The Shadow Thieves

  But then Uncle John cleared his throat. “Listen, um, Tara…I…” Charlotte could not help but notice that he sounded extremely uncomfortable. She perked up.

  “What?” Charlotte’s mom asked.

  His voice got very low then, and Charlotte had to keep her body very still to hear. “If Zee says or does anything…unusual…”

  Unusual? thought Charlotte.

  “Unusual?” said her mother.

  “Just…anything.”

  “John…he’s a teenage boy,” Charlotte’s mom said gently. “I think he may have a license to be unusual.”

  “Well…” Uncle John coughed a little. “True. But…anyway, if you notice anything…you’ll let me know?”

  Charlotte had already noticed several things, this conversation being high on her list. There was something weird about her cousin, that much was true. Uncle John knew it, but whatever it was, he certainly wasn’t going to tell her mother. Charlotte waited for more explanation, but none came. Her mother and Uncle John soon started to be very boring again, and Charlotte, forgetting all about her kitten treat, went up to her room, where she could think in peace.

  CHAPTER 4

  Doors

  IN THE IMMENSE SPRAWL OF SUBURBS AROUND Charlotte’s hometown, conveniently located off one of the vast freeways that encircled the area, just minutes from the international airport and accessible from several major bus lines, there stood an enormous mall. This mall, better known as the Mall, was the biggest mall in the United States (though not in North America. That distinction belongs to the Mall in Vancouver, British Columbia. If you want to be picky). Each floor of this mall was more than half a mile around. The Mall had 520 stores and sprawled over 4.2 million square feet. It had the largest indoor amusement park in the nation, with thirty rides, including a roller coaster, a Ferris wheel, and a water ride thingy. It had a fourteen-screen movie theater and more than fifty restaurants—including several that billed themselves as dine-u-tainment. It had a bowling alley, an aquarium that housed 4,500 creatures (including sharks), a theme park entirely devoted to cereal, and a blimp made with almost 140,000 LEGOs.

  The Mall was Big. It was Huge. It was Mega. But despite its size, the Mall was generally very well laid out. All of the stores sat on the central avenues, so none could be missed. Egresses were well marked and easy to find. There were plenty of restrooms, and large kiosks stood at convenient locations, displaying large, easy-to-read maps for the benefit of the bewildered Mallgoer.

  There was, however, a small hallway that did not appear on any of the maps. Most people did not even know it was there. You could pass it right by, swinging your shopping bags and drinking your large soda or fruit smoothie, and not even notice the nondescript corridor that lurked somewhere between the store devoted to foot sculptures and the store that sold cheese.

  If you did not notice the nondescript corridor, you certainly would not notice the nondescript door at the end of it, nor would you notice the nondescript sign with nondescript letters that read, nondescriptly, NO ADMITTANCE.

  No one who worked at the Mall thought much about that door. Certainly no one used it. The security guards assumed it was for the maintenance people. The maintenance people assumed it was for the cleaning staff. The cleaning staff assumed it was for Mall officials, and Mall officials didn’t really think about it at all.

  If any of these guards, people, staff, or officials were to try to open that door, he or she would find it very much locked. But no one ever tried. Whenever anyone wandered down that corridor, he found himself possessed of a strange incuriousness and, for added measure, an overwhelming urge to go to the food court and buy a nice jumbo pretzel.

  Now, let’s leave the door for a moment. Let’s leave the corridor and the jumbo pretzels, the cheese store and the dine-u-tainment. Let’s leave the Mall altogether and travel about ten minutes away, over the interlocking freeways and the bright rows of suburban houses, to the home of a man we’ll call Frank. This Frank was not a pleasant sort. He had a black heart, and black teeth to match. He scowled and grumbled at every man, woman, girl, boy, baby, dog, and kitten that he saw. All Frank loved on Earth were his tomato plants, to which he murmured and sang like he had just given birth to them. Now, Frank had very nice tomato plants, and they made lovely tomatoes, juicy and plump, but really…isn’t there more in life? Should one really devote every morsel of one’s love, to the exclusion of the rest of the world, to something that can’t even decide if it’s a vegetable or a fruit?

