The Shadow Society (12 page)

A man strutted by in a fedora and striped suit, then skidded to a halt when he saw me. He shrieked. A few women in cloche hats were more composed, though they clutched each other and yelled for someone to call the IBI. I stood there, hoping that this was enough of a commotion, when a mob rounded the corner, carrying torches and calling me names.

It was almost as bad as high school.

I ran.

But I was running on empty. I didn’t get far. The mob cornered me in a blind alley. I wondered if Shades got last requests, and if someone would give me a cinnamon roll before going completely Spanish Inquisition and burning me at the stake.

Then I heard a pair of light feet land next to me.

It was a boy.

“You,” he said, “look like hell.”

20

“And suicidal,” he added. “Are you suicidal?”

Our eyes locked. We were the exact same height. We were almost the exact same everything. “Um, help?”

The mob hung back. Two Shades was maybe too much.

“Just ghost,” he told me.

Ghost. That was
my
word. “I can’t.”

“Really?” he said with amused curiosity. “Why not?”

“Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. Like
now
it doesn’t. Like
now
I could use your help.”

He looked at the crowd. They were backing off, muttering that they should probably wait for the IBI, though I knew that they had been ordered by Fitzgerald not to arrive at the scene. “Very well.” The Shade shrugged. “Shall we kill them all?”

Torches dropped to the ground. People shoved each other in their haste to run out of the alley. They were gone.

He chuckled. “My name is Orion. Who are you, and why are you playing cat and mouse? Or rather, why are you the mouse?”

“I’m Darcy Jones.”

He pulled a sour face.

“What?” I asked.

“That’s a human name.”

Now that we were alone and I wasn’t about to be barbecued, I had time to see that he wasn’t exactly my male mirror image, as I’d first thought. There were differences. Orion’s eyes titled up at the corners. My chin is pointy. But he wore what I always wore—simple black—and looking at him was like looking at myself from a stranger’s perspective. Slender frame. Hair like an oil slick. Winter skin.

Orion picked up the backpack that had dropped at my feet. He handed it to me.

“Thanks.” I unzipped the backpack and dragged out a blue wool coat with a large hood. It looked like it was going to snow.

“What else have you got in there?” He yanked back the bag and rummaged through it as I put on the coat. “A brown wig. Makeup. Sunglasses. Things to help you pass as a human. Where did you get them?”

“I stole them.”

“I don’t think you’re very bright, Darcyjones.” That’s how he said my name: in one big blur. “If you can’t ghost, why weren’t you wearing any of this? Or that?” He pointed at my coat as I tried to tuck my hair under the hood. “Of course the humans attacked you.”

Stupid Conn and his stupid plan. “I was trying to find you.”

“
Me?
Why?”

“Not you specifically. Someone like you.”

“Someone like me,” he repeated.

“I wanted to find a Shade. But invisibility makes it kind of hard to see you.”

“A fair point.”

“So my best hope was to make a screaming target of myself and catch a Shade’s interest.”

“Ah.” He returned my backpack. “That’s quite daring. Probably the swiftest solution. Not bad.”

Huh. Stupid Conn and his apparently not-so-stupid plan.

Orion tucked a stray lock of my hair into the hood.

I pulled away. Was he flirting? No more flirting. Ever. Look where it got me the last time.

“I can do that,” I said.

“You asked for help.” Then he glanced down at my burned hands and his smile vanished. “What happened to you?”

A snowflake touched my wrist and disappeared.

It came and went silently. I was silent, too. I hadn’t practiced this, how to tell Conn’s lies. But the snow helped. A snowfall softens all the hard noises and hard corners. It’s a natural liar. I saw the sky sprinkle down a hundred, a thousand little white lies, and decided that I didn’t owe Orion anything.

Okay, he
had
saved my life. But saving someone and knowing her are different things. I had my reasons for following Conn’s advice.

I needed time to decide if I even wanted to go home to Lakebrook. I needed information.

I also needed Conn’s photograph. It could be the key to my forgotten years.

So when Orion said, “Let’s walk. You can tell me all about it,” I was ready.

