Breaking Away (The Man in the Shadows) (4 page)

Tenderly, he took in the vision of her, sleeping, in the void between his world and the human world. He had to leave her be for now. He should not have come to her tonight, revealing his secret. If the High Lords found out, he could be severely reprimanded. Nevertheless, he had seen her so hurt, crying, confused, that he couldn’t help himself, and came running to her aid. He had figured that the mere sight of him would calm her, help her forget about her problems, be happy. And it worked. But now, regrettably, he had to leave her, suppress her memory of the events that had taken place between them... besides one minute detail. He ran his hand down her face, down her neck. He leaned in close and whispered intensely, “Wake up now, Maika.”

Her eyes opened energetically. Her heart pounded in her chest, in her head. Now at home, in bed, she bolted up, as if shocked to life, and breathed, “Of all the wonderment in the world... Him.”

***

Overhead, stars twinkled, unknowingly littering the black sky with shining sprinkles, winking at the earth, flirting before running off and hiding behind the sun. Ethan stood with his arms crossed, trying to count them. Shivering slightly from the cold October wind, he starting to tap his foot, impatient.
Where in the world is Maika?
he wondered.
She wouldn’t run off with a stranger... Would she? She was pretty drunk!
The truth dawning on him, he tore his eyes from the sky and leveled out his gaze again, looking at the deserted street. Pivoting his head, he looked north down one side of the street, then south down the other. No one.
What if someone took her? Took advantage of her? What if she’s hurt?

He started towards the door of the building, and ran into the god-like bouncer. “Bruce!” Ethan shrieked, half out of surprise, half out of desperation. “Bruce... Have you seen the girl I came in with? Short, long black hair, corduroy jacket?”

Bruce scowled for a moment, then returned with, “I haven’t seen her for awhile, Brother. I have seen her jacket, though.”

A jolt rocked Ethan’s body. He almost shouted, “
Just
her jacket?”

“Yeah, man,” the large man answered. “It’s right down the stairs, in the club.” He added with a hint of loathing, “It’s on the back of that vomit colored couch.”

Ethan patted him on the back in thanks, and barreled into the building, hustling down the staircase, skipping every other stair. When he arrived on the bottom floor, the place was entirely empty. Made sense, closing time was at two in the morning, and it was 2:15am. Apparently, everyone takes ‘You don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here’ very seriously.

Heart sinking, aching, he grabbed Maika’s jacket in his hands, and he began to twist the fabric unconsciously as his fingers curled into fists. How could he leave her alone with hundreds of strangers?
How could you??
his mind growled.

Taking his cell phone out of his front pocket, he flipped it open and pressed the number two, Maika’s speed dial number. Scared for her safety, furious at himself, it seemed ages before the call even connected, and a millennium before the ringing turned into her voicemail message. “You’ve reached Maika!” Her voice sounded like an angel. “If you don’t leave a message, I refuse to call you back!” BEEP.

“Maika!” Ethan cried. “It’s me. Please, it’s very important that you call me back. I’m afraid I’ve lost you... Call me, Darling.”

He flipped his phone shut with a
clap
and shoved it back in his jeans pocket. What now? He had driven them there, so it’s not like she could have driven herself home. “ARGH!” he wailed, distraught. He had walked away from his best friend, his confidant, the person closest to him, the one person on the entire planet he felt magnetized towards, and for what? Because she kissed him. He reacted like it had been a crime. An action of love, repaid with an action of hate.

Snapping his fingers, the club vanished, leaving him in an empty, silent warehouse.

Chapter Two

His job was simple. Guide her to and through a nice, normal life in the human world. Along the way, be creative in slipping her hints about her original existence. Subliminal messages, if you will. Whisper to her, make her believe she has a higher calling. Crawl in her brain, implant a doubt in the meaning of her life. Lead her to the one soul on earth who could be a true friend: Ethan.

