Shadow Twin Page 2

  Max backed away, not strong enough to put himself into the middle of a challenge, if there was going to be a fight. Alejandro, stronger and with better control than most of the other newcomers, stared at Carter, his eyes taking on a fiery tinge. Of course Alejandro would understand that Carter was the most dangerous of the new ones. Natividad gripped her brother’s wrist, not that she could stop him if he moved, but she thought she’d better remind him she was here, and Miguel, and lots of other people. This would be a terrible place for a fight.

  Sheriff Pearson had backed away, too. His hand rested on the butt of his gun, but he didn’t draw it, being too sensible to step unthinkingly into this situation. Though Natividad seriously suspected the sheriff would get involved if he thought it would help and never mind Dimilioc law that said ordinary humans weren’t to involve themselves in black dog quarrels.

  Then Thaddeus caught Carter’s eye, raised his eyebrows, and said in his deep, deep voice, “Well, that’s too bad, something happening to Ezekiel.”

  Suddenly everyone’s attention was focused on Thaddeus, who was unquestionably the strongest black dog here, except just possibly for Grayson himself.

  Thaddeus took one step toward the Master, and turned, putting Grayson at his back, the clearest possible statement of his allegiance. Immediately Natividad was ashamed of the instant of doubt she’d felt, because of course Thaddeus would side with the Master, she should have known he would—she had known, really, because obviously DeAnn would never even think of siding with a cabrón like Carter Lethridge.

  “Ah,” said Carter, and shrugged. “Well, that is too bad. About Ezekiel, I mean.”

  “Indeed,” said Grayson, his tone dry.

  Carter turned his head to the side, a gesture of submission, but not a very strong one. Natividad didn’t always understand how black dogs worked out all their dominance issues, but she couldn’t see how that would be enough, especially when Carter said, in a light, easy tone, “Master.”

  Grayson walked forward. Carter tensed...and stepped aside. The Master brushed past him and came to Natividad. He said to her, ignoring the rest of them, “That was Étienne Lumondière. He has encountered something peculiar, it seems. Peculiar and troubling. He has evidently not been able to determine precisely what has happened to Ezekiel. It appears that Ezekiel has been out of touch for some days. Yet you only just now felt something happen?”

  Natividad stared at him. She said after a moment, “I don’t know if I’d have felt anything until it became serious. But whatever’s happened, he’s alive. I know that.”

  “You are confident?”

  Natividad nodded.

  Grayson’s eyes half closed. Other than that, he didn’t show any visible reaction, but she knew she’d better be right. She nodded again. The connection might be thin and the feeling it gave her might be hard to interpret, but she was positive she could tell that much. She looked away, west. “He’s...something’s happened. He’s not...right. Or...maybe it’s not him. Maybe it’s the...” she gestured helplessly. “The connection. It’s like it’s...faded. No, that isn’t right, not faded. Muffled.”

  “Muffled,” said Miguel, coming up beside her.

  Natividad nodded. “Sí. Yes, muffled. It’s like hearing something, only there’s a wall in the way. Or like you’re down a well, or buried in blankets, or something.” She made a frustrated gesture. “It’s not like any of those things, really. I know he’s alive. I don’t even think he’s hurt, exactly. I don’t think so! But there’s something wrong anyway. Something strange. I think—I think he’s angry. Very angry. But that is muffled also.”

  Grayson considered this. After a moment he glanced around. “I shall see all of you back at the house,” he told them. “James, if you would join me?” He walked away, without, so far as Natividad could tell, even a flicker of extra attention for Carter Lethridge.

  Natividad stared after him. He was going to Colorado. He’d said that, to Étienne. The Master of Dimilioc was going to leave Dimilioc. That idea gave Natividad a thoroughly uneasy feeling in the pit of her stomach.

  Even so, she was determined he would take her, too. If Ezekiel was in trouble, she was not going to be left behind.

  Natividad didn’t wait to talk to Grayson before packing. She had a nice little suitcase on wheels. Justin had bought it for her, last April, when they’d gone off so suddenly together. She hadn’t had a chance to pack that time. This time was better. At least, she hoped it was better. At least she could start off better. As long as Grayson didn’t argue with her.

