Shadowshaper Legacy

by Daniel José Older

  “Cool,” Rohan said, pointedly not lowering the gun. “Except these are our people and you’re not, but you’ve been trailing them and acting wild suspicious, my guy. You got something to say, say it.”

  The guy laughed a few times, and it was not the laugh of a man who felt threatened. Even empty-handed and staring down the barrel of a gun. “I need to talk to the people in that van.” His face went suddenly serious. “I give my word I won’t hurt them.”

  “Seeing as I don’t know you,” Rohan said, “your word don’t mean shit to me.”

  “Look, my name is Mort. I’m a friend. I mean, clearly! You guys …” He stepped forward, caught sight of Tee, and locked eyes with her. Tee felt herself tense inside. “You saw me take out the Iron Knight, didn’t you? You think people just go around dropping major players in the Deck of Worlds for shits and giggles? No. That was a gift.”

  “Do you guys know what the hell he’s talking about?” Rohan asked.

  “Yes,” Tee said, unlocking the side door and sliding it open.

  “Tee!” Izzy said as Caleb yelled, “What are you doing?”

  “Ah,” Mort said. “Here’s a brave soul. I wonder which card chose you, hm?”

  Tee just stared at him.

  “That’s good, that’s good,” Mort mused, his squinting eyes giving only condescension and disdain. “Keep that stuff close to your chest. No one needs to know. Now, look: I’ll be quick. Lucera knows who I am. We squared off over the summer and she won. Maybe she mentioned it.”

  “You’re the guy the House of Light hired to come after us,” Tee said, taking a step back. “She mentioned you alright.” Mort’s hands could deplete someone’s power away, Sierra had said. She had only barely managed to get away, and it had taken Bennie’s help in the form of a solid ass-whupping. She hadn’t been sure what kind of entity this guy was, but the whole thing had been some ploy of the House of Light’s to come after them and wipe out the shadowshapers, and Mina had been involved, back before she’d defected from the Sorrows to Shadowhouse and brought the Deck of Worlds with her.

  “Yes, only nice things, I’m sure. Point is —”

  “We’re not interested,” Tee said.

  “Point is,” he repeated, this time with a slight growl in his voice that sounded somehow feral. But then, instead of getting to the point, he looked up and his eyes went wide. Was this some trick? Tee didn’t want to be that jackass who turned her back on an enemy and ended up clobbered on some obvious shit. Then she heard what sounded like an entire battalion’s worth of automatic weapons clicking and clacking bullets into their chambers.

  She risked a quick glance and there was indeed a small army behind her pointing an array of very serious weaponry at Mort. A beautiful woman in sweatpants and a hoodie stood in the front, rifle steady at her hip, smile slightly askew and 100 percent delectable. Behind her, a few other gunners surrounded a short, thick, and very irritated-looking man with small eyes and close-cropped hair. He wore a simple tan jacket and slacks, and it was clear that every single one of the heavies standing there would’ve taken a bullet in a heartbeat to keep him alive. The guy didn’t even have a damn gun, but from the look of him, he simply didn’t need one. Tee felt absolutely certain that those thick hands had ripped more than one life away without the benefit of a weapon.

  Tee had never been on the wrong side of so much firepower before, but she felt somehow sure that their aim was impeccable. Still. She peeked over at Izzy and Caleb, both of whom just blinked out from the van with slightly open mouths.

  Mort raised both hands and smirked. “Hey, now …”

  Rohan let out a little chuckle. In fact, all these folks seemed to be unabashedly pleased with themselves, except for the man in the middle, who just stood there looking irked. “My name is Charo,” he said. “And you’re in my house.”

  “Listen —”

  “I wasn’t done talking,” Charo said. “So no, I will not listen.” He glared at Mort, challenging him. Mort kept his sneer intact and his mouth shut. “You are in my house, and these are my people you are threatening. If you think you’re going to call the police, understand that here? On this block? We are the police. And if you reach for your phone, you’ll be paste before you can illuminate the screen. Do you understand?”

