The Shadow Society (16 page)

Anger flared across his face. Then it was gone, like every other trace of emotion he had ever shown me. “Nothing. But … don’t get your hopes up. It’ll take me a while to find anything out, and you might not like what I find. There are ways of getting around a classified file, especially in this case, because it’s strange for the IBI to arrest a child Shade. That’s one of the reasons the photograph caught my eye when I saw it in the database. People will remember that arrest. I can talk to some of the older agents in the Bureau, pull unclassified files from that year—”

“It was 1997. I don’t remember much else.”

“1997? You’re sure?”

I nodded.

“All right,” he said slowly. “This will take time. But I’ll do my best.”

The crazy thing was, everything that made me resent Conn was exactly what made me sure that his best was very good.

“Whatever you do,” I said, “don’t let a Shade catch you doing it. I’m pretty sure the Society is watching me, and I don’t want them to have any reason to connect me to you.”

“What do you mean, the Society is watching you?”

“I was followed by a Shade.”

“When?”

“Just before I got here.”

“And you’re telling me
now
?” He was instantly alert, his gaze skittering into the corners of the room.

“Don’t worry, the Shade’s not here.”

“You can’t know that,” he said. I watched his eyes transform the kitchen into a potential war zone. “Everything we said could have been heard. Everything.”

“Trust me,” I said, and explained how Shades cast shadows. “So some humans
could
see that Shades are there, even if they’re incorporeal. That’s what Orion said.”

“That’s incredible.” It took me a moment to realize that the sound in Conn’s voice was hope. “Why haven’t we heard of this before?”

I shrugged. “Maybe people doubt what they see. Maybe they think it’s a trick of the light.”

“But why some humans and not others?”

“I don’t know. You figure it out.”

He fell silent, and I realized it was warmer in the kitchen than in the rest of the house, and slightly damp, as if water had recently been boiled to make tea or pasta. Pencils lay on the table of a breakfast nook for four, and there was a toothbrush in a glass by the sink. In a barely noticeable way, Conn
had
been practically living here. I felt a flicker of a feeling I couldn’t name.

“Priming,” he said.

“What?” I was less startled by the word than by my discovery.

“Priming is a psychology term.” He caught my glance. “I’m trained in psychology. Agents have to be, for interrogation.”

Whatever emotion I’d been feeling withered. “Of course you do.”

“Priming is when the mind is prepared to understand something that would otherwise be too extraordinary to believe. Like interdimensional portals. Even if somebody in the Alter is standing by the Water Tower, he’s not going to stumble through that portal into our world. He won’t even see it, because he can’t conceive that it’s there. But if someone
told
him it was, or if his mind was otherwise primed for the possibility, he might see it. Maybe that’s how seeing the shadows works.”

“Like an optical illusion—the one everyone knows, that looks like a white goblet. Then someone tells you that, no, it’s really two black faces in profile, and suddenly they’re there.”

“Exactly.” He smiled. “This is valuable information, Darcy. Thank you.”

“Valuable enough for me to skip town and head back to Lakebrook, courtesy of the IBI?”

His smile grew smaller. “Not quite.”

“Then what is?”

“The exact location of the Sanctuary would be a good start.”

“Excuse me if I don’t leap at the chance to give the IBI the perfect site for a big bonfire. You’d wipe them out.”

He made an impatient noise. “We’re not monsters.”

“Really. What about the Great Fire?”

“What about it?”

“Humans killed every last Shade in my world.”

“Yes, in
your
world.”

“So if there’s a war,” I said, “humans started it.”

His expression was quickly growing angry. “It was more than a hundred years ago. Besides, you can’t possibly blame
this
Chicago for something that didn’t even happen here.”

“This Chicago is drooling after the Great Fire.”

His voice got dangerous. “Meaning?”

“You people are obsessed with it. You name streets after it. You make
art
out of it. Just because the Holocaust happened a long time ago in Europe doesn’t mean it’s okay for me to build a shrine to Hitler in my backyard.”

“Street signs.
Street signs
,” he hissed. “I forgive the Society, then. They murdered innocent people, but I forgive them, because now I understand that the street signs hurt their feelings.”

