shadows of salem 01 - shadow born

by hamilton, rebecca

  CHAPTER 20

  Maddock’s words echoed in my head during the drive home, clawing at the edges of my mind and pulling me perilously close to a panic attack. Reincarnation? End of the world prophecies? What the hell kind of world had I walked into? And why had nobody prepared me for this?

  Anger and fear roiling inside me, I slammed my apartment door behind me, then made a beeline for my bedroom. I stripped off my dirty outfit, then flung myself onto the mattress facedown and closed my eyes.

  And then I breathed.

  Inhale, two, three. Hold, two, three. Exhale, two, three.

  I repeated the words over and over inside my head as I followed the breathing exercise Oscar had taught me when I was little. It helped me focus, helped still my thoughts and emotions, and was a great tool in times of stress.

  After several minutes, my heart rate finally slowed, and enough tension bled from my body that I was able to unclench my hands and roll over onto my back. Letting out a sigh, I finally allowed my mind to think again, and the first thought that popped into my mind, naturally, was Oscar.

  Oscar should have prepared me for this. My parents had given me into his care. Was it really their idea that I not be taught to use my magic, or was it his? I wanted to think that my parents would have wanted me to be well-armed and able to defend myself from all this. But what if they didn’t? What if they thought that by keeping me in the dark, they could stop whatever was coming to pass?

  And how did they even know anything was coming to pass?

  Turning over, I pounded my fist into my pillow, half to fluff it up and half in anger. The truth was, I had no idea why my parents had sent me away. They could have been bandits, living a life of crime, and having a kid on the run was too tough. Or maybe I’d been in actual danger.

  Either way, I was tired of speculating. I wanted to know the truth. I wanted to know why my parents had sent me away, and more importantly, who they really were. Had I gotten my magic from them? Since Oscar knew supernaturals existed, that likely meant my parents did, too. Were they witches, or something else?

  My mind made up, I picked up my phone and speed-dialed Oscar. The phone rang, and I stared up at the popcorn ceiling as I waited, trying to detect patterns the way one tried to find shapes in the clouds. But like my life at the moment, much as I tried to find meaning, all I saw was chaos.

  “Hey, kid.” Oscar’s rough voice drew me back to the present. “Glad you called. What’s up?”

  I opened my mouth, wanting to launch straight into my interrogation. But instead, I said, “Everything. And it really, really sucks.”

  I told him about the events that had transpired—about the missing fae, the assassination attempts, the strange markings on the walls, the dead body I’d found, and what I’d learned about Tom at the orphanage. The only thing I didn’t mention was the memory Maddock had showed me. Even though Oscar was the closest thing I had to family, I couldn’t bring myself to tell him about something so crazy.

  Not that I had to. What I told him was enough to make him fly off the handle as it was.

  “Dammit, Brooke, you need to come home!” I heard a thud, and I pictured him slamming his hand down on the counter. He was probably standing in the kitchen, drinking a glass of scotch and staring out the glass doors leading to the backyard like he usually did late at night. “Please, come back to Chicago. You can stay with me for as long as you need. I don’t care about you paying rent. You just need to stop digging.”

  “No!” Rage burned hot in my chest as I clenched the phone. “I’m not going to run home with my tail between my legs and more questions than I left with! You’ve been hiding things from me, and I want answers! You owe me answers.”

  “I don’t owe you anything!” Oscar snarled. “I took you in and raised you when you had no one.”

  “Yes, and why is that?” I spat, trembling now. “Why is it that I had no one? Why didn’t my parents take care of me? Why did they abandon me?” Tears spilled from the corners of my eyes, and my heart ached fiercely as I ripped open the wound that, most days, I refused to look at. The wound carried by every orphan and abandoned child who thought they were unloved.

  “Brooke—” Oscar sucked in a breath. Then he sighed. “Your parents didn’t abandon you.”

  “Oh, yeah? Well, what would you call leaving me on your doorstep and running off into the night?”

