PERIWINKLE

Today will be a good day. Today, I won’t kill anyone.

As I slink through the shadows, invisible to the mortal beings on the city street around me, I repeat my mantra.

It will be true. I know it will be.

I’ll take it easy. Stick to low-key situations. Nothing that could turn traumatic, nothing that would overwhelm me.

There’s no reason for anything to go wrong. I’ve totally got this.

I won’t think about the hunger prickling through my body even in its shadowy state. The ache has been burning for days now. I had to come.

Beyond the patches of shadow I flit through, the sun beams down over the strolling humans. Its warmth stirs enough contentment in many of the people it touches for the emotion to touch me too, but only in the wispiest way that matches my current form.

For a proper feeding, I need to shift into my physical body.

Childish laughter carries from the next street over. I taste the edge of that joy, bright and shimmery like fizzy lemonade.

The ache sears deeper, and I pause to make sure I’m totally in control. No rushing, no leaping before I look.

Weaving between the shops and restaurants, I come to the edge of a small park. A patch of trees stands on one side and a playground on the other.

A couple of kids are heaving themselves as high as possible on the swings. A toddler giggles nervously as he careens down the slide to his waiting mother. Two girls dangle upside down on the monkey bars.

Playgrounds work well. Happy but not to an extreme. A good, simple meal.

The cluster of trees gives me a convenient place to emerge from the shadows. I solidify in the air dressed in a basic daisy print sundress, flats, and my favorite track jacket—with rainbow stripes around the chest, because we’ve all got to have some fun in our lives.

The hood materializes already pulled up over my long, vibrantly turquoise hair, which I can’t change and tends to draw attention I’d rather not have. Especially if it starts glowing.

The fresh spring air floods my newly formed lungs, delightfully sweet with the perfume from the white-and-pink flowers blooming on a tree at the edge of the playground. My mind supplies the name from somewhere in my memories: magnolia.

The sweetest flavor drifting around me is the exhilaration and amusement of the children romping around the playground.

I amble closer and stop near the magnolia tree. Emotions emanate off the playing mortals and sink into my skin.

With each whoosh of the swings and clamber up the climbing equipment, I absorb more in little spurts. This boy’s daring eagerness tastes like a sip of spiced hot cocoa. That girl’s dizzy hilarity could be a mouthful of pulled taffy.

The edges of my hunger start to smooth out. The deeper burn remains, but it’ll just take some time.

These little wisps can’t fill the well that quickly. Once I know I’ve got my balance, I can come more often. I won’t wait until I’m on the verge of starving.

It’ll be wonderful.

A little girl wanders over to the other side of the magnolia tree. She gazes up at the luminous flowers with wide eyes and stretches her hand, but the nearest one is far above her head.

A glimmer of hope lights in my chest. I can do something nice for her. I can make her happy.

One more bit of joy to make amends for the thousands I’ve hurt.

I dare to step a little closer and smile. “I can get one for you.”

It’s been weeks since I last used my voice, but the words slide off my tongue with typical bubbly cheer. Even as the girl’s eyes widen even more, she grins. “Yes, please!”

The human-ish body I can take on has many appealing things about it, from the unique hair to the multitude of soft curves, but it isn’t especially tall. I have to rise up on tiptoe to reach a flower.

As my fingers close around the base, a tiny but sharp pain jabs through my ankles and feet like the prickling of needles. I snap off the flower and drop back down, suppressing a wince.

Mortal bodies can heal, and shadowkind wearing human form can recover from plenty of things regular humans can’t. But some wounds can never be completely erased.

I bend forward and hold out the flower. “Here you go.”

The girl plucks it from my fingers with a gasp of delight that melts in my mouth like a gumdrop. She darts away to show off her prize to a slightly bigger boy who might be her brother.

Warmth tingles over my scalp. I tug my hood a little lower to make sure the glow of happiness isn’t seeping out.

On the far side of the park, beyond a low wrought-iron fence, a procession of vivid colors catches my eyes. Various people are leaving cars to walk up to a large stone building. Most of the women are wearing swishy dresses, the men in collared shirts and suit jackets.

They give off a cocktail of excitement and anticipation that tingles against my skin from even this far away.

I consider the building for a moment. Arched windows, tall towers, those intersecting lines carved into the stone—oh. It’s a church.

