Why?
Was it because I was stronger? More confident in myself? Because I’d shown Iris’s demon who was boss?
I had no clue.
Now, however, the huffing was back; short bursts of hyperventilation that I couldn’t seem to calm. I forced myself to stop, to focus, to huddle beneath a tree until I could breathe normally again.
Finally, I hitched my bag higher on my shoulder and peered into the shadows at the little stone house with moss growing on the roof. Mordechai’s home. I’d never been inside it, but it looked pretty nice.
The rabbi’s backyard office, however, was a dump.
Books, documents, files on back jobs, notebooks, and a lifetime of office supplies were crammed into a room the size of a mousetrap, and I doubted the place had been aired out in decades. It was as much Mordechai as his shawl and rumpled pants.
But something felt different today.
I couldn’t put my finger on it at first, but the air seemed too cold, even for Mordechai. And there was a smell…faint, barely there, but it reminded me of Mrs. Klein’s house. Of Iris’s room.
Brimstone and rot.
I glanced around, but everything looked normal. The same cluttered shelves, the same stacks of papers. Nothing moved.
Still, the wrongness clung to me, and inside, something stirred.
Not quite a voice, not quite a feeling. But...awareness. Like I wasn’t alone in noticing.
Like something else was paying attention too.
The door to his office was shut, and I checked my newly charged phone. It was five o’clock. Nobody should be in there but him. Half the time when I knocked, Mordechai didn’t hear me anyway, so I opened the door and let myself in.
As usual, the wave of chilled, air-conditioned air made me smile. Most old people couldn’t stay warm enough… Mordechai preferred to live in a refrigerator. I could hear him mumbling to himself in his back office, and I opened my mouth to call out, then shut it again.
Why bother announcing myself?
Just go in. See what he’s doing.
The idea struck me so quickly that I didn’t stop to analyze it—it sounded like my thoughts, my own inner voice, not like some dark, nebulous entity potentially lurking inside me. A perfectly reasonable thought from a perfectly reasonable woman, who’d conducted a perfectly reasonable exorcism all by herself yesterday. Nothing to look at here.
I didn’t even try to be stealthy. I threw down my backpack in the corner of the reception room with a loud clatter, strode the ten steps it took to get to the back office, then stuck my head in.
Mordechai was bent over a pile of file folders lying on his small meeting table, papers everywhere, along with photographs of a giant old house that screamed money and a whole lot of it. Some of the pictures were in black and white, others in color. All of them looked creepy as shit, but that was probably becauseMordechai was looking at them. He didn’t care about anything thatwasn’tcreepy as shit.
He was also so into whatever he was reading that he clearly had no idea I was even there. “Hey,” I finally said. This time, there was a reaction.
“Delia!” The rabbi jerked back. His hands spasmed on his papers, sending the farthest ones flying.
“Oh, jeez, I’m sorry.” I moved forward and didn’t miss the way Mordechai pulled everything he could back toward his body, almost like he was trying to hide contraband. I tried not to be hurt as I dropped down on one knee, gathering up the glossy wisps of paper. One of them featured a twenty-something frat boy with dark curly hair and a nice jawline.
My brows shot up. Who wasthis?Even in faded black-and-white photos, the guy’s eyes seemed exhausted, somehow—the kind of eyes that had seen too much and would never be able to see ordinary things the same way again. Granted, I picked up odd, totally random insights from photos, the same as I did people, but this guy’s energy seemed to leap out of the photo and snatch at me, pleading for me to come, to see, to help. He wanted me—neededme—and something hard and angry lurched deep in my gut at that thought, making me gasp.
I coughed to cover the punch of pain, flipping the photo around casually to Mordechai. “Well, at least he’s cute,” I managed. The pain twisted deeper, possessive and furious. Something inside me didn’t like that observation. The sheer rage of its reaction startled me into response.
“Get a grip,” I thought at it. “And not on my guts.”
Instantly, the sensation eased, and I blinked. Since when could I negotiate with my inner voice? How had that become a thing?
“Give that to me.” Mordechai plucked the photo out of my hand. Feeling abashed at his rebuke, though I had no reason tobe, I gathered up the rest of the pictures, scanning them rapidly before dropping them into his open file folder. Quite a few of them featured a house. The same house as before, big and made of stone, with at least twenty windows on the front, an overlarge door, and a flat roof, which made it seem oddly fortress-like.
There were also pictures of a field full of horses, a lake with a gazebo, and a much smaller house set back into the trees. Silver-spoon hottie guy showed up again, too, this picture in color, not fifties-era black and white, so it could be he was still cute and not a million years old, tottering around his sad lonely castle.
