I could feel the cold wafting off of it, but even this close, it didn’t seem to be stealing any of my life-force. I thought I might just be able to pull this off. So long as the shadow remained focused on Marcy . . . so long as I didn’t actually touch it.
I willed the strands of At and anti-At streaking through my ba to extend out of my fingertips. “Don’t glow,” I thought to myself. “Don’t fucking glow.” If I was going to stay under the radar here, I couldn’t call on the collective soul-energy for help. Lighting up like a Christmas tree would make this whole charade useless. It was all on me, now. Just me.
Slowly, almost painfully so, those otherworldly strands emerged from my skin. They were thicker than before, more like yarn than thread. It was a little disturbing, but at the moment, I hoped the increased amount of otherworldly material marbling my soul would lend a little more oomph to my cleansing touch.
Those moonstone and onyx strands latched onto the shadow’s ankle, wrapping around it and climbing higher like an impossibly fast-growing vine. And everywhere they made contact with the shadow, cracks appeared in that unrelenting darkness, letting the pristine teal of healthy soul-energy peek through. It was exactly like what had happened when I’d cured all of those people infected with the Cascade Virus.
Which led to me believe the post on the message board was right about this being directly related to the Cascade Virus, and that these shadows, these poor, tainted souls, were the virus’s victims. The people I’d been too late to save. I supposed it didn’t really matter now.
What did matter was that my plan was working. The taint was being pulled out of the shadow, leaving the true brilliance of the soul beneath to shine through. I could feel that taint flowing through my ba, following the twisting, winding paths of At and anti-At marbling my soul, then leaving me, rendered inert by the process.
After ten seconds, the shadow’s leg was almost entirely teal. After twenty, almost the whole left side was transformed.
“What are you doing?” someone said, tone snide and voice loud enough for at least everyone on this side of the classroom to hear. It was bitchface. I recognized her sneakers, planted just a few feet off to my right. “Freak.”
Shit. The strands of At and anti-At snapped back into my hand, and I shot a quick glance around the classroom. At least a third of the eyes were on me.
Thinking fast, I cupped my hands together like I was holding something between them. “There was a moth,” I said, standing. I looked at bitchface, but only for a moment. “Hey,” I said, nudging Marcy’s arm with my elbow, careful not to touch the shadow soul still hovering over her. “Do you mind opening the door so I can let this thing outside?” If I couldn’t cleanse the shadow right then and there, at least I could get the girl it was feeding on away from it before it drained her of her soul-energy completely.
Marcy glanced up at me, eyes partially glazed over. “What?” She was running out of time.
“Can you get the door?” I asked again, nodding toward the back corner of the classroom. “You know, because every life matters.” I raised my cupped hands a little. “I’ve got a moth . . .”
“Oh,” Marcy said, scrunching her brow. “Sure.” She pushed her stool back a couple inches and stood, her legs visibly shaky. Not surprising, considering a damn ghostly leech had just been sucking the life out of her.
I followed Marcy to the back of the classroom, pleased the shadow wasn’t following. It floated in the other direction, disappearing through the wall, probably lured by some more bountiful feast. So long as it stayed away from Marcy, I was happy. For now.
Marcy pushed the door open, and I stuck my hands out through the opening to release my nonexistent moth.
“Fly free, little friend,” I said, then turned to Marcy.
She was staring at me, her eyelids opened wide and mouth forming a tiny “O.” Recognition lit her hazel eyes. It was almost like she knew who I was. Like she could see the real me, even though my reflection in the door’s narrow window told me my disguise was still in place.
Not a second later, Marcy’s eyes rolled back into her head and her knees gave out. I barely managed to catch her on her way down.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Marcy fainting pretty much put an end to Chemistry class. The nurse came straightaway, Marcy’s parents were called, and the class watched anxiously as one of their peers was wheeled out on a stretcher fifteen minutes after she first passed out. She was still unconscious. At least she wasn’t dead.
