Sunday, October 20, 2019
Sunday's Steampunk Spinner: Lord of the White Hell by Ginn Hale
Summary:
Kiram Kir-Zaki may be considered a mechanist prodigy among his own people, but when he becomes the first Haldiim ever admitted to the prestigious Sagrada Academy, he is thrown into a world where power, superstition and swordplay outweigh even the most scholarly of achievements. But when the intimidation from his Cadeleonian classmates turns bloody, Kiram unexpectedly finds himself befriended by Javier Tornesal, the leader of a group of cardsharps, duelists and lotharios who call themselves Hellions. However Javier is a dangerous friend to have. Wielder of the White Hell and sole heir of a dukedom, he is surrounded by rumors of forbidden seductions, murder and damnation. His enemies are many and any one of his secrets could not only end his life but Kiram’s as well.
Summary:
Kiram fought his family and Cadeleonian bigots to remain in the Sagrada Academy to prove himself as a mechanist and to dispel the deadly shadow curse that threatens to destroy his upperclassman, Javier Tornesal.
But when his efforts provoke retaliation, Kiram’s family and home are endangered. Both Kiram and Javier risk everything in a desperate gambit to combat the curse.
But they never imagined their battle would come so soon, or that it would be led by the one person they trust most of all.
Lord of the White Hell #1
Chapter One
Kiram woke as the carriage jolted against the rough cobblestones of the country road.
After six days of sleepless travel he couldn't believe that he had dozed off today of all days. He frowned at the creased front of his white linen shirt and tucked a loose edge back into his dark pants. His curly blonde hair was always a wild mess after he had slept on it. He tried to smooth it with his hand, feeling the tight spirals spring back as his fingers brushed over them.
His book, Modern Mechanism, lay on the carriage floor. Dozens of strips of paper protruded from between the pages, displaying Kiram's notes and diagrams. He retrieved the book, straightened his notes, and carefully wrapped the book in the remains of his parchment and tucked it into the wide pocket of his new Cadeleonian wool coat.
Kiram had packed very little clothing and only a few of his favorite books. Tools and crated machine parts filled most of the space in the carriage. Many heavier crates groaned against the ropes securing them to the roof of the carriage. The driver had charged Kiram's mother twice the normal fare because of the weight, but she had been proud to pay it. Those heavy, oily pieces of metal had won Kiram the right to attend Academy Sagrada.
No full-blooded Haldiim had ever before been accepted into the school, and a century had passed since the half- blood Yassin Lif-Harun studied there.
Lif-Harun's formulas had altered the very heavens. A statue of the man stood in the Royal Park. Kiram's father had already pointed out the spot where he thought Kiram's own statue would one day stand. If his parents had been allowed to, they would have sent another half-dozen carriages filled with praise dancers and red-dyed doves to announce their youngest son's arrival. Fortunately the school permitted only one carriage per student.
The carriage struck another bump and Kiram shoved the stack of rocking crates back against the carriage wall. Sunlight streamed in through the red carriage curtains, filling the space with a warm glow. The dark wood radiated a late afternoon heat. The brown coat he'd worn for the trip over the mountains felt sweltering hot now and smelled of his sweat. Kiram stripped it off and stretched his long legs as best he could in the cramped confines.
He couldn't be far from the Academy Sagrada now. Maybe an hour, possibly less.
He pulled the curtains aside and gazed out at the walls of wild, green forest that arched over the road. There was a flash of brilliant blue wings as a flock of jays took flight from the overhanging branches. He thought he caught a glimpse of something white moving fast between the trunks of trees but he lost sight of it as the road turned away.
As he rode further, the dense brambles and towering oak trees gave way to groomed hedges and open fields divided by low stone walls. A flock of white ducks waddled along the roadside, tended by a young, bored-looking boy.
Far across a fallow field, Kiram spied a horse and rider. The horse was brilliant white in the bright sun and rider's skin seemed almost as pale as the horse's hide. His black hair stood out in sharp contrast, as did his deep blue Academy Sagrada uniform.
Kiram doubted that his own uniform, well made as it was, would look so good on him. He wondered if the rider was an upperclassman or even an instructor. Kiram stared in amazement as the lean man urged his horse ahead and the two of them seemed to fly over the stone wall then raced across the road and through the opposite field.
He didn't spare a glance for Kiram's carriage, the herder boy, or even the flock of now startled ducks. A few moments later both the horse and rider were little more than a distant haze. Kiram tried to keep track of the rider's blue jacket, but eventually he lost sight of it amongst the fields of blooming sunflowers.
Kiram felt his pulse surging through his body. This was exactly what the academy promised for his future, such fearless prowess, such determination and beauty. Perhaps even adventure.
Kiram had been patient for days but suddenly he felt as though this slow, creaking carriage would never reach its destination and he needed to be at the academy now. Desire and excitement coursed through him like a physical pang.
As the carriage rolled up to the heavy stone walls that surrounded the academy, Kiram gripped the latch of the carriage door. He hardly took in the fortress-like towers of the main building or the chapel's brilliant blue spire. He stared at cobblestone paths and green lawn of the grounds, searching for his fellow classmates. Several boys dressed in academy blue strolled toward the chapel, but none of them captured Kiram's attention the way that single rider had.
The carriage jerked to a halt, and Kiram slipped slightly forward, his hand pulling the door latch. Instantly the carriage door sprang open and he spilled out onto the muddy ground in front of the stable. He struggled up to his feet to see two older men in gray scholars' robes gaping at him. Just behind them, leading his brilliant white horse by its reins, stood the rider.
"I'm fine!" Kiram announced, though no one had asked. "I just…the door opened and I wasn't looking…"
Kiram could feel his face flushing bright red. Not even his dark skin could hide such an intense blush. He regained his feet quickly but to his horror the rider's expression shifted from slight concern to amusement. His handsome smile somehow made Kiram's humiliation far worse. He glared at the rider and then dove back into the cover of the carriage to retrieve his coat.
When he turned back the rider had disappeared into the stables. The two scholars hurried to Kiram's side. They were both typical Cadeleonians, pale skinned and thickly built with brown hair and eyes.
One of them was older, probably in his late forties with shots of gray scattered through his close-cropped hair. The other scholar wasn't more than a decade past Kiram's own age, perhaps twenty-seven. He wore his hair a little long and his cheeks were dappled with freckles.
"I'm Blasio Urracon," the younger scholar introduced himself, "and this is my honored brother, Scholar Donamillo Urracon."
Kiram bowed to both men. Cadeleonian names often sounded odd to him, so he made special note of their pronunciation. Many Cadeleonians found Haldiim informality rude and so Kiram was careful to use proper titles as he addressed his new teachers.
"Scholar Blasio and Scholar Donamillo, it is an honor to meet you. I'm Kiram Kir-Zaki, your humble student."
Scholar Blasio smiled at Kiram's politeness. "It's a pleasure to meet you at last. Javier was just saying that he'd seen your carriage so we came to greet you." Scholar Blasio gestured back towards the stable where the rider had been standing. He frowned at the empty spot. "I suppose he's brushing down his horse. We're short a stable hand at the moment-"
"It's no matter," the older brother, Scholar Donamillo, cut in. "Kiram will be formally introduced to staff and students at dinner tonight."
Scholar Donamillo's tone was much more reserved than Scholar Blasio's, and his expression stern. Kiram couldn't help but think that the older man had taken a quick dislike to him. Probably because he was supposed to be a gifted thinker and he'd just fallen out of a carriage onto his face.
Scholar Donamillo looked a little past Kiram to the crates stacked atop and inside the carriage. "Are all of these yours?"
"Yes, sir. They're the components I've fabricated for the Crown Challenge."
Scholar Blasio grinned. "You brought them all the way from Anacleto? What dedication. That's fabulous!"
Kiram warmed to Scholar Blasio for his enthusiasm but he also noted Scholar Donamillo's expression of disapproval.
"I'll have the groundsmen unpack these," Scholar Donamillo stated. "I suppose that one of the tack sheds can be spared to provide a workshop for the project. No doubt it will take a great deal of space."
"Thank you, sir." Kiram bowed again to the older man. "I'm sorry for the inconvenience."
"Yes, it's good that you realize that this does inconvenience us. It is not common to accept a new student directly into the second-year courses, much less accommodate his individual studies." Strangely Scholar Donamillo's stern expression seemed to soften as he looked over the wooden crates. "I can only hope that you will prove to be the mechanist genius your teachers claim you are."
The label 'genius' brought a second flush to Kiram's cheeks and also a gnawing anxiety to the pit of his stomach. At seventeen, most of his achievements were still built upon his father's innovations. This would be the first time he would have to rise to a challenge alone.
"I will do my utmost to win the Crown Challenge in the academy's name," Kiram assured Scholar Donamillo. The older man offered him a slight smile in return. He reached out and brushed a clump of mud off Kiram's shirt.
"No doubt you will want a bath after your long journey. Scholar Blasio will take you up to your room."
"Yes, sir." Kiram snatched up his coat and his gray trunk and followed Scholar Blasio across the lush, green lawn to the three-story stone building that dominated the grounds.
"This is the dormitory. First-year students are all housed on the first floor of the west wing, in the old armory room." Scholar Blasio pointed to where the west wing jutted out from the main building. The windows were barred. "With everyone in a single room the night wardens can keep them out of trouble more easily."
Kiram was glad that he hadn't been forced to come as a first-year student. He couldn't imagine sleeping while crammed in a single room with a hundred noisy Cadeleonian boys. The smell alone would have driven him mad.
"Second and third years are housed together on the second floor. Those young men who stand to inherit titles, of course, stay on for a fourth year of Lord's Law. They each have private rooms on the third floor."
"What about the watchtowers?" Kiram gazed up at the two jutting towers that rose up from the third floor.
"The west tower is used for storage and the east one is for special cases." Scholar Blasio looked a little uncomfortable. "Let's go in, shall we?"
Inside, the building was dim and cool. Crests of Cadeleonian noble families, all woven in academy blue, decorated the walls. The royal crest of the Sagrada family was inlayed in gold over all the doors. Scholar Blasio led him past a statue of a rearing stallion, through a huge dining hall, and then up a massive staircase.
"Four of the lecture halls are located on the first floor, the rest are in the east wing," Scholar Blasio told Kiram as they walked up the stairs. "The dining hall and common library are directly below us."
"Everything seems so heavy and huge," Kiram commented. "It looks a little like a fortress."
"It used to be one. Three hundred years ago, during the first Sagrada dynasty, this was one of their great strongholds. After the Restoration the reinstated Sagrada king turned the fortress over to one of his favored vassals to train young lords in the arts of war and law. Of course, things have changed since then but we have not forgotten our history. In fact, it's right under our feet." Scholar Blasio paused on the stairs and pointed back down to a radiant, black design that spread across the stones of the floor below them.
"That is exactly the spot where one hundred years ago Calixto Tornesal opened the mouth of the white hell and defeated the Mirogoth invaders."
Kiram studied the fine web of black cracks. He didn't believe in the white hell or any of the other Cadeleonian hells but the sight of the burned, pitted stones still gave him pause. Standing in an ancient fortress, with a scholar relating the story and pointing out its exact site, it seemed almost plausible that a Cadeleonian nobleman had traded his soul for the power to drive back an invading army.
Even so, Kiram couldn't credit it. A soul could not be given up any more than joy or kindness could be bottled and sold at market. Only in death could the soul leave the flesh.
Kiram glanced to Scholar Blasio, searching his face for some sign that he was joking, but his expression was serious.
"Calixto's descendants still hold the pact of the white hell." Scholar Blasio looked meaningfully at Kiram.
Kiram wasn't sure if he should respond with reverence or revulsion. At last he decided to simply be honest. "In Haldiim tradition we don't believe that people are condemned to hells. We believe that in death all creatures pass through a shajdi and then are reborn in a new form."
Seeing Scholar Blasio's furrowed brow, Kiram continued, "Most modern Haldiim, like my family, don't give much credence to the tales of shajdis hidden in sacred forests or the Bahiim who opened them and claimed power over life and death. If shajdi ever did exist, it was in the ancient past, and they have gone now. But really, most of us understand such stories as metaphors for the balance of birth and death."
Only the very religious Bahiim took shajdis as literal gates between life and death, and the last thing Kiram wanted was to be taken for a superstitious ascetic who'd spend hours talking to trees.
"Really?" Scholar Blasio cocked his head slightly. "So, you aren't afraid of the hells?"
"No, as I said, we don't believe in hells. Shajdi make for amusing stories, though."
Scholar Blasio gazed intently at Kiram, studying his face. "So you wouldn't be afraid of a man who had been hell-branded? Who had the gate to a hell burning within him?"
Kiram simply shrugged. "I suppose not."
"It wouldn't worry you at all to, say, sleep in a room with him?" Scholar Blasio sounded almost incredulous.
"So long as he wasn't insane or sick with black pox I wouldn't be afraid to sleep in a room with any man," Kiram replied. It wasn't entirely true-certainly he wouldn't want to sleep in a room with a thief or murder or, honestly, a man who stank terribly.
"Well, that's good to know. Your room is on the third floor, in the east tower." Scholar Blasio continued up the stairs. Kiram followed him in quick strides. "It's away from the other rooms so it will be quiet enough for you to study, and unlike the other rooms, it's very spacious."
Kiram thought he knew where all of this was leading and decided to just get to the point, instead of having Scholar Blasio nervously list the amenities of his living arrangements when he'd already stated the east tower was reserved for special cases.
"You want me to room with one of these hell-branded men? A descendant of the Tornesal line?"
"You don't have much choice," Scholar Blasio admitted at last. "The other upperclassmen have refused to room with a Haldiim. They have no objection to you schooling here, but sleeping in the same room, when their souls are unprotected, is out of the question. However, since Javier's spiritual state is already.compromised, he risks nothing in sharing a room with you."
Kiram wanted to demand what exactly it was that these people imagined he was going to do to them in their sleep but then his thoughts stopped short as he registered the name Javier and remembered the dark, sardonic eyes of the rider.
"Javier? The man with the white stallion?"
"Yes, Javier Tornesal, Duke of Rauma. He will be your upperclassman."
Lord of the White Hell #2
Chapter One
Kiram stared with red-rimmed eyes out at the fields lining the road to the Sagrada Academy. Only desiccated sunflower stalks and tracks of broken soil remained from the harvest. ^e land looked as ragged as he felt and the dark confines of the Tornesal carriage offered him no more rest than his sumptuous bed had the night before. Despite exhaustion, hard liquor and hours spent wandering unknown streets, sleep had eluded him. Just as it evaded his restless mind now.
Outside, blue jays flashed their brilliant wings from a stand of apple trees; red leaves fell as the birds took to the air and swept past the creaking luggage carriage. Kiram shuddered at the sight of them and the scabbed gash in his forearm throbbed as if pulsing with poison. A week ago he could have found the birds a lovely distraction on such a cold fall morning. He might have delighted in their graceful flight and taken little note of how closely the flock followed the steady course of this single carriage.
Now he knew their chase betrayed a malevolent intent. ^ey flew as portents of the shadow curse, spies for the man who controlled it.
Slumped across the seat opposite Kiram, Fedeles Quemanor groaned and twitched, his peaceful doze turning fitful as the jays circled overhead. He gave a strained gasp and rolled his head from beneath his arm. Kiram glanced to Fedeles' face but for an instant he saw only Javier in those sharp, troubled features.
A longing so intense that it felt like pain shot through Kiram. He rubbed his tired eyes. He couldn't afford to think of Javier. What had been between them was over. ^ey had both destroyed it last night.
^is morning Javier had hardly met his gaze and offered no response when Kiram greeted him at the breakfast table. Instead he'd risen, abandoning his meal, wished Fedeles good day, and departed for the Sagrada Academy. Less than an hour later the dour staff of the Tornesal townhouse had efficiently packed Kiram and Fedeles into this musty carriage as if they were just two more pieces of Javier's luggage. While Fedeles dozed, Kiram deliberately turned his gaze from the trunks and leather chests emblazoned with Javier's family crest and tried to set his mind to other subjects.
But the strong physical resemblance between Javier and Fedeles roused all the thoughts Kiram had wished to forget. The stench of debauchery seemed to drift from the leather carriage seats. How could it be that those minutes he longed most to forget could burn in his memory with such painful detail?
Fedeles' legs shifted, brushing briefly against Kiram's calf and the contact offered Kiram a strange kind of comfort.
Both Javier and Fedeles were long-limbed, pale-skinned young men who sported ink black hair and handsome features. Ms morning the random shadows of luggage and Kiram's own exhaustion cast a harder line to Fedeles' jaw and lent an arrogant curve to his lips. ^e bulk of his new velvet coat offered the illusion of Javier's angular musculature to Fedeles' thinner frame.
The two of them could easily have passed for brothers, even twins. It was no wonder that some gossips whispered of scandalous relations between their parents. But Kiram knew Fedeles deserved better from him than to be seen as some proxy for his cousin, so he shifted his leg away.
Suddenly Fedeles jerked upright. With consciousness, much of his likeness to Javier fled. His dark eyes flashed wide as his mouth twitched between grimaces and grins. He caught Kiram's hand in his long fingers and Kiram couldn't help but note the power of his grip. Nearly as crushing as Javier's had been last night.
"They want to kill him, Kiri," Fedeles whispered. "The birds-" He cut himself short as a jay dived past the carriage window. The color drained entirely from Fedeles' face, leaving his mouth pale as chalk.
"I won't let them harm you, Fedeles," Kiram assured him. Fedeles shook his head as a violent shudder passed through his body. A wild, manic grin jerked across his lips but his eyes remained wide and terrified.
"Look here, Fedeles." Kiram lifted his lotus medallion from beneath the collar of his shirt and held it out. Even in the dim light of the closed carriage the gold surface glowed. Sacred Bahiim symbols gleamed as if throwing off their own light. Kiram hoped that, if nothing else, the medallion might distract Fedeles from his own fear.
Fedeles stared at the medallion like a fascinated crow.
"My uncle's partner is a Bahiim, a Haldiim holy man. He gave this to me. The lotus is a sign of powerful protection among my people, you know."
According to Alizadeh this medallion was more than that. It served as Alizadeh's spyglass, offering him the chance to detect the inner workings of the shadow curse and perhaps even to identify the man who controlled it. As Kiram held the medallion up now, he hoped that it would catch some hint of the dark magic that directed the jays in their pursuit of Fedeles.
The medallion swung on its chain as the carriage bounced over rough cobblestones. Light glinted off its polished surface. Then, without warning or seeming reason, the jays suddenly broke off from their chase. With a few harsh calls they fled into the thick woods that encircled the Sagrada Academy.
As he watched them go, Fedeles' expression lit with joy and he threw his arms around Kiram, crushing the air from him in his fierce embrace. Then Fedeles released him to press his face against the window and glare in the direction that the jays had fled.
"Stay away. Stay away. Stay away," Fedeles whispered as if reciting a holy chant. Then he dropped back into his seat.
"Good riddance." Kiram too felt better with the birds out of sight. He wondered if perhaps now he might steal a few moments of sleep. But when he closed his eyes his thoughts churned with the sour memory of writhing whores and Javier's proud glower.
Kiram straightened up, awake again.
Across from him, Fedeles hummed a bright tune. Now and then he moved his legs and tapped his toes against the floor of the carriage, keeping perfect time. After a few minutes he patted Kiram's knee.
"Dancing, Kiri," Fedeles informed him.
Kiram smiled. He didn't know why, but out of everyone at the Sagrada Academy only Fedeles seemed to know the Haldiim diminutive of his name.
"We'll dance a quaressa." Fedeles continued sweeping his feet in graceful motions across the carriage floor. "Left foot out and back, out and kick." Fedeles demonstrated and then looked expectantly at Kiram's motionless feet.
Though Kiram realized what Fedeles wanted, he still felt a moment of resistance; the bitterness of last night clung to him. But Fedeles was the last person he could blame for any of his troubles with Javier. So Kiram emulated the motions while Fedeles beamed with approval.
"Now right foot." Fedeles again demonstrated the dance step and Kiram copied him.
Laughing and grinning, Fedeles led him through the footwork of an entire quaressa. Last night Kiram had been so hurt and repulsed that he'd imagined he would never again find anything Cadeleonian charming. But this morning his sense of adventure seemed to have returned.
And in his own way, Fedeles was wonderful company, because for all his madness, he accepted Kiram without judgment and right now Kiram appreciated that more than anything.
"Again, again!" Fedeles crowed. Kiram obliged, mirroring Fedeles' steps and kicks from his own seat.
Leather trunks creaked and the carriage bounced beneath their weight. More than once Kiram misstepped, knocking knees and ankles with Fedeles, but Fedeles laughed it off. Kiram quickly improved. By the fourth time, their steps were almost perfectly synchronized. Fedeles sang out the names of his favorite horses, calling often for Kiram's black gelding, Firaj. Then he delightedly crowed for Javier's white stallion, Lunaluz.
Out of the corner of his eye Kiram thought he did catch a flash of white through the dense forest lining the road. Reflex- ively he looked and then felt the drop of disappointment as he discovered only a stand of white-barked birches growing among the dark woods.
The carriage rattled around another bend and the vast fortress of the Sagrada Academy loomed ahead of them. The heavy stonework of the main building dominated the grounds, rising three stories and thrusting its two watchtowers even higher. Kiram took in the whitewashed expanses of stables and sparring house without regard but scowled at the cerulean roof and gold steeple of the chapel.
Alizadeh and Rafie had only referred to the man controlling the shadow curse as the 'man on the hill' but it seemed obvious that if anyone at the Sagrada Academy would gladly plot murder and torture at the behest of the royal bishop it would be Holy Father Habalan.
Then Kiram wondered just how many jays sheltered among the gnarled oaks and fruit trees on the chapel grounds. Two of the birds perched in the branches of a tall pear tree. As the carriage rattled past Kiram was certain that the birds returned his gaze with calculating stares.
Suddenly Kiram remembered the merciless way that the flocks of blue jays had attacked and ravaged Nakiesh's sisters. Not even their own deaths had deterred the jays' assault.
Kiram looked away from the chapel and caught sight of familiar faces among the students gathered at the stables. A sense of something like safety returned to him. Fedeles leaned back into his seat and closed his eyes.
When the carriage drew to a halt, both Kiram and Fedeles bounded out to greet the waiting Grunito brothers. Nestor welcomed them with a toothy smile while Elezar simply used his massive frame to deflect other giddy students from crashing into their friendly exchange.
Kiram noted the brighter color of Genimo's auburn hair as he ducked past Elezar. Kiram and he exchanged cool, indifferent gazes but said nothing to each other as Genimo sauntered to Fedeles' side.
Kiram searched the throng of Cadeleonian students, grooms and house servants. They surrounded him in a sea of straight brown hair, dark eyes and light, freckled skin; their builds ranged from short, brawny grooms to the mountain of muscle that was Elezar Grunito-all of them quite the opposite of Kiram's slim Haldiim build, light eyes, dark skin and curling blond hair. Javier was not among them. His absence made Kiram anxious and uncertain of what to expect when he did arrive.
"Are we the last of the Hellions?" Kiram had to raise his voice to be heard over all the surrounding shouts and greetings.
