The Shadow Wing

by Sarah Painter

  Lydia shook her head. ‘Just do your best. I want this to stay between us for the moment.’

  ‘Why do you think they might be targeted?’ There was an element of insult in his voice.

  ‘I don’t, really. But an outsider could assume John is senior. And I thought they might be vulnerable to a spot of bribery.’

  That slur on John and Daisy mollified Aiden. He nodded sagely. ‘Especially since they lost Maddie.’

  ‘Exactly,’ Lydia said. ‘Just keep your eyes open. And, while you’re at it, let me know if anybody in the Family is flashing cash.’

  ‘I just got the new PlayStation,’ Aiden said lightly. ‘Full disclosure.’

  ‘That’s all right,’ Lydia said. ‘I know you’re not stupid enough to cross me.’

  * * *

  Upstairs, Lydia had just sat down behind her desk and was contemplating the drifts of paper and line of dirty mugs, when her phone rang. It was Maria’s assistant, and the spurt of annoyance at Maria Silver and everything she stood for felt like a welcome breath of fresh air. The assistant was doing his very best to make an appointment for Lydia at the Silver offices. ‘No, thanks,’ Lydia said cheerfully, in exactly the same way she had done the last three times he had called. It was nice to have a bit of normality in a very strange day.

  ‘Ms Silver would very much appreciate a meeting at your earliest convenience. If tomorrow isn’t suitable, how about Wednesday? Or Thursday? She is in court during the day, but you could come in for eight. A breakfast meeting. Or five-thirty.’ There was a note of desperation in his voice.

  ‘You can tell Maria that if she wants to see me, she can make an appointment at my office. I’m not running over to Holborn just because she has clicked her fingers.’

  ‘You don’t understand,’ the assistant said, sounding utterly miserable. ‘That’s not how she works.’

  ‘But it’s how I work,’ Lydia said, enjoying herself far too much. ‘You take care, now.’

  * * *

  ‘Who was that?’ Jason spoke near her ear, making her jolt in her chair, her hands coming up in fists.

  ‘Feathers!’

  ‘Sorry,’ Jason said, not looking sorry at all. ‘You’re jumpy.’

  ‘It’s been that kind of day.’ And, before she could stop herself, the whole story tumbled out.

  Jason hovered next to her desk, listening intently. ‘So you’ve got Aiden keeping an eye on John and Daisy?’

  ‘I didn’t tell him the real reason, of course,’ Lydia said. ‘But, yeah. He’ll be watching them.’

  ‘I don’t understand why you went to the roof in the first place. What the hell were you thinking? Why didn’t you call the police? Fleet?’

  Speaking to Jason was the closest thing to talking to herself. She trusted him, of course, but since nobody else could see or hear him, it really added a layer of security which helped her to open up. Still, she had to force herself to include the part where Maddie had threatened Emma. It had been bad enough telling Paul. Saying it out loud again made it even more real and she felt her fear spike.

  ‘You could have taken me, at least. I could have helped. Maybe the two of us would have had a chance…’

  * * *

  Jason didn’t feel physical things like a normal person, but he still had lots of mannerisms from when he had been alive. Conversely, when he was very upset, he forgot to use them. Now, instead of slumping in shock or sitting down, he went stock still for a full minute, as if someone had pressed ‘pause’. Then his outline began to vibrate. His physical form flickered in and out of existence and Lydia had to put her hand on his arm until he settled.

  Oddly enough, his reaction made her feel better. He was horrified, and that eased the shock of the situation a little. Lydia supposed that this was what people must be babbling about when they said ‘a problem shared was a problem halved’. It was nowhere near that effective, but it was something, and Lydia felt a surge of gratitude.

  ‘What do you think she will do next?’

  He meant ‘will she change her mind and finish the job?’ a thought which had been pinging in and out of Lydia’s mind all day. ‘I don’t know. Mr Smith said that an assassin had gone rogue. Assuming he meant Maddie, that gives us hope that she might decide to ignore this order and disappear again.’

  ‘Unless Smith is rogue,’ Jason said. ‘And that we can trust anything he told you.’