Even though the shadows had yet to drain a living person of their soul-energy completely, that horrifying vision of the future left me with little doubt that they could—and would—eventually kill. But I wasn’t about to let that happen. Not now that I knew how to cleanse them. I just needed to figure out a way to do it away from prying eyes.
As Nina and I headed out of the main building for her third-period class—P.E.—I wondered if creating a holding cell for the shadow souls out of sight of the masses was the true meaning behind the locker room echo. Was that why I was supposedly going to charm the mirror, transforming it into a portal to Dom’s private afterlife?
“So, I don’t know what you want to do about that,” Nina was saying as she led me toward a string of cement stairs winding down to a set of doors leading into the gymnasium.
“Do about what?” I asked, only half listening. The more I thought about the mirror plan, the more it sounded like a genuinely good idea. Gosh, I was chock-full of spontaneous light bulb moments these days.
“About gym class,” Nina said. “I mean, I’ve never seen anyone bring, like, a friend or whatever to school before, so I don’t really know what happens at gym class.” She reached for the door handle, pulling the door open.
“Thanks,” I said, passing through the doorway ahead of her and stepping into the gym.
I was surprised by Nina’s resiliency—she’d just watched one of her classmates fall prey to a soul-sucking spirit. Even if she hadn’t actually been able to see the shadow, knowing what had caused Marcy to pass out should’ve been enough to leave her shaken to the core. That is, if it hadn’t already happened a handful of times.
Apparently, Nina had found one of the girls who’d been drained to unconsciousness in the girls’ bathroom last week. She was an old pro at this.
The kids at this school were amazing at turning a blind eye to these overt displays of paranormal activity. From what I’d seen, they were less afraid than the adults.
“Like, do you participate?” Nina continued, prattling on about our gym class dilemma. “Or do you just sit there on the floor watching us and, like, looking sad?”
We crossed the corner of the gym, heading for another set of double doors on the other side.
“I’m perfectly happy just to sit and watch,” I told her.
High school dodgeball—what it looked like Nina’s class was about to play, based on the rolling racks of red and yellow rubber balls lined up haphazardly against one wall—hardly sparked bouts of nostalgia within me. More like shuddering revulsion and possibly a slight case of PTSD.
“No FOMO,” I added. “I promise.” I was planning on ducking out of class near the beginning anyway. The locker room would be empty, making it the perfect time to test out the mirror shadow trap.
Nina shrugged. “Suit yourself.”
We passed through the doors on the other side of the gym and entered a hallway lined with brick walls, the top half painted a glossy white. A thick crimson and yellow band divided the whitewashed brick from the natural red.
I froze, recognizing this particular hallway. It was the one from the locker room vision. The one where I’d first seen my altered appearance in the mirror.
I glanced over my shoulder. I could almost hear a ghostly echo of the laughter of the girls I’d seen running down the hallway in the dream. If I’d had any doubt that the locker room dream was yet another true echo, this moment would’ve vanquished it.
Nina stopped and turned partway to look at m
e. “Something wrong?”
I returned her stare and shook my head. “Just déjà vu.” Or would that be pre-jà vu if the thing I was reexperiencing had yet to happen?
I shook myself out of that eerie, dreamlike state and followed Nina into the locker room. While she changed into her gym clothes, I sat on a bench nearby, staring at the mirror in the back corner and rubbing the back of my neck in a useless attempt to ease the ache in my skull.
Girls were using the mirror to fix their ponytails and touch up their makeup. My half-brother’s ghostly silver figure was nowhere in sight. Not surprising, considering I’d yet to etch his name anywhere around that mirror. Right now, it was just a plain old mirror. Soon, it would be a whole lot more.
One of the girls touching up her powder—why she was doing this before heading out to sweat and dodge balls being thrown at her for an hour was beyond me—made eye contact with me in the mirror. I averted my stare to the floor and fiddled with my fingers.
