Shadowshaper Legacy

by Daniel José Older

  “I do, I do.”

  “Fellow Shadow and Lighters,” Caleb said. “Put your hands on his head.”

  Bennie, Jerome, and Sierra placed their left hands on Juan’s crown along with Caleb’s.

  Juancito. The air grew thick and several shadowy figures appeared around them: Vincent, Alice, Tolula. A few others. Sierra acknowledged them with a small nod. They each placed hands on Juan. “And so it begins,” Caleb whispered.

  “Whoa!” Juan yelped. “I feel it! It’s like a … wow!”

  “Very nice,” Caleb said, grinning for real. “You may step back, everyone. And, Juan, you may —”

  “One sec,” Sierra said as the others stepped away. “Stay down a beat. Thank you, Caleb.”

  He nodded and stepped back.

  Sierra pulled the Deck out of her pocket, took out the top card: the Hound of Shadow and Light. “Lemme see something, Juancito.”

  “The ancestors get to call me that,” Juan grumbled. “Not my younger sister.”

  “Uh-huh. I’m gonna check a card on you. You cool with that?”

  “Bring it.”

  She placed the Hound card on his head, and he jumped backward. “Whoa, whoa, whoa!”

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” Sierra said with a wiggle of her eyebrows. “The Hound of Shadow and Light.”

  “Aroooooo!!” Juan howled, and it sounded a little too convincing.

  “Damn, man.” Sierra laughed. “And congrats!” Everyone closed in around him with hugs and back pats and shoulder punches.

  “What, ah … what does that mean?” Juan asked.

  Sierra shook her head. “Man. We about to find out, I guess. I need you to track down Mina ASAP. I’m not sure how it all works. I mean, I guess I got the power in me somewhere, but I’ve never used it and … ask Cojo?”

  Juan guffawed. “I’ll figure it out.”

  “Ah …” Izzy said, looking around, brow furrowed.

  “What is it?” Sierra said. “What’s going on?”

  “That’s what I’m trying to figure out. I … okay, I’ll say this about being a Hierophant: I don’t fully understand the powers yet, but I can feel … it’s like we’re more deeply connected to that web I told you about that bridges all the elements of the Deck.”

  Tee sat up straight in the bed, startling the shit out of everybody. Her voice sounded far away, off somehow. “Something’s happening.”

  “Tee!” everyone said at once.

  Izzy reached her first, but only because she shoved people out of the way. “Babe! Babe! How you feel? You okay?”

  Tee scowled, rubbed her face, then nodded. “Yeah, but … I feel … something …”

  “What is it, babe? I feel it too, but what is it?”

  “I don’t know … change? Something’s shifting.”

  “What you want us to do, Sierra?” Jerome asked.

  “We gotta find Mina and make moves,” Sierra said. “Juan, that’s you. Take Bennie. And please don’t howl while you’re out there tracking her, thanks.” Juan looked jubilant and then crestfallen, but he nodded, saluted, and got himself ready to go.

  Bennie shot Sierra a sweet smile, batting her eyelashes. “I’ll see that he doesn’t.”

  “Good,” she said as Vincent stepped out of the shadows beside his sister and pulled back his hood. “What’s up, Vincent?”

  The spirits who’ve been trailing the Bloodhaüsers reported in just now.

  “And?”

  And they say the Bloodhaüsers are on the move.

  “What? All of them? Where to?”

  They don’t know yet. But they’ve gathered at a parking lot in Paramus and are caravanning into the city right now.

  Sierra squinted, as if whatever was going on would resolve itself as the rest of the world blurred. No such luck. “Stay on ’em?” she asked. “And keep me updated.”

  Vincent nodded, then turned to Bennie, who stood beside him. They passed a quick stare back and forth, then each held up a hand palm out to meet the other’s. For a moment, their hands merged — Vincent’s shining bluish one over Bennie’s brown solid one. Then they both nodded and headed off.

  “Stay safe,” Sierra called. “Alright.” She glanced around. Nydia, Robbie, Jerome, Caleb, and Anthony looked back at her expectantly. Izzy tended to Tee, who still looked dazed. “What are the Bloodhaüsers doing? Are they going to war? They know they’re being watched, so whatever it is, they’re betting everything on it. Are they —” The jangle of an old salsa song cut her off. Anthony boggled and took out his phone. He held up the screen so Sierra could see.

