Secondhand Shadow

by Elizabeth Belyeu

  I took the chart from his hand, regarding it morosely. Steve Stobar and Kitty. Ray Jimenez and Mia. Terry Fitzroy and Dolly. And now, Martin Iverson — without, thus far, the accompanying Shadow fatality. Thank God. “Does it mean anything that all the Lumii are male?”

  “You’re not the first to wonder. It might mean the killer is female, that she identifies with the Shadows and equates the Lumii with her own abusive mate. Or it could mean the killer is male, feels protective of female Shadows, like he has a duty to watch over his ‘sisters.’ Or it could be a coincidence. Four isn’t a very big sample, in the long run.”

  “Maybes,” I said. “And kinda-sortas.”

  “And we’re not going to solve it tonight,” he said. “I think some sleep will do us both more good than another hour staring cross-eyed at charts and papers.”

  I took the hint and decamped. Back in my borrowed bed, I tried to herd my thoughts away from Martin Iverson’s half-shredded corpse. I kept my mind’s eye firmly fixed on fluffy chicks and candy-colored kittens, and watched them pounce and play and tumble into a silver fog of sleep.

  Damon and I were in front of the fireplace in the Orphanage living room. The crackling flames were the only light in the room, and they definitely showed him to advantage, flickering over his arms and chest and face in a soft peekaboo kind of way. Without his leather jacket, he somehow looked softer, smaller — not in a bad way, though. At all.

  “Most people would be more cautious the second time around,” he said, examining a partly-browned marshmallow on the end of a long twig. He put it back in the fire. “After what Tyler put you through. I don’t know if you’re brave or stupid.”

  “Me, either,” I said. “What are we talking about?”

  Damon didn’t answer, grimacing as he tried to pull the toasted marshmallow off the end of the stick and place it atop the graham-cracker-and-chocolate foundation of a s’more. Mostly he was succeeding in making a big, sticky mess.

  “Not like that, silly,” I said. “Look, you have to kind of pull it off with the other graham cracker. Like this. See?”

  “Oh. Yeah, that does work better.” Looking sheepish, he took a bite out of the s’more, which immediately overflowed, squeezing melted marshmallow and chocolate out the sides. We both yelped, and I began scraping the mess off his hands and clothes with a graham cracker, which I popped into my mouth.

  “Remind me again why these are fun?” he said.

  “Because they’re messy!” I said through a full mouth. “I can’t believe you’ve never had one before.” I wasn’t pregnant, I noticed dimly, and had a brief mental flash of a baby asleep in a back room. That was okay.

  Damon was trying to wipe the marshmallow off his hands with a napkin, which was only sticking to the mess. I pulled the napkin away, dipped it in the mug of water at my elbow, and began wiping his hands with the damp paper. It worked a lot better, and the cool water felt nice against the firelight.

  He made a feeble effort to pull away. “Stop. My hands are sticky.”

  “My hands are sticky, too. What are you afraid of?”

  We exchanged grins.

  This is a dream, I realized. It will all go away when I wake up. For several seconds, I was devastated.

  Then I thought, I might as well make the most of it while I’m here.

  I leaned forward and kissed him.

  He kissed me back, hard, and there was no Wonder Tummy in the way, so it was just me and him, and sticky-sweet marshmallow and firelight.

  And I woke up.

  I do not swear, I reminded myself sternly, and then had to remind myself again when I remembered that last time I dreamed about marshmallows, Damon dreamed with me. I will not examine implications, and I will not swear. I will lurch myself into the bathroom and pat cold water on my face. Then I will feel better. After not examining implications. Or swearing.

  I felt my way to the bathroom door. Inside, a nightlight by the mirror cast a warm glow not unlike firelight. Brave or stupid, Naomi? I glared at my reflection, jumped when I turned on the water and it spattered into the sink, and glared again after putting cold, wet handprints all over my face. And jumped again when I saw the other reflection standing behind me.

  I spun and drew breath for a cry, but a steely hand clapped over my mouth with bruising force, an equally steely body pinning me against the sink.

