The Shadow Society (17 page)

“You look faint. Maybe we should climb down and have this conversation on solid ground.”

“Orion.”

“I’m nineteen.” He studied me. “Does that make you see me differently?”

My mind skipped back to something he’d said earlier. That I could look young longer, too. That I could prolong my life. That I— “Oh my God,” I said.
“How old am I?”

Orion shrugged. “Probably more or less the age you think you are. You were abandoned in the Alter as a child, and most children can’t control their shadows very well. They don’t have the training or attention span. But since you can’t remember your early childhood, we’ve no idea how much of your life, total, you’ve spent as a ghost. Nothing’s certain.”

I began to climb down from the tree. I was shaking. In the end, Orion did have to catch me. He was waiting at the bottom when I missed a branch.

“Told you so.” He set me on the bed, then stretched himself on the blanket, a black, sinuous line against the white. “There. Now don’t you feel better?”

I remained seated at the edge of the bed, but for once I didn’t move away from Orion, because I was suddenly grateful that he was there to hold on to. If I wanted.

Which, you know, I didn’t.

But I could.

“Every time I think I’ve gotten used to my new life, something
newer
happens,” I said.

“How old your body will be is a choice, Darcy. There are Shades like Zephyr who want to get as close to immortality as possible. They think a longer life means more wisdom, and that more wisdom means more power. But the body has its powers, too, and its own ways of being wise.

“I’ve spent”—he glanced down at himself—“perhaps two years total of my life as a ghost. Even brief minutes out of my body add up, eventually. But two years is nothing. I need to know how to live in my skin if I’m to be ready for whatever humans might try next. They attack us when they can. A few months ago, a Shade was burned to death in the streets by an angry mob.”

I knew the answer, but still I asked, “Why?”

“Why?” He gave a hard laugh. “Why
not
? Because he was there. Why were humans chasing
you
, the day we met?”

I would never get used to it. I’d never be able to believe that so many people wanted me dead. How terrible, to die. How worse, for my death to make someone happy. I touched the scar on my neck, and a memory almost quivered through me. Then it ebbed, and faded.

“Darcy.” Orion’s voice startled me. “Finding out what you can do is
good
news. The gift to ghost and manifest is your heritage. Do you realize how jealous humans would be if they knew?”

“They don’t?”

“They did, long ago in the Alter, and look where it got us. The Society has tried very hard in the past hundred or so years to hide this from humans. When we’re arrested, we give false names, false ages. Even if we’re voxed.”

With a sinking feeling, I realized that details I’d thought would be important about my photograph—like a name, an exact date—might be totally useless. It was as Orion said: nothing was certain. Unless Conn found out
why
I’d been arrested as a child, I’d get no closer to my past.

“How long can we live?” I asked.

“The oldest Shade in history died at almost two hundred. We don’t get sick, but the body wears out eventually.”

I gave him an incredulous look, which he misinterpreted as disappointment. “It’s not forever,” he said defensively, “but it’s a long time. You should be glad.”

His expression was growing troubled. The last thing I wanted was for him to think I wasn’t stoked about being a Shade, so I smiled at him, though inwardly I kicked myself for letting this conversation go the way it had. I’d meant to talk to Orion about interdimensional portals. Now I realized that I couldn’t do that without tipping him off to the fact that I wanted to lunge through one of them and head home. He was too sensitive to any hint that I was less than thrilled with Shadedom.

“Absolutely,” I said. “Humans are lame. They can have their spaghetti with pesto made from fresh basil with lots of Parmesan and pine nuts. Who needs it? I’d much rather be able to ghost when I want and live how I want, however long I want.”

“Bravo!”

“I bet you thought I was feeling sad or something, but—” I cast about for some kind of explanation and remembered how Orion had asked if learning his age had made me feel differently about him.

Insecurity. The realization was stunning. Orion, always confident, always outrageously flirty, had had a moment of insecurity. Because of how I might see him.

Because of
me
.

“I was worried that you think I look ancient,” I said. “Worn out. Damaged.” I showed him my hands. “I have these scars.”

He sat up and took my hands in his. “You don’t look worn out. You look like a warrior.”

