The Shadow Reader

But I will take advantage of them.

“Okay. I’m game,” I say, standing too quickly. My muscles protest the movement and my vision blackens around the edges.

She stares a moment. “After breakfast.” She starts to turn, then suddenly she grabs my hand.

I ball my other hand into a fist, ready to defend myself.

“Is that a watch?” she asks.

I hesitate. “Um, yeah.” It’s a cheap digital watch, $14.99 at Wal-Mart.

Kelia’s silver eyes widen. “Can I wear it?”

I pull my hand free from hers, rubbing it against my jeans to chase out the tingle of her edarratae. “It’s tech.”

“Small tech,” she says dismissively. “Please? I’ll give it back.”

What the hell is wrong with her? Kyol hates it when I wear my watch, and I’m honestly surprised Aren didn’t demand I take it off so he could send it to whatever tech graveyard my cell phone ended up in.

“Please?” she says again.

Well, it’s her magic. I unstrap the watch and hold it out. Chaos lusters spring up her arm when she takes it. Not bothered by their increased activity, she tries to fasten the band around her wrist. It’s obvious she’s never done this before—why would she have?—so I help her insert the metal hook into a hole in the rubber. Beneath the strap, her skin glows a faint blue.

She rotates her wrist, staring mesmerized at the digital face. The light coming in through the door wasn’t quite enough for me to make out the time, but she’s fae. She can probably see the numbers.

“Thank you,” she says without looking at me.

“There’s a . . . You see that little button on the right? If you press it, the face will light up.”

“Really?” She presses it and a trio of needle-thin edarratae rush up her finger and spread over the back of her hand like tiny blue spider veins. They disappear when she releases the button and then reappear when she presses it again. After lighting up the watch a dozen times, she finally drops her hands to her sides. The intrigue leaves her face when she realizes I’ve been studying her.

She clears her throat. “It’s time for breakfast.”

I close my eyes and press my palms into my temples. After three solid days of nothing but repeating everything Kelia says and naming everything she points to, I’ve reached my breaking point.

“Enough!” I yell.

“Na raumel e’Sidhe,” she responds calmly. In the language of the Fae.

“No. No more. I need a break.” Plus, I can’t remember the Fae word for “enough,” and I’m exhausted. The only times I’ve been left alone since Aren brought me here are when the rebels lock me inside my cell.

Okay. Room. And the rebels haven’t exactly been awful to me. They’ve made sure I have plenty to eat and drink, and no one’s outright threatened me since that first day, but they’re always around. They’re always watching, scowling, judging. They might as well have me shackled because I haven’t had a single chance to escape.

Kelia folds her arms and cocks her hip, waiting, but if she thinks she’s even half as stubborn as I am, she’s wrong. I’ve been the perfect student since we began these lessons. I’ve never in my life crammed so much information into my head in so short a period of time, not even the evening I returned from shadow-reading in the Realm and was forced to pull an all-nighter for an exam I should have spent days studying for.

Kelia lectures me in Fae. I don’t have to understand what she’s saying—her tone makes her meaning clear—but at this point, I don’t care if she turns over my supervision to the daughter of Zarrak. I can’t learn one more new word. I won’t.

Kelia finally realizes her words are hitting a wall—a very tired, grumpy, unmovable wall. Her shoulders slump as the fight whooshes out of her.

“Fine,” she says, a petulant purse to her lips. “You hungry?”

“No.” We ate lunch no more than half an hour ago and had a snack a little before that. Besides, I suspect this might be a scheme to get me to start naming foods and cutlery, and I’m serious about not learning another word of Fae today.

I walk to the picnic table and stare at my rock-carved map. My shadow-readings always look like they’re drawn by a schizophrenic. This one is worse than my others, bigger and messier with a series of lines that cut off abruptly only to begin again a few inches to the right when my mental map scale zooms. To a normal human, the final sketch probably looks like a kindergartner’s drawing, but to a fae who hears me name a city or a region, it’s as good as having an imprinted anchor-stone. Without an anchor-stone or a shadow-reader naming the location on his or her map, fae can only fissure to places they’ve memorized. It’s sort of like humans and phone numbers: they can remember dozens upon dozens of locations, but if they don’t think about them often or dial in on occasion, they tend to forget them completely.

I plop down on top of my map’s orchard, rest my elbows on my knees, and stare down at my boots. While I ate breakfast my first morning here, Kelia fissured out. Twenty minutes later, she returned with an armload of clothing. Most of it was for her, but she gave me two pairs of jeans, three new tops, and a pair of black leather boots—high-heeled, of course, because comfortable flats would make running away far too tempting. The jeans are just a smidgen too tight. Kelia’s assured me they look fine—not that I asked or cared—and that the neckline of my azure blouse isn’t too low, but this is definitely not my normal attire. I shop sale racks and wear T-shirts. This look is way too trendy for me. But not too trendy for Kelia.

She sits beside me on the tabletop, fingers the drawstring pouch tied to her belt, and gazes at the overgrown trailhead cutting through the dense tree line. She’s been doing that for three days now, gazing at the trail. At first, I thought she was waiting for Aren to return. I haven’t seen him since he deposited me in my room and, despite burning curiosity, I haven’t asked where he is. Now I’m not so sure he’s the reason for Kelia’s constant head-turning, not unless she has a crush on him. I’m pretty sure Lena’s in love with the guy—I suspect there are very few fae who wouldn’t want to jump into bed with him—but Kelia never sounds love-struck when she mentions Aren’s name. Maybe she’s worried about the Court finding this place? I can only hope.

As I pick at a thick splinter on the edge of the table, my mood plummets. This is one of the reasons I’ve managed to endure three full days of language cramming. If I let my mind go idle, inevitably I get depressed. It’s been four days now and I’m certain no one misses me back home, not even Paige, who is used to my long, sporadic absences. Those absences are the reason why I live alone in an apartment a couple miles from campus. I tried the dorm thing back when I was a freshman, but after being caught one too many times talking to myself—fae almost always choose to remain invisible to normal humans—my roommate requested to be transferred.

I flick the splinter I tore from the table away and search for a distraction. Anything to take my mind off my life.

“Aren,” I say, grabbing hold of the first image that pops into my head. “Will he come back?”

Kelia snorts. “Probably.”