  “I do,” Mort said, finally sobering up. “And I would never bring the police into an internal matter such as this. I just want to —”

  “Leave,” Charo said. “This is not a negotiation.”

  Mort locked eyes with Tee. “Tell Lucera I have an offer for her,” he said quickly, stepping backward. “The Iron Knight was a gift, to prove my sincerity. I have something that she wants.”

  The man radiated power in a way Tee couldn’t put words to or fully understand. It wasn’t just that he was so unimpressed by the nearness of a gory death; there was something else about him, an energy that felt like a deep vacuum and seemed to seep outward in every direction, like the man was a black hole.

  And then she understood. “You’re a Hierophant,” she whispered.

  Still looking her right in the eye, Mort’s smile grew slightly wider.

  Then he turned around and walked back to his SUV, got in, and drove slowly away.

  Something was on the ground where he’d been standing. A business card. Tee crouched down, picked it up without even thinking. MORT was written in typewriter type letters over a phone number.

  “What’s that?” Izzy called.

  Tee pocketed the card, unsure why, even more unsure of what she was about to do next. “Nothing.”

  Juan lay in bed and there was no music inside him, only noise.

  Cell doors slammed and voices cried out — terrified, mocking, anguished.

  A reckless tangle of Christmas lights barely illuminated one corner of the bedroom he’d slept in his whole life. His favorite metal bands glared and screamed from posters on the walls. It was inordinately tidy, consequences of being away for so long, to the point that his half almost looked as drab and boring as Gael’s, which they’d left untouched since he deployed. Ugh. Juan threw an old T-shirt on the floor to reclaim the space some and then went back to staring at the ceiling.

  There was no music inside him, only noise.

  Boots squeaked on cold hard floors, the squeaks flung outward like phantoms and bounced cackling off the walls, back and forth and back and forth as footsteps approached and then fell away. Clubs clanged against bars, the gurgling complaint and then final fwoosh of the toilet, the gradual drip and then steady stream of cold water from the shower. The chaos of voices in the yard, yells rising, bucking against each other, and then the slap and clap of flesh against flesh, more yells, then boots on gravel, cocking guns, and urgent bleats over the intercom.

  There was no music because there was no room for music in lockup. Each sound took up too much space, refused to sort itself into any rhythm whatsoever, defied logic or story. Worst of all, beneath and between everything, the never-ending ambient drone trundled on, an insidious vacuousness that only served as a constant reminder that this soulless facility still functioned.

  And even though Juan’s body wasn’t in lockup anymore, its musicless jumble was all he could hear when the rest of the world went still.

  His guitar leaned against the far wall, abandoned and dejected. Juan didn’t even want to look at it. He didn’t want to look at anything, but when he closed his eyes, all he saw was his cage. He would’ve called Anthony, but Anthony had betrayed him, and anyway, he didn’t want to trigger him into an anxiety attack on his first night of freedom, even if he was a traitor.

  But this clanging and banging, this impossible absence of music, this wouldn’t do. He sat up, suddenly sweaty. What if it never came back?

  He couldn’t remember a time when the music hadn’t been there for him. Even when he was actually in Rikers, it seemed to be just a few deep breaths away, waiting to swoop in and bring that sense of calm, however temporary, however fragile. A rhythm would start up, chords grad
ually simmering to life around it, giving it shape, momentum.

  But now … nothing. And if he didn’t have any more music inside him, did that mean he’d never be able to shadowshape again? It seemed absurd how much the thought terrified him — he barely knew how to ’shape as it was, so what difference would it make if it was gone? — but somehow the family legacy loomed large, and more than anything, Juan was acutely aware of needing to be able to defend himself in these cruel, magic-infused streets.

  He didn’t think too hard about it as he opened his laptop and powered it up. He knew if he overthought it, he wouldn’t do it, and he had to do something. Sierra had snuck out about an hour earlier. He’d heard the creaking of floorboards as she tried and failed to be slick about leaving late at night — their parents sleeping cluelessly through it as always.

  She was surely off getting into who-knew-what kinda mess, but she could handle herself, that much was abundantly clear, even if things were spinning way out of control.