  “Shhh, it’s me!”

  I froze. “Paris?”

  “Don’t wake up his parents!”

  “I won’t,” I mumbled against his hand. “For Pete’s sake, let go!”

  “Sorry.” He stepped back from me, and I realized he looked about as wild-eyed and frantic as I felt. “Where’s Damon?”

  “I don’t know.” I pressed a hand to my chest, trying to get my adrenalin rush under control. “But he said for you to run, go to ground. He wants to talk to you, but the Formyn—”

  “I know, that’s why I’m looking for him. They’re watching the Orphanage, but I thought he might be here — he’s not here with you?”

  “No.” My voice did not invite further conversation on the topic. I frowned at him, then fumbled for the light switch to confirm my suspicions. The light revealed all; he looked worse than I thought, hollow-eyed and wild-haired, his clothes torn and… bloody. “Paris, what happened?”

  “Not what the Formyndari think. But enough to get me killed, regardless.”

  “Tell me.”

  He sighed, wiped absently at a long-dry smear of blood on his face, and sat down on the toilet lid. “I went up to Boston to hunt. Without a partner, yes, which was stupid, but I’ve done it before without anyone getting hurt. Hurt more than expected, I mean. Anyway, I had my eye on this frazzle-haired woman who had just left a club, she was nice and tipsy — that’s the best way to do it, you know, they’re more docile and they don’t remember much — but as she was stumbling down the sidewalk she ran into some guy she knew. They were all over each other and they ducked into an alley. I wasn’t wild on getting those memories. I was already walking away when she started screaming.”

  He rubbed his face again, still not making a dent in the bloodstains. “I shouldn’t have even gotten involved. It wasn’t something I decided to do. I just ran into the alley and he was stabbing her.” He met my gaze. “And yeah, I killed him. Didn’t set out to, but I won’t be losing any sleep over it. I tried to help the woman, but — it was too late. She was gone.” He rubbed his eyes with the back of his hand, looking so like and so unlike a sleepy child… “But see, the bank across the street had security cameras. That’s what I figure tipped off the Formyndari, anyway. And all that would show is the two of them entering the alley, me following, and then me running away covered in blood. The woman doesn’t have bite marks, but that won’t prove anything. Priscilla knows Damon’s been training us to hunt with knives. I don’t have a great life expectancy at the moment.”

  “We’ll find Damon in the morning.” Surely this would pre-empt his desire to never hear from me again. “For tonight, you need to hide somewhere and get some sleep. You look awful.”

  He looked around blearily. “Honestly, I think I’m as safe here as anywhere. The Formyndari won’t descend on Frank DiNovi’s house without warning, even if it occurs to them I might be here. I don’t know if he’d turn me in or not, but since he doesn’t know…”

  “There’s a windowseat in the bedroom, I could set you up a bed there.”

  “Sounds great. I guess I should clean up a little.” He looked down at the dried blood on his hands. “Though I don’t know how well I’ll sleep with that psychopath’s memories floating around in my head. I got a nice little mouthful of a Day in the Life.”

  I’d been wondering about how all that worked. “Will they go away eventually?”

  “In a week or two. Well, longer for this particular specimen of sub-humanity. Same age and sex, some similar… experiences.” He winced, and I elected not to follow that line of questioning.

  “So that makes a difference? How
much the… donor has in common with you?”

  “Oh, yeah. Example: my last meal before this unfortunate incident was this elderly Japanese woman. For a few minutes her memories were completely indistinguishable from my own, but now I hardly remember her name. I have so little context from which to understand her life, see, that it just doesn’t ‘stick.’ Yours won’t fade, though.” He gave me a sly look, if a weary one. “For Damon, I mean. Not entirely. Your Lumi’s memories are a lot stickier than some random stranger’s.”

  “Wonderful,” I muttered, then realized that this was the best opening I was likely to get for fishing after Paris’s personal history. “So, uh… you have your Lumi’s memories still?”

  “No. Never did.” A lot of the friendliness dropped from his face.