It took Nina a couple minutes to change, another minute or two to gossip with her friends about the Marcy incident, and then our little gaggle of girls left the locker room. We made our way into the gymnasium, where the group split up to sit in what appeared to be a predetermined order along the wall. I figured this was probably some form of a seating chart and sat down on the floor beside Nina, propping my elbows on my upraised knees and leaning back against the wall as we waited for the gym teacher.
We’d been waiting for a few minutes and the class was starting to get a little antsy when the teacher, if you could even call him that—even “substitute” was being too generous—walked in through the doors on the opposite side of the gym.
My heart rate sped up as soon as I saw him, and I couldn’t help but sit up straighter. “Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me,” I said just a little bit louder than I’d intended. Plenty loud for the quote-unquote teacher’s sensitive Nejeret ears to pick up my words.
A few of the girls nearest me giggled and I could feel Nina looking from me to the “teacher” and back. “You know him?”
“Of course I do,” I whispered. “Don’t you recognize him?”
She shook her head. “Should I?” she asked, then shrugged. “He’s not a sub I’ve ever seen before.”
“Because he’s not a sub,” I muttered.
It was Nik, dressed in tennis shoes, athletic shorts, and a gray T-shirt. He wore a baseball cap—Washington Huskies—and a whistle on a cord around his neck. He’d removed all of his piercings, and somehow, it looked as though he had removed his tattoos as well, though I had no idea how that was possible. He’d claimed he couldn’t alter his appearance magically. I narrowed my eyes. Had that been a lie?
It seemed so obvious to me that this man waltzing into the gym like he belonged there was Nekure the Nejeret, but I could see why the rest of the class didn’t see what I did. When most people looked at Nik, they saw the modifications he’d made to his body. They didn’t see him, not like I did. I saw him. I always had.
Just because the kids didn’t recognize Nik didn’t mean they were unaffected by him. I could hear girls all the way down the line whispering and tittering.
“Have you seen him before?” one asked.
“No, I would definitely remember him. He’s so hot.”
“I’d dodge his balls all day long,” another girl said.
Her friend responded with a hushed, “I don’t want to dodge his balls.”
The girls burst into a bout of giggles. They cut off when Nik looked their way. I imagined how embarrassed they’d be if they knew he could hear everything they were saying about him.
“I’m Coach Nicholas,” Nik said, taking up a wide stance on the basketball court’s boundary line. “I’m going to be your sub for today, and since Ms. Bartel didn’t leave any sub plans, I figured we’d stick to an old classic.” He placed his hands on his hips. “Dodgeball.”
He looked at me, gotcha flashing across his not-so-pale eyes. He must’ve put in contacts in an effort to make his striking appearance just a little bit less other. It warmed my heart a bit to know that he’d come after me, going so far as to find his own way into the school. And by “a bit,” I meant that it caused a heat wave to roll over my body. I could feel myself flushing and looked down at the glossy floor in an attempt to hide the reaction.
“Alright,” Nik said, “who wants to be a captain?” His attention left me, moving down the line of students seated against the wall. He selected two from the bunch who raised their hands, and the classic, cruel schoolyard pick began. I slipped away about halfway through.
I snuck back into the hallway outside the gym and stopped to stand before the door to the girls’ locker room, just as I had done in the echo. I waited, expecting the giggling trio of girls to pass me. I waited there for nearly a minute, but the girls never came.
I scrunched my eyebrows together. Had something changed? Was the echo now null and void? Had reality taken another, similar but not-quite-the-same path? Did that mean the mirror-trap plan wouldn’t work?
A moment later, I shook my head. Dom wasn’t in the mirror yet, but he had been in the echo. That vision of the future wasn’t being disproven; I was just a little too soon.
I opened the door to the locker room and stepped inside, letting the door swing shut and pausing to listen for other people. No voices. No footsteps. No heartbeats.
Satisfied that the locker room was empty, I made my way to the bathroom area in the back corner and stopped to stand at the sinks, looking into the mirror. In the echo, I’d clearly been luring the shadow to this mirror.
