Shine

by Jeri Smith-Ready

  Decades ago MI-X had helped the Edgar Allan Poe Society keep this small brick home from being torn down, and in return, the society let MI-X use it as a short-term safe house. Ian had brought me and Zachary here that night to explain our sensitive security situation in private.

  In other words, to yell at us, like Simon was doing now.

  “In the future,” Simon said, “do nothing. No more investigating. No more spying.”

  “But I thought—”

  “No more thinking. Be a normal teenager.”

  I scowled. Had he forgotten he’d been a teen himself three years ago? “What about Nicola? You told me to get information out of her.”

  “Stop meeting with her for now, until we’re sure the DMP doesn’t suspect you were one of the trespassers.” Simon took off his glasses and squinted through them at the flickering wall sconce.

  I thought of the men in midnight-blue uniforms who’d chased us. “Have you ever heard of a group called ‘Nighthawk’?”

  Simon froze, staring at me, looking suddenly younger. “Of course I have. Why?”

  “SecuriLab may have hired them. They might’ve been there Friday night, but I’m not sure.”

  He said nothing as he cleaned his glasses with the tail of his brick-red polo shirt.

  “You didn’t know that, did you?” I asked him.

  “Not personally.” He examined his glasses, then put them back on. “I’m sure my superiors know.”

  “It would’ve been nice if they’d told you, so you could tell me what I’m up against.”

  “Aura, listen!” He jerked out the chair across from me and sat down. “Isn’t it enough to know we’re up against something big? Why must you question?”

  “Because I’m not paid to take orders like you are. How big is this ‘something’?”

  “Big enough to scare both our governments.”

  “Shit.” I remembered something he’d said a couple of weeks ago when I’d asked why MI-X couldn’t demand Zachary’s release. “Does this have to do with those ‘other interests’ you mentioned?” I dug my nails against the rough wooden tabletop. “Is SecuriLab the ‘other interest’? If they make BlackBox, they must be superrich.”

  “True.” He drew his bottom lip between his thumb and forefinger. “A company that size would have both our countries by the bollocks.” He glanced at me. “Sorry.”

  My nose wrinkled at the gross but convincing image. “So it’s SecuriLab we should be worried about? Not the DMP? Or do they want the same thing?”

  “They both have an interest in the dead. But the DMP would like to end the Shift and get rid of ghosts.”

  “Which would mean no more need for BlackBox.”

  “And no more money for SecuriLab.”

  I looked out into the Poe House living room, filled with the author’s possessions from his early twenties, when he fell in love with the girl he would someday marry. The museum’s caretaker had told me and Zachary that Poe had never gotten over her early death. At the time, I’d wondered if I would ever recover from losing Logan.

  Poe came back to Baltimore years later, but not to this house. He was found wandering the streets, incoherent or maybe drunk, and died a few days later. No one knew the cause of death, but some conspiracy theories said he’d been murdered because he’d pissed off someone powerful.

  I sat up straight, glimpsing a new possibility, like someone had ripped aside a curtain to let in the afternoon sun.

  “Simon, that’s why the DMP hasn’t killed me yet.”

  “Sorry?”

  “Because my death might end the Shift. No more ghosts, no more BlackBox, no more humongous profits.” I forced out the ugliest truth. “SecuriLab might be all that’s keeping me alive.”

  Simon had told me to stay away from Nicola, but of course he didn’t tell her to stay away from me.

  “Aura!”

  I looked up from my desk to see Nicola parading across my aunt’s law office toward me. At a nearby file cabinet, our paralegal, Terrence, gave me a “Should I get rid of her?” look.

  I shook my head and tried to smile. “Hey, Nicola.”

  “Told you I’d come through for you!” She held out a blank, white, letter-size envelope at either end with her fingertips, displaying it like a game-show hostess with the grand prize.

  I leaped out of my chair to grab the envelope. I tore it open, glad it wasn’t sealed, or I would’ve gotten a nasty paper cut.

  I unfolded the single sheet of notebook paper. The handwriting was definitely Zachary’s, though shakier than usual.

