by J. S. Morin
I cast Judy an apologetic grimace.
“Your other source of allies are my own kind: the arcanists. I wish I could tell you they will be of aid, but you’ve read my books and know as well as I do how curmudgeonly they can be. That much was no embellishment on my part. My training with them was spotty at best; yours likely will be as well, if you choose to seek them out. Your primary defense must always be foreknowledge. Reacting to forces of this magnitude will lead to your destruction. I can only hope that once I am out of the way, a means of saving yourself will open to you.
“One final piece of advice. Please bear with me, since as a fan you must know this already, but I have to say it. Under no circumstances should you ever allow yourself to fall under the sway of the shadowlord or his minions. The shadow taint is real and is as deadly to the soul as arsenic is to the body. Keep a vigilant as a bodyguard if you must, but divorce yourselves from all shadowy influences.”
I cringed at that part and mouthed a silent “sorry” to Judy. Maybe if Martinez hadn’t waited until she was dead to warn me, that wouldn’t have happened.
“I wish I had more to offer you, but the files speak for themselves. Now, I figure I’ve got a few good hours of drinking ahead of me before I sober up for my own murder. Wouldn’t want to look like a lush in the coroner’s report.” Patricia Martinez offered a wan smile and refilled her glass from a bottle of Jim Beam from off camera. “Vaya con Dios, Shadowblood Heir.”
Martinez lifted her glass, and the video ended.
Judy and I sat there a long moment, listening to the road noise.
She cleared her throat. “So… shadow-jumping. Kinda screwed us on that one, huh?”
Chapter Thirty-Nine
We couldn’t just go back to Boston like nothing had happened. That wasn’t even on the table. Tim was in lockup, and that meant that Judy and I had to at least be suspects.
If we were lucky, Tim had wiped his phone of anything too incriminating. But failing to get a hold of his girlfriend after getting arrested probably at least cast a shadow over Judy.
The fact that Judy’s job required a security clearance was going to complicate things for her however this turned out.
This whole business with the cops was a bus driving down a wet road. If we could keep clear of the obvious puddles, the splash might not hit us as it rumbled past.
“We need a hideout,” I blurted as we hit I-93 on the drive back. “Park the car a few blocks from the apartment. We’ll take the T into the city. Maybe find some shady place to rent for cash.”
“I’m not sure I’m comfortable staying anyplace that operates on cash,” Judy replied without glancing up from her laptop—plugged into the car to charge.
Martinez’s files were a treasure trove. Unfortunately, Judy was less interested in driving her own car than exploring the electronic candy store of shadowblood conspiracy theories. I only got occasional updates when she decided to share.
“I don’t think fugitives get to be picky,” I countered.
Judy snapped the laptop closed. “How sure can we be that we are fugitives? Someone would have had to ID us.”
This was the point where I wanted to reassure Judy that Tim and Greg were stand-up guys—that they could keep their mouths shut. But our heist wasn’t cherry-picked from hardened mobsters.
“I think until we hear otherwise, we have to assume.”
Judy gave me that over-the-glasses scowl. “Well, come Monday morning, I need to show up for work or have a damn good reason why not.”
“Don’t you get like twenty weeks vacation time?” I asked her.
“Five,” came the icy reply. “And I need clearance in advance to take it. I don’t think sick days cover avoiding arrest.”
“What if we get a place outside the city?”
Judy patted the laptop. “There’s a reason Martinez hung around Boston. She’s predicted it’s the location of the next incursion. If we’re going to stop it, this is where we need to be.”
“So… not only do we need a place that’s in Boston, takes cash, and doesn’t ask questions, it’s also going to be a superhero lair?”
Judy held up the laptop and waggled it, which seemed like a risky move as I merged into an exit lane. “Do you want to save the world or don’t you?”
“World-saving is overrated,” my shadow murmured. “It’s only ever a vision of the world that’s preserved. When the ‘world’ ends, all that really happens is that it changes a little.”
