Shadows Deep (Shadows #2)

Chapter 1

Letting go was one of the hardest things a person could ever do. Ellie knew that. What happened when she let go of the idea that reality as she knew it was merely a cover on a rabbit hole? She had willingly taken the cover off and fallen into the unknown darkness. She’d surrendered. Somehow, it felt easier that way. But the Voice kept picking at her even though she was deep in her hidey hole. It wouldn’t leave her alone.

What was it like for you when your parents died?

Ellie had answered some variation of that question what seemed like a million times over the years, but her response always paled in comparison to the effect of that one event on the rest of her life. How could she explain the depth of pain she felt when the two people who she loved most were ripped out of her life? Or the excruciating, almost debilitating sense of loneliness that followed when she finally comprehended that she was completely alone in the world?

I was eight, Ellie replied. I had no other family. One minute, I was surrounded by love. In the blink of an eye, I was an orphan. What do you think it was like? No one could understand what she had been through, and eventually she gave up trying to explain. Her parents’ death was just something that happened to her a long time ago. Ellie preferred to leave that buried there.

I am sure it was difficult. But you obviously learned to cope, even thrive.

Thrive isn’t the word I’d choose, Ellie said. I learned how to survive. Eventually, I learned ways to be happy again, but I did that on my own. I never felt like I belonged anywhere again.

The Voice was silent for a while and Ellie was relieved. When it wasn’t poking at her, the darkness was peaceful. Ellie was used to being alone.

Tell me about your ability. You’ve linked that to your parents’ death.

Ellie was tired of the questions. They had covered the same ground over and over again. But it was like the Voice was missing some nuance, and so it all started again. Combing through her life. Looking for clues. I noticed it for the first time at the funeral. I was standing there in the cemetery, looking at their caskets, with the social worker beside me. I kept looking around for more people, but it was just the three of us: me, the social worker, and the minister. And then I noticed that the longer the minister spoke, the more these colors seemed to grow out of him. It didn’t make any sense at the time. The colors were deep purple and blue and they got more vivid every time he made eye contact with me. It scared the hell out of me. I didn’t know what to do.

A familiar cloud of sadness fell over her thoughts as she remembered that lost little girl. When the service was over, I wanted to kick and scream and lash out. I wanted to push over those caskets because I convinced myself they were empty and it was some elaborate hoax. Any minute they would appear to take me home. But it wasn’t a hoax. My parents raised me to think that showing emotion in public wasn’t ladylike, so as desperately as I wanted to throw a tantrum, I knew they wouldn’t approve. I looked at the social worker and she had a glow of white tinged with yellow around her. Even though I didn’t know what it meant, the colors were soothing. I had to accept that I was left with nothing but this woman to take care of me. I was naïve and automatically assumed that she was kind and that she’d be good to me.

She wasn’t?

Ellie sighed. After twenty-five years of reading auras, I know now that she was indifferent. She probably saw a dozen kids just like me every week. Her aura meant she was at peace and even slightly happy, but it had nothing to do with me. I was part of her job, and while I was watching my parents be buried, she was probably thinking about getting a manicure or going home and having a glass of wine. Me, I had no home left.

You went into foster care.

Yes, and in foster care, I stayed until I applied for emancipation when I was sixteen. She remembered the day that the court approved her request. It had been bittersweet.

Your ability must have been helpful in that kind of hostile environment.

If you mean it helped keep me out of trouble, then probably it did. But I was always a good kid. I studied hard, got decent grades, and generally stayed out of everyone’s way. I never gave my foster families any reason to really concern themselves with me. I wanted to be invisible. I was pretty good at it, Ellie said. She had closed herself off from anyone who tried to reach her. It was a defense mechanism that worked well. Perhaps too well.

Until you met Veronica.

A face flashed in Ellie’s mind. A pretty blond with infectious laughter. Whereas her parents’ faces had faded over time, Roni’s was vivid and seemed so real that Ellie almost thought her friend was there with her in the darkness.

Roni just wouldn’t take no for an answer, Ellie said. She saw something in me I didn’t see in myself. And for some reason she wanted to be my friend. I owe her a lot. It was strange talking about Veronica. Those memories were under strict lock and key for a reason.

Tell me more about Veronica.

I met her when I was nineteen. I had been on my own for three years and things were hard. I was working three jobs trying to scrape enough money together to live in a decent place and stash some money away. Roni was in my accounting 101 class at the community college. She always had a yellow/gold aura. Until the end, Roni was always happy. She was an eternal optimist.

Sounds like a good friend to have.

She was my first real friend, Ellie choked. Roni was the one who convinced me we should try to open up our own business. We wrote the business plan at this little coffee shop that was just off the U’s campus. It always amazed me when I met someone like her who actually liked me back because Roni was popular. I don’t think most people even knew I existed. But we just clicked.

Tell me again what happened to Veronica.

