The Shadow Stealer

by Melissa Giorgio

  It hurt.

  I realized Charles was waiting for me to say something, and I forced myself back to the present. “So you knew since then? Since you kidnapped me?” I remembered how he’d paused after I told him my name was “Gabiella,” not “Gabriella.” I’d thought he was being creepy, but no, he was just keeping super important information all to himself. How nice of him!

  “I wasn’t certain, but it was a feeling I had.” Charles paused for a moment. “One that I hoped was wrong.”

  “Why?” Philip demanded. “That’s a horrible thing to say. Hell, everything you’ve done since that moment is horrible! You knew she was my sister, and you didn’t say anything?”

  Sister. The word echoed in my head, heavy and full of so much meaning. We’d wondered about it, but to have Charles confirm it for us made a world of difference.

  A brother. I had an older brother.

  One I’d been robbed of for almost seventeen years.

  Fury washed over me, hot and fierce, and all I wanted to do was hurl my hot chocolate at Charles’s face. But that would be a waste of a perfectly good beverage—and it was only lukewarm now, so it wasn’t like the liquid would hurt him—so I restrained myself.

  Barely.

  “Why don’t you start from the beginning,” I suggested through teeth clenched together so tightly I wasn’t sure he’d understand what I was saying.

  But Charles sighed and nodded, running a hand over his face. He looked tired and drawn, and I wasn’t sure if it was a direct result of our conversation, or stress from Silver Moon business, but at the moment, it was hard to care. He brought this on himself, I thought darkly. If he’d been honest from the start, we wouldn’t be having this conversation in the middle of Manhattan, the last place I was supposed to be. But there we were, at the point of no return, and I squeezed Philip’s hand as hard as I could as Charles began his story.

  “She wasn’t a hunter, your mother,” he said. “She could have been, but she didn’t want to be. It does happen from time to time, but usually with those who don’t display any talent.” His eyes flicked to me and I knew he was taking the time to explain this for my benefit. “But Morgan had the talent. She just didn’t have the stomach for the fighting and the killing.”

  Charles looked at his son. “By talent, I mean magic.”

  Philip sucked in a shaky breath. “That’s—” His voice cracked again. “That’s where I got the magic from? From her?”

  “Yes, precisely. That’s how we first met. I was hunting with Rafe’s father, and she stumbled across our veil. A regular human would have been deterred by the veil and walked away, but she entered the fray and saved my life with a skillfully thrown fireball.”

  I was desperately trying to picture my mom, a passive gardener who was also a little bit klutzy, as a badass magic user, and failing horribly. There was no way we were talking about the same woman.

  “Liam and I made quick work of the demon, and I approached her before she could escape,” Charles continued. “Naturally, I had questions for her. Was she a hunter? Where had she learned to wield magic like that? She tried to avoid my questions, but when she saw how persistent I was, she informed me I better treat her to a meal if she was going to tell me her life story.”

  “Holy shit,” Philip muttered, giving me a sideways glance. “Now I know where you get your affinity for food from.”

  I scowled in response.

  “We made plans to meet in two days, and I have to admit I was looking forward to it,” Charles said, a faraway look in his eyes. “She was so different from anyone else I had ever met, so alive, so—”

  “Okay, we get it,” Philip interrupted. “You can skip over the vomit-inducing stuff, all right?”

  Charles’s expression darkened. He’s enjoying this, I realized. The reminiscing. He… loved her, didn’t he? I shuddered. Thinking about Charles and my mom was just too horrifying. Maybe Philip had a point. We didn’t need to hear about that stuff, not unless we wanted to have nightmares.

  “Fine,” Charles said. “We met, and we ate, and she told me about her life. She’d grown up in Florida. Her parents were hunters, but she didn’t want to be one. This caused strife between them, and she ended up leaving when she was fifteen, moving to the Midwest to live with an aunt. Her aunt, however, was talented in the ways of magic, and that’s where Morgan learned to do what she could. She didn’t mind the magic, and she knew she would never wield it against demons. That’s when I pointed out she had wielded it against a demon, to save my life. Her expression softened, and she said she was beginning to realize it was worth it.”

