10. Chapter 10

10

T he second Rebecca entered the common room, meaning to watch Shade’s members at the start of their day while better formulating her plan, she paused.

The room was practically empty.

It was never this empty.

Which meant something was very wrong here this morning, with no visible reason why.

Her first thought was that it had to do with her —that someone had already been watching her a little too closely and had chosen the worst possible moment to spill their findings to the rest of Shade’s members.

But these operatives didn’t hide from each other. If anyone had an issue with her, they’d seek her out on their own. Probably.

This was something else. Some other reason for such an eerie silence in the mostly deserted common room.

More often than not, acting normal anyway and pretending not to have noticed generally coaxed the answers out one way or another. With zero other leads at this point, that was Rebecca’s only decent option.

So she took stock of the magicals who were here and continued across the enormous room like the last twenty-four hours hadn’t set off a chain reaction of unpredictable events she really needed to get in front of before they got in front of her first.

And then there really would be no way out.

Rebecca counted only four other magicals here this morning, which was practically zero in comparison.

So where the hell was everyone?

Moments after her budding suspicions got their hooks into her, she could no longer ignore—even above her hunger—the smell of freshly brewed coffee wafting across the building toward her .

Might as well make herself a cup before starting her own private investigation. Excluding powerfully complex magical issues, she had discovered long ago that very little in this world couldn’t be solved with a decent cup of coffee.

She headed toward the self-serve refreshment table beside Bor’s service window—the small section of the common room that made Shade’s entire headquarters building feel more like a four-star hotel with a continental breakfast included daily as part of their stay.

Whoever didn’t go straight for coffee first thing in the morning wouldn’t only brook suspicion in the majority of Shade members but would mark themselves as a magical of interest in Rebecca’s mind.

It was an instant red flag.

Even Aldous had his morning coffee every day, sent up to his private study overlooking the common room. The commander was of course entitled to wake up with a steaming mug in hand while lauding his extra privileges over the rest of them from above.

Rebecca snorted as she grabbed a Styrofoam cup off the table and filled it from the insulated carafe she had to pump at the top. Only Aldous could make even daily morning coffee an issue of rank and superior standing in a place like this.

In next went a healthy pour of cold cream from the slightly dented silver pitcher, followed by an imprecisely decadent pouring of sugar.

While she doctored up her caffeine, Rebecca occasionally glanced across the common room as brief bursts of flickering movement from the others caught her eye.

“Well slap my grandmama,” someone grumbled beside her. “You know what that is there, don’tcha?”

Rebecca stopped pouring a stream of sugar into her cup and looked for the owner of that voice before she noticed Bor glowering at her, his head poking out through the service window. She raised an eyebrow at him. “If you tell me it’s anything other than sugar, we’re gonna have a problem.”

“Not sugar? Please. You ask me, you already got a problem.” When the old giveldi blinked his beady eyes, the nasty battle scar crossing his forehead—from the right side of his hairline down, eradicating half his left eyebrow before ending in a cauliflowered knot of flesh that had once been his left ear—scrunched his face even more like a drawstring purse. “Never met an elf with a sweet tooth like that .”

Adding another healthy pour of streaming sugar, Rebecca smirked at her cup, then exchanged the glass container for one of those little wooden stirring sticks also reminiscent of a hotel stay. Then she mixed it slowly all together and casually asked, “How many elves have you met, old-timer? ”

Bor grunted, still glowering as he nodded at her Styrofoam cup. “Enough to know that ain’t standard issue for your kind. Hell, I ain’t seen a single other soul pass by that table takes as much as you every single day.”

“Bet you haven’t seen any other elves at this table, either.”

More than seeing it, she felt his gaze snap up to settle on her face.

It seemed Bor stared at her for a long time before finally deciding on a reply. “Oh, aye. Doesn’t make me wrong though.”

“No it doesn’t.” Rebecca slurped her first steaming sip of rich, dark, doctored-up caffeine and closed her eyes. She could give herself two seconds to savor a joyful moment that had nothing to do with missions, or Shade operations, or shitty commanders, or secrets.

Worth it.

Then she turned toward the giveldi still leaning halfway through the service window and raised her coffee toward him in the universally accepted morning salute. “It also means you make some damn fine coffee, Bor. Or I wouldn’t be here every day just for this.”

She offered the old-timer another gentle smile joined by an encouraging nod, then walked away from the drink station and service window to start her new personal mission right here in the common room.

Whether or not Bor recognized her words as a compliment, he glowered after her anyway, mumbling something that sounded a lot like any good cup of coffee didn't need a damn thing added to it.

Rebecca smothered her next smile with another slurping sip that still came dangerously close to burning her mouth, even with all the added cream, and ignored him.

It felt like forever ago that a bubbly witch with curly blonde hair and a smile for everyone and everything first showed Rebecca the best way to drink coffee in this world.

Thinking about her old life—or one of them, anyway, the one she’d led before the time had come to move on and make her way across the country until she’d found Shade—reminded her just how much of a fickle bitch time could really be.