"Most of the rest have gone up to the dormitories," Nestor replied and then he yawned widely. Kiram wasn't sure if it was just the hard morning light but Nestor looked nearly as tired as Kiram felt. His plump, pink cheeks seemed hollow and his small gold spectacles couldn't quite hide the shadows beneath his eyes. Nestor had encountered his own romantic troubles last night, Kiram thought, but he didn't want to ask about them in front of everyone.
Housemen in gray liveries slipped past Kiram and Fedeles, hauling away the luggage. Grooms saw to the horses and carriage.
One of the whip-thin Helio twins alighted from a different carriage and his friends greeted him, asking about his brother in hushed voices. Kiram peered past them, still searching.
"Javier's at chapel," Elezar informed him. "How any man can stand to attend morning and afternoon service is beyond me."
"I thought he might be," Kiram replied. All at once he didn't know what more to say. He'd seen too much of his fellow Hellions' passions last night. Now he couldn't quite meet Elezar's hawkish gaze.
"I should see Fedeles to the infirmary." Genimo stepped past Kiram, leading Fedeles by the hand as if he were a child. Fedeles smiled, but Kiram could see him pulling away from Genimo's grip.
"Fedeles can stay with me," Kiram offered. A pained expression flickered across Genimo's narrow features.
"He needs to see Scholar Donamillo for his treatment, but I'd be happy to turn him over to you afterward." Genimo didn't meet Kiram's eyes but instead stole a quick glance to small scar on Kiram's cheek. "Unless Javier objects."
"Why on earth would he?" Kiram responded, though it occurred to him that Javier could refuse just to spite him. Javier could be cruel when angered and as far as Kiram could tell, right now he was furious. Still, Kiram doubted that Javier would be so petty as to use Fedeles like some pawn.
Kiram felt briefly frustrated with himself for being too attached to Javier to think poorly of him even after last night. It would have been much simpler if he could dislike Javier, or failing that, just forget about him.
"If the two of you are going to stand around wondering why Javier does anything he does, Fedeles is never going to get to his treatment," Elezar commented.
Genimo scowled at Elezar, then turned his attention back to Fedeles.
"Come, Fedeles." Genimo pulled Fedeles along while Fedeles stumbled and dragged his feet behind him. There was nothing Kiram could do for him and he knew Scholar Donamillo's treatments were the best hope Fedeles had for survival until someone could find a way to break the curse. Still, Kiram wished that Fedeles didn't dread them so much.
"We'd best clear out from in front of the stables as well," Nestor said as another carriage rolled up.
The three of them took a wandering path towards the main building. Dry golden blades of autumn grass crunched beneath their shoes as they crossed the lawn and Kiram noted that dark rose hips now dotted the potted roses. Many of the apple trees sported bare branches while a litter of yellow leaves lay across the ground. Despite the bright sunlight a chill hung in the air and filled the deep shadows of the main building.
"Summer seems over all at once," Kiram commented.
"True, but there's plenty of ripe apples now." Nestor's broad smile brightened his face despite the dark circles beneath his brown eyes. "And with the autumn tournament over, you and I won't be spending every waking hour in battle practice."
That would be a relief, Kiram decided.
Nestor seemed surprisingly cheerful, given the trouble he'd been in the previous night. Riossa's lonely, hapless arrival at the Grunito house must have worked out.
"Well," Kiram glanced to Nestor, "aren't you going to tell me what happened after I left your mother's party?"
"The dolt got himself engaged," Elezar said in disgust.
At this Nestor smiled quite proudly. "There wasn't anything else to do. I couldn't let Riossa just take a fall, not that she wasn't willing to. She would-"
"She duped you, that's what she did," Elezar interrupted.
Nestor scowled at him. "You weren't there and you have no idea what went on."
Kiram thought this was the first time he'd ever seen Nestor take a stand against his older brother. Elezar didn't seem to appreciate his little brother's newfound sense of independence.
"All I need to know is that you're a fool. That girl fucked you over." Elezar stopped suddenly, catching sight of a figure far across the lawn. Kiram followed his gaze and realized that they were both watching Javier's broad back and long legs as he strode from the chapel towards the stables.
"I'm going to check up on Javier," Elezar announced. "Either of you coming?"
"Maybe later." Kiram hoped the response sounded casual.
"Later," Nestor agreed.
Elezar shrugged as if he couldn't account for their tastes and then hurried after his friend.
"Thank God," Nestor said as soon as Elezar was out of earshot. "He's been badgering me all day."
"Well, it is surprising that you're engaged. You've only known Riossa a week."
"Honestly, Kiram, there wasn't anything else I could have done. And it wasn't like Elezar makes it sound. Riossa didn't come in alone to the Grunito house to cause a scandal. She'd been by herself outside the townhouse for nearly two hours waiting for her sister to join her. She only came inside to try and have a carriage summoned so that she could return to her father's house. But the footman saw her invitation and escorted her into the ballroom."
Kiram frowned at this. He was almost certain that Cade- leonian girls from good families were not supposed to be left alone for hours on end. "So, why did the sister leave Riossa waiting?"
Nestor lowered his voice. "Because she was having an affair with the carriage driver, apparently, and picked last night to run off with him. She told her husband that she was taking Riossa to the celebration so he wouldn't wonder why she was gone. Then she told Riossa that she'd forgotten something and left Riossa outside the townhouse while she took the family carriage and fled."
"Sounds like a rotten sister."
"Yes, and it wasn't as if anyone knew what had happened right away either. At first my mother was thinking the sister intentionally left Riossa so that Riossa could get her claws in me." Nestor rolled his eyes. "As if she would need to do something like that. She's beautiful and funny and smart."
"And a good kisser," Kiram added. "If my source is to be trusted."
"Yeah, she's that too." Nestor grinned.
"So if your mother thought this was all a trick, how did you end up engaged?"
"Riossa's father is an ass. He half lost his mind when he found out about Riossa's sister. He started screaming at Riossa for allowing her sister to ruin their family name-right in front of everyone. And then he told Riossa that he was sending her to the Inanicia Convent, and when she said she wouldn't go, he struck her!" Just recounting the event, Nestor flushed with anger. "He knocked her to the floor right in front of me. What was I supposed to do?"
Kiram wondered what he would have done in such a situa- tion-certainly not get engaged to the girl. He kept his thoughts to himself.
Nestor continued heatedly, "I told him that if he ever laid a hand on her again that I'd hit him so hard he'd be talking out his crapper."
"Did you really say crapper?"
"I know I should have said asshole, but my mom was right there," Nestor explained sheepishly. "Then I proposed. I guess marrying me sounded a lot better then being sent to a convent."
"So…there'll be a wedding?" Kiram could not have imagined Nestor's engagement would be so dramatic. Perhaps having a black-haired, romantic adventurer like Atreau for an upperclass- man had affected Nestor more than Kiram had realized.
"Not until spring, but in the meantime my mom's taken Riossa into her care. She's not happy about the marriage but she was proud that I wouldn't let some bastard treat his daughter so badly."
"Not many men would step up like that." Kiram nodded. "I wouldn't have."
"Well, to be honest, I should have stepped up sooner.you know, right after we first.dallied. But she didn't say anything about it so I let it alone too."
"Dallied?" Kiram didn't understand the Cadeleonian term at first but then he realized what Nestor meant. "Nestor, you » didn't"
"How'd you think I knew so much about kissing her?" Then suddenly Nestor became serious. "You won't tell any of this to Javier or Elezar or any of the others, will you?"
"No," Kiram assured Nestor. "Though they'd hardly have the right to judge."
"But they would," Nestor said. "They'd treat Riossa like she was one of those tarts at the Goldenrod and I couldn't stand for that."
"Don't worry," Kiram assured him. "I won't say a word."
As they made their way past the clusters of first-year students lounging on the steps, Nestor whispered a full confession. While he rhapsodized about slipping his hand inside Riossa's bodice and touching her breasts, Kiram realized that Nestor hadn't gotten much farther with Riossa than a few furtive gropes in a fair tent-certainly not far enough to make marriage a necessity. Still, his face flushed and his expression grew ecstatic as he described the stolen moments.
Kiram resisted comparing those brief intimacies to the ones he had shared with Javier. He said, "You're quite taken with Riossa, aren't you?"
"Honestly, I never thought I'd meet a girl who wouldn't seem a little dull, but when I'm with her, we talk and laugh and I don't even notice the time passing. She's not like other girls at all. She tells great jokes and she draws really well and she knows law better than I do."
Kiram didn't tell Nestor that she sounded like any one of a multitude of Haldiim girls he knew. He'd read enough Cadeleonian literature to know that such traits were not encouraged among Cadeleonian women.
Nestor and he parted ways on the stairs where Nestor saluted him before disappearing into his room to attend his upperclass- man's hangover.
Kiram continued climbing up to the room he and Javier shared in the east watchtower. As he crossed the threshold, a feeling of deep sadness washed over him. Javier had obviously already been here; a discarded jacket hung on the back of his chair and one of his dusty boots peeked from the shadows beneath his bed.
Fresh incantations decorated the floor, new dark ink scrawled over faded red symbols.
Kiram wondered if it would do either of them any good if he went to Javier now. But he didn't know what he would say and Elezar would be there in any case. And he certainly wasn't about to get down on his knees and beg as Javier had demanded. The memory of Javier's pronouncement sent a flare of anger through the melancholy of Kiram's thoughts.
"Kivhash to Javier," Kiram swore in his native Haldiim. He had other ways to occupy his time and other reasons-better reasons-to be at the Sagrada Academy.
Kiram swung his tool bag over his shoulder and left. When he reached his shed, he was pleased to discover that the workmen had raised a section of the roof as he had requested. There would now be enough space to test his steam engine without it tearing through the ceiling supports.
Autumn chill filled the dim interior of the shed. He lit his sweet oil lamp and opened the window shutters, allowing bright afternoon light to pour in. Sunlight and heavy work soon warmed him. The familiar smell of machine oil and the weight of cast iron in his hands soothed him. Steadily, he assembled his secondary steam chamber, taking careful measurements, rechecking his work and making corrections for the pieces he would need forged to create the condensation chamber.
In his mind he could see it already assembled and he didn't suppress his satisfied grin. His situation now might be a wreck of frustration, worry and confusion, but this mechanism would not fail him. It would work as nothing else in his life seemed to: precisely as he planned.
A knock at the shed door interrupted Kiram's thoughts.
"It's unlocked." Kiram wrote down a final measurement, then looked up to see Scholar Donamillo peering in through the doorway. Kiram offered him a welcoming smile. As Donamillo gazed intently at the half-assembled steam engine, afternoon light struck the side of his face catching the thick streaks of gray in his dull brown hair and etching the deep wrinkles that edged his appreciative expression. Not since Kiram's father had another man gazed at Kiram's work with such an expression of delight and curiosity.
"I wanted to make sure your arm wasn't hurting you." Scholar Donamillo didn't pull his eyes from the towering mechanism. Kiram could see him trying to guess at the purpose of unassembled pipes and valves.
"My arm only hurts when I think about it." Kiram pulled back the sleeve of his shirt, allowing Donamillo to see the thick scab that traced his forearm.
"It looks good. I'm glad." Scholar Donamillo's attention returned almost at once to Kiram's mechanism. Slowly Donamillo circled the engine. He cocked his head in curiosity at the mount where the cooling chamber would rest.
Kiram couldn't keep himself from explaining the entire thing to Scholar Donamillo. Months ago, when he had describing his innovations to Javier, he had felt that Javier was humoring him, listening without much understanding or any real concern. Scholar Donamillo smiled in genuine delight when Kiram described the energy the cooling chamber would save and, after examining Kiram's diagrams, he offered several suggestions to rebuild a troubling valve.
"In my early work with the mechanical cures I came across a similar problem. The heat of constant friction distorted a number of my base plates. A few even melted." Scholar Donamillo's sheepish look at this admission gave Kiram a strong impression what Donamillo must have been like as a young man: both intense and shy. He leaned closer to Kiram and asked quietly, "Do you mind if I take a few measurements of my own? I want to ensure that the crank on Fedeles' mechanical cure will be compatible with your engine."
"Please do" Pride filled Kiram. He knew that his creation might not just win the Crown Challenge but would also aid Scholar Donamillo's work to save Fedeles.
While Scholar Donamillo measured the pistons, Kiram continued his own work, comfortable with the quiet mumbling of another inventor. More than once, as his thoughts drifted, he forgot that he was not once again in his father's workshop. Then fourth bell sounded and Scholar Donamillo excused himself.
Kiram himself had done as much as he could until his new parts were forged. He rewrote his order for the blacksmith in neat, clear print.
Nestor arrived and invited Kiram to join him for a ride, which Kiram accepted with pleasure. At some point during the months of morning lessons with Javier, riding had transformed from a fearful trial to a source of comfort. Now Kiram stroked Firaj's neck and felt the tension in his own body relax into the big gelding's even gait. Nestor and he discussed their upcoming history papers and the new class schedule now that the tournament was over. From time to time Nestor lapsed into some reverie about Riossa. She smelled like flowers; she could burp the entire alphabet. The things that attracted Nestor mystified Kiram.
Tentatively, Nestor asked about Kiram's visit to the Goldenrod last night. As Kiram described the gaudy rooms and the numerous naked women, he tried not to let his revulsion carry through. Still, he couldn't manage any enthusiasm and he guessed that was telling enough.
"Not the place for you?" Nestor casually brushed a yellow leaf from his roan stallion's mane.
"No," Kiram admitted. The pungent, sweet scent of fallen apples drifted on the cool air and Firaj briefly snuffled at the ground to locate an overripe fruit. Kiram indulged him.
"To be honest," Nestor said quietly, "it doesn't sound all that appealing to me either. I mean, who wants to have sex with a bunch of other men in the room-especially my brother?"
Kiram laughed at that.
They returned just before the first of the evening bells rang. After brushing down their horses and rinsing themselves in the icy water of the stable troughs, Kiram and Nestor rushed to dinner. Shouldering past the crowds of first and second-year students thronging the lower tables, they took their places at the Hellions' table. Atreau and Morisio had already claimed their seats and Atreau offered them an offhanded greeting as they dropped down onto the wooden benches. Kiram felt a slight flush spread across his cheeks, meeting Atreau's gaze and remembering the other man's drunken rutting. Fortunately Kiram's dark complexion disguised the worst of his blush and Atreau's attention quickly shifted as other Hellions arrived for dinner.
Kiram glanced to the empty space reserved for Javier. His longing to see Javier felt as sharp as hunger but also edged with dread. Javier could turn cruel easily.
When Elezar arrived a few minutes later, Kiram considered asking him if Javier had seemed to be in a bad mood but resisted. Instead, he peered around as the dining hall filled with students. In the past week, Kiram had almost forgotten the heat and smell of so many young men gathering in one room. When Kiram happened to take a deep breath, he realized that the pungent scent of horses and sweat saturated his jacket and trousers, making him as much of an odorous offender as any of the grubby first-year boys who sat wiping their noses on the backs of their shirtsleeves.
Javier arrived just before the teachers and Holy Father Habalan. He strode between the rows of tables with a handsome and arrogant expression of assurance. The jacket he wore glinted with silver threads and his black hair gleamed. His trousers were perfectly cut, accentuating the hard muscles of his long legs. Kiram could hardly look away. When he smiled, the warmth of his expression lent an alluring softness to his sharp features, though there remained a wicked gleam in his eyes.
He knew, Kiram realized. He knew exactly how good he looked and how the sight of him would affect Kiram.
And suddenly Kiram felt very worried. He had been prepared for Javier's most biting remarks, even secretly hoped for them, so that he could just hate Javier and be done. Now he had no idea how he could inure himself to Javier's charms.
And Javier did not relent throughout the meal. He was unerringly funny and pleasant. He didn't lavish his attention upon Kiram, rather, he complimented Kiram's work as his squire in an easy, offhanded manner. He bantered with Morisio and Elezar and very casually allowed one of his long legs to brush against Kiram's calf. A spark of sharp desire flickered through Kiram's body at the small contact.
It required nearly all of Kiram's attention to ignore Javier's appealing presence. The food hardly made any impression upon Kiram and more than once he had to ask Nestor to repeat himself.
"You seem a little distracted this evening, Kiram," Nestor commented at last.
Javier gave him a knowing smile. Kiram could feel a flush rising but he refused to acknowledge it.
"I've been thinking about Scholar Donamillo's mechanical cures," Kiram replied.
A vexed expression flickered across Javier's face.
"They're fascinating, aren't they?" Morisio commented. "I've been studying them myself. I even built a few miniatures but powering them is the real trick."
Morisio went on and Kiram tried to concentrate on his freckled face, but the light sensation of Javier's calf against his own obsessed him. He could feel the warmth of Javier's skin radiating through his stockings and he remembered the weight of Javier's bare body against his own and the heat of his mouth. Kiram hardly heard Morisio's continuing ruminations on the key to Scholar Donamillo's unprecedented success. "I can't help but wonder if there isn't something more than pure mechanism behind it."
At this Genimo darted a glance to Kiram and Kiram realized that Genimo already knew that Scholar Donamillo used blessings and spells as well as mechanically-generated power for the cure that protected Fedeles. The knowledge that only he and Genimo shared the scholar's secret lent an uncomfortable sense of fraternity to his normally cold regard of Genimo.
"I can't help but wonder if you realize that no one cares a pig's tit about Scholar Donamillo's mechanisms," Elezar told Morisio. In response, Morisio just threw a hunk of bread at him. Elezar leaned back and caught it in his mouth.
"If your fortunes ever fail, no doubt you'll have a place in some circus," Javier told Elezar.
"You're one to talk." Elezar tossed a golden plum at Javier. Javier caught the plum and spun it on the tip of his finger. Then he rolled it between his hands. White sparks of light flickered between his fingers and suddenly the plum appeared to vanish. All conversation at the table quieted as the Hellions watched in fascination.
Javier held out his empty hands, displaying his palms, then with a flourish he reached across the table and caught Kiram's hand in a gentle grip. A conspirator's warmth flashed in his smile. As he pulled his hand back, Kiram felt the plum drop from the cuff of Javier's sleeve into his palm. Hellions hooted and clapped at the seemingly magical reappearance. Students at other tables gawked.
Kiram couldn't help but be delighted-not just with Javier's ingenuity but also at being included in the sleight of hand. He had no doubt that Javier had conceived the gesture hoping that it would charm him but the knowledge did nothing to diminish Kiram's pleasure.
Elezar's demand for another plum brought normalcy back to the table. Atreau needed notes from Holy Father Habalan's lecture on the conquest of the Labaran Dynasty. Genimo offered his. Elezar complained about Nestor's engagement and Nestor grumbled responses.
Kiram ate the sweet, tender plum and wondered with a terrible sinking dread whether his resistance or Javier's persistence would fail first. He wished he could feel happy at the prospect of either.
Chapter One
Kiram woke as the carriage jolted against the rough cobblestones of the country road.
After six days of sleepless travel he couldn't believe that he had dozed off today of all days. He frowned at the creased front of his white linen shirt and tucked a loose edge back into his dark pants. His curly blonde hair was always a wild mess after he had slept on it. He tried to smooth it with his hand, feeling the tight spirals spring back as his fingers brushed over them.
His book, Modern Mechanism, lay on the carriage floor. Dozens of strips of paper protruded from between the pages, displaying Kiram's notes and diagrams. He retrieved the book, straightened his notes, and carefully wrapped the book in the remains of his parchment and tucked it into the wide pocket of his new Cadeleonian wool coat.
Kiram had packed very little clothing and only a few of his favorite books. Tools and crated machine parts filled most of the space in the carriage. Many heavier crates groaned against the ropes securing them to the roof of the carriage. The driver had charged Kiram's mother twice the normal fare because of the weight, but she had been proud to pay it. Those heavy, oily pieces of metal had won Kiram the right to attend Academy Sagrada.
No full-blooded Haldiim had ever before been accepted into the school, and a century had passed since the half- blood Yassin Lif-Harun studied there.
Lif-Harun's formulas had altered the very heavens. A statue of the man stood in the Royal Park. Kiram's father had already pointed out the spot where he thought Kiram's own statue would one day stand. If his parents had been allowed to, they would have sent another half-dozen carriages filled with praise dancers and red-dyed doves to announce their youngest son's arrival. Fortunately the school permitted only one carriage per student.
The carriage struck another bump and Kiram shoved the stack of rocking crates back against the carriage wall. Sunlight streamed in through the red carriage curtains, filling the space with a warm glow. The dark wood radiated a late afternoon heat. The brown coat he'd worn for the trip over the mountains felt sweltering hot now and smelled of his sweat. Kiram stripped it off and stretched his long legs as best he could in the cramped confines.
He couldn't be far from the Academy Sagrada now. Maybe an hour, possibly less.
He pulled the curtains aside and gazed out at the walls of wild, green forest that arched over the road. There was a flash of brilliant blue wings as a flock of jays took flight from the overhanging branches. He thought he caught a glimpse of something white moving fast between the trunks of trees but he lost sight of it as the road turned away.
As he rode further, the dense brambles and towering oak trees gave way to groomed hedges and open fields divided by low stone walls. A flock of white ducks waddled along the roadside, tended by a young, bored-looking boy.
Far across a fallow field, Kiram spied a horse and rider. The horse was brilliant white in the bright sun and rider's skin seemed almost as pale as the horse's hide. His black hair stood out in sharp contrast, as did his deep blue Academy Sagrada uniform.
Kiram doubted that his own uniform, well made as it was, would look so good on him. He wondered if the rider was an upperclassman or even an instructor. Kiram stared in amazement as the lean man urged his horse ahead and the two of them seemed to fly over the stone wall then raced across the road and through the opposite field.
He didn't spare a glance for Kiram's carriage, the herder boy, or even the flock of now startled ducks. A few moments later both the horse and rider were little more than a distant haze. Kiram tried to keep track of the rider's blue jacket, but eventually he lost sight of it amongst the fields of blooming sunflowers.
Kiram felt his pulse surging through his body. This was exactly what the academy promised for his future, such fearless prowess, such determination and beauty. Perhaps even adventure.
Kiram had been patient for days but suddenly he felt as though this slow, creaking carriage would never reach its destination and he needed to be at the academy now. Desire and excitement coursed through him like a physical pang.
As the carriage rolled up to the heavy stone walls that surrounded the academy, Kiram gripped the latch of the carriage door. He hardly took in the fortress-like towers of the main building or the chapel's brilliant blue spire. He stared at cobblestone paths and green lawn of the grounds, searching for his fellow classmates. Several boys dressed in academy blue strolled toward the chapel, but none of them captured Kiram's attention the way that single rider had.
The carriage jerked to a halt, and Kiram slipped slightly forward, his hand pulling the door latch. Instantly the carriage door sprang open and he spilled out onto the muddy ground in front of the stable. He struggled up to his feet to see two older men in gray scholars' robes gaping at him. Just behind them, leading his brilliant white horse by its reins, stood the rider.
"I'm fine!" Kiram announced, though no one had asked. "I just…the door opened and I wasn't looking…"
Kiram could feel his face flushing bright red. Not even his dark skin could hide such an intense blush. He regained his feet quickly but to his horror the rider's expression shifted from slight concern to amusement. His handsome smile somehow made Kiram's humiliation far worse. He glared at the rider and then dove back into the cover of the carriage to retrieve his coat.
