Shutter (7 page)

Dr. Montgomery crossed the room, carrying a Maglite flashlight in hand. “You have experience with antimirrors, don’t you, Miss Helsing? I’ve yet to train Gemma in their use.”

Mom had kept a basement full of them back at the Presidio house. Unbidden, her voice rushed through my memory:
Mark my words, Micheline—nothing good comes out of an antimirror.
Still, she’d taught me to summon ghosts to the edge of the pane, taught me how to question them, and taught me to never reveal my name to them. “Yes,” I said.

“Good.” Dr. Montgomery turned on the flashlight and pointed it into the mirror. The beam shot straight through the glass, illuminating the carnage in the hospital room beyond. She flicked it off, then on again, as the others gathered behind us.

“What’s that for?” Jude asked.

“Consider this a dial tone,” Dr. Montgomery said, continuing the flashlight’s off/on pattern. “Light draws them, as they can absorb its energy.” Well,
most
light energy—ghosts couldn’t absorb my flash’s specially ionized light.

After a few minutes, a rustling noise eked from the glass. The flashlight’s beam stuttered, its batteries weakening. A dirty arm flickered through the beam, and the faintest throb of violet ghostlight pressed itself against the glass.

Dr. Montgomery turned off the light, and something said, “Shh, shh,” from inside the mirror. The voice sounded like the wind whickering in the wooden shingles of my old house.

Meager light fell into the Obscura via our side of the antimirror. The refuse on the floor shifted, as though pressed by a footstep. A plaster pebble tumbled free from the mess and broke into a powdery cloud on the linoleum. There came a kind of hiss—more like the susurration that dragging one’s slippers across carpet makes—low and crackling. The hem of a tattered ball gown appeared in the arc of light cast by our side, the outline of a woman’s bony shoulders and long neck visible in the anorexic light behind her.

“Light, shh,” the ghost whispered. “On.”

“You may have the rest of the energy if you assist us,” Dr. Montgomery said to the mirror. “I have four living children who have been infected with ghostlight, and I need to know what’s happened to them. Will you help us?”

The ghost twitched.

“I’ll take that as a yes.” Dr. Montgomery blew out a breath. “Show her the infection, Micheline.”

I curled my fingers around the hem of my shirt and tugged up, exposing the ghostlight marks on my skin. The first loop had split into two identical, attached helixes and thickened.

The ghost drew back so fast, an avalanche of trash sputtered in her wake.

“Please, do you know what it is?” I asked.

“Shh, shh,” she said, her voice limped and lisped.

“Tell me,” I said.

“Shh-s-s-soulchain.”

The word made my insides seize up.
Soulchain
. The loops on my stomach were starting to look like chain links, a conduit connecting me to a demon. A vise-like pressure clamped down on my lungs, making my breaths shallow, dizzying.

Dr. Montgomery recovered first. “A soulchain? Do you know how to get rid of it?”

The ghost shifted her weight. She reached her hands into the light, her fingernails cracked and layered with dirt. She made two fists and twisted them in a way that looked vaguely like wringing a chicken’s neck.

“I don’t understand,” I said.

“Break,” she said.

“But how do I break the chain?” I asked, stepping closer to the mirror. “Do I need to exorcise the ghost?”

She made the twitchy wringing motion again. “
Seven days. Break ties
.”

“Seven days till what?” I asked.

“
Till you
 …
are as I.
”

There was a crash—a loud, wrenching sound. The ghost tripped backward, knocking into the light fixture, whimpering as I cried out, “How do I break the chains?”

An impermeable darkness bubbled into the room on the Obscura side. A scream cut the air, drawing an answering cry from Gemma. Dr. Montgomery stripped the sheets off a gurney in one motion and threw them over the antimirror, silencing it. The leftover stillness in the room sopped up the dregs of my composure. Dr. Montgomery and I stared at each other, our chests heaving as if we’d just run a mile.

For several seconds, no one spoke.

“That black mist,” Oliver murmured. “It looked rather like what we saw at St. Mary’s, didn’t it?”

“You mean the shadows in the mirror?” Dr. Montgomery said, looking at Dr. Stoker. “That’s what this ‘miasma’ you’ve described looked like? And you were all able to see it, plain as day?”

