The Cloak's Shadow

by Elle Beauregard

  Callum gave a low chuckle as he pushed himself up from the sofa. "Glad to know you like her." As if he hadn't already known.

  It was early evening. Too early for night-out crowds, but too late for the coming-home-from-work rush as he rode the foot ferry. He walked the ten blocks to Zander’s apartment with Rhia by his side, figuring he'd try there first. Then maybe the bar where they'd met, in case she'd been suckered into another co-worker happy hour.

  He hit the buzzer for her unit and waited for a response. Some moments later, with no answer, he turned and continued down the sidewalk for a few blocks. But a quick tour inside the bar revealed no Zander here either.

  Okay, so maybe this had been a stupid idea, he thought as he brought himself back out to the sidewalk. She had friends, a life. She was probably doing something other than the two things he'd ever see her do.

  The back of his neck warmed. Okay, he'd seen her do a hell of a lot more than two things.

  He thought of the way she'd looked pressed back against those bookshelves. Which made him think of the library.

  Huh. That was an idea.

  He looked down at Rhia. "One more stop. If she's not there, we'll go home. But we gotta go get the car first."

  Thirty minutes later, Callum was walking up the front pathway to the mansion-turned-library he and Zander had visited just a week prior.

  The trees that lined the walkway were just beginning their final turn toward full autumn colors, so though the light was fading, the landscape was painted in vibrant hues of orange and red. Callum made a mental note to mention the walkway to Scott, who loved color more than anybody Callum had ever known.

  Rhia's head drew to the left with a snuffing sound Callum recognized. He followed her gaze and wasn't surprised to see they weren't alone. The same woman who'd trailed him off and on throughout the day was beside him, as silent and unassuming as ever.

  "You again," he remarked absently.

  The spirit looked at him. Her eyes were green, hair long and light blond. She was very slightly built so when he'd first seen her this morning, he'd mistaken her for a child, but she wasn't. Her energy wasn't child-like—it was the somber mellow of someone who had gathered experience that surpassed the years they'd been living. It was easy to see she was probably about the same age he was, maybe in her late-twenties.

  "It's fine," he said when she didn't respond. "I'm not complaining."

  In fact, after so many days of the Shadow's oppressive presence, this quiet, kind spirit was a relief. Not only was her presence pleasant, but every second she was with him was proof the Shadow wasn't.

  Had he mentioned how glad he was to be rid of that thing?

  A moment later, Callum pulled open one of the heavy library doors and stepped into the hushed interior, welcomed by the cool brush of A/C against his humid-hot skin. Rhia's claws clicked gently against the wood floor as they ventured into the building, the spirit of the woman gliding soundlessly alongside.

  Callum paused long enough to tick a wave at the woman working at the front desk. The library employees knew him—and Rhia, by extension—but he liked to give them a heads up when he brought her with him in case another patron made a fuss about a dog in the library, especially since he'd left her service vest at home. Then he followed behind Rhia who appeared to know where she was going. She was either being her normal, confident self as she searched or she actually knew Zander was here. With no way to ask, Callum was left to follow her lead, which was fine. Rhia was usually right about these things.

  He followed only a few steps behind as she quietly made her way across the front room and entry way. She nosed into the sitting room, but ducked back out a breath later.

  "Is your dog lost?"

  "No. Well, maybe—" Callum caught himself, as surprised to hear the silent spirit speak as he was that he'd responded to her so easily. That wasn't usually his style.

  He sighed. "I'm not sure." But when he turned to give her a smile, she was gone.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Wow, there were a lot of people sitting in those pews, Wren thought as she placed her notes on the podium in front of her.

  Why had she agreed to do this again?

  She took a deep breath and glanced down into the front row where Bridgette's mom, Susan, smiled up at her; her eyes red but her smile real.

