Shade

by Jeri Smith-Ready

  I thought of how one day, when post-Shifters became cops, ghosts really could make a difference. They would be the ultimate Neighborhood Watch. I was about to point that out when Logan spoke again.

  “Aura,” he whispered, “I wish I could wipe away just one of your tears. Then I’d feel like a person again. Like I’m something more than a bunch of light.”

  “You can.” I reached into the space between our bodies. “Just follow me.”

  He placed his left hand behind my right hand, creating a violet shadow. Together, slowly, we touched my face. The wetness soaked into the tip of my middle finger.

  “I love you so much,” he said. “I wish you never had to be sad.”

  The tear my finger had taken was replaced by another. “Let me cry, Logan. I need to.”

  He brought his face near mine, so bright I had to squint, and placed his head on my pillow, close enough that if he’d had breath, it would have caressed my eyelashes. “I’ll stay until you sleep, and I’ll come back tomorrow. If you want.”

  I nodded, then shut my eyes against his light.

  Chapter Eleven

  Logan spent every night with me for the next month. Not until morning, of course. He would leave after I dozed off, because to him, watching me sleep was (a) boring and (b) creepy.

  If I called for him, he’d return, but I didn’t unless I’d had a bad dream. It was enough to know he’d come again the following night.

  Usually we listened to music together. Since Logan couldn’t use earbuds anymore, I’d pull my MP3 docking station under the covers and play it at low volume. Or we’d read books or magazines by the light of his glow. If I had a test, he’d help me study, but since he couldn’t turn the pages, this didn’t always work.

  When I got tired, Logan would sing me to sleep, sometimes a painfully appropriate song like Flogging Molly’s “If I Ever Leave This World Alive” or Snow Patrol’s “Chasing Cars.” Sometimes he’d pick a lilting Irish lullaby, or even a song he’d written himself.

  But never the song he’d meant to sing for me the night he died. Even Logan had his limits.

  Mostly we talked. It felt like we were kids again, with a sleepover every night. When I laughed too much, Aunt Gina would knock on the door to see what was up, but I always told her I was watching a funny video. It wasn’t like she could ever prove Logan was there.

  Every Sunday morning before Gina did laundry, I changed my sheets back to red and hid the dark purple ones in a secret compartment under my bottom drawer. I spilled drops of soda and scattered cracker crumbs over the red sheets so they’d look used.

  Even if she had suspected, how could she complain? I was happy. My boyfriend was dead, but in a way, he was with me more than ever.

  During the day he haunted his younger brother Dylan, and some of our other friends, especially if they were having a party. But the nights were all ours, and Logan was all mine.

  Zachary and I waited for Eowyn in her office before our second meeting. No tea was on the little table, so we sat in padded wooden chairs in front of the desk. The book fort was gone, replaced with uneven stacks of papers, a scattering of gnawed pencils, and a pair of laptop computers.

  “Almost ten minutes late,” Zachary said. His cell phone went off with a text message—I’d been around him enough to know his assigned ring tones—and his expression brightened. “Excuse me for a second?” He flipped open the phone and started texting. At least he was polite about it.

  To occupy myself, I pulled my folders out of my book bag and started flipping through their contents. As always, I started with the purple folder, the one containing the journal and photos my mother had left.

  The second page of that day’s entry had been torn out mid-sentence. I ran my finger over the jagged edge left behind.

  “Sorry I’m late!” Eowyn swept in, her shoes scuffing the carpet. She had dark circles under her eyes, and her long blond curls were swept back in a glittery blue scarf. But her face looked bright, like it had just been splashed with cold water.

  “Ooh, you brought me a present.” She untied our portfolio, then opened our first star map and spread it on the desk before her. I placed my purple folder under the yellow one on my lap. My plan was to advance my research without telling anyone my exact theory. Not until I was sure I was right, and maybe even then it wouldn’t be safe.

