by J. S. Morin
That’s what I was running from: the admission that I was too far gone to come back. What good was confirmation by independent sources if even those interactions were all in my mind? My sanity could be a proverbial uroboros, devouring itself without even realizing.
“In all earnestness, Matthew, you lack the self-loathing for this to be your delusion.”
Someone knocked on the bathroom door, snapping me from my self-pity.
“Just a sec,” I called out. To my shadow I whispered. “Thanks.”
It was time to get back to the apartment and face the music.
Chapter Fifty-Four
The scene at the hideout was one of disbelief, anger, grief, fear, and every other raw, sloppy emotion I tried to avoid.
Oddly, it was Judy who was the first to seemingly recover. She buried herself in her laptop, as if the monitor glow were a force field to keep reality at bay.
“That fucker’s gonna kill us all,” Tim grumbled. “You know that, right?”
The Black-Hatted Stranger was my problem. I couldn’t let anyone else pay for my errant dealings.
A slow scraping of stone on steel ended in a pleasant ring, only to repeat. Kelly was running a whetstone—don’t ask me where she got it—down the edge of Simon’s decorative dagger. The dagger Simon probably hadn’t brought along because it was just a prop.
“No,” Kelly replied with menacing calm. “We’re going to kill him.”
Tim grabbed the dagger out of Kelly’s hands. “No freakin’ way. We’re in over our heads. We need to call in backup.”
“Vigilants?” I asked, incredulous. I knew Tim well enough to understand his affinity for the Order of Vigilants. They were his second favorite faction after the Knights Volcanic. Even a shadowblood-loving fanboy like me couldn’t diss a bunch of knights with magma armor and flaming swords.
Tim pointed Simon’s dagger at the laptop where Judy typed away, purposely ignoring us. “That thing’s got addresses, phone numbers. We can call in experienced professionals who can deal with this crap for us.”
“I beat one of those vigilants unconscious with his own shotgun,” I countered.
Tim’s face went blank.
I suppose, in retrospect, that neither I nor Judy had seen fit to mention that detail.
Kelly burst out laughing, snatching the dagger back while Tim was flummoxed. There was a manic edge to Kelly right now, just teetering on the edge of control. “Nice… Shadowblood kills Simon and rag-dolls Matt. And the guys you want to bring in lost a fight to him.”
I felt my cheeks warm when the dagger pointed my way.
“Matt, come take a look at this,” Judy said without looking up. At times, I really wished I could enter her world. It seemed so quiet and remote in there.
Edging past Tim and Kelly, I looked at a laptop screen with a photo editor open. The image was entirely black.
“Looks like a whole lotta nothing,” I observed thoughtfully, not wanting to tell Judy she was losing it like the rest of us, staring at blank images.
Judy adjusted some of the settings. Shapes separated from the blackness as the rest faded to a pale gray. “It’s a low-contrast image. I think it was an additional layer of security, in case the wrong people got hold of the thumb drive.”
Tim peered at the twisted lines, like paintbrush scribbles on canvas. “But there was a ton of stuff on here that wasn’t even encrypted. I mean, whoever got this could do a ton of damage without ever figuring out the contrast thing.”
“Exactly!” Judy exclaimed. “Whatever these drawings represent, they were more important than the rest of the information on here. I was… thinking it looked a little like Chinese. Matt, wanna take a crack at translating?”
I gestured to the screen. “That’s not Chinese. I mean, I can see the similarity. It looks like some sort of pictographic language—”
“Look again,” my shadow interrupted.
My head snapped around, looking for the bastard who cut me off mid-sentence. I didn’t need him showing up and making me look paranoid in front of my friends.
When I looked back at the screen, the scribbles were words. “Oft mistaken for the passing of a cloud before the moon…”
“You can read it?” Tim asked. He looked at me like I’d just found a coded message in my Alpha-Bits cereal. “Or are you messing with us?”
I tried to keep reading, but with Tim’s distraction, all I could see were a jumble of lines.
