Shadow Hunt

CHAPTER 1



Ellie gripped the window frame as her shadow strained within the casing of her flesh-and-blood body—fighting, angry, anguished, helpless. She ached with the effort to hold her darkest self under her control. A renegade naked shadow was the last thing everyone here needed. And after the scene in the kitchen when Marcie died two nights ago . . .

Let go, shadow Ellie, Cam had said. Let Marcie go free. Be mine again.

Well, it was best she and her shadow kept their distance.

The Segue staff was in the ballroom for the memorial, chatting low or sniffling, which made her shadow harder to hold—so much emotion. Ellie forced her attention outside, where hope was alive, though she couldn’t feel it herself.

Eight-year-old JT Parson was on the lawn, a story below her window vantage, laughing and playing soccer with his brother and the guard assigned to their protection. He jogged over to the ball and deftly kicked it backward to his brother. Slick move. She’d been able to save JT. And just look at him now. She’d been part of that.

But Marcie . . . Segue was darker without her. Everyone felt it. Because that’s really who’d been holding Shadow back—at least for Ellie. Marcie and her easy, generous laugh had banished darkness. It was so obvious now.

The shadow tried to curl forward, as if to protect a gut wound, but Ellie wouldn’t let it. Of course this whole thing would be easier if she let her shadow go; the analytical part of her wouldn’t feel the grief nearly as much. But Ellie wanted to mourn Marcie. Needed to. What kind of a friend would she be to choose not to feel?

“Looks like JT’s going to be all right,” Cam observed behind Ellie, his body just close enough that she could feel a light hum of warmth.

Right. JT. Think of JT until the worst of this passes.

JT had been the subject of their last mission, some seven months ago, in Sedona, Arizona. He’d been lost in Twilight, and while yes, he’d come through mostly okay, he’d also developed some issues separating dream from reality, which was why the family of three had come to Segue. This morning, his mother, Angie, had silently and without question taken over in the kitchen. No one left her alone for a moment; Segue learned from its mistakes. And this had been a big one.

Cam’s arms went around Ellie’s waist, and he rested his chin on her head, as if to help keep her two parts together. Their inside joke.

After Marcie’s death, it was a necessity. It had been Cam who’d at last talked her shadow into letting go of Marcie’s body when Ellie herself had had no control. And that’s because Marcie had been a real friend, one who hadn’t been just polite about Ellie’s situation—that her shadow could move around independently of her body; that her shadow walked around naked and liked it; and that her shadow always reacted on the most primal level, which could be very scary, rude, inappropriate, or, according to Marcie, entertaining. She had accepted her completely. Marcie was family.

Anger straightened her shadow within her, and Ellie felt a raw bloodrush to hunt down that mage and . . .

“Ellie? Cam?”

Ellie glanced around Cam. Found Adam some paces away. He’d been in his office all night and all this morning making arrangements—some for Marcie’s funeral, of course, and if Ellie knew him at all, some to go after her murderer. Sure enough, he had that dark-deeds look in his eyes. Good. This was the distraction she needed.

Cam loosened his hold, and she glanced up into his eyes. She still kept expecting to see their pretty green color, but was met with the disturbing black of Shadow. While in Sedona, his vision had been altered by a changeling fae. For the past several months, he’d worked with his new sight, while she’d trained with her shadow.

And somewhere in there, she’d gotten happy. She should’ve known this was coming.

He was a good man cheerfully contending with her freakishness. But he was growing darker too; her shadow could sense it. And those black eyes were proof.

“Looks like we’re up,” Cam said.

Ellie’s shadow bucked with grief to confront Marcie’s murderer. “Let’s do this.”

They convened in Adam’s office, just the three of them, which seemed odd. Talia, Adam’s wife, would still be at Marcie’s memorial, but surely Marshall or Custo should have been present for this.

She crossed her legs and arms, a reflex by now, to hold herself together literally and figuratively. Cam noticed and reached a hand over to her knee, saying, I’m here. Whatever comes, we will handle it together.

Adam cleared his voice. “I’ve been in touch with Kaye Brand, the High Seat of the mage Council, trying to identify the perpetrator. Her guess is that your friend from Sedona is back.”

Ellie had concluded as much; it had to have been someone who could get inside the Segue grounds unseen, and she and Cam had been attacked on their last mission by an almost invisible assailant. He’d carried a black-bladed knife—steel infused with Shadow.

Cam’s eyes narrowed at the news. “Why now? All these months later?”

