The Shadow Stealer

by Melissa Giorgio

  Alexandra gave me an annoyed look over her shoulder. “Wait? Gabi, the girl was trying to murder you—”

  “Yeah, I kind of got that, but she knows things, Alex. She’s got a master, someone who’s very interested in me.” I watched as understanding dawned on her face. “Don’t you think we should ask her some questions? To prepare ourselves?”

  “Okay, we can talk to her.” Alexandra kicked Nina in the stomach again, and the pink-haired girl doubled over, retching. “But in a minute.”

  My mouth hung open. Alex is frightening!

  But totally, completely badass. Damn, why couldn’t I be more like her?

  Satisfied that Nina wasn’t going anywhere, Alexandra pocketed one of her blades and looked me over. “You all right?”

  I shrugged. “Somewhat? What are you even doing here?” Crap. That came out really ungrateful. But I really hadn’t expected to see her here. Guess she came with Evan to take care of Rafe?

  Luckily, she didn’t seem to mind my blunt question. “Evan said you were working, and I wanted to talk, so I rode the bus over here and…” Alexandra trailed off, eyeing Nina’s prone form. “Good thing I did, huh?”

  “What did you want to talk about?” I winced, convinced she was going to kick me for being so rude to her. It was great that she was here—she’d just saved my butt and all—but what did she possibly want to say to me?

  Some of the harshness left her face as she turned her attention back to me. “I wanted to see how you were doing. I know… I know we haven’t really gotten a chance to talk, and that’s my fault, for not seeking you out earlier, but I was so afraid of seeing Evan and…” She laughed and hugged herself tightly. “Basically, I was an idiot. And you seem really cool and I want to get to know you better. Fitz is madly in love with you, in case you didn’t know—”

  “I know, thanks,” I said, my cheeks burning.

  “And if you’re okay in Fitz’s book, you’re okay in mine.” Alexandra punched me in the shoulder and I couldn’t stop the groan that slipped out from between my lips. “Oops, sorry! I’ve hung around guys almost all my life; sometimes I forget how to act with girls.” She smiled hesitantly. “But I’d like to remember. With you, I mean.”

  Rubbing the sore spot on my shoulder (to go along with my multiple other injuries), I returned her smile and said, “I’d like that too.”

  In unison, we turned to face Nina, who glared up at us. “So, what do we do with her?” I asked.

  Alexandra cracked her knuckles. “Make her talk. Who’s this master of yours?”

  Nina kept her mouth shut and I sighed impatiently. “This is stupid. We already know it’s Collins.”

  Even though she didn’t confirm it, her face drained of color, giving her away.

  Alexandra reached for one of her knives and began twirling it absently, something I’d seen Evan do once or twice. I wondered who had taught whom that particular trick. “Does she know about the demon magic?”

  “I just told her, but I don’t know if she believes me.”

  “You’re lying!” Nina finally shouted. “Collins would never use filthy demon magic! He hates demons!”

  Alexandra squatted down in front of her. “Listen, Pinkie. That little spell you stabbed Rafe with? Up until a day ago, it was still inside of him, killing him.” She jabbed Nina in the shoulder with her pointer finger. “Even someone as stupid as you should realize that’s not normal magic or dark magic.”

  Tears began trickling down Nina’s face as she gasped for breath. “No! No, no, no, it’s not demon magic, it’s not, it’s not!”

  Alexandra made a face at me over her shoulder. “Why are we even bothering with her? She’s a lost cause.”

  “Because I need to know if Collins is coming for me,” I said, watching as Nina freaked out. She’d fooled me before, but something told me she wasn’t pretending now. Her whole world had been shattered by our words; that wasn’t something you could easily fake. “Is he, Nina? Did he leave the city?” Oh god, what if he was on the same train as Philip and Kain?

  “No, no, no, no,” she said, shaking her head rapidly. “No, no, no, no…”

  “We’re not getting anything else out of her.” Alexandra pulled out her phone. “Maybe Evan can work some magic on her—”

  Before she could dial, we heard the sound of squealing tires and turned to see Rafe and Evan spill out of Rafe’s car, their weapons drawn and their faces tight with worry.

