Secondhand Shadow

by Elizabeth Belyeu

“What happened to your neck?”

  “Huh?” My hand fluttered up to the half-healed teethmarks. Peter’s bite was all but gone, but Damon’s was deeper and more recent. “Oh, that. Just a scratch.”

  “Doesn’t look like a scratch.” Jonathan’s voice was grim. He took hold of my chin, turned me toward the light. “That’s a bite mark. Naomi, why is there a bite mark on your neck?”

  Uh-oh. “It’s, um, it’s really not a bite. It just, a tree branch hit me, that’s all.”

  “You are such a lousy liar.”

  Carmen had abandoned the couch and was eyeing my neck, more amused than alarmed. “Wow, Red, you sure know how to pick ‘em. I wouldn’t have figured you for the whips-and-chains type, but hey—”

  “What are you talking about?” Jonathan demanded.

  “That guy she’s been seeing, the professor’s son. I knew he looked like bad news.”

  “Right, which is why you’ve been flirting with him like crazy.”

  She grinned. “Bad news is good news in my world, Red.”

  “Naomi, did he hurt you?” I had never heard Jonathan’s voice that hard.

  I scrambled for a lie, or an acceptable version of the truth. “It was an accident—”

  “That’s it. We’re headed home.” He took my arm.

  I pulled it away. “No. Jonathan, you know I can’t do that.”

  “Naomi, you’re pregnant and some guy is hurting you. You are coming home with me now.”

  “No, I’m not!” I put my face in my hands, growling frustration. “Jonathan. I have classes. I have a job. Damon would never intentionally hurt me. I don’t think he ever wants to see me again anyway. I am not going home to Mom and Dad. You, on the other hand, can still get back home before curfew.”

  “If you think I am leaving you like this, you’re a blithering imbecile.”

  I pounded my head gently against the wall and moaned. “Jonathan…”

  He crossed his arms and glared at me. A pretty good glare, from a golden-haired baby-faced seventeen-year-old.

  “Fine,” I said. “I’m not going home, but I’ll tell you what’s going on so you’ll stop freaking out.” Oh, this was going to be a fun dance. The whole truth was likely to get me dragged home in a straitjacket. “If you buy me dinner. I’m starved and I know there’s nothing to eat in this house.”

  “You got that right,” Carmen said, drifting back toward the couch. “Here, my mom shelled out for the Epica meal plan. I never use it.” She held out her student ID. Theoretically, the lack of resemblance between myself and the picture on the card could be a problem. In practice, nobody cared.

  “Thanks, Carmen,” I said, pocketing the card.

  “Anything to get your drama out of my living room.”

  .

  Jonathan drove us to the dining hall. See? You don’t need a Shadow to get around. Just a brother. The student dining hall, Epica — despite its nickname of Ipecac — was a crush of hungry humanity, and the attendant didn’t even glance up when I bought two meals with Carmen’s card. We oozed snail-like down the buffet line, not trying to talk in the roar. Epica was old news to me, but Jonathan swiveled his head non-stop, soaking up this fragment of the college experience. I wondered what he found so fascinating about an echoey room full of sweaty frat boys, laughing and hollering over trays of mass-produced calorie-globs.

  I took advantage of the free, non-packaged meal for as much Healthy Food as I could grab — salisbury steak, a banana, whole-wheat toast, some variety of vegetable. Feed the Tummy!

  “Let’s go outside,” Jonathan shouted as we filled up at the drink machine — Pepsi for Jonathan, chocolate milk for me. Calcium for Baby!

  “Back door,” I yelled back, nodding my head toward the back entrance. Trays carefully balanced, we backed out the door, into comparative quiet. The sun wouldn’t go down until seven or so, but the air was cooling; it felt nice after the stuffy dining hall.

  “Let’s sit up there,” Jonathan said, jerking his chin at the student chapel, a small but nicely gothic brick building just up the hill from Epica. I wasn’t sure if anyone actually held services at the chapel; it seemed to be mostly used for awards ceremonies and musical performances, though I had heard of a few students getting married there.

