The Shadows Trilogy (Box Set: Edge of Shadows, Shadows Deep, Veiled Shadows) (42 page)

Her ears refused to comprehend Lucy’s words. She moved past Lucy into the sitting parlor and fell into one of the wingback chairs. “I don’t believe this,” she said.

Jeffrey had stepped forward to join them, but Lucy said, “Oh no. We need some girl time.” She unceremoniously slid the doors shut in his face. Then she clicked the lock so that he couldn’t open them. Ellie thought the gesture ridiculous considering Jeffrey had the ability to appear wherever he wanted at will.

As if she read Ellie’s mind, Lucy closed her eyes and said a short chant. Then she opened them and nodded with satisfaction. “That’ll keep him busy for a while trying to find a way around that. Unfortunately, it’s also going to raise Mikel’s suspicion, but you appear to be a pretty damn good liar. I’m really impressed.”

Her words of praise made Ellie feel worse. “I’m a liar, a thief, and a murderer. Perhaps I do belong in Hell.”

Lucy sat down in the chair across from her and shook her head. “Don’t be silly Ellie. Things aren’t as black and white as you think they are. There are lots of shades of gray. And what happened with Martin was an accident. I keep telling you that you can’t beat yourself up about that. Look, I promised to tell you more once we took care of Martin and handed Katie and Will off to the escorts. I’m keeping that promise now.”

Kneading the white cloth covering her knees, Ellie felt anxious. “Shouldn’t I get David? He should hear what’s going on too.”

A shadow crossed Lucy’s eyes.

“I know you don’t think a lot of David, Lucy. But he’s part of this too. I’m the reason he’s here. I can’t just leave him out of it,” Ellie said.

Lucy’s next words scared Ellie badly. “I’m pretty sure that David’s part of the problem, Ellie. And if you’re really sure that’s been David that you’ve been swapping spit with, I’m sorry to tell you that you don’t know him as well as you think you do.”

“What do you mean?” Ellie asked.

“I shouldn’t be telling you this, because Mikel would make things very unpleasant for me if he found out. So I’m trusting you to keep this to yourself, and hopefully by me telling you this, you can trust me when I say that I want to help you.”

Nothing Lucy was saying sounded good at all. But Lucy was clearly looking for her agreement. “Okay, deal,” Ellie said.

Lucy started to fidget, then took a deep breath. “Okay. So I told you that Mikel was interested in you. More than surface level.”

“Right...” Ellie said. Suddenly she knew what Lucy was going to say. There was only one possibility that made sense. She didn’t want to know.

“David was born here. He was vulnerable at a very early age. Mikel wasn’t shy about taking advantage of that.”

“Taking advantage of that how?” Ellie said in a hollow voice.

“By being him,” Lucy said.

Which was exactly what Ellie was afraid she was going to say.

CHAPTER TWENTY

She didn’t want to believe Lucy’s words, but it all made sense to Ellie now. David’s strange behavior when he appeared right after Ellie’s own arrival. The way he kept trying to convince her that she belonged here. Never seeing both of them in the same place at the same time. Her cheeks flushed as she thought about their make-out session on the stairs. She wanted to argue and tell Lucy that she was wrong, but she knew that she wasn’t. Ellie felt stupid for not figuring it out on her own. The David that she knew wasn’t here. Somehow she had truly lost him.

“Where is he? The real David?” Ellie asked quietly. “Has it been Mikel every time?”

“David’s been Mikel’s little secret for a long time. He hides him away because David’s soul wasn’t supposed to even exist. I didn’t want to tell you, but that was part of that ceremony that you somehow saw downstairs in that dream of yours.  Mikel used Lillian and Joseph to shield David from the rest of the Council and has been biding his time figuring out the best way to use him. I’m not privy to that kind of dark magic, but I know it’s bad, Ellie.”

“I need to know. Was any of it real?” Ellie asked hollowly. She felt like everything she thought she knew was being ripped away. “Or was it all just a lie?”

Lucy looked sympathetic. “Mikel can’t manifest on the Other Side without great effort. David’s personality and whoever he was when you met him would have been genuine.”

Ellie’s chest heaved just a bit. “He was good and giving and compassionate. How is it possible for those two things to coexist in the same body? Who is in charge? If it’s Mikel, then where is David?”

“I don’t know,” Lucy said. “Mikel doesn’t trust me that much. He’s never even confirmed to me that he possesses David, but I’m a witch. I can see mystical influence and every time I’ve seen your doctor since I got here, I see Mikel. But we don’t talk about it. Like I said, Mikel’s been keeping that little secret close to his chest for a long time.”

“How can you keep helping such an evil person?” Ellie asked.

“This is the part where you judging me isn’t going to work,” Lucy said, the heat in her voice obvious. “Everybody does what they do for their own reasons. I have mine and right now I’m not feeling in the mood to talk about it.” Lucy crossed her arms.

