The Shadow Society (22 page)

Joking with Lily about being a fly on the wall in the boys’ locker room was one thing. This was real. It was
too
real.

I decided to focus on the contents of Conn’s locker. Jeans and a stone-colored sweater. Very uninteresting. Very non-distracting. Very unhelpful.

“McCrea.” A young man leaned against the lockers next to Conn’s. “Punching out early?” he asked in a mock disapproving tone.

“So are you, Paulo.”

“It
is
Friday. Got plans?”

“Yes.”

Catcalls came from nearby men.

“I’ve got to get out of this thing.” Conn yanked at the top button of his uniform. “Why do they have to make the collars so tight?”

“To make me look good.” Paulo grinned.

Conn rolled his eyes. Then he shrugged off his shirt, balled it, and pitched it into a laundry basket.

If I’d had any breath, I would have lost it.

The strong wings of his shoulder blades. The ribbon of his spine. A narrow waist. The faded tattoo of a circle marking his upper right shoulder.

I’d seen this all before, in the back of the truck rumbling toward the IBI. But I had hated him then.

A thought cracked delicately inside me like a frail egg that spilled out a secret I had been keeping from myself for some time now.

I didn’t hate him anymore.

Conn’s skin looked new because he was new. Because he was a stranger again, someone who had fought to save me from the situation he’d created, who had broken his nose as a boy, who had asked me what I longed to eat and offered art I longed to see. He was someone I wanted to understand.

He unbuckled his belt.

My gaze fell to the floor. My entire body would have blushed, if I’d had one. I examined the tiny white floor tiles and listened to Paulo talk about traffic tickets.

Then he said, “Conn.
What
are you wearing?”

I glanced up. Conn had pulled on the jeans and sweater. “I got it in the Alter.”

“No no no,” said Paulo. “If you’re going out tonight, you’re not looking like an Alter-addled weirdo.”

“It’s comfortable.”

“Flannel trousers. A nice, sharp tailored suit. It’s the fashion.”

“It’s not the law.”

Paulo held up both hands as if to show he had no weapon. “Hey.
You
want to commit sartorial suicide, you go right ahead.” He shut his locker and leaned against it. “About the Alter … how’s your project?”

“Project?” called a new voice. It was Michael, strutting down the aisle.

“None of your business,” said Conn.

“Project
Jones
,” Michael drawled. “I’d like to project
her
.”

Conn flinched. Then he bit his lip, hard, and pulled on his coat.

“You’re sick, Mike,” said Paulo. “Shades and humans do
not
mix.”

“Oh, I know,” said Michael. “Seriously, McCrea, I’m surprised you signed up for this. Kind of twisted, isn’t it? Interrogating her must be like talking with your worst nightmare. Why do you do it? Halloween was almost two months ago.”

“That’s right,” Conn said coolly. “So then who let you out of your cage?”

Michael’s eyes flashed.

“Now, Mike,” said Paulo. “It was a joke.”

“No,” said Conn. “It wasn’t.” He held his body ready, to take a blow or strike one of his own.

“Hey,” Paulo said to Michael, smiling, “some of us are going out to Allegri’s after. Wanna come?”

Michael scowled at Conn.

“Conn’s got plans,” Paulo said easily.

“Yeah, sure,” Michael mumbled. “Meet you there.” He stalked away.

As soon as the locker room door had swung shut behind him, Paulo turned to Conn with a big, sarcastic thumbs-up. “Good job, Conn. You’ve made an enemy out of Ivers’s lapdog.”

“He made an enemy of
me
,” said Conn, and stalked toward the door.

I was floating after him when I noticed someone watching from a far bench. He was middle-aged, with a hefty body and prematurely gray hair. His eyes were on Conn, and had been for some time, I thought. Given the tense expression on his face, he seemed to have listened to the entire exchange.

That was not what startled me.

I
remembered
him.

I stared, trying to unclog my memory, yet the more I struggled, the more it fought back. And beneath it, fear bubbled like black tar.

I wanted to remember. Some part of me, though,
didn’t
want to, and would fight tooth and nail to keep it from happening. Maybe it was the wisest part of me.