“You broke my concentration,” I snapped. “Gimme some space.”
The slow scraping of stone on steel resumed. It was the only sound as I closed my eyes to center myself.
When I opened them, I tried again. “…the eyeless assassin slipped unnoticed through the dusty cobbled streets of Haverhaim.”
“These are Martinez’s notes,” Judy pronounced solemnly. “The raw notes. That’s not the wording that made it into Door of Shadows.”
“Skip to the end,” Kelly called out as she continued sharpening Simon’s decorative toy into a weapon. “Find out who wins.”
“Matt,” Judy said, taking pains to look me in the eye to the point where I removed my sunglasses to let her. “This is your mission. We have until tomorrow night to find out Martinez’s plan.”
Chapter Fifty-Five
Not the way I planned on spending my afternoon.
I slipped back home and snuck out my laptop and Tim’s desktop PC. Kelly had brought a laptop in her duffel bag, but she was the only one to sit out the effort.
My job was simple. I read what Patricia Martinez had left behind for me to find. Then I translated it to English for Tim and Judy to pore over.
If Kelly could read the language at all, she pleaded ignorance.
After skimming the notes for her early books, eventually I found the new material. This was stuff that had just happened on the television show and events that had yet to take place even in the most recent book.
“How’s it coming?” Judy called across the room. We had yet to put any real effort into furniture—mostly because I would have had to haul it all. We propped pillows against walls and sat on the floor, typing away like some ghetto LAN party in the lobby of an unfinished hotel.
“Slow,” I replied. “I keep focusing in and not being able to read it. It only works when my mind’s not half paying attention.”
“I’m surprised it’s not easier, then,” Tim sniped jovially. The mood had lightened a little, but Simon’s death still hung over the office.
Alone in a corner, Kelly kept dragging that whetstone down the blade of Simon’s dagger. I could only imagine that with Shawshank-like persistence, she’d have it razor sharp in about twenty years.
“Let me help,” my shadow suggested. “Ahem… and then the heir stood forth, hair plastered against his head from lack of showering. To the frenzied mob he proclaimed ‘Shadow magic for everyone. Line up to get your shadow released.’”
“It doesn’t say a damn thing like that,” I whispered, hoping that the whoosh of the heating vents was enough to drown out my voice.
“But that’s the beauty,” my shadow claimed. “It could. You’ve seen the evidence yourself. What the prophetess wrote wasn’t mere parroting mimicry. The future isn’t a monument in stone. It’s the clay in your hands right now.”
I glanced around to see if anyone was paying the least bit of attention to me at the moment. “I’m not tinkering with the fabric of the universe,” I muttered like a ventriloquist through my teeth.”
“Why not? That’s what she did. And it got her legions of worshipers, riches that shame kings, and—”
“Killed by a lunatic,” I finished for it. “Which she saw coming and couldn’t do anything about.”
“Well, there’s that. But she did have a nice run there for a couple decades.”
I hit save and an updated version of my translation file hit our makeshift local network.
For a while, I kept typing, one eye always watching the clock. The frequent distractions kept the shadow script fresh, always
a surprise in my mind. I told myself that obsessing over my upcoming date with Clara was just what I needed, both for the task at hand and my overall well-being. Every time I caught myself staring at Judy, I shifted to think of Clara instead.
“All right,” Judy proclaimed, setting her laptop down and standing. She stretched and did a couple of those foot-lifts that runners used to limber up, pulling her toes against her side. “I think I’ve got a working plan. Matt’s starting to give us a framework of coming events. There’s a definite direction to it, and it’s not good.”
“Personal bias,” my shadow grumbled.
“But we aren’t helpless here,” Judy continued, oblivious to my shadow’s commentary. “Martinez altered the future through belief. She promoted belief through fiction. I think we’re developing a blueprint on how to defeat the shadowlord and his minions.”
“I recall hearing something about the advisability of tinkering with universes.”
