Broken Shadows (11 page)

“What the—”

I smashed the bottle over his head.

He staggered, but he didn’t fall. Blood, bourbon and broken glass rained down around him. He looked right at me.

I acted on instinct and went for his hands. He was too shocked—or maybe too dazed—to respond at first when I grabbed them, pressing my thumbs into his palms. After spending weeks wishing my new gift would disappear, for once, I was grateful for it. All my practice sessions with Paulie paid off when it kicked into high gear.

The heat was so intense, I nearly jerked away. It took less than ten seconds before it faded, and I knew, somehow, that I’d neutralized him. He took another staggering step, cocked his head at me, and went down like a tree in a hurricane.

“Oh my God.” I hadn’t meant to hurt him—just ground his powers. I dropped to my knees and felt the back of his head. There was a lump, and blood. I moved my hands to his neck, looking for a pulse.

“He’s all right,” Simon said, pulling me away. “It was me. I knocked him out.”

“Oh, thank God.” Relief washed through me like cool water. I sat down hard on the floor. My pulse was still pounding from the energy I’d stolen, and my hands were shaking. I wasn’t used to taking on power with this speed—and this intensity. Whoever this guy was, he had more power than Paulie.

“Dissipate it,” Simon said. “Hurry—before you lose control.”

The thought only made me panic more. I looked around for something to touch—the wall, the shelving, something.

“Breathe, breathe.” Simon knelt in front of me. “You can do this. Remember? Look at me.”

I did as he said. He took my hands and placed them flat against the floor, then covered them with his own.

“Let it go. On three. Just let it all go. One, two, three.”

He lifted his hands from mine on
three,
and I exhaled as I willed every mote of alien energy out of my body. The concrete heated, and a tiny fissure opened up where the hot spot ended.

“Oh no!”

“This place has seen worse. Earthquake country, remember?” He stood, pulling me with him. “Are you okay?”

“I think so.” His attacker was still motionless on the floor. “Who is he?”

“A junkie after our cash.” Simon gave the guy a poisonous look. “Doesn’t happen often, but this isn’t the first time. One of the hazards of a cash-only operation.”

“A shadowmind junkie.” Probably a lot more dangerous than the garden variety. “Are you okay? Did he hurt you?”

He laughed. “Well, I could use some of that bourbon. Did you have to use the top-shelf stuff?”

* * *

Jackson was not pleased.

“What were you thinking, attacking him bare-handed like that?”

“Look, I didn’t know what to do, okay? There was no time.”

“You should have called me. You could have been killed.”

“Well, I wasn’t.”

He’d shown up with his father within minutes of my call. They’d brought specially designed converter-proof handcuffs—no lock, just soldered closed—and a syringe full of sedatives. I was pretty sure I’d absorbed most of the guy’s power, but Jackson wasn’t taking any chances. The guy was so deeply asleep, he didn’t even wake when James and Simon hoisted him up with telekinesis and floated him through the back door.

Jackson watched them go, gave a frustrated sigh and ran his hand through his hair. “Any idea who he is? Name, anything?”

I shook my head. “Simon said he’s just some junkie.”

“Do you think he knows what you can do?”

“Probably not. I think Simon knocked him out before he had the chance to put it together.”

“Well, that’s something to be grateful for. I can drive you home, if you want.”

“My shift starts in a few minutes.”

He looked as though he was going to protest, but before he could speak, Simon came in from the back.

“He’s secured. I called Sebastian—he said he’ll question him in the morning.”

“Sounds fine.” Jackson was still looking at me.

“Well.” Simon turned to me. “You still up for working a shift? Malik has the night off, something about exams. I can manage on my own if you need to take off—I get it.”

“I’m fine,” I said. “Totally fine.”

Simon nodded and flipped the light for the neon sparrow. He lit the candles himself in a surge of flame that made the whole place seem as if it was bathed in sunlight for half a second.

