The Shadow City Read online

  Someone had already made a pot of . . . Gabe sniffed. Is that tea? It looked a little weak. And what appeared to be a fresh tin of muffins sat on the stove top, untouched. Gabe poured a mug and ignored the muffins. He wandered out into the living room—one of the more opulently decorated rooms in an already opulently decorated house, with huge, heavy, mahogany furniture upholstered in burgundy silk—and found Kaz curled up on one of the couches. His knees were pulled up to his chest, and his hoodie stretched all the way down over his legs, which made him look like a blue M&M.

  Gabe noticed the laptop they’d found in the dining room open on the coffee table.

  “You got into it?” he asked, pointing to the computer. They’d been so busy the night before with all the books and notes Uncle Steve and Greta had left behind, they hadn’t even gotten to the laptop.

  “Yeah, it had the same password as the one in his home office,” Kaz said. “You know, your, uh, birthday.” Thinking again of how crappy he’d been to Uncle Steve the last time they spoke, Gabe felt a spike of regret in his gut. Kaz must have seen the look on Gabe’s face because he quickly continued. “Anyway—there’s not much on here. Looks like he mostly used it for his university email.”

  “I guess that makes sense,” Gabe said. “He was an old-school kind of guy. Would rather trek all the way across town to some moldy library than google something.” Gabe blinked and wiped the back of his hand over his eyes to stop the tears. Being around his uncle’s things made him miss him even more—but he had to focus.

  “But check this out.” Kaz nudged the laptop over to Gabe.

  Gabe picked up the computer and sucked in a quick breath. It was a video embedded in a news report. The volume was down, but the video showed a swarm of demonic-looking abyssal bats clustering on the island. There are thousands of them! Maybe more!

  The headline across the top of the screen read, “Mysterious Mass Migration of North American Condors.”

  “It’s the breach to Arcadia we accidentally opened during the last ritual,” Kaz said darkly. “The Dawn must be using the power coming through it to create an army.”

  The mass of bats surrounding the prison isle was easily a hundred times the size of the force they’d fought on Alcatraz three days ago. “We have to stop them,” Gabe said.

  “But how? There are already a million abyssal bats, and think of what just one of them did to—to—” Kaz didn’t finish the sentence because he didn’t have to. Gabe knew he was talking about Greta.

  “First we have to figure out this ritual. Then we’ll make our move,” Gabe said. It sounded easy, but it wasn’t. It was just about the furthest thing from easy he could think of. But one thing at a time. “Were you the one who made breakfast?”

  Kaz stared forlornly at his own cup of tea. “The milk was about to go bad, so I made muffins. Or at least, I followed the directions on the box. They look like muffins. I tried to do some tea, too, like Mom makes it, but I don’t think I got it right.” He sighed. “It doesn’t matter, I guess, since we don’t have any maple syrup, either.”

  Whenever Gabe had gone with Kaz, Brett, and Lily on one of their urban-exploration “field trips,” Kaz always brought a thermos of tea for them to share. He always remembered that Gabe liked his sweetened with maple syrup. Gabe tried to remember the last time he’d had any. It had been less than a week ago, but it seemed like another lifetime.

  Gabe sat down on the couch. Kaz just kept staring at his cup. It was still full.

  Worrying about his family is eating him alive.

  “Look, Kaz, you’re doing the right thing.” Gabe set his tea down on the floor. “Keeping your parents and sisters out of this? You’re keeping them safe. You know that, right?”

  Kaz touched his temple. “I know it up here.” He thumped his chest. “It’s just here that it sucks so hard. They really think I’ve been kidnapped! They’re worried sick.”

  Gabe nodded. “I know. I know. But you don’t want your family to end up like mine.” Kaz pulled his eyes away from his mug to look at Gabe. Gabe went on. “Everybody in my family is either dead or trapped in Arcadia, and it’s because of all this crazy elemental stuff we’re wrapped up in. Your family’s safe. And you will see them again. Dude, I promise you. You will.”

  Kaz tried a smile. It didn’t look convincing.

  Gabe stood up. “Have you eaten anything?” When Kaz shook his head, Gabe beckoned. “Come on, at least have a muffin. I mean, you made them, you’ve gotta try one.” After a moment, Kaz shrugged and stood. He trailed after Gabe to the kitchen, and Gabe found a tub of butter in the fridge, which he smeared on a muffin like it was frosting.

