Broken Shadows

by A. J. Larrieu

  “Here,” Jackson said, looking down.

  “Someone dug a grave in this?” The earth at my feet was more rock than soil, interspersed with weird, spiky succulent plants and occasional tufts of long, pale grass. I couldn’t imagine how anyone, even a converter, had shifted enough of the rock to bury a body. Then I remembered the enhancers.

  “You might want to stand back,” Jackson said.

  “You can tell? Is he...down there?”

  Jackson nodded. I backed up until I was knee-deep in the underbrush again. Jackson tossed me the flashlight, and the ground at his feet began to shift.

  It was surreal. Rocks and packed chunks of earth shifted and floated to the side, forming a sort of cairn. Jackson’s green eyes had gone almost black, dilated in concentration. Muscles in his jaw worked as sand and rock shifted, first in a steady stream and then in a torrent.

  He got past the top layer to the packed, muddy sand below. The soil hitting the ground made a sickening plop—and all at once, I was back. The suffocating press of the mud, the squelch of wet soil creeping into my throat, my ears. I tried to take a breath, but my throat was closing up. Sweat broke out over my forehead, across my back. I knew I was breathing too fast, but I couldn’t stop and I couldn’t get enough air in spite of it. I fell to my knees in the brush. I tried to say something, but I only managed a weak cry, and everything went dark.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  “Hey, hey...” Hands stroked my cheeks. I was warm, cradled in something soft. I opened my eyes, and the first thing I saw was Jackson’s face. My breathing slowed.

  “Sorry. Sorry...I...”

  “Shh.” He drew me in close and tucked my head against his chest. He’d wrapped me in a blanket, and he must’ve been warming it with his powers, because we were still outside in the windy dark. “Another flashback?”

  I nodded.

  “I saw. Like your nightmares. You still get them?”

  “Every now and then.”

  “I guess you never get over something like that.”

  Belatedly, I noticed his hands were still on my face. “You really shouldn’t be touching me.”

  He smiled slowly, lips curving. “I’m done digging.”

  “I’m serious,” I said, and his hands fell to his sides. I struggled out of his arms and wrapped the blanket tightly around myself. I remembered when he’d held me in his spare bedroom, soothing away my nightmare. And I remembered the consequences. He’d never be able to touch me like that again.

  “That’s not true,” he said.

  I didn’t bother contradicting him—we both knew this couldn’t continue. Even if we figured out who was behind the enhancers, there would still be plenty of rogue converters out to take advantage of him, and despite how much I progressed, I couldn’t depend on being able to control my powers.

  I turned to the disturbed ground. “Did you find him?”

  Jackson nodded. “Shot twice in the chest.”

  “Oh my God.” I thought of Bridget’s face when I’d asked her about Conner. “Oh my God.”

  “Let me get you back to the car,” he said.

  “I’m okay.”

  “You don’t need to see this. Trust me.”

  I gave in and let him settle me in the passenger seat. He disappeared into the underbrush again and returned a little while later carrying a small bundle that turned out to be Conner’s wallet and cell phone, both smeared with sandy clay and ruined. He put them in the trunk.

  “Shouldn’t we have left the scene untouched? For the police?”

  “I just dug up the body,” he said, closing the trunk. “I think we’re past that.”

  “Are you going to tell Bridget?”

  “I think I am. She might be involved, but I’ll be able to tell a lot from the way she reacts.”

  “I want to be there.”

  * * *

  Bridget lived in a flat on the third floor of a pretty Victorian near Alamo Square, and when she came down the stairs to meet us on the marble front stoop, I could tell she’d already guessed the news.

  At first I thought she wasn’t going to cry, but then tears were rolling down her face and she was sobbing. Jackson didn’t speak, just went to her and folded her up as though he were shielding her from rain.

  We went inside and sat on her tiny couch until she calmed down. She asked questions—how did he die, how long had he been dead, had he felt any pain. Jackson didn’t answer them. We don’t know, I couldn’t tell, it’s impossible to know. She was too distraught to notice his evasions. If she was putting on an act, it was a remarkable one. Whoever was behind this, it couldn’t be her.

  We stayed until Bridget calmed down enough to call her parents. Jackson gave her a ride to their house. I sat in the back, and to my surprise, she slid in next to me.

  “I knew,” she said after we’d gone blocks in silence. “I knew. I just didn’t want to admit it.”

  “I can understand that,” I said. “You were right not to give up.”

  “Was I?” She turned to me, all swollen eyes and red, tear-streaked face. “If I could have found him sooner, maybe I could have saved him. What if he was lost, what if he starved to death?” She broke down into fresh sobs, and I wanted to tell her there was nothing she could have done, that someone had murdered her brother, and now all we could hope for was justice. But instead I gripped her arm through her baggy, un-Bridget-like sweatshirt and murmured vague comfort—”It’s okay, don’t blame yourself.” She broke down again and sobbed into my shoulder, and I had to blink back tears of my own.

  Jackson stopped in front of a marina-style house in the Sunset. A man and a woman were waiting outside, still wearing nightclothes and pajamas. Every light in the house was on.

