The Reckoning

The air in the cramped apartment was thick with the scent of stale cigarette smoke and something else… something metallic, almost sweet, that I couldn’t quite place. Barry Hallow, his face a roadmap of hard lines and suspicion, loomed over me. He’d found me, of course. They always found me, eventually. It was the curse of being Nicole Armstrong, daughter of a ghost and prisoner of a phantom.

“He’s dead, isn’t he?” Barry’s voice was a low growl, cutting through the silence like a shard of glass. His eyes, the color of a stormy sea, bored into mine, searching for any crack, any tremor that would betray me. He knew. He had to know. He was Giovanni’s cousin, wasn’t he? A wolf from the same den, even if he wore a different kind of fur.

I swallowed, my throat dry and scratchy. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” The lie tasted like ash on my tongue. My hands, clenched in my lap, were clammy. I could feel the tremor starting, the familiar tremor that always preceded the noise, the whispers, the phantom hands reaching for me.