If Nora didn’t get some real sleep and a real meal soon, she’d end up in the morgue. Ever since she’d met Rafe Bogdani at the vigil for the Ortiz girl, the fights and the revelations had been coming in a never-ending stream, and it was all catching up to her.
On her way to her apartment, she spared a moment to imagine how Hugh Symes was going to explain his arrival at the hospital within seconds after he’d shot his partner. She couldn’t think of anything he could say that would sound halfway sane, but she figured Symes would rather be alive to answer questions than eviscerated by Mayhew.
Nora worried about her own vulnerability. Sam had been the only witness to Symes and Mayhew’s asking her to come down to the precinct with them, but some of the hospital staff might have noticed her departure with the two detectives. Maybe someone had seen her getting into the backseat of their unmarked car. She’d have to have a story ready, if—when—other detectives came calling. But she didn’t feel capable of making up a credible account at the moment. Indigo had other things on her to-do list, and they all seemed more urgent.
Sam had told her Shelby Coughlin didn’t exist … at least not under that name. Maybe “Shelby” knew who’d created the trust fund that paid her bills. Nora smiled. It would have been nice if this trust fund in her name had paid her own bills.
But at that thought, a bell began chiming in Nora’s head. Hadn’t that been what Uncle Theo had discussed with her? At her parents’ funeral?
Trying to remember, she bought a cup of coffee and a pastry at the counter of a neighborhood coffeehouse and sat down at one of the tiny tables. As she ate the pastry absently, she poked at the memory, trying to recover more of the conversation. Her eyes closed, and she concentrated. The day of her parents’ funeral had been gray; Nora found she was now sure of that. She remembered wearing a coat, so it had been cold, but no snow was on the ground. Most of all, she remembered her overwhelmingly bleak mood, but of course she had been grieving. Hadn’t she?
Now that she understood her parents’ assassination in the alley had been a fiction, real images were beginning to seep in.
“You’ll never run out of money,” Uncle Theo said. “Matt and Stella were insured, and they had some savings. Your folks left enough to make your life comfortable. Of course, you’ll need to work, Nora. But maybe you can pick the job you want most, rather than the job that pays the most.”
Nora could see Theo’s face clearly now, but she still didn’t know where he’d come from or where he’d gone after the funeral. Why hadn’t she ever seen her uncle again? She had become an investigative reporter. Why hadn’t she used her skills to track him down? Theo Hesper was not a common name … assuming he had been her father’s brother.
So the trust fund might be a reality. Nora had never placed a high priority on making every dime she could, but it would have been pleasant to enjoy a few things she’d wanted: a new laptop, maybe an apartment with more than one room. Instead, apparently, she’d rented an apartment for Shelby. And paid her utilities.
Nora made herself finish the pastry and the coffee, but inside she was panicking. Before she left the table, she looked down at her hands on the plastic table. She took a deep breath. Are you there?
I’m always here, my host, the sneering voice replied.
How long have we been … merged? Nora didn’t know how else to put it.
Since your parents died. You don’t remember yet?
Not exactly. Nora shuddered. Something about chatting with yourself was fundamentally wrong. Or whatever the voice was.
The thing inside Nora laughed. You saved me, though you didn’t intend to. In return, I saved you. I gave you strength and courage when you needed it the most.
Courage? Nora couldn’t understand why she’d needed courage.
Maybe “survival skills” is more accurate.
So much for the monks in Nepal. How could she not have seen the absurdity of that scenario?
“Miss, are you all right?” The voice was not the horrifying one inside her, but that of the young waiter from the counter where she’d paid for her coffee and the pastry. Now he was standing anxiously by her table, studying her with concern.
Nora emerged from her reverie with some bewilderment. Quite a few faces were turned to her, and they were all curious or frightened. She wondered what she’d been doing to cause such apprehension. She had to get out of there.
“So sorry.” Nora forced a smile on her face. “I sat up with a friend at the hospital last night.” She stood hastily, gathered her bag, and nodded to the waiter.
It was time to confront Shelby.
Nora was so unsettled that she didn’t want to use the shadows to travel. Walking like other humans would be fine.
