Paradise of Shadows and Devotion

by Gaja J. Kos

  I frowned at the device, feeling immensely lucky that my ice cream cart was just that. No cashier. No electronics.

  While I might have adapted to the modern ways of the world with a fair amount of success, some things still remained well beyond my comprehension. Computers, unfortunately, ranked very high on that list.

  How could something so small carry so much information? It was as if that mash-up of plastic and glass had a mind of its own, but no ears to listen to your requests.

  Catching myself before the furrow on my brow deepened, I waded into the back room, feeling Santino’s gaze on my exposed back. Briefly, I contemplated turning around and flashing him a smile, but common sense swept in in time and hushed the notion.

  Despite putting up a solid charade, I was still a murderess, a water spirit. I didn’t belong in his world, and the role Santino played in mine wasn’t one I even dared to think about.

  My fingers curled into fists. Eternal damnation didn’t come merely in the form of hell my late Christian parents had believed in. I was living it every damned day, and would most likely continue even when Veles’s realm—the underworld I believed existed, thanks to the unconventional path my life had taken—finally caught up with me for good.

  No, I was an intruder in human clothing. I couldn’t let myself forget that even for a second.

  So I simply bit my lip, snuffing out the purring thought of Santino, and squared my shoulders as I pushed past the threshold. The overhead lights blinked a few times before they came on, bathing the rough space in their pale, white light. I strode past the tightly stacked crates of beverages all the way to the far wall where four massive freezers were lined up, and lifted the heavy lid off the one in the corner to my right.

  Chills swept across my skin in a rolling wave as I leaned over, my breath coming out in condensed wisps. While my mermaid form had excellent thermo insolation, the same, sadly, couldn’t be said for my would-be human flesh.

  Gods, it was cold.

  I shuddered and quickly pulled out a tub of stracciatella, then closed the lid and repeated the process on the adjacent cooler. Only this time the flavor I picked out was mint chocolate chip. The patrons’—and my—favorite.

  I balanced both tubs on the palms of my hands, wincing as the cold bit viciously into my skin and sent goose bumps emerging down the length of my limbs.

  Although I had a pair of pastel blue gloves stored next to the cart for this precise reason, most of the time I felt too lazy to pull them on for trips this short. It was self sabotage at its best, but it appeared there were things not even being ripped from your former life—twice—could change. My stubbornness for taking shortcuts at all times being the main, spotlit one. Giorgio and I were more alike than either of us wanted to admit.

  Eager to rid myself of the tubs, I sighed and hurried across the floor, but my steps faltered the instant I reached the threshold separating the storage from the main part of the bar. Quickly, I slunk into what little shadows I could find by the beam and peered outside, fighting to keep my breaths silent.

  “Are you sure you haven’t seen anyone fitting the description around here?” a gruff man with brown hair cropped close to his scalp asked Santino.

  My boss shook his head. “Can’t say I have. Our clientele is mostly local, as I’m sure you can see for yourself…” He rubbed his lean, elegant fingers against the chiseled line of his jaw, and my heart skipped a beat—unsurprisingly, the treacherous glitch had nothing to do with the less than pleasant effect the newcomer was giving off. “I suggest you try the restaurants down by the seafront. They’re usually the ones that pick up the tourists.”

  From the lines running across his forehead, the man looked far from pleased, but he didn’t press Santino further. Instead, he pulled a card from the breast pocket of his sweat-drenched purple shirt and held it out above the counter, the white rectangle pressed between his index and middle finger.

  “Call me if you see anything, please.”

  The “please” sounded forced, nothing more than a rough bark, actually. But if Santino sensed the hostility lining the word, he didn’t show it. He accepted the card with a nonverbal affirmation, only the stranger’s gaze wasn’t on my boss any longer.

  No, it was scanning the bar, placing my meager hiding spot right on the collision course of his inquisitive, critical eyes.

