I rubbed my still aching eyes. “I’m sorry about that, Dorothy. I have another canister of mace that has a salt and iron dust instead of the gel. I thought the gel was a better idea. I’ve been in the way when the dust kind was used and it stings like you wouldn’t believe when it gets in your eyes. I’ll clean up the--”
“Stop that, Madison,” she interrupted, resting her mug on her knee with her hands still clasped around it. “I’m not asking you to clean up. I’m asking you how much of the legends people tell about my things are true.”
I leaned back on the antique sofa and let out a slow breath. “I wasn’t making up the story about the Cintamani. Legend states that it’s a wish-granting stone that came from a meteorite. Some of the legend is accurate but the story has been distorted.” I took a small sip of my tea, savoring the flavors as they rolled across my tongue. “I’ve seen a lot in the last six months I’ve worked for Erkens. I’ve seen demons and gods and ghosts and I’ve read about more. I know there’s power in the world. I can’t say if it’s all true but I’ve learned to keep an open mind.”
She kept her eyes fixed on her tea as tears welled in her eyes. “My Leopold believed as well. He said my collection gave him the heebie-jeebies but I thought he was being silly.”
I took another sip of tea, my eyes moving around the room. “Some people have an easier time around magic than others do.” I did my best not to allow my own tears to fall.
It had been one of the conflicts between Ian and I since I had begun working for Erkens. I had no discomfort around things and people with power. He did. We had so rarely seen eye-to-eye on any of it.
No. I had to stop. This had nothing to do with me and my problems. Dorothy was the priority. Period.
She turned to look at me and a few of her tears spilled over. “I feel like such a fool. I’ve had these things in my home for decades and never guessed that they could be dangerous.”
“That doesn’t make you a fool, Dorothy.”
The sound of snide laughter came from one of the corners of the room, just a quick snort before that thing went silent.
Dorothy jerked a little and more tears spilled over. “Even the ghosts think I’m a fool,” she said, her hands trembling so hard that the tea came very close to spilling over the sides.
I reached out and took the mug from her hand, setting it down on the marble-topped table next to me. “Whatever that thing is, it better clear out fast. My temper is running short and I’ve had a really, really bad week. I have a LOT of frustrations I need to take out.”
There was silence from that particular corner of the room. I didn’t know if that meant the thing was gone or if it chose not to draw attention to itself. I needed to figure out what it was in order to be able to deal with it.
I laid my hand on Dorothy’s and waited for her to look at me before speaking. “If knowledge of the supernatural was common and you chose not to believe it, that would be one thing. It’s not, though. One in a million people even believe and most of them believe faulty information. You made an amazing collection of things you found interesting and chose not to believe in the myths surrounding them. There’s nothing wrong with that. It doesn’t make you foolish at all.”
She sniffled, slowly getting to her feet. “I’ll be back in a moment,” she said and walked toward a pretty powder room near the front of the house.
I watched her go, unsure if I should go with her or not. If the shadows were toying with her, she might be in danger. No. What I needed to do was figure out precisely what the shadows were.
Since my phone was right there, I began doing some research. I entered tricksters into the search feature on the database I had created with a mix of Erkens’ books and the thumb drive from Ian. Both sources agreed. Tricksters weren’t always bad.
They were shapeshifters, taking the shape of whatever amused them. If it amused one of them to change into a shadow, I had no doubt it could do it.
The point of those beings was to teach people a lesson through the jokes they played. If that was its mission, it was accomplished. Dorothy was no longer in the dark.
I wasn’t sure what else it could be. I didn’t think it was a ghost. Every time I had seen a ghost, the sign they were present was a serious chill in the air. There had been no chill at all when the shadow had shown itself to me in the museum.
There was also a god of darkness and shadow that was a possibility. Very little was known about that deity, other than that it was one of the first gods. Somehow, I didn’t think a primordial deity would hang around Dorothy’s house to whisper and sneeze. That didn’t make sense.
So the most likely option was indeed the trickster. With a collection the size of hers, it was possible that trickster was bound to something and had been released a few days before.
The idea of a creature being bound to one of Dorothy’s things created other possibilities. It might be a djinn. If that was true, we were in trouble.
Djinn were not the magical beings who granted three wishes if their lamps were rubbed. The truth about them was that they brought both disease and darkness. If that was what we were dealing with, Dorothy and I were both in danger.
I glanced at Dorothy as she walked slowly back to her seat, her face damp like she had been splashing it with cold water. “Have you added anything new to your collection recently?” I asked, handing back her mug of tea as I spoke.
She pursed her lips, her eyes red from the tears she’d obviously cried in the powder room. She took a small drink of her tea, releasing a slow sigh. “I have a dealer bringing me a new shipment next week but my last shipment was six weeks ago.”
“How do you find these things?”
“I have a broker who keeps an eye out for interesting things he thinks I may enjoy.”
“Was there anything special in your shipment?”
She waved around. “It’s all special to me. You’re welcome to look around some more. I spread my things around so a few pieces from each shipment are in each room.”