I heard the door swing shut. Conn was gone.

I looked at the door. I looked at the man. The choice was clear, and I knew what I should do.

But then the invisible string that tied me to Conn tugged on the line, and I didn’t even really decide. I simply followed him.

*   *   *

H
E GOT OUT OF THE SUBWAY
at an area that sort of looked like the Ukrainian Village. Through the twilight, I could see tall, old Victorian houses, and when Conn rested his eyes on one of them his shoulders relaxed, and I wondered if he was glad to see whomever he was visiting, or if maybe this was his home.

It was the kind of house I used to dream about when I was little. It had gables, bay windows, fresh paint. Every window in the house glowed, and I could see a dog hurtling through the living room to jump at the front door. I heard glad barking. A little girl was sitting on the couch, her legs too short to reach the floor, a book open on her lap.

Conn pulled a set of keys from his pocket. He was home.

But he didn’t walk up the front steps. He went around to the backyard, where a swing set sang in the wind. The back of the house had one dark window and a weathered door. Conn set his key in the lock and went inside.

It was a studio apartment, completely separate from the rest of the house.

The walls were white and bare. A bar partitioned the main room from a tiny kitchen with a two-plate stove and a clean, empty sink. A stool stood at the bar. Books were stacked on the floor along the walls of the entire main room, except where a mattress lay on the floor, pushed into a corner. At the center of the apartment was a table cluttered with tools, gears, and blueprints.

Conn walked into the kitchen to open the narrow refrigerator, then went to the living room with a sandwich on a plate and a glass of water, which he rested on the only clear spot on the table. He pulled the stool from the bar, lowered it, and dragged it up to the table. He sat, poring over pages of mechanical designs as he ate. When he finished, he leaned to set the empty plate on the bar, brushed his hands, and picked up a pair of pliers and something that looked like a carburator. He settled back and proceeded to take the thing apart.

For some time there was no sound except a bare branch scratching at the dark window, the jingle of metallic parts, and the clunk of the pliers hitting the table when Conn dropped them to pick up a screwdriver. His face softened and filled with peace. I had never seen him look like that before.

Conn showed no intention of doing anything else than tinkering all night long. This, it seemed, was his big Friday night plan.

The screwdriver slipped, stabbing into Conn’s other hand. He swore and dropped the part, which thumped onto the table and then onto the floor, where it broke apart and scattered.

For a moment, Conn stared at the gears rocking on the floor, at the screws spinning on their heads like little break-dancers. Then, with a movement so sudden I nearly jumped out of my invisible skin, he flung out his arm and swept everything off the table. Metal hit the floor with the jangle of a thousand tuneless bells. Conn dropped his head into his hands.

He pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes, shoulders tight, body frozen, breathless.

Enough. I felt as if
I
had destroyed something. He never would have shown me this. He never would have shared anything I had seen and heard. I had stolen it.

Guilt sickened me as I glided toward an outside wall, ready to fade away.

Conn’s head snapped up, and his eyes zeroed in on me. They went wide with disbelief, then livid with rage.

He could see my shadow.

He vaulted off the stool and grabbed something from the pile of metal on the floor.

A flamethrower.

With a click, it came alive, spitting a stream of fire. Conn lifted it like a blazing sword and stepped steadily toward me.

33

My mind disintegrated at the sight of fire, babbling
Run run run
and
He doesn’t know it’s you, he can’t know it’s you. Go, go now!

If I stayed, fear would melt my body into being, and then he would know that
I
was that shadow. He would
know
.

That thought was more terrifying than fire.

Yet … I chose to stay.

I poured myself back into my skin, feeling flesh cloak my bones and adrenaline spike my blood so strongly it felt like poison. “Conn.” I swallowed. “It’s me.”

He lowered the flamethrower. “You,” he said slowly, as if the word was part of a foreign language. “You.” He switched off the flames, and I almost sighed with relief. Then I saw his face. It was worse than before. There was still rage, yes. But also betrayal.

“How long?” he whispered.

“How—what?” I stammered.

“How long
have you been here
?” he shouted.

