Shade (27 page)

“Not personally. We have operatives who would blend in at a punk concert much better than I would.”

“Why were you following him before he died?”

“Ms. Salvatore.” Falk slid into the seat across from me. “You know you’re the First. We know you’re the First. By definition, there’s only one First. Therefore, everything you do, everyone you know, is of interest to us.”

I squeezed my hands between my knees, as my fingers had suddenly turned cold. “You follow me.”

“Not all the time. God knows we don’t have the resources. But as you come of age, our curiosity grows.”

“Why? Am I going to sprout wings when I turn eighteen? Grow a second head or an eleventh toe?”

Falk didn’t laugh or even smirk. “Honestly, we don’t know.” He shifted the computer in front of him and tapped the screen with both index fingers. “Things have grown more interesting since the death of your boyfriend.”

My fist clenched, wanting to smash this guy’s nose.
Interesting.
He was talking about the worst thing that ever happened to me like it was a science project.

“Logan’s pre-Shift,” I said. “What do you want with him?”

Falk signaled the other agent, who slipped his hand out of his pocket. In his palm he held a small disc made of ice-clear crystal.

Falk spoke. “Do you recognize this device, Ms. Salvatore?”

“It’s a summoner. It can call a ghost who’s tagged by the DMP. We use them in”—my tongue stuttered along with my pulse—“in the courtrooms. To get ghosts on the witness stand. It lets a ghost go somewhere they never went during their life.”

“Correct. Summoners are made of clear quartz, which acts in opposition to obsidian. A tagged ghost must appear anywhere the summoner is activated.”

“Logan is tagged.” I tried to take slow, deep breaths to calm my racing pulse, but the bandages on my ribs wouldn’t stretch far enough. “His tag gets removed after the trial. That’s the law.”

“Of course it is. Any basic social studies class teaches that state and federal laws apply to ghosts as well as the living. After all, they’re people too.” Falk tapped his nails on the tablecloth. “However, the law becomes rather fuzzy when applied to shades.”

“Logan’s not a shade.” My voice cracked on the last word. “You can’t hold him.”

“Actually, we can. According to the readings from his tag, he’s exhibited the metaphysical signature of a shade on several occasions, including Saturday night at this address. Coincidentally when you took an injurious fall. It’s more than enough evidence to hold him.
His parents can sue to release him, but most of these cases are tied up in legal limbo for …” Agent Falk put a thumb to his sharp chin, as if calculating. “Forever, actually.”

I gripped the edge of the table. “They never get out?”

“Shades are far too dangerous to set free. Therefore we’ve decided that the only feasible solution is indefinite detainment.”

“They disappear,” I whispered, then turned to the other agent. “Is that what happens?”

He regarded me with eyes as clear and cold as the crystal in his hand. “We must protect the children.”

His voice slithered down my spine, twining between each vertebra.

“I know shades are dangerous,” I said to Falk, “but what if we could help them turn back into ghosts?”

“Rehabilitate them?” The arch of Falk’s eyebrow screamed his skepticism. “It would be like training a rabid dog to guide the blind.”

My anger surged at the comparison. “What do you know about shades, or ghosts, or anything? Without us post-Shifters, you wouldn’t even know that they exist.”

“But we do know, and we’ve developed ways to learn more, with or without the help of post-Shifters.” The agent narrowed his close-set brown eyes. “If Logan Keeley moves on, he will cease to be a threat, so we would appreciate it if you would do everything in your power to make that happen.”

“I don’t have that power. If his family wins their case, he’ll move on. If not—”

“If not, he’ll be what we consider an ‘at risk’ ghost. Too near to shading to allow his freedom.”

I pictured Logan locked up in a BlackBoxed room or on a shelf in some DMP vault for years, maybe decades. Maybe forever. My own mind seemed to shade at the thought.

“Please …,” I whispered. “Logan’s a good guy. He just gets a little excited sometimes.” I turned to the shorter agent. “What if he were your son? Or your brother? Wouldn’t you want to give him a chance?”

“That’s what we’re doing with this visit,” Falk snapped. When I looked at him, he smoothed his hand over his throat and down the front of his black uniform. “So you can warn him. Encourage him.”