He had found out about Ethan by some sort of fluke. For a decade and a half, he was led to believe that Maika was the only one of her kind, the only one in this specific predicament. One day, while he was watching over her in junior high, his eye was caught by a bright, purple glow. He saw auras all the time, they radiated from people with exquisitely good souls, from those who were special, and from those with the capacity, hidden or not, to change the world, for good or ill. Typically these auras were soft, subtle, like headlights in a fog. Not Ethan. As Ethan drew nearer, the glow became hard to bare. He’s one of
them
.

Ethan’s glow matched Maika’s both in intensity and color. Shocked, he had seen nothing like it before. Hence, he used a pinch of his majestic wizardry to throw them together so Maika would have a friend. The other kids always seemed to stay away from Maika, as if she were a poisonous flower, beautiful yet deadly, so he figured he could get away with using his magic to intervene and snag her a pal. He realized too late that his magic spell was taken literally by the powers that be, and Ethan was made to trip on his shoe lace, and fall directly into Maika. Thusly, he was thrown into her.

Keep in mind, this pairing took place in the lunch room, in a junior high school. During that delicate time in a young person’s life that is the most impressionable, the most emotional, the most vulnerable, the most embarrassing. When Ethan tripped and ran into Maika, she was holding a tray full of food, as she was walking to her normal table in the corner. Hitting her at full force, he knocked her food to the ground, and at the same time, all down the front of her brand new sweater.

Mortified, she froze, looking down at her clothes, her breath instantly taken from her lungs. She was already the most unpopular, nerdy girl in school, now this was just more fuel to add on to the relentless teasing fire. She slowly looked up, rage etched on her face, splatters of spaghetti sauce in her hair. Her mouth moved up and down, but she couldn’t utter a single word, her fiery robbed her of speech.

Ethan, the new kid at school, hadn’t yet made a reputation for himself with his new classmates. This one blunder was all he needed to be considered one of the cool kids, a bully. Yet it was just that: a blunder. It tore him apart to think that he’d be labeled a hard-ass. No ill will had been aimed at Maika. He was fashion savvy, his long hair styled like Elvis, destined to be correlated with coolness. His face turned bright red, as he stuttered, “I... I... I’m so...”

Maika’s fury turned to embarrassment, and tears burned her eyes. She burst out crying and ran from the cafeteria, spaghetti sauce dripping from her, the sound of the school’s collective laughter followed her down the hallway like a predator. Retreating to the band room, which was empty during lunch, she slumped in a corner behind the risers, and cried into her folded arms, which were balanced on the tops of her bent knees.

Running out of tears, she rubbed her face dry on her shirt sleeves, careful not to smear the spaghetti sauce any further.
I can never catch a break, can I?
she thought.
What is so wrong with me that I can’t even make one friend?
Standing up quickly, she took off her spaghetti soaked sweater and threw it aside. Luckily, she was wearing a tank top under her sweater, so she wouldn’t have to walk around wearing a cold, clammy, stained, smelly sweater for the rest of the day. As she stood there, contemplating her next move, a voice startled her.

“I’m sorry.”

She screamed in surprise and snapped her head towards the entrance to the band room. There stood the boy who had made a fool of her at lunch. Fury filled her eyes again, and she said, sarcastically, “Oh, boy. Just the person I wanted to see.”

“Look, I didn’t mean to do that to you. I stepped on my shoe lace and lost my footing...”
“Excuses, excuses,” Maika cut in, rolling her eyes. “You made a fool of me! What gives you the right to waltz into my school and dump food on my favorite sweater? In front of the entire school?”

He looked down, defeated. “I’m so sorry for making a fool of you. I really didn’t mean to. Can you believe me?”

Gritting her teeth, her jaw tight, she let her anger go for a second so she could genuinely observe this new kid. Her muscles relaxed, her hands unclenching, her jaw relaxing. Tall, cute... and something more. She sensed he was literally telling her the truth. She didn’t know how she knew, but she knew. Pushing her anger down and away, she shyly smiled at him. “Yes. I can.”