  Rafe pulled me into a fierce hug and I clung to him, surprised to find my eyes welling up with tears. It was like now that he was here, I was allowed to be scared. Sure, I’d been frightened out of my mind, but I hadn’t really felt it until now.

  “Are you okay?” he asked, breaking away so he could assess the damage. When he started swearing, I knew I looked bad. I glanced down and noticed that my knees had been torn up, and my jeans were wet with blood. As if on cue, my knees started throbbing, matching the aches in my palms.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked dumbly, because I didn’t know what else to say.

  “Your brother called,” Evan said, staring up at the sky. “Did you put a veil up?” He directed his question to Alexandra.

  “Yeah, just a quick one, before I approached Nina. She had one up already, but I figured if I killed her, the veil would break and then everyone would see…” She said that so flippantly, like it was normal to go around killing friends. Or ex-friends. “It’s pretty crappy, so maybe you should cast another one?”

  “Got it.” Evan closed his eyes.

  “Phil called you?” I asked Rafe, feeling like I was desperately falling behind on the conversation.

  My boyfriend nodded. “He was talking to you, wasn’t he? Then the call cut off, but he heard you say ‘Nina’ in a panicked voice. He was freaking out, Gabi.”

  “Give me your phone,” I said. “I need to tell him I’m okay.”

  “First let me take care of your knees and hands.” Rafe touched my bottom lip gently. “And this is bleeding too.”

  “Yeah, you look like you just bit someone,” Evan added unhelpfully. “Like a vampire.”

  “Shut up, Evan!” Rafe said, leading me toward the store.

  “Wait, no, I can’t go in there. Bernard will freak! And besides, I never came back from my break… I’m going to lose my job!” I couldn’t believe that was what I was focusing on, instead of the fact that I had been, you know, attacked. Maybe I was in shock? This whole evening seemed like one giant nightmare.

  “Gabi, stop,” Rafe said, helping me limp into the Corral. “I got this.” His jaw was set firmly and I knew it would be better for everyone if I just trusted him.

  “OH MY GOD,” Denise hollered the moment she saw us. “What the hell happened to you!”

  “A freaking car almost ran her over,” Rafe growled.

  I did a double take. Suddenly my boyfriend, who had just been speaking to me sweetly, had morphed into a pissed-off giant (I swear he looked even taller than usual), and if I didn’t know any better (and didn’t love him immensely), I would have been peeing my pants right about then. “She’s bleeding—I need some bandages.”

  “Oh my god,” Denise said again. “Did you call the cops? Holy shit, holy shit, we have to find that bastard and kill him. Or her. Was it a woman? I will beat that bitch until she forgets her own name—”

  “Denise,” Rafe said loudly over her ranting. “Bandages?”

  “Oh, right.” She scurried off in the direction of the first-aid aisle as Rafe helped me lean against the front counter. The office door banged open and I winced.

  “Harkins! What’s going on!” Bernard demanded.

  Rafe fed him the same story about a car nearly hitting me.

  “Shit!” My eyes widened; I’d never heard my boss curse before. “Did you get a license plate number?”

  “No, I was too busy avoiding being run over,” I said dryly. Rafe poked me gently in the side. “And now my knees really hurt and can I just go home?” I widened my eyes and blin
ked rapidly.

  “Home?” His bushy eyebrows rose up in confusion. For a second I thought Bernard was going to demand I finish my shift. “Yes, of course, but don’t you want to go to the hospital?”

  “No!” Rafe and I shouted in unison. Bernard stared at us, probably convinced we’d both lost our minds. “It’s not that bad,” I quickly added. “I think knees just bleed more, making it look like the injury is a lot worse than it actually is.”

  Bernard pursed his lips together. “Oh, I guess so.”

  “That’s for head wounds,” Rafe whispered in my ear.

  This time, I poked him in the side.

  “Here we are!” Denise came rushing back with a billion boxes of bandages and bottles of peroxide balanced precariously in her arms.

  Rafe reached for his wallet. “How much?”

  “Don’t you dare!” Bernard boomed, and the three of us jumped. “You’re not paying for any of this! Just take what you need and get her home! Harkins, I don’t want to see you back in this store until you’re fully recovered!”