“In the meantime,” I said, checking the clock on my computer. “I’ve got plans tonight.”
It was only 8:15. But since I hadn’t told anyone where I was going, I also hadn’t told them exactly when. As I shut down my laptop and headed for the door, I brushed aside Tim and Judy’s questions with the barest minimalist answers.
Yes, I had a date.
No, I didn’t stop to arrange one after Simon’s death.
No, I wasn’t going to cancel it.
Yes, I knew the world was at stake.
Outside in the biting Bostonian night air, I paused to collect my thoughts.
“She wants to undo you,” my shadow said. “Any ‘minions’ she might target with her well-intentioned crusade will catch you in the same net.”
“Yeah,” I muttered, setting off for someplace I could find some nicer clothes and a shower. “I’m not sure I’m willing to give this up just yet.”
I slipped into the shadows while I still could.
Chapter Fifty-Six
Joe-Boy’s Diner. 9:58 PM. By any rational measure I was early. But that hadn’t stopped Clara from getting there first.
Through the window, I could see her sitting alone at a table by the window, wearing a maroon sweatshirt. She was backlit against the flood of light from inside the diner, but aside from the surrounding glare, that just made her easier to see.
Now that I saw Clara in the diner, I wished I had time to go back to the hideout and change—I felt overdressed in a black blazer and silk shirt. But even shadow-jumping took some time, and I wasn’t that early.
I walked through the door at exactly 10:00 by the gold watch I’d bought with my dwindling cash supply. A nagging part of my mind said that money was for suckers. Muin of Vys had always taken what he wanted; casual burglary wasn’t beneath even a master warrior like him.
Clara perked up the second I entered the diner. She’d done her hair and had a ring in her nose instead of the stud from yesterday. A pair of earrings dangled in mops of little silver chains, and she was wearing pale purple eye shadow. Silver bangles cluttered one wrist as she waved to get my attention.
The smile she showed was brighter than all the jewelry.
“You showed up,” she said, mirroring my thoughts.
I slid into a seat across the table from her. “Hey, I said if I lived through the day, I’d be here. And here I am, alive.”
“Looking sharp. You clean up nice.”
I shrugged out of the blazer and laid it on the empty seat behind me. The diner was practically empty. A couple of trucker-looking sorts occupied seats at the counter, but we were the only table with patrons. “I didn’t know the dress code, so I wasn’t taking chances.”
“You hung over again, or are the sunglasses just a thing? Hard to get to know someone though black lenses.”
“Oh, these. I forget I’m wearing ‘em most of the time.” I took my sunglasses and laid them on the table.
“Nice contacts,” Clara said, looking at my eyes, rather than into them. She took a sip of her coffee from a plain little ceramic cup, the kind that coffee cup icons are modeled after.
“Sorry to disappoint you, but this is my natural color.”
“Bullshit,” she said, grinning and nearly dribbling coffee down her front before catching it with a napkin.
“What’s weird about brown eyes?”
“They’re purple.”
I grabbed the napkin dispenser and held up one of the chrome sides as a mirror. The glare stung, but forcing myself not to squint, I could see that my eyes weren’t brown anymore. The color had drained away, leaving a blacklit hue in its place.
“I… I could bullshit you right now, but this is the first time I’ve noticed. I’m… Jesus, what a clusterfuck this is. I want to get to know you, and I don’t even know who I am.”
Clara guided the dispenser in my hand back down to the table and leaned across. “This shit on the news; you’re involved, aren’t you?”
She was so close I could see the edge of contact lenses around her eyes, guarding the true color of hers.
I smirked. “Maybe.”
“That trick you showed me as you left Starbucks. You can do more than that, I bet.”
For a while I dodged around questions that reminded me of Simon and the upcoming meeting with Black-Hat and his cronies at the Museum of Science. There were too many exposed nerves left raw all over my life.
Clara bottled up a question as a short-order cook came from the kitchen, offered me a cup of coffee, and took our dinner orders. Seemed like he was the only one working at Joe-Boy’s this late. Clara ordered from the breakfast menu, so I followed suit.