* * *
Fifteen minutes later, Nora was knocking on the familiar door. She’d delayed this confrontation by stopping at her own apartment to feed and water the Assholes, who had ventured out of their hiding places when they’d decided she was Nora, not Indigo. She was going to have the most messed-up cats in New York, which was saying something. Then Nora had taken five more minutes to change their litter box. It seemed like the least she could do.
She did not feel in any way ready for this conversation, but she had to have it. When the door opened, Nora jumped.
“Hey.” Shelby sagged against the doorframe, her red-gold hair in a tangled mass. Nora had never seen Shelby so disheveled. “That was crazy, huh? How’s your friend Sam?” Shelby stood aside and gestured Nora into the apartment.
To Nora’s eyes, Shelby looked exactly the same. Her apartment was the familiar, charming blend of attractive odds and ends. But when Nora stepped through the door, she slipped into Indigo and looked again. The view through Indigo’s eyes staggered her. She stared at Shelby, shaking her head, and took a step back.
“What are you?” Indigo snarled.
Shelby looked shadowy now—almost translucent—and the rosy-pink love seat behind her flickered in and out of Indigo’s sight, as if it both existed and did not.
Sorrow shattered Shelby’s expression, along with a kind of shame. She slid down to her knees. “Don’t look at me like that. Don’t look from the shadows.”
“Who are you?”
Shelby began weeping. “Don’t you get it? I’m you, Nora. At least, you and Damastes created me.”
“What?” Indigo’s resolve faltered. “What do you mean?” she asked, her voice shaky.
Shelby pulled a green-and-gold vase off the little table next to the love seat and threw it at Indigo. Inhumanly fast, Indigo reached out to catch it … but it was air. The vase had vanished.
“Ask the demon,” Shelby said, and closed her eyes, her anguish painful to watch.
Time for you to know, Damastes rumbled inside Indigo.
She did not even need to formulate a question.
You have so much of me in you. I occupied you so … unexpectedly. And you were so strong. My power is manifesting in you, Indigo. My child.
I’m not your child, Indigo thought. You’re a demon. I fight the bad guys, asshole. I fight evil.
You do not just fight the people who wanted to control me. You leave bodies strewn in your wake. You can create what you need most. You pave the way for my return.
Indigo looked down at the spot where Shelby slumped against the table. For a second, Shelby’s legs vanished.
“What are you?” Indigo asked quietly now, sadness sweeping over her.
“I’m your friend,” Shelby whispered. “Because that’s what you needed the most.”
She’s your Heykeli. If she were mine, I would use her to kill people who need to die, including the ones you named. Damastes laughed. Friend, indeed!
Indigo stared at Shelby, the demon’s words echoing in her head. “I don’t know what that is. Heykeli?”
Shelby hung her head. “You do know, because I know. And the only way that’s possible is if somewhere inside, you have all this information already.”
Simmering with frustration and anger, sadness and confusion, Indigo crouched by Shelby and reached out to take her hand and felt reassured by its solidity. Whatever she was, she wasn’t just a figment.
“Talk to me,” Indigo said. Or maybe the words were Nora’s.
Shelby shook her head. “Let Damastes tell you. He won’t lie about this part. He wants you to know.”
Indigo felt a warmth in her chest, a feeling of pleasure, and she knew that in some shadowy hell, the demon was grinning.
Tell me, then, she thought.
Damastes laughed softly inside her head. Your power comes from me, woman, and I am a murder god. The shadows you control are only one tool I have at my disposal. Another is the creation of a Heykeli. The word is from the Turkish language and myth. Heykeli is a thing sculpted from air and light, a manifestation of pure will. The shadows are only that, but a well-forged Heykeli can appear as real as—
No, Indigo thought. She said it aloud. But the word didn’t make it any less true. She felt it. She knew it. A thing sculpted from shadows the way the golem of Hebrew legend had been sculpted from clay. Which made a Heykeli some kind of murder golem.
In ancient times, the murder gods would have used this power to create champions to fight and die for them. It takes such power that it is only possible to forge and maintain one Heykeli at a time. Unaware, unknowing, you’ve been giving Shelby life for years.
