Delinquents Turned Fugitives - Ann Denton Page 0,91

shield into an axe of darkness and swiped at Claude’s head.

But the fucker ducked and then… disappeared. Just like Dad used to after he visited with me.

Shit.

I let my shadows dissolve.

That’s when something ice cold plunged into my chest and squeezed my heart.

Pain.

It took everything I had to think beyond that one word. And my only thought was shadow. I closed my eyes and imagined blackness filling up my chest cavity, spilling down my abdomen, bubbling up my throat and then coating me like a second skin. The more my shadows spread, the more the cold retreated until I heard Claude hiss.

“Fucking bitch.”

I smiled at his rage and then I pictured shadow glasses—darkening my vision like sunglasses—descending over my eyes. It took far more energy than my light did, it seemed to pull from deeper inside of me, drained me faster. But it was necessary. I made certain, one last time, that I was covered head to toe in shadow armor. Then I opened my eyes, ready to face my stepfather.

He stood just to my right, appearing solid, but the camping chair overlapped and interrupted his legs in odd, very disorienting ways.

Claude lifted a hand, smug arrogance marring his features. Nothing happened.

“Magic doesn’t work when you’re dead, idiot,” I sneered, creating a shadow throwing star and lobbing it in his direction. He leaned to the side, easily ducking it.

Growling, he barreled for me.

I had no idea if my shadow armor would hold up, or how long I could hold it. It already felt like it was fraying behind my calves. I needed a better weapon.

Think! I screamed at myself as Claude latched onto me and I felt the tingling of cold on the back of my legs. It stretched up, locking up my knees and making me tumble backward, smacking my shoulders and head against the concrete.

I need something he can’t duck, something he can’t pull out of… I wished Malcolm were here to brainstorm with me. For some reason, that thought led to another of Malcolm. A memory. Me and him in a study room. Playing the dot game.

I lifted my hands and pelted out shadow dots, until they filled the entire warehouse behind us in a three-dimensional grid. A dot game I could win. The dots grew closer and closer to us, the grid expanding row by row.

Claude noticed my smug expression and glanced behind him.

I could see it on his face when he realized those dots would eat him up like a million bullet holes. His cold grip grew tighter on my knees and I felt like my bones might snap. He snarled, “I’ll be back.”

Then he disappeared.

I gasped, releasing all the shadows. Exhaustion smacked me in the face and made me its bitch. I huffed out a dry, sad, completely unhappy laugh. Because he would be back again and again.

And I had no idea how to end a ghost.

30

Z found me passed out on the concrete when he came back for me. I didn’t even wake up until he lifted me into his arms. Even then, I blinked slowly, unable to do much more than that.

“Hey, pretty girl, I’m gonna take you to our new spot now.”

I didn’t do much more than lean my head against Zavier’s chiseled pec before I fell asleep again, drained by the magic I’d expelled. I didn’t wake up even when he tucked me into a car he’d procured somehow. I did wake when I heard sirens blaring, jerking up in the stained backseat of some shabby Honda and staring out the window.

“It’s cool,” Z said. “We’re cool. They’re just going after the fire.”

I sat up and twisted so that I could peer out the rear window. The warehouse was in the distance, flames leaping out of each of its newly broken windows as fire trucks and police cars surrounded it.

“Arson?” I asked Z, before laying back down on the seat.

He gave a shrug. “If they can prove it. I pulled a Hayley and tried to start it around the wires and crap first.”

I grinned. “Pulled a Hayley, huh?”

He shook his head as he made a right turn. “Yeah. That girl’s a bad influence.”

“Very true.” I yawned. “How far are we going?”

“Twenty minutes. You’re gonna love it, it’s got—”

But I didn’t hear what “it” had, because I passed out.

When I woke again, we were parking in a vast sea of pitch-black concrete. It was late afternoon, so the sunlight shot down in bright orange streaks and heated my arms as soon