When he turned back the rider had disappeared into the stables. The two scholars hurried to Kiram's side. They were both typical Cadeleonians, pale skinned and thickly built with brown hair and eyes.
One of them was older, probably in his late forties with shots of gray scattered through his close-cropped hair. The other scholar wasn't more than a decade past Kiram's own age, perhaps twenty-seven. He wore his hair a little long and his cheeks were dappled with freckles.
"I'm Blasio Urracon," the younger scholar introduced himself, "and this is my honored brother, Scholar Donamillo Urracon."
Kiram bowed to both men. Cadeleonian names often sounded odd to him, so he made special note of their pronunciation. Many Cadeleonians found Haldiim informality rude and so Kiram was careful to use proper titles as he addressed his new teachers.
"Scholar Blasio and Scholar Donamillo, it is an honor to meet you. I'm Kiram Kir-Zaki, your humble student."
Scholar Blasio smiled at Kiram's politeness. "It's a pleasure to meet you at last. Javier was just saying that he'd seen your carriage so we came to greet you." Scholar Blasio gestured back towards the stable where the rider had been standing. He frowned at the empty spot. "I suppose he's brushing down his horse. We're short a stable hand at the moment-"
"It's no matter," the older brother, Scholar Donamillo, cut in. "Kiram will be formally introduced to staff and students at dinner tonight."
Scholar Donamillo's tone was much more reserved than Scholar Blasio's, and his expression stern. Kiram couldn't help but think that the older man had taken a quick dislike to him. Probably because he was supposed to be a gifted thinker and he'd just fallen out of a carriage onto his face.
Scholar Donamillo looked a little past Kiram to the crates stacked atop and inside the carriage. "Are all of these yours?"
"Yes, sir. They're the components I've fabricated for the Crown Challenge."
Scholar Blasio grinned. "You brought them all the way from Anacleto? What dedication. That's fabulous!"
Kiram warmed to Scholar Blasio for his enthusiasm but he also noted Scholar Donamillo's expression of disapproval.
"I'll have the groundsmen unpack these," Scholar Donamillo stated. "I suppose that one of the tack sheds can be spared to provide a workshop for the project. No doubt it will take a great deal of space."
"Thank you, sir." Kiram bowed again to the older man. "I'm sorry for the inconvenience."
"Yes, it's good that you realize that this does inconvenience us. It is not common to accept a new student directly into the second-year courses, much less accommodate his individual studies." Strangely Scholar Donamillo's stern expression seemed to soften as he looked over the wooden crates. "I can only hope that you will prove to be the mechanist genius your teachers claim you are."
The label 'genius' brought a second flush to Kiram's cheeks and also a gnawing anxiety to the pit of his stomach. At seventeen, most of his achievements were still built upon his father's innovations. This would be the first time he would have to rise to a challenge alone.
"I will do my utmost to win the Crown Challenge in the academy's name," Kiram assured Scholar Donamillo. The older man offered him a slight smile in return. He reached out and brushed a clump of mud off Kiram's shirt.
"No doubt you will want a bath after your long journey. Scholar Blasio will take you up to your room."
"Yes, sir." Kiram snatched up his coat and his gray trunk and followed Scholar Blasio across the lush, green lawn to the three-story stone building that dominated the grounds.
"This is the dormitory. First-year students are all housed on the first floor of the west wing, in the old armory room." Scholar Blasio pointed to where the west wing jutted out from the main building. The windows were barred. "With everyone in a single room the night wardens can keep them out of trouble more easily."
Kiram was glad that he hadn't been forced to come as a first-year student. He couldn't imagine sleeping while crammed in a single room with a hundred noisy Cadeleonian boys. The smell alone would have driven him mad.
"Second and third years are housed together on the second floor. Those young men who stand to inherit titles, of course, stay on for a fourth year of Lord's Law. They each have private rooms on the third floor."
"What about the watchtowers?" Kiram gazed up at the two jutting towers that rose up from the third floor.
"The west tower is used for storage and the east one is for special cases." Scholar Blasio looked a little uncomfortable. "Let's go in, shall we?"
Inside, the building was dim and cool. Crests of Cadeleonian noble families, all woven in academy blue, decorated the walls. The royal crest of the Sagrada family was inlayed in gold over all the doors. Scholar Blasio led him past a statue of a rearing stallion, through a huge dining hall, and then up a massive staircase.
"Four of the lecture halls are located on the first floor, the rest are in the east wing," Scholar Blasio told Kiram as they walked up the stairs. "The dining hall and common library are directly below us."
"Everything seems so heavy and huge," Kiram commented. "It looks a little like a fortress."
"It used to be one. Three hundred years ago, during the first Sagrada dynasty, this was one of their great strongholds. After the Restoration the reinstated Sagrada king turned the fortress over to one of his favored vassals to train young lords in the arts of war and law. Of course, things have changed since then but we have not forgotten our history. In fact, it's right under our feet." Scholar Blasio paused on the stairs and pointed back down to a radiant, black design that spread across the stones of the floor below them.
"That is exactly the spot where one hundred years ago Calixto Tornesal opened the mouth of the white hell and defeated the Mirogoth invaders."
Kiram studied the fine web of black cracks. He didn't believe in the white hell or any of the other Cadeleonian hells but the sight of the burned, pitted stones still gave him pause. Standing in an ancient fortress, with a scholar relating the story and pointing out its exact site, it seemed almost plausible that a Cadeleonian nobleman had traded his soul for the power to drive back an invading army.
Even so, Kiram couldn't credit it. A soul could not be given up any more than joy or kindness could be bottled and sold at market. Only in death could the soul leave the flesh.
Kiram glanced to Scholar Blasio, searching his face for some sign that he was joking, but his expression was serious.
"Calixto's descendants still hold the pact of the white hell." Scholar Blasio looked meaningfully at Kiram.
Kiram wasn't sure if he should respond with reverence or revulsion. At last he decided to simply be honest. "In Haldiim tradition we don't believe that people are condemned to hells. We believe that in death all creatures pass through a shajdi and then are reborn in a new form."
Seeing Scholar Blasio's furrowed brow, Kiram continued, "Most modern Haldiim, like my family, don't give much credence to the tales of shajdis hidden in sacred forests or the Bahiim who opened them and claimed power over life and death. If shajdi ever did exist, it was in the ancient past, and they have gone now. But really, most of us understand such stories as metaphors for the balance of birth and death."
Only the very religious Bahiim took shajdis as literal gates between life and death, and the last thing Kiram wanted was to be taken for a superstitious ascetic who'd spend hours talking to trees.
"Really?" Scholar Blasio cocked his head slightly. "So, you aren't afraid of the hells?"
"No, as I said, we don't believe in hells. Shajdi make for amusing stories, though."
Scholar Blasio gazed intently at Kiram, studying his face. "So you wouldn't be afraid of a man who had been hell-branded? Who had the gate to a hell burning within him?"
Kiram simply shrugged. "I suppose not."
"It wouldn't worry you at all to, say, sleep in a room with him?" Scholar Blasio sounded almost incredulous.
"So long as he wasn't insane or sick with black pox I wouldn't be afraid to sleep in a room with any man," Kiram replied. It wasn't entirely true-certainly he wouldn't want to sleep in a room with a thief or murder or, honestly, a man who stank terribly.
"Well, that's good to know. Your room is on the third floor, in the east tower." Scholar Blasio continued up the stairs. Kiram followed him in quick strides. "It's away from the other rooms so it will be quiet enough for you to study, and unlike the other rooms, it's very spacious."
Kiram thought he knew where all of this was leading and decided to just get to the point, instead of having Scholar Blasio nervously list the amenities of his living arrangements when he'd already stated the east tower was reserved for special cases.
"You want me to room with one of these hell-branded men? A descendant of the Tornesal line?"
"You don't have much choice," Scholar Blasio admitted at last. "The other upperclassmen have refused to room with a Haldiim. They have no objection to you schooling here, but sleeping in the same room, when their souls are unprotected, is out of the question. However, since Javier's spiritual state is already.compromised, he risks nothing in sharing a room with you."
Kiram wanted to demand what exactly it was that these people imagined he was going to do to them in their sleep but then his thoughts stopped short as he registered the name Javier and remembered the dark, sardonic eyes of the rider.
"Javier? The man with the white stallion?"
"Yes, Javier Tornesal, Duke of Rauma. He will be your upperclassman."
Chapter One
Kiram stared with red-rimmed eyes out at the fields lining the road to the Sagrada Academy. Only desiccated sunflower stalks and tracks of broken soil remained from the harvest. ^e land looked as ragged as he felt and the dark confines of the Tornesal carriage offered him no more rest than his sumptuous bed had the night before. Despite exhaustion, hard liquor and hours spent wandering unknown streets, sleep had eluded him. Just as it evaded his restless mind now.
Outside, blue jays flashed their brilliant wings from a stand of apple trees; red leaves fell as the birds took to the air and swept past the creaking luggage carriage. Kiram shuddered at the sight of them and the scabbed gash in his forearm throbbed as if pulsing with poison. A week ago he could have found the birds a lovely distraction on such a cold fall morning. He might have delighted in their graceful flight and taken little note of how closely the flock followed the steady course of this single carriage.
Now he knew their chase betrayed a malevolent intent. ^ey flew as portents of the shadow curse, spies for the man who controlled it.
Slumped across the seat opposite Kiram, Fedeles Quemanor groaned and twitched, his peaceful doze turning fitful as the jays circled overhead. He gave a strained gasp and rolled his head from beneath his arm. Kiram glanced to Fedeles' face but for an instant he saw only Javier in those sharp, troubled features.
A longing so intense that it felt like pain shot through Kiram. He rubbed his tired eyes. He couldn't afford to think of Javier. What had been between them was over. ^ey had both destroyed it last night.
^is morning Javier had hardly met his gaze and offered no response when Kiram greeted him at the breakfast table. Instead he'd risen, abandoning his meal, wished Fedeles good day, and departed for the Sagrada Academy. Less than an hour later the dour staff of the Tornesal townhouse had efficiently packed Kiram and Fedeles into this musty carriage as if they were just two more pieces of Javier's luggage. While Fedeles dozed, Kiram deliberately turned his gaze from the trunks and leather chests emblazoned with Javier's family crest and tried to set his mind to other subjects.
But the strong physical resemblance between Javier and Fedeles roused all the thoughts Kiram had wished to forget. The stench of debauchery seemed to drift from the leather carriage seats. How could it be that those minutes he longed most to forget could burn in his memory with such painful detail?
Fedeles' legs shifted, brushing briefly against Kiram's calf and the contact offered Kiram a strange kind of comfort.
Both Javier and Fedeles were long-limbed, pale-skinned young men who sported ink black hair and handsome features. Ms morning the random shadows of luggage and Kiram's own exhaustion cast a harder line to Fedeles' jaw and lent an arrogant curve to his lips. ^e bulk of his new velvet coat offered the illusion of Javier's angular musculature to Fedeles' thinner frame.
The two of them could easily have passed for brothers, even twins. It was no wonder that some gossips whispered of scandalous relations between their parents. But Kiram knew Fedeles deserved better from him than to be seen as some proxy for his cousin, so he shifted his leg away.
Suddenly Fedeles jerked upright. With consciousness, much of his likeness to Javier fled. His dark eyes flashed wide as his mouth twitched between grimaces and grins. He caught Kiram's hand in his long fingers and Kiram couldn't help but note the power of his grip. Nearly as crushing as Javier's had been last night.
"They want to kill him, Kiri," Fedeles whispered. "The birds-" He cut himself short as a jay dived past the carriage window. The color drained entirely from Fedeles' face, leaving his mouth pale as chalk.
"I won't let them harm you, Fedeles," Kiram assured him. Fedeles shook his head as a violent shudder passed through his body. A wild, manic grin jerked across his lips but his eyes remained wide and terrified.
"Look here, Fedeles." Kiram lifted his lotus medallion from beneath the collar of his shirt and held it out. Even in the dim light of the closed carriage the gold surface glowed. Sacred Bahiim symbols gleamed as if throwing off their own light. Kiram hoped that, if nothing else, the medallion might distract Fedeles from his own fear.
Fedeles stared at the medallion like a fascinated crow.
"My uncle's partner is a Bahiim, a Haldiim holy man. He gave this to me. The lotus is a sign of powerful protection among my people, you know."
According to Alizadeh this medallion was more than that. It served as Alizadeh's spyglass, offering him the chance to detect the inner workings of the shadow curse and perhaps even to identify the man who controlled it. As Kiram held the medallion up now, he hoped that it would catch some hint of the dark magic that directed the jays in their pursuit of Fedeles.
The medallion swung on its chain as the carriage bounced over rough cobblestones. Light glinted off its polished surface. Then, without warning or seeming reason, the jays suddenly broke off from their chase. With a few harsh calls they fled into the thick woods that encircled the Sagrada Academy.
As he watched them go, Fedeles' expression lit with joy and he threw his arms around Kiram, crushing the air from him in his fierce embrace. Then Fedeles released him to press his face against the window and glare in the direction that the jays had fled.
"Stay away. Stay away. Stay away," Fedeles whispered as if reciting a holy chant. Then he dropped back into his seat.
"Good riddance." Kiram too felt better with the birds out of sight. He wondered if perhaps now he might steal a few moments of sleep. But when he closed his eyes his thoughts churned with the sour memory of writhing whores and Javier's proud glower.
Kiram straightened up, awake again.
Across from him, Fedeles hummed a bright tune. Now and then he moved his legs and tapped his toes against the floor of the carriage, keeping perfect time. After a few minutes he patted Kiram's knee.
"Dancing, Kiri," Fedeles informed him.
Kiram smiled. He didn't know why, but out of everyone at the Sagrada Academy only Fedeles seemed to know the Haldiim diminutive of his name.
"We'll dance a quaressa." Fedeles continued sweeping his feet in graceful motions across the carriage floor. "Left foot out and back, out and kick." Fedeles demonstrated and then looked expectantly at Kiram's motionless feet.
Though Kiram realized what Fedeles wanted, he still felt a moment of resistance; the bitterness of last night clung to him. But Fedeles was the last person he could blame for any of his troubles with Javier. So Kiram emulated the motions while Fedeles beamed with approval.
"Now right foot." Fedeles again demonstrated the dance step and Kiram copied him.
Laughing and grinning, Fedeles led him through the footwork of an entire quaressa. Last night Kiram had been so hurt and repulsed that he'd imagined he would never again find anything Cadeleonian charming. But this morning his sense of adventure seemed to have returned.
And in his own way, Fedeles was wonderful company, because for all his madness, he accepted Kiram without judgment and right now Kiram appreciated that more than anything.
"Again, again!" Fedeles crowed. Kiram obliged, mirroring Fedeles' steps and kicks from his own seat.
Leather trunks creaked and the carriage bounced beneath their weight. More than once Kiram misstepped, knocking knees and ankles with Fedeles, but Fedeles laughed it off. Kiram quickly improved. By the fourth time, their steps were almost perfectly synchronized. Fedeles sang out the names of his favorite horses, calling often for Kiram's black gelding, Firaj. Then he delightedly crowed for Javier's white stallion, Lunaluz.
Out of the corner of his eye Kiram thought he did catch a flash of white through the dense forest lining the road. Reflex- ively he looked and then felt the drop of disappointment as he discovered only a stand of white-barked birches growing among the dark woods.
The carriage rattled around another bend and the vast fortress of the Sagrada Academy loomed ahead of them. The heavy stonework of the main building dominated the grounds, rising three stories and thrusting its two watchtowers even higher. Kiram took in the whitewashed expanses of stables and sparring house without regard but scowled at the cerulean roof and gold steeple of the chapel.
Alizadeh and Rafie had only referred to the man controlling the shadow curse as the 'man on the hill' but it seemed obvious that if anyone at the Sagrada Academy would gladly plot murder and torture at the behest of the royal bishop it would be Holy Father Habalan.
Then Kiram wondered just how many jays sheltered among the gnarled oaks and fruit trees on the chapel grounds. Two of the birds perched in the branches of a tall pear tree. As the carriage rattled past Kiram was certain that the birds returned his gaze with calculating stares.
Suddenly Kiram remembered the merciless way that the flocks of blue jays had attacked and ravaged Nakiesh's sisters. Not even their own deaths had deterred the jays' assault.
Kiram looked away from the chapel and caught sight of familiar faces among the students gathered at the stables. A sense of something like safety returned to him. Fedeles leaned back into his seat and closed his eyes.
When the carriage drew to a halt, both Kiram and Fedeles bounded out to greet the waiting Grunito brothers. Nestor welcomed them with a toothy smile while Elezar simply used his massive frame to deflect other giddy students from crashing into their friendly exchange.
Kiram noted the brighter color of Genimo's auburn hair as he ducked past Elezar. Kiram and he exchanged cool, indifferent gazes but said nothing to each other as Genimo sauntered to Fedeles' side.
Kiram searched the throng of Cadeleonian students, grooms and house servants. They surrounded him in a sea of straight brown hair, dark eyes and light, freckled skin; their builds ranged from short, brawny grooms to the mountain of muscle that was Elezar Grunito-all of them quite the opposite of Kiram's slim Haldiim build, light eyes, dark skin and curling blond hair. Javier was not among them. His absence made Kiram anxious and uncertain of what to expect when he did arrive.
"Are we the last of the Hellions?" Kiram had to raise his voice to be heard over all the surrounding shouts and greetings.
"Most of the rest have gone up to the dormitories," Nestor replied and then he yawned widely. Kiram wasn't sure if it was just the hard morning light but Nestor looked nearly as tired as Kiram felt. His plump, pink cheeks seemed hollow and his small gold spectacles couldn't quite hide the shadows beneath his eyes. Nestor had encountered his own romantic troubles last night, Kiram thought, but he didn't want to ask about them in front of everyone.
Housemen in gray liveries slipped past Kiram and Fedeles, hauling away the luggage. Grooms saw to the horses and carriage.
One of the whip-thin Helio twins alighted from a different carriage and his friends greeted him, asking about his brother in hushed voices. Kiram peered past them, still searching.
"Javier's at chapel," Elezar informed him. "How any man can stand to attend morning and afternoon service is beyond me."
"I thought he might be," Kiram replied. All at once he didn't know what more to say. He'd seen too much of his fellow Hellions' passions last night. Now he couldn't quite meet Elezar's hawkish gaze.
"I should see Fedeles to the infirmary." Genimo stepped past Kiram, leading Fedeles by the hand as if he were a child. Fedeles smiled, but Kiram could see him pulling away from Genimo's grip.
"Fedeles can stay with me," Kiram offered. A pained expression flickered across Genimo's narrow features.
"He needs to see Scholar Donamillo for his treatment, but I'd be happy to turn him over to you afterward." Genimo didn't meet Kiram's eyes but instead stole a quick glance to small scar on Kiram's cheek. "Unless Javier objects."
"Why on earth would he?" Kiram responded, though it occurred to him that Javier could refuse just to spite him. Javier could be cruel when angered and as far as Kiram could tell, right now he was furious. Still, Kiram doubted that Javier would be so petty as to use Fedeles like some pawn.
Kiram felt briefly frustrated with himself for being too attached to Javier to think poorly of him even after last night. It would have been much simpler if he could dislike Javier, or failing that, just forget about him.
"If the two of you are going to stand around wondering why Javier does anything he does, Fedeles is never going to get to his treatment," Elezar commented.
Genimo scowled at Elezar, then turned his attention back to Fedeles.
"Come, Fedeles." Genimo pulled Fedeles along while Fedeles stumbled and dragged his feet behind him. There was nothing Kiram could do for him and he knew Scholar Donamillo's treatments were the best hope Fedeles had for survival until someone could find a way to break the curse. Still, Kiram wished that Fedeles didn't dread them so much.
"We'd best clear out from in front of the stables as well," Nestor said as another carriage rolled up.
The three of them took a wandering path towards the main building. Dry golden blades of autumn grass crunched beneath their shoes as they crossed the lawn and Kiram noted that dark rose hips now dotted the potted roses. Many of the apple trees sported bare branches while a litter of yellow leaves lay across the ground. Despite the bright sunlight a chill hung in the air and filled the deep shadows of the main building.
"Summer seems over all at once," Kiram commented.
"True, but there's plenty of ripe apples now." Nestor's broad smile brightened his face despite the dark circles beneath his brown eyes. "And with the autumn tournament over, you and I won't be spending every waking hour in battle practice."
That would be a relief, Kiram decided.
Nestor seemed surprisingly cheerful, given the trouble he'd been in the previous night. Riossa's lonely, hapless arrival at the Grunito house must have worked out.
"Well," Kiram glanced to Nestor, "aren't you going to tell me what happened after I left your mother's party?"
"The dolt got himself engaged," Elezar said in disgust.
At this Nestor smiled quite proudly. "There wasn't anything else to do. I couldn't let Riossa just take a fall, not that she wasn't willing to. She would-"
"She duped you, that's what she did," Elezar interrupted.
Nestor scowled at him. "You weren't there and you have no idea what went on."
Kiram thought this was the first time he'd ever seen Nestor take a stand against his older brother. Elezar didn't seem to appreciate his little brother's newfound sense of independence.
"All I need to know is that you're a fool. That girl fucked you over." Elezar stopped suddenly, catching sight of a figure far across the lawn. Kiram followed his gaze and realized that they were both watching Javier's broad back and long legs as he strode from the chapel towards the stables.
"I'm going to check up on Javier," Elezar announced. "Either of you coming?"
"Maybe later." Kiram hoped the response sounded casual.
"Later," Nestor agreed.
Elezar shrugged as if he couldn't account for their tastes and then hurried after his friend.
"Thank God," Nestor said as soon as Elezar was out of earshot. "He's been badgering me all day."
"Well, it is surprising that you're engaged. You've only known Riossa a week."
"Honestly, Kiram, there wasn't anything else I could have done. And it wasn't like Elezar makes it sound. Riossa didn't come in alone to the Grunito house to cause a scandal. She'd been by herself outside the townhouse for nearly two hours waiting for her sister to join her. She only came inside to try and have a carriage summoned so that she could return to her father's house. But the footman saw her invitation and escorted her into the ballroom."
Kiram frowned at this. He was almost certain that Cade- leonian girls from good families were not supposed to be left alone for hours on end. "So, why did the sister leave Riossa waiting?"
Nestor lowered his voice. "Because she was having an affair with the carriage driver, apparently, and picked last night to run off with him. She told her husband that she was taking Riossa to the celebration so he wouldn't wonder why she was gone. Then she told Riossa that she'd forgotten something and left Riossa outside the townhouse while she took the family carriage and fled."
"Sounds like a rotten sister."
"Yes, and it wasn't as if anyone knew what had happened right away either. At first my mother was thinking the sister intentionally left Riossa so that Riossa could get her claws in me." Nestor rolled his eyes. "As if she would need to do something like that. She's beautiful and funny and smart."
"And a good kisser," Kiram added. "If my source is to be trusted."
"Yeah, she's that too." Nestor grinned.
"So if your mother thought this was all a trick, how did you end up engaged?"
