Page 50 of Kat Bethel

The truck shook from the force of the wind as other cars whipped around and smoke billowed from under the hood. My hands shook by the time I made it out of traffic.

I let out a heaving breath, “You’ve got to be fucking me.”

“I’ll call you back.” Esme chuckled and hung up.

Bitch.

I climbed out of my truck and popped the hood. A big cloud of smoke made me cough as I climbed ‌onto the bumper. The engine looked fine for the most part.

Where was the fire?

After a few minutes, the smoke cleared out enough to see that it was coming from the fuse box. I grabbed a rag from the back pocket of my jeans to open the latch and had to manhandle it when I realized the plastic was partially melted together. The fuses were misshapen and practically welded into their slots, but the fire had already died down.

“The truck, Abiel? This is where I draw the line.” I growled with as much gusto as a human woman could muster. It wasn’t anything compared to his, but hopefully it got the point across.

My shadow in the afternoon sun stood taller and bigger than me. His arms crossed as if he was also frustrated.

“I’m sorry, Dandelion,” he whispered in my ear, and the engine gave another angry pop that had me putting my hands up to protect my face.

I waited a long moment for something else to happen and for him to show himself.

I frowned when he didn’t appear. This stretch of road was empty, so there wasn’t a reason to hide.

Was he even worried about hiding himself?

“You can come out.”

“No, I can’t.” His voice rumbled with irritation.

His words hit me like a rock. Some part of me thought he could do anything.

I froze. “Why not?”

He didn’t answer. Of course not. Can’t tell the woman trying to kill you anything. I rolled my eyes and focused on the truck.

I’d described him as a shadow. When Esme suggested he might be a shadow person he reacted to her in surprise. Like it made sense to him. So maybe I wasn’t just perceiving him as a shadow, that’s what he considered himself to be.

My eyes went to the sun sitting high in the sky.

During the day when I was out and about, I rarely saw him. I felt him and saw him in my shadow, but he didn’t take form.

But when it was night or somewhere with an abundance of shadows, he took his own shape.

I glanced down at my shadow again. He held the same stance, shifting from foot to foot as if he wanted to do something but couldn’t. The edges of the shadow moved outwards as if they wanted to grow larger, but were confined to a small space.

Like he was trapped inside the confines of my shadow.

The realization was ice cold water tossed into my face.

He hadn’t been attached to the Dark Entry Forest. That was where he always had power. Or maybe it was just home, and this was the first reason he had to leave.

Nausea turned my stomach.

How did someone get rid of a shadow?

That ‘space’ he gave me hadn’t been space at all. There hadn’t been a time since I entered that forest that he wasn’t on my heels?

How could I get away from him? That wasn’t the right question.