The boys nodded.

“What is it?” I asked.

Dr. Montgomery drew a breath. “Those misty creatures have been described to me as starvelings, denizens of the Obscura that consume other spirits to accumulate power. From what I understand, they have the ability to deconstruct the fabric of the soul and weave it into the black matter you saw, which acts as both a shield and an agent for the host.”

“And what would happen if someone were to ingest some of a starveling’s miasma?” I asked. “Someone living, I mean.”

“Is this what happened to you, Miss Helsing?” she asked.

“The entity practically choked me with its smoke,” I replied.

Dr. Stoker checked his notes, flipping through several pages before he said, “It’s comprised of a carbon substrate, mixed with some element unrelated to any on our periodic table.”

“Well, I would have to say soulchains are the result of ingesting a starveling’s miasma,” Dr. Montgomery said quietly.

Dad raised me to have iron emotions, to stay calm and stoic in spite of fear; but the despair pooling in Dr. Montgomery’s eyes shot down my resolve.

I had seven days to break our chains. Seven days to stop a monster.

Seven days to save us.

It wasn’t enough.

FRIDAY, 3:42 A.M.

I
NEEDED A FEW
minutes alone to think. To deal. I pushed past the exam room doors and headed down the hall. The soulchains would likely break if I exorcised the ghost who held them, but a track and exorcism could take
weeks
—it required the establishment of a profile, an index of an entity’s preferred haunting locations, victims, and method of killing. It required figures. Projections. Data. Hunting. How much of that could I accomplish in seven days?

The hall clock’s second hand clicked like a revolver’s hammer—tick, tock,
bam.
Even time wanted me dead.

“Hold up, Micheline,” Ryder said, following me out of the exam room. I paused by the Helsing mural. To my surprise, he stopped inside the three-foot buffer zone we kept between us, the space that reminded us both of how off-limits I was, the one we didn’t discuss. The one my father put between us with all his talk of arranging my marriage, of keeping the Helsing bloodline strong, and how neither of those things included a castaway Aussie boy with no ties to the founding families.

Dad made that clear to both of us.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered, but I wasn’t sure if I apologized for the soulchains or for the lines drawn between us.

Ryder answered with a look—I expected it to ache, but the worry in his eyes drowned me instead. He touched the corner of my mouth with his thumb. His lips parted, and I hoped for words that could put the breath back in me.
It’s going to be okay
. I needed to hear it, if only from him.

He flinched when a door slammed. A nurse bustled into the hall, pushing a rattling cart in the opposite direction. Ryder set his hands on his hips and looked at me, his soft smile tugging my heartstrings out of shape. His emotions ran deep—he didn’t often use words to express his thoughts or feelings. A girl had to get used to translating his body language and using it to interpret the words he did say.

“What now?” he asked.

I blew out a breath and shoved the ache away. We had two options, but only one real choice: “We do what we do best—we find the monster and destroy it, or we die trying.”

“Just like any other hunt,” he said.

“Like any other night,” I said. Except it wasn’t.

I looked up at the painting and met Mina Harker’s bright gaze. Even in her final moments, as Dracula’s blood ripened in her body, poised to kill and necrotize, Van Helsing hadn’t given up on her. He’d fought for her life as I would fight for the boys’ lives, for my own. Whatever this thing was, it would be twice dead before our seven days were up.

Footsteps—sharp and timed, like a metronome—bounced toward us. “Micheline?”

We turned. Damian Drake strode through the lobby, alone. He looked like a darker version of Jude, his nephew, like all the years of working counterterrorism beat the sun out of his visage. His gaze drilled into my bones. “Your father asked me to escort you home and wait with you until he arrives.”

Wait with me? More like imprison me.
“Why didn’t he come himself?” I asked.

“He’s holding another press conference in a half hour,” Damian said. My heart clattered into the pit of my stomach. Dad had been angry at St. Mary’s, yes, but I had a feeling what was coming would be worse. Much, much worse.

“What about Ryder and the others?” I asked, fighting the quiver in my voice.

“Stoker’s keeping the boys for observation,” he said, inclining his head at Ryder. “Report to him immediately.” The gravity in Damian’s tone told me there were no buts to the order, as it wasn’t a manner he often used with us. Like Jude, Damian normally took a devil-may-care approach to reaping and life—he didn’t allow anyone to call him
sir
or even
Drake
, and dispensed with pleasantries for everyone else, even my father.

