Sweet Shadows (20 page)

With a tight grip on my things, I make my way to the water’s edge and slowly start to wade in. I knew the water was cold, but I had no idea how freezing it would feel to walk into it. Maybe it’s colder in this deeper end of the lake, or maybe my toes are just more sensitive than my hands. Either way, the shivers start before I’m even knee-deep.

As the water rises, I set the bundle on my head and try to stick close to the rock outcropping. The lakebed—all solid rock, of course—drops off quickly, and soon I can barely reach the bottom with my tiptoes. Jutting my chin up to keep my head and my bundle above water, I start to dog-paddle as I reach the end of the rock outcropping.

I pass the barrier and start swimming for the shore on the other side. I feel the first scrape of my toes on the rising bottom when something wraps around my ankle. I scream, but my shout turns into a gurgle as I get dragged under. Before I disappear beneath the surface, I heave my bundle as far toward the shore as I can, hoping to at least keep my clothes dry. With both arms free, I can concentrate on extricating my ankle from the iron grip of something that feels too much like a hand.

I dive under, reaching for my ankle. I wish I’d kept one of my daggers out instead of tying them both up with everything else in my bundle. I try to claw at whatever is pulling me, but the downward momentum and my natural buoyancy keep the hand just out of reach.

I feel the water pressure change as I’m dragged deeper and deeper. The lungful of air in my chest is running out of oxygen. Primal instinct starts forcing air out, trying to compel me to take another breath. The survival core of my brain doesn’t realize that there is no air out there, only water.

The last whoosh of air escapes. I’m out of time. And to think, moments ago I was worried about going days without water. Lack of oxygen will do the same trick in minutes.

Then, suddenly, I’m being yanked to the surface. The hand around my ankle holds on tight, but the creature it’s connected to gets pulled up with me. As we approach the surface, the hand releases, and I fly out of the water and out onto the rocky shore.

I suck in great gasping gulps of air, struggling to get oxygen back into my panicking bloodstream. My stomach heaves, rejecting the black water that it welcomed a short while ago.

I’m on my hands and knees, gasping and gagging, when a woman’s voice says, “What kind of fool goes wading into the Lake of the Dead?”

I look up and try to focus my blurry vision on the speaker, but my attention is drawn to a beautiful black horse standing a few feet away. It takes me a moment to realize that the reason I can tell the horse is black is that the single horn in the middle of its forehead is glowing like a ship’s lantern in the fog.

“No way,” I whisper, fighting off another coughing fit. “You’re a unicorn.”

The unicorn tilts its head to the side and gives me what can only be a bemused look. That’s the last thing I see before I black out.

W
hen Milo calls and asks if I want to go grab lunch somewhere, I almost put him off. Since Gretchen dived into the abyss just two days ago, I’ve been half crazed. I stayed up most of the last two nights working on my library archives search program—I call it the LASP—and then meeting Greer at first light to search the streets.

I’m exhausted and desperate, and those don’t seem like good things to throw into the mix between me and Milo.

“I’d love to go to lunch, Milo,” I say, “but—”

Before I can tell him I have to cancel our plans, Greer snatches the phone from my hand, clears her throat, and says, “I’m halfway across town. Can we meet in, say, twenty minutes?”

She sounded just like me.

I reach for my phone, but she jerks it out of reach.

“Greer!” I shout-whisper.

“Uh-huh,” she says, twisting to avoid my efforts at phone retrieval. “Okay, I’ll find it. Sounds perfect.”

She hangs up, hands my phone back, and says, “You’re welcome.”

“I’m welcome?”
Is she insane?
“I can’t go on a date. I have to keep looking for the oracle.”

“We’re covering the same ground,” she says. “I’ll keep searching while you have lunch with Milo. Consider this my penance for attending my tea committee meeting tomorrow afternoon.”

“I—I can’t.”

“You need to.” She looks me over. “How much sleep did you get last night?”

“I don’t know.” I shrug. “A few hours.”