  July 10

  Dear Aura,

  I needed you to know that I

  am alive, and that I love you.

  Don’t give up hope.

  Zachary

  My knees wobbled as I sat slowly, brushing my fingers over the words.

  Which were way too few. I flipped the page over. “This is all they’d let him write?”

  She peered over my shoulder. “Ooh, that is brief. Is he usually more verbose than that?”

  I shook the paper at her. “Does this sound like a letter from a boyfriend or a letter from a hostage?”

  Nicola crossed her arms and tapped her French-manicured nails against her biceps. “Hmm. They probably told him what he could and couldn’t say, for security reasons. So do you have a response for him?”

  “I do.” Still holding the letter Zachary had sent, I pulled my memo pad from my bag. I tore out the back page and handed it to Nicola.

  I hoped the DMP would think my message was harmless enough to give to Zachary unedited. Even if he couldn’t guess my exact meaning, maybe he’d take the hint that he shouldn’t try to escape. The thought of him running full speed into that invisible electric fence made me shudder as if my own body had been shocked.

  Dear Zachary,

  I love you and miss you so much. I’d give

  anything to bust down your door and be in

  your arms again. But the world doesn’t

  work that way right now. Please stay

  strong, stay safe, and stay there.

  Love, Aura

  “What’s going on?”

  Gina’s sharp voice made me and Nicola jump.

  “Aura was—”

  “Give me that.” Gina snatched the note from Nicola and held it at arm’s length so she could read it without her glasses. “Aura, why didn’t you tell me about this?”

  I crammed the letter from Zachary between my skirt and the chair I was sitting in. “I was about to do that when you walked up and stole it.”

  “Is there a problem?” Nicola asked her. “I don’t want to cause trouble.”

  “You’re with the DMP, so by definition, you are trouble. Please leave my office.”

  Nicola reached for the letter. “Of course, but can I—”

  “No!” Gina put her hands on her hips and took a step toward her. Though Nicola had five inches of height on my aunt, she backed away quickly, her face crumpling.

  “I’m so sorry. I wanted to help.” She hurried out, her steps unsteady, like she couldn’t quite see where she was going.

  “Can I please have my note back?” I asked Gina.

  Her face softened. “Hon, I know it’s hard not be able to communicate with him. But your letters won’t get through, and they’ll only expose you to the DMP.” Though we usually didn’t hug at the office, she put her arm around my shoulders and squeezed me tight. “We’ll get through this together.”

  When she went back to her office, I rewrote my letter to Zachary and slipped it into the blank envelope. Hiding it in my lap, I copied the address off Nicola’s business card.

  My cell phone buzzed with a text message:

  Nicola: MAIL IT TO ME.

  I smiled. ALREADY DONE. :)

  Nicola: MEANT TO TELL YOU, THERE WAS A SECURITY BREACH @3A LAST WKD.

  I was glad she couldn’t see my face, only my words: OMG! WHO WAS IT?

  Nicola: THEY DIDN’T CATCH THEM. ANYWAY, TALK SOON, I HO
PE! *WAVES*

  I folded the letter from Zachary into a tiny square, then clutched it inside my fist. “I hope so, too.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  As the heat wave intensified, so did my fear and frustration. Every rescue scheme I devised came unraveled in the face of reality. I began to feel like a ghost, wandering through my own life like it no longer belonged to me, like I could no longer change even one small corner of the world.

  Cheryl, Gina’s immigration-lawyer friend, was finally allowed to visit Zachary. She took with her a man from the British consulate, and afterward reported that Zachary was “fine, but a little thin.” I knew that couldn’t be the full truth, but I clung to that proof of his survival like a life jacket in a stormy sea.

  A hundred times I picked up the phone to call a newspaper or TV station, hoping media attention to Zachary’s case might set him free. A hundred times I put the phone back down.

  Gina had warned that now that the DMP were seen as heroes protecting us from ghosts, revealing Zachary’s whereabouts would only make him look suspicious. People would ask, “Why would they detain him if he’d done nothing wrong?” When it came to ghost-crimes these days, guilty before proven innocent was becoming the rule. And if the person was a foreigner like the alleged suicide bomber teen? Doubly suspicious. Doubly condemned.

