Page 5

FIVE

Sorsha

Monster advocacy wasn’t exactly the type of work you could openly advertise. Technically, the group where I did almost all of my socializing—along with picking up tips for new collectors to target—called themselves the Shadowkind Defense Fund. Outside of the four walls in which they held their twice-weekly meetings, we usually shortened that first word to “SK” or simply referred to the group as “the Fund.”

Those four walls were contained in a discount movie theater that showed second-run films. Tonight, the warble of a recent Marvel soundtrack filtered in from the showing beside us, all epic orchestration punctuated by the occasional explosion. The small popcorn machine brought in for our private party filled the air with a salty buttery smell—and something spicy that tickled my nose.

Ellen, co-owner of the theater and unofficial co-president of the Fund alongside her wife, had a thing for experimenting with new popcorn flavors. We Fund members served as her guinea pigs. As I strolled around the rows of red-velvet-padded seats to check out her current attempt, a petite figure bounded to join me with a swish of her buoyant curls.

“Sorsha!” my best friend cried, catching me in a hug I returned with a laugh. From Vivi’s enthusiasm every time I showed up, you’d have thought my attendance was a rare occurrence. The truth was, I rarely missed a meeting, since the people in the Fund were pretty much the only people I could talk to without having to lie about the vast majority of my life. And even with them, there was plenty I edited out.

When I’d first showed up at a Fund meeting as a much more hesitant and recently traumatized sixteen-year-old, Vivi had immediately swooped in and taken me under her wing. I’d even ended up living with her and her parents for a while. Two years older, she’d been the next youngest in the bunch, but she’d seemed awfully mature and worldly to me. Over the more-than-a-decade since, we’d come out on more equal footing, bonding over our unusual senses of humor and our mutual love for cheesy old movies and Thai food.

“It’s chili pepper and brown sugar tonight,” she said, nodding to the bags of popcorn already filled to the side of the machine. “It’ll roast your tongue like a rack of honey ribs and then set the barbeque on fire.”

I’d never met a lyric I couldn’t mangle; Vivi had never met a simile she couldn’t stretch to the breaking point.

I grinned back at her and swiped a Coke from the mini-fridge as well as my bag. “Thanks for the warning. I see you survived.”

“Only barely,” she said in a dramatic undertone, but her eyes still twinkled merrily. She struck a pose, one hand on her hip, the other in the air. “What do you think of the new get-up?”

Today’s outfit consisted of a sleek white tank top with a pearly sheen and trim white capris. Vivi only wore white—“It’s my calling card,” she’d told me way back when—which to be fair did set off her smooth brown skin and dark features amazingly. She emphasized her eyes with thick liner and mascara, and her black hair ran tight along her scalp in braids before bursting into a gush of curls at the back. Perhaps most amazing was the fact that she somehow managed never to get a smudge or a stain on all that pale fabric.

“You look incredible,” I said, “like you always do. Got something special happening later?”

“I’m supposed to meet this guy for drinks. We’ve talked a little online. I don’t know. Hard to tell how you’re going to feel about a person until you can see and, like, smell them, right?”

My mind tripped back to Ruse’s bittersweet cacao scent, and a warmth I hadn’t wanted to provoke flickered up from my chest. I tamped down on it in the same instant, but Vivi knew me pretty well.

“Huh,” she said with a teasing tilt of her head. “What have you been up to, missy?”

I waved her off. “Nothing, nothing. Just thinking about times past and all.” I didn’t have to mention how recently past they were. Time for a subject change! “Hey, have you heard anything through the grapevine about hunters getting more organized or people trying to trap higher shadowkind as well as the little beasties?”

Vivi frowned. “I don’t think so. Maybe someone else will have. Why, do you think something like that is happening?”

“Just seems like it could. Something to keep an eye out for.” I scrambled for an excuse that wouldn’t perk Vivi’s curiosity too much. “It’s coming up on the anniversary of Luna’s death, and I guess that got me thinking.”

My best friend’s expression immediately softened with sympathy. She gave me a gentle tap of her elbow. “That’s got to be tough. But it’s been a long time and we haven’t seen more incidents that were anything like that, so I don’t think there’s a pattern. Just a bunch of assholes who must have thought better of making that kind of move after things went wrong.”

“True,” I said. It could also be true that what had happened to the trio who’d crashed my apartment and their “boss” was an isolated incident, not part of a larger conspiracy, no matter what the guy in charge had believed.

“Can’t hurt to ask, though, if it makes you feel better. Come on.” She motioned for us to head back to the front of the room where several other Fund members were scattered across the folding seats, munching popcorn and chatting. The projection screen flashed briefly as Ellen and Huyen must have fiddled with their weekly visual report, which they would share once the meeting really got underway.

We’d only made it halfway down the aisle when one of the lounging figures yanked himself to his feet and ambled our way. My steps slowed. “Here comes the rain again,” I murmured to Vivi, but my heart wasn’t in the joke.

“Hey,” Leland said as he reached us, his voice light but cool, his expression outright cold. The muscles in his stout frame, which a bodybuilder would have envied, flexed beneath his polo shirt. I forced myself to smile, but his gaze only rested on me for a second before flitting to Vivi and staying there.

Ever since we’d broken off our friends-with-benefits arrangement, emphasis on the benefits, months ago—or rather, since I’d broken it off after he’d started snapping at me for not doting on him like an actual girlfriend—he’d turned to ice around me. Somehow he couldn’t stop making a point of shoving that ice in my face at least once a meeting. Did he think I was going to throw myself into his arms with sobs of regret because of his pointed demonstrations?

