The Shadow War Page 6

  I am nothing like him.

  His smile glittered like broken glass. Would you like a chance to prove it?

  It began as petty thievery, lifting supplies out of the back of military trucks and picking the jacket pockets of soldiers visiting Paris’s many brothels. Simone’s fingers had been made for that, slipping folded scraps of paper free. But as Georges-Yves’s network grew, so did their opportunities. The missions that they’d planned, bigger and bigger, allying with the Partisans, with the Free French, with unknown entities who only existed in dits and dahs over the radio. And now Georges-Yves had offered her the biggest one yet, one arranged by the American government, no less, although Simone hadn’t given him an answer.

  In the three years they’d known each other, it was the first secret Simone had ever kept from Evangeline.

  “You can’t join them, Simone.” Evangeline grazed fingertips against her face. “It’s too dangerous. Their eyes are everywhere, and I couldn’t bear it if anything . . .”

  Simone blinked. “But you would stop it. You’d find a way to protect me. Wouldn’t you?”

  Wasn’t that the point of working with those monsters? To temper what they did. Evangeline had spoken that way once. But maybe it was only a lie she’d told herself.

  “I don’t have that kind of power. No one does. The best I can do is—is watch them. Understand the way they work. Anything more is too great a risk, it would do more harm than good.”

  Evangeline turned a winsome smile on her, those green eyes glittering like the sea. Appeasement. Simone no longer felt guilty for not telling her the truth. She was her father’s daughter above all else: a diplomat. A collaborator. A conniver and a schemer, selling out Paris and her own heart to keep a soft pillow beneath her head. Simone had worked herself into knots trying to justify all that Evangeline did or didn’t do, but she could no longer ignore it.

  “Things will get better,” Evangeline said softly. She kissed the corner of Simone’s mouth, but Simone didn’t respond. “If we can endure it for a little longer . . . wait them out . . .”

  Simone stepped out of her grasp. “Oh, yes. It’s been a terrible hardship for you.”

  Evangeline sucked in her breath; it never took long for her offense to turn into cold anger. She narrowed her eyes. “You haven’t a clue.”

  “You still live in that golden prison of a mansion, do you not? You eat three meals a day?”

  “Don’t, Simone.”

  “And all those days in the government offices, helping your father manage the bigger prison that is occupied France now.”

  “Better me than the Nazis—”

  “What about those dinners at Place Vendôme? Has he found a sweet little Unterführer for you to wed?”

  Evangeline lunged forward. “I would never—”

  Distant shouts in German silenced them both. They shrank back into the shadows, and Evangeline reached for her hand, but Simone yanked it away. A car engine rumbled, and light swept over the mouth of the alley as a Hotchkiss drove past. Gestapo on the hunt, perhaps.

  Simone had spent all her life as a stranger in someone else’s land—Paris, the carpenters’ ateliers, Evangeline’s glittering diplomat world, with parquet wooden floors and lectures at the Sorbonne and waiting on the occupiers with a smile. It could never be Simone’s world. She was done being an unwelcome guest, shrinking into the corner as if she were prey. She needed a purpose. She needed to hunt.

  “Perhaps you’re right. It is better if we aren’t seen together,” Simone said. “Perhaps we shouldn’t see each other at all.”

  Evangeline reeled back. Tears marred her cheeks as she reached for Simone’s arm. “Please, wait. You haven’t given me a chance to explain—”

  But there was nothing left to say.

  “I would hate to soil your reputation.” Simone brushed the stone dust from her hands. “You have such important work to do, after all. Watching idly while they tear us limb from limb.”

  “Simone,” Evangeline hissed. “It is the safest way—”

  But Simone was already walking toward the quays. Shouldn’t she feel lighter, a burden lifted? Now Evangeline couldn’t betray her to the Gestapo, endanger Georges-Yves and all the rest. Now she wouldn’t taste appeasement on those too-soft lips. Like the appeasers themselves—Simone had been trying for so long to ignore what was right in front of her, and only now could she see past it.

  But all she felt was the humid air, the hollow where her heart should be. Her hands itched without warm flesh beneath them.

