Page 14 of Into Ember

The eleven minutes are up.

I set my fork down. “Okay. Now that we’re all here.” I look around the table. “You promised me answers. Tonight. You —” I point at Leif — “said all of it that I can hold. I’m holding out my hands, gentlemen. Start filling them.”

Rayner grins. Actually grins, wide and delighted, like me issuing demands at their dinner table is the best thing that’s happened to him all year. Gunnar groans into his drink.

“This is not going to end well,” he mutters.

“First question.” I turn to Erik, because there’s an elephant in this room and it’s wearing his face. “How did you get here before us? You were behind me. The entire walk. I would know.”

“I moved through shadow.”

He says it like that. No wind-up. No glance around the table for permission. He says it just like you’d say I took the shortcut, and he goes back to his plate.

“…Excuse me. You did what through what?”

“Shadow.” He gestures vaguely at the room, at the dark stacked in the corners of it, like he’s pointing out a door I should have noticed. “Anywhere there’s shadow, I can move through it. Come out somewhere else. It’s fast.”

“It’s fast,” I repeat.

“Considerably faster than walking.”

I wait for someone to laugh.

Nobody laughs.

Four grown men keep eating dinner like he didn’t just casually announce he commutes through darkness.

That’s how I know it’s true.

I’m going to need a minute.

Okay.

Okay. Shadow. Sure. I fell up through the sky today, there are four moons outside, my cat is a commander. I can deal with the shadow whatever it is.

“How often do you do that?”

He shrugs. “Not often. Almost never, on Earth.”

“But sometimes.”

“Sometimes.”

“Where do you go? When you do it.”

“Depends.” He’s relaxed. He is so relaxed. He has no idea he’s under oath. “If I was running late somewhere. Skipping a line. Small things.”

“Skipping a line.”

“The coffee place gets busy.”

“Uh-huh.” I nod slowly. Somewhere in the back of my head, a courtroom is assembling itself. Exhibits are being labeled. “And when you’re in there… In the shadow. Can you hear things?”

“Yes.”

“See things?”

“Yes.”