I looked around as well, wanting to talk to Erkens more than anything. I wanted to know if he thought my theories were valid. I hoped he would call me back soon. Something about not getting him on the phone made me worry.
Dorothy suppressed a yawn, her eyes a little heavy as she glanced at me. “Forgive me, Madison. I’m just worn out. I think I’m going to go off to bed,” she said, her eyes still fixed on her tea. “Thank you for staying with me and I’m so sorry one of my treasures hurt you.”
I laid my hand on her arm and shook my head a little. “I was happy to stay,” I said, glad to have some time alone to think over everything I had found out and do some more research.
She gave me a watery smile and motioned toward the kitchen. “If you get hungry, you feel free to have anything you like. The woman who brings my groceries comes tomorrow, so if there’s anything you’d like, just let me know. Oh and my cleaning service comes tomorrow as well, so they can take care of the museum.” She rose and motioned toward my mug. “Are you going to finish yours?”
I nodded. “I will. Thank you, Dorothy,” I said, my mind frozen on a picture of my sister.
Before I did any more research on Dorothy’s shadows, I needed to talk to Dawson Turner. Whatever he needed to tell me, hearing it might help me figure out both the Quinn and the Dorothy mystery. I hoped.
NINE
I turned on all the lights in my room, checking every shadow to be sure there was no human shape in them. I had no idea how that thing came and went. I didn’t even know if it was really a shadow.
I flopped back on the bed and stared up at the coffered ceiling above me. It was just one more beautiful architectural feature of the house. The bed was the perfect firmness with numerous pillows and a not-too-frilly but still pretty comforter. Okay, fine. I was stalling.
Before I could talk myself out of it, I pulled my phone from my pocket and searched for Quinn’s brother. Since I had found him that morning, it didn’t really count as a search. All I did
was bring up his info and with shaky fingers, hit the button to call him.
I almost hung up as soon as it started ringing. No. I had to nut up. Quinn needed me. Whatever her brother had to tell me had to be important enough for her to risk drawing my attention to him.
“Yeah,” a guy’s voice asked after two rings.
“Dawson?”
There was a pause before he spoke. “Yeah?” he asked, his tone wary.
“This is Madison Meyer. I’m . . . Quinn’s biological sister.”
He blew a loud breath into the phone. “Jeeze, you scared me. You sound just like Quinn. I thought something was wrong,” he said, sounding like he was as worried about her as I was.
A small smile came to my lips. I hadn’t realized we sounded that much alike. I’d noticed a similarity but it was probably far stronger on the phone.
“Do you know what’s going on?” I asked him, hoping he could give me some answers.
“I know she started getting even more cryptic than usual over the last few weeks. I also know she wants me to keep my head down and let her handle this.”
My heart sank. I had thought he would have some kind of information that would help me figure out the situation Quinn was in. Then again, maybe her message was less straightforward than I had thought. What else could she have meant?
“Oh. Okay. I’m sorry I bothered you, then.”
“Madison, if your family told you to keep your nose out of their business, I’m guessing you’d respond the same way Quinn would. Her way would involve threatening my junk and doing exactly what she intended to do anyway.”
I covered my mouth with my hand and turned my eyes heavenward. “You scared me. I thought you were saying you wouldn’t help.”
He snorted out a laugh. “She got into this mess because I asked her to help my bio-mom out. None of us are going to stand back and let her do this alone.”
Oh. He’d been adopted too? I wished I knew more about my sister but there was time to find out that stuff later.
I sat up and pulled my tablet out of the bag. “Okay, so do you have a plan or information that will help me form a plan? All I know for sure is that Quinn was put in disciplinary holding ten days ago. Her file says she’s not there anymore but it gives no information about where she is. She sounded like she was being observed when I talked to her earlier, so I don’t know what that means or if--”
“Madison, hold on,” Dawson interrupted and the sound of a slight laugh came through the phone. “Let me answer one of those.”
I got into Quinn’s file at the PSA and continued in my search, waiting to see what he might say.
“Okay, I don’t have a plan but I do have some info. Quinn was given a job that’s totally freaking her out. I don’t know what her job is. What I know is that she’s a first-rate inventor and the idea those people have dictatorial rights to any find she makes while she’s employed by them scares me. A lot. I’m the reason she’s in this mess. I will get her out.”
“Good,” I stated, glad to hear that he was willing to work with me. I didn’t know what the story was. What I knew was that OUR sister would be fine because we would work together to make certain of it. “I’m in Philadelphia right now and I will be for the next couple of days. When I get back, we need to figure out our next move.”
“Hold on. You’re the untrackable hacker, right?”
“That’s me.”
“Okay, tell me what Quinn said to you today.”
“She told me to give her love to Mom and that I should call you.”
He huffed out a half laugh sound. “The day Quinn went to see you the first time, she came by my place beforehand. She told me that Cici Meyer was playing with things she couldn’t possibly understand. I think she wanted us to talk so I could tell you to be careful around your mother.”
My eyes froze on the screen, then slowly moved to stare at the fireplace in front of me. Mom. What was going on? What had she gotten into that was so serious?
