Shadowhouse Fall Read online

  For Sam

  CONTENTS

  TITLE PAGE

  DEDICATION

  MAP

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  TWENTY

  TWENTY-ONE

  TWENTY-TWO

  TWENTY-THREE

  TWENTY-FOUR

  TWENTY-FIVE

  TWENTY-SIX

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  TWENTY-NINE

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  COPYRIGHT

  Sierra Santiago closed her eyes and the whole spinning world opened up around her. A brisk wind whispered songs of the coming winter as it shushed through browning leaves and then whisked along the moonlit field, throwing Sierra’s mass of curls into disarray. Up above, the first round of overnight flights leaving JFK cut trails across the cloudless sky. Traffic whirred along just outside the park walls, and beyond that the shuttle train sighed and screeched to a halt; doors slid open; weary passengers collected their personal belongings as instructed, adjusted their earbuds, and headed off into the night.

  But that was the simple stuff. Sierra had learned to expand her senses out farther than any normal person. It wasn’t easy, but when she quieted her mind and the spirits were close, she could hear the city’s clicks and groans halfway across Brooklyn. Tonight wasn’t about meditation or the ongoing urban symphony, though. Where were her spirits?

  As if in response, a vision sizzled into view in her mind’s eye: There in the forest, not too far from her, a figure crouched. She could make out the silhouette leaning against a fallen tree, see the person’s fast-beating heart telegraph frantic pulses out into the chilly night. The person scratched something onto the tree and looked around for nearby spirits.

  I see you, Sierra thought, tensing her face into a smug smile. Whoever you are. Now who else is out there? She let the image go and immediately another appeared: in the field she sat on the edge of, a figure lay facedown in the grass, breathing heavily. After a few seconds, the person hunched up on their elbows and peered into the darkness. Okay. Sierra nodded. Got it. What else?

  The next vision appeared so suddenly it almost knocked her over. Dark trees whipped past, and someone was panting. Running and panting. Sierra felt her own heart thunder in her ears. The other views she’d seen had been through spirit vision: a cadre of shadows she’d come to think of as her own Secret Service detail. But this was different — it was someone alive. Or something … Branches whisked out of its way as it bounded across the forest. Which forest? Was it … was it close? Sierra tried to scan for clues, but everything was moving too fast.

  Spirits, Sierra beckoned. Find this … thing. She didn’t remember having stood up, but she was on her feet. A wave of dizziness rushed over her as the half dozen views of Prospect Park swimming through her mind veered suddenly skyward and then turned toward the shadowy fields and forests below.

  All but one.

  Whatever it was kept storming through the forest, panting, its whole body tensed with intent. It was … it was hunting. Sierra felt its hunger deep within herself; saliva flooded her own mouth. Flesh would be torn, a panicked heart would race and then falter and finally fail in this monster’s jaws. The thing lunged, and Sierra’s eyes popped open as a hand landed on her shoulder.

  “Gotya!”

  Sierra screamed and spun around, elbows first. She hit something soft and jumped back.

  “Ow! What the hell, Sierra?” Big Jerome stood there rubbing his chest and pouting.

  “I … Jerome …” Sierra scanned the field behind him, the forest beyond. Nothing. “I don’t know … what happened.”

  “I do: You were so surprised I actually won a practice round you damn near cracked a rib.”

  “No …” Sierra rubbed her eyes. A branch snapped in the woods she had been facing. She turned, probed the darkness for movement.

  “Sierra?” Sierra’s mom, María Santiago, called. “¿Qué pasó, m’ija?” She walked up next to Jerome. “I was hiding and then I saw this guy barrel past and actually reach you and I knew something had to be going on.”

  “Whoa,” Jerome said. “Mrs. Santiago with the snark. If you hadn’t tangled your chalk spirits with my twig monsters at the last training run, neither of us would need extra practice.”

  “Mind your manners, jóven,” María snapped. “What’s a twig monster supposed to do anyway? Set itself on fire and dive-bomb the bad guys? Come on, man. Anyway, you didn’t ’shape anything this round to win, you just ran through the field like a lost moose! That doesn’t even —”

  “Shh,” Sierra said, her eyes still on the forest.

