Secondhand Shadow

by Elizabeth Belyeu

  Something in the tension of his hands and shoulders made my stomach cold. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing. Nothing I can talk about yet. I’ll be back as soon as I can.” He leaned down and kissed me, not nearly as casually as he was trying to, and paused with his forehead against mine for the space of a single shaky breath. Nerves, I realized. Fear.

  “Damon—”

  “I’ll explain later. Be back soon.” And he strode from the room without looking back.

  He wasn’t back soon. The four of us played Go Fish and Rummy and Hearts. Mom and Dad came back from the hotel with supper. I spent an hour with Charlie, rocking him and singing lullabies. Back in my hospital bed, I nodded off much earlier than usual and woke at midnight.

  Damon had not come back. I persuaded Dove to check in at the Orphanage.

  Damon wasn’t there, and hadn’t been all day.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Daughter of Eve

  DAMON

  I shaded straight to Westley’s bedroom in the hope of catching him alone. I had no idea what I was going to say to him. My hands were shaking.

  Jonathan in the hospital bed, “A little white kitten, hissing at you and Naomi—”

  Jewel on Westley’s bed, sitting too close, fingers interlaced, “ — still your little kitten?”

  Maybe it didn’t mean anything at all, maybe it was just a chance remark, a meaningless dream.

  Maybe tomorrow it would rain gumdrops…

  Westley wasn’t in his bedroom. Jewel was, sprawled across his bed with lazy possessiveness.

  “If you’re looking for Westley, he’s not here,” she said petulantly.

  I propped myself against the windowsill, arms crossed, and looked at her.

  She raised an eyebrow and sat up, brushing white-gold curls out of her eyes. “What’s with the death glare?”

  “Why you?” I said, and I already knew I was saying too much, that it was stupid to start this without talking to Westley first. The words spilled out anyway, burning my lips as they passed. “Why would Westley protect you?”

  She blinked, frowned. “Protect me from what?”

  She was a good actress. Even now I couldn’t be sure that the sudden wariness in her posture wasn’t my own projection. I may have been a blind, blundering idiot all this time, but she was a good actress.

  “Fine, I’ll play,” she said when I didn’t answer. “Why wouldn’t Westley protect me? We’re a family here, aren’t we? Isn’t that what families do?”

  “Family,” I hissed. “No one in my family would threaten my Lumi’s life. You don’t do that to someone you love.”

  “Good heavens, Damon.” She crossed the room to Galatea’s vanity, movements desultory, almost relaxed. “I know I haven’t been Naomi’s biggest fan, but calling me a threat is surely a little paranoid.” She picked up a tube of Galatea’s lip gloss and leaned forward to apply it in the mirror.

  My brain was picking at threads now, the three yellow squares under Jewel’s name on the alibi chart. “How did you convince Paris and Peter to give you alibis?”

  She shot me a sweet smile over her shoulder. “Such sweet, loyal, malleable boys, both of them. I do miss Peter.” She sniffed delicately at a bottle of Galatea’s perfume, dabbed a bit onto her wrist. “This suits me much better than it would Galatea, don’t you think? It’s too floral for her. She does better with citrus.”

  “Maybe they didn’t even have to lie for you, exactly. But Westley, he’s lied.” Tiny tremors worked their way up and down my body, shivers of bottled rage and pain and fear. What have you done to my brother? “I can’t figure it. I can’t figure why he would lie for you.”

  As if idly curious, Jewel asked, “Who would he lie for?”

  “Me. Teya. Can’t really think of anyone else.”

  “Oh, there’s someone else.” Jewel smiled and turned away from the vanity, ran a hand up under Westley’s bedside table. There was a click, and her hand came away with a photograph in it, which she dropped in my direction.

  I caught the photograph without looking away from Jewel, glanced down at it — looked again, startled. The picture was Westley and a young woman, arms around each other. The girl was smiling but looked pale and fragile. Her skin was all but translucent, bruised, her platinum-blonde hair thinning but still with a trace of curl.

  The resemblance to Jewel was arresting.

