Shadow Rising

by Gabby Fawkes

  I grimaced. The thought made me shudder.

  “I know a Shapeshifter,” Retta said then. “We can ask him about it after school.”

  “What should we do with this?” Nik said, jiggling the carcass in his arms.

  With a resigned exhalation, I held out my hand for it. “I’ll take it. Everyone already thinks I’m a freak. It’s not like having a dead hare in my bag will damage my stellar reputation.”

  13

  As Nik, Retta and I hurried down the steps of Zenith at the end of school, I was kinda surprised I’d made it out alive. No one else had tried to kill me. No more weird demon-hare-zombies had gone for my throat. And the icing on the cake - no one had shared another embarrassing video of me around the school. These days, that counted as a win.

  We headed to Retta’s car and got in. I took the shotgun seat, slinging my bag into the footwell. The pungent smell of dead demon-hare wafted through the vehicle.

  “Don’t let that thing drop any juices in my car,” Retta said, giving me the side-eye.

  Our plan was to swing by Geiser’s first. I wasn’t about to go and meet Retta’s Shapeshifter contact without my bow as protection and Nik wasn’t about to let me go anywhere without having conducted some kind of special spell on my bedroom to keep Geiser out.

  In the rear-view mirror, I watched him staring silently out of the window. The dark brooding look I’d first attributed to assholery, I realized now, was actually a look of agony. Torture. Nik appeared to be carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders. I was determined to do whatever it took to lift some of the load.

  Retta drove us to Geiser’s mansion. As we drew up the driveway, she whistled.

  “Mom will be pissed when I tell her how fancy her rival’s house is,” she said. “Not that she’d be surprised. We all know that men get paid twenty times more than everyone else.”

  “Hear, hear, sister,” I replied, climbing out the car.

  We headed inside the house. There didn’t seem to be anyone around. Emerald was at cheer practice tonight, Heidi at band. Geiser would be at the office, so that just left Mom. Oh yeah, and a shit ton of maids.

  As Retta paced inside the mansion, running her fingers across the impeccably dusted porcelain vases, I wondered where Mom had gotten to.

  “Hello?” I called. “Anyone home?”

  The Erlik maid emerged from the living room, feather duster in hand. She gave me a disgruntled look. “Can I get you anything?” she asked in a forced polite voice.

  I shook my head. “No, sorry, I wasn’t calling for you. I was just wondering if my mom was around, that’s all.”

  “Miss Delacour went to town to do some shopping.”

  Miss Delacour? My parents hadn’t gotten divorced. Mom had no reason to revert to her maiden name.

  I raised an eyebrow. “Don’t you mean Mrs. Foxglove?”

  “She asked me to call her Miss Delacour until the wedding,” the maid replied in a thin voice.

  A horrible sensation washed through me. Mom was in so deep with Geiser. First she’d replaced Dad with him. Then she’d erased her life in Harriman. Now she couldn’t even stick with the Foxglove name for a few more months. She’d prefer to revert to Delacour, to the name of the people who’d ostracized her for marrying an Elkie. No doubt Geiser — on Conrad’s advice — had encouraged it; Delacour would sound far more appealing to the voters’ ears than a typical Elkie name like Foxglove.

  How the hell was I going to untangle her from this mess?

  My thoughts reeled as I headed upstairs, Retta and Nik following.

  It was only once I was inside my room with the door shut that it occurred to me Nik was now standing inside my bedroom. You know, the place where I walked around in my underwear. The place where I slept. Naked...

  Though Nik’s face remained as impassive as always, the way his owl’s amber eyes darted about the place made me think he at least was acutely aware of the situation.

  I let out a little cough of embarrassment.

  “Come on, Magic Boy,” Retta said to Nik. “Get your thing done so we can leave.”

  Nik flashed her a cool look, clearly not appreciating her bossiness. But he began working on my door nonetheless, muttering under his breath in Latin as he worked in a methodical manner, touching every inch of the door frame.

  I went over to the closet to fetch my bow. Retta flopped onto my bed.

  “Hey, what’s that?” I heard her say.