“Why?” I twitched my shoulders, which prickled with fear and confusion. “Why not collect him now, if you think he’s a risk? And why help me keep his secret?”

“Ah.” Falk closed the laptop. I wanted to grab it back to see Logan’s full-color photo again. The agent folded his hands on the computer’s silver lid. “The Keeley case has garnered a lot of media attention. Detaining him prior to his trial would create a public relations nightmare and throw a spotlight on our indefinite detention program. We can’t afford to look bad just as you post-Shifters are coming of age. Recruitment is the department’s number one priority, so that we can better understand ghosts.”

“Better control them, you mean.”

Falk spread his thumbs and shrugged, as if to say
Whatever
without actually saying
Whatever
.

Not breaking eye contact, I reached out and slid my calculus textbook in front of me. “I need to study.”

“Of course.” He placed the laptop back in its case and zipped it.
“Best of luck with all of your endeavors, especially in the courtroom.” He joined his partner at the door. “And please give our regards to Logan, along with our message.”

My brain felt jumbled with all the new information. “What message?”

“Get out.” He tilted his head and offered a joyless smile. “Or we’ll take you out.”

I spent the next half hour calling for Logan, but he wouldn’t appear. When my throat started to hurt, I phoned Dylan.

He picked up on the second ring. “Hey, Aura.”

“Tell Logan to leave.”

“Why? When?”

“Whenever. After the trial at the latest. If not, the Obsidians are going to lock him up for being a shade.”

There was a long pause. “How do they know?”

“His subpoena tag must have a detector on it. I’ve been trying to reach Logan, but he won’t answer me. So you have to warn him.” I hurried through a shortened version of Agent Falk’s spiel.

When I was finished, Dylan said, “Um, what did these Obsidian guys look like? Black uniforms, haircuts like Moe from the Three Stooges?”

“Yeah, why?”

“They just pulled up in front of our house.”

My heart thumped. “Is Logan there?”

“No. I’m by myself.”

“Then let them in. They won’t hurt you, but don’t piss them off, okay?”

“Got it.” His voice held a quiet strength, giving me a twinge of pride.

“And please—tell Logan I love him.”

Dylan hung up. I clicked off the phone, set it on the table, and stared at it, like I used to do while waiting for Logan to call me. Some nights he’d forget, consumed with his music, and I’d go to bed wondering if he would ever be all mine.

Soon he would be no one’s.

I sat on the witness stand, resisting the urge to scratch the maddening itch under my knee bandage. I’d looked out at this courtroom from the adjacent translators’ seats countless times over the last few years.

But this time I was speaking for myself.

A red light above each door showed that the BlackBox had been deployed. Logan would stay away until it was his turn to testify. Then he would be summoned with the quartz disc connected to his subpoena “tag.” My toe slid over the notch on the floor where the disc would be inserted.

Dylan had passed on the Obsidians’ warning to Logan, who apparently had fallen very quiet, then spent the rest of the night alone in his old room. He knew that as long as he was tagged, the Obsidians could detain him at any time.

Gina approached the stand in her periwinkle suit, her eyes bearing the usual kind chill. The judge and jury knew I was her niece, so she had to be careful not to look like she was coddling me. I’d seen her compassionate-crusader courtroom routine many times, but had never been the source of her ammunition.

“Let’s begin with the events early in the evening of Friday, October eighteenth. Did you see Logan Keeley immediately after the concert?”

I took a deep breath, trying not to think about the reporters and bloggers in the packed courtroom. I vowed not to look at the smug CEO of Warrant Records, sitting at the defense table in an expensive suit.

“Yes,” I told her in a clear voice. “I saw him go backstage with Mickey to meet with the A and R reps from the two record companies.”

“When did you see him again?”

“About half an hour later.” I folded my hands in my lap to keep them from fidgeting with my blouse.

“And then where did you go?”

“Back to the Keeleys’ house for a party. It was his seventeenth birthday.” Aunt Gina had asked me to mention that fact, to add sympathy. A murmur from the jury box confirmed that this had been a good ploy.

“How would you describe Logan’s demeanor at the party?”

“I’d never seen him happier.”

Gina bowed her head for a moment to let my statement sink in. A soft blond curl fell over her cheek.