A few people came down right away, and Simon greeted them by name, pouring drinks without even taking their orders. Regulars. I hung back and did some leftover side work, replenishing cocktail napkins and coasters. To my surprise, Jackson hung around. He ordered a pint of stout, but he barely touched it, just stayed at the bar nursing it and fiddling with a coaster. His expression was stony.

“Did you want something?” I asked him. “You don’t need to hang around and be my bodyguard. I can take care of myself.”

“You’ve made that perfectly clear. I’m here to meet Bridget.”

I flushed, and his phone buzzed. He left without a word and came back a moment later with Bridget. Jackson grabbed his beer and they claimed a two-top in the far corner of the bar, heads bent close. Business started to pick up, and soon I was too busy making change and picking up dirty glasses to really watch them. Not that I wanted to watch them, obviously. But every time I looked over, Jackson was holding her hand or rubbing her shoulder, and she was gazing into his eyes like a teenager stares at a poster of a boy band.

She hadn’t mentioned anything about meeting him here while we’d been shopping. I frowned, wondering if she hadn’t wanted me to know. Did she think I was...interested in him? She couldn’t. It was ridiculous, and anyway, why should I care. Around ten I went into the back for a new bottle of vodka, and when I came back out, he was gone.

Things had slowed down, and I’d been on my feet for hours, so I took the chance to collapse on the ratty chair in the back and shovel down a granola bar. I could tell by the sound that things were still quiet out front, so I stretched and walked around the small space, enjoying the feeling of being alone for a few minutes. I couldn’t help thinking Simon could’ve spruced the place up a little. Even a poster on the concrete walls would’ve been an improvement. There were cracks running the full height of the wall, reminding me we were in earthquake country.

“Hey, Mina.” I turned around. It was Bridget.

I hastily swallowed my mouthful of granola. “Thought you guys left.”

“Jackson did. I was hoping to talk to you. Malik said you were looking for an apartment.”

“Yeah, I am. You know of something?”

“Well, maybe. My sister just bought a house in Noe Valley, and it’s got two units. Separate entry. She wants to convert it eventually, but they can’t afford it yet. She’s gone half the time for work, so she doesn’t like leaving it empty. She’d let you have it cheap if you water the plants and pick up the mail and stuff.” Bridget named a price that was well below the going rate for one-bedrooms.

I stared. “Are you serious?” Maybe she was trying to get me out of Jackson’s apartment, but I didn’t care. I was trying to get me out of Jackson’s apartment too.

“Well, yeah. She wants to rent it to a shadowmind so she doesn’t have to worry.”

“I’m not exactly a shadowmind.”

“Of course you are,” Bridget said. “So are you interested?”

“When can I see it?”

* * *

When I got back to Jackson’s condo, it was two o’clock in the morning. I expected him to be sleeping, but he wasn’t. He was sitting on the couch with an architectural model in front of him.

It was made out of tiny pieces of white cardboard, hundreds of perfectly cut strips forming a sprawling structure, some sort of house. I thought they were glued together, but as I watched, one wing broke off and shifted, angling with respect to the rest of the structure. Jackson leaned forward, focusing, his hands on his knees. The moving wing went still, and a section of roof broke off and floated into the air. I watched as the cardboard flexed, changing the pitch of the roof to make it shallower, then went back down to rest on the walls again.

“Whoa,” I said from the doorway.

Jackson jerked his head up, and the whole thing collapsed into a pile of paper cards.

“Oh no!” I ran forward and knelt in front of the table wanting to help, but I stopped when I realized there was nothing I could do. My hands hovered uselessly over the pile. “Shit! I’m so sorry.”

Jackson was chuckling. “It’s no big deal. I’m still working it out.”

“All that work!”

“It’s nothing. Watch.”

He held his hands out with his fingers gently spread. The cards started twitching, and a few of them righted themselves, making corners. More cards rose to meet them, making rooms, then ceilings, decks, fences. I wondered if he knew his fingers were flexing in the air. The house took shape again, and he laid down a narrow cardboard path on the coffee table, starting at the edge where he was sitting and leading to a wide-open front door. The whole thing took maybe five minutes.