“Does that drive have a shipping address for the Order of Vigilants? If not, I say we ship it back to the lighthouse keeper as a get-well gift.”
“Martinez knew him,” Judy argued. “There’s a reason we found the drive, and he didn’t just keep it for himself.”
“Cowardice,” my shadow commented. “Lack of writing skill. Probably wouldn’t fare well in television interviews, with the creepy eye thing he had going on.”
I sighed. Whether or not I was willing to save the world, we did need someplace to crash. “Let’s find someplace to park, then we can both switch over to scouring real estate apps for someplace suitably shady. Maybe Reggie can give us some hints. He’s been trying to rent out that old office above Pie On Third for months.”
“Um, Matt…”
“What?” I asked, unsure what Judy was hinting at.
My shadow was a step ahead of me. “You’re an imbecile.”
“You just said it. Reggie lets you use his personal car for deliveries. He’s your biggest fan. I’m sure he’d let us rent empty office space.”
She was right.
In a business where employees drifted in and out with the school year, I was the guy Reggie counted on for continuity. I trained the new drivers, knew how to cook a pie, and worked the register. I was the guy who handled the money when Reggie was out of town.
Of course, we could trust him.
“Lemme make a phone call.”
Chapter Forty
Reggie’s keys jangled as he unlocked the office door for us. It was flat, solid oak with a pale rectangular discolored spot where the prior occupant’s nameplate had been glued. There was a stale, disused odor that I hoped wasn’t mildew as we stepped inside.
Fluorescent lights hummed and stuttered to life as Reggie flipped a bank of switches near the door.
“Cozy,” Judy deadpanned, her voice echoing in the emptiness.
The office above Pi On Third had last been rented by a small accounting firm. The short-pile carpet was permanently indented where desks and cubicle walls had stood, as if someone had left instructions on how to rebuild an accounting office on site. A row of doors lined one wall, leading to tiny conference rooms. A bubbler on the opposite wall guarded a short hallway to the restrooms.
“It’s perfect,” I said.
I’d never had a hideout before. The closest I’d come was making blanket forts as a kid, and even then, the housekeeper had torn them down as soon as I left them unattended. Reggie’s vacant office space wasn’t exactly the Bat Cave, but for as long as my dad’s cash lasted, it was ours.
“Glad you like it,” Reggie said, stepping inside and pulling the door closed behind us. “I can send up pizzas after hours. You know where to find the dumpster out back. There’s no Internet up here, but you can hop of the Pi Wi-Fi if you promise not to hog all my bandwidth.”
“I’ll try,” Judy promised, not looking Reggie above the t-shirt.
At times it was hard to remember that my little pocket lives didn’t overlap. I’m not sure Judy and Reggie had ever met before, aside from maybe her picking up take-out during her college days.
“Before I leave you two to get settled in, can you do me one favor?” Reggie asked.
“Sure,” I replied, already suspecting what he was going to ask.
Reggie grinned like a kid with his first comic book. “Show me that shadow-jump trick again.”
Already heading for the light switches, I swiped a hand down and shut them all off en masse. Darkness swept in, leavi
ng boxy islands of light where sunshine bashed its way through the closed blinds.
“Much better,” my shadow moaned. “Those droning sky-lamps are a vigilant’s torment.”
I had to agree. Fluorescent lights sucked, and growing attuned to the shadows only emphasized their shabbiness.
“Here goes,” I announced.
Slipping through the shadows, I appeared between Reggie and Judy.
The pizza shop owner cackled and doubled over. “C’mon. Do it again.”
I obliged, spending the next few minutes popping around the room on command. With a little practice under my belt, it was getting pretty easy.
“Oh, man! I so want to put this on YouTube, but I swear to God I won’t.”
“Thanks for letting us use the place,” Judy said as she turned the lights back on.
“Yeah. No problem. Saving the world from real motherfucking shadows. Woo!” Reggie backed out, grinning, as he shut the office door.
