The Shadow Society (26 page)

“It runs on magnetic energy.”

“Of course it does. You’ll handle that, then. In the meantime, chop the eggplant into one-inch cubes and salt them. I’ll be mixing paints.”

Conn humbly accepted his servitude. I fetched the palette and turpentine, then pulled the stool up to the table, where I squeezed oils out of their tubes and onto the thin platter of the palette. I blended colors, mixing in turpentine to thin the paint. The chemical tang cleared my head.

Conn stood in the kitchen at the bar, chopping. “How’d you learn to cook?” he asked.

“The house mothers at my group home taught me when I was about thirteen. They were really big on survival skills. Cooking. Cleaning. Doing laundry. Sewing buttons onto clothes. That kind of thing. Sounds very 1950s housewife, I know, but it was partly to give us something to
do
. Some of those girls had problems—serious problems, not like me—and they would go off the rails if they didn’t have chores and a structure to their lives. And those girls taught me some pretty useful skills, too.”

“Like what?”

“How to hotwire a car. Steal. Commit credit card fraud. Break into—or out of—locked buildings.”

Conn’s knife paused in mid-chop.

“Relax, Officer.” I rolled my eyes. “I didn’t
do
that stuff. Er … most of it. But it’s good to have lots of tools in your toolbox, you know? In case sewing buttons can’t bust you out of an underground jail cell guarded by inhuman creatures.”

Conn gave me a narrow look. “Underground. So the Sanctuary is underground.”

I winced. I shouldn’t have let that slip. Conn could never know the location of the Sanctuary, because as much as I wanted to trust him completely, I couldn’t. Not only because he had once betrayed me. I now knew that Conn had an honorable streak in him a mile wide, and if he decided that giving the location to the IBI and helping them mount an assault on the Sanctuary was the Right Thing to Do, he might choose that over any … attachment, or whatever, to me.

I used to be afraid of Conn. Now I was afraid of his Right Things.

“Don’t ask,” I told him. “I won’t tell you.”

There was a silence.

I broke it. I sailed right past any more discussion of the Sanctuary. “The house moms also wanted us to learn how to take care of ourselves,” I said, picking up the thread of our earlier conversation, “since when we turn eighteen, we’re on our own.”

Conn swept the eggplant into a bowl and doused the cubes with salt.

“Work the salt in with your fingers,” I told him. “Spread it evenly.”

He shook his head.

“What?” I said. “You
told
me to boss you around.”

“It’s not that. It’s just that the foster care system in the Alter sounds horrible.”

“
Our
system sounds horrible? What about yours? They
tattooed
you, like you were a member of a gang. The Orphan Crips, or something.”

“That’s for our own good.”

I spluttered.

“Really,” he said. “It’s to help bring runaways home. What happens to runaways? The same thing, in your world and mine. Abuse. Prostitution. Homelessness. Sometimes they get arrested, and then they claim they’ve got no one to take care of them, because they
feel
alone, and they’re too proud to admit that the state is their legal guardian.”

“Fine. That tattoo is great for runaways, but what about you? You’ve still got ink on your skin and I’m betting that O comes with a stigma.”

“I don’t mind.” Conn shrugged. “It stands for orphan. That’s what I am.”

“And in this world, you never had the chance to be anything but that.” I was getting angry on Conn’s behalf. “You said that adoption isn’t allowed here. So no family for you. Ever. Plus, they
made
you become an IBI agent. They took away your chances to be anything but what they wanted you to be. How can you possibly say that the DCFS is worse?”

Conn stabbed into a tomato. “When I graduated from the Academy, I had a career. When you turn eighteen, you’ll have a high school diploma and nowhere to live.”

That sounded stark and dire … and kind of mean, too. I inhaled sharply, ready to say something starker and direr and meaner. But then it occurred to me that maybe I already had, and that the resentment in Conn’s voice was
for
me. It seemed as much on my behalf as my anger had been for him.

I let out my breath. “You are massacring the tomatoes.”

He glanced down at the mess on the cutting board. “Oh. Sorry.”

“It doesn’t matter.” I turned back to the blobs of paint fanned out on my palette, which was starting to look like a flat, lopsided flower with multicolored petals. I gave Conn a few more culinary commands, and soon the pasta sauce was bubbling on the stove.

“Come here,” I said. “Sit on the bed.”

