SEVEN

“OUT.” The guards took one look at Adam’s face and left the outer atrium to Jacob’s cell.

Sudden movement on the monitor drew his attention. Jacob on his feet, running his hands through his hair to bring the lanky mop under control. Then he brought his face up to the camera while his body effected the grave and servile bow of a butler. May I help you? Always mocking him.

“You chose this.” Adam dropped his hands on the console for support.

“I beg your pardon, sir?” Jacob inclined his head as if trying to understand what Adam implied.

Playing them both for fools. Not anymore.

“You chose to be this monster,” Adam clarified, careful to enunciate each syllable. “Your condition isn’t a new disease, an unanticipated consequence from using an exotic drug, or some strange possession. You chose this. You want this.”

“And?” Jacob blinked rapidly in an outward show of extreme patience at Adam’s stupidity.

Stupid is exactly what Adam felt. The idea that Jacob, the scion of the Thorne family, the prudent businessman and philanthropist, his fucking big brother would choose to become a monster had never occurred to him. The man Adam had known was brilliant, fearless, and vain in his responsibility for the legacy of the Thorne family. This devolution was beneath him.

“Why?” Adam’s throat had tightened and the word came out in a broken croak.

Jacob straightened. “Don’t be dense.”

“You killed Mom and Dad. On purpose.” Fresh pain spread across Adam’s chest like blood from a mortal wound.

“Stop whining. They were going to die anyway, eventually.”

“You fed on them,” Adam said through clenched teeth.

“Like a babe to a mother’s teat.” Jacob sighed and grinned.

A hundred wonderful tortures sprang to Adam’s mind, held at bay these many years only by the burden of family duty.

But now, desperate fantasies grew in Adam’s mind like a dark garden of twisted flowers denied sustenance too long. Colorful creations that would trap and teach Jacob what a monster really was. Exercises in the limits of pain and loneliness. Acts that rivaled a wraith’s soul feeding.

First, Adam had to know why. “You had everything handed to you. Born to wealth, the best education, a loving family, opportunities to do anything you ever dreamed, a girlfriend who loved you. Hell, you had plans, years in the making, to build Thorne Industries to dominate global markets. Why this?”

Jacob shrugged. “I got a better offer.”

“What could possibly be better than what you had?” You ungrateful son of bitch.

“I got Forever. This—” Jacob looked around his cell, mouth pursed in distaste. “—this will pass. The world as we know it will pass, and after everything is gone, I will still be here. Then I can do anything I want, whenever I want. That’s global power.”

“Tell me how you did it.”

“You know I won’t.”

“What if I want to join you?”

Jacob snorted. “You don’t have the kind of long-term vision necessary. You’re stuck in the past with Jena and Michael.”

“That’s Mom and Dad, to you,” Adam bit out.

“See what I mean?”

Rage burned in Adam’s chest, cauterizing the wound that was the loss of his parents. “I will end you. I swear it. I will find the way to undo this mockery of immortality, and I will tear you apart with my bare hands.” Already his hands itched, ached, to enact the madness in his mind.

“Is that any way to talk to your older brother?”

Brother? How could that…that creature call himself his brother? Just because they shared the same gene pool? Adam didn’t think so. Not anymore. Siblings could be disowned. All natural feeling of connection and obligation severed. Happened all the time.

Adam closed his eyes and willed his heart away from the wraith in the cell. Not his brother. He sought cold indifference. A removal of all feeling. Not his brother.

Jacob laughed. A light, gleeful little chuckle that poured gasoline on the fire of Adam’s rage.

Adam choked. He had to get out of there.

He stumbled to the door, tapped numbers into the panel, and tripped out into the corridor beyond.

The guards brushed silently by, eyes askance, and resumed their watch within.

Custo leaned against the opposite wall, arms crossed, waiting.

“Why are you still here?” Adam yelled. “Why aren’t you off living your own life, away from this constant nightmare? Find a woman, settle down, and have a bunch of brats.”

“That bad, huh?” Custo lowered his gaze.

“Talia was right. He chose to become a wraith. Admitted it freely, as if I should have known all along. And I should have.” Adam fisted and released his hands. They shook uncontrollably. He didn’t know what to do with them short of wrapping them around Jacob’s neck.

“Not you. It’s not in your nature to think that someone close to you can be that destructive by design. You save people. It’s what you do. It’s what you have always done.”

I was blind.

“Did you know?” Adam asked. Had Custo known all along as well?