  Simone knew, then, how the next few months would unfold. She could lie unsleeping, hands itching, in the bed she shared with her mother. Curse herself for her temper, her refusal to succumb to the easy, passive path.

  Or put herself to use. Any way she could.

  They scavenged the farmhouse for supplies, then Phillip set fire to the basement on their way out. It would take at least five, maybe ten minutes for the blaze to spread to the rest of the house, which should give them enough of a head start. Enough that the fire would be a distraction rather than a homing beacon.

  As long as they kept moving.

  “What makes you so sure there aren’t more of those things out here?” Phillip asked, after they’d been trudging in silence for half an hour. No signs of other humans yet, but soon they’d cross the main road west of Siegen.

  “Nothing. But it doesn’t matter.” She scanned the roadway, but it was motionless. “We need to make it to Siegen tonight.”

  The town of Siegen had the misfortune of being one of the military operations compounds for the western troops, handling administrative matters and logistics for forces heading into occupied Belgium and France. Once the American helped them establish their secure and covert communications channel, Georges-Yves had explained, their network’s contacts in Siegen should be able to flood the airwaves with fresh intelligence for the Resistance.

  “You know,” Phillip said, “you still haven’t told me your name.”

  Simone motioned him across the road, catching a faint whiff of smoke. From the farmhouse, or something else? She closed her hand around her rifle strap where it crossed her chest. “Names aren’t important.”

  “I’m supposed to be able to trust you.” He shuffled forward so they were walking side by side. “Kind of hard to trust you if you can’t even tell me your name.”

  He had a point, which only irritated her more. “Fine. Simone Khalef.” She dug around for another cigarette. “Do you smoke?”

  He shook his head. “Never saw the point.”

  “It helps file off the edges. But it can draw attention.” She smirked as she lit up. “Not as much as talking does.”

  “Message received, geez.”

  They continued in silence, the dark forest pressing in around them. No stars tonight, only thick clouds that drank up what little light the villages offered and glowed dully overhead. The scout perimeter for Siegen shouldn’t be for another three kilometers or so, but it never hurt to be ready.

  “Watch the trees,” Simone said under her breath. “If you see glints, red lights flickering, it may be snipers. They’re my favorite.”

  “Your favorite?” he asked dubiously.

  “To kill. Are you a good shot?”

  “Ha. According to the US Army, I’m . . . adequate.” He didn’t sound too troubled by it. “You?”

  “One of the best. That’s why they sent me for you.”

  “You’re from Paris, right?” Phillip asked. “They told me that was . . . well, kinda the base of operations for your network, I guess.”

  “Algerian.” Simone narrowed her eyes. The safest option was silence, but she’d developed a sense for approaching patrols, and it felt good to speak after the oppressive stillness of her hike. But it was dangerous to let people in, to give them a set of keys. They could find all the weaknesses in your
structure, all the failure points to exploit. Only Evangeline had ever seen Simone’s before, but it had been enough to leave Simone with a gaping wound.

  Evangeline. She shook off a pang and pressed on. Stuck-up, spoiled, selfish, sheltered . . . Simone ran through her well-worn list of reasons not to miss her, but her nerves were too wound up to put the usual force behind it.

  “Have you killed one of them yet?” Simone asked.

  Phillip was quiet for a moment. “No.”

  “Are you ready?”

  His voice was thick when he answered. “Kinda thought that was your job.” He turned toward her. “Does it get easier? Once you do it?”

  “I never found it hard.”

  He laughed at that, at least.

  “There is a funny thing about the way people think of the Nazis,” Simone said. “Some like to pretend they are not people, but something other. A real Nazi has no emotions and is only interested in hatred and death, you know the line.”

  “Huh. Yeah.” Phillip stared straight ahead. “Makes it easy for people to think they couldn’t be one.”

  “Précisément. The danger in that is that when you meet one—when they talk and smile and fuss about little stupid things, go about their stupid lives—you believe that they cannot be the real Nazis. The real ones must be somewhere else. And that”—Simone exhaled—“is a mistake.”

  “So what’s the right way to think about them?”

  “You must see that they are people. That they are, in fact, like you and me. You can use this knowledge poorly—if you use it to scrape some semblance of forgiveness out of the dregs of your heart. If you assume that they must only do what they are doing out of helplessness, or obedience, or acting on bad information.”