  “Protecting you,” Oscar shouted. “That’s what I would call it. Your parents wanted to shield you, to make sure that you didn’t fall into the wrong hands, that you stayed off the radar. And you’ve just ensured their efforts were all for nothing!”

  “The wrong hands?” I echoed. “What the hell does that even mean?”

  “I—” Oscar stopped talking. “I can’t tell you that, Brooke. I’m sorry. I made a promise to your parents.”

  “Yeah, I get it. A promise to lie.” My voice was heavy with bitterness. “What else have you lied to me about? Are my parents even still alive?”

  “Brooke…” He sighed. I could almost hear him swallow on the other end of the line. His next words came out strained. “I’m sorry, kid. They were murdered shortly after you came to me. And since then I have done everything to honor their request to keep you safe.”

  A memory slammed into my chest then—not a vision, but a recollection.

  “Hello?” Oscar answered the phone, gruff as usual.

  He was standing in the kitchen, his torso visible behind the counter, while I sat on the couch in the living room and read a book. The phone was in the kitchen instead of his study, because for some reason he liked to take his calls there, sitting on one of the barstools or standing in front of the stove and cooking a pot of his famous chili.

  I flicked up my gaze for just a moment before returning to my book—I was neck-deep in the Order of the Phoenix and too riveted to care much about anything else.

  “What? Are you sure?” The tightness in Oscar’s voice pulled me out of my book, and I glanced up to see that he’d gone completely still. His hand was gripping the counter so tightly, his rawboned knuckles had turned white.

  “Yes, yes, I understand.” His shoulders slumped, and his dark eyes flickered toward me. A strange feeling went through me as I noticed an emotion I’d never seen before in those eyes—sympathy. “Yes, I’ll make sure. Thank you for taking care of this. I’ll do my part.”

  He hung up the phone, and I put my book down. “Uncle Oscar?” I asked, coming over to him. I’d never seen him so distraught, and even though I didn’t know him well yet, I knew that it wasn’t normal for him. He was normally unflappable. “Is everything okay?”

  Uncle Oscar said nothing, his back to me as he stared out the window. Then he turned slowly and laid a hand on my head, staring down into my eyes.

  “Yeah, kid. Yeah, everything’s okay. It’s just been a long day.” He smiled, then ruffled my hair. “Why don’t you go finish your book. I’ll let you know when the chili is ready. Everything’s going to be just fine.”

  “Hello? Brooke?”

  Oscar’s voice pulled me from the memory, and I stared up at the ceiling, unseeing, for a long moment.

  “That evening, when you got that phone call. It was a few months after I came to live with you, and I was sitting on the couch, reading. That’s when you learned my parents were dead.”

  “Yes.” Oscar sounded incredibly weary. “Please, Brooke. You had just finished settling in. Telling you would have hurt you unnecessarily. You have to understand that everything I’ve done was for your protection.”

  “Well stop!” I jumped to my feet, anger forcing me to pace. “Stop protecting me! I’m a grown woman now, and that’s not your choice to make anymore! This is my life, and you should have told me.”

  “And if I had, kid? Then what? Would you have run away, tried to find them? Or been consumed with a burning vengeance until you were old enough to strike out on your own and find their killers? The same way you’re trying to find your fiancé’s killer now? And have yo
u even figured out what you’re going to do when you do find the person responsible? If this person has been killing and kidnapping so many powerful creatures, what’s going to stop them from killing you next?”

  “It doesn’t matter now. They’ve already got their sights set on me.” My voice was brittle now. “I’ve got no choice but to see this through, and if you’re not going to help me, then maybe I made a mistake calling you.”

  I hung up the phone, then tossed it onto the bed so hard that it bounced off the mattress, smacked into the wall, and flipped onto the floor. Thank God for cases, although if it had broken, I’m not even sure I would have cared.

  I was positively fuming about the fact there was someone out there who might have the answers—somebody who should be on my side—and he wouldn’t tell me what was going on. Oscar might have been protecting me when I was a kid, but his insistence on keeping me in the dark was going to get me killed.

