by P. S. Newman
That, finally, prompted something approaching a smile. "I noticed. Thanks."
I grinned back. "Wow, two thank-yous in one day. I'm going to start taking them for granted."
A shadow crossed his face. The smile slipped away. "Don't ever take anything for granted." He stepped up to the edge once again, giving me his back. At least he was spooning up the ice cream. I added dinner to the list of things to bring him as I headed downstairs with my sword to find David and ask him where he kept his spare blankets.
Taylor's last words bounced around my mind like a rubber ball. Don't ever take anything for granted. A longing hit me, like homesickness, only deeper. Greyson. Hollowness spread from my chest through my body. If I didn't hear his voice right now, I would shrivel up like a prune. Maybe this was what being lovesick felt like. If so, it was aptly named. I did feel sick.
The house resounded with the buzz of the doorbell, breaking me out of my misery. I hurried to the foyer, where David was already peering at the five black-and-white screens that showed the security camera feeds. One of the cameras was filled by a woman's face. In the corner above her right eye stood 'front gate' in white digital letters. David was about to answer when I stopped him. "Let me."
I pressed the speaker button. "How can I help you?"
"This is Regina March from the KCW," the woman said. Her eyelids were heavily shadowed, her lips black on the black-and-white screen. I wondered what colors they really were. "I would like to speak to David Baptiste."
David shook his head.
"Miss March, this is a private residence," I told the reporter. "You better have a good reason for this house call or I will call the Neighborhood Watch and have you removed from the premises."
"I just want to ask Mr. Baptiste a few questions regarding the incident at the garage today. The one with his brother's assassination attempt."
David's jaws whitened with pressure. I took my finger off the button so she wouldn't hear what we said.
"She's only trying to get me to correct her," he whispered. "Bloody reporters. Don't tell her I'm here."
I pressed the button again. "I think I've made myself clear.”
“I understand,” she said, “but here’s my number.” She held a card up to the camera with a phone number printed on it: 424-444-222. She must have paid an arm and a leg to the provider to get such an easy number. I wondered if any of the people she harassed this way ever actually called her on it. “Contact me if you decide that you want to share your side of the story.”
“Good night, Miss March."
We watched the on-screen Miss March purse her black lips in frustration. She looked left and right, then back at the camera before finally turning away. Once she'd gotten further from the camera, we could make out a van with the KCW-logo on the hood. Miss March got in on the passenger side and the van backed away from the gate.
"Hollywood pests," David said. "Always hoping to get the latest exclusive scoop."
"I'm surprised there aren't more standing out there, to be honest."
His smile was weary. It was a rare sight to see David Baptiste tired. "Most know not to bother me. I've sued several of them over the years. They know I follow through on my threats. But Miss March has always been... persistent. She'll go to Sean next if she hasn't already been there."
"Shall I give him a heads-up?"
"I'll do it. The two of us need to talk media strategy concerning the matter anyway."
"Okay."
"By the way," David added, "I've set up a meeting with the SHAID chairmen for tomorrow at lunch, regarding Greyson. It would be great if you could come along and act as character witness and sponsor for him. Might help get everybody on our side."
"I thought you were going to be his sponsor."
“Calm down, I’ll be right next to you all the way. But you’re our biggest secret success and this is a very delicate situation. I think it would add extra weight if you sponsor him. Though you might have to tell them about the dream."
"I'll do it." Anything to make this one-in-a-million chance happen.
David beamed, showing off the dimples that so many women swooned over. "Great."
"I'll go check on Mr. Grumpy-Puss, bring him something to eat for dinner," I said. "Then maybe you should try to get some sleep. Taylor and I will keep watch."
David nodded. "Let's hope a persistent reporter is the only evil we have to ward off tonight."
My Dream-Study Journal
Case Report # 12
General Thoughts:
I told A.V. everything. She was surprised and reserved at first, but my demonstration (see details under Experiment Setup) impressed her. And she thinks I should keep up the experiments, to try to recreate shades that follow my orders, like E.. I feel so relieved to finally be able to talk to somebody about this. Somebody who gets it. She’s even going to help me. And she already did last night. We proved that the movie angle works! I got a first-rate Bagheera going, this time without my subconscious slipping an unwelcome nightmare alongside the intended shade. I was worried that might happen with E. being so far away last night.
Experiment Setup:
A.V. watched The Jungle Book with me in secret, after C. tucked me into bed. A.V. told me that this time as I fell asleep, I should picture the shade I wanted to manifest with a collar and a leash; one that would connect the shade to me, make me able to control it. As our meditation coach says at school, it’s all about visualization.
So I found my mantra (also A.V.’s suggestion), or maybe more of a poem to recite: Bagheera with the pretty red collar, listening to me, to me.
I whispered it to myself as I laid down in bed and turned off the lights, over and over. Bagheera with the pretty red collar…
Experiment Results:
I fell into a half-conscious dream of Mowgli’s black panther buddy sneaking through the jungle. I imagined/dreamed him entering a cave that turned into my closet. Then a dream-version of me went up to him and snapped a red collar around his neck. I counted down from ten to one and woke up. Bagheera sat beside my bed, wearing the collar. No nightmare. No noise. No fear. Full control. It was glorious.