I wasn’t, because honestly, I didn’t miss even the casual relationship I’d lost all that much. I’d always found Leland easy on the eyes, that soft face and schoolboy haircut paired with his tough-guy physique, but in personality? We’d gotten along well enough when all we’d had to discuss was where we’d be hooking up on a given night. We hadn’t had much to talk about otherwise. The fact that he’d apparently wanted more had thrown me for a loop.

But it still stung that I hadn’t picked up on the signs soon enough to avoid his obvious hurt and that I’d managed to disappoint him so thoroughly even when we’d seemed to be on the same page… It wasn’t the first time. No matter what kind of relationship I ended up in, it always turned out I wasn’t giving enough.

I’d been doing my best to show I had no hard feelings and wanted to co-exist peacefully, so I ignored the intended snub with my smile still in place. “Hey. Looks like it’s going to be a busy meeting tonight.”

He responded with a noncommittal grunt, nodded to Vivi, and veered closer to the seats to pass us on her side. As he stepped by, his foot must have caught on the base of the nearest chair. I didn’t see it happen, but one second he was striding along, and the next he was sprawling forward onto his hands and knees with an audible “Ooof!”, ass in the air.

As Leland picked himself up, one of the old members who’d come over to the popcorn machine chuckled. “Watch yourself there, kid!” Leland brushed himself off with a briskness that showed his embarrassment and hustled on giving the chairs a wide berth.

Vivi wrinkled her nose and leaned in to talk under her breath. “Maybe if he paid more attention to where he was walking than to giving you the cold shoulder…”

“At some point he’s got to forgive and forget,” I replied. I sure hoped so. For now, I could stick to giving him whatever space he felt he needed. It was a big room—plenty of chairs for everyone.

Shaking off the gloom of that exchange, I continued on to the other familiar—and much more welcoming—faces gathered near the screen. With Vivi looking on, I phrased my questions about new hunter behavior carefully, but all I got were shaken heads and doubtful expressions. If a larger than usual effort to confine the shadowkind was underway, word of it hadn’t reached our group yet.

Which meant it either wasn’t happening… or the people involved were covering their tracks incredibly well.

“All right, folks,” Ellen called out as she and Huyen emerged from the projection booth. “Let’s see what we can put in motion today. We had an incident earlier this week that should remind us all why none of the beings that cross over into our world deserve to be left in the hands of people who see them only as supernatural collectibles. A member of the Defense Fund in L.A. joined a group of mortal-side higher shadowkind who shut down a hunter ring, and this is what they encountered.”

At the press of a button, a video started to play on the screen. It’d clearly been taken with a handheld camera, probably a phone, and the hand that held it was shaking.

The recording swiveled to take in a small, dim room. A couple dozen cages stood stacked against one wall. At the other, several furred or scaled forms sprawled on the steel table, bones protruding from their flesh like ghostly knobs.

“Oh my God,” the video-taker mumbled with obvious horror.

My own stomach churned queasily at the sight. Some collectors were too nervous or fastidious to want to deal with living shadowkind. For them, the hunters carved up their haul to provide polished skeletons or taxidermy shells. Two sales for one catch. Some hunters even preferred those dealings.

There wasn’t much we mortals could do to take down these hunter rings—or independent hunters and their clients—directly, especially a larger scale operation like in the video. They’d have at least one sorcerer on staff: one of the rare human beings who’d mastered the art of summoning shadowkind from their own realm and bending their powers to the sorcerer’s will. Their magic would deflect any typical law enforcement we tried to sic on them.

Those of us in the Fund had all come to know about shadowkind in various, personal ways we couldn’t have convinced the general public to believe. Maybe if the higher shadowkind had wanted to show off their powers and prove they existed, we could have made more headway… but understandably, they had much more of an advantage in keeping their true nature secret.

The best we could offer was to interfere with the hunting and collecting as well as we could in roundabout ways, gather money to buy and release caught creatures when we had the chance, and inform the higher shadowkind who’d taken up residence in our world of activities we’d uncovered so they could step in if they felt it worth the risk. At least this bunch had taken action before the people who ran the facility could torment any more unwitting beings.

A solemn mood had descended over the room when the video finished. Then a chart popped up on the screen showing our latest fundraising efforts—not a bad week, considering we had to keep secret what we were actually raising those funds for.

“One of the big old homes in Walnut Hill halfway burned down last night,” someone piped up as the screen went dark. “We’ve seen signs that the owner was a collector. That’s the third fire this year—do we still have no idea who to thank?”

I bit my tongue. I definitely had nothing at all to say about that.

If I wanted to continue my more vigilante-style interventions, it was best if no one else had any idea I was responsible. The other Fund members might joke about approving, but if they knew one of their own was committing the crimes, I’d be kicked out for “crossing too many lines” in two seconds flat. I’d seen it happen to a guy who’d leaned too far into vigilante territory not long after I’d first joined.

“If it’s a higher shadowkind taking matters into their own hands, as we’ve discussed before, it’s understandable that they’re not advertising the fact,” Huyen said.

A guy farther back clapped his hands. “I say we leave them to it. They can police what happens to their own in their own way.”

Being raised by a higher shadowkind for thirteen or so years made me pretty much an honorary one, right? That was my story, and I was sticking to it. Auntie Luna hadn’t deserved what the bastards had done to her, and I’d be damned if I let any other shadowkind suffer while I could prevent it by any means necessary.

Vivi glanced at me and must have caught something in my expression. “Still fretting?”

I shrugged. “It’s okay. If no one’s heard anything, then there’s nothing to hear.”

“We could always spread the net a little farther. I was thinking of stopping by Jade’s on Friday night. Wanna come with? It’s been a while since we let loose anyway.”

Yes, Jade’s would be the perfect spot to dig a little further—and hopefully solve my uninvited monster roommate difficulties. I smiled. “You’re right—let’s do it.”