"Riossa's father is an ass. He half lost his mind when he found out about Riossa's sister. He started screaming at Riossa for allowing her sister to ruin their family name-right in front of everyone. And then he told Riossa that he was sending her to the Inanicia Convent, and when she said she wouldn't go, he struck her!" Just recounting the event, Nestor flushed with anger. "He knocked her to the floor right in front of me. What was I supposed to do?"
Kiram wondered what he would have done in such a situa- tion-certainly not get engaged to the girl. He kept his thoughts to himself.
Nestor continued heatedly, "I told him that if he ever laid a hand on her again that I'd hit him so hard he'd be talking out his crapper."
"Did you really say crapper?"
"I know I should have said asshole, but my mom was right there," Nestor explained sheepishly. "Then I proposed. I guess marrying me sounded a lot better then being sent to a convent."
"So…there'll be a wedding?" Kiram could not have imagined Nestor's engagement would be so dramatic. Perhaps having a black-haired, romantic adventurer like Atreau for an upperclass- man had affected Nestor more than Kiram had realized.
"Not until spring, but in the meantime my mom's taken Riossa into her care. She's not happy about the marriage but she was proud that I wouldn't let some bastard treat his daughter so badly."
"Not many men would step up like that." Kiram nodded. "I wouldn't have."
"Well, to be honest, I should have stepped up sooner.you know, right after we first.dallied. But she didn't say anything about it so I let it alone too."
"Dallied?" Kiram didn't understand the Cadeleonian term at first but then he realized what Nestor meant. "Nestor, you » didn't"
"How'd you think I knew so much about kissing her?" Then suddenly Nestor became serious. "You won't tell any of this to Javier or Elezar or any of the others, will you?"
"No," Kiram assured Nestor. "Though they'd hardly have the right to judge."
"But they would," Nestor said. "They'd treat Riossa like she was one of those tarts at the Goldenrod and I couldn't stand for that."
"Don't worry," Kiram assured him. "I won't say a word."
As they made their way past the clusters of first-year students lounging on the steps, Nestor whispered a full confession. While he rhapsodized about slipping his hand inside Riossa's bodice and touching her breasts, Kiram realized that Nestor hadn't gotten much farther with Riossa than a few furtive gropes in a fair tent-certainly not far enough to make marriage a necessity. Still, his face flushed and his expression grew ecstatic as he described the stolen moments.
Kiram resisted comparing those brief intimacies to the ones he had shared with Javier. He said, "You're quite taken with Riossa, aren't you?"
"Honestly, I never thought I'd meet a girl who wouldn't seem a little dull, but when I'm with her, we talk and laugh and I don't even notice the time passing. She's not like other girls at all. She tells great jokes and she draws really well and she knows law better than I do."
Kiram didn't tell Nestor that she sounded like any one of a multitude of Haldiim girls he knew. He'd read enough Cadeleonian literature to know that such traits were not encouraged among Cadeleonian women.
Nestor and he parted ways on the stairs where Nestor saluted him before disappearing into his room to attend his upperclass- man's hangover.
Kiram continued climbing up to the room he and Javier shared in the east watchtower. As he crossed the threshold, a feeling of deep sadness washed over him. Javier had obviously already been here; a discarded jacket hung on the back of his chair and one of his dusty boots peeked from the shadows beneath his bed.
Fresh incantations decorated the floor, new dark ink scrawled over faded red symbols.
Kiram wondered if it would do either of them any good if he went to Javier now. But he didn't know what he would say and Elezar would be there in any case. And he certainly wasn't about to get down on his knees and beg as Javier had demanded. The memory of Javier's pronouncement sent a flare of anger through the melancholy of Kiram's thoughts.
"Kivhash to Javier," Kiram swore in his native Haldiim. He had other ways to occupy his time and other reasons-better reasons-to be at the Sagrada Academy.
Kiram swung his tool bag over his shoulder and left. When he reached his shed, he was pleased to discover that the workmen had raised a section of the roof as he had requested. There would now be enough space to test his steam engine without it tearing through the ceiling supports.
Autumn chill filled the dim interior of the shed. He lit his sweet oil lamp and opened the window shutters, allowing bright afternoon light to pour in. Sunlight and heavy work soon warmed him. The familiar smell of machine oil and the weight of cast iron in his hands soothed him. Steadily, he assembled his secondary steam chamber, taking careful measurements, rechecking his work and making corrections for the pieces he would need forged to create the condensation chamber.
In his mind he could see it already assembled and he didn't suppress his satisfied grin. His situation now might be a wreck of frustration, worry and confusion, but this mechanism would not fail him. It would work as nothing else in his life seemed to: precisely as he planned.
A knock at the shed door interrupted Kiram's thoughts.
"It's unlocked." Kiram wrote down a final measurement, then looked up to see Scholar Donamillo peering in through the doorway. Kiram offered him a welcoming smile. As Donamillo gazed intently at the half-assembled steam engine, afternoon light struck the side of his face catching the thick streaks of gray in his dull brown hair and etching the deep wrinkles that edged his appreciative expression. Not since Kiram's father had another man gazed at Kiram's work with such an expression of delight and curiosity.
"I wanted to make sure your arm wasn't hurting you." Scholar Donamillo didn't pull his eyes from the towering mechanism. Kiram could see him trying to guess at the purpose of unassembled pipes and valves.
"My arm only hurts when I think about it." Kiram pulled back the sleeve of his shirt, allowing Donamillo to see the thick scab that traced his forearm.
"It looks good. I'm glad." Scholar Donamillo's attention returned almost at once to Kiram's mechanism. Slowly Donamillo circled the engine. He cocked his head in curiosity at the mount where the cooling chamber would rest.
Kiram couldn't keep himself from explaining the entire thing to Scholar Donamillo. Months ago, when he had describing his innovations to Javier, he had felt that Javier was humoring him, listening without much understanding or any real concern. Scholar Donamillo smiled in genuine delight when Kiram described the energy the cooling chamber would save and, after examining Kiram's diagrams, he offered several suggestions to rebuild a troubling valve.
"In my early work with the mechanical cures I came across a similar problem. The heat of constant friction distorted a number of my base plates. A few even melted." Scholar Donamillo's sheepish look at this admission gave Kiram a strong impression what Donamillo must have been like as a young man: both intense and shy. He leaned closer to Kiram and asked quietly, "Do you mind if I take a few measurements of my own? I want to ensure that the crank on Fedeles' mechanical cure will be compatible with your engine."
"Please do" Pride filled Kiram. He knew that his creation might not just win the Crown Challenge but would also aid Scholar Donamillo's work to save Fedeles.
While Scholar Donamillo measured the pistons, Kiram continued his own work, comfortable with the quiet mumbling of another inventor. More than once, as his thoughts drifted, he forgot that he was not once again in his father's workshop. Then fourth bell sounded and Scholar Donamillo excused himself.
Kiram himself had done as much as he could until his new parts were forged. He rewrote his order for the blacksmith in neat, clear print.
Nestor arrived and invited Kiram to join him for a ride, which Kiram accepted with pleasure. At some point during the months of morning lessons with Javier, riding had transformed from a fearful trial to a source of comfort. Now Kiram stroked Firaj's neck and felt the tension in his own body relax into the big gelding's even gait. Nestor and he discussed their upcoming history papers and the new class schedule now that the tournament was over. From time to time Nestor lapsed into some reverie about Riossa. She smelled like flowers; she could burp the entire alphabet. The things that attracted Nestor mystified Kiram.
Tentatively, Nestor asked about Kiram's visit to the Goldenrod last night. As Kiram described the gaudy rooms and the numerous naked women, he tried not to let his revulsion carry through. Still, he couldn't manage any enthusiasm and he guessed that was telling enough.
"Not the place for you?" Nestor casually brushed a yellow leaf from his roan stallion's mane.
"No," Kiram admitted. The pungent, sweet scent of fallen apples drifted on the cool air and Firaj briefly snuffled at the ground to locate an overripe fruit. Kiram indulged him.
"To be honest," Nestor said quietly, "it doesn't sound all that appealing to me either. I mean, who wants to have sex with a bunch of other men in the room-especially my brother?"
Kiram laughed at that.
They returned just before the first of the evening bells rang. After brushing down their horses and rinsing themselves in the icy water of the stable troughs, Kiram and Nestor rushed to dinner. Shouldering past the crowds of first and second-year students thronging the lower tables, they took their places at the Hellions' table. Atreau and Morisio had already claimed their seats and Atreau offered them an offhanded greeting as they dropped down onto the wooden benches. Kiram felt a slight flush spread across his cheeks, meeting Atreau's gaze and remembering the other man's drunken rutting. Fortunately Kiram's dark complexion disguised the worst of his blush and Atreau's attention quickly shifted as other Hellions arrived for dinner.
Kiram glanced to the empty space reserved for Javier. His longing to see Javier felt as sharp as hunger but also edged with dread. Javier could turn cruel easily.
When Elezar arrived a few minutes later, Kiram considered asking him if Javier had seemed to be in a bad mood but resisted. Instead, he peered around as the dining hall filled with students. In the past week, Kiram had almost forgotten the heat and smell of so many young men gathering in one room. When Kiram happened to take a deep breath, he realized that the pungent scent of horses and sweat saturated his jacket and trousers, making him as much of an odorous offender as any of the grubby first-year boys who sat wiping their noses on the backs of their shirtsleeves.
Javier arrived just before the teachers and Holy Father Habalan. He strode between the rows of tables with a handsome and arrogant expression of assurance. The jacket he wore glinted with silver threads and his black hair gleamed. His trousers were perfectly cut, accentuating the hard muscles of his long legs. Kiram could hardly look away. When he smiled, the warmth of his expression lent an alluring softness to his sharp features, though there remained a wicked gleam in his eyes.
He knew, Kiram realized. He knew exactly how good he looked and how the sight of him would affect Kiram.
And suddenly Kiram felt very worried. He had been prepared for Javier's most biting remarks, even secretly hoped for them, so that he could just hate Javier and be done. Now he had no idea how he could inure himself to Javier's charms.
And Javier did not relent throughout the meal. He was unerringly funny and pleasant. He didn't lavish his attention upon Kiram, rather, he complimented Kiram's work as his squire in an easy, offhanded manner. He bantered with Morisio and Elezar and very casually allowed one of his long legs to brush against Kiram's calf. A spark of sharp desire flickered through Kiram's body at the small contact.
It required nearly all of Kiram's attention to ignore Javier's appealing presence. The food hardly made any impression upon Kiram and more than once he had to ask Nestor to repeat himself.
"You seem a little distracted this evening, Kiram," Nestor commented at last.
Javier gave him a knowing smile. Kiram could feel a flush rising but he refused to acknowledge it.
"I've been thinking about Scholar Donamillo's mechanical cures," Kiram replied.
A vexed expression flickered across Javier's face.
"They're fascinating, aren't they?" Morisio commented. "I've been studying them myself. I even built a few miniatures but powering them is the real trick."
Morisio went on and Kiram tried to concentrate on his freckled face, but the light sensation of Javier's calf against his own obsessed him. He could feel the warmth of Javier's skin radiating through his stockings and he remembered the weight of Javier's bare body against his own and the heat of his mouth. Kiram hardly heard Morisio's continuing ruminations on the key to Scholar Donamillo's unprecedented success. "I can't help but wonder if there isn't something more than pure mechanism behind it."
At this Genimo darted a glance to Kiram and Kiram realized that Genimo already knew that Scholar Donamillo used blessings and spells as well as mechanically-generated power for the cure that protected Fedeles. The knowledge that only he and Genimo shared the scholar's secret lent an uncomfortable sense of fraternity to his normally cold regard of Genimo.
"I can't help but wonder if you realize that no one cares a pig's tit about Scholar Donamillo's mechanisms," Elezar told Morisio. In response, Morisio just threw a hunk of bread at him. Elezar leaned back and caught it in his mouth.
"If your fortunes ever fail, no doubt you'll have a place in some circus," Javier told Elezar.
"You're one to talk." Elezar tossed a golden plum at Javier. Javier caught the plum and spun it on the tip of his finger. Then he rolled it between his hands. White sparks of light flickered between his fingers and suddenly the plum appeared to vanish. All conversation at the table quieted as the Hellions watched in fascination.
Javier held out his empty hands, displaying his palms, then with a flourish he reached across the table and caught Kiram's hand in a gentle grip. A conspirator's warmth flashed in his smile. As he pulled his hand back, Kiram felt the plum drop from the cuff of Javier's sleeve into his palm. Hellions hooted and clapped at the seemingly magical reappearance. Students at other tables gawked.
Kiram couldn't help but be delighted-not just with Javier's ingenuity but also at being included in the sleight of hand. He had no doubt that Javier had conceived the gesture hoping that it would charm him but the knowledge did nothing to diminish Kiram's pleasure.
Elezar's demand for another plum brought normalcy back to the table. Atreau needed notes from Holy Father Habalan's lecture on the conquest of the Labaran Dynasty. Genimo offered his. Elezar complained about Nestor's engagement and Nestor grumbled responses.
Kiram ate the sweet, tender plum and wondered with a terrible sinking dread whether his resistance or Javier's persistence would fail first. He wished he could feel happy at the prospect of either.
Author Bio:
Ginn Hale resides in the Pacific Northwest with her lovely wife and wayward cats. She is an award-winning author of science fiction and fantasy, as well as an avid coffee-drinker.
iTUNES / SMASHWORDS / KOBO
EMAIL: ginn@ginnhale.com
Lord of the White Hell #1
B&N / KOBO / SMASHWORDS
Lord of the White Hell #2
B&N / KOBO / SMASHWORDS
Saturday, October 19, 2019
Saturday's Series Spotlight: Hellsingers by Rhys Ford
Summary:
When his Uncle Mortimer died and left him Hoxne Grange, the family’s Gilded Age estate, Tristan Pryce knew he wasn’t going to have an easy time of it. He was to be the second generation of Pryces to serve as a caretaker for the estate, a way station for spirits on their final steps to the afterlife. The ghosts were the simple part. He’d been seeing boo-wigglies since he was a child. No, the difficult part was his own family. Determined to establish Tristan’s insanity, his loving relatives hire Dr. Wolf Kincaid and his paranormal researchers, Hellsinger Investigations, to prove the Grange is not haunted.
Skeptic Wolf Kincaid has made it his life’s work to debunk the supernatural. After years of cons and fakes, he can’t wait to reveal the Grange’s ghostly activity is just badly leveled floorboards and a drafty old house. The Grange has more than a few surprises for him, including its prickly, reclusive owner. Tristan Pryce is much less insane and much more attractive than Wolf wants to admit and when his Hellsinger team unwittingly release a ghostly serial killer on the Grange, Wolf is torn between his skepticism and protecting the man he’d been sent to discredit.
Summary:
Paranormal investigator Wolf Kincaid knows what his foot tastes like.
Mostly because he stuck it firmly in his mouth when his lover, Tristan Pryce, accidentally drugged him with a batch of psychotropic baklava. Needing to patch things up between them, Wolf drags Tristan to San Luis Obispo, hoping Tristan’s medium ability can help evict a troublesome spirit haunting an old farmhouse.
With Wolf’s sister handling Hoxne Grange’s spectral visitors, Tristan finds himself in the unique position of being able to leave home for the first time in forever, but Wolf’s roughshod treatment is the least of his worries. Tristan’s ad-hoc portal for passing spirits seems to be getting fewer and fewer guests, and despite his concern he’s broken his home, Tristan agrees to help Wolf’s cousin, Sey, kick her poltergeist to the proverbial curb.
San Luis Obispo brings its own bushel of troubles. Tristan’s ghost whispering skill is challenged not only by a terrorizing haunting but also by Wolf’s skeptical older cousin, Cin. Bookended by a pair of aggressive Kincaids, Tristan soon finds himself in a spectral battle that threatens not only his sanity but also his relationship with Wolf, the first man he’s ever loved.
Audiobook Review October 2019:
My original review four years ago was short and sweet but so on the mark I don't know what else to add. Tristan James is a perfect narrator when it comes to portarying Tristan and Wolf's journey, the voices for each character jumps off the page and makes them so real I expected to look up and find myself face to face with the boys and Winifred the ghost.
There's just something about Fish and Ghosts that appeals to my love of classic Hollywood horror, both A- and B- quality films. For some, that would mean cheesy bordering on comical but for those of us who love that genre and era, the old black and white tales of horror are anything but comical and neither is Fish and Ghosts. Okay, maybe there is plenty of humorous banter and flirting between Tris and Wolf but for me that only makes the ghostly elements that much more macabre and menacing. The humor gives cause to the reader to let their guard down so when Winifred strikes it can knock you sideways, you know the moment in a horror film where the theater audience laughs out loud, suddenly grows quiet, and then lets out a collective scream. Fish and Ghosts does that to you.
When I was searching for paranormal reads for October I asked around and Hellsingers by Rhys Ford was recommended more than once so I decided to check it out. The connection between Tristan and Wolf jumps off the page and you can just feel it in every fiber of your being. The secondary characters may be secondary by definition of their page time but not by their contributions to the story. Don't even get me started on the creepiness of Winifred the ghost, shudders just thinking about it.
Duck Duck Ghost #2
Audiobook Review October 2019:
What can I say about Duck Duck Ghost that wasn't said before? Not a whole lot other than once again Tristan James returns to bring incredible realism to the characters and their new menacing adversary. As with my original ebook review, I still say Duck Duck Ghost is even better than Fish and Ghosts. Tristan and Wolf are just as bickering and lovable as ever though there are a few issues in the beginning but soon they find themselves in a new battle for their lives and frankly Tristan's sanity. I won't go into too much detail but suffice it to say, dolls and doll parts are involved and having seen Annabelle, she has nothing on this entity. Creepy only begins to cover it. Once again, Rhys Ford has blended creepified mayhem with romantic humor to make a brilliant tale perfect for Halloween.
One last note: Hellsingers is definitely a series that must be read in order, mostly for character development, both personally and relationship-wise. I know it's been a long time but when Tristan and Wolf finally decide to tell Rhys Ford their next adventure I'll be right here waiting, whether it's next week, next month, next year, or longer. Hellsingers is just too delicious to forget about.
Just as in Fish and Ghosts, the characters are so enjoyable and feed the rainbow of emotions. So often when reading a series the follow-ups, no matter how good never quite match up to the first book but I found Duck Duck Ghost to be even better. There's heat, comedy, drama, mystery, and what would a good ghost story be without the ghosts. I am just going to say that I will never look at dolls the same way and if I ever found myself in the room of a doll maker with shelves of doll parts I would run and run far and fast. When I found myself at the final page I found myself wishing I had almost not started the series yet because the idea of waiting for book 3 is torture but once it is released it will be going on my Kindle immediately.
RATING:
Fish and Ghosts #1
Prologue
“SMELL THAT?” Wolf Kincaid paused at a narrow doorway, his broad shoulders wedged up against the creaking wooden frame. “Effervescent in nature, a whiff of dirt.”
He was speaking of the wispy mist blanketing the battered floor, its swirls created by the uneven knotty planks as much as by the two men walking down the hall. Around Wolf, the plantation house creaked with noise and echoes, tidbits of sound reaching back to tantalize the men sent to document its haunted history.
Built during the early days of Louisiana’s settlement, Willow Hills Plantation was once a hub of Southern activity, providing the surrounding area with food and, during bleaker times, an avenue for escaped slaves to begin a new life in the North. Stripped down nearly to its frame by its aging tenants, Willow Hills had been resurrected from its near death as a bed-and-breakfast. Positioned as the last stop of an Underground Railroad tour, the plantation soon earned a reputation of being a great place to eat as well as a home to restless spirits.
It was the latter part of its reputation that Wolf Kincaid came to tear apart.
“Hey, Wolf, want me to get an air sample?” Matt peeked out from behind his shoulder-mount camera, its illuminated trim splashing up enough of a glow for them to see in the plantation’s dark halls. “Or is it an ambient leak from outside? Swamp gas?”
“Some kind of gas,” Wolf muttered. “Nah, I know what it is. Don’t bother.”
No, he wasn’t going to feel bad about taking out the Willow Hills ghosts.
And if he had a chance, he’d go back in time and kick the shit out of its builders too. At a little over six feet, he should have had more space to walk around in the upper floors’ hallways. Instead, he felt like Alice after she had too many frosted cakes. His elbows hurt from banging into the walls, and the household staff wouldn’t have to dust for cobwebs because Wolf was pretty sure he’d walked through all of the ones in the attic storerooms. If he’d thought ahead, he could have taken a feather duster, done the job right, and charged the Willows for a deep cleaning as well as a spectral investigation.
Another step into yet another tiny room in the warren of servants’ quarters and Wolf found himself face-to-face with an apparition.
As apparitions went, it was fairly strong. White pallor, groaning black mouth, and empty eye sockets, with trails of ebony bleeding out under the spirit’s surrounding mottled skin. Her features were difficult to see, but the jut of her breasts straining against the thin lawn shirt she wore left Wolf with no doubt that he was staring through a woman.
Then she opened her mouth and a horrendous shriek rattled his eardrums and set fire to Wolf’s nerves.
Somewhere behind him, Matt screamed, and from the thudding sounds that soon followed, Wolf guessed he’d toppled over, probably taking the camera with him. The woman flickered in and out, a blue-white veil of features and fabric. Without warning, she rushed them, advancing on Wolf with her hands stretched out in front of her like talons.
He ducked. It was instinct born of human nature, and he cursed himself for it nearly as soon as he curled his shoulders away from the ghost. An icy chill hit him, whooshing over his face and arms. Then another struck, a stronger blast of air, cold enough to peel goose bumps up from his skin. The screaming continued, a murderous shriek echoed at a lower volume by his cameraman.
Something wet struck his cheek, and Wolf turned, looking up at the angled ceiling, where clotting strands of something dark and viscous dripped slowly down on top of them. It smelled rank and of curdled metal. Dabbing at a moist spot on his cheek, Wolf tasted the thick fluid, recoiling at its sourness when it spread over his tongue.
“Blood,” he murmured, holding up his wet finger for Matt to see. “Are you recording this?”
“I’m fucking freezing my nuts off, and I think I swallowed my tongue.” The young man struggled to get to his feet, tugging his ill-fitting Hellsinger Investigations T-shirt down over his slightly rounded belly. “Did you fucking see that? Shit, tell me you got readings on that.”
“Oh, I got something on it,” Wolf replied with a grin. “Come on, Matty. See if you can keep up.”
He left the younger man behind, edging past him, then launching into a full run down the tight staircase leading to the kitchens. His elbows took a beating. Obviously, his body had picked through his genetic soup and decided it preferred the enormous bulk of his Scottish ancestors above everything else and poured out his muscles and bones with a maniacal, enthusiastic glee.
While height and brawn were good in a fight, it made for shitty going while trying to run down a spiral staircase meant for tiny seventeenth-century women.
Somewhere behind him, Matt clomped along. He’d hired the young man for his filming and technical skills, not for going through an obstacle course, but Wolf didn’t really care. Most of the time, Matt could keep up. This time, however, it wasn’t as important as Wolf getting down to where he thought the apparition originated.
Because he needed to put an end to the haunting.
It was what he was paid to do. It was what he loved to do. Capturing that moment on film wasn’t as important as just having that moment.
And Wolf Kincaid was famous for having those kinds of moments.
