in the dark water. “I’d rather die than live like this. You’re not getting my permission to kill, never ever again. You asked me what I wanted, and now I want you to go away.”
The shadow shrieked inside her head, the pain almost unbearable. A big, sandpapery shape bumped up against her body. Sharp jaws clamped down on her bleeding wrist.
It yanked her down beneath the waves and shoved her into the sandy bottom. Through the cloudy water, she could see the pearly dead eyes of the big shark holding her down. The shark’s wide, razored mouth was inches from her face.
Give. Me. The. Boy.
Charlie kicked against the shark, churning up the sand, sharp shells and rocks cutting her legs. With her free hand, she beat against the shark’s snout, but the huge fish wouldn’t budge. Her eyes burned, and her lungs screamed for air.
She saw movement in the corner of her eye. David was diving down toward her.
“No!” she tried to scream, but all that came out was her last bit of air in a long string of bubbles.
The shark released her and rose to meet David. She pushed off the bottom, trying to reach them, but she’d gone too long without a breath. She blacked out.
Charlie came to on a stretcher on the sand. Her left arm was splinted and wrapped in bloody gauze. Master Kim and two paramedics hovered over her. Kim’s face was grave.
“Where’s David?” she whispered.
“I’m right here.” He pushed through the crowd and knelt beside her. There wasn’t a scratch on him. “Everything’s gonna be okay.”
Her shadow seemed to be gone. But the shark’s attack crushed bones in her wrist and forearm and severed a couple of tendons. The doctors said she’d need more surgeries and it would be at least a year before she regained full use of her hand. She felt weaker than she ever had before.
David came to visit her in the hospital the next day. He could barely sit still, and his eyes glowed with fever.
“It told me that I could save you, just by wanting to,” he said after the nurse left.
“It?” Charlie felt a deep chill.
“Yeah. It’s like … it’s incredible. I can kick more ass than Bruce Lee and Batman combined! I just have to be near water, and no one can stop me.”
“Oh God, David …” Charlie trailed off as it all sank in.
Her best friend seemed not to hear her. “I’m gonna go away, maybe to New York or Los Angeles. I just thought you should know, ’cause we’re buddies and all. I don’t need school, I don’t need Master Kim. Now I can do anything I want.”
“David, no, please, don’t do this, listen to me—”
“Sorry, Charlie, I gotta cruise.” He planted a quick, hard kiss on her forehead.
And then he was gone.
Charlie lay in bed, listening to her heart pound. Between the beats, she thought she could hear the shadow’s little-girl laughter.
chapter
twenty-six
Grave Matters
Pal and I looked at each other; clearly the shadow was some sort of devil. Whether it was the kind we could deal with was another matter entirely.
Charlie crushed her smoldering cigarette stub in her lunch plate and lit up another. “I thought that would be the last I’d ever see of David, you know? And it was, until about six weeks ago. I was on night patrol near the fence when he popped up out of nowhere. He looks so sketchy now, I barely recognized him.”
“What did he want?” I asked.
“He told me how he and the shadow had gone to L.A. for a while but they came back here—how did he put it?—because ‘the darkness was coming’ or something like that. And even though the shadow’s a lot stronger now, it and David got stuck here like everyone else. He told me that he and the shadow are helping Miko. Before, when she popped out people’s souls, their bodies might live on for a little while but then they’d die. The shadow gave him the power to turn them into zombies that she could control. They’ll stay alive for months if you give them food and water. And so Miko let him and the shadow do pretty much what they wanted—I guess the shadow mostly wants living bodies to eat—as long as she got enough zombies to do what she wanted.”
“But why did he come to you that night?”
Charlie shrugged. “Why that night? I dunno. But what he wanted was for me to join him and come back to the