault if anything happened to them.
I should’ve kept the group together, I should’ve gone with them—

“Micheline, talk to me.”

I spun on him. “I told you: I. Don’t. Know.”

He stood in the room’s archway, his expression overcast by the house’s dimness, his soulchains standing out in bright relief.

“I don’t know what happened back there,” I said, pointing in the vague direction of the warehouses. “I don’t know why, or if it will happen again, or if I can even
stop
this monster from killing you all, and God, Ry, I’m just so—”

Tears welled up, fast enough to cut my words off before I said it aloud, the one thing no self-respecting Helsing would admit to feeling—fear.

I’d almost said
I’m just so afraid of losing you.

Turning away, I wiped at my eyes with the backs of my hands and fingers. Picked up my pacing again. On my third pass, I pivoted right into the warmth and comfort of his arms. My first thought was to resist, to push him away, but I gave into my second instinct and rested my forehead on his breastbone. The embrace quieted the wildness in me, shutting down all the noise in my head. For several breaths I just existed, not fighting or shooting or even overthinking our problems. Still and calm, except for the ache that stood between us:
Of all the rules you live by, why break this one?

I wanted to understand his frustration, but didn’t dare push the issue further. He’d lock himself down, and sometimes, a girl won more ground with a boy by dropping the issue. Especially with a boy with a heart like a vault and a poker face blank as a clean slate; a boy I couldn’t lose, not to these soulchains nor to my own stupidity.

The knot in my chest pulled tighter. How could I separate my fierce desire to protect him from how much I loved him, when I couldn’t figure out if I loved him like a best friend, a brother-in-arms, or something else? Was loving someone different from being
in
love with them? My heart said yes, but my mind couldn’t tell me why or how.

Ryder turned my face to his, taking my chin between his thumb and forefinger. Despite the composure on his face—the relaxed brows, soft mouth—anxiety stole the warmth in his eyes and darkened them to black. The gradients in his irises changed with his mood sometimes, and I wondered if anyone noticed but me. I’d seen his eyes go so dark only once, on the night Mom died and we curled up with Dad’s gun and waited to see if my heart would beat until dawn … and beyond.

I startled when he spoke: “That thing tried to kill you.”

“Well, the entity does want us dead.”

“It ignored me and went after you. Just you.”

“Of course it came after me; I’m the threat.”

“Micheline, I—”

But my phone rang, stealing the moment and whatever words he’d meant to say to me.

“It’s Oliver,” I said, checking my screen.

“Answer it,” Ryder said, turning away. I watched him disappear into the foyer’s shadows, my phone wailing in my hand. Half of me wanted to ignore Oliver’s call and go after Ryder; the other half knew that if Oliver surfaced long enough from his work to place a phone call, he’d found something worth talking about.

Practicality won out—I picked up and said hello.

“Micheline,” Oliver said. “Sure took you long enough, I almost thought you wouldn’t answer.”

So did I
. “You okay?”

“I’m fine,” he said. “We’re sifting through Reynold Fielding’s dossier now. Morley hired him personally, though Fielding isn’t a new tech like I’d thought. Hand me the other file, Gem?” he said, shuffling papers in the background.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Fielding has worked for the corps for more than a decade,” Oliver said. “He suffered a nervous breakdown eighteen months ago and was involuntarily committed to a psychiatric hospital. Which, of course, is why you didn’t recognize him—Fielding didn’t assist with the forensic work for your mother’s case.”

Ryder passed me on his way to the family room, and bolts of Gore-Tex tucked under one arm. “How long was Fielding committed for?”

Papers shuffling. “Looks like almost a year. They thought he suffered from schizophrenia—he had visual and auditory hallucinations, severe social dysfunction, and night terrors. Oddly, Fielding also developed a taste for flies, which he would trap with scraps of food, then pull their wings and legs off before eating them. Spiders, too.”

Lovely.
“And Morley allowed Fielding to come back to work?” I asked. “Why?”

“Fielding’s symptoms disappeared,” Oliver said. “He’s still on antipsychotics, but apparently his cognitive functions returned to normal.”

I narrowed my eyes. “Normal? He released a starveling ghost in a maternity ward.” The words sounded sharper than I intended them to, but if Fielding was responsible for the attack on St. Mary’s, if he was responsible for the chains beneath our skins, he would pay. Dearly.

“He’s innocent until proven guilty.” Oliver sighed, and I imagined him pinching the bridge of his nose, just like his father did when my dad got brash. “Now that the hospital’s security tapes have been compromised, proving Fielding’s involvement will be difficult. I’m going to forward this information to my father, along with my suspicions Morley concealed evidence from the investigation. He’ll find a way to detain them both for questioning, but our methodology for obtaining this information hasn’t been exactly … legal.”

I started to pace, sick of having so many unanswered questions. Our pool of concerns seemed to grow as fast as our soulchains, multiplying by the breath, tightening like a noose with every step forward. Who had the power to organize both the dead
and
the living against me? If someone wanted the corps’s heirs dead—and believe me, Helsing had a lot of enemies—shooting us would’ve been cleaner. Assured, even. No Helsing could dodge a bullet point-blank.

“We’ll be hitting the tetro practicum grounds around midnight, think you can meet us there?” I asked. Once Ryder finished upgrading the reaping cases, we’d need to train with them, figure out our tactics, and ensure we’d fight as a unit.

“Sure, what do you need to do?”

“The boys need to learn how to exorcise a ghost; I’ll explain later.”

“Speaking of boys, your
numero uno
was texting a girl as he dropped me off,” Oliver said. “You might want to check on him.”