Adam opened his hands in a shrug. “His talents may have been required closer to home. There’s been a lot of turmoil among magekind over the past year. My understanding is that the Houses spend a lot of energy fighting each other, vying for power while control is unstable. Someone with his skills would’ve been useful.”

“What House does he belong to?” Cam asked, as if reading Ellie’s mind.

“His name is Slight. He’s a stray,” Adam said.

Ellie was confused. “Come again?” Stray applied to mangy cats.

“Stray means that he’s not allied to any House, or officially allied, I should say. No House is responsible for a stray’s actions, and apparently they are even preyed upon for sport.”

“Lovely people,” Cam mumbled.

No kidding, Ellie thought.

She’d been of a mind to locate whatever House the murderer belonged to and pay them her own visit. Her shadow also had the ability to sneak into places unobserved.

Adam leaned forward, elbows to knees, his gaze sharpening. “I’m told that occasionally, however, a stray might make arrangements undisclosed to the Council. But in this case, Kaye Brand recognized the form of magic that Slight uses, the ability to move unseen. Brand suspects he’s working on behalf of Martin House, which just happened to be on the wrong side of the conflict surrounding her rise to power.

“Since then, Gunnar Martin, the head of Martin House, has been paying lip service to Brand, saying they want to make amends, make friends, all the while looking for weaknesses to exploit, her alliance with Segue among them.”

“Segue’s no weakness,” Ellie argued. Segue was her home.

Adam nodded, once, short. “A fact we will soon teach Martin. Last night, Brand suggested to Gunnar that he open his House wards to Segue in a gesture of friendship and cooperation, and he accepted—or had no other choice than to accept if he was to keep up appearances.

“You leave in an hour. And when you arrive at Martin House, by all means, be friendly, but you are there to find a connection between Slight and Gunnar.” Adam smiled. “We have to show the Houses that we protect, defend, and avenge our own.”

“Avenge?” Yes, that’s what she felt too. Otherwise the hurt would swallow her.

Adam’s gaze didn’t waver. “These Houses are old-world, old-school, old-gods ruthless. If we do not hold our own, demand talion, or equal retribution, they will crush us merely to show that they can. Brand has explained that the world has entered what the Houses call the Dark Age, a time when Shadow is prevalent on Earth and magekind will rule over humanity.” His smile got sharper. “I intend a little human pushback.”

This was never going to end. Never. An age of Shadow was before them. And the ruthlessness that Adam suggested—basically an eye for an eye—had to be the reason this meeting was limited to just the three of them.

Cam was silent next to her. He’d be thinking about this talion idea; it wouldn’t sit well with his more peaceful soul.

But Ellie had one more question for Adam. “If we go to visit this Martin House, then you think Slight will follow? Will everyone else at Segue be safe?” She couldn’t stand to lose another friend. Or JT and his brother; his mom, Angie—Ellie couldn’t leave unless everyone was covered.

“Slight will go after you to protect Martin House.”

Good.

“And what will happen when Gunnar Martin gets a load of my shadow?” Wouldn’t he kill the monster in their midst?

Adam’s smile grew sharper still. “I think he’ll try to provoke her.”

Cam closed his eyes at the thought of the impending violence and taking his sweetheart into a nest of vipers, though she seemed more than willing to go. Sometimes he hated this work.

“While bringing Slight to justice is your mission,” Adam continued, “the explicit goal of your visit will be to facilitate a rapport between Martin and Segue.”

Adam was moving away from the crux of the matter—Slight—to the ruse of politicking with Martin. Not so fast . . .

“Let’s be absolutely clear,” Cam interrupted before the conversation could move on. “You are asking us—no, that’s not right—condoning the murder of Slight, and even Gunnar Martin himself if necessary, by our hands.”

Cam couldn’t look at Ellie, or she’d know what he was thinking. She occupied the better space in his mind and heart. Sometimes it felt like they breathed together.

“No,” Adam answered, “for Marcie, I am asking. I want you to kill the son of a bitch. I don’t want one more of my people lost in the squabbling between the mage Houses. Let them kill their own, not us.”

Which was exactly what Cam had feared. His guts knotted.

He was about to set his relationship with Ellie back a few paces. He wanted his ring on her finger so badly it hurt. Marcie had understood, had bawled and flapped her hand at her tears when she’d gotten a preview of the diamond. Marcie wouldn’t have wanted vengeance for her death. But taking Slight out wasn’t about her; it was about everyone else at Segue. Even Segue itself. Magekind had to be taught they couldn’t prey here, and ideally, yes, this job was for the humans of Segue to show them that.

