Secondhand Shadow

CHAPTER 1ELEVATOR GHOSTS NAOMI “…hardly the Dread Pirate Roberts, Dad. Can you really see him ripping someone’s throat out with his teeth?” I froze outside my English professor’s office door, and decided I did not want to interrupt that conversation. My hand didn’t get the memo and knocked anyway. I snatched it back and bit it, but it was too late. From inside came silence, then Dr. DiNovi’s voice. “Come in.” I debated running away instead. Or waddling away, since the U.S.S. Third Trimester wasn’t achieving warp speed anytime soon. But I opened the door. We all do dumb things. Dr. DiNovi was sitting at his desk in a perfectly normal way, which was all wrong. Dr. DiNovi was a feet-on-the-desk, head-in-the-clouds kind of guy, not a feet-on-the-floor, head-in-his-hands kind of guy. I’d never seen his bald spot before, peeking out of dark hair like a moon on a cloudy night. Maybe he grew the beard to compensate for the bald spot. He looks good with the beard, in a professorial kind of way. The other guy in the room did not look professorial. He looked grim and dark and scruffy and altogether Strider-like. All he needed was a cloak. The leather jacket, I decided, was a satisfactory modernization. Of course, if he was Strider, I was apparently a Ringwraith, because he was looking at me like he couldn’t decide whether to run away or run me through. I fully expected him to snarl. “Ah, Naomi,” Dr. DiNovi said. “Come to throw your term paper on my tender mercies?” His voice was casual and cheerful and did not match the way he kept glancing from me to Strider. “Yes, sir.” It was hard to look away from Strider, but easier than continuing to look at him. He reminded me of a firework my grandfather lit once, that sizzled and smoked and then went quiet—just before blowing up in his face and burning his beard off. So talk quick and get out of here before he explodes. “I need an extension, sir. Please.” Dr. DiNovi was not famous for cutting anyone a break on deadlines. I had marshalled all kinds of arguments to cover the fact that I flat forgot about my term paper. I could not remember any of them now. Please, sir, I’m very pregnant. I cry easily, and if you make pregnant women cry you go to hell. I’d hate to see that happen to you, sir. Dr. DiNovi gestured at Strider. “I don’t know if you’ve met my son, Ga—” “Damon.” His voice was rough, as if he’d been screaming. Without meaning to, I looked back toward him, and he flinched. So did I. He seemed to burn my retinas. “Damon,” Dr. DiNovi continued, “this is one of my Brit Lit students, Naomi Winters.” “Naomi,” he repeated, his voice even more choked, as if my name were razors in his mouth. He glanced at his father. “I have to go.” I was still standing more or less in the doorway. I tried to dodge him, and he tried to dodge me, and my shoulder bounced off his. He hissed—seriously, hissed, a sort of gasp between clenched teeth—and was out the door and gone. I bit my lip and glanced at Dr. DiNovi, my cheeks going hot even though I hadn’t done anything. That’s why I always got in trouble when my little brother broke something. “Guilty” is my default expression. Dr. DiNovi was not looking at me, but at the doorway his son had disappeared through. He looked happy as a clam, by which I mean confused and worried. That’s how I’d feel if I was a wad of snot living in a seashell. “Sorry,” he said after a second. “About Damon. He’s had a rough…” He looked at me as if I’d turned to blinking neon. “Oh. Oh. I guess that might explain it. Red hair, blue eyes… hmm.” “Sir?” “I’m sorry to cut our conversation short, Naomi, but I need to talk to my son.” “But—my paper—” “Yes, of course. I understand your situation. Just try to have it in by Monday.” He stepped out the door, hardly waiting to see if I followed, locked it behind us, and headed for the stairs. “Have a nice afternoon, Naomi!” So, aside from Weirdos from Middle Earth, I guess my day is looking up. I had gotten an extension out of King Deadline, meaning I had five nights, rather than two, to cook up a twelve-page term paper. I squinched my eyes and tried to remember what topic I had decided on, after my initial proposal—the role of dogs in Rebecca and Pride and Prejudice—was rejected on the basis of there being no dogs in Pride and Prejudice, though I distinctly remember a Harlequin Great Dane in the miniseries version. Beautiful dog. My second proposal was something else with Rebecca and Jane Austen… I unsquinched my eyes as it dawned on me that I was not alone in the corridor. Except I was. Nobody in sight. “Well,” I murmured as I rubbed the top of my Wonder Tummy, “one advantage of pregnancy is that you’re never quite alone. Not that you’re much of a conversationalist.” He turned under my hand. Or she, who knew? Could it be the baby that Strider—Damon—had reacted to so strongly? Plenty of people still disapproved of unwed pregnancy here in Ilium, Alabama, never mind that I was wed when Wonder Tummy began. But I was twenty-two, for crying out loud, not exactly a teenybopper; there was no reason to assume I was unwed. Besides, such disapprovers were usually fifty or above. Seemed odd that a guy my own age, whose father had no problem with me, would treat the tummy like a Black Plague pustule. But if it wasn’t the baby, then what? Dr. DiNovi had said something about my hair and eyes. I turned around to look at myself in the window of Dr. DiNovi’s door. He had it covered over with clipped-out comic strips, and my reflection was a thin layer over Garfield, Snoopy, and Hobbes. Red hair, long and windblown, hanging in my face. Blue eyes. No make-up. Baggy gray sweater flopping down over my hands. Third Trimester had killed my wardrobe, but I couldn’t believe that would make anyone hiss at me. Whatever. I had to walk home and change into my uniform before work. If I