Shadow Phantoms Read online

  “Devastatingly Midwestern,” he answered, not missing a beat. “But my mom did take me to a pretty great show. This couple had seventeen kids and taught them all to play jug band instruments.”

  “And that was great?” Jupiter asked, laughing.

  “What part of ‘devastatingly Midwestern’ did you not understand?”

  “Well, I think that’s sweet,” she said. “Personally, I’d love sixteen siblings to play washboards with.”

  “Tell me you’re being sarcastic.”

  “Being an only child sucks. I had to tell sweeping soap opera stories with my Barbies alone. Ken holding Stacey hostage to get Barbie to take him back isn’t worth anything if you know it’s coming.”

  We stared at her.

  “Come on, back me up here, Em.” She looked at me expectantly.

  “Don’t look at me, I’m not an only child.”

  Technically, Rowan and I were only cousins, but Rowan felt more like my younger sister. Probably because I’d lived with my aunt Bryn, Rowan’s mom, since my own mom died ten or so years ago.

  The door at the back of the classroom swung open, and all the air got sucked out of the room. Professor Tarkington hobbled down the stairs of the tiered floors, gripping the railing like he was trying to strangle it.

  “Open your textbooks to page two-hundred and eighty-three.” He yelled more than talked.

  There was a flurry of shuffling as people pulled notebooks out of backpacks. The professor watched them all with a weary disinterest.

  “Life. Energy. Magic.” His low, reedy voice drawled across his words. His silver hair was long, but his hairline had receded back to center-scalp. He spoke like a man trying to cancel out horse tranquilizers with decaf coffee. “What commonality do these precious entities share? Beyond their tendency to be misunderstood, I mean.”

  The room was quiet. No one would make eye contact. Everyone was afraid of him.

  Professor Tarkington sighed.

  “None are ever given,” he said slowly. “And none are received. Life, energy, and magic are only ever borrowed, and ultimately, they are all returned to the universe. But, for casters such as yourselves, there are ways to control these powers as they pass between plains.”

  He snapped his fingers. A dead mouse appeared on every student’s desk. Several people screamed. Kevin only lifted his eyebrows.

  “Birth and death, these are restorative in nature,” Tarkington said.

  The mouse sprawled across the rings of my notebook. Its little mouth hung open, tail curling on the paper. At least it didn’t stink.

  “This energy, its life force, once borrowed, then used, now surrendered back into the ever-expanding cosmos,” Professor Tarkington continued in his monotone. “Today, we learn to harness this transmission of energy and control it.”

  He snapped again. A palm-sized terracotta pot appeared next to the mouse. Green, fanning leaves poured over the edges like water.

  “The life force of the fern is the life force of the mouse,” he said, glaring at each of us in turn. “Your task: read the spell on page two-hundred and eighty-three. Use the energy of the living fern to bring your dead rodent back to life. You have until the end of class.” He planted himself in the chair next to the chalkboard and gestured broadly with both hands. “Begin.”

  We all looked at our mice.

  Brown, tiny, big ears and a long tail. They were dirty and thin, bones poking up through their backs.

  “Are we sure we want to put these things back in circulation?” Kevin asked, his ruddy eyebrows raised to his hairline. “I don’t think anyone’s complaining about fewer rats in the world.”

  “They’re mice,” said Jupiter, “and they’re adorable.”

  “They’re pests, Jupe,” Kevin corrected. “And they’re disgusting.”

  “They’re babies.”

  “They’re fully grown,” I said. Not that that was the issue here.

  Jupiter and Kevin brought their mice to life in something like twenty minutes. Most everyone else followed within ten more.

  I ran my finger along the book as I read. The print was tiny, two columns to a page. There was a diagram of a mouse, and another of a plant—not exactly like the plant we had here, but close enough.

  Just... take the energy out of the plant, put it back in the cosmos. Keep it close. Move it, carefully, guide it with your hands, like shepherding smoke.

  Don’t hold your breath: that was written in big, bolded letters above the diagram.

