Shadow Play: by Erin Kellison Page B

lurched to a new trajectory, but still reached toward him. Was the reason for her unease the fight he and Ellie had just had? Or something else?
    No. If the distress were due to a threat, the shade of her skin would be deepening, solidifying for a fight. This was about last night. A part of Ellie obviously still wanted him, which would only make her angrier. They had to resolve this situation. And soon.
    Col. Langer and Dr. March had retreated a step from the dark goddess who had suddenly emerged in their midst. Cam ground his teeth together that they should ogle her nakedness. It got under his skin sometimes, which was one reason he preferred the quiet of his lab: He had Ellie to himself.
    She forced her shadow to turn her head away from him and face the fae. Even wiped her shadow’s expression clean of feeling.
    Langer and March seemed to be recovering, but hadn’t yet lifted their jaws off the floor.
    Cam had never seen Ellie wield this kind of control. It was a cruel kind of mastery, a self-punishment maybe for the shadow’s unauthorized freedom last night. Ellie had been angry at times over the past four months, but the strong emotion had usually made her shadow even wilder.
    He was wary of this new strength. Too much was changing: The declaration of love, when their relationship was more stressed; the shadow’s new ability to wander while Ellie slept; Ellie’s precision control of her shadow now. Were the two sides of Ellie more separate than ever, or were they in more perfect union? He couldn’t tell.
    The shadow began to speak, the sounds similar to the fae’s, but neither was pausing for the listen and response of dialogue. The words should have collided between them, but instead ran on top of each other, twining, as if both fae and shadow listened and communicated at the same time.
    Cam looked at Ellie, who’d closed her eyes, as if she didn’t like what she heard.
    “Ellie?” Cam asked. He’d expected her shadow to interpret.
    Ellie shook her head, struggling to understand. “I think she wants to die. I think she came here to die.”
    Ellie translated while the shadow was the conduit. When they’d met the fae yesterday, Ellie had been in full union, like any other human being. Separated, displaced, she was able to decipher meaning where everyone else heard gibberish.
    Dr. March stepped forward to examine the shadow close up, then glanced back at Ellie, then back at the shadow, this time gaze flicking down to her breasts, before correcting to her face. “How do you know what they are saying?”
    “I don’t know. It just seems like that’s what she’s saying,” Ellie gritted out. “But yeah, I’m sure, she came here to die.”
    Seems was a very good word where Twilight was concerned. Cam ranged toward Ellie. “Does she say why she wants to die?”
    Ellie gnawed on her lower lip, gaze distracted. “She’s very old.”
    Twilight and its inhabitants were as ancient as the world. Old was an understatement.
    “She wanted something new,” Ellie told them, speaking over the babbling talk of the shadow and the fae.
    “Dying isn’t new ,” Col. Langer argued.
    Ellie continued. “She saw the way, the bright colors, the heat, the sun beating down in the sky. She wasn’t frightened. And then two humans full of death appeared before her.”
    “Children!” Col. Langer again. “Not full of death.”
    “Mortals,” Cam corrected. Ellie meant they were mortal, that they could and would die eventually.
    “And since death was what the fae wanted,” Ellie said, “she switched places. Became the boy.”
    That was the moment of crossing, one world to another. And something about this area of Sedona facilitated it. There was more work to be done here.
    Ellie inhaled deeply, filling her lungs with the waterfall-scented air. “Brought water to the desert as a gift.”
    Col. Langer grunted. “Cornville and Page Springs have enough water now.”
    “But the mother didn’t want him.”
    Ms.