“Foxglove,” Rory spat out. “He did it! Swoop was right! He’s a shadow stealer!”
Izzy sat on the ground and put her head in her hands.
“What’s going to happen?” she asked. “We’re gonna become . . . ghosts.”
Rory shivered at the memory of Swoop’s words: I would imagine you’d become a wraith. A shade of your former self.
“No,” Rory said. “We’re going to get our shadows back. Me and you, Izzy.”
He offered his hand and she pulled herself up.
A man walked by and shot them a curious look. Rory watched him pass and saw that he didn’t cast a shadow either. “We have to do something,” he said. “The whole town . . . everyone’s shadow could be gone!”
“Foxglove,” Izzy repeated, and the name sounded like a curse. “We’re going there now to get our shadows back!”
Rory released a trembling breath. “Wait a minute,” he said. “Let’s get ahold of ourselves. We don’t even know how to do that.”
Izzy paced back and forth. “I can’t believe it,” she muttered.
Rory couldn’t either.
He looked to the cobblestones again, lit by the lamplight. He waved his hand back and forth between the light and the ground. Nothing. There was no mirror image.
“Swoop,” Izzy hissed. “Maybe he knows how. He was hiding something, Rory. I could tell.”
Rory knew she was right. Plus, the artist was the one who’d talked about shadow stealing in the first place.
The idea of trying to retrieve his own shadow was beyond comprehension. Rory didn’t even know where to begin. His eyes suddenly stung.
Izzy grabbed him by the shoulders. “We can do it, Rory. Foxglove stole our shadows and our town. He’s going to get what’s coming to him!”
Rory swallowed back tears. He didn’t want to cry in front of Izzy. “We’re the only ones who can stop him,” he said, voice trembling.
She released her grip, and the look she gave him was fierce. “And that’s exactly what we’re going to do.”
Rory tossed and turned in bed, his thoughts plagued by visions of shadows and dark magicians.
My shadow, he thought, not for the first time. Gone? How?
He had heard his mother come in from her night shift at the tannery, but he was too fearful to go downstairs to see if she still had a shadow. What could he tell her? That he and Izzy would find a way to get them back?
He finally fell asleep, and his dreams were sunless and cold.
Rory and Izzy stood on the boardwalk of Captain’s Quay. The wind was strong, and Rory watched a small boat rock to and fro on the bay while the captain struggled with a tattered sail.
Much to Rory’s dismay, upon awakening, he had seen that his mum’s shadow was, indeed, gone. She hadn’t seemed to notice, though, only went about her morning tasks as usual. I have to tell her, Rory had thought. No. I can’t. Who knows how she’d take it? It’s up to me and Izzy. We have to find a way. Izzy had faced the same terrible realization when she had seen that Pekka’s had vanished too.
The darkening skies that had been plaguing Gloom were even worse today. A cold wind came with them, screaming down the Strasse like a spirit. “Probably Foxglove’s doing as well,” Izzy said.
Now that Rory knew he didn’t have a shadow, he constantly looked for it: along the road beneath his feet, on the side of every building he passed. It was gone.
Rory watched as people walked by, none of them casting any kind of shadow either.
“No one knows it’s missing until they look,” Izzy said distantly.
Will they all become wraiths? Rory wondered. Like ghosts, Izzy had said. What about his mum, and Izzy’s?
“And these skies don’t help,” Rory replied, peering up at the black clouds. “I know Gloom is dark, but this seems . . .”
“Unnatural?” Izzy suggested.
A heavy silence hung in the air. The wind whipped along the boardwalk, sending paper and debris flying.
“She is coming,” Rory whispered.
“I can feel her upon the wind,” Izzy finished.
There was no sign of Swoop on the beach.
“Looks like we have to try his house,” Izzy said.
They took the same path as they had before, past the inn called Bertha’s and the sail-maker’s shop. Rory walked warily, every now and then stopping to look behind them. What if Swoop was right? What if he was being watched by someone? Were they being followed before, when they first met Swoop?
Rory couldn’t think about that now. They just had to find him and ask more questions: How could they get their shadows back? Did Foxglove and Malvonius have any weaknesses? And then there was the matter of Foxglove actually owning Gloom.
Rory shook his head at the strangeness of it all.
“This is it.” Izzy’s voice brought him out of his reverie.
They were standing on the steps of Lysander Swoop’s house. Rory looked at the dead flowers and, once again, felt a sense of foreboding, a deep pang in his stomach. “Here goes,” he said, and knocked on the door—three short raps.
A breeze came down the street, snapping the clothes drying on a neighbor’s line.
“Maybe he’s not home,” Izzy said.
Rory knocked again, louder this time.
They waited, but there was no response. “What do you think?” he asked.
They both looked out to the street. They didn’t want to draw suspicion. A spark suddenly gleamed in Izzy’s eyes, one Rory had seen before—when she was up to no good.
She turned around again and faced the door, as did Rory. She rattled the knob, then peered in through the window. “Nothing,” she said. “Curtain’s in the way.”
A moment of silence hung in the air between them.
Izzy took a pin from her hair and held it up.
“Really?” Rory asked in disbelief.
“Any better ideas?”
“No,” he said, against his better judgment.
Izzy glanced back toward the street. “Stand behind me,” she told him in a low voice. “Look like you’re just waiting for someone.”
Rory did as she asked. He released a trembling breath. He knew it was wrong to break in, but they needed answers, and he didn’t know where else to find them.
He heard Izzy fiddling around with the keyhole and then a distinct click. “Got it,” she said.
They entered quickly and shut the door behind them.
Rory gasped.
Lysander Swoop lay face-down on the floor, his arms and legs at crooked angles.
