The Shadow Society (18 page)

“We don’t want to get her killed before she’s properly trained,” said Orion.

“I’ll be fine,” I said. “Savannah’s right. This bike will prove how much I can fool them.”

Orion smiled.

“And—” Savannah hesitated. “It
is
pretty.”

It was only then that I noticed that her glasses chain was strung with blue and yellow beads. At least one Shade, I realized, didn’t see the world in black and white.

I was wheeling the bike toward the Archives’ exit when my hand snatched something off the shelves. I’d grabbed it purely by instinct, out of some certainty that whatever it was, it belonged to me, and it was a moment before I really saw what I held. A box of oil paints.

“Can I take this, too?” I asked.

Savannah peered at it, pursing her lips. “It couldn’t do any harm.”

I tucked it under my arm. For the first time since I’d arrived in this world, I felt pleased. The box of paints reminded me that I wasn’t a totally different person, even if I wasn’t human. I still wanted to make beautiful things. And the bike made me think that Marsha had been right to give me a red sweater. Maybe it was time for me not just to seek beauty and color, but also to claim some for myself.

I gave the shiny bike an affectionate pat.

The only thing I didn’t like about it was that it would take me to Conn.

27

I got totally lost.

As I biked south my brain kept getting fooled into thinking I knew where I was. Once I even thought I saw Lily, though that was crazy and impossible, and the girl had dark hair. Lily would never let her natural color show. Still, as I biked past I let myself pretend it was her, and that I was home.

It was a bright, bright day. The snow had melted, and the streets were streaked with sunny water. My bike tires swished through the puddles, water spattering my ankles as I wove through the city, trying to figure out how to get to Schiller Avenue. It wasn’t easy. In the midst of all the bizarre differences of this Chicago—that metal rail running high along the buildings, the nauseatingly cute green lampposts, those decorated wooden sidewalks that Orion said raked in tons of money in tourism every year—I also had to keep an eye out for any stray shadows that might be following me. I almost crashed a dozen times.

But no humans spotted me as a Shade, and it didn’t look like I was being tailed by the Society. At least, not today.

When I found the address Conn had given me, I parked the bike and bounded up the library steps, past the bronze lions with their shiny paws that had been rubbed by thousands of strangers. I was late. I was also, I realized, eager to see Conn.

Which made sense. He had information I wanted.

The Jennie Twist Library didn’t exist in my Chicago (neither did Jennie Twist), but getting around the building was easy, thanks to a lifetime of navigating new schools. Plus, this library was super old-fashioned, down to its wood-paneled elevators. I got inside one of them and watched the golden arrow above the doors swoop past floor numbers. It occurred to me that Conn had chosen this place precisely because it didn’t have any sci-fi techy gear for me to deal with. It occurred to me that I was grateful.

I got out at the third floor and headed for the stacks. Browse, I told myself. I was supposed to browse until an IBI agent posing as a librarian found me. I riffled through the shelves, which were massive oak things that would flatten me like a cartoon character if they toppled over.

I started with the A’s. Alcott, Ardent, Austen. My hand stopped there. I was a pretty big fan of Jane Austen, and had read everything she’d written—which wasn’t enough. I always wanted more, more, more. So imagine my delight when, nestled in between
Pride and Prejudice
and
Sense and Sensibility
, was something completely new:
Reservation.
I grabbed it off the shelf and was flipping through it when someone coughed. I turned to see a girl who was a few years older than me. She was very pretty. Angry, too.

“He’s waiting,” she hissed. She stalked away before I could respond, then paused and glanced over her shoulder.
“Follow me.”
She rolled her eyes. “I can’t believe he’s wasting his time with someone like you.”

I resisted the urge to whack her in the back of the head with my leather-bound book.

She whisked me toward a private study room, motioned for me to enter, then shut me in, alone with Conn.

He was sitting at a table, drawing something in a sketchbook that looked like a design for a machine. I instantly wanted to come closer, to see better, but reminded myself that I wasn’t supposed to be curious about Conn. My heart wasn’t supposed to stutter just because he lifted his tawny head and looked at me.

