Shadeland (The Ethereal Crossings, 1)

by D.L. Miles

  Chapter 2

  Time was relevant, I told myself. Just because it ticked slowly by for me, didn’t mean it was the same for Luke, who at the moment was furiously writing down everything Dr. Wineman said. This was what every day in class felt like to me. I glanced at the large white clock above the emergency exit that matched the one in the hall entrance. 7:55 PM.

  “And that concludes New History to the sixteen hundreds,” the doctor said, “I look forward to seeing you all this Friday.” The crowd began to shuffle but I stayed still until Luke nudged me to get up. I stood and walked to the back to the aisle stairs, letting people walk down before me. Luke leaned on the wall behind us and we watched as the Eidolon’s trailed down towards the exit.

  “This Friday, huh,” I prodded Luke. He knew what I was thinking.

  “I forgot to mention,” he said disarmingly, “it’s twice a week. Isn’t that great? It won’t interfere with your exams though, I swear.” Great; that’s one word for it. Why would he think I even cared about my exams? I looked at him from the corner of my eye. “I know you don’t want to be here, but it’s important to me. I need to know this stuff Liv, and I want to share it with you.” I looked back to the flood of people, almost all of them were already out the door and gone.

  “Whatever,” I sighed as I took a step down. Luke perked up.

  “Thank you,” he said. Anyone else would have been insulted by my reaction, but he knew me too well. He knew exactly what I meant by “whatever”. I would suffer through the next classes for him; he had done enough suffering for me after all.

  The doctor had begun to fiddle with the projector again as everyone left. The second my foot hit the last step he looked up at me and then to Luke.

  “Wait a moment, please,” he said, and I looked back to Luke, who had only shrugged, “I just want to ask you something.” He straightened his back and took a step towards us, only to pull the projector down off its pedestal. Dr. Wineman caught it before it hit the floor with an unusual speed and grace and carefully placed it back. His coat stuck out on the left, caught on something on the projector. He unhooked it and took a careful step forward, watching the projector to make sure it wasn’t going to fall again. If I was about his age I would find him adorable, but right now I found it a little sad.

  “Yes, doctor?” Luke asked, more curious about why the doctor had stopped us than I was.

  “I just wanted to ask your friend a question,” he said looking at me, “Liv, did you really just guess at those answers?” My first thought was “how did he know my name?” until I remembered he had advanced hearing and Luke had said my name at the top of the stairs.

  I shrugged and said, “It just seemed obvious.” Dr. Wineman gently touched his chin, considering my answer.

  “You keep saying that.” He reached his hand out to me and I stared at it. Luke swatted my hand upwards, forcing it closer to the doctors and we shook hands. “You’re a bright young girl, very little humans would be able to guess those answers. I look forward to seeing you Friday.” He smiled at me, but it felt different, like he was too busy thinking of something else to make it genuine.

  “We look forward to it too,” Luke said with a grin. “Let’s go Liv, or we’ll miss our show!” He led me out the door and waved goodbye to the doctor. We were the last ones to leave the B Hall, and as the wooden doors shut behind us I felt as if Dr. Wineman had never stopped watching me.

  Was it really so odd for me to guess those answers? Besides, it’s not like I knew what Elvis was, or even Amelia Earhart; I only knew Cleopatra and Hitler, both of which I had guessed on instinct. I merely put two and two together, was it so odd?

  “Weird,” I whispered to myself as Luke opened the glass door for me.

  “Oh, I’m weird, am I?” he questioned while we walked. “You write plus one as your name, answer questions you shouldn’t know the answer to, but I’m weird for opening the door for you.” I looked down at the nametag over my heart and ripped it off, throwing it in the first trash bin I found. I held a hand out to Luke but he just said, “What?”

  “I was going to throw out your nametag…” I explained, as if it really needed to do that.

  “No way,” he refused, “I’m keeping this; it’s going to be going in my post-revolution scrapbook to commemorate our first class.” He smiled proudly and patted his chest. Luke was the only man I knew that would be proud of having a scrapbook.

  “Hmm,” I said and we continued walking to the car.

  The parking lot was almost completely empty by the time we had returned. It seemed that no one had wasted any time getting home. What was so important on a Tuesday night? I looked up at the sky and counted what few stars were there; seven dim lights shone down through the clouds.

  A soft breeze chilled me through my sweater and I noticed it did the same to Luke. It was strangely cold at night for late June and I hoped it would get warmer soon. But then again, the smell of summer always reminded me of fire after the revolution.

  I unlocked the car from a few feet away and Luke quickened his pace to get ahead of me. He opened my door, as he always did; ever the gentleman. I rolled my eyes and got in, turning on the heater while he ran around the front and jumped into the passenger seat.