Booming thumps echoed in the rear of the house, percussive rounds loud enough to shatter the eerie silence that settled down after the ghost’s shrieking. The walls around Wolf shook, and he ducked out of the way as a framed sampler fell off its hanger as he rounded the stairwell’s landing.
Behind him, Matt followed, stomping and cursing at the tight fit. The young man would have a hard time of it. The camera was too big, too bulky to make the tight turns quickly if Matt insisted on keeping it fixed to his shoulder to film. Which was what he’d certainly do. It was what Wolf paid him to do, even as he was tumbling ass over teakettle down the stairs behind his boss.
The staircase let out into the servants’ kitchen, a dank-smelling, closed-in room that, despite the staff’s best efforts, seemed to cling to its grimy lower-class roots. Wolf slipped on a tile, his sneaker catching on a thick line of grout, the sandy mixture providing some traction against the overpolished ceramic floor.
Ahead, the noises grew louder, more ear-shearing rattles and booms. More shrieks followed, echoing first upstairs, then suddenly snapping to the bottom floor, louder and more profane than the ghostly banshee moans. Rounding the corner, Wolf found himself in a room directly beneath the staircase, a long, rectangular space the plantation used for storage.
A stein flew past Wolf’s head, nearly clocking him on the temple. The heavy ceramic shattered against a wall behind him, and he felt a shard cut his cheek, the brief sting deepening into something heavy and wet on his skin. Another stein followed, then a plate wide enough to host a good-sized turkey.
“Fuck!” Matt exploded into a round of curses. From the sounds coming from behind him, Wolf guessed a piece of flying crockery had found its target in the cameraman or his equipment. “Poltergeists now?”
Wolf fumbled to find a light switch. His fingers found a bank of sliders on the wall next to the door, and the storeroom burst into view, two banks of overhead fluorescents throwing everything into a stark contrast of bright and shadow. Fully drenched in light, two women in period costume froze in place, one caught in the middle of throwing a metal steaming tray while the other’s hands were tangled in audio-visual feed lines. The cables disappeared through a small hole in the ceiling tiles, and nearby, a tripod lay on its side on what looked like a camera case. Both women were bleached white from heavy layers of makeup, their eyes hollow and bleak from a coating of dense theatrical kohl.
Smug, Wolf gave both women a short, mocking bow, then sneered, “Hello, ladies.”
Chapter 1
“THEY WERE pretending to be ghosts so people would go stay there?” Nahryn placed a steaming mug of black coffee in front of Wolf and settled into an empty wing chair next to his. “Why would someone do that?”
A bubbly young Armenian woman and Hellsinger’s Girl Friday, Nahryn kept their office running at a finely tuned hum and, more importantly to Wolf, made certain he had a pot of Ka‘u coffee to bolster him by the time he made it into their San Francisco office.
Even if sometimes her coffee was strong enough to bleach Wolf’s dark-brown hair to white from its bitter shock.
“Because ghosts equal profit,” Gidget pronounced from behind her teacup, her mascara-thick eyelashes fluttering the steam rising from her Earl Grey. “It was a pretty stupid rig too. Projection onto dry ice mists with leads feeding into speakers on the third floor. They’re never going to get the pig’s blood out of those ceiling beams.”
Their technician and Matt’s lover went for a more Rosie the Riveter look that morning, a piss-yellow bandana holding back a spill of flame-red curls from her pale face and her overalls creaking as she shifted in her chair, the heavy denim still so new it stank of dye. Glass cherries dangled from her lobes, a row of four in each ear, and they chimed when she moved her head. While they matched the printed cherries on her button-up shirt, Wolf thought it looked like she’d lost a fight with a fruit salad.
He’d tell Gidget that as soon as he told Nahryn about her coffee. One wrong, pissy word and Gidget could have his sensors bleeping a spectral hit on every pile of dog shit he walked by.
While he might get the hots for a long-legged man in jeans, he could commiserate with a straight man about the minefields of living with a woman. He spent days on end with two of them and still had to tread carefully with the best of them. Also—Wolf grinned into his coffee—he always had Matt to throw in as a sacrificial lamb whenever he needed an out.
“But that’s lying,” Nahryn insisted.
“It’s what keeps us in business, Nah-nah,” Wolf pointed out. “And since Willow Hills invoked our confidentiality clause and paid their invoice in full, we can’t say anything about their two wayward docents. The powers that be didn’t know, and now that they do, they want to make sure no one else does.”
“So we can’t even tell people they’re lying?” Her big brown eyes were narrowing. “That’s wrong too. The world sucks.”
“People hire us to prove their ghosts are real or at least come up inconclusive.” Turning on his tablet, Wolf tapped through his appointments. “Willow Hills gambled and lost. They didn’t know they were playing loaded dice. It happens sometimes. A lot of people think they can pull one over an investigator—”
“But the equipment doesn’t lie,” Gidget crowed, resting her heels on the corner of the conference table.
“Nope. It usually doesn’t.” Wolf saluted her with his coffee mug. “Let’s see what we’ve got on the books for today.”
“You have an appointment with a Mrs. Walter Pryce the Third in half an hour. She called right as I was making coffee, so I didn’t get a chance to put it down on the books yet.” Nahryn scrolled through her own tablet, then stopped to wrangle her curly brown hair into a tie. “She wants to hire you to look into a haunting. She thinks it’s bullshit.”
“She actually say bullshit?” Wolf’s eyebrows lifted. “People with the Third in their names don’t usually trot out the word bullshit.”
“No, she said implausible, but I was having problems spelling that so I just wrote down bullshit.” Nahryn grinned at him. “I didn’t think you’d mind.”
“Nope, I don’t,” Wolf admitted. “Okay, I’m going to talk with Mrs. Pryce. Then, after that, I’ll take all of you to 39 for some lunch.”
“Crab?” Nahryn paused halfway out of her chair and did a little dance with her butt against the upholstery. “’Cause you know… crab.”
“For you, Nah-nah, we can get crab.” He tweaked his Girl Friday’s nose. “First Mrs. Pryce’s boo-wigglies and someone get Matt on the phone. About time he got to work.”
“MY NEPHEW is insane.”
Wolf spared the woman a brief glance as he shuffled through the papers she’d brought with her. Mrs. Walter Pryce III was an older woman, one Born-to-the-Park, pinkie-lifting Junior Leaguer. Patting her swing of artfully done blonde hair, she took a moment to pause at the doorway of his pier-front office, her critical gaze taking in the space’s blend of gentlemen’s club furnishings and broad, sweeping view of the water. He almost didn’t catch the curl in her lip or the slight flare of her nostril, but he did. The brittle smile that chased after the hint of disapproval slipped from her face. After tugging carefully at the hem of her cardigan, she then smoothed her black pencil skirt and held her head up as she let herself be led into Hellsinger’s conference room.
Now, settled into a leather wing chair and armed with a porcelain teacup filled with a lavender-lemon blend, Mrs. Pryce seemed much more in control, especially after she’d shocked Wolf with her pronouncement. She nodded curtly at Wolf’s glance, probably mistaking his curiosity for something else. Or maybe, Wolf thought, she didn’t really care what he thought just so long as he took the assignment and delivered on the job.
“Rather than me reading through now, why don’t you give me the highlights so I can decide if I’ll take the case?” Wolf matched Mrs. Pryce’s haughty sip of her tea with a sloppy slurp of his coffee.
“I didn’t realize I was here to be auditioned.” Another sip, and this time, the nostril flare remained too long on her face to be dismissed as a tic.
“I don’t take every case presented to us,” Wolf replied. “If I did, I’d never get any sleep. But please, tell me about your nephew… the insane one.”
“Are you mocking me, Mr. Kincaid?”
“Not at all, Ms. Pryce.” Wolf shook his head. A lot of people walked into Hellsinger either thinking they were crazy and hoping to find out they weren’t or dancing on the razor’s edge of needing a wraparound jacket and looking for someone to prove them sane. It was, however, the first time someone sat across of him and openly declared her prey nuts. “Please go on. I’m all ears.”
“Tristan has always been a delicate boy.” Her pinkie flexed slightly, hovering over the cup’s handle as if she was afraid to let it touch the porcelain. “It all started when Great Uncle Mortimer Pryce died—”
“Mortimer?” Wolf nearly snorted coffee through his nose. “Really?”
“It’s a family name,” she replied smoothly. “My third son is named after him.”
“God help him,” he muttered to himself. “Sorry, continue. I didn’t mean to interrupt.”
“Tristan’s parents were quite normal. Did the best they could for him, but of course, he always seemed to wander away. Even if he was right in front of you, he would… rather… appear to not be paying attention. Great Uncle Mortimer was fond of the boy and would have Tristan visit him over the summers. I personally didn’t think his parents should have let him go to Hoxne Grange by himself. Mortimer was… a confirmed bachelor, if you know what I mean?” Her eyebrows somehow both lifted and scowled with disapproval, something Wolf had not thought possible before he’d met the woman.
He didn’t answer, merely blinking with a muted ignorance of what she was implying. “There wasn’t anyone for him to play with?”
“No, that is not what I meant,” Mrs. Pryce said firmly. “Tristan was a young boy and at an impressionable age. Great Uncle Mortimer should not have had access to him. He filled the boy’s mind with rubbish.”
“What kind of rubbish?”
“That Hoxne Grange is haunted and that he somehow was its caretaker… the ghosts’ caretaker.” She shuddered, either with the foolishness or the growing bitterness of the cooling tea. “Mortimer was one thing. I mean, he was an older gentleman. Very set in his ways and the Grange is… well, it’s a family legacy. The Pryce family had it built nearly a century and a half ago. It’s on a fantastic property in Mill Valley. Great Uncle Mortimer inherited it when his father died. When he passed, he left everything to Tristan. It’s been a touchy subject in the family since then.”
“So Tristan getting the property wasn’t expected?” Wolf began taking notes, diagramming out the Pryce family tree.
“No, my husband is the next eldest son in the Pryce family. Tristan’s father was his youngest brother.” She set her cup down, the saucer rattling beneath it. “It should have gone to him, but instead, Tristan is Mortimer’s sole heir, and from what we can tell, he’s continued the man’s insane claims about the Grange being haunted.”
“How long has he been its owner?”
“Since he was nineteen. Really, it was too big a burden to hand over to a teenager. He’s almost twenty-eight.” Mrs. Pryce’s mouth flattened into a line, crinkling her pink lipstick. “Luckily, he kept most of the landscaping staff, and there is a daily housekeeping staff that comes in, so at least the estate isn’t being run to the ground.”
“So he’s maintained it?”
“Thankfully, Mortimer set up a trust fund to dispense monies to Tristan until his twenty-eighth birthday. It truly is a blessing. Tristan’s… an artist of sorts. A children’s book writer, I think. Certainly not enough of an income to keep the Grange up.” She lifted her shoulders in an elegant shrug. “On Tristan’s birthday, he’ll inherit the rest of the estate and have full control of its assets. The family is concerned that with Tristan’s… peculiarities… he’ll be taken advantage of. We’d like you to help us ensure this will not happen.”
“What about Tristan’s parents?” Wolf cocked his head, tapping the tip of his pencil on two empty boxes on his flow chart.
“Carol and Sandy… Alexander was his real name… they died in a small plane crash off of the coast of Italy about six months after Tristan inherited the estate.” A frown crinkled her smooth brow, and she played with a button on her sweater. “Sandy was against Tristan living there. He thought Mortimer was setting his son up to continue playing his little ghost game. Of course, Tristan denies this. He fully believes the Grange hosts his little friends. He’s turned the family home into an inn, Mr. Kincaid, and the majority of his guests are not real.”
Wolf didn’t have to guess at the Pryces’ motivations. Mortimer’s money and estate seemed to be their first priority, although he couldn’t rule out the woman’s concern for her nephew. A few taps on his tablet called up the Grange’s visual from an overhead map. Constructed during the Gilded Age, the sprawling estate was built into a nest of hills, and from what Wolf could make out, clearly designed by someone with a love for the Renaissance Revival form. A photo of Hoxne Grange called up a view of its front drive and landscaped grounds. The place was huge—sprawling seemed to be too weak of a word for the winged W set among the redwood trees—and embellished with formal gardens.
“What do you want me to do? I’m not in the business of declaring people mentally incompetent,” Wolf pointed out. “Even if I’ve got a sheepskin telling you I can.”
“The family would like you to stay at the Grange and investigate Tristan’s claims. Your agency is known to be fair. We’d just like you to show Tristan that his ghosts only exist in his mind. If you can do that, Mr. Kincaid, just show him that the Grange isn’t a way station for phantoms, we will pay you anything you ask for. He needs to be shown reality, Mr. Kincaid, and I think you’re just the man to do that.”
HIS UNCLE was going to wear a hole in the library floor; Tristan was sure of it. The last half hour was ticked off by the squeak of his Italian loafers when he turned, a five-second interval bleeding off Tristan’s morning. Checking the grandfather clock for what he thought might have been the hundredth time since Walter Pryce III came through his front door, Tristan waited for his uncle to wind up yet another argument meant to move him out of the Grange.
“Your aunt is speaking with the agency now—” Walter began another circuit, his meaty hands clasped around his back.
“Is she still counted as my aunt if she’s your third wife?” Tristan huffed a breath up at his forehead, hoping to move a chunk of blond hair away from his eyes. If he used his fingers, he knew he’d get trapped in playing with his hair, and anything Walter said to him would be lost in the contemplation of how the sunlight changed the colors as it bled through the shafts. “I mean, Aunt Judith counts because she was first, right? Sharon maybe because she had Mortie, but Ashley? Is she my aunt too?”
“Tristan, please concentrate on what I’m saying to you.” The man harrumphed, exhaling forcefully enough to make his lips flap. Tristan’s fingers itched for a sketchbook, wanting to scribble out his impressions of a disgruntled walrus waddling back and forth on an ice floe. “We’re hoping you’ll see reason.”
“Reason….” Tristan repeated softly. “By opening the Grange up to people who chase ghosts?”
“They are paranormal psychologists. Or at least the agency head is.” Walter turned again, squeaking off another tick of time. “I know it would be terrible to discover that perhaps you’ve been encouraged to… um… what is the word I’m looking for?”
“Hallucinate?” he supplied for his uncle. “Sucking on guano from the bats in my belfry? Rowing with one oar?”
“You’re not crazy!” His uncle frowned, caught in midstep, his large belly jiggling under his suit. “Look, boy, I’m fond of you. I want the best for you. Just let them come stay here for a bit and see what they can find. Is that too much to ask?”
Tristan stretched out his legs, rubbing at the cramp forming along his thigh. He’d not asked Mara to turn the heat on in the library that morning until Uncle Walter’s sedan pulled up in front of the Grange. It had been an unexpected visit, and they’d both sworn under their breath when the man’s driver let his short, soft-bellied uncle out of the car.
Well, he’d sworn. Mara merely muttered darkly and scurried off to turn the heat on before pulling together a coffee tray for his guest. He’d sworn enough for both of them. His elderly housekeeper, while a pleasant woman for the most part, liked to get her daily work done and out of the way so she could spend her afternoons watching the shows she’d recorded the night before. Since most of her day included making sure he kept himself fed, Tristan didn’t care how she spent her days so long as the Grange was always guest ready. With fifteen bedrooms to keep up and two young women from the nearby town coming in to help her dust and mop, Mara kept the Grange primed and lemony-fresh, and she resented his uncle’s sudden appearance on a tightly scheduled Tuesday morning.
Tristan wasn’t too fond of Walter’s arrival either. He had only ten more minutes before he had to be at the reception desk, and from the man’s squeaky pacing, it didn’t sound like Walter Pryce was going to leave until Tristan gave him some kind of concession.
“And if they find out I’m not crazy?” he offered up in exchange. “Suppose they hand you a report that I’m sane and the Grange is what Uncle Mortimer and I say it is? Will you leave me be then?”
The look of confusion on his uncle’s face told Tristan the man had not considered that possibility. A few lip flaps and another squeaka-squeaka pass later, Walter Pryce grumbled, “If he comes back and says that there’s something here, then yes, I’ll acknowledge that there might be something to your claims. But the agency has to verify that there is some sort of activity here. If not, then I’m going to insist you stop this nonsense and come home.”
“I am home, Uncle Walter,” Tristan said softly. “I’ve lived here at the Grange for most of my adult life and spent nearly all of my summers here. If this isn’t home, then where is that?”
“Then we’ll come to you.” The man’s hand on his shoulder was meant to be reassuring, but Tristan felt it held a greater weight than his uncle’s skin, bones, and flesh. “We’ll come here to you at the Grange. It is the family home, after all.”
He was able to hustle his uncle out with a few murmured assurances and then exhaled a sigh of relief when the door closed behind him. A few seconds later, the sedan’s quiet engine rumbled away and Tristan was left with the silence of the Grange around him.
The snick-snick of a dog’s nails on the foyer’s parquet floors echoed up into the high ceiling, and Tristan grinned at the shaggy gray head poking out from around the side of the sweeping mahogany counter Mortimer Pryce had built to be the Grange’s reception desk.
“Come on out, Boris.” He whistled to the Irish wolfhound. “He’s gone.”
“That dog knows evil when he smells it.” Mara appeared at Tristan’s elbow, moving as silently as one of the hall’s guests.
“He knows Uncle Walter doesn’t like him.” Bending over, Tristan scratched at the enormous dog’s floppy ears, sending Boris into a wiggling dance of ecstasy. “The man’s not evil, he’s just… closed-minded.”
“Well, ghosts or no, he’s a menace.” The woman’s harrumph was less pronounced than Walter’s, but it was still impressive. “Your ghosties are your business. This is your house. If you want to hold balls for faeries, it’s your right, and damn anyone else who says something against it.”
A dusting rag hung from her elbow crook, and a faint hint of the green-tea soap Tristan gave her for Christmas perfumed her soft white skin, its delicate scent fighting a losing battle against lemon polish and the arthritic salve Mara used for her aching knees. A softly curved woman, she came up to Tristan’s shoulder and often was in and out of a room, leaving behind only plates of sandwiches and cookies as evidence she’d been there. Something clung to the frosted candy floss of Mara’s silvery hair, and Tristan reached over to pluck it off.
It was a single diamond stud, and he handed it to her. “Did you find the other one?”
“No.” She shook her head, closing his fingers over the stone. “You keep that one. Maybe even change that silly hoop you have in your ear. You look like a little boy playing pirate.”
“Maybe.” He’d never told Mara the hoop belonged to his mother, a sliver of gold some faceless official handed him over her remains. She would scold him about being morbid, not understanding the hoop made him feel close to the woman who’d given birth to him but never really understood the changeling she’d been saddled with. “Or maybe even a second hole?”
“All you need is a parrot instead of that dumb Sasquatch you’ve brought into this house.” A deep belling roll began to sound off from the library, and Mara sniffed at the chilling air. “Well, that’s time, then. I’ll be off. You deal with… that. Don’t get to talking too much. I’ll be bringing you lunch at noon, and don’t forget, the gardeners will be here this afternoon, so get that beast to his walk before then.”
“Yes, Mara.”
He was talking to her back by the time the final chime from the library’s grandfather clock struck. Settling himself on the stool behind the old-fashioned reception desk, Tristan immediately regretted leaving his coffee behind. There was no telling how late his morning arrival would be, and he’d only had half a cup. He’d have to scare up another pot before he headed to his study on the third floor.
“If I’d really been thinking, I would have brought a sketchbook too,” he informed Boris. The dog lolled his long pink tongue at him and began a leisurely scratch at a spot near his jowls. “Really, Uncle Walter showing up just screwed the whole morning.”
He didn’t have to wait long. A few minutes after he’d sat down, the Grange’s front doors rattled and swung open. A brisk wind cut through the open portal, carrying in the scent of rain on its breath. As suddenly as it opened, the wide doors closed, whispering on their well-oiled hinges. From behind the desk, Boris whimpered, tucking himself into a huddle, and Tristan patted the dog’s broad head.
A wet footprint appeared on the wooden floor about two feet into the foyer, then another, a sopping trail of steps marking someone’s progress toward the reception area. Elongated shadows played beneath a large round table set in the middle of the circular area, and something brushed against a stray pink rose that drooped from the enormous flower display sitting in a mint-green urn on the table’s top.
She came into view a step or two after she passed the table, a bedraggled woman dressed in a neatly patched plain dress. Clutching her case in front of her in a white-knuckled grip, she nodded carefully at Tristan, then plastered a tentative smile on her pleasant face, clearing her throat before she spoke.
“I’ve come about the cook’s position, sir.” Her melodic voice was stamped with the distinct grit of a Northern Londoner, and if Tristan looked carefully, he knew he would see the black grime of the Lower Hells stuck under her fingernails. The rest of her was neat and trim despite the wear on her clothes and the fatigue on her still young face. “I’ve got no references, as the Lady turned me out for what the Lord was doing, but….”
“I don’t need your references. You’ll do fine,” Tristan reassured her. “Wages are forty pounds, and you’ll be given tea, beer, and sugar, as well.”
“That’s too generous, sir.” She blushed, a pink lightening up her pallor. “I’m not skilled for that—”
“We’ve only one cook position,” he cut her off gently. “Kitchens are through that door and down the hall. Can you start now? I’ve nearly a full inn and need a dinner set up for the guests. Your rooms will be behind the kitchen.”
“Yes, sir. I can start immediately.” She dropped into a short curtsey, nearly losing her satchel. “My name’s Heather. Heather Cook, sir. Thank you so much. I won’t be letting you down.”
“I know, Heather. I know,” Tristan said, pointing to the door. “Welcome to Hoxne Grange. We’re glad to have you here.”
As soon as the words left his mouth, she whispered away, dropping out of sight in flecks of light until nothing remained of her but the wet footprints on the foyer’s wooden floor. He was about to fetch a mop when Mara came out of the door he’d directed Heather to.
“So she’s gone, then?” Mara asked, wheeling out a metal mop bucket in front of her.
“Yeah, she is.” Tristan smiled, saddened by the young dead woman he’d spoken to.
“Well, then, it’s done until next Tuesday,” his housekeeper pronounced in a firm voice. “I’ll clean this up, and you go on upstairs. There’s coffee waiting for you and some brekkie. Maybe later on, you’ll get a nap. I know how Tuesdays wear you down.”
“Thank you, Mara.” He kissed the froth of silvery-white curls at her temple. “I don’t know what I’d do without you.”
“You’d be mopping your own damned floors every Tuesday after you hire your dead cook again.” She slapped at his arm. “Go on with you, and take that cowardly beast with you.”
Duck Duck Ghosts #2
Chapter 1
THE SMELL of rot permeated the air.
It was a foul smell. A blackness to it Wolf would never get used to. With the proximity of the Florida swamp and Atlantic, there was a faint hint of stagnancy as well, with an overlay of brackish algae just for good measure. He couldn’t imagine living in its stink every day. Like cigarette smoke, it would flavor everything he touched, breathed, or ate.
He’d expected some dampness, especially in the lower jut of an ill-advised half basement below the church turned hostel, but when his sneaker sloshed through an actual puddle in the kitchen, Wolf wondered if the owners had less of a ghost problem and were more in need of a home demolition.
