by J. S. Morin
Clothes—casual
Clothes—formal
Shoes—casual/formal/sports
Luggage
Computer hard drives
Laptop
Personal effects
Pets (give away/bring along—if so, pet supplies)
Pay three months’ rent/break lease (pay penalty)
Cancel utilities
Transfer bank accounts or cash out
Pay off outstanding debts
Medications (fill prescriptions)
Quit job
Inform between 2 and 5 acquaintances that you are moving—no forwarding address—including any/all roommates
Purchase farewell gifts for friends (optional)
“What is all this?” I was no idiot, but I wanted Kang’s explanation.
“This is the hand held down from heaven to lift you up. Do all on that list, and you will be able to leave with no one filing a missing persons report or worrying that you have been kidnapped or are hurt and lost somewhere. A butcher can cut off an arm, but a surgeon knows that you must close the wound for it to heal.”
“So… what? I’m cutting off an arm here?”
Kang shrugged and puffed at his cigarette. “Figure of speech. I won’t pretend you aren’t leaving a lot of your life behind.”
I scanned the list again. Luckily I didn’t have a lot of attachments, especially not debts, but I could only imagine how much it would cost someone like Judy to make a clean break with her life.
I slapped the stack of cash against my palm. “How much is here?”
“Ten grand. Be smart. It’s not a million dollars.” He wagged the cigarette at me like a scolding finger. A casual flick of the filter with his thumb sprinkled ash on the hardwood floors.
It might as well have been a million in my world. I got my tip money in ones and fives mostly. On the night I hadn’t cleared fifty bucks.
I stood up and edged toward the door. “I can’t. I have a life here. My father can’t just summon me and expect me to, what… flee the country? Buy a ticket to Shanghai and fly on a false diplomatic passport? No.”
“Don’t be silly. It’s a private jet. And you might not have a life here for long. Sides are being chosen. Someone unleashed a power they don’t understand. One long kept in check. They started here. You are too close.”
Kang knew more than he was admitting. He had to.
“What do you expect me to do then? Pack up and meet someone at a private airfield in the morning?”
He pointed to the index card. Flipping it over, I saw a phone number, 617 area code. “Call that number when you’re ready. A car will pick you up in half an hour. Though your father’s instructions don’t mention it, you may bring one other person—someone who would want to start a new life with you. All she would need is a passport. If that is an issue, let the person who answers know. It will be taken care of.”
Judy came to mind but only by reflex. She wasn’t going anywhere, even if it weren’t for Tim. She had a career, ambitions. Plus, she hated change, travel, and authentic Chinese food. If it wasn’t a fried take-out staple, she wanted no part of it.
“What if I say no?”
Kang hung his head. “Please don’t. I made your father a promise that I would keep you safe. When the prophetess isn’t even safe, how am I supposed to keep those same people from coming after you?”
Had I heard that right? He called Martinez “prophetess.” Just like with the shadows, I wished I’d had a witness.
“I appreciate your concern, Mr. Kang. I’ll give your offer some thought, but I think that if whoever is murdering people in locked offices gave a damn about me, I’d be dead already.”
I didn’t mention the Black-Hatted Stranger.
Chapter Eighteen
I walked to the T station in the rain.
In retrospect, maybe I should have taken a cab and gotten my ten grand in cash off the streets. The passport, driver’s license, and instructions were concealed in a baggy to protect them from the weather, which in turn was tucked inside a bag filled with takeout from Yangtze Valley.
The smell had me ravenous.
If I had wanted to, I could have walked out of that little apartment with Kang’s 9mm. He offered it to me.
But what good was a gun going to do me, really? My problem was shadows and voices in my head. I’d seen Fight Club. Hell, I’d even read the book. I knew the dangers of mixing guns and imaginary friends.
Tony’s phone was an awkward fit in my pocket. Kang had confiscated it from his nephew when he found out I didn’t have one of my own. The oversized screen made it jab me in the thigh with each step.
The night was darker than I’d realized at first. Rainclouds obscured the stars and moon. Again, more of the streetlights were out. Red, green, and yellow dots stood out against the darkness at each intersection, directing cars that were just disembodied pairs of headlights and taillights. Squinting at the street signs, I double-checked that I was on the right route.
I rounded a corner and saw a round sign jutting from the Chinatown Station entrance, backlit by the only working streetlight on the block.
More than that, I saw the dark figure standing beneath that sign, concealed in a long trench coat and Stetson hat.
I froze.
My brain wanted me to tackle the Black-Hatted Stranger, grab him by the collar, and shake some answers out of him.
My heart told me to run.
My feet refused to arbitrate between the two.
The Black-Hatted Stranger—or someone dressed just like him—tugged the brim of his hat in imitation of a cowboy’s greeting. With a flick of his other hand, he threw something behind him. It moved too fast to tell what it was.
The last thing I saw before it struck the streetlight and darkened Washington Street was the swirl of trench coat as the Black-Hatted Stranger ducked inside the station.
It occurred to me that the darkness might have been of my own making. Every light in Boston might well have been lit, and my mind playing tricks to tell me otherwise. I certainly hadn’t tripped over curbs or fire hydrants on my unlit journey thus far.
