Broken Shadows (5 page)

“Oh God. Oh God.” I sat down hard on the stool behind the bar.

“There’s nothing,” Paulie said, still with that blissed-out look. “Just nothing.”

“What do you mean, nothing?” Malik glanced at me and got in front of Paulie. “Even if you try?”

Paulie only shook his head. “I—I gotta go.” He slid off his barstool and banged through the door before I could think to stop him.

“I think it must take contact,” Malik said. “My powers are fine.” He reached out for me. “Here—see what happens—”

“No!” I flinched away from him. “I have to go.”

“Hey, Mina, wait—”

But I was already leaving. The door closed on the rest of his sentence.

Chapter Five

I walked for hours. Even after it began to grow dark, I didn’t head back to Jackson’s. My whole body was buzzing, and I just needed to get
away.
I didn’t care where.

I left the speakeasy and Featherweight’s far behind. The neighborhoods grew hillier and more residential as I walked. Instead of large blocky apartment complexes, there were two-and three-story homes, old buildings in impeccable condition with fresh paint and neat landscaping. Some had posters in the windows.
War is not healthy for children and other living things. Legalize Gay. Park for Mayor.
The farther I went, the fewer the signs and the bigger the houses.

I eventually noticed how tired I was. My feet had started to ache several blocks back, and I was starting to think longingly of the fancy water bottles in the overpriced gourmet grocery store I’d passed at the bottom of the last hill. I sat down on a low concrete wall bordering one of the well-kept Victorians.

My phone buzzed. Jackson. Malik must have told him. I sent the call to voicemail and put my phone in do-not-disturb mode. I had no idea what I was going to say to him.

I stayed where I was on the concrete wall. My urge to run had bled out into wrung-out, apathetic exhaustion. My feet throbbed and my eyes felt dry. No one came and asked me to leave. It grew dark in earnest. I was going to have to find a hotel, or call Avery and beg for a spot on her fiancé’s brother’s couch.

I was going to have to go home.

I should have gone home the moment I’d seen that eviction notice. I should have known I couldn’t make it out here on my own.

I took out my phone. It was nearly 10:00 p.m. and I had eleven missed calls from Jackson. Time to find a hotel for the night.

I looked around. This didn’t seem like the sort of neighborhood that had a cheap hotel. Actually, this wasn’t the kind of
city
that had a cheap hotel. I was going to have to get downtown somehow, try my luck somewhere south of Market Street. I needed to get to a train.

I started walking back the way I’d come. It was as good a plan as any. I passed the grocery store, closed up for the night and dark. The Muni station was two more hills, I thought, two more San Francisco city blocks. It seemed impossible. I made it to the bottom of the first one when a tiny, bright blue electric car came zooming through the intersection. It screeched to a stop right in front of me, and a tall redhead came tumbling out of the driver’s seat.

“Mina!” It was Bridget. She came running up to me, wild hair bobbing around her. “Are you okay?”

“Bridget, what are you—why are you here?”

She looked genuinely perplexed by the question. “You’ve been missing for hours. Jackson’s been turning the city upside down looking for you.”

“Oh, God.” I sat down on the sidewalk. The burst of I-don’t-want-to-sleep-on-the-street energy I’d gotten was completely used up.

“Are you okay?” Bridget asked. “You’re not hurt, are you?”

I didn’t have an answer for her. I put my head in my hands. She sat down next to me.

“Did you guys have a fight?”

That got me to look up. “What? No. We’re not together.”

Bridget cocked her head at me. “Oh. Are you sure?”

“I think I’d know,” I said. “Why is he looking for me?”

Bridget laughed, a pealing sound like bells. “You’ll have to ask him. And you’d better come with me.” She stood up and dusted off her rear. “If he finds out I found you and let you get away, he’ll kill me.”

* * *

I sat on Jackson’s couch and sipped the coffee he’d made me. Plenty of cream, plenty of sugar, exactly the way I liked it. He must have pulled my preferences out of my head. It felt warm all the way to the pit of my belly.

