ELI

That woman looked like Kotori, Eli thought, as she stalked over to the bookstore to find a paperback for her next flight. (She had been reading horror lately. Thrillers were too unrealistic, and romance hurt too much.) There was no way it could have been Kotori. The woman had been too worn, too sad. Kotori was in the States with Umi, still tending to Umi's strenuous physical therapy after their last squabble. Umi had been laid up in the hospital for days, according to the intelligence. Eli felt her stomach cramp.

Eli's Shadow stood in arabesque across the bookstore, seemingly people watching. It was unnerving. Before, it used to just hang in the air. Now it seemed to possess an intelligence of its own. It was getting harder to close her eyes and will the figure away.

A buzz went off in her pocket. It was Eli's boss. Again. She sighed and picked up.

"I had told you to go back to Japan, Agent Kairos."

Eli stared at the best-selling horror novels with a phone held up to her ear. Maybe she'd try the book with a castle and a beast on the cover. "Your supervisor also told me to run some errands while I was traveling. You were cc'd in the email." These errands involved the murder of several revolutionaries and the theft of a vital material in the making of 3D-printed medical supplies for distressed areas..

"You know this project is a Priority One. None of these… petty tasks will matter."

Eli yawned. Her supervisor's supervisor had little faith in "science fiction toys" and told her as much on a regular basis, despite the research and personal examples. "Why don't you take it up with Andrei? You know I can't say no to him. He's the one who writes my checks." And holds the metaphorical gun to Alisa's head so I can never leave.

Her boss growled. "You will be in Japan, and I don't care how you get there. You will mitigate the use of the machine and you will acquire it for us. Make it happen, Agent Kairos." He hung up. Eli's jaw unclenched. She hadn't realized she'd been clenching it. What was she going to do in Japan? Swoop in on the "temporal anomalies" machine and take it back to Russia? Murder everyone involved?

Everyone involved being, of course, Maki, Honoka, and Umi. Eli remembered Umi's face covered in blood. Could Eli really do that again? She'd been holding back last time.

Chills clutched her shoulders. Could she really murder her friends? Could she really end the lives of the people who'd meant so much to her? Emptiness hollowed her skin. The Shadow was close, now, gesturing with urgent motions.

Eli closed her eyes. She needed to get a book for the plane ride. At random, she picked up a book from the pile.

There was a crying baby on the plane. It was ceaseless. Eli knew how it felt, almost, with her endless hollow melancholy. She drank her wine as she read; a collection of fairy tales reimagined as horror stories. Eli's back hurt from hunching over. She kept hunching over. The Shadow hunched over too, as if in mockery of her.

The garden walls held poisonous plants and withered roses, and Odile knew each leaf and stem personally. Thorns clutched precious magic fruits. This was Odile's only sanctuary. The Queen knew of this garden in her castle, but dared not to come. Each time she tried to enter, the thorns would rush to prick her fingers.

The Queen observed Odile sometimes, as if she were studying an insect. She whispered nonsense rhymes and the Kingdom Zoning Codes and poems she'd written as a young woman. Odile didn't speak the Queen's language. All she heard was a song, from beyond the walls and away from her respite.

Eli's eyes grew heavy, but she wouldn't let herself sleep. She'd been dreaming of Nozomi lately, despite the horrors she'd perpetuated. Nozomi in bed, Nozomi at her card table, Nozomi washing the dishes. Somehow the old intimacy hurt worse than the nightmares. Nozomi hadn't texted Eli in awhile, or called. She didn't know Eli was coming home. Maybe she did, Eli thought. She was a psychic. Sometimes, Eli was disappointed Nozomi hadn't caught her, hadn't demanded Eli end her wild and dangerous lifestyle

Odile caressed the dirt and loam, indulging its sensuous wholesomeness. She was

messy and real and far and away from the glittering cruelty of the Monarchs, who only sought to scald her with bleach and fire. She knew the day she could understand the music was the day everything would be ruined.

It was the morning that Odile turned 25 that she heard the first words of the first song of the day and began to mourn herself.

"The Swan pecks bleak and blood

The Maiden cries tears of glass and pearls

The bones fill with withered buds

The Mirror's Shade Unfurls"

Eli reread the poem several times. It sounded like the lyrics of a duet Umi had tried to write, once. Umi had wanted Eli to do it with Maki. Eli's stomach churned. All she'd had today was donuts and wine. Her eyelids imposed, fluttering, dragging themselves down. Nausea rolled over her. Eli drifted down further as the waves of unease rocked.

Nozomi was waiting for her, when Eli knew she had fallen asleep, in the garden with dead roses and the skeletons of swans. She wore nothing; her long dark hair unbound and set with flowers, her bare feet trodden over rocks and thorns. Eli stepped forward and felt something pierce her, hot blood pulsing from her arches.