  She put in underthings and another pair of jeans and several shirts, rolling them up tight so they wouldn’t wrinkle.

  But she wanted more than that. She never again wanted to be in trouble and not have anything she could use. So she also got out a little palm-sized mirror with a protective cloth case. Then she found a little bag of glass beads. Two light chains of nearly pure silver, and the small wooden flute that was almost the only thing she still had of Mamá’s. To keep all these things safe, she rolled them into a t-shirt. Then she put the shirt in her pink sisal handbag, carefully, where she could get to it without searching.

  Then she looked around, thinking. She had had a knife of Ezekiel’s, once. He had given it to her. But she had used it up, and he’d never had a chance to give her another.

  After a moment, she left her room and went, boldly, down the hall and around to Ezekiel’s suite.

  The door wasn’t locked. She had known it wouldn’t be. People didn’t generally lock their doors in this house, and anyway, Natividad had carefully laid a mandala around Ezekiel’s living room to bar his door against anyone who intended him harm or harbored ill will against him. Probably it had been completely unnecessary effort. Nobody would dare intrude into the Dimilioc executioner’s private space, even if he had been exiled for a year. But she had wanted to do it and she’d done it. Maybe someday it would turn out to be useful. You never knew.

  But since the door wasn’t locked, it was no trouble to just walk right in.

  When she’d first seen Ezekiel’s suite, she’d been surprised by its plainness and simplicity. Now she knew it was just right for him. She liked it. She liked the muted grays and charcoal of the first room, what the Norteamericanos called the living room as though the rest of the apartment or house weren’t where people lived. Natividad could imagine Ezekiel living in this room, though. She liked the painting on one wall, all washes of soft gray and charcoal, that looked first like it was abstract and then started to suggest a mountain and trees and water. But there was nothing in this room that she could use, and she crossed to the bedroom.

  Of course there was nothing she could use here, either. Or hardly anything. But there was a statue on the table by the bed. She liked it. At first she’d thought it was a Buddha statue, even though Buddha statues were usually fat and comfortable and this figure was tall and thin and holding a spear. Later, Ezekiel had told her it was really a statue of Bishamonten, the Guardian of the North. But Bishamonten was a Buddhist deity, so she hadn’t been so wrong.

  The statue itself was no use, but a scattering of shiny black pebbles lay at its foot. Hematite. She knew that too, because Ezekiel had told her the name. She took one, because it was something he had touched and because a pebble was a lot easier to carry than an eighteen-inch-high statue of Bishamonten. Then she looked around, frowning. She didn’t want to search in Ezekiel’s closets...there must be a desk and things in the other room, which she hadn’t ever seen. Leaving the bedroom, she went back out to the living room and opened the other door.

  It wasn’t locked either, and yes, there was a desk, with a computer on the top and lots of drawers down the front. And a filing cabinet. And a shelf above the desk, with a set of three-ring binders—black, of course, with no labels on them, which didn’t matter. That wasn’t the kind of thing she was looking for. There wasn’t anything else in the room, which was not large. Except another painting, not as big as the one in the living room, but simil
ar: washes of misty gray and darker gray. At first she thought maybe the painting was of a river winding between mountains, and then she thought it might be a dragon winding between clouds. There were dragons in China, everyone knew that. They hated black dogs; they hated everything demonic. Somehow it didn’t surprise her that Ezekiel had this painting that might be of a dragon. She looked at it for a while, feeling oddly homesick, even though nothing about this painting and this room was like home. But the feeling was like homesickness. She missed Ezekiel, that was the trouble.

  He was alive. She knew that. He was far away, and there was something more than distance between them, but he was alive and she was going to find him.

  Crossing the room, she opened the top desk drawer, hoping for something he had touched and held and cherished. A knife. Though probably he had taken all his knives with him. But there was nothing. Paperclips and things. Nothing at all useful. She opened the next drawer, and the next.

  In the bottom drawer, she found nothing at all, except one small glass bowl, and in the bowl, a fine gold chain. Hardly thicker than sewing thread. Fine and elegant and fragile...and gold. Gold wasn’t at all useful in magic. It was only pretty. This was a bracelet; it had a fastening like a necklace, but it was small, sized for a wrist. A slender wrist.

