Shade City (14 page)
Authors: Domino Finn
Strange meetings occurred. Their new partners did not take kindly to Viola's appearance. She was not, it turned out, in their designs, but Alexander stubbornly refused to accept any outcome that abandoned his daughter and impressed his fellow shades with his conviction. In the end, they begrudged him the vice, and the father, for his part, kept Viola away from their proceedings.
All did not go well. Some on the Dead Side were disappointed in Ambrose. He was unpracticed and unable to cling to the world of the living. Desperate for success, he redoubled his efforts.
As Alexander attended to business, Viola dreamed of her old world and soon found that she could inhabit the familiar workings of her father's timepiece. Originally a secret, the revelation of this news had excited her father and his cohorts. As Viola watched the world of the living through Fingal's watch, her father was given a unique conduit between both worlds.
So it was that, after more than a decade on the Dead Side, Alexander Ambrose overcame the obstacles needed to possess Fingal McAllister, an overworked family man with a wife, a little girl named Catriona, and a newborn son, Finlay.
Alexander, now in possession of a new life, began instructing his daughter to inhabit Catriona. These attempts met with initial success, but Viola, not gifted with the growing talents of her father, always struggled to hold herself inside her host. Catriona was strong-willed and a pure soul and fought for her independence. Worse yet, the agitation caused to the family by these events shone a light on the suspicious circumstances, and the mortician's wife became dangerously interested. Alexander Ambrose, unknown to his innocent daughter, staged her death to appear like an accident.
Alexander's new life did not go as he had hoped. In return for his reincarnation, he owed a great portion of his wealth to his benefactors, his associates from the Royal Ruby Millinery. Those in positions of power dubbed themselves the Royals, a select few with monstrous abilities but subtle designs. Fingal's business proved useful for promoting their illicit empire. Bodies could be hidden. Grieving families could be assessed. Alexander's work was immensely needed. His company expanded, but he found that ever more of his time and his efforts went to the cause and very little benefitted him. His work garnered little respect. His ascendancy to the Royals never happened. Alexander discovered that, in freeing himself from the shackles of his previous life, he had only entered the service of another.
Leading to more distress was his inability to cater to Viola's needs. He pushed her to join him amongst the living but had only succeeded in driving Catriona mad. He had little time for his real daughter, much less Fingal and Catriona. After twenty years of hardship, something needed to change.
Alexander Ambrose knew he had indebted one lifetime to Royal Ruby. Perhaps it had been nigh time to see that contract completed. He gave his pocket watch to his son, a new man, and after some grooming and preparation, Alexander Ambrose found he could do the impossible: he bound himself to another living person.
Powerful shades had jumped bodies before. At least, in a more opportunistic fashion. But Ambrose used the same trick that had brought him to the living in the first place. Viola's trick. The pocket watch once again served him and strengthened his grip on the living. Finlay was Alexander's new host. The old Fingal, devoid of any will left within, quickly lost himself and passed away soon after.
The Royals had created a new flagship company, Blush Bonnet Clothiers. As his final act of duty and per the terms set, the totality of Fingal McAllister's empire went to the new venture. Alexander Ambrose was left behind by the Royals. Seen as weak. As an outsider. But at long last, he was free.
Unbeknownst to Blush Bonnet, Alexander had continued on in the world of the living. Binding to hosts is extremely difficult and often happenstance. The ability to bind to others, well, that is nearly unheard of. Alexander was never meant to have brought Viola into the fray and her peculiar bond with the physical pocket watch had allowed her father to learn more about possession than most men. So Alexander lived a secret life, but a free one, as Finlay. The line continued. And the Royals had no cause for suspicion.
The new life was rife with challenges. Catriona was a handful and was eventually committed to an institution. Financial wealth proved more difficult than Alexander had supposed. To make ends meet, he was forced into a life of crime. Viola Ambrose contented herself with remaining on the Dead Side and only communicated with her father through the pocket watch. It was an empty life for both of them. And then Finlay went to prison.