Damian’s stone-cold streak came from his work with Helsing’s Special Ops and our necrotic counterterrorism units. Work he’d chosen Jude to inherit, as I would inherit my father’s work and Oliver his father’s. Only Ryder had a choice in his future, and he’d apply to the Harker Elite in the spring. The Harker’s solo entrance exam consisted of one handgun, one clip, one reaper, and one
big
necro. Those capable of passing the exam made up the Helsing’s own reaping crews—a sort of personal guard for the family, like a Secret Service with an undead edge. I’d get my own detail at eighteen, when my current reaping crew graduated to their respective departments and I started college and hunting more dangerous things.

The thought of Ryder applying for my detail comforted me, and Dad supported our platonic friendship wholeheartedly. Dad was all about loyalty—the blinder, the better.

“I’ll get my camera,” I said. When Damian turned away, Ryder brushed the back of his hand against mine, intertwining our index fingers for a moment. Even that was a risk, putting hairline cracks in the one rule I couldn’t break. If the crack spread, Dad would set the Pacific Ocean between us.

“Be careful,” he murmured.

All I could manage was a nod.

*   *   *

I
FOLLOWED
D
AMIAN OUT
into an anemic, waning night. Spindly trees lined the wide avenue, shedding the gangrenous leaves of fall. The world smelled terminal, waiting for winter and rot. October in San Francisco was usually warm, but this year, fog frothed over the peninsula, carried by a chilly wind. I crossed my arms over my chest, hugging my camera and belt.

One of the lieutenants had a Humvee waiting for us in the street. As soon as I dropped into my seat, exhaustion bricked in my eyes and filled my bones with mortar. I leaned my head back and closed my eyes.

“Been a long night,” Damian said. The Humvee growled and jostled beneath us.

“Not as long as some,” I said, thinking of the night I spent curled in Ryder’s arms on a safe house couch, sleepless, shivering, sick. Surrounded by people. Doctors. Dad hovering. Mom’s blood under my fingernails.
We caught it in enough time
, the doctors said.
She shouldn’t turn, she’s already made it past the five-hour mark …

But if she does …

If she does …

Well, that’s why Dad put a handgun on the coffee table, bullet chambered, safety off.

Damian and I drove without speaking to each other. The Humvee’s scanner chattered, absorbing the cab’s silence. Compound hangars and artillery bunkers blurred by, then the training and practicum arenas, even the academy campus. Mundane things, too, like the Safeway supermarket and the night-track elementary and junior high schools. Most reaper families woke at sundown and lived at night—not a lifestyle for everyone, but it was all I knew.

Up ahead, the compound’s residential high-rises melted from the fog, their sides checkerboarded with light. The dead retreated at dawn, so reaping crews were just getting home, eating dinner with their families or knocking back a beer with friends. Turning on the news, seeing St. Mary’s, shaking their heads or exchanging knowing glances.

Once upon a time, they said my father had raised me well; and after I took out the Embarcadero Scissorclaw, they said I’d be the first woman to successfully lead the corps. But nobody had confidence in me now—nobody, except the three boys who had my back, no matter what. And I’d gone and led them into a nightmare.

Damian pulled into the garage under the officers’ tower, acknowledged the guards’ salutes, and parked by the private elevator that would take me to the penthouse. As I popped my door open, Damian pressed his cell phone to his ear and stepped from the vehicle. I followed him to the elevator and typed the penthouse’s sixteen-digit security code into the glossy stainless-steel panel.

“Yeah, she’s home,” Damian said. The doors dinged, the bright sound covering up whatever my father said on the other line. We stepped into the elevator. “Relax, Len—the fruit doesn’t fall far from the tree.” Damian chuckled, but the sound was taut as trip wire. He listened and frowned, glancing over at me. “Then hurry, Barbara Walters, I have two crews to debrief at nine.… See you then.” He hung up.

“Dad’s still mad, isn’t he?” I asked.

“‘Mad’?” Damian asked. “
Mad
doesn’t even begin to describe where Len’s head is at right now, sweetheart.”