"Lucien's Menagerie"
(Suspense/Horror)

"It's genuinely unsettling... I love the way it keeps us guessing as to whether
the events are supernatural or trickery."

"Grim and very nasty gothic. Loved it."

"It should continue to be anthologised forever as a
remarkably clever and stand-alone example of a Horror Story."

"Fitzpatrick's piece tugs on fear from two angles--the realistic and the supernatural--and skillfully portrays the unheard of cruelty that can surround immortality."

"...a marvellous piece, full of incident and rich in detail, with tongue in cheek dialogue
and a megalomaniac character who must surely have been inspired by Vincent Price at his most
insidious, and easily my favourite of what’s on offer."

I was privileged to appear in a previous Nemonymous title, Cone Zero. I was eager to appear in the next one, Cern Zoo, and submitted this story, "Lucien's Menagerie," to it. Editor Des Lewis liked it but was on the fence about it, suggesting a few things to clean it up and make it better. It made the short list, but in the end didn't quite make the cut. Of course, I was disappointed, but life goes on.

A year later, Des announced the final Nemonymous title, which was to be called Null Immortalis. As with all Nemonymous titles, that meant whatever it meant to the contributors. I began working on another story, but it crossed my mind that "Lucien's Menagerie" might well fit the Null Immortalis motif. But I back-burnered the idea.

Des emailed me out of the blue one day to say he'd be willing to consider "Lucien's Menagerie" for the final Nemo, and the rest became history. He accepted it, and it appeared in the final edition of this fantastic anthology series. The Nemonymous series is a bit strange in that the bylines are not paired with the stories; the authors are listed in no particular order on the back, but the stories have no bylines, not identified until the next edition (and online later). This final edition breaks that rule, assigning the proper bylines, since there will be no further editions in this series. It will be very sad to see this stellar series end.

So far, reviews have been good--about the anthology as a whole, but also specifically for my story. Here are a few comments from reviewers:

  • Peter Tennant at Black Static magazine (print, #19): "Let’s talk about some of the ones I can get enthusiastic about, and three stories stand out in particular. ‘Lucien’s Menagerie’ by David M. Fitzpatrick, a tale that has echoes of House on Haunted Hill in the plight of a woman bequeathed her family mansion by her wealthy ex, but only if she spends a night there, and dotted about the house are stuffed animals that are intended to drive her over the edge into madness. It’s a marvellous piece, full of incident and rich in detail, with tongue in cheek dialogue and a megalomaniac character who must surely have been inspired by Vincent Price at his most insidious, and easily my favourite of what’s on offer."
     

  • Matthew Fryer: "“Lucien’s Menagerie” by David M. Fitzpatrick certainly stood out for me. One of the longer works, this is a taut ride of impending doom. In order to inherit her cruel ex-husband’s house, a woman has to spend a night there with several creepy exhibits and memories of her miserable past. It’s genuinely unsettling, and I love the way it keeps us guessing as to whether the events are supernatural or trickery." Read more...
     
  • Thomas Logitti (also posted at British Horror Novels forum): "The items are things that are so disturbing, so deeply entangled with memories of her ghastly past life married to a sadistic madman, that their presence is almost enough to drive her to breakdown. Or will they drive her present husband Jake to a coronary? Kane had amassed a great many trophies of his hunting life, and had employed a world-famous taxidermist to preserve them. Now the house swarms with the terrifying shapes. And only a madman could be responsible for some of them. Grim and very nasty gothic. Loved it." Read more...
     
  • Des Lewis, the editor of Nemonymous: "Objectively, this, for me, is a great page-turning story that genuinely horrifies with its suspenseful images. It should continue to be anthologised forever as a remarkably clever and stand-alone example of a Horror Story. It also pleases me - on a more book-specific level - with its Null Immortalis game and its menagerie images reprising the previous Nemonymous (Cern Zoo). Taxidermy will never be the same again. Nor will death itself, in this story's own light and the light of the previous stories." Read more...
     
