I smiled. She was trying to put me on the defensive, as well. I didn’t take the bait. “Since you’re so on top of things, I assume you didn’t want to talk to me just to insult me.”
I heard another sigh, but I couldn’t tell if it came from Kalif or Aida. Either would have been earned.
“I wanted to talk to you alone, actually,” Aida said. “But this will have to do. I have a job for you.”
My jaw actually fell open. I wished Kalif was there with me, if only so we could share an incredulous glance. Whatever he thought now, though, he was silent.
“You’re joking,” I said.
“I wish I was,” she said.
No wonder she hadn’t been willing to tell Kalif what she wanted. Even she couldn’t have this much audacity.
I let a laugh creep into my voice. Let her know I thought she was ridiculous. “You betrayed my family. Why would I work for you?”
Aida’s voice was matter-of-fact. “Because I can keep your mom safe. I can make sure my parents don’t find her.”
Kalif was supposed to be doing that for me. That was one of the reasons he’d stayed with his mother instead of running off alone to wait for me to get my mom situated. From the inside, he could alert me if any of them came close to finding us.
But I didn’t miss her threat—if I didn’t help Aida, she could also sic her parents on me.
Even Kalif couldn’t protect us from that.
“Let’s pretend I believe that you can help me,” I said. “Why would you?”
“That’s the payment,” Aida said. “For you finding Mel before my parents do.”
My jaw dropped lower. In spite of all my training, I was actually speechless.
Kalif, however, wasn’t. “You did not just ask her to do that,” he said. “He tried to kill her.”
The muscles in my neck tightened. Mel had tried to strangle me when I was in the midst of rescuing my parents.
Before I shot him in the leg.
I closed my eyes. Aida thought her parents were looking for Mel, and unless the emails on my phone in the gym locker were actually from her, she was right about that.
Did she know that they’d asked me to find him? Asking would give her too much information. Still, there had to be a way to use this. I had to keep her talking, get more out of her before I committed to anything. That was another thing my dad taught me. Speaking in absolutes gave away power.
If I wanted to pit them all against each other and get my mom to safety in the process, then this was just another piece in a very dangerous puzzle.
I let my voice drip with sarcasm. “So you want me to find my dad’s murderer. I’ll get right on that.”
“Mel didn’t kill your father,” Aida said. Her voice stayed perfectly calm, but she spoke a touch too quickly, like she was trying to convince herself. Either way, I was pretty sure I’d shaken her.
If I stayed right on top of her, maybe I could maintain the edge. “He set him up to die. Same difference. Also, I think you had something to do with that.”
Aida charged forward—a good move on her part. “My parents will find your mother eventually. If you don’t want that to happen, you’ll take the offer.”
I paused for effect. “I thought you could find us anytime.”
Aida was quiet.
The silence made me nervous. If she got frustrated with me and hung up, I’d have to come to her if I wanted to accept the job, which would give her more power.
And did I want to accept it? Looking for Mel might involve travel, and I couldn’t leave my mother for long.
“Let me get this straight,” I said. “You want to feed me some bogus lead, and then wait for me to follow it so you can bring me in to your parents, is that it?”
“No,” Aida said. “My parents have no idea I’m contacting you. They’re looking for him, and if they find him, they’ll kill him. That’s what I need you for.” Aida paused. “But while you’re suspecting me of laying a trap for you, you might as well know that I’m reasonably certain he’s still in California.”
I narrowed my eyes. “Why would you think that?”
“Because Mel is never far,” Aida said. “He wouldn’t leave his family like that.”
I swallowed a comment about how the evidence said otherwise. Mel was probably in Australia by now.
Still, if he was in California, that made looking for him more possible.
“What I want to know,” I said, "is why you want to help him. He murdered a bunch of people and lied to you about it. He tried to strangle me in front of you. He sleeps with everything that moves. I’d think you’d be happy to be rid of him.”