  Officer Grintly.

  “Everyone, shut up,” Sierra whispered.

  Anthony put the phone to his ear. “Hello?”

  “Anthony? Where are you, kid?” said the voice at the other end.

  “Uh, Brooklyn. What do you need?”

  “There’s a lot going on, son. You sure popped up at quite a time in our history. Iron House needs your help. All hands on deck. I’m gonna text you an address. I’ll explain when you get here.” He hung up.

  A moment passed, in which everyone looked back and forth at each other. Then the rustle of people standing, grabbing their coats and bags, took over. “Nydia, take Caleb and Robbie,” Sierra called over the din. “Anthony will text you the address he gets. Post up nearby and see if Neville and some of those taxi hoodlums y’all hung with last night can back you up. Who knows where this’ll go.”

  “Taxi hoodlums,” Robbie said, punching Anthony lightly on the shoulder. “New band name.”

  Anthony laughed, and Sierra allowed herself a tiny sigh of relief.

  Nydia snapped a salute. “Aye aye, captain.”

  Sierra rolled her eyes. “I wish y’all would stop doing that.”

  “Yo, make sure Tony Stark goes out the back door,” Izzy called from the bed.

  “Who’s Tony Stark?” Anthony asked.

  “You are,” Sierra said, covering her face and shaking her head. “Iron Man. Welcome to the House of Shadow and Light and our corny-ass sense of humor.”

  Anthony gawked. “Whoa, that was a good one, Iz!” He threw up his hands. “And I know! I’m undercover. I was never here. I don’t know any of y’all. I’m out!”

  “And his name is Anthony!” Izzy insisted. “How was I supposed to pass that one up?”

  Everyone started moving at once, pulling on jackets, talking briskly about what might be happening. Only Anthony and Sierra stood perfectly still.

  “Be careful,” she mouthed at him across the room.

  He smiled, mouthed, “You too,” and walked out the door.

  Everything felt so different and somehow the same.

  But nothing would ever be the same.

  Every swirl of dust seemed so distinct as it spiraled through the stale air of Lázaro’s old apartment. Tee could feel the gentle vibrations of people walking down the street four floors below, the tremble of a car passing, the shiver of leaves on the tree outside.

  She blinked, tried to focus on what was right in front of her.

  “Baby,” Izzy said, concern in her eyes. Concern and love. Her hand reached out, found Tee’s face, wiped a trickle of water away. “Babygirl.”

  Why was she crying?

  She didn’t know. Everything was simply so much. What had even happened? she asked Izzy.

  Izzy shook her head, rolled her eyes. She was still Izzy. She glowed with a new kind of ferocity, some secret inner light charged her, but it was one Tee felt too. Felt but couldn’t describe or make sense of. Not yet anyway. It was just there. And it was the same as whatever illuminated Izzy.

  “So much,” Izzy said, eyebrows raised. “So, so much.”

  “Wikipedia version?”

  Izzy scoffed.

  The room had cleared out pretty quickly after Tee woke up. Things had been really blurry and weird, like she was watching everything from inside a musty jar. She’d felt a sharp twinge pulse through her and it had shoved her unceremoniously awake and into a room fu
ll of her closest friends. All she knew was that something important was happening, something she was deeply connected to — so much so that she could feel it all through her body, that change. But there were no words for it, no explanations. Everyone had leapt into action, and now she and Izzy were the only ones left, except Sierra, who was staring at a huge sheet of paper covered in drawings, and the old spirit lady Septima, who hovered in the corner muttering to herself.

  “What’s the last thing you remember?” Izzy asked.

  Tee moved her mouth from one side of her face to the other. “Hmm …” The night before crept back to her consciousness in sudden, strange spurts, like a preview for a movie she’d already seen. Scooping up Izzy from outside the detention center. The SUV crushing that man’s head. The garage. Mort. The diner. The showdown at the drowning warehouse. And then … Izzy’s eyes went wide as she patted her shoulder where the metal rod had entered her body. She flinched; still tender. “I got stabbed,” she said.

  Izzy nodded, face creased with worry.