Bridget had dropped me off and left, saying she’d see me at the speakeasy sometime. Then she’d given me a tight hug and sped off in her tiny blue car. Apparently no one had told her yet I was too dangerous to touch, but I didn’t feel any zaps of energy from her skin. Maybe I’d managed to keep the contact brief enough.

Jackson had barely spoken a full sentence to me since I’d walked in the door. He’d glared at the coffee as he’d passed it to me, and then he’d started pacing.

“What happened?” he said finally. I was halfway through the cup.

“Malik didn’t tell you?”

“No, I mean why did you disappear like that?”

“What, I have to report all of my movements to you now?”

He rounded on me. “You got mugged last night. You wouldn’t pick up your phone. You’re staying at my place. When you didn’t come back, I fucking noticed.”

I barely heard the heat in his voice until he cursed. I guess when he put it like that, he did have a right to be a little worried. I slumped a little deeper into the couch cushions. “I guess I freaked out.”

“Yeah.”

“Well, I think I kind of had a right to.”

He sat down, his expression softening. “I guess you have a point, there.”

“God. What am I supposed to do now? I mean, I can’t be around shadowminds anymore.” I was afraid to ask about his powers, but I made myself do it. “Are your—are they back?”

“What? Oh, sure. They’ve been back a while now.”

I didn’t believe him. “What about that guy? Greg? Malik said he lost his too. I don’t even know how this works. What if there are long-term effects?”

“Mina, I’m completely recovered, and I had my hands on you longer than he did.”

Heat rushed through me at the words; flashes of his naked chest strobed through my thoughts. I was sure he could see them, right there at the top of my mind. Well, fuck it. If he was going to be nosy, I wasn’t going to be responsible for the results. A hint of red crept up Jackson’s neck. It was nice to know he wasn’t totally immune to embarrassment.

“Watch,” he said sharply. His heavy glass and steel coffee table rose several inches off the rug and stayed there. “Believe me now?”

“Sure, but those marks—”

“Mina, I’m fine.” He set the coffee table down. “What I want to know is why you didn’t tell me about this.”

“What was I going to say? ‘I think I’m accidentally burning people?’” It sounded crazy even now.

He sighed. “Tell me again what happened when Cass tried to fix you.”

I explained it as well as I could remember. Ryan had damaged my powers, but I’d been on the mend when Cass’s ability to pull had spiked out of control and damaged them again. I didn’t blame her, but she sure blamed herself. She’d never been comfortable with her gift, even as a kid. After it was all over, after she’d disabled Ryan’s dangerous abilities for good, she tried to do the opposite for me.

I hadn’t been able to feel her in my head, but I still would have stopped her if I’d known what she was trying to do—funnel her own power into me, give up the abilities she didn’t want so I could have mine back. It had been more desperation than any knowledge of what she was doing. As if the universe couldn’t possibly be so unfair, to saddle her with a gift she hated while mine was gone forever. As if wanting to make it right was enough to make it so.

“I finally had to stop her,” I said. “I think she would’ve kept trying for hours if I hadn’t pulled her out of it.”

Jackson’s mouth quirked. “I believe it.”

“But she didn’t really—I mean, I don’t have my powers back.”

“No. But...do you mind if I have a look?”

“In my head?

He nodded.

“It’s not like I could stop you.”

He waited, eyes still asking the question.

“Sure. I mean, go ahead.” I’d never invited Jackson into my mind before. If I’d still been able to feel him, consciously letting him in like this would’ve been a mark of something new. Friendship, maybe something more. As it was, it was just another awkward moment.

Jackson closed his eyes and put his hands on his knees. I tried to make my thoughts go quiet, but I’ve never been all that good at meditation. Knowing Jackson was about to poke around in there wasn’t helping. It seemed the only thing I could think about was the way he’d looked coming out of the shower, damp and wrapped in a towel, and the more I tried to shove the thought down, the bigger and more unwieldy it got. It was like trying to hold a beach ball underwater. Jackson’s fingers tightened on his knee, his knuckles whitening.