Her brain told her the witch and all those experiences were from a lifetime before now, decades, when in reality, it had been only a few months shy of a year ago.

That witch had pink hair now, which she’d already changed the last time Rebecca had seen her. Back when the elf calling herself Rebecca Knox had run with a whole different kind of magical crew.

The kind Shade wouldn’t have particularly appreciated if Golden, Colorado and Chicago, Illinois had been a whole lot closer together .

That, more than anything else, had been Rebecca’s cue to take her leave.

That past wasn’t necessarily tied to the far more valuable secrets Rebecca kept now. Nor did it have anything to do with the new path she intended to walk here with Shade. Not to mention the current threats to all of it Aldous’s petulantly vindictive secret mission just for her had thrust upon her.

All of her pasts and different lives, no matter how congruent or disconnected, had to remain exactly where she’d left them.

Behind her.

Buried forever.

Because even slipping up a little right now and letting the wrong part of herself show at the wrong time could destroy everything she’d been fighting so hard to protect.

A delicate balance she had to maintain, both for her own sanity and to avoid the war she knew was coming. Eventually.

If those out there who’d been looking for her since the beginning ever found out where she was…

Before anything else, though, Rebecca had to figure out who Aldous had chosen as her damn shadow.

Which was also the point of coming down to the common room first thing in the morning. If she could track who moved where, who followed her down the halls or watched her from across the room at any given time, she could pin down exactly who to look out for in the coming days.

Being followed by someone ready and willing to do whatever Aldous told them to, reporting back to him whatever they saw Rebecca doing, would make her daily existence trickier than navigating a minefield buried in straw.

She couldn’t start her real work until she figured out who had been assigned to track her every move. Only then could she start feeding Aldous the information he thought he wanted while she labored in secret toward securing her own continued survival here.

And, by default, the survival of every other Shade member.

All because she couldn’t shake the nagging feeling that very soon, Aldous would try to pull something he never should have considered. Something far worse than going full berserker in the middle of a semi-tactical operation, or knocking himself out cold in the process, or even injuring all the other operatives working for him.

Since Rebecca couldn’t just leave Shade without being followed and more likely hunted, she had to make the most of her time with the organization for as long as she continued to stay .

Which brought her back to that damn shadow and how the hell she was supposed to figure out who it was. Especially when there was hardly even anyone in the common room this morning.

No one had followed her here. No one stood back along the perimeter, keeping to themselves and trying to act normal while casting her occasional suspicious glances. Nothing had changed since she’d stepped into the common room other than Bor commenting on her morning sweet tooth.

Not what she’d expected at all.

She hadn’t even seen Maxwell yet, which was odd enough given his daily habit of being the first person to wake and the last person to turn in at the end of a long, hard day of vigilante justice and trying not to die.

As far as she knew, the shifter hadn’t shown himself today.

Asking around would only make her look that much more suspicious. So she took her coffee with her and headed across the building toward the only other location at Shade’s headquarters compound that could hold her attention for longer than five minutes.

In the last six months, she’d gone through at least a quarter of the surprisingly extensive collection of printed works and information Shade had maintained within the compound since before most of its current operatives could remember. Most of the books were copies of human stories, but there was a section specifically for magical volumes as well.

Not that Rebecca could glean any knowledge from that comparatively small collection that hadn’t already been drilled into her head countless times and trained into the core of her being over and over again. She could have been a living library in her own right, which was just another part of the problem.

It wasn’t just where she was from, to whom she had answered, or what part she’d played in the broader-scale politics she’d wanted nothing to do with. It wasn’t just the magic inherent in her that had been honed to an astoundingly fine edge, sharp enough to cut through worlds.

It was the knowledge inside her as well.

That was what everybody wanted, wasn’t it?

The Bloodshadow Court had wanted it for their own aims to sustain what they’d built, to ensure the survival of their power, generation after generation.

It was what their enemies coveted as well.

The kind of knowledge combined with an inherent ability so powerful, it could be nothing more than a weapon in the wrong hands.

It was nothing more than a weapon in the right hands too, which in some ways was even worse .

Rebecca had discovered that from a young age on her own, because of course that wouldn’t have been a part of her training. It had , however, molded the way she’d seen herself from then on.

Then, once the Bloodshadow Court had begun to send its many whispers rippling out into the old world—and by default into Earth as well—she’d had to make her decision.

She’d chosen not to be a weapon at all in anyone’s hands.

That was exactly what she’d recreated herself to be.

The whole time she’d been with Shade, Rebecca had not once seen anyone else inside the library. If someone decided to randomly show up and join her there today, chances were pretty high they were also the lucky bastard Aldous had picked for the job of tailing her.

After that, Rebecca would know exactly who to fool next.

She hardly passed anyone else through the building. Those she did pass had nothing to say. They hardly even looked at her, which only made the thick tension in the air that much more recognizable.

Something was stirring inside Shade’s Chicago-based headquarters.

About damn time.

To her complete surprise, Rebecca found the compound’s library nowhere close to its normally empty state.