  • Grim Blogger at Grim Reviews: "The stories crafted and laid out by Lewis' impeccable editorial selection amounts to nothing less than a feast for all the senses, and a gallery of literary iconography for the intellect that cannot help but prompt deep contemplation. One such story is 'Lucien's Menagerie' by David Fitzpatrick, where a tormented woman must spend the night with her dead ex-husband's haunted taxidermy in order to inherit the mansion. Fitzpatrick's piece tugs on fear from two angles--the realistic and the supernatural--and skillfully portrays the unheard of cruelty that can surround immortality." Read more...
     
  • David Hebblethwaite: "The idea behind ‘Lucien’s Menagerie’ is creepy enough, but what makes Fitzpatrick’s story work even better is a wonderful ambiguity over the exact nature of the events taking place. Nicely done. Rating: ***½ [out of 4]." Read more...
     
  • Jaym Gates: "‘Lucien’s Menagerie’ by David M. Fitzpatrick is a refreshing change to the fairly monotonic, rambling style of most of the other stories. A woman has the chance to reclaim her childhood home on her husband's death. He left only one stipulation: she has to stay in the house for one night, with this hunting trophies. Dark and horrific, it keeps a slow, building tension, with a clear plot. While it is cerebral, it isn’t self-indulgent. The simplest of the stories and not the most original, it also left the most lasting impact ... Some of the pieces are subtly terrifying ... and a couple (‘Lucien's Menagerie’!) are downright horrific." Read more...

"Lucien's Menagerie"
by David M. Fitzpatrick

“Thank you for coming, Mrs. Trafton,” the smiling lawyer said to Julia from across a lavish mahogany desk that gleamed in the sunlight. Jake immediately distrusted the man. It was the smile, somehow fake and perhaps hiding regret. The fancy brass nameplate on his desk read S.D. TULLIS, ESQ.

“You’re welcome, Mr. Tullis,” Julia said. “But since my ex-husband left instructions for you to fly us back here for this, it was pointless to refuse.”
“I admit the terms of Lucien Kane’s estate are strange,” Tullis said, “but I assure you it has been far stranger than you might expect.”

“Nothing about Lucien would ever surprise me,” Julia said.

Jake adjusted himself in the soft leather chair, trying to relax, but he’d rather have been just about anywhere else. But coming here was important to Julia, no matter how insane it was. And with his heart condition, he didn’t need to get worked up over everything. He glanced around the room, at the bookshelves full of legal tomes and the massive aquarium stocked with a rainbow of tropical fish. Scott Tullis’ forty-year-old Harvard law degree hung behind him, calligraphic and proud.

“I’ll be interested to find out why Lucien is bothering with me, now that he’s dead,” Julia said, smiling with perfect white teeth and conservative peach lipstick. She’d just turned fifty, but was as beautiful as when Jake had met her at thirty-two. She was older and wiser, with laugh lines in all the right places on her pretty face, and a bit of dye in her auburn hair hid a few invading gray wisps. “We divorced eighteen years ago, after all.”

Jake knew better, of course. Lucien Kane had been a millionaire many times over, but he’d also been a psychopath who had delighted in making his wife’s life a living hell. Julia didn’t need to deal with those memories, but she had agreed to come, hoping he’d actually done a good deed from beyond the grave, and left her the one thing he should have given back to her long ago.

“Mr. Kane’s will indicates that you’d know what this is about,” Tullis said.

“I have a hope. But given how he treated me, I’d not be the least bit surprised to discover he’s flown me here from California just to announce that he’d left me his dirty socks, or something equally time-wasting and insulting.”

“I don’t know if it’s a waste of your time,” Tullis said, his old face flushing a bit, “but you may find it insulting.”

Julia sighed. “I’m not surprised. I left that marriage with the clothes on my back, and wanted nothing from him. But he’s never let me live in peace.”

“I’m familiar with your challenges regarding Mr. Kane,” Tullis said, looking downright uncomfortable. “One of my partners handled the criminal matters.”

