A Million Shadows

by Janci Patterson

  I leaned over and kissed his cheek. “Thanks,” I said. And then I pulled out my phone to dial 911.

  As we drove away from Damon’s apartment building, I used the GPS on my phone to find the address that Damon had given us. It was for a house in a suburban neighborhood in Woodland.

  “Still in the Sacramento area,” I told Kalif. “It fits.”

  Kalif shook his head. “It fits with the data points we had before, but two of the three were probably Damon.”

  I settled into my seat. He was right. We’d had the hospital in Rocklin and the doctor’s office in San Ramon, but at least one of those wasn’t Mel, and we couldn’t be sure about the other. All that was left placing him in the area was the job where Mel had disappeared all those years ago.

  Not exactly compelling evidence.

  “So you think this is a trap,” I said.

  Kalif sighed. “I think everything is a trap. You?”

  I set down the phone. “Same here.”

  Kalif sighed. “I don’t want to follow that lead,” he said. “But it’s our only one, isn’t it?”

  I nodded. My gut said that Damon had been telling the truth, but the secret to being a con artist was knowing what cues spoke straight to other people’s guts. My parents had preyed on people that way all the time.

  So did I.

  I looked over at Kalif. If he noticed, he didn’t glance at me. I knew I’d bothered him already with the risks I’d taken with Damon. I owed him this one.

  “He’s your dad,” I said. “It’s your call.”

  Kalif nodded. “My dad has to be involved somehow, right? Because someone shot that guy in the knee, and he must have done it for a reason.”

  “He was diversifying the trail,” I said. “So we’d find Damon and not him.”

  “And if we drive by the house right now, Damon can’t beat us there. It’ll take at least half an hour for him to get out of that apartment. And you took his phone. Did you see if he had another one on him?”

  I shook my head. “If there was one in reach, I didn’t see it. So he shouldn’t be able to call anyone else down on us either, if he has partners.”

  “Though if he did,” Kalif said, "he probably would have had someone watching his back at the doctor’s appointment.”

  He was right. That’s what we’d have done for each other.

  I shivered. I felt alone enough as it was, and I had Kalif, and technically also my mother. Was Damon really all alone? And would that make him more likely to betray us, or less? “We don’t have to do anything,” I said. “Just drive by.”

  Kalif gave a decisive nod. “Let’s do it.”

  And he pulled onto the freeway in the direction of Woodland.

  The house was in a quiet neighborhood, bordering an apartment complex with rows of silver mailboxes lined up by the curb. A big willow grew in the front yard, shading the house and draping over the driveway and fence. That was exactly the type of house I might choose, if I were Mel; the tree blocked visibility to the windows of the house, and even the walk and driveway were partially obscured. That meant we’d have to get pretty close to observe, making casual spying impossible.

  But as I watched the house recede in the side mirror, a car pulled into the driveway. “Go around the block,” I said to Kalif. “Take one more pass.”

  Kalif looked over at me. “Why?”

  “Someone just pulled into the driveway,” I said. “If we’re not too late, we could get a look at them.”

  Kalif turned to drive around the block, but he didn’t look convinced. “If it’s my dad in persona, looking won’t tell us anything.”

  “I know,” I said. “But Damon said that your dad hadn’t been here in a while, which means he may not be the one who actually lives here. I want to know who does.”

  Kalif nodded and drove us around the block. I bounced my knee up and down, sure we were taking too long and we were going to miss whoever it was.

  But when we drove by again, a woman with curly blond hair stood at the back passenger door of the car, resting her arm on it. A boy climbed out, hauling behind him a backpack and a pile of papers. As his feet hit the driveway, one of the papers broke free and fluttered toward the curb. The little boy chased after it, his mother calling for him not to run into the street.

  At the end of the road, Kalif turned to drive out of the neighborhood. “I didn’t recognize them,” he said. “Either my dad is the woman and he’s working with a shifter disguised as a kid, or it’s just a random address. Another dead end.”

