Indigo(59)

Maybe “survival skills” is more accurate.

So much for the monks in Nepal. How could she not have seen the absurdity of that scenario?

“Miss, are you all right?” The voice was not the horrifying one inside her, but that of the young waiter from the counter where she’d paid for her coffee and the pastry. Now he was standing anxiously by her table, studying her with concern.

Nora emerged from her reverie with some bewilderment. Quite a few faces were turned to her, and they were all curious or frightened. She wondered what she’d been doing to cause such apprehension. She had to get out of there.

“So sorry.” Nora forced a smile on her face. “I sat up with a friend at the hospital last night.” She stood hastily, gathered her bag, and nodded to the waiter.

It was time to confront Shelby.

Nora was so unsettled that she didn’t want to use the shadows to travel. Walking like other humans would be fine.

*

Fifteen minutes later, Nora was knocking on the familiar door. She’d delayed this confrontation by stopping at her own apartment to feed and water the Assholes, who had ventured out of their hiding places when they’d decided she was Nora, not Indigo. She was going to have the most messed-up cats in New York, which was saying something. Then Nora had taken five more minutes to change their litter box. It seemed like the least she could do.

She did not feel in any way ready for this conversation, but she had to have it. When the door opened, Nora jumped.

“Hey.” Shelby sagged against the doorframe, her red-gold hair in a tangled mass. Nora had never seen Shelby so disheveled. “That was crazy, huh? How’s your friend Sam?” Shelby stood aside and gestured Nora into the apartment.

To Nora’s eyes, Shelby looked exactly the same. Her apartment was the familiar, charming blend of attractive odds and ends. But when Nora stepped through the door, she slipped into Indigo and looked again. The view through Indigo’s eyes staggered her. She stared at Shelby, shaking her head, and took a step back.

“What are you?” Indigo snarled.

Shelby looked shadowy now—almost translucent—and the rosy-pink love seat behind her flickered in and out of Indigo’s sight, as if it both existed and did not.

Sorrow shattered Shelby’s expression, along with a kind of shame. She slid down to her knees. “Don’t look at me like that. Don’t look from the shadows.”

“Who are you?”

Shelby began weeping. “Don’t you get it? I’m you, Nora. At least, you and Damastes created me.”

“What?” Indigo’s resolve faltered. “What do you mean?” she asked, her voice shaky.

Shelby pulled a green-and-gold vase off the little table next to the love seat and threw it at Indigo. Inhumanly fast, Indigo reached out to catch it … but it was air. The vase had vanished.

“Ask the demon,” Shelby said, and closed her eyes, her anguish painful to watch.

Time for you to know, Damastes rumbled inside Indigo.

She did not even need to formulate a question.

You have so much of me in you. I occupied you so … unexpectedly. And you were so strong. My power is manifesting in you, Indigo. My child.

I’m not your child, Indigo thought. You’re a demon. I fight the bad guys, asshole. I fight evil.

You do not just fight the people who wanted to control me. You leave bodies strewn in your wake. You can create what you need most. You pave the way for my return.

Indigo looked down at the spot where Shelby slumped against the table. For a second, Shelby’s legs vanished.

“What are you?” Indigo asked quietly now, sadness sweeping over her.

“I’m your friend,” Shelby whispered. “Because that’s what you needed the most.”

She’s your Heykeli. If she were mine, I would use her to kill people who need to die, including the ones you named. Damastes laughed. Friend, indeed!

Indigo stared at Shelby, the demon’s words echoing in her head. “I don’t know what that is. Heykeli?”

Shelby hung her head. “You do know, because I know. And the only way that’s possible is if somewhere inside, you have all this information already.”

Simmering with frustration and anger, sadness and confusion, Indigo crouched by Shelby and reached out to take her hand and felt reassured by its solidity. Whatever she was, she wasn’t just a figment.

“Talk to me,” Indigo said. Or maybe the words were Nora’s.

Shelby shook her head. “Let Damastes tell you. He won’t lie about this part. He wants you to know.”

Indigo felt a warmth in her chest, a feeling of pleasure, and she knew that in some shadowy hell, the demon was grinning.

Tell me, then, she thought.

Damastes laughed softly inside her head. Your power comes from me, woman, and I am a murder god. The shadows you control are only one tool I have at my disposal. Another is the creation of a Heykeli. The word is from the Turkish language and myth. Heykeli is a thing sculpted from air and light, a manifestation of pure will. The shadows are only that, but a well-forged Heykeli can appear as real as—

No, Indigo thought. She said it aloud. But the word didn’t make it any less true. She felt it. She knew it. A thing sculpted from shadows the way the golem of Hebrew legend had been sculpted from clay. Which made a Heykeli some kind of murder golem.