by L. A. Banks
He shrugged and looked off toward the horizon again. “Sure, you could cop a plea and probably get your grandmother to tell Miss Tittle to back off and not make you do detention. Suit yourself, but do you truly want to do seven years here as ‘that privileged Neteru bitch’ and be hated by everyone because of that?” he asked, making little quotes in the air with his fingers as he glanced at her over his shoulder. “Or would you rather fit in as best you can? Your choice, but if it were me…”
Sarah just stared up at her newest instructor, hanging on his every word.
“I thought so,” he said. “Good choice. Now, back to why you don’t base jump from here, and I’m telling you this because you came in here with a couple of fliers. Earlier this year we lost two seventh-year Uppers because they were showing off for a couple of girls. Sure, they claimed it was all about trying to locate the missing students—but if you ask me, it had more to do with trying to impress the two Clavs they came up here with.” He let out a hard breath and looked off toward the horizon again. “Damned shame, too. So much life yet to live, so much promise, and gone—for what? Just because they couldn’t follow some basic rules.”
He turned his attention back to Sarah, and his gaze was penetrating. “So I guess you wonder why am I telling you this. Because after the shadow attack, you might suddenly find yourself being very popular with a few bad asses. Why am I concerned? Because those bad asses are dumb asses at your age.”
He walked to the edge of the platform and slapped his chest. “I’m a supernatural. Was never a kid. Was always this age since the beginning of ages. I can fly in where normal angels fear to tread, you read me? Problem with an inexperienced flier base jumping from here is that this entire structure is being shielded by a Neteru energy distortion, courtesy of your dad. Once they come out of that at the base of the pyramid, things are a lot closer than they appeared.” Professor Razor shook his head. “Ground just comes right up on you—whack.”
She cringed and thought about Al and Val flying out past the light barriers at the Neteru compound. If they had managed to land out there, God help them. Maybe the only reason they’d made it back safely that night was because they’d had to turn back when they heard her screams.
Her voice moved up her throat and past her lips without consulting her brain. She thought of Val’s expression when he took flight, just as he took a running leap. “Or maybe,” she said, closing her eyes and opening her arms wide, feeling the breeze caress her soul, “maybe if you had wings you feel like you have to do this. Maybe not giving in to the wind and hurling yourself off the edge of the world would feel like you were in a cage, maybe you have to just let the nothingness catch you until you became lighter than air.”
“That must suck,” he said quietly. “You’ve got the soul of a flier but no wings.”
Sarah opened her eyes.
“Tough break. But everybody’s got issues.”
For a moment she just stared at him. “Yeah, I wanted the wings but got crazy demon shadows that hurt people. Go figure.”
“They aren’t demons, and for the record, I wanted white wings and a frickin’ harp but got raven wings and a scythe, then a class of newbies with problem parents. You learn to play the hand you’re dealt. Not much work after the Armageddon for us Reapers. Just a little border patrol duty, the occasional riffraff to drag back to Hell, nothing major. Gotta wait until the next big one, I suppose. Like I said, kid, we’ve all got issues.”
“What’s a Reaper, exactly?”
Professor Razor let out a long, weary sigh and rolled his shoulders. “Didn’t they teach you anything?” One moment he was standing beside her like a normal old dude with weird eyes. In the next moment, darkness fell over her. His twenty-foot, muscular wingspan eclipsed the sun. Blue-black feathers glistened as his eyes turned midnight blue and a silver scythe materialized in his hand.
“This is a Reaper,” he said in a low, ominous rumble. “If one of us is on your ass, you’ve obviously made some very unfortunate choices in life.”
Sarah stepped away from the edge of the platform on wobbly legs. “You were after my dad?”
Her shadows leap-frogged over each other and let out tiny squeals before jumping into his larger shadow to disappear entirely.
“Yeah,” Professor Razor said, then folded away his wings and flung his scythe away from him into the clouds. “But he got a last-minute pardon. Luck of the draw that never sat right with me, but I don’t make those decisions. Then again, you’re here as a result, so somebody must have had a reason for sparing him.”
“Oh.” What was she supposed to say to that?
“And those little shadow guys who scare you? Those are Collectors. And they don’t like being confused with gremlins, hobgoblins or demons. It’s an insult.”
He tapped his foot and waited as they came sliding over the edge of the platform, then began bouncing up and down like tiny balls.
“Collectors?” Sarah hugged herself, making sure she kept her distance from the Reaper.
“We Reapers are like bounty hunters,” he said matter-of-factly. “We drag things down to the Pit, and those little guys are like our bloodhounds. They help—and they love to play go fetch. Yours are still young. Your Collectors are like big puppies, really, when not on the hunt. You just have to give them plenty of love and discipline, let them know who the alpha dog is and tell them no when they grab the wrong creature occasionally. But I like ‘em.” He motioned toward the small moving orbs with his chin. “You oughta name them.”
“Name them?” Sarah couldn’t believe what she was hearing.
“Yeah, like give…them…a name,” he said slowly and deliberately, without a smile.
