“Are you sure?” I ease back on my heels. “See, the thing is that Rileys only give it to little ones, so they grow up seeing the shadow side. To us, it’s normal. To someone of your years?” I shrug. “I remember Ma told me about a lady she knew, was deaf from the time she was little, and then the doctor fixed something so she could hear, and she went around wearing earmuffs because the world was just too loud. You can’t hide from the shadows. Even if you shut your eyes, you’llfeelthem there.”
A hand lands on my shoulder. It’s hot and heavy and stinking of oily shadow.
“That’s enough,” Billy says. “Don’t you be trying to weasel out of this, girl. You know you’re telling my ma a pack of lies.” He looks at Paula. “She’s tricking you, Ma. She can’t give you no magic powers.”
“No harm in her trying,” Paula says. “If it works, we’ll let her go.”
Billy shifts, and his shadow drips down my back like sweaty fingers, and it takes everything in me to stand firm.
“You said I could keep her,” he says. “You promised.”
“If you want the power,” I say to Paula, “you gotta let me go home. There are things I need to get.”
Billy’s laughter comes sharp, ringing out in the quiet night. “Girl, you think you are a heap more clever than you are. All that book learning Ma warned me you girls get.” He looks at Paula. “Now do you see what she’s doing?”
Paula’s shoulders slump, and she turns away from me. “She’s trying to trick me into letting her go back home. Pretending she needs secret ingredients for the spell.”
“I do need secret ingredients,” I protest. “It’s not like I can just cast?—”
Billy thumps me between the shoulders, hard enough that I stumble, even as his voice is light. “Enough of that, girl. You’ll just embarrass yourself now. Come on, Chester. We’ll fetch the wagon.” He looks at me, cold amusement lighting those dead eyes. “And don’t go thinking you can talk my ma into running off with you. She’s not that stupid, and we’re not going that far.”
I slump. “Yes, sir.”
Billy walks away with Chester. As soon as they’re out of sight, I tug a folded paper from my hip pouch. Paula watches, frowning. I unfold it to show a couple of pinches of dried herbs.
“That tobacco?” she says. “Or tea?”
I lower my voice. “It’s the ingredients I need. I just wanted Billy to leave us be. Otherwise, he’d have stopped you from taking it.” I meet her gaze. “Men never want their womenfolk having an advantage.”
She stares at the herbs, and then looks over her shoulder. “How do I know you’re not poisoning me, girl?”
“You don’t need to eat them. Just put them under your tongue while I cast the spell.”
She peers at the dried mix. “Don’t look like much.”
“It’s not. It’s the magic used to make it that counts.”
Paula takes the folded paper. Then she dumps the mixture under her tongue. There are a dozen poisons that would kill her where she stands, seeping through the lining of her mouth. But the herbs are exactly what I said they are, and I cast the spell quickly. When I’m done, she blinks at me. Then she steps back.
“There’s…there’s something behind you.”
“That’s my shadow self.”
She shivers. “I can feel it. I can feel the things you’ve done. The people you’ve killed.” She’s about to say more when she tenses, her body jerking as her head snaps up. “What isthat?”
“What’s what?”
She convulses and then doubles over, retching.
“You—you poisoned me.”
“No, that’s a shadow you feel,” I say. “Your son’s.”
Her head shoots up again, gaze locking on mine. “You lie.”
“I do not lie, and you can tell that,” I say calmly. “When he arrives, you’ll see what he’s done.Actuallysee it. There’s a reason you were so close by when those families were killed.”
She pauses, taking a moment to understand, then she spits, “Youlie!”
