Vowed in Shadows by Jessa Slade Page A

leading downward, but he couldn’t escape her comment. “Between Nanette and your wife, you’d have quite the virtuous harem.”
    He stopped abruptly at the bottom of the stairs, and she smacked into him.
    She didn’t reach out to steady herself, but the scent of her warm skin wreathed him in the lingering hint of incense.
    â€œYou’re trying to offend me again,” he said. “Is it jealousy? My wife is dead. Nanette is married to a man she adores. They cannot come between what you and I will be to each other.”
    She recoiled. “We’re nothing to each other. Except maybe thorns in each other’s sides.”
    â€œThen the ache will help us remember why we are here.” When he faced her, her expanded pupils were shot with violet sparks.
    â€œThat’s just sick,” she hissed.
    He leaned toward her and thumped the hook into the wall at her eye level. “This,” he said. “This is what we are to each other. Missing pieces that will never again be unbroken. But in the striving, we will atone.”
    She slapped her palm against the wall just above the hook and canted forward to get in his face. “I am not your phantom hand.”
    â€œA phantom would be quieter.” He stalked away from her, unlocked the storage room, and shoved open the door. This time, he turned on the light.
    Behind him, Nim sucked in another breath.
    â€œCome on,” he said. “I’m sure Nanette has a VCR here with all this other junk.”
    â€œJunk?” Nim crept the last few steps to the doorway.
    He stepped in amid the half dozen people standing motionless around the stacked plastic chairs and folding tables, a rolling car with a slide projector, and a teetering pile of cardboard boxes labeled CHRISTMAS DECORATIONS. None of the people moved to avoid him, spoke, or even blinked at the change of light. A misty haze hung in the air.
    Nim lingered in the doorway, her fingers pressed bloodlessly against the jamb. “Who are they?”
    â€œNo one. Not anymore. Their souls have been stripped by a desolator numinis , a rare demonic weapon. Similar to the one you apparently sold for—what?—fifty bucks.”
    â€œTen,” she whispered. “I told you, it looked like . . . junk.”
    â€œThe desolator numinis was reengineered into a street drug called solvo and spread through the city.”
    â€œBut solvo disappeared months ago. One of the girls at the club, her boyfriend was a dealer. She was complaining because as the source dried up, he got twitchy and weird, and then he . . .”
    â€œDisappeared too?” Jonah rifled through one of the shelves. “These soulless haints have a bad habit of forgetting. Everything. In their blank states, they can be overwritten by free-roaming demons. Many were destroyed last winter in a pitched battle. The league survived the conflict. Mostly. Nanette collects the haint remnants.”
    â€œAnd stuffs them in basements?”
    â€œFor a few days. See that flickering haze? Thanks to the teshuva, you are seeing what remains of their souls. Some of the soulflies find their way to the body. We keep the haints nearby until the dust settles.”
    â€œWhat happens to them?”
    â€œJilly knows an old Chinese witch who draws the solvo out of them, as much as she can. We hope that lets some of the soul wisps in and gives them some measure of redemption. Then we take them out to the country, where they’ll wait. Maybe for the end of days.”
    â€œOh, I’ve heard that line before. ‘Sorry, Johnny. We can’t keep the dog anymore, so we sent him to live in the country.’ Meanwhile, Spot ends up at the pound. Or in a bag in the river.”
    â€œWe can’t afford to let the authorities find the haints,” Jonah said. “Imagine the havoc of discovering zombies exist. The haints can’t drown, can’t really die, since their souls aren’t