Ghostly Echoes (Jackaby #3)(73)
The temperature dropped abruptly. The steaming water that had soaked my shirtwaist suddenly felt like ice. Morwen spun again, channeling the water back up her body, and whipped her arm out toward Spade. He flinched, bracing himself for the blow, but it never came.
“What . . . ?” Morwen’s voice shot up an octave and she shuddered. The water, which was coiled around her from shin to shoulder, had frozen solid.
“Neat trick, I’ll give you that,” she said. “Is that you, Jenny?” Morwen flexed and shook until the ice cracked and broke apart, tumbling around her in heavy chunks. She slid one hand to her hip and pulled the long black blade from her belt as she scanned the room from side to side. “That’s adorable. I took your meaningless life and now you’re going to pay me back with what? The chills?”
The air shimmered on the other side of the bathtub and Jenny appeared. “I couldn’t see it before,” Jenny said. “But I see it now. You’re afraid.”
“Afraid of you?” Morwen laughed. “You were pathetic when you were an idiot girl. Now you’re just the shadow of an idiot girl. You’re nothing. I can see why your boyfriend was so eager to give you the slip. You really think he didn’t know it was me? He knew.”
“Don’t listen to her,” Jackaby grunted, and pushed himself to his feet.
“It’s all right, Jackaby,” Jenny said evenly. “I can handle her.”
“You think so?” Morwen scoffed. “Because I think you’re a damn ghost. You think I’m afraid of being haunted? Haunt me. I’m going to gut every last one of your friends in front of you while you haunt me. I’m going to start with the girl.” She jabbed her black blade at me to punctuate the threat. “And then I’m going to work my way up to lover boy over there, and you’re going to haunt me through the whole bloody slaughter, because that’s all you can do.”
“Leave her alone!” Jackaby pulled a slender chain from his coat. It was a dull iron-gray and no thicker than the chain for a pocket watch. He wound it around his hand several times until it formed a band of links across his knuckles when he clenched his fist.
“No,” said Jenny. “It’s my turn.” She did not flicker. She did not slip into an echo. Her voice was steady and calm.
Morwen laughed. “That’s hilarious. What’re you going to do to me? Make the curtains wiggle?”
“I can manage a little more than that.”
The whole house shuddered.
Morwen sneered. “If you think a little tremor is going to scare me, then you haven’t met my fa—”
Morwen’s sentence was cut short as the bathtub flipped suddenly upward and launched itself with a deafening crash through the bathroom wall and into the adjacent room, taking the unready nixie along with it.
I stared at Jenny. She drifted through the wreckage as calm as anything, not a hair out of place. “My brick. My house. My whole wide world.” She slid through the demolished wall. “My turn.”
We hastened to follow, clambering over broken plaster and cracked beams. The bathtub had carved its path into Mayor Spade’s study. It now lay with its brass feet pointed at the ceiling, splintered enamel shards littering the deep red carpet. Morwen’s groans echoed from within.
“I’ve always been strongest when I was being strong for other people,” Jenny said casually. “And that’s not a bad thing. I would have made a marvelous wife.” She gave the slightest wave of her hand. It was no more effort than she had devoted to swatting at a handkerchief when we had first begun practicing together, but now the bathtub flew off of Morwen like a piece of dollhouse furniture, smashing into Spade’s desk with a clamorous clatter of enamel pieces and splintered wood. “But somebody reminded me today that it’s okay to be strong for myself.”
From the mantle above the desk, the portrait of Mrs. Spade smiled placidly down upon the chaos. The perfect, elegant face behind the frame could not have looked more unlike the manic, furious madwoman lying crumpled in the middle of the carpet. Her uneven eyes glared up at Jenny, her hair was splayed out like Medusa’s vipers, and her lips curled in a spiteful snarl.
Morwen pushed herself to her knees, swayed, and nearly toppled back down again. She held fast to her wicked weapon with one hand and pushed a mess of red-blonde hair out of her face with the other.
Jenny drifted slowly toward her.
“I remember every detail of it, you insignificant cow,” Morwen panted, affecting a crooked grin that failed to convey the same confidence it had before. “You screamed. You cried and blubbered like a baby before you died.”
“It won’t work,” said Jenny. “You can’t rile me anymore.”
“No? You should have seen your handsome Howard Carson after our vamp got through with him,” Morwen went on. For all her venom, she looked as though she might pass out at any moment. The trip through the wall had left several gashes along her arms, and her eyes appeared to be having difficulty focusing. “You could barely recognize his butchered corpse in the end,” she hissed. “We pitched what was left into the fire like greasy table scraps.”
Jenny did not rise to the bait. She only drifted slowly to a stop, looming over Morwen. Morwen gripped her dark dagger so tightly her knuckles whitened. She lashed out wildly at the specter, but the blade met nothing more substantial than moonlight. The effort cost the nixie her balance, and she collapsed again onto the carpet.