Ghost of Jealousy (Claws Clause Book 4) by Jessica Lynch

Author:Jessica Lynch [Lynch, Jessica]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2021-03-15T16:00:00+00:00

15

September 1899

Dodge remembered everything. Ever since he was a boy, his head was stuffed with everything he saw, everything he heard, everything he read.

In another world, in another life, he might’ve been able to use that skill to make something of himself. Growing up in the slums of Manhattan, it was more a parlor trick than anything else; his sleight of hand was a lot more helpful than being able to remember what color feather the burlesque girls teased with at O'Flaherty's one specific night.

If he closed his eyes, he could still see his mother, back bent over the washboard as she scrubbed. He could count the gashes made by a former bunkmate’s penknife in the top bunk at the lodging house. It had been a clear blue sky—a rarity in the Bowery—the first day he met Mary Catherine, he remembered.

She’d worn a blue ribbon in her blonde curls that day, and Dodge had thought it matched the sky as well as her eyes. From then on, whenever he saw that shade of blue, he only ever thought of his Mary Catherine.

He remembered it all.

He remembered everything—except for dying.

The pistol flashed. A single, solitary spark in the not-too-far distance, the whistle of the bullet almost entirely drowned out by the loud crack that split the night’s sky.

His last thought—shit, was that thunder?—ran through his head because, even as he faced down the barrel of Johnny Baxter’s pistol, he couldn’t believe what was really happening. That Mary Catherine, after all these years… after all he had done for her… that the little girl he loved long after she became a woman he could never have… that she’d stepped back so that Johnny could get a better shot.

The thunder cracked, only it wasn’t thunder, and Dodge crumpled.

He didn’t know what happened after that. He doubted he ever would. One moment, his chest was on fire, his heart shattering, his brain refusing to accept what was happening to him.

The next?

Dodge was back in the alleyway, watching as Johnny rolled up his sleeves. His hands were empty. The pistol? Gone. The lantern, too, since it seemed as if the pair wanted to use the dark to hide. Surprisingly, though, Dodge could still see pretty clearly—and that should have been his first sign that something was really, really wrong.

What the hell was going on?

Had Johnny missed? Was it all just some sick joke? Dodge started toward Johnny, desperate to ring the bastard’s neck for even playing around like that.

In quick succession, two very important things occurred to Dodge. The first? Despite his intent to cross the alley and get to Johnny, he’d barely moved. Something—some wild sense of self-preservation—warned Dodge against looking down to see what was holding him back, but he did anyway.

And that’s when he caught on to number two.

Because when Dodge looked down at his legs, he got the shock of his life—or, as it turned out, afterlife. ‘Cause not only did he not see any feet beneath him, but he came face-to-face with the same one he saw in the cracked mirror hanging in Mrs.

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