Shadow Touch

by Marjorie M. Liu

  “She’s expecting you,” William said, and led him through the foyer, through the open-air courtyard in the middle of their Spanish-style ranch, right up to an open door that revealed a large, comfortable room, decorated with the light touch of a woman who had been around the world.

  Nancy Dirk stood at the window of her office, a slender figure, pale and shining with power. William said not a word. He left, closing the door behind him. Nancy did not speak either.

  “You know why I am here,” Artur said quietly. “It is simple, really. I want to know why Beatrix Weave targeted me to get to you.”

  Nancy did not look at him. She continued to stare at her garden, the green labyrinth of bramble and rose.

  “Mrs. Dirk,” he said, and she raised her hand.

  “You touched this once,” she said, waving her fingers at him. “What did you see?”

  “Power,” Artur said immediately. “So much power you blinded me.” More power than a simple precog should have. More power than anyone he had ever encountered.

  “And you never said a word?”

  “Never.”

  Nancy finally turned to look at him. “You are a good man, Artur Loginov. I knew that all those years ago when I saw you in my head. I knew you were the man for us. I just had no idea how truly loyal you would remain. So, thank you. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.”

  “It is nothing,” he said, taken aback by her sincerity.

  “No,” she disagreed. “And I am so terribly sorry you had to endure this fiasco, all because of my poor planning. I had a vision, you see. Those murdered women. I knew the culprit would have a direct connection to this agency. I just did not realize quite how direct.” She shook her head. “I cannot believe all of this pain was brought about by a spoiled little girl who could not live with her family’s secrets.”

  “I do not understand. Are you referring to Beatrix Weave?” When Nancy made no reply, Artur said, “She could hardly be called a spoiled child. Her power—”

  “Was tremendous. Yes, I know. But she was still spoiled, and compared to her elders, very much a child.” Nancy’s lips tightened. “She was my great-niece, Artur. She was blood.”

  It was good that there was a chair nearby. Artur’s knees buckled. He sat down hard. He tried to talk, but his voice would not work. Nancy crouched before him. Her silver gaze searched his face, her far-seeing eyes delving into his secrets.

  “You cannot tell anyone,” she finally said. “Not a soul. Except for your wife, of course. The two of you are so much a part of each other, it would be foolish to exclude her. Isn’t that right, Elena?”

  Elena, who had been eavesdropping in his head, mentally flinched.

  “You knew,” Artur said hoarsely. “You knew about the Consortium.”

  “No,” Nancy said. “But I foresaw the possibility of its existence. I just did not anticipate the players within it.”

  Artur swallowed hard. “If Beatrix Weave was your great-niece, then you must have siblings. It was always my impression—everyone’s impression—that you were an only child.”

  “Impressions are not truth, Artur. Impressions are illusion.”

  “Why, then? Why allow everyone to believe you have no family?”

  “Because mine is not the kind of family who should be known. Nothing good would ever come from it. As you saw for yourself.”

  Artur sat back. He closed his eyes, trying to make sense of everything he knew, everything Elena showed him, again. Graves, also family. Beatrix’s cousin. Calling themselves a corporation, businesspeople running experiments, playing with unnatural forces—trying to control the world through criminal power. The American couple, who had been told to investigate, who represented yet another player, and who had pointed the finger directly at Nancy Dirk.

  “The man and woman who shadowed us from Vladivostok claimed they worked for an organization that had originally been interested in recruiting Elena. And yet they investigated both our kidnappings. I find that very curious. How did they know I had been taken? Why would they even be interested? Unless someone from our agency contacted them. But why do that? Why go behind everyone’s backs … unless there was something to hide? Something that could not be investigated so carefully by our own without jeopardizing secrets. Your secrets. So let me ask you, Ms. Dirk. Where are your siblings? Where are they and what do they do? And why, again, is it so important that no one from Dirk and Steele know they exist?”

  Nancy went very still. “You are asking me if I have betrayed this agency.”

