The Cloak's Shadow

by Elle Beauregard

Zander felt her brows furrow and her blood go cold. "No," she said, shaking her head. "No. You should pick Alyssa up in the morning and go get a hotel or something. You shouldn't stay here. Not until we have this finished." She couldn't stand the thought of her mom involved. Couldn't stand the thought of her mom seeing what she might have to see. Risking another person. Risking her mom's opinion of Callum. What if the Shadow attacked and inhabited him again? What if Zander had to fight him off? Her mom would never be able to separate Callum from the things she'd seen his body do. And, even worse, what if the Shadow made Callum attack her mom instead of her?

  No. It was all too much to even consider.

  "Are you kidding?" her mom replied. "I'm not going to abandon you to this."

  "You're not abandoning me," Zander said, speaking through the fire-pain in her throat. Forcing her voice to be firm. "I have Callum and Cecily on my side. But Alyssa's alone. She's staying at a friend's house. We thought it would just be one night." She shrugged when a lack of words and the searing pain in her throat wouldn't let her go on. She needed to change her and Callum's return flight tickets—not to mention call in sick to work. It was a weird thing to be thinking just then, but the thoughts came nonetheless.

  Her mom just stared at her for a moment. Her brows were furrowed like she was fighting with herself. Finally, she nodded. “Fine. But on one condition.”

  “Name it.” Anything to keep her and Alyssa as far away from this as possible. She hated that Cecily had to be involved, but at this point, that was unavoidable.

  “You let me give you some pain killers and you go back to bed. You look like hell and you sound worse.”

  Zander felt herself smile. “Deal. But I have to call in to work first.”

  Her throat was still stinging with needles of cold and the promise of relief when Zander opened the door to her bedroom. She’d been relieved to leave a voicemail for her boss when he didn’t answer. She had not relished the thought of having to talk to the guy. She was exhausted again, the hour and a half of talking to her mom having sapped her energy. Plus the pain killers she'd just swallowed would kick in soon—and then she'd be asleep whether she liked it or not. Might as well crawl into bed with Callum and enjoy the slumber.

  But when she stepped into the room, she stopped.

  Callum was sitting up in bed. On his lap was the notebook she kept on her nightstand. Scattered on the mattress around him were pages torn from the book, covered in scribbles she couldn’t make out in the dim light. .

  He looked up at the sound of the door as she closed it behind her.

  "Hey," he said. "Sorry about your notebook." He began stacking the loose pages and stuffing them back into the cover. "I needed to write some shit down all of a sudden. I'll buy you another one."

  Zander stood for a moment, but ultimately shook off the pin pricks of dread tickling along the back of her neck. He'd been through a lot, a little strangeness was understandable. "It's no big deal," she said. "It wasn't anything more than a scratch pad anyway."

  He nodded but didn't look at her as he closed the cover on the book, the loose pages sticking out at random from within it.

  "You sure you're okay?" Zander asked.

  He looked up at her with a smile as he sat the book back on her bedside table. "Yeah, I'm good. Are you okay?"

  She nodded after a breath. "Yeah. Yeah, I'm good. I'll be better after another round of sleep."

  ⫷⫸⫷⫸⫷⫸

  Callum still looked like hell, Zander found herself thinking as she surreptitiously stared at him from across the room while she stirred her coffee later that afternoon. His shoulders were hunched, back rounded as he sat on the sofa. His hair was falling into his face and he didn't even try to flick it away like she'd seen him do so many times. It obscured the dark circles under his eyes.

  They'd slept all morning, but he looked like he hadn't slept in days.

  "Okay, new plan time," he said as he leaned forward, bracing his arms across his knees.

  Zander crossed from the kitchen to the living room, bringing her coffee cup along for the ride. She took a seat on the loveseat across from him. Cecily, curled up under a blanket on the club chair, gave her a glance as she sat down. She'd been relatively quiet and Zander couldn't be sure, but it seemed like Cecily had been watching Callum as closely as she had been.

  "I saw the veil," Zander said simply.

  Callum's brows furrowed.