“Yes. Lucien never left me alone, not even after I met Jake in New Hampshire. Not even after we moved to California and started our life together. He hired private investigators to find me, no matter where we moved. Letters would start showing up; I dreaded going to the mailbox every day.”

She was getting emotional, talking faster, her voice shaking. Jake reached over to clasp her hand. “No matter how many restraining orders I got, he always found legal loopholes and kept annoying me,” she said. “He never let me go. It was horrible.”

“Perhaps you should forget the bad things and focus on the present, Mrs. Trafton.”

“Forget the bad things?” She was incredulous, leaning forward in her chair and gripping the arms with hydraulic fingers. “I lived a ten-year hell with Lucien. He was a master at psychological warfare, and kept me a virtual prisoner in my own marriage.”

Tullis held his hand up as if to ward off a magical attack. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to upset you—”

“He was the cruelest man alive,” she continued, as if Tullis hadn’t spoken. “He killed my cat, you know. Her name was Tamara, and she was the only thing in that house that mattered to me. But he was angry one day, and he kicked my poor baby across the room. What kind of man does that? The kind of man who enjoyed traveling the world and shooting exotic animals as if they were his personal playthings, that’s who. And while I bawled over her broken little body, he just laughed at me.

“But even then I didn’t have the strength to walk out. Not until the next day, when my sister Jeannie died in a car accident. She’d been the only family I had left, and I lost it. I couldn’t take his insanity any longer. I had to live for myself.”

She sagged back in her chair, out of energy and on the verge of tears. She never spoke of those final days with Lucien—of him brutally killing Tamara and of Jeannie’s death—and certainly not to strangers. For Tullis’ part, he’d sat stone-still and silent, respectfully letting her say what she felt needed to be said.

“I’m very sorry, Mrs. Trafton,” he finally said, quiet and reserved. “I know the man Lucien Kane was. My sympathies are honestly with you.”
She heaved a shuddering sigh and waved her hand. “Forget it. So what horrible thing has he managed to do to me from beyond the grave? What part will I play in Lucien achieving immortality?”

Tullis slid his glasses off and set them down atop the filed and papers and looked meaningfully at her. “Mr. Kane has left you your family home.”
And Jake felt her trembling hand seize like an oil-drained motor, felt it go cold. He felt his heart do the same. It was what she had hoped for, and what she was sure the man would never give her.

“My family home?” she echoed, weak and half-whispered. “On Queen’s Mountain? In Tarrington?” When Tullis nodded, she sagged in her chair, exhaling in rush. “I signed it over to him when we’d married. I was young and stupid, and my parents had just died. He taunted me with it, used it as leverage when I left him, but I—I walked away and didn’t look back. But you’re saying that, in death, he’s done the right thing?”

“Perhaps,” Tullis said, “but there are conditions.”

Julia let out half a laugh. “I’d expect nothing less.”

“They’re quite straightforward,” Tullis said, his chiseled old face furrowing. “Tomorrow, you must spend the night in the house. You must be inside the house from sunset until sunrise and must not leave.”

“What the hell kind of condition is that?” Jake said, sitting up in his chair and glaring at the attorney.

“Jake, please,” Julia said. “What else, Mr. Tullis?”

Tullis coughed nervously and shuffled through his papers. He produced a rectangular orange card, blank on both sides. “Fifty-two objects in the house have been tagged with these. They must remain in their locations during your stay. They can’t be moved, covered, or otherwise tampered with in any way.”

“What are the fifty-two items?” Julia asked.

“I’m instructed not to reveal that information. But I’ve seen them, and they’re not dangerous or anything like that.”

“But she’s not going to like them, is she?” Jake said through clenched teeth.

Tullis loosened his tie. “No, I don’t suppose she will. But if she stays from sunup to sunrise in the master bedroom, the property is hers.”
“How will you know I’ve done it?” Julia asked.

