The Shadow Prince (28 page)

“You’re lying.”

My stony mask almost cracks.

“I don’t think it’s a coincidence that you just happened along tonight when something weird was going on in the grove, and I don’t think it was a coincidence that I saw you there before that other girl was attacked.”

“She had a health scare. She wasn’t attacked.”

“You’re lying again.”

I purse my lips. What is she getting at? Does she think I tried to kill that girl? Does she think
I
was the assailant tonight? How on earth am I going to explain my way out of this? How can I ever get her to trust me?

“I think you followed me tonight because you knew something was wrong. And I think you tried to get me to leave the grove the other day because you knew it wasn’t safe. You were trying to protect me.”

I blink at her, not knowing how to answer. Is she really handing me the explanation I need?

“Maybe,” I lie.

“But how did you know?”

I flounder for an answer. “Maybe I … just did.” I stifle a wince, thinking I probably sound like a complete dolt.

But she nods. “I know what you mean. I felt something like it before Tobin and I found Pear. I just knew something was wrong. Is that what it was like?”

“Maybe,” I say, suddenly unable to say anything else. I don’t want to tell her more lies that I might need to corroborate later. I clear my throat. “Maybe … we should get you home,” I say. “I don’t know what really happened out there, but I’ll go back and take a look around if it makes you feel better.”

“And you’re not afraid?” she asks. “What if you get hurt?”

“Do you care?”

She bites her lip, turns, and starts down the block. “Maybe,” she calls back to me.

Her
maybe
sets that heat tingling under my skin again. I follow her, staying a few feet behind, not wanting to push my luck. After a couple of blocks, she stops in front of a house with a red sports car parked haphazardly in the curved driveway.

“Looks like my father beat us home,” she says. “I’m good from here.”

“I’ll wait until you get inside.”

She gives me a look I can’t read and then places her hand on top of mine. The tingling under my skin shoots through my body. She pulls her hand back as if I’ve shocked her without realizing it.

“The strangest thing,” she says, looking up at the sky, “is that it was a burst of lightning that scared that thing away, but there isn’t a cloud in the sky.”

I slip my stony mask back on and step away from her. “Must be some freak of nature.”

She squints at me and I wonder if I’ve used that expression correctly.

“Freak of nature,” she mumbles to herself as she heads up the driveway. She glances back at me before slipping into the house and shutting the door behind her.

I may have lied to her about why I’d tried to get her to leave the grove with me before, but I keep my word about going back there now. Lexie had been attacked on the path leading to the island. I don’t find much evidence there, but when I cross the bridge and enter the grove, I find that it looks very different from when I was here last. Small saplings have been pulled up by their roots, and holes have been burrowed into the ground. It looks as though someone, or something, has been searching for something.

Is this simply the Keres’s chosen hunting grounds, or had it attacked on instinct to protect whatever it had been looking for here?

But Keres are supposed to be mindless creatures—so fearsome they have been locked away in the Pits of the Underrealm for centuries. What would it be looking for?

And the more vital question—how had it escaped the Pits?

“Keres!” I say to Dax when I see him sitting in one of the armchairs, fiddling with his tablet, in the family room. He looks up at me, startled. I pant and claw at my tie, trying to get more air. I’d run all the way here in my dress clothes after inspecting the grove. “They’re here. Or at least one of them is.”

Dax gives me a cautioning look.

“What’s all this?” Simon asks, stepping in from the kitchen,
one of his green smoothies in hand. I hadn’t realized he was here or I would have called Dax out of the house before saying anything. He’s still dressed in the tight-fitting, shiny clothing he wears when he takes his bike out for a ride around the lake each night. Only this time, he’d taken a detour to the mayor’s mansion during his ride. “Care to fill me in?” he asks cheerily, his teeth gleaming white as he smiles.

My first instinct is to keep anything I know from Simon, but then I realize that he might be the one person who might be able to help. He’s in communication with the Underrealm, so he could possibly get us some instructions on how to send this thing back there.

“A Keres,” I say. “I think that’s what really happened to that girl who supposedly had a heart attack last week. It tried to attack Daphne and one of her classmates near the lake tonight.”

“What?” Dax asks. “Are they okay?”

I nod. “I scared … I mean, it got scared away before it did any damage,” I say, catching myself before revealing to Simon that I had used my powers in close proximity to a couple of humans.

“Are you sure it was a Keres?” Dax asks. “That shouldn’t be possible.”

I catch a movement in the corner of my eye and notice Garrick slinking into the kitchen, listening to us as he passes. Lessers have a talent for lurking.

“I saw it. It looked just like the carvings on the walls in the palace.”

“Well. That’s a relief!” Simon says brightly as he places his smoothie on the table behind the couch, careful to use one of the coasters.

“A relief?” I ask. “We’re talking about the most fearsome
monsters of the Underrealm and you think that’s a relief?”

“They found an unconscious waitress at that party you went to this evening,” Simon says, his voice far too chipper sounding for such a revelation. “I had to do some damage control and convince everyone she’d had a heart attack like I did with that student. But I was beginning to think you had some kinky fetish for stopping pretty girls’ hearts, which you and I were going to have to have a little chat about. It’s a relief knowing we won’t have to have such an awkward conversation. I’d much rather deal with a monster on the loose.”

“Then you know how to deal with it?”

Simon smiles, but there’s an accusatory narrowing of his eyes. “Any thoughts on how it got here?”