  ‘Yes,’ Lydia agreed, suddenly feeling exhausted. ‘Assuming that.’

  * * *

  Relieved that she didn’t have plans with Fleet and would have a little bit of time to recover her game face, Lydia had fallen into her bed and slept a deep and profound sleep. She had expected nightmares and insomnia but instead she dreamed of flying. It was so immersive that it took her a while to get properly conscious the next morning. She had dragged herself into the shower and taken her coffee out onto the small roof terrace, letting the morning drizzle and mild spring air rinse away the last dregs of sleep.

  The pressure sensor under the carpet in the hallway set off a beeping alarm so that Lydia had prior warning whenever anybody approached her door. Seconds after it sounded, Lydia tasted the clean bright tang of Silver, so she wasn’t at all surprised when she opened the door to find Maria Silver glaring at her.

  ‘So this is where you work,’ she said, sweeping into the flat.

  ‘Come in,’ Lydia said drily, following her into the main room which served as both her living room and office. There had been murmurings in the Family that she ought to move into Charlie’s house or, at least, rent an office more befitting of the head of the Crow Family but she had resisted. The main reason for that resistance had, at that very moment, materialised behind Maria Silver’s back and was making little bunny ears above her head.

  ‘Tea? Coffee? Valium?’

  Maria’s frown intensified in confusion.

  ‘Have a seat,’ Lydia said, indicating the chair in front of the desk that she used for clients.

  Maria was walking around the room, looking at it with an attention that Lydia found unsettling. She was wearing a tight black pencil skirt and a fitted jacket with a red silk blouse peeking from underneath. She looked like money and danger and sex and Lydia pitied the defence lawyers that found themselves opposite her in court.

  Jason had moved with Lydia to her side of the desk and was making eye contact, waggling his eyebrows in a questioning manner. Lydia raised hers in reply with the tiniest of shrugs. She had no idea why the head of the Silver Family had decided to grace her office with her presence. They hadn’t spoken since Maria had agreed to visit The Fork in a show of solidarity against Mr Smith and his shadowy government department. That had been a week ago and, given that Maria had spent the previous year vowing to kill Lydia, it was a very new, very tenuous truce. Lydia kept her balance light, ready to dive for the floor if Maria produced a weapon.

  Jason circled around and got closer to Maria which made Lydia feel a bit better. Jason was a ghost, but he was surprisingly handy in a fight.

  ‘You live here?’ Maria inspected the sofa before sinking gracefully to sit. She crossed one exquisite leg over the other and laid her arms across the back of the seat, forming a compelling image. It was calculated, of course, as with everything Maria did. The woman was a master of performance.

  Lydia sat in her office chair. She leaned back and put her DMs up onto the desk, crossing one leg over the other in a less elegant motion. ‘What can I do for you, Maria?’

  ‘You owe me,’ Maria said.

  Jason sat next to Maria on the sofa and leaned close. He blew lightly on her neck and Lydia was interested to see Maria shiver.

  ‘We’re allies,’ Lydia said. ‘You want a favour, all you have to do is ask.’

  ‘You did ask,’ Maria replied. ‘And I delivered. I stood with your family, provided the necessary optics.’

  Lydia had wanted to demonstrate to Mr Smith that she had a successful alliance with the Silvers and that further attempts to turn the Families agai
nst each other would be futile.

  ‘Not just optics, I hope,’ Lydia pushed a little Crow into her words. ‘This alliance is only going to work if it’s genuine. No more scheming behind my back. The Silvers and the Crows are allied. That means if our fortunes rise, so do those of the Silvers, and vice versa.’

  Maria’s expression didn’t change, although there was the slightest twitch of her left eye. ‘Naturally.’

  She was lying, but so was Lydia. Alliance meant cooperation while it was mutually beneficial. When stars fell, all bets would be off. ‘Good, then. I repeat, what can I do for you?’

  ‘The cup,’ Maria said simply.

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘You told me it was fake. Were you lying?’

  ‘I was not.’

  ‘So you will find the real one for me.’ It wasn’t a request.