“See? Easy.”

“Right.”

He let the pieces fall. “It’s not quite right yet.”

“What is it?” I shifted to sit cross-legged on the carpet, and Jackson leaned back on the couch.

“It’s a house. For Mr. Charles Jones in Katy, Texas.” He took a sip of the beer that was sitting next to him on the coffee table. It had clearly been there a while. Condensation was beaded on the glass and pooled on the table.

“I thought you designed warehouses.” I knew he was an architect at the same firm Cass had worked at when she’d lived out here.

“I do. This is sort of a side project.”

“That’s a lot of work for a side project.”

“Yeah, well, I have to do something else every now and then or I’ll go crazy.”

“So it’s not through your company?”

He shook his head. “I find people on my own. Word of mouth, mostly.” He twisted his lips in a sort of smile. “Don’t tell.”

“You’re secret’s safe with me.” I couldn’t help smiling back for a moment, but then I snapped out of it, looked away and cleared my throat. “So, have you designed anything around here?”

“Not in the city. Up in Walnut Creek, Orinda...the suburbs. Where there’s space.”

“You live in the wrong city.” I picked up one of the cardboard pieces. A wall?

He stared at his beer. “You may be right.” He sounded so thoughtful about it—and so sad—that I regretted the offhand comment.

“I’m sure you get to do cool stuff with your regular job, too, though, right?”

He let out a little laugh. “Not as much as you’d think. These days I’m mostly telling everybody else how big to make the warehouse. I don’t even get to design them.”

“One of the hazards of moving up in the world?”

“They didn’t tell me that part in the interview.” He gave a crooked smile, then scruffed his hair and stretched. “But what do I have to complain about, right?”

“I think everybody deserves to like what they do.”

“That’s optimistic of you.”

I shrugged. “Idealistic, maybe. But when I was working at the Center, it was great to see some of the musicians earn a living doing what they love. Maybe they weren’t...I don’t know...indie rock sensations or whatever, but it meant something to them to be able to introduce kids to music.” I was thinking of Avery, how she’d started out as a volunteer at the Center but moved up to full time staff once she’d realized how much she loved it. “I mean, if you hate it...”

“I don’t hate it,” he said quickly. “Not really.” I wasn’t sure I believed him, but I also wasn’t sure he wanted to talk about it. His eyes settled on the garment bag I’d draped over the arm of the couch. “What did you get?”

“Oh, right. Uh, Malik roped me into playing a gig with his band. I had to get something decent to wear.”

“When is it?”

“Tomorrow night at Henry’s. I’ll be on keyboard. Why?”

“I’d like to go.”

“Well, I’m not as good as I used to be, but the rest of them are decent. It shouldn’t be too bad.”

“I’ve seen Malik’s band before. They’re good.”

“You’ve seen Malik’s band?” I couldn’t hide my surprise. Jackson seemed more like the type to have tickets to the opera.

“A couple of times. But I like opera too.” He grinned at me.

“Hey!”

“Sorry. Couldn’t help it. You seemed so sure.”

“About what?”

“About me.”

Chapter Eleven

I went to see Bridget’s sister’s apartment the next morning.

The address was in a part of the city I hadn’t been to yet, southwest of the Mission. There was a Muni stop nearby, so I took the train and walked the rest of the way. It was hilly, and I was breathing hard by the time I’d gone more than a block. I ended up in front of the kind of house you see in magazines.

The front porch was covered in mosaic tiles, and every inch of the façade was decorated with intricate millwork: curling carved embellishments on the porch columns, gingerbread trim, wooden decals below the windows. The color scheme was all shades of green with deep gold accents. It should have been gaudy, but it wasn’t. It was beautiful. There was even a turret, a round little tower with a steeply pitched roof and windows all around. I stared up at it for a moment, sure I’d gotten the wrong address.

