by J. S. Morin
Clara hadn’t even needed a wig since her and the character already had the same hairstyle. I wondered fleetingly if that was a coincidence. Judy couldn’t possibly have arranged all this. I’d read the menagerie story five times now, and there just wasn’t any way this could be part of that plan.
“You look amazing.”
Clara giggled. “And you’re such a huge fanboy.” She sidled up and pressed her body against mine, looking up into my eyes.
“You even did the two different colors,” I noted, referring to the two different colored contacts.
“One’s clear, actually. That’s my natural color. We ready to go?” Clara extended an elbow, and I interlocked mine.
Double-checking the address of one of the surprising number of Halloween parties still going on in the city, I ventured off into the shadows, date in tow.
We emerged into a secluded alley a block from the event. There was a line when we got there, with a bouncer checking IDs at the door. Clara stopped me short.
“I don’t have an ID,” she whispered into my ear. “Just jump us inside.”
“Where’d you leave it? I can run back and—.”
“You’re not listening. I don’t have an ID. Not one that says I’m over 21 anyway.”
For whatever reason, that subject had just never come up. I stiffened. “Oh.”
She whacked me in the arm with her costume staff. “I’m 20; only underage for booze.”
With a sigh, I jumped through the shadows, right past the bouncer and cutting ahead of the dozen people in line. The venue was packed and unobserved space at a premium. We materialized in a janitorial closet. As soon as Clara got her bearings, she pulled me to her and kissed me.
Keeping both hands on me—one also juggling her staff—she looked me in the chin. “I suppose you can see everything in here.”
I guided her lips to mine again. “Your costume loses something in monochrome, but you’re the highlight of the room, trust me.”
“You’re stiff. Relax. Find us a doorknob, and let’s join the party.”
Something had been bothering me since we jumped inside. “How much do you see while we’re shadow-jumping?”
Clara shrugged. “It’s more a feeling than a vision, I guess. Why?”
That crawling feeling was coming back over me. “Because I swear that bouncer saw us.”
How fast could the human eye track movement? It was possible that he was reacting to something besides a faux shadowblood and his underage videogame princess. But those eyes of his tracked too accurately, or at least they seemed to.
Everything during a jump happened so quickly.
Clara blew a lock of hair out of her eyes. “Whatever. If he busts us, just leap us out. I’m not planning on letting you out of my sight all night.”
“Plan on at least one trip to the men’s room, then,” I joked.
“You know what I mean.”
I opened the closet door, and we slipped out.
A girl in a nurse costume saw us come out and gave Clara a conspiratorial wink. We found the flow of newcomers and that led us to the main hall.
This is the point where I admitted to myself that I hated loud, chaotic events. The Halloween MegaDepot had come to life on a gymnasium-sized dance floor, compete with colored spotlights waving around, a bank of dry ice fog, and music that was 90 percent bass.
Even from right next to her, I had to shout to Clara as we waded into the sea of monsters. “If anyone hands me a chalky pill, we’re out of here.”
“It’s not that kind of party,” she hollered back. She was already flush-faced, despite the low-fabric costume. The mass of humanity was sweltering. Didn’t anyone around here realize that you didn’t need to heat a building with this many people in it?
We tried to dance.
I think Clara may have succeeded, but the staff made movement awkward in tight quarters. But she moved her hips better than I could ever hope to.
I wasn’t a dancer. I didn’t go to these kinds of things. Between finding out Clara’s actual age and realizing I hadn’t been to a dance since taking Judy to the prom, I was feeling old at 26.
As I broke out in sweat, I started looking around the outskirts of the ballroom. There wasn’t any nudity that I’d seen, so this party had to be 21-plus for a reason.
Somewhere there was a bar.
“You thirsty?” I shouted in Clara’s face.
She nodded, working into the swaying, shimmying dance she’d settled into. “Yeah.”
As we picked our way to the edge of the crowd, the shadows beckoned.
Not literally. I had my own fucking backseat driving shadow for that.