“Why should I trust you then?” Ellie asked when it was clear that Lucy wasn’t planning to say anything more.

“You should trust me because now you know more about what you are dealing with. I have done everything Mikel asked me to do, but I never really thought he’d be strong enough to overthrow the Council. Now that he’s found you and I’m starting to see what you can do, I’m worried. I’m worried about everyone. Purgatory may not be all that great, but if I want my shot at heading back to the Other Side someday, there has to be an Other Side to go back to.”

“So you think that these things that I take from the people moving through the waypoint; they give him some kind of advantage?” Ellie asked

“They give him power. The right abilities mixed the right way could give him the ability to create a psychic army that could blow the Afterlife completely to hell. It’s not just control of the waypoints at that point. It’s everything. Mikel would be powerful enough that he could even make a run at the Other Side.” Lucy shuddered.

“All of that, because of me.” Ellie stood up and started to pace. “I can’t be part of that. I won’t be part of that. What do we do?”

“We have to lay low a little bit longer,” Lucy said. “Trust me. Falla and Braz are going to be here as soon as they find out that Mikel put a Guardian in place here without their permission, and a psychically powerful one at that. We have to figure out a way to tell them what’s going on here without Mikel finding out.”

Ellie thought back to the electric tingle when Lila shook her hand. “Lila sized me up, didn’t she?”

Lucy grinned. “You were amazing. I don’t think Dane is used to not getting his way. He likes to throw around his weight.”

“Isn’t Dane on the same side as Mikel?”

“Just because they are on the same team doesn’t mean that they like each other. Not at all. They have to play nice, but either one of them would claw out the other’s eyes if it meant getting ahead in Hell. Dane’s an ambitious one. If he knew what Mikel was up to, he’d tell Falla and Braz just so that he could have a shot at taking Mikel’s spot on the Council.”

Ellie’s head was starting to hurt, and her stomach was starting to ache. She was surprised. She realized that she hadn’t eaten in what seemed like forever and said as much to Lucy.

“I spiked the wine,” Lucy said.

Ellie raised her hand to her mouth in alarm.

“Not in a bad way. I can’t be sure, but I wouldn’t put it past Mikel to put something in your food to help keep you...malleable. You also shouldn’t let Jeffrey fool you. The more they feed that meat to you, the more you are going to crave it. You can sustain your body on other things.”

Now Ellie had gotten a warning from both of them about the other. But so far only Lucy seemed to be forthcoming about what was going on. She was undecided. “Okay, so we should lay low and wait for the others to come. What about between now and then? How do we find out about what’s going on with David? I can’t forget about him in all this mess.”

Lucy looked unsure. She squirmed in her chair. “I don’t know yet. I’ll figure something out though, I promise. Just sit tight.”

Ellie was just getting ready to retort when there was a soft knock on the door. Lucy stood up and grimaced. “I knew it wouldn’t take long.” She said the same words she had said before and Ellie watched as the locks on the doors clicked open without Lucy touching it. The locks sprung open immediately.

“Ellie?” David’s voice wafted through the crack in the door. “Are you in there?”

Ellie looked at Lucy.

Play it cool
, Lucy mouthed to her.  Ellie had no idea how she was going to do that. It was possible that the man walking into the room just looked like her boyfriend.

Ellie stood up just as the doors opened. David, or the person who looked like David, was standing on the other side with a confused look on his face. “Ellie, I was worried. You said you were going to come upstairs last night and I must have fallen asleep because you never came up. What’s going on?” Then he looked down at her outfit and his mouth fell open. “You look terrific. It looks like I missed a party or something.”

Putting on her most brilliant smile, her skin crawling, Ellie walking over to David and gave him a hug. “I’m sorry, David. Things happened so fast, and you know that time is wonky around here. Lucy and Jeffrey had to help me with some things for the escorts.”

“The escorts were here? Are you okay?” David took her left hand in his and tenderly traced the scar that had appeared there. Ellie’s body seemed to have some healing powers as well; she thought it may be gone completely soon. In the back of her mind Ellie wanted to shriek and pull her hand away. She had to find a way to figure out who she was talking to, but for the time being, it seemed wisest to assume that she was dealing with Mikel wearing David’s face.

“Yes, it was fine. Katie and Will are gone,” she said. “It went well, I think, considering I had no clue what I was doing.”

David pulled away and put his hands on either side of her face. “I’m glad that went well. The sooner you settle in and get used to how things work here, the better. I’ll help you.”

“Perhaps next time you can help me with escorting them instead of Jeffrey,” Ellie said. “It would make me feel better with you there. Especially with the one named Dane. He was really intense.”

Something gleamed in David’s eyes. “Of course I’ll help where I can, Ellie. But that’s really Jeffrey’s job. I probably forgot to mention this earlier, but it’s better if you don’t mention me to the escorts.”

