Page 9 of Shadowed

The shadows in Cutler's Alley corrected themselves. Fine. I filed that under Odd Things Lilith Saw at Four in the Morning and moved on. Odd Things Lilith Saw at Four in the Morning is a long category. It includes a man fighting a lamp post, a woman who insisted she was Queen Victoria's chambermaid, and a constable face-down in a horse trough singing hymns. Shadows that sit funny rated low on the list.

But then the shadow under the bridge on Hanbury Street was too long. Then the one in the courtyard behind the pawnshop on Brick Lane sat at an angle that doesn't exist when the sun is west of the chimney. Then the shadow in the stairwell outside my flat—my stairwell, my building, the stairwell I've climbed four thousand times—was three inches wider than it should have been.

I changed my routes. I doubled back. I used every trick the rookeries taught me—false turns, sudden stops, walking intoa crowd and walking out a different person, the whole bag. The shadows adjusted. Not quickly. Subtly. The way a good locksmith adjusts a mechanism to account for a new key—small changes, patient, intelligent.

Something is learning my patterns.

I don't like being learned.

"This is getting insulting," I tell the shadow in the stairwell on the morning of the third day. It is exactly the right width again. Whatever follows me has started correcting faster, as if it heard my complaints about Cutler's Alley and took notes.

Marcus is watching me from the doorway. "Who are you talking to?"

"The stairs."

"Right." He's got his coat on—the one I bought two sizes too large so he'd grow into it, except he's growing faster than I budgeted for and the sleeves are already above his wrists. "Lil, you've been acting strange."

"I've been acting strange since I was thirteen. Be specific."

"Stranger than usual." He leans against the door frame. Sixteen years old and trying very hard to look like he's not worried. He's worried. "You checked the locks four times last night. You never check them four times. You check them twice. I count."

He counts. Of course he counts. He learned that from me. Everything useful about Marcus—the counting, the caution, the way he watches a room—he learned from me, and everything dangerous about him—the temper, the recklessness, the belief that he can protect people by throwing himself between them and the problem—he learned from Da.

"There's something in the rookeries," I say, because Marcus has earned honesty and because lying to him takes more energy than I have this morning. "Following me. Watching. I don't know what it is."

"Coppers?"

"Coppers are stupid. This isn't stupid."

"Gang?"

"Gangs are loud. This is quiet."

He's quiet himself for a moment. Thinking. The line of his jaw works the way it does when he's chewing on something he doesn't want to say. "Fae?"

The word lands in my kitchen like a stone in still water. Fae. The obvious answer. The one I've been not-thinking about for three days because thinking about it means admitting that whatever is following me through the rookeries isn't a problem I can solve with a knife and quick feet.

"Maybe," I say.

"Then we should leave."

"Where?"

He opens his mouth. Closes it. There it is—the question that has no answer, the lock with no keyhole. Where do you go when the thing following you lives in every shadow in the city? Where do you run when the darkness is the problem?

"I'll figure it out," I tell him, because that's what I do. I figure things out. That's the deal—Lilith figures it out, Lilith finds the money, Lilith opens the lock, Lilith keeps them alive. The fact that I don't know how to figure out shadows that learn is a technical difficulty, not a defeat. I've faced technical difficulties before. I faced one at thirteen with a baker's window. Shaking hands. No experience. I figured it out. They ate.

"Go to school," I say. "Take Elena. Walk Tommy to Mrs. Chen's."

"Lil—"

"Marcus." I put my hand on his shoulder. He's taller than me now, which is a recent development I find personally offensive. "I will figure it out."

He goes. He takes Elena and Tommy. The door closes behind them. The flat is empty. I stand in my kitchen and look at the shadow under the table.

Normal shadow. Table-shaped, floor-bound, correctly sized.

"You'd better be normal," I tell it.