The Shadow Society (24 page)

I shook my head.

“No one else in the Society has offered more details?” he asked.

“No.”

“I would have thought that you’d ask Orion.”

“Things with Orion, um, went a little south.”

Conn’s face grew stern. “Define
south
.”

“Well … let’s just say he thought we were more than friends, and now we’re not even that.”

Several emotions fluttered across his features, too quick for me to identify even one. “You’re not.”

“No.”

He paused. “This is dangerous, Darcy.
He
could be dangerous.”

“Not necessarily.”

“You’re too willing to believe the best of people,” he said shortly, “until they disappoint you and the damage is done.”

“Orion can’t hurt me.”

“Because he can’t touch you?” He gave me a dark, skeptical look.

Conn was right, of course. There are a million ways to hurt someone without ever lifting a finger.

“I can handle Orion,” I told him.

For a moment, it seemed like Conn would argue. Then he nodded.

“Hey,” I said. “Don’t worry about me. I broke your ribs, remember?”

The corner of his mouth lifted. “Oh, I do.”

“I’m sorry I only brought bad news.”

“Don’t be,” he said. “This is important. Now we have a date for the attack: New Year’s Eve. We have an idea of what the Society will do.”

“I won’t do what they’re asking of me.”

“I know you won’t. And … you
didn’t
bring only bad news to this meeting. You brought yourself.”

A silence fell. I tore my eyes from his (they were green today, like spring grass). I turned back to the art and noticed a series of four statues. They were of the same life-sized figure—a boy leading a horse—yet each was made from a different material. One was carved from wood, another from marble. The third statue was cast in bronze, and the last was chiseled from limestone. There was something arresting about the series. Maybe it was the way the horse dipped his nose to brush the boy’s shoulder. Or how their limbs were carved into fluid motion, so that they looked like one elegant creature. Or maybe it was the sheer fact that the different materials completely changed the way I saw each statue, even though they were of exactly the same thing. The bronze sculpture made it seem as if the boy and horse were entering battle. The limestone glittered, like the boy and horse were mythic. The stuff of stories.

I stepped close to the wall to read the placard. The artist was named Moré, and the date was 2009. I read the title out loud: “
Te Panta Re
. What is that … Italian?”

“Greek,” said Conn. “It means ‘Everything flows.’”

“You know Greek?”

He laughed. “No. But I know these sculptures. They’re famous here, so if you live in Chicago you end up learning a bit about them, like people in the Alter know about that architect, Frank Floyd Wright.”

“Frank
Lloyd
Wright.”

“Right,” said Conn. “Anyway, a Greek philosopher was talking about a river when he wrote ‘Everything flows.’ He said that you can’t step into the same river twice. Even if you set your foot in the very same spot, nothing is the same. Everything is different.
You
are different. The river has gotten warmer. The sun shines with a different light.”

“So what’s that supposed to mean? That there are no second chances?”

Something flickered in his eyes. “What do you think? Are there?”

I thought about it. “Yes. That sculpture is made of bronze and the other one is marble, but they’re still a boy leading a horse.”

“Ah, but maybe you like one more than the other.”

“True … I like the marble better. It looks softer. More alive. Not the color, of course. But the texture of the stone looks like skin. Like if I touched it, it would sink beneath my fingertips.”

“You could touch it. There are no guards to stop you, and”—he gave me an impish grin—“I won’t tell.”

I hesitated, because breaking the Do Not Touch museum taboo isn’t so easy when you’ve trained yourself for years to obey it. Then my hand stretched out before my mind said that it could. I would have touched the boy—his arm, or shoulder—but felt suddenly shy, and swept my hand down the horse’s back, then patted its nose. It was hard and cool, but smooth.

“Good boy,” I told the horse, kind of foolishly, but everything seemed a little too serious and also … magical. I had to say something. Who knew what Conn thought of me, stroking a horse as if it were real? Maybe, for him, this moment wasn’t special. Better to make some kind of joke, even if it was lame.

“Which is your favorite?” Conn waved a hand to include all four statues.

“This one.” I gave the horse a final pat and let my hand fall from its side. “And you?”

