“If you mean is he angst-ridden and unhappy, the answer is yes.” Victoria answered for me. “I got an earful from him this morning when I asked if he was ready for the fight. Kendall isn’t making him happy and weak.”
Rafael shook his head. “Something feels wrong.”
They all popped out of sight, leaving Victoria and I staring at our own reflections in the mirror. I cleared my throat. “You spoke to Malcolm?”
“That’s what you want to talk about? We just saw the Others.”
I shrugged. “I see them constantly. Take a minute if you need one to process.”
She elbowed me. “Process? What are you Dr. Phil? Okay, I called Malcolm. I got into the habit of occasionally doing that when you couldn’t remember us. I’m not ridiculous about it. Every once in a while. We have a few conversations every so often.” She sighed. “It’s not a big deal. You can call Henry and check on him if you want to. Feel free. Once a week, give him a call.”
I walked past her out of the room. “First of all, my texting Henry would be ridiculous. He’s fine. He’s always going to be fine because he has you and Jack. I’ve never known a person as singularly happy as your husband. He doesn’t need me texting him. He’s going to find that weird.”
She walked past me out to the front of the store. “The Others were in my mirrors, and they think something is wrong.”
“There is a lot wrong.” My phone beeped. I looked at it. I had a voicemail. Why hadn’t my phone rung? I hated when that happened. I put the phone to my ear and listened. It was Grayson. We’d given him a cell phone when he started middle school. He could call if he missed the bus or needed something. One of us took it from him in the afternoon. When he was in high school, if he proved responsible, he’d be in control of his phone full-time.
Grayson sighed loudly. It was his I’m annoyed sound. “Mom, I forgot my lunch. I don’t want to buy the food from the cafeteria. It’s gross. They have this weird looking chicken. Can you bring me lunch? Or forget it; I’ll call dad. Where are you?” He hung up.
I whirled around. “I have to go bring Gray lunch. He forgot his.”
“Debbie should be coming in any second; I’ll go with you. Then we can look for more shadows. Or window shop for shoes. Let’s pick up Jack after you bring Gray his lunch. You can text Henry and tell him we’re coming. It’ll be the first in your weekly conversations.”
Victoria’s ability to multi-task never ceased to amaze me.
***
“This is where he goes to school? This is a public school? It has a swimming pool. My public school had bars on the wall. Gangs roamed the street. How do they expect kids to toughen up in such a country club?” Victoria kissed Jack’s head and kept walking through the hallway with me. We were on our way out of the school after leaving my son’s lunch with the secretary. She’d promised to call him to get it. I checked my watch. He should be in math right now. He’d have no issue with taking a break to retrieve his food. Grayson hated math, and I couldn’t say I blamed him.
“Is the purpose of school to toughen them?” I took her arm. “Or educate them to become active members of our society? Contributing adults who can be beneficial to our electorate?”
We rounded the corner, and I abruptly stopped. Standing in front of the door was my son. He was blocked from going any further by a boy who was much taller than him— at least a foot. I didn’t know the boy, but I could tell from the way Grayson stared at him with large eyes he wasn’t happy to be in the kid’s presence.
I went to step forward, and Victoria grabbed my arm. She whispered in my ear. “Give him a second. You embarrass him, and this is only going to get much worse.”
“I heard from Brad who was in the office that your freak mom with the white hair was in the office.”
Who was this kid? The thing about middle school was I didn’t know all of his friends anymore. Our middle school drew students from three other elementary schools besides our own. Finding this kid’s number and calling his mother was not going to happen very easily and—
Grayson stepped toward him, his hands fisted. “No one talks about my mother like that.”
Oh, no. What was he doing? I moved again, and once again Victoria wouldn’t let me advance. “Let’s see what’s going to happen. Nothing bad will happen to Grayson. I assure you.”
I don’t know why I believed her except this was Victoria, and if she said he’d be fine, he’d be fine. Still, I crept a little more forward.
