by S. L. Gray
Nothing in the world could have prepared her for the actual words. "I need to know who you're working for and for how long."
Her mind had been racing a moment before. Now all thought ground to a halt. "Pardon me?"
"Your boss. Your employer. What agency sent you here?" His gaze was direct and steady, measuring.
A sweat broke out between her shoulder blades for no good reason. She had nothing to hide, had done nothing wrong, except perhaps not waking him up last night. She still wasn't convinced she hadn't just imagined the hole in the shadows, though. No point in waking someone just to prove she'd gone crazy.
Brow furrowed, she answered, "No agency. I'm not a contractor. I'm a direct hire. I interviewed with Dr. Andruss, the man you just met."
"That's not the kind of agency I meant."
"Then you'll have to clarify, because I'm at a loss. What agency, Kade?"
"The one that put you in my path. Sent you after the tablet."
Melanie stared. "Are you crazy?" Maybe she'd caught it from him. "Did I imagine what happened last night? We talked about this. You told me... You really think I'm that good an actress?"
"Maybe." He said it petulantly.
For one second, laughter threatened. "I'm flattered," she said instead. "But I don't think I'm good enough to fool myself." She paused, running her tongue along the inside curve of her bottom teeth. "Do the names Zahret and Mahmoud mean anything?"
She might as well have touched him with a live wire. He jerked and his gaze sharpened. "Where did you hear those names?"
"In a daydream." When his brow furrowed, she held up a hand and took a deep breath to explain. "That's not like me," she finished. "I don't have waking dreams."
"That wasn't a dream," he said lowly. "You had a vision. A shard of history."
She watched his shoulders relax and his posture loosen. He swiped a hand down his face and her frown deepened. "What am I missing?"
Kade tipped his head back, aiming a rueful grin at the ceiling. "Paranoia, that's all. My boss had a theory. A crackpot idea that you were working for the other side. I had to check."
"The other side." She kept on staring. "The ones who came to the bar last night and tried to shoot me?"
He nodded. "One and the same."
The wheels of her thoughts spun again, but took a moment to catch and make forward progress. "You had to check?"
"I told you. They had to be watching you. Be a whole lot easier if they were doing it with permission. We rule things out to make sure there are no mistakes later."
"But I let you sleep on my couch." She spoke each word very distinctly. "I didn't try to slit your throat once. If I was working for them, whoever they are, don't you think I might have tried to get you out of the way?" The suspicion felt like betrayal. She struggled not to rub the ache beneath her breastbone with the heel of her hand.
"Look." His voice gentled. "You have a boss, so do I. I follow orders, I do what he says. For the record, I didn't think you were a spy, but when he says jump..."
"You ask how high. I get it. No, I do," she insisted when he opened his mouth again. "I don't like it, but I understand." She smiled tightly. "Why I'd work for an agency that thinks shooting its own people is a good strategy might baffle me for a while, that's all."
She stepped forward, pulling a chair back from the conference table. She sat, put her elbows on the edge and her head in her hands. She was in for a long, confusing stretch of insanity. She should have expected this. Last night had just been the start.
"Who'd you tell?"
Melanie lifted her head as Kade sank into a chair opposite hers. "Pardon me?"
"About the tablet. Who'd you tell? Anyone?"
She squinted at him. "Is this about me being a spy again? Because one accusation I can ignore. If it's going to become habit, I protest."
"It's about human nature. People talk," Kade argued. “Gossip. That's not a bad thing. Except in this case. You can't spread the word. The more people that know about this, the greater the risk. You've got to keep it quiet."
Melanie shook her head a little. "I can't. I might need help."
"You'll have it," he promised. "I can get you anything you need, but it's got to come through me."
She could argue, but what would be the point? She knew without thinking he'd have an answer for every objection, so she puffed out her cheeks and gave him one shallow nod. "Fair enough. I've only told Noura. Only part of what happened, only some of what you said. I don't think she believed me."
He nodded in response. "And she won't spread it around?"
Melanie started to promise she wouldn't, and paused. She wrinkled her nose uncertainly. "I can ask her to keep it to herself. That's about the best you're going to get. She's popular. She has a lot of friends. If I let her know it's important to keep it under wraps, maybe she'll pay attention."
One corner of his mouth lifted. "I hope so, for her sake."
A chill raced down her spine. She didn't like the weight of the words or the threat they implied. She didn't want her friend dragged into something she didn't fully understand herself. "I won't say any more, I promise. I'll keep her out of the loop."
She would find a way to distract her friend if she started asking questions again. She'd make up sordid details about whatever this was with Kade if it kept her partner out of the same sort of trouble. It would be entertaining, at least. "And what about us?"
"Us?" Kade looked wary.
Did the whole world think with its pants? "Us," she repeated, determinedly not rolling her eyes. "What's the next step? I mean, besides putting the tablet back together." If he wanted it kept secret, she'd save the revelation that they'd found pieces until later. No point in getting his hopes up if she had the wrong one.
But if he was sticking around and not going to give her apartment back, then she needed direction. "What do we do now?"