  Kaz eyed the pastry warily. “Jeez, Gabe, are you trying to give me a heart attack with all that butter? How am I supposed to be a, like, a good earth elementalist if I’m always grabbing my chest and keeling over?” But he picked up the muffin and took a big bite anyway, and the earlier trace of a smile came back, this time with a little more strength.

  Lily wandered in, rubbing her eyes. She was back in her regular clothes, which were rumpled but looked a lot cleaner than Gabe’s. “Morning. What’s going on? Did I miss any more insanity?”

  Around a mouthful, Kaz said, “Nah. Gabe was just nicing at me.”

  Lily sat down across from Gabe and smirked. “Nicing? Is that a word?”

  Kaz swallowed, nodding. “Trying to make me feel better.” He took a sip of tea. “When we should be nicing at him instead.”

  Huh?

  But Lily seemed to get what Kaz was talking about. She turned her dark eyes to Gabe. “Gabe, you know it’s really important to stay positive while we’re going through all of this. We have to believe it’s going to come out all right. But if it doesn’t . . .”

  Before Gabe could figure out where this was going, Kaz said, “Just, you should know, man. We’ve got your back. I mean, Mom and Dad already have a bunch of kids. What’s one more?”

  Lily said, “Or, I mean, you’d be totally welcome at our place. You could . . .” She paused. “You could take Charlie’s old room. It’d be good for somebody to sleep in there again.”

  Gabe sat back in his chair. It took a few seconds for his mouth to make sounds again. They’re trying to take care of me in case I don’t see any of my family again. In case Uncle Steve and my mom . . . don’t make it back. “Have you two talked about this before? You have, haven’t you?”

  Kaz and Lily exchanged guilty glances. Lily said, “We just want you to know you’ve got somebody. You’re not going to end up by yourself.”

  Gabe turned away from them so they wouldn’t see the tears in his eyes. He’d already gone to pieces in front of them once, when he realized the apographon wasn’t really his mother. He couldn’t do it again.

  Get a grip, Gabe! Everyone’s counting on you!

  “Thanks, guys,” Gabe managed to squeak out. But these words didn’t nearly begin to cover the gratitude he felt.

  Kaz and Lily and Brett were his friends. Real friends.

  No, Gabe realized.

  They were more than friends. Even if he didn’t see his uncle or his mother again . . . he knew he still had a family.

  Full of watered-down tea and muffins, Gabe led Kaz and Lily into the dining room, where Brett still sat hunched over the Emerald Tablet and stacks of paper choked with handwriting. Ghost Boy still lurked in the corner, watching Brett like a hawk. The apographon lay in another corner, back to its stone-golem appearance. Fighting off a shiver of disgust, Gabe pulled back the chair it had occupied and sat down across from Brett. “You’re starting to look like some kind of mad scientist, dude.”

  Brett grunted. “From what I can tell, Greta and your uncle almost had everything worked out. It won’t take all that much to recalibrate the ritual so it uses all five elements. And maybe—if we’re smart about it—we can figure out how to get Dr. Conway and your mom back before we destroy Arcadia, too.”

  Gabe surprised himself by grinning. “That’s great!” We finally have a clue a
s to what to do next!

  Kaz was just as excited. “Really? Like how? What do we need to do?” He circled the table to look over Brett’s shoulder, and Brett rattled off a flurry of what might as well have been Klingon to Gabe. He understood the individual words, but the way Brett had put them together, it was just a wall of information. Gabe had never been a star student even when he was studying normal things like history or biology, and he was totally out of his depth with this stuff. He was just glad it seemed to make sense to Kaz and Brett.

  “I’ve gotta say, Brett, I never thought you would get all into research like this,” Gabe said.

  Brett broke off talking to Kaz to spear Jackson with a pointed look. “Yeah, well, there’s nothing like getting trapped in a magickal nightmare world to make you reexamine your priorities.”

  Gabe shrugged. Can’t argue with that.

  Then a dark thought made his eyebrows draw together. What if we can’t do both? What if we can’t get Mom and Uncle Steve back and destroy Arcadia? He shuddered. What if we have to choose?