A curtain in the tower twitched aside, and Bridget waved down as if I were coming over for a birthday party. I waved back. A few minutes later, she opened the front door.

“Isn’t it beautiful?” she said, smiling.

“Yes,” I said, and meant it. “It really is.”

Inside, the walls were plaster. A chair rail ran up the staircase, and minutely detailed patterns were stamped into the plaster wall above it. At the top of the stairs was an old chandelier made of stained glass and lead piping.

“Yours is on the top floor,” Bridget said, leading me up. She took out an old-fashioned key and unlocked a heavy wooden door painted dark brown. It opened into a narrow hallway with a skylight, and I followed her through as she gave me a tour. There were wood floors throughout the apartment, and the same beautiful plasterwork on the walls. The unit included the turret room, which had windows on all sides and a view of the downtown skyline.

“Wow,” I said.

“I know.” Bridget joined me at the window. “Pretty awesome, right?”

The bathroom was tiny—it looked as though it had been added much later, crammed into a spare corner of the single bedroom. No bath, just a stand-up shower, a toilet and a sink so small it wouldn’t have held a teacup poodle. Not ideal, but it would do. The bedroom itself was large, and it connected to the turret room through a pair of glass-paned pocket doors.

The formal dining room had a wall of built-in cabinets with glass doors, probably all a hundred years old or more. The kitchen, on the other hand, looked as though it was from the seventies. The appliances were mustard orange, and the countertops were cheap yellow laminate. But the light was good, and there was plenty of cabinet space.

I’d been looking at apartment listings long enough to know what a place like this went for. Even with the outdated kitchen, it was underpriced.

“What’s the catch?” I said.

Bridget looked confused. “What do you mean?”

“She could get more than she’s asking in rent.”

Bridget shrugged. “She’s had some bad renters in the past. People who didn’t take care of her old place. I told her she could trust you.”

I was struck speechless for a moment, wondering when we’d arrived at this point. The point where she could trust me enough to tell her family they could do the same. A year in San Francisco, and I hadn’t gotten this far with anyone else except Avery.

“Thank you,” I said.

“Sure. So...will you take it?”

I had to laugh. “How could I not?”

* * *

That night, I brought the red silk dress and my heels on the Muni. I didn’t want to wear them and risk sitting in spilled coffee, or worse. I’d put on more makeup than usual, and I felt conspicuous and out of place on the train full of tourists and San Francisco office types. Simon was manning the bar alone tonight, and he’d grumbled good-naturedly about it. I hoped he wasn’t too slammed.

Malik and his girlfriend Sheree lived in a basement apartment underneath a Victorian duplex in one of the quiet, dead-end streets dotting the Castro. There was a truck parked out front, and Erica and Paulie were loading up the back. Paulie settled the amp he was carrying and sidled over to me.

“Mina, I was hoping—”

Malik came by and smacked him on the back of his head. “Leave her alone. She’s not your personal power vacuum. Besides, you can barely keep up as you are.”

Paulie mumbled something that might have been a threat or an apology as Malik disappeared into the house. I’d suspected he hadn’t told his bandmates about our arrangement, and I didn’t want to embarrass him now. I let it go.

“I gotta go change.” I didn’t like the way he was looking at me, as though he might make a grab for me.

The door to Malik’s place was open, leading right into the cramped living room. It was wall-to-wall books, and I couldn’t help stopping to look at the titles.
The Physician’s Desk Reference
must have been Sheree’s, but there was a whole wall of slim paperbacks with titles like
Green for Green: The Economics of Environmentally Sustainable Practices Among California Family Farms
. Malik’s public policy degree, I assumed. The opposite wall was taken up by his collection of guitars. He had an acoustic twelve string and a second electric bass, and, if I wasn’t mistaken, a vintage Epiphone Casino. My ex would’ve salivated on it. There was a keyboard and, to my total surprise, a cello. I’d known he was into music, but not how much.

