A Shiver of Shadows Read online

  Table of Contents

  Excerpt

  Praise for Hunter J. Skye

  A Shiver of Shadows

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  A word about the author…

  Thank you for purchasing

  Also available from The Wild Rose Press

  “We won’t make it in time, so I need you to do exactly as I say.” She clutched me by the tops of my arms then shoved me into a small convenience store that blazed white with artificial lighting. She dragged me down a narrow aisle, past products with unfamiliar labels, toward a dead-faced man in a turban. His mottled eyes followed us as the woman pushed past his small counter.

  “Santuario,” she whispered to the man, and he nodded stoically. Then she turned to me.

  “Don’t stop. Don’t look around. Just keep moving.”

  “What?” I asked as her hand closed over mine once more, but we were already moving again. We hurtled down a dark, slender hall to an ancient rat-chewed wooden door with symbols painted on it in a dark, drooling liquid. Something about that viscous fluid made my skin crawl. The dingy walls pressed close, and suddenly the hallway felt as though it was swallowing me whole.

  “Wait.” My voice wavered. “Just wait a second.” Something big was on the other side of that door. Something I wasn’t ready for. It peeled away my thoughts. It knew I was coming.

  “This is a mistake.” Not a bad tattoo kind of mistake. This was the kind of mistake that would burn through my being. It would hollow me out. I’d already rebuilt myself once. I couldn’t go through that kind of stripping again. “Whatever’s in there…it isn’t for me to see.”

  “Then close your eyes.” She yanked the door open and pulled me through.

  Praise for Hunter J. Skye

  A GLIMMER OF GHOSTS

  ~*~

  “An offbeat tale of things that go bump in the night featuring a well-developed main character…this is a promising start, and readers looking for something different than the genre’s norm will be satisfied.”

  ~ Kirkus Reviews

  ~*~

  “Ms. Skye has crafted an intriguing tale full of history and fascinating paranormal angles, the likes of which the reader probably won’t have seen before…incredibly inventive debut novel from a talented author.”

  ~ InD’Tale Magazine

  ~*~

  “Part Ghostbusters, part Beauty and the Beast, A Glimmer of Ghosts is Hunter J. Skye’s debut novel and promises to be the start of an impressive career.”

  ~ L.R. Braden,

  Amazon #1 Best-Selling Author

  ~*~

  “The imagery in the scenes carried me through like a dream…”

  ~ Melody DeBlois, Award-winning author

  ~*~

  “Riveting, dark, sexy read.”

  ~ Alexandra Christle, Award-winning author

  ~*~

  “A Glimmer of Ghosts is a well-written paranormal tale with creative descriptions, lively dialogue, and unique characters.”

  ~ CoffeeAddictedWriter.com

  A SHIVER OF SHADOWS

  ~*~

  “This sequel is an exciting continuation filled with a host of unusual characters, surprising plot twists, and a thrilling conclusion that had me up all night until I reached the end…but even after all that, I’m still hungry for more!”

  ~ Jennifer Soucy,

  #WomeninHorrorMonth featured author

  ~*~

  “A carnival of addictive attraction and dark debauchery set in a uniquely magical world.”

  ~ L.R. Braden,

  author of The Magicsmith series

  A Shiver of Shadows

  by

  Hunter J. Skye

  The Hell Gate Series

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales, is entirely coincidental.

  A Shiver of Shadows

  COPYRIGHT © 2021 by Julia Burgess

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the author or The Wild Rose Press, Inc. except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

  Contact Information: [email protected]

  Cover Art by Kristian Norris

  The Wild Rose Press, Inc.

  PO Box 708

  Adams Basin, NY 14410-0708

  Visit us at www.thewildrosepress.com

  Publishing History

  First Edition, 2021

  Trade Paperback ISBN 978-1-5092-3598-8

  Digital ISBN 978-1-5092-3599-5

  The Hell Gate Series

  Published in the United States of America

  Dedication

  This book is for all those lucky souls out there that know the joy of having a best friend and remember the fateful moment when they first met.

  In memory of my bestie in heaven,

  Falana Devon Thornton.

  Grab a table and order some cocktails. I’ll be there soon, my love.

  Acknowledgments

  For walking forty-five minutes across town and lurking for hours in an old graveyard just to report on the mood of the place, I thank my cousin, Charles Burgess, and his wife, Kerstin Michaelsen. Their impressions of the Montjuïc Cemetery, and tales of life in Barcelona were invaluable to me while writing this story. I further thank them for inviting my family to Spain where I received so much inspiration, and for being such gracious hosts.

  For their continued support and encouragement, I’d like to thank my husband, Keir, my children, Cameron, Leah, and Ben, my parents, Dean and Peggy, and my brother, Dean.

  I’d also like to thank my editor, Dianne Rich, for her faith in my storytelling, and her endless patience with my many foibles.