Chapter Eight
He could wait. Bide his time. He'd had years of practice, after all. A few more days meant little in the grand scheme of things.
And yet, with word that the temple had been found and the tablet recovered, an urgency he hadn't felt for centuries flowed through his veins. All of the shadow-born felt it and they scrambled toward the same end: the means to control the course of history, once and for all.
Those who considered themselves servants of light would undoubtedly track down the descendants of those named on the tablet. They would challenge the balance of power. They would recruit those with untapped talent to their way of thinking and twist the rules of a battle that stretched back millennia.
And all for the sake of what they called "good."
Good and evil were not so easily defined. She would understand.
Movement in the stairwell of her apartment building caught his eye. Ah yes, the guardian. Of course he'd still be there. This one had made his duty personal, no doubt seeking a means to atone for the loss of his family. In war, however, there were no innocents and every weakness presented a new opportunity. A warrior learned to accept and forgive, but never to forget. In time. In time, he would find his peace.
The battle would go on.
He stepped back as the guardian jogged across the street, dodging traffic. The shadows surrounding his hiding place welcomed him eagerly. Now was not the time to challenge. He still had much to observe. Let them think themselves safe, for now.
Wait and bide.
Kade had been training since boyhood. He knew half a dozen ways to fight. He'd faced opponents twice his size, men made more of shadow than flesh and bone, and survived their attempts to kill him, or at least to make him surrender. He'd stitched wounds and buried friends. He'd sworn to avenge his family.
None of that prepared him for Melanie.
She wasn't the first outsider who'd ever been brought into the Icarus fold, but she was his first student. That made her equal parts exciting and almost too frustrating to stand.
Of course Kade's frustrations might have something to do with
Garamendi's planted seed. If she was really his echo, it became all the more important that he not let anything happen to her. Losing family at all was bad enough. Losing a soulmate, antiquated as the concept might be, would very likely drive him insane.
Then again, she might just get him there before anyone could try to kill her again.
"I don't think you understand how this whole having a job thing works," she said as she trailed him up the steps to her front door. "You're too serious about what you do to not get the concept of overtime. And yet..."
"I get the concept," he argued. "I understand that you really like your work. I also get that all of this is weird for you. Doesn't change the fact that I need you alive and that means you've got two jobs now. Fixing the tablet and surviving."
If eyes could make a sound rolling in their sockets, Kade would have gone deaf by now. "I thought that's what you were here for." Her keys rang as they slid together before she turned the deadbolt. "You know, helping me survive."
"It is," he confirmed, crowding into the apartment behind her. She didn't stop on the way to the closet. More important to hang up her coat than make sure he turned back to lock the door. "But you could help me out by paying attention."
She eyed him as she pushed up the sleeves on the bulky sweater she wore. Another shapeless garment, even if the color looked good on her. Someone really didn't like standing out.
Which should have pleased him, Kade supposed. It made things that much easier if she could disappear in a crowd without drawing attention. Still, it struck him as wrong, somehow. Like someone, sometime, had told her she didn't deserve to be noticed and she'd taken it to heart.
He noticed her. He wished he could stop. If she remained just a client, a valuable target, he wouldn't have to worry about losing his focus or getting distracted. Yeah, yeah, pretty girl, still being hunted by the enemy.
Now she had her hands on her hips. "What did I not pay attention to this time? I looked both ways before I crossed the street, didn't I?"
Kade smirked. "Yeah, and I'm sure your mom would be very proud. She's not here." He slipped his own jacket off and laid it over the back of the couch. "You just walked in without checking anything. Whether the door was already open, if there was anyone waiting inside. There could be someone hiding in your kitchen, waiting for you to turn your back."
She folded her arms. "I thought you wanted me to lighten up on the paranoia thing. That's not helping." Her shoulders rose. "Besides, if someone was in here already, someone like you? What good would it do me to look for them? They'd be hiding in the shadows between my bookcases. I'd never see them until it was too late."
"You're right," he answered. "But you will."
She laughed. "Right. Because I'll get used to all of this and learn to check under all the furniture."
He smiled thinly. "Because I'm going to teach you what to look for."
That kept her silent for a moment at least. She stood there, watching him, making a decision he couldn't quite read. When she moved again, it was with a sigh as she reached for the clip holding her hair up in a fancy twist.
It fell like silk, swinging down to hug her shoulders. He caught a glint of fire in the depths of the waves before she started gathering it up again. She paused a moment, fingers deep in the locks, to look at him from beneath her lashes, sizing him up. Then she shook her head and tied the length into a knot around itself. Miraculously, the makeshift ponytail stayed put.
"All right, Obi Wan. If you want to teach me, there's something you should know." She crossed the room toward a corner where one of her lamps stood. Rather than turning it on, however, she turned to face him and crooked a finger. "C'mere."
Suspicion flared to life again, but Kade went where he was beckoned, joining her in the corner. "Something happened over here?" He had no idea what she might be planning.
"No," she said, as if the suggestion was absurd. "Something happened in my room last night, but this will work just as well." She took a breath and added in a whisper, "I hope. I think." Then she went still.