But the lure of the easy path, the cool, the effortless, was palpable. Hanging on the edge of shadow-jumping, my consciousness clinging to my corporeal form by fingertips, I noticed something.
We were being watched.
Followed.
Surrounded.
“We might be in trouble,” I shouted as I took Clara by the hand.
She nodded, but a form materialized right beside us, and in her surprise, Clara pulled away and fell to the floor.
A few bystanders took note of the supernatural arrival of a tidy Chinese gentleman in a suit fit for politics. He bent and offered Clara a hand getting up. “Mr. Li. I apologize for startling your companion.”
I could hear the subtle difference that made the name sound mainland instead of Americanized. More Jet Li than Robert E. Lee.
With a glance to me for reassurance, Clara accepted the man’s help. I didn’t object because my mind was preoccupied. This wasn’t one of Black-Hat’s anarchists. I knew this man. His name was taunting me from decade-old memories. More importantly, it told me who had sent him.
Snapping my fingers, I pointed to him. “Mr. Zhao… Zhao Yong.”
This brought a smile to Zhao’s lips. He held a hand, stiff as a knife blade, in the direction of the exit. “Your father is eager to see you. Please, come with me.”
Clara frowned at me and mouthed the word, “Father?”
I had ignored his messages and fled from him at Joe-Boy’s Diner. This was my father proving he could still out-think me.
What would Judy have me do? Run.
If there was one thing I could bet on with my father that I couldn’t be sure of with Black-Hat, it was this: at least he probably wasn’t going to kill me. It said volumes about my filial affections that I had to add that probably, but it really was a pretty high percentage.
I offered Clara my hand, mouthing a “sorry” back to her, and followed Zhao. Another pair of black-suited men I hadn’t spotted previously was keeping a path clear ahead of him. Amid the crowd of zombies, witches, and thinly veiled excuses to dress in skimpy costumes, the Secret Service look drew a sharp contrast.
As we exited the crowd, then the venue, it was our turn to look out of place. A black stretch limousine idled out front, its exhaust forming a cloud in the frigid autumn air. Two smaller, equally gleaming black vehicles flanked it front and back, and smartly dressed men were posted at the ends of the block on lookout.
“Matt, what’s going on?” Clara asked urgently, keeping her voice low.
Where in the long, rambling road of my childhood to begin? Hell, I didn’t even know what was going on. “Remember my two-sentence life story?”
Clara nodded stiffly.
“You don’t need to meet my father tonight.” I raised my voice. “Zhao, she’s not involved in this. Call her a cab and send her home.”
Zhao turned but didn’t slow. “Mr. Li, I assure you that she is safer with us than anyplace in this city.”
I couldn’t let go of Clara’s hand.
For one, ditching her on a random street in the middle of Halloween night was cruel. She wasn’t dressed to be outside for long in this weather, and she didn’t even have a purse with her. But even if I was enough of a heartless bastard to do it, she had a white-knuckle grip on my hand. As a result, the two of us were quickly and efficiently u
shered into the back of the limo—together.
The door slammed behind us. We were trapped inside, with glass tinted so black that not even a shadow could pass.
Chapter Sixty-Six
My eyes adjusted to the dark interior. This was your everyday, garden-variety stretch limousine with the window interiors spray-painted black. The aerosol smell mixed with the new leather aroma to produce a noxious miasma that wrinkled my nose.
I took off my sunglasses.
Inside the limo was a woman I didn’t know and Mr. Kang. Seated between them was my father, Li Zhujiu.
“This is your American son?” the woman asked in Chinese. “He looks like an idiot.”
“This idiot hid from my spies for days,” my father replied. “He is still my son. Show him proper respect.”
“What’s going on?” I demanded, hoping my use of English would get them to switch over for Clara’s sake.
She was shaking beside me and not just from the cold. I extracted my hand from her grasp and put it around her shoulder to hug her close.
“I should ask you that,” my father replied.
