by J. S. Morin
“On the ground,” the guard ordered, keeping the light trained on my attacker, who was still on his hands and knees.
“You’re a fun sort of stupid. Do you know that?” my shadow taunted.
“Glad you’re enjoying this. I’ve got something better in store.”
Distraction number one: accomplished.
It was time for distractions two through… well, however, many it took to find Tim and Greg.
Silently, I slipped in and out of cells, careful to catch inmates unaware and jump before they knew what was going on.
I was indiscriminate.
Young or old, brawny or scrawny, I grabbed them and dumped them outside their cells. As psychological experiments go, using inmate populations had fallen out of style. Prisoners’ rights, ethics, and all that jazz had left those methods by the wayside. Besides, randomly releasing a bunch of inmates wasn’t quite what psychologists worried about, so really, I had no idea what to expect besides chaos and confusion.
The guard, overwhelmed, confused, and probably pants-shittingly scared, called for backup. That was when I stopped dumping all my charges in the cell block and started sorting.
It would probably have been an interesting study of me, if any psychologist had been around to collect the data. The ones that looked to me like they might be violent, unstable, or just generally unpleasant humans, I dropped off into the sea of chaos inside the jail. Anyone who looked mild-mannered, feeble, or otherwise possibly sympathetic, I took outside, onto the streets.
It wasn’t long after I started sorting that I came across Tim’s cell. He was paired up with a young black guy who reminded me of a calculus TA I had freshman year at Harvard. That was good enough to get him dropped off on Nashua Street while Tim’s back was turned.
Seconds later, I was in the cell again.
“Hey, big guy.”
Tim jumped—the regular kind where an unexpected voice speaks behind you. “Matt?”
“Easy on the names. I’m getting you out of here.”
He didn’t resist as I shadow-jumped us to the roof of the prison. “Holy shit! Did we just—?”
“Yup,” I replied without waiting for the rest of the question. “Hold tight. I’m going back in for Greg.”
Before I got the calm, reasoned assurance that Tim was going to be all right, he grabbed me. “You asshole. You could do that, and you left me in there for a whole day?” He shuddered. “Ugh. And I can’t shake this tainted feeling. What the hell, man? I’ve been… taken apart.”
“Make up your mind, dick. You rather I left you inside or drag you through the shadows by… well, let’s just say I don’t quite get how I do it.”
I glared at the big baby, shivering in his orange prison jumpsuit. Tim looked spent. Clean shaven for the first time since I’d known him, he was barely recognizable. He bunched his arms tight against his body, which seemed leaner than a day away from good meals could have explained.
Without waiting for a response, I jumped through the shadows once more and set off after Greg.
In the process, I met a variety of disreputable people, failed to introduce myself, and got to see the most shocked expression each was capable of. It was like trying to speed date during a hostage crisis.
After a couple minutes, I located Greg and swooped up to the roof with him, too.
Greg stood catatonic when we resolidified. “Whoa.”
“Great,” Tim groused. “We’re up on a fucking roof. Now what?” The prison jumpsuits didn’t look particularly warm, and Tim was shivering, arms tight against his sides.
“Whoa,” Greg repeated, staring off with unfocused eyes.
“Where’d they stash your stuff?” I asked neither of them in particular.
Hunched up and blowing into his hands, Tim shrugged. “Took it at processing.”
“Anything you can’t live without?”
“They got my cell phone,” Tim said. “Greg’s too, I’m betting. Not sure if it’s in personals or evidence. They’ll have call records of the conference call we were all on. Judy’s number is on there. They asked me a shitload of questions about her and the rest of you guys. We’re all fucked.”
“Fucked,” Greg repeated. “We’re in the system now. No digging out of that hole. We’re fucking fugitives, man. Fugitives…”
“They get anyone else?” Tim asked. “Javy? The quiet guy? The one with the million braids?”
I shrugged. “It’s been radio silence. Judy and I decoded a message from Martinez. I’ll fill you guys in at the hideout.”