As for the Black-Hatted Stranger? Fuck him.
I wasn’t walking all the way to the next station just to avoid him. Plus, I still needed answers, and Kang’s hadn’t sated that hunger.
Some faint possibility existed that I knew everything and was concealing it from my conscious mind. It sounded a little bit soap-opera corny, but it would mean that the Black-Hatted Stranger would be an aspect of my own mind. Confronting him might hold the key to unlocking my mind’s own secrets.
The station was all but deserted. Was that my imagination, too?
Was I blocking crowds of Bostonians from my conscious sight just to maintain the illusion of dread?
Or it could have just been late at night with no big event in town to keep people out on a shitty night like this one.
Anger drove me down those stairs into the belly of the city. If I weren’t carrying a good ten pounds worth of Chinese food, I’d have broken into a run.
I found myself on the platform without any recollection of stopping to run my Charlie card through the machine or pushing through the turnstile.
The only bank of fluorescent bar lights left glowing above the platform were down at the far end, as if some dickhead who could conjure shadow daggers was shattering the lights as he went.
A dozen or so human forms stood silent, milling around waiting for the train. I didn’t see the Black-Hatted Stranger among them—I’d have known his silhouette.
“He’s here,” the whisper assured me. “But he’s not worth your trouble.”
“Not now,” I snapped. My words washed out amid the sound of the brakes of the incoming train.
I was on board before half the exiting riders had passed through the doors. The first car was as good as any, and I parked myself in a seat at one end. Either the Black-Hatted Stranger was going to show himself, or I was going to get to Downtown Crossing, swap lines, and head ho
me.
The doors closed, and I studied the few riders who shared my car. If I’d been in a calm mindset, I might have pieced together stories, inferred relationships between the riders, invented the various reasons that had brought them all together on this particular train. Writer’s practice. But that night all I could do was rule out the Black-Hatted Stranger being among them.
But as soon as we got moving, the lights in the car went out. No one cried out or complained; conversations carried on uninterrupted.
“You came back to see me.”
I stiffened at the voice coming from beside me. I’d been looking out the window on the left side, and the voice of the Black-Hatted Stranger originated just outside my peripheral vision.
I gritted my teeth and kept my voice low. “What do you want from me?”
He leaned down and took a long sniff at my takeout bag. “Smells good. Yangtze Valley, right?”
I double-checked, and it didn’t say the restaurant name anywhere on the plain paper bag. “You followed me.”
“More like watched. They’re a wild card in all this. I couldn’t risk getting close, but it’s obvious you weren’t in any danger from them. Wonder why that is…” His gaze wandered down to the takeout bag.
“Family friends.”
He snorted. “Convenient. Look, I’ll make this simple. You’re with us—got it? Come with me, and I’ll explain everything.”
With us—an implied clause involving a rather unpleasant against us option. “Or else what? You think I’m afraid of my imagination?” I glanced around the car to make sure we weren’t attracting undue attention, but I might as well have been invisible.
The Black-Hatted Stranger held out a dagger, concealing the blade from the other passengers’ view with the sleeve of his coat. It was a deep violet color, nearly black. Wisps of shadow wafted from the blade, like the fog from dry ice except inky black.
“Something to convince you this is real.”
With a quick twitch, faster than I could react, the blade flicked out and slashed across the back of my hand.
In shock I looked down, but there was no mark on me. Holding up the hand with a wicked grin, I showed it to the Black-Hatted Stranger.
“Ha! Your bluff sucks.”
The Black-Hatted Stranger quickly slid the dagger into his sleeve. “That wasn’t a bluff, and you’re not who I thought you were.”
He edged away from me.
Who did he think I was? Someone who could be stabbed with a dagger conjured from shadows? If he’d expected that to cut me, maybe I wasn’t someone he wanted to mess with.
Emboldened, I pulled the takeout bag onto my lap and pulled out the pen I carried for customers who paid by credit card. It was a crude effort, but in less time than the Shadowblood intro, I sketched out a rune circle, same as Judy and I did every episode. I picked the nastiest spell I could think up on short notice.
The Black-Hatted Stranger watched, transfixed as I angled the bag so he couldn’t see what I was writing.
“What do you think of that?” I taunted.
“You wouldn’t. You can’t. You’re not even sure you’re awake right now. I see it in your eyes.”
“Willing to take that risk?”
I wrote on the palm of my hand, just random lines, since I didn’t know my personal rune. I held up a fist, concealing the markings. If I wasn’t full of shit, I’d written a banishment spell, one that would force a shadowblood from the world of light.
There was so much wrong with my plan, I didn’t know where to begin. The rune was drawn like utter hen scratch for starters, not to mention that brown paper and gel ink weren’t exactly the most desirable arcane materials. But the kicker was that my personal rune hadn’t shown up in my head like a bolt from the heavens.
I was counting on Black-Hat being a coward.
But the Black-Hatted Stranger sat motionless for a moment as the train rumbled on. “Fine.” The lights went out, and when they came back on seconds later, he was nowhere to be found.
The train pulled into Haymarket Station; I’d missed two stops.