  An ambulance raced by, its siren wailing, and Charles paused until it passed. I was literally on the edge of my seat, completely engrossed in his story. I still couldn’t picture this woman as Mom, and it felt weird to hear things about her I never knew. (She was estranged from her parents? She has an aunt? She’d never talked about her family, ever!). But all the same, I wanted—no, needed to know more.

  “I’ll spare you the details,” Charles said with a rueful look in Philip’s direction, “but it was a whirlwind courtship, and suddenly, she was pregnant with you.”

  Philip shut his eyes and swallowed hard.

  “You weren’t married?” I asked.

  “No,” Charles said. “I immediately proposed when she told me the news, but she said no. I thought she wanted to wait, have the baby first, but now I realize…” His voice dropped to a whisper. “She never cared for me the way I cared for her.”

  Despite myself, I felt sorry for Charles. Why? Because the expression on his face was the same look my dad wore whenever he thought about Mom and didn’t think I was watching him. I’d seen it so many times throughout the years, and it was like a knife through my heart, each and every time.

  Mom hadn’t just hurt Dad. She’d hurt Charles, too, and who knows how many other guys in the process. I didn’t know why, maybe it was just the way she was, but that was a horrible thing to do to someone. Especially the father of your child!

  “So what, she had me and left?” Philip asked hoarsely. “She didn’t give a shit about me, huh?”

  “No, Philip, that’s not true—”

  Philip slammed his hand against the table, knocking over my cup of hot chocolate. “Don’t lie to me, Dad!”

  “I’m not,” Charles insisted as I righted my cup, using a tissue from my purse to wipe up the spilled liquid. “I was there when she had you. I saw the look on her face when the doctor handed you to her. She may have never loved me, but she fell in love with you the moment she saw you, Philip.”

  Philip went from being angry to looking like he was about to start crying. “Then why did she leave?”

  “She was a wanderer,” Charles said. “She was never happy if she stayed in one place too long. She never wanted to be a hunter, never wanted to be part of Silver Moon. She knew I did, though, and while she was able to ignore it for a little while, in the end she knew she could never compete with the organization.” Charles shook his head. “She was wrong, though. If she had talked to me, instead of making assumptions, I would have left the organization in a heartbeat. The only things that mattered to me were her and you.”

  Philip looked away with a wince, blinking rapidly.

  “But she left before I could tell her this, vanishing in the middle of the night, and despite how hard I tried to find her, I never could.”

  I thought that was the end of the story, but then Charles turned back to me. “Until one fateful day when I saw her again.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  A cloud passed over the sun, cloaking us in shadows for a few moments. Chilled, I shivered and tucked my scarf more securely around my neck. There was something about Charles’s expression that I didn’t like. Sure, I never liked it when he stared at me because it usually meant bad things were about to happen to me, but this felt different.

  This felt ominous.

  Philip, meanwhile, was spitting with indignation. “What do you mean, you
saw her again? When? Why didn’t I see her?”

  “It was when you were twelve. A few months after you had nearly died from that demon bite,” Charles explained. “I’d gone upstate to help track and dispatch a demon. Normally I stayed in the city and hunted with Liam, but after what happened to you, I was angry. And,” he said after a pause, “bloodthirsty. I wanted to kill as many demons as I could after nearly losing you. So when the call came for additional hunters, I volunteered. We tracked it to a park, and after killing it, I saw her.”

  “Mom,” I said. “You saw Mom.” There were things Charles was saying, little facts that he probably didn’t think were important, but they were adding up to something huge and life-shattering.

  Like the park. I knew exactly which park he was talking about.

  “I saw her, and I also Saw what she had done. Have they explained magical traces to you, Gabi?”

  If only Charles knew I’d just been discussing this same exact thing with Rafe. My mouth was dry, but I managed to answer, “Yes. It’s how you track down sorcerers who summoned demons—” I broke off with a gasp. “She summoned a demon? The one you fought in the park?”

