A Million Shadows

by Janci Patterson

  “Who does your badge belong to?”

  “I lifted it from an FBI agent on a job.”

  “I thought theft wasn’t your style.”

  “I said embezzlement wasn’t my style. I mostly steal things I can’t buy.”

  “Like ID for government workers.”

  “Strangely, they don’t sell those at Wal-Mart.”

  I laughed. “He must have reported it stolen.”

  “It’s a copy. I dropped the real one back in his car.”

  “You’re a forger?”

  “I know a guy.”

  I chewed on my lip. Damon probably knew a lot of people. His resources could be useful to us, but they could also potentially be dangerous. If I interrogated him, though, we might lose his cooperation. Better to let the information about his contacts come out naturally over time.

  “Hasn’t this guy noticed you using his ID?”

  “I haven’t used it yet. These badges are strictly one-use things, you know? If we use this one, I’ll have to lift another one.”

  That was smart, always having a stash of badges to use. We should be doing that, but first we’d need to find ourselves a forger, or one of us would have to become one.

  Which, of course, would be the opposite of getting out of the crime business. I paused. “That badge is valuable to you, then. Why would you be willing to use it for me?”

  “Gorgeous,” he said. “No one can say no to you.”

  I turned around and rolled my eyes so Kalif could see. He rolled his back, which I took as a sign that he didn’t hate my guts for what I was doing.

  After all, he was the one who usually said there was no saying no to me. Though I suspected that Damon’s reasons were more complicated than Kalif’s.

  “Or,” I said, "could it be that it’s worth it to you to get revenge for your knee?”

  Damon laughed. “Revenge is for suckers.”

  “Aw,” I said. “Don’t talk about yourself like that.”

  Damon laughed louder. “Girl,” he said. “You are so much fun.”

  My knees locked in place. Kalif had said that to me once, too, after we’d run a job together.

  “Tell me where to meet you,” I said. “We’ll stop by a store and put some personas together before we go to the station.”

  “Done,” Damon said. He gave me the address of a street corner.

  “Okay,” I said. “How will I know you?”

  “Girl,” he said. “Trust me, you won’t be able to miss me.”

  I almost didn’t want to believe him. “Okay,” I said. “Give me two hours.”

  “I wouldn’t miss it,” he said. And then he was gone.

  I turned back to Kalif, whose whole appearance had become more disheveled. His hair drooped onto his forehead. His eyes were slightly swollen and his posture slouchy. He was a computer geek channeling a sullen stoner.

  I didn’t mention it. He was embarrassed enough about his unconscious shifting. Better to stick with business and let him get over it. “Damon will do it,” I said.

  “Joy,” Kalif said.

  I wrinkled my nose at him. “Don’t make me tackle you again.”

  “We do have some time to kill before you meet him, right?” He gave me a look that told me he was only half joking.

  “Easy,” I said. “I have more awkward analyses just waiting to ruin the mood.”

  Kalif groaned. “You have to run out of those eventually, don’t you?”

  I shook my head. “It’s my other super power.”

  He pulled me into him and buried his face in my hair. “I love you.”

  “You, too,” I said. “But I think you’re getting a little too used to being the only person in my life.”

  “Ugh,” he said. “I don’t want to be a possessive jerk.”

  “Then don’t be. Trust me.”

  “I do. You know I do.”

  “Yeah, I know,” I said. “You’re the one who’s forgetting.”

  He sighed. “Fine. You win. Maybe working with Damon will get us out of this whole mess faster. Like the freaking wind.”

  I couldn’t have been more on board with that.

  Twenty-two

  Damon wasn’t kidding when he said I would recognize him. When he showed up on the corner, I knew instantly it was him, even though he didn’t look a thing like his home body with his oversexed hourglass figure, his red cocktail dress, and his thigh-high boots, which neatly covered his knee injury.

  And the motorcycle. No sane person would wear that outfit while going forty miles an hour on the thing, even in the summer in California. If he crashed in that getup, there was going to be nothing left of him. And I wasn’t talking about just his face.