  I really, really had to fight to keep a smile from stretching across my face. The mood was serious. I’d almost been hit by car, right? Lowering my head, I sniffled and said in a low voice, “Okay.”

  “Thanks, Bernard, Denise.” After accepting a plastic bag stuffed with medical supplies, Rafe wrapped his arm around me and led me to his car. He opened the passenger door and I sat down, angling my body so I was facing him.

  Crouching in front of me, he rolled up my pant legs, and his fingers, calloused from both swordplay and baseball, gently skimmed my skin as he assessed the damage. Both knees had been torn up pretty bad, but at least they seemed to have stopped bleeding. For some reason I was reminded of our first encounter with Boneless, and how I’d cut my knees that night as well. Rafe had been too embarrassed to touch me back then, but tonight he was having no problem.

  But seriously, my poor knees. Maybe I should start wearing knee guards.

  Rafe unscrewed the top of the peroxide, poured some onto the paper towels Denise had stuffed into the bag, and began cleaning my knees. As tender as his touch was, it still stung. I gritted my teeth and said nothing, but I knew Rafe could tell he was hurting me. After cleaning both knees, he spread some ointment over the cuts before bandaging me up. Rafe moved on to my hands, repeating the same process all over again.

  God, I was a mess.

  Rafe didn’t say a word the entire time he was fixing me up, but I could tell from the way his hands were slightly shaking that he was a lot more upset than he was letting on. “Rafe?” I whispered.

  He busied himself with stuffing the supplies back in the plastic Corral bag for a moment. Taking a deep breath, Rafe leaned his forehead against mine, his eyes squeezed shut. “I’ve never been so scared in my life. When Phil called me, and I couldn’t reach you— I didn’t know what I was going to find when I got here.”

  “I’m okay,” I told him, touching his face, his shoulders, his hands. “I’m here. I’m with you. I’m okay.” My words were for both of us, not just him.

  “That’s true, but what if Alex hadn’t been here? What would have happened?” Rafe gathered me in his arms, holding me tight, as if he expected me to vanish on him. “Something like this never should have happened. I can’t—” His voice cracked with desperation. “I can’t lose you, too.”

  In the past I’d complained about Rafe being too overprotective, but this was different. This wasn’t Rafe going berserk, ready to kill anyone who looked at me the wrong way. This was someone who’d already lost people he cared about, scared it was going to happen again.

  I wanted to reassure him that it wouldn’t, that I would be fine, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t lie to him like that. I’d been lucky with Nina, but what about when Collins came for me?

  What would happen to us?

  Chapter Forty-four

  After a few more minutes of hugging (I don’t know who needed that more—him or me), Rafe reached into his pocket and handed me his phone. “You better call Phil,” Rafe said.

  The phone barely had time to ring before Philip picked up and said, “Did you find her?”

  “Yes, he did,” I said.

  “Holy shit, Gabi! Are you okay?”

  In a weary voice, I explained what happened. I had to stop every few seconds so Philip could curse. Rafe raised his eyebrows, no doubt hearing Philip’s multiple f-bombs and I shrugged helplessly.

  “I don’t believe this! I should have let Dad kill her when he wanted to!” Philip shouted.

  “Yeah, but then we wouldn’t be able to ask her about Collins,” I pointed out. Not that we’d been able to get much of anything out of her. She said Collins wasn’t on his way here, but was that really true? “You don’t see him on the train, do you?”

  “No, but he’ll be hard to miss if he gets off at my stop.”

  “Please be careful,” I begged.

  “Gabi, I will rip that asshole’s face off if I see him.”

  “And I’ll help!” I heard Kain holler cheerfully in the background.

  “Phil—”

  He cut me off. “We’ll be fine. Just focus on yourself, okay? Are you still standing outside the store? You need to go home with the others. In fact, let me speak to Rafe.”

  “Why?” I narrowed my eyes. “Are you keeping secrets from me?”

  “Just do it, Gabi!”

  I handed the phone over to Rafe. “Hello?” he said. He started nodding and saying “yes” a few times before hanging up. I stared at Rafe and he squirmed. “What? Why are you looking at me like that?”

  “What did he say?” I asked.

  Rafe rubbed his face tiredly. “He pretty much told me if I let anything happen to you, he’d kill me.”