  “It was that emo nazi prick, Dake. I think. I didn’t see him do it, but …”

  “What else?”

  “We were in the Crown Vic with Ms. R and Mort and …”

  Mort had done something. Something huge. She sat up very straight. “What did he …” Someone was lying beside her in the bed. Tee gaped at Mort’s unconscious body. “Izzy. What the hell happened?”

  Izzy chuckled. “I was pretty out of it too, honestly, but not quite as much as you — pretty sure they brought us back to that garage where Ms. R has her crew. There was a doctor of some kind there, a Haitian woman. She checked you out and I remember her shaking her head a lot, but not out of worry — more like fascination. She checked me out too, but I was just … I could hardly talk. I was just barely there. Like I was hanging on by a thread to this reality.”

  Tee nodded. She knew exactly what Izzy meant.

  A toilet flushed in a part of the apartment Tee couldn’t see, then came the shushing of a faucet. Then a door opened and Jerome walked out. He smiled at her. “How you feeling, Tee-Cake?”

  “A hundred bucks short of empty,” Tee said.

  Sierra got up from her musing and stood beside Jerome at the foot of the bed. “Hey, Tee. You want hugs or you want space?”

  Tee hadn’t realized she didn’t want anyone but Izzy touching her until Sierra asked, and she was immediately grateful and felt a little guilty. She put her hand on Izzy’s knee to make sure she didn’t go anywhere, even though she knew she didn’t have to. “Space, please.” She looked down, then met Sierra’s eye. Could tell from the way Sierra’s own eyes widened a little, that same glint of fire that burned in Izzy’s could be seen in hers too. “Thanks,” she said. “For asking.” She wanted to swear things would go back to normal soon, that everything would just be cool again, but it would’ve felt like a lie. And anyway, she wasn’t sure that was what she wanted. She didn’t know what she wanted.

  “Cool,” Sierra said, offering a gentle smile to let Tee know she understood. “We gonna hit the bodega and stoop sit for a minute to get our thoughts together anyway.”

  Jerome waved awkwardly, and they walked out. Septima had hovered off to another part of the apartment. It was just Tee and Izzy, and Tee felt like she’d been waiting for this moment her whole life, like she couldn’t quite breathe right until it came. And here it was. They turned to each other, smiled, and closed their eyes.

  “How is this supposed to work?” Juan asked, once they’d walked a couple blocks through Bed-Stuy, just turning random corners like Bennie had suggested.

  She shrugged and looked up at the sky. “I mean … I was kinda hoping it would just click in by now and you’d run off barking and howling and stuff.”

  “Sierra said no howling! Do I get to howl?”

  “Don’t you dare!” Bennie snapped, in a playful way that made Juan want to kiss her. Focus! He had to focus! But how was he supposed to focus when Bennie was right there, being extra cute and kissable. And they hadn’t even really kissed yet — not more than a kind of quick one in passing, and they hadn’t admitted what they felt for each other, even though it was right there and obvious in plain sight, just waiting to be named and cultivated and to grow.

  It was right there, wasn’t it? Juan paused, suddenly overthinking everything. What if it wasn’t, and she was just being really nice because he’d gotten out of Rikers and she’d said she’d had feelings for him before but didn’t anymore but didn’t know how to tell him and —

  “Juan!” Bennie yelled into his face.

  “Ah! What?”

  She jumped up and down in front of him, her breath coming out in steamy puffs. “You’re trying too hard!”

  He gulped. “I am?” Shit. She really was just being nice to him.

  “Yeah, man. You gotta just let it flow. You’re the Hound of Shadow and Light, playa. It’s inherent to you. It’s not just that you got this — you are this. This is who you are, man. I know it’s new, but this you.”

  “That was …” He blinked a few times. She wasn’t just being nice to him.

  She put her chin to her chest and looked up, making her voice all deep. “Yessss?”

  “That was the best pep talk I’ve ever heard in my life.”

  “Bam! Bam!” Bennie punched the air twice, then spread her arms wide. “Wuuuut!”

  “Seriously, you should be a motivational speaker for, like, weirdo supernatural people like us.”

  Bennie tipped her head thoughtfully. “Hmm, that’s a, um, small target group, probably, from a marketing perspective, Juan, but okay, cool.”

