In the same fashion she continued through the neighborhood, slipping from gloom to gloom, until she emerged in a patch of airless black in the service alley behind an elementary school. Grass grew up through cracks in the pavement, and the Dumpster was rimmed with rust. Blue lights flashed at either end of the alley, throwing pale ghosts against the back wall of the school and the high fence behind it. The police cars were silent, the officers guarding the crime scene just waiting by their vehicles, and Indigo knew that the detectives had not yet arrived. Except for her, only two people were in the alley, and one of them was dead.
A single police officer had been posted to guard this new body until the detectives and the crime-scene techs arrived. Tall and broad-shouldered, he must have been in his midtwenties but had a sweetness to his face that made him look younger. A good cop, though, or the others on-site would not have posted him here. They trusted that he was smart enough not to contaminate the scene by touching anything he shouldn’t.
The dead girl lay on her side, wrapped in a blanket. One arm was flung over her head as if she’d just gone to sleep in the alley behind the school. Thirteen years old, according to Raj, which must mean that the police had already identified her. Or had Raj made assumptions? The detectives hadn’t even arrived yet, but if a girl of this age and description had been reported missing, both the cops and Raj might have leaped to conclusions.
Nora needed a closer look.
Indigo stepped out from behind the Dumpster, some of the shadows trailing after her.
“What’s your name?” she asked quietly.
The big, baby-faced cop whipped around. His hand dropped to the butt of his pistol, but he froze when he saw her.
“Holy shit,” he whispered.
“You know who I am.” It wasn’t a question.
The cop exhaled, glanced toward the blue lights at the nearest end of the service alley—gauging how long it would take his fellow officers to back him up if he shouted for them. His chest rose and fell but the hand resting on the butt of his gun did not tremble.
“Hey,” she prodded. “Officer…”
“I know who you are.” He shifted his head in an attempt to get a look at her face beneath the hood, unaware that the shadows wouldn’t allow it. “I thought you were just a story.”
“Now you know better. What’s your name?”
“Pacheco.”
“Officer Pacheco, I need to take a closer look at the girl.”
The cop stiffened. His grip settled more firmly on his sidearm. “We’re supposed to secure the crime scene. You’re going to want to step away now. Anything you want to know, you can—”
She took a step toward him. “I’m on your side, Officer.”
Finally, he drew his gun and held it down by his side. “Ma’am, you need to back the hell up right—”
Indigo swept the deeper shadows out from behind her, and the darkness washed over Pacheco like a wave. All light fled the patch of alley around them, leaving Indigo, the cop, and the dead girl in a circle of total darkness about twenty feet in diameter.
Pacheco shouted for help, terror in his voice and etched on his features. He spun around in a panic, aiming his gun at nothing, rendered virtually blind. But Indigo could see perfectly well. She slid toward him and wrapped a hand around his wrist. He pulled the trigger, fired into the impossible dark. The sound was thickly muffled, as if they were underwater instead of lost in shadow.
“I’m on your side,” she said again, ripping the gun from his hand and tossing it along the alley. It skittered out of the pool of darkness.
Officer Pacheco dropped to his hands and knees, cursing her as he scrabbled around in the dark for his weapon. He shouted for backup again, but the shadows swallowed his voice and returned it in echoes.
Indigo knelt by the body of the dead girl. Thirteen years old, if Raj had been right, but she looked younger. A mess of blond hair haloed around her head, veiling part of her face, but the blanket was what interested Indigo the most. None of the police statements had mentioned the dead children being in any state of undress, but she’d reported on enough crimes to know that the police routinely held back vital details from the public. If a suspect knew something that the detectives had kept out of the media, it could indicate guilt, or at least complicity.
A wave of unease rushed through her. She reached out and gripped the edge of the blanket. Distant shouts penetrated the gloom as Pacheco’s fellow officers began to respond, his shouts not quite muffled enough to keep them from hearing.
She drew the blanket back and her heart sank. Sorrow and guilt warred inside her, and then were obliterated by fury.
The girl’s eyes had been removed, yes, but her body had suffered other mutilations. Her chest had been cut open, ribs exposed. On her arms and legs, and most explicitly on her abdomen, her killers had carved arcane symbols that Indigo recognized immediately. Ritual markings.
“Oh, you bastards,” she whispered.
The Children of Phonos had murdered four children. She had dealt with members of the cult several times. She had fought them, exposed individuals, even taken lives, but she had always stopped short of simply destroying them all. It would have felt like murder, and she had drawn the line. Now she had to live with the knowledge that if she had crossed that line, four children might still be alive.
This didn’t explain all of the other missing kids in New York, but now she knew what had happened to these four. Horror. Human sacrifice.
The police were shouting and she felt them trying to enter her sphere of darkness. Numb with anger and sick inside, she stood and walked back toward the Dumpster. Pacheco cried out in relief as the shadows withdrew and he could see again at last. It was the last thing Indigo heard before she slid fully into the shadows between shadows …
… and stepped out again into that darkness just a few doors down from her apartment.
Over on Columbus Avenue, a car went by with music blaring through open windows. A chilly autumn wind caressed her and a few leaves danced along the sidewalk at her feet, and then she turned and vomited kung pao shrimp onto the concrete.
Unsteady on her feet, Nora Hesper shed the cloak of shadows and started back to her apartment, knowing she could never again hesitate. She had drawn the line, but now all the lines had been erased.
2
This time she kept all the lights in her apartment turned off. The place felt quiet in the aftermath of Shelby’s earlier visit. Nora would normally have welcomed her friend’s chaotic, comforting presence, but after being Indigo for a while, she needed some time alone.
Even with blinds drawn, light bled into the apartment from the streets, and moonlight silvered through the long, high window by her loft bed. As Nora slumped on her sofa, she drew the shadows around her. It took no effort to feed and expand them, and as total darkness enclosed her, she saw so much more. To anyone opening the door, her apartment would have looked like a void, endless and depthless, a hollow in the world.