Page 25 of Soul of Shadow
“I can’t really explain.” Elias pushed himself off the doorway. “But I can show you.”
Charlie tracked Elias as his shadow form stepped over his real body, crossing the dining room toward the fireplace. Once he stood before the hearth, the fire disappeared and he stooped over, brushing aside the pile of ashes within to reveal a small black box. He lifted it from the stone floor and turned around.
“Inside this box,” he said, walking slowly toward Charlie, “is a fruit calledeyaerberry. It doesn’t grow here. It must be harvested on Jotunheim, one of the other seven realms, which makes it exceedingly rare. I don’t give this to you lightly.”
Jotunheim? Realms?What kind of gibberish was he spewing? How was she supposed to take any of this seriously?
“If this berry thing is so rare,” Charlie asked, eyeing the box, “why give it to me? Why not save it?”
“I don’t need it,” said Elias. “I’m a creature of Asgard. I can already see.”
A creature of Asgard?This was getting ridiculous. What he was saying made it sound like they were living in a storybook. She should push the box away. Should tell him there was no way in hell she was taking whatever kind of drugs were inside that box.
And yet …
And yet she couldn’t deny what she had seen him become. She couldn’t deny that his presence, standing before her as a man made of shadow, defied every known law of nature. He was bending reality for her, making her desperate for answers, for the truth.
She pushed herself up to a seated position. “See what?”
He bent over, bringing the box down to eye level where Charlie sat on the floor. Slowly, he lifted its lid, revealing fiveshiny purple cherry-shaped fruits. They glinted in the flickering candles. “You’ll know soon enough.”
She stared at the purple eyaerberries. They seemed to hum within the box. To call to her. She lifted a hand to reach for one, but Elias shook his head.
“Not here,” he said. “Wait until we go outside.”
“Why?”
“You’ll understand when you take it.” He straightened, closing the box’s lid and tucking it under one arm. “Ifyou take it. You see, Charlotte, what you must understand is that after you eat this berry, your entire life will change. Everything you thought you knew about reality—it will go out the window.” He watched her seriously. “Are you ready for that?”
Charlie hesitated. Was what he was saying true? Or was he just trying to scare her off? And if what he was sayingwastrue, did she really want that? Up until this moment, she had lived a small, safe life, never straying too far from Silver Shores, never seeking anything beyond the very immediate. Did she really want to shake loose all the screws that had kept her tightly bound life in place? A large part of her said no.
But an even larger part…
Had she not once dreamed of a world beyond her own? Had she, Sophie, and Lou not spent hours imagining a universe that contained witches and mermaids, fairies and goblins? What if some percentage of that—even afraction—was true? Could she stomach the rest of her life knowing she had let it all slip past?
Slowly, Charlie stood, raising herself from the floor like a skeleton emerging from the grave. When at last she stood tall, she looked at Elias and said, “I’m ready.”
She was pretty sure she wasn’t.
13
Outside, the sun had begun to set behind the trees, drizzling darkness into the forest. Charlie opened the front door to leave the house. Elias walked right through it, reaching into his stomach and pulling out the box once he was out in the open air.
“How’d you do that?” she asked, pointing at the box.
“My body is one big pocket,” he said, grinning his shadow-filled smile. “Anything I put inside it becomes intangible. I can store it there as long as I need, and when I pull it back out, it goes back to solid.”
“That’s … creepy.”
“But useful.”
They crossed the porch and descended the front steps. When they reached the grass, Elias stopped and reopened the box’s lid, holding it out to Charlie.
“What do I do with it?” she asked.
“You eat it,” he said, pushing the box closer to her. “Obviously.”
Tentatively, she reached out a hand and picked up one of the eyaerberries. It was cool to the touch, as if it had been stored in a refrigerator, not an old fireplace. Its flesh was tender, perfectlyripe. She held it up and studied it closely. It didn’t look dangerous; it looked delicious.