  I tipped my head round the closet door to see her gazing at the far wall. There, lying against the skirting board where I’d thrown it last night, was the necklace Geiser had gifted me.

  “That,” I said, walking over and picking it up, “was Geiser’s shallow attempt to buy my affection.”

  “No,” Retta said, unfurling her long legs over the side of the bed and gesturing for me to bring it to her. “That’s a veiling necklace.”

  “A what?” I asked, walking over and depositing it into her outstretched palm.

  Retta held the blue gem up to her face, inspecting it with a scrutinizing look. “Oh yeah. I’m 100 percent sure. I had to do a midterm paper on these babies.”

  “What does it do?” I asked.

  “It accentuates Mage powers,” Retta explained. “But if non-Mages abuse it to get Mage powers, it has side effects, like Vanpari losing their teeth or Elkie...”

  Her voice faded away as she realized — at the exact same time as me — what the veiling necklace’s intention had been.

  “That fucker was trying to get my Elkie ears to disappear,” I said, clenching my fists.

  Of course the gift from Gesier was an attempt to deal with his step-daughter’s Elkie problem.

  “Or he was trying to help you become a better Mage?” Retta suggested without conviction.

  I shot her a look. “Really? Help me? Geiser?”

  “You’re right,” she said, bringing her hands up into a truce. With a softer voice she added, “That sucks, Theia. I’m sorry.”

  I paced away, shaking my head in disbelief as it all fell into place.

  So that’s where my powers had come from. The veiling necklace. And that’s why they’d disappeared overnight. I wasn’t brilliantly gifted at magic at all. Geiser knew I was going to make the candles blast a foot into the air because of the necklace. He’d planned it all. His delight had just been at knowing it was working, and that my ugly ears would soon shrink away.

  I turned back to Retta. “The upshot is I’m not as Mage as I thought I was. Identity crisis averted.”

  She nodded. “But those white fireball blasty things were really handy. Maybe you should wear the necklace again in case we need them?”

  I touched my ears protectively. “And risk losing these beauties? That’s a hard pass.”

  Just then, Nik finished muttering his Latin spell. He looked over his shoulder at us.

  “All done,” he announced. “Now no one will be able to step over the threshold without you explicitly inviting them. Which is better than a lock, don’t you think?”

  I had to agree. “Thanks,” I mumbled, still not completely over the fact he was standing in my sacred naked-sexy-dancing place.

  With my room now secure from any more late night intrusions, we headed out the house and piled back into Retta’s car to enact part one of the plan.

  As we drove through the streets of NYC, everything felt different. In just one day there’d been a tangible shift in the atmosphere. There was a feeling of foreboding, of distrust. Some of the coffeeshops that had been open yesterday remained closed today. There were hardly any different classes mingling. I shuddered.

  Once we’d parked, Retta led us to a rundown part of town. I couldn’t help but feel even more wary. I gripped my bow tightly, ready to spring into action.

  We stopped beside a large metal garage door with a smaller door cut into it. What the heck was this place? And what was someone of Retta’s ilk doing associating with people who lived in a place like this?

  Retta
rapped her knuckles against the metal. “Cora? You there? It’s Retta.”

  A moment later there came the sound of scraping metal as a bolt was drawn from the other side. Then the smaller door was heaved open.

  There stood the coolest looking Celestial girl I’d ever seen. Far from the pious religious freaks at Zenith, this girl was a punk, with choppy dyed black bangs and blood red wings. Her baggy jeans were flecked with paint and there was a silver ring through her septum.

  “Retta, ohmygod!” she squealed, throwing her arms around Retta. “What are you doing here? I thought you were avoiding us because of the whole…” She stage-whispered, “...Lucas thing.”

  Retta’s expression stiffened. “This is Nik and Theia. We need to speak to Aaron. Is he in?”

  “Sure, come in,” the Celestial girl said. She moved away from the door to let us through. Unlike Trevor, her feathered wings were small, neat and delicate, barely stretching past her waist. “I’m Cora by the way.”