“Webcams have been installed in several locations inside and outside the house, and I’ll review the videos the next day.”

“This is goddamned ridiculous!” Jake said, coming out of his chair and to his feet, his heart pounding angrily against his ribs. “Julia, you don’t need to do any of this.”

“You’re correct, Mr. Trafton,” Tullis said. “But if she doesn’t, the house isn’t hers.”

#

Julia hadn’t returned to Maine since Jeannie had died and she’d left Kane, but she still knew her way around. From Bangor, it was only a half-hour drive, across the Penobscot River and winding through the back roads beyond Brewer, before they were headed up the narrow Queen’s Mountain Road. It was bordered on either side by walls of evergreens and birches, oaks and elms, before giving way to mountainside homes as Queen’s Mountain rose above rural Tarrington like a little Olympus.

There were a few scattered houses on the way up—mostly nineteenth-century farmsteads that had housed the same families for generations—but at the very top was the jewel in the Queen’s crown. The former Tidwell family home stood at the peak, a huge New England farmhouse that looked to have been made for a family of fifteen, elegant and regal and built the way nobody built them anymore, with slate shingles on its sprawling roof and wide pine clapboards on its exterior walls. A narrow breezeway stretched from the far end of the long, boxy structure, connecting the house to a massive red barn. The barn sported a giant gambrel roof that was topped with cedar shakes.

“That’s impressive,” Jake said.

“He maintained it well,” Julia said, excitement in her voice. “It’s just like I remember.”

The road morphed into the driveway, which became a sweeping cul-de-sac. Julia She pulled the rental Toyota into the yard and was hardly stopped before she threw it into park and leaped out. Jake followed and joined her as she stopped before the stairway to the sprawling porch, looking up in awe.

“It’s the only thing I ever regretted leaving behind,” she said. “I can’t believe it will mine again.”

He put an arm around her shoulders and squeezed. “It’s the least the bastard could do.”

“That’s for sure.”

“I wish I could have given you more,” he said, wistful and weak.

She turned to him, smiling. “You’ve given me a thousand things Lucien Kane never could have—starting with a life of happiness.”

“And a carpenter’s salary. You deserved better.”

“I never regretted giving up his millions for your love,” she said, and she leaned in and kissed him. “Jeannie and Tamara were the only things that kept me hanging on with him. When he killed poor Tamara, I didn’t think I’d make it. But when Jeannie died—I knew that had to be it. She’d been more than a sister to me. She was my best friend in the world. I was sure I couldn’t survive without her, on my own, and then I met you. You’ve been the best friend Jeannie used to be, and that’s worth more to me than anything. But you don’t have to rescue me from every evil in my life.”

He smiled. “I just want to protect you and keep you happy. And I don’t know how to do that now, spending the night here at that man’s insane behest.”

“I’m sure you won’t have to. And whether we stay here depends on what these fifty-two items are. I expect nothing less than the bizarre things Lucien’s twisted mind would dream up.”

The suspense was killing Jake, but he tried to act nonchalant when he said, “Well, let’s go find out.”

They climbed the porch steps, Julia fumbling for the single key on an oversized ring with a big green tag. Jake pulled open the storm door as a pleasant breeze soared over the mountaintop and through his hair. He could envision living up here.

Her hand shook as she unlocked the door and pushed it open. The inside held the musty smell of a house that hadn’t been lived in for years. But as they entered the expansive kitchen and Julia flicked the light on, Jake could tell the place had been kept clean and heated. Whatever else he’d done, Kane had taken care of it.

“It’s just like I remember,” she said again.

“There’s a duck here,” Jake said, pointing, and she turned to look.

It was in the corner, atop a small table. It was stuffed and mounted, done so expertly and realistically that it looked alive. It was mostly white and brown, with a green head and neck and a bright yellow bill. It was posed as if floating on water, its wings pulled slightly back and up, as if preparing to take flight.

“A mallard,” Jake clarified. “Who keeps a stuffed duck in the kitchen?”

