I slid the dead bolt, parted door from jamb in the narrowest of slivers, and knifed the sharp white beam of my flashlight through it.
A dozen Shades shrank back, retreating with oily swiftness to the edge of the light and not one inch further. Adrenaline kicked me in the teeth. I slammed the door shut and drove the dead bolt home.
There were Shades inside Barrons Books and Baubles!
How in the world had that happened? I’d checked the lights before I’d gone to bed—they’d all been on!
I pressed myself against the door, shaking, wondering if I’d really woken up or if I was still dreaming. I’ve had some bad dreams lately and this was certainly the stuff of nightmares. I might be a sidhe-seer and a mythic Null, I might have one of the Fae’s deadliest weapons in my possession, but even I’m defenseless against the lowest caste of Unseelie. Ironic, I know.
“Barrons!” I shouted. For reasons my taciturn host refuses to divulge, the Shades leave him alone. That the deadly bottom-feeders of the dark Fae give Jericho Barrons a wide berth perturbs me immensely but I’d promise to never ask him another question about it again, if only he’d cut a swath through them right now and save me.
I shouted his name until my throat hurt, but no knight-errant rushed to my rescue.
Under normal circumstances, if the Shades had been outside the store in the streets, dawn would have driven the amorphous vampires back to wherever it is they hide during the day, but it was so stormy I doubted enough light could filter through the bookstore’s alcoved windows to affect them in here. Even if the dense cloud cover passed and the sun came out, strong sunlight wouldn’t enter the main floor of the bookstore before early afternoon.
I groaned. But Fiona would, long before that. This past week she’d begun working extended hours at the bookstore. Increased customer demand, she’d said. Lots of early morning clients. She’d been arriving at the shop at precisely eight-forty-five A.M. to open the bookstore at nine o’clock sharp.
I had to warn her off, before she walked into a waiting Shade ambush!
And now that I thought about it, I was pretty sure she knew how to reach Barrons, too. I snatched up the phone and rang the operator.
“County?” he inquired.
“All of Dublin,” I said briskly. Surely Fiona lived nearby. If not, I’d try the outlying counties.
“Name?”
“Fiona…uh…Fiona…” With a sound of disgust, I dropped the phone back in the cradle. I was so panicked I hadn’t realized I didn’t know Fiona’s last name until I’d needed it.
Back to square one.
I had two choices: I could stay up here, safe with my flashlights while, in a few hours, the Shades devoured Fiona and any number of innocent, hapless patrons who might subsequently stroll through the door she unlocked, or get my panicked act together and stop that from happening.
But how?
Light was my only weapon against the Shades. Though I suspected Barrons might get positively hostile if I set his store on fire, I had matches, and it would certainly drive them out. However, I didn’t want to be inside the building when it went up in flames, and since I could hardly jump from the fourth floor, and there was no fire escape or convenient stash of bed linens to knot into a rope, I filed that option away in the category “Last Resort.” Unfortunately I could see only one other resort, and it wasn’t a sunny spot in the Bahamas. I stared dismally at the door.
I was going to have to run the gauntlet.
How had the Shades gotten inside to begin with? Was the power out in part of the store and they’d slithered in through a crack? Could they do that? Or had the lights somehow gotten turned off? If so, I could creep from switch to switch, armed with flashlights, and turn them back on.
I don’t know if you’re familiar with the child’s game Don’t Touch the Alligator, but Alina and I used to play it when Mom was too busy with something else to notice that we were hopping from the Sunday parlor sofa, to her favorite lace-covered pillows, to that awful chair Gram brocaded to match the curtains, and so on. The idea is that the floor is full of alligators and if you step on one of them, you’re dead. You have to get from one room to the next, without ever touching the floor.
I needed to get from the top floor of the bookstore to the bottom without ever touching the dark, and I wasn’t sure how completely I couldn’t touch it. Barrons says they can only get you in full darkness, but did that mean a Shade could eat me, or part of me, if for one second, a single foot, or something so small as a toe protruded into shadow? The stakes in this game were significantly higher than a carpet-burned knee, or a scolding from Mom if I slipped up. I’d seen the piles of clothing and human rinds the Shades left behind after a meal.
Shivering, I pulled on my boots, zipped a jacket over my pajama top, and tucked two of my six flashlights into the waistband of my jeans, front and back, pointed up. I tucked two more into the snug elastic waistband of my jacket, pointed down to shine on my vulnerable toes. Those were iffy. If I moved too quickly they’d fall out, but I only had so many hands. I carried the other two. I slipped a pack of matches into my pocket and tucked the spear into my boot. I’d have no use for it against this particular enemy, but there might be others. It was possible the Shades were merely the vanguard, and there was worse to come.
I took a deep breath, squared my shoulders, and opened the door. When the overhead light arced into the hallway, the Shades repeated their oily retreat.
Shades come in all different shapes and sizes. Some are small and thin, others tall and wide. They have no real substance. They’re hard to pick out from the darkness, but once you know what to look for you can spot them, if you’re a sidhe-seer. They’re areas that are darker and denser, and ooze malevolence. They move around a lot, as if they’re hungry and restless. They make no noise. Barrons says they’re barely sentient, but once I shook my fist at one of them and it bristled back at me. That’s sentient enough to worry me. They eat anything that lives: people, animals, birds, right down to the worms in the soil. When they take over a neighborhood, they turn it into a wasteland. I’d christened those barren landscapes Dark Zones.
“I can do this. Piece of cake.” Embracing the lie, I aimed my flashlights and stepped into the hall.
It was a piece of cake. Turned out the power wasn’t off; the switches had been thrown. Initially, I worked my way cautiously from wall switch to lamp, but when I realized the Shades were consistently staying beyond the reach of direct light, I gained confidence. Even in a windowless hallway of utter blackness, the flashlights bathed my body in white radiance that protected me. With each switch I threw, more Shades bunched up, until I had fifty or more of them crammed into the darkness I was forcing to retreat, light by light.
By the time I reached the landing of the first-floor stairwell, I was feeling downright cocky about my ability to clear the store of the Unseelie infestation.
I stepped briskly into the back parlor, heading for the light switch on the opposite wall. Three steps into the room, a damp breeze ruffled my hair. I swung my flashlight in that direction. A window was open onto the alley behind Barrons Books and Baubles! The truth was inescapable—interior and exterior lights off, a window propped open? Someone was trying to kill me!
I stomped toward the window and sprawled headlong over an ottoman that shouldn’t have been there. My flashlights went flying in all directions, casting a dizzying strobe light effect as they spun out of control across the floor. Shades erupted like panicked pigeons, flocking through the open window to the sanctuary of night.
Ha. Good riddance. Now I just needed to slam the window on them.
I scrambled up onto my hands and knees and froze right where I was—face-to…er…blackness-where-a-face-wasn’t—with a Shade that hadn’t fled. It wasn’t one of the smaller ones, either. It had contorted itself to occupy the darkness between the flashlights, coiling snakelike over, under, and around the beams. I didn’t want to think about the frighteningly quick reflexes it must have to have managed the trick. It was as high as the ceiling in several places, at least twenty feet long, and pulsated like a dark cancer, pressing at the edges of the light.