A Million Shadows

by Janci Patterson

  Aida continued. “If she can’t leave, it’ll make it easy for me to protect her. I can monitor the hospital security in person. I can obscure all the leads that would draw my parents to you, and feed them information that leads them away. She’ll be safe and contained. It won’t be hard to slip them a false lead here and there, while closing off any possibility of them looking where they’d actually find her.”

  I nodded. If there was anything I could trust Aida to do, it was to lie to people’s faces.

  Though that included my own.

  Kalif and I could try to manage this by ourselves—he’d be better at monitoring the computer records than she would be—but even if we could handle it without her, we couldn’t stop her from turning us in.

  We needed her, because she already knew too much.

  The corner of our table had a chip in the enamel, and I ran my nails over the semi-circular groove. Much as I didn’t want there to be anything good about Mom’s situation, Aida had a point.

  Except maybe the part about containing my mother.

  “My mother won’t stay,” I said. “As soon as she wakes up, she’s going to start plotting a way out.” Security might be tight for regular people, but that wouldn’t stop Mom. She could impersonate a doctor, a nurse, a janitor. She’d get out of there.

  And then she’d be looking for me, wondering why I wasn’t by her side, why I put her in danger and then abandoned her there.

  Aida tapped her nails on the table. “You’ll need to convince her to stay.”

  I sat back in my chair. Me. I was the one who would convince her to stay in this trap.

  But what Kalif said rang true. I’d do it if I didn’t want to be back in an empty apartment, watching her kill herself slowly—or worse, quickly.

  “And I’ll find Mel,” I said. “That’s the deal.”

  “If you lead me to him,” Aida said, “I’ll even help you disappear, so my parents never find you.”

  That was a grandiose promise, and one I didn’t expect she’d keep, even if she had the power to. She just wanted me to have an incentive to succeed, so I wouldn’t simply say I was looking and bide my time.

  It was time I took control of this situation. I would have done that right from the start if I hadn’t come into it so shaken. “Fine,” I said. “We’ll look. But Kalif still comes with me.”

  Aida opened her mouth, probably to protest, but I cut her off. “We’re a team. We’re most effective together. So if you want me to find Mel, you’ll let Kalif help me. But I’ll be watching my mother as well. At the first sign that something’s wrong, the deal is off, and you’ll never see any of us again.”

  I looked sideways at Kalif. He was nodding, backing me up. I was so grateful for that, I could have thrown my arms around him right there.

  But I kept my focus on Aida. I expected Aida to laugh at me—to tell me I didn’t have a shred of a bargaining chip. And for a moment, she did look at Kalif, as if trying to read how far she could push him without losing him forever.

  He took my hand above the table, and Aida sighed.

  “Done,” she said.

  I squirmed in my seat. I should have presented more bravado. I should have made it sound like I was doing her a favor. There were a lot of things I would have done, if I wasn’t an hour away from finding my mother in a pool of her own vomit.

  Pull it together, I told myself. “So,” I said. “Can you give us anything to go on, or are we starting the search from scratch?”

  Aida jabbed at her phone, and inclined it toward me. “This is the best lead I have.”

  I looked at it. It was a medical record of a man with a festering gunshot wound, only a week and a half after Mel escaped from the basement of the Carmine’s tech building.

  Just a week and a half after I’d shot him in the knee. Long enough for a wound like that to get infected, if he hadn’t taken care of it properly. And more evidence that Mel was probably still walking around with at least a bit of a limp.

  “That’s it?” I asked. “The trail goes cold after that?”

  “I don’t know,” Aida said. “I haven’t had a chance to follow up. Not with my parents watching.”

  I studied her, but she said that without emotion. I wasn’t sure how she could willingly work with them when she knew they watched her every move—when they might be willing to throw their own daughter into their dungeon to torture and mutilate.

  “He could have left the state after this,” I said.

  Aida shook her head. “He won’t have left us here. He’ll be close by. Watching.”