Not exactly what every girl longs to hear.

I felt the strength in Orion’s long, thin hands and wondered if I dared to ask him what had been haunting me. Was it a safe question?

Was anything?

We used to sell Mexican jumping beans at the Jumping Bean Café. They were encased in plastic boxes, and hopped and danced like they were full of voodoo. They weren’t really alive, but something inside them was. A worm. A tiny parasite that had eaten its way to the center of each bean. When it moved, the bean jumped.

I had an idea. It had burrowed inside me like one of those worms.

“I want to ask you something,” I told Orion.

“You can ask me anything.”

“Could my disappearance from this world … my memory loss … could it have something to do with the Ravenswood Medical Center attack?”

He dropped my hands. “What do you know about Ravenswood?”

“I know it happened in 1997. I was five years old then. It was the year I was abandoned in the Alter.” It was also the year the IBI took my photograph. “Maybe it’s no coincidence.”

“Impossible.” He shook his head. “The Shades involved in that operation died.”

I remembered the sickening image splayed on the wall behind Fitzgerald. “So it happened. The Society really did it.”

“Of course we did. I don’t know much about Ravenswood, though. It happened when I was young, and many of the details are still cloaked in secrecy. Only a few people knew about the mission, and fewer still were directly involved.” He gave me a shrewd look. “Is your memory returning?”

“Maybe.” I couldn’t tell Orion that the parasite in my mind had the voice of the screaming man.
Murderer,
he had called me.

I had lied when I told Orion why I couldn’t sleep at night. It had nothing to do with the tree.

Murderer.

“I don’t want to talk about Ravenswood anymore,” I said. “I want to ask you a favor.”

“Yes?”

“Will you teach me how to ghost?”

Orion clapped his hands and laughed. “Finally!”

26

I’d been trying for hours, with no sign of success.

“No,” said Orion. “Don’t breathe. You’re supposed to stop everything. Your heart. The blood pumping in your veins. Even your breath.”

We were in a room on one of the upper floors of the Sanctuary, with wide windows overlooking the Great Hall many feet below. Orion had said it would be too distracting for him to practice in my bedroom.

“I can’t stop my heart from beating,” I said.

“You can. You simply don’t want to.”

“What I want is for you to stop nagging me. Stop giving stupid advice. You’re supposed to
help
.”

“And you’re not a child,” he said. “In fact, children are easier to train than you, because at least they’re thrilled to ghost. You act like your gift is a burden.”

Orion was infuriating. He was also right. I’d gotten better at telling lies, though my voice always sounded brittle to me, like my words would shatter upon impact. Yet members of the Council had believed me, and so did Orion. Still, I hadn’t figured out how to lie to myself.

I didn’t really want to ghost.

I know.
I
had asked Orion.
I
had asked for this, and not because Conn had ordered me to. It was because of that screaming man.

In my dreams he grabbed me over and over again. In my dreams I died.

Murderer
.

I used to think that at least I could rely on myself. That I was strong. Now I felt like someone with no control. Someone who fell out of trees. Who heard one word and was so paralyzed that she had to rely on the help of someone she hated.

This was Conn’s fault. That afternoon at Marsha’s house, he had broken something. Not only my trust in him. He had also broken my trust in myself.

“I thought learning how to ghost would make me feel stronger,” I told Orion. “But I can’t do this.”

“Of course you can. You
have
.”

A memory trembled inside me. I heard my father’s voice, rumbly deep, buried so far down in his chest that I wouldn’t have been able to find it even if I looked really hard.
You need to learn,
he told me.

I looked at Orion. I
had
ghosted. Not just recently. Also long ago, long before I’d seen the Alter.

But I’d never been any good at it.

“You don’t know how to control your shadow,” Orion said. “That’s all.”

“Okay.” I pressed a cold palm against my throbbing forehead. I tried to cling to the memory, yet it shredded and vanished. “
How
do I stop my heart?”

“You do it with what you have when your body’s gone. You do it with your mind. You do it with your soul.”

Pretty words. But they didn’t help me either.

