Shadow Thief - Eva Chase Page 0,12
tickled my nose.
Ellen, co-owner of the theater and unofficial co-president of the Fund alongside her wife, had a thing for experimenting with new popcorn flavors. We Fund members served as her guinea pigs. As I strolled around the rows of red-velvet-padded seats to check out her current attempt, a petite figure bounded to join me with a swish of her buoyant curls.
“Sorsha!” my best friend cried, catching me in a hug I returned with a laugh. From Vivi’s enthusiasm every time I showed up, you’d have thought my attendance was a rare occurrence. The truth was, I rarely missed a meeting, since the people in the Fund were pretty much the only people I could talk to without having to lie about the vast majority of my life. And even with them, there was plenty I edited out.
When I’d first showed up at a Fund meeting as a much more hesitant and recently traumatized sixteen-year-old, Vivi had immediately swooped in and taken me under her wing. I’d even ended up living with her and her parents for a while. Two years older, she’d been the next youngest in the bunch, but she’d seemed awfully mature and worldly to me. Over the more-than-a-decade since, we’d come out on more equal footing, bonding over our unusual senses of humor and our mutual love for cheesy old movies and Thai food.
“It’s chili pepper and brown sugar tonight,” she said, nodding to the bags of popcorn already filled to the side of the machine. “It’ll roast your tongue like a rack of honey ribs and then set the barbeque on fire.”
I’d never met a lyric I couldn’t mangle; Vivi had never met a simile she couldn’t stretch to the breaking point.
I grinned back at her and swiped a Coke from the mini-fridge as well as my bag. “Thanks for the warning. I see you survived.”
“Only barely,” she said in a dramatic undertone, but her eyes still twinkled merrily. She struck a pose, one hand on her hip, the other in the air. “What do you think of the new get-up?”
Today’s outfit consisted of a sleek white tank top with a pearly sheen and trim white capris. Vivi only wore white—“It’s my calling card,” she’d told me way back when—which to be fair did set off her smooth brown skin and dark features amazingly. She emphasized her eyes with thick liner and mascara, and her black hair ran tight along her scalp in braids before bursting into a gush of curls at the back. Perhaps most amazing was the fact that she somehow managed never to get a smudge or a stain on all that pale fabric.
“You look incredible,” I said, “like you always do. Got something special happening later?”
“I’m supposed to meet this guy for drinks. We’ve talked a little online. I don’t know. Hard to tell how you’re going to feel about a person until you can see and, like, smell them, right?”
My mind tripped back to Ruse’s bittersweet cacao scent, and a warmth I hadn’t wanted to provoke flickered up from my chest. I tamped down on it in the same instant, but Vivi knew me pretty well.
“Huh,” she said with a teasing tilt of her head. “What have you been up to, missy?”
I waved her off. “Nothing, nothing. Just thinking about times past and all.” I didn’t have to mention how recently past they were. Time for a subject change! “Hey, have you heard anything through the grapevine about hunters getting more organized or people trying to trap higher shadowkind as well as the little beasties?”
Vivi frowned. “I don’t think so. Maybe someone else will have. Why, do you think something like that is happening?”
“Just seems like it could. Something to keep an eye out for.” I scrambled for an excuse that wouldn’t perk Vivi’s curiosity too much. “It’s coming up on the anniversary of Luna’s death, and I guess that got me thinking.”
My best friend’s expression immediately softened with sympathy. She gave me a gentle tap of her elbow. “That’s got to be tough. But it’s been a long time and we haven’t seen more incidents that were anything like that, so I don’t think there’s a pattern. Just a bunch of assholes who must have thought better of making that kind of move after things went wrong.”
“True,” I said. It could also be true that what had happened to the trio who’d crashed my apartment and their “boss” was an isolated incident, not part of a larger conspiracy, no