  A final thanks to the City of Portsmouth, Virginia, and the residents of the Olde Towne and Swimming Point neighborhoods for putting up with my paranormal literary antics.

  I feel it is worth repeating in this volume that narcolepsy is a serious
and sometimes debilitating autoimmune disorder. I have the utmost respect for those who suffer from sleep disorders or any other disabling medical condition.

  Chapter One

  Unsavory Spirits

  Melisande

  Up until this point, I’d firmly believed that I could be on fire and the powers that be would not so much as pee on me to put out the flames. And yet…here I was, standing in the darkness of my soon-to-be new home, with my flesh and blood boyfriend only a touch away. Someone had made a big mistake upstairs.

  My real estate agent click-clacked across the small bedroom in her shiny high heels and followed the psychic she’d hired through the doorway.

  “Why is the medium walking backward?” Colonel Grayford’s lips were at my ear. His warm breath brushed my cheek. The citrus sweet scent of the orange he’d just eaten wrapped around me. It wasn’t a dream. It was the twenty-first century, and the most eligible bachelor of eighteenth-century Colonial Virginia was standing behind me.

  His arms circled my waist, and a wave of giddiness ran through me. Yes, I was euphoric about the idea of starting a new life with him, but I was exhilarated by another thought as well. I was almost breathless with happiness because I knew I was finally the girl who wouldn’t screw it up. That gleeful certainty was a shaky, newborn thing that barely had legs to walk on, but it was there. Now, I knew why it hadn’t worked out for Josh and me. It wasn’t him. Sure, my friend Josh was a six-foot-tall, hesitant tangle of mixed messages. But it hadn’t been his fault. It was me. I hadn’t been ready. Back then, I was still occupied with solving the mystery of me. I’d wanted a relationship, but I hadn’t left any real room for one.

  I turned in Grayford’s arms and pressed my lips to his calm, controlled mouth. His sense of propriety kept him from sliding his lush, wide tongue into my mouth. The Colonel’s mannerisms were polite and staid, but I could feel his desire stirring to life with each beat of his very real heart. I couldn’t call Grayford a ghost anymore. It didn’t fit. But he wasn’t quite human either. Whatever the Colonel’s present state might be, he’d seen the other side of existence and had still elected to stay here with me in a heaven of our own making. For that, I was beyond thankful.

  How could I have gotten so lucky? Only a few short weeks ago, I’d been the city of Portsmouth’s saddest sack, wallowing in the wreckage of my autoimmune disorder each day and aching with loneliness every night. Narcolepsy had reduced me to flotsam drifting on an endless shore of nightmares. Hypnagogic hallucinations in the first stage of sleep and hypnopompic sleep stage hallucinations, just before waking, haunted every corner of my mind, but it was the resulting hypoxic brain injury that had let the ghosts in. Who could have guessed low oxygen levels during sleep could cause permanent brain damage? I’d always wondered if it was just my broken mind that called ghosts, or could others with deceased brain cells like me summon spirits as well? Either way, the crack in my brain would never close. The dead would always be with me.

  A lump formed in my throat as I remembered the years I’d spent trying to manage my sleep disorders, and the endless doctor’s appointments when my autonomic nervous system began to degrade. Narcolepsy hadn’t exactly improved my social skills. I’d been a wreck. Joining the four-man Ghost Towne Investigations team had helped me make use of my strange little ghost-sensing side effect. Making friends with team members Seth and Gabe, and then the brothers Grimes—Josh and Matt, had pulled me out of my shell and into the world of paranormal investigation. Josh’s friendship particularly had made me feel real again. A gilded image of his infrequent smile spread through me. He was a road not taken.

  I leaned into Grayford’s tightening embrace and refocused on the here and now.

  “It’s a part of the spell to banish spirits.” I fought a smile that threatened to crack my face in two.

  “And yet…the ghosts seem unperturbed.” Grayford gestured toward the spirits drifting in and out of the cottage walls. The trajectory of his hand caused his fingers to graze the side of my breast. A mistake? I think not. Eighteenth-century men drew attention to their desire the same way most twenty-first-century men did. Bluntly and to the point.

  “Give it a moment,” I offered quietly. I knew the “medium” my realtor had hired would have little to no effect on the specters currently inhabiting my new home. The historic cottage had been standing since 1735. Long enough to serve as a buoy for souls who’d lost their way. This was more an exercise in cleansing her guilt for selling me a haunted house than it was a purifying of the actual premises.

  Of the four of us huddled together on the cramped second floor, Grayford and I were the only ones who could see the wayward souls. The real estate agent and the medium might feel a presence, but if they could see the actual entities around them, they’d have run by now. I, however, was no longer bothered by disembodied specters. Ghosts would always be a part of my life. The crack in my mind that linked me to the grave would never heal. I’d made my peace with that. I’d faced the Seventh Devil. I’d closed the Hell Gate. I’d saved our town from a fountain of evil that might have drowned the world. All things considered, a few incorporeal visitors and a little spackling didn’t scare me. This was the house for me. We deserved our happily ever after.