  A knock on the door pulled me away from the maelstrom of thoughts in my head, and I frowned. Who the hell was calling on me at eight o’clock at night? Annoyed, I pulled on a robe and stalked to the door, then peered through the peephole.

  My annoyance vanished when I saw Shelley standing in the hall. Her face was blotchy, her mascara clumped together from tears, and her toddler mounted on her hip like he was a security blanket.

  The stark fear in her eyes tugged at my heart strings, vanquishing my problems as I put them aside for hers.

  I yanked the door open, and she jumped. “Hey, what’s going on?”

  “I… Can I come on in?” She pressed trembling lips together, and the toddler wailed, clearly distraught by his mother’s grief.

  “Of course.” I quickly ushered them in, not wanting any neighbors to come out and complain about a crying baby in the hall. “Here, let’s sit down, and we can—”

  “No.” Shelley’s voice was somehow both hard and full of desperation. She planted her feet in front of the kitchen, refusing to let me lead her to the couch. “There’s no time. We have to go now.”

  “Why? What’s happening?”

  “My son’s missing. I’ve called him a hundred times, I’ve looked for him everywhere, and I don’t know what to do.” Voice breaking, she shifted the toddler to her other hip and gripped my hand so tightly she ground the bones together. “Please, Detective Chandler. Find my son. I don’t care what you have to do, but find him.”

  CHAPTER 21

  “I’m sorry the place is such a mess,” Shelley babbled as she fussed with the lock on the front door of her apartment. It was peeling paint, and the brass doorknob looked like it had been at least two hundred years since it had last been polished. But since she was living in the Point, which was considered the bad section of town, that wasn’t really surprising. “I’ve just been so busy, and with Jason going missing—”

  “You don’t need to apologize, Shelley.” I placed a hand on her shoulder, gentle but firm. She looked back at me, her eyes red-rimmed and stark with fear. “I’m not here as a guest. I’m here as a detective. Now breathe, focus, and let’s get that door open so I can look through Jason’s things and see if there’s anything I can use to find him.”

  “Okay.” Shelley took a deep breath, blinked the tears away. “Okay.”

  On the way over, she’d talked me out of calling backup. She was worried what might happen if he was caught doing something wrong when they went looking for him, so I relented. Finding him and making sure he was safe was the important thing.

  Shifting the toddler on her hip, Shelley tried again with the keys. The door swung open, revealing a cramped, but overall tidy living space. The underlying structure was pretty drab—shitty carpet and pale grey walls—but she’d tried to liven it up with colorful knick-knacks she’d placed on various surfaces and shelves.

  To my right, a pile of laundry sat unfolded on a threadbare couch and baby toys were scattered all over the floor in front of the TV. To the left, a few undone dishes sat in the kitchen sink. But despite the mess, and the clear poverty, I got the sense that the space was generally well-taken care of, and Shelley wasn’t a slob.

  “Jason’s room is back here,” she said, starting toward the hall leading away from the front area. But the toddler began to fuss again, flailing desperately in her arms.

  “Shhh, shhh. It’s all right,” she tried to reassure him, but he just grew more distressed. Nearly in tears again, Shelley turned back to face me. “Tyler’s tired, and I need to feed him. Would you mind going ahead without me? I’ll be in soon.”

  “It’s okay. Just tell me which room.”

  Shelley pointed me to the second room on the left-hand side. The directions weren’t really necessary—the Mudvayne poster plastered all over the black-painted door was a dead giveaway.

  I let myself in, inhaled the scent of pot and stale Doritos, and allowed my eyes to wander. Underneath the heavy metal posters and the black, well, everything, I was looking at the bedroom of a typical teenage boy. Unmade bed, clothes on the floor, a cluttered dresser, and piles of textbooks on the desk and floor. A quick look at those told me that despite his issues, Jason was a dedicated student.

  As I approached the bed, a spark tingled up my spine, and I stopped. I was beginning to recognize the feeling, as it had happened a couple of times now. It was a sense of awareness, a sense that something magical had occurred in the area.

  Inspired, I went back into the living area. Shelley was on the couch, nursing Tyler, so I let her be and went straight into the kitchen.