  Besides me, Philip had gone white.

  “No. That’s ridiculous. Of course he’s not saying that—”

  “That’s exactly what I’m saying.” Charles placed his shaking hands on the table. “She summoned a demon. Maybe not that particular demon, but she’d brought one of those fiends here and the trace was on her, clear as day. I quickly approached her, knowing what would happen if the other hunters saw her, but she fled. I chased after her and finally cornered her, but she refused to tell me why she’d summoned a demon. Instead, she attacked me.”

  Philip and I exchanged uneasy looks. A part of me wanted to get up and run away so I wouldn’t have to hear the rest of Charles’s story.

  If I don’t know what happened next, then it never really happened, right?

  “I didn’t want to fight her.” Charles reached for Philip, but Philip snatched his hand away before his father could touch him. “Please, you have to understand. Hurting her was the last thing I ever wanted to do. Despite everything she’d done, I still loved her.”

  “You’re lying,” Philip said, speaking through clenched teeth. “Because you did hurt her, didn’t you, Dad?”

  “I didn’t have a choice.” Charles looked like he was having trouble forcing the words out. “She would have killed me if I didn’t stop her.”

  “You attacked her?” I whispered, trying to picture Mom, my mom, fighting with Charles. No. That was impossible. She didn’t summon demons, she didn’t attack people, she—

  “Only one of us was leaving the park that day.” Charles spread his hands desperately. “Philip had already lost his mother—first she left him as a baby, and now she’d gone rogue and was summoning demons. If I died, who would Philip have left? No one.”

  What is he talking about? I thought, my sense of horror growing. Only one of them was leaving the park? What did they do, have a duel to the death?

  Oh my god.

  “No.” I stood quickly, my chair scraping noisily against the bricks. “No, no, no. You didn’t. Charles, you didn’t—”

  Charles gazed up at me, imploringly. “She was relentless, using spells I’d never even seen before. I’d been holding back, but I knew I wouldn’t last much longer if I didn’t fight her at full strength. Despite the hunter blood that coursed through her veins, she wasn’t a trained fighter. She didn’t even see the knife before it was too late.”

  “Stop,” I pleaded, shaking my head. “Just stop talking!”

  But Charles wasn’t finished. “This is why I brought you to HQ, Gabi. I thought I could—” His voice cracked, and he swallowed before continuing. “I thought I could use your powers—the powers of a Soul Healer—to bring her back to life after I killed her.”

  After I killed her.

  His words echoed in my head, over and over again despite my efforts to block them out. All this time I’d thought she left us because she no longer loved us, when, meanwhile, Charles had killed her.

  My family had been destroyed because of the actions of the man sitting across from me. And if Kain hadn’t found Mom’s picture, I never would have learned the truth.

  It was too much. I collapsed in my chair, unable to speak or think or even breathe.

  “This is why I never said anything,” Charles continued softly. “To either of you. I thought by lying to you, I could save you from the same anguish I’ve suffered through.”

  Philip, his face full of rage, grabbed his father by the front of his jacket and yanked him forward. “You suffered? You killed our mother and you want us to feel bad for you? You selfish, lying bastard—”

  “Philip!” Kain raced over, followed closely by Rafe and the others. He tried unsuccessfully to pull Philip away. “Stop, Philip. Whatever he did, I’m sure he deserves this, but you’re making a scene—”

  “He killed her!” Philip shouted as he finally let go of Charles’s jacket. “He killed our mother!”

  A pathetic little whimper escaped from my lips as I sat there, staring at Charles, and everyone froze.

  “Oh, hell, are we forming a line to punch Charles in the face?” Evan asked from somewhere over my left shoulder. “Because all of a sudden I really want to.”

  Rafe knelt before me and placed his hands on the sides of my face, forcing me to look away from Charles. His green eyes were wide and fearful as they searched my face. “Gabi, what—”

  “Philip, please—” Charles pleaded. He reached for his son.