“Tears of a fish!” Izzy whispered.
Rory stepped forward carefully. Maybe Swoop was sleeping. Or drunk. He was an artist after all.
Rory knelt and took a deep breath, then gazed up at Izzy, who nodded. He rolled the man over.
Two lifeless eyes stared up at him.
He scrambled back. “He’s . . . he’s dead!”
Izzy didn’t speak, but knelt next to the body. She lowered her ear to the artist’s chest. Rory saw her blink calmly, as if in concentration. After a moment, she lifted her head. “Yup, he’s dead, all right.”
Rory closed his eyes and swallowed hard.
“I don’t see any marks on him,” Izzy observed, as if she saw dead bodies every day.
Magic, is what Rory was thinking, but kept it to himself.
“Uh-oh,” Izzy said.
“What?”
She lifted Swoop’s limp arm. Weak sunlight filtered in through the curtains. She moved the arm back and forth, as if he were a puppet, looking at the floor as she did so. “There’s no shadow.”
Rory stood up. He felt faint. His head spun. “They killed him and took his shadow.”
“Or,” Izzy countered, “they took his shadow and then killed him.”
“We have to get out of here,” Rory said nervously, peering around. Fear was slowly rising in his chest. Sweat beaded on his brow.
“Wait,” Izzy said, rising from the floor. “Let’s look around first. There might be something here we can use. Something that can help us get our shadows back.”
Rory looked at his friend like she had truly lost her mind. “Are you mad? He’s dead, Izzy. Dead. We can’t . . . be here!”
Izzy didn’t respond, only walked over to the wall and examined some of the paintings.
Rory sighed in frustration. He didn’t want to look at Swoop’s lifeless body again, but he did.
The man was dead.
“Check the books,” Izzy called without looking at him. “There might be something there.”
“Can’t believe it,” he muttered. “This is crazy.” But still, he did as his friend said.
The rows of books on the shelves were broken up by a few small decorative objects between them. Rory picked up the clay bird that Swoop had handled just a few days ago. He placed it back down and angled his head to read some of the spines: Lysander Swoop, Royal Portraitist; Goldenrod, Tales from the Sea; Ancient Rome: Myth or Reality? Most of the other books were about painting and sculpture.
“Hey, look,” Izzy said. “This is weird.”
Rory walked over and stood beside her. His fear and frustration had lessened somewhat, but still, there was a dead body just over his shoulder.
He shivered.
Izzy had peeled away a sizable piece of loose rose-colored wallpaper between two of Swoop’s paintings.
“It was flaking away,” she said. “Look.”
Rory leaned in. The distinct image of an eye stared back at him.
“What could it be?” he asked.
“Only one way to find out.”
Izzy and Rory peeled away more of the wallpaper. It curled and fell to the floor in great ribbons. Rory glimpsed smudges of red, yellow, and green underneath. There was definitely a painting there.
At last, Rory peeled away the final strip.
“By the sea gods,” Izzy whispered.
Rory didn’t speak, but another tremor ran through him.
Staring back at them was the image of a woman. It looked as if Swoop had painted her in some sort of fever dream. The mouth was open, revealing red tongues of flame. The eyes were only smudges of color—more like the impression of human eyes. Twisted green and brown vines made up her hair.
Rory’s dream flickered in his vision—a human form and red flames. He swallowed.
“Look,” Izzy said, leaning in closer.
Rory took a tentative step forward. Along the bottom of the painting, a snaky line of red paint revealed a name.
“Mara,” Rory whispered. He immediately felt as if he shouldn’t have said the name aloud. “I’ve seen her before,” he said quietly.
“Where?”
“My dream. I’m sure this is who I dreamed about. And it was also carved on Foxglove’s cellar doors.” He swallowed again. His mouth was dry. “This is her, Izzy. She.”
Izzy peered around the room warily, as if more hidden portraits were waiting to be discovered. “Why did Swoop paint this?” she asked.
“Why did he cover it up?” Rory shot back.
Izzy, while seemingly not distressed by the man’s dead body, paled at the question.
Rory glanced away from the painting and then back again. It was hard to look at for more than a few seconds at a time. It was as if there was something in it that was pulling the viewer in, beckoning. Calling. “C’mon,” he said abruptly. “Let’s get out of here.”
Izzy turned away from the wall. “What about him?” she said, cocking her head in the direction of Lysander Swoop’s crumpled form.
“I don’t know,” Rory replied. “We can’t tell anyone. They’ll want to know what we were doing here.” He set his jaw. “And we broke in.”
“Just have to leave him then,” Izzy said matter-of-factly.
Rory was taken aback by his friend’s callousness, but he didn’t know what to say. He was numb. He reluctantly walked to the door without glancing back, and imagined the eyes of Mara staring at his retreating form. Who was she?
“Wait,” Izzy said, turning around.
“What?” Rory snapped. “We have to get out of here, Izzy. Now!”
She didn’t answer, but walked to a table full of paints and brushes.
Rory joined her. “What are you doing?”
“I have an idea,” she said.
Rory breathed in deeply. We’re never going to get out of here. We’ll be caught, and then what will Mum do?
Izzy picked up a small knife and walked back toward the image painted on the wall. To Rory’s surprise, she began to scrape away some of the paint, cupping her free hand to collect the colored specks.
“What are you—” Rory started.
“Shh,” Izzy scolded.
She continued to scrape until a small mound of paint was in her hand. Then she stepped away from the wall and looked at her open palm. She breathed in through her nostrils and then exhaled. “Okay. Let’s go.”
“What were you doing?” Rory asked. “What are you going to do with that?”
Izzy grinned. “I’m going to see if I really have the sight.”