  Take the energy out. Slowly. So I did. Or, at least, I tried to.

  The leaves shrivelled and shrank, turning off-yellow. The plant curled up and went stiff, brittle, shrinking and shrinking and shrinking until the leaves cracked like dried mud in the desert.

  The energy hovered as an invisible cloud to the left of the plant. The air around it wavered while I held the energy between the mouse’s dead body and the rest of the universe. The energy vibrated, fighting my hold. This middle place, it couldn’t stay here.

  Put it somewhere, anywhere.

  Very carefully, said the textbook, guide the extracted energy into a carcass of approximate equal size and energy volume. Note that overloading a carcass with energy in excess can and will result in variant mental and physical deficiencies in the target consciousness, including, hallucinations, heart palpitations, random release of adrenaline, aggressive tendencies…

  “Miss Balfour.”

  Professor Tarkington put his hands on my desk and loomed.

  “We have a zero-tolerance policy for academic fraud,” he said. “Cheating has no place in Elmington, and neither do witches who syphon magic from their peers.”

  Fuck. He must have found out about the vial Jupiter had given me. But, how?

  “I—”

  “Miss Balfour, I don’t want to hear another word,” he said. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Allegra, Ellenora, and Trixie craning their necks around to stare at me.

  Allegra inclined her fiery red head in my direction with a sly smile. She must’ve heard me tell Jupiter I’d used the vial.

  “Principal Grabelle is expecting you,” Professor Tarkington said.

  “Professor, I just didn’t want to be late on my first day…”

  I didn’t know what to do with the energy from the plant and it was growing into a bright blue within my hands. Professor Tarkington looked down at it with a frown then touched his index finger to the energy and transferred it back to the plant. The plant then immediately bounced back to life.

  “Now. Miss Balfour.” He took a breath. “And you’ve failed this lesson for today.”

  I gathered my books and slung my ratty messenger bag over my shoulder. As I turned to leave, I heard Allegra’s high-pitched laughter from over my shoulder. I sighed, a shallow, defeated huff, and walked up the stairs to the lecture hall’s back door.

  “Sorry, Em,” Jupiter said with a well-intended frown.

  ###

  I sat on the narrow wooden bench outside the principal’s office. I crossed my legs at the knee and folded my arms across my chest. My head thumped hard against the bench’s tall, ornately carved backrest. My back straightened reflexively.

  I can’t believe I’m sitting on a bench outside the principal’s office like a five-year-old, I thought. Patricia was gonna have a field day with this.

  I really hoped she was on a different floor tonight.

  I sighed and reached into my bag for yesterday’s issue of The Sight, flipping straight to the crossword.

  I squinted down at the seventh clue where I’d gotten stuck yesterday:

  I’m a word that’s barely there. Take away my start, and I’m herbal flair. What am I?

  “Good freaking question,” I muttered. I tapped the empty boxes with the eraser end of the pencil. Maybe if I glared at the empty boxes long enough, the answer would just appear. Like those Words with Friends knock-offs where the letters start shaking when you’ve exceeded the threshold for acceptable stupidity.

&nbs
p; “Herbal flair.” So, spice, I guess? Eight letters.

  Camomile. Except ‘amomile’ isn’t a word.

  “Sparsely.” A smooth rich voice spoke from above me.

  I looked up and felt my breath catch. A man sat next to me on the bench, openly staring at the crossword. Tan skin, blue eyes, goldish-brown hair. Handsome. Beyond handsome, actually. And slouching. He wore a plain black sweater under a tweed jacket. The elbow patches—along with their associated elbows—rested on his knees.

  “What?” I said stupidly. The man leaned forward and pointed at the seventh clue slot.

  He clasped his hands together and pointed vaguely towards the paper. “Sparsely, it means ‘barely there. And if you remove the ‘s’ it spells ‘parsley’—herbal flair.”

  “Yeah, I heard you,” I said and didn’t mean to sound ungrateful but there it was.

  “Then what’s the ‘what’?”

  He smiled, and I kinda wanted to smile back.