But she was staring, glassy-eyed, at the duck, her face pale and her jaw trembling. Jake touched her arm. “Are you okay?”

She shook her head, a nervous smile on her lips. “He was evil, all right. Jeannie loved ducks. She had stuffed-animal ducks, ducks on her clothing, toy ducks, duck trinkets. She had real ducks when we were kids. Loved Donald Duck and Daffy Duck. And she especially loved mallards.”

Jake stared, trying to figure it out, and then he realized. On the front of the ornate wooden pedestal on which the mallard was mounted was a small brass plate. He moved closer, squinted, and read the engraving: FOR JEANNIE.

“Oh, my,” Jake said. He didn’t know what else to say.

“I’d expect nothing less from a cruel man who enjoyed traveling around the world shooting helpless animals,” Julia said. “He loved to hunt them and stuff them, and he knew I hated everything about his creepy dead animals.” She shook her head in disgust and pointed at the duck. “Is that an orange tag?”

Jake moved in to inspect the duck. Sure enough, on the back side of the pedestal was one of the orange tags Tullis had shown them. This one wasn’t blank.

“Number fifteen,” he said. “Of fifty-two, I suppose.”

Julia headed to a wide doorway, beyond which was a big living room. He followed her in as she turned on the light, and suddenly she yelped and staggered backward and into Jake. “What is it?” he hollered.

“Oh, for Christ’s sake!” she cried out, pointing.

There were a black bear and a mountain lion in the living room. Jake recoiled in surprise, backing into the door jamb, but he realized what they were. The animals were stuffed like the duck, posed on hefty wooden pedestals in opposite corners of the room. The black bear was up on two legs, in mid-stride, clawed paws raised menacingly, his gaping maw a ferocious snarl. The mountain lion was on all fours, posed as if stalking its prey, its head low to the ground, an angry, sharp-toothed snarl on its furry face. The room was all teeth and claws, and the animals unsettled Jake like nothing ever had.

“You weren’t kidding about his hobby,” Jake said.

“He had this world-famous taxidermist he’d fly in from Arizona whenever he had some great new kill,” she said. “I refused to stay in our house on Cape Cod with them, so he kept them at the camp house on Moosehead Lake here in Maine.”

She turned to him, breathing a sigh of relief. “So this is how he’s reaching out from the grave. If I want the house, I have to spend the night with fifty-two dead animals I can’t bear to be around.”

Jake ventured over to the rearing bear and inspected it. Sure enough, on the back side of the pedestal was an orange tag: number thirty-one. “I don’t mean to be insensitive, honey,” he said, “but one night with a bunch of dead animals isn’t so bad.”

She sighed and nodded. “You’re right. He could have specified that I had to live in the house for the rest of my life with these things, but he didn’t. It really is just one creepy night, and the reward is my family home. The Tidwells settled in Maine just after the Revolution, and were in this house since before the Civil War. It’s hard to ignore that.”

“You ignored it when you let him have the place,” Jake said, choosing his tone carefully. “You left him and never looked back.”

He could see the pain in her face. “He was a perfect gentleman when I married him, and I was young and blinded by his millions. But soon he let his cruelty show, and it worsened with every passing day until he was so sadistic and terrible that he could kick a helpless cat to death. And when Jeannie died that next day, there was no sorrow for my loss. He didn’t come to her funeral, and he told me I couldn’t bring the urn with her ashes into our house. Even my family home wasn’t worth that.”

Jake went wrapped his arms around her. “I don’t know how to make this better for you. Just tell me what I can do.”

Her upturned, heart-shaped face, framed by her straight auburn hair, smiled ruefully at him. “You’re too sweet, Jake. And I know this is difficult for you. After eighteen years of handling one of Lucien’s messes—me—this is the last thing you need to deal with.”

He smiled back. “You’re no mess, darling. You’re stronger than what that man did to you. Do what you must, claim your family homestead, and move on with no more fear of him. He’ll find no immortality with you—just his bones turning to dust. Now let’s tour this place, and see what other creepy surprises await us.”
She hugged him back. “Are you doing okay? Your heart, I mean. You got worked up back in Tullis’ office.”

