The Cloak's Shadow

by Elle Beauregard

  "Yes, here," she said, cracking the book open and flipping through just a few pages before she found what she wanted. "This will tell you how to summon him. There are things you have to do." She looked up at him. "Do you have salt?"

  Random much? "Yeah, of course."

  "Good. Use the salt to keep you safe while you summon him. And you have to offer the chicken as a sacrifice." She peered up at him again. "Do you know how to kill a chicken?"

  His non-response consisted only of eyebrows raised with a healthy dose of are-you-out-of-your-mind?

  Oh, wait. She sort of was.

  "First, you put it between your knees—"

  "Okay, I'm good." Callum cut her off before she could go on. "Thanks, though."

  He took the book from her and placed it on top of the others that were in his arms before setting the short stack at the foot of the bed.

  Her expression was all urgency and concern when he turned to her again.

  "But you have to make a sacrifice," she insisted. "That's how you ask Legba for help—to keep yourself safe."

  "I'm fine," he assured her again. "Really, I'm good. But what about keeping someone else safe? You got anything in your books about that?"

  His mom stepped back, eyes narrowed. "You can ask Legba to protect another."

  Callum sighed. "Any ideas that don't involve slaughtering innocent fowl?"

  His mother just stood, staring at him for a moment or two before speaking. "Is it a girl?"

  Another sigh, more discomfort than exasperation fueling it this time, though—so at least there was that. "Yeah, it's a girl."

  "You have to leave her."

  Callum's stomach fell to his feet. "What?"

  "To keep her safe," Miriam said like it was obvious. "You can't be with her. Only alone is safe."

  A flash spark of anger lit in his gut. "Great," he said, voice flat. "Alone and celibate. That sounds just swell. Thanks for the help."

  Why had he come here? Had he really thought she'd be able to help him? "Look, it was good seeing you—"

  "You can't go," she said urgently.

  Like hell I can't, he thought. "I gotta go to work," he said aloud as he turned for the door. "But I'll visit again soon—"

  "I kept you safe!" she yelled at his back. "Safe! Alone is safe!"

  Without warning, that tiny flare of anger in his gut lit into a roar.

  And everything with Zander, all the shit with the Shadow—it all made great kindling.

  He spun back on her. "Safe? Are you kidding me?" he barked. "You tattooed an eight-year-old kid! You didn't let me go to school! You drove us back and forth across the country a hundred times looking for answers that don't exist. Do you understand me? They. Don't. Exist. What part of that was keeping me safe?"

  All part of the slow burn deceit that had landed him in foster care.

  He barked a groan of frustration and turned for the door again, knowing that if he stayed, he'd say something really cruel.

  God, he was an idiot. He'd known she wouldn’t have answers, what was he doing here?

  "You can't leave me!"

  Callum spun around once more, a what-the-hell-are-you-talking-about ready and waiting on the tip of his tongue, but Miriam rushed toward him before he could get the words out.

  "You can't leave here!" she exclaimed, grabbing his wrist. "You have to stay. It's not safe!"

  Callum stepped back, but her grip was like iron, deceptively strong for the reed-thinness of her fingers digging into his skin. The anger roiling in his chest was replaced by a breathtaking fear when his gaze caught on hers—in her eyes was nothing but wild emotion running on instinct. There was nobody home behind those blue irises and black, dilated pupils.

  Using his free hand, he pried her fingers from his skin, mumbling something about needing to go to work.

  As soon as he got himself free, she screamed.

  ⫷⫸⫷⫸⫷⫸

  Callum's heart was pounding so hard he thought he might be sick as he jogged down the front steps. He'd texted Scott as soon as he had cell reception within the hospital, so it was no surprise that the red hatchback they shared was idling at the bottom of the stairs, ready and waiting to rescue him.

  He threw himself into the passenger seat, slammed the door shut behind him and reached for his seatbelt without giving Scott a second glance. "Let's go."

  There was a pause, but Scott ultimately got the car rolling. Callum knew from experience that the farther away they drove, the better he'd feel.

