The Shadow Prince

chapter twenty-eight DAPHNE

Tobin leads me down a long hall toward the front of the mansion. He stops and waits until one of the waiters passes, with a silver tray of tempura shrimp, before we duck through a set of French doors into a room I assume is his mother’s office. There are glass cases displaying various vases and artifacts lined up along the edges of the room. Some look Asian in origin, but most of them look like relics from ancient Greece or Rome.

“Is your mom a collector or something?”

Tobin puts a finger to his lips to quiet me. “Yeah,” he whispers. “But none of this is what I wanted to show you.” He leads me to a large mahogany desk and opens one of the drawers.

“What are you doing?”

From the way he’s acting, I almost think he’s planning on pulling a heist in his mother’s office—and using me as his accomplice—but what he pulls from the drawer is hardly something valuable. In terms of money, that is. It looks like an old family photo.

“Notice anything weird about this picture?”

There are a lot of weird things about this photo. It’s at least seven years old, based on how old Tobin looks in the picture, but I wouldn’t have guessed it was his family from appearance. The woman in the photo has long, naturally curly, auburn hair and a daisy tucked behind her ear, and the Japanese man in the photo has hair almost to his shoulders, and wears a beaded necklace and a T-shirt with a windmill design on the front. Besides their faces, they barely resemble the dapper power couple of the mayor and her husband. There’s another boy in the photo who looks to be a few years older than Tobin.

“Who’s that?”

“My brother, Sage,” Tobin says. “He went off to MIT a couple of years ago.”

“MIT. I’m guessing he wasn’t as into singing as you are?”

“No. He’s a mechanical genius, just like my parents.”

“Your parents?” Then I recognize the windmill design on his father’s T-shirt. “Wait. I’ve heard your last name before. Oshiro-Winters Wind Energy. Your parents own one of the largest alternative energy companies in the West. They built a wind farm a few miles outside Ellis a few years ago.”

“Owned,” he corrects me. “They went public and sold out just before we moved to Olympus Hills. They retired at forty, except for my mom going into local politics and all. They were total hippies, and now they’re the ultimate yuppies.”

“I’ll say.” I point at the picture. “Your mom looks like she could have been on the cover of a Simon and Garfunkel album.”

“But that’s not the weirdest thing about this picture. Do you see it?” He points out the way his brother Sage’s hand seems to float, as if it were resting on an invisible person’s shoulder.

“Is there someone missing from this picture?”

“My sister, Abbie.”

I think back to the only other time Tobin had mentioned his sister—in the grove. “Your sister. The one you said liked to go to the grove with her friends.… Before she ran away?”

Tobin nods. “It happened six months after my parents got rich and moved to Olympus Hills. They were so upset when she went missing. But not like worried upset, like angry upset.”

“Is that why they Photoshopped her out of this picture?”

“Not just this picture. All of our pictures. I can barely remember what she looks like sometimes. They say she dishonored the family. They won’t even speak her name these days. But the thing is, Daphne, sometimes, I don’t think she ran away. Sometimes, I think … that she was taken.”

“Taken. Like kidnapped? What do your parents think?”

“They think I’m nuts. She left a note on her computer, and my dad says the PI he hired to check it out couldn’t find anything to suggest there was foul play involved. But that note didn’t sound like the Abbie I knew. It was more like someone else had written it for her.”

“That’s insane. I mean, not that I think you’re insane. That’s just some pretty intense stuff. I mean, you were what, like, ten years old when this happened?”

He nods. “I was the last person to see her, you know. I was out riding my bike around the lake and I saw her crossing that bridge that leads into the grove only a couple of hours before she didn’t show up for dinner. She wasn’t alone.”

I raise my eyebrows, asking the question I can’t quite put to words.

“He was a new friend of hers from school—a visiting student from the East Coast. His last name was Lord and he looked an awful lot like this Haden guy.”

“What?” I say, completely confused.