“My aunt is a mom at your elementary school. She says your family is a bunch of freaks. We don’t like them here.” He tilted his head to the side. “I think you’re going to give me money every day to leave you alone.”
Grayson shook his head. “That’s not how this is going to work. You see? My family, we are freaks. The biggest you’ve ever met. And you really don’t want to fuck with my family. Bad things might happen to your family if you do.”
I gasped and covered my mouth. He’d cursed and threatened this child. What had happened to my sweet boy? When had he developed the skills to protect himself this way?
Victoria raised an eyebrow and grinned. She flicked her finger, and the picture of the school from twenty years earlier flew off the wall and smashed into the other wall. Unnamed Bully jumped. Grayson looked left and right. He’d have no idea what had happened. My son had no ability to move objects around.
Still, he rolled with the moment. “I’m not giving you money, and you’re going to stay as far away from me as you possibly can. Otherwise it won’t be pictures flying. Maybe it’ll be your head.”
The boy ran two steps backward.
“Hey.” Levi’s voice startled me. He rounded the corner from the other side of the hall. “None of this is okay. You don’t threaten people, son. No matter how small, ridiculous, and pathetic they turn out to be. Our family isn’t the way either of you have described it.” He shoved a brown bag at Gray. “Here’s your lunch. Go back to class. And, young man,” he addressed the other kid. “I’m going to get your name and email the principal and your father. What you just did? Extortion? In seven years you’ll go to jail for that.”
The boys both scampered off past Levi. My ex didn’t move. “Kendall. Hiding around the corner is beneath you.”
Victoria and I looked at each other. He was right. I was a grown woman. I steeled my spine and walked toward him, Victoria by my side.
“Hello, Levi. I see you got the same message I did.”
He pointed toward the exit. “Outside.”
I could argue with him. He didn’t really have the right to order me around. Still, I’d gotten really used to following his directions over the years. I walked behind him until we were both on the front lawn of the school. Where had he parked that he hadn’t come in through this door originally? The back lot?
“It is not okay. What just happened can’t happen again.” He threw his hands in the air. “Can I assume you threw the picture across the room?”
Victoria raised her hand. “That was me. Want to yell at me, Levi?”
A muscle ticked in his jaw. “This is between me and Kendall.”
“I’m afraid it’s not. See, Kendall is my family; that makes Grayson my family. Okay? Should I have not thrown the picture? Probably not. But see? I’ve grown up in his world. I’ve heard the word freak used for me. I’m going to somehow guess you never did.”
I touched her arm. “Maybe you should …”
“Yeah.” She shot Levi a look and then stopped her exit. “I wasn’t your biggest fan because you weren’t Malcolm. Probably shitty of me, but that’s the truth. Then I decided I was wrong about you. If you can’t understand how a moment like today was completely necessary to give that boy a sense of power in a life where nothing will ever be what he thought it would, you’re exactly the small-minded prick I thought you were.”
“Don’t talk to him like that. This is my battle not yours. He’s my ex, and like it or not, he has a point. I’m not saying he’s right. You don’t g
et to call him names.” I wouldn’t be guilty of the same thing I blamed him for, which was not standing up for me to others.
He held up his hands. “I don’t need you to fight my battles, Kendall. I’m not scared of Victoria calling me names.”
She stormed off, calling over her shoulder. “See you in the car, Kendall.”
I could practically feel Levi’s blood pressure rise. He looked at his feet. “There has to be a standard of behavior for our family. I don’t care what your friends think. I care what you think. I get that you wanted a win for Grayson. I appreciate that. You think I don’t want one for him too? But he gets that from being smart and strong. Not by making threats of things he can’t possibly do.”
“He cleared a ghost last night.” I hadn’t had a chance to talk to Levi about it yet. “This is his life. I’m his life.”
He patted his chest. “I’m his life, too, sweetheart.” He shook his head. “I don’t really want to fight this out with you on the middle school lawn. We have to be the best possible versions of ourselves, the models of who we want them to be.”