  Cecily adjusted the way she was sitting, turning her body toward Zander. "That seems like a big deal."

  "When?" Callum cut in.

  "Last night," Zander replied, keeping it cryptic on purpose. "So I think—"

  "When last night?"

  "I don't know. What does it matter?" Zander replied, a little short in response to Callum's shortness. "Anyway, it was my veil—or cloak, or whatever. I think I can open it. I just have to figure out how."

  "Jesus fucking Christ," Callum growled, pressing the heels of his hands to his eyes. He leaned forward again, arms braced across his knees, like before. "Okay. So then here's the plan, you work on figuring out how to open it. Once you have that down, I let it inhabit me again. You come at me, open the cloak—and bam." He clapped his hands together once, then sat back into the cushions. "We've smoked the motherfucker."

  "No."

  Zander and Callum alike looked to Cecily.

  "No. You're not letting it inhabit you again," she said.

  "I agree," Zander replied, looking to Callum. "Too dangerous. We'll figure some—"

  "Fuck that," Callum shot off. "I'll tell you what's too dangerous, letting that Shadow walk around now that we've given it even more power. I know I sound like an asshole, but you better figure this cloak thing out quick 'cause we're on the clock now."

  Zander felt her hackles rise. She opened her mouth to respond, but Cecily cut her off:

  "You're not doing it," she said, resolute.

  "And what, you are?" Callum challenged. He sighed like he knew he was coming off harsh—but was having a hard time stopping. "You're not even runed. No. I've got this. I did it once, I can do it again."

  "Callum," Zander interjected. Where the hell was all this acid coming from?

  Cecily rose from her chair, the blanket that had been across her lap falling to the floor. "I didn't say I'd do it. But you're not doing it and that's final."

  "Excuse me?" Callum stood from his seat.

  When Zander looked to Callum again with the words to ask him what his problem was ready and waiting on her lips, she could see he was already asking himself the same thing. His fingers were pressed into his temples and his brows were furrowed like his head hurt.

  Zander looked to Cecily, then to Callum again. Callum's expression, behind the pain, was all challenge and who-do-you-think-you-are? But the look on Cecily's face was all business—she wasn't backing down.

  What the hell was going on here?

  "Don't make me do this," Cecily said to Callum, her tone a warning.

  What was she talking about? "Cissy, nobody's going to make you do anything—if Callum thinks he can handle it..." though, Zander had to admit, she wasn't sure she agreed.

  "Callum's mom lives in a mental institution," Cecily said, the words fast and hard. "She's psychotic because she did too much of this shit."

  One beat of silence, then, "What. The. Fuck."

  Zander looked to Callum. He looked like he'd just been kicked in the chest. Brows furrowed, his lips hung open.

  "I'm sorry," Cecily sighed. "Scott told me so I could—"

  "I gotta get outta here." Callum took off across the room on long strides.

  Rhia, who'd been watching the exchange as she laid on the floor at Cecily's feet, got up and followed at the same moment Zander saw where Callum's beeline was taking him.

  The front door slammed behind him a blink later, narrowly missing Rhia's tail as she slipped out with him.

  Zander stared at the door for another second. Then she turned to Cecily. "What the hell, Cecily?"
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  "I could have been smoother about that," she said, pulling her phone out from where she'd had it stashed in the chair. "Scott told me so I could watch out for Callum. I should warn him I just blew it."

  Wait, what? "Scott—like, Callum's brother?"

  Cecily looked up from her screen. "Yeah. I talked to him last night, remember?"

  No, she didn't remember. But what Cecily had said was playing on a loop in Zander's head—against the image of Callum scribbling in her notebook early that morning: She's psychotic...

  Zander knew Callum’s mother lived in a psychiatric hospital, that she was unstable. She'd never stopped to ask what disorder his mother had, or what had happened to put her there.

  A swell of something like dread rose in Zander's chest. She stood from the sofa. "Come with me."

