The Shadow Stealer

by Melissa Giorgio

  “Then don’t be,” I said, my voice throbbing with passion. “Do this the right way, Mom.”

  “How?”

  I grimaced. A mother asking her child how to be a parent. What was I supposed to say? “Come see us before you leave. I’m at work, but I’ll be off in two hours. We can go home so you can say goodbye to Chloe too. Even if it’s only for a few minutes, it’s better than just leaving.”

  “No, I’ll—” Now Mom’s voice was the one tight with emotion. “This can wait. I’ll stay.”

  My heart lifted. “Really? I mean, if you have something to do, or if Jared and the others need you, then I don’t want to stand in your way—” Ugh, now I was rambling, and saying the exact opposite of what I’d said moments ago! What the heck did I want?

  “Shh, Gabi. It’s okay. I’ll stay. I want to see you again. There’s something I need to tell you. How about tomorrow after school? We can go to the park. You know how much I—”

  “Love the lake,” I finished for her, smiling for the first time since our conversation had started. “That’s perfect. I’ll see if Rafe can drive me. If not, I’ll bum a ride off of Harrison.”

  We set up a time and meeting place. Before hanging up, Mom said, “I’m really sorry, Gabi. You must hate me.”

  “No, I don’t.” I thought I had, once upon a time, but now I wanted to stop wasting time on stupid, unnecessary emotions. We needed to treasure what we had because with everything hanging by a thin thread, who knew how long it would last? “Just… Talk to me, Mom. I want to know what’s going on in your life. No more secrets, okay?”

  “No more secrets. I love you, honey.”

  “I love you too.”

  My pizza had gone cold, but I forced myself to eat it while typing out a text to Rafe. He agreed to drive me to the park, and I sat back in my chair, relieved. When Rafe had told me Mom was leaving, it was like I’d been punched in the stomach. While I knew she wasn’t used to being a mom again, the fact that she could leave so easily really hurt.

  She hadn’t said why she was going back, but I assumed it had something to do with the other sorcerers. I got that she had responsibilities, which included other people who looked to her as their leader. Really, I did. It had been her life for seven years, and it wasn’t fair of me to expect her to forget about them like they no longer mattered. I didn’t even want that! I wanted us to communicate, though. I wanted her to talk to me instead of telling my boyfriend she was leaving. That wasn’t a lot to ask for, was it? Our talk yesterday had been a good start, but we both needed to make an effort to continue. I was willing, but if Mom was always so eager to leave…

  No, I told myself firmly as I gathered up my garbage. She’d made a mistake. That’s all it was. She’d acted without thinking, but now that I’d let her know how hurtful her actions were, it wouldn’t happen again. I was sure of it.

  Then why did I still feel so uneasy?

  Chapter Forty-two

  My phone started ringing on my way back to the Corral. I still had a few minutes before my break was over, so I slowed down, lingering in the parking lot of the convenience store as I answered. “Hello?”

  “Hey, sis,” Philip said.

  A huge smile spread over my face at the sound of his voice. Instantly, the sour taste of my phone call with Mom evaporated. “Hey! How are you?” We hadn’t spoken since the night all hell had broken loose in Manhattan, but he had texted me back after my conversation with Kain.

  “Guess where I am,” he said.

  “Umm, do I really want to? Because if you’re in bed with Kain—”

  “I’m not in bed, you pervert!” I could totally picture my brother’s horrified blushing. “I’m on the train, coming to see you, although now you’re making me regret that decision.”

  I came to a complete stop. “You’re coming here?”

  “Yep! Kain is feeling better, and I really need to see you, so… Surprise!”

  How did Philip do that? How did he always know what to say and do to make me feel one hundred percent better? My voice cracked as I said, “I’m really glad.”

  “Hey, are you okay? You sound funny.”

  “I just got off the phone with Mom. She was going back to Manhattan without telling me!” I hadn’t meant to blurt that out, but it just happened.

  His reaction wasn’t surprising. First he cursed, and then he said, “Does she ever change?”