On the tip of my tongue were a lot of really low things I wanted to sling at him verbally. It would be as easy as pie to point out to him all the ways he had failed the children with his example. Instead, I took a deep breath. I was always the worst version of myself when I felt guilty about something.
“There’s going to be a big battle on Friday. It might put an end to things.”
He raised his eyebrow. “You’re battling?”
“Not me. I’m the lightbringer. Not the warrior. We all have a role.”
Levi seemed to consider what I said for a moment. “Malcolm, then.”
“Yes. But before any of that, I have to tell you that the shadows seem to be hanging around your offices at night after hours. Maybe not yours specifically. But the whole outfit. Do you have any idea why that would be?”
I heard the bell ding inside the school building, indicating the kids should move on to their next class. A breeze blew through my hair. Levi stayed silent.
“Why would they be in my offices?”
I took a deep breath. “I really don’t know. I guess I could try to fathom a reason. Either someone in your office is a shadow, so it’s a good meeting point. Or there’s something in the office they want. Or maybe it’s the location itself. I could keep trying to guess.”
He strode over to me with long steps, tugging me against him. “Well, we’re going to have to find out. When do you want to come look?”
Levi always smelled so familiar. Like home. “Now?”
“Okay.” He whispered in my ear. “I needed a hug because I yelled at you. I hate fighting with you. It just makes … me sick. You’re my partner, not my adversary. Listen, I don’t care what’s going on with Malcolm. It’s not going to be forever, you two. He had you then. You belong to me now, and you know it. What do the two of you have in common outside of this mess? Nothing. Say he wins in whatever battle. What do you have left to say to one another? Nothing.” He kissed my forehead. “I don’t care that you’re sleeping with him. In the end, it’s always going to be us.”
I jerked. “How …”
“It’s written all over your face, honey. I always knew I would know if you moved on. I’m not even jealous, not really. He’s a rest stop for you. I get it. Right now with this insanity, you need him. This is a blip of time. I’m your forever. You love me.” He gave me a tight squeeze before he let me go.
I gripped his arm. “Listen, you’re right okay? I shouldn’t have engaged in those antics. But I want to be clear. If I’d had my way and really given in to my baser instincts, I’d have let Victoria turn that little shit into a frog for the afternoon. And I don’t think I would have had a moment of remorse. I want to do that to anyone who hurts my family.”
Whatever his reaction was to my statement, he made no comment. As for me, his declaration of my ending up back with him left me rattled. I loved Malcolm; I’d told him so and not lied. We could never be Victoria and Henry—the ease they had together wouldn’t be natural for Malcolm and me in this life. I had children; that was always going to be in our way, and I wouldn’t change that decision for anything in the world. Our discomfort didn’t mean I wasn’t in love with him.
The real problem was my ex wasn’t wrong either. I loved Levi, too. Even if he infuriated me when he got so damned holier-than-thou. Or just downright correct in everything he said, even if it drove me crazy.
What was I supposed to do?
I took a deep breath. For starters, I would go investigate shadows and let the workings of my heart figure themselves out another day.
Victoria fumed in the car. I could tell from the way she pursed her lips. I got in the drivers’ side and turned on the radio to play some low elevator-type music.
“Do you remember that time in the Other place when I was so mad at Malcolm I hadn’t spoken to him for a week? I’d even gone so far as to move out of our space. You let me move in with you and Henry.”
She shifted to stare at me. “Vaguely. I think Malcolm showed up eventually, extended his hand, you took it, and off you went like the whole thing had never happened.”
“That’s right. That’s how it’s always been with me. He extends his hand, and I go. But what I remember from those nights with you and Henry, living on the couch of your space, was how it wasn’t like that with you and Henry. You didn’t seem to live in between fights. You really got each other. You still do.”