I thought instead about Malik and Paulie, the way Paulie had grabbed my hand, desperate. Jackson’s eyes moved beneath his closed lids, and his hands relaxed. He leaned forward a little, lips parting, and a slash of dark hair fell down over his forehead. I noticed for the first time the way his bottom lip was slightly rounded compared to his top, a note of softness in the hard planes of his face.

Shit.

Jackson opened his eyes.

“Did it help?”
Let’s just pretend none of that happened, please.

“Yeah.” He paused a beat, long enough for me to wonder if he meant more than what he was saying. He cleared his throat. “Yeah. It looks like she sort of...rewired you.”

“Um, okay?”

“I mean, she fixed your shadowmind, part of it, anyway. It was too damaged to let you mindmove or mindspeak, but maybe she gave you something else.”

“The ability to inflict minor burns and terrify people?”

“No—you’re like some sort of grounding wire. You’re taking energy from a shadowmind and dissipating it. Like pulling in reverse.”

“But not permanently. Right?” It was more hope than conviction.

“Only in the moment, maybe for a few hours afterword. I recovered. Paulie’s powers are back, too, by the way.” He clenched his fist. “He shouldn’t have done that.”

“It’s okay.”

“Let me know if he keeps giving you trouble.”

“I can handle him.”

Jackson looked as though he wanted to argue, but he let it go. “Regardless, you’ll have to learn to ground out the power. Otherwise it seems like it discharges on whatever’s handy.”

I couldn’t help glancing at his chest. “I’m really sorry. I didn’t know—”

“They’re almost gone. I think it wasn’t as severe because I wasn’t using my powers when I was close to you.”

That surprised me. “You weren’t?” I figured he’d at least been skimming my thoughts.

He met my eyes. “I don’t go invading your head without your permission.”

“Then how did you know how I like my coffee?” I blurted it out, surprised to hear myself.

His mouth quirked up. “You did live with me for a couple of weeks last year. I paid attention.”

“Oh,” was all I managed to say. His expression stayed light, but something else crept in. Hurt that I’d thought he’d skim without permission? The moment lengthened, and my lips parted. I wondered what he would find if he invaded my head now, and my heart pounded with a different kind of fear. I broke eye contact first.

“So how do I dissipate it? I don’t want to go setting things on fire any time I touch a shadowmind.”

“Yes,” Jackson said with a small smile. “That would be bad.”

“No kidding. I don’t suppose you know someone I could ask about this.”

“No. No, this is unprecedented.”

“Great.” I was going to have to quit my job. If I still had a job after running out like I had. I mentally erased my time-to-a-security-deposit calculation.

“It might not be as hard as you think.” He slid a little closer to me on the couch and gently took my coffee. “Are you still carrying a charge from earlier?”

“From Paulie? I don’t think so. Maybe it dissipated while I was walking?”

“Here.” He held out his hand. “Let’s see if we can figure it out.”

I shrank back. “You want me to do it on purpose? No way.”

“You’re going to have to learn how eventually.”

“Not if I never touch another shadowmind.”

He opened his mouth and closed it again. “Well—I mean—if that’s what you—What about the speakeasy?”

“Gloves?” I was only half-joking.

“Come on,” Jackson said. “It’s not permanent. I don’t mind.”

I shook my head. “But I do.”

Chapter Six

The next day I reluctantly asked Jackson if he was willing to help me move my few belongings into storage. I almost hoped he’d turn me down—at least if I hired some of the storage company’s workers to help me, I wouldn’t have to stress out about accidentally touching them—but of course he said yes.

Jackson drove us to the U-Store-It on Brannon Street and parked in their surprisingly ample lot. I’d reserved the smallest unit they had, plus a pickup truck for the morning. When I unlocked the unit and rolled up the metal door, he looked doubtful.

“Are you sure your stuff is going to fit in here?”

“There’ll probably be space left over. Are you sure you don’t mind doing this?” I wished yet again that I could have asked Avery to help instead, but I couldn’t ask a pregnant woman to haul furniture.

“I’m sure. Come on.”