I leaned back against the window and felt the cold glass against my shoulder blades. “I will never tell you the location. I don’t trust you.”

It was as if I had slapped him. Honestly, if I had known I’d get that kind of reaction from those words I would have said them earlier.

He turned. Walked out of the kitchen. Walked down the hall, picking up the pace. Then straight out the front door, letting it slam behind him.

Without mentioning when or where we’d next meet.

The IBI deal, it seemed, was off.

Well, I wasn’t going to cry over it. As it happened, Conn had given
me
a piece of useful information, about portals. The IBI had never said
how
they’d send me back to my world, and they’d never claimed that only they could do it. It was stupid of me not to notice that before.

I’d find my own way home. In the meantime, I’d ask Orion if he knew anything about a five-year-old girl arrested in 1997.

I raised the hood of my coat and left the house.

There was no sign of Conn—and, really, that was for the best.

I headed north on Michigan Avenue, hugging my arms to me for warmth. I had a long walk ahead. One free of certain people and public transportation systems I despised.

The wind blew down the street, lifting a skeleton of ivy that trailed along a brick wall. It ruffled the tailcoat of a man walking toward me, the only other person on the street.

His footsteps quickened. His eyes darted to mine. I had just enough time to realize that my sunglasses were in my coat pocket and that I had forgotten the wig in the house when a gust of wind blew back my hood.

My black hair swirled in the air. The man stopped. Horror broke across his face.

I thought he would run.

And he did. Straight at me.

He slammed into my chest and caught me by the throat before I could fall.

25

“Murderer!” he screamed. I scratched at his hands, trying to pry them from my throat, but he crushed harder. I couldn’t breathe.

I fell to my knees and he raged down at me, his words getting so cruel and dirty that I was grateful when the rushing sound in my ears drowned out his voice. Lights spattered across my vision and I felt his spit on my face. The shock of it overwhelmed me, and things were starting to go dark when something rammed into the man’s side and knocked him away.

Conn shoved him up against the brick wall, wrenched his arms behind his back, and cuffed him. The man struggled against the steel bracelets. He tried to break away as Conn hauled him to the nearest lamppost and chained him to it. “You traitor!” he howled at Conn, who stalked away.

Toward me. He knelt on the cold sidewalk and held my shoulders with hands that felt kind. Yet his face was furious. “Darcy—”

I shrank away. “I didn’t do it,” I croaked. “I couldn’t have killed anyone.”

“I know.”

I let him help me up and lead me down the street, far from the screaming man. “Why did he do that?” I wiped at the wetness on my cheeks, which could have been the man’s spit or my tears. “He doesn’t know me. He can’t know me.”

“That doesn’t matter.” Conn’s mouth pressed into a line so thin it looked like it could cut. “To most people, Shades are all alike. You’re all murderers.”

I was so dizzy and breathless that it was a full, long minute before I realized that Conn’s arm was warm around me. I stepped away.

“
Most
people,” he said. “Not me.” As gentle as his words seemed, hostility flared from his body like fire. He reached for me.

“Don’t.”

His hand fell. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine.”

“Well, I’m not.” He pressed his fingertips against his brow, hiding his face. I sensed the rage echoing behind his hands, even if I couldn’t see it anymore. He took a deep, deliberate breath. His hands fell away. “We don’t have much time,” he said. “I have to go back there and deal with
that
.” He tilted his head in the direction of the man. “Put this on.” He handed me my wig. “When I went back to the house and saw that you’d left, that you were gone, I…” He stopped. “If something had happened, it would have been my fault. I was stupid. I was”—he looked away—“unprofessional.”

I rubbed my throat. I couldn’t believe that
he
was the one acting like it hurt to talk.

He said, “If I hadn’t found you—”

“So is he another IBI agent?” I nodded at the man. “Like Michael? Did you pay him to do that?”