“More like a couple of hours,” she guesses. “You look like the walking dead.”

“Great, all the more reason to go on a date.”

Greer walks over to the nearest car and sets her purse on the hood. She pulls out a small silk pouch. “That,” she says, “I can take care of.”

“This is a stupid idea,” I argue. “I’ll never be able to have a coherent conversation. I
shouldn’t
be able to. Greer, I need to keep searching.”

She holds my face between her palms and looks me straight in the eye. “Listen to me, Grace Whitfield. You are not a machine. You cannot operate on no sleep and, I imagine, no food.”

I feel my cheeks burn at the truth of her accusation. I was too rushed to grab even a granola bar for breakfast.

“If you run yourself into the dirt, you will be no good to Gretchen.” She releases me and grabs a silver tube out of the silk pouch. “Go on this date. Enjoy yourself. Flirt with the cute boy.” She pulls the top off the tube and twists the bottom, pushing a stick of skin-colored makeup out of the end. “When you’re done, you will be reenergized and we will meet back up and resume our searching.”

I sigh. Maybe it’s okay, maybe this is a good thing.

I relax and let Greer work her magic. Ten minutes later she pronounces my face ready for Milo. She unbuttons her lilac-colored cardigan, shrugs her way out of the sleeves, and hands it to me.

“Wear this over your …” She makes a face at my navy-blue
SAVE THE OCEANS
tee. “That thing.”

“You’re sure?” I ask her. “You don’t think this is selfish?”

“Of course it is,” she says. “But selfish isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It only means you take care of yourself, and you have to do that to be able to take care of others. Now, let’s get you to Crepetude.”

As I follow her to the bus stop, I wonder if I’m letting Gretchen down. Maybe Greer is right. Maybe I need this break to clear my mind, to get a fresh perspective. This could be just the thing to help me figure out what to do.

I only hope I’m not rationalizing so I can hang out with Milo.

Sitting across the table from Milo an hour later, pushing my half-eaten peanut-butter-and-jelly crepe around on the plate, the guilt hits me hard. I should be out hunting for Gretchen. Not that anything useful has come from our hunting, but it feels wrong to be on a date when I could be—should be—trying.

“Earth to Grace,” Milo says, a cautious smile on his adorable face. “You know they don’t give refunds for the part you don’t eat, so you might as well finish.”

I manage a weak smile. “I’m sorry,” I say. “I’m not very good company today.”

“You’re worried about something,” he says, pushing his empty plate aside and leaning forward over the table. “Want to talk about it?”

Oh how I wish I could. I think I would feel so much better if I could just blurt out,
I’m a monster-hunting descendant of Medusa and my sister has gone missing in the abyss!
My relief would last only half a second, though. Milo would think I’m insane, that I deserve to be dropped off at the nearest nut-house, never to be seen—or dated—again.

It’s funny how, just a couple of weeks ago, I thought I
was
going nuts. Some days I wish I was.

“No,” I say, forcing a smile. “I just have a lot on my mind.”

I pick up my fork and lift a bite of crepe to my mouth.

“Are you worried about Thane?” he asks. “He’s been gone almost a week.”

There’s that too.

I haven’t had much time to worry about Thane, what with my immortal ancestor getting kidnapped and my sister disappearing into another realm, but I know he can take care of himself. Gretchen can too, but Thane’s not fighting monsters in the abyss. He’s somewhere he can still text Mom every day so she doesn’t get suspicious. He’ll come back to me whole, and hopefully happy. I’m not even sure how Gretchen will make it back at all.

“Yeah, I am,” I say, because that’s something easy to talk about. “I miss him.”

I could really use my big brother right now, even if I can’t tell him what’s really going on. I could use his strong shoulder to lean on.

“Have you heard from him?”

“He’s texted me a couple of times.” I flip open the crepe with my fork and swirl it through the peanut-butter-and-jelly filling. “He texts Mom every night. She’s starting to get almost worried, but I’m doing what I can to keep her from suspecting anything.”

