The Shadow Reader

by Sandy Williams

  Kyol. Oh, God. He’s hurt.

  I spin toward the exit, trying to get back to him, but two rebels move to block my path, their swords held ready to strike.

  “I don’t want to hurt you,” the fae’s leader says. “I’d like to talk to you.”

  He takes a step toward me. I take a step back.

  “Look.” He sheaths his sword, then holds his hands out, palms up like he’s harmless.

  Screw him. I won’t let them take me. I sprint for my only remaining escape route, the metal staircase in the building’s northeast corner.

  My backpack bounces as I run up the steps. I reach the second floor before I hear the rebels coming after me. I pause to consider my options, realize I have none.

  “Shit!” I have nowhere to go but up, and once I’m up, I’ll have nowhere to go at all. I sprint to the next floor because I don’t know what else to do. I can’t turn around. I can’t stop. They’re right behind me.

  “Shit, shit, shit!”

  My legs are burning by the time I reach the fourth level. I can’t make it up the next flight of stairs so I run across this floor instead, watching my feet as I step over stacks of two-by-fours and through the wooden frames of the building’s future walls. The sun’s set. It’s dark, but I’m able to make out the outline of a piece of machinery in what will eventually be a hallway. I duck down behind it, praying I’m out of sight in time.

  Soft footsteps walk across the cement.

  My hair clings to my face and neck. I swipe it out of my eyes and search for some way out of this. There’s an opening at the end of the hallway for what I assume will be a floorto-ceiling window. An orange plastic safety fence runs across the gap, and seven or eight feet away from the edge of the building is the white, moonlit arm of a tower crane.

  Seven or eight feet. Can I jump that?

  “You’re making this more difficult than it needs to be.”

  I flinch at the voice. He’s close. He knows I’m here.

  I grit my teeth and refuse to panic. I don’t think the rebels will kill me immediately. They’ll try to use me. They’ll try to turn me against the Court, make me read the shadows. They probably won’t hurt me until they’re certain I won’t cooperate. I should have a few seconds to make my move.

  I wipe sweat from my face and focus on the crane outside the building. Seven or eight feet. I have to jump that.

  I don’t give myself time to second-guess my decision. I sprint the distance to the plastic fence, scramble over it—

  “No, wait!”

  —and jump, but the rebel grabs my backpack.

  I slip. I scream.

  My fingers tangle in the plastic fence.

  I fall.

  I hit the side of the building and keep screaming.

  My throat’s raw by the time I realize I’m not dead. I’m hanging between the third and fourth floors, holding on to the plastic fence like my life depends on it because . . . well, it does.

  A chuckle draws my attention upward. The damn fae peers over the edge, looking all jolly and relaxed.

  “I can’t believe you held on,” he says.

  The moonlight highlights the planes of his face, and even though I’m dangling three and a half stories above the ground, I’m suddenly more pissed than afraid. I don’t recognize him, but my gut tells me who he is: Aren, son of Jorreb, the false-blood who’s determined to overthrow the king. And he’s laughing at me.

  The plastic fence stretches. My fingers cramp, but I’m determined to hang on forever if it keeps me away from the killer above.

  Something snaps loose from the wall and I drop another foot.

  “Whoa, easy there. Easy,” Aren says.

  “Back off!” I mean to yell the words, but they come out as a hoarse croak. I know I should be begging for his help, but a part of me believes Kyol will rescue me. I choose to ignore the part that believes he’s dead.

  “Sure,” Aren says in an infuriatingly devil-may-care voice.

  “No problem, but how about you give me your hand first? There’s no need for you to fall.”

  “I won’t help you!”

  “I’m not asking for your help. Just give me your h—”

  The plastic rips free from the wall. I scream again and tense, bracing for impact.

  “McKenzie. Hey, look up here, McKenzie. I’ve got you.”

  Heart thudding, I look up. He does have me. Sort of. He’s dangling over the edge of the building, his left hand wrapped in the fence, his right hand grasping the opening’s frame.

  “Stop kicking,” he says. I stop, not realizing I was moving at all.

  “Good. Now, you’re going to have to grab my legs. I think the fence will rip if I try to pull you up. Can you do that?”