I almost bring up the theory I’d postulated when Dax had told me about that Pear Perkins girl having a heart attack—that perhaps a Keres had somehow stowed away with us through the gate like Brim had. But I stop myself from mentioning it, because the last thing I want is for Simon to try to pin responsibility for this happening on me. It was a highly unlikely theory anyway. A tiny cat hiding in my bag was one thing, but a large, shadowy monster going completely unnoticed by me and the entire crowd surrounding the gate was virtually impossible.

“I think it’s more important to focus on how to stop it,” I say.

“Leave this to me,” Simon says.

“You’ll contact the Court, then? You’ll ask them how to send this thing back? Or kill it?”

Simon draws one arm across his chest and uses the other to grab his elbow, pulling it tight to stretch his shoulder. “There’s no need to bother the Court with this matter.”

“But it could go on hurting people.”

Simon shrugs. “I don’t really care. I just need to clean up after it in order to keep too many people from asking questions.”

I realize then that Simon is more concerned with appearances than about the people this Keres could possibly hurt. Or kill, if it gets strong enough.

Which it will, if it goes unchecked.

“Then I’ll go after it myself,” I say, balling my fists.

“You don’t have time for such distractions,” Simon says. “Leave this to me. This isn’t your concern.”

“But that thing almost hurt my Boon,” I say. “That does concern me. And I’m sure it’s only just started with its attacks. If we don’t stop it now …”

Simon snaps his gaze in my direction. I don’t look away fast enough, and he locks eyes with me. “Drop it,” he says. “This conversation is over. Let me handle this.”

I find myself unable to speak anymore about the topic—but I know this matter is far from being over.

chapter thirty

I don’t realize that I have been asleep until the sound of a phone ringing wakes me up. In my groggy, disoriented state, I find I am unable to tell if what had happened in the last few hours—the party, Lexie near the grove, strange shadows and lightning, Haden walking me home—had been real, or if I’d merely been having the strangest dream.

I blink several times and my eyes focus on the dirty, torn blue dress that’s draped over the back of my vanity chair.

Nope, definitely not a dream.

The clock on my dresser tells me it’s early Saturday morning.
Too early for social calls
, I think as I pick up the phone.

It’s my mother.

Her voice is bordering on shrill, and the notes of concern ringing through her words are so strong that I panic, thinking she’s somehow gotten wind of what happened after the party and is about to demand that I pack my bags and come home. Instead, I realize she’s saying something about CeCe.

I sit up in bed with the handset pressed to my ear. “What was that?”

“Have you heard anything from CeCe in the last week?” she asks.

“No. I’ve left her messages, but she hasn’t called back.”

“Nothing? No texts or anything?”

“No,” I say, not admitting that my cell phone is probably in some guy named Haden Lord’s bedroom. Who may happen to be related to a kidnapper, according to my new bestie. “Why?”

“She’s gone,” my mom says.

“What? What do you mean, gone?” I try to keep the panic from rising in my voice, but Tobin’s talk of missing girls is making me as paranoid as he is.

“Demi, you’re being overly dramatic and scaring the girl.” I hear Jonathan’s soothing voice and realize I’m on speakerphone. Probably in the flower shop, the faint buzz of the old cooler in the background. “Hey, honey, how was the fancy party? You took pictures, didn’t you?”

“It was … nice,” I say. “But what’s this about CeCe? I thought she had the flu.”

“She quit,” Jonathan says. “In a note, of all things, and right before we needed to get all the orders in for the Harvest Banquet.”

“Why would she quit?”

“I don’t know,” Mom says.

“When did this happen?”

“I don’t know when she left,” Mom says. “She called in sick the morning after you went to California and didn’t come in for any of her shifts this week. I figured she must have been feeling really poorly, so I went over to her apartment with some of my tummy tea this morning, and, well, she was just gone. Her landlord said she left a check to cover cleaning and a note saying that she quit her job and was leaving town.”

“Why?” I ask.

“No idea. She’s never seemed interested in leaving Ellis.”

“I told you,” I hear Indie’s staccato voice from somewhere in the background. “She must have taken that new job.”

“What’s that?” I ask.

“Some woman called the shop a few days ago,” Indie says, coming closer to the speakerphone. “She was asking all these employment verification questions. Like how long CeCe had worked here, where she’d worked before, and stuff. I don’t get why everyone is worked up about it. So she quit and took a new job in a town that actually has malls and stuff.”

Honestly, I can’t blame CeCe, considering I’d left Ellis for bigger and better things. It just surprises me that she hadn’t called to tell me her plans.

“We were hoping you’d heard more from her,” Jonathan says. “I can’t get over her not saying good-bye.”

“It doesn’t make any sense,” Mom says. “She always seemed so happy here. Right up until you …”

“Right up until I left,” I say, finishing the thought for her.

chapter thirty-one

“He’s not even singing,” Tobin whispers to Daphne. They sit on the other side of the half circle of chairs in the music room. It’s amusing that he thinks I don’t know what he’s saying. I can’t actually hear their words over the singing, but I have spent the weekend mastering the art of lipreading. What isn’t amusing, however, is that Tobin has caught on to the fact that I’m merely moving my own lips along with the rest of the choir. Daphne looks up at me. I stare down at the songbook in my hands. Maybe I should try singing along, but I don’t know how to make my voice do what hers does, even if I want to. I feel her gaze leave me and I glance back at her.