  I opened my mouth to defend her, but then I shut it. Philip was right; she was acting like normal. Normal for her, anyway. “I think…” I started in a small voice. “I think she doesn’t realize what she’s doing.”

  “You mean, she doesn’t realize she’s being selfish.”

  “Phil—”

  “Don’t make excuses for her. This is ridiculous. How many times is she going to hurt you?”

  Us. She was hurting us. But that wasn’t something Philip would ever admit to. I knew what he was doing. He’d rather keep his distance so she couldn’t hurt him. I knew because it was what I’d been doing for the past seven years. “Can we talk about something else?” I asked desperately.

  “Sure. I actually wanted to tell you about a weird phone call I just had.”

  “With who? Your dad?”

  “No, not my stupid dad,” Philip said. “Nina’s brother.”

  I clutched my phone tighter. “What the hell does he want?” Nina’s brother was currently going to college in California, and I stupidly thought we didn’t have to worry about him on top of everything else. Back in December, he’d been the one to incorrectly tell Nina that a Soul Healer’s power came from demon blood. Why was he calling Philip? Was he trying to find out more about the Soul Healer so he could pass the information on to Silver Moon?

  “It was really strange, actually. He asked me if I’d heard from Nina lately.”

  “What?”

  “Apparently, he hasn’t heard from her since November.”

  I shook my head. “He’s lying! She called him in December to ask about me, remember?”

  “But she never talked to him,” Philip insisted. “I couldn’t outright ask him, but I fished around, and she definitely did not call him asking about Soul Healers. I don’t even think she would have; he said they’ve grown apart over the years. He thought maybe she had a boyfriend or something, but I’ve never seen her with anyone. She mostly kept to herself or hung around my dad.”

  I kicked at a pile of dirty snow. “So what did you tell her brother?”

  “Just that I haven’t seen her around, but I haven’t been hanging out at HQ lately. He heard about the explosion and was concerned.”

  I swallowed hard. “But what really happened to Nina that day, Phil? Did your dad kill her? He told me in the hospital that he took care of her, but what does that even mean?”

  “My dad didn’t kill her.” But I could hear the uncertainty in his voice.

  “Please don’t get upset,” I started, “but can you call him and find out for sure? She’s Collins’s apprentice. She knows things about me. Things she won’t hesitate to share with Collins. Charles needs to know about this. Maybe he can stop Collins from meeting with Nina?”

  There was silence as Philip mulled over my request. “You’re right. Of course you’re right. I’m sorry I’m being such a selfish jerk. I’ll call Dad. I’ll do it right now. We have enough to worry about, and we don’t need Collins to come snooping around. I only just found you,” he said, his voice breaking a little, “and I refuse to lose you already.”

  “You won’t,” I promised, comforted by his words. Checking the clock on my phone, I sighed. “I gotta go. My break is almost over and Bernard will be pissed if I’m late again.”

  “You’re such a horrible employee,” he teased, lightening the mood.

  “Yeah, well, it’s not like the Corral has very high standards. I’ll see you later?”

  “The train’s getting in in another half hour. Do you want us to swing by, or just meet you at your house?”

  “Ugh, I’m g
rounded, I don’t even know if Dad will let you in—”

  Someone tapped me on the shoulder. I turned around, missing Philip’s response, and gasped as fear froze me in place.

  Nina, in all her pink glory, stood only inches away from me, a happy smile on her face. But her eyes were dark with hatred, and her lips quickly twisted into a sneer as she said, “Hey there, Gabi. Did you miss me?”

  My phone was still pressed to my ear, and Philip was repeatedly calling my name. “Gabi? You still there? Hello?”

  At last I found my voice. “She’s here! Phil, Nina is—”

  Nina moved faster than I thought possible, smacking my phone out of my hand. It fell to the ground with a sickening crack, and she stomped on it with one sparkly pink boot, grinding her heel into the plastic. “No, no, no, we can’t have you telling anyone. You and I need to have a little chat first.” Nina threw up her hands and I instinctively winced, but I saw all she was doing was putting a veil in place. I swallowed, my throat tight with fear.