  I nod. I don’t care who he is anymore. I don’t want to die. I want to live. I want to be normal, graduate college, get a real job, and spend time with some real-life friends. Hell, I want to have sex at least once before I croak.

  The thought of death pulls my gaze toward the concrete.

  “No, don’t look down, McKenzie. Look up here. Look at me.”

  I do as he says. His eyes are bright but soft, like silver sand with tiny shards of diamonds, and his expression is serious but not strained. The last part impresses me. I might be thin, but I’m not dainty, and he’s supporting both of our weights.

  “Pull yourself up.” There’s a bit more urgency in his voice now. He must feel the plastic stretching, too.

  I muster the strength to reach up and grab his legs. As soon as I wrap my arms around him, he releases the fence. With a grunt, he pulls himself up and over the edge. I scrape along the side of the building until he grabs my arm, dragging me to safety.

  I lie facedown on the cement floor. My arms feel like spaghetti and I’m shaking, but I can’t be weak right now. The rebels will demand a high price for saving my life, and I have no intention of sticking around to pay it.

  I lurch to my feet, but my knees buckle.

  “Are you okay?” Aren asks.

  I ignore him and rise again. This time, I manage to keep my balance. It doesn’t matter, though. Three rebels block the staircase. One of them speaks in Fae.

  “The police are coming,” Aren translates behind me. No doubt my screams have brought them. I consider screaming again, but Aren grabs my arm.

  Lightning flashes from his skin to mine. I can’t shake loose. He wrestles me to a corner and, when he presses his lean body against mine, my brain stops functioning. The lightning between our skin increases, becoming almost volatile, and my body flushes with heat.

  “The police can’t help you,” Aren says. I’m sure that smirk on his face is due to my obvious discomfort. He feels the electricity between us the same as I do, but he’s not bothered by it.

  “Let go!” I demand, trying to free my arms.

  Flashlight beams precede the cops up the stairs.

  “Be quiet. Be still,” Aren whispers.

  I twist. I almost slip free, but one strong arm locks around my waist. He covers my mouth with his other hand.

  Stupid move on his part. I bite down hard.

  He doesn’t grimace, but his smirk vanishes.

  “Sorry about this,” he whispers in my ear.

  Pain explodes above my temple. I totter, but don’t black out. My knees aren’t working, though. Aren’s holding me up. I’m able to focus on his face well enough to see surprise in his eyes. Then the surprise disappears. His lips thin as he raises the weapon again. It’s a dagger. He swings its hilt down a second time.

  TWO

  MY HEAD’S KILLING me. I’m alone in the backseat of a IV van. A human is driving, slowing down, stopping. I don’t want to move from the floor of the van, but the side door grinds open and I’m yanked to my feet. Black splotches dance in my vision. They’re much like the shadows I read for the Court, but these don’t form patterns and no one’s opened a fissure here, wherever here is. Before I’m able to focus, I’m yards away from the vehicle, which is already
pulling back onto the road. At least Aren isn’t the fae who’s trying to dislocate my shoulder. He’s a man the rebels call Trev. I can barely feel the electric thrum of his touch because his fingers are cutting off my circulation. He doesn’t hesitate when I stumble or lag behind. Humans can’t move as quickly as the fae. He knows this. He’s a total asshole for not slowing down.

  We don’t go far. That’s good because walking makes the world wobble, but bad because this means we’ve reached a gate. It’s invisible when I look directly at it, but if I turn my head to the side, it’s there in my peripheral vision. A thinness in the world. A subtle blurring of the atmosphere.

  I blink, trying to figure out where we are. I manage to read the numbers on my digital watch. It’s a little after midnight. I know the locations of every gate within a three-hour radius of my campus, but we’ve driven beyond that boundary. I don’t recognize the tiny pond in front of me or this patch of trees, which appears to be in the middle of some farmer’s cow pasture.

  Aren steps to the pond’s edge. Gates are always located on water, so I understand what he’s doing when he reaches into the dark pool. He makes a connection with the gate, then stands, lifting his cupped palm toward the sky. But instead of a sprinkling of water, light spills over his fingers one drop, two drops, three drops at a time until the unending rain forms a bright, solid downpour. When this fissure breaks through the In-Between, it grumbles like a raging thundershower.