  “Very nice work,” Eowyn said. “But not so nice I’d think you were cheating. You’ve definitely nailed the fundamentals, and the level of detail is admirable.” She sank into her chair. “Clearly you don’t mind spending time together.”

  From the corner of my eye I saw Zachary mirror my squirming.

  “If we got it right the first time,” I said, “does that mean we can stop?”

  “Is that what you were hoping?” Eowyn closed the portfolio. “The point is for you to see what changes over time and what stays the same.” She folded her hands, shoulders sagging from what looked like exhaustion. “From year to year, the stars are the most constant thing we know. But within that time frame, they seem downright fickle. So yes, you still have to do this every month. Plan to dress warmly.”

  My face heated at the memory of Zachary’s jacket around my shoulders, despite the casual turn our friendship had recently taken. Our conversations had grown less personal over the last few weeks. Sometimes he ate lunch with me and Megan and our friends who were starting to act like friends again, but it seemed like we were merely part of his social rotation. Zachary didn’t hang out with anyone so much as he hung out with everyone.

  “What’s next?” he asked, and I realized he was speaking to me.

  “I thought it would be cool to study ancient observatories that marked special times of the year, like equinoxes and solstices.” I opened my yellow folder on the desk. “I figured we’d start with Stonehenge.” I looked at Eowyn, then Zachary. “If that’s okay with you.”

  The professor steepled her fingers under her chin. “What exactly did you want to study about Stonehenge?”

  “How the ancient astronomers figured it all out. How they decided where to place the slabs of rock. It’s so unique.”

  “Actually, there are many sites like it around the world,” Eowyn told me. “Stonehenge is simply the most famous because its size is so impressive and its structure so distinctive.”

  I feigned surprise. “But it’s the oldest, right?”

  “The passage tomb Newgrange is older,” Zachary said.

  “Where’s that?” I asked him, hoping my ignorance was convincing.

  “In Ireland. It marks the winter solstice sunrise.” He shifted to face me, his green eyes sparking with animation. “And up in the Orkney Islands in Scotland, Maeshowe marks the sunset on the same day. You should see it.” He scratched his jaw, as if realizing he’d lost his sheen of guarded cool. “Because it’s brilliant.”

  My pulse quickened from the way he’d looked at me, like he wanted to whisk me across the ocean. “How do they mark it?”

  “I’ll show you.” Eowyn shoved some papers aside, then went to her bookshelf. She took down the model of Newgrange, a glistening white granite half-ring topped by a grassy dome, and laid it on her desk. I examined it as if I’d never seen it before—which I hadn’t, in 3-D at least.

  Back at the bookshelf, Eowyn flipped up one of the posters and pinned it to the frame of the shelf, which contained old, leather-bound, musty-looking books, the kind that make you want to roll around in them. (Well, that make me want to roll around in them. But I’m weird.)

  She pulled out an armful of books and set them on a stool, letting out a whoosh of exertion. In the space left behind, I noticed an odd nick in the backing of the bookcase. It almost looked like a switch, the kind you press on to release a nearby panel. The Keeleys’ old home in the city used to have hiding places like that—supposedly their house had been a speakeasy during Prohibition, and the secret compartments had held illegal liquor.

  Eowyn unpinned the poster, and it fell back into place, hiding
the shelf. When she saw me examining the spot, I looked away and pretended to adjust the zipper on my book bag.

  She opened one of the books to a wrinkled, yellowed page filled with sepia-toned photographs.

  “Here’s what happens.” She turned the domed model so that the door faced me, and pointed to a small rectangular window above the entrance. “On the morning of the winter solstice, the rising sun shines through this roof box into a chamber inside.”

  She opened the model’s roof to reveal a narrow corridor with a round room at its end, then indicated the first photo. “Over the course of seventeen minutes, the light traces a pattern over the carved walls, through three recesses.”

  I studied the photograph. A man stood beside a spiral carved into the rock. I’d known about the solstice sunrise shining inside Newgrange, but I’d never heard of these recesses. They looked like rough versions of those cubbyholes that rich people use to display vases.