  “It comes down to a reagent, I think,” Brett said. As if to answer Gabe’s unspoken question, he held up a ring. “A reagent is an ingredient for a spell. In this case, this ring.”

  Jackson gasped at the sight of it.

  Gabe squinted at it. That’s a signet ring—the kind of thing they used to mash into hot wax to seal letters with. It had a pretty simple design, a circle with five lines radiating from the center.

  Kaz took the ring from Brett, and Lily came over to get a look at it. “What’s the big deal about it?” Kaz asked.

  Jackson rasped out, “I shall tell you what the ‘big deal’ is. It bears my family crest—‘Wright’ was shortened from ‘Wheelwright’ in the early eighteenth century—but the ring’s origins far predate my family’s.”

  Gabe looked at the design of the ring again. He guessed it did sort of look like a wheel. But wouldn’t a wagon wheel have more than five spokes?

  “That ring, according to lore, was fashioned from metal found in a meteorite,” Jackson went on. “It cannot—”

  Brett cut Jackson off with a wave of his hand. “Yes, yes, it’s very old, we get it. Don’t worry, Ghost Boy, I won’t hurt your precious family heirloom.”

  Jackson glowered at Brett with enough force to peel paint. “Pardon me, but my concern is not for the ring, but for us—indeed, for our entire world. As much occult knowledge as the Eternal Dawn, or Steven Conway and Greta Jaeger, have collected, a thousand times that has been lost over the course of millennia. You cannot begin to know the effect that using the ring may—”

  “Listen, I’m trying to do something,” Brett snarled. “Researching, reading, calculating. And what are you doing? The same thing you’ve been doing for the last hundred years: absolutely nothing. You whine, you sulk, you lash out, and that’s it. Because that’s all you’re good for: getting in everyone else’s way.”

  Even Jackson seemed taken aback by Brett’s venom.

  I’m not exactly a fan of Jackson’s, but Brett sounds like he straight-up hates the guy.

  Everyone at the table jumped when the doorbell rang. Gabe turned to Jackson. “Who’s that? No one knows we’re here. Is it the cops?”

  Jackson threw his hands up. “Why are you asking me? Am I standing at the front door? Honestly, Gabriel.”

  Kaz jammed the ring into his hoodie’s big front pocket and frantically started sorting and collecting the piles of paper on the table. Brett clamped a hand down on Kaz’s wrist. “What do you think you’re doing?”

  “We’ve got to hide all this stuff and get out of here!” Kaz’s voice rose in pitch. “What if the bad guys found us?” He pointed at the apographon. “Somebody needs to throw a sheet over Rocky there, too!”

  Jackson scowled at them all. “One thing I will say. No one should have been able to trace us here. The way this house is warded? The silver in the walls? We are standing in a fortress.”

  “Okay, everyone calm down,” Gabe said. “Let me go see who it is, and I’ll try to get rid of them.” No one objected to that, so Gabe crossed through the foyer to the front door, peered through the curtains of the small window set into it, and felt his stomach fall right into his shoes. He turned to see everyone else watching him from the dining room door, and he mouthed the words: It’s the cops!

  Kaz gasped, before Lily put a hand over his mouth.

  Gabe understood how they felt. The last time police had shown up at his door, they’d turned out to be agents of the Eternal Dawn, and sicced a pair of hunters—eyeless, skinless horrors the size of small ponies—on them. Gabe had practically had to burn his own house down so he and his friends could get away.

  Gabe thought as fast as he could. This was bad, even if these were regular, run-of-the-mill cops, considering they were a group of unaccompanied minors with at least one official missing person among them. He turned on his brightest smile as he opened the door. He took a deep breath. “Can I help you, Officers?”

  Both cops were black, one a short, chunky man, the other a tall, thin woman. Their name tags proclaimed the man to be Officer Cook, and the woman to be Officer Dante. “Hey there, son,” Officer Cook said. “Are your parents home?”

  “Not right now, no,” Gabe said, relieved and amazed that he hadn’t stuttered. “I mean, I live with my uncle.”

  Officer Cook held out a phone with a photo of Kaz on it. “Well, we’re looking for a missing boy, about your age, and we traced his cell signal to this neighborhood. Have you seen this kid?”