People are coming for a wedding.

My heart skips a beat, and I tense against my own excitement.

Weddings bring big emotions. Delicious, giddying, fill-me-up-in-one-gulp emotions, but that means it’s so much easier to overindulge.

I’ll only walk over to the fence. Not go inside, not even enter the church yard. Just absorb the edges of the celebration from a distance.

Pleased with the compromise, I stroll around the playground. The wafting festive energy draws me in.

I stop by the fence like I promised myself I would and rest my hands on top of it. I’m still only absorbing impressions of the largest emotions, the way you can stand outside a bakery and imagine the pastries filling your belly from the scents trickling out, but it’s plenty all the same.

The burn of my hunger dwindles. After another five minutes here, it’ll be nothing but a smolder. Five more, and I’ll be completely sated.

The stream of wedding-goers trickles to a halt. It must be almost time for the ceremony to begin.

Even without being able to see inside the building, the celebratory atmosphere flavors the air.

Then a small wooden door in the side of the church opens, and a woman in a poofy white dress steps out onto the narrow lawn.

Her pale hair swirls around her head in a fancy arrangement of overlapping loops, and gold jewelry gleams around her neck and in her earlobes. Thick makeup emphasizes her eyes and lips.

It’s obvious to anyone who has eyes that she’s the bride, but her arrival outside the church is so unexpected that I stare at her for a few thumps of my pulse before the realization sinks in.

What’s she doing out here? How are all the people inside going to continue reveling in the impending marriage if she isn’t with them doing, you know, the getting married part?

A current of more concentrated emotion washes over me with her so close by—and apparently feeling so strongly. Without trying, I can pick up on a sour tang of doubt and a bitter knot of guilt alongside the delicate wisps of excitement.

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My own appreciation for the festivities dampens. What does it matter if all those people inside are happy if half of the couple they’re supposed to be celebrating isn’t?

She is still a little eager. What’s made her so confused?

Despite my previous resolve, I can’t help walking along the fence until I’m directly across from her, just a few feet away.

"Are you all right?” I ask.

The bride was so lost in her head that she startles at my voice. She spins to face me with a rustle of her massive skirts.

A starker blush stains her cheeks beneath the powdered version. Embarrassment, tart as cheap wine.

She knits her brow. “Are you one of Ted’s cousins?”

I shake my head. “I’m not a guest. I just saw you, and you looked like maybe you need someone to talk to.”

The bride droops. “I—I don’t know. Maybe I do need to talk.”

She presses her hand to her forehead. “My thoughts keep going in circles. I thought I wanted this, but… we haven’t been together for that long. Only a little more than a year. Everything’s felt so right, and I didn’t want to wait, but the past few days, I can’t help wondering if I’m being crazy. Who jumps into marriage like that?”

My knowledge of the finer details of human relationships comes mostly from fictional ones on TV, but that’s enough to give me context. “You’re afraid you’re rushing in too fast. You might not know him well enough yet.”

Her hands clasp in front of her. “People don’t normally do this. There’s obviously a reason why.”

Through the uneasiness and shame, the quivers of excitement still reach me. I taste the edge of a richer sweetness like a honeyed glaze on a roast. “He didn’t do anything to make you feel that way, did he? He makes you happy.”

A smile lights up her face, and she lifts her gaze to meet mine again.

“Oh, yes,” she says, and there it is in her voice, in her sparkling eyes—the whole roast and a heap of buttery mashed potatoes and caramelized squash besides. “When I’m with him, I feel like I can do anything. And he’ll be right there, cheering me on.”

She lets out a choked sort of laugh. “Even if I went in there right now and said I wanted to wait, he’d just hug me and reassure me that we’ll sort everything out.”

My breath catches in my throat. I haven’t gotten to bask in this most potent and bountiful of sensations very often. It’s filled in every bit of empty space inside me, soothed every trace of hunger.

I can repay her for that. Do a much bigger kindness than picking a flower.

I reach across the fence to pat her arm. “You love him. It’s obvious. And you know he loves you. That’s bigger than anything you’re afraid of.”

It’s strange that they’re the ones feeling the feelings, but quite often humans need to be told what’s inside them before they can totally recognize it. A brilliant smile crosses the bride’s reddened lips as a flood of relieved joy courses off of her.