Indigo stared at Shelby, saw the tears streaming down her friend’s face, and shook her head. It was unthinkable. Impossible. And yet …
“So, you’re what?” Indigo said quietly. “My—”
“Imaginary friend.” Shelby glanced up, wiped at her tears, and looked away. “More or less, yeah.”
“But you’re right here! Right in front of me!”
“Only when you’re near. When you’re too far away, or you haven’t thought of me in a while, I’m just … gone.”
Indigo could barely breathe. Trying to come to terms with this revelation, she looked around the room. As she did, items began to fade to black and white, and then to vanish.
“What are you doing?” she demanded, focused inward.
Nothing, Damastes said. This is your doing. You’ve been hiding the truth from yourself, and now it is unraveling. Shelby is three-dimensional, full color, but the things in this apartment are only shadows that you’ve seen the way you want to see them. Like so much else.
“Or the way you made me see them,” Indigo snarled.
Damastes kept silent on that point.
“I’m a crazy person,” Indigo whispered to herself. “All of this lunacy. Have I really even been out there, fighting crime, or is that all in my head?”
You are a great fighter. Better than I ever expected.
Praise from a demon. Indigo shuddered.
Unexpectedly, Shelby said, “You’re more than Indigo.”
“What?” She was already shaken, and talking to someone who kept flickering in and out was absolutely unnerving.
“You’ve taken and taken from Damastes every time you go through the shadows, as you hide, as you attack. You’re a leech on him. He never planned on you getting so strong when he entered you, but you did. Only someone very strong could have created me.”
“What about the money?” Indigo asked her Heykeli. Her murder golem. “The trust?”
“Maybe Sam can find out. It’s not something I have to worry about.”
Indigo shifted back into Nora, who pointed out something that had been bothering her, eating at the edges of her new knowledge. “How could I see you eat pizza and drink beer? How did you create all those stories about what happened to you at work? It seems impossible that you aren’t real.”
“And yet, I am.” Shelby seemed more sad than angry now. “Please don’t kill me, Nora. Please don’t erase me. I know keeping me around is sapping your power. But you need me.”
“I’d be stronger without you?” Strength … Indigo certainly needed as much as she could muster.
Shelby started to cry. “I love you, Nora. I’ve been your friend through all these trials. You confessed who you were to me.”
Shelby looked completely solid now, as if she were mustering the remnants of energy Nora had channeled into maintaining her. Nora stretched out her hand, laid it on Shelby’s shoulder, warm and solid. Nora’s heart ached and she still couldn’t quite believe any of this, but if she was going to be able to defend herself against the Phonoi and the murder nuns and even Damastes, she knew she had no choice.
“I can’t let them kill any more children. And I need to know who I really am. How this all happened to me.” Nora could feel tears running down her cheeks. “I’m so sorry, Shelby. I have to let you go.”
Shelby shrieked, and Nora drew the shadows close, transforming once more into Indigo. She knew how to expend power. Now she experimented with absorbing it. Like a vacuum cleaner, she told herself. She felt the moment Shelby became part of her. Indigo felt the surge of strength, an incredible jolt of power. She closed her eyes to revel in the feeling, and to fight off the guilt and shame that swept through her.
When she opened her eyes, Shelby was gone. The closet door hung open, the rack inside it vacant. The apartment was bare and silent, aside from a dripping tap in the tiny bathroom. And an empty space was inside Nora. But even as the Nora part of her acknowledged this loss, the Indigo of her felt invigorated and leaped into the shadows.
* * *
With an unprecedented swiftness and ease, she emerged behind the open bathroom door in Sam’s hospital room.
“Before I come out, I want you to know I’m here,” she said, and Sam squawked.
When Indigo emerged, she saw that Sam was half-sitting on the bed, his hair rumpled and his expression startled.
“I was asleep,” he said in protest. “Could you not do that ever again?”
“Sorry. I see you got your laptop.”
“Yeah, my neighbor has a key to my apartment, and he brought it over for me.”
“What have you been doing in your waking hours?”
“Mostly battling a killer headache,” Sam said sourly. “But I started looking up the names on the list you gave me.”
“And?”