  I helped Bridget out of the car, and she collapsed into her mother’s embrace. Jackson exchanged a few low words with the man, who looked as though he’d dammed his grief back under a wall of grim anger. Jackson broke away, and the three of them went back into the house.

  “Should we stay?” I asked him.

  “Her uncle’s coming over. He’ll help them get settled.”

  We got back into the car. “You don’t really think they’re involved, do you?” I asked him.

  “No. But the fewer people who know how Conner died, the better. Maybe someone will slip up.”

  He looked more drawn than I’d ever seen him, even when he’d taken the body out of the speakeasy. As he drove down Taraval, I tried to come up with something comforting to say, but it was hopeless.

  “What now?” I said finally.

  “Now we see what that phone can tell us.”

  * * *

  Sebastian sat on a stool in a back room at Featherweight’s and pulled a cardboard box full of cell phones out of a cabinet.

  “I hate these things.” He set the box down with a crunch of protesting electronics. “You can burn every one of them for all I care.”

  “I don’t want to burn them,” Jackson said. “I just want to borrow one that looks like this.” He held up the phone he’d found on Conner’s body.

  We’d spent a sleepless night in separate apartments and met at Featherweight’s as soon as Jackson got off work. There was an empty barstool between us. We couldn’t run the risk of touching and neutralizing Jackson’s powers—or mine. Jackson filled Sebastian in as he rummaged through the box of phones. Seb seemed to be taking this whole thing rather personally.

  “We are going to find this son of a bitch,” he said, “and I am going to personally rip off his head.” He seemed to mean it literally.

  Right now, though, the only lead we had was Conner’s ruined phone. Jackson was hoping to find a match in the lost-and-found at Featherweight’s. If we could read the SIM card, we might be able to figure out who else was behind this drug ring.<
br />
  “Here,” I said. “Let me help.” Sebastian was no use—all he was doing was glowering at the things. I put a handful of phones on the table and sorted through them. An ancient flip-phone, a fancy large-screen smart phone with a leather case, wrong brand, right brand wrong model.

  “Here!” Jackson sounded elated. “I think this is right.” He held up an older-model smart phone with a sparkly purple case. “No battery left, though. Can I take it with me?”

  “Just keep me posted,” Sebastian said.

  We went back to Jackson’s apartment and ate Indian delivery on his couch while we waited for the sparkly purple phone to charge. We’d had to go to an electronics store and try every charger on the sale rack until we found one that fit. Then we’d swapped the SIM card from Conner’s ruined phone into the borrowed one.

  “Naan?” Jackson said.

  “Sure.” I took the piece of flatbread he offered and used it to sop up the remains of my chicken tikka masala. We were sitting on opposite ends of the couch to avoid even accidentally grazing each other. “So why doesn’t Seb trust Simon or Malik?” I would have felt better if they were helping us look.

  “Seb’s just overly cautious. He doesn’t even like Caleb dating a normal.”

  “Does Caleb’s partner know?”

  “Yeah, but Seb wasn’t happy when he found out. He wanted them to wait until they got married.”

  “Kind of a big thing to spring on someone on the honeymoon.”

  “My mother’s a normal, and she figured it out ahead of time. I think she would’ve killed my father if he’d lied about it.”

  I thought of my uncle Lionel’s partner, Bruce. I was too young to remember when Lionel had told him what we were, but Bruce was so unflappable, I could picture how it had gone. He’d probably said something like “Huh,” and gotten up for another beer.

  “Have you ever told anyone?” Jackson asked.

  The question surprised me. It had been a long time since I’d been in a position to even consider it. The last normal I’d dated had been in high school, and that definitely hadn’t been serious enough for me to risk revealing myself. Reggie had been a converter, and the few guys I’d dated casually before him had all been shadowminds of one sort or another.

  “I guess I’ve never been that close to anyone who wasn’t a shadowmind,” I said, taking a big bite of naan.

  “Never?” Jackson’s eyes met mine over a paper take-out carton.

  “Except my uncle’s partner.” My mouth was full of naan and spicy sauce. It seemed to take forever for me to chew. “How about you?” I said finally. He just shook his head.

  I looked away. “I guess there are so many more shadowminds here, you don’t have trouble finding people to date.”

  He raised an eyebrow and speared a piece of paneer. “Yeah, you’d think, but...you know. You grow up with these people. I mean, Bridge and Cam are like sisters.”

  I was suddenly fascinated and tried not to show it by focusing on my food. “How long have you guys known each other?” I asked the bread.

  “Since we were born. I think our mothers took us walking in matching strollers when we were six weeks old.”

  I swallowed. “Wow. So, uh, why did Cam leave?”

  Jackson blew out a deep breath. “It’s her story, really...the short version is that her parents wanted us to get married.”

  “Wha—? You and her?”

  He nodded, sipped his beer. “She wasn’t interested.”

  I suppressed a small storm of incredulity that anyone could not be interested. I was having more than my share of trouble not jumping him right this moment. Jackson’s mouth twitched.

  “So they moved on to my brother,” he went on.

  My eyes widened.

  “But she wasn’t interested in him, either. So they suggested Caleb.”

  “I though Caleb was gay.”