  “I’ll take her through,” Aren says, taking a long strip of indigo cloth out of his pocket.

  “Is that necessary?” I ask.

  His silver eyes meet mine. “If the rumors about you are true, then yes. It’s very necessary.”

  Having a reputation sucks sometimes.

  Trev holds me in place while Aren ties the blindfold around my head. I guess I shouldn’t have expected them to make a stupid mistake, especially since the only reason I’m in this situation is because of what I’m able to see. If I wasn’t blindfolded, there’s a good chance I’d learn our location after we fissured. Basically, I’m a glorified cartographer. When fissures wink out of existence, I see the topography of the earth written in the shadows left behind. It’s like looking at a bright light for too long. When you look away, it takes a while for your vision to clear. The same thing happens with fissures, but where everyone else sees random blurs and blotches, I see the curves of rivers, the edges of mountains, and the slopes of the land. I sketch out these shadows so the Court fae can hunt down their enemies, and I’m pretty damn accurate; a fact that has obviously pissed off the rebels.

  Aren says something in his language and a moment later, I hear normal, ungated-fissures opening. I assume the other fae are going directly home or to their base or camp or wherever the hell it is they stay. That leaves me alone with Aren, one on one, mano a mano. Not that my odds of escaping are that much better but, hey, I’ll take what I can get.

  Aren presses something warm and smooth into the palm of my right hand. I don’t have to see it to know it’s an anchor-stone, one that’s probably still glowing from his imprint.

  “Do you know what will happen if you drop this?” he asks.

  “I’ll be eviscerated into a hundred billion pieces of flesh and plague your nightmares.” I let the stone slip through my fingers. It hits the ground with a light thump. I wait for him to bend over to retrieve it, but I don’t hear or feel him move.

  “If you’re suicidal,” he says after a long moment. “There are less painful ways to die.”

  “You need me alive.” My voice is steady. My heart rate, however, is not. The lightning from his touch radiates up and down my arm.

  “You’re sure about that?”

  “You wouldn’t have saved me if you wanted me dead.” That’s the only thing giving me courage right now. He went to a lot of trouble to keep me from going splat. He has to want me to shadow-read for him, for the rebels. As long as he thinks I might do it, I should be okay. I think.

  His hand slides from my elbow to my shoulder. “Pick up the anchor. It’s by your left foot.”

  I sink down to get away from the tingling heat of his touch and pat around the dew-covered grass until I find the stone. It’s so very tempting to chuck it as far away as I can, but I’m not suicidal and Aren, son of Jorreb, is the Butcher of Brykeld.

  “You won’t be eviscerated if you let go of the anchor,” he says, pulling me upright. “You’ll be lost in the In-Between.”

  And with that, he yanks me into the gated-fissure.

  My breath whooshes out of my lungs and crystallizes. It feels like I’ve dropped through the surface of a frozen lake. It’s so cold here my heart stops beating, my blood stops flowing. Only my mind functions, and it can only focus on the heat of the anchor in my left hand and the heat of Aren’s palm in my right. I don’t remember taking his hand, but I squeeze it tight. I’d rather be squeezing his throat.

  Supposedly, traveling via fissure, whether gated or not, is instantaneous, but I swear it lasts ten to fifteen excruciating seconds. That’s plenty of time for me to know I do not want to stay in the In-Between one moment longer than necessary. I hate going through gates, especially without Kyol.

  As soon as the ice releases me, I know we’re in the Realm. The air here is different. It’s . . . crisp, like biting into an apple, and the atmosphere is lighter. Or maybe it’s me that’s heavier. I’m not sure. All I know is I’m human. I don’t belong in this land any more than the fae belong in mine. I feel big and awkward, like I stick out. And I do. Here in the Realm, chaos lusters originate from humans, not from fae, and the bolts of lightning are white instead of blue. I’ll get used to them and this world in an hour or two, but right now I’m more than uncomfortable. I’m pissed.