  Cecily's expression turned questioning when she looked up from her phone, but she followed as Zander crossed the room and threw open her bedroom door. She went straight for the notebook on her nightstand. Loose pages fell from it as soon as she picked it up. Lifting the pages from where they'd landed on her bed, she turned them over in her hands and her blood turned cold.

  She hadn't been able to make-out what Callum had been drawing when she'd come back to bed early in the morning, but then she also hadn't tried very hard to see it then.

  They were shapes. Lines that branched and intersected. Some straight and angled, others organic and curvilinear.

  Zander started flipping through the pages, faster and faster. Every page the same: though the symbols varied, they were repeated over and over. Pages and pages of them.

  "What the hell...?"

  Zander looked up to see Cecily looking on with something like urgent question in her eyes.

  "He drew these," Zander said. "This morning, I got out of bed to talk to Mom for a while. When I came back, he was awake—and he'd been drawing these. I didn't see what they were—he stuffed them away as soon as I came in."

  Cecily took the short stack of papers from her and began flipping through them. "These look like runes," she said. "They're almost like the picture you texted Alyssa—but they're different." She consulted her phone for a moment, then turned it to Zander, the picture of the rune from Callum's chest on the screen.

  She was right. The drawings were reminiscent of that shape, but not the same.

  They stood silently. They didn't need to speak for Zander to know they were thinking the same thing. What if they'd broken him? What if Zander's plan had destroyed Callum's mind?

  Zander thought she might be sick. "What do we do?" she breathed.

  Cecily stared at the drawings for another breath, then she brought her phone back into her line of sight, the movement decisive. "We text a picture of these to Scott. It seems like he knows a lot about this stuff, maybe he's seen these symbols before."

  Okay. Yeah, that seemed like a good idea. Zander took the papers from Cecily and began spreading them out on the bed, choosing sheets so they could get a good variety of symbols into one shot.

  Cecily held her phone and began centering the picture—

  The sound of a barking, snarling dog outside stopped them both in their tracks.

  Zander looked to Cecily in time to see her gaze snap up.

  "Rhia," said Cecily.

  "Callum," said Zander at the same time.

  Cecily took off at a sprint from the room. Zander started after her but turned back at the last second to shove the pages back into the book, strangely loath to have Callum discover she'd been looking at them. Then she sped through the small living room, dashing for the front door Cecily had left open behind her. The change in Rhia's barks made Zander’s heart trip when she was just two fast strides from the door.

  She hit the landing less than a breath later and immediately, she found Callum.

  He was at the bottom of the stairs. He was gasping, standing with his hand braced against the building for support. He looked up, his eyes were blue—clear and bright—but a keening wail broke through Zander's relief before it could blossom.

  She followed the sound and her lungs constricted, knocking the wind from her chest and dilating the seconds into a slow drip terror.

  Cecily was lying on the stairs. Her dark hair had escaped its ponytail and fell in sheets over her hunched shoulders. She was writhing where she lay, her head cradled in her arms, turning back and forth, the movement strange and choppy. Rhia was on the stair below. Her head was low and a menacing growl slid between her bared teeth—even while her icy eyes held question, and a mewing whine accompanied the growl in turns.

  Time snapped back. Callum came darting up the stairs before Cecily could cry out again. Zander was racing down to meet him when Cecily's head shot up, her eyes freezing Zander where she stood.

  They were blank, the green muted and dead.

  "No." Zander looked to Callum, hoping to find reassurance there. Instead, she found unguarded pain and panic in his expression.

  "Nice try," the Shadow said in Cecily's twenty-two-year-old voice. She lurched upward, then she darted up the remaining steps with more speed than Zander knew was possible. She braced herself for the impact, throwing her arms out in front of her—but the contact never came.

  She opened her eyes, her hands still held in front of her. An opalescent sheen bent around her fingers.

  The cloak.

  Zander's eyes refocused, looking through the bending colors, to see Cecily struggling against the hold Callum had around her waist. But Callum wasn't looking at Cecily. He was staring at Zander, his brows furrowed and his lips parted in awe.

  He could see it too.

  Hope lit in Zander's chest. This was it, she thought, terror and excitement ringing under her skin.