The basement seemed to be where most of the noises were coming from. At least from what Wolf could figure out. Creaky, eerie sounds wafted through the sprawling hostel, carried through the antique ductwork set into heavily built walls, and they certainly appeared to be originating from underneath the first floor. Tapping at the plaster, Wolf frowned, wondering what the builders had been thinking when they’d put in so many tight hallways and corners. The maze made it difficult to find the source of the hostel’s supposed haunting, but it apparently helped keep the place cool when it got too hot.
“It’s like they got paid by the fucking corner,” he grumbled. “Every single damned old house has a million stupid little corners.”
An undulating groan drifted through the hostel, and a screeching wail followed close on its heels. A startled yelp nearly broke Wolf’s eardrum, and he stopped for a moment with his foot on the second step down to the basement.
“Jesus, you trying to get me killed?” Wolf muttered, flipping the light switch at the top of the stairs one more time. “I could have fallen down this death trap and broken my neck.”
Much like the other five times he’d clicked it, the light stayed off, and he glanced up, fumbling in his pocket for his flashlight. After finding it, Wolf turned the torch on and splashed the beam up along the ceiling, not surprised to find a pair of dangling capped-off wires where a light fixture should have been.
A woman’s voice tickled Wolf’s ear as he crept down along a tight spiral staircase. “I’m not exactly sure what I’m supposed to be doing here, Dr. Kincaid.”
Wolf sighed and leaned his head against the cramped interior stairwell. Cupping his mouth over the wireless headset he wore to keep in contact with his intern, he counted to three, then said, “You’re supposed to keep up with me.”
“I’m trying to, Dr. Kincaid.” The young woman sounded exasperated. “But your legs are too long. I can’t keep up. I lost you back in the hallway. The lights aren’t working in this end of the house. Everything went black.”
“Where are you, Trixie?” he growled into his mic. “And more importantly, how soon can you get to the basement stairs?”
“Shit, you’re going to go down there? Why? Can’t we just use something to see underneath the house? Like they do for dinosaurs. What is that? Sonar? Can’t we use that?”
Biting back a sarcastic reply, Wolf reminded himself that soon-to-be-Doctor Trixie Huff was his only staff on the hostel job, so snarling at her probably wouldn’t necessarily endear him to her.
Initially, he’d agreed to use the headsets because he wanted to keep his communication to a whisper so as not to telegraph where they were in the building’s labyrinth of cellar space and servants’ quarters. Now Wolf was partially glad he had it on because he kept losing his damned intern.
It wasn’t Trixie’s fault.
Wolf was just too used to working with his team, and the intern, while highly intelligent and sharp, hadn’t planned on spending her summer vacation hunting ghosts in tourist-infested St. Augustine, Florida. Instead of lounging about the pool—or beach—being brought drinks by hot cabana boys in tight, skimpy shorts, she was tromping behind a grumpy parapsychologist in cobweb-cluttered mazes while rats and spiders dropped down on her like turtle shells in a game of Mario Kart.
When Hellsinger Investigations agreed to take on a pair of summer interns from Berkeley, it sounded like a perfect solution to his staffing woes. His techs, Matt and Gidget, longed to explore the Welsh countryside with its rambling hills and ghostly apparitions, while his office manager, Nahryn, planned on having a three-week visit with her grandparents in Los Angeles.
Trixie’d been a godsend. Especially since she was enthusiastic and, more importantly, a bit of a skeptic about paranormal activity.
If there was one thing Wolf needed in his life at the moment—it was a skeptic.
No, he wouldn’t think about Tristan. Not while he stood halfway down a flight of stairs with one wet foot waiting for an intern he was probably abusing by dragging her off to Florida so she could record his progress through a haunted hostel.
Something dropped onto him from above and skittered across his neck. Wolf resisted the urge to slap at it. He’d done that piece of stupid when he was younger and bore a half-moon scar on his shoulder from the very pissed-off centipede he’d slammed his hand over.
A strong beam of light cut over him, and Wolf grinned, glancing up at Trixie as she aimed the shoulder camera down the stairs. At some point, she’d dragged her glossy brown hair back and pulled a ponytail through a Hellsinger Investigations ball cap. Having abandoned her contacts for a sturdy pair of glasses to protect her eyes against the hostel’s dirt and cobwebs, Trixie’s eyes glittered with excitement behind her clear lenses.
“You ready, Huff?” Wolf grinned in the bright light.
“Sneakers on, boss,” she retorted saucily.
“Good, because we’re going in.”
They went down the stairs together, Trixie’s camera beam lighting up Wolf’s shoulders. It actually wasn’t a bad thing, because in the dank darkness, any light was welcome. Aiming his own smaller flashlight up, Wolf trudged through the tiny rooms built into the hill under the hostel, noticing the damp air thickened into an almost mist as they drew closer to the outer wall.
“Isn’t a basement in Florida kind of stupid?” Trixie asked above their squeaky footsteps.
“Yeah, not exactly the smartest thing. Whoever built this place made the hill first. It’s called a berm. It’s a smart thing to do to get your property above the flood line, but instead the asshole dug in and put half of the house into it. I’m surprised this place hasn’t come tumbling down on their—” A hissing noise made Wolf pause, and he turned, holding up his hand to stop Trixie from going any farther into the dark.
“What was that?” She kept her voice as steady as she could. Wolf gave her that. Even with the tremble in her throat, she held the camera steady, trained just beyond Wolf’s shoulder as he’d instructed her. “Oh God, something’s over there.”
Wolf’s beam was too weak to do anything but catch a sliver of movement beyond a turn in the hall. He took a few steps forward, but the camera’s light didn’t follow him, so he turned around, staring into the beam at the silhouette behind it.
“Come on, almost-Doctor Huff. Time to chase our ghosts,” he urged her on. The light bobbed once, and Trixie moved in step behind him, but he could still hear her mutter under her breath at his back.
“You are certifiable. No college credit is worth this.”
The thick rough walls under the old church must have been the only thing shoring up the foundation, but Wolf had to acknowledge the builder might have had something going. Lifted up off the ground, the airspace below would keep the building’s lower level cooler during the hot summer months, but he’d have been more scared of wood rot than a high air-conditioning bill.
Especially when his foot went through one of the floorboards, and his leg dropped out from under him, slamming his crotch into the rotted wooden planks.
Wolf grunted from the pain of getting his balls shoved up into his rib cage, but he stopped himself from whimpering out loud. Huffing to maintain his composure, he shouted back, “Trix, stay back there. The floor’s gone here.”
“Oh God, are you okay?” The large light bobbled and then dropped low when Trixie set the camera on the floor next to her. “Do you want me to go get someone?”
“Let me see if I can get out of this hole.” Wolf hissed when he leaned back. Massive splinters from the rough floorboards drove into his palms, and for once he was glad Nahryn insisted they all were current on their tetanus shots. “Okay, I’m going to rock back and pull my leg out. Be careful in case the boards go down behind me. I don’t know how big this hole in the ground is.”
“Why would someone dig a hole in the basement, then cover it with boards?” Trixie scooted forward a bit. “Do you want me to grab you and help?”
“No,” Wolf said with a shake of his head. “Our weight might bring the whole thing down. Stay back where we know it’s solid.”
Wolf gritted past the pain and pushed himself up, leveraging his weight back until he got his knee clear of the hole. His jeans were shot, torn along his thigh and flecked with blood where broken wood scratched into his skin. Another heave, and he cleared the hole up to his calf. Then the deep shadows beyond the camera’s powerful beam moved, and a low hiss echoed through the confined space.
The movement was slow, nearly graceful, and Wolf froze, trying to see into the darkness.
Then he realized what he was looking at, and his stomach crawled up to lodge itself into his throat.
“Trixie, I need you to move slowly back and go up the stairs. Now.”
“And leave you here?” she scoffed. “That makes—”
“Leave the camera and get the hell out of here. Use the flashlight I gave you.” Wolf kept his voice low, not wanting to spook the young woman. “Like right—”
The gator lunged out of the shadows, its teeth flashing a sickly yellow in the light beam. The reptile was nearly as wide across as Wolf’s hips, its quick legs whipping its long body back and forth as it moved across the floor. Its long tail slapped into one of the walls, making a wet sound on the hard surface.
Trixie screamed and fled, her cries for help seemingly coming from all directions as she ran out of the space. Wolf jerked himself free of the hole, rolling to the side as he tried to scramble to his feet. The alligator made another lunge, throwing its body up a few inches, and his sneaker sole caught in its teeth, ripping from the bottom of his shoe as the gator twisted its head.
“Fuck!” Wolf dodged the camera, catching his nearly bare foot in its harness.
The gator went after him again, the floors creaking under the reptile’s enormous weight. The boards bounced, and Wolf heard them cracking under him as he ran toward the room’s entrance. Trixie’s anxious screaming continued to bounce about the basement, a high-pitched wail loud enough to drown out the gator’s aggressive hissing.
His own flashlight flickered woefully when Wolf tried to aim it down the hallway outside the room. A fragmented beam warned him he’d probably broken the lens, but it still gave off enough light for him to see his way out. Something heavy slammed into his side, and Wolf’s heart jerked in fear until he realized it was Trixie running out from another room.
“I can’t find my way out!” she wailed, grabbing at his arm. “Oh God, it’s right there!”
Wolf chanced a glance back, and the gator grumbled with a menacing roar. Nudging the discarded equipment, the gator made the camera’s light flash and tilt against its hide, illuminating its variegated skin. Wolf grabbed Trixie’s arm and dragged her with him, urging her to run. A loud cracking sound came from the room behind them, and some small part of Wolf’s brain wondered if the gator would be trapped in the hole he’d almost fallen into.
The larger part of his brain shoved that thought down, intent on escaping the seemingly pissed-off reptile rather than pondering if the rot would give before the gator could catch up with them or if gators could climb stairs. They hit the steps at a run, and Wolf pushed Trixie up ahead of him. Her sneakers pounded up the staircase, and he followed close behind, his hands pressed on the small of her back.
All around them, they heard the hissing and screaming wails of the gator thrashing its way through the basement. Its vocalizations echoed through the ductwork, and somewhere in the hostel, someone else started screaming, matching Trixie and the gator in volume.
Voices called out from various rooms, but Wolf didn’t have the breath to answer. He shoved the intern through the open door at the top of the stairs, flung himself through, and kicked the door closed behind him with a mighty thump.
He lay on the floor, panting as people poured into the kitchen. Trixie lay on her stomach next to him, her body heaving from the sprint up the tight staircase. Someone sounded alarmed at the sight of his leg, but Wolf didn’t care about the pain. From what he could tell, he was still intact, if just a little bit winded.
The owner, a long-haired older woman, leaned over him, her bright blue eyes blinking in surprise at his bloodied and mud-caked body. Patting him on the shoulder, she asked someone to call 911 before Wolf could stop her.
“Oh my, Doctor Kincaid. Are you all right?” she murmured in her soft butterfly voice. “What happened?”
“Found your ghost,” Wolf gasped, fighting to push words out as he sucked in clean air. “And it’s big enough to make a whole set of luggage.”
“THEY ARE never going to give you another intern,” Nahryn, his girl Friday, complained loudly as Wolf came through the front door of Hellsinger Investigations. “You keep breaking them!”
“Hey, I returned that last one in perfect working order!” he shot back, dropping a bag of donuts on her desk as he hobbled by. They were damned good donuts, hot and yeasty malasadas from a nearby Portuguese bakery. Good enough to ward off a scolding from a girl ten years his junior, but Nahryn wasn’t having any of it, judging by the look on her face. “I’m the one who got fucked up.”
“Yeah, well, death by gator isn’t something a lot of people want to put on their résumé.” She sniffed at him and opened the bag. The pretty Armenian girl eyed him, as if searching for sugar around his mouth. “Did you already eat one?”
“Yeah, on the way in.” He winced at the steady ache along his thigh. Eight dissolvable stitches and a few shots later, his leg was patched up, but he was reminded constantly of his refusal to take any of the painkillers the doctors shoved at him. A few ibuprofens would do the trick, he promised his leg, along with a very nice hot cup of coffee.
“Well, take one in with you. Meegan’s here.” His office manager stepped in behind him before Wolf could turn around and drag himself out of the office. “Oh no you don’t, Kincaid. She’s your mother, and she’s here to ask you something.”
“I’d rather be eaten alive by the gator,” Wolf muttered darkly. “Go get me coffee, and if I buzz you in ten minutes, I expect you to come rescue me.”
“You’ll be lucky if I even answer,” Nahryn shot back with a Cheshire cat smile. “But I’ll bring you some coffee, you big baby.”
His mother was standing at the wraparound glass window of his office, her hands cradling a large cup of fragrant jasmine tea and her eyes dreamy as she stared out at San Francisco’s bay. Ferries jetted from shore to shore, carrying tourists and locals alike. The morning fog kept a light grip on the shoreline, but it was a weak one, with a lemony sun pushing its way through the watery mist.
The faint sunlight shone around the older woman, outlining her long, curly bright auburn hair and crazy-quilt peasant dress. Large chandelier earrings made of tiny bells and beads tinkled when she cocked her head, her eyes following the activity on the pier below. She’d lost her sandals somewhere in the office, her bare toes spread over the office’s wooden floors, and she shifted slightly, adjusting her black cobweb lace shawl over her pale arms.
His coffee arrived with a filthy look, both courtesy of Nahryn, and Wolf nodded pleasantly at her, then shooed the young Armenian woman out. Meegan Ocean-Kincaid turned and caught her son’s eye, but instead of the beatific, motherly smile she normally gave him, her mouth was set into a neutral straight line.
From his hippie-gypsy mother, this was tantamount to a scowl.
“Hello, Mom.” Wolf leaned in to give his mother a kiss, but she tilted her head back to stare up at him. Sighing, he rolled his eyes and said, “What?”
“What now, you mean?” Meegan sniffed.
It was a mighty sniff. Possibly one of the greatest she’d ever given him. It rivaled the one she’d aimed at him and Bach when they’d shaved Ophelia Sunday’s head with their Uncle Stavros’s clippers, but he still thought the time he’d dumped an entire load of horse manure on their living room floor because he was looking for gold coins held the top spot.
Another sniff, and the Horse Manure Incident sadly dropped to second place.
“I take it this is about Tristan?” He wondered if he could bribe Nahryn to go to the corner store and grab him whiskey so he could doctor his coffee or if it was still too early to start some serious drinking. “Have you talked to him?”
Her arched eyebrow lift was pointed enough he could hang a Christmas ornament on it, and Wolf took a gulp of his coffee, wincing at its sugary taste.
“Great, now even my office manager is trying to poison me,” he muttered, setting the mug down. “Okay, get it out of your system, Mom. Go on and scream at my head.”
“I don’t scream, Wolfgang,” Meegan informed him smoothly. “What I am going to do is tell you how disappointed I am in you. You have a chance at so much happiness, and you’re letting your pigheaded stubbornness get in the way.”
So yes, his mother had spoken to Tristan, and knowing his reclusive lover, he’d probably been nudged, bothered, and poked at until he spilled every last detail of their argument.
He didn’t need his mother to tell him he’d fucked up. He screwed up by starting up a fight with Tristan Pryce, owner and proprietor of Hoxne Grange, a spiritual hub for ghosts passing on to the afterlife, then walking out on Tris. The gorgeous blond man was reserved, quirky, and more importantly, willing to shove back at Wolf’s strong personality—and damn it, if Wolf didn’t miss the hell out of him.
Tristan ended up under Wolf’s skin, and part of the argument—most of the argument, if Wolf was really honest—was that he was scared. He was frightened by how quickly Tristan hooked his soul and pulled in Wolf’s heart. He hadn’t been looking for love when he went to debunk Tristan’s ghost-hosting inn, but that’s what he found—and he didn’t want to ever let him go.
And that scared Wolf most of all….
“We had a fight, Mom,” Wolf protested. “Things like that happen—”
“You accused him of hallucinating everything the two of you went through!” She turned on him, setting her cup down. Jasmine tea sloshed over the cup’s rim, leaving a small amber puddle on his desk. “What happened at the Grange was—”
“Mom, the iced tea you gave us to drink had euphoric honey in it, and then you left a quart of it in his kitchen cabinet!”
“How was I supposed to know he’d make baklava with it?” She waved off his disgusted look. “Really? Does he look like he’s the type to bake homemade anything? Does one even bake baklava?”
“He could have poisoned us with it! Honey’s a major ingredient in that.”
“No, really, how do you make baklava? Does it really go into the oven?” Meegan’s attention had obviously wandered off into the intricacies of Greek pastries.
“Jesus, Mom. That stuff was potent. Hell, no wonder we ate ten pizzas after that damned séance. We had the raging munchies. What were you thinking?”
“Just to calm everyone down after the haunting!” Meegan protested. “I’ll even bet you the baklava was good. It was premium honey. So what if it was a bit hallucinogenic? Some of my best memories were when I was a bit baked. Hell, you’re here because of a bit of that honey.”
“That’s not the point.” He rubbed at his face, then dropped his hands to his hips. “And I didn’t say what happened that day wasn’t real. I just—”
“You accused him of drugging you and said the whole experience was a mass hallucination!”
“I did not say that.” Wolf kept his voice as even as he could. “When I was done tripping along the Timothy Leary Highway—”
“Something that wasn’t his fault—”
“Mom, will you let me finish one sentence?” Wolf gritted his teeth and took a long breath to steady himself. “Please?”
“Fine, go ahead.” Meegan threw her hands up. “Talk, but nothing you say to me is going to fix what you messed up. So you got a little bit stoned. It’s just a relaxer—”
“It wasn’t the five minutes of fun-house-mirror world, it was the hour and a half of me living in the bathroom, wondering if I was going to have to reel my guts back in, after the two hours of trying to talk to Tristan’s monster illustrations,” he insisted. “I might have said a few things I wasn’t proud of, but I never accused him of drugging us that day. You did that.”
“Afterwards!”
“I told him I loved him and I’d call him in a bit. Did he tell you that?”
“I didn’t actually talk to him about afterwards. He’s very close-lipped,” his mother hedged. “But I definitely got the feeling things went a bit haywire. Then you hied off to God knows where.”
“Florida. I had a job in St. Augustine, and I couldn’t cancel. I was going to call him this morning.” Suddenly tired, he sat on the edge of his desk, wincing when his leg reminded him of his stitches and bruises. “I just needed to think of what I was going to say.”
“I’m sorry is a good place to start,” Meegan replied tartly. “Then I’m sorry again. Maybe even I love you? You do love him, don’t you?”
“It’s complicated.” The weariness of dealing with his mother set in, and he rubbed at his leg. “But yeah, I love him. It’s crazy because I’ve known him for what? A month? And it’s not like he’s totally normal. We’re going to have to come to some kind of middle ground.”
“Well, it’s time to uncomplicate it,” his mother ordered. “And I have just the thing for that. Something you both can do together.”
“Why does that scare the shit out of me?” Wolf picked up his coffee and took another sip. The sugar in it hadn’t magically evaporated. “God, I’m going to kill Nahryn. This is like hummingbird food. I did text him while I was in Florida.”
“And what did you say? That you were sorry?”
“That we needed to talk.” Admittedly, his messages had gotten more and more insistent with each unanswered text. He hated being ignored, and Tristan could ostrich with the best of them. “And I was an asshole. He didn’t text me back.”
“You should have called. It’s been over a week, Wolf,” Meegan huffed. “Okay, we can fix this. I have just the thing.”
“I’m already going to go up there, Mom. I don’t think I need—” He intercepted her simmering glare. “Fine, what is it?”
“Do you remember Sey? Your second cousin from your Great-Aunt Natty?” Meegan frowned at Wolf’s clueless look. “The one in San Luis Obispo.”
“Sey with the toys? Yeah, I love her. We’ve kept in touch.” A slender, brash woman known for her boisterous laugh and nearly endless energy, Sey was one of the few relatives he positively adored. He’d spent more than a couple of summers as his older cousin’s satellite, a tall lanky girl with sharp elbows and freckles. She’d been the one who’d taught him how to shoot a crossbow… and more importantly, how to run away from a charging bull when he’d accidentally fallen into the temperamental bovine’s corral. “Why? What’s up with Sey?”
“Funny you should ask that,” Meegan practically cackled as she rubbed her hands together. “Because she’s got a problem, and it’s one that is totally up your alley.”
Prologue
“SMELL THAT?” Wolf Kincaid paused at a narrow doorway, his broad shoulders wedged up against the creaking wooden frame. “Effervescent in nature, a whiff of dirt.”
He was speaking of the wispy mist blanketing the battered floor, its swirls created by the uneven knotty planks as much as by the two men walking down the hall. Around Wolf, the plantation house creaked with noise and echoes, tidbits of sound reaching back to tantalize the men sent to document its haunted history.
Built during the early days of Louisiana’s settlement, Willow Hills Plantation was once a hub of Southern activity, providing the surrounding area with food and, during bleaker times, an avenue for escaped slaves to begin a new life in the North. Stripped down nearly to its frame by its aging tenants, Willow Hills had been resurrected from its near death as a bed-and-breakfast. Positioned as the last stop of an Underground Railroad tour, the plantation soon earned a reputation of being a great place to eat as well as a home to restless spirits.
It was the latter part of its reputation that Wolf Kincaid came to tear apart.
“Hey, Wolf, want me to get an air sample?” Matt peeked out from behind his shoulder-mount camera, its illuminated trim splashing up enough of a glow for them to see in the plantation’s dark halls. “Or is it an ambient leak from outside? Swamp gas?”
“Some kind of gas,” Wolf muttered. “Nah, I know what it is. Don’t bother.”
No, he wasn’t going to feel bad about taking out the Willow Hills ghosts.
And if he had a chance, he’d go back in time and kick the shit out of its builders too. At a little over six feet, he should have had more space to walk around in the upper floors’ hallways. Instead, he felt like Alice after she had too many frosted cakes. His elbows hurt from banging into the walls, and the household staff wouldn’t have to dust for cobwebs because Wolf was pretty sure he’d walked through all of the ones in the attic storerooms. If he’d thought ahead, he could have taken a feather duster, done the job right, and charged the Willows for a deep cleaning as well as a spectral investigation.
Another step into yet another tiny room in the warren of servants’ quarters and Wolf found himself face-to-face with an apparition.
As apparitions went, it was fairly strong. White pallor, groaning black mouth, and empty eye sockets, with trails of ebony bleeding out under the spirit’s surrounding mottled skin. Her features were difficult to see, but the jut of her breasts straining against the thin lawn shirt she wore left Wolf with no doubt that he was staring through a woman.
Then she opened her mouth and a horrendous shriek rattled his eardrums and set fire to Wolf’s nerves.
Somewhere behind him, Matt screamed, and from the thudding sounds that soon followed, Wolf guessed he’d toppled over, probably taking the camera with him. The woman flickered in and out, a blue-white veil of features and fabric. Without warning, she rushed them, advancing on Wolf with her hands stretched out in front of her like talons.
He ducked. It was instinct born of human nature, and he cursed himself for it nearly as soon as he curled his shoulders away from the ghost. An icy chill hit him, whooshing over his face and arms. Then another struck, a stronger blast of air, cold enough to peel goose bumps up from his skin. The screaming continued, a murderous shriek echoed at a lower volume by his cameraman.