  No matter. Frank will not trouble us for long. One day—just two days after Zee arrived at the Mielswetzskis’—Frank went out in his yard as usual to sit among his babies and talk of their hopes and fears, only to find some bugs had eaten away at his plants overnight.

  Frank let out a high-pitched shriek. Flocks of birds from several neighborhoods away flew from their perches. Shaking his hand at the sky, Frank swore vengeance then and there, not just against those bugs, but all bugs. He began to stomp wildly around the yard, looking for mosquitoes, flies, ants, and yes, even ladybugs, and he slapped at (flying bugs) or stepped on (crawling bugs) every single one. Frank saw a particularly large grasshopper and lifted his foot high in the air, ready for a particularly crushing stomp, when he felt a strange pain in his chest.

  Ouch.

  The pain grew and soon became unbearable. To Frank, it felt like his heart was getting ready to explode, and he had a pretty good idea that it actually might. Frank knew. He knew what was about to happen, and he still used all his might to stomp his foot down on the grasshopper with a great thwap. If he hadn’t, perhaps he could have been saved—but he did. So, then and there Frank died, killing himself through his own meanness.

  No one, not even the tomatoes, would mourn.

  A few moments after Frank’s death the door in the Mall opened. A form slipped through, a messenger of sorts, with winged sandals and a winged hat, and he moved so quickly through the air that no one saw him at all. People in the Mall saw a flash, maybe, felt a small breeze, a mere tickle of the air, but as soon as it was there, it was gone again and thus forgotten. Oh, nothing, they say. Let’s go to the food court. Those jumbo pretzels are so good, aren’t they?

  The Messenger whizzed through the Mall, out the doors, and up to the sky. He arrived at Frank’s house in moments, where he found the dead man sprawled in his garden.

  Nice plants, thought the Messenger.

  He opened Frank’s mouth to check for a coin and shook his head. He didn’t know what was wrong with people these days. He buzzed right through the walls of the house, circled around, found an old, stained sofa in the living room, checked between the cushions, and pulled out a quarter. Then he flew back to Frank, stuck the coin under his tongue, and knocked on his forehead three times.

  A few minutes later Frank and the Messenger were zipping toward the sliding glass doors of the Mall. When Frank saw where they were headed, he muttered, “I should have known.” Frank had never much liked the Mall.

  And in the blink of an eye Frank and the Messenger were standing in front of the nondescript door.

  There are doors like this door all over the world. Their locations change as civilizations change, old ones simply fade away and new ones pop up all the time. They tend to be hidden in plain sight, where vast crowds of people congregate, where the air fills with the cacophony of life. There are doors like this door all over the world, but this particular door at this particular time was unique because there was a man waiting on the other side of it. Or something very like a man.

  This man-like man was quite tall, perhaps seven feet tall, and extremely thin, with hollow cheeks and deep-set eyes. His face was white—not Caucasian white, but white white—his lips were gray and cracked, and his eyes were a sickly shade of yellow. He stood stiffly in the shadows with a strange kind of grace, and he wore an old-fashioned tuxedo with tails and a white tie.

  He had followed the Messenger up through the long, winding caves when Frank’s time had come; he had be
en too late to make it through then, so he waited in the shadows behind the door for it to open once more. He would not miss this chance—who knew when the call would come again?

  And when the door did open, he pressed himself against the stone wall of the cave, as he did every time, while the Messenger and the dead man (that would be Frank) sped through. He waited while the large door slowly swung shut, then, at the last second, when the Messenger was well out of sight, the tuxedoed man caught the door and slipped through into the bright expanse of the day.

  CHAPTER 5

  Get Ready

  CHARLOTTE AND ZEE ARRIVED AT SCHOOL A HALF HOUR early on Monday so she could give him the grand tour. It had already been determined that Zee would share Charlotte’s classes for the year, since she could help him catch up. Which sounded like a great deal of extra work to Charlotte, but nobody had asked her.

  As her mother kept reminding her, Charlotte was supposed to introduce Zee to her friends. This would not take long. With Caitlin gone, that only left Maddy. The threesome had become a duo. It was okay. Maddy was cool, when she wasn’t worrying about school.