Ethan let out the breath he was holding and grinned. He thought he had just earned himself an enemy, but it seemed as if he might have made his first friend. Walking a few steps closer, he thrust out his hand a bit timidly, but it was the most genuine gesture he’d ever offered someone. Especially a girl. “Ethan.”

Maika stepped closer to him, and put her hand in his like a business deal was being agreed upon, and shook it hard and firm. “Maika.”

Disaster averted, the man in the shadows sighed, content, yet not. If his commanding officers, or the High Lord himself, were to find out that he had used his power to control a human, and in the process make Maika’s life
worse
rather than better, it would have literally been his head served on a silver platter. The closest thing to someone in
his
world was Ethan, and now Maika could be friends with him. Her kin, although she (and Ethan, for that matter) did not know it.

Maika had, from the day she met Ethan all those years ago, felt close to him, but she was never able to put a finger on why. The man in the shadows knew why, but she’d find out eventually, when she hit the correct maturation, and the universe itself gave her soul the key to the door. Souls mature, and only by reaching this maturation would a soul be able to handle a paradigm shift of that magnitude; it is a great responsibility, one the man in the shadow’s tried not to dwell on. For now, on Earth, she would be happy with her friend. Her kindred spirit.

In his world, the man in the shadows was considered a hero. He had volunteered to sacrifice his life for the soul that got away. The one and only soul that had flown into another world, letting the door close behind it, risking being lost forever. This soul had made its home in Maika, and this was why her life must be preserved at all costs; his world required the return of this delicate soul.

He could not, however, forcibly take her back. He was unable to put a spell on her and carry her back to the door and through it, back to his world. A soul can only open the door with its own power, with its own desire. She, in essence, will become her own key to the door that lead back to his world when she turned 25; a switch will flip within her mind, and she’ll remember her past. But her soul would not be ripe for another twelve years from that moment in junior high when she met Ethan. Such a long time to wait, but the man in the shadows found living on Earth, and being a phantom guardian, a very intriguing, yet desperately lonely, endeavor.

Sometimes, in the night, as he sat stagnant and lonesome in the shadows, concealed by the darkness and by the strictest of military orders, he would whisper to her, saying her name kindly, or reassuring her that all is well in her life when she worried. Sometimes, temptation getting the best of him, he’d whisper to her that he was real, that the whispers she heard came from an actual person, and she’d wake up thinking it had all been a dream. He’d sing to her of true love, of longing, and sometimes he’d sing to her songs from his native land, from
her
native land, though this was of course highly discouraged by the High Lords. It seemed everything was discouraged by the High Lords. One song in particular that he loved to sing to her quietly subtly told of his dark plight. One line specifically struck a chord with him, one that posed a question which he could never quite answer: ‘What should I do with all this time?’ With the years of silence, he would love her like no one else could.

When Maika’s father died suddenly, all of the delicate trickery the man in the shadows could muster wouldn’t even begin to help her cope with the degree of her loss. The grief was so real, so palpable, that he
had
to figure out a way to help her. He was so connected to her, he could feel -intensely- the pain she was feeling. It wasn’t even a question of ‘if,’ it was a question of ‘how’ he could possibly help.

The way of his people, of
their
people, was that of souls. Of spirits, it was how his world ticked, how each person in the Empire worked together in harmony and loved each other without question. They talked to souls, recovered souls, infused souls, freed souls. Every single soul had a job to do and every single soul was important. Thus, protecting Maika’s soul was of the utmost importance.

The man in the shadows felt that his quest to bring joy to Maika in her most dire time of need was important enough to tear his watchful gaze from her for a few days. Traveling distantly and secretly he cashed in all the favors that he was able (being stuck in another world and all), and faster than he had dreamt possible he found her father’s soul in the spirit world, newly arrived and scared. The man in the shadows rushed to him, and explained to him how Maika was handling the loss, and he asked her father a favor.