*   *   *

T
ALKING WITH
O
RION MEANT
talking to thin air. He strolled invisibly by my side while I muttered to myself like a crazy person. Every so often, I saw Orion’s fingers flash in and out of being. He nipped at my elbow, tugging me in one direction or another.

When I asked, he explained (with some surprise that I didn’t know already) that it was easy enough to make specific body parts appear and disappear, though harder to talk as a ghost.

“What about your clothes?” I asked.

There was a pause, then a wicked chuckle. “What
about
them?”

“They disappeared when you did.” That’s how it had worked for me, at Marsha’s house.

“When Shades ghost, we produce a kind of energy, like body heat. Anything small or light enough and in direct contact with our skin—such as clothes, or a book—comes along for the ride.”

“I assume your clothes will reappear, then, when you do.”

Another laugh. “I suppose so.”

It was snowing hard by the time he pulled me north along Clark Street, one of my favorite parts of Chicago. This was where (in my world) Lily and I stocked up on art supplies. Then we’d pile into a booth at the Melrose Diner with Jims and Raphael and order a huge plate of mozzarella sticks. We’d swear that the next time we took the train into the city we’d do something different. But we never did.

Orion’s Clark Street was too clean. The apartment buildings were all very nicey-nice. Even the fire escapes were painted in pastel colors, though the strange rail that ran along the buildings was left alone, just plain silver.

Orion led me into a park and under a cluster of trees. The bad weather seemed to have chased everyone inside, so we had the place to ourselves. By then, I had told Orion almost everything, aside from the kiss (which might actually cease to exist if I ignored it hard enough) and how I really got away from the IBI.

Orion appeared. “So you ghosted out of IBI headquarters? I thought you didn’t know how to do that.”

I remembered Marsha throwing the kitchen knife, and the fear that had crept over me while drawing the IBI building. “If I’m startled or scared or about to die I can do it.”

“Half an hour ago, you were being chased by humans. Weren’t you frightened then?”

“No.” I realized that this was somewhat true.

“They had torches.”

“Yeah, but after firecuffs and solitary, the torches seemed kind of charming.”

“The IBI put you in solitary confinement? You are a brave Shade, Darcyjones.”

“Just Darcy.” He looked at me quizzically. “Jones is my last name. You don’t have to say it all the time.” He was still confused. “Okay, I get it. Shades don’t have last names, do they? Still, don’t you spy on humans?”

“Of course.”

“Haven’t you ever noticed how they speak to one another? How they use names?”

“We study humans for self-defense. You’re talking about cultural habits. We don’t care about that. You’re home now, Darcy. You’re one of us. You need to learn what matters.”

“Am I home?” I looked around the park, and it hit me that it
wasn’t
a park. It was Graceland Cemetery. “You’re kidding.”

He brushed the snow off a marble grave slab and pried up one edge. It lifted like a hatch, revealing an underground tunnel. “After you.”

Give me some credit. I
did
consider the possibility that the underground tunnel wasn’t going to lead to a party with streamers and balloons and a big banner saying, “Welcome home, Darcy!” But I went down anyway.

I dropped about fifteen feet. The shock of hitting the packed earth below made me stumble and really dislike Orion, who landed as lightly as a cat. He had probably ghosted his way down most of the tunnel. Cheater.

He reached into a tangle of roots and must have flipped some kind of switch. The tunnel glowed with sudden light, illuminating a passageway where the earth merged into stone walls and floors.

“How do you get electricity down here?” I asked, peering down the tunnel. Yes, I was stalling. That fall had shaken some sense into my head, reminding me (now that it was too late, now that I was trapped in an underground Lair of Doom) that Shades were supposed to be mass murderers. Hadn’t Orion threatened to slaughter that angry mob?

But no, that had been a joke. Or a bluff. Or both.

Right?

I kept babbling. “Doesn’t the IBI notice power being sucked out of the city to a hole under Graceland Cemetery? You might as well set up a flashing sign saying ‘We’re here. Come and get us!’ over one of the mausoleums.”

“We use solar energy. Many of the gravestones absorb sunlight, and its energy is conducted, stored, and used here.” He paused.

