She took the stairs two and three at a time, surprisingly feeling the muscles in her thighs burn from this mundane activity. She forced herself to keep going. It was annoying that being a superpowered killing machine didn’t come with basic physical fitness, but whatever. She could hit the gym later, if she miraculously lived that long.
Shelby’s hall was exactly as it had always been, save for one new addition—Sam, standing outside Shelby’s door, one hand raised, as if he had just been knocking.
Sam, alive and checking on Shelby, as Nora had asked. She felt like Scrooge on Christmas morning—she wasn’t too late. He hadn’t noticed her arrival, and for a second she braced herself against the wall with one hand, the other hand pressed over her heart, catching her breath. Elated. Then he knocked on the door again.
“Come on, Shelby. I’m a friend of Nora’s,” Sam called, not quite shouting, but raising his voice enough for it to carry into the apartment. “If you’re home, you need to open the door.”
“Coming!” shouted Shelby’s voice.
The door opened. Sam straightened, a look of pure confusion on his face. Nora shoved herself away from the wall, started toward them. Something was—
The fist hit Sam squarely in the chin, knocking him backward, away from the door. He staggered until he hit the wall and crumpled. Shelby screamed.
Nora flickered. One moment she was herself, running as fast as she could toward her friends, and the next she was Indigo, diving into the narrow band of shadow created by her own foot. It was like turning herself into a pretzel, twisting inward in a way that made her stomach lurch, but it worked. She went from the hallway to the interior of Shelby’s apartment in the blink of an eye, appearing behind her friend.
The color of the apartment was almost a shock, it was so bright, seeming to snap into place in an instant as she materialized. There was no time to dwell on the ache in her retinas. Shelby was still screaming, and the Phonoi assassin behind her was raising his knife to silence her. Reflection was for later. For now, Indigo needed to act.
She thrust her hands out in front of her, sending waves of shadow to wrap around the cultist and squeeze until his screams drowned out Shelby’s. Indigo flung him to the side, hearing him hit the wall with a satisfying crunch. When he fell, he smashed a decorative end table that she remembered helping Shelby lug home from a swap meet downtown. Indigo felt a sharp pang of guilt. Being near her was like being too close to a tornado. One way or another, everything wound up getting smashed.
A man grabbed her from the side, yanking her off-balance. She hadn’t even seen him there. Another came at her from the other side. This time, she was more prepared. She grabbed the arm that held her, using it to brace herself as she kicked at the second man, landing a blow to his gut. He staggered backward, and she called the shadows, bringing them raining down on both of her attackers.
“Indigo! Watch out!” Shelby sounded strangely far away.
Indigo ducked, flowing down into the shadows and reappearing a few feet behind her original position. The fourth assassin stumbled as his attempt to stab her landed on empty air. Shelby stepped up and smashed a vase over his head.
It was a silly, cliché note, like something out of a children’s movie. But it worked. The man wobbled, his eyes rolling back in his head, and collapsed to the floor. Indigo raised her head, meeting Shelby’s eyes. Shelby quirked a smile and tossed the remains of her shattered vase aside.
“Very cool.”
“Behind you!” said Indigo, and shoved Shelby aside with a sweep of her arm before hitting the last assassin full in the face with a blast of shadow. He staggered into the hallway, hitting the wall next to Sam …
Who was awake on the hallway floor and staring at Indigo in wide-eyed dismay.
Shit.
Indigo froze, not sure what to do. Shelby rushed over and slammed the door, cutting off Sam’s view. Leaving him out in the hall with a dead Phonoi assassin.
“Run,” Shelby whispered loudly. “Get yourself—back to yourself, and come back, but right now, run.”
Indigo’s eyes went wide in surprise. Shelby recognized her. Somehow, she knew that Indigo and Nora were one and the same.
Reeling from this epiphany, Indigo glanced at the dead assassins, the four cultists scattered around Shelby’s apartment in pools of blood and the wreckage of furniture. For the moment, Shelby was out of danger.
Indigo dropped into the floor, into the silence of the shadows beneath their feet. The world fell away.
*
Once again, she was falling, and once again, she didn’t know what to do about it. Shelby knew she was Indigo, and Sam had seen … something. She’d been Nora when she stopped to catch her breath, but she’d been Indigo when she appeared in the apartment, and Indigo when she joined in the fight. Shelby had never called her by the name Nora. Maybe he hadn’t realized it was her.
This falling thing was getting old. It used to be that when she slipped into shadow, she slipped right back out again, arriving at her destination without any time passing between entry and exit. Now …
She tried to feel for the purpose that would allow her to move back into the real world. She couldn’t find it.
You’re weakening, little one, rumbled the voice of Damastes. You’ll give in soon enough. Why not give in now?
I will never give in to you, she thought. She didn’t speak. She didn’t need to.
But you already listen to me. I told you that your friends were in danger and you moved to protect them. I told you that Rafe would wait until they were together, and you raced to beat him to their door. I told you everything you needed to know. You followed my lead. Damastes’s voice dropped to a purr, low and thrumming and dangerous. See how well we work together? I can tell you where to go. I can tell you who to kill. I can remove all question from your life and give you the freedom to act as you see fit, to do as you see fit, to live as you see fit. And you can keep your friends. Doesn’t that make it more tempting to give in?
No, she thought fiercely, and yes her heart whispered, and Nora grabbed the shadows around her and disappeared, leaving behind the nothingness, and the distant, aching echo of Damastes laughing as if he were the only source of laughter in all the universe. In all the world.
*
Nora toppled out of shadow and back into the hallway outside Shelby’s apartment. As she came out of her crouch, she could see Sam slumped against the wall across from Shelby’s door, his hands braced flat against the floor and his eyes wide. He hadn’t seen her appear. She was almost certain of that.
The body of the assassin was gone. Indigo had no idea how that was possible. She also had no idea if these two attacks were connected. While she’d been trying to shadow-walk back from Greece to New York, the murder nun had somehow managed to drag her right out of the shadowpaths, landing her in Italy. Then when she’d escaped, one of her same order—that sisterhood of slaughter maidens, the Androk-somethings—had been waiting in Nora’ apartment to ambush her. And minutes later, as she was approaching Shelby’s apartment and Sam was knocking on the door, Phonoi assassins tried to kill Sam?