The Cloak's Shadow

by Elle Beauregard

“It sure as hell did,” Callum replied. "Where is your sigil?"

  "It's right here—" but she stopped short when she looked at her arm. It had faded. The ink must have bled in the shower. "Oh shit. I didn't realize—"

  A hard shiver ran up her spine. Cecily folded her arms over herself and she looked up at Callum whose expression softened.

  He reached for her shoulder and turned, angling them toward the stairs. "There it is. I was wondering when the shivering was gonna start."

  "What's wrong with me?" She could hardly get the words out for how hard her teeth were chattering. She was freezing cold, but the shivering was more than that. Like her joints might rattle apart with the shaking. It was the same way she'd felt after she'd fainted at work—only this felt even worse.

  "You just survived a partial intrusion; welcome to the other side of it," he said, walking them toward the stairs with an arm tucked protectively over her shoulders. "Let's get upstairs. You're wide open down here without a sigil, and you need some blankets. Maybe a hot shower."

  Where was Trey? Cecily went to look behind them but Callum's hold, while not tight, wouldn't let her easily turn.

  She stepped back, ducking out from under Callum's arm and hugging herself tighter when leaving the warmth of his side made the shivers even worse.

  Callum stopped and turned back, giving her a questioning look.

  "I'll meet you upstairs in a minute," Cecily ground out between tremors.

  His expression turned incredulous. "Are you nuts? Even if you like to shiver until your teeth crack, you're wide open down here. That Shadow comes back and you’re in the freezer all over again, only worse this time."

  Cecily battled with herself, her desire to stay with Trevor warring with her fear of the Shadow and the horrible things it could do. She was becoming more and more certain as the minutes passed that Callum had put himself between her and the Shadow—had shielded her from its attempt to enter her body, to take control. And if those seconds of bottomless black abyss, devoid of warmth or joy, light, or sound were still only the edge of what an intrusion was like—well, she couldn't even pretend to be brave in the face of that.

  Sighing with defeat, she threw a glance around them, hoping to catch a glimpse of Trey, hoping she could at least see him before going back upstairs. She wanted him to know she was okay, as much as she wanted to know he was fine for herself.

  "I'm back here, Cissy."

  Cecily stopped. Trey was behind her. He'd been keeping out of sight, whether by coincidence or design, she couldn't be sure, but he wasn't out of sight now. Callum saw him. She knew it by the way his brow furrowed in question. The way his gaze flicked away, and back to her again.

  She turned around. Trey was standing some feet away. In his eyes she could see it, he was torn and confused, worried and frustrated.

  "I'll explain," she said simply through chattering teeth, stepping toward him without telling her feet to do it. "But I can't now."

  She fought against a tremor that shot up her spine, rattling her teeth and drawing her shoulders upward.

  Trey stepped closer. "Did that thing do this to you?" He brought a hand to her arm.

  Warmth spiraled into her skin. It diffused the freezing, settling in her belly like hot coffee on a cold day. Her muscles relaxed.

  She drew a breath. The shivering had stopped. "Did you just do that?"

  Trey looked likewise surprised as he pulled his hand away and looked at his own translucent fingers. "Yeah, I guess I did. I reached for you without thinking."

  It was incredible. There was no trace of the Shadow's freeze left in her.

  Trevor's gaze darted over her shoulder as he stepped closer. "Can he see me?"

  Smiling, Cecily nodded. It was resignation, chased by relief that ran through her. Callum was going to ask her about this—and she wasn’t going to lie to him. How could she? He’d just saved her life. "That's Callum," she said. "He came with Zander. I'm pretty sure he just saved me from the Shadow."

  She watched as Trey ticked a nod at Callum, but she didn't turn around to see if Callum returned the gesture.

  "Does he look mad?" she asked instead.

  Trey shook his head. "Nah. Curious. Maybe a little worried."

  "Yeah, I bet he's all those things." Cecily laughed under her breath, then sighed. If she’d had her choice, she wouldn’t have told Callum about Trey—not yet, at least—but she didn’t have a choice, and maybe that was better.