Custo pushed off the wall and gestured toward the elevator. “No, but it doesn’t matter. I’m not here for him. I’m here for you. You’re the closest thing to family I’ve ever known. And family sticks. You taught me that every time you pulled my sorry ass out of trouble.” Custo’s mouth curved. “Remember that business with the boat?”

Family sticks. What the fuck was family? Adam sure as hell didn’t have a clue anymore.

“I wanted to impress a girl,” Custo continued. “You took the blame.”

“You’d have been thrown out of school.” If Custo were trying to distract him, he was doing a piss-poor job. Memory lane was not exactly where Adam wanted to be.

“That’s part of why I did it, too. If I had been thrown out, maybe my family would’ve taken notice of me.” Custo had been dumped in a boarding school at nine. No visits. No communication.

“They never realized your value.”

Custo shook his head. “What I’m trying to say is that my family did take notice. My family was with me. I knew it the moment you told the cops that you stole the boat.”

Adam looked over at Custo. His right arm. His friend. In every way that mattered, his brother.

The anger inside Adam cooled somewhat, abated to a few degrees above that six-year-old steady burn. It allowed him to gulp at air and smooth his expression. He could live with this trade. Hell, he had been living with it, working toward answers because of Custo’s dogged support.

“Are we done being sappy yet?” Custo punched the elevator button.

“Yeah, I think so.” Adam fought to bring his shakes under control. Flexed the last of the tremors from his hands.

The door slid open. Custo glanced back as he entered. “By the way, if ever there was somebody who needed to settle down with a bunch of brats, it’s you.”

Bring children into this world? Never.

Through the peephole in the door, Talia watched Spencer swagger back to the elevator. She had to do something. Give Adam something. He might appear calm and controlled on the surface, but she’d felt the grief and pain that roiled beneath, and how close he was to becoming overwhelmed by the bright white fury that laced his being. He couldn’t go on like this for much longer.

And with Spencer spouting nonsense about how wraiths might be an evolutionary step up? No wonder Adam was sick over his brother.

The elevator pinged, Spencer stepped in, and the doors…finally…closed.

Talia eased out of her apartment, took a sharp right, and opted for the stairs. She coded herself into the stairwell and hurried down to the main level of the hotel portion. She exited by the kitchen, where the stairs terminated, and chanced the elevator—yes, empty!—to the office and laboratory subfloors.

If Adam already knew so much about her anyway, he might as well know what she’d discovered about Shadowman, her father. The research that had almost cost her life in the heat of Arizona.

None of it suggested how Shadowman could help kill Jacob and set Adam free. She didn’t even know what Shadowman was. A ghost, like Adam suggested? That didn’t feel right, and it didn’t account for her abilities either. And why would Jacob fear a ghost?

Talia coded into her office and headed directly for her laptop.

A thought niggled in her mind: What Adam needed—though she’d never tell him, no way never—was that other dev il, Death, the dark thing with the red eyes inside the black wind of her scream. The monster. The one who slaughtered the wraiths with a sweep of his scythe, and took Melanie down, too. Then had the perversion to—Talia shivered with the memory—to caress her cheek.

That monster could kill Jacob. Easy. Jacob should fear him.

She selected the file of images she’d been amassing, her research on Shadowman. ctrl A. Opened them all. She could give Adam this much at least.

They blinked one by one, layering onto the screen. As she waited, her mind turned inward, shifting the puzzle pieces of her origin around:

Jacob feared Shadowman, whom she’d met upon her momentary death, who likely had her ability to alter perception. But it was the monster who could kill him, called by her scream.

Two entities, and she was connected to both. One desired effect.

The heuristic rule of Occam’s razor said the simplest theory was the best.

Why two entities? It made no good sense. Not unless…

Her stomach turned. The room suddenly warped around her, and she clutched the table before her. It couldn’t be, could it? Was her heritage so horrible? Her birthright so despicable?

Yes. Somehow she’d always known. It’s why she was alone.

If she tried, she knew she could probably fit the puzzle together now. If she could summon the courage to face the truth, she could probably name Death. He was her father, Shadowman.

Adam left Custo in the elevator and headed to his office, grim anticipation redoubling in his blood. If Jacob had chosen to become a wraith, then someone must have offered him the choice. Jacob was never going to give away the identity of this individual, but perhaps the algorithms of The Collective tracking program could be modified to isolate the general location of the source.

Adam turned a corner to find Talia rapping on his door. His pulse quickened. His gaze darted up and down her body, but it was hard to get a sense of her curves when she was still wearing the shapeless clothes Patty had selected. He hoped new ones would come in soon. She was too young and pretty to be dressed like that.