Nothing happened. She didn't speak, she didn't move. When Kade leaned closer, he saw she'd closed her eyes.
For a moment. One popped open now and focused on him. "Stop moving."
He grinned at the command, holding up a hand and straightening when her other eye opened and she glared. "Sorry, just making sure you weren't sleeping on your feet. Not moving, I swear."
She heaved a sign, squared her shoulders and closed her eyes again.
The air changed a minute later. Melanie hadn't moved from her spot. Instead, she'd pulled the darkness in the corner to them. It deepened, flowing around them until they stood in the middle of a shadow that couldn't have moved on its own.
Kade tensed. Garamendi's warning echoed through his head and he braced himself. She'd taken so much offense at the idea she might have been planted that Kade had believed in her innocence. This, though, wasn't an accident. Melanie had not only reached into the shadow, she'd summoned it to her and then stepped in.
"What are you doing?" His chest felt tight. He'd balled his hands into fists.
"I don't know." She opened her eyes again and looked up, expression open and honest. "I don't even know how. I was mouthing off at shadows, last night, after you went to bed, and it just happened."
He scowled. "This doesn't just happen, Melanie. You summoned shadow." He looked into the darkness surrounding them again.
She looked too and her eyes got rounder. "I didn't summon anything. I mean, I didn't mean to.” She squinted at him. "Now you really think I'm a spy, don't you? I swear to you, I promise, I've never done this before, and if I'd known I could, I wouldn't. Because this? This is really freaking me out!"
She held his gaze and stood her ground, chin lifted stubbornly, but there was no defiance in her eyes. No elation, no triumph. He saw fear. It struck him as surely as if she'd punched him in the chest. Fear, real fear. She was terrified and looking at him like he'd said he wouldn't help her. Like he'd abandon her to a monster waiting in the darkness she'd made.
It wasn't an act. It couldn't be an act. He wasn't a perfect judge of character, but he knew fear. "All right. I believe you. It's okay."
Relief swept over her, making her eyes abruptly bright. Her shoulders slumped and she lifted a hand to scrub at her eyes. "Great." Her voice was shaking. "So tell me how to get rid of this?"
Easier said than done without knowing exactly how she'd done it. He'd been trying to part shadows the first time he managed something like this. He'd suffered lectures and lessons and more cautionary tales than he thought he could stomach. He was supervised and he'd still needed a push from his father before he got his powers to respond. If she could do this much on her own, without training...
He hadn't answered her yet. The hope in her eyes was flickering. "Yeah." He shook himself. "Yeah. Sorry." There'd be time for puzzling out the hows later. Now he — they — had to put things right.
Kade put his hands on her shoulders, turning her gently so she faced away from him. So she could lean back against him if she needed something solid to brace against. Shifting shadows took physical strength on top of mental focus and she'd been through a lot in the last couple days. He wouldn't hold it against her if she wanted to lean.
"Don't worry about what we're doing. You don't have to do anything. Just let go. Close your eyes," he prompted when she tensed beneath his hands. "Stop thinking. Stop worrying. You didn't do anything wrong. Trust me."
It was a lot to ask from her. It was a lot to ask of himself, but he'd begun to understand why Garamendi had sent him here. He still resented the manipulation, but he understood. Damn it.
Back to the trouble at hand. When Kade was learning, getting a boost from his father hadn't been comfortable and they were family. Tied together by blood which lowered the barrier between their minds. Without that connection to Melanie, he had to convince her mind to let him in. Her body would fight the invasion, too, just like the introduction of any foreign
body. She might get sick. She might get violent.
At least he knew where to start. He closed his eyes, letting his awareness reach into the shadow as well. He didn't want to tear control out of her hands. He wanted to find the place where she'd tethered herself in the darkness and help her, convince her it was okay to let go.
Now that he wasn't waiting for some unknown assailant to strike, he could feel her all around him. He should have felt the draw the minute she'd started to gather shadows close. He'd put too much of his focus on protecting her from outside attack. Now, she nearly overwhelmed him with her signature, the essence of everything she was coming on strong.
It was the scent of her hair. The color of her eyes. The heat that radiated from her, warmer beneath his palms now than it had been a moment ago. It was the hum of a power that threatened to explode from the little crack she'd opened. Maybe Garamendi knew the strength she contained but Kade hadn't been properly warned about what or who he'd been guarding.
She drew in a breath, startled when his power collided with hers. He curled his fingers, anchoring her, reminding her that no matter what she felt, her body was still here, still safe, and he stood close at hand. "That's me," he told her. "The pressure change inside your head. Just me."
Pressure he suddenly felt like a hammer against the inside of his temples. He tried not to flinch or fight back as her will tested his. He had instincts too, though, and they insisted he defend himself. For all of her raw talent, it would be easy to push her back, to be the one overwhelming her with a little effort. Judging by what little he knew of her, she'd do her best to give what she got, but he could hurt her if he wasn't careful. This wasn't a fair fight.
"Relax," he prompted. "Don't push back against what you're feeling." He struggled for the words to convince her to let him in. "Think of me like the guy behind you in line. He just wants to get by you. You're not in a hurry. You can step aside."