“What now?” Judy asked.
We were bundled for outdoor travel, but those were the only clothes we had. Judy had her laptop and the invisible thumb drive.
“First things first,” I said. “We need to get settled in. I’ll make the trips outdoors. You stay here, keep reading up on the mysteries of the universe, and set up what I bring back.”
“You need a shopping list?” she asked.
I smirked. “Why, you want anything besides you own stuff?”
“You’re going back to the apartment? But I thought—”
“We can’t stay there,” I cut in before Judy went off on a long tangent. “But I think with shadow-jumping, I can manage to keep from getting caught on the streets.”
It took a couple hours. Daytime shadows weren’t contiguous all the way from Cambridge to Somerville, and I had to be mindful of turning substantial in plain sight. But eventually I ferried enough clothes and small appliances for the hideout to pass for livable.
Strange what we can get used to. Humans are so damned adaptable. After the first couple trips, me coalescing into solid form under a bank of lights we’d left dark had ceased to be enough to get Judy to look up from her laptop screen.
“More clothes? Pile them in the laundry room.”
The small conference rooms had become a pair of bedrooms, with blankets and pillows spread on the floor, a pantry, and a room for unsorted laundry.
Beyond the windows, the city was growing dark. After consulting with Reggie, he agreed to let me spray paint the insides of the windows so we could keep secret the fact that the upper floor was occupied.
“What now?” Judy asked.
“You find the key to stopping Black-Hat and his alleged band of shadowblood allies?”
“No smoking gun.”
“Then you keep looking, while I take care of something that’s been nagging at me all day.”
“What’s that?”
All day I had been practicing my shadow-jumping. I wasn’t just getting good at it. I was getting fast. The shadows were a superhighway, and night was setting in.
I took a steadying breath. “Time to man up and do something about Tim and Greg. I’m a shadowblood, dammit. I’m not letting some flesh-bound jail keep my friends prisoner.”
Chapter Forty-One
Judy dressed me for the excursion. I went along with it less because I thought I needed a costume and more for Judy’s peace of mind. Somehow, staring at a screen where an honest-to-god prophetess spilled secrets of an otherworldly invasion took a back seat to making sure I wasn’t ID’ed breaking her boyfriend out of jail.
“Be careful, Matt,” she cautioned, as I slipped out into the night. “Remember, you’re not the only shadowblood out there.”
Not the words I wanted to hear embarking on a jailbreak but maybe the ones I needed.
I left the hideout wearing Tim’s Boston Bruin’s sweatshirt, turned inside out so the logo wasn’t visible. Even with a jacket underneath, it fit like a circus tent, and I had to cuff the sleeves. None of us owned a black scarf, so the one I ended up wearing to cover the lower half of my face was a burgundy shade. Why Judy kept latex gloves in the apartment I’d never understand, but they stretched to fit my hands and would keep me from leaving fingerprints.
The ski goggles she tried to get me to add is where I drew the line. I opted for sunglasses. Cheap. All black. I could see through them like clear glass even in the dark.
The city air stuck me when I strode out into the Boston streets. Fresh wasn’t the word for it, but it carried the night chill and cleansed the vacant office reek of unwashed carpet and ancient coffee stains.
It was nice to be free of Judy.
Our little adventure was the most time we’d spent alone together in ages, but I’d gotten used to having huge, uninterrupted chunks of time to myself. And as much as I’d enjoyed having her attention all to myself, I needed space for my own ideas to roam.
My first thought was to head subterranean.
Suffolk County Jail was just across the river by the TD Garden and a stone’s throw from the Science Park stop on the Green Line. My phone told me it would take 11 minutes to get to Science Park taking the T.
Out of curiosity, I set a timer on my phone. Then I jumped into the shadows.
The city of Boston rushed past in a blur. I had to pause regularly to reorient myself because I couldn’t make out the street signs. With the whole city basking in the Earth’s shadow, transportation had become child’s play.
