Elemental Shadows (13 page)

"T
hat's why I stopped you. We don't know what your beating up on. But as for making Shadow People from this side of things?" Crwys shook his head. "As far as I know that can't be done."
 

"You just wanted to be safe. I get that." I finally pushed my chair out and stood up. I was all better now, physically. Mentally? Emotionally?
 

I'll get back with you on those fronts.
 

When he didn't answer, I put my finger in his face. "What if that
was
one of the kids? Or even worse, what if that really was Kathy and I let loose a storm of Elemental whoop-ass on her?" I hated to think or even imagine that horrific shadowy nightmare had been Kathy. Then again, it was better to find out for sure. I knew that meant contacting Tzariene.
 

Again.
 

The detective shook his head. "It can't be done."
 

Levi shrugged. "We don't know that. What about a Coyote Flame?"
 

I narrowed my eyes at Levi. "That sounds familiar. What is that?"
 

"It's an old doorway spell," Kyle said. "It was created as a means into the other Worlds."

"And it's dangerous," Crwys pushed my finger away from his face. "Don't even try to make one of those. They're unreliable."
 

"How so?"

"Because you don't know where the other door is going to form. They're unstable. You could create a door here with the intent of going directly into
Alfheim
and end up in an Ethereal dungeon."
 

"I heard that world shut down," Levi said. "Someone rebooted it."
 

Crwys pointed at his partner. "Not now."
 

"I don't know about this Ethereal place," Kyle said. "But Arden can tell you more about the Coyote Flame. I wasn't ever allowed to learn how they're made. That's Elder magic."

"Well unfortunately Arden's in jail," I rubbed at my eyes.
 

"No, she's not," Crwys moved around the den and looked out the window at the back yard. I knew there was a very lonely swing set out there, and a trampoline, missing the joy and laughter of children. "She made bail before we even booked her. Woman's got powerful allies. Not to mention Prescott's starting to like her."

Oh great. That was not what the city needed.
 

Grey pushed at my hip with her nose and I reached down to her. Weight pressed on my shoulders. I started yawning. I was going to have to sleep. And eat. My magic came directly from my own energy, and I needed to refill it. "I'm going home."

"Want us back at the shop?" Kyle asked.
 

"No…you go on home, Kyle. I'll take Ivan back so he can get his car. Just come in early."
 

Kyle nodded.
 

"What about Robin?" Crwys asked. I was touched that he did.
 

I looked at my boyfriend, still sound asleep on the couch. He looked terrible. Even more so now. "I don't know. Is there a way to ward against these Shadow People?"
 

"I can do what I did for the other houses we visited," Kyle said. "I have my kit in the car. The detectives can help me if they want and then I can take them back to get their car."
 

"I'd appreciate it.
 
You two okay with this?"
 

The detectives nodded. I gave Robin a kiss on his cheek. We were growing so far apart, he and I. With Rose's death, and Kathy's disappearance…he was falling apart.
 

Ivan and I didn't talk on the way back. Ivan didn't bat an eye when I turned away from the shop and pulled up next to Ina's house. We went inside and things were just as I left them. I asked him to search the house for the book, just in case the Shadow Person hadn't been able to take it and had hidden it instead.
 

"It's not here." Ivan and I were in the back yard, looking at the Circle. "But I can see Arcane all over that Circle. What the hell happened out there?"
 

"Something terrible." I looked up at the sky for a few seconds. The sun was setting, leaving behind a wash of pinks and soft oranges. "You know who Ronald Kennett is."
 

Ivan's head snapped around as he turned around to face me. "How did you know?"
 

"Because you're a lousy poker player. And you've been very picky about how much time you spend diving into the web. Almost like you were afraid something like that would happen to you because you knew it had already happened to someone else."
 

He narrowed his eyes at me. "This is why we came here."
 

"Wards are still up. There aren't any devices here that can spy on us. No one knows we're here. This is where we can tell each other secrets."
 

"I know yours. Now you want to know mine?"
 

"One of them." I leaned my head to my shoulder. "What happened?"
 

Ivan shoved his hands into his pockets. "I was online about a month ago—this was before any of this Arcane stuff happened. I came across an article telling how a local women's shelter had been hacked, and the worker's private information was leaked out. Two of the workers were killed a day after that information got out and I found a direct link between the hack and the deaths."
 

"This kid did it? He hacked and killed the two women?"

