The Shadow Walkers

by Shannon Reber

Ian nodded. “Yeah. I’ve got a handle on things, at least for right now. I appreciate the help,” he said in a far friendlier way than he had ever spoken to Spencer before.

  Spencer inclined his head in response, the dark circles under his eyes telling the truth of his feelings. The last week had been as hard on him as it had been on me. The news about Adrian had affected him more than I would have expected it would.

  I glanced at Ian, unsure about his change in regards to Spencer. He had always been so uncomfortable around the power Spencer held that he’d reacted like he was being threatened every time he saw him. Maybe the fact that Ian had a power of his own made it easier for him to handle Spencer’s.

  It was strange to realize that Erkens, Serena, and I were the only humans in our group. Okay, so Ian was human but he had been changed. He was now a person with power.

  My mouth fell open as our group all trooped into the kitchen. Dawson stood in front of the stove and Quinn stood next to him. My sister was there. I didn’t even know what to make of that idea. She had been asking for my help . . . hadn’t she?

  She turned and I was struck again by how much we looked alike. We were both dark-haired and brown eyed, with freckles spattered over our faces. There was more too. The shapes of our faces. The shapes of our eyes. Even the shapes of our bodies. She was what I would look like six years in the future.

  She smiled and stepped over, wrapping her arms around me. “Are you okay?”

  I coughed out an incredulous sound. “I’m fine, Quinn. Are YOU okay?” I asked, thrilled that my worst-case scenarios had been off base. I eagerly took the cup of coffee Ian handed to me when Quinn had released me, thrilled to have them all there with me.

  She considered for a minute and blew out a breath. “It’s bad, Madison. Really bad. I can’t say anything at all. I’m bound even more tightly than I was before. The guy I’m working for is out of town for the next couple of days, so I was finally able to come and see you.” She rubbed her brow and lifted one of her shoulders. “I was trying to tell you on the phone that Ian might be able to help.”

  He raised his brows, leaning back against the counter as he savored his first cup of coffee. “What do you mean?” he asked, his mouth falling open as he stared into space. “Tria,” he said quietly.

  I gazed at him, startled to see his Caribbean blue eyes turn brown. He looked like he was listening to something. Seeing him use that gift was . . . weird.

  Everybody went silent as we all watched him. It was mesmerizing to see. Ian Gregory was a medium. Holy worm-ridden blue screen of death.

  After a minute or two, he blinked, a dazed look on his face. “The shadow walkers are coming,” he said, his eyes changing back to their usual, bold blue.

  All of a sudden, a lightbulb went off in my head. Dorothy’s house. It hadn’t been a trickster at all. I’d never heard of a shadow walker but it made sense.

  Quinn raised her brows. “As far as I know, the shadow walkers are mercenaries. Why would they be coming here?” she asked, looking around nervously like she expected one of the shadows to jump out at her.

  Considering my experience with them, it wasn’t beyond the realm of possibility. How did I not know anything about that group? If they were mercenaries . . . and realization slammed into me.

  “No way,” I whispered, taking out my new phone and dialed Dorothy’s number. It didn’t ring at all, clicking straight to voicemail.

  “This is Dorothy Otto. Please do leave me a message and I will return your call at my earliest convenience. Have a lovely day,” and the beep sounded out.

  “Dorothy, this is Madison Meyer. I was wrong. It’s not a trickster. They’re called Shadow Walkers. I don’t know anything about them but I think they might be coming to rip you off. Please call me back as soon as you can,” I said, ending that call before dialing Erkens’ number and leaving him the same message.

  As I spoke, Ian appeared to come back to himself, his eyes bleary as he leaned back against the counter. He looked wiped out like he had just run a marathon at a sprint.

  Spencer walked to the fridge and took out a bottled sports drink, handing it to Ian. “Drink that. You’re going to need it,” he said, walking over to the stove and picking up where Quinn left off with the eggs.

  Ian glugged the entire bottle down in a few long swallows, his skin still sallow.