  In the backseat, Rhia made a gentle chuffing sound.

  Callum threw a look behind him. "Hey, girl. Were you a good dog while you waited?" But he couldn't make his voice shift into the sweeter, higher pitch he normally used with her.

  "Was it that bad?" Scott asked as he drove.

  Callum could only scoff a no-humor laugh and shake his head as he sat back in his seat. He wanted to peel the roof off the car, unzip his skin, and fly away. His body was twitchy, his mind a racing jumble of nothing—and everything.

  There were a few minutes of silence in the car before he said anything—giving voice to the very thing that was running in his head on a loop, "I'm gonna end up like her."

  Scott threw him a look of disgust mingled with disbelief. "Miriam? Fuck that, dude. You are not."

  Callum just shook his head and rubbed at the stubble on his jaw. "She said that only alone is safe. That she kept me safe."

  "Serious, Cal. Fuck. That." Scott's tone was so severe, Callum looked at him.

  Scott pulled up to a stoplight. When he turned to Callum, his expression was as focused and angry as Callum had ever seen in all the years he'd known him.

  "First, I don't buy that alone-is-safe shit," Scott spat. The tattoos on his forearms flexed as he adjusted his grip on the steering wheel like he wanted to strangle the thing. "She's crazy because she was alone, I promise you that. Hell, you've said so yourself. And second—shit, there's no good way to say it." He shook his head, glancing out the windshield before pinning Callum with a hard stare. "You ended up a ward of the state because of her brand of 'keeping you safe.' So fuck her. Why do you torture yourself like this?"

  It was an apt question—and one Callum didn't have a real answer to, other than to look at all the messed-up things in his life. His childhood: foster care and fist fights. And the more recent shit: Shadows and losing Zander—the first woman he felt like he’d actually connected with.

  In the cargo pocket of his shorts, his phone buzzed. On autopilot, he retrieved it and glanced at the screen.

  Only to be kicked in the chest.

  It was a text message from Zander.

  I wasn't thinking straight last night, her text read. Hang out again soon?

  As he stared at the words, another text from her came in, Nakedness not required. Plus a winky face.

  Callum swallowed down the bitter fuck-my-life sigh that tried to come up his throat. Instead, he brought his thumbs to the screen:

  Nah. You were right. We should focus on work. See ya around.

  His chest got so tight as he hit send he thought he might throw up.

  "Who's that?" Scott asked from the driver's seat.

  Callum shook his head and dropped his phone back into his pocket. "Wrong number."

  CHAPTER NINE

  "You want romaine or baby spinach?" Wren asked, standing from her crouch in front of the refrigerator with a head of romaine lettuce in one hand and a box of organic baby spinach in the other.

  "Romaine," Bridgette replied from where she was sitting on Wren's bed. "I like to use the spinach for juicing."

  "Noted." Wren returned the spinach to the fridge, then grabbed a bowl from the cabinet alongside it. Next she pulled a cutting board from another cabinet and laid it on the counter.

  For some reason, Zander popped into her head at that moment. She needed to shoot her a text and see how her date—sorry, working get-together—with that Callum guy had gone. Wren had texted just like she'd promised she would. She’d r
eceived a thumbs up emoji in response, but nothing since then. Which, all in all, seemed like a good sign. Possibly a very good sign.

  "What are you thinking about?" Bridgette asked as she pushed herself up from the bed and crossed the room. "Your expression got all suggestive-amused for a second there."

  Wren laughed. "I was wondering how Zander's date went."

  "Ah. You sure you weren't wondering about Zander?"

  Wren gave her girlfriend a don't-be-dumb look. "Zander is a lot of things, including a great friend. She is not queer, however. And even if she was, she's not my type."

  "Too healthy for you?"

  "Fuck. Don't talk like that," Wren scolded her. "And no, she's too serious. Life is heavy enough. Zander has a weight to her that I don't know if I could handle in a living-together, romantic kind of way."

  Bridgette seemed to consider that with understanding.