  As I turn toward Aren, I reach up to take off my blindfold. He stops me, takes both my hands in one of his, and holds them to the hard jaedric armor protecting his chest. We’re so close his cedar-and-cinnamon scent dances its way into my lungs. My thoughts hitch for a moment as his touch triggers more lightning. It shimmies through my fingers, over my palms, and up my arms. It would be so easy to forget myself in the addictive sensation, but I’ve had ten years to steel myself against a fae’s touch and I won’t be distracted.

  “Never, ever pull me through a gate unprepared again!” I try to jerk away as I snarl the words. I’m unsuccessful, of course, and I think I hear a chuckle beneath the rumble of another gated-fissure opening.

  “I brought you through in one piece.” He takes the anchor-stone from my hand, returns it a moment later. It’s hot with the imprint of a new location. “Hold your breath.”

  Already? I start to ask, but he pulls me into the fissure and the question is whipped from my mouth.

  I’ve never traveled this quickly before. Fae can fissure over and over again as long as they don’t move far from their original location, but we just jumped between two worlds. Even if we stayed on Earth, the most conditioned fae would have to wait two to three minutes before opening a second fissure. No wonder the Court’s never been able to capture Aren.

  My world’s warmth wraps around me. I try to listen between my gasps for air for the voices of people or fae, for the sounds of traffic or construction. Something, anything, to give me a clue as to where I am. The birds twittering overhead aren’t helping me out. I could be anywhere.

  Aren re-imprints the anchor-stone. “Again.”

  “Again?” I yelp, but this time I hold my breath before he takes me through. That helps. My lungs don’t feel the bite of the frost, but I’ve never, ever been through more than two fissures in an hour before.

  We stay in my world. I’m shaking now, and it’s not entirely due to the ice that seems to have replaced my bones. Journeying sucks energy from travelers. When Kyol takes me through a fissure, he absorbs most of that drain himself. Unless he’s exhausted or injured, I only feel a little disoriented on most trips. I’d undoubtedly feel more if we crossed through three fissures, but there was never a need to. Besides, I’m pre
tty damn sure what we just did was dangerous.

  Aren releases my hands to rub his palms up and down my arms. The electric tingle warms me some, but I shove away from him. With the cloth still blinding me and my head still pounding from being knocked out, I’m off-balance. I’m sure my knees would have buckled if he didn’t steady me, but I don’t want his help. As soon as my dizziness subsides, I pivot on my right foot and swing my left knee up and into his groin. He harrumphs but doesn’t let go, and he has no trouble catching the fist I blindly aim for his nose.

  I kick and twist and struggle. “Let me go!”

  I try to swing my head into his, but he’s ready for me now. His arms encircle me, pinning my arms to my sides. I spin until my back is pressed into his chest and stomach, and I keep squirming until I wear myself out, which doesn’t take long since the gated-fissures siphoned most of my strength.

  “Are you finished?” he asks.

  I slam my heel into his shin one last time. “For now.”

  A short pause, then, “I’m going to take your blindfold off. Do not turn toward the shadows.”

  I can feel them lingering just a few steps away, and when Aren removes the cloth from my eyes, it takes all of my self-control not to glance over my shoulder. It’s always difficult not to be sucked in by the shadows. They tug on my consciousness, calling to me like the whisper of a siren’s song. I’ve gotten better at resisting their lure over the years, but Aren’s order not to turn has made them even more tantalizing.

  I dig my fingernails into my palms, trying to distract myself. Then, instead of a forbidden glance over my shoulder, I tilt my head back to peer through the treetops to the sky—the sunlit sky.

  Wait a second. It was pitch-black when Aren took me through the first gate, and he was so freaking impatient to get through the next two that no more than three or four minutes could have passed. My watch says it’s only ten minutes after midnight.

  “Where the hell have you taken me?” I demand.

  A tiny smirk pulls at the corner of his mouth. He should have left the blindfold on because I’m seething now that I can see the smug expression framed by his tousled blond hair. He pulls off disheveled-sexy very well, and the fact that I notice he’s good-looking pisses me off even more. A killer should be ugly and scarred. He shouldn’t have a face like his.