  I staggered back into the darkness, breathing heavily and clutching the two ice cream tubs as if they weren’t cold enough to make my teeth rattle. But I felt absolutely nothing save for the suffocating fear of discovery as I stood there amidst beer bottles and flasks of wine, hoping to the gods my reaction hadn’t been too slow.

  For a moment, nothing happened. There was only the soft murmur of the square weaving through the door, coupled with the faint humming of the freezers coming from behind.

  Still clutching the tubs, I barely allowed myself a weak exhale when the wind got knocked out of my lungs once more. I froze, every muscle in my body going numb.

  It was footsteps I was hearing, thudding against the tiled floor. And their steady march was bringing them closer and closer to the faint shadows concealing my form.

  I contemplated using the tubs as a weapon to try and bash the stranger over the head, but—despite being a weapon myself for so many decades—I didn’t really know how to fight. Didn’t even know how to swing hard enough to knock a person out, to be honest. I’d come to rely on my magic too much, placed my faith in my ability to spell even the worst of men into submission—and, ultimately, death. In light of the murderous power I wielded, nothing had ever sparked the thought to maybe cultivate other skills.

  And why would it, when the magic never faltered, never failed… Even now, changed as I was, it would have been more than enough to rid myself of the stranger if it weren’t for a single, brutally damning fact. My magic was inadvertently tied to the presence of my tail.

  Shit.

  My heartbeat hammered in my ears, and briefly, I wondered if pouring beer all over my legs would prompt the shift—if it would even work fast enough to actually make a difference… As it was, I never got to test out my theory.

  A shadow cut off the light streaming in from the bar. I bit my lip, unable to do anything but watch as the man stepped inside.

  A helpless cry wrung itself from my throat.

  Santino.

  It was only Santino.

  My relief, however, was short-lived. Because my boss’s silver blue gaze was drilling into mine, and the expression touching his tanned skin was far from placid.

  In fact, it was furious.

  We stood there, utterly still as seconds ticked by, only the tension—and my fear—undulating between us. Santino’s piercing gaze never left mine, and all of a sudden, I had a suspicion he was seeing far more than just how damned terrified I was.

  Not that it made a difference. Not that he showed any intention of backing down. Shit.

  His chest rose as he sucked in a breath, nostrils flaring slightly. “Would you mind telling me why the fuck a PI is looking for you?”

  I opened my mouth but no words came out. I’d never seen Santino this angry, this cold. As if he were a whole other person, not the man who’d taken in a girl with no papers and no education to show. Not to mention more quirkiness at being utterly lost in the world that had seemed to evolve overnight than one could ignore.

  But he had never questioned my circumstances. Not even once.

  Santino had simply accepted the weak explanation that they were unfortunate and gave me a job to help get me on my feet. It might have played in my favor that the supernatural community came out of the closet a couple of years ago and caused quite a stirring—something even I heard through the grapevine all the way in the morass—but what Santino did was still an act of unexpected kindness.

  He wasn’t some activist for the Human-Supe Coalition, hoping to help us integrate into society—if he even knew I wasn’t truly human at all. He was just someone who didn’t turn a blind eye to
the less fortunate populating this world.

  Yet staring at him now, at the hard lines of his face and the anger making the silver rim of his eyes even starker against the blue, there wasn’t even a single shadow of that former man resting there.

  I swallowed, cradling the slowly melting tubs of ice cream in my hand, and channeled every bit of strength into keeping my voice as steady as I could make it. “I’m sorry for the inconvenience, boss, but I promise you won’t have any trouble. I’ll leave the cafe right now—”

  “And go where?” His tone was even sharper than the look he dealt me.

  Slowly, his gaze swept up to my less than inconspicuous hair, the lilac that made me stand out even in the thickest of crowds, then came to rest on my face once more.

  I bit my lip. “I’ll go somewhere. But the man won’t have any reason to come here again. I swear. Just—just let me go, please.”