  Me and Tyler could have gotten married there, I supposed. But Tyler wanted to have a grand, romantic elopement, like his parents. Our wedding took place at the Chapel of Eternal Love in Las Vegas, performed by an authentic long-haired hippie who may have been authentically stoned. Tyler thought the whole thing was adorable, so I giggled in the right places and didn’t let on that I hated it.

  On the upside, what marries in Vegas can divorce in Vegas — cheap, easy, and above all, fast.

  The chapel, set back in a cathedral of pines, was certainly secluded enough for our conversation — or had better be, after the hike it took to get up the hill. Stairs — hateful, hateful stairs — led up to a wide, roofless porch, lined with waist-high brick, before the chapel door. I sank onto the top step, puffing.

  “Sorry, I didn’t realize it was this far,” Jonathan said.

  “‘S fine. Whatever.” I rubbed slow circles across my belly. Either the walk or my rumbling stomach had roused the baby. Kick kick flutter, flutter kick kick.

  “All right, sis, you’ve got food,” Jonathan said, sitting down beside me. “Now what’s this magical explanation that’s going to make a guy biting you somehow okay?”

  “Damon didn’t bite me, stupid. It was his dog. He was in my lap, got overexcited about my earring. Damon was mortified. It was no big deal.” I took a big bite of the meat-like substance on my plate, and washed it down with chocolate milk.

  Jonathan frowned. “Yeahhhh. And you brought me all the way out here to tell me that?”

  I sighed. “I wanted to talk to you about Damon, after what Carmen said. He’s not the kind of ‘bad news’ she’d have you believe. He has some problems, but he’s not dangerous.” Not to me, at least, I amended, thinking of the hundreds of liquid dinners he’d had over the years. Not to mention the kathairna he’d sent on to glory.

  “What kind of ‘problems’?” Jonathan’s voice was flat.

  “His last girlfriend was murdered, okay? He didn’t take it well. He reminds me of the Grinch sometimes. ‘Mangled up in tangled up knots.’”

  Jonathan raised an eyebrow. “‘I wouldn’t touch you with a thirty-nine-a-half-foot pole’?”

  “It’s been… kind of like that, actually. Until recently.” I took a big gulp of chocolate milk, wishing it was hot cocoa. The temperature was dropping fast.

  Jonathan shook his head, looking mystified. “Naomi, there are plenty of guys in the world who are actually, you know, nice. Why not date one of them?”

  I shrugged. “They’re not Damon.”

  “Sounding like a plus, to me.”

  “Look, it’s not even going to matter soon. He tried to… break up with me today. It didn’t exactly take. But he’ll try again soon and then it’ll be over.” I tried not to sound disconsolate.

  “I don’t like it, Nims. I don’t think this guy is good for you.”

  “I think he agrees with you, if that helps any.”

  We both fell silent, munching steadily, absorbed in our respective thoughts. I have to get him to go home before he gets tangled up in all this supernatural nonsense…

  “Well now, I wasn’t expecting you to have company. A two-for-one deal, how nice.”

  We both turned toward the unfamiliar voice, Jonathan setting aside his tray to stand up. “Um, hello?”

  A woman stood at the other end of the porch. She was thirty or so, pale and bony, with long, dirty reddish hair under an equally dirty bandana. Her clothes were grimy, mismatched, and I wondered if she was homeless. Until I looked at her eyes.

  Empty. Broken windows of an abandoned building, like Peter’s eyes.

  “Jonathan.” I scrambled to my feet, heedless of my tray spilling, chocolate milk streaming down the stairs. “Let’
s go. Let’s get out of here.”

  The kathair tipped her head. “You know what I am, then? Then you should know you can’t run fast enough.” All the teeth in her smile came to points.

  “What the—” Jonathan grabbed my arm, already turning to run.

  She knocked him away from me, into the brick wall of the chapel.

  “Stop!” I screamed. “Leave him alone!”

  She froze in place with a shudder, a snarl distorting her bony face.

  Jonathan had not gotten up. I grabbed fear by the throat and tried to force the Babysitter Voice out of it. “Leave now. Go.”

  She backed up a step. “You are not my Lumi.”

  I stepped forward. “Get out of here now!”

  “You are not my Lumi!” She lunged.

  And went sideways as Jonathan tackled her legs. They hit the waist-high wall of the porch, and she turned on him with a flash of teeth. He cried out as blood sheeted one side of his face.

