Almost certainly not. That wasn’t the emergency workers’ job.
They’d have left it for me. “It’s still a mess,” I said.
“I don’t care about that,” Kalif said.
He hadn’t understood, but I didn’t want to describe it. When we opened the door, though, the smell of bile had grown pungent.
As I walked into the kitchen, I expected the bile that was smeared across the floor. But the cabinets were all open and what few dishes we had were littered about the counter in heaps, like someone had tossed them there in a hurry. The refrigerator door hung ajar far enough that I could see the scant contents piled in the bottom. One of the paramedics might have swept up the pills for examination—I couldn’t be sure. But the rest of this had been done by someone else.
For the second time that day, I stood frozen in place.
Someone had been here, had gone through the apartment.
Looking for what? My mom’s drugs?
Or something else?
I grabbed Kalif’s hand, and he squeezed it tight. Could the intruder still be in the apartment? I listened, but heard nothing.
“You weren’t kidding about the mess,” Kalif said. His voice was tentative, waiting for me to affirm that this was what I expected to find. It might have been, I supposed. A person who was ready to swallow all those pills and die might have searched the house first, trying to scrounge up enough.
I shook my head. “No. Someone else has been in the house.”
I might be frozen, but Kalif wasn’t. He swept past me, carefully treading around the smear on the floor and into the back rooms. He shifted as he went, taking on a form that was taller and blonder and much more imposing than his home body.
I stumbled after him. I might feel like a child, but I wasn’t one. This was my apartment. I couldn’t let him take point and protect me. That wasn’t how we worked.
But I only managed to follow on his heels.
The bedrooms were even worse than the kitchen. Blankets had been stripped from the beds and lay in heaps. All the clothing from the closets and the floor were piled together in the centers of the mattresses, like someone had meticulously checked each piece.
Kalif looked around. “Can you tell what’s missing?”
I stepped over to my mother’s nightstand. The drawer lay flat on the floor, empty. “Her tablet’s gone, maybe some phones.”
Kalif finished his sweep of the apartment. “There’s no one here,” he said. “But we need to go.”
I looked around at the disheveled room. There weren’t any drugs in here. Had I gathered them all up for the paramedics? Every bottle? The tablet and phones could have been stolen by a common thief.
Or . . .
Kalif swore. “It was probably my mother.”
I stepped toward the door, but Kalif already had his phone in his hand. He pressed it to his ear. I heard Aida’s voice start to say "hello,” but she didn’t even get through the whole word before Kalif started talking over her.
“What were you doing in Jory’s apartment?” he asked.
A pause.
“Put it on speaker,” I said.
Kalif clicked a button, and held the phone out between us. "—on my way back home, now,” Aida said. “I have no idea where Jory’s apartment is, and I’ve certainly never been there.”
My arms broke out in goosebumps. “We need to get out of here,” I said to Kalif.
“Swear to me,” he said to the phone. “Swear it wasn’t you.”
“It wasn’t me,” Aida said. “I swear. But if you’re there now and someone else has been—"
Kalif hung up the phone.
“As of this morning,” he said, "my grandparents didn’t know where you were.”
“Can you be sure?” I whispered.
He looked at me. We couldn’t be sure. When it came to them, none of us could ever be sure.
Enough. I grabbed Kalif by the arm and hauled him through the apartment to the front door. I threw the door open and nearly knocked right into Laura, who stooped outside with her walker.
“Hey!” she shouted. If she hadn’t been supporting herself with both arms, she looked like she might have grabbed me. “Who are you? What are you doing in Amelia’s apartment?”
Ugh. Once again, I should have put on Amelia’s face. I held up my hands. “It’s okay. She’s my cousin.”
My very white cousin.
And just like that, my persona became adopted. I opened my mouth to explain, but Laura was already charging ahead.
“Have you been to see her mother? Is she all right? I’ve been so worried about them. That other girl was so rude. Is she also a cousin? She did call you, right? You do know what happened?”
