Shadowshaper Legacy

by Daniel José Older

  Aaaand just like that her momentary good mood was ruined.

  Izzy.

  The absence of Izzy, which felt a hundred times bigger than Izzy herself, like the negative space she’d left behind kept inflating and inflating and would one day become the whole world: a never-ending emptiness.

  But she wasn’t gone forever, not really, just shoved away in a cell behind a hundred layers of concrete and steel. And she was protected, supposedly. The Iron House couldn’t break their word, it was said. Unlike all these other scumbags.

  “Look who the huge satanic demon hound dragged in,” Bennie snarked as they made their way into the clearing.

  “You have no idea what you’ve done, do you?” Dake said.

  Bennie looked Tee up and down. “Where’s your shoe, girl?”

  “I don’t even want to talk about it,” Tee said, still trying to ignore the overwhelming lack of Izzy expanding around her.

  “Who wears loafers to a secret parlay anyway?” Caleb said.

  Tee does, Izzy would’ve barked, and then everyone would’ve laughed. Tee felt like crying.

  “Tee does,” Sierra and Bennie said together, and everyone except Dake laughed. Tee allowed herself a chuckle and then silently berated herself for being so caught up.

  “Fair enough,” Caleb said. “That one you still got is pretty sweet.”

  “Thanks,” Tee said, not even pretending to sound pleased.

  “Maybe we’ll find the other one when we’re done with this guy.” He nodded at Dake.

  “You …” Dake seethed, staring at Sierra. “You … don’t know … all the history … all those years of work and toil that we’ve done, building up, passing on the legacy … the legacy!”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Sierra said, stepping forward to face him. “Calm ya nuts.”

  “You don’t even —”

  “Bloodhaüs isn’t gone,” she said.

  “Uh?” about five people said at once.

  Tee finally snapped out of the Missing Izzy Cocoon enough to catch up. “What do you mean it’s not gone?” she asked.

  Dake looked like he didn’t know whether to spit at her or burst into tears. “You said —”

  “I said it’s over, yes,” Sierra allowed. “But all I did was take out your queen, really. You still have your blood magic, don’t you, Dake?” She spat his name out like it had gone sour in her mouth.

  “Don’t! Don’t you dare take my —”

  Sierra shook her head, massaging the spot between her eyes. “No one’s taking your magic, man. At least, not if you cooperate.”

  “Cooperate? I could ne —”

  “Just listen for a sec before you make melodramatic declarations that you’re going to have to backtrack on anyway.”

  Dake got quiet.

  Tee — all the shadowshapers, really — stared at Sierra with barely disguised awe. Everyone knew she’d had it with running away, with barely catching up, with being a newbie in this deadly game of magic and mayhem and not even really knowing the rules. But they’d never seen this side of her. This was something new.

  Tee wasn’t sure if she liked it or not.

  Sierra let a moment of silence pass, eyebrows raised, and then continued. “You are — or were, I should say — the Bloodhaüs’s spy, correct?”

  Dake just stared at her.

  “Okay, cool,” Sierra said, raising her hand to his forehead and closing her eyes.

  “Wait, wait, wait,” Dake pleaded. “Yes. Yes, I’m the Crimson Agent.”

  She took her hand away, smiled. “Is that what you guys are calling it? That’s cute. Alright, well, we need use of your services.”

  “Huh?”

  “I need you,” Sierra said, “to infiltrate the House of Iron.”

  Now it was everyone’s turn to say, “Huh?”

  This was bonkers. “Si,” Tee said. “How can we tru —”

  “We can’t,” Sierra said, still blessing Dake with a serene smile. “But we don’t have to trust him when we know that he knows that his whole beautiful century-old legacy will be wiped out completely with just a few quick strokes, right, Dake?”

  “I …”

  “With the Bloodhaüs Master eliminated and no way to get a new one, since they don’t have the Deck, all anyone has to do is take out a few more of their initiates for the house to be eliminated completely. Isn’t that right, Caleb?”

  Caleb nodded. “You know it.”

  “And I’m sure Dake does too. So …”

  Tee watched as Dake looked up at the night sky, let out a long, steamy breath. Closed his eyes. Finally: nodded.

