Page 42 of Shadebound (Dark Fantasy #1)

Chapter Twenty Five, Menace

T he showers in Mors were too quiet. No talking at the sinks about skincare or school drama.

No footsteps coming or going. Just the hiss of a few working showerheads and the slow drip from the pipes high in the walls.

The sound carried, bouncing off the tiles until it seemed sharper than it should have been.

Enough steam to make my hair frizz filled the room from floor to ceiling, pressing against the walls and clinging to the glass over the sinks. Had I been alive, I would have been annoyed.

Now I was dead. So I was annoyed about other things.

The ceiling lights buzzed with an uneven hum that I could hear.

One flickered now and then, quick bursts that made the shadows move along the walls.

The sound grated after a while, that faint electrical whine, the kind you could almost imagine boring straight into the back of your skull if you stood there too long.

I was bored with being bored. It was probably the most annoying thing about being dead. Other than you, know... the dead part.

Ignoring my pity party thoughts, I floated to the object of my haunting.

Eris was at the far end under a working shower, her back to the wall. The water streamed over her face and hair, darkening it until it stuck to her neck. She tipped her head back, eyes closed, and ran her fingers slowly through it.

She was humming. It wasn’t a tune I recognised.

Just a lazy rise and fall like she wasn’t even thinking about it.

She looked comfortable. And yes—she was annoyingly pretty.

Even soaked, with her hair plastered to her face, she had that outcast, but hot thing going on.

Like she could walk out of here, throw on any clothes, and still look like she’d done it on purpose.

It made her obliviousness worse somehow.

Pretty girls should have been extra smart so we could fuck the patriarchy over with a double dose of excellence.

“You’re supposed to be a seer,” I told her as I pretended I hadn’t checked out her ass like a sleaze. “You’re supposed to feel it when someone’s standing two feet away from you, watching you soap up with this god-awful excuse for skincare.”

Nothing. Not a flicker.

I moved closer, letting the cold of me spread over her. The steam shifted as I passed through it, thinning in streaks. The water running over her arms cooled, and her pale skin prickled with goosebumps. She rubbed at them, but didn’t open her eyes. Not even a glance around.

The drip in the far corner had been steady all along.

I pulled at it until it was louder, until each drop hit the tiles with a heavier sound.

It echoed in the space between us, cutting through the hiss of the water.

She tensed slightly. I waited for her to turn.

She didn’t. She just adjusted her stance and kept humming.

I was getting even more annoyed, and not at myself this time. At the ridiculous girl who ought to have seen me by now.

I shifted to her other side, just within her peripheral vision. Nothing. She didn’t flick her eyes open, didn’t pause the movement of her hands through her hair. I waved once, sharply. No reaction.

Then I leant over the next shower stall and twisted the handle just enough to make the pipes groan.

The spray sputtered and spat against the tiles before I shut it off again.

Her head tilted a fraction toward the noise but then went right back under her own water, humming like the sound meant nothing.

I was going to kill her. Not yet. I needed her alive. And also I had the whole dead and can’t murder people thing going on. But one day, I would kill her. Because I was not built to be annoyed. Or stressed. Or useless. And she was forcing me to be all three.

On my way past the sinks, I swiped at the condensation on one of the mirrors until her reflection came through in a hazy oval.

Then I dragged my hand across the surface again, distorting the image so her head stretched and her features warped.

In the steam it looked wrong—eyes too far apart, mouth in the wrong place.

From where she stood, she could see the movement in the glass if she looked.

She didn’t. She just reached for her soap and kept going.

Jaw tensing, I dragged my fingers along the tiles as I walked past her stall, nails catching faintly on the grout. It made a sharp scratch. She rubbed at her arm again but didn’t move.

I huffed. “That’s all you’ve got for me? A twitch?”

Fine, bigger it was then.

A towel sat folded on the bench beside a row of bottles.

I slid my hand under the nearest one and tipped it off the edge.

It hit the tiles hard, bounced once, and stopped near her feet.

The sound cracked through the room, loud enough that anyone with sense would have noticed it didn’t happen by accident.

She opened her big onyx eyes, glanced down, and bent to pick it up. “Damn bottle,” she muttered. She put it back exactly where it had been, even nudging it into place like the symmetry mattered.

“It’s not the bottle. It’s me. The ghost who’s trying to speak to your useless, gorgeous self.”

I crossed back to the mirrors. The steam was thick again, coating every surface.

I cleared a small circle with my hand, then traced her name into the glass—ERIS—slowly, making each letter sharp so it wouldn’t blur too fast. The warmth of the surface bit at my skin, and the effort made my fingers ache.

