by Sara Hanover
I opened the door.
She smiled widely. “I couldn’t believe the video Evelyn forwarded me, so I came to see myself.”
I drew a blank. “Video?”
“The high heel walk! Take me upstairs and show me.” In that quaint way she had, she hid her smile behind her hand in a show of modesty.
Odder things had definitely happened to me over the past few weeks, so I said “Sure!” and let her in. The midafternoon sun ushered her through the door and for just a minute, a freaky moment, she had two very distinct shadows. One followed at her heels, a perfectly ordinary silhouette of my friend, but the other gave me a start to see, hunched over and skulking, with sharp and cutting edges. As it flowed over my feet and flip-flops, a distinct chill crossed over. I blinked hard but it stayed, points and all. Joanna smoothed the line of her skirt and the shadows both copied her, falling into line with what they should have been. I rubbed the corner of one eye, trying to decide if I’d seen what I thought I’d seen, as far from normal as I could imagine. I began to regret inviting her across my threshold. Brian was upstairs too, sleeping the sleep of the dead tired, but he’d hear me if I screamed loud enough. Right? Maybe he could find enough zing to get a sputter out of his perdition rod if necessary.
Joanna led the way up the stairs confidently as though she’d been there a million times. “This is quite an old place. I didn’t get a chance to ask you about it when we brought the dresses.”
“Yeah. My Aunt April says it was the original home on this part of the land they turned into the tract, so it’s decades older than most of the places around us.”
“Got any secret passages?”
“No, right? I wish.” And I did, sincerely. I felt like I might need one.
“Your mom doesn’t own it?”
“No, we’re renting. You know we lost our house when my dad disappeared?”
She nodded and waited for me by the bedroom door. “I’m sorry.”
Shrugging, I opened the door. “Nothing you did. For a long time, I didn’t even want him back, but now I wish he could come home.”
“You know half the school said your mom did him in.”
“I know, and the other half said I did it but to feel sorry for us. But we didn’t. He had an addiction and couldn’t deal with it.”
“Wow. Prescription drugs?”
“No, but that is what everybody talks about today. It’s almost even understandable, but not my dad. He went crazy for gambling.”
“Oh. Sad.”
She said sad but I heard pathetic in her tone. I’d never thought of Joanna as being judgmental, that had always been Evelyn’s take, but I revised my opinion. “Not as sad as the idiot who keeps updating my picture ID and stuff on the Internet. It’s everywhere I look. I’d like to just forget everything and move on.”
“Social media can be the worst,” Joanna agreed, not meeting my eyes. I looked at her slender hands, always so quick and sure on computer keyboards in the labs. “Bullying.”
“Anonymous.” I added, “Stay out here and I’ll walk up and down the hallway for you. My room’s a little messy today.”
“How about you put on the dress too? No sense waiting until the last minute.”
“You think? Okay.” I did want to have an idea how they went together. I grabbed my brace while she looked behind her and slipped it on. She followed me in and perched on the edge of the bed while I changed.
The gown slipped over me like silken water, flowing into place and pooling around my ankles. It felt so good that I made a mental note to ask Santa for a silk nightgown when the season rolled around. I had to search the corner of my closet to recover the shoes with no idea how they’d gotten there. I stood up, dangling them by their silver straps. “Got ’em.”
“You are not going to wear that brace, are you?”
“Hell to the no. My wrist should be pretty well healed by Saturday. My mom’s got a pair of silver iridescent long gloves she wants me to wear. Old fashioned and formal, from back in the day.”
“That should be awesome.” She had moved to my nightstand. “Didn’t you have a journal here?” She flashed me a sideways look. “I bet you write poetry in it.”
“Do I look like my soul is tortured? No, don’t answer that. It doesn’t belong to me anyway; the professor’s nephew left it here. I’ve given it back.”
“He’s still staying with you guys?”
“Until we contact his parents. They’re like lost in Peru or the Amazon or something.”
“Interesting. I didn’t know people could be off the grid like that.” She ran a finger over my Central Park leaf, still brilliant and supple. “Pretty.”
It felt as though someone had run a buzz saw down my spine. I slipped my shoes on, leaned over to hook her by the elbow, and dragged her out the door with me. I paraded up and down several times, feeling graceful and scared.
She applauded. I did a little curtsy and told her, “I’ve got assignments to finish or we could go for a frappé.” The lie floated off my tongue easily.
“Oh, right. Me too actually. I hope you don’t mind my just showing up.” She gave that bashful little smile again. Waved. I escorted her down the stairs and out the door before my heartbeat got back to normal and I stood there, back to the door, silver shoes on my feet and fabulous sea-glass gown on my body and wondered what the hell had just happened. A hot burn streaked up my left hand. I hissed at pain I hadn’t felt earlier.
I wanted to bolt upstairs, wake Brian, and pry into his brain for answers, but a knock sounded and I jumped high enough to half-climb a tree. I peered through the peephole, expecting Joanna again, but Steptoe stood there instead, looking expectant. I let him in.
He tipped his hat. “’Ello, ’ello. All the hard work and noise done?”
“Yes, and no thanks to you.”