His sourness deepened.
“Wow, Sam, I’m so sorry you got hurt because you are my friend. I’m really devastated that you’re missing work and running up a hospital bill.”
Indigo felt ashamed. But only briefly. Children’s lives were in the balance. She hadn’t lost sight of the missing children of Graham Edwards. Edwards had told Rafe Bogdani that he was through with the Children of Phonos. Bogdani might dispute that, and he was both a powerful and a violent man.
“I’m sorry, Sam,” Indigo said with as much contrition as she could summon. “You shouldn’t have been hurt, and I hope you recover in record time.” She kissed his forehead lightly.
“You don’t smell like Nora.”
Shocked, Indigo flinched backward. They stared at each other for a long moment. Then Sam shook his head, dismissing his own words with visible effort. He winced when the movement made his head swim.
“Okay,” he said. “I checked all the names. Some of the people on the list are dead. In fact, at least eighty-five percent of them. They were killed in that massacre in the warehouse. Maybe you read about it.” He eyed Indigo narrowly. “Maybe you were there.”
Indigo did her best to look blank.
After a moment Sam went on, “The real shocker on the list was Captain Fritz Mueller, of the NYPD. He’s alive and well and raging in the press over the death of his detective, Angela Mayhew. She was apparently gunned down by her partner, Hugh Symes, whom she’d stabbed with a knife. One witness said he saw a dark cloud in their car. And the last time I saw them, you were leaving this room with them.”
She took a breath, then told him about Mayhew’s being a member of the cult, about how the detective had tried to kill her, and Symes had intervened and been stabbed for his efforts.
“Symes had to shoot his own partner,” Indigo said. “I don’t know how he’ll come out of the inquiry. I can’t make it up to him, but I can at least ensure that all the pain and trauma were worthwhile by saving kids’ lives. And in ridding this city, and maybe even the world, of the Children of Phonos.”
For a fraction of a second she was Nora, looking at the man she’d loved, maybe still loved, and he was looking back at her with a whopping dose of doubt.
“Assuming I accept your point of view,” Sam said deliberately, “and that’s a big assumption … what do you plan to do next?”
“I plan to find out where Graham Edwards stowed his children. He indicated in a conversation that his wife, Charlotte, had been preparing them for sacrifice. Edwards hid them, and because he was busy taking them away, he missed the slaughter at the warehouse where his wife died.”
Sam had pulled the laptop toward him and he began to type. “I think I can answer one question, though not the one you asked. Look.” He turned the screen to face Indigo, and she bent closer. Graham Edwards, looking ten years older than the man she’d watched confronting Rafe Bogdani, was standing at a bank of microphones. A handsome blond man was standing at Edwards’s elbow, and Indigo had no trouble pegging him as the family lawyer. The man at Edwards’s other side was a uniformed police officer. As long as the cop in charge wasn’t Fritz Mueller, Edwards might keep his children safe.
“My wife died two days ago,” Graham Edwards told the cameras, looking suitably shocked and grieved. “I have received revelation after revelation about her secret life as a cult member. I thought I had hit rock bottom, until my children were taken from me. I have contacted the NYPD, the finest police force in the world, to help me to get them back.”
One of the reporters yelled, “Ransom demand?”
Edwards shook his head. “Not yet.”
“Don’t you think calling the police in on this will make the kidnappers think twice about giving them back?”
“I hope, by going public, I’m enlisting the eyes and ears of the good citizens of this city.” Edwards appeared to start crying, and his lawyer gently turned the distraught father away from the microphone.
He took Edwards’s place. “If any of the cult members have survived the mysterious massacre in which Mrs. Edwards died, we plead with you to please come forward to share any information you have concerning the whereabouts of Anastasia Catherine Edwards, age twelve, and Andel Raymond Edwards, age ten. We beg you to come forward. I’ll be distributing recent pictures of the children at the exit doors.”
“Any reward?” called a voice.
The police officer stepped forward and almost shouldered the lawyer out of the reach of the microphones. “I’m Captain Ray Delaney. In situations in which a reward has been posted, the flood of information becomes almost impossible to wade through. But it’s still under consideration.”