  The thought that he was watching was somewhat less comforting to me than it clearly was to her. I bit back a comment about how if that was true, he clearly hadn’t made contacting them a priority.

  Aida looked at Kalif. “Don’t come home. We can’t risk them discovering what you’re doing. I’ll make it look like you ran away.”

  “Don’t worry about me,” Kalif said.

  “I will worry,” Aida said quietly. “About both of you.”

  I stared straight at her, one eyebrow raised.

  I couldn’t believe her. Aida was a liar and had always been. This was her MO—she pretended to be your friend, and then she stabbed you in the back. I wanted to shake her for sounding so sincere. I didn’t want her to believe for a second that I trusted her.

  “You leave first,” I said.

  I waited for Aida to argue, to lecture me about how she was in charge here.

  Instead, she nodded. As she stood, she put a hand on Kalif’s shoulder. “You know how to find me,” she said. Then she looked down at me. “Don’t take unnecessary risks. I’d like my son back in one piece.”

  Ha. She was the one asking us to look for the murderous megalomaniac. “You don’t need to worry about Kalif. He’s not stupid.”

  Kalif rolled his eyes. “He’s also sitting right here.”

  Aida looked right at me and kept talking as if he weren’t. “He loves you. And love makes everybody stupid.”

  Then she turned and walked out the revolving glass doors. I watched her go. “I’ll say this about your mom,” I said. “She’s got nerve.”

  Kalif let out a long breath. “No kidding.”

  Aida didn’t look back at us once before she disappeared into the parking lot. I’d always assumed that Aida thought of Kalif and me as infatuated children, and maybe she did. But the way she said that he loved me made me think that she understood how serious we were about protecting each other. I couldn’t imagine that Kalif had told her that, since he’d been pretending that he’d left me behind for months, so she must have put it together by observation. I shivered, wondering what else she knew that we hadn’t told her.

  Knowing Aida, it was probably a lot of things.

  Eight

  When Aida was gone, I put a hand on Kalif’s arm. “Before we can leave, I need to talk to my mom.”

  Kalif gestured to his bag. “Let me see if I can tell where she is. If she’s checked in to psych, we can go straight there.” Kalif broke out his laptop on the café table, and started to work.

  As I waited, I counted cameras. There were two on the front doors, and three pointing down the various arteries into the hospital. At least three of those were currently capturing Kalif and I sitting at the table. But Kalif had a privacy screen on his laptop, and the cameras weren’t the kind that could pan or zoom, so his operation should be safe from security eyes.

  “She’s still in emergency,” he said after a minute. “They’re working on her intake.”

  “Okay,” I said. “I’m going to talk my way in to see her.”

  Kalif nodded. “I’m coming with you.”

  “You can’t come in with me to see her,” I said. “Even in persona, she’ll know it’s you.” Who else would I be with? Knowing I was cooperating with Kalif—that he knew where she was—might be enough to send her running that instant.

  Kalif put a hand on my shoulder. “Of course not. I’ll just stay with you until you
get in to see her, and then meet you after.”

  I nodded. That made me feel better—and not just because I didn’t want Mom to know I was with him. I hadn’t told him anything about what had been happening these last weeks. And though I knew it was stupid, I still didn’t want him to see in person the way things had spiraled out of my control.

  I put my older home face back on in the bathroom before returning to the emergency room, since that was the one the nurses and paramedics had already seen. Kalif changed in the men’s room back to his redhead persona, then held my hand as we approached the desk. The nurses at the emergency desk looked relieved to see me. “You’re Anne’s daughter,” one of them said to me.

  I nodded. “Is she okay?”

  One of the nurses nodded. “She’s hanging in there. Let me show you back. The doctor wants to talk to you.”

  I dropped Kalif’s hand. “So I can see her?”

  “The doctor will talk to you about that,” she said.

  I shot Kalif a look, but since I wasn’t going to see my mother directly, I let him come back with me.

