The hand went down right in front of her, and she must have thought it was an invitation, because she dove forward—I bit down again, and this time tasted blood—but she was now swarming up my arm. . . . I shut my eyes and sucked (gently) at my wounded cheek. She slithered around the back of my neck—my hair blew aside and came down again, like when you pull your hair up from under your collar and let it drop—and stopped on my other shoulder. The rest of her finished shooting up my arm and stopped (I thought) on that shoulder. Accordion shadow? There was a little of her trailing down against my chest, but she was only about half the length she’d been when she stood up in front of me. Shawl shadow. Feather boa shadow. I could smell her again. It was still a nice smell. She weighed totally nothing, but you—I—were still kind of aware there was something there. Someone. I warily put a hand up. I could, I thought, just feel her—that whiskery feeling again, against the tips of my fingers, and that lovely, first-day-of-vacation smell fanned delicately against my face. I wiggled my fingers, trying to, well, pet her, and there was this faint hum or vibration—almost like she was purring.
Finally I looked up. Both Mom and Val were staring at the radio, even though all it was saying now was that it was going to rain tomorrow. Okay, I wouldn’t invite Casimir for a romantic riverside walk then. I stood up slowly, as if I were balancing something heavy and fragile across my shoulders. “Mom?” I said. “Er . . .” Before last night I would have ignored Val unless he said something directly to me, but now, with one of his shadows draped around my neck, humming . . .
Val made it easier. He looked at me. “Val?” I said.
“There is a cobey in Copperhill,” said Val.
“Copperhill?” I said. “Copperhill?” Copperhill was like two towns over—less than ten miles. Most of the kids in Copperhill came to our school—a few of them went to Motorford Tech on the other side of Longiron. “I mean—confirmed?”
“Yes,” said Mom. “NIDL has just issued a statement.”
The niddles were the practical branch of Overguard. If they were involved it was too big for the Watchguard, which was definitely bad news. I couldn’t think of anything to say except, “But . . .” But probably everyone who ever had a cobey open up near them said that, so I didn’t say anything.
“There was one in Greenwire when you were just a baby,” said Mom, trying to be brisk. “It was pretty serious at the time, but they cleaned it up and I don’t think there’s even a scar. There wasn’t any fuss about reclassifying land use. Most of our milk still comes from Greenwire.”
And the niddles were nothing if not paranoid. I tried to breathe easier. I heard Ran pouring more cereal so I went to check on the African violet, and let Mongo back in, who was beginning to wail at the back door. He knew there was breakfast going on and he didn’t want to miss anything.
I had to reach past Val to open the cupboard where Mongo’s kibble lived (on the highest shelf and so relatively bad-breaking-training-moment-proof) and as he moved aside I got a better look at his face. He looked even older than he had last night, and haunted. “Val?” I said, and my reaching hand, almost without my awareness, fell on his arm instead of grabbing the cupboard handle. “Are you all right?”
He smiled at me. I didn’t think I’d ever really looked at him—without looking away again immediately—when he smiled. The lines on his face looked like they went in a long way. Mom was thirty-nine (and said crisply when asked that forty was just a year like any other year and your point was?). I knew vaguely that he was older than Mom but this morning he looked as old as a magician in a fairy tale telling you how the world began, which he knew about because he’d been there. “A cobey in the area is never all right,” he said. I was trying to decide if he was blowing me off when he added: “And last night—I spent the dark hours listening to the voices of things I thought were gone forever . . .” He paused.
Things, I thought. I wondered if he’d heard the voice of his best friend. Or of the beginning of the world.
“It will take me more than one night to adjust. I cannot even see the gruuaa—the shadows—as you can at present. And—if this were Orzaskan, I would be a—a niddle.”
“I’m sorry,” I said helplessly.
“No,” he said. “Don’t be sorry. The truth is usually to be preferred—especially in matters concerning magic, where untruth can be fatal.”
Magic was fatal for your friend, I thought.
“And I never wished to distress you. That, at least, is better now, I hope?”
“Yes,” I said, Hix still humming in my ear, although if I were one of his students I’d have trouble looking at that shirt for a whole tutorial hour. And—holy electricity—not just socks with sandals, but plaid socks with sandals.
There was a shadow rappelling down the wall behind Val. It hooked my eye away from his feet, and as I looked up again I saw the clock. Drog me. I had to do time-warping things if I was going to make it to school, and Mongo was going to have the fastest sprint around the block of his life.
Jill hadn’t been paying attention to any news reports. “Well?” she said when I climbed into her car.
I was only slightly breathless from racing Mongo. And I still had a shadow around my neck. I’d checked in the mirror and there wasn’t anything to see—I didn’t think—but then I didn’t know if shadows—gruuaa—showed in mirrors or not. Maybe my hair looked a little thicker and darker at shoulder level. Maybe I was losing my charge fast.
“What’s that smell?” said Jill. She sniffed. “I like it. New perfume?” Fortunately she didn’t wait for an answer. “So—well?” she said again, louder.
“What?” I said. I’m not a morning person anyway, and a lot had happened since she’d dropped me off last night. I wasn’t even thinking about the cobey—or Val. I was wondering if anyone at school would notice there was a gruuaa around my neck. Mongo had certainly noticed that she wasn’t getting shut up in the kitchen with him when I left. “What’s got into him?” Ran had said. I hoped Mongo wasn’t going to take it out on the curtains. Or the furniture.
Jill smacked her forehead with a flourish that would have got her a lead in the autumn term play if Ms. Gratton saw her. “Casimir, you moron. Have you figured out a campaign?”
“Oh,” I said. “No.” It wasn’t that I’d forgotten about him—I’d thought about him kind of a lot after I was in bed in the dark but still too wired up from everything. Including Casimir himself. And including wondering if you rolled over on a shadow if you’d squish it. I’d finished up sleeping with a pillow over my head so I couldn’t see the shadows the streetlamp made out of the tree outside my window. It had been windy last night. But there wasn’t really any way I was ever going to ask Casimir to go for a romantic river walk, even when it wasn’t raining. I’d expect him to say, Who? if I phoned him up. I wasn’t going to put it to the test.