  “You never met Emily, did you?” Jewel was saying, gaze on her reflection once again, as she used Galatea’s brush to sweep her hair up into an elegant knot. “Even before the cancer, she was one of those tiny, frail creatures that has to be taken care of, looked after. And Westley missed that so badly, poor thing, it was heartbreaking. He needed that. And I gave it to him. So you see, he’d do anything.” She turned to me with a bright, innocent, blinding smile.

  When she lunged at me I was ready, ready for teeth and fingernails, already moving to block and subdue—

  I wasn’t ready for the hairspray she snatched from the vanity and blasted into my eyes. Her hand muffled my scream and I bit down on her palm, but she was already shading us — where?

  I fought, blind and pain-dazzled, with no idea where I was except that it was cold and damp. She smashed my head into something metal, stunning me long enough to enter a code at some kind of keypad — deet deet deet — and before I could get my feet under me, she had haul-shove-kicked me through a door and slammed it behind me.

  I clawed at the door, shouting, head spinning — finally had to simply cling to the strange metal rods under my hands, be still and breathe before I made myself pass out. I couldn’t see at all. The air was stale, smelled of Shadow blood and… someone familiar.

  “Darling?” Surely that was a trick of my vibrating brain…

  “Damon,” came a weak, tired voice. “Oh, man, she got you, too?”

  “Darling, where are we?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “But there isn’t any way out.”

  NAOMI

  “He ask everyone in house,” Dove said, lips pinched with worry. “Damon not been there all day. Here, he want you now.”

  I took the cell phone from her hand. “Westley?”

  “ — what even, Wes, it looks like a bomb went off in here!” Was that Galatea in the background?

  “Naomi, you’re sure he said he was coming here?” Westley’s voice was strange. Frayed. Somehow I knew he was pale as death right now.

  “Yes, positive,” I said. “I wouldn’t put it entirely past him to lie, I guess, but what for?”

  “ — liked that perfume. What do you think, Damon have another tantrum?”

  “Teya, quiet!” Westley snapped, and she went instantly silent — as surprised as I, perhaps, to hear Westley snap. “Naomi, I need you to tell me exactly what he said. From the beginning. What were you talking about?”

  “Well… dreams. Your dreams, in fact,” I said awkwardly. “The ones you passed to Jonathan. He was complaining about them.” Dove and I pressed our backs to the wall to let an orderly go by with a cart. A few feet away, inside the room, my parents and brother slept peacefully.

  Westley took a slow, deep breath. “Tell me exactly.”

  My pulse had picked up uneasily. Surely I could tell Westley anything? Damon’s blood brother, who had already been cleared?

  I told him, about the ashes and the peculiarly menacing little white kitten. “What’s going on, Westley?”

  “Oh, some nonsense or other, I’m sure. I’ll take care of it, no need to worry. Just… make sure Dove stays with you.”

  As a reassurance, it failed spectacularly.

  DAMON

  “Can’t believe I wasn’t fast enough to shade when she opened the door,” Darling muttered. “Wasn’t expecting her to come back. Figured she just left me here to die.” I heard a rustle of movement and a hiss of indrawn breath.

  “Are you hurt?” I asked.

  “My legs,” she said tightly. “She was serious about not wanting me to go anywhere. I
don’t suppose she tossed any blood in here with you?”

  “No.” I felt my way along the wall toward her voice, my hands sliding over row upon row of what felt, possibly, like metal drawers. Were we in some kind of vault? That made sense, with the keypad and the strange metal door…

  My feet suddenly slipped under me, and I had to grab the handle of one the drawers to stay upright. “What’s with the water on the floor?”

  “That would be my blood,” she said cheerily.

  I swore, and continued feeling my way along until my foot bumped something — Darling’s leg, judging by the way she gasped and jolted.

  “Hold still.” I sank to my knees and felt for the damage, as gently as I could.

  Both legs shattered, bits of bone catching at my hands, blood welling steadily around them. Her skin had the distinctive soft-edged texture of the heavily blurred. I swallowed nausea. “You’d be dead already if not for the darkness in here.”