"No. His girlfriend was in one of the shelters but he didn't know which one. So he started hacking them all to find her, and when he did, he leaked the information out. This forced her to leave the shelter when the two women were attacked in their homes and killed." Ivan looked upset. "I knew this bastard was responsible for the leak, even though some hacking group calling themselves Soul Machine took credit. So I looked for him, followed the path of his hack back to his computer."
 

I took a step toward Ivan; terrified he was going to tell me he had something to do with this kid's murder. "What did you do?"

"I dumped his hard drive. Copied it all to another server and threatened if he ever did anything like that again I'd send evidence to the FBI of what happened. I told him to leave his ex and everyone else alone. And don't look at me like that. What I do isn't traceable because there's no IP. I don't log in through anyone's account. I just access it. So he couldn't trace me if he wanted to."
 

"But you traced him."
 

"Because he didn't know what he was doing. He was only half educated in what he was. I could sense his Cyber signature but he still worked on the assumption he had to log in to hardware, and he didn't have to."
 

"Could he trace where you put the information?"

"He could trace the actual information. But I don't think he ever did. When I didn't hear anything else from him and his ex didn't either, I went back to his computer." He looked down and didn't say anything else.
 

"You found him dead."
 

"Yeah…it was the scariest thing I'd ever done. I mean, I could use his webcam and see he was dead. And he'd been dead a few days. So I scrubbed everything and backed out."
 

"But you didn't tell the police."
 

"Tell them what? Hey, I can put my mind into the web and take a look into people's computers and I saw this dead guy?" He made a face. "I checked in with his parent's itinerary and knew they'd be home with within twenty-four hours of my discovery."

"What you saw…that scared you, didn't it? That he'd gotten so involved that he died."
 

"Yes."

"And you guys saw Shadow People in his house?"
 

"That's what I don't understand. These things aren't ghosts, not like we define them. If they're showing up at the houses children were taken from by Dionysus to make the Changelings, why there? There wasn't a child missing from that house."
 

That
was
odd. No wait…
everything
in this was odd. All kinds of pieces and nothing fitting together.
 

"I hope your theory isn't right," Ivan said. "About the Shadow People being the children. Did you see what your Elementals were doing to that thing?"
 

I winced. Yeah I had. I remembered the little Gnome chopping the Shadow Person down to size. I also remembered the screams of pain.
 

He put his arm over my shoulder. "Things are getting bad, Sam."
 

"Yeah, they are." I wrapped my arm around his back. We both faced the Circle. "There's no way you can download that book again from memory?"
 

"No. I tossed every byte of that infernal thing the first chance I got. I don't have any of it stored in memory. Sorry, Sam."
 

"Oh. Well. I just don't know why a Shadow Person would take the book. Or how. I'd made it a physical book at that point."
 

"Oh it was physical, but probably not stable," Ivan offered. "I made it with an expander in mind, so it would convert back to the necklace. Any great amount of pressure on it would make it pop back into its smaller shape."
 

"And…it would have to digitize to do that?"
 

"Yeah," he pulled away and looked down at me. "What?"

I pulled my phone from my back pocket and did a quick inventory of where my guns were. In my car. Right. And Grey…I felt her still roaming the house. I held the phone out to him. "Look for Arcane."
 

"Oh I can see it. It's in the circuitry of your phone. But it's not real…" he pursed his lips. "It's like trace Arcane."
 

"Say that again?"
 

"I mean it's like what got left behind for me when I uploaded and downloaded that book. Like ghost images of what had been there. I suggest you find a way to dump your phone to get that out of there."
 

"So, something Arcane was in my phone, or had to be to leave these elements?"
 

He nodded vigorously. "Yeah."

"So I brought whatever it was from the shop, into Ina's house and there it came out of my phone and grabbed the book."
 

Ivan didn't answer at first. Grey came out of the house and started sniffing around the grass nearby. Poor thing. Probably had to go real bad. "How did it get back out of the house?"
 

"Huh?"

"If you brought it in through your phone, did you take it back out through your phone?"
 

I stared up at him. "I don't think so. I used my phone right after it to talk to Kyle."
 

He snapped his fingers. "That's how it got out. It went through the connection to Kyle's phone," and then his expression changed. "Oh shit…it's in Kyle's phone!"
 

"B
ut how can something that's allegedly spiritual even attach itself to a phone?"
 

Ivan closed his eyes. "Who said these things were spiritual?" He held out his hands, palms up and I watched as he connected to the web. I didn't know how he did it, and I wasn't going to try and suss out the logistics. It was just something I'd seen and grown to accept.