  I took his hand, guiding him to the table and down into one of the chairs. “Are you okay?” I asked, not liking the pallor of his skin or the light sheen of sweat on his face.

  He blinked a few times before slowly, he nodded. “Yeah. They say it gets easier but since this isn’t a gift I was born with, it’ll take longer for me to adapt.” He rubbed his hands over his face and groaned. “Right now, it still feels wrong. I AM getting used to it a little, though.”

  I walked back to the coffee pot and refilled his cup, bringing it back to him. “Tell me what I can do to help,” I pleaded, wishing I didn’t feel so helpless.

  He took the mug, using his other hand to pull me down onto his lap. “You’re here, Mads. That helps,” he said, his lips curved in a small smile.

  Quinn cleared her throat. “Okay, Romeo. We need to focus here,” she ordered, her arms folded as she looked around the room. “If the Shadow Walkers are coming, that means we have something they want. With the amount of paranormal power in this room, it could be any or all of you they’re coming for.”

  Dawson rolled his eyes as he set a plate of bacon on the bar at the same time that Spencer set a plate of scrambled eggs next to it. “Do you honestly think a shadow has any chance against us?” he asked, turning to take a cookie sheet out of the oven.

  He set it on the bar and motioned everybody forward to get some food. The scent of croissants mixed with everything else, giving the kitchen a homey, warm fragrance. The people I loved were right there surrounding me. What more did I need?

  “They’re not just shadows, Dawson,” Quinn huffed in an exasperated tone, cocking her hands on her hips. “They move in the shadows. They can be practically invisible. When they take corporeal form, they’re warriors.”

  My eyes went so wide, they burned. I told her everything that had happened at Dorothy’s house, from Erkens’ truck to everything Dorothy had mentioned. As I spoke, it made me more and more sure my trickster idea was wrong. It was like I had been a newbie computer owner who’d decided my system had a virus because I’d hit the wrong button. I felt like an idiot.

  Ian stood up and moved to the bar where everybody else was loading their plates. “The thing also picked Maddie up and threw her at the wall, which knocked her out all night,” he tattled, his eyes angry slits.

  Quinn narrowed her eyes, rubbing absently at her chin. “Huh,” she said and began muttering under her breath. “If a Shadow Walker IS at that woman’s house, they would have been hired. Who would hire one of them to break into a woman’s collection of mythological junk? Who would benefit? What could be in her collection?”

  “Almost anything you can imagine is in her collection,” I stated, tapping my temple next to my eye. “I tried to hit one of the Shadow Walkers with our demon mace and it missed. The gel hit the Sword of Light instead and that was one of probably twenty swords just in that one room. And by the way, the legend about the Sword of Light is totally true.”

  Ian handed me a plate holding a breakfast sandwich just the way I liked them, light on the eggs, heavy on the bacon. “The things I saw didn’t look like something somebody would kill for.”

  Quinn tapped her lips. “You never know what somebody will be willing to kill for. People have their own reasons for doing things and whatever they are willing to do, they can find ways to justify it to themselves.” She turned her eyes down. “Sometimes, you have no choice.”

  I set my plate down and took a step closer to my sister. “I’m going to get you out of this. Whatever it takes. I promise you, Quinn.”

  She took my hands and gave them a squeeze. “You need to be careful, Madison. I’m in a simil
ar situation to Tria. I’m not willing to risk your life just to--”

  “Me?!” I yelped, my hands tightening around hers hard enough to make her wince.

  She gave me a hard look, easing her hands away from mine. “I can’t tell you what’s going on or what they’re making me do. I’m in theoretical engineering now and what I’m being asked to engineer is . . . dangerous.”

  My temper bubbled up. As it did, reason faded back. All I saw was the red haze of my rage.

  Tria’s son had Tay-Sachs disease. The PSA had apparently cured him of that fatal, genetic disorder but there had been a condition. Tria had to work for them, using her ability to do things she would never do, all to satisfy their curiosity.

  If Quinn had been forced to do that engineering work because of me or her adoptive family, there was no way I’d let that stand. I would burn that place to the ground.