  Tammi Teller had become the symbol of the Flight 346 tragedy, and her Keeley Brothers’ fandom kept people talking about Logan. Since I was connected to him, the spotlight was always searching for me. If people found out my new boyfriend was some kind of anti-ghost freak, that spotlight would find and destroy my life.

  And if it became known that I was the First, soon everyone would draw the same conclusion the DMP had: If my birth had caused the Shift, then maybe my death would end it. Killing me would be one quick solution to the “ghost problem.”

  The media fed the country’s rising hysteria about the dead. Every week brought a new prime-time TV program about “radical influential ghosts.” These always got huge ratings in the pre-Shifter target audience.

  Post-Shifters felt like we were under a microscope. I’d walk down the street with Megan and our friend Jenna, and the other pedestrians would examine us to determine (a) whether we were pre- or post-Shifters (one of “them” or one of “us”), and (b) whether we were talking to one another or talking to ghosts. It was like when we were little kids and the world had just started believing us. But now we were old enough to understand: We were the enemy within.

  I kept myself sane by researching university astronomy programs to narrow down my list of colleges. In a moment of extreme hope, I put the University of Glasgow on my list. It helped to pretend that my future could one day be my own.

  And lastly, to feed my hope, I got up at sunrise every morning, rain or shine. I lit the green candle Gina had used for our vigil on the night of the Flight 346 crash. For exactly one minute, I closed my eyes and thought of Zachary. Then I blew it out and went back to sleep, hoping to dream of him—and that somehow, somewhere, he’d dream of me, too.

  “How did you get these amazing seats?” I asked Nicola.

  She shrugged. “From work, of course.”

  Nicola Hughes had called me out of the blue and asked if I wanted to see an Orioles game with her at Camden Yards. I didn’t follow baseball much, since the only thing that changed from year to year was the degree of the Orioles’ suckitude, and by August the season was long past hope. But I couldn’t pass up the chance to get more information.

  I set my soda in the cup holder and examined my surroundings. We were so close to home plate, I swore I could feel the breeze from the batters’ swings.

  No way a government agency could afford Camden Yards box seats. I’d seen the DMP offices—their decor was vintage early ’90s. These seats belonged to SecuriLab.

  Eating my crab cake sandwich, I thought wistfully of the times I’d been here with Logan and his family, and resolved to call Dylan the next day. Megan and I hadn’t spent much time with the Keeleys since our failed Fourth of July “commando raid.” It was too painful after her breakup with Mickey.

  Nicola elbowed me. “You should put your hat back on so you don’t get sunburned.”

  “But it’s seven o’clock in the—”

  “Put your hat on.” Nicola peeked over her shoulder up the stairs. “Now.”

  I didn’t question. I pulled my battered black Orioles cap out of my bag and placed it firmly on my head, pulling my ponytail through the hole.

  In a low voice, Nicola said, “Two places women are most invisible in this world? Boardrooms and sporting events. When I go golfing with my coworkers, I learn a lot by just shutting up. They forget I’m there, and they discuss things I’m not supposed to hear.”

  I tugged down the brim of my hat, sat back in my seat, and watched from the corner of my eye as two late-middle-aged guys in expensive polo shirts and khaki slacks sat behind us.

  They turned out to be Yankees fans, so they spent the first hour dissing the Orioles. I wanted to throw them a dirty look, but couldn’t risk them recognizing me. For all I knew, my face was on a Most Annoying poster in the SecuriLab offices.

  “Did you see those July numbers?” asked the guy on the right, the one with the deep voice and the heavier New York accent.

  “Did I see ’em? I’m thinking of getting them tattooed on my ass. Biggest sales growth since the first two months of release. Can’t wait to see those quarterly figures.”

  “Tell me about it. Gonna be a good Christmas.”

  I tried to chew softly so I could hear.

  “I’m taking the family to Tahiti. Hang on.” He let out a forceful sneeze that made me want to go buy an umbrella. “Damn hay fever. Happens every time I leave Manhattan.”

