“When? Now?” The sooner I could save Anna, the better. Truth be told, I didn’t know how I’d protect her from another attack, or how I’d keep her fed. But wherever she was now … the images from Mr. November’s walls were burned into my brain. No one should be left there, wherever there happened to be.
“It will take some time. One person’s pain is not very distinct from another’s. We think you might understand.”
I nodded. Everyone at the hospital wanted to think that their case was special, and if you were a good nurse, you helped them keep that illusion alive. Knowing that someone down the hall had it worse than you never stopped your own paper cut from hurting, at least not until they came in and bludgeoned you senseless with their amputated leg.
“We are not typically surface creatures, and we cannot come out in bright light,” the Shadow continued. Five dark columns rose out of the fluid on the floor. It moved its bulk across the floor toward these columns as it went on. “Thus our ability to interact with the outside world is limited, and there have been recent inconsistencies in our map.”
“So?”
“Certain areas have gone dark to us. Someone is siphoning away our rightful pain.” The Shadow gestured toward the few thin plateaus of black. “We cannot point to a simple area and say this represents a certain region above without aid. And even then, when many things are happening, triangulation can become difficult.”
“Is it possible that everyone in those places are just happy?” I couldn’t think of any place in the County where that would actually happen, but who knew?
“It is highly unlikely. We feed off happiness too—it just never lasts as long as pain.”
“Great.” I pursed my lips. “So you currently have a lack of information? From somewhere above?” I asked, gesturing grandly up toward the rock ceiling.
“Yes. Which, given our rights to all free energies within this County’s lines, should be impossible.”
In its creepy multivoice, I could hear a thousand different kinds of frustration.
“So everyone inside these five areas is either dead or—”
“Blocked from us, in breach of our contract with the Consortium. And we do not know where the perpetrators physically are. We cannot sense the absence of something.” The Shadow multivoice narrowed down to one distinct voice that was somehow worse than all the rest. “We have an ancient contract. We cannot be denied,” it hissed.
I did not ever want to meet that voice in a dark alley. “But what can I do? I’m only me.”
“Rest assured we have other pieces of meat performing surveillance,” the Shadow’s other voices returned. “We have learned, however, that having minions capable of independent thought is sometimes useful too.”
I snorted.
“Do you have something that you can keep on you at all times?” the Shadow continued, beginning to swirl near.
I looked down at myself. I took everything off for work—no earrings or necklaces, and I’d never worn any rings. “This is it,” I said, holding up my badge, which still held a faint orange glow of its own.
“Give it here.”
I unlooped the lanyard from around my neck and handed it over carefully, so as not to touch the Shadow. My badge already had some qualities imbued by Y4’s mysterious nursing office, prior to being assigned to me. My employee number was only on the back with label tape, and my name was just written on the front. It didn’t even have my photo on it.
The creature took my badge and enveloped it entirely into its black, lanyard and all. Then it extruded my badge again through the other side, and passed it back toward me. I grabbed it as carefully as I’d handed it over.
“If you wear this, we will see through your eyes,” the Shadow said, as I looped the lanyard around my neck again. “Skin contact is best.”
“I bet.” I left the badge on the outside of my scrubs. Behind me, the elevator doors made their opening ding.
“Never take it off,” the Shadow continued.
“Fine.” The elevator’s light outlined the Shadow like an eclipse. It melted into the ground, making a minature tsunami on the floor.
I couldn’t wait to leave—and I also remembered my lawyer appointment that I was now becoming late for. Surviving just today wasn’t enough, not when there was the tribunal in three days. “How will you let me know when you’ve found her?”
“When we know, you will know as well.”
The Shadow was gone, so I addressed the ground. “And when do I start looking for you?”
“Now.” Its voice was a faint echo, the rind of a distant, aged fear.
I shook my head. “That’s not what I—” I began, but I closed my mouth. Whatever. I began shuffling my way back toward the elevator, watching the patterns on the floor ripple as I did so. Did I have any control over the pains of the outside world from here? I hoped not. I took three big steps and made it into the elevator, never so happy to smell were piss in my entire life. As the doors began to close, I thought of one more question I had to ask.
“Hey!” I shouted, cupping my hand against one door to keep it open. This time it held. “Why didn’t you erase Shawn’s memory all the way? That night in pediatrics, with the dragon?”
“And miss a chance to feed on all of his delicious subsequent fear?” asked the Shadows’ voice, in return.
I couldn’t see the creature out there anymore—but I could hear its refracted and reflected mirth, resonating up from whatever fragments of humanity it currently had hold of. I stepped back, revolted, and let the doors slide shut in front of me.
Chapter Thirty-Two
The elevator rose the requisite forty seconds and then released me into the hallway that it joined. I walked quickly, down the hall and up the stairs, until I reached a room with windows. Dawn, even murky cloud-covered dawn, had never looked so good. But sunlight—shit. I glanced at my watch and sprinted for my car.
Traffic was light driving uptown. People from uptown drove downtown to work, or took trains, or had drivers drop them off. People from downtown didn’t go up so much, unless they were washing other people’s dishes, or mowing lawns—but there wasn’t so much mowing now, in winter.
I stopped at the address the lawyer had given me, a small business park where all the building’s windows were covered in heavily tinted glass. I parked in a spot near a double-parked Jag and gave serious thought to keying his car on principle, before going up to the set of equally tinted glass doors.
I double-checked the address I’d written down, noted that I was thirty minutes late, and tried the door.
It was locked.
“Hello?” I pushed and pulled the simple loop of steel, not so much as rattling the door in its daylight-proof frame. I beat it with the palm of my hand. “Hello?”
Nothing. I looked at my reflection—a little blurry from where my hand had left a smudge print. My ponytail was spiky, there were circles beneath both eyes, and I still had more than just a whiff of were piss about me. Not that I could see that in my reflection, but I could maybe understand why a place like this was also not a place for me.
But on the phone he’d said he’d help. “Come on!” I kicked the bottom of the door with the toe of my shoe.
As this felt particularly satisfying, I was preparing to do it again, when—the door opened inward, slowly. I quickly made to stand on my own two feet and look innocent of any crimes.
“We feared you were not coming, Miss Spence,” said a sensuous female voice.
“I got held up at work. I’m sorry,” I told the darkness in front of me.
As the door’s gap widened, I took a step inside. I could see who was holding the door now, and she was beautiful.
I didn’t excel at being a girl. I could fake it for a night out—I could buy the right clothes, strap up the right