His answer was immediate. “I like the one you like.”

“Well, let’s say I’ve changed my mind, and now I like the wooden one best.”

“Then that’s the one I prefer.”

“The limestone. The limestone sculpture is my favorite.”

“Then it’s mine, too.” Conn smiled.

“Now you’re just being silly.”

“I know.” He laughed. “Isn’t it great?”

“I want a real answer, Conn.”

“Really, truly, the marble. But what if I
did
like it best because you do? That would only mean that you’ve changed the way I see something. Isn’t that … isn’t that what friends do? They change our perspective on the world. Part of why we care about them is because we love that feeling. The feeling of being changed.”

I studied the series, choosing my words carefully. “Okay,” I said. “There are second chances. But maybe it’s also true that things can never be the same, and that you have to decide whether the second chance lives up to the first.”

“It could be even better.”

I looked at him. “Yes,” I said, achingly aware that we weren’t talking about art. “It could.”

Conn reached for my hand as if it were the most natural thing in the world to curl his fingers into mine. “Let’s go see the paintings,” he said.

Happiness swirled through me, spiraling from my fingertips. “Perfect.” I felt my face light up. “That’s exactly what I was going to say.”

He gently tugged me in the direction of a flight of stairs. We walked up, our feet hushing into the silence.

And neither of us let go.

We strolled through a hall of old masters. I tried not to be distracted by the way Conn’s hand in mine made me feel as if I were wrapped in rough fur—warm and sort of prickly all over. “You’re not bored by Renaissance art, are you?” I asked. “I know not everybody likes the old stuff. But I’ve been trying to work with oils lately, and these artists could teach me a lot about that.”

“They definitely knew a lot about the interplay of darkness and light,” he said in a confident tone, yet also with a quick sideways glance at me, as if checking to see that he was right.

“Yes … but how come you’re giving me that funny look?”

“Oh,” Conn said sheepishly. “Well, maybe I did a little studying.”

“On art? Conn, you’re not trying to
impress
me, are you?”

“No. Um … yes. I mean, did I?”

“You didn’t have to do that.”

“I just thought I should read up on the museum’s collection. I want you to have a good time today.”

“I
am
having a good time.” I tightened my fingers around his.

“Good.” He ran a thumb over my knuckles, and the sensation rippled through me.

“Let’s…” I started. I tried again. “Let’s go see the Impressionists.” With sudden wariness, I added, “Impressionism happened in this world, didn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“Whew.” I pretended to wipe my free hand across my brow. “You’re lucky, you know that?”

Conn smiled down at me. “Yes.”

As we walked down the hall, he said, “Are you upset about what happened with Orion?”

I let go of Conn’s hand—not because I wanted to, but because I was startled and felt like I needed to concentrate to answer his question. There was no way I could do that while a small part of me touched even a small part of him. “Honestly? Yes.” I saw his expression change and hurried to say, “It’s not what you’re thinking. It’s just … it was nice to have a friend here.”

“
I
am your friend.”

I was silent. I didn’t know what to say, and it was hard not to sense how my hand already felt homesick for his.

“Darcy.” He rubbed his brow. “I’ve thought a lot about what happened on Friday. How you followed me. I was furious. One thought kept looping through my head: How could you invade my privacy?
You
. Of all people. The last person who should see me unguarded. But then I realized that’s exactly what I’ve wanted, for so long.”

Conn’s words unleashed such a rush of feeling in me that I wanted to offer him something. Give him something. But I didn’t know what. Or, to be perfectly honest, I didn’t know what I could risk giving away. Finally, I said, “On Friday, I saw someone I remembered, from when I was arrested in 1997.” I described the man I’d seen in the IBI locker room.

“That’s Kell,” said Conn. “You’re talking about John Kellford.”

The name plucked at my memory, striking a chord that panged and throbbed. “Yes,” I said.

“He was young in 1997,” Conn said thoughtfully. “A bit older than me. He was a rising star back then. Everyone thought he’d shoot through the ranks, maybe even become director one day, but he stagnated. No one knows why. Maybe the reason has something to do with you.”

“I want to talk with him.”