Not wanting to be subjected to the rigors of confinement, Alexander Ambrose abandoned his host to the fate he had dealt him. Again amongst the dead, he reconnected with his ill-tempered daughter, but the bleak world crushed his soul. He had ambitions to once again leave that place but his conduit, Viola's pocket watch, was locked with the prisoner's possessions and isolated. Without it, his foothold was missing. So Alexander Ambrose, never content to allow his fate to be dictated to him, practiced his talents.
Shades don't operate on tangible quantities. The machinations of the world are ill-defined. To skirt the impossible, one needs only the ambition of man. And Alexander Ambrose was nothing if not ambitious. After years of study, he discovered he could possess bodies other than the one he was bound to. It was erratic. Only sustainable for short periods of time. But it allowed him to practice his craft in secret. Slowly, the man once thought incompetent outgrew his reputation.
So it was that there were two parts of the same man: Finlay McAllister, serving an interminable sentence but living his own life again, acting to better himself and working towards rehabilitation, and Alexander Ambrose, jumping into the bodies of his gangster acquaintances and setting up his fortune.
Viola, at a time when she had the opportunity to be closest to her father, found herself ever the afterthought.
Finlay McAllister, having been a fine example of a prisoner and serving fifteen years, had his sentence commuted and was released. He recovered his pocket watch, the gift from his father, and exited the institution. He was prepared for a new life. He never realized how truly his wish would be granted.
Ambrose, seeing the host he was bound to set free and reunited with the conduit that was his stepping stone, reclaimed his place within the man. Finlay benefitted from Alexander's elaborately executed crimes, which he had committed while possessing his gangster puppets. He had embezzled hundreds of thousands of dollars from Blush Bonnet in an attempt to have his fortune repaid to him. Upon his release, he had immediate access to a store of savings.
He was affluent but he was old, the best years of Finlay's life having been wasted in a cell. With all his knowledge and all his power, Alexander was determined to keep everything he had built. He quickly established himself as legitimate, found a wife, and had a son as a successor, whom he named Alexander. He did think of his daughter, Viola, but his wife died in childbirth. Still, he remarried to try for a daughter, but his second wife proved barren. Finlay grew older, gave in to the excesses of his lifestyle in the seventies and eighties, and had no more kids.
It was at this time that Viola Ambrose first considered that her father was a bad man. Not an evil man, or a dastardly one (since she had known little of Alexander's darkest dealings), but at the very least, an absent father. Viola realized, on her own and without guidance, that her place wasn't among the living. Finlay McAllister carried the watch less and less over the years, and this suited Viola well.
It wasn't until 1996, when Alexander and Livia McAllister gave birth to Aster, that Ambrose began to take notice of his family again. In particular, seeing the little girl grow up before his eyes, he remembered the pact he had made with Viola and how they would be together. Alexander found times to return to the Dead Side, when he could, to rekindle their relationship, but it was hard going. The poor girl was broken in many ways. She had never had the opportunity for a normal life. Even in death, she was largely on her own and had to make sense of circumstances by herself. But Alexander was her father, and she loved and needed him. He began plans to bring them together again.
At seventy-eight, in 2004, Finlay's health suffered a turn for the worse and he died unexpectedly. Alexander was forced to possess Finlay's son rather suddenly and his wife, Livia, took notice of the change. Whereas once they were a perfect couple in love, she found herself trapped with an entitled stranger. She was a strong woman but it drove her to the edge, and she sought council from Catriona.
Over the years, Alexander convinced Viola to once again take up residence with the living and possess Aster. He promised her love and attention. The perfect family, reunited once again. He gifted the girl the pocket watch. He claimed not to need it anymore, and her use of it might avoid the incidents that plagued Catriona. Viola begrudgingly obeyed but remained distant. Even with the timepiece, she continued to struggle with control. She didn't feel fit for her new life. Aster McAllister drew inward, became depressed, and began cutting herself.
Livia's marriage was quickly failing and her senses continually tested. Seeing her daughter become dissociated over the years finally broke her. In 2008, believing to catch her husband in proof that he was possessed by a demon, she struck him on the back of the head with an iron. Alexander Ambrose was caught off-guard and succumbed to the attack. He was beaten to within an inch of his life as he lay helpless on the floor.