  María scowled. “Sierra, don’t you —”

  “Shh!” Sierra hissed. “Something’s out there.”

  If María asked a bunch of annoying parenty-type questions instead of being quiet, Sierra was going to scream. A year ago, that’s what her mom would’ve done, but since embracing the family legacy and becoming a shadowshaper four months back, María had let go of some of her extra-eyeroll-worthy mom habits. She sighed, probably scrunched up her face, but said no more.

  Sierra exhaled. Squinted into the forest. If her kinda-sorta-maybe-sometimes boyfriend Robbie had shown up like he was supposed to, at least she’d have another skillful shadowshaper to face this down with. But of course, he was once again a no-show.

  Her spirits had swooped back down into the park and were springing along through the underbrush. The charging, starving whatever-it-was was gone. At least, she couldn’t see through its eyes anymore. Maybe it was right there at the edge of the darkness, watching her.

  Sierra narrowed her eyes and steeled herself. She had done enough running away over the summer, when she first learned about the magical art of shadowshaping and her family’s legacy. It had only been a few months, but she wasn’t that scared little girl anymore. She wasn’t even just a shadowshaper — her dead abuela had passed on the mantle and made Sierra into the next Lucera, the beating heart of the shadowshaping world. She was still figuring out what all her powers were, but one thing she had promised herself was that she wouldn’t be that freaked-out, screaming girl in all the horror movies. No more running away. She took a step toward the dark forest.

  “Uh, Sierra,” Jerome said. “What’re you doing?”

  “There’s something in the trees.”

  “I get that. Why are you going toward it?”

  Shadows rose up around Sierra, tall, long-legged spirits that would leap into her drawings and lash out if needed. Their gentle hum rose in the night air, filled her with that familiar mix of ferocity and calm, like a loving hurricane within. She pulled two pieces of chalk from her hoodie pocket and held one in each hand. “Stay where you are, J. I got this.”

  “But —” Jerome started. María must have calmed him with a hand on the shoulder, or probably a gentle slap. She knew better than to try to stop her daughter in one of her gung-ho moments.

  Sierra reached her arms out to either side and strode into the shadows. She scraped the chalk along the trees around her as she walked, then tapped the marks once with her fingertips. The forest night closed in around her. Even with the spirits heightening her vision as they slid along in smooth, sparkling strides, it seemed like a blanket of darkness had been thrown over the whole world. She could run — she could always run — but she would never
run. She would find out what this was and fight it if she had to. The chalk scratches sped along the tree trunks, flashes of color, and then disappeared in the gloom up ahead. They weren’t the best weapons to have — nowhere near as strong as a painted mural, for example — but they’d be able to keep an enemy busy till she could work out something better.

  Hopefully.

  And then, very suddenly, Sierra stopped. She wasn’t alone. The certainty of someone else there, a presence, tickled along her shoulders and the back of her neck.

  “Don’t be afraid,” a girl’s voice said as Sierra spun around.

  “Mina?”

  Mina Satorius was a grade above Sierra at Octavia Butler High, but she looked fourteen. She had big eyes and her strawberry blond hair was ponytailed, with bangs at the front and a spindly curl framing her face on either side. She stood in the middle of a clearing, wearing a plaid shirt over a tank top and a sweater tied around her waist. Despite what she’d just said, Mina herself looked terrified — eyebrows creased with worry, bottom lip trembling slightly, arms wrapped around her slender frame.

  “What are you doing out here?” Sierra asked. Her towering shadows emerged in a circle around Mina; their gentle glow pulsed in time with Sierra’s own heartbeat. Shimmering chalk marks appeared on the trees, poised to flush forward and attack.

  “I’m … I …” She looked like she might collapse into a puddle any second. Sierra resisted the urge to walk up and hug her. Something had been out here hunting, something ferocious. It was hard to imagine Mina could have anything to do with that panting monster whose eyes Sierra had seen through, but …

  “Spit it out, Mina. We’re not safe here.”