I felt a pang of regret for saying that within earshot of Kalif. He hated dealing with what his dad was, and I didn’t mean to throw it in his face. But while I hadn’t accepted Aida’s job, talking to her was a job in itself. I had to play her if I was going to get anything out of it.
He’d understand that, wouldn’t he?
Aida’s voice was quiet, and if I hadn’t known what a great actor she was, I would have believed her completely. “I don’t want him dead. You shot him in the leg, so he’ll have scar tissue, and possibly a limp. My parents will use that to find him, just as they’ll use your mother’s scars to find you. I want to get to him first.”
My eyes narrowed, and I fiddled with the straw to my smoothie. She’d put up with his philandering for years. Of course she now wanted to save him from her parents, even if he was the murderer she’d thought my parents to be. That was Aida’s thing—she protected her people, no matter how horrible they were.
Except when those people were my parents—some of the only people in her life who’d deserved her protection.
Kalif stepped in for me. “Why do you want Jory to find Dad?” he asked. “You could do it. I could do it.”
“But you can’t,” I said. “Not with Wendy and Oliver Carmine looking over your shoulders. That’s why, isn’t it?”
“You’re clever,” Aida said to me. “That’s why I want you working with me.”
That’s when I saw my opening—the best one I was ever going to get. “I’ll do it,” I said. “But I don’t work alone.”
“I doubt your mother will want to—"
The silence that followed told me she got it, but I continued anyway. “I work with Kalif. He comes with me or there’s no deal.”
I squeezed my eyes shut. I wasn’t ready to leave Mom, but this was the best possible way for him to get away from his mother and her parents. If she knew where he was going, she wouldn’t hunt for him. She’d actively keep her parents from following. And once we were gone, Aida couldn’t control what we did. We could look for Mel, or not. We could turn him over to Aida, or to the Carmines. We could work it out together, which was how both of us worked best.
I could hop between Mom and Kalif until Mom was stable, and then we could leave. I could keep up the double life for as long as I needed to. Mom wasn’t exactly with it enough to notice. And we wouldn’t have to stay in California. We could move to France or Barbados or the freaking Arctic circle for all I cared.
This was it. This was the change I was looking for.
“He can’t,” Aida said. “My parents will trace him if he leaves.”
“I thought you were better than that,” I said. “You kept him a secret for seventeen years. You could cover his tracks if you wanted to. Tell them he ran. Tell them you can’t find him. And then make sure they don’t.”
Aida was quiet again. I tucked the phone into my shoulder and leaned my head into my hands. If Aida was telling the truth, this would be perfect. Aida would protect Mom; Kalif would come work with me. We could figure out a plan to stay one step ahead of the Carmines and his parents—especially if we actually could find Mel before he snuck up on us.
Afterward, Kalif and I could walk away from all this, just like we’d planned. If I could get Mom to a more stable place in the meantime, everything would work out. And I’d have Kalif to talk to freely while I di
d it.
But I had to be careful. If it was perfect, it was probably a trap. And a trap where I’d gotten the upper hand was still a trap.
But if Aida’s silence was any indication, she was actually considering my point. “Agree to my terms,” I said. “And I’ll think about it.”
“No,” Aida said. I cringed. I’d pushed too hard, forced her to refuse. But then she added: “You take the offer now, while it stands.”
I let myself smile. She’d implicitly agreed to let Kalif help me, if only I agreed now.
But again. Trap. I pitched my voice to sound absolutely confident. “You’ll give me time. You wouldn’t be asking me for help if you had another option.”
Then I hung up the phone, to drive the point home.
I got up from the table. If she’d somehow traced the call, it was time to get out. Either way, it was time to get rid of the phone. I’d get in touch with Kalif later, after I’d had time to think about how I really wanted to handle this situation.
Shifters didn’t do rush jobs. If I made a snap decision in a case like this, Dad would have killed me.