  But this bracelet had been tucked away in Ezekiel’s desk, out of sight, but important enough that he had kept it safe and never put anything else in that drawer.

  It wasn’t anything Natividad had looked for. She couldn’t imagine how she could use it. But it was important to Ezekiel. There had been another girl, once. She knew that. She didn’t know anything else. Just that there had been another girl, and she had died. Natividad didn’t know that this bracelet had belonged to that girl. But it was important to Ezekiel. She thought maybe it had been that girl’s.

  That might be useful. She couldn’t quite think how, but she had a feeling. Natividad put the bracelet on her own wrist, fastening it carefully, because something so delicate wouldn’t be safe even tucked in a little box and rolled up in her special t-shirt. She couldn’t think of any way to make sure it was safe except to wear it. And she had better be careful never to catch it on anything. She could just imagine trying to explain to Ezekiel how she had managed to lose his special bracelet.

  But no knife. Nothing silver. She looked around the room once more, shook her head, and went to find Grayson. She was going with him; she hoped he wouldn’t argue but she was going. And that being so, maybe he would give her a knife.

  He didn’t give her a chance to ask him, not immediately. She tapped on the open door of his study, and Grayson glanced up from the papers he was arranging, gave her an absent-minded nod, and said, “Natividad, how very timely. Come in, by all means. I don’t expect to need you, but one never knows.”

  Trying not to frown or look confused, Natividad stepped into the study and looked around for a chair that didn’t have papers or books piled on it. There seemed to be more papers on the chairs than on the long table—certainly more than on Grayson’s actual desk. There was a letter opener on the desk, though. She could tell it was silver, or more likely an alloy, but silver enough. Maybe he wouldn’t mind if she borrowed that. She moved a stack of papers from the nearest chair to the table and perched on the edge of the chair. “Grayson—”

  The Master held up one hand, meaning Wait, and said, “Thaddeus. Come in. Ethan will be—ah, yes, good. If you would join us.”

  Thaddeus was big and tough. His size and strength made him an asset to Dimilioc, especially because DeAnn helped him keep his head straight even when things got scary. Right now, though, he was plainly suspicious and wary, which wasn’t so good. He took an aggressive stance not too far from Grayson’s desk, standing with his feet apart, his back straight and his powerful arms folded across his chest.

  Compared to Thaddeus, Ethan looked like a kid, though he was several years older than Natividad—a couple years older than Alejandro, even. Though Ethan was a Lanning and Grayson’s nephew and could trace his bloodlines all the way back to Dimilioc’s founding, his shadow wasn’t very strong. Natividad understood how hard that must be for him, and she sympathized, she really did. But Ethan was hard to like. He was so annoyingly desdeñoso, worse with the newer black dogs, but a little bit even with Natividad and her brothers. He moved now to clear a seat for himself with only the briefest nod for his uncle.

  Grayson said without preamble, “You understand, I am going to Colorado.”

  “Yeah, you said so,” Ethan agreed, and Thaddeus gave a short little nod, looking more suspicious than ever.

  Grayson didn’t actually take a deep breath or visibly brace himself, though Natividad had the impression he wanted to do both. He said, his tone flat, “James will accompany me. Also Alejandro, Carter, and Richard Jacobs—”

  “Rip?” Ethan asked. “Not Don?”

  “I believe you may find Donald’s ability to roll down other black dogs’ shadows useful here, as neither Alejandro nor I will be available. I believe he will prove trustworthy. Especially since Richard will be with me.”

  Ethan raised his eyebrows skeptically, but he nodded.

  Grayson turned to Thaddeus. “While I’m gone, I will need someone to act as Master here. As you will be without question the strongest Dimilioc wolf remaining here, Thaddeus, that will be you.”

  Well, now it was perfectly clear why Grayson had been pleased when Natividad had showed up in time for this interview. She laid both her hands flat on the cool wood of the table and wished fervently for peace, peace, peace.

