Glittering Shadows Read Free Page A

fault, really. We never really—I don’t know. We didn’t give him much respect.”
    “You might be right. But it’s too late now.” Volland patted her shoulder. “Can you tell the others? I just wanted to share the latest news.”
    “Of course.”
    She watched Volland’s scarecrow-lean body dash back up the stairs. The door shut her out once again.

T hea tried to lose herself in the smell of coffee, the familiarity of her own kitchen, of filling cups and stirring in sugar and milk.
    Trying not to think of those last moments with Father. Watching his spirit slip away. Holding his hand as it went still and lifeless. She had to leave his body on the street, covered by her
coat, and walk home with Mother.
    Stop
.
    She handed one cup to Freddy, who stood close to Thea in the kitchen, crowded between the cabinet and chipped enamel sink. The rest she distributed around the small table adjacent to the
kitchen, where Nan, Sigi, and her mother occupied all three of the chairs. Coffee would do little to battle the exhaustion in their eyes, but it was nice to do some small thing for the people she
loved.
    “We need to make a plan,” Nan said. “Freddy isn’t safe here. Everyone will be looking for him.” Her voice was a little sharper than Thea remembered. Nan was always
tough, but never so serious. Now she seemed all edges and angles, and her face matched—it was thinner, her cheekbones standing out, her blond cropped hair ruffled and unwashed.
    “Maybe you should introduce me to your friends, Thea,” her mother said. “I know I haven’t been myself, but I do remember you mentioning Nan before. Didn’t you two
work together?”
    “Yes,” Thea said, “at the club.” She looked at Nan uncertainly.
What are you, anyway?
    Nan hadn’t explained much to Thea, either. There hadn’t been time.
    Nan looked at the table. “So much has changed since we worked at the club. I didn’t know how to explain. I still don’t. Sigi’s mother, Arabella von Kaspar, told me I was
a Norn. I’d never heard of it, and she had to dig up these dusty books to try and convince me. All I knew was, I’d always felt different, and the description matched—that Norns
can’t see colors, for instance.”
    “I
have
heard of Norns,” Thea’s mother said.
    “You have?” Thea asked.
    “Yes. In the north, there is a festival dedicated to them. They’re believed to be the guardians of magic and the sacred forest. But I don’t know much more than that. I lived in
southern Irminau.”
    “And you didn’t die, Nan,” Thea said. “Do you have some kind of magic?”
    “I think so, but I don’t know how to use it. I don’t really know much of anything.” Nan shrugged like she was trying not to show how much this distressed her.
    Thea’s mother turned to Freddy. “Now, you—I see, with your silver hair, that you’re a sorcerer. A powerful one. You had something to do with what
happened….”
    He glanced down. “I had everything to do with what happened.”
    “That’s not quite true,” Thea said. “They made him do it. The government took him from his family when he was a child because he could raise the dead. That’s why he
has to hide now, so they don’t try it again.”
    Thea’s mind flashed back to the kiss they had shared out in the hall, just minutes ago.
My first kiss, shared with a boy whom everyone will be hunting for
. She’d imagined her
first kiss would be a joyous thing, but the memory lingered bittersweet on her lips. Nothing about Freddy felt safe.
    “Are you the one who brought back my husband?”
    “I brought back all of them.” Freddy’s eyes were still pointed at the floor.
    “This is the sort of thing we left Irminau to avoid.” Mother put a hand on Freddy’s shoulder. “Don’t apologize, Freddy. If they forced you into it,
then…”
    Mother had plenty of stories about life in the village where she had grown up, but she didn’t talk much about why she and Father left their home in