  The doctor showed us to an exam room with walls made of accordion divider. Kalif and I both took seats in the chairs covered in worn flannel upholstery, leaving the exam table empty.

  Kalif wrapped an arm around me and squeezed. “I know it doesn’t seem like it,” he said. “But it’s going to be okay.”

  That sentiment made me want to cry more than anything. I took a deep breath, tucked in my tear ducts, and shrugged. “We’re going to do our best,” I said. “Isn’t that what we always do?”

  Kalif nodded at me, but I could tell he wasn’t convinced that I meant it.

  It was probably a good thing that he couldn’t be taken in by my act, but at that moment, I couldn’t help but wish he was, if only because if he believed me, I might have been able to follow.

  The door to the exam room opened, and a Hispanic woman in a white coat walked in. She smiled at me—and she must have had a lot of practice, because it looked genuine. “I’m Dr. Rubino. Anne is your mother?”

  I nodded. “That’s right.”

  “Her blood work looks like she’s going to be okay,” she said. “But she swallowed a lot of pills. This could easily have been lethal.”

  “But it wasn’t,” I said.

  Both she and Kalif gave me looks. I probably sounded too quick to make the best of it, like I just wanted it to all go away.

  I totally wanted it to all go away. I wanted my mother back.

  “No,” the doctor said. “She was lucky this time. But we’re admitting her to the psych ward. Since this looks like attempted suicide, we need to hold her for seventy-two hours.”

  I nodded. That might not be enough time to find Mel, but it was definitely enough time for me to come up with another plan.

  “Okay,” I said. “Can I see her?”

  The doctor shook her head. “She’s still unconscious. And we want her to talk to a social worker before she receives visitors—"

  “Please,” I said. I released my hold on my tear ducts and squeezed, forcing my eyes to fill. “I don’t need long and it doesn’t matter if she’s asleep. I just want to see for myself that she’s okay.”

  My acting skills did apparently work on doctors, because she nodded. I couldn’t congratulate myself too much, though. That particular bit of manipulation hadn’t been far from the truth. I did want to see her, and not just because I needed to convince her to stay.

  My mother could have died. And while I knew I would be having a very different conversation with the doctor right now if she had, a part of me just needed to see her face with my own eyes.

  “Just a few more questions. And you’ll only have a few minutes. We’ll be moving her upstairs soon.” She sifted through her papers. “I think you missed some of the intake papers,” she said. “Does your mother have insurance?”

  I sat up straighter in my chair, and Kalif squeezed me tighter.

  Of course they were going to ask all sorts of identifying questions.

  Crap.

  Would they kick her out if she didn’t have insurance? Hospitals had to treat people regardless in situations like this, didn’t they?

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  She nodded. “Well, I’ll just need you to fill out these papers as best you can.” She extracted them from her clipboard and handed them to me.

  I took one look at the top one and knew that I couldn’t fill them out. Who was Mom’s employer, they wanted to know. Insurance company. Address. I could lie, but if I came back to visit again, I didn’t want them confronting me with the false information.

  “I’ll work on it,” I said. “Can I see her now?”

  The doctor nodded, and fortunately didn’t look too worried about babysitting me with the paperwork. Processing the papers was probably the job of one of the receptionists. I made a mental note to dodge them on my way out, and followed the doctor as she led me to another room.

  Through the doorway, I could see Mom lying on a wheeled hospital bed. A monitor to her right showed all sorts of colored lines and numbers, though I didn’t know what any of it meant.

  Except the heartbeat. That I could make out. And, of course, Mom’s home face, grey and pale though it was.

  She was alive, and if they were processing her into psych and not intensive care, they must have been pretty confident she was going to stay that way.

  I left Kalif in the doorway and stepped closer. He moved out of view—probably a precaution in case Mom happened to wake up, for which I was grateful.

  That’s when I found a good use for the papers the doctor had left me. I tore one of the pieces in half, pressed it to the wall, and wrote Mom a quick note.