It made me mad. Even though my mind knew better, some part of my body couldn’t forget the tug and pull of Conn.

He closed the sketchbook. “You’re late.”

“And you’re obnoxious. But
I
won’t always be late.”

He blinked. Then he chuckled.

“You’re not supposed to laugh,” I said grumpily.

“It was funny.”

“Not that funny.”

“No, really.” He smiled. “I’d congratulate you on it, but only nice people give compliments. Unfortunately, I’m doomed to always be obnoxious.”

I had forgotten that he could be playful, and that when he was he almost glowed.

I wished he hadn’t made me remember.

“What is
with
you today?” I demanded.

He opened his hands as if they were a box that was going to reveal something secret. “I’m just glad to see you.”

I studied him suspiciously. “Act normal, Conn, or I’m leaving. You’re weirding me out.”

That wiped the smile off his face. “All right.” He cleared his throat. “What’s that?” He nodded at my book.

Even though I’d planned to come straight to the point and ask him about my photograph, for a moment I faltered, suddenly nervous about what I’d find out. So I showed him the book.

“Reservation,”
he said. “That’s one of my favorites.”

“This book shouldn’t exist.”

“In
your
world.”

I shook my head. “The split between my world and this one is because of the Great Fire, so everything that happened in both places before 1871 should be exactly the same.”

“That’s right.”

“But Jane Austen was writing way before then. It doesn’t make sense that
here
she would have written an extra book.”

“She didn’t,” he said. “But
here
, her lost manuscript of
Reservation
was discovered.”

“Ahhhh,” I said. “Okay.” I leaned against a wall, recalculating my conception of how different this world was. “And Jennie Twist? Who’s she? I’m pretty sure I don’t recall her from history class, and she’s got to be important if a library’s named after her. What’d she do? Eat twenty Shades for breakfast?”

“She’s our first woman president.”

I stared. “You have a woman president?”

“Not at the moment,” Conn said. “Twist was elected in 1978.”

“Well, at least you people got something right.” I paused. “You know … has it ever occurred to you that there are probably more worlds than yours and mine? If the Great Fire caused some interdimensional split, what did the dropping of the atomic bomb do? Or the Civil War? There must be tons of worlds, zillions of worlds, where history and everything else is different.”

He looked at me with an expression that seemed to be respect. “Not many people think of that. You’re right, Darcy. There probably are more worlds than we can imagine. But the government keeps that information very close to its chest. Governments are like that. Yours, for example, knows full well about our existence. But they’ve kept it a secret for more than a hundred years. We have a treaty with them to protect that information. I don’t approve, personally, but it’s the law. As for this world, everyone here knows about the Alter, though they’re not allowed into it.”

I stared, and realized that my fascination about the world around me had sucked me into a much longer conversation with Conn than I really wanted to have. Conn was too easy to talk to. He always had been.

But of course he would be. He’d been trained in interrogation.

“Let’s get down to business,” I told him. “I want these meetings to be short.”

For a moment he didn’t speak. Then he nodded sharply. “Good,” he said. “You’re right. We’re risking a lot to speak to each other. Every minute, we risk more. What do you have to report?”

“Nothing until I hear what you’ve found out about me.”

He folded his large, scarred hands. “Have you met my requirement? Have you learned how to control your shadow?”

I braced my back against the wall and stared down at him. “Sure.”

“Then ghost,” he said. “Right now.”

“Later.”

He crossed his arms. “Now.”

For a while, neither of us said anything. Then I caved. “I’m trying, all right? I can’t do it. But I will.”

He looked at me.

“I
will
.”

Conn’s eyes held mine. “I believe you.”

I exhaled slowly. “So.” I prepared myself for whatever might come next. “What did you find out about me?”

His mouth twisted. “Darcy. There’s no easy way to say this. You’re supposed to be dead.”

For a moment, I wavered on my feet. The news didn’t shock me so much as the way my memory reacted.
No one’s supposed to know you’re alive,
I heard a voice—a man’s—say.
I’ll keep your secret.

I sat down hard, like my legs had been cut out from underneath me.