She almost barreled headfirst into a witch she hadn’t had much of an opportunity to get to know during her time here. Definitely for lack of trying.

The young witch with a smooth, pitch-black bob framing her face squeaked in surprise when she ripped open the library door and nearly rammed her head into Rebecca’s throat while trying to peek her head through the doorway.

“Whoa…” Rebecca stepped back and looked the witch up and down.

What was her name? Flora or Fauna or some ridiculous nature-y word like that. Maybe.

“Sorry,” the witch blurted in a hushed voice. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to… I didn’t hurt you, did I?”

“With the most aggressive lookout move ever?” Rebecca raised an eyebrow. “Nope. Give it a little practice, though, and you could probably do some serious damage that way.”

The witch’s dark, glistening eyes widened as she craned her neck to peer up at Rebecca. “How did you know I was the lookout?”

“Well, if the way you’re hugging that door didn’t already give it away, your question just did.”

“Shit.” The witch leaned even farther forward through the open door and peered up and down the hallway to either side of where Rebecca stood. “What are you doing here? ”

“Trying to get into the damn library. That part’s obvious.”

But now Rebecca’s gut was telling her something else was going on too. Seeing as she lacked any previous sight of whoever Aldous’s new shadow for her might be, she might as well follow this story all the way to the end.

It was way too fucking easy.

She took a step back, folded her arms, and tilted her head at the witch before offering a blasé shrug. “What do you think I’m doing here?”

“Wait. Are you for real?”

Rebecca’s deadpan stare was the perfect catch-all response. “I’m here, aren’t I?”

“Well, yeah, I mean… I just wouldn’t have expected…you know. Screw it. Come on, hurry up before anyone else sees you.” The witch ushered her through the door, which she had to push open quite a bit more to allow them both room to enter.

Then, with another quick glance up and down the hall, the witch darted inside and pulled the door shut behind her—despite it being one of those heavy, swinging hydraulic doors that would have gently clicked shut on its own anyway.

“Don’t just stand there,” the witch added, looking Rebecca up and down again. “Come on. We’re about to start.”

She reached for the doorknob, tapped it once with an outstretched finger, and sent a burst of electric-yellow light flickering across the whole thing. The locking mechanism turned on its own with a soft click.

Okay, being locked inside the normally empty library with a bunch of Shade operatives clearly up to something had not been on Rebecca’s to-do list when she’d left her room this morning.

But it was now.

The witch scurried past her like she didn’t want to miss a single part of this, ducking and diving around bookshelves and only glancing over her shoulder once to make sure the elf was following.

The urge to fix such a skittish creature with a feral grin was almost overpowering, but Rebecca managed not to terrify the flighty little thing prematurely.

Though, if whatever was happening in here now gave her a reason to act, she now knew exactly which one of them would make the perfect breeding ground for the first seeds of doubt and panic.

Until Rebecca knew what the hell was going on in this library, though, she wouldn’t make a move against anyone .

Somehow, she didn’t think this secret meeting behind the magically locked door of a room hardly anyone ever entered was much of a threat to her right now. She had been openly invited in, after all.

Even if the witch had mistaken her for someone who already knew what was about to go down.

Rebecca could keep playing that role as long as she needed to.

All she had to do was walk toward the tense whispers and murmured voices rising from the back of the library. Even if everyone had kept their mouths shut, she could have followed the thickening tension around her straight to its source, as if this clandestine group had left a literal trail of breadcrumbs.

This might just be a perfect chance to hit a few magical birds with one covert stone.

Now she was curious as hell to see what this secret meeting was allegedly about. Even though she’d come to the library to try sniffing out her new shadow, she still wouldn’t walk away from this empty-handed.

If she found her new spy here in this meeting, whoever it was, she’d have leverage against them afterward. Clearly, no one in this room wanted Aldous to know where they were and what they were doing.

If her anonymous shadow wasn’t here, they’d have no idea what was happening and would most likely try to sneak into the library to keep an eye on Rebecca, as ordered. So if anyone knocked on the locked door or tried to break in, chances were pretty damn good that was the Shade member assigned to stick to her like old skin on a molting Skirra.

Win-win.

A sly smile finally started to lift the corners of her mouth when she rounded the final long, standing shelf stuffed on both sides with magical books from end to end.

Now, though, with nothing else between Rebecca and the gathering of operatives who’d chosen the most unlikely place to hold what felt a lot like the beginning of an insurrection, that tiny bit of a smile disappeared.

She’d thought she might find half a dozen members gathered back here. Maybe twice that, based on the levels of palpable friction in the air.

But only a dozen disgruntled Shade members holding a secret meeting away from the rest of the organization in the back of the library wouldn’t have had to move all the bookshelves away to clear a space this size.

They wouldn’t have made this much noise, either, with all the whispering and crosstalk and muttered voices.

Nor would the sudden silence have been this deafening when far more pairs of eyes than she’d expected all settled on her the second Rebecca appeared around the final bookcase .

It wasn’t just a dozen or even two dozen Shade members huddling back here.

It was damn near all of them. Gathered together in one place.

What the hell was going on?