“That’s why I flipped out at school on Monday. After hearing your description of Haden and hearing his last name … Something just came over me and I thought …”

“That he was the guy you saw with your sister? But that was what, six years ago? Haden would have been, like, ten or eleven. It couldn’t have been him.”

“I’m not saying it was him. They just share the same look, you know? Maybe he was, like, a brother or a cousin. All I know is that someone from this Lord family was with my sister just before she disappeared.” Tobin pulls a small key from his pocket. “But here’s where things start to get really weird, Daphne. I think there have been others.”

“Other what?”

Tobin crouches next to his mother’s desk and starts to unlock a large file drawer. “Other girls who’ve been taken from this place.”

“Tobin!” a stern voice interrupts us. Tobin stops what he’s doing and slips the key back into his pocket and shoves the family photo under the desk as Mayor Winters appears in the doorway. “What are you doing in here? I have a meeting.”

There’s a man with her, but he’s obviously not Tobin’s father. He’s wearing bike shorts and an Under Armour tee, and there’s a bike helmet covering most of his head. What kind of meeting was the mayor having with him in the middle of a party?

“Sorry,” Tobin says, quickly stepping away from her desk.

“Your father has been looking for you. It is impolite to neglect your other party guests for so long.”

The man in the bike shorts grins merrily. “Now, now, Rosemary. Don’t be so hard on the boy. Kids will be kids,” he says, with a little bit too much twinkle in his tone.

Tobin clears his throat. “Again, my apologies, Mother,” he says with a slight bow, and leaves the room.

I follow after him, wondering if I should bow also. The mayor stops me just before I exit the office. She taps my shoulder with one of her long, manicured, red fingernails. “I hear you’re the one who told security you thought the Perkins girl was attacked. You know it’s a crime to give a false report, don’t you?”

I shake my head. “I didn’t lie.” I almost add that the guy I suspected of doing Pear harm is currently in her backyard, but I don’t like the way she’s staring at me. Like she could have me locked up with only a single phone call.

“Tobin is a good boy,” she says. “I wouldn’t want him to make friends with anyone who might encourage him to behave otherwise.” She glances at the desk drawer that Tobin had been about to unlock. Is she insinuating that he was poking around in her stuff under my influence? “Thank you for inviting me to your party,” I say, not knowing how else to respond, and leave the room.

By the time I make it back outside, Tobin has been entrapped by his father into greeting their various guests, so I decide it’s time for me to make my exit.

I’m already tired of this so-called party.

I don’t see Joe anywhere—he’s probably off somewhere with that gaggle of women and a bottle of champagne—so I decide to walk home, despite how dark it’s gotten. I keep snagging the train of my dress with my heels, so I remove my shoes and leave them on the hood of Joe’s Porsche, which is parked along the road.

I set off barefoot on one of the lonely lake paths, only to find myself not quite so alone after all. A very short girl in a very tight purple dress is hunched over a trash bin at a fork in the path—in the process of losing her dinner. She heaves one last time and stumbles in her ridiculously high heels.

“Lexie?”

She steadies herself with the rim of the trash can and looks up at me, wiping the corner of her mouth with the back of her hand. “What are you looking at?”

“Are you okay?” I ask. “Bad sushi?” More like too much drinky, but whatever.

She narrows her eyes at me. “Why do you care?”

I shrug, not sure why, either. “Do you need help getting home?”

“Why would I need help from you? You don’t even exist,” she says, turning her back on me.

“This stonewalling thing is stupid, you know. You can’t pretend I don’t exist when I’m the lead of the play.” I am so burned out from Joe, the party, trying to process Tobin’s revelation, and my encounter with his cranky mother that I’m ready to just lay into Lexie and tell her what I really think of her and her elitist little mafia. Do they really think they’re so much better than everyone else?

Lexie reels around, nearly toppling over in her shoes. “You think you’re so much better than me, don’t you?”

“What?”