The funny thing about being alone with someone who was maybe an Evildoer with a capital E is that, no matter how attractive he is (in a gaunt, French runway model kind of way), a pause isn’t just a pause. It’s a heavy, sharp weapon. “You look nervous,” he said.

“Me?”

“Is there something you’re not telling me?”

“Nope. Nothing.” Aside from planning to spy on you and report back to your enemy, whom I happen to hate.

“Perhaps I shouldn’t have brought you to the Sanctuary. This might go badly if you’re not ready yet. I can return you to the surface.”

“No. I’m … you’re right. I
am
nervous. There’s a lot I don’t know. About who I really am. How to act. You said it yourself: I need to learn what matters, as a Shade. I hope that everyone else will be as nice as you.”

That won me a warm look. Ah, flattery. How had I overlooked this very useful tool all my life?

Orion led the way down the tunnel. I followed, and stopped asking questions about how this place had been built. I didn’t need to. Orion had taken my question about electricity as an invitation to give an eager lecture about the Sanctuary, which was built in the nineteenth century. Its halls were made from Illinois limestone, he said, and its running water was pumped in from Lake Michigan.

The echoing tunnel flowed into a spiraling staircase that sucked us deeper into the earth as Orion explained that Shades had constructed the Sanctuary when their society began to change from a close-knit community based solely in Chicago to a nomadic collection of clans that traveled far and wide. “Different groups within the Society have different interests. We don’t always agree. Yet we have a common adversary, and a common history. These things will always bring us together, and the Sanctuary provides a home to all Shades, wherever they come from.”

The tunnel opened into a chamber with soaring ceilings. High up—maybe hundreds of feet high—arcades lined the walls. Passageways with balconies looped overhead, and I was so busy wondering if anybody up there was looking down at us that I didn’t notice the appearance of another Shade until I bumped into her.

“Idiot!” The young woman had tiny hands. Tiny or not, they felt pretty strong when she gave me a good shove. “Have you no manners? Orion, who
is
this filthy creature?”

“Well, it’s a very interesting story—”

“Get to the point.”

Orion described our meeting. “So you see, Darcy meant no disrespect. Of course she should have avoided physical contact with you, but she can’t ghost. She has lived in the Alter almost her entire life—”

“Then she is no proper Shade! What were you thinking, bringing her here?”

He paused. “I shouldn’t have to remind you that our law requires us to offer shelter to any Shade.”

“This matter should have been brought before the Council first. And it certainly will be.”

She vanished.

“The Council.” Orion sighed that kind of sigh that tells you that someone is totally screwed.

That someone being almost certainly me.

21

I had traded one prison for another.

It wasn’t long before Orion and I were surrounded by Shades. They flashed into being, their faces as pale as cold stars. No one laid a hand on me, but the threat in their eyes was clear, and Orion whispered that I should do as they said. This meant getting locked into a small cell with a narrow bed and a stockpile of bottled water.

“The water has a high caloric content,” Orion said as the other Shades shut the door behind them, throwing the lock. “And it’s full of electrolytes, so—”

“Let me guess. It’s essentially a full meal.”

“I’m sorry, Darcy. It’s against the spirit of the Society to imprison you like this. No Shade should be kept in a cage.”

Of course, most Shades
couldn’t
be imprisoned, not in any normal sense of the word. Which—I realized as I looked at the bolted door—meant that this room wasn’t designed to hold them.

It was a cell for humans.

“Take heart,” Orion said. “This is one of our nicer cells, and you won’t be here for long. I’ll plead your case with the Council.”

Then he disappeared.

There wasn’t much to the room, but I discovered that what I thought was a closet door actually led to a bathroom. I went weak-kneed at the thought of being clean. I stripped off my clothes, telling myself that things weren’t so bad, that I should take heart, like Orion said. Sure, being dragged to another dimension and finding out you’re not human is higher up on the scale of life-altering events than getting booted out by yet another set of foster parents. Maybe being in jail sucks a bit more than living in a group home. But I’d been through a lot. I could get through this.

Naked, I shivered. I looked down at this body that was mine and yet not at all what I’d thought it was. Then I saw my bruise.