  SEVENTEEN

  Because I was so focused on my mad, I forgot about pretty much everything else. My laptop was in front of me, my fingers flying over the keyboard as I searched for ways to free my sister of that magical contract. The trouble was, a lot of the answers in my database involved more magic, magic of the dark variety.

  I clicked out of the third listing for a spell containing virgin blood. It was appalling how much that particular type of blood was used in black magic. It was somehow even more disgusting. Okay, it was equally horrible.

  I could hear voices in the background but wasn’t paying attention. I couldn’t let go of my anger. My sister needed me. I would not let her down.

  “Madison.”

  I blinked, looking up to find Dad standing in front of me. We hadn’t spoken much in the last week but he had come by after the news about Adrian. That had been the only comfort I’d been given in the previous week.

  He had stood by me when things got bad and I felt closer to him at that point than I had done so far. I hadn’t told him about Quinn. I’d wanted to wait until they could meet each other face-to-face. Looked like that would happen right then.

  I opened my mouth to introduce the two, then closed it. The encounter with Mom was so fresh in my mind and all of a sudden, there was Dad. I wished it comforted me. It didn’t.

  My mind floated back years before when I’d had my first run-in with the law. Being an eight-year-old with the ability to hack a security system or anything with a computer had its ups and downs. The ups were that I felt bulletproof. The downs were the fact that Mom had mostly ignored me before but all of a sudden, she began watching me like a hawk.

  Everything I did was wrong. Everything I said was wrong. I reminded her of Dad, so she felt she had to beat me down on a daily basis.

  After I’d written my algorithm that hid my IP address and made me entirely untrackable online, I began pushing boundaries. Mom had never given me any, so I pushed them with Emma’s parents. They had been good at showing me what was right without making me feel like a secondary citizen.

  The time that stuck out in my mind as I looked at my dad, was when I was twelve. It was Emma’s first year of middle school and she had gotten a bad grade. She was afraid her parents wouldn’t let her have one of her parties if they found out, so she had asked me to change her grade.

  I had been in AP classes at the high school and had been bored out of my mind. I had needed a challenge, so had hacked into the school’s mainframe and changed Emma’s grade. My algorithm hid that it was me but the school knew what I could do and they pulled me in for questioning.

  When I’d been suspended for that infraction, Mom had not been happy. She had taken my laptop and smashed it, then begun destroying the rest of my things. By the time she was done, everything I loved was nothing more than rubble. She’d also made me clean up the mess.

  That was when I had called Dad. We had never been close. We were practically strangers but to me, the idea of living with a stranger was better than being with Mom.

  Dad had told me no and had gone to Mom, telling her that I had asked. That was when my life got truly difficult. And I had never asked my dad for anything again.

  Looking at Dad, the feeling of betrayal that had festered inside me most of my life rose up again. He was a good man. I knew that. But he had failed me in so many ways.

  I had thought I was over it. It looked like I was wrong. The wounded little girl inside me had to be protected from the pain.

  Dad tipped his chin back and arched his brows. “Ian told me about your mom. Are you okay?”

  I scoffed. “You want to know if I’m alright? Are you kidding? I spent my entire life taking care of myself. You never cared. So yeah, I dealt with it myself and I’m fine.”

  Dad swallowed hard before slowly, he nodded. “I know your mom can be a cruel woman but I think she has reasons. I’ve always thought she had a narcissistic personality disorder but she refused to acknowledge there was any kind of problem. I don’t think that justifies her behavior but I do believe it may explain some of it.”

  I stared at him for a few humming seconds before tears rose in my eyes. “How long have you thought that?” I asked, feeling the walls inside me crumbling to dust.

  “A while.”

  And a single tear cascaded its way down my cheek. “You believed that mom had that kind of disorder and you left me there?” I squeaked, the lump in my throat expanding until it was hard to breathe.

  Dad took in a shaky breath and stepped over to sit next to me. “I did. I’m so sorry, Madison. I honestly believed that it was different with you. I thought you could help each other. I closed my eyes to the rest because it was easier for me that way. There is no excuse. I’m so sorry.”