  “What do they mean?” I asked her.

  “Archaeologists believe that they signify mother, father, and child.” She turned the page, revealing close-ups of the three ancient marks.

  Zachary leaned over. “Can anyone go in there?”

  “They give tours year-round,” Eowyn said, “but to be there on a solstice you enter a lottery. Fifty names are drawn, and each person can bring a friend.”

  I scanned the images with greedy eyes. Was this where Mom had met my father? Was that why she hid the photos?

  Turning the pages carefully, I said to Eowyn, “Have you been there?”

  “Mm-hmm.”

  “When did you go?” Zachary asked her.

  “Well.” Eowyn spoke faster, drawing my attention back to her face. “I went several times for my work, but only once for the solstice. I can’t remember which year.” She shut the book, almost trapping my fingers. “There are also many other sites you could study. Zachary mentioned Maeshowe, and here in the States we have Chaco Canyon out in—”

  “Can I borrow this?” I held on to the book’s edge with fingers that felt like claws. “I know it’s old, but I swear I’ll take good care of it.”

  Eowyn hesitated, her eyes no longer sparkling. “Well, it does have a thorough bibliography. Primary sources, many of which we have here in the department.” She tapped the cover in a quick staccato. “Things you’ll never find on the Internet.”

  “Thank you.” I slid the book toward my chest, resisting the urge to hug it.

  “Let me get you a bag.” She opened a drawer. “No offense, but I’ve seen inside teenagers’ backpacks, and it’s not exactly a sterile environment.” She slipped a plastic bag over the heavy book and held it out for me.

  In my eagerness to grab the book, I leaned forward and let go of the purple folder on my lap. It tipped, spilling my mother’s photos on the floor. I let out a panicky gasp before realizing they’d fallen facedown. Whew.

  “Here.” Zachary slid out of his chair to help me.

  “I’ve got it!” I scrambled to gather the pile of slick white squares.

  “You missed a couple.” He reached under the desk and extracted the runaway photos. As he pulled them out, he turned them over. One was of the bright white doorway of Newgrange; the other, of a young Eowyn Harris.

  Zachary raised his gaze to meet mine. A flash of heat sparked between my shoulder blades.

  Eowyn rounded the desk. “Everything okay?”

  Zachary flipped the photos over and slid them into my folder. “We’ve got it.” He winked at me, then said to Eowyn, “You were telling us about Chaco Canyon.”

  “Right!” Eowyn closed the Newgrange model and set it back on her shelf. “It’s in New Mexico, and it marks the summer solstice…”

  I tried to pay attention—or at least look like I was—as she described how the Anasazi people used the progress of a “sun dagger” across a spiral carving to know when to harvest. In the corner of my eye, the Newgrange model glowed white, the dark eye of its door beckoning my imagination.

  At the end of our meeting, she told us to return the first week in January, after our next two star maps were finished and we had decided which megaliths we wanted to focus on. Maybe I was paranoid, but Eowyn seemed nervous as she showed us to the door, as though she were a mother sending kids off to army boot camp.

  Zachary stayed quiet beside me as we exited the building and walked to the parking lot. The tension was killing me.

  “Why don’t you just ask?” I said as we approached my rain-soaked car. “You know you want to.”

  “Because I’m trying to decide if you’ll really answer. Otherwise there’s no point, aye?”

  I gritted my teeth. “You’re infuriatingly patient.”

  “You have no idea.” Zachary smirked at me over the roof of the car. “Yet.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Like most post-Shifters, Megan and I usually avoided the Free Spirit Café. The Charles Village coffee shop’s ghost gimmick held no appeal for those of us who saw spirits on a regular basis. Most of its customers were twenty- and thirtysomething people who thought it would be cool to visit a “haunted” restaurant and have their kids waited on by friendly ghosts.