Sarah shook her head and walked away from him and the little nuisances that had bothered her all her life. They looked like ink spots, just strange splats against the stones, when dormant and not three dimensional. The really weird part was when nothing was going on, there’d always just be two of them—but when things got crazy, it was as if they’d multiply and divide into a bunch of smaller dark orbs. Yet after things calmed down, they always came back into the main two blobs they’d originated from. And now she was supposed to name them? Was he nuts?
She hadn’t a clue as to how to name a shadow, especially when they began stretching like an old Slinky toy when they tried to follow her down the stairs. “Inky… Slinky? Professor, help me out here,” she said, opening her arms wide. “I don’t know! Who names scary shadows?”
Shrill noises that degenerated into grumbles emanated from the shadows.
“It might be me,” Professor Razor said, trying hard not to smile, “but I don’t think they’d like that. The whole Inky and Slinky thing? Rhyming…uh…not so great.”
“Well then…what?” Sarah dragged her fingers through her hair, grabbed her scrunchie and slipped it around her wrist before placing both hands on her hips. “How’s Beep and Bop, since that’s what they sound like when they’re playing around and not fussing at me?”
Squeals of delight ricocheted off the stones, and her instructor cracked a smile.
“Wouldn’t have been my choice, but I guess it works for them,” he said, trying to remain stern.
“Okay,” Sarah said, blowing out a breath of annoyance. “Beep and Bop—but how the heck do I tell you guys apart?”
“I wouldn’t worry about it, since they work in tandem…sorta like twins are supposed to,” Razor pointed out. “Anyway, now that they’ve been named, your Collectors should behave a little better just knowing you’ve finally claimed them, which should also stop any unauthorized attacks. Rather than acting on your behalf, they’ll wait for your command. But you’ve really got to practice some anger management, kiddo.”
“They grabbed Melissa,” Sarah said, and hung her head. “They bit her, yanked out her hair and cut her up.”
“Yep. But they’ll fix her up in the infirmary and her face will be as good as new—courtesy of our expert healers,” he said with a shrug. “Unfortu
nately for Melissa, the green-eyedmonster is hard to tell from other demons, then add in a jigger of malcontent, lies, whatever else she had stewing in her, and then an attack that sent you to a very dark place inside your mind, and your Collectors flipped out. It was the perfect storm.”
“Were they really gonna drag her to Hell?”
“Yep,” he said in a casual tone, going to the edge of the stones to peer over them. “Like I said, they hunt and fetch what a Reaper or Shadow Walker tells them to go collect. They would have belched her out of there eventually. It’s not her time. Once she got down there, the Reapers on patrol would have checked with their commander, The Grim Reaper, and she would have gotten a pass—although she’d have been traumatized for life, but hey.”
Sarah squeezed her eyes shut. “I never, ever, ever want to be responsible for anything like that. What if she’d burned like that demon did or something?”
A pair of rough hands suddenly held Sarah’s arms tightly, forcing her to peer into Professor Razor’s hard glare.
“What demon, Sarah?” he asked in a no-nonsense tone, almost shaking her.
“Not here at school,” she said quickly. “The one at home. We were out at night—weren’t supposed to be, but that’s a long story.”
“Aren’t they all?” he said, letting her go and seeming somewhat relieved. “But what happened?”
“I got separated from…one of my compound sisters,” Sarah hedged, not wanting to implicate any of her friends in her confession. “Then, out of nowhere, a demon jumped at me. Then everything went black. I started falling, and I went into this…I don’t know. This dark place—a demon hole, I guess. Except it wasn’t like demons were there. In fact, there was this being of light instead. Nana said it was Christine—the daughter she lost a long time ago, who is now my guide. And when she sent me back, the demon was burning.” Sarah looked at her teacher, searching his expression for answers. “Is that where Melissa would have gone?”
A slow smile spread across Professor Razor’s face, then he raked his hair with his fingers, beginning to pace. “I’ll just be damned!” he exclaimed with a wide grin, then he threw his head back and laughed. Staring up at the sky, he said in a loud, booming voice, “First she shadow pulsed a student out of her chair, and now she says she can torch demons? Do you hear that! Do you hear that? The girl can already throw shadow fire, and she can even create a shadowbox!”
Not sure if what he was saying about her was a good thing or a bad one, Sarah just hugged herself and stared at him. Her grandmother had just used some of those terms the professor mentioned when they’d spoken in her office: shadowbox, like a cage. And what was shadow fire? She had to learn more.
“Sarah,” he said with a big smile, then went to her and placed his hands on her shoulders, “you are so gifted.” His expression and voice took on a gentler quality that she hadn’t known he was capable of, and he bent down so they were eye-to-eye. “When you went into the darkness, your guide didn’t save you. You saved yourself. It’s called shadowboxing—you put yourself in a black box to hide yourself from what was chasing you. Then you blew the sucker up with shadow fire. Dark energy, not to be confused with evil or dark consciousness… It’s like…the spectrum of ultraviolet light that actually becomes a black light—but concentrated. We call it shadow fire. The demons can’t see it, especially inside a shadow box, but when they trip over it…kaboom.”
He stepped away from her and laughed out loud. “Only fifteen years old and already blowing demons to smithereens. I love it!”