  Grayford and I followed the gray-haired woman as she backed out of the bedroom and headed toward the even smaller room across the little landing. I felt a jolt of nerves as she swept past the opening to the stairwell. The old steps were worn and rounded at the edge with age. One false move might send her careening to her death, and I’d have one more ghost to deal with in my lovely “new” home. I waited for the ensuing wave of cataplexy that usually accompanied a sudden emotion, but nothing happened. My knees didn’t buckle, my neck muscles didn’t weaken, my jaw remained locked in place. No sign at all of narcolepsy’s worst symptom—cataplexy. I held off on the confetti and champagne toasts. My narcolepsy wasn’t gone, and neither was the cataplectic loss of muscle control. It never would be, but I had learned a few tricks for minimizing my immediate responses to certain stimuli. No strong emotions, no dropping like a rag doll.

  I slid my hand along the railing of the abbreviated second-story landing. The bowing wood was varnished with the touch of work-weary hands, tender fingers, panicked grasps. Every notch and scar held years of exquisite, messy life. I knew the structure wasn’t attractive to most, what with the cracked plaster, broken door frames, and drooping ceiling. But it was beautiful to me. It was also one of the only houses in the lovely riverside city of Portsmouth, Virginia, that Colonel Grayford remembered from his time. His own house was long gone, claimed by the fickle river tides and dredged out to be used as a ferry stop for tourists and day commuters.

  Also, I was the reason why the historic cottage was in such a sorry state in the first place. I’d dragged a larger than normal poltergeist out of it only weeks before. I’d scared the young family in residence half out of their wits when I removed the locus of destruction from their attic. The phantasm wouldn’t even have been loose and looking for a nest had I not previously released it from the Ghost Fleet’s dungeon in a mass prison break of epic proportions.

  My powers had been new and shiny then, and the DMV didn’t offer learner’s permits for icy, ectoplasmic chains of subjugation. One had to test drive them, which had almost led to me being torn limb from limb when the entity fought my frozen restraints.

  Panic pricked at my brain. I pushed the memory of that night from my mind, but the hot, glowing shrapnel of horrors I’d experienced were embedded in my psyche. Some other time, I promised myself. I’d process it all one terror-drenched piece at a time.

  The medium emerged from what would soon be my painting studio and turned toward the stairs. She wavered on the first step, steadied herself, and then started her teetering descent down the narrow stairwell—backside first. I gasped as she wobbled then braced her elbow against the creaky banister. She held the white candle “lit at the stroke of midnight” in her right hand and cupped the leaking p
ile of salt in her left hand. It was a dangerous maneuver, but she seemed as determined as the realtor to wipe the property clean of unsavory spirits.

  “Oh, I’m not registering a complaint. This is rather fun.” The Colonel’s mouth dropped to my neck, and I leaned my head in accommodation as his teeth drew a warning across my skin. The current of his passion was unpredictable. A soft caress could turn to a clutch of uncontrolled desire in the space of a shuddering breath. He kept me guessing…and wanting.

  I hesitated on the upstairs landing as the pool of candlelight drifted away from us. The agent’s heels clicked hypnotically as she directed the medium through the living room and into the kitchen below us.

  I pressed into Grayford until his boots struck the wall behind him. He clutched my bottom and drove his tongue into my mouth. He knew what I wanted. My insides clenched. It had been two days since I’d slipped my hands beneath his shirt. Two days since I’d gripped his muscular back. He was busier now than he had been in his former life, both with his new job consulting for the City Planning Office and with his new role as Commander of the Ghost Fleet. My increased hours at the art gallery didn’t help either.

  “Commander,” I whispered and licked his lips. He drew a shaky breath and spun me in his arms until my back pressed against the wall. I thrust my hips out to meet his straining length. Two days had obviously been too long for him as well. His hands found my breasts. His fingers clutched hungrily.

  “I am not a member of the Royal Navy,” he reminded.

  “I know, but you do command a contingent of spectral warriors that would lay down their very souls for you.” I wrapped my fingers through the brown waves of his hair. “Plus, it’s sexy.” I smiled in the darkness. “Commander,” I whispered again and slid my hand down the hard plains of his chest, along the smooth slope of his waist.

  “Will you not call me William?”

  I shook my head.

  “Then, I think I will stick with Colonel.”

  He convulsed as I pushed my palm between our straining bodies, and the connection between our minds opened. If my own hunger hadn’t been enough, now his need flooded through me, filling my muscles with masculine strength. Edging my thoughts with animal aggression. Grayford was a gentleman to a point. His thoughts unfurled inside me, showing me what he craved. He let me sense how my honeysuckle perfume smelled to him. To me, it was a soft, sweet scent that wrapped me in the promise of early summer. For him, it was a saccharine succulence, an invitation to lick the sugary rime of my skin.