  Charlotte always said that Maddy cared so much about school that Charlotte didn’t have to; Maddy worried enough for two people. But Charlotte liked her because she had no patience for twits or jerks either—though for Maddy it was probably because they interfered with her studies.

  There were girls Charlotte was friendly with—Elizabeth-who-never-talked, and Molly-the-ballerina, and Gretchen-the-goth-girl, who didn’t like anyone. But as for tell-all-your-secrets-to, three-hour-long-phone-call, maid-of-honor-at-each-other’s-wedding, best-friends-forever friends, Charlotte was distinctly lacking. Someday, when she hopped on a bus for Brazil, that might change.

  She didn’t really explain any of this to Zee. In some seismic departure from her norm she introduced him to absolutely everyone, even people she didn’t like (she wouldn’t have been able to tell you why)—and absolutely everyone seemed to size Zee up as someone they might like to have on their side. His accent, his clothes, his countenance, and some ineffable je ne sais quoi seemed to mark Zee as one of those cool but accessible kids that everyone likes. It was incredibly annoying; Zee was clearly drinking some sort of weird potion that made him perfect in every way. Even Gretchen-the-goth-girl seemed impressed with him and immediately started to ask Zee about bands Charlotte had never heard of. His Zee-like reticence was taken as an alluring mysteriousness, and he was immediately marked as a babe by Audrey, Angie, Andrea, and both Ashleys, who indeed had all gained more shape and definition at the sight of him. He ran circles around everyone during the soccer game in gym and was quickly deemed the man by Chris and Brad and their ilk. Even the teachers seemed charmed by his politeness and formality—qualities that, for any other new kid, would have earned him a serious wedgie, but not Zee. After an entire day of being asked which one of them was adopted, Charlotte began to wonder if the question had more to do with respective coolness than any confusion over ethnicity. It was all very typical of her life.

  The last class of the day was English. Charlotte and Zee walked down the hallway together, and everyone had a smile for Zee. Charlotte was surprised he still bothered talking to her.

  Zee leaned over to her and muttered, “People are very friendly in America.”

  Charlotte raised her eyebrows. “Sure,” she said.

  “It’s nice. When you meet people here, they don’t introduce themselves as, like, the eighth earl of Asherton.”

  “Sure,” said Charlotte.

  “And the teachers are so relaxed.”

  “Sure,” said Charlotte.

  “So…” Zee said, “next is literature, isn’t it?”

  “English. Yeah. At the end of the hall.”

  “Do you like it?”

  Charlotte shrugged. “Well, we used to have a wonderful teacher, but Mr. Metos—”

  Zee stopped suddenly. He stared at Charlotte. “Metos?”

  “Yeah,” said Charlotte, looking at him. “Why?”

  Zee turned his head. “Oh, nothing,” he said. “Unusual name, that’s all.”

  But the way Zee said “Oh, nothing” was the way people talked when there was Definitely Something. Charlotte peered at her cousin and said slowly, “Well, he’s an unusual guy.”

  Every time Charlotte walked into Mr. Metos’s classroom, she felt as if she were walking into a crypt. The room had an air of dusty, dark things, things you would be advised not to touch. She kept one eye on Zee when they entered the room, but when he saw Mr. Metos, his face only looked puzzled.

  Mr. Metos sat at his desk in the front of the room while the students filed in, writing in his attendance book. Probably deciding whose blood he wants to drink first, thought Charlotte. She took a deep breath.

  “Mr. Metos?” she said quietly. “Um, this is my cousin Zee—Zachary Miller. He’s new.”

  Slowly Mr. Metos lifted his head from his desk. His eyes went right to Zee’s face. He looked at Zee for what seemed like ages, long enough to make Charlotte want to squirm. Bet Zee won’t think everything’s so relaxed here now, she thought. Indeed, he was eyeing Mr. Metos strangely, almost suspiciously.

  “Well, Zachary,” Mr. Metos said. “You’re coming in at the end of our unit. How are you on your Greek mythology?”

  “I have some schooling in that subject,” Zee said.