  She didn’t like any of this, but she knew Sierra had a plan and had already outmaneuvered one of the oldest, most powerful houses out there. At least, it seemed like she had.

  “Good,” Sierra said. “Thank you. Get home safely.”

  Dake looked around, taking in each of their faces. Tee didn’t like that steely auburn glare of his. It spoke more of vengeance than any kind of acceptance. And of course it did: He was a damn Bloodhaüser. There was no taming him, no trusting him. Not even with the upper hand.

  Dake nodded once, cast a weary glance at Cojo, then walked off into the darkness.

  “Guys! Guys! Guys!” Sierra yelled over the din of everybody yammering at once. “Just chill for a sec! Please!”

  Caleb was guiding the Culebramobile along the scattered night traffic of the New Jersey Turnpike. Up ahead, the cold, twinkling towers of Manhattan seemed to sneer out at them.

  Sierra caught Caleb’s sharp, inscrutable eyes in the rearview mirror for just a second before he looked back at the road. He was the only one who hadn’t had something to say about what had just gone down, and that somehow made his opinion the one Sierra wanted to hear most.

  She let the tinny pop jam on the radio and Cojo’s heavy panting take over the car for a few blessed moments. Then she let out a deep breath and said, “Okay. I know that was a whole lot.”

  “It was more than a whole lot,” Bennie pointed out. “It was a whole whole lot.”

  “Right,” Sierra allowed. “It was. I know that. And we all knew going in that it was gonna be.”

  “We knew it was gonna be an unpredictable shitshow,” Jerome said. “But we didn’t know you were going to turn into the Joker on their asses.”

  Sierra felt her spirit drop. She’d done everything she could to protect them and wrap this whole ugly chapter up, and all they saw was what she’d kept from them. “I just —”

  “Bloodhaüs is annihilated,” Tee said. “And okay! I admit it was badass. But you did the most, Si!”

  “I thought it was pretty cool,” Robbie said quietly. Everyone turned to the back of the van, where he sat in the darkness beside Cojo.

  “I mean …” Bennie said. She didn’t have to finish the sentence — everyone knew Robbie had been Sierra’s kinda-sorta boyfriend at the beginning of this whole shadowshaper business, had given her her first lesson in shadowshaping, in fact, but then he’d stayed aloof, couldn’t figure out how to commit or even really take a moment to just be with her, and she’d slipped suddenly away from him and directly into the arms of Anthony, the tall and delicious bass player of Sierra’s brother Juan’s band, Culebra. And almost immediately, Anthony and Juan had ended up locked away along with Izzy, and Robbie had resigned himself to sticking around and just trying to be friends. And all that history hung in the quiet after Bennie’s voice trailed off.

  “I agree,” Caleb said. “That shit rocked.”

  “But we didn’t know about any of it!” Bennie complained. “We didn’t even know Cojo was there! How did you even get Cojo there without us knowing?”

  Sierra shrugged. “I brought him out earlier today with Uncle Neville.”

  “And just left him in the field?” Tee said.

  “He was fine!” Sierra said. “Weren’t you, boy?”

  Cojo barked appreciatively, and they all heard his tail thump a few times against the rear window.

  �
�That’s not the point,” Jerome said. “The point is we had no idea all that was gonna go down.”

  “I barely did either,” Sierra said. “I mean, I had some of it in my mind, obviously, but it was all a bunch of different possibilities depending on how Bloodhaüs reacted to us. Half the time, I was making shit up as I went along!” Why was she yelling? Sierra wondered to herself. But also, why were they ganging up on her? “I was just trying to be ready, and I’m sorry if me not telling you every detail of my plan hurt y’all’s feelings, but —”

  “It’s not that our feelings are hurt,” Tee said in that somber voice that probably meant she was right about whatever she was saying, “it’s that we could’ve died out there. The situation was out of control. That woman pulled a gun, Si.”

  “Exactly!” Sierra said. “Y’all let yourselves get searched for body paint but didn’t bother searching the evil blood nazis? The ones who love guns? What was that?”