  Checking the rear view mirror I caught a glimpse of my eyes. Normally my hazel eyes looked weary and tired from either not enough sleep or too much, but tonight they didn’t look so bad. Not great, but not bad. I adjusted the mirror properly and pulled out of the parking lot, ready for the half hour drive home.

  Sitting down on the couch next to Luke seemed a larger relief than it should’ve been. It was nine o’clock at night and I was going to have to prepare myself for the coming weeks of New History, and in two days, an exam. Or should I say, prepare myself for the coming lessons with Dr. Wineman. He had seemed nice enough, but I didn’t like how much attention he had given me.

  “It’s cool that your dad is letting you stay here,” Luke said, flipping on the television and starting his routine of changing channels between the news and what he had deemed “our show”. I didn’t like watching either, but I wasn’t about to burst his bubble when he finally settled on the news for a moment.

  “Earlier today a woman was found dead in her apartment,” said the overly cheerful reporter, “it is still unknown as to how she died but police say it does appear to involve some sort of non-human.” Luke changed the channel with “tch” noise, angry that the blame was on an Eidolon already.

  “It really could have been one,” I told him, “you changed the channel too soon to know anything else.” I understood his pain over the subject, but like the humans, he also tended to assume too much as well. It made sense, Luke’s parents knew what he was but they were human, so he was raised like a human. He rolled his eyes at me and changed the channel back to the news.

  “Rosa Navarro was last seen leaving work at The Corner to get to her car.” A reporter’s high pitched voice was heard while they showed a screen-shot of a small dark-skinned woman with blue eyes. She was pretty. The screen flashed back to the same reporter from before. “We have just received this video tape,” she said, holding a finger to her ear, “of a man throwing Rosa into her car.”

  A dark parking lot came onto the screen as Luke and I watched. I saw Rosa walk onto the screen, barely visible with whatever kind of security camera was viewing her. She reached into her small clutch and pulled out what I assumed to be a set of keys. Her fingers flipped through them, one by one, trying to find the one for her car.

  The reporter whispered something, almost sounding like a gasp, just before a hooded person stepped into view. They hit Rosa over the head with some sort of long, blunt object and carefully carried her further from the camera. Just as they were about to go out of view, the person looked up at the security camera and the tape buzzed out in a flash of black and white. The cheery eyed reporter came back on screen, less cheery now, and told
the world to call the police tip line with any possible information on the man they had now identified as John Walker.

  “That’s stupid,” I said.

  “What?” Luke asked. “Because it’s so obviously human?”

  “Hmm, partly. But I was talking about how they think it’s a man and an Eidolon.” Luke turned to me as he changed back to “our” show.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Nothing,” I said, it was going to be too tiresome to explain, and I didn’t want to make Luke go on one of his humans-blame-Eidolon’s-for-everything-now rants. “’Night.”

  “Come on!” he called to me as I stepped over his legs and headed to the bathroom. “Keeping secrets isn’t nice!” I couldn’t help but smile at that. Just as I was about to close the door to the bathroom, there was a knock on the apartments front door.

  “Liv it’s me,” came Charlie’s voice, “Luke told me you’re staying over and I need your help!” I sighed and rested my head a moment on my door. So close, yet so, so far. Slowly, I made my way to the front door, Luke ignoring both me and Charlie to watch his show. She called again, “Liv!”

  “I’m here,” I said, opening the door to find Charlie in nothing but a towel holding up two shirts. She really wasn’t the shy type, that much I knew; the rest of her however, was a total mystery. “What is it?”

  “I’m going out tonight with some friends,” she explained, “and I don’t know what to wear!” She thrust the two shirts forward, if they could even be called shirts. I didn’t take them from her and merely pointed at the pink one.

  “That one,” I said, “goodnight.” I tried to shut the door, but Charlie stopped me and swung it back open.

  “Wait,” she said, “you should come out with us! We’re all going to The Corner, it’ll be fun.” She shuffled in her towel to show me, I assumed, how much fun dancing would be. Why would she want to go to the club when another woman had just been kidnapped from and then murdered in her home? Maybe because they knew who her assailant was? I didn’t react so Luke did it for me.

  “She’d love to,” he said with a pat on my shoulder and then whispered in my ear, “go out, have fun.” He shoved me out the door before I had a chance to flee.

  “Great!” Charlie said, brown hair bouncing on her bare shoulders. “Let’s go do your hair!” She grabbed my wrist and pulled me into her apartment next to mine. I groaned and knew there was no escape for me.

  I guessed I was going dancing tonight.