“I was looking at everything from 1997,” Conn said. “Every file my rank allowed me to pull. Other Shade arrests. Transcripts of emergency phone calls.” He rubbed tiredly at his forehead. “I even looked at traffic tickets. Then I came across your photograph, the same one, in a file from the coroner’s office. It listed you as deceased, but the details of the file were sealed.

“I tried to find out more. The coroner—Dr. Green—has been with the IBI forever, and would have had to sign off on your autopsy—which obviously didn’t happen—so I went to talk with her. Dr. Green claimed she’d never seen you, couldn’t remember your case—nothing.” He looked at me. “She’s lying.”

“How do you know?”

“Hours later, I checked the coroner’s database again. Your file had vanished. I think it was a fluke that I’d found it to begin with. It was a loose end someone forgot to tie up.”

“So go back to Dr. Green. Tell her the file vanished. See what she says.”

“Confronting her won’t do any good. I already tried that, with no luck. And whatever the IBI is hiding about you, it’s something bigger than Anne Green. Information about you is buried so deep, only the highest ranking officers have access to it.”

“But Green knows something. Make her talk.”

“I can’t
make
her,” he said.

“Yes, you can.”

“Darcy. I can’t make people do things they don’t want.”

And there it was again. That kiss, throbbing across the tension between us.

There was a very long pause.

“Don’t worry,” Conn finally said. “Dr. Green’s stonewalling me. Fine. That doesn’t mean this is over. There are a lot of people in the IBI. A lot of people who know a lot of things. One of the secretaries invited me to dinner at her place tonight. Maybe that’ll lead us somewhere. She likes me.”

I felt a stab of an emotion I didn’t want to examine too closely.

“I’m sorry I don’t have more information,” he said. “Now. What do you have for me?”

“Well,” I said reluctantly. “The IBI might be right. Maybe the Society is planning something. But they could be planning an interpretive dance with IBI flamethrowers for all I know. Not necessarily an attack.” Still, I told him about the little things Shades had let slip around me—the idea that I could be put “to good use” by passing as a human, that “now, more than ever,” the Society couldn’t afford a security risk. The flamethrowers, and how Orion had warned me away from them.

Conn’s eyes sharpened. “Tell me more about Orion.”

“He’s…” It wasn’t easy to sum him up. “Graceful. I think he must be one of the Society’s best fighters. He mentioned something about training people. Well, he’s training
me
, in fact. He’s intelligent, and … passionate. So passionate that sometimes I think he doesn’t always see things for what they are. He doesn’t see
me
for what I am, anyway. I think.”

Conn leaned back in his chair, silent. A muscle pulsed along his jaw. “You should be careful around him.”

“As if I’m
not
,” I said. “Anyway, he’s a nice guy. Sure, he doesn’t
like
humans, but I’ve never seen him hurt one. Whenever he’s mentioned a Society terrorist attack, it’s always been in a matter-of-fact way, like what they did is simply part of the past. And he’s been good to me. I’d be in Society prison if it weren’t for him, and he’s been more welcoming to me than anyone else in this world.” Something made me add, “He likes me.”

“I’m sure he does.”

“Can you please cut the sarcasm? I’m trying to tell you that Orion might give me some valuable information. The IBI wants me to spy. He’s my best source.”

“You can find other sources.”

“I’m working on it.” I frowned. “I really don’t see what your problem is.”

“It’s just”—he ran a hand through his hair—“you’re talking about using someone, and that’s not an easy thing to do. I don’t think you’ve ever done that before—use someone. Your friends—Lily, Raphael, Jims—”

I flinched, the pain of missing them was so sharp.

“I’ve seen how you are with people,” Conn said. “Your friendships are true. You value people, and when they value you, you’re true to them. That’s a gift. I don’t want to see you throw it away.”

“Hey, I’m not spying for the IBI because I enjoy it.”

“I know,” Conn said. “But be careful,” he repeated. “Especially if Orion has feelings for you.”

I looked at Conn and decided I wasn’t crazy about the turn this conversation was taking. So I changed it. “You were right about something. Sort of. Shades don’t really need food.” I explained what Orion had told me about ghosting, and how it could shut down hunger, pain, even aging.