With Jackson helping—and using telekinesis whenever he could—it took us less time than I’d anticipated to load up the furniture and the half-dozen boxes of books and cheap cookware I’d accumulated over the past year. It wasn’t much by most standards, but seeing it gathered in one place like that, I wondered how I’d managed to accumulate so many belongings, to put down so many anchors in this city that still wasn’t mine.

“Are you okay?” Jackson asked me, and I realized I’d been sitting in the passenger seat in silence for a dozen blocks.

“Just thinking,” But I couldn’t tell him about what. I’d been wondering why I didn’t just go home. It would be easier. I would have a place to live, a job at the B&B. It wasn’t just the prospect of being around shadowminds, not anymore. Some part of me wanted to prove I could make it on my own.

After we returned the truck, I asked Jackson to drop me off downtown. I was scheduled to work—if I still had a job—but I had one more errand to run before I went in. I headed to one of the fancy department stores on Market Street and asked the first cashier I saw where the gloves were.

I’d never bought gloves before. I hadn’t needed them in Louisiana, and they definitely weren’t necessary in San Francisco. They’d always seemed like a frivolous accessory, the kind of thing people bought to match their coats and never really wore. Now, I needed them for practical reasons.

I tried on a dozen pair before I found some that felt right. They were a little darker than the color of my skin, but if I wore long sleeves I hoped they’d only be noticeable when I took cash or handed over drinks. And anyway, gloves were better than accidentally neutralizing a customer. I tucked them into my back pocket and headed for the speakeasy to see if I still had a job to go back to. After the way I’d left yesterday, I wasn’t entirely sure.

I got to the door behind the Dumpster at Featherweight’s and fished for my keys, only to realize I’d left them at Jackson’s.

“Dammit,” I said to the door. I didn’t want to call Malik and ask him to let me in before I even knew if I was still employed. I turned to head into Featherweight’s, hoping Caleb was working, and jumped when I saw Paulie standing right behind me.

“Jesus, Paulie. What are you doing here? The bar doesn’t open for hours.” I pressed a hand to my chest, breathing hard.

“I know,” he said. “I was looking for you.”

I frowned. “What for?”

Before I knew what he was after, he’d lunged forward and grabbed my hand, covering it with both of his. I stared at him in shock, and the prickling of the power transfer built where his skin touched mine. I yanked my hand back.

“No!” he said, making a grab for me again. I stepped back and gave him an astonished look.

“You want me to ground you?”

“You don’t understand—it’s constant. I can’t handle it anymore. If you could make it stop, even for just one more day, I swear...I’ll pay you, I can get money—” He put his hands on my arms, gripping.

“Jesus, Paulie, stop!” I shook his hands off. “You think I’d make you pay me?”

“I’m desperate, Mina. Please.”

I had no trouble reading his expression. He was pleading. I couldn’t imagine wanting something like this, but then, I didn’t have Paulie’s gift. It couldn’t be easy, not being able to block out emotion. All shadowminds with any kind of telepathy went through this phase as kids—when your powers were mature but you couldn’t quite control them yet. I remembered being in high school, picking up on everybody’s raging, overemotional crushes at once, feeling as if my head were a radio receiver for the whole school’s teenaged angst. It was a rite of passage—you learned how to deal because you had to. Maybe it was harder for empaths.

“Please, Mina.”

It was like kicking a puppy to disappoint this guy. I didn’t have it in me. “Okay,” I said. “Fine. Let’s just try it and see how it goes.” His eyes lit up. “I may not be able to do this every day,” I added, a little scared of the way he was looking at me.

“That’s okay,” Paulie said, nodding rapidly. “I understand.”

I took a deep breath and took his hands in mine.

“What do I do?” he said.

“I have no idea. Just...wait, I guess.”

It took about ten seconds for the transfer to start. I knew to expect it now, and when the unpleasant prickling feeling started moving up my arms, I didn’t draw back. I could see it in Paulie’s face as he started losing his empathic connection with me. His eyes widened and then relaxed, and he gave a small, blissful moan. The rush of adrenaline hit me a few moments later.

“Oh,” Paulie said, a soft sound.