  Damon parked the motorcycle on the curb and hopped off, giving me a flash of the pink thong he was wearing under the super-short skirt. He sauntered toward me.

  “You must be warming your whole body,” I said. “Or I hired a hooker I don’t know about.”

  We checked hands.

  “Hey,” he said. “You have to admit I look hot in this.”

  If you were into size-two women with bobbed hair, he was right. I clearly should have stepped things up; I’d come in the face I used to break into his apartment.

  I opened the car door for him. “If we get picked up for prostitution,” I said, "it’s your fault.”

  Damon climbed into the car and looked at me sideways. “If we’re going to work together,” he said, "you need to show me your real face.”

  I tried to keep my expression casual, though my limbs wanted to lock up. That hadn’t taken him long. “Who says this isn’t my real face?”

  “If it is, you’re terrible at this, and I should just do the job myself.”

  I sighed. “Fine. So it isn’t. And you’re not seeing it, either.”

  “Think about it,” Damon said. “What if you get knocked out on the job? I’m supposed to back you up and save you, but I won’t know who to look for, and you won’t be conscious to give me a signal.”

  I chewed on that. The request was incredibly invasive—even when my parents started working with Kalif’s, they kept their home faces private for the first month or so. Obviously Damon was playing at scenarios to get what he wanted, but he was right that shifters who worked together were better off knowing each other inside and out, because of all the things we couldn’t communicate in persona. I knew our parents’ team had gotten a lot tighter after they shared everything.

  Until Kalif’s parents betrayed us.

  “You know what I look like,” Damon said. “And I didn’t even complain about you using my drugs to knock me out. I’m guessing you don’t have a medical degree. You could have killed me, you know?”

  I knew. But Damon didn’t look angry about it now. “The drugs were yours,” I said. “Are you a licensed anesthesiologist?”

  He just gave me an amused smile.

  I shook my head. “You don’t even take your own death seriously?”

  He laughed. “Life is short and brutal, more so for a shifter.”

  “All the more reason to be careful,” I said.

  “All the more reason to relax. Things are hard enough for us without tying ourselves into knots.”

  I wanted to believe he was right.

  “Take you, for example,” he said. “You’re wound tight enough to snap.”

  My back stiffened, proving his point. I made myself shrug it off. “I just get tense before a job is all.”

  “Right,” Damon said. “And the way you were twitching at my apartment was just a coincidence.”

  I held a finger in the air. “Also a job.”

  “Riiight,” he said. “You keep telling yourself that.”

  I sighed. I was glad Kalif couldn’t hear this conversation. I seemed to be thinking that every time Damon opened his mouth. “You’re just trying to get me to drop my guard,” I said. “It won’t work.”

  “I don’t care what you do,” Damon said. “As long as it isn’t getting me ki
lled. But going into a job with you without a relationship of trust . . . I’ve done it before. It’s a bad idea, and definitely the kind of thing that could put one or both of us in danger.”

  I nodded. That was one reason Kalif and I worked together so well; I was willing to put my life, my mother’s life, everything I had to risk right in his hands. It didn’t matter that technically he could drop me, because I trusted he wouldn’t.

  I didn’t have to ask Kalif to know that he’d hate me showing my face to Damon. He didn’t want me exposing myself to risk, but more than that, he’d hate the intimacy of Damon knowing my home face. He didn’t need to worry—I wasn’t going to trust Damon the way I did him, not for a long time and maybe not ever. But if I wasn’t willing to give Damon at least a little faith, I should have just walked away in the beginning, like Kalif wanted me to. “I’ll think about it,” I said.

  Damon smiled. “So these people you work for.”

  “With,” I said. “Not for.”

  Damon nodded, like he was filing that away. We were both maneuvering each other, trying to be the one who got more and gave less.

  “Family?” he asked.

  It was a good bet. I imagined most shifters worked with their families, if their relatives were shifters as well. Other people were harder to trust.