  We emerged into a warehouse style room. It was dingy, with lamps dotted around the place. The only natural light came from the crescent moon shining through a dirty skylight in the ceiling. Next to a battered leather couch were a variety of scattered bean bags and a large wooden coffee table covered in weed paraphernalia. Dotted all around the room were large canvases with abstract-style oil paintings in various states of completion. Most of them depicted gruesome scenes of bloody Celestials with torn wings.

  “Did you paint these?” I asked Cora, looking at the art with a mixture of revulsion and awe.

  “Yeah,” Cora smirked. “It’s a form of therapy for me. I had a bad childhood.”

  “Oh.”

  How awful must her childhood must have been if painting angels having their wings torn off was therapeutic?

  “Help yourself to coffee,” Cora added. “Beer. Wine. Whatever. I’ll fetch Aaron.” She went off down the hall.

  I looked at Retta. “She’s a moon-class Celestial? How does that work?”

  Retta took a beer from the fridge. She offered me one. I shook my head.

  “She’s still sun-class,” Retta explained. “She just schedules herself with the moon-class for college. She was raised in this really strict religious sect. Like a lot of Celestials, if you turn your back on your religion you get totally cut off from your whole family. Which she took as an opportunity to attend the best art college in New York, which just so happens to be a moon institution.”

  I thought again about Nik belonging to dual classes, about the moon-class not actually being nocturnal. Mages didn’t have to choose where to draw their magic from and it looked as if suns and moons didn’t really have to stick to their divided hours either. There was way more movement than I’d ever considered and way less need for segregation.

  “And you’re friends with a nocturnal Celestial because...?” I asked Retta.

  “Because none of the other kids at my church smoke weed and pierce their septums, d’uh,” Retta replied.

  Just then, I heard a sound from down the hall. I turned, expecting to see Cora again. But instead, a huge guy with long golden hair emerged from the darkness.

  I could tell right away he was at least part Siren. He was tanned, topless, muscular and looked like he’d been carved from marble. I felt my legs weaken beneath me.

  Bleary-eyed from having just woken up, he strode into the living room, caught sight of Retta and froze. His pale blue eyes locked on her like he was seeing a ghost.

  “Hey,” he mumbled.

  Retta seemed uncomfortable as she shifted from foot to foot. “Lucas. How’s it going?”

  “Fine.” He spoke in a clipped monotone. He went over to the kitchenette and picked up the coffee pot. “Why are you here?”

  “I’m with my friends,” Retta said, pointing at us. “We wanted to ask Aaron something Shapeshifter related.”

  He frowned. “You’re here to see Aaron? Right. Okay.” He sounded disappointed. His gaze roved over to where Nik and I were awkwardly lingering. “Hey.” He gestured with his coffee mug toward Nik. “I know you. You’re that kid. The moon-class defector.”

  Nik looked incredibly uncomfortable. “I’m Mayor Storm’s son, yeah,” he replied.

  “Cool.” Lucas took a sip of coffee. Turning to Retta, he said, “Does your mom know you’re hanging out with a Geiser groupie?”

  “I’m not,” Nik said forcibly. “I’m anti-Geiser.”

  “We both are,” I added, feeling the need to leap to his defense.

  Lucas looked at us both suspiciously. “Good for you,” he replied dispassionately. Then he gave Retta a final parting look before sauntering off, taking his huge, beautiful, bulking, bulging body away from my lustful gaze.

  I shook my head to snap out of my trance. When I turned to Retta, my eyes were wide and questioning.

  “What was that about?”

  “We have history,” was all she’d say, leaving the rest to my imagination.

  As much as I’d have loved to stand here grilling Retta on her past conquest with an uber-buff Siren boy, there was another pressing curiosity demanding my attention.

  I looked at Nik. “Why did he call you a defector?”

  Nik seemed to bristle. “Bit of a harsh way to describe it, but when I switched, the moon-class were peeved. I mean, no one likes it when one of their own switches and I’m kinda high profile, being the mayor’s son and all. So the press was all over it.”

  Poor Nik. He’d really been through it. Leaving home, switching classes and suffering the backlash all for his Vanpari friends. He must be so loyal. It only made me like him more.

