Jenny Pox (The Paranormals, Book 1) by JL Bryan

Author:JL Bryan
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3, mobi
Tags: urban fantasy, plague, witchcraft, urban dark fantasy, supernatural romance, horror paranormal, horror fiction, horror romance, supernatural suspense thriller, supernatural urban fantasy, horror dark fantasy, black death
Publisher: JL Bryan

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

The day after the party, Seth’s father called him into the office, a spacious room located at the back of the first floor. Seth had never liked the office. It was well-lighted, but by small rectangular windows near the ceiling, giving the lower part of the room a stuffy, shadowy feel. As a boy, Seth had been frightened of the collected trophies of past generations: the lion head mounted above the fireplace, the stuffed dead falcon perched on a lacquered limb jutting out from the wall, the big buffalo-hide rug, and the row of heads that looked down on you from the wall as you sat on the visitor side of the desk: jackal, hyena, jaguar, grizzly bear, snow leopard, a big black wolf that always reminded Seth of the Three Little Pigs. Great-grandfather had been quite the skilled hunter, if by “skilled” you meant “able to hire a gang of men with high-powered rifles.”

Below the heads were a row of old photographs like the one in the back stairwell, depicting Seth’s grandfathers going back several generations, the same men immortalized in oil around the front stairs. He didn’t know what scared him more as a boy, the dead animals or the stern looks of his ancestors bearing down on him and casting their judgment from beyond the grave.

The rest of the room was dark wood paneling, like too much of the house. One entire wall was taken up by rows of pigeonholes and wooden file cabinets. In the back corner sat a liquor cabinet that looked like it came from an Old West saloon, every bit of it handmade, with no two pieces exactly alike: the rough-hewn drawers and shelves, the iron handles, the thick cloudy glass doors in front of the bottles. Seth’s father stood there now, pouring amber whiskey from a bottle with a faded, illegible label into two 19th-century drinking glasses that had a primitive, not-quite-circular look.

“Did you still want to talk?” Seth asked.

“Close the door and have a seat,” his father said. Seth took one of the chairs, which had wide arms and a hard back, upholstered in leather pinned by brass tacks. The ancient material creaked under Seth, and it smelled like drunk old men.

Seth’s father eased into a taller chair across the big black slab of the desk, which was carved entirely from petrified wood. A blue iMac sat on top of the desk, as incongruous in the office as a Roomba sucking up bone fragments and rock chips on a Neanderthal cave floor. They had a satellite on the roof for high-speed internet, since the TV and phone companies still didn’t offer that in Fallen Oak.

His father placed a glass of the old whiskey, neat, in front of Seth. Then he raised his own glass.

“To another year gone,” he said.

Seth clinked his glass against his father’s, and drank a sip. It was smooth and smoky on the way down. In his belly, it turned into a fire that burned up his esophagus and into his brain.

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