  Mom, It’s safe to stay in the hospital. I have your back. You’re better off here than at home. Please get better. I’ll see you when they let in visitors. Love, Amber.

  It might not be enough, but it was the best I could do. The A names were seriously going to kill me, but I needed to tell her what to call me, so I could call myself that same name when I could get in to see her legitimately.

  Amber, I repeated to myself as I walked up the hallway. I am Amber, she is Anne. When I went back to the complex, I’d be Amelia.

  This was either turning into a trackable habit, or a whirlwind of names other shifters wouldn’t be able to make sense of.

  I really hoped it was the latter.

  I slipped my note under Mom’s hand, where her fingers would press it against the sheet. It would be there when she woke up. I couldn’t guarantee no nurse would find it, but when they read what it said, they’d probably leave it for her.

  They’d want her to stay willingly, too.

  My hands were shaking as I returned to Kalif, leaving my mother alone in the hospital bed, unsure what she would think or feel when she woke. I couldn’t help but imagine what she must have been thinking in those last moments, after she swallowed all the pills.

  Did she regret what she’d done? Did she imagine me finding her? Was she too stoned to even fully realize what was happening?

  I found Kalif waiting just outside the door. He smiled softly at me, and I took his hand. “Let’s go,” I said. “Before someone else bothers me to fill out paperwork.”

  He nodded, and we headed for the exit. No one stopped us.

  And though it made me feel like the worst daughter in the world, now that I’d seen my mother alive, I couldn’t get away fast enough.

  Kalif and I headed out of the hospital and into the parking garage. In a dark corner, out of sight of cameras and passersby, we shifted again. This time I changed into an African-American woman with deep-set eyes and long, sleek hair. That kind of hairstyle took real girls hours with a flat-iron, but I produced it in three seconds flat.

  This was why I couldn’t be friends with normal girls. They’d hate me for my hair.

  I altered my face to make it pudgier, and my complexion less even. That was the secret to blending in; never be too thin o
r too pretty. In our screwed up, Photoshopped culture, people who don’t look like models are invisible.

  Kalif darkened his skin and his hair, though not as dark as his home body.

  We paused when we reached the street. “Where to now?” Kalif asked.

  “My apartment,” I said. “We can’t stay there, but we’ll want to pick up some things.”

  Mostly what was left of the cash drop, my collection of disposable phones, and my mother’s tablet. But the clothes we’d gathered would be helpful, too. Kalif and I couldn’t rely only on them, but it would give us a good start.

  “Plus,” I said, “I want you to change your clothes again. Especially your shoes.” We’d gotten one bug, but I wasn’t going to take chances.

  “Fair enough,” he said.

  As we walked out to the street, I looked up at him. “Tell me the truth. Do you know where my apartment is?”

  “I don’t,” Kalif said. “That’s the truth.”

  I sighed. “Me, neither. Not from here. I wasn’t paying a lot of attention to directions in the ambulance.”

  Kalif smiled, pulling out his phone again. “Give me the address. I’ll put it in my GPS.”

  I eyed his phone. Until I got the spares from home, there was no way to guarantee that they weren’t bugged. “Just call a cab,” I said. “I’ll give the driver the address.”

  The cab felt like it took forever to come. I bounced up and down on my heels, and paced back and forth, even though I knew being still was less conspicuous. Kalif watched me like he wanted to say something, but thought better of it.

  Which was smart. Breaking down here on the street wouldn’t help anyone. I had to hold it together. I had to believe that my mom would stay in the hospital, that Aida would really protect us. This was the course we’d chosen. I had to trust in it or I was going to go completely insane.

  Though I was beginning to wonder if I’d ever be able to trust anyone again.

  When the cab arrived, I gave the driver the address. It wasn’t until we were climbing out of the cab in front of my apartment building that I thought about what I would find upstairs.

  My stomach turned. Were there still pills on the floor? Had anyone cleaned up the vomit?