“Why not?” Ellie asked. She was getting used to playing dumb.

“A long time ago I had a run-in with that guy, Peter. We just don’t really get along. I don’t want him to treat you any differently if he found out you were with me.”

A neat lie, Ellie thought. Not only would it ensure that Ellie protected him, it also would put distrust on Peter, a representative of Heaven. As Ellie thought back on each conversation she had with David since he reappeared, she realized that each one was geared toward gaining her acceptance of things that sat on the darker side of the fence; things that aligned more with Mikel and Hell than anything else. It was a clever plan.

“Hopefully it wasn’t anything serious,” Ellie said. “So if I understood the one escort correctly, waypoints are kind of like Switzerland, right? Neutral points of entry into the Afterlife?”

David frowned. “I wouldn’t pay too much attention to her. She hasn’t been around nearly as long as Dane and Peter. I remember Lillian saying that girl acted pretty full of herself. You shouldn’t put any credence in what she says.”

He squinted over Ellie’s shoulder, noticing Lucy was standing there. He smiled. “Hi, I don’t think we’ve formally met. I’m David.”

“Lucy,” was the short reply. Then the witch breezed past them. “I’ll find you later, Ellie. Don’t have too much fun without me.”

Chagrined, Ellie realized that she was being left alone with David. Then her stomach growled and for once, she was happy about it. “Want to get something to eat?” she asked. “I’m starving.”

“I’m cooking,” David said with a grin.

“Great,” she said. “Let me run and change into something more appropriate.”

“I think what you’ve got on suits you,” David said, openly admiring her from head to toe.

She rolled her eyes. “I can meet you in the kitchen,” she said, starting to step around him. David grabbed her hand, causing her to stop.

“Let me show you a neat trick,” he said. “Close your eyes.”

Ellie didn’t want to close her eyes. But as she saw his face turn into a frown, she knew that she couldn’t tell him why. Taking a deep breath, she lowered her eyelids. A few seconds passed and then she felt the air shift around her body. Her eyes flew open, and she saw that she was wearing her clothes from earlier.

“You know magic?” she said. This wasn’t David. She was sure of it.

“Nah, that’s nothing but a parlor trick. You have to stop thinking of things like you used to, Ellie. There are all sorts of things that you can do here just because of what it is,” David said.

Ellie remembered the mirror appearing earlier. The house did seem to react to directed thoughts. She shivered. David led her to the back of the house. Ellie realized that she could smell food before they even reached the kitchen, and as she guessed, Jeffrey was moving around in there. There were two settings on the table, and David winked at her as he pulled out the chair for her.

“Chez Bradford is open for business,” he said in a silly French accent.

It was only after she smiled automatically at his joke that Ellie realized how charming Mikel could be wearing David’s skin. If she wasn’t careful, it would be easy for her to forget that it wasn’t David, except for small nuances every now and then. Mikel was almost perfect in his delivery of David’s speech and mannerisms.

There was a bottle of red wine sitting in the middle of the table, and before sitting down himself, David poured each of them a glass. He raised his glass to her. “To new beginnings.”

The words carried more weight now that Ellie knew the truth. She raised her own glass and clinked his, which seemed to satisfy him. She took a small sip and moments later a full plate of meat was sitting in front of her.

“Thanks, Jeffrey,” David said. “I’ve got it from here.”

“Of course,” Jeffrey said as he nodded, and then he turned and left.

“You seem to have won him over,” Ellie said.

“Hmm?”

“I didn’t think that he liked you much,” Ellie said.

“Oh, I think Jeffrey always had a thing for Lillian and was jealous of the time that she spent with me. We have an understanding that goes way back.”

I bet you do
, Ellie thought.

“Since you’ve started remembering things, you should tell me more about your childhood, David. Even before I didn’t know a lot about you. Was it happy?” Ellie said. She was reluctant to eat anything prepared by Jeffrey after what Lucy told her, but her body was already tingling in anticipation of eating.

“Of course it was happy,” David said, taking another sip of wine. “Lillian gave me everything I wanted. I had this huge house to play in, and I learned a whole education’s worth of things about the Other Side from the people who came here. My life was very full.”

“I’m not quite sure I understand how you got to the Other Side when I met you,” Ellie said. She wasn’t sure that he would tell her the truth, but she had to ask.

“I hope you aren’t thinking about trying to find a way to go back,” David said with a heavy tone of disapproval in his voice. “I thought that you were settling in, especially now that Mikel arranged it so that we could be together.”

“You misunderstood my question,” Ellie said soothingly. “I’m just trying to learn more about you. Like why you chose to be a doctor. Did Joseph influence that? It must have hurt a great deal when you realized that they were going to kill us. These are things that are important for us to talk about.”

As David cut into the meat, Ellie could see his hands were pushing harder and harder on the pieces. He was agitated. She’d have to take things slower.