  “I know,” Mina said. “That’s what … that’s what I’m here to say. A warning.”

  The shadows around Mina rustled, seemed to whisper to each other. Mina glanced up, her eyes widening even more. She had the spirit vision, Sierra realized, just not very advanced. At least, that’s how she made it seem.

  “You have a warning for me, so you hide out in the woods and wait for me to come to you? You couldn’t send a text or something? This is creepy.”

  “No, I know, I … I was gonna come out and talk to you, but then I felt it nearby and …”

  “Felt what, girl? Come on, now.”

  “The …” She sighed. “Here.” With a trembling hand, she held up what looked like an old playing card.

  Sierra didn’t move. “What’s that?”

  “It’s from the Deck of Worlds. Take it.”

  Sierra shook her head. “My mama told me not to take freaky magic cards from strange white girls I meet in the woods.”

  “Sierra, I’m … I’m not here to hurt you. I know you’ve had problems with the Sorrows before, but —”

  “You’re with the Sorrows?” All the shadows tensed and took a step forward. Sierra clenched her fists. “Get out of here. Leave. Don’t talk to me in the hallway. Don’t talk to my friends. And definitely don’t let me catch you skulking around these woods while I’m working with my shadowshapers.”

  “It’s not like that, Sierra, listen —”

  “I listened. I heard what you said. Get out of my sight before I let these shadows loose on you.”

  Mina shook her head, took a step backward. “You don’t understand,” she whispered, placing the card in the soft forest soil at her feet. “But when you do, come find me. I’m not … I’m not your enemy, Sierra. Take the card. Don’t leave it there. You need to … you need to take it.” She turned around and ran.

  Sierra took a step toward the card.

  “Sierra?” María called from behind her. “¿Estás bien, m’ija?”

  “Sí, Mami,” Sierra said. “Ya voy.”

  She crouched down to get a better look. An archaic, faded drawing was scrawled on the front of the card. It showed a white wolf with blue glowing eyes, its jaws open and lips pulled back into a snarl. Gleaming castle towers spiraled toward a stormy sky in the background. El SABUESO de la LUZ was scrawled across the top in elegant, medieval print. On the bottom it read, The HOUND of LIGHT.

  Sierra stood up. The spirits flushed around her as she backed away from the card, then turned and walked quickly out of the woods.

  “The hell was that all about?” Jerome asked, huffing and puffing to keep up with Sierra.

  “I’m not … I’m not really sure,” Sierra said. Prospect Park had always felt like a sanctuary to her, an escape from the cruel, busy city, and later a safe place to shadowshape in peace. But now, she exhaled with relief as they crossed out of its dark embrace and into the bright, bustling roundabout at Grand Army Plaza.

  “What do you mean you’re not sure?” María demanded. “What happened?”

  Sierra leaned against the stone wall at the edge of the park and shook her head, panting. “A girl I know from school was there. Mina.”

  “You mean Snap Crackle and Pop Mina?” Jerome asked.

  “Huh?”

  “Mina, that tiny white chick that usedta kick it with Little Jerome?”

  “I guess,” Sierra said. “Why y’all call her Snap Crackle and Pop?”

  “She always used to read books about serial killers in seventh-grade homeroom. Like, every day, it was another one. So you know …”

  “Serial, cereal … You guys are terrible.”

  Jerome shrugged.

  María crossed her hands over her chest and scowled. “¿Y qué carajo hacía en el parque a esa hora de la noche, coño?”

  “I dunno, Mami. I mean, someone could easily wonder what we were doing in the park at this hour too …”

  “We were practicing our cultural heritage. ¿Y qué?” María had emerged from a lifetime of denying shadowshaping to become its most militant advocate.

  Sierra sighed. She didn’t dare mention that Mina was somehow lined up with the Sorrows — her mom would lose her mind and spend the rest of the night freaking out, and anyway, Sierra wasn’t totally sure what to make of it all yet.

