Page 16 of Hunted in the Shadows
After several minutes of fruitless research, the familiar leaden weight of disappointment set in. I rocked back on my heels, sighing. More of the same:absolutely nothing. Every hopeful report on a possible gemstone so far had led us nowhere on our meandering journey west. Empty caverns, boring meadows, and nothing but more miles on the car to show for it.
Maybe the next leg of the journey west would finally offer a stroke of luck.
Abandoning the phone, I rose into the air and circled around to see what Cliff was watching. Still the same video: the screen showed a vast number of humans dressed in robes. One by one, young men and women walked up to the stage and shook hands with important-looking people wearing the most peculiar hats.
“Is this a ritual?” I whispered.
Cliff exhaled through his nose, stifling a smile. “It’s a livestream from May. I found out my kid sister graduated college with honors. They’re almost to theE’s now. They’ll call her name soon, and she’ll walk across the stage here.”
“Ah.” I did the math in my head, trying to remember the human-named months. This video was at least half a year old.
Cliff peeled his eyes off the screen to study me for a second. “You gonna ask me what college is?”
I smiled at him knowingly. “You look so excited to explain it to me, anyway.”
“I oughta make you guess,” Cliff muttered with a little laugh. “It’s a place humans go to learn and prepare for the job they want after high school. Graduation means they passed all their classes and didn’t get so plastered that they slept with the dean’s daughter.”
“Personal experience?” I asked.
“Friend of a friend.”
I cringed a little inside.Stars—of course that hadn’t been him. He’d been busy being disowned by his family and hunting his first spirit with Jon when other students were progressing toward that milestone.
“It reminds me of affinity ceremonies back home. It happens much younger, closer to ten or twelve summers, but we do a far better job making it festive.”
He snorted. “Not like they can set off fireworks in an auditorium.”
“The affinity ceremony takes placeunderground, and it still looks more exciting,” I insisted. “It’s one of the many festivities during Midsummer. Special foods are prepared to honor the children who found their affinity since the previous summer. The affinities welcome new members into their cohort by creating a spectacle.”
“Let me guess. Lightning strikes? Wildfires?”
I swooped closer to elbow his neck. “Nothing that draws unwanted human attention, obviously. Air affinities make objects dance above everyone’s heads—scarves, goblets, wine, that sort of thing. Water fairies make the dining hall sparkle with floatingstreams. Oh, the earth displays are a favorite. They make flowers and mushrooms sprout right out of the ceiling—it smellsamazing.” I glanced wistfully at the cracked plaster overhead.
“What about ice?”
“It’s been a couple years since we’ve had a new ice affinity, but last time, we made these huge, glittering ice sculptures all around the hall. They didn’t melt for days and days.”
My mind wandered to my own affinity ceremony—my acceptance into the ice cohort. More than anything, I pictured the pride in my father’s eyes as I raced toward him across the chamber.
I cleared my throat. “Hazel was disappointed that she didn’t find her affinity before the ceremony this summer. Chances are, she’ll find it before the next. Even if she doesn’t, that’s alright. She’s still on the younger side.”
Cliff’s pause was noticeably heavy. Before he could say anything, he stiffened, his attention back on the screen.
The voice in the laptop said, “Anna Grace Everett, graduated with a bachelor’s degree in environmental science, summa cum laude.”
A pretty blonde girl with the same green eyes as Cliff filled the screen. She strode onto the stage as people cheered from the crowd. Finding the camera, she waved both hands overhead, soaking up the attention with a good-natured grin.
“Environmental science,” Cliff said. “Always a tree-hugger, that one. You’d probably get along with her.” He swallowed hard, pausing the video on another close-up of her face. He stared like he was memorizing it. “Can’t believe how grown up she is—twenty-three years old now. Feels like last week she was little enough to squeeze under the couch when we were playing hide and seek.”
Truth be told, I could hardly wrap my head around Anna being older than me. Any time Cliff spoke of her, I pictured a child like Hazel.
“And how old are you again?” I asked with tentative levity. “Forty?”
“Twenty-seven, you little shit.”
I chewed my lip. In two months of gently prying about Cliff’s past, I learned that his mother had once convinced him he was allergic to gluten and that he’d briefly had a pet snake when he was eight. Nothing more. Jon was slow to open up, but Cliff was a fortress.
“I’ve seen her name in your phone contacts,” I said. “Have you gotten in touch with her lately?”