“I’m fine. Just got a little uptight.”

“Maybe you should take a nitro pill.”

“Maybe you should show me the rest of the house.”

They toured it together, and with each room it became obvious that the place was a veritable zoo. Every room displayed at least one stuffed-and-mounted animal. Some were small: a gray squirrel on its hind legs, head tilted as if listening for an approaching car; a raccoon, sniffing about the ground; even a skunk, black-and-white tail fluffed up in the air as if inviting a foolish adversary. Others were larger: a wolf, its upturned nose testing the air for its prey; a wild boar, dark and mean with menacing tusks; and a fourteen-foot python, fat and coiled around a wooden post in the corner of one bedroom.

The second floor had eight bedrooms, and each was a cage for various animals. There was a zebra in one; a big stuffed macaw, wings extended, appeared to be lighting on its back. A crocodile, toothy maw open as if attacking, seemed to be coming out of invisible waters behind the striped animal, sneaking up on its prey.

There was a kangaroo in one room, a baby joey peeking out of its pouch. Both were labeled with orange tags. Jake wondered further about the sanity of a man who could slaughter a kangaroo jill and her baby, and then display them like that.

One room was replete just with heads: a rhino, a moose, a giraffe, and several more. And in all the rooms, there were smaller stuffed animals: birds, a turtle, a beaver, several monster fish, a shark, a wolverine, a Tasmanian devil. Every door opened to another twisted menagerie.

At the end of the long hall on the second floor was a door. “The master bedroom,” Julia said.

Jake went for it, opened it, and waited like a gentleman for his wife to enter. He followed her in, and stopped short when he realized she’d done so, almost bumping into her.

He didn’t have to ask her what was wrong, because he saw it just then.

The room was huge, probably twenty-five feet long and fifteen wide. Trios of big windows lined the short walls, facing east and west. A framed photo of Julia’s parents, taken in the 1970s judging by the clothing styles, hung on the wall near the door; another framed photo, this an external black-and-white shot of the farmhouse from probably a hundred years before, hung on the opposite wall. There was a dark-stained pine four-post bed on the west end of the room that looked as if it had been handmade a hundred years before. Matching nightstands and dressers flanked the sides, and double folding doors on the wall opposite the door concealed a walk-in closet. But it was the thing displayed on the pedestal at the east end that nearly stopped Jake’s heart.

He’d never even seen a photo of Lucien Kane, but there was no doubting who it had to be. The man was stuffed and mounted like all the other creatures in the house, bedecked in a silver-gray Armani suit and shoes liked polished obsidian. His weight was back on his right foot, his left somewhat out before him, and his left hand was on his hip. His right hand rested on the silver handle of an ebony cane.

And Kane’s face seemed to glow with confidence. His dark eyes, topped by a slightly furrowed brow, glimmered like deep-brown marbles in the sunlight. His angular old face looked chiseled from a block of white marble, and his nostrils were flared and his thin-lipped mouth was turned barely up at its corners. A shock of gray-white hair capped his visage, the only wild and unkempt thing about the man.

Jake realized his mouth was hanging open, and knew his wife had to be ready to pass out. He grabbed for her shoulders as if to hold her up—maybe to hold himself up.

She was trembling beneath his grip, but saw her head shake quickly back and forth. “It can’t be real. Nobody can do that legally, can they?” She wavered beneath him, then spun about. Her face was ashen, her eyes wide, and she pushed past him into the hallway. “You have to check, Jake.”

He regarded the bizarre statue of the dead man. There was no way the old bastard had had himself stuffed and mounted—that was just ridiculous. Jake started forward, his legs shaking like the tines of a tuning fork. Every step was a risk of toppling over. He nearly staggered across the room, and as he moved, he was sure the statue’s eyes were following him.