  “Maybe,” I said. “But we won’t really know unless we do better than just drive by.”

  Kalif rolled his eyes. “I should have known. You can never just look.”

  He was right. I’d thought driving by was a good idea, but really I was just trying to ease myself closer without committing to what I already knew I was going to do. “I don’t like leaving the job half done,” I said. “We’ve come this far looking for your dad. I at least want to get a look inside the house. If Damon has never seen your dad’s real face, how does he know he’s not there?”

  “Tell me what you’re thinking of doing,” Kalif said.

  “Nothing,” I said. Too quickly. Crap. Talking to Kalif always sent my scamming skills out the window. Not that I wanted to lie to him, but I did want a complete plan in my head before I pitched it to him. Carefully. In a way he couldn’t refuse.

  Kalif gave me a wary look. “Don’t hold out on me now.”

  I looked back over my shoulder. No one appeared to be following. “I just think we need to get a better look at the house, is all. I want to see that woman sleep, to make sure she isn’t your dad. And the kid, too, for that matter.”

  Kalif groaned. “Okay. I’ll agree to that on one condition.”

  I didn’t even need to hear it to know what it was. “You’re not staying behind this time.”

  “Damn right. You are not doing that to me again. If you’re going in, I’m going with you.”

  After this afternoon, I could hardly blame him. “Okay,” I said. “So what’s our angle?”

  Kalif smiled. “I don’t know about you, but I think that tree out front needs toilet papering.”

  I nodded. “That’ll do it.”

  We found a corner store several blocks away, and walked through the line dressed like a pair of teenagers to buy a twenty-four pack of toilet paper rolls. The clerk gave us a knowing look. We smiled back.

  We had enough time to grab dinner and check in with Aida to make sure my mom was okay before the hour got late enough to expect that the people in the house would have gone to sleep. We told her nothing of our lead, and she didn’t push us too much, which I hoped meant she underestimated our ability to work quickly and not that she was tracking us and already knew what we were up to.

  At one AM our teenage toilet-papering selves parked the car across the street from the house. The street was still. Kalif carted the case of paper across the street and dropped it at the base of the tree. We each pulled out two rolls and moved around the house.

  If I were Mel, I’d have kept a great big dog in the yard. My parents did that sometimes, so that anyone who came looking wouldn’t be able to case the house effectively. The dogs were always mean—as much to keep us from getting attached as to keep other people away. We couldn’t take a dog with us when we split, since it couldn’t shift appearance.

  But as we moved into the backyard, I saw a fluffy white cat bolt over the fence, but no other signs of life.

  The backyard was small, mostly just a concrete patio with some bistro furniture and a planter full of bare dirt. The windows back here were small, but through a sliding glass door I could see the red digital numbers of an alarm clock.

  I could tell through the glass that the sliding door was locked, but through the blinds, I could see a sleeping woman in the bed, her blond hair poking over the edge of the comforter. The bed was large, probably a king, but at least from this angle, she appeared to be alone.

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nbsp; Kalif moved to the corner of the house, stepping carefully over the planter, and returned. “There’s a small window open on the side of the house,” he whispered. “It’s probably the bathroom, but it’s out of sight of the neighbors’ windows.”

  “Do you think we can fit?”

  He nodded. “If we squeeze.”

  I hefted one of the toilet paper rolls in my hand. I really did want to paper that tree, and it would be good to keep up our cover. But if a neighbor saw us and decided to confront us or call the cops, then our operation would be over before it began.

  “Show me,” I said. I followed Kalif around the house. The smoked-glass window was only open a crack, and it was five feet above the ground. I silently lifted one of the chairs from the bistro set and hauled it to the window, and Kalif stood on it, loosening the screen from the frame. I crouched in the corner of the yard and watched through the sliding glass door as he worked. The woman inside didn’t move.

  I told myself that was good. If she wasn’t waiting for us, then Damon probably hadn’t alerted anyone we were coming. And that meant maybe he’d been telling the truth.