  Ugh, Lily was right about the cell signal!

  Gabe scrunched up his face. “He looks familiar . . . I might have seen him around, I just can’t place where.”

  Officer Dante tried to look into the house over Gabe’s shoulder. “May we speak to your uncle?”

  Be convincing! “Like I said, he’s not here right now. Could you maybe try back later?”

  Officer Cook seemed impatient, like he’d rather be done with this and move on to the next house, but Officer Dante got a look on her face that Gabe recognized. It was the same look Uncle Steve got when he could tell Gabe was lying about something. “What’s your name, young man? And your uncle’s name?”

  Gabe wasn’t sure whether it came from his nerves, or his quick thinking, or maybe quick thinking fueled by nerves, but he sent a burst of fire energy into the street and thought, Now!

  A manhole cover exploded up out of the pavement, billowed aloft on a cloud of hissing steam, and bounced off the side of the patrol car parked in front of the house. Both Cook and Dante yelped and scrambled off the porch, barking into their radios.

  Gabe slammed the door and put his back against it while everyone else rushed forward. “Okay, I just bought us a little time, I think, but that lady cop is totally onto me. What do we do?”

  “There is room for them in the basement,” Jackson said speculatively, before everyone else stared him down. “What? Do you have a better notion?”

  “We’re not kidnapping innocent cops and putting them in the basement!” Gabe barked.

  “You’re sure they’re innocent?” Lily peered out the little window.

  “Pretty sure. I didn’t get any Dawn-ish vibes from them while we were talking.”

  “Well, we can’t send Kaz with them, no matter what.” Brett chucked Kaz on the shoulder. “We need you to stop the apocalypse, buddy.”

  Kaz didn’t rise to Brett’s casual remark, and he looked gloomier than usual when he said, “If I did go back home now, Dad wouldn’t let me out of my room until I was forty.”

  “Wait a minute!” Lily said excitedly. “The, the thing, we can use the rock thing!” She pointed to the golem that lay collapsed in the corner. “The apographon! Send it with the cops!”

  “Yes!” Gabe nodded furiously. “We can make it look like Kaz! Lily, you’re a genius! Brett, do you think you could pull that off?”

  A smile slowly spread across Brett’s lips. “Of course I can!”

  “It’s not
that easy, you fool,” Jackson snorted. “Reverting the apographon to its previous appearance of Gabriel’s mother was one thing. But creating a link between it and Kazuo’s consciousness is utterly beyond your abilities.”

  “Thanks, Ghost Boy,” Brett said, gathering the apographon’s strange humanlike form up from the floor. “Forget the cops—now I’ll do it just to prove you wrong.”

  They heard footfalls coming up the front steps.

  “Well, you’d better do it really freaking fast, then,” Kaz said.

  Once everyone else had scurried back into the dining room, Gabe waited until the cops had knocked on the door twice before he opened it again. “Oh, hi, Officers. Did you forget something?”

  Officer Cook, who had looked bored, now looked bored and annoyed, and Gabe decided he’d better tone down the smart-aleck before Cook decided to take that annoyance out on him. Officer Dante’s suspicious expression had only deepened. Gabe noticed the manhole cover was back in place.

  “We forgot to get your name and your uncle’s name,” Dante said with a tight jaw.

  “Oh! Oh, right. My name is Gabe.”

  Never taking her eyes off him, Dante pulled out a notepad and jotted that down. “Last name?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Your last name. What is it?”

  Stall, stall, come on, Gabe!

  “My last name? Don’t you want my uncle’s name?”

  Dante sighed. “Yes, we want your uncle’s name, too.”

  “Oh, his name is Steve.”

  Dante’s eyes narrowed, and Officer Cook made a growling sound in his throat. Hurry up, guys! “Hey, y’know, I was thinking, I might’ve remembered where I saw that kid on your phone before.”

  Dante dropped her hands to her sides. “Yeah? Where?”

  “Well, I’ve got some friends over, playing video games, y’know, because that’s what us young people do, and that kid might be a friend of a friend. So he might actually be here after all?”

  Officer Cook put his hand on the doorknob. Gabe had no illusions about his ability to keep hold of the door if Cook decided to push it the rest of the way open. “You’re saying Kazuo Smith is here now? Where?”