by Kait Nolan
~*~
“I swear, that Macaroni penguin looked just like a guy my team had to report to on the Council. Beady eyes and all.”
Emily laughed, grinning with approval because Rab made a joke, and he seldom allowed himself the release of humor. It was good to see him unwind a little. It was good to see him period. He was the only family she had left.
Across the table, Rab played with the straw of his soda, face suddenly serious. “Are you doing okay here?”
Emily considered the question, considered telling him the truth. That she was miserable. That she didn’t fit in, even among the Mirus students. That she spent every day missing him like a limb. But in the end, she said none of those things, just as she hadn’t said them when he’d asked at all the other schools, in all the other towns around the country. He worked so hard to provide this life for her, taking all the risks, doing all the work so that she could have what he believed was as much normal as he could give. Trying, always trying, to make up for the fact that his enemies had slaughtered their parents. He could no more stop being a spy than she could stop wishing for the phantom stability of her childhood. Asking him to settle down somewhere for a truly normal life, a normal job, would make something in him die. They’d both lost so much already, she simply couldn’t make the request. From this one thing, she could protect him.
“I’m fine,” she lied. If she kept telling herself that, maybe it would become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Stranger things had happened.
He watched her with eyes like pools of night, assessing. Emily held her ground, staring him down with an exaggerated serious gaze of her own intended to break the tension, turn their stalemate into a joke. At last his lips curved and he pushed his empty plate away. “You want dessert?”
“What kind of question is that?” she demanded.
“Cheesecake or Mississippi mud pie?”
“Pie,” she declared. Her brother thought she always ordered dessert because she had a massive sweet tooth. Really it was to draw out their time together as much as possible. Not that she didn’t have a sweet tooth.
She lingered over the pie, savoring each minuscule bite.
“You think I don’t recognize this tactic from Christmas Eve when you tried to stay up and wait for Santa?” he asked, one dark brow lifted.
“Shut up, I’m having a chocolate Zen moment,” she said, closing her eyes to hide the regret that belied her light words. He would go soon. Disappearing back into the shadow world where he lived and worked.
She was silent as he paid the check and ushered her outside, down to the river walk. Her breath puffed out in a faint cloud against the night sky. Autumn was coming. Still in her school uniform of plaid skirt and Oxford shirt, Emily shivered. Rab wrapped a companionable arm around her shoulders in a gesture that was part hug, part noogie, all big brother. Couples and families were scattered along the pathway, lingering at the rail, perching on benches. Most of them would probably go home together, Emily thought. And they wouldn’t have to worry tomorrow or the next day or the next, whether their loved one was still alive.
“I have to go,” murmured Rab.
“When will you be back?” she asked softly, curling closer to his warmth, as if she could hold him to this place by will alone.
“Three weeks at the inside, six at the outside. Depends how things go.”
“Will I hear from you?”
Emily felt rather than saw Rab shake his head. “Too dangerous. I’ll be incommunicado for this job. If anything goes wrong here, the emergency channels will still be open.”
She knew that “anything” meant life-threatening. She’d never had to use the emergency channels before, though she’d been sorely tempted on more than one occasion, just to alleviate her anxiety that he wasn’t okay.
“Fall break will be coming up at the end of next month. Maybe you could hold off on taking another job when you get back? So we could take a trip or something?”
He ruffled her hair. “Sure. Wherever you want to go. Somewhere up the Eastern seaboard to see the fall foliage?”
She tried for a smile and hoped the dark hid how wobbly it was. “That sounds good. I’ll do some research while you’re gone. Plan out an itinerary.”
A momentary flash of pain crossed his features, chased by a lopsided smile. “Just as organized as Mom. You go ahead and play travel agent. Surprise me.” He stopped walking. “And now, my dear baby sister, it’s time for me to take you back.”
Emily followed him up the stairs from the river walk to an alleyway snaking between two buildings. The pavement was swathed in shadow. They each cast a look around, checking to make sure no one was watching as they slipped into the dark. Knowing what was coming next, Emily hugged him again, squeezing tight. Then she was ripped out of the world and into a cold darkness.
