The Shadows

“Help . . .” she called out. “Help . . .”

Straining against her bones, she tried to remember the last time she’d seen any of her sisters up here. It had been . . .

Too many nights ago. And even then, no one came this far into the landscape, the cemetery being rarely visited at its peripheral site save for sacred remembrance rituals—that were not due to occur for months.

“Help!”

With a colossal pull, she fought against her body. But all that transpired was a twitch of her hand, the fingers dragging against the lawn.

That was it.

Tears flooded her eyes and her heart hammered and she wished absurdly that she had not e’er asked for an expiration date . . .

From out of the depths of her emotions, an image of Trez’s face—his almond-shaped black eyes, his cropped black hair, his dark skin—came to the forefront of her mind.

She should have said her good-bye sooner.

“Trez . . .” she moaned against the grass.

As her consciousness receded, it was a door that shut softly, but solidly, blocking out the world around her . . .

. . . such that she was unaware, sometime later, when a small, silent figure approached her from behind, floating above the grass, a brilliant light spilling out from beneath flowing black robes.

SIX

SALVATORE’S RESTAURANT, OUTSIDE OF LITTLE ITALY, CALDWELL

With a curse, iAm ended the call that had just come through on his cell phone and braced his upper body on the counter in front of him. After a moment of arrhythmia, he yanked on his wool peacoat, the black one with the forty in a hidden pocket on the left side and an eight-inch hunting knife stitched into the lining on the right.

He might need the weapons.

“Chef? You okay?”

He glanced across the industrial kitchen at Antonio diSenza, his executive chef. “Sorry. Yeah. I gotta go—and I already started the mise en place.” He picked his cell phone back up. “You can finish it tomorrow.”

Antonio took off his toque and leaned a hip against the massive twelve-burner stovetop. All the equipment used for dinner service was cleaned up, the lingering steam from the dishwashers making the forty-by-twenty-foot kitchen seem like something out of the Amazon rain forest.

Too quiet, iAm thought. And the brightly lit place smelled like bleach instead of basil.

“Thank you, chef. Do you want me to stew the tomatoes before I leave?”

“It’s late. Go home. Good service tonight.”

Antonio wiped his face off with a blue-and-white dish towel. “Thanks to you, chef.”

“Lock up for me?”

“Anything you want.”

With a nod, iAm left the kitchen and cut through the tiled delivery hall to the back exit. Outside, two of his waiters were loitering around their cars and smoking, their tuxedo jackets off, their red bow ties loose and hanging from their open collars.

“Chef,” one of them said, straightening.

The other immediately came to attention. “Chef.”

Technically, he was more boss than chef here at Sal’s, but he did do a lot of the cooking and recipe R & D himself, and the staff respected him for it. Hadn’t always been that way. When he’d first stepped in to take over the Caldwell institution, he had not exactly been welcomed. Everyone from the waiters to the chefs to the busboys had assumed he was an African-American, and the deep pride and tradition of Italian ownership, cooking, and culture would have worked against anyone who didn’t have Sicilian blood in his veins.

As a Shadow, he understood the deal better than they knew. His people didn’t want anything to do with vampires or symphaths—and certainly never those rats-without-tails humans. And Sal’s was one of the most famous restaurants in Caldwell, not just a throwback to the Rat Pack era of the fifties, but a place that had actually served the Chairman of the Board and his slick boys. With its flocked wallpaper, hostess stand, and formal everything, it was Sardi’s north—and had always been owned and managed by Italians.

Over a year into his ownership, though, everything was all good. He had proved himself to everyone from the customers to the staff to the suppliers, not just stepping into Salvatore Guidette III’s shoes, but filling them. Now? He was treated with respect that bordered on worship.

Wonder what they’d think of him if they knew he wasn’t from Africa, he did not identify as American—and more to the point, he wasn’t even human.

A Shadow was in their midst.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” he told the two men.

“Yes, chef.”

“’Night, chef.”

iAm nodded at them and strode around the far corner. As soon as he was out of sight, he closed his eyes, concentrated, and dematerialized.

When he re-formed, it was on the eighteenth floor of the Commodore, on the terrace of the condo he owned with his brother. The glass slider was wide-open, the long white drapes billowing in and out of the dark interior like ghosts trying and failing to escape. There had been two possible destinations for him: here or shAdoWs, and he’d picked their bachelor pad because of what was waiting inside.