My lungs swelled with everything I couldn’t say. I closed my mouth. Drew back.

“Since the beach,” Conn said through gritted teeth. He nodded. His knuckles clenched white around the flamethrower before he flung it to the floor. “You’ve followed me since the beach. The whole time.”

I forced myself to speak. “Yes.”

“How dare you?” he hissed.

“You wanted this,” I said, suddenly frightened. Not of him, but of what I had done. “I mean, not
this
this, but you wanted me to learn how to ghost. You
demanded
it. Didn’t you want me to spy on people? Not on you, of course, but—”

“I wanted you to be safe!”

I fell silent.

Conn’s hands opened and closed, and he stared at them as if something should have been there yet now was gone. “My—you heard—” His voice broke. “You saw—” His mind was really working now, tunneling through the shock to remember every moment, every detail since he’d walked away from me on the beach. “Oh God.”

“Conn.” I groped for my courage, because there was something I had to know. “What upset you?”

“What
upset
me?” He made a sound too harsh to be a laugh.

“No, not what I did. What upset you before you saw me, when you dropped the part you were working on?”

“The truth,” Conn snarled. “That’s what. The fact that nothing turns out the way I plan. Nothing is the way I want it to be.” He glanced at the metallic ruins around his feet and then simply stared, as if counting all the broken things.

I was counting them, too. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I shouldn’t have spied on you, and I won’t do it again, I swear. I’m sorry I hurt you. I didn’t know that I could be this sorry. But, Conn.” It took me a moment to speak again. “You hurt me, too.”

The anger drained out of him. He looked at me, and he looked lost.

“Conn, please tell me. What happened to you in 1997?”

He sank to the edge of the mattress and sat there, feet heavy on the floor, arms limp and resting on his knees.

Finally, in a low voice, he said, “My baby sister, Moira, had a fever.” He paused, then started again. “She was three months old. My mother couldn’t bear the thought of anyone else taking her, and my father didn’t want my mother to go alone, so they went to the Ravenswood Medical Center together. I was eight. I knew what it meant to visit the doctor. Long waits. Nowhere to run. I wanted to stay at home and play with my cars, so they asked a neighbor to look after me.

“It’s strange. I only remember pieces of my parents. The sound of my mother’s slow heart. My father’s hands showing me how to use a socket wrench. He was a mechanic, and I wanted to be one, too.” Conn’s shoulders slumped in defeat. “I didn’t want Moira, when she was first born. But then my mother put her in my arms and I fell in love. She smelled like milk. And she’s the one I remember perfectly. So curled and soft and fuzzy-headed, like a caterpillar. I always held her carefully. Sometimes she would fall asleep in my arms, and then I was proud.

“Here, orphans become wards of the state. Well, that was true for you, too. But here there is no foster care system, no adoption. All of us are tattooed with an O—” He tentatively raised a hand to touch his shoulder, and his eyes asked me if I had seen it. I looked away. Nodded. Conn shrugged a little. He said, “I was put into a school with other children like me, and when I was twelve years old, a professor from the department of education visited our class. We expected him. We knew that our careers would be chosen for us that year, and we’d be sent to different schools—special ones, where we’d practice to become whatever the government wanted us to become. I was very nervous. There was only one thing, then, that I wanted to be. And after my evaluation by the professor, I thought I was lucky. I was going to get exactly what I hoped. I was sent to the IBI Academy.”

Conn gazed up at me. “When I met you, I wanted to destroy you. I didn’t understand your game. Why you stayed solid. Why you spent time with humans. Had you recruited them? For what? Something deadly, I was sure. Something cruel.

“You seemed so smug, tight in the center of your three friends, who circled you as if
you
were the weakest of them, as if
you
were the one who could be hurt, when I knew full well you were nothing of the kind.

“I needed information. Taylor Allen and her crowd were more than happy to give me some.” He made a disdainful noise. “A lot of petty gossip. But nothing about strange disappearances, or cases of you being aggressive to other students. This made you seem even more dangerous. It was clear that you were so serious about whatever plan you had up your sleeve that you wouldn’t slip into typical Shade behavior until the moment suited you.