  I hated to push him any further, but felt I had to try. I wanted to be able to tell Damon that Paris wasn’t Liberty. “What happened to her?”

  His look now seemed to be equal parts amusement and contempt. “Playing the voyeur, are we? Curiosity killed the cat, you know.”

  I waited.

  “Her name was Deborah Stonecastle. She was a thirty-five-year-old schoolteacher from Kansas. We tried to hide from her what it meant, that I look the way I do. But the night before the befasting, she figured it out. I could see it in her eyes, the moment she figured it out.” His gaze went distant. “When she left that night, she hugged me and told me she was sorry. Then she went home and shot herself.”

  It was a full minute before I could speak, and then my voice was soft and choked.

  “Poor woman.”

  He turned on me with a shocked look, then quickly away again, eyes bright with tears.

  “I’m sorry,” I cried, “I know what she did was awful—”

  “No, you don’t understand,” he said. “I haven’t told many people about Deborah. But of those few, you are the first to show any kind of compassion for her.” The tears were coming hard now, despite his best efforts. “I loved her. I still — I still — She couldn’t help what she was, any more than I can — She never hurt a child in her life — I was eighteen — If only I’d talked to her, explained, explained that it was okay, that we wouldn’t be doing anything wrong—”

  Hesitantly, I stepped nearer, put my hand on his bony child’s shoulder, and to my surprise he didn’t pull away. Instead, he huddled closer, the sobs shaking his thin frame with choking force, as if seeking shelter from a storm. Eventually, he cried himself into an exhausted stupor, and I guided him into the bedroom.

  As I tucked him into a pile of blankets on the windowseat, I reflected on two things. First, that in Romeo & Juliet, Paris was the man Juliet killed herself rather than marry, and second, that if Deborah Stonecastle didn’t befast him, it was unlikely she named him.

  I tucked myself back into bed, where I prayed for Paris, and for Deborah Stonecastle, even if it was too late, and for Claire and her Romeo, and for me and Tyler and my poor fatherless baby, until I fell at last into dreams that made no sense, and that dissipated like fog on waking.

  DAMON

  I spent a few hours among the broken headstones, too tired to shade elsewhere even after realizing I’d destroyed whatever peace the cemetery once held for me. I lay down at the top of one of the picturesque rolling hills and watched the sun take its last gasp at the horizon. I didn’t notice the deepening darkness for some time, focused on the agonizing effort of not. Going. Back. To Naomi.

  After a while, it got easier. The pain didn’t decrease, but I became more accustomed to it. I had thirteen years of that under my belt, and would have many more, if all went as planned. I could do this. I could.

  At some point, I dozed off. And dreamed.

  Claire and I had seldom dreamed together, not as often as many link-pairs, and when we did I generally knew it. I wasn’t on guard against shared dreams with Naomi. It might not have helped to be on guard. Even in shared dreams, even in shared lucid dreams, the subconscious still held the reins. At least in my experience. And at least one level of my subconscious saw no reason whatsoever not to stay by the fire and go just as far with Naomi as she wanted to go.

  I wrenched myself awake with herculean effort, and fought a desire to break more headstones. Something had to break, rip and break and tear down to its component atoms. Self-harm wouldn’t do, either, because the last thing I wanted was more of Naomi’s blood. In the end I settled for a nice, bloodcurdling scream that left my throat sore and my ears ringing, and shaded back to the Orphanage.

  I landed in Westley and Galatea’s room, hardly knowing whether I hoped to find it empty or not. It wasn’t. Westley and Jewel were sitting on Westley’s bed, deep in conversation.

  “ — still your little kitten?” Jewel shut her mouth with a snap, and looked up at me with wide, innocent eyes. Westley looked up, too, but quickly away again. Their fingers, loosely enlaced on the bedspread, slid away from each other.