  Rhia trotted by looking very satisfied. She glanced at Trevor and made a gentle snuffling sound as she passed, presumably on her way to Callum.

  “And that’s Rhia,” Cecily said. “She can see you too. Anyway, I have to go. But when they leave, I'll be back, and I’ll tell you everything."

  Trey nodded. He took a step back. "I'll be here."

  "I know." Then she turned around.

  Callum was standing a few paces away, watching with a pensive expression and Rhia by his side. His hair had fallen into his eyes, and his arms were crossed over his chest.

  Well, now somebody knew her secret—or at least parts of it—and it happened to be somebody she barely knew. And somebody who was more than likely going to tell the person she'd hated keeping it from most. She knew that should be a relief; that the secret could end, that someone would do the dirty work of that hard conversation for her. But it wasn't. If Zander was going to find out, she wanted to be the one to tell her.

  She crossed the few steps between her and Callum, ticking a nod toward the stairs as she passed. "Let's go back upstairs."

  She heard Callum and Rhia follow her after a beat, but she didn't turn back until she got to the top of the stairs.

  She paused on the landing to give a cursory glance out into the parking lot and was unsurprised when she didn't see Trey standing where she'd left him, close to Zander as she was now.

  Unbidden, memories of what was probably a hundred times waiting for him on this landing rolled into her memory. She could see his red car pulling up, hear the engine and the crank of the emergency break as he pulled it. Could feel a shadow of the thrill that would well in her chest every time she skipped down those stairs to meet him. Smell the cleaner he used to keep the interior of his car sparkling clean: lemon and new car scent.

  All those things she would never see, never hear, or smell, or feel again.

  Her heart hurt. She was so tired of feeling sad.

  Callum quietly came up beside her. "You knew him." It wasn't a question.

  She nodded, her eyes stuck to the cement below, to the spot where his car had idled so many times, and the words slipped out, effortless, "I loved him."

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Callum let himself back into the apartment with Cecily on his heels. As if being woken up from post-sex sleep by Rhia pulling the blankets off of him hadn’t been enough of a kick-start for his heart, stepping between Zander’s youngest sister and the Shadow that had been trying to inhabit her had been like sprinting right into oncoming traffic. And then, seeing Cecily comfortably talking with a spirit, the connection between them so plain and easy—well that had been the final push to the finish line, hadn’t it?

  The thing was, he was pretty sure Cecily was serious when she said she loved that spirit—and not just infatuation-serious, but really. There was a tone and emotion to her voice he was surprised to find he recognized.

  "Okay, spill it," he said, voice low, turning around after hearing Cecily close the door behind them. "Who is that guy?" Or maybe ‘who was that guy' was more appropriate...

  She slowly crossed the room and sank into a chair at the dining table before looking at him. "His name is Trey—Trevor. He is...was...my boyfriend."

  Callum sighed. This was one of those times he wasn’t happy to have been right. "That's what I thought. That sucks, I'm sorry."

  She laughed a quiet chuckle under her breath. "Thanks."

  "Had you been together long?"

  "A couple of years."

  Callum pulled a whistle thr
ough his teeth. "Wow. That's something I'd have thought Zander would have mentioned when we started talking about you seeing dead people," he remarked. Then he sighed to himself, that joke had sounded way less insensitive when it had been in his head.

  "She doesn't know about him," Cecily said before he could apologize.

  Callum stopped. He looked at Cecily more closely. "She doesn't know about your boyfriend of two years?"

  Cecily shook her head. "Nobody does, actually. Well, except you, now."

  "Why?" he asked, confused and more than a little worried.

  "It’s a long story,” Cecily replied. “It wasn’t ever meant to stay a secret for so long.”

  He drew a deep breath and paused, looking at Cecily and making a decision he really hoped he wouldn't regret. "Okay, look," he said. "It's not my place to tell Zander about this unless she asks," though he couldn't think of a reason she would do that. "But you should tell her—and everyone else."

  Cecily grimaced. "Thanks. I will. Not now, but I will."