  And with Sierra gone and Anthony bad, that left one person for Juan to reach out to.

  “Juan?” Bennie’s sleepy face squinted out at him, dimly lit by her own screen. If Juan had any lingering doubts that he’d only fallen for her because of the sudden divine revelation of seeing her in that brightly lit, fully feathered, skanty Carnival outfit before the West Indian Day parade earlier that year, they were wiped out by the way she took the floor out from under him in just a bonnet and plaid pajamas. For a few seconds he blinked at her, breathless.

  “You okay?” she asked, cocking her head to the side. “What is it?”

  “I …” He shook it off, tried to collect himself. This didn’t feel like the time to be waxing poetic somehow. Still: the shape of her face, the glimpse of that collarbone, even the small platter of sleep crusties she was now trying anxiously to wipe away as she glimpsed her own image in the pull-away window.

  “Juan, talk to me, dude.”

  “I just.” More than all that though, if he was being honest, it was the way she looked at him. There was concern on her face, but she knew to keep it light, knew how to be gentle with him and still let him know she took him seriously. She had kept in touch with him while he was inside, and while they’d barely had a chance to tell each other how they felt, she’d managed to let him know, without ever really saying it outright, that she wanted him, felt him, craved him, and that when he got free she would be there, ready for him.

  Normally that kind of ambiguity, however sweet, would’ve raised one of his eyebrows and then the other, but with Bennie it just made him even more sure they were on the same page without ever discussing it. Any outright declarations would’ve felt out of place in the midst of trying to make it through his ordeal. If they were going to express deep things to each other, Juan wanted it to happen far away from his cage.

  Bennie finally just laughed. “Okay, man, talk to me when you’re ready.” She perched her chin on her hands, elbows on a pillow, and batted her eyelashes. “I’m right here.”

  See? he thought. Even that. Even that.

  “How did you … when did …” He took a deep breath. “How did you come into your own as a shadowshaper?” he finally said.

  “Oh, let’s see.” Bennie sat up, folding her legs beneath her, and adjusted the screen so she was still on camera. Laughed at her own memory, shook her head. “I was in the lab at Butler after school, tinkering.”

  Juan’s mouth dropped open. “I am shocked.”

  It took Bennie a half second to catch up, and then she narrowed her eyes. “I’m glad your sarcasm is still intact, Juanisimo.”

  And just like that, he felt the slightest bit normal again; the slamming cages and approaching boots fell further into the background of his mind.

  “Why you smiling so hard?” Bennie asked. “It wasn’t that funny, buddy.”

  “Nothing, nothing,” Juan said. “Keep going.”

  Bennie shot him a suspicious look, then complied. “And I felt the spirits there. It was the first week of school; I was modifying one of the school telescopes cuz the ones Butler has are absolute booty and not the good kind of booty. Booty like stinky-butt-booty booty.”

  “Okay, I think I understand your point here.”

  “Just trying to be clear. Anyway, yeah, I felt the spirits. This was before Vincent had shown himself to me, and that’s a whole other story for a whole other night, thank you very much.”

  Juan knew there had been some messiness with Bennie’s murdered brother appearing to Sierra before Bennie, but he didn’t know the details. He did like the sound of a whole other night, though. He liked it a lot.

  “So they just looked like the tall glowing shadows, you know? And they were longstepping around the place, all intense and excited, and I was scared at first. It was like they wanted something but couldn’t tell me what, and of course I had no murals handy to ’shape them into; no chalk. But I did have the instructions for the ’scope. And I thought, This is a form of art, isn’t it? It might be a technical drawing, but someone still drew it, yeah? And, like, who really knows the exact parameters of what can and can’t be used to ’shape a spirit into, ya know?”

  “Ah, true, true,” Juan said, stroking an imaginary goatee sagely.

  “What’s that accent you’re doing, bro?”

  “Huh? That’s my scientist accent, B. Obviously.”

  “You sound like a porn star playing a sexy German nun.”

  Juan boggled at her. “What kind of porn have you been watching?”