“Ow, that wounds me, it does.” He familiarly put his hand over his heart, and then gave me a look up and down. “Got a date?”
“Yes, but not now. Stay here, I’ll go change.”
“You don’t ’ave to do that on my account.”
“Oh, yeah, I do.” I nudged him before going and changing. Feeling slightly more like myself in jeans, T-shirt, and barefoot, I walked him into the kitchen. My toes finally warmed up from the iciness of Joanna’s shadow. “What brings you here? Bored with the minions?”
He rolled his eyes. “That lot. Well-meaning but not the sharpest knives in th’ drawer. No, actually, I came to return this.” And he held out the booklet on the maelstrom stone and chaos.
“I’ll go get Brian.”
“No. This is between the two of us.”
I took it slowly. “Why?”
“You need it more than ’e does, and a wizard is like a dragon. He hoards his things, ’e does. A true wizard. Brian is not all he has been or could be, but it’s still in ’im to want to keep his things to himself. I figure you might need this more, at the moment.” Coal-dark eyes sincere, ruddy cheeks glowing a bit from the near-summer sun, he watched my expression to see if I accepted his words. He nodded when he realized I did.
“I’m not supposed to say thank you, right? So, this is nice of you.”
“It is, isn’t it!” He beamed at that. “Got any tea, luv?”
“Always.” I fetched him a glass and made myself one as well, and we settled at the kitchen table. I watched as he drank it slowly, savoring it.
“You make a decent cuppa,” he said.
“I’ll take that as thanks.”
He laughed, but a short one. One eyebrow lowered a bit. “Something’s on your mind.”
“Wellll.” I traced my initials on the condensation of my glass.
“Not a personal question, is it? I don’t talk about meself much.”
“No, no. Nothing like that. At least, I don’t think so.” I thought back on the book I’
d just labored to finish, and some quaint ideas about the philosophy of self, among other things I didn’t think I’d ever understand. But it nudged me toward the question I wanted to ask. “What do you know about shadows?”
“Everybody ’as one but vampires.”
“Vampires!”
“They don’t run around in the sunlight, now, do they?”
“Steptoe!”
He waved a hand, laughing. “No, no, vampires don’t exist. At least, not that I know about.” He took another drink. “Shadows. That was a serious question?”
“Very.”
“Well then. Speaking from my side o’ the magical street, shadows are rather like a mirror. They can reveal a person, like? If you’ve the eyes to see with. Most of us never really look. Children do, sometimes. And sometimes that’s why they disappear.”
“That sounds awful.”
“It is. Make no bones about it, ’tis bloody horrid. Look, if I stepped outside and stood in that blazing sun, and lost control o’ myself, you’d see a handful of shadows. That’s me, chaotic, never quite in line with the rules of time and space, see?”
“That’s perspective though, and angle of the light, and science. Sometimes we all throw multiple shadows.”
“I’ll give you that. But they’re all the same, right? As science applies.”
“Right.”
“A person like me, they’re not. It’s quick, it’s fleeting, but you can spot it all the same.”
I refilled his glass, thinking. “So if I met a person and they had, for just a minute or so, two shadows, and one of them was really, really different, that might reveal something.”
His drink stopped halfway to his mouth. “What kind of different?”
I gestured with my hands. “All sharp and spiky. Cold, too. Very, very cold.”
“Both shadows?”
“Just one. And then it smoothed down and got normal.”
“I think you need to ask th’ professor about that one.”
I narrowed my eyes and he fidgeted a little. “I asked you.”
The glass made it to his lips and he took a big gulp. Then, words tumbling out in a rush, he said, “Might be a twinned soul. Not bloody good.”
“Twinned soul?” Something from that tedious book I’d just finished reading bounced around in my skull for a moment even as I talked. “Two souls, one body, and generally neither is up to any good?”
“That would be it. Sorry, ducks. I ’ope it wasn’t a friend.”
I didn’t answer. She was a friend, although not a close one. And, the longer I thought about it, the more I realized I really knew very little about Joanna Hashimoto, and wasn’t sure I wanted to know more. But I needed to. Like, why was she suddenly so interested in Evelyn and me? I settled. “I know her.”
He tapped the back of my wrist brace. “This should have told you something.”
“I didn’t notice it was burning my hand until after she left.”
He frowned. “Could have put a damper on it, somehow. You let her in after all, right?”
I nodded.
“Then the stone is not quite sure. You let her in, but she might be a menace. What’s a stone to do, eh?” He put his glass down firmly. “Which is why I brought th’ booklet to you. You’re needin’ it now, not him.” He looked up at the ceiling. “Not sure if he woulda told you proper anyway.”
“He’d hide it from me?”
“No, no, just part of the wizarding way is t’ let the young ones learn as they go. Lesson earned and done is more dear than one handed you. Old-fashioned way of teachin’, but it works, mind you.”
That much was true. I’d probably learned more from that blasted book Brian had given me by translating it myself than by sitting at his feet and having him drone it at me. That thought bouncing around inside my skull finally came to a halt and I caught it. “A twinned soul, sometimes they need to take on a second body, don’t they? And then they’re twice as powerful, side by side, right?”
“Some ’ave it that way, yeah.”