  “And my boyfriend,” I said.

  Damon gave me a dubious look. “Riiight.”

  “What?” I asked. “You don’t even believe me about that?”

  “It would make for a good cover story, if you didn’t want me hitting on you. Most of the shifter teams I’ve met are related.”

  “You’ve known a lot of teams, then,” I said.

  Damon shrugged. “One that got captured by Wendy Carmine. Another couple who disappeared after that.”

  The message was clear. No one he could contact for help, now. I wondered if that was true, or if he was just trying to disabuse me of the notion that I could enlist the help of his contacts.

  “Well my team isn’t entirely related,” I said.

  “Not into commitment?”

  I wasn’t going to tell Damon how young I was. “It’s a relatively new thing.”

  “Ah, so I can seduce you away.”

  “No, you can’t,” I said. “And do me a favor. Don’t say things like that in front of him.”

  “Only when the boyfriend isn’t around, then.”

  “That’s not what I—"

  Damon held up a hand. “Hey, hey! Whatever you’re into is fine with me.”

  “Monogamy,” I said. “That’s what I’m into.”

  Damon laughed. “Hey, I was just trying to say it doesn’t have to be a competition. But if that’s what you like—"

  I glared at him. “What are you, twelve?”

  He smiled at me and his eyes danced. “Would you be able to tell if I were?”

  I wouldn’t. He had to be old enough to have a fully-developed self-concept, so preteen at the least. But he could be fourteen or fifty-five, and if his self-concept was warped enough, it wouldn’t show in his home body’s appearance.

  “Seriously, though,” Damon said, "tell me about this boyfriend of yours. Are you sure you can trust him?”

  I sighed. “Yes, I’m sure. No, I won’t tell you why.”

  Damon tugged at the bottom of his mini-skirt. “I figured you wouldn’t give me the details, anyway. You don’t trust me yet.” He raised his eyebrows at me. “Am I wrong?”

  “I figure some of what you say is true, and some of it isn’t,” I said. “I’m sure I’m not wrong.”

  “No,” Damon said. “You’re not. And I imagine the same could be said about you.”

  I didn’t have to ask him why he asked questions, even though he knew I might lie. The pattern of people’s lies could be used to trace the truth. He probably knew that better than I did.

  I just needed to play the game better than he did, so I could maintain the upper hand.

  “Are we done?” I asked. “Because there’s actual work waiting for us.”

  “You don’t trust me enough to talk candidly, but you do trust me to watch your back as you risk your life. You’re a strange girl.”

  “I’m a shifter,” I said. “Same difference.”

  We stopped at the local Wal-Mart, where I picked out a passable outfit for an FBI agent—shirt, slacks, and shoes. I considered a gold paisley tie, but Damon advised against it.

  “You don’t want to overdo it,” he said.

  “You’re one to talk,” I said.

  Damon just smiled.

  “Okay,” I said. “So you’ll be the FBI agent, and I’ll be . . . who?”

  “This is your mission,” Damon said. “You play the agent. I’ll play your daughter.”

  “And what is it? Bring your daughter to work day?”

  “Okay, maybe not. It’s your job. Assign me something.”

  “You could be my informant,” I said. “That way you wouldn’t have official ID.”

  “Done,” Damon said. “I’ll make her tiny and cute as a button. That’ll help us get in.”

  “If the person at the desk is into women,” I said. “Don’t you ever use male personas?”

  “All the time,” Damon said. “But I like the look on your face when I don’t. Haven’t you ever seen a man turn into a beautiful woman before? Is your boyfriend insecure in his manhood or something?”

  I shook my head. “He’s just not so insecure in his skills that he needs to show off.” Kalif didn’t do women because he kind of sucked at it, but I wasn’t going to talk about his weaknesses with Damon, in case Damon was only cooperating with us to scout us out. Now that I thought about it, maybe Kalif’s problem wasn’t as much anatomy, as that he lacked Damon’s audacity.

  I wasn’t going to say that out loud, either.