  Jason pulled a face at Lydia and mimed throttling Maria, both of which she did her best to ignore. ‘Why me? You looking to save some cash?’

  ‘Because you know the significance of the piece and because you are properly motivated to carry out a task of this importance. You have incentive that money cannot buy.’

  ‘And what’s that?’

  Maria smiled. ‘My continuing kind wishes.’

  Chapter Four

  ‘You’re not going to do it, are you?’ Jason was frowning as he filled the kettle and hit the switch to turn it on. She was glad to see that he had regained one hundred per cent solidity and was back to looking almost alive. ‘Isn’t it a good thing Maria doesn’t have it?’

  ‘I have to,’ Lydia said. ‘Gotta keep the alliance in good order.’ Lydia knew that her position as the head of the Crows was only as secure as the peace she managed to keep between the Families. She had lost points for winding up the more criminal parts of the Crow empire and knew there were plenty of whispers about her being too weak. She couldn’t afford to have anything else slip.

  ‘You don’t trust her, though? I mean, do you really think she’s on our side?’

  ‘Feathers, no,’ Lydia said, smiling at Jason. ‘But I have to act as if I do. Believe her, that is.’ Lydia had told Maria that the Silver cup, a Silver Family relic which lived in their crypt beneath Temple Church, had been swapped with a fake. She had been in the process of telling her that her supposedly dead father, Alejandro, was not in the crypt either, which had, understandably, been the headline. Lydia hadn’t even been sure that Maria had taken in the news about the cup at all as she hadn’t reacted and they had soon been back to their usual fare of mortal threats. Lydia ought to have known better. Whatever else she could say about Maria Silver, the woman was sharp. Nothing got past her.

  Jason dropped a tea bag into a mug.

  ‘No hot chocolate today?’

  He shook his head. ‘It doesn’t feel like hot chocolate weather anymore.’

  ‘Fair enough,’ Lydia said. The sun was streaming through the living room windows, and would be drying the terrace from the night’s rain. ‘Is it beer weather?’

  ‘Too early,’ Jason said. ‘And you’re working.’

  If someone had told Lydia that she would be living with the ghost of a man who had died in the 1980s and that he would treat her with a kind of motherly concern, she wasn’t sure which fact would have seemed less likely.

  She took her tea and sat behind her desk, feet up. The Silver Family cup had been donated to the British Museum at the time of the truce as a show of goodwill, but had been stolen forty years ago. Lydia had seen the cup in Alejandro’s office and knew it was the real deal by her reaction to it. Namely, she had hurled her lunch all over Alejandro’s nice carpet. The next time she had seen the cup it had been in the Silver Family crypt and that had most definitely been a replica and not the real thing. Which begged several questions. Did Alejandro place the replica cup in the vault and, if so, did he know it was a fake? If he had been knowingly handling a replica in order to keep the real cup hidden elsewhere, why hadn’t he told Maria about it? And, for the grand prize, where the feathers was the real cup?

  Lydia sipped her tea and closed her eyes, chasing the threads of her thoughts. Whether Alejandro knew or not, the replica was clearly good enough to fool the rest of the Silvers, which meant exquisite workmanship.

  When she had been on the trail of an enchanted statue, Lydia had visited a shop in the silver vaults. Perhaps they could provide details of likely silversmiths.

  As for the real cup, the most likely possibility was one which made Lydia shiver. If Alejandro had kept hold of the real cup, placing a replica in the crypt to hide that fact, there was a chance it hadn’t disappeared along with him. The government department paying for his relocation package would have bled Alejandro dry and that, logically, would include confiscating any valuable Family relics. They would have argued that it would have endangered his new identity, and explained that it was for his own protection, but the result of that argument made Lydia taste blood and fury. A Family relic sat in a secure room of some shady government department. Worse still, Mr Smith handling the cup, maybe working out some way to harness the power contained within it.