  “Ugh, never mind!”

  “I mean, whatever it is, I support you. I am kink positive. But also, whoa.”

  “Any … way …” Bennie growled, putting her face in her hands.

  Juan pulled the sheet over his head and wrapped it under his chin so just his face poked out, and when she looked up, he whispered, “Ah, Fräulein! How do you solve unt problem like Bennaldra?” and wiggled his eyebrows suggestively.

  They both fell out laughing for a good five minutes, then Bennie had to run off to the bathroom, and when she got back, they were both getting sleepy and agreed to finish the story another night. “You good?” Bennie asked, suddenly serious, almost sad.

  Juan nodded. “Thanks.”

  After they logged off and he lay back down in the darkness, the clangs of cages had faded even further away; it was their laughter that filled his mind now, and somewhere, very faintly, the slightest hint of a melody.

  The freezing rain had tapered off, thank God, but the temperature plummeted as the night grew deeper; an icy wind flushed across the rooftop and invaded all the tiny openings in Sierra’s winter jacket, her hoodie underneath it, and her coal-black jeans.

  She hardly noticed.

  Down below, Anthony’s family was finishing up their own welcome-home dinner, dishes were being put away and counters wiped down. She could make out figures moving back and forth behind the slim curtains on the front window, a warm light emanating from a warm house that wrapped around a family, Sierra suspected, as full of love and heartbreak for their newly freed son as her own was.

  Anthony lived on one of those streets a few blocks off Eastern Parkway that couldn’t decide if it was a quiet suburban enclave or a bustling city market. Massive prewar apartment complexes — one of which Sierra was standing on the roof of — loomed over two-story Victorians sandwiched between fruit stands, cell phone outlets, nail salons, a dollar store. And in another few years, it would probably all be Starbucks and glossy hipster high-rises.

  The bedroom at the back of the house was Anthony’s. There was a small yard. In another hour or so, she’d be standing in those shadows, and her spirits would slide smoothly along the outer walls of his house, into his window. They’d be formed into thick, razor-sharp arrows that would surround him before he could make a move, and then she’d be inside, and he’d be at her mercy, and she could get some damn answers.

  Sierra’s phone vibrated inside her jacket pocket, and she answered without taking her eyes off the Kin
g house. “Yo.”

  “Sierra?” Robbie’s voice. She felt a twinge of — what was that? Guilt, probably — and rolled her eyes. Residue from having hurt him in the messy transition between a kinda-sorta relationship with Robbie to something much more sudden and beautiful but still unclear with Anthony. And now she was here, stalking the one she’d chosen, because he’d betrayed her, and talking to the other. Had it all been a mistake? “Where you at?”

  It hadn’t, she decided, firmly putting the brakes on that whole line of thinking. Even if Anthony was a traitor, Robbie couldn’t commit until it was too late, and she’d rather be with no one than someone she had to walk away from to find out his true feelings. “Er … out and about.”

  A pause. She didn’t want to lie to him, but she wasn’t really comfortable explaining herself either.

  “So, getting into trouble. Need backup?” It was a sweet offer, made, she thought, more on the strength of the friendship they were still trying to make work than anything more.

  “I think I’m alright. Did Bennie update you?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Anthony and your brother are free, but Anthony joined the Iron House while he was locked up and didn’t tell Juan? A mess.”

  “Pretty much.”

  “And Tee and Izzy are lying low with Caleb because of something that went down when they were scooping her up, but we don’t know what.”

  “Yeeeah.”

  “And a new entity of some kind is in town.”

  “You got it.”

  “And you’re at some undisclosed location doing something suspicious. Sure you don’t want backup?”

  “Ha — keep your phone on just in case.”

  Another pause, and Sierra found herself grinding her teeth. Why did everything have to be so complicated?

  “Sierra?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I’m okay, you know. I’m not … I’m not here waiting for you to come to your senses or hoping you’ll come around. You don’t have to feel … you know, awkward around me.”

  She exhaled, not sure whether she resented him making assumptions or the fact that his assumptions were right. Either way, she was relieved.