“I did?” she said in a very small voice, but down deep inside his pleased assessment made her stand taller.
“Yes, Sarah, you did,” he said, then folded his arms, still smiling. “Have you ever been so upset or afraid that everything around you just went dark, but somehow you didn’t feel terrified, just safe, like you’d thrown a blanket over your head or something?”
She looked off toward the horizon and thought about his question hard, and after a moment she turned back to him and began sputtering excitedly. “Yes, yes, just this morning! In the shower—I was so upset, I just wanted all this stuff to go away, and my roommates…” She hugged herself again and looked down. “I lost track of time. Everything went dark. It was so quiet and peaceful, then I realized I was late for homeroom.”
“It’s all right, Sarah,” Razor said in a quiet tone filled with pride. “One day, you might grow into shadow sight or even learn to shadow speak or hear what the shadows say. You already hear the little noises your Collectors make, right? If you’re really adept, you might even learn to strengthen your skills enough to regularly shadow travel.”
Sarah peered up at the man who had finally given names and clearer definition to the weirdness in her life. Overcome with emotion, she closed the gap between them and simply hugged him. He awkwardly patted her back and returned her hug. Somehow words weren’t necessary for him to understand what it had been like living with this thing and not having a name for it.
“I don’t want to hurt anybody,” she said, keeping her eyes tightly shut as she held onto him. “I’m so, so sorry for what I did to Melissa.”
“I’m not going to let you hurt anybody, honey,” he said softly, then held her away. “But that was why I was so angry when I found out that no one had told you.” He released a long breath and shook his head. “You needed to know. Ignorance is a sure recipe for fear. And had you known your power, you could have been trained like a black belt not to get into petty street fights with amateurs, knowing full well you could kill them. But without knowledge, you were just spontaneously ejecting all over the place—not good.”
“My father always said knowledge was power,” Sarah said in a bitter tone, feeling outrage beginning to rekindle within her.
“Yeah, I bet he did, and I’m pretty sure where he got the quote. Be that as it may, let’s not focus on what people did wrong. Let’s focus on your learning, your improvement, your talents, all right?”
“Okay,” she said, finding a smile. It was hard not to be angry, but it was also hard not to feel empowered—and that felt so good. “Can I like…maybe…just come to you sometimes after class just to ask you questions, sir? Like…there’s nobody who really understands this stuff, not even Nana—I mean, Headmistress Stone.” Sarah bit her lip, waiting, hoping, praying that Professor Razor, who only took the super-advanced kids, might share just a little of his time and expertise with her. If she could learn how to use her talents with him, maybe she could learn fast enough to help Ayana. What good were special powers if it didn’t help the people you loved?
He shrugged and stepped back, looking down at her. “I don’t know, Sarah. Are you willing to work hard?”
“I am. I really am,” she said, almost breathless at just the chance to study under him.
“Then I’ll do you one better than just some casual tutoring after class.” Professor Razor stared at Sarah, then he reached into his pants pocket, extracted a little onyx-and-sterling pin in the shape of an Egyptian Ankh and attached it to the collar of her sweater. “There. You’re now officially in the Shadows division. You are not in the Blends talent division anymore. Normally I give these out during the first day of class, but why stand on ceremony? You sure don’t, Miss Rivera.”
“Oh, my God!” she said excitedly, and after a moment she touched the small black pin and looked up. “I don’t ever want anything like hurting another student on my conscience. I promise you won’t be disappointed in me. I’ll study hard. I know this is a big responsibility, and I swear to you that I’ll only use what I learn for the good. I don’t want to be responsible for dragging another kid to you-know-where.”
“I didn’t think so,” he said firmly. “So learn to control your gift and make your Collectors behave.”
“I don’t know how to,” she said.
“That’s why I got the job of working with you. Oh joy,” he said with a lopsided smile and a wink.
By the time she’d gotten back to the purple c
orridors, homeroom was over and so was first period. Sarah dashed down the hall to make it to Miss Tittle’s English class a full minute early, then put on her most contrite expression, walked up to the high-strung woman and apologized in front of all the other students.
“Thank you for allowing me back into your classroom, Miss Tittle,” Sarah said in a solemn tone. “I am very sorry that I was disrespectful earlier and retaliated against another student. It won’t happen again. And I’ll be at the stables on time—I promise.”
“Well, that is more like it—and I do hope Headmistress Stone reinforced with you how unacceptable disrespectful behavior is.” Suddenly Miss Tittle came to a halt. She stared at Sarah’s collar. “Oh, my,” she said. “Your powers…that explains it…you’re in Shadows now.”
Murmurs broke out in the class as Sarah went to take her seat in the back row next to her brother.
“What’d you do?” Amy Feingold muttered. “Go get a free pass from your grandmother? I guess everybody in the Netpound sticks together, huh?”
“You know they do,” Angelica Roberts griped under her breath.
“Back off,” Al said, giving Melissa’s girlfriends a warning glare. “If Sarah’s a Shadow, it’s because she earned it. And after what Mel’s been doing to Sarah and her friends, then what she said about my cousin Ayana…well, Melissa is just lucky my pop doesn’t go in for hitting girls. But as you can see, my sister can take care of herself.”