  Sierra had made a terrible mistake pairing them up. That much was clear. Total newbie mistake, from a leadership perspective. She knew exactly all the seriousness between them, so she had no excuse! Bennie was just standing there blinking at him with her winter hat pulled back around her cute ears and her sparkly lip gloss and little blue swirls of eyeliner, and Juan was about to just politely, in a very gentlemanly way, take one step forward so they were close enough together to see the pores of each other’s skin and then say something sweet and breathy and then —

  “AH!” A fierce kind of awareness ripped through him, like the flickering awake of a new consciousness.

  “What’s wrong?” Bennie asked, her adorable face fraught with concern.

  A brand-new knowledge. That’s what it was. No, better: a new way of knowing. Juan knew where to go. Not just that — it was like there was an imaginary thread at some distant point and it was yanking him toward it. He had to get there. And anyway, he didn’t want the trail to go cold. “Haha!” He blinked, glanced around. “Ahahaha!”

  “What’s so funny?” Bennie demanded. “Let a girl in on the secret.”

  “I think it’s … I feel it.” He looked around again, let the urgent pull bristle for a few more seconds, relishing what he knew was about to happen. Then he grinned even wider and took off down Gates Avenue at a run. “I feel it!”

  “Wait up!” Bennie yelled, jogging after him. “Her ass better not be in Staten Island!”

  “I’m starting a new house,” Jerome announced as they sat on the stoop slurping icies and watching the random comings and goings on Sierra’s block. “Just thought I should let you know.”

  “Oh God,” Sierra groaned. “Here we go.”

  “It’s only gonna be for married women.”

  Sierra shook her head. “And you’re gonna call it House Wife. Brilliant.”

  “Sierra! Ugh! Why would you steal my glory like that?”

  “Heh, glory. That’s cute.” She sucked the last bit of extra-saccharine, half-frozen blue gunk out of the plastic sleeve and then popped open the lid of her coffee.

  “What about a house of only buckets?”

  “You mean like the people can make buckets do whatever they want? Because, like … why.”

  “No, I mean a house where all the members are buckets. Only buckets.”

  “I need you to stop talking, Jero
me. Just … take a time-out.”

  “I’m just saying. We could always have one that cooks flat sugary breakfast treats and has to have members from many different countries.”

  Sierra put her head in her arms.

  “Hey, isn’t that the kid who dropped out of our middle school in like the first week?”

  She glanced up the block, already bracing herself, and sure enough, here came Little Ricky Tate, sauntering along like it was a lovely spring day.

  “Hey, hey, y’all!” Ricky called once he got a few steps closer.

  “Oh boy.” Sierra sighed. Ricky had catcalled her over the summer, then been a dick when she’d told him to fall back. Then he’d apologized in October — the night of Lázaro’s wake, in fact — but something had been extra weird and needy about the way he did it — something Sierra couldn’t quite put her finger on at the time; she’d been so caught up with attacks from the Sorrows and the drama of going from Robbie to Anthony. And now she couldn’t remember what it was he’d said that set her slightly on edge.

  “What you guys up to?” Ricky asked.

  Jerome shrugged. “Nothin’.”

  Ricky didn’t even look at him, all eyes on Sierra. “Hey, do you think, do you mind if … maybe I could join you guys?”

  “What’s going on, Ricky?” Sierra asked, because something obviously was, and she was in no mood and had no time to bullshit around until he decided to tell her what it was.

  “No, I just, you know,” Ricky stammered, looking every which way but at who he was talking to.

  “I don’t know,” Sierra said.

  “I just wanted to ask, you know … and like … feel me?”

  “We don’t feel you, kid,” Jerome said with some added bass in his voice. “Spit it out.”

  “I just want to, I want to, you know, I want to do what you guys do!”

  That was it. That was what he’d said. I want to be part of what you’re part of, Sierra. She had worried he’d somehow found out she was a shadowshaper, that he was trying to get in with her crew while they were fending off attacks from all sides. That he was somehow connected to those attacks. She’d dreaded the whole thing and walked away quickly enough to not give him a chance to respond, which kept her wondering. But mostly she figured it was probably his awkward way of trying to be sweet. He had just asked her out, after all. And then everything had gone to hell and she had barely thought about it at all.