Bloodfever

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.

I sucked in a breath. I’d seen one do this before—test the light. I’d not stuck around long enough to learn the outcome of its test. I muttered a fervent prayer it had gotten an F. My flashlights were scattered across the floor. Two were shining on me, flanking me, left and right. I was far enough between them that the combined pool of light narrowly bathed my entire body, but if I were to crawl toward either one, the beam would dwindle the closer I got, leaving large parts of me in darkness. It was a risk I couldn’t take with this abnormally aggressive, gigantic Shade crouching over me.

As I huddled there, it snaked inky tendrils of itself forward, one toward my hair haloed weakly in light, the other at my fingers splayed in a pale pool on the floor.