She grasps my hand for just a second. “You’re right. The worries seem so silly when I think about them clearly. Thank you.”

She turns and hurries back into the church, nothing but elation radiating off her now.

The marriage will go on. She’ll unite herself with this special partner who brightens her life.

And I helped send her on that path.

A rush of my own happiness swells inside me. Too quickly, too vast.

I only have an instant to register that fact with a jolt of panic, to push myself away from the church fence, before the hurricane of joy bursts out of not just my hair but all of me in an explosion of light.

I crumple in on myself, hugging my knees, willing the blinding glow back under my skin. But it’s blazing too wildly for me to grasp hold.

Frantic voices yell. Tires screech. Sparks of panic nip at me.

A metallic crunch reverberates through the air, and the impact of the people hurt by my power stabs right down the center of my body. An acidic spurt of agony, a searing flare of anguish.

A crackling of pain before a life snuffs out.

A sob hitches out of me. I dig my fingers into the grass.

The moment the light starts to contract back into me, I dive into the first sliver of shadow I can reach.

I didn’t mean to— I tried so hard—

I shouldn’t have come over to the church at all. I should have known it’d be too risky.

Why didn’t I walk away when I saw the bride?

But she looked so lost…

I grimace at myself and ripple around in the shadows, cringing as the aftereffects of my outburst keep hitting me. More injuries to make up for. More hurt to balance out.

I’ll find a way. There has to be a way. For now—

A sudden force blasts straight through the shadows to slam into me.

I reel through the patches of darkness, abruptly dizzied. Before I can get my bearings, another surge of the unexpected energy smacks me.

This time it digs in, as if it’s clutching fingers around my mind. The force wriggles through my thoughts, and I have a sense of some kind of presence at the other end of it, as if I’m a fish snagged on a lure.

The lure yanks at me. It’s so snagged in my head that I can’t do anything except follow.

I stumble through the shadows as if dragged, a silent wail building inside me.

Oh, no. No, no, no. It’s been more than a year since I felt this before, but I know the sensation.

It’s one of them, the mortals with magic. A sorcerer is reeling me in.

Not just me. As I hurtle forward with increasing speed, my essence brushes up against other beings in the shadows alongside me. We’ve all been caught up, more like we’re in a vast net than on separate lines.

The one before, he couldn’t command a crowd all at once from a distance like this. Unless he’s gotten stronger?

Or this is someone even worse.

An impression of words hum through my presence. Come. Come to me.

I don’t want to. I try to squirm and flail, but my essence won’t respond. It just flows on toward the call.

I’m trying so hard to fight it that I barely notice my surroundings until my forward momentum slows. I extend my awareness to the world beyond the shadows cautiously.

Along with the other shadowkind creatures who’ve been hauled by the sorcerer’s power, I’m dipping under a rusty fence that surrounds a large, mostly empty lot. Weeds sprout up amid the cracks in the pavement. The nearest building has a face of crumbling brick and cracked windows.

Five figures wait for us by a van in the middle of the lot. Three of them are human; two are higher shadowkind like me, though in their human guises. Those two and two of the humans stand poised around a gray metal box as tall as their waists.

An icy shiver passes through my essence.

I know a cage when I see one.

The last of the humans is the one reeling me in with his magic. He loosens his hold just slightly when I’m about ten feet away, his dark gaze sweeping over the lot as if he can see us even in the shadows.

He’s definitely not the other sorcerer I’ve known. This man is a lot younger—maybe mid-twenties, as well as I can judge mortal ages.

But I don’t sense any lack of experience. His power shows not only in the invisible force still clamped around me but the set of his chiseled jaw and the muscles filling out his broad shoulders.

He twitches his head to flick away a strand of wavy black hair that’s drifted into his eyes. Then he intones a command in a low murmur I can’t make out.

The force rams into me again—and wrenches me right out of the shadows into my true physical form.

My body shimmers with a passing gust of wind, nothing but pure light from the vague shapes of feet to my glowing blob of a head. All around me, the other shadowkind pop out of the darkness too: mostly lesser creatures with their oddly animalistic bodies but a few scattered higher beings as well.

The sorcerer looks only at me.

He points his finger. His voice comes out steady and hard. “That’s the one. Take her in.”