“And Brian has no soul. Or two very, very weak ones.”
Steptoe nodded. “Right again.”
“So M might not necessarily want Brian dead, just . . . occupied.”
Steptoe grimaced. “Oh, that’s a bloody nasty thought.”
“All the more reason we get him rejuvved as soon as possible.” I stood up. “I appreciate the information.”
He stood too, and hesitated a moment, before turning and starting toward the front door. “Nothing I can do around here tonight?”
“Not really. I’ve got stuff to do and this to study.”
“A’right then. You know how to get ahold of me. You do, right?”
“Call your name three times.”
“That’s my girl!” He beamed then, tipped his hat and let himself out. I went and locked the door behind him, just in case. It didn’t get unlocked until the postman came.
* * *
• • •
She knocked lightly and was down the street by the time I got to the door and found the smiling package on the steps.
“Hey, Brian!” I yelled, knowing from the noise upstairs that he no longer napped. “Some of the stuff is here!”
He came downstairs, combing his damp hair back with his fingers, the muted red-gold color more of a soft brown when wet. “Is it?”
“It is.” I put the parcel into his hands.
He looked at it. I could sense a subtle fear in him, and felt it myself. It meant he drew that much closer to a ritual that was about as daunting as any I could imagine. Who looked forward to going up in flames, even if you had the best DIY handbook in existence? Plus one had to wonder just how many lifetimes a phoenix wizard could count on. What was the lucky number? Seven? Eight? One hundred? Any miscalculation could end up in a pile of ashes.
“You should check and make sure the bottles didn’t break in shipment or something.”
He looked up from the box. “I think,” and he gave a wry smile, “we could smell them if they had. They are very aromatic.”
“Oh. Right. Well then. All we need are the rowan sticks?”
He put the box on the foyer entrance table and absently rubbed the thick gold ring on his thumb. “I believe so.”
“They’ve shipped. They should be here any time.” I put on a smile and started an end run around him.
Brian put a hand out. “Did I hear Steptoe down here earlier?”
“Briefly. He was wondering if it was safe to visit or if we’d shanghai him into the work force. Imagine his relief when he found out the wrecking crew had finished up and left.” I wanted to tell him about Joanna, but I didn’t. The decision not to, though, knotted in my chest like a really awful lie or a medium-sized betrayal.
“Mmm.”
I took another step and stopped when he added, “Tessa.”
“Yeah?”
“The two of you seem to be fast friends.”
“I think he’s proven himself, don’t you? He’s been quite helpful.”
“And yet, he is who he is.”
“Do the two of you have a checkered past?”
“Easily. I would say so.”
I tilted my head a little. “Why do you think he changed?” Or maybe it was the professor who’d changed. I hadn’t forgotten that both Carter and Remy called him an outlaw.
“I think he’s an opportunist. He changed just as much as it serves him to change, which is why I’d urge caution with Simon.”
“Take what he says with a grain of salt?”
“At the very least. Chaos,” and his gaze dropped to rest briefly on my wrist brace, “tends to act for itself, and only for itself, and for the general disruption.”
“Maybe the status quo needs a little rebellion now and then.” I didn’t like hearing what I heard
. I knew lying liars and I knew friends, and Steptoe had, after that first rocky start, been a friend.
He gave a half nod. “Such has been the thought of youth from the very beginning. It’s in your hot blood, unfiltered by things like consequences. Striving for change is necessary and sometimes only the young are brave enough to attempt it. I’m not unaware that people of my age and experience have a comfort zone they don’t wish to leave.”
I wasn’t sure where that put him on rebellion. For or against? Or youth either, for that matter. I decided to change the subject. “Finished the first book. Which one do you want me to start next?” I knew which one I wanted to start, although there might be a reading problem. I hadn’t had a chance to look at what Steptoe left me just yet, although my hands itched to pick it up.
My having finished startled him. “Already?”
“The internet is a wonderful thing.”
“It must be. I would suggest two titles: Matter and Immutability or perhaps The Spirit Way. But it depends on you, my dear. Look at them and find the one that speaks to you.”
The one speaking to me stood spread wide open on my bedroom desk, the treatise on chaos, and I almost said as much, but Steptoe’s caution against telling him he’d returned it stopped me. I wondered if one of the five books the professor had given me was titled, Wizards and Their Dragon Hoards. I should check. “I’ll do that.”
“Good, good. No hurry.”
“But shouldn’t I be ready for the ritual?”
“Tessa, your only role in my ritual is to be there for me, as a friend and witness. In case something should go wrong, or even if I succeed.” He paused. “I don’t think either of us is looking forward to this.”
“Not really. I mean, I know you have to do it, you’re weaker every day, so something is not right, but . . .”
“It seems like a drastic cure?”
“Exactly!”
“I understand. Believe me. But the actions of both Remy and Steptoe have convinced me that a confrontation of monumental proportions is coming, and I need to be ready for it, or we will lose a great deal.”
“A war of wizards?”
“That sounds a bit glamorous for it, but something in that neighborhood, yes. I am not looking forward to any such conflict, but it seems it will be thrust upon us, and we should be ready to brace ourselves.”