“You still there?” Dawson asked after a long silence on my end.
“Uh . . . yeah,” I croaked, shaking my head to clear the fog from my mind. “Okay. I might not see my mom anyway but if I do, I’ll . . . uhh . . . something.” My brain felt like it might never truly clear again.
There was just too much to face. Adrian. Quinn. Ian. Those shadow-things. Now Mom. I had no more room in my heart or mind.
“Madison, I’m not--”
“Thanks for the information. I’ll talk to you when I get back to Pittsburgh,” I breathed into my phone and ended the call before anything more could be said.
TEN
The second I was off the phone, my mind started whirring. What was the point of the shadow being there? If it was a corporeal being who sneezed like the rest of us, it was not a ghost. The same could be said of a djinn. That left a trickster as the most likely suspect.
So what lesson was the trickster trying to teach Dorothy? If it was that her collection wasn’t just ‘fairytale doodads’, then it should be done. If it was done, they should be gone from the house entirely.
I grabbed the cross-body bag, placing my tablet and phone back inside. It was definitely better to be safe than sorry. I hoped Dorothy’s security system wouldn’t go off with me wandering around.
I had to take the chance in order to see if the shadows were still doing their thing. Since I knew my way around security systems so well, I could go in and simply shut it down.
That seemed like a terrible idea. I chose simply to hope whatever security service the neighborhood had, wouldn’t shoot me on sight if the alarm did start jangling.
I checked to make sure the white sage smudges were still in place so I could do that little ritual if there WAS something left in the house. My hand froze. I hadn’t looked around much when I’d come in. As I did, I saw that things were not as I’d left them.
My laptop was on the bench at the end of the bed. The protections bag had been moved. And one of the salt containers was gone. I knew precisely where everything had been. That picture did not match the picture in my head.
Why would Dorothy have messed with my stuff, though? Taking a container of salt was fine but why wouldn’t she have just asked? That annoyed me. A lot.
My mom used to do things like that. She would come into my room and search my things, often taking my stuff without telling me. I supposed it was a typical-enough thing for a parent to do but not a woman who’d hired us to help her get rid of her moving shadows. It was a serious invasion of privacy and I was NOT happy about it.
I glanced around some more and decided to try some old tricks just to see if or when she came back. I’d read a few books about little things people would do to let them know when someone had been in their things.
I tugged out a single strand of my hair and placed it on the laptop. If it was still there when I got back, it would mean that no one had opened it. I did the same thing with the bag, looping a single strand of my hair around the handles. It was small enough that no one would notice. What I did then was to send Erkens a text.
Something’s up. Call soon.
After that, I headed back down to the museum. My mind whirred through other theories as I walked. What if Dorothy was indeed just a lonely old woman who had chosen to create some kind of mystery in order to draw attention.
That sounded a lot more like a child’s action than something a ninety-three-year-old would do. It would take a lot of work too. Creating an illusion of a shadow would be easy enough with a bright light and someone else helping out.
The only bright light around us had been from the sword. And it had happened AFTER I’d seen the shadow. It didn’t make sense. Not much about that case did, though.
I kept an eye out as I walked around. There were lights on, so I assumed they were either on a timer or they were just kept on to keep Dorothy from tripping over things in the middle of the night. It made things easier, so that was a nice little convenience.
I laid my hand on the dark wood
of the museum door and took out the amber. I held it up to the door but nothing happened. The stone inside didn’t change color at all. Okay. The door was not magical. Good to know.
The room was dark as I swung the door open, the smell of must and magic hitting me in the face immediately. It was a scent I loved or one I had loved a little while before. I wasn’t sure what to make of it anymore.
I felt around on the wall for a light switch, my senses on high alert. I heard something. The room was not empty.
I took out a salt vial and sighed in relief as I felt the light switch under my fingers. Before I could talk myself out of it, I flipped the light on and scanned the room.
There was so much stuff, it was hard to tell what was different. Again, the picture in my head helped me to figure it out. It was something I had always been good at, maybe because of Mom’s invasions of my room. I had learned at an early age how to tell what had been moved.
Everything was in the exact spot it was when I’d left but the salt and iron gel was no longer on the floor and the sword that had blinded me was polished to a gleam. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up. Everything was spotlessly clean, every sword gleaming, every book and trinket both dust and smudge free.
Dorothy had said her cleaning service would show up the next day, so that couldn’t be it. There was no one in the house other than us. Had Dorothy . . . that was when I saw it.
One of the shelves held something that hadn’t been there when I’d left. It was a creature, maybe three-and-a-half inches tall. I wouldn’t have noticed it at all if it hadn’t moved the tiniest bit. It was like the thing was getting ready to run.
I was dumbfounded. With all the mythological artifacts in the house, it probably shouldn’t surprise me to find a brownie there. That hobgoblin-type creature was a household spirit who helped with cleaning in exchange for things like honey or cream. It explained why all of Dorothy’s collection was in such pristine condition.
The Shadow Walkers Page 4