A.V. was super impressed, too. She suggested I try how tight my hold was over him, so I started giving him commands.
He listened to my every thought. He fetched my socks out of a drawer and then put them back. He rolled on his back and let me rub his belly. He growled on command and was silent at a thought. He took my wrist gently between his fangs without grazing my skin.
A black panther shade, indulging my every whim. How fudging cool is that?!
I took off the collar and let him go at dawn before C. came to wake me and found him. I couldn't face the thought of E. unmaking him and A.V. didn’t protest. I know there's a potential danger for other people; he might scare someone; he might attack someone. I ordered him not to, but I don't know if my control is of the kind that will endure when I'm not in the immediate vicinity. But just as he would fight for me, so I must now at least give him a fighting chance.
They are not mindless beings.
Conclusion and Outlook:
Fudge-wad Louis dared me to watch Jurassic Park, a pre-Surge horror flick with dinosaurs. He keeps taunting me, even after I decked him. He calls me Ickle Bellakins. I hate him. But I'll show him. Tomorrow, I’ll quote the entire fudging movie to him.
I checked the movie’s rating: R-21. Under normal circumstances, I’d never watch it, but I made a black panther shade fetch my slippers! So my plan (A.V.’s idea, actually) is to take the dinosaur that scares me most in the movie and turn it into a shade that follows my every command.
Then we’ll see who’s afraid of monsters.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
“You don’t believe that this shade, your shade of a comic book figure, is a danger to the public?”
“No, Sir,” I said, gritting my teeth. David had prepared me for this question on the drive to this nondescript office building in Pasadena; SHAID’s unofficial head
quarters for their unofficial - meaning illegal - activities. Prepared as I was, I’d not expected Sean to be the one to ask it. “I believe him to be an asset, like myself.”
“How so? He hasn’t exactly kept a low profile.” Sean laced his fingers together in front of him in his ‘convince me’ gesture. The others - three more men, including David, and two women - watched me from their seats in their high-backed chairs, their expressions as blank as Sean’s. They looked like they had a lot of practice, though when I’d manifested two years ago and Cecelia had gone to David for help, there’d been no such inquisition in place. SHAID had been a fledgling organization and had only helped around ten shades integrate into society in secret. That number was somewhere beyond fifty today and systems had been put in place to ensure these highly illegal activities weren’t discovered. Systems like the sponsor interview.
I took a deep breath. It was up to me to convince them that I was a worthy sponsor for Greyson. I wouldn’t let Sean stand in my way. I looked each of them in the eyes. “You all know that I’m a shade.”
The chairmen all knew who and what I was, and about my power, even though not all of them had even been members of SHAID two years ago when they helped me set up a legit life for me. Nevertheless, I trusted them all to keep my secret, if only because it was theirs as much as mine. If I was found out, I would be eliminated and all the people who had helped me make a life would go to prison for a long time.
Mr. Edwards, the eldest chairman, was the first to nod. Once one of the greatest critics of shades, his change of heart had made the headlines. It wasn’t every day that the son of a rich oil tycoon saved himself from being lost at sea by manifesting the Coast Guard by his lost little dinghy. Edwards had applied for SHAID membership two days after his son’s rescue.
He wasn’t the one I needed to convince.
“You know my story. You know David brought me to SHAID two years ago,” I continued. “Since then, I’ve managed to meet all your requirements.” The ones they’d already had then and the ones that were added later. “I have a job with which I support myself. I’ve made social contacts. I haven’t broken any laws and I’m a well-adjusted, stable person without incidents of suspicious or erratic behavior of any kind.”
They glanced at each other. I raised my brows at David, who sat at the opposite end of the oval conference table. He gave me a reassuring nod. He’d been keeping quiet after he’d outlined the situation to his fellow chairmen at the beginning of the meeting. If it looked too much as if he were coaching my answers, the decision wouldn’t come out in Greyson’s favor. These were intelligent people. They wouldn’t be swayed by David, the youngest in their assembly, trying to convince them. This was my battle.
“Greyson is like me,” I plowed on. “He wants to help people. It’s in his nature to do so because that’s how I created him, as evident from my dream.”
A man in his early seventies, with steel-gray hair and piercing brown eyes, crossed his arms in front of his chest. He hadn’t moved for at least thirty minutes, listening with stoic patience to the tale of my dream, the questions posed to me by his colleagues, and my answers to them. “You didn’t create him to be your lover?”
Another question David had predicted. “It’s Kellerman you need to convince most of all,” he’d told me. “If he sees the value in my plan, in Greyson’s survival, he will lead the others’ opinions. But watch out; he can detect a lie a thousand miles against the storm. He’s worked with enough actors in his lifetime to know when he’s being told the truth or not.”
Now this living lie detector, one of the most revered movie directors of the last three decades, was frowning at me as if he couldn’t believe he was wasting his precious time with this tale of woe of a love-sick shade. I stood up straighter. “Being my lover isn’t his purpose. It’s to protect the helpless and innocent, which he has proved capable of more than once. He has saved the lives of at least eight people since he manifested.”