  “Jonathan!” I bent and snatched up my dropped plate, my solid ceramic plate, and smashed it into the kathair’s head.

  She staggered back from Jonathan, slapped the broken plate from my hand, and grabbed me by the throat.

  “You,” she growled, “have done just about enough damage around here.”

  A shadow in the chapel doorway solidified, and Westley buried a knife in the kathair’s back.

  With a screeching-metal scream, she whirled, flinging me away. I bounced off brick — saw stars — nothing to grab — each brick step a kick in the belly, head, shoulder, belly.

  I hit the bottom, couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe. Opened an eye, but everything was upside down and sideways. Two figures dancing at each other, knives gleaming.

  “Naomi, Call for Damon!” Westley shouted.

  I opened my mouth, but had no breath to speak.

  “Call him now!”

  “Damon,” I croaked, but my brain was screaming it. Damon Damon Damon Damon!

  The stars in my vision were getting worse, and so was the pain in my belly. It gripped hard, and I gasped, and the stars clouded over and went dark.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Dreams and Memories

  DAMON

  Naomi was at the bottom of a staircase with blood in her hair. Terror shrieked up my spine, blocked out everything but her neck, my fingers feeling for pulse and breath. Stupid, because no one would know sooner than me if she were dead.

  “Damon!”

  Westley? I looked around frantically. Why was Naomi at the campus chapel? What was Westley doing here?

  A thump from the top of the stairs — a wild-haired figure slamming Westley against the wall, a knife in her hand. I leaped on her without even touching the stairs, tried to pin her but she twisted out of my grasp. My knife was in my hand now, and we circled each other, growling.

  The growl froze in my throat as I recognized her. Ginger, a kathair who had lived at the Orphanage — three, four years ago? Ginger had a problem with rules, left after a few weeks. What was she doing here, now?

  In my moment of distraction, she lunged. I spun, blocked, felt the knife hiss against my sleeve. I managed to flick my own knife against her arm as she passed, opening a wide, dark line of blood. She shrieked, more from rage than pain, and lunged again, but Westley darted in from the side, landing a hit of his own that crumpled one leg under her.

  “What are you doing, Ginger?” I demanded, dodging a wild sweep of her arm as she fell to one knee. My knife was shaking under the force of my grip. It was hard to care about anything except that she’d hurt Naomi, but killing her now would leave a lot of unanswered questions.

  “I’m doing you a favor,” she growled. Her eyes had gone a bit glassy, her wounded leg pumping blood in a widening pool on the concrete. She wasn’t blurry yet, but she was swaying. “This wasn’t part of the plan.”

  “What plan?”

  With a shout of pain, she pushed off her injured leg — not toward me, but toward a body I hadn’t noticed slumped against the wall of the porch. Westley intercepted, and they rolled, leaving a wake of blood-streaks. The body — a boy, a student? — moved an arm feebly, not dead after all, despite the blood coating his face. I went cold, recognizing Naomi’s little brother from her memories.

  Ginger threw Westley off her, a dark slash across his chest, and came at me, but her aim was spoiled by a parting kick from Westley. I pinned her to the ground — not securely enough — she flipped me, and my head hit the concrete and rang with stars for a precious second. I struck blind, heard Ginger hiss, but she knocked the knife from my hand, spun from me to slash again at Westley, who fell back with another dark line crossing the first. She turned back to me, I raised an arm to block, knowing it wouldn’t be fast enough—

  Jonathan did not look able to stand, much less fight. But he fell against Ginger with all the strength that mass and gravity could give him, folding her injured leg beneath them. Westley, blood-soaked, snatched Ginger out from under the boy by her hair, and ripped his blade through her throat. She was still scattering to ash as he rolled Jonathan onto his back.

  Ginger’s knife was buried to the hilt in his throat.

  We stared as the boy tried to suck in a breath, blood bubbling around the knife.

  Before I could move, Westley snatched the blade from the boy’s throat, slashed it across his own wrist, and pressed the wound to Jonathan’s mouth.

  I didn’t know if it would work. Jonathan was not Westley’s Lumi. But it was out of my hands either way.