Something wet struck his cheek, and Wolf turned, looking up at the angled ceiling, where clotting strands of something dark and viscous dripped slowly down on top of them. It smelled rank and of curdled metal. Dabbing at a moist spot on his cheek, Wolf tasted the thick fluid, recoiling at its sourness when it spread over his tongue.
“Blood,” he murmured, holding up his wet finger for Matt to see. “Are you recording this?”
“I’m fucking freezing my nuts off, and I think I swallowed my tongue.” The young man struggled to get to his feet, tugging his ill-fitting Hellsinger Investigations T-shirt down over his slightly rounded belly. “Did you fucking see that? Shit, tell me you got readings on that.”
“Oh, I got something on it,” Wolf replied with a grin. “Come on, Matty. See if you can keep up.”
He left the younger man behind, edging past him, then launching into a full run down the tight staircase leading to the kitchens. His elbows took a beating. Obviously, his body had picked through his genetic soup and decided it preferred the enormous bulk of his Scottish ancestors above everything else and poured out his muscles and bones with a maniacal, enthusiastic glee.
While height and brawn were good in a fight, it made for shitty going while trying to run down a spiral staircase meant for tiny seventeenth-century women.
Somewhere behind him, Matt clomped along. He’d hired the young man for his filming and technical skills, not for going through an obstacle course, but Wolf didn’t really care. Most of the time, Matt could keep up. This time, however, it wasn’t as important as Wolf getting down to where he thought the apparition originated.
Because he needed to put an end to the haunting.
It was what he was paid to do. It was what he loved to do. Capturing that moment on film wasn’t as important as just having that moment.
And Wolf Kincaid was famous for having those kinds of moments.
Booming thumps echoed in the rear of the house, percussive rounds loud enough to shatter the eerie silence that settled down after the ghost’s shrieking. The walls around Wolf shook, and he ducked out of the way as a framed sampler fell off its hanger as he rounded the stairwell’s landing.
Behind him, Matt followed, stomping and cursing at the tight fit. The young man would have a hard time of it. The camera was too big, too bulky to make the tight turns quickly if Matt insisted on keeping it fixed to his shoulder to film. Which was what he’d certainly do. It was what Wolf paid him to do, even as he was tumbling ass over teakettle down the stairs behind his boss.
The staircase let out into the servants’ kitchen, a dank-smelling, closed-in room that, despite the staff’s best efforts, seemed to cling to its grimy lower-class roots. Wolf slipped on a tile, his sneaker catching on a thick line of grout, the sandy mixture providing some traction against the overpolished ceramic floor.
Ahead, the noises grew louder, more ear-shearing rattles and booms. More shrieks followed, echoing first upstairs, then suddenly snapping to the bottom floor, louder and more profane than the ghostly banshee moans. Rounding the corner, Wolf found himself in a room directly beneath the staircase, a long, rectangular space the plantation used for storage.
A stein flew past Wolf’s head, nearly clocking him on the temple. The heavy ceramic shattered against a wall behind him, and he felt a shard cut his cheek, the brief sting deepening into something heavy and wet on his skin. Another stein followed, then a plate wide enough to host a good-sized turkey.
“Fuck!” Matt exploded into a round of curses. From the sounds coming from behind him, Wolf guessed a piece of flying crockery had found its target in the cameraman or his equipment. “Poltergeists now?”
Wolf fumbled to find a light switch. His fingers found a bank of sliders on the wall next to the door, and the storeroom burst into view, two banks of overhead fluorescents throwing everything into a stark contrast of bright and shadow. Fully drenched in light, two women in period costume froze in place, one caught in the middle of throwing a metal steaming tray while the other’s hands were tangled in audio-visual feed lines. The cables disappeared through a small hole in the ceiling tiles, and nearby, a tripod lay on its side on what looked like a camera case. Both women were bleached white from heavy layers of makeup, their eyes hollow and bleak from a coating of dense theatrical kohl.
Smug, Wolf gave both women a short, mocking bow, then sneered, “Hello, ladies.”
Chapter 1
“THEY WERE pretending to be ghosts so people would go stay there?” Nahryn placed a steaming mug of black coffee in front of Wolf and settled into an empty wing chair next to his. “Why would someone do that?”
A bubbly young Armenian woman and Hellsinger’s Girl Friday, Nahryn kept their office running at a finely tuned hum and, more importantly to Wolf, made certain he had a pot of Ka‘u coffee to bolster him by the time he made it into their San Francisco office.
Even if sometimes her coffee was strong enough to bleach Wolf’s dark-brown hair to white from its bitter shock.
“Because ghosts equal profit,” Gidget pronounced from behind her teacup, her mascara-thick eyelashes fluttering the steam rising from her Earl Grey. “It was a pretty stupid rig too. Projection onto dry ice mists with leads feeding into speakers on the third floor. They’re never going to get the pig’s blood out of those ceiling beams.”
Their technician and Matt’s lover went for a more Rosie the Riveter look that morning, a piss-yellow bandana holding back a spill of flame-red curls from her pale face and her overalls creaking as she shifted in her chair, the heavy denim still so new it stank of dye. Glass cherries dangled from her lobes, a row of four in each ear, and they chimed when she moved her head. While they matched the printed cherries on her button-up shirt, Wolf thought it looked like she’d lost a fight with a fruit salad.
He’d tell Gidget that as soon as he told Nahryn about her coffee. One wrong, pissy word and Gidget could have his sensors bleeping a spectral hit on every pile of dog shit he walked by.
While he might get the hots for a long-legged man in jeans, he could commiserate with a straight man about the minefields of living with a woman. He spent days on end with two of them and still had to tread carefully with the best of them. Also—Wolf grinned into his coffee—he always had Matt to throw in as a sacrificial lamb whenever he needed an out.
“But that’s lying,” Nahryn insisted.
“It’s what keeps us in business, Nah-nah,” Wolf pointed out. “And since Willow Hills invoked our confidentiality clause and paid their invoice in full, we can’t say anything about their two wayward docents. The powers that be didn’t know, and now that they do, they want to make sure no one else does.”
“So we can’t even tell people they’re lying?” Her big brown eyes were narrowing. “That’s wrong too. The world sucks.”
“People hire us to prove their ghosts are real or at least come up inconclusive.” Turning on his tablet, Wolf tapped through his appointments. “Willow Hills gambled and lost. They didn’t know they were playing loaded dice. It happens sometimes. A lot of people think they can pull one over an investigator—”
“But the equipment doesn’t lie,” Gidget crowed, resting her heels on the corner of the conference table.
“Nope. It usually doesn’t.” Wolf saluted her with his coffee mug. “Let’s see what we’ve got on the books for today.”
“You have an appointment with a Mrs. Walter Pryce the Third in half an hour. She called right as I was making coffee, so I didn’t get a chance to put it down on the books yet.” Nahryn scrolled through her own tablet, then stopped to wrangle her curly brown hair into a tie. “She wants to hire you to look into a haunting. She thinks it’s bullshit.”
“She actually say bullshit?” Wolf’s eyebrows lifted. “People with the Third in their names don’t usually trot out the word bullshit.”
“No, she said implausible, but I was having problems spelling that so I just wrote down bullshit.” Nahryn grinned at him. “I didn’t think you’d mind.”
“Nope, I don’t,” Wolf admitted. “Okay, I’m going to talk with Mrs. Pryce. Then, after that, I’ll take all of you to 39 for some lunch.”
“Crab?” Nahryn paused halfway out of her chair and did a little dance with her butt against the upholstery. “’Cause you know… crab.”
“For you, Nah-nah, we can get crab.” He tweaked his Girl Friday’s nose. “First Mrs. Pryce’s boo-wigglies and someone get Matt on the phone. About time he got to work.”
“MY NEPHEW is insane.”
Wolf spared the woman a brief glance as he shuffled through the papers she’d brought with her. Mrs. Walter Pryce III was an older woman, one Born-to-the-Park, pinkie-lifting Junior Leaguer. Patting her swing of artfully done blonde hair, she took a moment to pause at the doorway of his pier-front office, her critical gaze taking in the space’s blend of gentlemen’s club furnishings and broad, sweeping view of the water. He almost didn’t catch the curl in her lip or the slight flare of her nostril, but he did. The brittle smile that chased after the hint of disapproval slipped from her face. After tugging carefully at the hem of her cardigan, she then smoothed her black pencil skirt and held her head up as she let herself be led into Hellsinger’s conference room.
Now, settled into a leather wing chair and armed with a porcelain teacup filled with a lavender-lemon blend, Mrs. Pryce seemed much more in control, especially after she’d shocked Wolf with her pronouncement. She nodded curtly at Wolf’s glance, probably mistaking his curiosity for something else. Or maybe, Wolf thought, she didn’t really care what he thought just so long as he took the assignment and delivered on the job.
“Rather than me reading through now, why don’t you give me the highlights so I can decide if I’ll take the case?” Wolf matched Mrs. Pryce’s haughty sip of her tea with a sloppy slurp of his coffee.
“I didn’t realize I was here to be auditioned.” Another sip, and this time, the nostril flare remained too long on her face to be dismissed as a tic.
“I don’t take every case presented to us,” Wolf replied. “If I did, I’d never get any sleep. But please, tell me about your nephew… the insane one.”
“Are you mocking me, Mr. Kincaid?”
“Not at all, Ms. Pryce.” Wolf shook his head. A lot of people walked into Hellsinger either thinking they were crazy and hoping to find out they weren’t or dancing on the razor’s edge of needing a wraparound jacket and looking for someone to prove them sane. It was, however, the first time someone sat across of him and openly declared her prey nuts. “Please go on. I’m all ears.”
“Tristan has always been a delicate boy.” Her pinkie flexed slightly, hovering over the cup’s handle as if she was afraid to let it touch the porcelain. “It all started when Great Uncle Mortimer Pryce died—”
“Mortimer?” Wolf nearly snorted coffee through his nose. “Really?”
“It’s a family name,” she replied smoothly. “My third son is named after him.”
“God help him,” he muttered to himself. “Sorry, continue. I didn’t mean to interrupt.”
“Tristan’s parents were quite normal. Did the best they could for him, but of course, he always seemed to wander away. Even if he was right in front of you, he would… rather… appear to not be paying attention. Great Uncle Mortimer was fond of the boy and would have Tristan visit him over the summers. I personally didn’t think his parents should have let him go to Hoxne Grange by himself. Mortimer was… a confirmed bachelor, if you know what I mean?” Her eyebrows somehow both lifted and scowled with disapproval, something Wolf had not thought possible before he’d met the woman.
He didn’t answer, merely blinking with a muted ignorance of what she was implying. “There wasn’t anyone for him to play with?”
“No, that is not what I meant,” Mrs. Pryce said firmly. “Tristan was a young boy and at an impressionable age. Great Uncle Mortimer should not have had access to him. He filled the boy’s mind with rubbish.”
“What kind of rubbish?”
“That Hoxne Grange is haunted and that he somehow was its caretaker… the ghosts’ caretaker.” She shuddered, either with the foolishness or the growing bitterness of the cooling tea. “Mortimer was one thing. I mean, he was an older gentleman. Very set in his ways and the Grange is… well, it’s a family legacy. The Pryce family had it built nearly a century and a half ago. It’s on a fantastic property in Mill Valley. Great Uncle Mortimer inherited it when his father died. When he passed, he left everything to Tristan. It’s been a touchy subject in the family since then.”
“So Tristan getting the property wasn’t expected?” Wolf began taking notes, diagramming out the Pryce family tree.
“No, my husband is the next eldest son in the Pryce family. Tristan’s father was his youngest brother.” She set her cup down, the saucer rattling beneath it. “It should have gone to him, but instead, Tristan is Mortimer’s sole heir, and from what we can tell, he’s continued the man’s insane claims about the Grange being haunted.”
“How long has he been its owner?”
“Since he was nineteen. Really, it was too big a burden to hand over to a teenager. He’s almost twenty-eight.” Mrs. Pryce’s mouth flattened into a line, crinkling her pink lipstick. “Luckily, he kept most of the landscaping staff, and there is a daily housekeeping staff that comes in, so at least the estate isn’t being run to the ground.”
“So he’s maintained it?”
“Thankfully, Mortimer set up a trust fund to dispense monies to Tristan until his twenty-eighth birthday. It truly is a blessing. Tristan’s… an artist of sorts. A children’s book writer, I think. Certainly not enough of an income to keep the Grange up.” She lifted her shoulders in an elegant shrug. “On Tristan’s birthday, he’ll inherit the rest of the estate and have full control of its assets. The family is concerned that with Tristan’s… peculiarities… he’ll be taken advantage of. We’d like you to help us ensure this will not happen.”
“What about Tristan’s parents?” Wolf cocked his head, tapping the tip of his pencil on two empty boxes on his flow chart.
“Carol and Sandy… Alexander was his real name… they died in a small plane crash off of the coast of Italy about six months after Tristan inherited the estate.” A frown crinkled her smooth brow, and she played with a button on her sweater. “Sandy was against Tristan living there. He thought Mortimer was setting his son up to continue playing his little ghost game. Of course, Tristan denies this. He fully believes the Grange hosts his little friends. He’s turned the family home into an inn, Mr. Kincaid, and the majority of his guests are not real.”
Wolf didn’t have to guess at the Pryces’ motivations. Mortimer’s money and estate seemed to be their first priority, although he couldn’t rule out the woman’s concern for her nephew. A few taps on his tablet called up the Grange’s visual from an overhead map. Constructed during the Gilded Age, the sprawling estate was built into a nest of hills, and from what Wolf could make out, clearly designed by someone with a love for the Renaissance Revival form. A photo of Hoxne Grange called up a view of its front drive and landscaped grounds. The place was huge—sprawling seemed to be too weak of a word for the winged W set among the redwood trees—and embellished with formal gardens.
“What do you want me to do? I’m not in the business of declaring people mentally incompetent,” Wolf pointed out. “Even if I’ve got a sheepskin telling you I can.”
“The family would like you to stay at the Grange and investigate Tristan’s claims. Your agency is known to be fair. We’d just like you to show Tristan that his ghosts only exist in his mind. If you can do that, Mr. Kincaid, just show him that the Grange isn’t a way station for phantoms, we will pay you anything you ask for. He needs to be shown reality, Mr. Kincaid, and I think you’re just the man to do that.”
HIS UNCLE was going to wear a hole in the library floor; Tristan was sure of it. The last half hour was ticked off by the squeak of his Italian loafers when he turned, a five-second interval bleeding off Tristan’s morning. Checking the grandfather clock for what he thought might have been the hundredth time since Walter Pryce III came through his front door, Tristan waited for his uncle to wind up yet another argument meant to move him out of the Grange.
“Your aunt is speaking with the agency now—” Walter began another circuit, his meaty hands clasped around his back.
“Is she still counted as my aunt if she’s your third wife?” Tristan huffed a breath up at his forehead, hoping to move a chunk of blond hair away from his eyes. If he used his fingers, he knew he’d get trapped in playing with his hair, and anything Walter said to him would be lost in the contemplation of how the sunlight changed the colors as it bled through the shafts. “I mean, Aunt Judith counts because she was first, right? Sharon maybe because she had Mortie, but Ashley? Is she my aunt too?”
“Tristan, please concentrate on what I’m saying to you.” The man harrumphed, exhaling forcefully enough to make his lips flap. Tristan’s fingers itched for a sketchbook, wanting to scribble out his impressions of a disgruntled walrus waddling back and forth on an ice floe. “We’re hoping you’ll see reason.”
“Reason….” Tristan repeated softly. “By opening the Grange up to people who chase ghosts?”
“They are paranormal psychologists. Or at least the agency head is.” Walter turned again, squeaking off another tick of time. “I know it would be terrible to discover that perhaps you’ve been encouraged to… um… what is the word I’m looking for?”
“Hallucinate?” he supplied for his uncle. “Sucking on guano from the bats in my belfry? Rowing with one oar?”
“You’re not crazy!” His uncle frowned, caught in midstep, his large belly jiggling under his suit. “Look, boy, I’m fond of you. I want the best for you. Just let them come stay here for a bit and see what they can find. Is that too much to ask?”
Tristan stretched out his legs, rubbing at the cramp forming along his thigh. He’d not asked Mara to turn the heat on in the library that morning until Uncle Walter’s sedan pulled up in front of the Grange. It had been an unexpected visit, and they’d both sworn under their breath when the man’s driver let his short, soft-bellied uncle out of the car.
Well, he’d sworn. Mara merely muttered darkly and scurried off to turn the heat on before pulling together a coffee tray for his guest. He’d sworn enough for both of them. His elderly housekeeper, while a pleasant woman for the most part, liked to get her daily work done and out of the way so she could spend her afternoons watching the shows she’d recorded the night before. Since most of her day included making sure he kept himself fed, Tristan didn’t care how she spent her days so long as the Grange was always guest ready. With fifteen bedrooms to keep up and two young women from the nearby town coming in to help her dust and mop, Mara kept the Grange primed and lemony-fresh, and she resented his uncle’s sudden appearance on a tightly scheduled Tuesday morning.
Tristan wasn’t too fond of Walter’s arrival either. He had only ten more minutes before he had to be at the reception desk, and from the man’s squeaky pacing, it didn’t sound like Walter Pryce was going to leave until Tristan gave him some kind of concession.
“And if they find out I’m not crazy?” he offered up in exchange. “Suppose they hand you a report that I’m sane and the Grange is what Uncle Mortimer and I say it is? Will you leave me be then?”
The look of confusion on his uncle’s face told Tristan the man had not considered that possibility. A few lip flaps and another squeaka-squeaka pass later, Walter Pryce grumbled, “If he comes back and says that there’s something here, then yes, I’ll acknowledge that there might be something to your claims. But the agency has to verify that there is some sort of activity here. If not, then I’m going to insist you stop this nonsense and come home.”
“I am home, Uncle Walter,” Tristan said softly. “I’ve lived here at the Grange for most of my adult life and spent nearly all of my summers here. If this isn’t home, then where is that?”
“Then we’ll come to you.” The man’s hand on his shoulder was meant to be reassuring, but Tristan felt it held a greater weight than his uncle’s skin, bones, and flesh. “We’ll come here to you at the Grange. It is the family home, after all.”
He was able to hustle his uncle out with a few murmured assurances and then exhaled a sigh of relief when the door closed behind him. A few seconds later, the sedan’s quiet engine rumbled away and Tristan was left with the silence of the Grange around him.
The snick-snick of a dog’s nails on the foyer’s parquet floors echoed up into the high ceiling, and Tristan grinned at the shaggy gray head poking out from around the side of the sweeping mahogany counter Mortimer Pryce had built to be the Grange’s reception desk.
“Come on out, Boris.” He whistled to the Irish wolfhound. “He’s gone.”
“That dog knows evil when he smells it.” Mara appeared at Tristan’s elbow, moving as silently as one of the hall’s guests.
“He knows Uncle Walter doesn’t like him.” Bending over, Tristan scratched at the enormous dog’s floppy ears, sending Boris into a wiggling dance of ecstasy. “The man’s not evil, he’s just… closed-minded.”
“Well, ghosts or no, he’s a menace.” The woman’s harrumph was less pronounced than Walter’s, but it was still impressive. “Your ghosties are your business. This is your house. If you want to hold balls for faeries, it’s your right, and damn anyone else who says something against it.”
A dusting rag hung from her elbow crook, and a faint hint of the green-tea soap Tristan gave her for Christmas perfumed her soft white skin, its delicate scent fighting a losing battle against lemon polish and the arthritic salve Mara used for her aching knees. A softly curved woman, she came up to Tristan’s shoulder and often was in and out of a room, leaving behind only plates of sandwiches and cookies as evidence she’d been there. Something clung to the frosted candy floss of Mara’s silvery hair, and Tristan reached over to pluck it off.
It was a single diamond stud, and he handed it to her. “Did you find the other one?”
“No.” She shook her head, closing his fingers over the stone. “You keep that one. Maybe even change that silly hoop you have in your ear. You look like a little boy playing pirate.”
“Maybe.” He’d never told Mara the hoop belonged to his mother, a sliver of gold some faceless official handed him over her remains. She would scold him about being morbid, not understanding the hoop made him feel close to the woman who’d given birth to him but never really understood the changeling she’d been saddled with. “Or maybe even a second hole?”
“All you need is a parrot instead of that dumb Sasquatch you’ve brought into this house.” A deep belling roll began to sound off from the library, and Mara sniffed at the chilling air. “Well, that’s time, then. I’ll be off. You deal with… that. Don’t get to talking too much. I’ll be bringing you lunch at noon, and don’t forget, the gardeners will be here this afternoon, so get that beast to his walk before then.”
“Yes, Mara.”
He was talking to her back by the time the final chime from the library’s grandfather clock struck. Settling himself on the stool behind the old-fashioned reception desk, Tristan immediately regretted leaving his coffee behind. There was no telling how late his morning arrival would be, and he’d only had half a cup. He’d have to scare up another pot before he headed to his study on the third floor.
“If I’d really been thinking, I would have brought a sketchbook too,” he informed Boris. The dog lolled his long pink tongue at him and began a leisurely scratch at a spot near his jowls. “Really, Uncle Walter showing up just screwed the whole morning.”
He didn’t have to wait long. A few minutes after he’d sat down, the Grange’s front doors rattled and swung open. A brisk wind cut through the open portal, carrying in the scent of rain on its breath. As suddenly as it opened, the wide doors closed, whispering on their well-oiled hinges. From behind the desk, Boris whimpered, tucking himself into a huddle, and Tristan patted the dog’s broad head.
A wet footprint appeared on the wooden floor about two feet into the foyer, then another, a sopping trail of steps marking someone’s progress toward the reception area. Elongated shadows played beneath a large round table set in the middle of the circular area, and something brushed against a stray pink rose that drooped from the enormous flower display sitting in a mint-green urn on the table’s top.
She came into view a step or two after she passed the table, a bedraggled woman dressed in a neatly patched plain dress. Clutching her case in front of her in a white-knuckled grip, she nodded carefully at Tristan, then plastered a tentative smile on her pleasant face, clearing her throat before she spoke.
“I’ve come about the cook’s position, sir.” Her melodic voice was stamped with the distinct grit of a Northern Londoner, and if Tristan looked carefully, he knew he would see the black grime of the Lower Hells stuck under her fingernails. The rest of her was neat and trim despite the wear on her clothes and the fatigue on her still young face. “I’ve got no references, as the Lady turned me out for what the Lord was doing, but….”
“I don’t need your references. You’ll do fine,” Tristan reassured her. “Wages are forty pounds, and you’ll be given tea, beer, and sugar, as well.”
“That’s too generous, sir.” She blushed, a pink lightening up her pallor. “I’m not skilled for that—”
“We’ve only one cook position,” he cut her off gently. “Kitchens are through that door and down the hall. Can you start now? I’ve nearly a full inn and need a dinner set up for the guests. Your rooms will be behind the kitchen.”
“Yes, sir. I can start immediately.” She dropped into a short curtsey, nearly losing her satchel. “My name’s Heather. Heather Cook, sir. Thank you so much. I won’t be letting you down.”
“I know, Heather. I know,” Tristan said, pointing to the door. “Welcome to Hoxne Grange. We’re glad to have you here.”
As soon as the words left his mouth, she whispered away, dropping out of sight in flecks of light until nothing remained of her but the wet footprints on the foyer’s wooden floor. He was about to fetch a mop when Mara came out of the door he’d directed Heather to.