  Unless she was Mel, lying in wait for us.

  I was getting really tired of scrutinizing people to figure out if they were really asleep.

  Kalif lifted the screen free and inched the pane open. It made a soft grinding noise; no one had cleaned the track in years, but still the woman didn’t stir. Once it was entirely open, he waved for me to come over.

  He stepped off the chair, letting me climb up and look in. The window opened into a bathtub, hung with a white shower curtain liner. The door to the bathroom was open, but through it I could see a narrow hallway. At least we weren’t trying to climb through the window and into the master bedroom.

  “Boost me up,” I whispered down to Kalif. “I’ll go in and report back.”

  “Yeah, no,” he said. “I’m going first. You can follow if you want.” He raised his eyebrows at me, daring me to argue with him.

  “Fine,” I said. “But this is the last time you get to pull the Damon card.”

  “Not a chance,” Kalif said. “That card is good for at least two more punches.”

  I rolled my eyes, but boosted him up. Kalif had to shrink his body to the size of an eight-year-old to get through the window—which was nearly as small as our shifting would allow. It didn’t help with his weight any, though, and as I boosted him up, I wished we could alter our mass along with our shape.

  I was glad we were in the shadow of the building. All we needed was a neighbor to call the police and announce that there were shrinkable people breaking into the house next door.

  With no one to boost me through, I tightened and lengthened my body, making myself as tall and skinny as genetics would allow. I stepped up on the bistro set and pushed one leg through, straddling the window sill and curling my spine forward to duck my head through. As I did, I pulled my body in, shrinking it as small as I could. My clothes hung limply around my body, and I moved slowly, watching to be sure they didn’t catch. I rested my forward leg on the ledge of the bathtub, twisted around in the window and lowered myself down, letting the other leg follow me in. Kalif stood in the bathtub, his hands at my waist, lowering me down. My feet made a soft tapping sound when they hit the tub, and our breathing suddenly felt loud.

  The rest of the house was silent.

  “Okay,” I breathed. “Let’s go.” I climbed out of the bathtub and walked over to the open bathroom door.

  I moved through the house, taking stock of the rooms as I passed. Through one door I could see the corner of a refrigerator, and through another the arm of a couch and the side of a TV. The doorway to that room was littered with Legos—I made note not to step on those. At the end of the hall was one more closed door, with a paper sign attached to it, declaring in crooked letters, “No Momz Alloud.” Around it, he’d drawn what might have been dinosaurs.

  Crumbs had been ground into the corners of the carpet, and gathered around the baseboards. This house wasn’t a front. It was a place where a woman lived with her little boy. Mel had slept with enough women that it wasn’t exactly unlikely that he’d have spawn running around—especially since he liked to sleep with people when all he wanted from them was information.

  I rounded a corner and nearly ran into Kalif, who was standing in the doorway to a family room, eyes fixed on something beyond the TV. I was about to step back when Kalif’s hand locked onto mine and squeezed it, tight. I passed him our signal, thinking that was what he wanted, however briefly we’d been parted.

  But when we finished, he didn’t let go. Then he looked down at me and pointed.

  And I saw it. There on the far wall was a wedding photo of a man in a white tux and a woman in a lacy, draping dress, that same frizzy hair flowing over her shoulders. The man was turned into her shoulder as if whispering in her ear, his face partially concealed by her hair. But he was definitely, unmistakably Mel—in his home body no less.

  I took another few steps toward the picture, and Kalif stepped with me, like he couldn’t stand to let go of my hand. Next to it was a collage photo frame with pictures of the three of them. In most of the photos, the man was turned away, or wearing a pair of large, dark sunglasses he must have bought in 1985.

  In one particular photo, his face behind the glasses was stern, his expression clearly stating he didn’t want his picture taken. On his lap, the boy grinned, chin lifted up toward the camera, a dark hole gaping in place of his two front teeth.