Ellie hated the Voice then. Pick. Pick. Pick. Every scab of her past it went after, and it was unrelenting. If I didn’t pick up on the fact that life wasn’t fair when my parents died, I got the message loud and clear the night that I came home from work and found Roni.

You feel responsible for that, don’t you?

Ellie squirmed under the question. She had gone through a good deal of therapy after Roni’s death, trying to get her head around that very question. And since then, she had done an excellent job of forgetting that it had ever happened. What good is having an ability like mine if you can’t tell that the people you care about are in trouble? I still don’t know how she hid it from me, but I never guessed that Roni was having problems. Roni didn’t deserve to have her life end like that. Not to a bottle of pills. Not when her roommate was supposed to be home two hours earlier and maybe could have saved her.

You still blame yourself for what happened to her.

Roni had everything to live for. I refuse to believe that she truly meant for that to happen. She knew I was supposed to be home at six p.m. But somebody was late for their shift, and I was asked to stay. What kind of message does it send to somebody like me when somebody like Roni checks out? Her suicide made me angry for a long time. She should have said something. I would have helped her, just like she helped me.

Would you say that your life changed after Roni’s death?

Ellie realized that her voice had gotten screechy, and she took a breath to calm down. She wanted to sink further down into her secret place in the darkness and be alone. Even though I was mad at her, I felt like I owed it to Roni to become that person she always told me I could be. I had to do it for both of us. So, I forced myself out there. I got more jobs and saved every dime so that I could bring that dream of owning that coffee shop into reality.

Which led you to Jake.

Ellie tried to focus in on those early days with Jake. She knew the more granular she got in this exploration, the better chance that the Voice would leave her alone soon. My ability, that was really handy when I hit the dating scene. It seemed like guys always had ulterior motives, but they couldn’t hide what was there, plain as day in their auras. It was hard for me, but I had reached the point in my life where I was tired of being alone. I remembered watching how happy my parents were, and I wanted that in my life.

So you met Jake.

I literally ran into him the day that I had a showing for the space that became my coffee shop. He was in Uptown meeting some buddies for happy hour, and we collided as I was going around the corner while he was coming in the opposite direction. When he helped me up, I could tell that he was anxious about something. He surprised me by inviting me to go with him to meet his friends. It was easy to say yes, and I felt bold and excited. Jake was so handsome and a complete gentleman. That first night, he was attentive and thoughtful. It wasn’t hard to fall for him.

But Jake was keeping secrets.

At some point, you’d think I’d figure out that everyone keeps secrets, Ellie replied. She wished they could be done. She wanted to forget again. Why wouldn’t the Voice go away? Jake’s secret was just a lot worse than I ever suspected. I always thought his anxiety and depression came from dealing with trying to stay sober. Who knew that drinking was how he dealt with the fact that he could see dead people?

You were with Jake for eight years and you never suspected?

It was the million-dollar question. Not that long ago I would have laughed out loud at anyone who suggested that such a thing as ghosts really existed.

Even though you yourself possessed a gift that was...otherworldly?

I have always thought of myself as a misfit for a multitude of reasons; my ability was just one of many, Ellie said. She paused, searching her memories deeper. Jake creeped me out at the end. His aura was dangerous, and I knew to tread lightly. But the things that should have clued me in sooner were wiped from my memories, remember?

Let’s move on then. You and Jake divorced. You went through your dark time.

"I was so upset with myself that I couldn’t seem to hold any kind of semblance of normalcy together. At some point, you have to take an introspective view and realize that things aren’t happening to you, they are happening because you are you. I mean, that’s why you’re talking to me, right? There’s something about me you want to know, and you can’t figure it out."

So you think that these experiences in your life meant that you would spend your life alone?

Every time I let someone get close, they either died or changed so dramatically for the worst that they couldn’t be in my life. I don’t have to be a therapist to realize that I have trust issues, but they seem justified.

So you believed until David appeared.

His face floated across her mind. She felt her anxiousness bleed away. David was different. I felt safe around him. I could see the person there behind his eyes, and it was someone good and pure. He never did anything that led me to believe I couldn’t trust him. If anything, I betrayed him.

By accepting The Third’s offer?

Ellie was still ashamed of the way it had happened. I should have asked him. I should have found a way to ask him. But I thought it was the only way to keep him safe. To keep both of us safe.

Do you think he sees it that way?

I hope so, Ellie said. The decision was made so quickly, and their time together afterwards had been so short. Then the darkness came. I wish I could see him. I’d ask him.

It is extraordinary that after everything you’ve told me, and how faulty your trusted ability has proved to be, that you would open up so quickly to someone you barely knew.

Ellie didn’t like the sound of that at all. Her mind flailed. Where am I again? Ellie asked. She thought her eyes were open now, but there was only darkness around her. I forgot how I got here.

Ellie, I don’t think you are ready yet. But I have no choice. It’s time.

Time for what? She felt panicked.