Milo picks up his paper placemat and folds it in half. “You don’t have any idea where he went? Is it somewhere in the city?”

“I honestly don’t know.” I watch as he folds and refolds the paper. “He might have gone back to our old hometown for all I know.”

The folds start to take shape, and I can tell Milo is making some kind of origami object.

“It’s nice that you worry about Thane,” he says. “Growing up, my sisters would have loved for me to disappear for a few days. They’d have divvied up my bathroom time like jackals.”

I can’t help a laugh. Maybe it’s a pressure release, but I’m picturing three girls—with dark curls like Milo’s—fighting over his precious time in the bathroom, and it just cracks me up. Milo starts laughing too, like it’s contagious. I’m grateful for the light moment.

“One time,” he says between laughs, “Maura snuck into my room and changed my alarm so she could have an extra fifteen minutes before school.”

“They sound ruthless,” I say. “Thane hardly uses the bathroom enough to count. He showers and brushes his teeth. Ten minutes max.” I glance down self-consciously at my jeans and tee and borrowed cardigan, acutely aware that my hair is in a ponytail and that if Greer hadn’t intervened, my face would be totally bare. “Besides, you can probably tell I’m not much of a primper.”

He shrugs, focusing on his origami folds. “You don’t need primping.”

My cheeks burn and I feel the compliment all over.

I mumble a quiet “Thanks” and we fall into a gentle silence, listening to the sounds of paper folding and the other diners chatting. His fingers move fast and light, folding here, tucking there. Then, with a quick pull, the mess of folds pops up into the shape of a unicorn.

“Wow!” I say, truly in awe of his skill. “That’s amazing.”

He pushes the unicorn across the table toward me. “It’s no big deal.”

“Where did you learn to do that?” I ask. I pick up the unicorn and study it, turning it around and over to see where the paper folds go.

“I was in a Japanese immersion kindergarten.”

“You speak Japanese?”

“Uh, no,” he says with a laugh. “The origami stuck. The language didn’t.”

“Well still,” I say, setting the unicorn on the table between us. “It’s pretty awesome.”

“Then I should probably ask you out again,” he says, giving me a quirky grin, “while you’re so impressed.”

I blush again.

“How about tomorrow after my soccer practice?” he suggests. “We could go for pizza.”

Tomorrow feels a long way away. Who knows what will have gone crazy—crazier—in my life by then.

But if I’ve realized anything in the last hour, it’s that Greer was right. This break was just what I needed to rejuvenate my energy. I feel refreshed and ready to hit the streets to find an oracle again.

Besides, Greer will be in her tea meeting until at least early afternoon. I might as well get a little more refresh time with Milo.

“Tomorrow sounds perfect,” I say. “It’s a date.”

Sitting on the bleachers above Milo’s soccer field, I hope the bright afternoon sunshine can burn away my despair. Three full days since Gretchen dived into the abyss, three days of searching the city with Greer, three nights of running my archives search and scouring the internet for anything—
anything
—that might help. And what do I have to show for my efforts?

Absolutely nothing.

To say I’m frustrated would be an overwhelming understatement.

So rather than scream like a crazy person in front of the Euclid High soccer team, I close my eyes and point my nose toward the sun. When a shadow blocks my light a few minutes later, I have a momentary panic attack that it might be another harpy.

Until Milo says, “Hey there.”

I open my eyes and smile. “Hi.”

“Ready to eat?” he asks. “I’m starved.”

“Me too.”

I grab my backpack and fall in step beside him as we head for the pizza place around the corner from the soccer field. I smile as I realize we’re both wearing Chuck Taylors. I knew we were a good match.

“What did you do this weekend?” he asks. “Other than have the most amazing crepe lunch ever.”

I laugh. “Oh, I kept myself busy.” Scouring the city for a mythological fortune-teller. The frustration is about to burst from me, so I decide to let it out in a manageable amount. “I’m working on this really impossible project. It’s taking up all my time and I feel like I’m not making any progress.”