  “What are you looking for?” She tried to crane her neck around, but clearly the task was difficult when holding a nursing toddler.

  “I just need some supplies. I didn’t bring my field kit. It’s fine, I’ll let you know if I need help.”

  Working quickly, I whisked chamomile, honey, and sage together in a bowl, then grabbed a glazing brush and headed back to the bedroom with my concoction. Kneeling on the bed, I dipped the brush into the bowl and painted the savory-sweet mixture onto the walls. I then muttered the same words I’d heard Maddock use.

  It took me three tries to get the syllables right, but when I did, a haze briefly shimmered in the air before revealing the same black O with the three jagged, vertical slashes that had been in my apartment and the giant’s.

  “W-what is that?”

  I nearly dropped the bowl at the sound of Shelley’s voice. Twisting around, I saw her standing in the doorway, her eyes round as saucers. She must have finished feeding the baby and gotten him to bed, because he wasn’t attached to her hip this time.

  “It’s a gang symbol,” I lied, hastily climbing off the bed and putting the bowl on top of a stack of textbooks piled onto a side table. “I’ve seen it at a couple of crime scenes recently. They’re usually drawn in some kind of weird invisible paint.”

  “And the ingredients in my kitchen were enough to uncover this invisible paint?” Shelley sounded a little skeptical.

  “Yeah.” I resisted the urge to run my fingers through my hair. I felt really uncomfortable lying to Shelley about this, but what could I do? “Look, the other crime scenes I’m talking about were all regarding missing persons. I think it’s safe to say that this gang, whoever they are, has taken Jason as well.”

  “But why?” Shelley cried. “Why have they taken my son? What have I done to deserve this?”

  Now was the time to take a gamble. “Could your connection with a certain vampire have anything to do with it?”

  Shelley stiffened, and the walls behind her eyes slammed down instantly. “What are you talking about?”

  “I think you know exactly what I’m talking about.”

  “No. No.” Shelley backed out of the door. “There’s no way you could possibly know about that.” Her eyes were wide with fear again, but this time the fear was directed at me instead of the unknown enemy who had taken her child.

  “Shelley.” I gentled my voice as I approached her, as one might approach a skittish animal. “I’m not here to judge
you or hurt you in any way. I’m here to find your son, and in order to do that, I need you to be truthful to me. I need you to tell me why you got involved with the vampires, and why your son is so fascinated with them that he’s trying to turn himself into one.”

  “Oh God.” Shelley’s lip trembled, and tears spilled over her cheeks. “This is my fault. If I hadn’t made that deal…if I’d just put up with Daniel for a little longer, none of this would be happening.”

  “Okay, okay. Slow down.” My heart twisted at the sight of her crumpled to the ground, wracked with grief and guilt, but I didn’t have time to let her wallow there. Closing the distance, I put one of my arms around her shoulders and grasped her hand, urging her to her feet. “Let’s go sit down, and you can tell me what’s going on. We’ll get through this. Together.”

  I guided her to the couch and moved the laundry out of the way so she and I could sit down. Rather than looking at me, she reached for a baby monitor sitting on a black side table, then stared at the image of Tyler sound asleep in his crib.

  A look of inexplicable tenderness crossed her face, and I felt a pang as I wondered if my own mother had ever looked down at me like that. Had she loved me like that, the way Shelley loved her own children? To distraction? To indescribable grief?

  Stop it. This isn’t about you.

  “This can’t be happening,” Shelley whispered, her hand coming to cover her mouth as she stared at the baby monitor. She made a sound a little like a hiccup, then traced her forefinger around the edge of the monitor’s screen. “Everything I did…I did it for my boys. My actions have only ever been motivated by the desire to keep my children safe.”

  “Of course,” I said gently, squashing the urgency that wanted to seep into my voice. I needed Shelley to be calm, or she would panic and perhaps forget details. A focused witness was a good witness. “I’m not here to judge. Just here to find your son.”

  “I’m guessing, by your lack of shock and the casual way you speak about vampires, that you are acquainted with the supernatural world?”