Katie's Hellion

The cold wind felt good against her face and roused her dark thoughts. She breathed out fog, watching it rise to the dark grey skies. Dr. Williams' clinic had a blessedly late schedule; it was nearing eight, and the lights of his building still glowed. Having the world's best neurologist on call was one of the perks of the rich and famous, a world unfamiliar to her except that her sister had been gunning for it since her sixteenth birthday.

Hannah had succeeded in landing a big fish blueblood, a descendant of Italian royalty, whose old money placated the chilly welcome she received into a lifestyle far, far different from her own.

Katie shivered and looked around for a cab. Her eyes settled on a form across the street, so still and dark he would've been a shadow if not for his presence beneath a street lamp. She felt the cold, black glare and fought the urge to run back inside the clinic. He didn't move; for a long moment, she convinced herself he was a statue, not a man too still to be human. He was in black, unaffected by the cold or the light settling over him, outlining him like glitter on black construction paper.

Like one of Toby's drawings on the fridge.

Toby.

She didn't know why she suddenly felt near hysterics. She felt no motherly bond to the kid huddled beside her in a thick coat despite how adorable he was. With the living shadow staring at her, the winter wind sucking the air from her lungs, and the prescriptions clenched in her hand, she'd never felt less a part of her world.

A car approached, and a window lowered.

"You need a lift? Taxis quit coming this way after rush hour."

The voice of the friendly nurse from the nurse's station brought her back from her thoughts. Blinking back tears, Katie looked toward the shadow. He was gone.

"Yeah," she forced herself to say. "Thanks."

The nurse dropped her and Toby off, and they trudged to her apartment.

The shadow man was on her fridge. Toby had drawn him on black construction paper with silver glitter outlining the shape of a man. There was no mistaking the image.

Death dealer, Toby had called him.

Katie stared at the picture for a long moment, then emptied her pockets on the table. She attached the prescriptions to the fridge with another cartoon magnet and smoothed out the paperwork she'd been given from the police station. Toby dropped his coat in the middle of the floor and trudged to his room with a yawn. She slumped in a chair at the kitchen table, eyes blurring as she struggled to make out the forms. There were biographical forms and consent forms she hadn't really read, all signed in a loopy, angry signature, and a copy of Toby's birth certificate.