Viola, who had always sulked about quietly, saw the entire act firsthand. She saw another life destroyed. She blamed herself for failing her father. She blamed herself for failing the McAllisters. But most of all she blamed her father for meddling with the living.
As the little girl sobbed, Livia turned to her and said that what was happening wasn't tragedy but salvation. They were prisoners of demons and would be free in Heaven. When her mother came after her with the iron, Aster McAllister locked herself in the linen closet.
If possessing bodies is not a clean experience, then vacating them is downright filthy. It is possible, of course, for a shade to exit the living, but it isn't an immediate process. The binding is tenuous, unpredictable, and mysterious.
All that said, as Livia banged on the closet door, hitting wood with metal, Viola had sufficient time to escape to the cold comforts of the St. Angelo Hotel. Viola Ambrose was a child, powerless to save herself against the madness of the mother who meant to destroy her. It would have been normal, even expected, for her to have fled the brutality that descended upon Aster.
But Viola, though only a girl of twelve, couldn't bear the thought of her counterpart being slain by a mother she loved. Had she left her host, Aster McAllister would have opened the closet door and experienced firsthand the cruel smiting by her own flesh and blood.
When she had first died, her father Alexander had shown her mercy by doing it peacefully with gas. Now, unable to look after the fate of his daughter, this death would involve no such kindness.
Viola Ambrose did not think herself brave when the door splintered and broke open. Nor when she stood firm as the iron fractured her skull. She simply closed her eyes and knew that the nightmare would be over soon.
On the Dead Side, Viola and Alexander argued for a long while. Everything had been set up perfectly, but her refusal to accept her new life had raised Livia's suspicions and ruined the plan. Alexander was just doing what anybody would have done in similar circumstances. People didn't matter, only they did. There weren't such things as good and evil. He would find a way back with or without her.
In the end, their split was mutual. Alexander no longer needed his daughter to return to the living, and Viola didn't get proper parenting whether she followed him or not. Aster's death sat at her feet and she wouldn't add another, no matter the cost to herself.
Her father stormed away in the heat of passion, unsure how to proceed in a great many matters. Whether this was a blessing or a curse, Alexander McAllister had survived in a coma. This left Ambrose a stronger link in the world than any other could provide, albeit through a host that was comatose. Alexander once again resumed inhabiting other bodies temporarily for his own means. After time and retrospection, he also reconsidered his feelings for his daughter and looked for her. Surprisingly, she was absent.
The little girl had decided to act on her own for the first time in her life. Instead of being the victim of abandonment yet again, it was she who had left her father. She took up private residence in the St. Angelo Hotel, a spot only she was familiar with, and kept her head down. She clung to the pocket watch, if only to keep it from her father. Viola Ambrose had no more family, living or dead, and she was reborn as her favorite color, Violet.
Along the course of the living, a forgotten Hamilton pocket watch found its way to a little antique shop in Burbank...
* * *
My beleaguered psyche was devastated by the time Alexander Ambrose finished his account. I could only muster the strength to face the floor.
Here was a man, standing before me, guilty of crimes of supreme evil. He was a man that had stopped at nothing for his own selfish gain and likely had greater designs ahead. It seemed that this man, above all, deserved the brunt of my vengeful attention.
But the quiet sobbing of a little girl tugged at me harder than the devil ever could.
I had always thought of Violet as my sidekick. My little sister even. Now it was hard to get past the fact that she had betrayed me. She was the very incarnation of what I had been fighting against, under my nose the entire time.
Other books
Natural Suspect (2001) by Margolin, Phillip
Criss Cross by Lynne Rae Perkins
The Jewolic by Ritch Gaiti
Sussex Drive: A Novel by Linda Svendsen
Dark Soul Vol. 3 by Voinov, Aleksandr
A Darker Place by Jack Higgins
Summer Star (The Blue Phoenix Series Book 1.5) by Lisa Swallow
He Calls Her Jasmine by Ann Jacobs
Dead and Buried by Anne Cassidy
Emily Post's Great Get-Togethers by Anna Post