  “No. Don’t.” Philip backed away from the table, pointing a trembling finger at his father. “I never want to see you again. Do you hear me? Just leave me the hell alone!” Philip stormed away, Kain chasing after him.

  Good, I thought. I’m glad he has Kain. I’m glad he’s not facing this alone. No one should be alone… My gaze traveled back to Charles, who was very much alone, I realized, now more than ever.

  Not that I cared.

  “I had to, Gabi.” Charles leaned forward, his brown eyes pleading with me to believe him. “She left me with no other choice. It was either her or me, and I couldn’t leave Philip alone in this world. I did what I did for him. It’s always been for him. Please, you must believe me.”

  Our eyes met, and I saw in his gaze that he wanted my forgiveness. Something inside of me hardened, even as my heart was breaking into a million pieces, and I knew I could never give him what he wanted.

  “Screw you,” I spat before allowing Rafe to lead me away.

  ***

  It felt like I was in the middle of a dream.

  No, not a dream. A nightmare.

  I barely remember what happened next. Rafe must have flagged down a taxi, because the next thing I knew, we were being driven someplace. We were huddled together, Rafe’s arm around me as I pressed my face into his chest, my teeth chattering loudly in the silence. Evan was sitting in front of us next to the cab driver, and Alex was to Rafe’s left, but no one spoke.

  In my head, Charles’s voice echoed. “She left me with no choice, Gabi.”

  He had no choice, and now my mom was dead.

  No. If I thought about it, I was going to lose it, right here, right now, in this yellow cab racing through the busy city. I didn’t want that. I wanted to go home, lock my door, and sob into my pillow for the next three months.

  The cab rolled to a stop. I stood on the pavement, staring up at an unfamiliar apartment building. “Where are we?” My voice was low, a soft whisper, and I was surprised Rafe even heard me over the sound of traffic.

  He was also staring up at the building, and he let out a sigh before answering me. “This is where I used to live. With my parents.”

  My mouth parted open in surprise. I knew Rafe had lived in the city up until a few years ago, when he and Evan had moved upstate to be closer to Alexandra, but I didn’t expect him to still rent an apartment. I thought, like Evan, he had cut all his ties to
the past.

  You know what? I didn’t care. I was so weary, and this was closer than home. I understood why Rafe had brought me here. He didn’t think I could survive the trip home.

  I think he’s right.

  When it became clear I wasn’t going to answer, he gently tugged me forward, into the building. In the lobby we waited for an elevator, riding it to the third floor. We passed doors on both sides of the carpeted hallway before pausing in front of apartment 306. Rafe pulled out his car keys and shuffled through them before finding the key he wanted. Even in my foggy, dream-like state, I still felt a pang of sadness for him. After all this time, he still carries the key.

  To Rafe, this would always be home.

  He hesitated slightly before turning the key and unlocking the door. Stepping inside, he held the door open for everyone else. It opened into a small living room with a couch, TV, and a coffee table. That surprised me. I had expected an apartment sparsely furnished, and instead it looked like a place just waiting for its occupants to come home. It was dusty, however, reminding me that no one had lived here for a long, long time.

  Rafe was saying something to Evan and Alexandra behind me. I shook my head, my hearing muffled, as if I’d plunged my head underwater. I was trying so desperately to hold onto my sanity, but each second took me closer and closer to losing it all.

  To fully understanding what Charles had said.

  To realizing she was gone.

  Permanently.

  Mom was dead.

  The floor lurched dangerously underneath me, and I was falling before I even realized it. My knees collided with the wood floor with a hollow thump, but I didn’t register any pain. I heard Rafe shout my name, as if from a distance, and then everything went black.

  Chapter Fourteen

  My eyes fluttered open. I was stretched out across a small bed in an unfamiliar room, underneath the room’s only window. Light from a streetlamp outside cast the room in a gray pallor, and I could make out faded posters of baseball players hanging on the walls. Sitting up, I winced as my knees throbbed dully. Rafe was sitting in a desk chair next to the bed. For a moment I thought he was asleep, but then he leaned toward me, whispering, “Hey.”