  “Nothing,” I said.

  “Am I wrong?”

  “No.”

  He stared at me. He looked like he was waiting for me to say something.

  Eventually, I said, “Thanks.”

  “Any time,” he went on casually. I looked up to find a heart-melting grin on his gorgeous face. “I didn’t mean to spoil the puzzle for you…” He trailed off, a question in his voice.

  “Emma.”

  “Emma,” he repeated. Really rolled the letters around in his mouth. “Nice to meet you, Emma.”

  “Thanks. Nice to meet you…” I leaned over and eyed the documents on his lap, hoping to catch his name. I got lucky with the guest ID form in front. “Stone,” I read. “Interesting name.”

  “Befitting of the man, I assure you,” he said. “So, Emma.” He nodded at the office door. “What are you in for?”

  “Beating the system,” I said with a sigh.

  “Beating the system?”

  “Cheating, I guess. Technically. Supposedly.”

  “Supposedly?” he repeated, his grin growing. “So, you didn’t do it?”

  “Not on purpose.”

  “How does one cheat on accident?”

  “Umm… that’s kind of… personal,” I answered. Then decided to change the subject. “What about you?” I asked. “Why are you here?”

  “Jury duty.”

  “Hmm.” A light laugh bubbled out of me. “I think you might be lost.”

  He grinned.

  “I’m new here.” He tapped the thick brown folder in his lap with the back of his hand. “Paperwork.”

  “Ah.” I said, nodding sagely. “Fucking paperwork.”

  “Fucking paperwork,” he echoed. The smile hung softly on his lips, radiating an easy good humor. His smile was warm, inviting like a hearth.

  The office door opened.

  “Mr. Draper?” The secretary’s chipper voice called through a crack in the door. She peeked around the corner just long enough to nod to Stone, then stepped quickly away to clear a space in the doorway.

  Stone stood up and readjusted the button on his jacket. He looked down at me and smiled again, his teeth perfectly white through his brown, sun-kissed stubble.

  “It was a pleasure meeting you, Emma.”

  “You too. Have fun in jury duty.”

  He chuckled and closed the office door behind him.

  THREE

  SINJIN

  If I closed my eyes, I could hear the blood thundering in her veins as her heart beat fast with anticipation.

  “Will it hurt?”

  “I will put an influence on you to take away the pain,” I replied.

  Still with my eyes closed, I traced a finger up her throat, following the line of her carotid artery, feeling the flow of blood with only a thin layer of skin separating me from it.

  “Oh, Sinjin…” She moaned my name, and it was the voice of my beloved tempest.

  Unable to wait any longer and spurred by the sound of that deep and sultry voice, I sank my teeth into her throat, taking the pain from her as I did so.

  “Sinjin…” Without the pain of being bitten, the sensation of being drunk by a vampire could be wonderfully intimate, and her voice—the voice of Bryn—was thick with pleasure.

  But the taste spoiled the illusion.

  I opened my eyes to try to recapture the moment, for the woman (Denise—a name I had never liked) looked as much like Bryn as she sounded like her. Of all the women I had found who physically resembled my lost love, Denise was the one who most sounded like the wildcat who had stolen my heart years ago, adding another important piece to the puzzle with which I was fooling myself. But the blood was always a giveaway. No one tasted like Bryn. No one I had found yet, at least. I supposed I would keep searching as there was no other option.

  It is something that always seems to surprise mortals, but to a vampire, blood is blood. There is no gourmet selection, no hemoglobin-friendly wine list, no vampires saying, ‘Do you have the AB negative? The ’53 I think’. Such does not happen. I am afraid you all taste quite the same to us.

  Except for Bryn.

  Perhaps it was owing to the fact that she was an Elemental—though I had sampled others of her kind and found them to be nothing special. Perhaps it was simply because I loved her and the exquisite taste of her blood was all in my head. No, such could not be the case because her blood had also allowed me to go about in the daylight. Whatever the reason, the realization remained the same—no woman could compare to Bryn. Try though I did to find one who could.