  “Yeah, well, it wouldn’t be a problem if it weren’t for the darkness in here. I could have hunted.”

  “Do you think you’d even survive a shade right now?”

  She laughed grimly. “I sure intend to find out, given half a chance.”

  I took a couple deep breaths, trying to think clearly. “Okay, I’m going to feel my way around this place, just in case you missed something. No offense, but in your condition—”

  “Oh, by all means, let me have missed something.”

  “But if I’m right about this being a vault, my hopes aren’t high. I don’t know what Jewel intended for you, but if I’m right about what she intends for me,” I had to take a moment to fight down the gibbering panic for Naomi Naomi Naomi, “then she’ll be back. And we need to be ready.”

  “Oh, I was born ready,” Darling said, and I tried not to notice that her voice was slurring as her body shut down.

  NAOMI

  Jonathan and I were released from the hospital around dawn. With Jonathan’s help, and a good bit of hard, sweaty labor, I convinced Mom and Dad to get back to their jobs in Burgundy and leave me at the DiNovis’ until the weekend. Dove and I waved from his parents’ front yard as they drove off with Jonathan, and I sighed with relief as the car passed out of sight. With the Formyndari coming over, nosy parents were the last thing we needed.

  And, some quiet place in my mind added, whatever crap is going down, they’re well out of it.

  Somewhat to my surprise, I was informed that my presence was requested at Paris’s Formyndari interview. Regarding our midnight conversation in the bathroom, I could only assume. The Formyndari wouldn’t be arriving for another hour, however, and that was too long to sit still and worry about Damon. I imposed upon my transportation/bodyguard/carrier of objects to help me fetch the last of my things from Carmen’s.

  “I been thinking about what you say,” Dove said as I gathered clothes, books, and oddments into Helen’s laundry basket. “About not punish Valerie for my sins. I think you right.”

  “Of course I’m right. Is this the face of a girl who would lie to you?”

  She rolled her eyes, but smiled a little. “I serious. Maybe I not the mama Valerie deserve. But I what she got. Even if Bo marry, she not Shadow, she not know.”

  “So… you’re going to go back? Go talk to her?”

  Dove took a deep breath and nodded. “After find Darling. I not leave until I know Darling okay.”

  I didn’t mention my fear that we would only find Darling halfway through her next murder. If we found her at all.

  First Darling disappears, now Damon…

  I fought down the spike of panic. Most likely I was doing Darling an injustice, and she would show up tomorrow full of apologies and explanations — and, most importantly, an alibi — with Damon on her heels, having… gotten lost on the way home from the supermarket?

  I made myself smile, gave Dove a hug. “I think you’re doing the right thing.”

  “I hope so.” She hugged me back, then picked up the laundry basket. “This everything?”

  “Yeah, I guess… Oh, wait, I still have stuff in the bathroom.” I gathered my toothbrush, toothpaste, shampoo and deodorant. “Boy, have I missed you babies.”

  I heard a crashing sort of thud from the living room, as if Dove had thrown down the laundry basket. “Dove?”

  She hadn’t thrown down the basket. She had fallen on top of it. And she wasn’t getting up.

  “Dove!” I ran to her, and glimpsed blood trickling through her hair before arms wrapped around me from behind, and the world darkened, crushing around me like ocean depths.

  When I could breathe again, I fell to my knees, gasping and clutching my overturned stomach. The floor was hard and smooth and ice-cold, the air dim and shadowy. What in the world…?

  “Don’t bother trying to Call for Damon, sweetie, he can’t come,” said a soft soprano voice behind me. I spun, tripping over my own legs. “And don’t try to fight me, I’ll just kill you sooner.”

  I gaped up at Jewel. Jewel, cute little helpless Jewel with her Shirley Temple curls, the Dickensian tragedy in action. With a gleaming knife in her hand.

  “I do plan to kill you anyway, just so we’re clear,” she said, “but you’ll live a little longer if you’re good.”

  “What did you do to Dove?” I said, voice shaking.

  “Oh, she’ll be fine. We’ve all been through worse. It’s yourself you should be worrying about.”