“She’ll be all right,” I said. “I was just on my way to see her now.”
Laura looked over my shoulder at Kalif, and I forced myself not to cringe. He’d walked in with one face and was now wearing another. I didn’t even try to introduce him. My brain was too panicked to make up good lies.
Laura squared her walker right in the middle of the path, between us and the stairs. I couldn’t get past her without physically moving it. Trapped as I felt, I wasn’t ready to knock over an old lady to escape. “You just missed her father,” Laura said. “It’s a shame. He seemed really worried, and I didn’t know which hospital to send him to. I told him to try the one over on Elm.”
Her father.
“What did he look like?” I asked.
Laura shrugged. “A lot like that other girl,” she said. “The one who was here with the ambulance. Is she a sister? She didn’t look a thing like Amelia, but neither do you.”
She gave me an accusing glance, but I was already stumbling back.
Amelia’s father. Who looked just like the home face I’d accidentally shown to Laura earlier.
I heard a roaring in my ears so loud I was sure a train was about to come through the wall. I backed right into Kalif, who put a hand on my waist to steady me, and it wasn’t until then that I realized I was swaying.
Of all the people to impersonate. My father? There was no reason for anyone to do that.
No reason at all except to mess with my mind.
Aida would have harassed me at the hospital if she meant me harm. The Carmines would have gotten the job done, not bothered with mind games. They could have come here looking like anyone and pretended to be Amelia’s father.
No. Mind games smacked of Mel. Was Aida right about him? Was he still skulking around, watching us, waiting for his chance for revenge?
It might make him easier to find, but not if he already had the upper hand.
“We need to get going,” Kalif said.
Damn right, we did. But Laura was still standing squarely in our way.
“I hadn’t seen him before,” Laura said. “Does Amelia talk to him much? Because it’s so important, dear, to have a good relationship with your parents.”
Kalif stepped into Laura’s personal space and she reluctantly scooted her walker out of the way.
She put a hand on my arm as I moved by. “If you run, dear, you might catch him. He walked in that direction. He can’t have been moving terribly fast, what with that limp.”
All the blood had drained from my face. A limp. A man who claimed to be my father, walking on a damaged leg.
I was right. It was Mel. Or another shifter who wanted us to think it was Mel.
Either way, we’d stood here for far too long.
Kalif hauled me toward the stairs at the back of the building, opposite of the way we’d come. That was smart. I was glad one of us was thinking. I could feel my feet moving, but they seemed to be doing that on their own.
“Bye, deary!” I heard Laura yell.
I didn’t look back. And when I got to the bottom of the stairs, Kalif’s footsteps still reverberating behind me, I saw him. My father, standing next to an open car door across the parking lot. Favoring his left leg, like Mel would be, if the bullet had jacked up his knee.
&
nbsp; And though I was supposed to be looking for this man, supposed to be leading Aida right to him, all I could feel was the way his hands had closed over my throat at our last meeting.
If this was Mel, what was he doing here? Did he have the same offer from the Carmines as I did—bring us in, and they’d forgive him? Or did he just want revenge on me for shooting him, on my mother and me for breaking up his perfect life?
Either way, he had the advantage here. Kalif and I weren’t prepared; we didn’t have the upper hand.
The man with my father’s face looked up at me, his eyes narrowing. Panic clawed at my chest and I reached for Kalif.
What should we do? Run?
Kalif took me firmly by the arm, and tugged me gently toward the alley at the back of the parking lot. My skin crawled at putting my back to Mel, but when we were facing fully away from him, Kalif whispered to me.
“He won’t know it’s us unless we give ourselves away. Walk slow. Look natural.”
I was pretty sure that, even with all my training, I couldn’t pull off natural today. But I did lean closer to Kalif, putting my head on his shoulder as we walked, like we hadn’t noticed my father. Like we didn’t think anything of it.
I heard footsteps behind us, and my heart pounded so hard I was afraid I would faint.
We entered the alley, stepped around the corner. And then we did the only thing we could do.