"You're not whole." Nozomi said, suddenly behind the bars of a wrought-iron fence, peering into the garden. "You're split between, unable to come together. You've been struck so many times."

Eli couldn't control her words. "I am the symptom. The reflection."

"Don't you feel it? Don't you see it? Your aura was never the same after senior year. It was covered in clouds and shadow and feathers."

"I am a zombie, half-living, half-dead."

Nozomi flickered and disappeared. Eli felt arms around her. She smelled like Nozomi, with her dark clean scent. "Yes. Your Shadow has gotten so wild, Elicchi. And somehow I never saw it. I never wanted to see what it became. I didn't want to know the truth."

Eli's Shadow appeared in front of her. Its core pulsed, and Eli felt something stirring within her. Something that had grown in wrong, a parasite, something that wasn't supposed to be there.

"Look."

The Shadow loomed inside her, outside her. Its pools and feathers and scales festered, filling her with wounds and bruises and whispers of salt water. Cold water filled her, freezing her-

The plane was empty. All but the Shadow and Eli and the book tossed on the ground.

Eli walked to the emergency exit. Her hands shook as she felt the door handle. Eli had done this once before. She'd jumped out of a plane with something strapped to her back into the ocean. The Shadow hissed at the thought.

Eli glanced over. Could it read her thoughts?

The Shadow nodded.

"What… happened?"

The Shadow studied her, as if it were pondering giving her the answer, as if it could talk. Eli looked into its face, really, for the first time. Narrow, delicate features, more familiar than not. The nose was broken. Its skin was a watercolor of dark purples, blues, and blacks, ever-shifting wet-on-wet pigments.

Eli knew who the Shadow was, then, but she did not let herself process that knowledge.

The Shadow gestured to the book that had been tossed on the ground. Eli lifted it up, the pages opened where she had been before.

The Song bent Odile down into a husk, pressing into her bones, sinking her skin. The Song held a sweet, brutal rhythm that Odile could not resist, making her move without consent, without action. Her legs spun and raised and twirled past princes and princesses, kings and queens. Odile had danced once in the garden ballroom before. It was not the first time she'd stolen a princess's life.

Eli put her hand to her forehead. The Shadow wanted her to read the story. It'd been so long since her last rendition of Swan Lake. Odile was… an evil fake princess pretending to be the real good princess, Odette? Stealing the princess's potential husband who would break the spell if she loved her? Had she… stolen the Shadow's prince, somehow?

The Shadow stared at her.

"I don't understand."

The shade pirouetted and kicked and spun towards her, with the grace and energy of a real dancer. Like Eli used to do. It started to sway, lifting its arms like it was holding something. Up and down, as if the creature were holding a fan. The movements were so familiar. Eli had seen them somewhere before.

The Shadow gestured to her and she moved in synch with it. Eli knew this dance. She'd made the choreography herself.

Angelic Angel.

"Ma'am?"

Eli opened her eyes and realized she was standing up. Standing right next to the emergency exit. The plane was full. The Shadow had gone back to the corners of her vision. A flight attendance had grabbed her shoulder.

"Ma'am, I believe you were sleepwalking."

Eli blinked. Pain clutched her eye sockets and tension was building in her neck. "Wow. Um. I'm so sorry."

"Would you like something to drink? We have rose and chardonnay and…"

Eli had a sinking feeling the flight attendant did not see a young woman in her early 20's, but rather a frazzled business woman with an empty glass of wine at her seat. "Just… a coke please. And maybe a hot chocolate."

She let herself be guided back to the seat. Her phone buzzed. An email from her boss, she rolled her eyes. Beneath it was an email from Nozomi. An old email address, from high school old: mikonomicon .

It was a short message: Did you meet me at the garden?

Eli gulped. Of course her psychic girlfriend could see into her dreams. She typed yes . The attendant brought, with a soft smile, a hot chocolate and a coke. Eli was inclined to scowl but thought better of it. Let one person in the world not consider her a monster.

Nozomi replied as soon as Eli had finished the hot chocolate. Come home. As soon as you can. Bring your friend.

Okay, Eli typed. I'll see you soon.

Eli felt a great tension leave her body. Seeing Nozomi. Seeing the Shadow - Nozomi knowing about the Shadow.

It would be another 24 hours before she reached Sapporo and Eli needed something to read. She dug into the seat, rummaging for the book. It wasn't there. With a sheepish look, she stood up again - this time holding a coke to demonstrate that she was not sleep walking - and arched her neck, staring down into the aisles. The book was gone.