I locked eyes with Kellerman. Nobody knew why he had a pro-shade attitude. He’d never divulged the reason for his inclination to a media source. Even David didn’t know. The only thing shade-related that was known about him was that he hadn’t let the Surge stop him from making movies for more than six months. He produced and directed the first post-Surge movie in the world, which turned into the highest-grossing film to this day. People at the time had been starved for a few hours of entertainment and distraction. Nothing fazed this man. Few things could change his mind once set. I had to get him on my side on the first try.
“Like me, Greyson Deynar was manifested as a shade hunter,” I continued. “Like me, he has no obvious glitches. He is intelligent and stable.”
“Assuming the shade of a shade exists under the same conditions as the shade of a human,” Kellerman said. “Frankly, I’ve never even heard of a shade creating another shade before. We have no idea if the usual rules apply, especially considering the ‘usual rules’ are a fluid concept anyway.”
“Research on this issue is limited,” David agreed, surging to his feet. “But we have a team of dream specialists working on it. I took the liberty of contacting them.” He picked up a remote control from the middle of the conference table and pressed a button. A screen at the end of the room lit up. David hit a few keys on his laptop and the scan of an official-looking document with SHAID’s logo at the top appeared on the screen.
“As you can see, the lead scientist on the project confirmed that they have no reason to believe that the shades of shades are in any way different to shades of humans. That’s the gist of this paper. Of course, there hasn’t been enough substantial research done on the matter to confirm this. It’s difficult - and frankly illegal - to find eligible test subjects. Maybe Eden and this shade of hers can also help answer this question in future.”
“Putting aside the difficulties in making that happen without implicating all of us, that wasn’t your main idea, was it, David?” Kellerman said.
“No,” David agreed. “I believe Greyson Deynar could be the key to a wider acceptance of shades in society.”
“People are already calling him a hero,” Mrs. Peralta, a middle-aged CEO of a software company in Silicon Valley and one of the founding members of SHAID, interjected. Her reasons for being a shade advocate were well-known. A stranger’s shade saved her from a gang rape in her late twenties.
“That may be so,” Sean said, “but to harbor a shade is still illegal, even for us. And we’re in the public eye. If we openly sponsor this shade, hero or not, we all go to jail.”
“I have a plan to prevent that,” David said.
“Of course you do.” Sean's voice was dry.
“Let’s hear it,” Kellerman said.
“We show a video of Greyson asking for our help at the SHAID fundraiser in two nights. Sent to us by an anonymous source.”
Nobody moved. Eyes were wide, fixed on David in mute shock.
Except for Kellerman. His face lit up. “It’ll have to be non-traceable,” he said. “Nothing in or about it can connect back to us.”
“Precisely,” David agreed, “which is why I was hoping we could use your camera equipment from before the digital age.”
“You assume I have such equipment.” But a smile tugged at Kellerman’s lips. David had appealed not just to the usefulness of our endeavor, but to Kellerman’s passions.
David winked at me. We have him.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Cecelia called when I was heading to David's place for another night of guard duty.
“How are you?” she wanted to know. We hadn’t seen each other all day.
“Hoping tonight will be more productive than last.” After Taylor’s near breakdown and the reporter’s visit, nothing else exciting had happened the rest of the first night. The doppelgänger hadn’t taken the David-bait. I had the suspicion we were being too obvious in our quest to lure him into a trap.
“How’s Bella? And Aunt Vy?” I’d never gone a full day without see
ing either of them. Bella was probably having more nightmares than usual, as she always did when something upset her or when she felt abandoned.
“Coping,” Cecelia said. “Better than expected. No shades last night. Aunt Vy seems to have done the trick.”
“That’s good.” It was a tad surprising, but good. “Is she doing her meditations?”
“Yes, without a fight. You can call her, she should be home from school by now. I asked Ester to pick her up since I’m swamped at work.”
“Bella was okay with that?” The last time Cecelia had asked her cleaning lady to fetch her sister from school, Bella had thrown a hissy fit.
“Seemed to be. She’s been very helpful these past two days.”
No dreams and being helpful? Surprising and… suspicious. “I’ll have to ask Aunt Vy what her trick is.”
“Probably nothing we can replicate, though it would be interesting to know,” Cecelia agreed. “But there’s something else I need to talk to you about.”
“You have to bring Sean in for questioning in the murder case.” I’d been expecting it. The twelve hours she’d given me to find the doppelgänger were long over.
“I already have him in custody,” she said. “He wasn’t a happy camper. But I convinced him that his cooperation would ensure his fastest release. As would yours.”
“My cooperation?”
“I need to get your statement about your involvement in this murder case. I’m on my way over to David's to meet you right now. You and Taylor both. He was the first shade hunter to confront the doppelgänger.”
“He’ll just love being questioned about it,” I warned. I had first-hand experience in questioning him about his cases, after all.
“He’ll tell me what I need to know,” Cecelia said. “They always do.”
“Would it be possible for me to listen in on that conversation?”
“I don’t see why not. Neither of you are suspects. All I need is your statements, which is why you don’t have to come to the precinct. Can I ask why this interest?”