Oliver and I said our good-byes. I dialed Jude’s number, knowing it’d take a miracle for him to answer his phone. It rang ten times before I gave up, and Jude didn’t have voice mail because he “wouldn’t freaking check it anyway.”

I almost texted him a
Where are you?
But I erased the text before sending it, choosing to tell him to meet us at the tetro arena at midnight instead.

My phone buzzed thirty seconds later:
OK.

Typical Jude.
But I’d already played my Helsing card once tonight, and I didn’t dare pull it out a second time. Besides, Ryder and I could jury-rig the cases on our own.

I stalked into the family room, counting backward to check my temper. Ryder unrolled a bolt of fabric across the hardwood floor, a fabric measuring tape draped over his neck. Rocking back on his heels, he rested his forearms on his thighs and looked up at me. He seemed chill, maybe exorcising our foyer argument in some subconscious creative space. If any tension remained, it didn’t show on him.

“What’d Ollie say?” Ryder asked.

“Fielding isn’t a new hire.” I repeated what I’d learned from Oliver, and the news made Ryder’s brows lift. He muttered
bloody hell
under his breath, surveying his work on the ground.

“Can’t catch a break, can we?” he asked.

I nudged the reaping cases with my boot. “You’ve always said we make our own luck.”

“Fortune favors the bold,” he said. “But she’ll only fall for a bloke who’s got an ace up his sleeve.”

We spent the next hour measuring and cutting fabric. My grandmother’s antique sewing machine sat on the coffee table—the thing looked like a medieval torture device with its wheels, pedals, and pointy bits. After a few false starts, we worked together to sew the wooden boards inside the Gore-Tex panels, giving the cases more strength and shape. I found the machine less torturous than I’d guessed—maybe it was the needle’s hum or the regular pump of the pedal. Maybe it was the feel of a weapon forming beneath my fingertips, or the knowledge that every stitch brought us closer to freedom.

Or maybe it was Ryder sitting beside me, hip to hip, helping me guide the fabric through the machine. Every so often my hand brushed his, or he’d move and I’d catch the blunted edge of his scent: a mix of masculine sweat and the eucalyptus soap he liked. He still had rust-colored crescents under his fingernails, and mottled bruises and scrapes on his arms from our crash landing last night.

Every little thing about him distracted me, now that his kisses had thrown my resolve off-kilter. We swung like a pendulum, back and forth, sometimes battering down the barriers between us, sometimes hurtling away again. We couldn’t escape the physics of the situation: Each time we swung away, we picked up momentum, came back, and hit the barrier harder. His every action seemed amplified, everything noticeable, everything meaningful.

I wasn’t sure how our world would change if—no,
when
—that barrier finally fell. I wasn’t sure I wanted to know.

Between the two of us, we stitched up the mirror cases quick, adding front panels to zip over the reaping panes for safe transport, rigging kickstands, and stitching in better, tougher handles.

“Just add mirrors and reapers.” Ryder crouched beside the finished products, straight pins stuck between his teeth.

“They’re perfect,” I said.

“They’ll do.”

I nudged him with my knee. “They’re amazing.”

He leaned against my thigh, sighing. I placed a hand on the crown of his head, surprised by the softness of his hair. It gleamed like wet ink, highlighted with burnt umber and cherry tones. So pretty, and like most boys, he probably didn’t even realize what he had. The color made me wish I had something richer than pale European blood running through my veins, too. Ryder’s mother had Australian Aboriginal blood and gave him his five-shot latte coloring.

Getting braver, I ran my fingers through his hair.

He looked up and the warmth in his gaze nuked any resistance in me. I let him tug me down into his lap. Despite the soulchains, his body still burned several degrees hotter than mine, practically scalding the insides of my thighs. I placed a hand on his cheek, touching the sandpaper shadow on his face. He cupped my rear in his hands and pulled me closer, leaving inches between our lips. Dueling emotions set my cheeks ablaze—my heart wanted him, but fear grabbed me and held me back. This was the hammer clicking, the bullet chambering … and all I could think about was how itchy my trigger finger felt.

“You’re shivering,” he said, wrapping his arms around my waist.

“It’s just the chains.” I watched the strands of his soulchain twine together, building a new link right under the rosary beads around his neck. I traced the edge of one with my fingertip.

“Can you feel them?” I whispered.

“Just the cold—they feel like someone shoved a bunch of coolant tubes under my skin.” He swallowed hard, his muscles contracting under my fingertips. “Warm me up?”

Somehow, I got the feeling he wasn’t talking about the kind of warmth that came from hot, strong coffee or fuzzy bunny slippers. He pulled me closer, so close our noses touched. I nuzzled him, encouraging, not committing.

“You never answered my question, you know,” I whispered.

“Which one?”

“The one I asked you back in the alley.”

He cupped my chin in his index finger and rubbed his thumb over my lower lip, wiping my words and worries away. “You think you have someone to lose, you beauty, but you know I would break every one of his rules for you. Say the word, and I would fight for you, kill for you, follow you anywhere, even leave the bloody corps for you—”

I kissed him. Ryder hummed and slipped a hand up my back, skin on skin, cradling me. He nibbled my lower lip, twisting a bundle of nerves in my navel, then opened me with a kiss. My toes curled in my boots. I hadn’t realized I’d pull the trigger so easy. Now I was falling and tumbling without a parachute—he was twice the adrenaline rush of jumping off the PacBell Building and almost as frightening.

“I used to think I’d always be loyal to your old man,” Ryder said, so softly I almost couldn’t make out the words. “But now I know it’s you I’ll be always be loyal to, not him.”