Chapter Nineteen
The rest of the train ride back to Davis Station was uneventful, which in itself was something of a surprise. I guess they couldn’t all be Willy Wonka boat rides.
The clouds were breaking up after the evening’s rain, allowing occasional moonlight to peek through as I came topside. The twisted cardboard handles of my bag of Chinese food were digging into my fingers. Everything inside had to be cold by now—already leftovers before I even got it home. If not for my contraband travel papers buried at the bottom, I’d have been tempted to tear it open and eat beggar’s chicken with my bare hands.
The lack of streetlights was reaching catastrophic proportions. Had it always been this bad, or was I just now noticing?
If I didn’t know the way from Davis to the apartment in my sleep, it would have been hazardous. Maybe one in five was lit, just enough that I could see one from the next and keep my bearings. As I passed under one, I noticed my shadow. I stopped. It didn’t.
This was getting on my nerves. Hadn’t I dealt with enough shit today? Tonight? This week? When was it time for Matt to get a lazy night sitting on the couch? My shadow waved its arms like a stranded motorist looking for help with a spare tire.
“What do you want?” I snapped, not caring whether any neighbors might have heard.
“Acknowledgment,” the whisper replied. This was the first time I’d caught the moving shadows and the whisper conspiring.
With a mocking half-bow and a forced smile, I complied. “Hi. Nice to meet you, Mr. Shadow. Now fuck off.”
“How about belief? Zhujiu believes in me. So does Kang. Even your friend on the train, irreverent shit that he is, still believes.”
“Family history of mental illness, and I’m still not convinced the subway guy is real,” I grumbled.
I tripped on a curb in the dark. If not for the bumper of a parked Civic, I’d have face-planted on the asphalt.
“Maybe seeing is believing?” the shadow asked.
Suddenly, the night snapped into focus. It wasn’t thanks to an influx of light. The darkness merely took on dimension. Murky blackness sharpened into crisp edges and contours.
Color aside, I’d never seen the world so clearly.
Mouth gone dry, I licked my lips before responding. “This… I can’t have imagined this. Could I?”
“Couldn’t say. You’ve got such a vivid, vibrant imagination. Perhaps. But in this case, you’re not.”
For the first time, I think I let that possibility settle in. The Black-Hatted Stranger shoving me had really gnawed at the edges of my delusion. And if he were real, the rest teetered like a house of cards.
“You’ve got one chance,” I told it. “You need to convince the least irrational person I know that you’re real.”
“I already told you, your father believes quite fervently that shadows can live.”
“Not him. Judy.”
Chapter Twenty
I set the bag of Chinese takeout on the coffee table and folded my arms. The tension of being out on the streets with a pile of cash and iffy travel documents poured out of me like I’d opened a tub drain.
But it wasn’t entirely good news being back at the apartment. Judy’s car had been out front. Good. Tim’s had been absent. Also good. The fact that I needed to wake Judy before Tim got back and convince her that shadows were real, talked to me, and that I hadn’t gone stark raving mad? This had disaster written all over it.
“What’s your pitch?” I asked the shadow in a whisper. “How you gonna convince her?”
“I could unlock her shadow, too. Let it haunt her directly. Probably the easiest way, frankly.”
“No,” I snapped. Then I lowered my voice before I woke Judy arguing with myself. “No. You can’t do that. If you’re the real deal, that’s the last thing she’d want. Assuming it works like the books. Does it?”
“They’re a bit whimsical bu
t remarkably accurate. That’s what I love about them. So much more lovingly crafted than the television program.”
I headed for my bedroom to change out of my wet clothes. Bad enough to sound like a madman. I didn’t need to be dripping wet to boot.
Turning on the light in my bedroom, I noticed something perched on my pillow.
It was my cell phone.
The screen was still cracked, but when I picked it up and hit the power button, it turned on. Judy must have found it on the floor and fixed it. She must have conjured up all sorts of scenarios that would have led to me breaking it.
I checked for a note, a text, an email that might have claimed responsibility. Plenty of people had been trying to get a hold of me all day—including calls and texts from a local number that probably worked for Kang—but nothing from Judy.
The presence of the phone was message enough, I supposed.
Judy just fixed things. That’s what she did.
It came to me in a flash. “What if you gave me inside info? You must know stuff Martinez didn’t publish.”
“You have a talking shadow, and you ask for fan fiction? You are such a writer sometimes. Your friend has an arcanist’s bent of mind.” Shadowy tendrils wound around my phone. “What would convince an arcanist?”
“Can’t you just talk to her?”
The shadow’s laughter echoed all around the room. I shushed it, but the thing just cackled all the louder. “No, I can’t,” it claimed. “Besides, you’ve heard me for months now, and I swear you’re still skeptical.”
“That’s another thing,” I added. “Why now?”
“Use that imagination of yours, Matt. Treat Earth like Corondia. After all, that’s what you’re best at.”
I ignored the shadow trying to sidetrack me. “Can she see you?”
“Probably. She does have poor eyesight, though.”
I leveled a finger at the shadow as I crept down the hall to Judy’s door. “Put up or shut up.”
My knock was answered with a weary grunt. My follow-up knock drew a sleepy “What?” from beyond the door.