“The bed?”

“You have only one stool, and I need it.” I dragged the stool into the middle of the room, propped the canvas against it so that it served as an easel, and sat cross-legged in front of it on the floor, with a good view of Conn on the mattress when I peeked around the edge of the canvas.

“You should sit on the bed,” he said. “I’ll sit on the floor.”

“I like the floor. It’s good for my posture.”

“Your posture’s perfect.”

“Conn. Sit still.” I reached for a stub of charcoal.

“But—”

“I thought I was the one giving the orders tonight.”

“That was just for cooking.”

“I seem to recall that I offered to boss you around,
generally
, and you said, ‘please.’” I sketched the rough outlines of the portrait, my charcoal rasping against the canvas.

Conn leaned back on one elbow. The look he gave me was downright roguish. “All right. I’ll do whatever you say tonight.”

“Anything?”

“Anything. Except—”

“There’s always an
except
.”

“In exchange, I’d like for you to do one thing
I
ask of
you
.”

My charcoal skidded to a stop. “One thing?”

“One thing.”

“I’m not going to tell you where the Sanctuary is.”

“I’m not going to
ask
you where the Sanctuary is.”

I pushed the canvas aside so I could look Conn full in the face. “Then what is it?”

“I’ll tell you later.”

I narrowed my eyes. “You can’t make me do something if I don’t want to.”

“I know.”

“All right,” I said. “Deal.”

He smiled, and my charcoal leaped to the canvas to capture the curve of his cheek.

I pulled the canvas back in front of me so that he couldn’t see my face.

“So…” I heard him say. “What do I do for the portrait? Should I … I don’t know. Sit in a certain way?”

“No, just sit. You can move around for now. I’ll tell you when you can’t.” I traced the line of his neck, the shadow of his jaw, that tricky quirk of his broken nose. Straight brows, almond-shaped eyes. Sometimes I glanced up at him. My eyes always danced away first, back to the canvas and the other Conn coming to life underneath my fingertips.

Then I dipped my brush into pale gold and began to paint.

Thin washes of color, shining wetly on the canvas. Broad strokes. Shadows. The way the light shifts a color out of itself, back into itself, and then into something entirely new. I listened to the smooth slap of my brush and Conn’s quiet rustles as I fleshed out a face I almost didn’t recognize. And of course I didn’t, not yet, because I was only painting the base layer, so all I had then were vague shapes of color.

Conn and I were blanketed by a cozy kind of almost silence. The radiator hissed and clanked, the sauce simmered, and my brush swept over the canvas. I settled into a trance.

Then Conn asked, “Why are you painting the portrait in oils?”

My fingers paused. There were several ways to answer that question. I switched my brush for a thinner one, making a fuss over the selection, stalling for time.

“You could have chosen something else,” he said. “Acrylics, watercolors, Conté crayons.”

I teased, “You’ve been studying again, haven’t you?”

“Or fingerpaints. Why not fingerpaints?”

“You’re not a fingerpaints kind of person.”

“Hmm,” he mused. “But I’m the oils kind.”

“Oh, yes.”

“What does that mean? To you.”

I set down my brush and turned away from the canvas to look at him. I was arrested by his gaze, entranced by it as fully as painting entranced me. The words flowed out of me before I could stop them. “I used to be afraid of painting with oils. It’s risky. Easy to make a mistake, hard to correct it. They’re expensive—no, it’s more than that. They
feel
expensive, like I’m squeezing my blood out of those tubes. But when I see oil paintings by great artists I know that they felt that way, too, and that it was worth it.”

“Why?”

“Because it shines with light even when the paint is dry. It gleams like a jewel. It’s treasure.”

Conn eased himself off the bed. His lips parted.

Then we heard the distinct sound of sauce spattering onto the stove.

“Yikes.” I dashed into the kitchen, muffled my hand in a towel, and pulled the pan off the hot plate and onto the cutting board. I was grateful for the interruption. I felt a sharp certainty that that stupid oils speech was enough heart-on-sleeve wearing for the rest of the evening—for the rest of my life, even. “It’s too hot.”

Which wasn’t such a bad thing, since the steam from the sauce could be a plausible reason for the blush burning in my cheeks.