It didn’t hurt, not exactly, but the feeling left her oddly breathless and disoriented. Emily felt her whole body vibrate like a tuning fork. The sensation made her teeth ache, her bones feel brittle. Traveling by shadow, as all the Shadow Walkers did, was not for the faint of stomach. She had a love-hate relationship with the experience, same as many people did with roller coasters. It was both exciting and nauseating. Rab had once described it as tuning the body in to a new frequency. He swore the nausea passed with training, which was all well and good, but passengers didn’t get that training because they didn’t have the gene.
Shadow walking was a rare ability that popped up in isolated cases across all races, seldom in the same town, let alone the same family. So useful, the Council of Races sought out and recruited those who could master shadow as soon as their powers manifested, sometimes as young as six. Rab had been ten when they took him. As a doppelganger, his ability to control shadow was especially exceptional, and they’d exploited him in every way imaginable before his defection, down to using his abilities as a master soldier-spy to take out high profile political targets. Like their parents.
He thought she didn’t know. But Emily knew perfectly well that they had manipulated him into setting the charge. She’d found out a lot in the wake of his brutal nightmares. He’d been told the target was someone else. Why the Council had gone to such trouble to make sure it was him and not one of the other operatives, Emily had no idea. It was weird and nonsensical. What if he’d figured out who the real targets were? But he hadn’t figured it out. Not until he went through the carnage after the blast did he realized what he’d done. Then he’d left his squad, grabbed her, and been running ever since. He had not taken another life.
Never again, she vowed. He’d never again be put in a position where he had to use deadly force. Not if she could help it.
They emerged near the empty path from the quad to the dorms, slipping free of the shadows into one of the pools of light that dotted the sidewalk at regular intervals. Emily closed her eyes, willed her system to settle as Rab set her gently on her feet. It was like hitting land after being on a ship for a long time. She still felt as if the ground was pitching and rolling. Shaking off the sensation, she opened her eyes to find Rab checking his watch.
“You have to go,” she said, speaking before he could.
He nodded once, already slipping back into soldier mentality.
“I’ll be fine from here. The dorm’s just up the hill.”
Rab glanced around, eyes searching the dark. “You sure? I can walk you to the door.”
Emily looked at her own watch. “You’re already late. Go ahead. I’ll see you in a few weeks.”
His embrace was fierce, protective, and she returned it with every muscle. “Be careful,” he ordered, and it was ritual.
“Only if you will,” she said, playing it out.
Rab released her. “Keep to the light.” Then he melted back into the shadows, soundless as any ghost.
“Be safe,” she whispered.
Once, she might have lingered, willing him to com
e back for one last goodbye. She’d learned better. Once he was mission-bound, nothing distracted him. It was one of the things that made him so good at his job. Her footsteps echoed faintly off the concrete as she began the trudge back to the dorm. She felt clammy, as if the cold of the shadow world still clung to her in a fine sheen. Wrapping her arms around her torso, she glanced down. Her steps faltered. Wisps of dark wrapped her hands like spiderwebs.
Emily shook them and blinked, stared again.
Nothing.
It was nothing. Just my imagination, she thought, starting to walk again. I’m just overtired and worried. And cold. I’ll grab a nice long, shower when I get back. Everybody will be out tonight, so nobody will gripe about my using all the hot—
Hands jerked her off her feet, off the path, out of the light. Mindful of his earlier lesson, Emily struck out, expecting to either catch Rab in the gut or have him twist away. But the body pressed frontside to her back was not her brother’s. He was shorter, leaner, and he smelled of dirt and motor oil. She opened her mouth to scream, only to find a filthy hand jammed over her lips.
Bitter cold leeched into her everywhere his skin touched hers, and with it came a despair so deep it all but buckled her knees.
Wraith, she thought dimly, as she felt the will to fight bleeding out of her and struggled to hold on, to get free. But it was no use. Even as she tried to gather her power, to manifest somewhere there would be people she could lead to help, she felt her consciousness flicker.
Then she sank into the dark.