The bathroom was cramped and littered with shaving accessories, hair products, ponytail holders and clips. Two people crammed into a space meant for one. I changed, doing my best not to knock anything over, and tried to recreate what Bridget had done with the ties on my dress. It came out pretty well.

Malik wolf-whistled at me when I walked out.

“Damn, girl. That’s some dress.”

I cocked a hip and spread my hands, posing. “You like?”

“Dee-licious. Turn around.”

I spun.

“Love it.”

“Bridget found it for me.”

“I bet she did.”

Paulie and Erica had gone ahead in Erica’s truck, so Malik gave me a ride in his Toyota hatchback. “You sure you won’t need a ride back after?” he asked as we drove downtown.

I shook my head. “Jackson said he’d meet me there. He’ll take me home.”

“Mmm,” Malik said.

“Not like that,” I said.

“Mmm,” he said again.

“Oh, shut up.”

Malik grinned. He parked next to a Dumpster behind the bar in a cramped excuse for a parking lot that reminded me of the Quarter. In the opposite corner, Paulie was pulling the amps out of the back of the truck.

“What can I carry?” I asked.

“Dressed like that? Nothing.” Malik smiled at me. “I’ll get your keyboard.”

I flinched at his use of “your.” It wasn’t my keyboard. Would never be my keyboard.
It is for tonight.

We warmed up in the empty club, lights still on and the waitstaff still trickling in. I was way more nervous than I should have been. I’d played clubs three times bigger, but I kept screwing up chords and missing my cues. Nobody said anything. After a few minutes, I relaxed, letting Erica’s flawless voice lead me, and my fingers slipped over the keys the way they were supposed to. Memory and instinct. She looked over her shoulder at me as she sang the last verse of “September Sun,” one of her sad, unrequited love songs, and it all came together, everything in harmony.

People started showing up not long after. The crowd in the bar was tiny, barely enough people to fill up the tables along the sides, much less pack the floor out front, but my palms were sweating as if it was my first gig. Malik squeezed my shoulder as I checked the keyboard one last time.

“All right, beautiful?”

“All right.”

Paulie counted us in with the sticks and I took a breath and dove into the first song.

It was incredible.

We were starting off with one of their up-tempo pieces, something to get the audience fired up and listening, but it didn’t matter. It didn’t matter that I felt more like crying than clapping. I poured all the anger and uncertainty I’d been feeling for the past six months onto the keys.

By the second set, people had left their tables to press against the stage. I breathed in the sweaty, beer-laden smell of it like cologne. It woke up something deep in my gut, that visceral, with-the-crowd connection I’d thought I’d lost forever. Malik flashed me a grin, and I knew he’d been listening, but I didn’t care. I grinned back, ecstatic and thrilled, riding the last chords down as the little crowd yelled and surged and clapped.

I played in a haze, almost as if I were drunk. It wasn’t the same as before—couldn’t be—but my heart pounded with the realization that it wasn’t gone. The owner of the club had this weird thing for “Hallelujah,”
so that’s how we ended the night. As the last notes died, I caught Malik’s eye, and instead of grinning, he gave me a slow smile and nodded toward the back of the room. I looked out over the crowd and saw Jackson.

He was leaning against a wooden post in the middle of the room, his beer dangling by the neck between two long fingers. He lifted it and sipped as he watched me, angling the bottle up and never taking his eyes off my face. He let the bottle back down, and then he knew my eyes were on him. Our gazes were locked, and I heard, through a din of cheers and buzzing conversations and drunken shouts, Malik announce that we were playing a gig at The Star and Feathers next month, and everybody please come. Malik cut the mic and everybody started packing up. The crowd shifted their attention back to their beers while the next act scrambled to set up behind us, and I helped Erica cover up the keyboard and store the drums. Jackson stayed in his spot by the post. When we were done, I went to him.

“Well? Whatd’ya think?” I couldn’t help grinning.

“Let me buy you a drink.”