Conn mulled this over. “You’d spook him,” he said after a long pause. “Don’t get me wrong,” he spoke over my noise of protest. “I’m not saying you
shouldn’t
talk to him. Spooking Kellford might be a good thing. The shock of seeing a Shade—especially a Shade from his past—might rattle him, might make him more willing to share what he’d otherwise try to hide—try to hide from
me
, for example. The only thing is … once you manifest in front of him there’s no going back, and afterward he might try to cover up important information. That’s exactly what happened when I approached the coroner who signed your death certificate. I know this is asking a lot, but could you wait before going to Kellford? I might be able to dig up something on him first.”

His logic was, well … logical. But I was reluctant.

“A week,” he said. “Give me a week.”

I still had that urge to give something to Conn, and when I looked at him squarely I realized that he was almost pleading with me. This was important to him.
Helping
me was important to him. I had waited eleven years to discover how I’d ended up outside those firehouse doors. Could I wait one more week?

“Okay,” I said.

“Thank you.”

“But I want his home address.”

Now it was Conn’s turn to look resistant. “That sounds risky. We don’t know how he’s going to react.”

“Well, I’m not going to talk to him at the IBI.”

Conn saw the sense in that. His co-workers weren’t exactly my biggest fans. “All right,” he said. “I’ll get it for you.”

For a while, I couldn’t focus on the art and stared blankly at a Midwestern painter’s cornfields. Gold waves under a pink slice of sun. But I didn’t really absorb it, because the name John Kellford kept stabbing into the darkness of my memory, and hit nothing but shadows.

Conn touched my shoulder. “I want to show you something.” As we strolled into a new wing of the museum, he asked, “Do you like John Singer Sargent?”

“Eh … not so much. He was an awesome painter, but obsessed with painting pretty, rich women. That gets old. Sargent was kind of the
People
magazine of the late nineteenth century, except boring.”

“In this world, he painted a very controversial portrait. I promise you’ll find it interesting.”

Conn guided me to a canvas that was taller than me, with a heavy, silvery wooden frame. As we drew closer, I was about to say to Conn, “Told you. Just another pretty girl.” Then I saw that I was wrong.

The background was gray with hints of pink—typical Sargent, who was wild about this color, which looked like a misty dawn or certain kinds of shells. And yes, it was a portrait, and yes, the girl stood in a classic Sargent pose. Slightly turned away from the viewer, her eyes glancing back at me over her shoulder.

But she was a Shade.

Her black hair was swept back, held in place by one fringed swan feather. A string of pearls rested in the hollow of her throat, so close to the color of her skin that the pearls only stood out because of their shape and shine. An inky silk dress belled from her hips, flowing out onto the canvas until it faded away where the girl’s feet should have been, but weren’t. It looked as if she were ghosting slowly, disappearing from the bottom up. She floated there, looking at me, unsmiling. But her black eyes gleamed with a joyful secret.

“There,” said Conn. “You see?”

“Why…” My voice trailed off. “Why is this controversial?”

Conn’s eyes held mine. “Because she’s beautiful.”

We stood still, and I wondered if my face was full of the same secret as the Shade’s. I asked, “When will I see you again?”

“I thought … Friday night, if you’re free.”

“Where?”

Conn hesitated. “Why don’t you come over to my place? I’ll cook dinner for you.”

It took a moment for my mind to translate those words. Then I understood.

He was asking me on a date.

And this—this trip to the museum—this was a date, too.

The beach, the library, the beautiful old house. Conn had chosen all of those places.

He had chosen them to please me.

I gazed back at Conn unwaveringly. “Yes,” I said. “I’ll come. And when I do … I have a favor to ask.”

“Name it.”

“Can I paint you?”

36

In my Sanctuary bedroom, I sat beneath the quiet tree, my back resting against its bark. I closed my eyes and kept seeing the boy and his horse, the Shade in her dress, Conn’s face.

I’d always thought that “counting the days” was a cliché people like Marsha used when waiting for the season finale of their favorite TV show. But I was doing exactly that: counting the days until Friday. Three days. After tonight, two. And then it would be one.