I stuck the phone inside my smoothie cup and walked to the end of the block and down the alley that ran along the back of the restaurants. I lifted the lid on one of the Dumpsters and lowered the cup inside.
I was just about to let go when the cup vibrated in my fingers. I stood there for a moment, holding it over the edge. I probably should have let go of it anyway, but I couldn’t—not if this was Kalif.
Instead, I pulled it out of the cup, wiped off the peach-banana residue, and answered it. The receiver felt tacky against my face. “Hello?” I said.
“Poodle armies,” Kalif said.
I smiled. “Rats with swords.”
“Hey,” Kalif said. “I wasn’t sure if I’d catch you before you got rid of the phone, but it took me a minute to shake off my mom.”
I paused. On a disposable phone, with so little time, there was almost no chance Aida could be listening, as long as Kalif had been careful.
But I still didn’t want to talk too long, or say too much. And I wanted a second verification, in case somehow Aida had found out about our code words.
“So?” he said. “What do you think?”
I was quiet. Verifying Kalif’s identity was harder over the phone than it was in person. I needed a question that Aida wouldn’t guess the answer to. “Remember that last night before we rescued my parents?”
“Yeah,” he said. “Why?” Kalif sounded suspicious, like he wasn’t sure where I was going with this. Which would make sense, if he was actually Aida in disguise.
“Tell me about it,” I said.
“We were sitting on the balcony in our hotel room,” he said. “And we decided to run away together. But then later we decided not to, because of your mom. Jory, are you trying to torture me?”
“No,” I said. “Just tell me what we had for dinner.”
“Cold hamburgers,” Kalif said. “It’s really me.”
I smiled. “Took you long enough.”
“You should have started by asking about all the fabulous sex we had. Then I would have gotten it.”
I laughed. After the conversation on the balcony, I’d practically had to force Kalif not to sleep on the floor, and he’d kept his hands strictly to himself, because he was so afraid of taking advantage of me while I was worried about my parents. “I thought about telling you I was pregnant, but I thought that would be too obvious.”
“Or it would have made me insanely jealous, one or the other.”
My whole body ached for him. “Okay,” I said. “So it’s you. I still don’t want to discuss things over a used phone.”
“Yeah, I get that.” Kalif sounded disappointed. “Call me later, then?”
I could feel my resolve weakening. I was already in San Jose. Had I really come down here to bother with Aida, or did I have something else on my mind? With as pretty as I’d made my persona originally, I had to be expecting something.
“Come meet me,” I said. “We can talk in person.”
Kalif was quiet. “Really?” he said. “You want me to meet you where I traced your email?”
At least he was being careful. “No. The place where I bought those hamburgers. Meet me there.”
He sounded as eager as I felt. “Done.”
“Twenty minutes?”
“You’re that close?”
His excitement might have made me nervous if I hadn’t felt the exact same way.
“I am. You?”
“Give me half an hour.”
“You got it.”
When we hung up, I did throw the phone in the Dumpster, and then I slipped behind it to change my hair and face again.
And as I left the alley and headed for the hamburger place, for the first time in ages, I felt like a spy.
Four
The burger place was in a strip mall down the street from one of the hotels where Kalif and I had stayed when we were planning to rescue my parents. I arrived five minutes late, because I wanted Kalif to already be there. Call me paranoid, but even with him, I wanted to stroll by and observe before I approached.
I didn’t have to look long. A man walked out of the bakery next door and set a cardboard box filled with two big cinnamon rolls down on a bench. He had red hair and pale skin, unlike Kalif’s dark hair and olive complexion, and he looked several years older than Kalif, but his jawline was an exact mirror.
This was what happened when I wasn’t around to critique him on his shifting.
I maintained an even step as I walked up to the nearest light, crossed the street, and approached his bench from the other direction, even though I felt like skipping. Kalif looked me over as I approached, but then pulled out his phone, as if checking the time. I was tempted to walk right by and make him sweat.