“Can I help you with something?” If she was here, then maybe she wasn’t angry anymore. Maybe he could have a real discussion with her. Work through her idea, see if her unique talents offered any solutions.

Talia jumped and whirled. Her hair slipped, strand by strand, from a knot at the nape of her neck. He didn’t know why she bothered—the curls obviously rejected constraint.

“Sorry for startling you.” Adam slowed his approach. First day on the job and she’d shaken up Segue. Of course, that’s what he’d hoped. He’d wanted answers, and she’d given him one big enough to turn his world upside down.

“Do you have a minute?” She tucked a strand behind her ear. Her eyes were strained. Sad, maybe. Or worried. Something had bothered her deeply.

“Of course. Come on in,” Adam said, coding the lock. He reached around her to the lever that opened the door, his body surrounding hers for a moment. Her scent hit him, dark and sweet, an exotic fragrance more suited to her shadows than sterile Segue. The combination made him want to drop his head into her hair. Breathe deeper. His weight on the handle opened the door and she moved out of his circle and into his work space.

It took a moment for his head to clear before he followed her into his own office. Employee, he reminded himself. He couldn’t ward off Gillian with that excuse and then pursue Talia. Besides, Talia was messed up enough as it was. She didn’t need him complicating her stay here. Damn her fairy eyes.

“What can I do for you?” The door closed behind him. His gaze automatically flicked to the monitor—Jacob reposed in a corner, a small smile of satisfaction on his face, still gloating from their argument—and then back to Talia.

“First of all, I need to change the code on my apartment door,” Talia said. She glanced at Jacob as well, her expression carefully circumspect, but she didn’t comment. “Spencer saw me punch it in.”

“You invited Spencer to your apartment?” Adam had already warned her about the implications of SPCI being aware of her abilities. She was too trusting. Next time he sparred with Spencer, he was going to make sure he kicked his ass extra hard.

In her room. Damn.

“He followed me up. Wanted to discuss my ideas about immortality and choice. He spoke as if becoming a wraith weren’t such a bad thing after all. As if what they did wasn’t…abhorrent.” She frowned, a worry line forming between her brows. She, who’d seen what the wraiths were capable of and had been hunted herself, would not be able to tolerate any mind games on the subject.

“You want me to talk to him? Tell him to lay off?”

“I can fight my own battles, thanks. I just want my pass code changed.”

Adam sighed. “Spencer has master codes, regardless. As do Custo and I, for security reasons. We have to be able to get inside any room in the event of an emergency.”

“I don’t want him or anyone else going in my room.”

“Talia…” he argued, but his heart wasn’t in it. The thought of Spencer touching her, of him making himself at home in her apartment, took all the strength out of Adam’s argument. He didn’t want Spencer in there either.

And Segue Security? Perhaps in this one case, a modification was called for. Something along the lines of Talia Security. “All right,” he conceded. “I can disable his access to your office and apartment, but I am going to retain mine and Custo’s. Nonnegotiable.”

She nodded. “I can live with that. Thanks.”

Adam swiveled to face his computer. Called up the security system. Indexed Talia’s account. Entered his administrative override. “What do you want your new code to be?”

“Uhm. Aurora,” she answered.

The word suited her. Aurora borealis. The magical northern lights. She’d look just about perfect with the colors framing her features. Brink of the world, a fairy on its doorstep.

“Thanks,” she said. Request granted, he expected her to beat a hasty retreat. Instead, she chewed on her lower lip.

“Anything else?”

“Yeah. Um…are you okay? You seemed pretty upset at the staff meeting.”

Something had happened during that meeting with Talia, too. She felt sorry for him. Nothing like a little pity to get her talking to him again. At least Jacob was good for something.

“I’m good,” Adam answered. “I needed to hear what you had to say.” He left it at that.

“Well—” She flashed a rueful smile. “I have something that might make up for it.”

“Oh?” The woman was going to be the death of him.

“I was wondering if you have anyone covering the arts.”

“Martial arts?”

Her lids dropped halfway, lips pursed. “Fine arts,” she corrected.

Adam rapidly sorted his thoughts. “I know that the existence of wraiths has bled into pop u lar consciousness. I wouldn’t be surprised if people tried to make sense of what is going on through music and art. But I haven’t pursued it as a research focus at Segue. Why do you ask?”

She inclined her head. “I think you may have missed something.”

Adam sat forward. “How so?”