Greg finally returned to his own head at the mention of a hideout. “Hideout? Man. Get me home. I need to take care of stuff.”
“They’re going to look for you there, numb-nuts,” Tim sniped.
Greg gazed down into the streets. “Maybe. But not tonight. Matt, do me one favor. Check that my crew’s all safe.”
I quoted Muin of Vys. “The night is mine.”
Chapter Forty-Two
Judy threw her arms around Tim when we rematerialized in the hideout.
I looked away and let them have their moment.
“Thank you, Matt,” Judy said from closer behind me than I’d been expecting. She wrapped her arms around me in a surprise hug that threatened to choke me.
“Nice shit-hole you guys picked out,” Tim said, stretching his legs and taking the dollar tour of the hideout. “So what’s the plan?”
“First,” I said. “We’ve got four accomplices out there. Three are MIA.”
Tim jabbed a finger my way. “Keep off the cell. Cops probably have them tapped or bugged or whatever the hell the NSA uses.”
Judy had worked out the security details.
Burner phones, cryptic messages with insider jokes passed back and forth, and Greg composing the messages over text from home.
For Simon, Greg had me text asking his favorite color.
“Wenge because no one else knows what it looks like, either,” he replied. Simon was colorblind. Unless the cops knew that, Simon was in the clear. Also, the cops would have had to know wenge was even a color. I had to Google it.
The text to Kelly was simple, “MFK: Zac Efron, Liam Hemsworth, Bruno Mars.”
Her response came back in under a minute, “Kill all 3.” I had to text Greg for confirmation, but he assured me only the real Kelly would have given that answer.
I came up with the idea for what to send Javy. “What do you want on your pizza?”
Javy didn’t respond for a long time, then sent us a link to the Pi Over Three website with a completed order for a large garlic crust pepperoni, sausage, and bacon with four-cheese blend.
With updated info in hand, it was time to round up my co-conspirators.
Chapter Forty-Three
Even referencing my phone, Javy’s Roxbury apartment took me a few minutes to find.
The warren of poorly labeled streets was unfamiliar to me. It was outside of Pie On Third’s delivery range and not part of the city I hung out in for entertainment. A red brick apartment building sat across the street from elderly two-family houses with cracked paint and chain-link fence surrounding the yards.
Javy lived with his dad on the third floor, apartment 319.
I slipped through the glass of the front door, following the shadows past the buzz-to-enter intercom security. The steps I took on foot, rather than jumping from floor to floor. In the blurry speed of the jump, I wouldn’t have been able to read apartment numbers.
By the time I reached the door to 319, I was winded. Slumping against the doorjamb, I rested my head on my forearm.
Some bad-ass I was turning out to be. Shadow-jumping was an act of willpower, not cardio, and I hadn’t been to a gym since Harvard, when my roommate Leo kept on my case about it.
Once I caught my breath, I knocked. It wasn’t a loud knock, considering the hour and not wanting to wake the whole building.
Then I remembered that I was shadowblood, and Javy was expecting me. There was a low gap under the door, but
it cast a shadow all the same. A second later, I was on the other side.
The apartment wasn’t exactly tiny but felt cramped because of the clutter. The living room hardly had a place to step without tripping over discarded takeout cartons or bottles.
Javy sat slumped on the couch with a blanket across his lap and his elbow propped up on a pillow. He snored.
I picked my way over to him, mindful of the minefield at my feet. Even watching my step and able to see in the dark, I knocked bottles together and toppled a beer can from the board-on-two-crates table. Javy snorted, then resumed snoring.
But Javy wasn’t the only one home. A light flicked on down the short hallway. “Mijo?” a male voice called softly.
I froze.
“Mijo?” the voice repeated, then asked a question in Spanish that I couldn’t understand. If I’d gone to high school in California, maybe my understanding of the language might have been better, but snooty New England prep schools didn’t require it. I’d studied Greek, Latin, and Mandarin (which was a joke after growing up around it), but nothing so utilitarian as Spanish.