  I sat there with tears sliding down my cheeks and all of a sudden, the pain began to ease back. It was still there, yet the fact Dad recognized what he had done wrong and did genuinely seem to be sorry, it meant the world to me. I wasn’t alone.

  I had my dad with me for the first time in my life. We had grown closer over the last few months, our similarities making it easier for us to understand the other.

  I leaned my head to the side to rest on his shoulder, sniffling a little before I spoke. “There’s something I need to tell you,” I said, turning my head to look in the direction I had last heard Quinn’s voice.

  Dad let out a sniffle of his own, wiping at his eyes like he had also been tearful. “Let me guess. You hacked the Association for Computing Machinery and put my name in to win the Turing Award.”

  I snickered a little and shook my head. “Maybe next year,” I said, motioning Quinn over. “I’d like for you to meet Quinn Turner.”

  Dad looked at Quinn, doing a double-take before his mouth gaped. “You . . . look just like Madison,” he whispered, shaking so hard it was like he was having a seizure.

  Quinn stepped closer and nodded. “I was adopted by a family who gave me all the love and caring a girl could need. Out of simple curiosity, when I was eighteen, I found my biological mother. Cece Meyer wasn’t interested in knowing me or in allowing me to know the rest of my family. I found Madison last week and no one will ever take that away from me.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  Quinn held out her hand between them. “I’m Quinn Turner, your biological daughter,” she stated concisely.

  Slowly, Dad stood up and took her hand. “Quinn,” he croaked, clearing his throat. “Uh . . . I’m Lawrence Hopkins. It’s . . . nice to meet you.”

  And right then, the peace I had been yearning for clicked into place. The moment solidified every good thing in my life. Quinn was going to stick around. Dad was going to do the same. It was the most amazing feeling.

  And as that peace solidified, I figured out what had been bugging me about the Dorothy situation. There had been no shadow in the room when I had been thrown at the wall. If Shadow Walkers moved in shadow, both dark and light could be used against them. The room had been black. Whatever had been in Dorothy’s museum, it was not a Shadow Walker.

  EIGHTEEN

  I ended my tenth call in the la
st ten minutes, worry coating my throat. Dorothy wasn’t answering. What did that mean? Was she simply busy or had something happened?

  Instinct told me something had happened. I didn’t know what it could be. Trusting my instincts was not easy for me usually. That time, it wasn’t hard at all.

  I rushed upstairs and changed my clothes, worried enough for Dorothy that I considered using the portal generator to get back to Philadelphia instead of driving. There was far too much red tape involved to use the thing legally, so I decided to break in my new car with that drive. Hopefully, it would give me time to figure out what was really going on at Dorothy’s house.

  I stuck my laptop, tablet, phone, and the gun Erkens had insisted I learn to use into a tote and ran back downstairs. I hadn’t explained what was going on to my family, so everybody looked a little confused as I stopped in front of them.

  “I need to get back to Philadelphia. Whatever is in Dorothy’s house, I think it might have done something to her.”

  Spencer rushed upstairs to get dressed as well while everybody else bombarded me with questions. Fortunately, a knock sounded on the front door. Thankfully, Erkens had arrived in time.

  He looked around at everybody when I guided him into the living room and folded his arms. “Why does the sight of all of you together make me so nervous?” he asked rhetorically, a slight smile on his face.

  “Because you’re a grumpy old man,” I teased before looking at Ian. “Are you coming with us?”

  He sighed and shook his head. “I was supposed to be in Lily Dale, New York this morning. I need to get moving.”

  My mouth fell open. Lily Dale was a meeting place for spiritualists. He hadn’t said anything about it until right then but it seemed likely to me that he was going there to learn how to deal with his ability to speak with the dead. I wished he could come with us, although the idea of him learning the control he needed did seem like a far better use of his time.

  Spencer jogged back down the steps, just pulling a baseball cap over his hair. He waved around at everybody and turned toward the door, clearly as worried about Dorothy as I was.