  The last three days had been a blur. Wren didn't remember Tuesday afternoon very well, like the memory had been recorded with a thick layer of Vaseline on the lens. She remembered standing and staring at the closed curtain until the nurses and the doctor had let her into the room. She remembered seeing Bridgette lying there, her eyes closed like she was sleeping, neatly tucked into the hospital gurney. Wren thought she remembered some of the nurses saying comforting things and telling her where to sit, but she couldn't be sure. She remembered Bridgette's parents arriving, though she couldn't say how much time had passed before they got there.

  Wren cleared her throat, forcing her thoughts away from that day, that hospital room. From the feeling of profound helplessness she was still having a hard time shaking.

  She'd helped Susan and Dennis plan this funeral. She'd designed the playlist of songs Bridgette would have wanted and managed everything internet-related, like the funeral announcement and notifying all of Bridgette's followers and friends on social media. She'd cooked lunches and dinners in Bridgette's parents’ home. She'd gone to the grocery store for them. She'd told Susan more than once that she wanted to help—she wanted to stay busy, and Bridgette would have wanted her to help them.

  How was this real? She'd asked herself that so many times over the last three days.

  Wren forced her lips to move and her voice to work when she realized she had been standing at the podium in silence for a beat too long to be comfortable.

  "Bridge and I used to joke—morbidly, I guess—that only incredible people ever seem to die," she began, flinching at that word, but smiling at the memory. "No one has anything bad to say about anybody in their eulogy, right?" she went on with a chuckle. "If you believe them all, every person who has ever passed away was the most loving, passionate, supportive person that anybody has ever known."

  That had always struck Wren as really stupid. Everyone was flawed, weren't they?

  "I told Bridgette once, that when I die, I wanted her to be honest at my funeral. I wanted her to tell everybody about the stupid stuff I've done. The stuff that really pissed her off, you know?" she said. "So, when I started to write this, that was my plan. But... I can't think of anything."

  Wren's throat hurt, but her eyes didn't burn.

  "The fact is Bridgette really was the most passionate, kindest, strongest person I've ever known," she went on after forcing a swallow down her throat. "And that's all I can think about now. That's what's honest."

  She looked out into the room full of people. Most were from Bridgette's family. Her immediate family, Wren knew well. She'd even met some of her aunts, uncles, and cousins in the two years they'd been together—though her extended family didn't know about the “together” part. She and Bridgette had kept that mostly to themselves.

  So, while all of these people in the audience loved Bridgette, it struck Wren suddenly, most of them weren't mourning the real person.

  Most of them were mourning a made-up version of her.

  A version lesser for being a lie.

  Wren fought to bring her thoughts back into the church once again—back to the eulogy she was delivering. She glanced down at her notes. When she brought her eyes back up, they caught on Bridgette's cardiologist—the doctor Wren used to work with—Doctor Mason. He smiled when she looked at him. It was a somber smile, but one of solidarity. One that said “I see you. I know how hard this is. And I know the real story.”

  Besides Bridgette's parents, he was the only one who did.

  All those people in those pews were her family—and almost none of them knew the real Bridgette.

  And it's not my job to introduce them to her, Wren ha
d told herself when the urge to do just that had hit her while she was writing the speech she was in the middle of giving.

  But now, as she stood there, pretending to be nothing more than Bridgette's best friend felt like a betrayal. It felt like a betrayal to everything they'd had together. To everything they'd planned and shared.

  "Bridgette was my best friend," Wren said, pressing on. But when she went to keep speaking, the next words written on the paper wouldn't come out from between her lips, like her voice knew they were a lie. A lie by omission, but a lie just the same.

  Bridgette was her best friend. And so much more than that.

  And Bridgette would have wanted them to know. In that moment, Wren knew Bridgette wouldn't want her to lie. Bridgette hadn’t ever meant to lie about it to begin with—there just hadn’t ever been a good time to tell the aunts and uncles she rarely saw.

  Wren expected the words to be harder to say. But they weren't. They slid out from between her teeth like they'd been waiting there all along.