I recognized the panic for what it was this time—a physical reaction to the energy I’d stolen from Paulie. That didn’t make it any less intense. I had to fight a false, instinctual urge to run.

“Are you okay?” Paulie asked, but he was already looking back the way he’d come.

“I’ll be fine.” Hopefully I wouldn’t have to set something on fire every time I did this.

“Thanks, Mina. You really are the best.”

“I don’t know how long it’ll last. Probably not more than a couple hours.”

“It’s enough.” He was already picking up his bag. “I gotta go. I’ll see you later?”

“Hey, wait! Do you have a key? Can you let me in?” I kicked at the locked door.

“Huh? Oh, sure.” He unlocked it for me absently, almost letting it close again before I could catch it.

“Thanks,” I called after him, but he was already walking out of the alley. I shook my head as he disappeared and let the door slam behind me.

The only light in the hallway was from a couple of weak, bare lightbulbs. It was enough light to tell that the concrete tunnel was dirty, but not exactly with what. Maybe that was something to be grateful for. My mind spun with the possibilities of disease-laden rat droppings and poisonous spiders hiding in the shadows. Had the door locked behind me? I scrabbled at the knob frantically until I recognized the panic for what it was—the energy I’d stolen from Paulie.

I took a deep breath. The day before the panic had taken hours to dissipate—I couldn’t walk around like this all day. I had to find a way to dissipate it consciously.

Back when I’d been learning how to mindmove, my mother had taught me how to access my shadowmind. It was a little like searching for a memory, or replaying a song in my head. A specific kind of concentration.

Jackson had said it was my shadowmind that Cass rewired. If it was my shadowmind that was grounding people, then I should be able to control it like I had before. Theoretically.

I stayed where I was with my hand on the doorknob. Years of practice I thought I’d never need again came back to me. The way my mother had taught me to focus my power on a single spot until I could tie knots in thread with my mind, the way I’d learned to bait hooks telekinetically out fishing with my uncle. How I’d learned to scan a crowded room for a crush when I was in high school. I reached for that feeling again, that sense of connecting with something vast through the tips of my fingers. The rest of the world wasn’t
there
the way I’d grown up experiencing it, but the hectic power in my body was. I let out a pent-up breath, and the energy I’d absorbed flooded out of me. It happened all at once, a surge of power arcing through my fingers fast enough to send a shower of sparks between my hands and the metal doorknob.

“Ouch!”

The door swung open, and there was Malik, rubbing his hand and frowning. His keys still hung in the exterior knob.

“You the new security system?”

“Oh God. I’m so sorry.” This was definitely not how I’d hoped to ask if I still had a job.

Malik pulled out his keys. “What’s going on?”

“I...uh...” No point trying to lie to a telepath. I explained what had happened with Paulie.

“Lazy bastard,” Malik said. “If he’d just focus a little instead of watching porn in his mamma’s basement, he’d be all right.” He shut the door and started down the tunnel. “So what are you doing here so early, anyway?”

“Actually I came to see if I still have a job.” My heart caught in my throat as I said it. “I’m really sorry about yesterday. I shouldn’t have run off like that, but I just freaked out.”

“Wait up.” He turned around and faced me in the dim light. “You think I’d fire you?”

“Well, I’d understand if you did.”

“Mina.” He reached out and took my hand. “That was enough to freak anybody out.” He squeezed my palm, and I realized I hadn’t felt the heat I’d come to associate with an energy transfer. I yanked my hand back anyway.

“I got these.” I took the gloves out of my back pocket. “Just to be safe.”

He nodded. “I didn’t feel a thing just then.”

“Maybe because I just grounded Paulie? I still don’t understand how this works.” I remembered how I hadn’t felt a charge from Bridget when she’d dropped me off at Jackson’s the night before. It must take at least half a day for me to be able to ground someone again, maybe more. If neutralizing Paulie’s powers meant I could be around shadowminds safely, maybe this wasn’t as bad as I’d thought. “Maybe I have to...recharge. Or something.”

“You’ll figure it out. In the meantime, there’s a new shipment of Tanqueray to unpack.”