  They’d entered the Holland Tunnel and hit stop-and-go traffic, and Sierra wanted to be anywhere but in the damn car. Well, no, not anywhere. She wanted to be wrapped up in Anthony, taking in his sweet smell and feeling him all around her. And since she couldn’t have that, she wanted to be alone in the dim embrace of her room, clacking another letter to him on her typewriter. Yes. There she would make sense of all this somehow.

  “That was sloppy,” Caleb admitted. “And here’s something else that was sloppy” — his eyes darted away from the road and glanced back in the mirror again — “we got a leader, guys. Like it or not, agree or disagree, that’s what it is, and Sierra is that leader. And y’all welcome to have all the disagreements you want here in the van, away from all those eyes out there, feel me? But when we in the field, when we in a fight, or a negotiation, or anywhere else besides with just each other, you do what the general says. Period. You don’t question her in public, and you definitely don’t question her in front of the enemy.” He paused, nodded his head twice at his own words. “Feel me?”

  “I feel you,” Jerome said. “It’s like” — he hunched over and let his bottom lip droop, then said in a halfway decent Marlon Brando voice — “What’s wrong with you, Michael? Never tell anybody outside the family what you’re thinking again.”

  “Exactly,” Caleb said. “Except he says it to Sonny, not Michael. Michael never woulda done that.”

  “Isn’t it Michael who says it to Fredo?” Tee said.

  “He does later,” Caleb says. “That one’s: Don’t ever take sides against the family.”

  “When he gets to Vegas!” Jerome yelled.

  Sierra had had enough Godfather trivia, but she kept her mouth shut. Caleb had stood up for her, and he was right. She wondered if Bennie and Tee agreed, though. Or whether it even mattered.

  The truth was, beyond all the bullshit that was going on with everyone else’s opinion of what had happened, deep down Sierra felt amazing. She felt like something had unraveled inside her that had been squinched up and tucked away for … well, for her whole life, probably.

  She’d figure out whatever she had to with her friends; tell them more if that’s what it took to make them feel included. But she knew that that thrill, the thrill of battle and, even more, the thrill of victory — that was hers and hers alone to cherish, and she’d earned it. Earned every second of it. And no postmortem or group dynamic would take it away.

  Forty-five minutes later they’d all had some time to calm down, pass out, listen to the same handful of corny pop songs on the radio several times through. Caleb pulled up in front of Jerome’s apartment building on a mid-gentrification block of Lafayette and turned down the radio. “Y’all good? Got real quiet back there.”

  Sierra had spent the time staring out the window, alternating between daydreams of Anthony’s smile and going over and over what had just happened. Beside her, Bennie looked up groggily from Sierra’s shoulder and rubbed sleep from her eyes. “What year is it?”

  “Yeah, those car naps will do that,” Jerome said, packing up his stuff.

  “Listen,” Sierra said. “Before we start splitting off for the night …” Everyone looked at her. “I just … I’m sorry y’all felt uninformed….” That didn’t sound right somehow.

  “Try that one again,” Tee said.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t inform y’all about everything.”

  “Better,” Bennie said.

  “It’ll do,” Jerome agreed.

  “But also —”

  “Here we go,” Tee said.

  Sierra ignored her. “But also, there’s gonna be some shit that I can’t tell you sometimes, and I need you guys to trust me that I know what I’m doing and if I don’t tell you something, it’s not just cuz I want to be coy, you know? I got reasons. And —”

  Bennie cut her off. “But then why didn’t you just —”

  “Because,” Sierra said, “I don’t always know how to explain those reasons. Even to myself.”

  “I hear that, Sierra.” Jerome made his way out of the van and then poked his head back in. “And we still rolling with you. I’m just saying, that could get one or all of us killed.”

  So could telling you, Sierra wanted to yell, but it didn’t make sense and she was empty of fight. “I’m doing my best,” she said, meeting Jerome’s eyes.

  He nodded once. “I know.” And then he was gone.