“You think you’re so great because your dad is some middle-aged rock star.” She points a finger at me. “You think you can come waltzing in here with your long neck and your long legs and steal the part that should be mine. I’ve been working on Mr. Morgan for the last two years to get to be the star, and now it’s like he’s lost his mind. I mean, you’re a contralto or whatever you are. Contraltos never get the lead. And you’d look ridiculous onstage with Tobin. Look at you, you’re like a … like a … giraffe or an albatross or something.”

“Ostrich,” I say.

“Huh?”

“You called me an albatross, but I think you meant ostrich. An albatross is like a seagull. Ostriches are the birds with long necks. If you’re going to insult me, at least get it right.”

“What, now you’re a freaking brain, too?” She puts her hands on her hips. “But all you really are is a pathetic little brownnoser, or whatever you call someone who uses her daddy to get whatever she wants.”

“I barely even know him. I had no idea this play was the reason he wanted to bring me here, so don’t blame me, okay?” I reach for her arm. “Let’s just get you home.”

Lexie pulls away from me. “I don’t need your help. I can get myself home.” She takes a couple of unsteady steps down the path to the right of the fork that make it clear she does need help.

“Isn’t your house the other direction?” I call after her.

She responds with her middle finger. I stand at the fork in the path and watch her disappear around the bend of the tree-lined trail. Most of me wants to just let her go. She deserves to get lost in her drunken state for being such a brat. But then I realize that the path she took leads to the bridge to the grove, and I remember what happened the last time I let someone head in that direction when I should have stopped her.

“Lexie?” I call after her.

She doesn’t respond and I can’t see her anymore, so I start after her. I’ve only taken about six steps when I hear a noise that sounds like something falling over, followed by a muffled swearword from Lexie. I smile, guessing she tripped in her shoes.

But then a horrible noise fills the air. At first, it starts as a low hiss and then grows higher pitched and grating. It reminds me of the screeching squeal of bad car brakes—only higher and much louder. It reverberates around me, making me shiver. When the noise dies away, Lexie’s frantic scream replaces it.

Without thinking, I run in the direction of her scream. I think I hear footsteps following me, but it’s probably just the pounding of my heart in my ears. I don’t dare look back. I round a corner in the path and stumble over something. I fall hard on my knees and see, lying on its side like a lifeless corpse, one of Lexie’s gold shoes on the ground in front of me.

At first, I can’t find Lexie. The path in front of me seems empty. I look deeper into the woods that line the path, and see her. She’s on the ground, backed up against a large tree about ten feet away from me. She holds her hands up defensively and shouts for help. That’s when I realize there’s someone—or something—else in the trees with her. At least I think I detect movement in the shadows beside her. It’s so dark, all I can see is the outline of a large black form standing over her. Or maybe it’s just the shifting shadows of tree branches. Then the shadow seems to swoop down toward Lexie.

“Get away from her,” I shout, and grab the closest thing that resembles a weapon. Lexie’s very pointy shoe. I push myself up from the asphalt path and lob the shoe at the shadowed outline. It passes right through it.

I am sure it’s just a shadow now, except it seems to turn in my direction.

That terrible screeching noise fills the air again. It seems to echo off the trees and slice into my ears. I can’t tell if it comes from the shadow or from somewhere behind me. I swallow hard and launch myself at Lexie. I wrap my arms around her protectively as the shadow engulfs us. Lexie buries her face against my shoulder, her curly hair blocking my view of the shadow.

I do the only thing that I can think of next. I scream.

My voice echoes around me, almost as loud as the screeching squeal, matching it in pitch. I feel the shudder of the shadow against my skin, but I don’t dare look at it. A second later, a burst of lightning explodes just over our heads. I scream again. Lexie flails. The light illuminates the terror on her face before I clamp my eyes shut to protect them from the brightness. My lids are down only for half a second, but when I open my eyes, she and I are alone beside the path. The shadow is gone.

But, no. I am wrong. We’re not completely alone. Electricity tingles in the air around me as I push myself up to get a better look at the boy who stands on the opposite side of the path.