  At a creepy, abandoned churchyard down a sidestreet on the northern tip of Manhattan, three golden shrouds held court. They called themselves the Sisterhood of the Sorrows, and Sierra had jacked up their shrine last summer to find out where a deranged anthropologist named Dr. Wick was hiding. They weren’t happy about it, but considering that they’d helped Dr. Wick incapacitate her grandfather and nearly destroy the shadowshapers, Sierra didn’t really care how they felt. Then again, they’d vowed revenge, and she’d spent more than a few sleepless nights wondering when they’d come collecting.

  Or if they already had. A strange man had attacked her at the beginning of September. He’d had some kind of supernatural stuff going on, that much was clear. Bennie and Sierra had fought him off but they never did figure out who sent him.

  “You coming home, m’ija?” María was already heading up Eastern Parkway toward the train.

  “No, Mami, Juan has a show tonight at the Edge and we’re already by the Slope. You’re not coming?”

  “Sierra.” María’s voice tightened, her eyes narrow. A few seconds passed, during which Jerome became very interested in his phone. “I don’t want to … I don’t want to go through it again. What happened this summer. I don’t want to wonder if you’ll make it home alive every time you leave the house.”

  “I know, but I’m not gonna let one random girl showing up in the woods make me miss my brother’s show. Nothing’s wrong. It was just weird is all. I promise.”

  María stared down her daughter for a solid five seconds, then relented. “Wake me up when you get in.”

  “Okay, Mami.”

  “And Jerome, if anything happens to her that doesn’t happen to you, you get to explain it to me. ¿Me entiendes?”

  “Yes, Mrs. Santiago. I’d take death at the hands of a horrible phantom before having to explain shi — anything to you. I swear.”

  “Good.” She turned around and walked off into the night.

  “Your moms is a trip,” Jerome said. They walked into the q
uiet avenues of Park Slope, the park safely behind them. “Like, I kinda wish my moms was as cool as your moms, but then again I don’t, because your moms looks like she’d whip ass with a quickness and mine acts like she would but really, her bark is like way worse than her bite, ya know?”

  “My mom’s alright,” Sierra said. María Santiago had rejected shadowshaping entirely when she was Sierra’s age. Grandpa Lázaro and Mama Carmen were the two most powerful ’shapers around, but after their daughter’s refusal to even acknowledge the family magic, Lázaro had fallen back on his machismo ways, insisting that shadowshaping was a men’s practice. Sierra still hadn’t brought herself to fully forgive him for keeping her in the dark about the family legacy her whole life. Anyway, he was laid up on the top floor of their brownstone now, wasting away and incapacitated from an attack by Dr. Wick.

  “You were lying when you said that nothing’s wrong, though, right?” Jerome said. “Cuz … I get the feeling something’s wrong.”

  “I’m not sure,” Sierra admitted. “I’m really not.”

  “And wasn’t Robbie supposed to show up tonight? Where he at?”

  Sierra heard the snarl in her own voice before she had time to smooth it out: “That’s a terrific question.”

  Sierra would normally never go to the Red Edge. The first and only time she’d gone in was the first time Culebra played there and the night that strange man attacked her, right there in the alley behind the club in fact, and that was quite enough for her.

  Besides, she wasn’t even seventeen yet, and even if she had a fake ID, the unimpressed-to-death bouncers outside would surely see right through it with their x-ray vision and then have her arrested or something. But more importantly, the place oozed with creepy excess and awkward-fake-schmoozy small talk. Sierra had passed it plenty of times on the way to her favorite comic book store in Park Slope, and there were always one or two uncomfortable-looking black or brown folks in the corner surrounded by tons of white folks, chattering away.

  But it was Wednesday night, and Sierra’s brother Juan had managed to get his salsa-thrasher band, Culebra, a weekly gig playing the Red Edge’s back room. This meant that on Wednesdays and Wednesdays only, the place transformed into a raucous, multicultural smashpot of punk rockers, hip-hoppers, poets, graffiti artists, and the occasional random old Puerto Rican guy who would wander in off the street. Sierra felt right at home.