“So she’s gone, then?” Mara asked, wheeling out a metal mop bucket in front of her.
“Yeah, she is.” Tristan smiled, saddened by the young dead woman he’d spoken to.
“Well, then, it’s done until next Tuesday,” his housekeeper pronounced in a firm voice. “I’ll clean this up, and you go on upstairs. There’s coffee waiting for you and some brekkie. Maybe later on, you’ll get a nap. I know how Tuesdays wear you down.”
“Thank you, Mara.” He kissed the froth of silvery-white curls at her temple. “I don’t know what I’d do without you.”
“You’d be mopping your own damned floors every Tuesday after you hire your dead cook again.” She slapped at his arm. “Go on with you, and take that cowardly beast with you.”
Duck Duck Ghosts #2
Chapter 1
THE SMELL of rot permeated the air.
It was a foul smell. A blackness to it Wolf would never get used to. With the proximity of the Florida swamp and Atlantic, there was a faint hint of stagnancy as well, with an overlay of brackish algae just for good measure. He couldn’t imagine living in its stink every day. Like cigarette smoke, it would flavor everything he touched, breathed, or ate.
He’d expected some dampness, especially in the lower jut of an ill-advised half basement below the church turned hostel, but when his sneaker sloshed through an actual puddle in the kitchen, Wolf wondered if the owners had less of a ghost problem and were more in need of a home demolition.
The basement seemed to be where most of the noises were coming from. At least from what Wolf could figure out. Creaky, eerie sounds wafted through the sprawling hostel, carried through the antique ductwork set into heavily built walls, and they certainly appeared to be originating from underneath the first floor. Tapping at the plaster, Wolf frowned, wondering what the builders had been thinking when they’d put in so many tight hallways and corners. The maze made it difficult to find the source of the hostel’s supposed haunting, but it apparently helped keep the place cool when it got too hot.
“It’s like they got paid by the fucking corner,” he grumbled. “Every single damned old house has a million stupid little corners.”
An undulating groan drifted through the hostel, and a screeching wail followed close on its heels. A startled yelp nearly broke Wolf’s eardrum, and he stopped for a moment with his foot on the second step down to the basement.
“Jesus, you trying to get me killed?” Wolf muttered, flipping the light switch at the top of the stairs one more time. “I could have fallen down this death trap and broken my neck.”
Much like the other five times he’d clicked it, the light stayed off, and he glanced up, fumbling in his pocket for his flashlight. After finding it, Wolf turned the torch on and splashed the beam up along the ceiling, not surprised to find a pair of dangling capped-off wires where a light fixture should have been.
A woman’s voice tickled Wolf’s ear as he crept down along a tight spiral staircase. “I’m not exactly sure what I’m supposed to be doing here, Dr. Kincaid.”
Wolf sighed and leaned his head against the cramped interior stairwell. Cupping his mouth over the wireless headset he wore to keep in contact with his intern, he counted to three, then said, “You’re supposed to keep up with me.”
“I’m trying to, Dr. Kincaid.” The young woman sounded exasperated. “But your legs are too long. I can’t keep up. I lost you back in the hallway. The lights aren’t working in this end of the house. Everything went black.”
“Where are you, Trixie?” he growled into his mic. “And more importantly, how soon can you get to the basement stairs?”
“Shit, you’re going to go down there? Why? Can’t we just use something to see underneath the house? Like they do for dinosaurs. What is that? Sonar? Can’t we use that?”
Biting back a sarcastic reply, Wolf reminded himself that soon-to-be-Doctor Trixie Huff was his only staff on the hostel job, so snarling at her probably wouldn’t necessarily endear him to her.
Initially, he’d agreed to use the headsets because he wanted to keep his communication to a whisper so as not to telegraph where they were in the building’s labyrinth of cellar space and servants’ quarters. Now Wolf was partially glad he had it on because he kept losing his damned intern.
It wasn’t Trixie’s fault.
Wolf was just too used to working with his team, and the intern, while highly intelligent and sharp, hadn’t planned on spending her summer vacation hunting ghosts in tourist-infested St. Augustine, Florida. Instead of lounging about the pool—or beach—being brought drinks by hot cabana boys in tight, skimpy shorts, she was tromping behind a grumpy parapsychologist in cobweb-cluttered mazes while rats and spiders dropped down on her like turtle shells in a game of Mario Kart.
When Hellsinger Investigations agreed to take on a pair of summer interns from Berkeley, it sounded like a perfect solution to his staffing woes. His techs, Matt and Gidget, longed to explore the Welsh countryside with its rambling hills and ghostly apparitions, while his office manager, Nahryn, planned on having a three-week visit with her grandparents in Los Angeles.
Trixie’d been a godsend. Especially since she was enthusiastic and, more importantly, a bit of a skeptic about paranormal activity.
If there was one thing Wolf needed in his life at the moment—it was a skeptic.
No, he wouldn’t think about Tristan. Not while he stood halfway down a flight of stairs with one wet foot waiting for an intern he was probably abusing by dragging her off to Florida so she could record his progress through a haunted hostel.
Something dropped onto him from above and skittered across his neck. Wolf resisted the urge to slap at it. He’d done that piece of stupid when he was younger and bore a half-moon scar on his shoulder from the very pissed-off centipede he’d slammed his hand over.
A strong beam of light cut over him, and Wolf grinned, glancing up at Trixie as she aimed the shoulder camera down the stairs. At some point, she’d dragged her glossy brown hair back and pulled a ponytail through a Hellsinger Investigations ball cap. Having abandoned her contacts for a sturdy pair of glasses to protect her eyes against the hostel’s dirt and cobwebs, Trixie’s eyes glittered with excitement behind her clear lenses.
“You ready, Huff?” Wolf grinned in the bright light.
“Sneakers on, boss,” she retorted saucily.
“Good, because we’re going in.”
They went down the stairs together, Trixie’s camera beam lighting up Wolf’s shoulders. It actually wasn’t a bad thing, because in the dank darkness, any light was welcome. Aiming his own smaller flashlight up, Wolf trudged through the tiny rooms built into the hill under the hostel, noticing the damp air thickened into an almost mist as they drew closer to the outer wall.
“Isn’t a basement in Florida kind of stupid?” Trixie asked above their squeaky footsteps.
“Yeah, not exactly the smartest thing. Whoever built this place made the hill first. It’s called a berm. It’s a smart thing to do to get your property above the flood line, but instead the asshole dug in and put half of the house into it. I’m surprised this place hasn’t come tumbling down on their—” A hissing noise made Wolf pause, and he turned, holding up his hand to stop Trixie from going any farther into the dark.
“What was that?” She kept her voice as steady as she could. Wolf gave her that. Even with the tremble in her throat, she held the camera steady, trained just beyond Wolf’s shoulder as he’d instructed her. “Oh God, something’s over there.”
Wolf’s beam was too weak to do anything but catch a sliver of movement beyond a turn in the hall. He took a few steps forward, but the camera’s light didn’t follow him, so he turned around, staring into the beam at the silhouette behind it.
“Come on, almost-Doctor Huff. Time to chase our ghosts,” he urged her on. The light bobbed once, and Trixie moved in step behind him, but he could still hear her mutter under her breath at his back.
“You are certifiable. No college credit is worth this.”
The thick rough walls under the old church must have been the only thing shoring up the foundation, but Wolf had to acknowledge the builder might have had something going. Lifted up off the ground, the airspace below would keep the building’s lower level cooler during the hot summer months, but he’d have been more scared of wood rot than a high air-conditioning bill.
Especially when his foot went through one of the floorboards, and his leg dropped out from under him, slamming his crotch into the rotted wooden planks.
Wolf grunted from the pain of getting his balls shoved up into his rib cage, but he stopped himself from whimpering out loud. Huffing to maintain his composure, he shouted back, “Trix, stay back there. The floor’s gone here.”
“Oh God, are you okay?” The large light bobbled and then dropped low when Trixie set the camera on the floor next to her. “Do you want me to go get someone?”
“Let me see if I can get out of this hole.” Wolf hissed when he leaned back. Massive splinters from the rough floorboards drove into his palms, and for once he was glad Nahryn insisted they all were current on their tetanus shots. “Okay, I’m going to rock back and pull my leg out. Be careful in case the boards go down behind me. I don’t know how big this hole in the ground is.”
“Why would someone dig a hole in the basement, then cover it with boards?” Trixie scooted forward a bit. “Do you want me to grab you and help?”
“No,” Wolf said with a shake of his head. “Our weight might bring the whole thing down. Stay back where we know it’s solid.”
Wolf gritted past the pain and pushed himself up, leveraging his weight back until he got his knee clear of the hole. His jeans were shot, torn along his thigh and flecked with blood where broken wood scratched into his skin. Another heave, and he cleared the hole up to his calf. Then the deep shadows beyond the camera’s powerful beam moved, and a low hiss echoed through the confined space.
The movement was slow, nearly graceful, and Wolf froze, trying to see into the darkness.
Then he realized what he was looking at, and his stomach crawled up to lodge itself into his throat.
“Trixie, I need you to move slowly back and go up the stairs. Now.”
“And leave you here?” she scoffed. “That makes—”
“Leave the camera and get the hell out of here. Use the flashlight I gave you.” Wolf kept his voice low, not wanting to spook the young woman. “Like right—”
The gator lunged out of the shadows, its teeth flashing a sickly yellow in the light beam. The reptile was nearly as wide across as Wolf’s hips, its quick legs whipping its long body back and forth as it moved across the floor. Its long tail slapped into one of the walls, making a wet sound on the hard surface.
Trixie screamed and fled, her cries for help seemingly coming from all directions as she ran out of the space. Wolf jerked himself free of the hole, rolling to the side as he tried to scramble to his feet. The alligator made another lunge, throwing its body up a few inches, and his sneaker sole caught in its teeth, ripping from the bottom of his shoe as the gator twisted its head.
“Fuck!” Wolf dodged the camera, catching his nearly bare foot in its harness.
The gator went after him again, the floors creaking under the reptile’s enormous weight. The boards bounced, and Wolf heard them cracking under him as he ran toward the room’s entrance. Trixie’s anxious screaming continued to bounce about the basement, a high-pitched wail loud enough to drown out the gator’s aggressive hissing.
His own flashlight flickered woefully when Wolf tried to aim it down the hallway outside the room. A fragmented beam warned him he’d probably broken the lens, but it still gave off enough light for him to see his way out. Something heavy slammed into his side, and Wolf’s heart jerked in fear until he realized it was Trixie running out from another room.
“I can’t find my way out!” she wailed, grabbing at his arm. “Oh God, it’s right there!”
Wolf chanced a glance back, and the gator grumbled with a menacing roar. Nudging the discarded equipment, the gator made the camera’s light flash and tilt against its hide, illuminating its variegated skin. Wolf grabbed Trixie’s arm and dragged her with him, urging her to run. A loud cracking sound came from the room behind them, and some small part of Wolf’s brain wondered if the gator would be trapped in the hole he’d almost fallen into.
The larger part of his brain shoved that thought down, intent on escaping the seemingly pissed-off reptile rather than pondering if the rot would give before the gator could catch up with them or if gators could climb stairs. They hit the steps at a run, and Wolf pushed Trixie up ahead of him. Her sneakers pounded up the staircase, and he followed close behind, his hands pressed on the small of her back.
All around them, they heard the hissing and screaming wails of the gator thrashing its way through the basement. Its vocalizations echoed through the ductwork, and somewhere in the hostel, someone else started screaming, matching Trixie and the gator in volume.
Voices called out from various rooms, but Wolf didn’t have the breath to answer. He shoved the intern through the open door at the top of the stairs, flung himself through, and kicked the door closed behind him with a mighty thump.
He lay on the floor, panting as people poured into the kitchen. Trixie lay on her stomach next to him, her body heaving from the sprint up the tight staircase. Someone sounded alarmed at the sight of his leg, but Wolf didn’t care about the pain. From what he could tell, he was still intact, if just a little bit winded.
The owner, a long-haired older woman, leaned over him, her bright blue eyes blinking in surprise at his bloodied and mud-caked body. Patting him on the shoulder, she asked someone to call 911 before Wolf could stop her.
“Oh my, Doctor Kincaid. Are you all right?” she murmured in her soft butterfly voice. “What happened?”
“Found your ghost,” Wolf gasped, fighting to push words out as he sucked in clean air. “And it’s big enough to make a whole set of luggage.”
“THEY ARE never going to give you another intern,” Nahryn, his girl Friday, complained loudly as Wolf came through the front door of Hellsinger Investigations. “You keep breaking them!”
“Hey, I returned that last one in perfect working order!” he shot back, dropping a bag of donuts on her desk as he hobbled by. They were damned good donuts, hot and yeasty malasadas from a nearby Portuguese bakery. Good enough to ward off a scolding from a girl ten years his junior, but Nahryn wasn’t having any of it, judging by the look on her face. “I’m the one who got fucked up.”
“Yeah, well, death by gator isn’t something a lot of people want to put on their résumé.” She sniffed at him and opened the bag. The pretty Armenian girl eyed him, as if searching for sugar around his mouth. “Did you already eat one?”
“Yeah, on the way in.” He winced at the steady ache along his thigh. Eight dissolvable stitches and a few shots later, his leg was patched up, but he was reminded constantly of his refusal to take any of the painkillers the doctors shoved at him. A few ibuprofens would do the trick, he promised his leg, along with a very nice hot cup of coffee.
“Well, take one in with you. Meegan’s here.” His office manager stepped in behind him before Wolf could turn around and drag himself out of the office. “Oh no you don’t, Kincaid. She’s your mother, and she’s here to ask you something.”
“I’d rather be eaten alive by the gator,” Wolf muttered darkly. “Go get me coffee, and if I buzz you in ten minutes, I expect you to come rescue me.”
“You’ll be lucky if I even answer,” Nahryn shot back with a Cheshire cat smile. “But I’ll bring you some coffee, you big baby.”
His mother was standing at the wraparound glass window of his office, her hands cradling a large cup of fragrant jasmine tea and her eyes dreamy as she stared out at San Francisco’s bay. Ferries jetted from shore to shore, carrying tourists and locals alike. The morning fog kept a light grip on the shoreline, but it was a weak one, with a lemony sun pushing its way through the watery mist.
The faint sunlight shone around the older woman, outlining her long, curly bright auburn hair and crazy-quilt peasant dress. Large chandelier earrings made of tiny bells and beads tinkled when she cocked her head, her eyes following the activity on the pier below. She’d lost her sandals somewhere in the office, her bare toes spread over the office’s wooden floors, and she shifted slightly, adjusting her black cobweb lace shawl over her pale arms.
His coffee arrived with a filthy look, both courtesy of Nahryn, and Wolf nodded pleasantly at her, then shooed the young Armenian woman out. Meegan Ocean-Kincaid turned and caught her son’s eye, but instead of the beatific, motherly smile she normally gave him, her mouth was set into a neutral straight line.
From his hippie-gypsy mother, this was tantamount to a scowl.
“Hello, Mom.” Wolf leaned in to give his mother a kiss, but she tilted her head back to stare up at him. Sighing, he rolled his eyes and said, “What?”
“What now, you mean?” Meegan sniffed.
It was a mighty sniff. Possibly one of the greatest she’d ever given him. It rivaled the one she’d aimed at him and Bach when they’d shaved Ophelia Sunday’s head with their Uncle Stavros’s clippers, but he still thought the time he’d dumped an entire load of horse manure on their living room floor because he was looking for gold coins held the top spot.
Another sniff, and the Horse Manure Incident sadly dropped to second place.
“I take it this is about Tristan?” He wondered if he could bribe Nahryn to go to the corner store and grab him whiskey so he could doctor his coffee or if it was still too early to start some serious drinking. “Have you talked to him?”
Her arched eyebrow lift was pointed enough he could hang a Christmas ornament on it, and Wolf took a gulp of his coffee, wincing at its sugary taste.
“Great, now even my office manager is trying to poison me,” he muttered, setting the mug down. “Okay, get it out of your system, Mom. Go on and scream at my head.”
“I don’t scream, Wolfgang,” Meegan informed him smoothly. “What I am going to do is tell you how disappointed I am in you. You have a chance at so much happiness, and you’re letting your pigheaded stubbornness get in the way.”
So yes, his mother had spoken to Tristan, and knowing his reclusive lover, he’d probably been nudged, bothered, and poked at until he spilled every last detail of their argument.
He didn’t need his mother to tell him he’d fucked up. He screwed up by starting up a fight with Tristan Pryce, owner and proprietor of Hoxne Grange, a spiritual hub for ghosts passing on to the afterlife, then walking out on Tris. The gorgeous blond man was reserved, quirky, and more importantly, willing to shove back at Wolf’s strong personality—and damn it, if Wolf didn’t miss the hell out of him.
Tristan ended up under Wolf’s skin, and part of the argument—most of the argument, if Wolf was really honest—was that he was scared. He was frightened by how quickly Tristan hooked his soul and pulled in Wolf’s heart. He hadn’t been looking for love when he went to debunk Tristan’s ghost-hosting inn, but that’s what he found—and he didn’t want to ever let him go.
And that scared Wolf most of all….
“We had a fight, Mom,” Wolf protested. “Things like that happen—”
“You accused him of hallucinating everything the two of you went through!” She turned on him, setting her cup down. Jasmine tea sloshed over the cup’s rim, leaving a small amber puddle on his desk. “What happened at the Grange was—”
“Mom, the iced tea you gave us to drink had euphoric honey in it, and then you left a quart of it in his kitchen cabinet!”
“How was I supposed to know he’d make baklava with it?” She waved off his disgusted look. “Really? Does he look like he’s the type to bake homemade anything? Does one even bake baklava?”
“He could have poisoned us with it! Honey’s a major ingredient in that.”
“No, really, how do you make baklava? Does it really go into the oven?” Meegan’s attention had obviously wandered off into the intricacies of Greek pastries.
“Jesus, Mom. That stuff was potent. Hell, no wonder we ate ten pizzas after that damned séance. We had the raging munchies. What were you thinking?”
“Just to calm everyone down after the haunting!” Meegan protested. “I’ll even bet you the baklava was good. It was premium honey. So what if it was a bit hallucinogenic? Some of my best memories were when I was a bit baked. Hell, you’re here because of a bit of that honey.”
“That’s not the point.” He rubbed at his face, then dropped his hands to his hips. “And I didn’t say what happened that day wasn’t real. I just—”
“You accused him of drugging you and said the whole experience was a mass hallucination!”
“I did not say that.” Wolf kept his voice as even as he could. “When I was done tripping along the Timothy Leary Highway—”
“Something that wasn’t his fault—”
“Mom, will you let me finish one sentence?” Wolf gritted his teeth and took a long breath to steady himself. “Please?”
“Fine, go ahead.” Meegan threw her hands up. “Talk, but nothing you say to me is going to fix what you messed up. So you got a little bit stoned. It’s just a relaxer—”
“It wasn’t the five minutes of fun-house-mirror world, it was the hour and a half of me living in the bathroom, wondering if I was going to have to reel my guts back in, after the two hours of trying to talk to Tristan’s monster illustrations,” he insisted. “I might have said a few things I wasn’t proud of, but I never accused him of drugging us that day. You did that.”
“Afterwards!”
“I told him I loved him and I’d call him in a bit. Did he tell you that?”
“I didn’t actually talk to him about afterwards. He’s very close-lipped,” his mother hedged. “But I definitely got the feeling things went a bit haywire. Then you hied off to God knows where.”
“Florida. I had a job in St. Augustine, and I couldn’t cancel. I was going to call him this morning.” Suddenly tired, he sat on the edge of his desk, wincing when his leg reminded him of his stitches and bruises. “I just needed to think of what I was going to say.”
“I’m sorry is a good place to start,” Meegan replied tartly. “Then I’m sorry again. Maybe even I love you? You do love him, don’t you?”
“It’s complicated.” The weariness of dealing with his mother set in, and he rubbed at his leg. “But yeah, I love him. It’s crazy because I’ve known him for what? A month? And it’s not like he’s totally normal. We’re going to have to come to some kind of middle ground.”
“Well, it’s time to uncomplicate it,” his mother ordered. “And I have just the thing for that. Something you both can do together.”
“Why does that scare the shit out of me?” Wolf picked up his coffee and took another sip. The sugar in it hadn’t magically evaporated. “God, I’m going to kill Nahryn. This is like hummingbird food. I did text him while I was in Florida.”
“And what did you say? That you were sorry?”
“That we needed to talk.” Admittedly, his messages had gotten more and more insistent with each unanswered text. He hated being ignored, and Tristan could ostrich with the best of them. “And I was an asshole. He didn’t text me back.”
“You should have called. It’s been over a week, Wolf,” Meegan huffed. “Okay, we can fix this. I have just the thing.”
“I’m already going to go up there, Mom. I don’t think I need—” He intercepted her simmering glare. “Fine, what is it?”
“Do you remember Sey? Your second cousin from your Great-Aunt Natty?” Meegan frowned at Wolf’s clueless look. “The one in San Luis Obispo.”
“Sey with the toys? Yeah, I love her. We’ve kept in touch.” A slender, brash woman known for her boisterous laugh and nearly endless energy, Sey was one of the few relatives he positively adored. He’d spent more than a couple of summers as his older cousin’s satellite, a tall lanky girl with sharp elbows and freckles. She’d been the one who’d taught him how to shoot a crossbow… and more importantly, how to run away from a charging bull when he’d accidentally fallen into the temperamental bovine’s corral. “Why? What’s up with Sey?”
“Funny you should ask that,” Meegan practically cackled as she rubbed her hands together. “Because she’s got a problem, and it’s one that is totally up your alley.”
Rhys Ford is an award-winning author with several long-running LGBT+ mystery, thriller, paranormal, and urban fantasy series and was a 2016 LAMBDA finalist with her novel, Murder and Mayhem. She is published by Dreamspinner Press and DSP Publications.
She’s also quite skeptical about bios without a dash of something personal and really, who doesn’t mention their cats, dog and cars in a bio? She shares the house with Yoshi, a grumpy tuxedo cat and Tam, a diabetic black pygmy panther, as well as a ginger cairn terrorist named Gus. Rhys is also enslaved to the upkeep a 1979 Pontiac Firebird and enjoys murdering make-believe people.
Rhys Ford
B&N / GOOGLE PLAY / CAFEPRESS
EMAIL: rhysford@vitaenoir.com
Tristan James(Narrator)
Fish & Ghosts #1
AMAZON US / AMAZON UK / B&N
KOBO / iTUNES / iTUNES AUDIO
AUDIBLE / GOOGLE PLAY
DREAMSPINNER / GOODREADS TBR
KOBO / iTUNES / iTUNES AUDIO
AUDIBLE / GOOGLE PLAY
DREAMSPINNER / GOODREADS TBR
Duck Duck Ghost #2
AMAZON US / AMAZON UK / B&N
KOBO / iTUNES / iTUNES AUDIO
AUDIBLE / GOOGLE PLAY
DREAMSPINNER / GOODREADS TBR
KOBO / iTUNES / iTUNES AUDIO
AUDIBLE / GOOGLE PLAY
DREAMSPINNER / GOODREADS TBR
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