  "She was the love of my life," Wren said.

  God, it felt so good to say.

  "And I was hers. I've never loved someone so much. I've never been loved so thoroughly. She's everything to me. And I'll miss her until I get to join her wherever lovers get to be together after they die."

  ⫷⫸⫷⫸⫷⫸

  Was it weird to drink wine at the funeral reception for someone who hadn't been allowed to drink when they'd been alive? Wren asked herself an hour later while she was sitting at a table alone.

  Odd, maybe, she decided. But not disrespectful. At least not disrespectful enough to make her stop doing it. Plus, she got the sense Bridgette wouldn't mind, so Wren took another sip of the bougie red wine in her glass.

  The friends and family at this funeral reception seemed to have one of two reactions to the eulogy Wren had delivered. On the one hand, she'd received many comments that it had been beautiful. The few doctors and handful of nurses in attendance, especially, had been kind and professionally supportive. Beyond those offerings of kindness, however, it had been stony silence from many of the other guests. Some had even left immediately after the service, though whether that was because of what Wren had revealed in her speech, she couldn't be certain.

  Movement caught her attention, and Wren looked up to see Susan taking the seat beside hers. Her smile was warm, though her eyes were still bloodshot. The redness made her green irises appear electric.

  "I thought this day would be easier," Susan said with a chuckle.

  "I thought it would be harder," Wren replied. She'd expected to be a wreck. Instead she was just... numb.

  "I love what you said," Susan said, then, her voice low. "About the two of you, I mean. I'm glad you said it. Not that my approval was necessary."

  Wren smiled, though it hurt some to do it. "I'm glad to know you aren't mad."

  "Of course not," Susan replied. "I'm so grateful she had you. Bridgette got to be in love because of you. I'll be forever grateful to you for that."

  Wren just stared at the woman sitting beside her.

  "She loved you so much," Susan went on. "She used to say that she loved you because you didn't hold back from her. You didn't ration your love. That was one of the things she hated most—when people kept their distance. She knew they didn't do it on purpose, but it broke her heart. You never did that. That's how I know you were the one for her."

  "She was the one for me," Wren replied quietly. It was impossible to ration her love for Bridgette. Even if she'd wanted to, she'd have never been able to manage it. Bridgette's love demanded love in return—Wren was powerless to stop her feelings for her, or lessen the depths of them. She only realized she was staring down at her hands when she saw Susan's hand cover her own fist, clenched in her lap.

  Wren looked up at the other woman, and words leapt out, "She was doing so well," she said. "She was doing better. I don't understand what happened."

  "She was very good at managing her symptoms," Susan replied, her smile soft and lined in a sad kind of understanding. "She refused to let any of it stop her. She was always that way—even when she was little."

  Wren felt the root of a chuckle take hold in her chest, but it withered before it could bloom. "We were going to travel. Did you know that?" she said. "One day, after her transplant, we were going to RV across the US."

  Susan's expression changed, her brows furrowing. Maybe Bridgette had never mentioned their one-day plans to her.

  "Maybe even renovate the RV as we went," Wren went on. Now she really did chuckle because it seemed so silly at this point. So far away.

  Impossible things usually felt that way, she supposed.

  "You said the two of you planned to travel, when?" Susan asked.

  "When she was better," Wren replied with a shrug. "Once she got a transplant. It was a little thing, but it was nice to plan for the future, ya know?"

  Susan drew a breath and when her brows furrowed again, her eyes were laced with pain. "Wren, Bridgette wasn't eligible for a transplant."

  Wren's gaze snapped to Susan's. "What?"

  Susan opened her mouth like she was about to begin speaking, then stopped and started again. "When the condition reemerged after her first transplant, when she was a kid," she said. "It made her ineligible for another heart." Her eyes narrowed, but not with suspicion or aggression; with concern. "I figured you knew that."