“Fine,” Cam said. “Then I want it understood right now that I’m the one to do it—to kill Slight.”

The engagement ring would just have to wait for another time. He was about to touch one of Ellie’s oldest, deepest fears, one that had kept her isolated on her farm for most of her life and had driven her to attempt suicide.

“What?” Ellie asked, sharply turning toward him in her seat.

He couldn’t look at her. She’d see right through him. Her shadow probably already knew.

“The shadow would be the safer choice,” Adam said. But his tone had gone circumspect.

Safer for whom? For Cam, yes. For Ellie . . . No.

“It’s easy for others to forget that Ellie and her shadow are the same person. That they’re parts of a whole.”

Adam looked a little irritated at the criticism, but he waited for the explanation.

Ellie would take it personally, as she should.

“You’re not talking about self-defense, Adam,” Cam said. Self-defense was reasonable and necessary. “You’re talking about cold-blooded murder.”

Murder was personal. Take Marcie, for example.

“There’s no one else I can ask,” Adam said. “No one else who can see Slight like you and Ellie’s shadow can.”

“I’m not backing out,” Cam said. “I’m saying that it’s dangerous for Ellie to attempt to commit cold-blooded murder.”

“You don’t think I can control myself.” Myself, meaning her shadow. She was hearing that she was dangerous. That he doubted her. And in this case, yes, he did. The shadow had been very near violence when Marcie died. It just hadn’t been able to let go of Marcie’s body to act on it. They’d been lucky in that, though Cam was the only one who’d realized the danger.

Let go, shadow Ellie, he’d said. Let Marcie go free. There’s nothing more to do here. Let go, sweetheart. Be mine again.

Cam now finally looked her in the eyes, pushed all the love in the universe to the fore, so that she might understand.

“You’re not an assassin. I’m not an assassin. We’re two nice people with cool tricks stuck in an ugly mess.”

Actually, he’d always figured one day it might come to something like this—every sign pointed to a time of desperation and forfeited honor.

“You’re a tough person, Ellie, but you’re not a hard one. We can’t be sure what will happen to your shadow,” Cam continued, “or your hold over your shadow, if you force yourself to kill when you could choose to save.” Would she understand? “I won’t risk you.”

The obvious unsaid fact was that since his shadow was and had always been properly attached to him, he wasn’t a threat. He could kill, and if for a moment (or forever) the act made him a monster, no one else would be in danger.

He’d never heard anything like the shadow’s cry of grief when Marcie died. And, after . . . he’d been afraid for a moment that all their hard work would end there.

Ellie swallowed hard, her face stony pale. “Marcie was my friend.”

“Ellie,” Adam slowly began, finally contemplating the impact committing murder might have upon her shadow. “I hadn’t considered—”

“Shut up,” she snapped.

Cam wanted to put his arms around her—he knew that of all things, she hated to feel helpless—but instead he looked back at Adam to give her some room. “When are we supposed to go?”

Adam took the cue to move the conversation along. “You’ll leave in the morning, spend the weekend at Martin House, and meet with Kaye Brand and Gunnar on Sunday morning before you leave. I don’t want you there even one more day. If there is no sign of Slight, we’ll pursue him another time, another way.”

Cam got the particulars, but he was also thinking about that ring and how today was supposed to have been different. He could feel Ellie moving away from him.

Adam cocked his head. “See if you can’t get Martin to mention ally or enemy Houses. It might keep him off balance if he thinks you’re prepared to discuss the same with Brand.”

For the last couple months, Cam hadn’t wanted to pressure Ellie with a marriage proposal when she obviously didn’t want to talk about the future. It scared her, and he’d been prepared to give her all the time she needed. But she’d had seven long months after meeting his mother, and still wouldn’t even move into his rooms. Her shadow came to him, though, almost every night. And that meant something.

“Martin will have a foreknowledge of what both Ellie and I are capable of,” Cam said. No element of surprise.

What if the mages could see Ellie as he did? Thus far, everyone else saw the darkness of her shadow, but his enhanced vision revealed dazzling prismatic hues. Ellie was beautiful beyond imagination. And these mages, so learned in Shadow, would see her for what she was too. He wanted that ring on her finger to say, Mine. And, Back off. And to tell her that no matter what the scary future held, even the dawn of the Dark Age, if he and Ellie were together, they’d be okay.

“If Slight is in his employ, then yes, Martin will know what you both can do.”

Cam glanced back over at his girl, took in the rigid set of her chin, the tightness of her shoulders—a study in control determined to prove them all wrong—and he knew that there was no way in mage hell she’d wear his diamond now.