But from the stalls, she could see the movement if she looked.

She didn’t. She didn’t fucking do anything.

By the time she glanced over, I’d already swiped my hand through it, smearing the letters into nothing out of sheer frustration. She gave the mirrors a single, distracted glance and went right back to rinsing her hair.

The light above her stuttered once when I moved to it next. I pushed it again, harder this time, until it flickered fast enough to throw her shadow up the wall in jagged shapes. She looked up at it with a frown, then shook her head.

“Maintenance here’s a joke,” she said, and tipped her face back into the spray.

I could have torn the whole bench over. But that would burn through what little I had left, and I still hadn’t told her what mattered. So instead of having a tantrum, I stepped in front of her, close enough that her outline warped in the steam. I waved my hand in front of her face.

No reaction.

She wasn’t even blinking differently.

“I’m going to haunt you until you die.” I warned. “And I mean it. I’ll be Casper the bitchy ghost forever until you do what I need you to do.”

She didn’t hear me. Even if her eyebrows twitched.

I took the nearest towel instead of screaming at her. Pulled it off the bench, dragged it across the tiles, and let the edge dip into the spray from the next showerhead until it darkened with water. The damp spread quickly, creeping up the fabric.

That made her pause. Her humming stopped. She turned her head, stepped out from under her shower, and picked the towel up. Then she muttered something about a draft and threw it back onto the bench, water-darkened edge and all.

“You are unbelievable,” I said. “You’re like when I see a man’s red flags, and honey, that is not a compliment.”

The mirrors by the sinks were coated in steam after another minute or two of my thinking.

I moved to the middle one, pressed my palm flat against it, and cleared a circle.

The warmth bit at my skin. I pressed my finger into the glass and wrote slowly, making the letters large so she couldn’t miss them.

KILLER HERE

AFTER JINX

The words stood out, white against the fog. Drops of condensation cut through them in thin, wavering lines. My finger stung faintly with the effort, like the heat in the glass was pushing back against my ghostly efforts.

Eris finally turned. She fucking turned .

Her eyes locked on the mirror. Her expression changed—confusion first, then unease. She took two slow steps toward the sinks, bare feet making dull slaps on the wet tiles.

The effort to keep my hold on the glass dragged at me.

My energy drained fast, like water slipping away.

The K blurred at the edges, bleeding into the next letter.

The rest of the message began to run as the steam crept back in.

I tried to push more into it, keep it visible just a little longer, but my arms were starting to ache in that deep, bone-heavy way I’d come to recognise as the last of my ghostly effort burning out.

“No,” I said. “Keep looking. Read faster, or I swear to God I’ll really haunt you.”

The words faded. My grip slipped, and I let the mirror words go before they took the rest of me with them.

My limbs hung heavy, like moving them would take more than I had.

I could feel the heat of the room more now that I wasn’t channelling it into the glass, like the steam was pressing down harder.

Eris stayed where she was. Her mouth opened, but she didn’t speak. Her gaze darted toward the far stalls, then back to the mirror as if she wasn’t sure she’d really seen anything.

I could have tried again, but I was done. I’d already pushed further than I should have. If she had seen it and taken the warning seriously, she’d act. If she didn’t, then she’d go back to humming in the steam while the killer moved closer to Jinx.

Then I’d go back to haunting her until she got her shit together and helped me out.

I hated leaving it at ‘if’ so I stayed. My reach was gone, but watching her didn’t cost me anything. I needed to see which way she’d go.

Eris stood there a little longer, still looking at the mirror. Her breathing had changed—not faster, but more like her heart was racing. She brushed her hair back from her face, then let her arm fall. When nothing else happened, she turned back to her shower and shut off the water.

She picked up the towel I’d soaked, wrapped it around herself without a second thought, and gathered her clothes from the bench. She didn’t look back once as she took another towel to dry her hair with.

“Brilliant,” I muttered. “I practically spell it out for you, and you’re going to take your time drying your hair.”

I waited. Patiently. Okay, not so patiently. I may or may not have tried to throw all the bottles and towels in the room until she was done.

But eventually she left the showers, the heavy door swinging shut behind her. My ghostly ass floating barely a few feet away.

If she told someone, ideally my sister, then maybe it would be enough. If she didn’t, then I’d just burned through half my strength for nothing and would have to wait to try again. And Jinx...

I pushed that thought away. I’d done my part. The rest was on Eris now.

And there was totally a comfort in relying on the worst seer I’d ever met to save my sister’s life.