“But if you don’t offer a reward, you might miss the good tip that leads to their recovery!” a young woman said.
She could have been me a few years ago, Nora thought. Voicing the unpopular thought, trying to get an honest answer.
Captain Delaney looked at the reporter with distaste. “For now, we rely on the goodwill of the people of New York to save the lives of these two children. Thanks for coming. Good-bye.”
And the press conference was over. Sam had pulled his laptop back, and he was typing as he talked.
“What do you think?” Sam said. “Sincere, or staged?”
“Little of both. It makes me suspicious that they emphasized New York City so much. If that’s sincere, it’s smart, but maybe Edwards is trying for misdirection. Maybe he knows where his kids are, but in case something happens to them, he wants all eyes watching.”
“Does he really think the cult took them?”
“He has good reason to wonder.”
“Get this,” Sam said. “The kids’ weird names? At a quick glance at one of those baby-name Web sites online, Anastasia means ‘resurrection,’ and Andel means ‘God’s messenger.’”
“That’s unsettling.” Indigo thought of Rafe Bogdani getting possession of those children, and she shuddered. She wouldn’t leave an earthworm in the care of Bogdani, especially if the earthworm had something Bogdani wanted.
Such as a life to sacrificed.
“I have to go,” she said abruptly.
“What are you going to do?”
“I’m visiting Symes. He’s here in this hospital.”
“How do you know?”
I brought him here. Through the shadows.
She shrugged. “I heard the nurses talking about it.”
“They may not let you in.”
Indigo smiled. “They can’t stop me.”
She found the right floor on the directory, but when she got off the elevator, she was confronted by a nurses’ station at the hub of a wheel of intensive-care rooms. The rooms didn’t have conventional walls, just plate glass, so the nurses could keep an eye on their patients. Light curtains could be drawn across the glass, though, probably to allow the patients some privacy when they were being bathed.
Indigo scanned the people in the rooms. She had never visited an ICU before. For the first time, she realized what a desperate place this was. And how bright. She could not find a single shadow.
At first her eyes passed over Hugh Symes without recognition. The detective was propped up, unconscious or asleep, and he’d clearly had surgery. There were tubes and bandages, wires running to machines. Sitting outside the room was a police officer. At Symes’s bedside stood a handsome woman in her forties, who looked down at Symes with mingled despair and pleading. Indigo could see the woman’s mouth was moving. She was talking to Symes, though she didn’t get any response that Indigo could detect. The woman patted Symes’s hand and left the room, pausing to chat with the cop on duty, who’d pulled up a chair to flank the door.
Indigo had been intent on speaking to Symes. She’d wanted to thank him. She’d wanted to be sure he was going to recover. Though not true allies, they had saved each other’s life. Symes had stopped Mayhew from killing Indigo. And Indigo had gotten him to the hospital faster than any ambulance, giving him the best survival chance he’d had.
“Can I help you?” a sharp voice said.
Indigo started and looked down at the short woman standing in front of her. She ought to have been in the shadows, but this woman had seen her. Somehow, in a moment of distraction, she’d become Nora again.
“I’m sorry,” she said, trying to gather some composure. “I think I got off at the wrong floor. I’m looking for Pediatrics.”
Short Nurse didn’t believe her for a second. “Not here,” she said crisply. “Please get on the elevator and go to third floor, if you want Pediatrics.”
“Thanks.” Nora punched the elevator button. Short Nurse made it clear that she was going to wait until Nora got inside, so the minute the door pinged open, she stepped aboard. She nodded and smiled at the nurse, who did not nod and smile back.
Nora wanted to go home and go to sleep. She wanted to wake up to the life she’d had before. But Indigo knew that was never going to happen.
As she made her way out of the hospital, she decided to return to the Edwards house. She would interrogate Graham Edwards, determine if his children had really been kidnapped or if he’d trumped up the story to explain his kids’ absence so Rafe Bogdani wouldn’t go after them. She could avoid wasting time if she knew the truth.
It was midafternoon, and shadows were to be found. In an alley a block from the hospital she saw a slice of darkness to the side of a green Dumpster, and she made for it like a homing pigeon. She wanted to feel she was moving forward again, something Indigo did well.