  I backed away until I collided with the brick wall of the Corral. “What are you doing here? How did you find me?”

  “Please.” Nina laughed cruelly. “Don’t you remember telling me all about your stupid little job that you hated so much? How many other Texan-themed convenience stores do you think exist in New York?”

  I silently cursed Bernard and his stupid, stupid Corral.

  “All I had to do was look it up on the Internet; you guys are actually pretty famous,” she continued. “You have a webpage and everything! So it wasn’t hard to find you, nope.”

  “Okay, you found me. Now what do you want?” I was hoping if I kept talking to her, she would become distracted, and I could run away before she could stop me. Hell, I just needed to get inside the Corral; Nina wouldn’t attack me in front of others, would she?

  Actually, she might. The girl was certifiably insane.

  As if she could read my mind, Nina grabbed my wrist and yanked me forward with a painful tug, pulling me into the middle of the parking lot before shoving me to the ground. My palms scraped against the asphalt, and I felt the skin tear painfully. Nina crouched down in front of me, whipping out a knife and angling it in front of my eye. “No running away, Gabi,” she said in a sing-song voice. “We’re going to have a chat, and you’re going to stay put and listen, even if I have to stab you in place.”

  Even though my heart was racing, and my palms were aching, I forced myself to breathe in and out calmly. I wouldn’t show her how scared I was. Something told me that would only make her meaner.

  “Isn’t this nice?” Nina asked, as if we were back in her too-pink room, watching TV and stuffing our faces with snacks.

  “Uh, no, not really,” I said as blood dripped from my palms onto the pavement.

  “I’ve really missed you, Gabi,” she continued as if I hadn’t spoken. “You were so stupid and had no idea how much I hated you. Do you know how much I laughed at you behind your back?”

  I narrowed my eyes. Back in December, when she’d first shown her true nature, I’d had to listen to her call me stupid a number of times. If she thought we were going to go through that again, she was gravely mistaken. “Thinking you were nice and, you know, semi-normal does not make me stupid, Nina,” I snapped.

  “‘Oh, boo-hoo, mean Mister Charles took me away from my boyfriend, oh woe is me,’” Nina said with a fierce smile. Was she trying to imitate me? Because I sounded nothing like that! “‘Oh Nina, please be my friend, because I’m so pathetic and can’t do anything on my own.’” She started laughing at her own joke, oblivious to my death glares.

  “God,” I said, “you are super annoying. Why couldn’t Charles have killed you?”

  Her laughter broke off abruptly. “Because Charles is an idiot. He liked me too much to kill me—even though I would have gladly killed his dumb son for getting in my way that day—so instead he just placed some spells on me, making it impossible for me to talk about what I knew, and locked me up in HQ.”

  So that’s what Charles had meant when he said he’d taken care of her. I appreciated the effort, but clearly it wasn’t enough.

  “And that worked for a little bit,” Nina continued, “but then my master arrived and found me. He immediately saw the spells, broke them, and had me tell him everything.” She grinned. “And here I am!”

  “Your master?” Eww, Collins made her call him that? I tried to ignore the disturbing images that word invoked.

  “Yes.” She seemed pleased by my reaction. “He was very, very interested in what I had to say about you. I’d told him back in December that Charles had come into possession of a Soul Healer, but I’d kept your name and identity a secret because I wanted to kill you myself.”

  So that was why Collins had never come for me. He hadn’t known who the Soul Healer was! Look at Nina, doing me a favor. Sure, she was a psychopath, but her craziness might have actually saved my life.

  “Where is he now?” I asked, inching back slightly, away from the knife. Nina didn’t seem to notice, so I moved backward a fraction again. “Your…master? How come he sent you, if he’s the one who’s so interested in me?” Again I shifted away from her. “You said it yourself: You’re just going to kill me.”

  Nina shook her head, and her pink hair, loose instead of in its multiple braids, spilled freely over her shoulders. “No, he doesn’t want you dead. Not until he can see what you can do. But…” Here her face broke out into a twisted smile that scared me to my core. “He did say I could play with you for a bit.”