  “Perhaps,” he said, and felt Elena wrap herself around his soul to comfort him as he said such a terrible thing.

  There was another chair beside him. Nancy sat down. “Can I tell you a story, Artur? Can I tell you one part of the truth? You and Elena must never speak of it. Never.”

  “I promise,” Artur said, hearing Elena echo the same.

  Nancy smiled grimly. “I am afraid to tell you. The truth can be an ugly thing. It can turn hearts.”

  “I know,” Artur said. “I have been told that a leap of faith is often required in such situations.”

  “Faith,” she whispered, and then: “Many years ago my sisters and I fell apart from one another. I had certain … visions … of a world that could be, and it was not a good place. I wanted to change that future. I thought I knew how. My sisters did not agree. They wanted to focus their energies on other things. Power. Wealth. I wanted those same things, but for a different reason. And so we went our separate ways. I promised never to interfere in their business—no matter how much I disagreed with it—and they promised never to interfere in mine. And we kept that promise to each other, up until the day Beatrix Weave kidnapped you from your home.”

  “How did you know it was her?”

  “I didn’t. But I had a feeling your disappearance was linked to my family. I contacted my sisters. They assured me they had no knowledge of any wrongdoing, but they promised to look into it. What they discovered was quite startling. Members of the family had taken it upon themselves to … branch off. My sisters, despite their motivations, are in their own way quite moral. They refused to dabble in certain criminal activities that would have been lucrative. Their children, however, had no such compunctions.”

  “Beatrix Weave did not kidnap me for money. That might have been the story she and Graves originally told, but what she wanted was you. She wanted me because I had shaken your hand, skin-to-skin, and somewhere deep inside me, she thought I had your secrets.”

  “You probably do,” Nancy said. “And if it had not been for Roland’s safeguards, your stubbornness, and Elena’s power, she might very well have drilled deep enough into your unconscious to discover all that I left behind in our one brief handshake.”

  Artur frowned, somewhat disturbed that deep within him he knew exactly what Nancy Dirk was trying so desperately to hide. “Beatrix gave up in the end, but only because she grew tired of failure. She still wanted the knowledge.”

  “Spoiled. No patience. Better she never got it.” Nancy sighed. “Better that she died than have it.”

  Artur shook his head, sharing his disbelief with Elena. Everything he knew about this agency and its founder was unraveling at the seams. “What are you hiding that is so terrible?”

  “Tell me,” Nancy said, and her voice was hard, unforgiving. “Was Beatrix human when you found her?”

  He hesitated, recalling those black eyes, her impossibly sharp teeth. “No. She was not human. I believe, though, that she was experimenting with things of a … magical nature. In her last moments, she told Elena that she had … opened a gate. That she had awakened someone, or something.” And then there was Rictor to consider. A man who was so much more than human, and who had been trapped by nothing more than a ring of light. The unknown was becoming a frightening thing.

  Nancy leaned back, her gaze distant. She covered her mouth with one hand. “Yes. It is very good she died.”

  “What happened to her? How is this all connected?�
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  Nancy did not answer right away. She seemed to be in a trance, one that she finally shook herself from with a blink and a shrug. “Beatrix finally found her teacher. She found what she was looking for.”

  “No,” Artur said. “If she had found that, she would not have gone searching for your secrets. Whatever she found was not enough. It might have changed her, but it was not enough.” Anger stirred within him; he was growing tired of these games, which bordered on betrayal. He could not stand that, to be betrayed by this organization that had become so much like family. He could not take it, and yet he had to know. He had to know what he almost given up his life to protect.

  “Mrs. Dirk,” he said. “Nancy.”

  “You will not be satisfied with anything less. Yes, I know. All right, then. I will give you one more truth, which is only one part, and not even the most startling part, if you knew the entire story. Beatrix was looking for her great-grandfather. My father. The only man who could have possibly taught her how to use her legacy.”

  “Which was magic,” Artur said. “She was not just a psychic.”