He was dressed in a gray suit, hale and fit with all his hair. Kang was probably about the same age as my father, but Li Zhujiu looked twenty years younger. A tumbler of liquor occupied one hand. His other hand rested on the knee of his companion.
His wife? Another mistress? My mom had worked in Hollywood, getting by on looks as a D-list actress. This woman looked like a PR agent or executive. Stone faced, sculpted cheekbones, hair yanked back into a bun so tight it pulled the skin of her forehead.
“I’ve had a lot on my mind lately. Sorry, but I didn’t need you adding more. Where are you taking us?”
My father turned to meet Kang’s eye. “I was made to understand that you explained to Matthew.”
Kang lowered his head. “I explained a dam to a river. I could not keep it from flooding.”
My father gave me an appraising look. “A river? This one?” He threw back the contents of his glass. “He’s a spring breeze, never amounting to much or going where he should, too often carrying an odor from the pasture at mealtime.”
Clara cast me a worried, sidelong look. Yeah, my family’s fucked up. Sorry.
“Listen,” I said, ignoring everyone and looking my father square in the eye. “When Mr. Kang made me the offer of protection, I was adrift. Even then I couldn’t just abandon everything I knew. Now? I’m fighting to keep my friends safe. Drop us off at a nice restaurant or something, but I’m not leaving Boston. Oh, and you owe my date an apology.”
My father gave Clara an appraising look, as if noticing her for the first time. It was for show; my father never missed the slightest detail.
“Clarabelle, I apologize for disrupting your evening.”
I felt Clara stiffen. My dad had that effect on people. No one just expects to have a gangster from Shanghai with a Stanford education drag them into a limo, knowing their name.
To normalize things a little for her, I made a formal introduction. “Dad, this is Clara. Clara, this is my father, Li Zhujiu.”
Mr. Kang leaned across and extended a hand. At first I assumed for a handshake, then it turned palm up. “Matthew, your phone.”
With a sigh, I dug out my cell phone and handed it over. “Oh, and this is Kang. Sorry, by the way. Not sure what I did with your nephew’s phone.”
“Big baby,” Kang muttered, poking away at my phone with surprising deftness for a man his age. “Two whole days. Whine, whine, whine until I buy him a new one.”
My father watched over Kang’s shoulder. When he gave a nod, Kang handed the phone back.
The messaging app was open, and a blank text to Judy was ready and waiting for words.
“Text your friend,” my father ordered. “Ask her if she’s at your hideout. No tricks.”
Kang gave a tight, apologetic smile as he slid a pistol from his shoulder holster and aimed it at Clara.
“Do it,” my father snarled. “Or your date is going to make a mess of my seats.”
“Matt!” Clara exclaimed, burying herself against me.
I held out a hand in front of the barrel. “No. I’ll send it. I’ll send it. Jesus, Dad. This isn’t the fucking Wild West.”
At a nod from my father, Kang quietly slid his pistol out of view inside his jacket.
“This is far more grave a situation than you grasp, Matthew,” my father said as I started tapping my message.
No tricks, he said. Hell with that. I’d played by the rules all my life. It got me expelled, single, working a dead-end pizza job, and writing garbage novels on the side.
Breaking the rules had earned me power, opportunity, and Clara. It had gained me enemies as well, maybe even turned my friends on me. But for once it was my life, to do with what I pleased.
I wasn’t lying down without trying.
The message I sent was simple. “Judy, u safe back there at hide out?”
Kang collected my phone, showed the message to my father, who nodded, then we all waited.
Clara was trembling. I hugged her close and whispered. “It’ll be all right. I won’t let them do anything to hurt you.”
Time ticked by.
I was sweating, and the limo wasn’t that warm. Had to be strong, for Clara’s sake, otherwise I’d have been tempted to call to my shadow and let it put an end to this bullshit.
Where had my shadow been, anyway? Was even it scared of my father?
Finally, Judy texted back. Kang smiled, showed my father, then showed the screen to me without handing it back.
Judy’s message: “Yes, Matt. I’m sitting here in the fucking hideout by myself. Thanks for caring.”