Instead, I offered him my hand.
Kalif broke out in a grin before our palms even touched. He grabbed it with a firm grip, and I could have just let him hold it if we didn’t need to verify each other’s identity. I shifted my hand warm as he shifted his cold; then we swapped. Our signal, the one only he and I knew. I hadn’t realized how much I’d missed it. Kalif’s whole face lit up and he wrapped me into his arms. It made no difference that we didn’t look like ourselves; I squeezed into him, surprised by a cue I hadn’t known I knew.
He smelled like home.
When I looked up at him, his mouth closed over mine, and my body tingled from head to toe. When he broke away, he looked down at me and shook his head. “Why are we always someone else when we do that?”
I laughed. “Because you’re impatient.”
He pulled me down beside him on the bench. My persona looked about four years younger than him, so we didn’t exactly match, but the gap wasn’t big enough that we were drawing tons of attention.
“So,” he said, "how are you really?”
The last thing I wanted to do in my first minute of seeing him was get into that. I smiled—and for the first time lately, it felt genuine. “A lot better than I was a minute ago.”
He grinned like an idiot. “Yeah,” he said. “Me, too.”
Being this close to him again made my head spin. It would be all too easy to get totally distracted. “Does your mom know you’re gone?”
He shrugged. “Probably.”
A heavy set woman with a flowered blouse passed us on the street. Hairs rose on the back of my neck. Aida could be anyone. “Do you think she’s tracking you?”
He leaned close and shook his head. “No. I cleaned the bugs out of my phone, so we’re good.” He pulled out his phone and flashed the screen at me. “But I planted one on her today, so I can watch her.” He squinted at the screen. “She’s ten miles away, and not coming toward us.”
I smiled. “Good work,” I said. “And your grandparents?”
Kalif shook his head. “Mom and I are careful. We cycle out everything regularly—computers, phones. These clothes haven’t ever been in our apartment
. We’re fine.” Kalif ran his fingers over the back of my hand, and then took it in his. The pull between us was magnetic.
I shook my head to clear it, trying to pull us back on the subject. “Your mom really put trackers in your phone.”
Kalif rolled his eyes. “And my laptop, and my external drive. I got them all. I was thorough.”
I squeezed his hand. “Sure there’s not one hidden under your skin somewhere?”
Kalif laughed. “No operations lately, though I wouldn’t put it past her to try that when the others don’t work.”
His face dropped close to mine, and he rubbed his nose against my temple. “I probably shouldn’t go to your house, just in case.”
I stiffened. That wasn’t even on the table. “You can’t anyway. My mom thinks you’ll betray us.”
Kalif hesitated. “And you?”
I squeezed his hand and turned my head to whisper in his ear. “I think if you’re working against me, you’re the worst spy ever.”
Kalif smiled. “That’s what I’ve been missing. Nobody puts me in my place like you do.”
I smacked his shoulder. “That was only an insult if you’re double crossing me. And if you are, I haven’t insulted you enough.”
Kalif laughed. The sound made my stomach ache. I wanted to stay here with him all day—to drag out each moment and make it last forever.
Kalif dipped a finger in the frosting of one of his cinnamon rolls and licked it off. His face turned serious. “I’m so sorry about what my mom said. If I’d known that’s what she wanted, I never would have told you about it.”
“And then we wouldn’t be sitting here,” I said.
Kalif put his other hand on my arm. “You know I don’t regret that.”
I smiled. “I know.”
“So you think it’s a trap?”
I fought off a shiver. “I never can tell with her. I don’t trust her.”
He nodded. “Me neither.”
My heart ached for him. Mom was a mess, and I couldn’t depend on her, not like I did before. But I did have autonomy—more than I wanted. I didn’t have to worry about Mom watching my every move when she couldn’t even leave the house to pay the rent. We didn’t own a computer right now, much less tracking devices. I didn’t want to send him back to that alone.
A Million Shadows Page 3