Javy stretched and squeezed his eyes tight before answering sleepily, also in Spanish. I picked a ‘nada’ out in the middle of his reply. He yawned and repositioned on the couch. The light went out.
“Javy,” I whispered.
More than half asleep, he mumbled something in Spanish.
“Javy, English mi compadre.”
The rhythm of his breathing caught a snag, and he blinked awake. Seeing me a couple feet away, he shouted his alarm. “Jesus!” He scrambled away, down the far end of the couch.
“Easy, bro. I’m here to pick you up.”
The light down the hall came back on.
Footsteps.
Baseball bat.
Javy’s father was wearing boxer shorts and ankle socks. He shouted something in Spanish as I stumbled back, jangling cans and bottles like a car with a “Just Married” sign on the back. Javy’s dad turned on the living room lamp before immediately resuming a two-handed grip on the bat.
“What’chu doing in my apartment?” he demanded.
“Senor Diaz, it’s cool. I’m a friend of Javy’s.” I backed away, just in case.
Javy scrambled from the couch and put himself between us. “Pa, it’s OK. I know Matt. We play Dungeons and Dragons together. He got Greg out of jail.”
I appreciated him not mentioning how.
Senor Diaz craned his neck to look me in the eye over Javy’s shoulder. In close proximity, the resemblance between the two was uncanny. “You… you’re the one who got my Javier in this police business?”
“Pa, it was my choice. Let me handle this.” He held out a warding hand to keep his bat-wielding father at bay. “Matt, I’m not going with you.”
“What?” I exclaimed. “Javy, the cops got Tim and Greg’s cell phones. They know who we all are.”
Javy offered up a weak smile. “Matt, we’re leaving first thing in the morning. We’re going to stay with my Uncle Roberto till things cool down.”
Senor Diaz wagged the end of the bat at me. “This your fault. These… shadow thing. No good. Bad business. You bring my Javier into police business. Now we gotta pack up.”
I nodded and swallowed past a lump in my throat. The clubhouse atmosphere of the hideout made it easy to think this was all a game.
“Senior Diaz, I’m so sorry.”
“Pa, lay off him. OK?” Javy said. “Matt, can you just… whatever it is that got you in here? Let my dad see this is for real.”
It was the least I could do. Javy’s dad wasn’t wanted by the cops, but he was taking Javy out of the city to protect him. I could be so lucky as to have a dad like that.
Strike that. My dad tried the same trick, except with a wad of cash and creepy lackeys. Somehow, it didn’t have the same heartwarming feeling.
I whooshed out of the Diaz’s apartment and onto the street, hoping that Javy’s dad would at least now understand that the threat wasn’t Boston PD.
The shadows were real.
I was one of them.
And we were all dangerous.
Chapter Forty-Four
After my failure to grab Javy, I headed for Kelly’s place.
If I knew Roxbury poorly, it didn’t hold a candle to Dorchester. I took the Red Line practically every day of my life, but I don’t think I ever rode it past Broadway Station unless I fell asleep and missed my stop.
According to Greg, Kelly was holed up with her brother in an apartment on Dayton Street. It would have been quicker finding the place if he’d mentioned that it was next to the Shawmut T stop.
I wasted time following turn-by-turn directions through an aboveground maze when I could have just followed the Red Line.
The house was tidy, with more landscaping than should have been possible in a front yard roughly the size of a king mattress. I checked the house number and slipped through the windowed front door. If light could enter, so could shadow.
I rematerialized in a living room strewn with scraps of construction paper and reeking of pumpkin. Hand-cut shapes of jack-o-lanterns and bats were taped to the walls. Kids’ toys littered the floor to the point where if I’d been barefoot, I would have impaled myself the instant I turned solid.
A clink of a spoon drew my attention to the kitchen. The sink was piled with dirty dishes, and the front of the refrigerator plastered with crayon drawings. Sitting at the hubcap-sized table in the middle was Kelly, poking at a bowl of sugary cereal with a cup of coffee steaming beside her.