  Already raw to bleeding, I barely swallowed an urge to slap Jewel across the room. Jewel was a flirt. Unusual, among Shadows, but some Lumii liked that. The other orphans — the other males, at least — seemed to find her coquetry harmless and endearing. I found it irritating, which of course had only increased her determination to win me over, and she was not above playing me and Westley against each other. And that was the last sort of complication Westley needed right now.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I shouldn’t have barged in.”

  “Jewel was just leaving,” Westley said, not looking at either of us.

  Jewel pouted theatrically and sashayed from the room, brushing me with her hip as she passed. Westley clutched a handful of bedspread, his face going white.

  For a moment we were both quiet, looking around as if the room were new and interesting, when in fact it was downright spartan, even with three people’s things in it. Some orphans became hoarders, as if their vast amounts of stuff could fill the hole at their center, but neither Wes, Teya nor I had fallen prey to that delusion. Teya had gone OCD instead, which in her case meant that the room was not only painfully neat, but that anything we didn’t want her to break got hidden elsewhere.

  “Well,” Westley said, “what happened?”

  “What makes you think anything happened?”

  He looked at me at last, scornfully.

  “Naomi’s with my parents,” I said. “And she’s staying there until we breach. I’m through with bodyguard duty. I can’t be around her.”

  “You’re making a mistake.”

  “So be it.”

  “You’re hurting her.”

  “I don’t care about her!”

  His face lifted with a strange, fey amusement. “Liar.”

  “There is no reason for her to mean a thing to me.”

  “And reason crashed the party when?”

  “I won’t do this, Wes. I won’t go back in that box. I’ll die first.”

  “Then stop dithering about it!” He surged to his feet, fey amusement segueing to fey rage. “You want the silent dark? The welcoming arms of death? Then go! Don’t keep her waiting! If your Lumi isn’t worth living for, then nothing is. Don’t you want to find out if our mothers were right? Don’t you want to know if we’ll go to hell without a Lumi to take us to heaven? Or just oblivion, our souls — if we ever had them — scattered on the wind with our ashes. Send me a postcard to let me know how it goes!” The last words were practically spat into my face. On the heels of them, he turned, shoulder crashing against mine, and left the room, slamming the door behind him.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Hungry

  NAOMI

  I woke groggy and sore and not at all rested. That seemed appropriate. I would have felt guilty for feeling good today. Not that I was in much danger of it; Damon’s absence was huge and empty, a great hollow globe on my shoulders, denser than lead. I squinted at the weak sunlight filtering through the curtains, then at my watch. Not quite six o’clock. I never woke up that early. Not without a violent encounter with my alarm clock. />
  “Paris?” I turned over to face the windowseat.

  Paris sat silhouetted against the window, the curtain drawn aside with one hand, the other pressed to the glass. At the sound of my voice, he turned, and the light spilled across a face lightyears away from the weeping child of last night. He looked both older and younger, softer and harder, and I didn’t know what to make of it until he smiled — not ironically, not nastily, but with a sort of surprised serenity.

  “How do you feel?” I asked.

  “Better,” he said. “Better than I have in a long time.”

  “Well, I feel lousy, so I guess we even each other out.”

  His smile deepened. “Don’t worry. He’ll come back.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said loftily. I sat up, which involved lots of pulling and rolling and shoving and grunting, and finally managed to get my feet onto the floor. “Speaking of Damon, we’re not speaking, so I’m not sure how to get word to him about you.”

  “His father will know how. Tell Damon I’m at the Methodist cemetery in Augusta, Kansas. He’ll find it.” He stepped away from the window, into the shadows. “Naomi?”

  “Yeah?”

  He cleared his throat. “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  He darkened and flattened, a shadow-colored paper doll, and was gone.

  Shock of shocks, I was hungry. I wrapped myself in the silky sky-blue housecoat Helen had lent me — trying to ignore the realization that I was now blue and yellow and round and had in, fact, become an Easter egg — and peeked out the bedroom door. The house was dark and silent. I wasn’t hungry enough to wake anyone up. I shut the door and padded back to bed.

  I couldn’t get back to sleep, for all of the soft, achy leadenness in my muscles. I burrowed my head into the pillow and wondered how well Damon had slept.