  “How’d you know anyway?” Bennie asked. They had been sitting on Sierra’s stoop for almost an hour, letting the chilly night ease them back into regular everyday life after the thrill of all that had happened and whatever would come next. Cojo lay sprawled out, taking up the whole top step and one or two below it, snoring gigantically and sometimes twitching, his big ol’ wrinkly face smattered with a ravenous smile.

  Sierra hugged her jacket closer to herself, blew out a steamy breath. “Know what?”

  “That ol’ auburn eyes was the Bloodhaüs spy.”

  “Oh.” She smiled. “It was a hunch at first. Then it just really felt true, if that makes sense. And then he went ahead and confirmed it.” She chuckled to herself.

  “You know you still have the half skull on, right?” Bennie said. “So when you do that little creepy laugh you look extra, extra double creepy.”

  Sierra shrugged. “I’ll be that.”

  “Do you … do you know what the next move is?”

  Sierra leaned back, resting her head on Cojo’s rising and falling flank. Dake would be trying to figure out a way to betray them and get his house back, that much was certain. He could try to team up secretly with the Iron House while pretending to infiltrate them. But without the Deck, they wouldn’t be able to do much at all. The Deck of Worlds had five cards for each house: the Spy, the Sorcerer, the Master, the Hound, and the Warrior. Once a house emerged as ascendant, they appeared on the pages of the Almanac and on the Deck itself, but members of the house couldn’t take on their roles and step into their powers unless they touched the card that matched with them.

  Up until two months ago, the Sorrows of the House of Light had always had the Deck in their possession, and they portioned out powers to different emergent houses who came and paid tribute to them in that creepy cathedral hideaway uptown. But now Sierra had the Deck, and she had no intention of giving her enemies any more ability to come after her and her friends.

  “I guess we gotta do like Wu-Tang says,” Sierra finally said, putting her hands behind her head. “Protect ya Deck.”

  “Sierra, it’s ne —”

  “I know, dammit! Let me have my pun!”

  Bennie shook her head. “It’s not even really a pun if —”

  “Shh!” Sierra hissed. “I’m appreciating the sound of my own sense of humor. Since no one else will.”

  “Seriously, though.” Bennie stood up. “It’s a school night. And I’m sleeping in your bed.”

  Cojo blinked up at her like she’d just cursed out his mother, then stretched, kicking Sierra in the head with one paw.

  “Ow!” Sierra said. “Watch it!”
The junkyard dog rolled onto his front and then stood and let out a massive yawn. “Alright, alright, I’m coming.”

  Bennie opened the door, and Cojo bustled ahead of her to get inside. She stopped, blocking the entrance.

  “We going in or what?” Sierra said.

  Bennie looked her in the eye. Sierra gulped. “You have it somewhere safe, right?” Bennie asked.

  “What, the Deck? Of course.”

  “Do you really think it’s a good idea that no one else knows where it is? What if something happens to you?”

  Sierra didn’t like where this was going. Her friends were already targets. If they were captured, they could be tortured, worse … And with all these supernatural shenanigans floating around, some rando magic creep might get it in his head to try and extract the information somehow. It was dangerous. But then, everything was dangerous. And Jerome was right, what they didn’t know could get them killed just as easily, if not more so, than what they did.

  “I do. But …” She looked around. “Alright, come with me.” She walked in, the sudden, overpowering heat of her family’s brownstone wrapping around her like an old friend.

  “Here?” Bennie hissed, following her and locking the big wooden door behind them. “You have it in your house?”

  “Have what in our house?” Dominic Santiago said from the easy chair in the front room, where Cojo was perched like a furry, slobbering mountain on his lap.

  Sierra froze.

  “Oh, hey, Bennaldra.” Dominic narrowed his eyes at Sierra. “Would you please inform your pet that she is not a lapdog, oh daughter of mine.”

  “Cojo, down boy,” Sierra called. The panting beast lowered himself gently to the floor, curled up at Dominic’s feet, and promptly passed out.

  “And, uh, Cojo’s a he, Mr. Santiago,” Bennie said, forever unhelpful.

  Dominic didn’t take his eyes off Sierra. “What do we have in our house?”

  Sierra stared at him for what felt like a tiny eternity. “Something important,” she finally said. “And private.”