She flowed through the shadow world until she emerged in the Edwards backyard. It had never before been so easy, so painless, to travel. And all I had to do for it was kill my best friend. But that was a Nora idea, and Indigo banished it.
She focused on the questions she’d ask Graham Edwards. And while she was in the house, she’d retrieve the keys she’d taken from Charlotte Edwards’s corpse. It had occurred to Indigo that since the keys hadn’t unlocked the Edwards house, maybe they opened Rafe Bogdani’s apartment. After all, Charlotte had been having an affair with the magician. Or wizard. Or whatever he called himself.
As she went up the steps to the kitchen door, she extended her senses into the house, but she could not feel the presence of another human inside. Maybe she would wait for Edwards’s return, or maybe she’d get the keys from the ornamental box and start searching for Bogdani’s apartment.
Having a plan felt good. She flowed in through the keyhole as she had before. This time it was easier, less frightening.
She took shape in the middle of the kitchen …
Just in time to catch a blow to the jaw.
Indigo staggered back, which was involuntary but fortunate. The swipe of a knife barely missed her throat.
She hit the kitchen door and righted herself, ducked to avoid another knife, and turned her own hands into blades of darkness. The ability to see in the dark gave her a slight advantage, because no matter how they’d been disguised from her detection, these were human beings. They weren’t all women, which meant they were Phonoi assassins. She swung her blade across the arm of a man, who screamed and fell, clutching at the flayed meat of his biceps. That left four more, and they were skilled.
After the events of the morning with Symes and Mayhew, Indigo was not in any condition to win a fight of this intensity. She wanted to flow out of the keyhole as she’d come in, but the Phonoi were on her every second. All of her attention had to be focused on parrying, thrusting, dodging.
Finally, to her relief, she managed a well-timed stab that took out another assailant. But that still left three, and they were fresher than she was.
Indigo found her back pressed against the door again, and she launched a twisting side kick at the man in front of her. The kick took him in the chest and knocked him flailing backward across the floor … into the arms of a new arrival, a woman who hadn’t been there a moment before. This new arrival caught the man and twisted his neck with an audible, nasty crack. He collapsed on the floor like a bag of rice.
The face was familiar: Selene, the nut job who’d attacked Indigo on the subway steps.
Selene was here. But this time, it appeared, she was on Indigo’s side.
Having an ally gave Indigo a surge of strength, and she cut the throat of another man who’d turned to stare at this new twist of events. Indigo had mustered her last reserve of strength, so she was grateful that Selene, still only another shadow in the gloom of the kitchen, dispatched the last Phonoi with another neck-breaking twist.
Indigo let herself slide to the floor and sit with her back pressed against the door. She took a few moments to catch her breath. Her heart rate gradually slowed to normal, and at last she didn’t feel like a scared rabbit.
“Thanks,” she said finally. “I don’t know what changed your mind about me, and I hope you’re not going to pick up the job they started.”
Selene laughed. “If I’d wanted you dead, I would have let them wear you out before I took over. It would have saved me some trouble.”
“I guess you’ll tell me why you helped.”
“If you’ll tell me why you pulled such a foolish move, coming back here.”
Indigo didn’t even try to deny that she shouldn’t have revisited the Edwards house. “I wanted to question him. He says his kids were kidnapped, and I want to know if that’s true or if he’s keeping them hidden from Rafe Bogdani. Their mother promised Rafe he could sacrifice them.”
“Anything else?”
“Yes, I wanted to retrieve some keys.”
“What do these keys unlock?”
“I don’t know. But I figure if Charlotte Edwards had them, the keys must open something interesting.”
Selene thought for a moment, her expression unreadable. “You and I need to go somewhere and have a heart-to-heart,” she said finally.
“About this?” Indigo waved her hand at the corpses.
“Not our problem, are they?”
“I guess not.” Indigo felt better immediately. Exhausted, she accepted Selene’s hand to rise from the floor.
“So go get these keys. And then we’ll find a safe place to have a conversation. You need to tell me what happened in New York today, and I need to explain why I helped you. It’s a story you’ll find interesting, I promise you.”