  “Sometimes the two are not so far apart, but yes, that is the simple answer.”

  “Who was your father, then? Surely she could not have expected him to still be alive.”

  Nancy shook her head. “Who do you know, Artur? Who do you know, however indirectly in your lifetime, who managed to achieve immortality, who had the power to alter reality?”

  Artur stared into her face, searching, searching, and for a moment felt sure he would lose his mind to her impossible secret. It was too much, more than he could bear, and Elena held him tight, soothing him with her voice. He could not be soothed, though. Elena did not fully understand the ramifications, the absolute insanity of this one small truth. The wickedness of it was horrifying and simple.

  “The Magi,” he said. “Your father was the Magi.”

  A man who had lived for two thousand years, made immortal by the curse he had placed on another. A man whose evil had led him to spend millennia bearing daughters in the hopes that one of them, one day, would be the key to freeing him.

  “Fate is a funny thing, isn’t it?” Nancy said. “My granddaughter marrying the one man whose curse gave me life. My father would never have existed to have my siblings and I had it not been for Hari. Who then promptly took him away.”

  “He was a monster,” Artur said.

  “Yes,” Nancy agreed. “But I would have liked to have met him again. Just once. Just to look into his eyes and see if he recognized me.”

  “He did not recognize his great-granddaughter,” Artur said coldly. “He tried to murder her. He might have raped her, given the chance.”

  “And for that alone, I would have killed him myself.” Nancy stood, pacing the room, ending up once again behind her desk to stare out the window. “I hardly knew my father. Most of what I learned has been through Dela and Hari, and I have rarely enjoyed what I heard. So you see, Artur, why I keep my secrets close to my heart. You know the damage they would do.”

  “And you say that is not the most startling part?” His voice was weak. “What are you doing here? What is Dirk and Steele really for?”

  Nancy gave him a cold look. He felt power shiver through his body, and he thought, Yes, she very well could be the daughter of that man. She said, “The agency was created to help those who need it. It was formed so that we—our kind, with power—would not waste it on the trivial and mundane. This world is headed toward dark times, Artur. It needs every helping hand it can get. My job is to cultivate those hands. To build them fast. Do you understand, Artur? Beatrix was just the beginning. She was small potatoes.”

  A terrifying notion, to think of Beatrix Weave and all she represented as somehow insignificant. He could not imagine what would be worse, but Elena reminded him again of those dark eyes and that gaping maw of sharp teeth, her darkness and fury and control. Perhaps that was a glimpse, a taste, and it filled him with fear.

  Artur could not take any more. He was afraid of what Nancy would tell him next. He stood. She said, “Are you leaving us?”

  Us. The agency. Artur thought about it for a moment and shook his head. “Not yet. I will be watching, though. I will be … more careful.”

  “As will I,” Nancy said. “The covenant between myself and my sisters has been broken. I don’t know what will happen next.”

  Artur had no response to that. He began to leave, but stopped in the doorway. “Dela and Hari deserve to know the truth about the Magi.”

  “Eventually,” Nancy said. “Preferably after I’m dead and gone, and can’t hear their complaints.”

  “That could be a while,” Artur said.

  “Maybe,” Nancy agreed, impossibly grim. Artur did not like the look on her face. It was the expression of a woman who had already seen her death, and had no taste for it.

  Artur left. He did not see William on his way out. He walked down the long, curving driveway to where he had parked his car, a small black convertible with the top down and a beautiful woman sitting in the front seat with her sunglasses on. Elena tilted her chin to peer at him over the lenses.

  “Your agency is screwed up,” she said. “I’m not so sure I want to join this circus.”

  “You may have a point,” Artur said, equally disturbed. He removed his gloves and gathered up Elena’s hands. He buried his face in her palms, inhaling the clean scent of soap and water. Oh, he loved this woman. If he lost everything else, at least he had her.

  “Let’s go,” Elena said, pulling one hand away to trail teasingly up his thigh. “And put the top up. There’s something I want to show you.”