  I froze.

  I hadn’t noticed in a glance from the street, but now, looking at so many pictures of the boy, it was obvious: the face shape, the spread of his forehead, even the color of his hair.

  The kid looked a lot like his mother—a stronger resemblance than I would have expected from a normal child’s genetic face. The curve of his cheeks, the set of his eyes, and the pale shade of his skin all came from her.

  But his jawline, his hair, his nose, his smile . . .

  Kalif stared at the photos, and I knew he was thinking the exact same thing.

  The child looked exactly like Mel.

  He looked about six, which meant that if he was a shifter, he would be right at the cusp of developing powers. Or, he could just be a normal kid—when shifters had children with normal people, the kid’s nature was a toss up.

  “He’s got to be a shifter,” Kalif said. “To look that much like his parents.” His voice was calm, but hollow.

  I stepped closer and squeezed his hand. “But for him to look that much like him, your dad would have to have been around a lot. And he couldn’t have been . . . could he?”

  Kalif took a step back, his fingers crushing mine. “He certainly didn’t explain to his wife the need not to be featured in family photographs.”

  I looked at the wedding photo again.

  Kalif was right. If that little boy was a shifter, the woman who lived here must have no idea what she was married to.

  Or what she was raising.

  Eighteen

  “Let’s go,” I said, tugging on Kalif’s arm. He needed to get out of here, someplace he could react without putting us in danger.

  “No,” he whispered back. “We need to find out if he’s been here recently.”

  He stared at the pictures, his eyes hard.

  “You wait outside,” I said. “I’ll do it.”

  Kalif still hadn’t torn his eyes from the photos. He shook his head. “I’m not leaving you in this house.”

  “Don’t move, then,” I said. And I swept through the house, looking for evidence of a third person.

  I found a pile of mail on the kitchen counter. It had been piled into three stacks—advertisements and junk mail in one, opened letters and bills in another, and a third, unopened pile, all addressed to someone named Bruce Vermeer. I rifled through them. The postmarks went back three weeks.

  I moved silently through the house and returned to Kalif. “His mail’s here for the last three weeks. So he’s
been here, but not recently. If we can find the woman’s phone, we could look in it for the number she uses to reach him.”

  “It would only be a burner,” he said.

  I hated to admit he was right. We’d be able to do little over the phone besides alert him that we knew about his double life, decreasing the odds of him coming back here.

  Kalif gritted his teeth. I put a hand on his arm. All his muscles were tense.

  “Let’s go,” I said. I pulled him toward the hallway, but he walked instead to the front door and quietly unlocked it.

  The door. Of course. This wasn’t a place of business, where we had to worry about leaving the same way we came. It was likely Mel had cameras around, so he could keep an eye on things here, but if that was the case, he would already know we’d been here.

  All the more reason to go.

  We walked onto the porch and I closed the door quietly behind us, not bothering to lock it. Kalif made a bee line for the car, leaving the toilet paper under the tree, and I had to jog to keep up with him.

  My heart pounded, and not just from the exertion. We should be taking the case of paper. We should have closed the bathroom window, moved the chair. We should have erased all evidence that we’d ever been in the house.

  But something about the purposeful way that Kalif was walking told me the risk of hanging around was far greater.

  He needed to get out of here, before he lost it and did something stupid.

  When we got into the car, Kalif swore under his breath.

  I put a hand on his shoulder. “Maybe it’s not him,” I said. “It could be a setup.”

  He shook me off. “Yeah. Want to bet?”

  I sat back in my seat. I already knew a setup didn’t make sense—what were we being set up for, exactly? If we were being pinned into a corner, that house should have been it.

  I searched for something comforting to say as Kalif started the car and pulled off down the street. I realized immediately I shouldn’t have let Kalif drive. His hands wrapped so tight around the steering wheel it might have been Mel’s neck.

  “Talk to me,” I said.

  He blew air out his nose. “What is there to say?”