“It’s what I was working on in Phoenix, before the wraith caught up with me. I was tracking down an artist. If you have a minute, I’d like to show you what I’ve found. I think you’ll find it interesting, at the very least. I don’t know if it will help with Jacob.” Her gaze flicked to the screen. Like Custo and Patty, he knew she’d have understood what Jacob’s choice meant to him.

“Could you come over to my office? Take a look?” She was chewing on her lip again, plumping it to ruby red. The worry was still in her eyes, so it couldn’t have been Spencer that bothered her. Had to be something else. Maybe something she’d found.

Adam stood and gestured toward the exit. “Absolutely.”

She used her new code to open the door, glancing out over her shoulder at him with a look of thanks, and then they stepped inside.

The room echoed with emptiness. Bare shelves lined the far wall, a couple of someone else’s thick books stacked and forgotten on one shelf. The walls were plain white, scuffed here and there from equipment and storage. A dark wood conference table stood in the middle, her laptop open at one end. As far as he could see, her near-death research remained in cardboard boxes, but instead of on the table, where he had put them himself, now they were beneath, acting as a footrest.

“You know you can requisition anything you need or want for this space,” Adam said, looking around for signs of her personality, her work, of someone moving in with the intent to stay. He really wanted her stay. He’d be thrilled if she’d drain Segue’s account to make herself comfortable. If he could make her comfortable.

She beckoned him over to her laptop and hit the space bar to void the field of stars moving across the screen as she took a seat.

An image appeared, a photograph of a sculpture in a gallery setting. Adam bent low to make out a mixed-media, abstract creation, a representation of a human form writhing in agony and trapped by encircling mesh layers. Adam’s gut responded to the piece, aching in sudden sympathy for the futility with which the figure fought his trap. The figure could be anyone, but Adam saw himself.

“Very powerful,” he said, ignoring the way the sculpture thinned the air in his lungs. It was exactly the way Jacob made him feel. Trapped.

“Did you look at the name of the piece?”

Adam glanced down again. The image wasn’t labeled in text on the screen as he expected, but if he squinted, he could just make out words on a placard on the floor in the photograph. MAN OF SHADOWS.

“That’s not…You don’t think…” She couldn’t possibly believe that the sculpture was a rendering of the Shadowman.

“I do.” Talia smiled. Her eyes finally lit with excitement, her darker emotion buried under the thrill of discovery. The expression set his nerves zapping. Pleasure made her positively beautiful. He had to tear his eyes away to concentrate on the screen.

“Aside from the name, how do you know?”

Talia held up a wait-for-it finger while she scrolled through the many files she had open on her screen and clicked with the other hand. Another image popped up, a black-and-white photograph, manipulated with digital illustration to create a desolate landscape, a figure similarly writhing, harried by a subtly transparent whirlwind around his body. The rendering was more surreal than the first, like a Salvador Dalí, but the effect was comparable.

His eyes flicked to the title, scrawled in pencil in the white margin beneath the image. Shadow’s Man.

“Coincidence,” Adam argued. “Believe me, I’ve checked out every reference to Shadowman on the Internet…”

Talia shook her head from side to side, eyebrows lifted.

“What?” Pressure built up in Adam’s chest in a strange combination of frustration and excitement. He hated the thought that he had missed something all these years, but if there were more answers to be had this day, he’d take them gladly.

“I can show you six more, all similar. The images don’t come up on an Internet search. Like you said, nothing related to Shadowman does. Somebody out there is controlling that. However, text inside images is not searchable, and in each of these cases, the titles are part of the image. You have to know the names of the artists and what to look for to find anything.”

Adam grabbed and dragged a chair squealing on its wheels to sit next to Talia. “Explain it to me.”

His motion had her tensing, but that couldn’t be helped. The way things were going, he’d be around her a lot. She better start getting used to him now.

She sighed heavily. “It goes back to the accident I had when I was fifteen. My aunt Maggie died and, for a moment, I did, too. One minute I was in the car, the next I was surrounded by a darkness far deeper and denser than my shadows. I knew I was dying. I glimpsed this man”—Talia tapped the screen—“trapped by a dark wind. I can’t describe the sensation. All I can say is that I knew instinctively he was…” She took a deep breath. “…my father. As you know, meeting family upon crossing is common in near-death experiences. I knew his name, Shadowman. He tried to speak, but I was already being pulled back to life. The EMTs had zapped me back.”

Adam kept his composure. “Your father is Shadowman.”

Talia’s face whitened. He felt her searching him for a reaction.

“You are the source referenced in your dissertation,” he concluded.