Nodding to myself, I patted the pockets of my sweatshirt, searching for something I could use to etch Dom’s name into the glass. In the echo, Dominic l’Aragne had been etched into each corner, the letters small and unobtrusive, but there. It would be the most minimalistic Dom mirror I’d made yet. But, according to the echo, those four iterations of his name would be enough to link this mirror to his already growing network of mirrors.
Finding nothing in my pockets, I searched my jeans, lips pressed together. Again, I found nothing that would be of use.
“Way to come prepared,” I muttered as I turned away from the mirror, scanning the rows of basket lockers. They pretty much all had locks on them, keeping the students’ clothing secure.
I lowered my gaze to the floor. The kids might’ve been good about locking their clothes up, but they didn’t seem to care a lick about their schoolbags. Most were trusting enough—or stupid enough—to leave their backpacks and messenger bags unsecured under the benches.
I crouched down onto one knee and unzipped the front pouch of the nearest backpack. Bingo—a set of keys.
Prize in hand, I stood and made my way back to the mirror. I started working in the bottom right corner, wedging myself between the end sink and the wall of a bathroom stall.
D-O-M-I-
I scratched Dom’s full name into the mirror, the screech of metal on glass reminding me of parts of the warped song of ma’at. I squinted, the sound paining my ears. Nails on a chalkboard had nothing on keys on a mirror.
When I finished with that first corner, I crawled up onto the sink and stood to etch Dom’s name in the top right corner of the mirror, then did the same on the top left, finally cutting into the glass with the keys on the bottom left corner of the mirror. As I scratched that final letter into the mirror—E—the surface seemed to shimmer and shudder like water, rippling from the corners inward.
Its shivery movement stilled a moment later. Dom stood on the other side of the glass, silvered expression severe. I probably deserved that for going MIA for the past few days.
I pressed my hands to the mirror so I would be able to hear him but blurted out, “I’m sorry!” before he could bite my head off. “I know you’re pissed off, and you totally have every right to be. I shouldn’t have disappeared like that, and I promise I won’t do it again, but I swear to you, Dom—I wouldn’t have done it if it wasn’t super important.”
&n
bsp; He narrowed his eyes to slits.
“I need your help?” I said, semi-asking.
“Is that really you, Kat?”
My focus shifted from Dom to my own reflection. I’d grown so used to seeing the blonde, blue-eyed girl looking back at me that I’d forgotten all about the disguise. “Yeah,” I said. “It’s me . . . and it’s a long story that I don’t have time to tell you right now, but I promise I will when this is all over.”
Dom’s stern expression softened minutely. He nodded, momentarily satisfied by my promise. “When what is over?” he asked, focus shifting past me. “Where are we?”
“I’m at the school,” I said, then added, “You can’t tell anyone—not yet.”
Dom was quiet for a moment. “Very well,” he said with a nod. “I will give you one day of silence. Now, why am I here?”
“Aw, Dom . . . because I missed you,” I said, hiding a smile.
He gave me his trademark pointed stare, made all the more effective by his dark, silvery eyes.
“No,” I said, “but really—I need your help.”
“I’m listening.”
I nodded. “I need to come up with a way to keep the shadows from draining the energy from my soul while I cleanse them. Every time I try, everything goes great until they touch me—then, it’s game over.”
“I see,” Dom said. “And what does that have to do with me?”
“I had another echo-dream,” I told him, “and it made it pretty clear that you and your mirror land would play a part in this.” I paused for a moment. “I was thinking I could try to trap one of the shadows in the mirror. Do you think that might work?”
The corners of Dom’s mouth turned down. “I honestly do not know.”
“Yeah,” I said, “that’s what I thought you’d say.” I couldn’t think of any other reason I would have gone through the effort of leading the shadow to the mirror in the dream. It had to be about using the mirror as a trap. I frowned, thinking of another possible outcome. “Do you think the shadows could hurt you the way they hurt me?”
The Kat Dubois Chronicles: The Complete Series (Echo World Book 2) Page 72