  Santino raked both hands through his mass of silver curls, swearing softly in Italian. “What have you gotten yourself into, Liana? The PI didn’t give details, only said your family was looking for you and that you might be a little…unhinged.”

  I groaned, hugging the ice cream so tightly my breasts almost froze off. A part of me wanted to throw the tubs at Santino and flee out the door, but there was something in the tone of his voice that revealed he wouldn’t give up the chase that easily. Damn. When had humans become so persistent?

  No, running away wasn’t an option.

  Besides, that other part of me—the non-ice-cream-throwing one—felt like I owed Santino an explanation. For all I knew, that PI just might return if any of our clientele recognized me from the description he was passing around and pointed him back here. I couldn’t leave him in the dark. Not even to save my own ass.

  Gods… I’d believed I’d left my past behind when I moved across two whole countries to escape the morass. But I had been a fool. After all, I did go back to my homeland, and I should have known better than to think something as insubstantial as a few borders would be enough to stifle my sisters’ determination to wipe me off the face of the earth.

  What was a little distance when the taste for blood ruled over rational thought?

  “Fine,” I said, my voice weary and quite obviously echoing the delicate state of my decision. “Meet me at Moon Bay at midnight, and I’ll tell you everything you want to know.”

  3

  With the PI walking around Piran and handing people my description, leaving the town seemed like the safest option. There weren’t that many places where I could hide in such a small settlement, especially since my appearance made it hard to blend in with the crowds. None of the boutiques lining the narrow streets carried wigs, and, somehow, despite the blazing sun, large hats just didn’t seem to be in fashion.

  So my hair remained hopelessly lilac, a beacon giving away my location to even a casual glance.

  I had attempted to dye it to a neutral brown after I escaped the morass, but the chemicals simply refused to alter it. It must have been the vila blood, passed down from my great grandmother that gave me the unusual coloring—as well as the cruel inability to do a single thing about it. Magic truly wasn’t my friend.

  Tension prickled at the back of my neck as I took one slightly crooked street after another, carefully scanning each corner and turn before hurrying down the cobblestones and farther away from the bustling, gleeful center. While there were fewer people here to see me, the lack of a crowd meant I was that much more exposed at the same time. As hard as I tried, I just couldn’t win, but I still felt more secure in this intimacy of residential buildings than the mock anonymity the masses would have offered. And that was the precise reason I hadn’t returned to the boarding house.

  Not only was it the kind of place the PI might be inclined to visit—if he hadn’t already—but its location close to the bank didn’t exactly give me many routes I could take and hope to stay hidden since it lay in the direction of Portorož and the heavy foot traffic flowing between the two towns. So I vehemently walked the other way, ascending Piran’s streets one rapid, terrified heartbeat at a time.

  I passed just beneath St. George’s cathedral, listening to its melodic bells ring as another hour went by, then made my way down the other side of the hill, aiming for the somewhat less popular Fiesa which lay clustered farther east. Taking the seaside path connecting the two settlements was a gamble, but I hoped the PI was still too busy going from bar to bar to have made it all the way here on such a short notice.

  Luckily, I wasn’t mistaken.

  His absence, however, didn’t diminish the other problem that greeted me the instant my feet touched the white stones of the path.

  With each second I spent walking along the shore, the sloshing of waves called to me, serenading me to join in their languid dance. I pushed on, furiously wishing the melody that twined around my heart would die down.

  But it only increased.

  Eventually, its relentless chanting stole away my control over my own body, and I found myself standing on the gentle slope, the sea an endless expanse of untamed beauty stretching out before me. I couldn’t deny that the riveting blend of muted green and deep, velvet blue was tempting, that it embodied my deepest desires—the freedom I could never taste while locked in this human form. And it most certainly didn’t help that when I looked around, I realized I was the sole person on the walkway.

  No prying eyes. No children rushing about. Not even a single boat.

  Just a few steps… Just a few steps and I would be nestled in the sea’s embrace. The PI would never notice my lonely form making its way east, slipping from his grasp.

