Several of the lights on the façade of the garage had outlived their usefulness during the night: not enough that I’d noticed in the glare of the Viper’s headlights and the soft spill coming from the bookstore’s rear windows, but enough to have created a sliver of opportunity for a truly enterprising Shade, and unfortunately, I had one of those shadowing my doorstep.
I was tired, and I’d been sloppy. I should have looked up and checked the spotlights on the buildings the moment they’d come into view. Thanks to the burnt-out bulbs, a thin line of darkness now ran down the center of the alley, where the light cast by the adjacent buildings failed to meet, and the massive Shade that was as obsessed with me as I was with it had managed to pour itself into the crack, creating an inky black wall that soared three stories high and extended the entire length of the bookstore, barring me from crossing the alley.
I’d opened the door to find it towering over me, a greedy, dark tsunami, waiting to come crashing down and drown me in its lethal embrace. Although I was 99.9 % sure it couldn’t do that—that it was trapped in its menacing wall-shape by the light on both sides of it—there was that petrifying.1 % doubt in my mind. Each time I’d thought I’d known its limits, I’d been wrong. Most Shades recoiled from the mere possibility of the palest, most diffuse light. Just waving one of my flashlights in the direction of the Dark Zone usually caused them to scatter.
But not this one. If light was pain, this enormous, aggressive Shade was getting tougher, its pain threshold increasing. Like me, it was evolving. I only wished I was as dangerous.
I reached inside my jacket, fisted a flashlight in each hand, and yanked the door open again.
One of my flashlights wouldn’t turn on. Dead batteries. When it rains, it pours. I tossed it and grabbed a second from my waistband. Two more came out with it, crashed to the ground, clattered down the steps and spun out into the alley, unlit, wasted.
I had two left. This was ridiculous. I needed a better way to keep myself safe than toting unwieldy flashlights with me everywhere I went.
I turned on another, and ordered myself to step out onto the pavement.
My feet didn’t obey.
I aimed one of my flashlights directly at it. The inky wall recoiled and a hole exploded in it the exact diameter of the beam. I could see it was barely an inch thick.
I heaved a sigh of relief. It still couldn’t tolerate direct light.
I studied it. I wasn’t completely barred from getting to the bookstore. I could walk down to the left, parallel to the towering, dark cloud until I reached the end of the building, where the lights of the greengrocer next door prevented it from spreading further, then go around to the front door and let myself in.
Problem was I wasn’t sure I had the nerve, and I wasn’t entirely sure it would be smart. What if, when I was nearly to the end of the Shade-wall, the light on the grocer’s building burned out? Normally, I’d relegate the odds of that happening to the realm of the absurd, but if there was one thing I’d learned over the past few months, it was that absurd really meant “more likely to happen to MacKayla Lane.” I wasn’t about to risk it. I had my flashlights, but I couldn’t shine them on every part of my body at once, and I certainly couldn’t shine them on all of it.
I could call V’lane. He’d helped me get rid of Shades once before. Of course with V’lane there was always a price, and I would have to let him embed his name in my tongue again.
I considered my cell phone. It had three numbers programmed in: Barrons, IYCGM and IYD.
IYCGM, which was Barrons’ not-so-subtle shorthand for If You Can’t Get Me, would be answered by the mysterious Ryodan who—although Barrons contended he talked too much—hadn’t confided anything useful to me in our recent, brief phone conversation. I had no desire to lure anyone else close to the overly aggressive Shade. I wanted a few days reprieve between deaths on my conscience.
IYD was If You’re Dying, and I wasn’t.
I was sick of depending on others to save me. I wanted to take care of myself. It was only a few hours until dawn. The Shade could stay out there all night for all I cared.
I stepped back into the garage, closed and locked the door, flipped on the brightest tier of interior lights, considered the collection a moment, then crawled into the Maybach to sleep.
It occurred to me, as I drifted off, that my feelings about the car had certainly changed. I no longer cared that it had formerly belonged to the Irish mobster Rocky O’Bannion, from whom I’d stolen my spear and whom I was indirectly responsible for killing, along with fifteen of his henchmen, in the very alley where the monster Shade now lurked. I was just grateful it was comfortable to sleep in.
We expect Evil to announce itself.
Evil is supposed to adhere to certain conventions. It’s supposed to cause a chill of foreboding in the intended recipient of its visit; it should be instantly recognizable; and it’s supposed to be hideous. Evil should glide out of the night in a black hearse, fog streaming from its dark flanks, or dismount from a skeletal Harley, leather-clad, wearing a necklace of freshly scalped skulls and crossbones.
“Barrons Books and Baubles,” I answered the phone brightly. “You want it, we’ve got it, and if we don’t, we’ll find it.” I take my job very seriously. After snatching six hours of sleep in the garage, I’d made my way across the alley to the bookstore, showered, and opened shop, business as usual.
“I’m certain of that. You finding it, that is, or I wouldn’t have phoned.”
I froze, hand on the receiver. Was this a joke? He was phoning me? Of all the possible confrontations with Evil I’d imagined, this was not one of them. “Who is this?” I demanded, unable to believe it.
“You know who I am. Say it.”
Though I’d heard the voice only twice before—the afternoon in the Dark Zone when I’d almost died, and more recently in Mallucé’s lair—I would never forget it. Contrary to what Evil was supposed to be, it was a seductive, beautiful voice, mirroring the physical beauty of its owner.
It was the voice of my sister’s lover—and murderer.
I knew his name, and I’d die before I’d call him Lord Master. “You bastard.”
I slammed down the phone with one hand and was already using my other to punch up Barrons on my cell. He answered instantly, sounding alarmed. I got right to the point. “Can the Druid spell of Voice be used over the telephone?”
“No. The spell’s potency doesn’t carry through—”
“Thanks, gotta go.” As I’d expected, the store phone was already ringing again. I thumbed my cell off, and left Barrons sputtering. I was safe from being coerced over the phone lines, and that was what I’d needed to know, fast, before the Lord Master had been able to use it on me.
Just in case it was a paying customer, I said, “Barrons Books—”
“You should have asked me,” came that seductive, rich voice. “I would have told you that Voice is diluted by technology. Both parties must be in physical proximity to each other. At the moment, I’m too far away.”
I wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of knowing that was what I’d been afraid of. “I dropped the phone.”
“Pretend what you will, MacKayla.”
“Don’t address me by name,” I gritted.
“What should I call you?”
“Don’t.”
“You have no curiosity about me?”
My hand was shaking. I was talking to my sister’s murderer, the monster that was bringing all the Unseelie through his mystic dolmens and turning our world into the nightmare it was. “Sure. What’s the quickest, easiest way to kill you?”