  He did, and she did, and it was very good.

  * * *

  It was strange for Elena, thinking of herself as a married woman. She did not feel married. She felt the same, except now there was a weight to her relationship with Artur. A good weight, another kind of link, and it felt right. Crazy, too—she had never imagined herself capable of such fast and immediate commitment—but here she was, living in his home, with a heart so full she thought it might burst. How strange. So much could change in such a short time. Life, plodding along, and then boom, boom. Yee-haw. A happy ending.

  Kind of.

  They had dinner that night with Amiri and Rik. The two shape-shifters, who had been staying at one of the guest apartments Roland owned just for out-of-towners, came to Artur’s home bearing gifts of dessert and flowers. Elena knew Artur was reluctant to let them in—they would infect his floors and walls and God only knew what—but it was easier than meeting in a restaurant, especially with what they had to talk about.

  “So it’s safe for us to go home.” Rik did not look terribly happy about that. He leaned on the table, fiddling with his napkin. “And if we don’t want to?”

  “Why not?” Elena asked. “Even though you stuck with us this long, I can’t imagine staying on land is your first choice. What about your family?”

  Rik’s jaw flexed. Elena saw an emptiness in his eyes, and she realized that despite his bouts of strength and good humor, she had felt that missing piece of him from the start; as though he were a vessel waiting to be filled. Elena did not believe Rik was broken, but his captivity had certainly stripped him down to the very basics. Or maybe it was not just his time at the facility; she knew almost nothing about the young man or the life he had come from.

  “I don’t have family,” he finally said, confirming her fears. He challenged them all with a hard stare. “Not any that wants me, anyway.”

  Silence around the table, broken only when Amiri sighed. “I cannot imagine that. Why did you not speak of this before?”

  Rik gave him a look, and then tore his gaze away to stare unblinking at Artur. “Will Dirk and Steele hire me? I don’t want charity or special treatment because of what I am. I can learn things.”

  Elena felt Artur’s indecision. After eavesdropping on his conversation with Nancy Dirk, she knew why. God. She felt like a full-fledged inhabitant
of the Twilight Zone, except this was worse. How did a person deal with craziness, and then go on pretending life was normal? How did she go back to being a regular girl—albeit a regular girl who could perform miracles?

  “No favors,” Artur said quietly. “But I am sure Roland would offer you a job, though it would be a trial position at first.”

  “Good enough.” Rik studied his hands and hesitated. “What about you, Amiri?”

  Amiri also gazed at his hands. “Even with Beatrix gone, home might not be safe for me. I do not know where those photographs ended up. So, I will stay. I have already spoken to Roland. He is preparing my paperwork.”

  “Nice.” Elena sipped her beer, noting the relief that passed, fleetingly, over Rik’s face. “The old gang is hanging around. We can reminisce about being lab experiments when life gets too boring.”

  “I’ve got you all beat on that one,” Rik said. “I bet none of you were probed.”

  Elena held up her hands. “Do not say another word. Please.”

  “When are you leaving for Wisconsin?” Amiri asked, politely cutting his steak into portions. The golden high-lights in his hair seemed especially bright tonight, the undertones of his dark skin shimmering smooth and warm.

  “At the end of the week. I’m going to teach Artur how to be a farmer.”

  For a little while, anyway. Long enough to work the harvest. Long enough to visit the hospital and check on the children. Elena did not tell them that after Wisconsin they would be returning to Russia. They had unfinished business there. Or rather, Artur did. It was time, he had told her, to go back to the orphanage. Time to find his mother. Time to walk those old streets and come to terms with his nightmares—nightmares he did not want to burden Elena with.

  It was funny: she did not know what was going to happen to them, knew it would not be easy, either way, but she looked forward to the adventure of living and loving Artur Loginov. He was her best friend, and she was his. They were each other’s heroes. It could not get much better than that.

  The doorbell rang. Artur frowned.