  "And not on your deathbed," Callum added. "That doesn't count. I mean, like, within in a couple of weeks. Got it?"

  She laughed, though it wasn’t a happy sound. He wished he could take that sadness away from her.

  "Got it," she agreed.

  Good. Callum hated secrets. There were too many in his life already out of sheer necessity; he didn't have room for more.

  Now that that was out of the way, "When he touched you," Callum began, "Trevor, I mean—when he touched you, he made you stop shivering."

  Cecily nodded with a shrug. "He did, yeah. How does that work?"

  Callum gave a shrug of his own. "Hell if I know." Seriously. He'd never seen that happen before. Not that he'd seen many peaceful spirits come to the aid of a medium in the aftermath of a botched intrusion.

  That was kind of a unique situation.

  Cecily looked surprised, her eyebrows rising above her green eyes. "Did I just discover something you didn't already know?"

  Callum gave a laugh. "Basically, yeah."

  "Nice!" Then she leaned toward him. "So how does the rest of it work? What you know of it, at least."

  "Shouldn't you go back to bed?" Callum asked in response. Him too, for that matter.

  "It's morning." She ticked a nod toward the window.

  He followed her gaze to see that, indeed, the sky outside was no longer black but a deep, ever-lightening blue. He sighed and pulled out the chair across the table from her. "So it is. What do you want to know?"

  "How does Zander keep spirits from being able to find us?"

  As though Cecily had summoned her, they both looked up to the sound of Zander's bedroom door opening. She was wearing a pair of sweats and one of Callum's t-shirts, but she might as well have been wearing lingerie as far as Callum was concerned.

  Damn, he wasn't sure there was anything sexier than the sight of her in his tee.

  "It's six in the morning," she said, her voice quiet and low with sleep. "What are you doing up?"

  "I couldn't sleep," Cecily replied.

  "And it's eight in the morning to me," Callum added. Not that that would have actually mattered given how little sleep he'd gotten over the last few days.

  Zander considered that for a second and nodded. "Fair enough. That's probably why I'm awake too. Damn time zones."

  "Callum was just about to explain how your anti-spirit mojo works," Cecily said, pushing the chair next to hers out from the table so Zander could sit down.

  "Excellent," Zander said. "But first, coffee."

  ⫷⫸⫷⫸⫷⫸

  Callum watched as Cecily appeared from her bedroom holding a small, white lamp with a blue and white polka-dot lampshade.

  "Perfect," he said as she handed it to him. He sat it on the table while Cecily went about plugging the thing in. Then he turned and picked up a thin, white dish towel he'd seen lying on the pass-through to the kitchen. When he turned back, the lamp shown with a soft light, the white polka-dots in gentle contrast to the aqua color around them.

  "Okay." He looked to Zander, holding her steaming cup of coffee, and looking more alert with each sip. Then to Cecily, who was settling back in after helping collect the visual aids for this little lesson he was about to impart. He'd used a t-shirt instead of a dish towel the only other time he'd done this—when he explained everything to Scott, years ago—and the lamp shade hadn't had polka-dots then, but this was just as good. Maybe better. In any case, Scott had gotten it easily enough, so the general idea was sound.

  It was the same basic explanation Callum's mom had used when he'd been six or seven and had started asking questions. They hadn't had a lamp to use, but she'd drawn the whole thing out on a pad of paper they'd found in the motel room.

  Callum pointed to the lamp. "Think of the lamp as our side." He motioned to the air around the lamp, drawing a circle around it with his hand. "And the space around it as the other side."

  "So we're viewing the lamp—our side—as if we're on the spirit's side?" Zander surmised.

  He pointed to her. "Exactly."

  "Got it." She took another sip of coffee.

  "The lampshade represents all the people on the living side," he went on. Now for the part where the polka-dots were a value-add, "The blue parts are all the normal people—the white parts are sensitives."

  "Like us?" Cecily chimed in.

  "No. We're mediums—I'll get to us in a second," he replied. "Sensitives are people who have had a supernatural experience, or maybe they can remember being contacted by a deceased loved one, but they aren't a conduit between the two sides. Does that make sense?"