All too quickly, he stood face to face with the man. Or more like face to chest, as the statue was up on the pedestal. He looked up into those dark eyes, and could tell right away they were glass, just like the other animals in the house. But the skin seemed so real.

His heart pounded, slow but terribly heavy, like an underwater sledgehammer. He focused on breathing steadily, trying to ignore the sound of blood rushing in his ears, and looked down at Kane’s hand, resting on the silver top of his elegant cane. Along with the skin, the fingernails looked real: neatly trimmed and filed, with visible cuticles. The detail about the knuckles was amazing, with myriad tiny wrinkles and individual hairs sprinkled here and there. And on the back of the hand was a three-inch-long scar. It looked terribly real.

“Is it him?” Julia’s warbling voice came from out in the hall.

Jake reached out and touched the back of the hand. The skin was cold and waxy, giving slightly under the pressure. He yanked his hand back and watched as the slight depression undid itself, like memory foam regaining its shape.

He looked up in sickened horror. There was no doubt that the dead body of Lucien Kane was on display in his wife’s family home. And she had to sleep in that room tonight.

“Jake, answer me!” she cried.

“Go downstairs,” he said to her, backing away from the macabre scene, ignoring the twinge he felt in his chest. “Go now.”

#

They hurried out onto the big porch, and Julia gasped maniacally at the fresh air as if she’d escaped suffocation. She staggered forward, leaning on the wooden railing and practically hyperventilating. Jake leaned against the outer wall of the house, trying to calm his own nerves, which sizzled like live wires.

“That bastard!” Julia hissed amidst sobs. “Even in death he can’t let go—he still has to torture me!”

She broke down, head hanging, bent over and looking like a hunchback, her shoulders hitching and jerking as she cried. Jake stumbled across the porch, reaching for her, and she spun about and dived into his arms, bawling like a child. He held her in arms of steel, practically holding her entire weight up as she got it out of her system. It took several minutes, her wails echoing out from the mountaintop homestead like radio waves broadcasting across Tarrington and Maine and the world.

She finally quieted, disentangling herself from his embrace and digging for a handkerchief in her purse. When she was done drying her eyes and tidying her makeup, she had managed to make herself look beautiful and elegant again, a picture of self-control—qualities that had enabled her to survive her decade-long ordeal with Lucien Kane.

“I can only imagine the pleasure he got,” she said, shaking her head. “I can picture him in his office, atop his Boston skyscraper, laughing as he planned it all out.”

She turned away, looking back out over Tarrington. “That bastard,” she said. “That fucking bastard.”

Jake’s eyes bulged, but he held his tongue. Nearly two decades with her, and he’d never heard her use that word before. Hell, he’d never heard her use “bastard,” either. “Honey, let’s go,” he said in a gentle voice. “We’ll go back to California and forget about everything.”

She spun back to him, eyes wide, her face suddenly burning with a fire he’d never seen before. “I didn’t come all the way back here just to run away. I’m not going to turn down the chance to reclaim my family home. And I’m certainly not going to let that bastard beat me again.”

She spun on her heel and stomped down the stairs, heading for the car. “We’re going back to our hotel. Tomorrow, we’re spending the night here.”
“You can’t be serious!” Jake cried, hustling down the steps behind her. “That’s your dead ex-husband up there! You can’t say you mean to stay in this house, sleeping in that bedroom, with his body on display!”

He was hot on her heels, and when she hit the brakes and whirled about, he almost bowled her over. “I certainly am!” she cried. “This is about more than my pride—it’s about the pride of generations of my family! I dishonored that by letting him have the house, and not fighting for it when I ran away like a scared little girl. I’m done running! I’ll get this house back, and this land, and I’ll spit in Lucien’s dead face when I do, before I haul him outside and burn him in the biggest bonfire Queen’s Mountain has ever seen!” ...

*   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *  

But it won't be that easy. Julia and Jake have no idea what the night has in store for them...

To read the whole story, order Nemonymous 10: Null Immortalis.
 

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