“Just what I was hoping for.”

We went into the stockroom, and Malik flipped on the lights. Sure enough, there were cases of liquor ready and waiting on the floor.

“Sebastian usually brings it down,” Malik said. “We route all the deliveries through the upper bar so we can stay off the books.”

“Who’s Sebastian?”

“Owner of Featherweight’s.” Malik took out a box cutter and started opening boxes. “You haven’t met him yet?”

I shook my head, and Malik chuckled. “He’s hard to forget.” He handed me two bottles of gin, and I took them and placed them carefully on an empty spot on the shelf. There was no organization to it whatsoever—eight different kinds of hard liquor jumbled together with bottles of wine and six-packs of beer from local microbreweries.

“You know, even secret supernatural speakeasies should be organized,” I said, laughing. “How can you even tell when you’re out of something.”

“It’s all up here.” Malik tapped his temple, and I shook my head at him. “By the way, the boss is coming in tonight. Wants to meet you.”

“Simon?” I looked down at my faded orange V-neck and torn-up jeans.

“Don’t worry. He’s not a suit-and-tie kind of guy.” He grinned. “Not like some people.”

“Oh, shut up.” I grabbed the bottles he extended to me and shoved them rather harder than necessary into the first empty spot I could find. Malik was unfazed.

“Speaking of your boy, what’s he think about all this?”

“Jackson is not my boy.”

“Uh-huh. What’s he think about it?”

“I don’t see why he should care.” I thought about his offer to help me learn to control it, the way he’d looked with his hand outstretched. I hadn’t expected him to be so willing to take that kind of risk. As if it was nothing, not even a question.

Malik slanted me a look. “Of course he cares, you moron.”

I slid two bottles of gin into place. “Look, Dr. Ruth, I’m not in need of relationship advice. We’re just friends. Not even friends. Acquaintances. And I’m moving out as soon as I find a place.”

“Good luck with that.”

“Tell me about it.”

We finished unpacking the gin and got started on the side work. I cut fruit while Malik transferred clean glasses from the dishwasher to the racks beneath the bar. I’d expected the place to feel a little creepy with hardly anyone in it—it was an old fallout bunker, after all—but it was almost calming. No street noise or slamming doors, just the quiet hum of the under-bar fridge and the electric lights. We worked in companionable silence until Simon showed up.

I knew it was him right away. He came in through the back, a tall man with dark hair and Asian features wearing a black leather jacket and carrying a motorcycle helmet. He greeted Malik and set the helmet on the bar.

“You must be my new bartender.” Tenor, California accent, very clear. He held out his hand.

I almost took it. Then I remembered draining your boss’s supernatural powers was probably not the best way to make a first impression. I wasn’t going to bank on being temporarily safe to touch. “Uh...” I began, trying to come up with a quick way to explain.

“Oh, right.” He let his hand fall. “I forgot. Simon Lee.”

“Mina Tanner.”

“So.” He straddled a stool and sat down. “Malik says you’re an accountant.”

“I am. But the job market’s not exactly booming right now.”

“So I hear. Well, if you want to pick up a handful of extra hours, you can help me out with this.” He reached down and hauled a dirty white binder up from somewhere below the bar. It bristled with unaligned printer paper and carbon copy receipts. He dropped it on the bar with a
thunk.

I looked at it out of the corner of my eye. It was stained, and the cover still had the factory issue insert describing its virtues.
Two Inch, Three Ring, Sturdy Plastic.

“Haven’t bothered keeping the books,” Simon said. “Not exactly your typical business, here.”

Even my Uncle Lionel, who had been an almost criminally negligent bookkeeper, had done a better job than this. The thing looked as if it hadn’t been touched in years. I lifted one edge gingerly.

“If you want me to make sense out of this,” I said, half-joking, “you aren’t paying me enough.” The speakeasy was strictly cash, and we recorded tabs on a white board behind the bar. The cash register was ancient, more like a glorified calculator with a drawer. It didn’t even print receipts. I knew everything had to be under the table, but I was pretty sure I could do better.