  I let out a sigh and felt something inside me crumble, breaking the glistening surface of the spell. The water would be my cover, my blanket of protection from inquisitive eyes, yes. But it wasn’t only human eyes I had to concern myself with.

  For a moment, despite the rational impulse to clear this open space as fast as I could, I let myself mourn the loss of entering the world that spoke to my very soul. The insurmountable barrier lying between me and the waves clawed at my insides, but with each forced breath I took, some of the pain lessened until, finally, I managed to shuffle my feet forward.

  There was no reason to tempt fate just yet.

  What I intended to do later on tonight would be perilous enough.

  The hum of life grew louder once more as I neared the Fiesa beach. The buzz wrapped around me in a playful whirlwind, only instead of lifting my spirits, all it did was remind me of everything I’d lost. Not the morass or the whispers of the sea. But before…

  An ache I had believed to be long buried kindled in my chest, the treacherous heat of tears starting to prickle at the back of my eyes. I didn’t know why, but somehow, the shaded, murky waters of the morass had dulled these old wounds.

  Or maybe it had simply been the presence of my sisters, locked in the same bubble of isolation that had loosened the clutches of my past. Because despite our differences, we had all been equal in the lives we’d lost. And that was no small kinship.

  But here, alone in the midst of human and supernatural life with the sun blazing high above me, I couldn’t help feeling that, perhaps, they were right in hunting me.

  After all, the dead had no place to walk among the living.

  The sight was stunning, truly.

  Moonlight bathed the world in silver, nothing but the faint, distant sounds of night critters filtering down from the canopy of trees looming above. Even the sea seemed tranquil as I sat beneath the imposing cliffs of Moon Bay, instinctively feeling the stroke of midnight approach.

  My senses were only as keen as a human’s, yet through the whispers of the water that spoke to me regardless of which form I took, I had no difficulties discerning Santino’s growing presence on the backdrop of the starry sky. His steps echoed down the shore, the vibrations entering the barely noticeable waves and making it easy to track his progress along the curving bay. I continued to sit on the rock, almost pointedly gazi
ng out at the sea.

  This wasn’t a meeting devoted to beauty. And I knew with bitter certainty that if I let my attention drift to Santino now, if I would see that glint of moonlight reflected in his silver hair, those shadows of night dancing on his face and making his elegant features even lovelier than they already were… That thread of composure still holding me together would unravel.

  I stifled the tide of unease rising within me.

  What was I hoping to achieve by luring him out here? Was it truly for his protection that I agreed to our midnight rendezvous?

  I shook my head, hating how I failed to morph my lies into truth. If anything, I should have kept my distance simply to protect him from the ugliness that was my world…

  Santino was human. He might have been aware of the supernatural, but werewolves, vampires, witches, and the other species now living out in the open were quite different from the murderous depths I’d swum out of. And if he miraculously decided to let me keep my job… Would I even take it?

  Could I be so selfish and endanger him just because his little cafe and his company were the only security I had in my life? The only spark of joy I’d felt in a century?

  I closed my eyes and battled the silent tears that refused to listen to my command.

  No, whatever happened after, whatever turn my fate would take, one thing remained unchanged. Santino—he deserved to know. It was the least I could do to repay him for his kindness.

  “Liana?” His voice slid around my shoulders like a caress.

  Discreetly, I wiped the back of my hand across my cheeks, then tucked my hair behind my ears and lifted my gaze up to him.

  My breath faltered. He was even more handsome, wrapped in the cocoon of the night than I imagined. Dressed in black jeans and a white T-shirt that revealed just a dash of silver curls spread so lovingly across his chest, he seemed more like an apparition of a dark angel than the man of flesh and blood I’d come to know him as. The moonlight made his sun-kissed skin paler, almost ethereal, and I marveled at how well those vivid, pure silver strands I could barely resist to touch framed his face. It was impossible to look away, impossible to do anything but admire how masterfully the gods had shaped him.