  I ran to Naomi, half-falling down the stairs to kneel beside her, afraid to gather her up as I desperately wanted — what if her spine was damaged? She gasped, body drawing up around the sudden tightness of her belly.

  The baby.

  “Hospital now,” I barked over my shoulder at Westley. Without waiting for his response, I bent myself around Naomi and shaded.

  .

  Doctors took Naomi and Jonathan from our arms, pushed us out of the operating room, threatened to call security if we didn’t calm down. It was impossible to calm down. Not-screaming was as close as I could come, and only by pacing the waiting room with my fists clenched.

  Naomi had dreamed she died.

  It doesn’t mean anything. She’s no psychic. It was just a dream.

  “Slow down, Damon,” Westley said. “Humans can’t move that fast.”

  I stopped, shaking, and dragged in a breath. “Are you all right?”

  “Yes.”

  I looked at him for the first time. His shirt was sliced and bloodstained, but there was no sign of wounds beneath. I raised my brows; with a wry half-smile, he pulled a flask from his back pocket.

  “I thought we tried that already,” I said.

  “Ah, but we didn’t try mixing it with whiskey. Alcohol keeps the blood from clotting.”

  “Speaking of blood, that was quick thinking,” I said. “With Jonathan.”

  “I didn’t expect it to work,” he admitted. “But the wound closed right up.” He looked shaken, and I didn’t blame him. Much as I liked the kid, I’d be shaken, too, to have a full copy of my-life-to-date floating around in his head. Westley had always been the generous one.

  “You saved their lives,” I said. Assuming Naomi lives. “I wouldn’t have been there in time.”

  He smiled wanly. “Does that mean you’ve decided I’m not Liberty?”

  I shouldn’t have been surprised he knew. I never could hide much from him. “Unless you engineered the whole thing to convince me you’re not Liberty.”

  He closed his eyes in weary frustration. “Much simpler to let Ginger succeed, after which you wouldn’t care who I was as long as I was handing you blood. Besides, for heaven’s sake, even if I were Liberty, I wouldn’t hurt the baby.”

  And that, I realized, I could believe absolutely. I could stretch my mind, barely, to include Westley killing a Lumi to free her Shadow. Westley killing a child? Never.

  Westley wasn’t Liberty.

  The wash of relief
was sharp enough to trigger tears. I wasn’t going to have to kill my best friend. “I’m sorry,” I said, voice unsteady. “I’m sorry I even thought—”

  “I gave you cause enough,” he murmured. “I think we both know I’m not… right… these days.”

  I sat beside him, slowly, like an old man. “What’s wrong? What can I do?”

  He leaned forward, head in his hands. “You can’t do anything. No one can. But that’s nothing new.”

  He was right. I couldn’t bring Emily back, or his murdered sister. I couldn’t take away his pain, except by killing him. And I couldn’t do that, even if it made me a selfish coward.

  “How did you know,” I asked instead, “how were you there in time to stop Ginger?”

  “Dove came home without Naomi, and I just… decided to check on her. I knew she’d be upset about… how things went…” He ran a hand through his hair. “Luck was with us, for the first time in living memory. About time our karma improved.”

  “What was Ginger thinking?” I was pacing again. “Attacking two people out in the open, in daylight, alone? I didn’t even think she was still in the area. Why would she come after Naomi? She barely glows more than my father now. She should have been safe.” The last sentence came out rougher than I expected.

  “It’s not your fault,” Westley said, though he knew as well as I that it made no difference.

  “Did you hear what she said? She was doing me a favor. And this ‘wasn’t in the plan.’ What was she talking about?”

  Westley hesitated. “Could she have been Liberty?”

  “Ginger?” My first instinctive denial died on my lips. Why not? Ginger was aggressive, violent, had little regard for others. She was connected to my orphans. She had been abused by a tyrannical Lumi. She fit all the criteria.

  It was the “little regard for others” that was sticking in my craw, I realized. Liberty was a flaming psychotic, but his — or her — actions indicated at least a delusion of altruism. Liberty wanted to free the abused. Ginger didn’t care about abuse, as long as she was on the giving side of it.

  “Maybe,” I said reluctantly. I wanted it to be Ginger, God knew. But wanting didn’t make it so.