When she furrowed her brow, laugh lines showed by her eyes. “Right. But—”
I held up my hand. “What you had, that’s what I had with Levi for a while. Before it all went to hell. A person. A purpose. A time. Everything wasn’t hard.”
“I …” She took a deep breath. “I should not have spoken to him like that.”
I agreed. “No.”
“I’ll apologize.”
I hugged her to me. “Okay.”
“Just one thing. I remember you and Malcolm differently. You fought hard, and you made up just as hard. Always. You missed him, and he was lost without you.”
I put my hands on the steering wheel. “We’re going to go check out the shadows. Why don’t you text your good buddy Malcolm, who you talk to on the phone, and tell him to come if he wants. The whole team.”
She rolled her eyes at me. “It’s not like I’m regularly speaking to him.”
“Yeah, well, I’m going to tease you about it forever. Be warned. One more thing.”
Victoria pulled out her phone. “Hit me.”
“If I die, Levi obviously gets custody of the kids. If he goes, they go to me. But, in the event we both die—him first and then me since apparently order matters in custodial decisions—I’d like you to take my children. My parents are not equipped on their own. My mom is fading. My kids will need you.”
She gasped, tears immediately flowing down her face. “Yes. God. Yes. Sure. I’d love to. Only, don’t die, okay? Because I don’t have Levi’s good sense, and I’ll turn the whole school into insects to protect your kids.”
That’s why I needed her.
Because I knew she would.
***
Henry couldn’t join us because he needed to stay with Jack since his wife had declared she wasn’t leaving my side. We stopped on the way to pick up Chase, whose favorite car was in the shop having an oil change. Pulling alongside of the dealership service entrance, I put my car in park and rushed toward Chase. He chatted with a man wearing what I thought of as mechanic clothes. His name, Nathan, had been etched on a tan jumpsuit above the insignia for the car company.
“Right. So then maybe fifty thousand more miles?” Chase shrugged. “That’s pretty good wear and tear.”
I put my hand on Chase’s arm. “No light.” I nodded toward Nathan, who was a shadow. I guess we’d found one of Chase’s observers.
The shadow’s eyes darkened, a trick I’d never seen before. “Looks like you found me. My bet was on one of the others seeing
their watchers first. Oh well. My master will see Malcolm in the house you saged. The battle will be there.”
I couldn’t have been more surprised if the shadow donned a tutu and did a little dance. “That house?”
“This is the Cascade after all. For the same reason the ghosts like it, we do too. Ironically, it’ll be a position of power for you as well. We’re nothing if not fair and—”
I don’t know what he would have said. While he spoke, Chase pointed at the light and then at the shadow. The man exploded into dust where he stood. I jolted backwards.
“You killed him.” I’m not sure if it was the shock of seeing Chase take out a shadow on the side of the road by a car dealership or the sheer audacity of the fact that Chase took out the shadow at all.
He nodded. “That’s our job. That’s what we got sent here to do. We kill shadows. I didn’t kill Nathan. They did that however long ago when they took his body.”
Chase stormed past me, heading toward the car. I ran after him, jumping into the driver’s seat. Victoria sat with her eyes closed, and Chase scowled in the back.
Without opening her eyes, she addressed Chase. “Doing that means that Nathan’s family will never know what happened to him. If we at least let them change bodies, Nathan seems to have died of a heart attack and everyone can mourn him. There’s going to be a missing person report now. They’ll check video footage. They’ll see you do that. Then there are going to be questions asked and fingers pointed.”
He put on his seatbelt while I pulled into traffic. My hands shook on the wheel. I should have been prepared for what had happened. Only the way it went, I couldn’t help my alarm. Intellectually I understood Nathan was a shadow. Seeing a being that looked human disintegrate was another thing entirely.
“They aren’t going to find me.” He pulled out his phone. “I can’t do what I do and not have friends in high places. There won’t be a video feed.”
Presumably whomever he texted was going to take care of this for him. I gripped the steering wheel tighter. This was not the day I’d expected to have.