  She lunged for me, and I twisted to the side, narrowly avoiding the sharp blade of her gleaming knife. My hands grabbed at some slushy snow (for once I was grateful that Bernard was too cheap to have the parking lot plowed and did a half-assed job of cleaning it himself) and I hurled it as hard as I could, aiming for her eyes. Nina grunted with pain, momentarily blinded.

  Okay. So this was the part where I would get up and run like hell, right? That’s what any reasonable, intelligent person would do, I would think.

  Did I do that?

  No, of course not.

  Instead, I drew my arm back, tucking my thumb over my other fingers just like Rafe had shown me, before swinging it forward and connecting with Nina’s chin. She let out a gasp of surprise and fell backward, landing hard on her butt.

  Nina stared up at me, stunned.

  “That was for stabbing Rafe, you bitch,” I snarled, my lips curling back. My hand was killing me, but I refused to let her see how much pain I was in. Stumbling to my feet, I turned to leave.

  A force slammed into me from behind, sending me sprawling face-first into the ground. All of the air was knocked out of my stomach in one painful whoosh, and I lay there, unable to move.

  Nina flipped me over, her face murderous. “You should have run, Gabi.”

  Yeah, I really should have.

  Chapter Forty-three

  Nina pressed her knee into my stomach, digging into my ribs, and I gasped in pain. “Oh, Gabi,” she said, scolding me like I was a naughty child who’d snuck another cookie before dinner. “What are we going to do with you?” She put more weight on her knee, and it took everything I had not to cry out. “I can’t kill you. I promised I wouldn’t.” Plucking her knife up from the ground, she twirled it in the air. “Maybe I can stab you, and see what color your blood is?”

  If she’d just looked at my palms, she would see the red blood dripping from them, but it was hard to talk with all of her weight pressing down on me, crushing me. Nina must have noticed this because she leaned back slightly, and suddenly I was able to fill my lungs with wonderful oxygen.

  Did I keep my mouth shut? Had I finally learned my lesson?

  Nope.

  “My blood is red, you moron,” I said, glaring up at her. “I’m not a freaking demon, all right? And you’re one to talk. Has your precious master told you what those spells he’s taught you really are?”

  Her dark eyes glittered dangerously. “What are you talking about
?”

  “I’m talking about demon magic. You know, the creatures you hate oh-so-much? You’re using their magic!” I smiled cruelly, watching her face morph from smugness to uncertainty. Hah, how’s that feel, having your world shattered like that?

  Nina backhanded me hard across the face, and my head smacked against the pavement. I tasted blood in my mouth; I must have bit my lip. “Shut up,” Nina hissed. “Shut your stupid mouth, Gabi. You don’t know what you’re talking about. You have no idea!”

  Now I wisely remained silent, mainly because the world was spinning around me. That, combined with the copper taste in my mouth, made me want to puke. Hey, would she let me go if I threw up on her?

  Before I could find out, Nina slashed downward with the knife. I lifted up my forearm to block her when a dark shape came hurtling out of nowhere, colliding with Nina and sending her flying away from me.

  I scrambled to my feet, ignoring my dizziness as I put some distance between us. The dark shape—another person—got up, and I gasped when I recognized the long, glossy dark ponytail.

  Alexandra.

  She flipped her wrists, and two daggers appeared in each of her hands. Nina stood with a groan, blinking when she saw the other girl standing in front of her. “Alex?”

  “Hey,” Alexandra said before executing a perfect roundhouse kick. Her fashionable brown leather boot connected with the side of Nina’s face, and there was an audible crunch as the pink-haired girl went flying.

  “Holy crap,” I said to no one in particular.

  Alexandra walked over to where Nina was sprawled across the ground and kicked her, this time in the stomach. “That’s for stabbing Fitz.”

  “Actually, I already punched her in the face for that,” I volunteered.

  “Oh.” Alexandra paused. “Well, then that was for hurting Evan. And now this is for attacking Gabi!”

  She raised one of her daggers, and I surprised everyone (including myself) by shouting, “Wait!”