A warm hand pressed into her shoulder. It was the first time she had felt a touch in the darkness and her breath caught. Then she felt her weightless body vibrate.

As the darkness rippled, she heard the Voice’s last words reach her ears. Time for you to embrace your destiny.

Chapter 2

The sensation of feeling her body’s weight again was jarring. One moment she was floating through the darkness, and the next it felt like she was drowning; her body heavy and sinking, her lungs gasping for air. Then an electrifying tingle penetrated her skin and ripped through her body and her eyes flew open to intense light. She wondered if she was being reborn into the world.

A cry escaped her lips at the memory of the pain that rattled her limbs, and hearing that sound out loud caused a ringing in her ears. Her mind came into sharp focus. Her imaginary rabbit hole and the darkness weren’t real. Real wasn’t the right way to explain it though. Her mind had thought she was safely trapped inside it, but as the familiar room came into focus around her, she knew with certainty that someone had been playing a game with her. She couldn’t understand why she had trusted the Voice, and she wondered how much of herself she had revealed floating there in the darkness.

Air filled her lungs, and she took a deep breath. It was like she hadn’t taken a breath in a long time, and a sharp cough rattled her chest. She curled on her side as that cough was followed by another and then another. She felt heat on her face and saw that it was coming from the fire in the fireplace before her. She may not have known where she was before, but she knew where she was now: the library of the Bradford mansion. She stubbornly refused to think of it any longer as Linda’s house. Linda had been nothing but a charming illusion hiding a century-old soul-sucking monster that had once gone by the name of Lillian Bradford.

Lillian, as Linda, had pretended to be Ellie’s friend. Somehow, she had gotten past Ellie’s deflective shield and lured her into a trap, as neat as any spider. Now Ellie was tied to the Bradford mansion as surely as Lillian had been. Ellie felt a small amount of vindication, though, that Lillian had got hers in the end, after Ellie made a deal with Lillian’s demon and sent Lillian and her equally nasty husband, Joseph, straight to hell.

As the coughs finally subsided, Ellie sensed a presence behind her. Her body screamed in protest, but she rolled over to her other side while simultaneously pushing herself backward to sit up. She didn’t know who she would encounter here, and while she hoped it would be David, she knew she wouldn’t be so lucky. As she felt the cool and prickly surface of the stone fireplace against her back, she saw that her intuition had not been wrong; Ellie wasn’t alone in the library.

A shadowy figure detached itself from the far wall and approached her slowly. The shadow took on features and a man’s form finally appeared, carrying a tray with a teapot and teacups on it. Ellie knew him: it was Jeffrey, Lillian’s butler. It never occurred to Ellie that she would see the man again. In her mind, he was tied to the world she remembered, a place she desperately wanted to go back to and forget Lillian Bradford had ever existed.

Good to see you, Ellie. How are you feeling? Jeffrey asked pleasantly as he set the tray down on the coffee table between the two facing sofas that were just a few feet away from the fireplace. I took the liberty of starting the fire and making you some tea. I knew you would be disoriented from your transition.

Ellie was still trying to process what had happened to her in the last few minutes. Transition? Where was I? She looked down and noted that her clothes were the same jeans and sweater that she knew she was wearing the night Lillian and Joseph attacked her. How long have I been...gone? Where’s David?

Jeffrey chuckled as he poured tea into one cup. So many questions. Always the same. Come, have some tea. You may want to get acclimated again before diving into all of that. You’re weak and you need to give your body a bit of time to rest.

Ellie had no desire to drink tea or do anything but try to make sense of what was going on. I’m not drinking anything that you’ve made. You were working with Lillian to trap me. She was going to kill me. What makes you think that I’d trust you?

Jeffrey smiled at her as he settled onto one couch and threw his arm up on the back of it. With his white hair, heavy cowled sweater, slacks, and boat shoes, he looked just like what Ellie envisioned a grandfather would look like. Both sets of her grandparents had died when her parents were young, so she had never known them. She shook those thoughts from her head.

Ellie, I think you are mistaken. I provided services for Lillian, but I did not work for her. For a long time, our interests were aligned, he said.

The tingle of an idea grew in her mind and the thought filled her with dread. "You work for him, she said. The Third."

Jeffrey’s smiled broadened in confirmation. Everyone has a master, Ellie. He is mine. But why the formality? That would distress him. You may call him Mikel.

I would call him a monster, Ellie said, trying to keep her voice even.

That monster saved your life, Jeffrey said. Yours and David’s if I recall correctly. I think you may be judging too harshly, Ellie. Perhaps you should gather all the facts before you make up your mind about Mikel. There is so much you don’t know, and it is unfortunate that Lillian colored much of that with her own scheming. Lillian was the monster there, not Mikel.

That she had misjudged a demon made Ellie’s body shake with mirthless laughter. The entity who called himself The Third had the power to condemn Lillian and Joseph to hell and could bind anyone he chose to do his bidding. He had presented Ellie with an impossible choice after it was revealed that he had had an active