My father took the phone once I’d had a chance to read it, slipping it into the breast pocket of his suit. “Now it’s time to choose.”
That didn’t sound good. Not one bit. “Choose what?”
“We’re leaving for Shanghai within the hour. There’s a bomb at your hideout. Mr. Kang still has his pistol. One of those is going to go off. You get to choose. I don’t like loose ends, but I’m still willing to let you take one companion with us. Or you can choose neither. If that’s your choice, so be it.”
Clara clenched a fistful of my shirt. “Maaatt,” she wailed softly.
“Hardly a choice at all,” I said, trying to sound smooth when I’d just pushed all my chips to the center of the table with a pair of twos.
Chapter Sixty-Seven
“Clara’s coming with us.”
A slight raising of the eyebrows was my father’s only immediate reaction. Kang’s shoulders relaxed slightly.
My father’s mistress pulled out her own phone and made a quick call. “Yes… yes… do it,” she said in Mandarin.
“Boston’s my home now,” I said, trying to avoid the topic that was on everyone’s mind: the explosion that just occurred at Pi On Third. “I don’t want to leave.”
“Do you have the documents I sent you? The passport? The driver’s license?”
With a scowl, I pulled them from the vest pocket of my costume. “Here. You can have them back as far as I’m concerned.”
I hugged Clara to me and made a last-ditch effort to shadow-jump to freedom.
We went nowhere. Somehow, I’d known my father would have accounted for all shadow paths out of the limo. But I had to at least try.
Li Zhujiu rapped his knuckles against the glass of the moon roof. “I was prepared, you know. You glide through darkness; a true eyeless assassin.”
“Shadowblood,” I corrected him.
He laughed and tucked the travel documents back into my vest. “The seer came up with all manner of ridiculous terms to warp reality in her hands. She kneaded the truth like dough until some anarchist ended her life. A pity, really. She served our ends without ever realizing. No matter, you will be shown the truth behind the lies and misdirection.”
The woman at my father’s side sneered. “Of all your children, only the bastard son had the dark eyes,” s
he muttered in Chinese. “Pathetic. Should have let him go die with all his friends.”
“Enough!” my father snapped at her.
I grew dizzy. The world was closing in around me. They had bombed Pi On Third and were planning to cut all my ties to Boston!
We were trapped. Clara was a hostage. Even if I could shadow-jump, I don’t think Kang or my father would be careless enough to let me grab her when the limo door opened.
Where was my shadow when I truly needed it?
“Stay quiet,” my shadow’s voice came so faintly I might have been imagining it. “Play along. Escape some other day. Pretend you’re any other shadowblood. Li Zhujiu… cannot… know… I’m… here.”
The voice chilled me.
A revelation played at the edges of my consciousness—an itch I couldn’t quite reach.
Imperceptibly to everyone else in the limo, I shook my head. Just the slightest twinge, but I counted on my shadow being attuned to me, watching my every movement.
“Matt, by the loving darkness, keep your mouth shut. Your shadow is dead. I’m all you’ve got now. If they find a way to control me, we’ll both be slaves.”
It finally all made sense.
This wasn’t my shadow; it never had been.
Kelly’s shadow reflected her own dark impulses, same as every shadowblood in the books and television show. Mine was an amateur comedian who pushed me to take up Martinez’s mantle. I could shadow-jump across cities at the speed of a bullet train but not manifest a simple solid shadow.
Locking eyes with Li Zhujiu, who didn’t flinch from my scrutiny, I asked a single question. “What is it about Patricia Martinez’s death that caused such an uproar among the shadows?”
My father’s eyes narrowed and grew shrewd. His lips pursed. The next words that came, I knew he’d weighed them with delicate care. “The shadowlord’s power was leaking through. She had been appointed to stem it. Instead, Patricia grew careless and became a celebrity more than a guardian. The shadowlord may be loose already; if not, he surely will be soon unless we contain him.”
Click.
The final piece.