  I should, at this point, stress that, for all this talk of ‘lost loves’ and so on, my hellion was not dead. She was very much alive. But, quite unfortunately, I was dead to her. Of course, to be tiresomely literal, as a vampire I am always dead, not only to her but to everyone. But such is not what I meant. I meant the phrase in a much more metaphorical sense. I was dead and I was dead to her.

  Bryn and I had parted company some ten years ago. Her choice, not mine.

  I pulled back from the woman’s throat, licking my lips clean of her blood.

  “You don’t have to stop, Sinjin.” Some humans have a positive fetish for being drunk by vampires. It can be very unhealthy for them (in fact fatal) and it requires a certain amount of self-control on the part of the vampire.

  “No. I do not want to hurt you, Bryn.” The word was out of my mouth before I could stop myself.

  “Denise,” she corrected me.

  “Of course. My apologies.” I got up from the couch on which we had been lying together, turning away from her, not wanting her to see the sadness in my eyes. Or the weakness.

  “You can call me Bryn if you want.”

  “That would be ridiculous, would it not?”

  “You can call me anything you like.”

  I turned back to find that she had, with impressive swiftness, disrobed and now stood naked before me. No wonder I had lighted on this young woman. She really did look like Bryn; the honey brown hair; big blue eyes; athletic, honed body. Well, she was almost like Bryn, but not quite.

  “You can have me, if you want.”

  I nodded. “That is accurate.”

  It was sweet of her to offer, but having drunk her blood, I could now exercise some control over her, and she would do as I asked. If I were to ask. But, I would not.

  I will not say the thought did not cross my mind. Vampire I may be, but I was still a man, and standing before me was the most desirable woman I had ever seen. More accurately; standing before me was a facsimile of the most desirable woman I had ever seen. This Denise looked like Bryn, sounded like Bryn, for all I knew she would make love like Bryn. But she was not Bryn.

  “Get dressed.”

  There had been no one since Bryn. Not for ten years now. For a vampire, ten years can seem like the blinking of an eye, but let me assure you that, vampire or not, ten years without sex, without love, does not seem like the blinking of an eye. So many times I had gone out with the express intention of picking up a woman and sc
rewing her brains out—such would not be difficult; I was unnecessarily handsome, charming, charismatic, physically superb and stallion-like where it counted. So many times I had considered taking the next logical step with one of the parade of Bryn-a-likes I had found in the last decade. Most, like Denise, had made their own feelings on the subject clear. I wanted to (part of me really wanted to), but something always held me back.

  It was foolish. It was not as if Bryn was living in austere celibacy (the thought of her with another man made red rage flash through my mind), but I could not see myself with a woman other than my tempest. Even in her absence she had gelded me.

  But I could have it no other way for the truth was that from the moment Bryn and I had come together, there was no other woman for me. And that had not changed just because we had parted.

  I would drink from other women—yes. Such was a necessity for a vampire, but drinking blood for my survival was as far as I would go.

  In this self-restraint, I was very much at odds to my surroundings. As Denise and I left my state room and walked through the corridors of the cruise ship, I could not help being aware of the suffusion of sexual activity all around.

  Vampire senses are particularly potent and I could hear, through the cabin doors, the rhythmic breathing, the moaned names, the growls and grunts of lust and the fierce smack of flesh on flesh. In fact, because there was little around here in the way of propriety, I also caught sight, through open doors, of writhing bodies, each room seeming to detail a different page of the Kama Sutra; one on one, one on two, two on one; three, four, five to a bed. One room seemed to have an open-door policy; join in if you happened to be passing.

  Such sexual promiscuity was not confined to the rooms; we passed a couple who had apparently been too impatient to find a bed and decided the wall would suffice, while a couch in one of the lounges was hosting a tangled three-way. The air was thick with the smell of sex; the scent of pheromones blended with sweat and massage oil. You could taste the arousal in the back of your throat. With me going through the longest period of abstinence in my adult life, it was a miracle I did not burst. Instead, I quite wanted to weep.