We ran like hell.
Nine
Kalif and I raced down the alley, our shoes pounding against the asphalt. I clung to his hand as the edges of my vision started to go white. This was both a good and a bad idea; the alley was thin and concealed, so no one could watch us, but there were a limited number of entrances and exits, making us easier to track.
I listened behind us. Mel might have had a camera on my apartment; he could already know it was us. But I didn’t hear footsteps anymore. If that had been Mel, he probably couldn’t run after us with his leg injury.
If it was one of Kalif’s grandparents who only wanted us to think it was Mel, they’d be able to follow along just fine.
I glanced around. The apartment had probably been bugged, at the least. The whole complex might have been riddled with hidden cameras. What if even this alley was monitored?
Kalif pulled me up beside him, wrapping an arm around my shoulders as we slowed. “Jory,” he said. “I need you to focus. Are you with me?”
I took a deep breath. “Yes,” I said. “Hide first; think later.”
“Exactly.”
The alley behind us was still clear, but that only meant Mel could approach us from any direction. I started to run again, sprinting down the alley as fast as I could go.
Before we reached the end, Kalif pulled me through a back gate, down a walkway that wound through another apartment complex.
“We need new clothes,” Kalif said. “Something no one has seen us in before. Something no one has had the chance to bug.” He paused at the bedroom window of a basement apartment. Someone had left it cracked open, but the inside of the apartment was dark. The sun had sunk behind the apartment building.
“People will be home from work,” I said. “This isn’t a great time.”
Kalif glanced around, surveying the area. “Check the other window,” he said.
I moved to the front of the building, scanning the windows. Whoever lived here wasn’t concerned about closing their blinds. The view to the other apartments was blocked by a long row of thick hedge. I checked all three basement windows, but didn’t find anyone home.
When I got back to Kalif, he already had the screen popped out.
“It’s clear,” I said.
Instead of climbing in the window, Kalif leaned the top half of his body in so he could reach the drawers of a dresser a foot below. He leveraged the drawer open and pulled out a woman’s blouse and a tank top. I took them from him and stuffed them under my shirt, so that anyone who saw me wouldn’t immediately be able to identify the new clothes I was going to change into. Kalif stretched for the second drawer, but couldn’t reach.
“We could keep our pants,” I said.
Kalif shook his head. “That’s sloppy.”
So was this impromptu break-in. I didn’t argue, though. It would be easier to deal with whoever lived here than to fight off Mel.
Kalif pulled his head out of the window and then lowered himself through feet first and dropped down into the room. He reached for the floor, then tossed me a pair of jeans and a pair of slacks, followed by some Chucks and a pair of pink high heels.
Good thing I had lots of practice running in those.
While I waited for Kalif to hoist himself onto the dresser and out the window, I moved along the building, looking for somewhere out of sight where we could change.
Around the back of the building, two rows of privacy shrubs met, shielding the corner from view. I scanned the tops of the buildings, looking for cameras, but saw none. For most apartment complexes, outdoor surveillance wasn’t a big priority. And Mel couldn’t have covered every surrounding building with cameras.
Could he?
If he wanted to play games, I had no way to know how long he’d been watching.
I climbed back into the shrubs, easing behind them as gingerly as I could. Once I’d climbed in, I realized my mistake. I couldn’t see the apartment window from here; that was kind of the point. But I also couldn’t see Kalif. I’d expected him to be right behind me, but he wasn’t.
I listened, but didn’t hear any talking or shouting—just a TV going in an apartment over my head and a car pulling in to the parking lot on the other side of the building. I could go looking for Kalif, or I could change first.
I decided to trust Kalif; he’d handled himself better today than I had. Instead, I stripped off my jeans, narrowing my hips to squeeze into the pair Kalif had handed me. I hunched over in the shrubs and stripped off my shirt, pulling on the tank top. I rubbed my arms, wishing I’d thought to tell Kalif to find me a jacket as well.