As soon as the kitchen door closed behind him, the dam burst. “You’re not making this up, are you? This shadow stuff is for real.”
“Either that, or we’re all high,” I said, shrugging and lacing my fingers behind my head. “Really, there’s no objective way for any of us to tell if we’re sane, or this is all in our heads. I could just be a figment of your imagination, or you could be in mine.”
Clara blinked. “That’s kinda deep… and a little fucked up. I can think of ways to check, though.” She bit her lower lip.
I snickered to hide my nervousness at how forward Clara was. “Well, I decided it was either roll with it or fall victim to solipsism, convinced I was crazy. That meant dealing with this whole business head-on. I figure I traded in my right to run away from problems and leave them for someone else when I started using the shadows’ power.”
She was still wide-eyed when she looked at me. “Was it worth the trade?”
“Totally.”
Taking a sip of her coffee, Clara shook her head in bemusement. “I’ve been up since almost midnight. I spent the whole afternoon between my shift and now wondering if you were for real. The one thing I kept wondering was: if you are for real, why me?”
I paused to consider her question, scrunching up my face to make sure she knew I was thinking it over. Clara bit her lip and watched with mild concern in her eyes.
That was when it struck me. Same general body type. Similar features. Hair just a shade darker.
Aside from the braces-perfect smile and the colored contacts, Clara looked enough like Judy to be her stunt double. Judy had told me—to my chagrin—enough about the things she and Tim got up to that I knew she had a wild side, if only a harmless one.
Clara was what I imagined Judy to be like, cut loose.
“I guess you’re just my type,” I said. “And lately I’ve been feeling a little more… proactive, I guess you could say.”
Clara nodded. “So what did you do before turning into a monster-slaying vigilante?”
We had to wait as our orders came out of the kitchen. Say one thing about Luis—according to his nametag—he was fast on the grill. I took a bite of my pancake before he left, and answered Clara with my mouth full. “I delivered pizza.”
With a smile that bordered on a laugh, Clara looked at me in disbelief. “I never had you pegged for service industry. You used ‘solipsis
m’ in a sentence. And yeah, I know what it means.”
“Got kicked out of Harvard. Some of the lingo came with.”
“OK. Maybe this is a lot for a first date. But my friend Marsha has this game. Sum up how you got to Boston in two sentences. Like, half the city isn’t from here, so paint me a line from home to now.”
If I was any sort of writer, this was like hitting golf balls off the back of a cruise ship. “Rich dickhead parents shoveled me from one expensive school to another until I burnt out. Then one of the most famous writers in the world framed me for plagiarism in her creative writing class and got me expelled. Your turn.”
“Wow. Um, well mine can’t top that. Let’s see.” She took a deep breath. “Me and a friend couch-surfed our way out of the burbs looking for nightlife. Our dreams of the eternal party didn’t work out, and now she’s doing time for selling weed and I’m pouring coffee.”
“I like yours better,” I said between bites of pancake.
“I guess that’s sort of the point. Everyone likes the other person’s better. Marsha says that’s the trick. Two sentences are enough to spark curiosity. Are you sparked?” She licked her lips.
Headlights shone in through the windows of the diner. I squinted against the glare, but despite parking, the driver didn’t shut them off. Clara held up a hand to shield her eyes. Against the glare, I made out the shape of a giant SUV.
“Shit…” I breathed as the passenger door opened. A heavyset Chinese man in an all black suit stepped out and opened the rear door.
“What is it? Someone you know?” Clara asked.
“Do you want to see what I can do?” I asked hastily. Out in the parking lot, a thin gentleman was stepping out of the back of the SUV. Under assault from the headlights, I couldn’t make out his features. In my heart, I knew it was Li Zhujiu.
“What’s going on?” Clara demanded, trying to see under her hand but struggling against the headlights in her eyes.
One of my father’s lackeys was heading for the diner door, leading the entourage.