  “I heard the service here sucks,” Megan said as we squeezed into a tiny table by the window, which was painted over with swirling black strokes to keep the place dark. “I heard the ghosts pretend to take your order and then just disappear.”

  “At least they have an excuse. Some places, the living waiters do that.”

  A mural covered the wall above Megan’s head. On a night-sky background, the violet ghosts of famous people floated together, dancing or talking. People who never could’ve hung out: Elvis and Socrates; Ben Franklin and Julius Caesar.

  Like most pre-Shifters’ ideas about ghosts, it was cute but inaccurate. First of all, they couldn’t interact with each other, only with the living. Second, famous people usually got sick of afterlife on Earth pretty fast—after the funerals and TV retrospectives, the twenty-four-hour admiration stopped, so there wasn’t much point in hanging around. Most of them moved on, but a few turned shade. Or so I’d heard, but I’m skeptical. Shades tend to be dark, seething, vaguely human-shaped masses, which wouldn’t do much for a celebrity’s image.

  “Speaking of living, or not so much,” Megan said, “how are you sleeping these days?”

  “Fine.” I stiffened my posture to simulate alertness.

  “Really? Because I was thinking we wouldn’t need to-go bags for our muffins. We can just use the ones under your eyes.”

  “I don’t have muffins under my eyes.”

  “Dork.” She shoved her sunglasses on top of her head. “If I bought you a new red top, would you wear it?”

  “Sorry, got plenty of those.” I picked at the gray fuzz balls on the sleeve of my cardigan.

  “I never see you wear them anymore.”

  “I may have given them all to Goodwill.”

  “What about the ghosts?”

  “They don’t bug me as much as they used to.” I held up my hands to cut her off. “Some of them really need help.”

  “If you want to take on charity cases, you could start with the living.”

  “Did you not just hear me say I donated a bunch of clothes to Goodwill?”

  “Just because you’re the girlfriend—or whatever you are—to a ghost doesn’t mean you have to become a champion for them all.” Megan jerked the zipper open on her purse. “You’re turning into your aunt.”

  “Ouch. If I were dating a black guy, would you complain if I started having more black friends?”

  “There’s no comparison. Ghosts aren’t people.”

  “Hello!” Next to our table appeared the ghost of a ponytailed woman in her early twenties. “I’m Stephanie. Is this your first time here?” When we nodded, she continued. “Okay, the way it works is I take your order back to Justin in the kitchen, and then he brings out your food and drinks.” She beamed at me. “He’s a liver.”

  “Liver?” I crinkled my foreh
ead. “Oh. Live-r. I get it.” I hadn’t heard that term used to describe we who breathed. I didn’t think it would catch on.

  Ex-Stephanie gestured to the blackboard above the counter. “As you can see, our special dessert today is the white chocolate cheesecake. I’m told it’s to die for.” She let out a string of giggles, and I joined in to be polite.

  “Funny,” Megan said through tight lips as she pulled out her wallet. “I think we’ll just order at the counter.”

  I flapped my menu. “Oh, come on, this is cool.” I turned to ex-Stephanie. “Do they pay you?”

  “Under the table.” She flipped the end of her ponytail. “My social security number expired when I did. The money goes to my kid.”

  I told Megan, “Make sure we leave a big tip.”

  She rolled her eyes and said to the ghost, “Two skinny mochas, extra whipped cream on mine.”

  “And the cheesecake,” I added.

  “Sounds great. Thank you!” Instead of walking away, ex-Stephanie vanished.

  Megan dragged herself out of her chair. “I’ll go see if she really put in our order.”

  My cell phone vibrated, still in silent mode from working that afternoon at the law office. I peeked at the caller ID and was surprised at the number.

  “Hello?” I answered, half expecting to hear Logan’s voice.

  “Aura.” Dylan spoke in a hushed tone. “Where are you?”

  “I’m at Free Spirit with Megan. I just got off work, so I’m desperate for sugar.”

  “Have you seen Logan?”