  “Touché,” Damon said. “Didn’t know I was that transparent.”

  He actually sounded impressed. “Do you think the car is okay?” I asked.

  “Should be fine,” Damon said. “Though Agent Getty drives a Volvo.”

  I’d need to cycle it out after this, anyway. “We’ll park around the side of the building,” I said. “And hope that Agent Getty doesn’t have friends in Rocklin. Now we just need something for you.”

  I frowned as Damon led me to the tween girl’s section. “You’re there to back me up,” I said. “Shouldn’t you at least look like you’re capable of that?”

  “Does that matter?” he asked. “I can knock a guy out looking like a twelve-year-old as easily as I can looking like myself.”

  “You confuse me,” I said. “You like dressing like a woman, but obviously you don’t see yourself that way.”

  Damon shrugged. “My clothes aren’t who I am.”

  “I’ve got to know, where do you get your self-image? No one’s muscles are that big.”

  Damon’s shoulders shook with laughter. “Guilty,” he said. “But I do spend a lot of time at the gym. I can bench as much as the big guys, so who’s to say I don’t look like them?”

  “So you’re full of yourself.”

  “Would you rather I looked like a wimp?”

  “Probably,” I said. “I’m not into muscles.” I forced my face not to cringe. I wasn’t trying to sound like I could even potentially be interested, but I did.

  “Fine,” Damon said, redirecting himself to the men’s department. “I’ll look like a man, if that’ll make you feel more secure.”

  He made me sound like a damsel in distress at best and a sexist at worst. But I had to admit, I did feel better when he reached between his breasts and pulled out a driver’s license for a twenty-something guy with broad shoulders and a buzz cut.

  I wondered how many IDs he had stashed beneath that tiny outfit of his.

  We paid for the clothes, then slipped into the family bathroom so Damon could teach me the FBI persona. I half-expected him to harass me, but he turned away while I changed, and not even at an angle where he could watch me in the mirror.


  “What’s the matter,” I said to him. “Never seen a naked girl before?”

  “I’ve been a lot of naked girls,” he said. “But that doesn’t mean I have to be a jerk about it.”

  Damon assumed the persona of the agent whose ID he’d stolen—a young guy, clean cut and lanky. Matching his stature and frame was easier standing across from Damon than it would have been from a picture—even the detailed 360 views that my parents kept in their digital files.

  “Not bad,” Damon said. “Doesn’t have to be perfect.”

  “Unless someone knows him,” I said.

  “Let’s hope not. But just in case, you better learn the voice.” The tone of his voice switched mid-sentence, lilting higher without becoming effeminate. Damon looked impressed when I echoed the voice right away. I didn’t tell him that I didn’t even have to try. That part came naturally.

  “So, the asshole,” Damon said as we drove to the station. “You think he ran this embezzlement job?”

  “I think there’s a good chance,” I said. “That’s what we’re going to find out: if he did it, and if he left a trail we can follow, even if the cops can’t.”

  “I hope you can tail him,” Damon said. “Dude has to pay for what he did to my knee.”

  “Trust me,” I said. “That’s not the only thing he’s going to pay for.”

  Damon looked a question at me, but I just smiled.

  When we got to the police station, we parked at the far end of the empty parking lot, so the people inside wouldn’t be able to watch us get out of the car.

  The station lobby was empty except for a man standing behind the desk, leaning over a computer. I walked up and handed him the badge. “Agent Getty, FBI,” I said. “I’ve been working on an investigation and we’ve run into a possible connection to the CareWare case. I’d like to get a look at those files, if you don’t mind.”

  The man behind the counter examined the badge, and typed something into the computer. “Looks like we’ve already shared our files with the FBI,” he said. “Was something missing from your records?”

  “That’s what I’m here to find out,” I said. “I’ve got the digital files, but not the physical evidence.”

  “Ah,” he said. “Looks like we’ve been fully cooperating with you, so I can get you in to see those immediately. You should have had our write-up of everything we found, though.”