  She closed her fingers and squeezed her eyes shut. Then she swept her hands apart—and pulled the cloak aside.

  A force hit Zander in the chest, rocking her back on her heels and sending a frozen starburst exploding outward from her ribs. She gasped just before a second impact knocked the wind from her. Eyes shooting open, she wrapped her arms around her sister and followed her to the ground, cradling her when her knees went slack just as Callum’s had done when the Shadow had left him the night before.

  “Is it gone?” she called, looking up, wild eyes searching for Callum. “Callum? Is it gone?”

  “Yeah, it’s gone.”

  Her eyes landed on him. He was still standing on the stairs, leaning on the railing for support.

  Zander felt Cecily's muscles constrict and a familiar tremor run under her skin before she could respond.

  But that was a good sign, Zander told herself. If she was shivering, the Shadow wasn’t in there with her anymore. Still, the memory of Callum shaking in that shower, knowing that's what Cecily was in for made her panic. She looked up, frantic, ready to tell Callum to go start the shower—but she stopped short.

  A man was standing beside her.

  Not Callum. Someone else.

  She recognized him vaguely. She'd seen him before, but she didn't know him. He was tall, his skin a light brown, his hair shades darker. He looked at Cecily like he knew her very well.

  "It's okay," he said. Then he reached and touched Cecily's arm.

  Cecily’s breath changed. She inhaled deep, her eyes fluttering, but before Zander could ask him what in the hell he was doing, Cecily's muscles began to relax. The tremors slowed, then disappeared.

  Stunned, Zander watched as a shadowed, double image rose from Cecily's skin. Then it, too, disappeared, like sand blown from the palm of her hand.

  A deep kind of relief settling in her chest, Zander looked to the man again. Then to Callum, who seemed as surprised as she was, halfway up the flight of stairs.

  A dark double image stood against his skin, like the one Zander had just seen leave Cecily.

  "What is that?” Zander asked.

  “I think it’s what the Shadow leaves behind,” the boy said.

  Zander watched the boy walk toward Callum. He stretched out a hand an
d, at first, Callum shied away. But then, like correcting the instinct, he settled back again and brought his arm up to the boy's touch.

  Immediately, the shadowed mask left Callum's body, blown away on a breeze that skated through the covered front patio. Zander watched as he drew a deep breath. His gaze landed on her and he blinked like the sun was in his eyes, but still his face held on to its awed expression.

  “You’re so bright.”

  Zander looked down to Cecily, lying in her arms, staring up at her with squinting eyes like she was staring at the sun. "You’re like a spotlight," she said.

  "She’s right. You gotta close the veil," Callum said.

  Cecily nodded in agreement. She began to push herself up, to sit on her own as the man returned to kneel by her side.

  "Who are you?" Zander asked him. Why had he helped them?

  "I'll explain," Cecily said before he could respond.

  "But you gotta close the veil first," Callum added. He was still holding onto the railing like it was holding him upright.

  Zander nodded. She gave the man one last look, unable to keep herself from doing it. He was her age, maybe younger—maybe Cecily’s age. "Thank you," Zander said.

  "Anytime," he replied. Then smiled a cocky, playful smile. "Well, hopefully not too soon or anything."

  Zander didn't know what to say.

  Was this going to be her sister’s life now? Was she always going to be running from spirits trying to hurt her?

  She didn’t have any answers so she smiled and, with a breath, let the gossamer colors fall around her again. She’d been unaware of the effort it had taken to keep the cloak open, but as soon as she intended it closed, it slipped into place like it had never moved at all. It had a weight she’d never noticed before, a weight that dissipated as quickly as she felt it, taking the opalescent colors with it.

  The man who had helped them disappeared with the colors.

  ⫷⫸⫷⫸⫷⫸

  “I can’t keep my eyes open.”

  “That’s normal,” Callum replied.

  Zander trailed behind Callum who had Cecily’s arm looped over his shoulder, all but carrying her back into the apartment and toward her bed. She was having a hard time believing it was over.