  I could make out more of our surroundings now; a bank lobby, with teller windows along one wall, a fancy domed ceiling, cold marble beneath my knees. Sunlight trickled from tiny, high windows onto the jagged shapes of graffiti. YOU SUCK. GO LIONS!! TREY + KIM 4-EVA.

  “We’re in Detroit, if you’re wondering,” Jewel said. She took a handful of my hair and pulled me, fumbling on hands and knees, into the center of the room, where the light was uninterrupted, shadowless. “This part of the city is just rotting, buildings abandoned left and right. The whole block is vandal-bait.” She did not so much let go of my hair as fling it down, and me with it.

  Slowly, carefully, I got to my feet. My breath plumed in the icy air. I tried to keep the plumes deep and even, keep my expression from changing as I Called Damon as hard as I could. He can’t come, she’d said. What did that mean? What had she done to him? Was she holding him somewhere?

  “What do you want from me, Jewel?”

  “I want you dead, silly. Didn’t I already say that? I want Damon free of you, and back with us, where he belongs.”

  “Losing me is just as likely to kill him as free him.”

  “That’s the risk we run. Liberty or death.” She smiled, and goosebumps rushed across my arms. Keep her monologuing.

  “So it was you who killed Audrey’s Lumi?” I said.

  “That was clever, wasn’t it? Very close timing. Turn on the shower, shade to Martin’s loft, shade back to the shower and rinse the blood off. I had to be back in time to help Audrey with the breach. It made the actual killing part dreadfully rushed, but I had to be there for Audrey.”

  I was still wrapping my mind around this. “But — I saw Damon’s alibi chart. You had yellow squares across the board. Who lied for you?”

  “No one had to,” she said smugly. “I really was at the water park with Paris the day Ray and Mia died — I knew it would be days before he turned up to be questioned, and by then he wouldn’t remember exactly what time we left. And I really was at the movies with Peter when Terry and Dolly died. Poor sweet boy, it wasn’t hard to convince him not to mention that I’d gone to the restroom partway through. He was so wrapped up in the movie, he hardly knew I was gone anyway.”

  I sent out another Call, trying not to panic at the lack of response. You little witch — if you’ve hurt him at all, I’ll… What? Glare at her darkly? I fought down a hysterical laugh. “Jewel, why are you doing this? Why are you killing Shadows?”

  Her smile dimmed. “The Shadows weren’t supposed to die, none of them. We were trying to free them.”


  We.

  “They weren’t strong enough,” she continued. “Not their fault, I suppose. They’re better off now, either way. But Damon, he’s strong. And he’ll have Westley, if I can ever track that boy down. That’s Westley’s job — to keep him alive. That’s always been Westley’s job, while I deal with the messy part. He never wanted to do it — he’d want you to know that — he kicks and screams about it every time, but he knows he can’t stop me. And he knows the Shadow won’t have a chance without someone to help them. He takes them into the vault, there.” She nodded toward the opposite wall, where a metal door gleamed with rods and wheels and number pads. “We found the combination on the underside of a desk. Careless of someone. It’s pitch-black in the vault, see, so they can’t shade. Makes it harder to go to ashes, too — though they still manage. They always manage, and I’m the one who has to open the door and brush it out of his hands and clothes, and hold him until he stops crying. Maybe his is the messy part after all.” She sighed, then pulled a little black box out of her pocket — a walkie-talkie, I realized, when she lifted it to her mouth. “How are you doing in there, Damon?”

  There was a long pause, then a blast of rattling and white noise — Damon struggling with the controls, in the dark vault? — and then Damon’s voice, crackling with static and rage. “If you hurt Naomi, I will tear you apart.”

  “Oh, calm down, she’s right here,” Jewel said, rolling her eyes. “Naomi, do say hello.”

  “Damon!” I tried to think of something useful to say, but all that came out was, “I’m sorry.” What was I even apologizing for?

  “Naomi. Naomi.” His voice was rough with relief and terror. I felt like I could see him, pressed against the door of the vault, fingernails digging uselessly at the metal. “Don’t worry, love, I’m going to get us out of this.”