left now, I could take my time and get there late enough that I’d have to hurry to work. If I put it off, I’d walk fast and get home early, which meant facing the mountain of dishes in the sink. I started down the hallway toward the elevator. Dr. DiNovi’s office was on the third floor, and I’d taken the stairs to avoid the English building elevator, known affectionately as the Tomb of the Unknown Student. My first day at Ilium U, I’d heard the story of the murdered student in the elevator shaft whose vengeful ghost liked to trap people in the elevator. I had a nightmare about it that night, and had avoided the blasted elevator for weeks afterward, before… Tyler convinced me to get on it with him. Ow. The only thing worse than reminding myself of bad times with Tyler was reminding myself of good times with Tyler. The elevator had been a good time. We rode up, we rode down, we rode up, we rode down. We heard later that it got stuck minutes after we left. All right, Elevator Ghosts of Various Metaphorical Layers. Me and Wonder Tummy have had enough stairs for today. Make way. I marched—waddle-marched—down the hall, pushed the Down button, and stepped into the Tomb. I jumped when a hand shot between the silver doors just as they slid closed. They popped back open, and Dr. DiNovi’s son stepped through. GodpleaseforgivemeformysinsIthinkI’mabouttobemurdered. He didn’t jump at me with a knife. He didn’t even snarl. He just stared at me as the doors closed again. I felt my face heating up, but I set my teeth and stared back. I was in the stupid elevator first. This was my turf. He didn’t look so very Strider-like after all, I decided. No stubble, and his face was too narrow. He had the hair, dark and tangled and hanging past his chin. But his eyes were green as a cat’s and sharp as claws. Again I had the sensation that they might burn me. “So, who do I look like?” I asked. He jumped, as if he hadn’t expected me to have the power of speech. “What?” “Either I look like someone you never wanted to see again, or I smell bad. Since you got in an elevator with me, I’m going with Option A.” He continued staring a moment, then opened his mouth to speak. And the elevator shuddered to a halt. No. I closed my eyes. No, this cannot be. These things don’t really happen. I leaned my head back against the wall with a thunk. Then, to my own dismay, I started to laugh. “I’m sorry,” I gasped when I saw Damon’s stare turn from mysterious to confused. “It’s just such a cliché. The pregnant lady trapped in the elevator. If I give birth in an elevator—” Confusion became alarm. “Oh, no, I’m fine,” I said quickly. “Still two months to go, thank goodness. It’s just the idea.” I was able to stop laughing after a minute, because it stopped being funny. There was a help button in the wall, which I would be calm enough to push, eventually. But it could be hours before we got out of here. Hours during which I was supposed to be at work. I fumbled my cell phone out of my book bag. No signal. Damon began to pace, which was a nice trick in an elevator that size, especially when he refused to come anywhere close to me. Yeah, well, I wouldn’t touch you with a thirty-nine-and-a-half-foot pole, either. “I can’t be here,” he muttered under his breath, and ran a hand through his hair, which very unexpectedly made my breath catch. So I have a thing for long-haired guys. Why else would I have the Lord of the Rings movies memorized? “Hit the help button,” I said. It was on his side. He paused, looked at the button a moment, then resumed pacing. “You should do it.” Bossy much? I considered suggesting an anatomically unlikely new location for the help button, but then I remembered that just because he hadn’t pulled a knife on me yet didn’t mean he wouldn’t. I stepped toward the help button, wondering what he’d do when I crossed the orbit of his pacing. What he did was stop dead with a sharp breath, back up against the wall, and close his eyes. For the first time, I was truly afraid to turn my back on him. I froze, not breathing, and waited. He kept his eyes closed, breath coming faster, hands half-raised as if to ward me off. They were shaking. Seconds passed. A minute. Maybe more. My fear began to ebb, just a bit, to make room for pity. He was in pain. I had no idea why or how, or what I could do to help, but surely I ought to try. “Damon?” The word was tiny and feather-edged, but it broke something. Suddenly I was pinned between him and the wall, my upraised hands trapped against his chest, too stunned to push him away. “I won’t hurt you,” he said, pressing his face into my hair. “I won’t hurt you. I hate you too much to ever hurt you. I’m sorry.” I felt a hand against my cheek. And I was alone in the elevator. DAMON I wasn’t sure what state the cemetery was located in. I’d seen it in a magazine years ago, alongside an article I couldn’t remember. What mattered was that it was neat and quiet, with nobody—no living body—for miles. And that I didn’t know a single person buried there. I sank to the ground beneath the magnolia whose shadow I’d borrowed to escape the elevator. Before me stretched a carpet of grass and stone, silent in the sunlight, welcoming in its calm, indifferent way. I wanted to walk to the nearest grave, lie down in it, and never get up. I hadn’t been seriously suicidal in over a decade, but I would never have let my father persuade me to live if I had, for one second, thought this could happen. Orphan. Vampire. Kathair. Abomination. What I was had many names, among my people. Some names were given by those who feared and hated us, some by those who loved us still. All pitied us, if only distantly. Because our wounds could never heal. There was no hope for us. Only pain, blood, and eventually oblivion. No grave for me and mine, only a handful of dust and a sigh of relief to scatter it.