  “Tahiti, huh?”

  “Yep.” The sneezer blew his nose. “Tax-deductible, of course, since it’s a market we’ve been trying to reach. I’ll make a few initial contacts, feel them out. Don’t want to lay on the hard sell yet.”

  “Don’t need to anymore—346 speaks for itself.”

  My spine jolted. Did they mean Flight 346? It sounded like they were talking about the increased sales of BlackBox since the disaster. It made sense—with the rising paranoia, people would be clamoring for a way to make their homes and businesses off-limits to ghosts.

  I glanced at Nicola, who had been unusually quiet, especially for her. She paged absentmindedly through her ball-game program as she sipped her soda.

  Deep-Voice Guy added, “Of course, part of the profit increase is the unit price, not just number of units moved. Demand went up, so we raised the price, because we could. Nice, huh?”

  The sneezer gave a heavy sigh. “Nah, Joe, it’s not nice. This whole business . . .”

  I stopped chewing. Beside me, Nicola had gone totally still. Their next words could hold the key to—

  A crack sounded, then the crowd roared, rising to its feet. Damn it.

  “No, no, no, no, no, no!” Joe whined as the ball soared over the center-field fence. His next words were lost in the crescendo of cheers and blare of music.

  While I clapped and danced, I checked out the men from the corner of my eye. They wore and carried nothing that gave me a clue. Not that I thought they’d bring a briefcase of classified documents to a baseball game, or wear badges that read: I BOMBED FLIGHT 346. ASK ME HOW!

  The men sat back down while the home crowd savored this rare crushing of the Evil Empire. I strained to hear the guys’ next words, which were louder than I think they knew:

  “The lengths we gotta go to sometimes,” said the sneezer. “The slime buckets we gotta deal with. Sometimes I think I’d rather, I don’t know, retire to a farm somewhere and forget them all.”

  “I take it you mean Nighthawk?” Joe asked.

  I sat down, partly to hear better and partly because my legs had gone rubbery from the shock and thrill.

  “Yeah,” the sneezer said. “If those pit bulls did what I think they did, and did it for us—
”

  “Don’t think about it. When the cards are all counted, we’re protecting the public. Never forget that.”

  I sipped my soda to ease my nerves and look natural.

  “I know, I know, I tell myself that all the time. But whenever I see Tammi Teller’s face on the news, I wonder, did we put her there?”

  I bit the straw so hard it cracked.

  There was a long silence, then Joe spoke. “Did we?”

  They stopped talking for several minutes. I got a headache from straining my ears to hear them. Eventually they started discussing the Yankees’ playoff chances.

  When Nicola went to the restroom, I jotted everything I could remember of the guys’ conversation into my phone, looking like any other bored girl at a baseball game, texting her friends. I held it low in my lap so they couldn’t see.

  I felt a tap on my shoulder. “Excuse me, miss.”

  Instinctively I shoved my sunglasses up the bridge of my nose to better cover my eyes. “What?” I snapped.

  “Your friend. What’s her name?”

  I kept my mouth shut. I didn’t want to tell them a fake name for Nicola, in case they actually knew her.

  “It’s not what you think,” he said. “I’m not trying to hit on you guys. I just thought I knew her from work.”

  “Then you can ask her when she comes back.”

  But they didn’t.

  Nicola and I walked to the parking lot amid the jubilant Oriole fans and morose Yankee fans. My stomach was twisted in a knot, and not just from all the junk food. I sensed that if I asked the perfect question, Nicola would confirm my suspicions about SecuriLab and Flight 346. She must have brought me to the ball game tonight hoping I’d hear what I needed to know.

  “Um, Nicola?”

  She spoke quickly. “Those guys behind us were obnoxious, weren’t they? When I go to Nationals games, the Phillies fans are the same way. They come in from out of town and take over the stadium. It ends up being like a Phillies home game, with all the noise they make.”

  She kept chattering, which gave me my answer. We weren’t to remotely acknowledge why we’d really been at the game.