She turned to fix drooping eyes at me. Her hair was inexpertly braided into pig tails, which she caught me staring at.
“My niece, Audry,” she explained. “She’s going to be heartbroken that I’m gone.”
“Wake her up,” I suggested. “Say goodbye.”
“And say what? That my fairy prince shadowblood came and is whisking me away? Dave can explain it to her; I was only supposed to be here a couple days anyway.”
“You’re taking this better than Javy.”
“Am I? Maybe because I’ve got a price.”
I cocked my head. “I’m getting you out of here so the cops don’t pick you up for questioning.”
“You think I couldn’t call up a friend out of state and crash with her?” Kelly raised her eyebrows and took a sip of her coffee.
“Then why?”
“Book four, chapter 18, Muin of Vys bargains with Terron’s shadow and gets it to serve him.”
“You want me to turn you into a shadow thrall?” I asked, scratching the back of my head.
“No, Muin abandoned Terron to continue hunting for the light-drinker blade. He could have helped him control his shadow if he’d stayed,” Kelly replied. She chugged down the last of her coffee with a wince. “Let’s just get out of here. We can discuss terms later.”
She grabbed a duffel from under the table.
“That everything you’re bringing?”
She shrugged. “This is all I brought from home when I bunked down here.”
“You and Simon are best buds, right?”
Kelly shrugged.
“Mind helping me convince him to hunker down with us?”
Javy and his dad would already be worrying me enough, out on their own. I didn’t need Simon taking his chances solo, too.
“Why not,” Kelly replied, fighting back a yawn. “Sure. Let’s just go.”
I took Kelly by the arm. She yanked that arm away. “I don’t need your help.”
“I didn’t drive.”
“You expect me to fucking walk to—”
Quickly grabbing hold of her shoulder, I shadow-jumped us outside. We materialized behind the dead tree, its trunk shading us from the moonlight.
“…Back Bay… What just happened? Did we just…?”
“Yup.”
“OK, now you’ve got to show me how to do that!”
“Not tonight. Just take my hand.”
Her skin was dry and unexpectedly warm t
o the touch. Her grip was firm. With a long, steadying breath, she gave me a nod. “Let’s do this.”
Chapter Forty-Five
Simon was at home in his apartment in Cambridge. Ballsy but probably not the smartest idea in the world.
Kelly and I appeared in Simon’s living room as he paced in front of the muted television. The news showed a live scene outside the Suffolk County Jail, where apparently there was some sort of escape going on.
“Holy—!” Simon stumbled over his coffee table in an effort to get away from me.
“Relax,” Kelly sing-songed. “We’re your fairy godparents, here per our custody-sharing agreement with the city cops.”
Simon gestured to the television. “Have… have you seen this?”
Peering over the top of my sunglasses, I pretended to study the newscast. The scrawl at the bottom proclaimed: “Inmates Loose On Boston Streets.”
“Yeah,” I replied smoothly. “Dangerous out there tonight.”
“Grab what you need,” I told him. “Pack up for a weekend trip, except you want any sentimental stuff you can carry. Never know when this place will turn too hot to come back to.”
“Seriously?” Simon asked. “We faked a work order and cleaned up a crime scene. We’re not hardened criminals.”
I shadow-jumped behind him, vanishing while he was staring right at me.
“It’s not just the cops you need to worry about,” I whispered in his ear.
Simon whirled, eyes agape.
“I thought I was seeing things. You two came in through the door, and I was in my own head.”
“Shit’s real,” Kelly explained. “Greg’s on board already. Tim’s back at our makeshift safe house. Javy pussied out. Unless you’re a pussy, too, grab your stuff and let’s get out of here. If you’re not, fine, but you’re on your own. Next one to come looking will be wearing a badge... if you’re lucky.”
This is why I brought her along. Simon was more acquaintance than friend. Kelly knew which buttons to push.
Simon pondered for a moment, breath coming hard as his eyes fixed on me. “Show me that again.”