  Her tea was cold, and she was gripping the mug so tightly it was in danger of shattering. Lydia pulled herself upright, her DMs thudding onto the floor, and put the mug onto the cluttered surface of her desk. She slid her phone over and tapped a quick message to Emma. She had called to check in on her twice already and knew that if she did so again, she was really going to freak out her friend. After a moment’s thought, she constructed a bright and breezy message about avoiding her tax paperwork and then waited, breath held, until the little checkmark indicated that Emma had read the message. Seconds later and a reply appeared. It was heavy on the emojis which meant that Emma was as busy as ever. Alive. Happy. Safe.

  * * *

  Since Operation Bergamot had been officially wound up and his bosses seemed to have accepted that Fleet’s private life had not affected his loyalty to the force, Fleet was no longer out in the cold at work. At least, that was what he said. Lydia didn’t know how much he was playing up the positives in an effort to make her feel less guilty. Lydia knew that Fleet’s decision to go public with their relationship had caused him no small measure of professional pain.

  He texted to ask about dinner plans and Lydia hesitated before replying. She had been spending more and more time at Fleet’s comfortable flat. Partly because she was determined to match his commitment to the relationship but mostly, if she was honest, because she didn’t feel as comfortable in her own flat since Ash had died in it. The cleaning crew had done an exemplary job, but they hadn’t been able to expunge her memory. Not only was a troubled soul snuffed out before his time, in a truly unpleasant manner, but he had been under Lydia’s protection. She had failed him. And what was to stop her failing the remaining people in her life?

  Jason breezed through the room as she hesitated over the screen. She knew that he preferred her to stay in the flat overnight, and the added responsibility for his wellbeing pulled at her.

  ‘What are you scowling about?’ Jason asked, suddenly on high alert.

  Lydia shook her head. ‘It’s nothing. Just thinking.’

  ‘I’ll make you some toast,’ Jason said. ‘Carbs cure everything.’

  Lydia didn’t bother to argue. Now that he could touch things, Jason found making food and drinks extremely therapeutic. Who was she to disrupt his equilibrium?

  The smell of toasting bread floated through the open door to the small kitchen and Jason was singing a Bowie song quietly.

  Lydia had never been very good at sitting still. She paced the room until Jason floated through with her food and then wolfed it down. He had been right. Buttery toast made everything better. Not solved. Not okay. But better. ‘Thank you,’ she said, dabbing her finger in the crumbs.

  ‘I miss eating,’ Jason said suddenly.

  ‘Do you?’ Lydia was surprised. He had never said as much before.

  ‘It’s new,’ he said. ‘It’s been creep
ing up ever since you came along. Feelings of all kinds.’

  Lydia opened her mouth to speak, but Jason rushed on.

  ‘It’s good. It’s all good. I mean, I like feeling more real. I like being able to touch things and think clearly and care about… Things. It’s like being alive.’

  It hit Lydia. It was like being alive, but he wasn’t alive. It was close but no cigar.

  ‘But there’s a cost to wanting things,’ Jason continued, sounding forlorn. ‘Feeling things. I am aware of what I’m missing. What I can’t have. I’m aware that I’m dead and that there are so many things I will never have again.’

  Lydia didn’t know what to say. It put a lot of things into perspective. She probably ought to have an epiphany about living life to the full while she was breathing, but she just felt an aching sadness for Jason. He didn’t deserve to have been cut down prematurely. He didn’t deserve this half-life existence.

  ‘But this is better than before,’ he said quickly. ‘Before you came was way worse.’ He was getting upset, Lydia could see his edges vibrating and a sliver of space opened up beneath his feet where he seemed to have forgotten about gravity.

  ‘How so?’

  ‘I was barely here. But I had no control. No peace. I spent a lot of time in that other place, I think.’

  Sometimes, without wanting to, Jason disappeared. It could be for five minutes or five days, but when he came back he was always shaken. He said he couldn’t remember where he went or whether it was just like passing out, a blank space, but Lydia didn’t know if he was lying. All she knew for sure was that it terrified him. She put a hand on his arm, now, letting the cold seep into her arm until he stopped vibrating and looked solid again. ‘What can I do?’

  Jason smiled crookedly, looking like himself again. ‘Don’t leave me.’

  ‘Never,’ Lydia said.

  Jason still looked as if he wanted to cry, so she added: ‘Who would bring me toast?’