  “Good, good,” said Mr. Metos, rubbing his hands together. “Why don’t you see me after class and we can discuss how we can catch you up.”

  “Yes, sir,” Zee said. Charlotte had not yet told him you weren’t supposed to call teachers “sir.” She would. Someday.

  Today’s class was on Prometheus. Again Charlotte knew the story well. Prometheus was a Titan who had fought for Zeus in his wars against Cronus. So Zeus gave him the task of repopulating Earth, and Prometheus made humans, molding them out of river clay in the shape of the gods. Prometheus loved his creations and wanted humans to be better than animals. But Zeus was content to let people stay primitive, another beast on the earth. And humans were not faring well in the world. So Prometheus stole fire from the gods and gave it to the humans so they could keep warm and cook food. The fire also taught them to look upward, to the heavens—to think and to dream.

  Zeus was not happy. Gods never want people to have knowledge. So, as punishment for defying him, Zeus chained Prometheus to a mountain, and every day an eagle came to gnaw on his liver. Every night Prometheus’s liver would regenerate so it could be gnawed on again the next day. This last part always seemed especially excessive to Charlotte.

  Mr. Metos seemed to think it was excessive too. “Prometheus did not understand why Zeus would make man and then leave him in the dark. He wanted Zeus to bless man, and when he didn’t, Prometheus took it upon himself to do so. Prometheus was known as the Friend of Man but was tormented for generations because of that friendship. But there was more to it than that. Prometheus was essentially telling Zeus that in his treatment of man Zeus was proving himself unworthy to be a god, and Prometheus decided he would have to nurture and protect man himself. So”—he turned to the class—“can anyone think of another situation where the gods abused mankind?”

  Humankind, Charlotte thought, doodling. Charlotte spent the class making a picture in her notebook of a man chained to a cliff with a big eagle heading right toward him. She was not a very good drawer, and her eagle looked more like a weird-looking giant bat. She wondered if Mr. Metos turned into a bat at night or if that was just a myth.

  Next to her Zee was paying careful attention to Mr. Metos like a good boy. He had probably never doodled in class in his life. British boys probably didn’t do that; they were too busy making friends and being polite and stealing people’s kittens.

  After class Charlotte put her books together slowly and stood in the doorway. She was torn between wanting to run out of the classroom and wanting to see what Mr. Metos would say to Zee. Anyway, she was supposed to watch over her cousin, and Uncle John might not want
him to get his blood drained on his first day.

  Zee looked at her. “Um, I’ll catch up with you,” he said. “I’ve got to talk to Mr. Metos for a minute.”

  “I know,” said Charlotte. “I can wait.”

  “No, no,” said Zee. “Don’t trouble yourself. I’ll meet you on the steps.” And then he closed the door.

  Charlotte sat on the front steps of the school, watching as all of the kids filed out around her. It was still oddly warm; no one was wearing a coat. By Halloween everything might be covered in snow, and Zee would have to hurry up any mysterious postclass meetings if he didn’t want Charlotte to freeze to death. Of course, she thought, looking at her watch, she might still be here then. Once upon a time there was a girl named Charlotte who sat in the same place for six years, and no one noticed her.

  “Charlotte?”

  Charlotte looked up. Her history teacher was standing above her, shielding her eyes from the sun and smiling kindly.

  “Hi, Ms. Bristol-Lee,” Charlotte said.

  “Charlotte…”—she crouched down and put her hand on Charlotte’s shoulder—“I wanted to talk to you for a second.”

  Uh-oh, Charlotte thought. She braced herself to hear more about her potential.

  “Listen,” the teacher leaned in. “I just want to say, what you’re going through, with your family…I understand.”

  Not potential? It took Charlotte a couple seconds. Oh, yeah. Pop quiz in history. Didn’t do reading. Parents fighting. World War I. Right.

  “Thanks, Ms. Bristol-Lee,” she said, nodding slowly. “That really means a lot.”

  “My parents were divorced when I was your age. I know it’s hard. Now, I just want to let you know that I’m here for you.” She patted Charlotte. “Sometimes parents forget that what they’re doing affects their kids. If you want someone to talk to your family about what you’re going through—”