  My mouth dropped open. “He did not!”

  “He did indeed.”

  I pounced on my boyfriend, who let out a startled yelp. “Give me your phone so I can call him up and scream at him, Rafe!”

  “Ack, Gabi, stop!” We wrestled for a few moments before Rafe managed to get me back in my seat. “What are you doing? You’re injured!”

  Panting, I brushed my hair out of my face. “I won’t let him talk to you like that!”

  “Despite what you may think about me, I’m not that fragile,” Rafe said dourly. “And I get where he’s coming from. I would say the same thing to him, if I was in his position.” He placed his hand over mine. “I’d be extremely upset if something happened to you and I wasn’t around. Cut Phil some slack. He just spent the last half hour wondering if you were alive or not.” His gaze dipped to my lips and he let go of my hand to grab the bag of first-aid supplies. “You still have some blood on your face.”

  I pulled down the sun visor and winced. Evan was right; I did look like a vampire. No wonder Denise and Bernard had lost their shit. A nice bruise was forming on my cheek too, courtesy of Nina’s wicked backhanded slap. Accepting a baby wipe from Rafe, I cleaned up my chin. “There, better?” I crumpled up the wipe and tossed it in the bag with the other stuff. “God, what am I going to tell my dad? That I got hit by a car?”

  “It sounds a lot better than getting attacked by a psychopath, doesn’t it?” Rafe asked with a lift of his brows.

  He had a point. Either way, Dad was going to freak. I sighed. Poor Dad. I was really giving him the week from hell, wasn’t I? It was like I was making up for nearly seventeen stress-free years all in one go. I leaned back in my seat. “Or we could just sit in your car forever.”

  “Like that would work,” Rafe replied. “In about two minutes you’d be sending me out for cake.”

  “True. What I should have said was, I could just sit in your car forever.” We shared a smile before I reached for him. He wrapped his arms around me, kissing the side of my face. “I’m so glad you’re here,” I said.

  “Not as glad as I am that you’re still here.”

  “I was really scared,” I admitted.

  His grip tightened. “Me too.”

  �
��Tell me we’re going to get through this,” I said softly. “Tell me everything is going to be okay, Rafe.”

  Without hesitation, he whispered, “We’re going to be fine. I promise.”

  ***

  Philip had told me to go home, and while that was good advice, I couldn’t do that just yet. Despite Rafe’s protests, I rejoined the others to see if they’d made any progress with Nina yet.

  The fierce scowl on Alexandra’s face and the dejected look on Evan’s told me that, nope, they hadn’t learned anything new. Nina was slumped against the bricked wall of the Corral, her body limp like a broken doll’s and her eyes glassy and unseeing. It was so bizarre seeing her like that that I stumbled to a halt, my mouth open.

  “What did you do to her?” I asked. “Besides Alex beating the crap out of her, I mean.”

  Evan shrugged. “Nothing. She won’t say a word, no matter what we ask her.”

  “This is a waste of time!” Alexandra threw her hands up in the air and stalked away, grumbling. “What do we expect her to tell us, anyway? All of Collins’s big bad secrets? The pink idiot didn’t even know he summoned demons for fun!”

  Rafe pressed his phone into my hands once more. I shot him a questioning look. “Call your mom,” he said.

  “Why?” Belatedly, I realized I hadn’t thought about her, not even once, since I was attacked. “Do you think she can get some answers out of Nina?”

  “Maybe. But besides that, I want her around in case Collins shows up. We really shouldn’t be out in the open like this. If he’s around, he’ll sense the veil.”

  “He’s not here,” Nina said suddenly, staring at me and Rafe. I bristled. After what she’d done to Rafe, I didn’t want her looking at him, and I stepped in front, shielding him with my body. (Okay, no, not really, since he was nearly a foot taller than me.) “I was supposed to capture you, Gabi, and then call him up and tell him my location. He’s still in the city, taking care of the HQ explosion stuff.”

  “Ooookay,” Evan said slowly. “Why is she being cooperative now? That’s kinda fishy.”

  “Why should we believe you?” I asked quietly. “You did nothing but lie to me, Nina. I thought you were my friend, and you tried to kill me!” And nearly killed Rafe in the process!