  "Totally," Cecily and Zander said together.

  "And this," he continued, lifting the dish towel and placing it over the shade, blurring the dots and dimming the light, "is the veil that separates our side from the other."

  "It's harder to tell the sensitives and the normal people apart now," Cecily observed, leaning forward.

  "But not impossible," Callum added. Then he thought of something. "How much do you care about this lampshade?"

  Cecily's expression turned questioning. "Not at all."

  "Cool. I'll give you ten bucks so you can buy another." Callum leaned and grabbed the pair of scissors he'd seen on the far end of the counter, standing on end in a cup of pencils and pens. Opening the blades, he slowly drove one of the tips through the towel and the shade, then again, until two small holes were visible and bright, side by side.

  He looked to Cecily. "These holes are you and me. There is no veil for us. Make sense?"

  Cecily blinked, eyes bright with understanding. She nodded.

  “We are basically walking holes in the veil,” he went on. “Well, maybe not holes. More like doors. Regardless, our light attracts spirits—and less happy things, like Shadows.”

  “Why?” Cecily asked. “And light? Like, actual light?”

  Callum gave a nod. “Actual light, yeah. At least that’s how spirits describe it all the time. As for why it attracts them, I don’t know. You’d have to ask a spirit.”

  Cecily looked away.

  “So are you constantly being stalked by this kind of shit?” Zander asked him.

  Callum shook his head. “No. I’ve encountered some really unhappy spirits before, sure, but this is a first. Shadows aren’t just walking around like normal spirits. They have to be summoned by someone.”

  "Who would summon something like that?" Cecily asked, brows high and expression full of shocked question.

  "There are some fucked up individuals out there," Zander chimed in with a shrug.

  "Usually somebody summons a Shadow thinking they can control it," Callum added. "Clearly whoever summoned this one wasn’t very successful at the controlling part."

  “Unless this is exactly what it was summoned to do,” Zander chimed in. “Maybe whoever summoned it is making it stalk the two of you.”

  “But why?” Callum asked. “I can’t think of anybody who’d want to do that. Can you?”


  They all thought for a second, but eventually Zander and Cecily both shook their heads. “Nobody who knows us knows we know you,” Zander said. “So no, that doesn’t make sense.”

  Cecily gave a nod that devolved into a head shake.

  "Well, regardless of how it got here, it's our job to stay in its way," Callum went on. "We have to keep the door closed in the veil and we have to make sure not to give it the power to open it. Which, to be honest, I haven’t been doing great with.”

  “What do you mean?” Cecily asked, looking worried.

  “If we acknowledge its presence, we give it power." He put his finger through one of the holes in the towel, stretching it wider. "So, looking at it, talking to it, even just actively fearing it gives it power. And each time, it presses the door open a little wider, steps through it a little more, until eventually it can impact its environment on our side..." He stretched the hole again, "...then begin trying to inhabit us..." He tore the fabric a little this time and threw a glance at Cecily.

  Her eyes were wide and wary, fear-laced concern evident in her brow and the set of her jaw.

  It was that expression that made him leave it at that instead of finishing the list with the truth. Eventually, if they let it, the Shadow would cross the threshold entirely—it would enter the living world and no longer require proximity to someone like the two of them to do whatever it wanted to whomever it saw fit. He didn't know what would happen next—and he didn't care to find out.

  There was a moment’s pause where Cecily appeared not to know what to say, and Callum was likewise uncertain. He didn't want to freak her out—but it was also hard to avoid. She needed the truth, but he reminded himself that didn't mean she needed all the details all at once, either.

  His own mom hadn't gone into this part the first time she'd given him this lesson. But it hadn't been applicable at the time—and he'd been a little kid. Cecily wasn't that young, and the topic was very pertinent right now.

  “It’s been here for days,” Cecily said. “I’ve looked at it. I was terrified of it. I made this worse, didn’t I?”

  Callum shook his head. “Of course you were terrified. You didn’t do anything wrong. Being scared didn’t help, but it didn’t hurt as much as what I did over the last week, trust me.”