“Let me.” Conn fiddled around with some wacky-looking knobs on the stove and transferred the pan back to the hot plate. The sauce began bubbling again, but gently. “What now? I await your orders.” He smirked, and I was glad—glad that he was striking a lighthearted tone, glad that if I’d made a fool of myself he was overlooking it.

“Well.” I was still flustered. “Spices always go in last, but I didn’t see any dried spices in the cabinet, so—”

“Ah. I forgot.” He opened the refrigerator door and pulled out a bunch of basil tied with string.

“Shred it, all of it, and put it in the sauce. We’ll put the pasta on to boil, and eat in ten minutes.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“It’s a good time for a break, anyway. The paint needs to dry before I add the next layer.” Something made me add, “I’ve painted my friends with oils, too, you know. Lily and the boys.”

“Oh,” he said, and fell silent.

And stayed silent, even when he spooned the pasta and sauce onto two mismatched plates.

We both sat on the floor this time. The pasta was simple but perfect, and piping hot. I was so eager to eat that I burned my tongue. After two months of drinking water and stealing the occasional cinnamon roll, it was
amazing
to eat a real meal. To bite. To taste different flavors in my mouth. To swallow and feel heat radiating through me. “Mmm,” I said.

“It’s delicious. How did you do that?”

“
You
did it.”

His eyelids lowered in a skeptical, be-serious way. It was a little too scary, though, to be serious with Conn. Like talking about painting. Art is so much a part of who I am, so close to the very essence of me, that it always makes me show things I’m not sure I’m really ready to show.

But since I couldn’t think of any not-serious topic, I ate in silence, and so did he. When we finished, Conn took my empty plate, stacked it on his own, and tilted his head toward the canvas. “Back to work?”

I nodded. We settled again into our triangle: Conn, the canvas, and me.

I used a thinner brush this time, dabbing on paint with short strokes that made a
push-pat, push-pat
sound. Dark ochers filled out the planes beneath Conn’s cheekbones. A mix of blues and browns blurred into the hollows under his sleepless eyes. A touch of crimson brought out the warmth of his skin.

I had to use my finest brush for his lips, which were thin yet exquisitely defined. I held my breath for this part, trying to keep my hand steady, steady. Then I made the mistake of glancing at him. I had only meant to look once and look away, but I couldn’t. I was hypnotized by the memory of his mouth on mine.

My fingers shook, and the brush wavered across the canvas.

I swore.

“What’s wrong?” Conn asked.

“I made a mistake,” I growled. The painted line of the mouth had gone wrong, had sloped and wiggled. Frustrated, I rummaged through my box for a palette knife and used it to scrape paint off the canvas, clearing away as much as I could of my error.

Conn started to get up.

“No!” I said. “Don’t. I don’t want you to see.”

“Okay, but can I do something?”

“Of course not. What could you possibly—” I broke off. This wasn’t Conn’s fault. It was mine, for looking. Mine, for not looking away. Mine for trembling to my very core. I focused on the blotch on the canvas, trying to squeeze my feelings into something small, something I could easily hide. “Do you have a rag, or a shirt I can use?” I asked in a calmer tone. “Whatever you don’t mind me ruining.”

Conn went to the closet, swept aside a few hanging shirts, and tossed an IBI jacket onto the floor.

That startled me out of my anger. I raised one brow.

“I have others,” he said.

“It was the
way
you did it.”

He returned to the edge of the bed as I dipped the jacket sleeve into the can of turpentine, wrapped it around the end of my brush, and dabbed at my mistake.

He said, “I’m going to quit after New Year’s Eve.”

What was left of the wiggled line slowly faded. The mistake hadn’t been as bad as I’d feared, and I could blend what was left of it into the natural shadow at the corner of Conn’s mouth. Carefully, I said, “Are you really sure that you want to quit? It seems like this job has been important to you for a long time.”

He shrugged. “People change.”

“One thing’s for sure: you’re seriously slacking. You haven’t even asked me for my report.”

“Right.” He rubbed his eyes. “There was Kellford … and then, I guess I was just having a good time. I didn’t want to … pump you for information, and—”

“See? You’re slipping. Well, there are only two things you need to know: one, Meridian and her pals are training themselves to handle fire, and two, Zephyr, the leader of the Society, and most of the Shades have managed to quash terrorist plots against humans since Ravenswood, and they are going to demand full citizenship. Equal rights with humans.”