Yellow lamp light spilled over his bare torso. His body was strong and tightly muscled—a body that knew labor. Her gaze crept over burnished arms to an impossibly well-constructed broad chest and broader shoulders. Muscles everywhere. Muscles on his stomach—his stomach! And the middle of it was covered in golden hair that darkened as it arrowed beneath his belt buckle.
George certainly didn’t look like that. In fact, she was quite sure every unclothed male torso she’d ever seen—and there weren’t many, including her own father and the occasional movie star in the theater—were all lumps of dough and loose skin held up by a few bones.
They weren’t this.
If her mind was impressed, her body was ecstatic. A tremor started in her chest and ran through her center, until she was hot all over. She licked dry lips and swallowed nothing. Tried to remember what she’d been doing before her knees had gone weak.
Deep breath.
She calmed down enough to notice Number Four. The damn cat was on his back, stretched out lengthwise on the seam between Lowe’s closed thighs, all four paws in the air. Lowe slowly scratched the beast’s belly.
“I guess that means you’re welcome.” She marched toward them, as if it were the most normal thing in the world that a beautiful man with the body of a god sat in her living room wearing nothing but his pants and shoes. “Though I should warn you that he’s got a nasty biting habit. The building superintendent thinks he’s a demon in disguise.”
“Animals love me.”
“Of course they do,” she mumbled irritably. Animals, secretaries, her father. Lowe had everyone wrapped around his finger. She supposed she could add her name to the list.
“I wouldn’t have taken you for a cat lover. What’s his name?”
She set her armload down on the nearby end table. “Number Four.”
He squinted for a moment before chuckling. “A curious cat, is he? Did he go through those first three lives before or after he came into your possession?”
“I didn’t choose him. He chose me. Now I can’t seem to get rid of him.” She reached to scoop him up, but hesitated when she realized where her hands were headed. “How’s the pain?”
“Fine.”
“Liar.”
“I thought we’d established that as an invariable fact.” He groaned and plucked Number Four out of his lap, setting the cat down on the floor. “All right, if you want to know the truth, the pain’s pretty goddamn awful.”
Easy to believe when she tilted her head to get a look at the burn. Nasty. His left biceps were splotched with an angry red patch of blistered skin. “My God,” she murmured. No telling how much he was hurting. “Would you like aspirin or whiskey?”
“Both.”
She screwed off the cap and poured him a couple of fingers of scotch. “Would be funny if this was your brother’s booze,” she said, handing him several aspirin and the liquor. He downed it in one gulp.
“Didn’t envision you as a big drinker.” He handed her the empty glass.
“I’m not.” But liquid courage might be needed if she was going to be near so much bare skin. Skin she’d have to touch if she was going to do this. So she poured herself a drink and tipped it back, shaking off the burn. Malted warmth spread through her stomach. “Every once in a while I can’t sleep, and this does the trick. Though, I do try to avoid drinking while sawing.”
His laugh sounded pained. “Wish I’d taken that advice. Don’t be stingy.”
She poured him another and opened a tin of ointment while he tipped the glass back a second time. “Better?”
“Much. But I have a feeling you’re about to change that,” he said, eyeing the scoop of salve in her fingers. “Be gentle, Nurse Hadley. I wouldn’t want to faint on you.”
“You aren’t the only one.” She knelt next to the chair. Her eyes darted to his nipples and the dusting of honey hair ringing them. Best to get this over with, and fast. “Take a deep breath.”
As he followed her instruction, she swabbed the ointment over the top of his burn. He jumped, then stilled himself and spoke through gritted teeth. “Your furniture is bolted to the floor.”
She flinched and reached for more ointment. “Yes.”
“Mirror’s bracketed to the wall.”
“Yes.”
“No chandeliers.”
“Mmm.” She gouged out another measure of ointment. Felt the scotch’s pleasant warmth in her belly. Then she sighed and let the words come.
TWENTY
“MY FATHER CALLS THEM Mori specters,” she said. “Shades of death. I suppose they look a bit like ghosts made of smoke and shadow. I don’t know if they are actual ghosts or demons or something else entirely.” The ointment was cool on her fingers. She gently spread it over the rest of Lowe’s burn. “I inherited them from my mother.”
“That was the curse she spoke of when Aida channeled her spirit?”
Hadley nodded. “Once she died, they started showing up. Whenever I’d have temper tantrums, they’d float up from floorboards and attack the cause of my anger. They like to use nearby objects to inflict damage. Glass, wood, metal—whatever they can manipulate. When I called them up to attack the griffin, that was the first time I’d seen them attack something directly.”
“I knew it,” he whispered.
She kept her eyes down and cut a square of gauze with a pair of scissors. “My father says my mother never knew anything about their origins. They just started appearing to her one day after a trip my parents made to Egypt, apparently. He said it must’ve been some bizarre mummy’s curse. I never saw them until they started appearing to me. They’re fueled by negative emotions. When I’m very angry, they are difficult to control. It’s hard to explain. They . . .”
She sat back on her heels, reaching for the right words.
“They don’t speak or communicate with me in any way,” she finally said. “But it’s as though they can pick out my thoughts and act on that information. And I can feel their energy. They’re hungry, I guess you’d say. To be blunt, they want to hurt people. And if I loosened their leash and let them go wild, they wouldn’t stop until they’d killed.”
He didn’t ask her how she’d tested this theory, and she was grateful for that. “So you have some control over them? Oww.” He flinched and hissed as she covered the ointment with gauze.
“Sorry,” she murmured. “And yes, a little. I didn’t send them out specifically to pull that chandelier down, if that’s what you’re thinking. They are, well, I like to think of them as bounty hunters. My mind gives them the target name, and they do whatever they must to bring down the target.”
“Are they here now?”
She shook her head. “Remember how Aida told us she had to summon my mother across the veil? I don’t know for certain, but I feel like they live in another place, and they only come here when they catch scent of my emotional state.”
“And these specters are the reason for your touching phobia.”
Her hand stilled. “When I was thirteen, a family named Price lived next door to my father. Mrs. Price’s cousin moved in with them. The man wasn’t right in the head. He’d been arrested for crimes related to the molestation of children, but beat the charges on a technicality.”
Lowe watched her without comment, so she continued.
“My father was having our downstairs floors polished. The doors were open for ventilation. Mr. Price’s cousin walked into the house without anyone noticing, right as I was getting out of the bathtub upstairs.” She took a deep breath and plunged through the rest of the story before she lost her nerve. “He pinned me to the floor. I was terrified. The Mori came so fast. He was horrible and crazy and I was frightened. Before I knew what was happening, the Mori caused his footing to slip on the wet tile as he was struggling to hold me down. His head smashed against the porcelain tub. He died almost instantly.”