Back in the complex, Tory and I knocked on Ashanti’s door and waited for her to open it. When she did, we were taken aback by her surprised expression.
“Hey,” she said cheerfully. The gauze and adhesive tape covering her abdomen were visible through her yellow shirt. “I thought you guys weren’t comin’.”
Confused, I asked, “Why’d you think that?”
“‘Cause I saw you passing by my house a little while ago to go to the projects, so I figured you had other plans.”
A grin forced its way onto my face. “Oh, so you were spying on me this time?”
She couldn’t hold back a smile herself. “Wow. No, I was just lookin’ out the window.” She started twisting a strand of her braid around her finger.
Tory cringed next to me. “Damn, I’mma have to deal with this all my life? Z, why’d you have to find your soulmate so young, bro? Now you tied down and we can’t play video games ‘til four in the mornin’ anymore.”
Ashanti entertained his joke with a giggle, but I could tell she wasn’t feeling his words by her subtle eye roll. She looked back at him once he took a step forward and relaxed his facial features.
“On the real though,” he began, “I wanna thank you for saving my life yesterday. You forever cool in my book. If you need somethin’ and I can make it happen, just lemme know.”
“I appreciate that,” she replied. “Dinner isn’t ready yet, but I got somethin’ I wanna show you two. Come in.”
The smell of soul food blessed our noses as we walked inside the house and past the kitchen where Ashanti’s mom was cooking. Both Tory and I said hello before entering Ashanti’s room.
“Leave the door open,” her mom shouted over the jazz music playing throughout the house. My mom also loved to cook with the music on, so the vibe was similar.
If were being honest, I never been in a girl’s room before. My belief of them being some colorful, over-the-top spot was quickly debunked after looking around. From the plain pink sheets on her bed, to the white walls and curtains—everything about her room was normal and chill.
Well, maybe except for the huge TV mounted on the wall above a small dresser. That thing had to be 70" inches at least.
“Close the door,” she said after sitting on her bed and opening her laptop.
Recalling what her mom just said, I had to ask, “Shouldn’t we leave it open?”
“No. I’d rather my mom not pass by and hear or see what I’m about to show you. It would scare her.”
Tory shrugged and closed the door before we sat by Ashanti and observed her laptop screen. The image on display was the outside parking lot of the supercenter, where multiple EMT trucks and police cars were stationed around dozens of injured people being carried out of the building. It must’ve been the aftermath of the incident yesterday.
“There.” Ashanti pointed at a man in the photo wearing a black suit. “And the guy next to him wearing the same thing. Those are two of the men who were after me and my mom in Harlem.”
Looking closer at the men in the picture, both appeared to be discussing something with police officers. “You think they know you’re here in Newburgh?” I inquired.
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She hunched her shoulders with a worried expression. “No clue, but I hope not.”
“Zayn filled me in on everything with you,” Tory said to Ashanti. “And to be honest, the whole thing sounds scary as hell. You think these guys after you and your mom work for some secret society that controls the police? Wait, wait—what if they brainwash people with powers into fighting the shrouds? Because that’d be cool as hell.”
“You think it’d be cool to be brainwashed?” Ashanti questioned with an obvious fake smile on her face. “Anyways, I know nothing about these guys, but check this out.”
She opened another tab on her internet browser that showed her DMs on social media, where of course a stream of desperate dudes flooded her inbox with weak ass messages. Funny enough, there were no replies until Ashanti scrolled down to someone named Ciara.
“Who’s that? She bad,” Tory said while staring at the girl’s profile pic. She was brown skinned with glasses rockin’ a frohawk with braids on the side.
“That’s my best friend from Harlem,” she told us with joy. “We used to run track together before I moved up here. Her cousin was gunned down by police in the Bronx at a school called Ravenvale High. The media reported it as another angry Black kid who was out of control and had to be put down, but Ciara figured somethin’ else had to be up ‘cause her cousin wouldn’t hurt a fly.”
“I heard about that,” Tory acknowledged. “Yeah, that influencer, Candice Forever, was also involved.”
“Yeah, you right. So, Ciara has been investigating the incident out of justice and love for her cousin. Eventually, she discovered that these shrouds making people go crazy are called Shadows.”
“Shadows?” I asked.
“Uh-huh. She hasn’t been able to get a lot of info, but supposedly, these Shadows are demons that corrupt human minds and force people into using their superpowers for bad things. How people are gettin’ these powers to begin with, I have no idea. They seem to come from somethin’ we really want and feel, or from desperate needs.”
Answers turned into questions as we sat and processed the information. None of us could believe what was happening. It was almost too magical and frightening to be real.
“Uh, so where my powers at?” Tory questioned out of the blue. Both Ashanti and I looked at him with no real way to respond. Just silence and shrugs.
The shout of her mom outside the room shattered the awkward moment. “Ashanti, get the door.”
Ashanti closed her laptop and said to us, “Okay, let’s all act normal and pretend we don’t know about any of this. We can’t tell anyone.”
The three of us came to an agreement before leaving out of the room and walking to the front door of the house. Remember when I said all of this was too scary to be real? Well, that fear gave me a rude awakening once Ashanti turned the knob.
“It’s you.”
I had expected those words to stumble out of my mouth from the sudden presence of the bald man and the towering Shadow behind him, but it was Tory who voiced his shock of the man’s arrival.
The man glanced at Tory before addressing Ashanti with a deep voice. “How are you, princess?”
“Please don’t call me that,” she replied in disgust. “You ain’t no king, either.”
The man guffawed before walking past us to enter the kitchen, where Ashanti’s mom was putting food on the plates. My eyes widened as I trembled from the cold, dreadful pressure of the demon treading past my body. It was almost too much to bear.
“T-Tory,” I managed to breathe out once the creature was further into the house. “How do you know that g—”
“Hey, you came.”
Ashanti’s greeting of the next person at the door silenced my curiosity. “Marcus?” I said in disbelief. “What’chu doing here?”
“I invited him,” Ashanti answered for him. “He asked me out at the party Friday, and we were supposed to go out last night, but you already know what happened.” She smiled and rubbed her side where she had been injured. “So, I invited him earlier today to come by and have Sunday dinner with us.”
Really? Why?
“Hey, y’all good?” he asked me and Tory while taking off his hat to reveal his freshly cut fade. “Yesterday must’ve been scary.”
“Yeah, we good,” Tory replied. “But you kinda killin’ the vibe, bro. My boy here tryin’ to make moves.”
Damn, he really put me on the spot.
“Huh? What’chu mean?” Marcus questioned. “Make moves? You mean on Ash—”
Before a scene was made and everything blew up in my face, Ashanti’s mom called out that the food was ready. Sighing in relief, I made my way over to the dinner table in the living room with the others. This feast was gonna be a nightmare, and I’m not even counting the demon standing behind the bald man’s chair as he took his seat.
What in the hell did I get myself into?