When I stopped behind the shrubs of the park across the street from the jail, I checked my phone. About two and a half minutes. I could get used to this.
The jail looked more like an apartment building or a library than a penitentiary. This was a local lockup, not a supermax. The red brick looked new and fresh, the walls, perhaps unsurprisingly, were free of graffiti.
Before getting arrested, I’d never given a thought to seeing the inside of it. If I had made it to a court hearing and been denied bail, though, this is where they’d have stuck me.
The front doors faced the park. Tall, glassed, and inviting, they stood atop a low rise of concrete steps. Light spilled from the lobby area or whatever they called the front desk of a jail.
I stopped dead.
Not only did I not know what they called the first room of a county jail, I knew nothing about them that I hadn’t seen in movies or on TV. By all rights, my first stop should have been to look up the construction company who built the prison and break into their offices for the blueprints.
The upside of taking a step back and planning this out: knowing what I was up against on the inside, a plan for entry and exit with the least hassle, and virtually eliminating the risk of getting caught.
The downsides: a lost night with Tim and Greg behind bars and a hassle of paperwork to track down the information I’d need to do the job right.
Being honest with myself, the reason I stayed was simpler than all that: I was there, and god dammit, I knew I could pull it off.
Windows lined the walls of the upper floors, the whole facade of the building bathed in shadow like a red carpet just for me.
Those upper-floor windows beckoned, and in an instant, I was standing on the other side of them.
An instinctual panic gripped me as I was enclosed in a small cell with two occupants, both asleep. It was nearly pitch dark, but I could make out both clearly. One inmate was middle-aged, lean and haggard, with a mural of tattoos up one arm. The other younger, shaved bald and with muscles that could crack walnuts between bicep and forearm.
Neither of the two was Tim or Greg.
Another quick jump and I was on the far side of the door, on a catwalk that spanned the length of the cell block. This mezzanine level overlooked a dining and common room. Across the way was a matching catwalk, with rows of cells above and below.
The jail breathed in its sleep, the quiet, unconscious rustling of its charges.
My blood quickened when I heard the ring of a booted footstep on the catwalk behind me.
I spun silently, mindful to keep my footing on the shadows instead of the steel-grated floor.
A sleepy guard strolled on patrol, headed straight for me. He carried a flashlight and clipboard but was making his way in the darkness of emergency-only lighting.
The guard looked right through me and continued to advance. I grinned behind Judy’s scarf, realizing that the shadows concealed me utterly. For all my costuming, I could have been wearing a clown suit for all that it mattered.
I pressed myself against the wall between two cell doors as he passed, holding my breath. Keys jangled at the guard’s belt. If I lifted them, even without him feeling it, the sudden cessation of noise would alert him they were gone.
I ducked and vanished, shadow-jumping into the nearest cell.
The two inmates in this next cell were stirring. One was average in every way, if a little on the scruffy side. The other looked like a bouncer at a biker bar.
Perfect. I grabbed him by the arm.
The bouncer didn’t say a word, but his reflexes caught me off guard. One hand grabbed the wrist of my hand that touched him, the other went for my throat.
If that was my only move, he’d likely have ended me then and there. As he rolled from bed and threw me to the floor, I shadow-jumped, taking him with me onto the catwalk.
I jumped again, a split second before his weight bore me to the metal flooring with enough force to crack my skull open.
I reappeared on one of the vinyl couches in the common area down below. The bouncer crashed to the catwalk, and the guard caught sight of him.
“What are you doing out of your cell?” the guard demanded.
The flashlight shone on the mammoth prisoner.
Meanwhile, I worked my jaw loose and flexed my wrist to check for broken bones, then searched my tender neck for blood as I drew slow breaths. That idiot could have crushed my windpipe if I hadn’t been lucky.
“I got no fuckin’ idea,” the prisoner said. “Some bitch came at me in my sleep.”