  Wren hated when Bridgette joked about being sick—but hadn't she just said she preferred to keep things light when she could? Ugh. Maybe she was a hypocrite.

  "You like things mellow because you've had a lot of not-mellow," Bridgette said after a moment.

  Wren supposed that was a good assessment. She smiled at Bridgette and leaned across the counter. "Which is why we make a good pair."

  Bridgette smirked like she was trying to play it begrudging but failed miserably when her smirk spread into a smile. She leaned and met Wren's lips with hers.

  One day, Wren thought, they'd have forever in front of them. And then all of this would be easier.

  "Go sit," Wren said as she pulled back. "The chicken is cooking and I'll have salad ready in a flash."

  She watched as Bridgette crossed back over to the bed and flopped down before pulling the blanket laying at the end up around her shoulders.

  She'd been cold a lot lately, Wren couldn't help but notice. But she had always tended toward the cool side. "You want me to turn on the heat?"

  “No,” Bridgette replied, her green eyes narrowed. "It was eighty degrees today."

  Wren smiled and turned back to attending to the salad. She'd turn the heat on when Bridge wasn't looking.

  "So, I had a dream last night," Bridgette said.

  "Oh?" Wren glanced up at her as she chopped lettuce leaves. When Bridgette started a conversation like that, she wasn't talking about a run-of-the-mill dream. She was talking about a visitation or a dream heavy with psychic messages.

  "Yeah, it was odd."

  And...? Wren stopped chopping and looked at her in earnest. Bridgette’s brows were furrowed, her eyes far away and unfocused.

  Wren put down the knife and crossed the room. She knew that face—something was eating at Bridge. She sat down beside her on the edge of the bed and ran a hand down her back. "Was it scary?" she asked when Bridgette looked at her like she only just realized she'd sat down beside her.

  Bridgette shook her head, but her eyes stayed worried. "No. Not scary. I just remembered the rest of it all of the sudden. That's all. It was... strange, but not scary."

  "You want me to read your tarot?" Wren asked. "Or I can make you some tea and read the leaves."

  But Bridge shook her head with a smile that reached her eyes. "No, I'm totally good. Remembering the rest of the dream actually made it less weird. No reading needed."

  Well that was something, at least, Wren thought. It wouldn't be fair to pry and try to make Bridge tell her what the dream was about. When your girlfriend was a walker—someone who existed both in the spirit and living worlds by degrees—you learned to let lie the things she didn't volunteer. Sometimes her dreams were clairvoyant, sometimes they were ordinary mental spring cleaning; and it was up to Bridgette to tell the difference. Which wasn't as easy as it sounded. So when she wanted to keep things to herself, Wren let her—while always making a point of being available and open if she wanted to talk. And sometimes she did. They'd had long, intense conversations about her dreams and experiences before. They'd also fought about them.

  Wren gave Bridgette's back another rub and kissed her temple, then her ear. Then she stood from the bed and headed back into the kitchen. "How old were you when you started having dream experiences?" she asked as she went back to salad prep.

  "Eleven," Bridgette replied. Her voice was lighter now. "It was right before I... well, it was the night before my heart stopped in Science class."

  "That was the episode that landed you with your ICD, right?" Wren recalled from previous conversations.

  "Yeah. That’s how I earned my sweet grandma street cred.”

  Wren chuckled and shook her head. She couldn’t imagine what the Emergency Department must have looked like the day they wheeled eleven-year-old Bridgette in on a gurney, newly shocked back to life but in persistent tachycardia. That’s not the kind of thing medical staff see every day, even in the ED.

  She scooped the lettuce leaves up and dropped them into the salad bowl. Then she started on the tomato. "I was eleven when I had my first witchy experience."

  "I know that," Bridge replied. When Wren glanced at her, she was smiling. "I still say it was your mom making sure you heard what your grandma was saying.”

  Wren shook her head. "I'm no medium. I don't have spiritual experiences—not really."

  "That's not what I'm saying," Bridgette replied. "I think your mom is who triggered your powers so you'd be able to hear it."