Conn didn’t speak. He looked stricken, which was nice to see. “You should go,” he said finally. “Meet me a week from this Thursday at the Jennie Twist Library, 118 Schiller Avenue, ten-forty a.m. Go to the third floor and browse for books. An IBI agent posing as a librarian will lead you to a private study room. I’ll see you on Thursday?”

I shrugged. “You will if you find out more about that photo.”

“I said you wouldn’t owe me anything for that, but I’ve changed my mind.”

Of course he had.

“You need to do something for me,” he said. “You need to learn how to ghost.”

*   *   *

A
S DAYS PASSED,
I should have been trying to meet Conn’s requirement, but I could only think about how much I missed food, which was nowhere to be found in the Sanctuary.

The bottles of water did their trick, I guess. I was never physically hungry. But I was full of longing. I wanted fries so hot they’d burn the roof of my mouth. Spaghetti wound tight around a fork. Crunchy cucumbers. Toasted bread with a slick coat of butter. A bowl of ice cream as I curled up on Marsha’s couch by the radiator.

When I asked Orion where they kept the real food, he said, “You mean human food.”

“I just want something that tastes good.”

He cocked one brow. “You don’t have to search far for that.”

“Orion.”

“Darcy.” He leaned against the large oak tree growing in the center of my new Sanctuary bedroom. It had been three days since I’d seen Conn.

“I’m serious.” I reached for the closest branch and began to climb. “It’s driving me crazy.” My foot slipped against the bark.

“I heard that,” Orion called from below. “You’re going to fall.” He almost sounded like he wished I would.

“I’m not worried.”

“Only because you think I’ll catch you.”

I snorted.

“I heard that, too,” he said.

I reached the top of the branches and surveyed my room with its shiny black marble floors. The large bed was draped with fine white linen, and lamps glowed from deeply set niches in the walls.

Orion appeared on a branch next to me. He lounged, swinging one foot in the air. “Why are you climbing this tree?”

“To make it rustle.”

“To make it rustle?”

“The Society’s given me this swanky room with a great big galloping tree growing out of the floor, and I can’t sleep at night because it’s too quiet. Trees
always
rustle, Orion. But there’s no wind here, no windows, not even a draft.”

“Hmm.” Orion’s midnight eyes grew thoughtful. “I understand. It’s hard to accept what humans have taken away from us. We can’t enjoy the world above—the trees, the sky—without feeling hunted, so we do our best to bring the world into our home. But you’re right. It’s not the same.”

Orion hadn’t understood, not really, or he would have realized that even though what I’d said was true, I’d also climbed the tree to place some distance between us. And now he was mere inches away.

“You only want food because you’re used to it,” Orion said. “And because you’re always in your body. If you were a ghost, you wouldn’t be hungry. That’s why we don’t bother keeping human food in the Sanctuary. It spoils, and we don’t need to eat often. So we drink IBI water.”

“Are you telling me the IBI never eats real food?” When Conn had given me that water in IBI headquarters, I’d thought it was supposed to be a quick fix, not a way of life.

I was right. “They use the water for military operations,” Orion said. He propped an elbow on the trunk and rested his temple against his fist. “It’s a recent invention of theirs, and a good one. We love stealing their supplies.”

“If I ghosted, how long could I go without food?”

“As long as you needed.” He paused. “I think you’re missing the point. When you ghost, your body ceases to exist, so
everything
that it does stops. You stop digesting food. You stop growing hair. You stop aging.”

I nearly fell out of the tree. “Are you saying that Shades live forever?”

“We can live a very long time.”

“So you could … put your body on pause, manifest ten years later, and still look exactly the same?”

“
You
could, too.”

This meant that no one in the Society was the age they seemed. It meant that age had no meaning. I clung hard to the tree trunk. This was disorienting. It made my brain feel like a planet that had been zapped with an antigravity beam. All my thoughts were soaring off the ground and crashing into each other. Some things were starting to make sense, though, like how Zephyr could be in charge of the Council when she looked like a college student. “How old is Zephyr?”

“I think she’s in her nineties.”

“What?”

“Ninety-seven? Ninety-eight? I can’t remember.”

“Wait. How old are
you
?” Orion looked my age, but for all I knew, he could be a grandfather.