  Finally, I heard movement from the corridor. Cora reappeared and this time, she had a shy-looking guy in tow. He was average height, not short, not tall. His hair was brown. He was slim and had a timid way about him. He was basically the opposite of Lucas in appearance and demeanor and exactly everything I hadn’t expected from a Shapeshifter.

  I’d always been taught not to trust Shapeshifters. Shapeshifters could only shift into the appearance of something they’d seen before. Though the terms of the peace treaty made it illegal for them to shift into any other person — effectively meaning they could only ever imitate animals — it was still anxiety provoking to meet one, because there was always that lingering possibility they’d steal your identity.

  “Hey, Aaron,” Retta said when she saw him.

  “Cora said you wanted to see me?” he replied in a uncertain voice that suggested he thought such a thing was improbable.

  “Yeah. We wanted to ask you something.” Retta gestured to me.

  I pulled the demon-hare from my bag.

  Aaron looked at it with confusion. “What’s that?”

  “It’s a demon-hare,” I stated. “But when it attacked me, it looked Vanpari.”

  His head snapped up. “It shifted?”

  “Right before my eyes,” I said. “When it died, the Vanpariness just seeped out of it and it reverted to its original form.”

  “Look at its ass,” Nik said. “Flank. Whatever it’s called.”

  Aaron did as he was instructed. He looked at the weird series of numbers branded into the flesh of the creature. “That’s a lab code,” he said.

  “Do you think it escaped from an experiment or something?” Retta asked. “Could that be possible? To turn a demon-beast into a Shapeshifter?”

  Aaron paced away, patting his chin contemplatively. “Theoretically yeah,” he began. “There are potions that can do that.”

  “Potions?” I repeated. “To give a non-shifter shifting abilities?”

  He nodded. “You know that whole thing with a cauldron and frogs’ legs and hubble bubble and all that? Those kinds of potions were banned during the peace treaty. The recipes were supposed to be destroyed. But obviously you can still find them all on the night web.”

  Curiosity swelled inside of me. “What’s the night web?”

  Aaron took a breath, as if he was a little frustrated by my high schooler ignorance.
“Well, you know what night magic is?”

  “Uh huh.”

  “And you know night magic is banned?”

  “Yes,” I deadpanned, growing tired by the condescending way he was speaking to me.

  “Well, the night web is the bit of the internet that you can only access through special software. It means your activities online can’t be traced or tracked. It’s full of banned spells, night-magic talismans, recipes, all of it.”

  “Including ones that could imbue shapeshifting abilities?” Retta asked.

  Aaron gave her an affirmative nod. “Yup. So the way we shift is by mimicking the appearance of something we’ve seen. It’s like we take a snapshot photograph of someone. When we want to look like them, we’re actually just putting up a glimmer to fool the beholder into seeing the photograph. We don’t actually change. It’s all an illusion. A type of magic. Easily mimicked with a potion. If you know where to find such a potion.”

  Nik cleared his throat. “So if someone injected this beast with one of those potions and then showed them a Vanpari they’d be able to turn into one?”

  Aaron scratched his head, looking uncertain. “I guess. But with a Shapeshifter it’s a voluntary act. I don’t know how you’d convince a demon-hare to put up a glimmer.”

  “It would have to be changed forcibly,” Retta added.

  “Which adds a whole other level of illegal,” Aaron said. He had a perplexed expression on his face as he studied the demon-hare. “This is kind of creeping me out. Where did you say you found it?”

  “It was in the playing fields at Zenith,” I told him.

  His eyebrows drew together. “Zenith? Oh, right, that’s the sun version of Eclipse. The fancy school. I thought it was closed.”

  “The moon part closed,” Nik explained.

  Aaron clicked his fingers. “Right, that’s it. I was watching it on the news when I woke up this evening. Eclipse chose to move to a different premises underground to protect its students from some targeted Vanpari attacks or something, right?”

  Huh. So the story had been spun a different way by the moon-class press. Neither version was the truth. I wondered if anyone in the press ever told the truth or if there was always a bit of bias coloring every story.