  Wren gave a shrug as she sliced. "Who knows." She'd been staying with her grandmother while her mom was on a trip or something—she wasn't certain at the time what she was doing, and frankly still wasn't, though she had some sense now that her mom was likely off doing something witch-related. Wren just hadn't known any of that existed at the time. The room she stayed in when she visited her grandmother was all the way down in the basement. It was cool and dark, and very quiet down there. Wren spent a lot of her time reading or playing with the crystals and stones her mom always brought back for her whenever she went on one of her trips.

  Those stones were another thing Wren saw in a different light now. Stones like jade and fire quartz—stones to keep her grounded and connected to the earth—that Wren had taken to be simple, pretty things in her youth.

  She'd been playing with them that day when, all of the sudden, her grandmother's voice was so clear it was like she was standing in the room. Only she wasn't.

  The room was heated by a freestanding electric space heater in the winter, so there was no duct work through which her grandmother’s voice could have traveled.

  Curious, Wren had gone upstairs, thinking maybe her grandmother was close by and some confluence of ricocheting sound waves was getting the sound to her. But as she walked up the stairs, nothing in the quality and clarity of the sound changed.

  It was like it was in her ears.

  So she'd started listening. Which was how she learned her mother had died. "The Lord sees to it that wickedness is struck out. Her wickedness got to my boy, rest his soul. And the Lord is protecting that girl of theirs. Praise Him in his infinite wisdom! It's not my place to question His plan, but I hope she's worth it."

  The woman never even cried.

  Bridgette's arms snaking around her from behind pulled Wren from the memory.

  "Your phone just buzzed," Bridgette said, voice low as she brought Wren's phone into view.

  Wren took the phone from Bridgette's fingers, but turned before looking at the screen and snagged Bridgette around the waist. She pulled her close and dipped her chin to meet Bridgette's lips with hers.

  Bridgette smiled when they both pulled back a moment later. Then she reached up and twisted one of Wren's curls.

  "It's a text from Zander," she said. Then she winked. "Don't ever try to say you aren't a little psychic."

  Wren laughed and opened the text as Bridgette made her way back over to the bed.

  I need many drinks and irreverent conversation. The text read. You in? GF welcome too, of course.

  Wren sighed, her stomach going hollow.

  "What is
it?" Bridgette asked, back on the bed and under her blanket once again.

  Wren shook her head. "Zander wants to know if we want to go out. I'll tell her we're staying in tonight." She brought her thumbs to the screen.

  "You should go," Bridgette said.

  Wren stopped and looked up. "What? We're about to eat dinner."

  "So eat and then go out," Bridgette replied with a shrug. "Or, gasp! I'll eat it alone."

  Wren felt her expression go ten kinds of yeah, right. She was so not leaving her girlfriend here to eat alone while she went out on the town.

  Bridgette must have seen the message in her expression. "Okay, okay. We can box it up and eat it tomorrow. But seriously, you should go."

  "And leave you here? Zander invited us both. You can come too, if you want." Though, Wren knew she didn't.

  Bridgette couldn't drink. And she got tired easily. Plus, she hated explaining her condition. A night on the town of the caliber it sounded like Zander needed wasn't in the cards for Bridge—nor should it be.

  "No, I'll go spend the night at my parents," Bridgette replied. She smirked. "I should sleep in my own bed every once in a while."

  Wren chuckled. "Are you sure?"

  "Totally," Bridgette replied, not an ounce of fabrication in her tone. "I've been feeling like I should go visit anyway."

  Wren drew a breath. She looked at the phone in her hand, then back at her girlfriend.

  "You have tomorrow off," Bridgette said.

  "And Monday," Wren added.

  "Exactly. So much recovery time. You should take advantage of it," Bridgette replied. "I'll hang with my parents tomorrow, then have my mom drive me to my appointment Monday morning and come here afterward. It's like the plans made themselves."

  Wren felt a smile pulling at her lips. A night out did sound sort of great.

  "In fact, I'll be pissed if you don't go," Bridgette said. "And don't you dare feel guilty about it."