As I fitted my body to the clothes, I also fitted myself with a new face—a small Hispanic girl with a trendy bob cut. I shoved all my clothes under the edge of the shrubs and out of sight, then slipped into the heels. I didn’t know if Kalif had practice running around in pumps, but this wasn’t the moment that I wanted to find out.
I was just about to emerge from the bushes when I heard footsteps on the sidewalk, coming from the direction of the apartment we’d robbed. I peered under the hedge and saw Kalif’s shoes, paused in the walkway.
“Back here,” I whispered.
Kalif pushed his way through the shrubs, reaching for my hand and waiting for our signal before he climbed fully in behind me. He was carrying a large bag that he hadn’t had before.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“Cover for my computer,” he said, taking the clothes I’d left for him. “Plus a second change of clothes for each of us. Including shoes. We’ll want to change and move, and change again before we find a hotel.”
The mention of a hotel made my pulse race. Our meeting this afternoon felt like a year ago. If we’d gotten a room then, would my mother be dead?
From overdose, or by Mel’s hand?
The bushes squeezed closer.
What did he want from us?
“Are you sure there aren’t any more bugs in your computer?”
“I’m sure,” he said. “I completely disassembled it after I found the first one. Twice. But you were right. It was too obvious. The bug in there was probably just to put me off the trail of the other one.”
He flipped the blouse over in his hands, finding the front before he hung it in the bush and pulled his own shirt off over his head.
If changing in front of me made him feel awkward, he didn’t show it, but I was grateful in retrospect that I was already in my new clothes. Not that I didn’t want to take all my clothes off with him, but this was neither the time nor the place. As he kicked off his shoes, I knelt over the new bag, in theory to l
ook at the clothes, but also to give myself something to look at while he changed his pants.
I expected to find more impossibly tiny women’s clothes inside, but instead I found a pair of flannel pants with the bottoms rolled, a set of grey slacks that were pilling all over, and a cardigan.
“Who lives there?” I asked.
“Judging from the pictures,” Kalif said, “I think it’s a girl and her grandparents.”
“So next change we’ll be old. Nice touch.”
“I thought so. Okay. Critique me.”
I should have been prepared for the change, but I wasn’t. I turned around to find a girl with thin hips and black hair standing where Kalif had been. The neckline of the blouse showed off her collar bones, which looked a little large for her frame, but not impossibly so. The blouse hung loose on the front, because he hadn’t given her enough cleavage to fill it out, but that wasn’t really a problem. Better to undersell her curves than to make her look like a Barbie. Besides, he hadn’t thought to grab himself a bra.
“Not bad,” I said.
He coughed once, changing his vocal cords. “How’s this?”
“Too falsetto.”
He deepened the tone. “Better?”
I grimaced. Women had never been Kalif’s specialty. “Just . . . don’t talk.”
He rolled his eyes at me and picked up the sack of clothes, his messenger bag tucked safely inside. “Let’s go.”
I nodded. “There’s a mall about a mile away. We can walk through it and change again there.” We might have already lost Mel, but it was better to leave a long, unnecessary trail than to be followed because we were careless.
I stayed a pace behind Kalif as we moved into the complex parking lot and then to the street. He walked slowly and a little bit stilted, like his hips weren’t rotating as much as I’d expect them to for their frame. That meant he’d made a mistake somewhere deep in the anatomy—one that wasn’t physically impossible, but subverted my expectations. It might draw a little attention, but it wasn’t egregious enough for me to correct him on it right here.
I caught up to him, careful to match my speed to his. He walked like we weren’t in a hurry, which was the opposite of what my body wanted to do. My feet itched to walk faster—to put more distance between myself and the break in, and whoever might be watching us. My eyes wanted to flit around nervously, looking to see who might be paying a bit too much attention to us. Mel could be that man in the business suit, talking on the phone in his car. Or he could be the child playing with a bouncy ball in the corner of that parking lot. That couple waiting for the bus might be Wendy and Oliver.
A Million Shadows Page 8