Page 38 of Darkness Defined

“Yes, you do.” His green eyes were intense as they held my gaze. “Remember, relax and focus. You know what it was before. Tell it to go back.”

“If you’re telling me to order this back into the shape of a spoon, you’re a nutter.”

He laughed again. “Not with words, Matt, with your mind. Will it back.”

“That doesn’t make any sense.” Where were the rules? The logic?

“What did you say to me the other night? You needed to be in the kitchen? That’s how it works. Need it to be a real spoon again.”

“But I don’t need it to be a real spoon again. I already have one.” I held up my spoon.

He reached over and plucked it right out of my hand. “Now you don’t,” he said, using the stolen spoon to scoop another bite. “Go on. I would hurry, though, or your ice cream will melt.”

“That’s just rude,” I mumbled, and he chuckled, still eating his stupid ice cream.

Guess I do need a spoon.

I picked the sphere up and thought about what it had been like before. Nothing happened. I looked at Alex and contemplated stealing my spoon back. “This is stupid. We already know I can’t.”

“Look at your hand.”

I did as he said. Somehow, the spoon was back. It was still entirely black, but decidedly spoon shaped. “How?”

“You’re overthinking it. Until you learn better control, everything is basically need based. If you need it, it’ll happen. That’s the thing that makes us so dangerous.”

I thought about the mysterious club that kept showing up. “What about creating things out of nothing? Can we do that?”

“Of course. You basically just use available shadow and shape it to your will.” He said it so matter of fact, it was hard to doubt him.

“But what if you’re in a place that’s really bright and there aren’t any?”

“There is always shadow. Where there is light, there is darkness.”

Suddenly, I felt a similar sensation to when Vera had intimidated Administrator Smith at Superno House. Like all the surrounding darkness was pulling into one space. I even felt a tug on myself, kind of like that night I’d woken up on the floor. All the while, Alex sat there with black eyes. In his hand, drifts of shadow spiraled into a new sphere. The pull on me got stronger.

My breath shortened and my hands sweat despite the container of ice cream I was holding. There was a pain in my chest, like something was trying to get out. My panic ratcheted up another level as I recalled a movie where an alien creature had done just that.

How could I not see how dangerous he is?

The spoon in my hand shifted to a miniature version of the club I’d used only last Thursday. There was inky black everywhere. The entire cafeteria had dimmed. My heart raced as I tried to determine the best way to make it stop. Meanwhile, Alex sat immobile, surrounded by night, then he closed his hand and the feeling stopped. His eyes returned to normal, and he looked back at me.

“That’s what we are at our core—pure darkness,” he said, once more his amiable self. If he could do that in a brightly lit room, what else could he do?

I swallowed my lingering fear and asked the only question that seemed to matter. “What happens if it’s dark everywhere?”

“Then, depending on your power level, you could potentially exert control over everything.”

I shivered and hoped he would blame the reaction on the ice cream. “That sounds like a nightmare.”

“That sounds like how an entire race got a reputation for being evil.” He sank into his chair, his shoulders curling inward as he poked absently at his ice cream. Like that, my concerns about him vanished.

“Do you think we’re evil?” I asked softly. Alex might be secretly terrifying, but there was no way he was evil. I’d met evil. It didn’t have a conscience, and it certainly didn’t help its roommate study.

“No, but I worry the rest of the world always will. The Rebellion didn’t help things.”

I tried to remember the lessons from the last couple of weeks in Demonic History. “Have we covered that yet?”

“No, it’s more recent. The Rebellion only officially ended a few years ago.” He scraped his spoon along the body of the empty container.