  Grayson was going on in that same flat tone, “Ethan, I will expect you to support Thaddeus. I will be very disappointed if—”

  Ethan had raised his chin, his lip curling haughtily. But, surprising Natividad, it was Thaddeus who said abruptly and a little too loudly, “No.”

  Grayson stopped, tilting his head. “No?”

  Thaddeus glowered at him. “No. It wouldn’t work. How do I know how to do any of the things the Master does?” He jerked his head at Ethan. “He can do it. He can do it well. Give it to him.”

  There was a short silence. Grayson’s heavy brows had gone up. He said, his tone neutral, “Ethan doesn’t have even a third of your strength.”

  “Doesn’t matter, does it, if I support him.” The way Thaddeus said this, it wasn’t a question. He turned his glower on Ethan, who glared back. But though Natividad could see more than a trace of outrage in the line of the younger black dog’s back and the tension in his shoulders, Ethan didn’t say a word. If Thaddeus had taken him by surprise, it had only been for a second.

  Turning back to face the Master, Thaddeus growled, “Yeah, I’m stronger. Most of us are stronger. Russell for sure. Maybe Don. But Ethan knows Dimilioc. Hell, he is Dimilioc, as much as you—a lot more than me. You want to leave somebody in charge, it’s gotta be him. That won’t surprise anybody. It won’t offend anybody either. Leave me in charge and everybody will figure it’s cause I’m strong, but they’ll think maybe two against one, three against one, maybe they could take me down. Leave Ethan in charge and me at his back and everybody’ll feel Dimilioc’s still solid.” He shrugged. “I’m not saying it right. DeAnn could explain it better.”

  “Hm. No, I think you are quite clear.” Grayson swiveled his chair around and said to Ethan, “And do you also feel that you would be a more appropriate choice for Dimilioc Master than Thaddeus?”

  “Yes,” Ethan answered, his voice level. “He’s right. If you were leaving James here, it’d be different. But you need him to watch your back. And if James goes with you, then it should be me. If Thaddeus is okay with it, I’m okay with it.”

  Grayson studied his nephew for another long moment. Eventually he said, “It’s not easy to hold power when one must depend upon a stronger black dog to reinforce one’s position. Such an arrangement can work. But it will inevitably present certain difficulties.”

  “I know. I can do it.”

  “It would require you to trus
t Thaddeus.”

  Ethan only shrugged. “That won’t be a problem.”

  Grayson leaned back in his chair, considering them. “Well. Good, then. If you both agree, we shall arrange matters just so.” He gave Thaddeus a slight nod. “Dimilioc will be strengthened by this arrangement.”

  Thaddeus scowled uncomfortably, but Ethan said, “You sure you don’t want to reconsider taking Carter with you? We can handle him, if you don’t want him at your back.”

  “If I left him here, you would almost certainly be required to kill him. I believe he is significantly more likely to survive if he is with me. I remain confident that he could be an asset to Dimilioc.”

  “As if,” muttered Ethan.

  Grayson pretended not to hear him. “In any case, I think you may indeed trust James to watch my back.”

  “And Alejandro!” put in Natividad. “But, look, Master, you need to take me with you, too! How else will we find Ezekiel, if—well, if someone needs to find him?” She touched her breast over her heart as though the gesture might let her listen a little more closely to the muted awareness of Ezekiel’s life, to the faint trace of his shadow tied to her magic.

  “Indeed. Both you, and, as you say, Alejandro,” agreed Grayson. “Alejandro’s primary duty, however, will be to watch your back. How else will we find you, if we suddenly discover that you have been lost? You must admit, Natividad, that you have in the past shown a regrettable tendency to...” he paused.

  “Leap before you look?” suggested Ethan, not quite kindly.

  “Bite off a mouthful that’s a little too big for you,” said Thaddeus, but with more sympathy. He liked her, or at least he approved of her because DeAnn liked her.

  “Need to be found,” concluded Grayson, only a touch drily.

  Natividad suppressed an urge to declare that this wasn’t her fault. She had to admit it kind of was. She said instead, “Can Miguel come too? He might be useful if we find anything, well, raro. Peculiar. I mean, he knows things. And we don’t know yet what’s happened to Ezekiel...”