“They come and go,” she said casually. “Abuelo calls them part of my magic. Sometimes they listen to me, sometimes they don’t. Wanna see?” She closed her eyes. The shapeless shadows rose higher and higher until they looked like tall poles, wings sprouting from each of them. Then they collapsed just as quickly and disappeared. Ren opened her eyes. “See? Not very magical or useful, if you ask me.”
“Can your grandpa do stuff with shadows?”
Ren shook her head. “Supposedly, magic doesn’t run consistently through my family. And my dad hated the whole idea of it, so he wouldn’t teach me. But I don’t even know if the shadows are part of the magic, or being a godborn, or…” She let out a long sigh. “It’s super frustrating not knowing who you really are.”
It reminded me how I couldn’t control fire very well. “So, you go into trances when you’re stressed, shadows sometimes follow you, and you can sometimes make shapes out of them. Do they talk to you or anything?”
“I wish,” Ren said.
Ren was right. We needed to know who her godly parent was, except I wasn’t sure where to even begin looking. We couldn’t exactly take out a want ad or put up a billboard. The gods had made it clear they wanted to be rid of godborns. (Like I said, jerks, right?)
So even if we found Ren’s mom, it wasn’t like we could throw a reunion party. Plus, I was leaving to go on my quest in just a few hours. Ren’s problems were going to have to be put on hold. We’d call her abuelo, and then she’d have to wait here until I got back from this quest to figure out next steps.
Ren yawned loudly, and her eyelids drooped. “Now what?”
I tossed a broken shell into the water, thinking I could hardly wait to tell Brooks about Ren. She was going to flip. What would she think of this girl?
“The gods want to k
ill godborns, so…for now, you have to stay on this island. We should figure out what those little flying creatures were and how they knew about you…or…No, we should definitely try to find out if you were followed.”
“I should tell you…” She yawned again and laid her head on the sand. “The shadows…they can come out of…”
“Out of what?” But when I turned, the girl was fast asleep. “Ren?”
Then came an eeekscritch. From inside the boat.
Rosie and I launched to our feet simultaneously.
Eeekscritch.
I changed Fuego back into the spear as black smoke curled from Rosie’s nose.
Crap!
Ren had definitely been followed.
Swirls of red fire burned at the center of Rosie’s eyes, which meant that whatever was inside that boat wasn’t here for surfing lessons. And with my luck, it was probably gigantic and murderous and bloodthirsty.
Clouds of black smoke trailed from Rosie’s nose, and her ears were standing at attention as I gripped my spear and stalked toward the rowboat. The shallow waves tipped it back and forth. My palms were slick with sweat.
The warm water soaked my sneakers as a west wind raced toward us. Craning my neck, I peered inside the dinghy just so I wouldn’t have to get any closer than I had to. But there was nothing inside. Cero.
I’d have thought I was hearing things, except Rosie’s killer senses told me something was here. Was the something invisible? I didn’t know if that was better or worse.
“What do you sense, Rosie?” I whispered. Her hackles stood on end, and a low, deadly growl sounded from deep in her throat.
Then that horrible eekscritch sound, like metallic branches scraping glass, ricocheted across the beach, and I couldn’t be sure where it was coming from. But Rosie kept her laser focus on the boat. Which, by the terrible way, was still swaying like an invisible hand was rocking it.
That’s when a small shadow, no bigger than a fist, slid over the boat’s edge and began to grow into a tall column.
Before I could blink twice, three shadow monsters emerged from the column, spreading their colossal wings. Long insect-like arms and legs sprouted from their swollen, pulsing bodies.
Rosie’s dark roar echoed over the thrashing sea.
“DEAD!” I screamed.
Rosie exploded into killer-hellhound mode, shooting fireballs out of her mouth and eyes. But the flames made contact with absolutely nothing (unless you count the now-blazing dinghy). I mean, how do you kill shadows? Shadows that were morphing and growing faster than I could say dead?