She nodded stiffly—attempting to cover some strong emotion—and went on. “Then my first year in college I was struck dumb when I happened into the student gallery. And there he was—Shadowman—in a sketch. The artist had no idea where he got the inspiration. Ditto for the other artists I’ve spoken to. The image just ‘came to them.’ So apparently, I’m not the only one who has seen him. Others have, too. And some have attempted to make a visual representation of him.” Talia clicked through a couple of screens to demonstrate.

The similarities could not be denied. A bound male identified with shadow.

“So what are you thinking? Mass hysteria?”

“Hysteria, no.” She winced. “Have you seen Close Encounters of the Third Kind?”

“You think Shadowman is an alien?” That was just too much.

She laughed in surprise, her expression clearing again. “No. Not that part. In the beginning of the movie, all these people with different kinds of lives envision the location where the spaceships eventually land. The mountain. Richard Dreyfuss makes a giant mud mountain in his kitchen…”

“I get it. You think Shadowman is trying to tell us something.”

“Yes.” She sat back in her own seat. “Maybe he’s calling for help.”

“Talia, if Shadowman is trying to contact someone, why not me? I’ve dedicated myself, my life, to discovering…What? Why are you making that face?”

She relaxed her look of skepticism. “I doubt you’d readily welcome or respond to subliminal messages. You’re just not the type.”

“You know my type?” This ought to be interesting.

She stuck a strand of white gold behind her ear. The lock slipped out and curled again at her temple.

“Most of the images I’ve been able to find are by artists. You know, people particularly attuned to inspiration. You’re more of a manager. A leader. You’re not”—she waved her hand in the air as if looking for just the right word—“open enough.”

“Not open,” he repeated, processing this. Right now he was open to a lot of interesting ideas.

“Not impulsive,” she corrected, peering at her screen.

“I can be impulsive,” he said. He glanced at her mouth. He’d been pushed just about as far as any reasonable man could.

Ah, shit. Here he was going to warn Spencer off pursuing her, and he was ready—to what? Drive her away completely?

“What else have you got?” he asked to distract himself. He had to do something with his hands or he was going to touch her. He reached out, grabbed the laptop, and flicked to another image.

“No!”

But Talia was too late. A vibrant illustration filled the screen.

The graphic artist depicted a nude bombshell beauty reclining on a sumptuous divan, white-blonde curls cascading, mingling with a dark, multilayered cloak that spilled from her shoulders to the floor. Her heavy-lidded, tilted eyes regarded the viewer. She was somnambulant, sexual, and powerful. The woman’s facial features were unmistakably Talia’s. The provocative slope of her bare hips, the dip of her waist, the sudden swell of her breasts, branded his mind and scalded his blood.

The title was painted on the lower left in script, Sleeping Beauty.

Talia slammed the lid of the laptop closed.

“Umm.” Her voice sounded thicker, clogged. “There…uh…may be some imagery of me out there as well. Of course, grossly exaggerating certain aspects, but still…”

Adam took a steadying breath to redirect the flow of his blood. “There’s no reason to be embarrassed. You’re a beautiful woman. But you are also part of this riddle of Shadowman, so I’m going to need to see everything you’ve found.” He kept his gaze direct, his voice professional. It was hard, what with the fantasy woman standing right in front of him and his blood roaring south. Patty’s frumpy clothes on that body were a crime.

Jaw tight with forced composure, she gave a perfunctory nod. “I’ll e-mail them to you.”

“I want everything you have,” he repeated. She’d obviously wanted to hold some things back, and he didn’t blame her. The woman had spent her life hiding what she was, and the image he’d just seen stripped every last layer away. Literally. Unfortunately, privacy was a luxury none of them could afford now.

“Of course. I’ll send along my notes as well.”

With a deft adjustment, Adam stood to go. To give her a little space. To give him some room to clear his head. A hard run ought to take the edge off the impact of the image, burning in his mind again.

One question, though. “The title. Why Sleeping Beauty?”

Talia yanked the jack out of the back of the laptop and twisted to pull the plug out of the wall. She wouldn’t meet his gaze, and he didn’t force her.

“A reference to my name,” she said briskly. “The fairy tale was my mom’s favorite. My mom had been confined to bed a lot in her life, and she said that my father ‘woke her.’ Talia comes from an older French version of the fairy tale, predating Disney.”

Something clicked in Adam’s mind. “Aurora.”

She piled the cord on top of the laptop and gathered the mass to her chest. She moved around the table toward the door. Running away again.

“Talia,” he called to her.

She stopped, but she didn’t look back.

“The name suits,” he said.