  “He is. I’m not sure they realized that, though. Anyway, Cam was dating a normal at the time. Nice guy. I think it was pretty serious. Her parents threatened to cut her out of her inheritance if she didn’t marry a shadowmind, and she left.”

  “It’s hard to imagine anyone thinking that would work on her.”

  Jackson smiled. “She was softer back then.”

  “So that was the last time you saw her?”

  He nodded. “It’s been a while.”

  “Were you interested?”

  He looked over at me. “Like I said, she’s like my sister.”

  “Wouldn’t be the first time childhood friends fell in love,” I said, thinking of my brother and Cass.

  “Yeah, well, not this time.” He reached out with a crumpled paper napkin and wiped a smear of tikka masala sauce from my cheek. Then the sparkly purple cell phone buzzed, and both of us jumped.

  “What do we do?” It kept buzzing. A number with an area code I didn’t recognize showed up along with a picture of a girl with curly black hair.

  “Let it go to voice mail.”

  We both watched until the screen went dark again. I held a forkful off food halfway to my mouth. The phone went ding. I dropped my fork.

  “Put it on speaker,” I said. Jackson swiped at the phone, and the message started.

  “Conner...seriously, where the hell are you? I’ve been calling and calling, and I know you said not to leave messages on this number but...I need a re-up, okay? I’ve got people breathing down my neck, and some of them aren’t exactly friendly about it. I’ll meet you halfway up six. Just call me back.”

  “L.A. area code,” Jackson said. “He was supplying the whole state.”

  “Are there any other voicemails?”

  “Half a dozen.” Jackson went to the contacts list and started scrolling. “And I recognize some of these names.” Turner and Greg and Thomas were there, but so were Bridget and Malik and Simon and Jackson. “I don’t recognize most of these,” Jackson said. “We’re going to have to be systematic.”

  “Makes sense.” I stood up. “Look, my shift starts soon. I’d better get going.”

  Jackson frowned. “Are you sure you want to go in?”

  “Bills to pay. And hey, maybe I’ll hear something we can use. Someone might come in looking for Conner again.”

  This made Jackson frown even harder. “I don’t think you should—”

  “Relax.” I smiled at him. “I’m not going to call attention to myself.”

  “It’s probably good if you aren’t in my apartment anyway,” he said, and the look he gave me from across the couch went straight to the place between my legs.

  “When this is over...”

  He shifted toward me and put his hands on my shoulders, a hairsbreadth away from my collar. I could feel the warmth of him. “When this is over, I’m not going to let you sleep alone for a month.” I would’ve laughed if he hadn’t looked so fierce. I met his eyes, and they were dark. Possessive. I couldn’t look away. Another second caught in that gaze and I would’ve stayed the night, consequences of all kinds be damned, but Jackson sighed and broke the spell.

  “I’ll give you a ride,” he said.

  I kept my hand dutifully away from his while he drove, no matter how sexy he looked working the gearshift. He drove faster than usual, changing lanes rapidly to get around slower cars. When we arrived at Featherweight’s, he pulled into a bus lane and gripped the wheel with both hands.

  “You’d better get out,” he said. “This gearshift isn’t enough of an obstacle.”

  I was tempted to stay exactly where I was. Jackson closed his eyes and took a couple of shallow breaths. Then my seatbelt unbuckled itself and my door opened and swung wide. He’d gotten it under control.

  “I’ll walk you in.”

  “Are you sure that’s a good idea?” There were plenty of dark corners betwe
en the alley and the speakeasy.

  “No.” He unbuckled himself and got out. “But my motivation for finding these guys faster is only getting stronger.”

  We managed to control ourselves on the dark, twisting journey to Simon’s. Jackson left me at the door, and I joined Malik behind the bar to start prepping for the night. A bag of limes was waiting for me. I dumped them out and started butchering them.

  “Whoa,” Malik said. “Somebody sure needs to get laid.”

  “Shut up.” I dumped the cut limes into their plastic crate and moved on to the lemons. Serial citrus murdering. The best cure I had for sexual frustration.

  “Feeling better?” he asked me.

  “Huh?”

  “You know, from yesterday.” He looked at me with his brow furrowed.

  It took me a moment to remember I’d told him I was sick. “Oh. Yeah, much better. Thanks. I think it was one of those twenty-four hour things.”

  “Well, just don’t puke in anyone’s beer.”

  I laughed a little too loud and hoped he’d bought it. Fortunately, Malik let it go and lit up the candles.

  As it turned out, all my hopes for covertly gathering intel were in vain. It was a slow night, and the tip jar was depressingly light by the end of it. No one came in asking for mysterious pills; no one went into withdrawal in the back room. When Paulie came by at his usual time, there was only one other patron in the bar.

  “You’ve been away,” he said. “I thought you were sick or something.”

  “No—I mean, yeah, but I’m better now.” No one thought Paulie was connected to the enhancers, but it was still probably safer not to tell him.

  “Everything okay? With Jackson?”

  I blushed, wondering if he was picking up on my sexual frustration. “Fine. What are you having tonight?”

  “Did you guys break up?”

  “No. Look, it’s nothing, okay? You want a gin and tonic, or what?”