“Sure.” I was still riding the crowd vibe, smiling back at the people who said “Good job,” or “Right on.” It had been so long.

We got to the bar, and Jackson ordered a scotch on the rocks and looked at me expectantly.

“Same,” I said, feeling adventurous. I realized I was sweating through the fabric of the dress, and I hoped I wasn’t ruining it. “Did you get a picture?”

He showed me his phone.

He’d caught me leaning into the mic over the keyboard, fingers down on the keys. I was singing backup harmony with Malik while Erica sang “Hallelujah.” My head was tilted a little and my eyes were closed. I barely recognized myself.

“Nice shot,” I said, and my voice was like gravel. Our drinks came, and Jackson raised his toward me.

“To your first gig in the city,” he said.

“Thanks.” We clinked glasses, a little too hard, and I took a too-big sip. The scotch burned its way down my throat.

“You were great up there,” he said.

“It felt good.”

“I bet it did.”

“I wasn’t sure it would.” I took another sip of the scotch, and it didn’t burn quite so much this time.

“Was that your first gig on keyboard too?”

“Nah. I started out on piano. It was my first instrument.”

“Really? Well, I guess a lot of kids take piano lessons young.” He finished his drink and asked for another, giving me a questioning look.

I shrugged. “Why not?” I said, and we both grinned. The bartender refilled our glasses in place, and for the first time in weeks, I didn’t care what was going to happen the next day. All I needed was to sit in this place and drink this drink.

“So how old were you?” Jackson asked. “When you started?”

It took me a moment to remember what we’d been talking about. “Six.”

“I bet you outshone them all,” Jackson said, and I snorted.

“Yeah—you should have been there the first time my mom brought me. It was this woman’s house in the Garden District—that’s kind of the fancy part of town. Anyway, she brought me there, and there were all these white girls with their mothers checking in, and everybody looked up when we walked in. There was this old lady taking everybody’s checks, and she looked at my mother—she was white—and looked at me and she thought my mom was doing some kind of charity work for a poor black kid. I could hear what she was thinking, you know? She noticed everybody looking, and she looks at my Mom and she’s thinking she doesn’t want this little black girl to make all of her nice white clients uncomfortable, but what can she do? So she says, ‘Ma’am, I’m sure you understand I can’t accept any students unless their real parents are present to sign the waivers,’ and my mom said, ‘I just did. Something wrong with my signature?’ The woman sat there with her mouth open for a second and then took the check and went to the next person. She never could look me in the eye after that.”

“You mean your mom let you keep going there? After that?”

“She knew I was going to have to learn how to handle it eventually.”

“Still. That’s terrible.”

I almost laughed. “It’s definitely not the worst thing I’ve ever heard in someone’s head.”

“I’m sorry,” Jackson said. “It’s a fucked-up world sometimes.”

“Yeah. Well, I can’t hear anything anymore.” I looked down at my drink. “It’s all one big silent room.” I looked at the people pressed up to the bar, sipping their drinks, listening or not listening to the music, thinking or not thinking about the person they’d come in with, about the person they’d left behind. I had no way of knowing. And it wasn’t even that. It wasn’t the handful of times I’d eavesdropped on a stranger’s thoughts. It was the silence of it all, the feeling of being cut off.

“I miss it.” The words just slipped out. I’d meant to turn the conversation completely, to talk about Malik or the foggy weather, but the alcohol had made the careful fences I put around my words grow weak.

Jackson nodded.

“I know you think it’s not a good idea, me working at Simon’s and helping out your dad—”

“Not my business,” Jackson said. “As you’ve repeatedly reminded me.”

“It helps. Feeling like I can be useful again. And it makes it easier to keep this...” I opened my hands, “...whatever it is, under control.”

Jackson set his drink down and covered his hand with mine. It was cold, chilled by the ice in the glass.

“Careful,” I said.

Jackson gave me a small smile, then lifted his hand. “Five seconds.” He looked at his glass and it rose half an inch off the bar. “In the clear.”