  Wren's throat was so dry she couldn't force herself to swallow. "That—" she started to argue. To say that was impossible. There was no way Bridgette wasn't eligible for a transplant. She'd have known that. They wouldn't have made all those plans. Wren would have seen that in her charts, years ago, when she'd been Bridgette's nurse.

  Wouldn't she have? Had she read that in her charts, years ago, and blocked it out?

  She couldn't be certain. Right then, Wren wasn't certain of anything. She couldn't even think enough to do anything but make an excuse, "It was just a stupid thing," she said instead. "Just something we talked about for fun. It wasn't real."

  ⫷⫸⫷⫸⫷⫸

  Wren pushed open the door to her apartment, dropped her purse just inside, shut and locked it behind her—and just stood there.

  It was cold.

  It had been unseasonably cool today. It had even rained. It had seemed fitting at the time, but now the cold apartment felt like a slap in the face. Like it was rubbing it in by being empty all day. Because it would always be empty when Wren was out.

  Because there was nobody else there.

  And there never would be.

  Because Bridgette was gone.

  Because it was always going to be that way. From this point on—but also because there was never a future where she survived. She was never going to have lived.

  And she knew.

  The rage came so fast and so hard, Wren couldn’t stop it. It was like a freight train, barreling through her chest, driving her forward.

  The candles on the bar top in the kitchen shattered like a glittering explosion when she swept them off the counter with a shrill yell.

  The stoneware plates in the sink sounded different when they exploded at her feet.

  Then across the apartment, where she threw the coat rack to the ground with a scream.

  To the bed, where she pulled the comforter from the mattress and snatched the pillows from the head. The pillow that still smelled like her. That Wren had found one of her hairs on just last night.

  She threw it to the ground, the anger overriding her want to hug it to her body so hard she would never breathe anything but that scent again.

  She snatched the flat sheet up and wrenched it off before throwing it to a pile on the floor.

  And stopped.

  There was a t-shirt there. On the bed.

  It was Bridgette's.

  Wren's legs got weak. Her head swam. She lowered herself to the floor, catching her upper body on the edge of the bed as a crest of loud, choking sobs pulled her under.

  She dissolved.
>
  ⫷⫸⫷⫸⫷⫸"Oh my god, you are such a slob!"

  Cecily was lying in her bed, feeling ill. She'd felt like hell since the episode at work on Monday. That was four days ago.

  The shivering—so hard her shoulders and chest had ached and her head had started to pound—had subsided some hours later, but left behind a greasy, sick kind of exhaustion. She'd been able to play the whole thing off as a virus so work would give her the days off and her family wouldn't worry, but she knew her illness had nothing to do with germs.

  The scene with the Shadow had been playing on a loop in her head. She could remember parts of it now. Like parts of it had been wiped from her memory when she fainted and were coming to the surface again. The feeling of the Shadow touching her had been a breath-stealing cold, then a rushing shock of frozen electricity speeding under her skin. Her eyes had gone dark in a claustrophobic blindness.

  She'd been sure, for one fraction of a heartbeat, that she was going to die.

  It had flown by, a fleeting thought, but in that moment, she'd never been more certain of anything. She was about to die.

  That part was as scary as all the rest of it put together.

  "Earth to Cissy! I know you're awake!"

  Cecily pried open an eye and gave Alyssa a questioning look. "I'm sorry, what?"

  Alyssa had her hands on her hips, her posture ten kinds of challenging. "I know you're sick or whatever, but you left all the cabinet doors open in our bathroom," she snapped. "I just smacked the hell out of my shin on the bottom drawer, which you also left open, thank you very much."

  Cecily pushed herself up in bed, her head gave a pang of discomfort with the effort. "Seriously? Does that sound like something I'd do?" she replied, her voice reedy.

  "Well, who did it then?" Alyssa challenged.

  Cecily could think of someone—or, more accurately, something. Her gaze flicked quickly to the corner above Alyssa's head where the Shadow was currently poised, waiting. She couldn't see its eyes, but she knew it was watching.