Finally, when my headache was raging and I didn’t want to say so because Orion would tell me that if I ghosted, the pain would go away, I opened my eyes and looked around the room. Trunks were stacked against the black walls. “You said that this is a practice room. Practice for what?”

“Warfare.”

I opened a trunk. It was filled with short metal batons. I’d seen these before, strapped to the hips of the guards in the truck. “That’s IBI equipment. Those are flamethrowers. You brought
fire
into the Sanctuary?”

Orion shut the trunk. “Don’t touch that.”

“Orion.” I paused. “Did you follow me?”

“What?”

“The other day, when I left the Sanctuary to explore the city. Did you follow me?”

“Why would I do that? You said you wanted to go alone.”

“Well, someone followed me. I saw the shadow.”

Orion’s mouth pinched. “Contrary to what you might think, I don’t push myself where I’m not wanted.”

“I didn’t mean—” This was going badly. Ghosting was going nowhere, now Orion was pissed, and I had just seen evidence of weapons that the IBI would like to know more about—a
lot
more about. And Orion was clearly in no mood to be milked for information.

It occurred to me that I was going to have to find other Shades to make friends with.

“I’m sorry,” I told Orion. “I’m not thinking straight. My head really hurts.”

“If you ghosted—”

“Hey, maybe you can give me some advice,” I interrupted. “I want to get to know this Chicago, but the subway sucks.” I explained what had happened on the train. “The humans didn’t notice me, but I had no clue where to get off. I can’t walk everywhere, and until I learn how to ghost—”

“You will,” he said comfortingly, and I saw that if there was one thing he could understand, it was my frustration over not being able to control my shadow. “In the meantime, we’re going to the Archives.”

*   *   *

T
HE
A
RCHIVES WAS IN THE MOST
basementy part of the Sanctuary. It was a warehouse stacked with zillions of human objects—pots and pans, racks of clothes, umbrellas, wheelbarrows, knickknacks, bear traps, kayaks, and stuff stuff stuff, neatly labeled and arranged, stretching as far as the eye could see. It looked like a never-ending garage sale, and in front of it all was an elderly lady sitting at a desk.

“Oh.” She took off her glasses. She let them dangle from the beaded chain around her neck and looked straight at me. “It’s you.”

She was the Council member at my trial, the one who had called me a security risk.

“Her access here is restricted,” she told Orion. “
You
may come back another time, whenever you wish, so long as it’s without her.”

“You can only control her access because she can’t ghost,” said Orion. “You know perfectly well that any Shade can use any part of the Archives, if only because boxes and locks wouldn’t stop us. Your job is to keep human objects organized, Savannah, not deny Darcy her rights.”

She played with her glasses chain.

“We want to look at Section 7A,” said Orion. “That’s not a sensitive area.”

Savannah stood, stiffly. “I voted against you,” she told me.

“Surprise, surprise,” I said.

She sniffed. “Fine,” she said to Orion. “Follow me.”

Our footsteps echoed in the musty air as she led us past some contraptions that I couldn’t name but that Jims would probably go wild over. I half expected to see a rocket ship that delivered chocolate sauce propped next to machines that looked like they could either blow something up or vacuum out a car.

Finally, Savannah waved an irritated hand. “Section 7A.”

Bicycles. Rows and rows of bicycles with rusted chains and colored chrome and sleek racing bodies. I even spotted a unicycle.

“Wow,” I said.

“Pick one,” said Orion.

It took only seconds for me to find the perfect bike. It was flashy. A candy-apple red with orange rubber handlebars and spokes so shiny that the wheels looked like exploding stars. A few weeks ago, I never would have chosen this bike for myself. But Lily would have.

Orion followed my gaze. “It’s very bright.” He squinted. “Don’t you think you’d draw attention to yourself?”

“No. No, I don’t.” I knew he was right, but I couldn’t say that I needed that bike, that I loved it because Lily would love it, and I loved her. I couldn’t say anything he’d understand.

Savannah shrugged. “If you can get away with riding around Chicago on
that
, then what Orion claimed at your trial must be true: you can pass for a human like no other Shade. Maybe we
could
put her to good use.”