“How much alcohol did you see him consume?”

“I saw him drink three pints of Guinness, plus part of a fourth pint. Then he had about half of a mixed drink called Liquid Stupid.”

The crowd reacted to this with scattered titters.

“Your Honor, a sample of Liquid Stupid was left on the deceased’s nightstand.” My aunt retrieved a sheet of paper from her table. “A previous witness, a forensic expert, has authenticated this exhibit, already admitted into evidence. The Liquid Stupid substance was estimated to be one hundred eighty proof. Ninety percent alcohol, more than ten times the strength of beer. There were also traces of codeine found in the solution. The forensic expert concluded that this concoction would have severely impaired the judgment of a one-hundred-fifty-pound man such as the deceased, especially one who had already consumed more than fifty ounces of beer.”

The judge peered through his reading glasses at the sheet of paper. “Yes, this has been admitted already. Please continue.”

Gina asked me, “What did Logan do after he drank the Liquid Stupid?”

“We went to his room.”

Her voice was gentle but firm. “For what purpose?”

My stomach fluttered, and I took another deep breath. “For the purpose of sex.”

I heard a tongue click. One of the jurors, an older woman, shook her head. For the most part, though, the crowd seemed unsurprised.

Gina was unfazed by my semi-smart-ass response. “And did you achieve this purpose?”

“No.” I tried not to sound defensive.

“Why not?”

I hesitated, hoping that the roof would cave in or aliens would vaporize the courthouse in their effort to conquer the planet. Anything to keep from saying it.

“Aura? Tell us what stopped you from consummating your relationship.”

“The alcohol had made him … um … He couldn’t.”

The snickers spread throughout the courtroom. I gritted my teeth, hating Mr. and Mrs. Keeley for making me tell the world. Instead of being famous for his music, Logan would go down in pop culture history as the Ghost of the Guy Who Couldn’t Get It Up.

“Then what happened?”

My gaze dropped to the floor. “I was mad at him. I told him he was stupid.”

Gina upped the urgency in her tone. “How did he respond?”

“He almost passed out, but then he said he knew how to fix it. He said he was going to take a shower and wake up.” The words came fast now, tumbling over one another. “So he went to his dresser and got a package of something he said was shampoo. And then he left, and the next time I saw him, he was—he was a ghost.” My voice halted. “He was dead.”

I hadn’t cried during any of our rehearsals, though Gina had told me that tears would be a nice touch. I’d obsessed over choosing the right words and emphasizing the right syllables. In rehearsals, this testimony had been a performance.

But now it was real. Logan was gone. And I was standing in his bedroom all over again, with my shirt backward and inside out,
seeing him in violet, feeling my world shatter into so many pieces that seventy-six days later, I was still picking them up.

Even now, each eye released only a single tear. They dribbled down my cheeks, so slowly they seemed to be having a reverse race, seeing which could take longer to fall.

“No further questions, Your Honor.”

“Your witness,” the judge said to the defense attorney.

Harriet Stone approached from my right, spiked heels clicking on the hardwood floor. Twice before I’d translated for cases involving Stone’s clients. She didn’t even try to hide her disdain for ghosts, which meant translators got a dose of it too.

I wiped my cheeks and faced her with my last bit of strength.

“Thank you for testifying, Ms. Salvatore.” She glanced at my aunt, then at the jury, as if to remind them I was related to the plaintiff’s attorney. “The death of your boyfriend must have been a difficult ordeal.”

I said nothing, since it technically wasn’t a question.

Stone buttoned her suit jacket, a scarlet that brought out the blush on her sharp, pale cheeks. She was from that older generation of women who thought wearing red—and shoulder pads—made them look masculine and therefore powerful. At least tomorrow she’d have to put on another color, since Logan would be in the room.

“Prior to the night in question,” Stone asked, “had Logan Keeley ever consumed alcohol to the point of unconsciousness in your presence?”

“Yes.”

“How many times?”

I cringed inside at the hurt this would cause his parents. “Four times.”

“What were his last words to you?”

I gripped the smooth wooden arms of the witness chair. That memory belonged to me and Logan, and this woman wanted to steal it. Taint it. And what would it prove?