  “Uh-huh,” Phillip said, unconvinced.

  “Or.” Simone punctuated the air with the cigarette. “You can take that knowledge and use it to remind yourself that these are only people you are fighting. Fallible. Stupid. Cruel. They have made their choices. Like you, they are probably set in their ways. And also like you . . .” Simone pushed the flat of her palm to her chest. “They are soft and fragile, and one bullet is usually enough.”

  Phillip’s smile gleamed in the moonlight. He wasn’t tall or short, a little soft around the edges, but there was a structure to his smile that put her more at ease. They may have sent her an amateur, but he could be a quick study.

  “You’re kind of scary, you know that?”

  Simone couldn’t help but smile. “I hope so.”

  She checked her compass and map. “We’ll see the valley of Siegen soon.” She pinched out the butt of her Gauloise. “Stay quiet. There may be scouts.”

  As she said it, though, she became all too aware of the stillness that had settled over the forest. When was the last time they’d heard something other than the crunch of their boots in dead leaves? She trudged ahead of Phillip in search of the ridgeline and strained to hear anything between the trees. Thankfully, he didn’t ask questions, just pulled the rifle he’d taken from the farmhouse out of its loop on his pack.

  Something shuddered deep in the earth then, a pulse like drums. For a moment, she thought it was the sound of her own heart in her ears, but no—it was all around them. Where the earth had been soft just moments before, it now sifted like ash under her feet. The trees had tightened, desiccated—as if some wave of sickness were coursing through them at record speed.

  A tug in Simone’s chest made her vision blur, and for a moment, ancient ruins loomed before her, then melted away again. It reeled her forward—she wanted to stand in the ruins, run her hands against the cool stones.

  Idiot girl. A mirage, a trick of the starlight. She had to steady herself against a tree trunk to catch her breath. The forest was still the forest.

  “Did you feel that?” Phillip whispered. He was panting alongside her, his features no longer clear.

  Simone nodded, not caring whether he could see her or not. Then, with a tap to his wrist, she took off running toward the ridgeline, the stink of smoke heavy in her nose.

  Below them, the town of Siegen and the military base stretched out, picturesque white stone and streaming river.

  And a thick cloud of black smoke billowed over the blazing fire at the military base.

  CHAPTER SIX

  LIAM

  The Eisenberg siblings took it pretty well, all things considered. A world washed in darkness and fire and blood, the ruins, a shattered and unknowable past. The creatures who loped through it, each dangerous in different ways. Professor Einstein’s theory called it a dimension, but that wasn’t enough. It was the shadow of another world, a universe that lived beside theirs like the pages of a closed book. Given their similar geography, he suspected the worlds shared a common link, a common seed, but like dinosaurs and chickens, they’d somehow grown apart.

  It was enough to send most folks screaming, or at least calling the warden at Bellevue. Daniel understood because he’d seen it; he saw its potential as a weapon for ending wars. Rebeka, though, seemed more resigned to their fate. She donned that long-suffering look Liam knew too well from their neighbors back in Hell’s Kitchen: worn out and incapable of being shocked, betrayed so many times she just expected it.

  He wanted desperately not to disappoint her—not to disappoint either of them. He wasn’t crazy. He wasn’t dumb. He’d always been the overachiever, the insufferable one, the youngest kid in class practically crawling out of his seat to answer the professor’s questions. He never knew when to give up—he was always wanting. More knowledge, more power. He was going to get into Siegen whether they helped him or not.

  But it’d sure be easier with their help.

  Liam hadn’t stumbled into the dark arts like in some Bela Lugosi movie: with a secret wish in his black heart; with candles, incantations, blood. That story came later. In the beginning, there was only the flame of his anger casting strange shadows on the walls. In the beginning, there was nothing but his own yearning and a sheet of numbers that wouldn’t add up.

  It began when he was sixteen, when, yet again, he hadn’t been enough to stop all the evil in the world. He’d just started his second year at Princeton, and only visited his mother on weekends, like it proved he was all grown up and could take care of himself. (He wasn’t, but he loved to pretend.) But when the call came from her neighbor that Tuesday night, he raced for the last train back to New York, feeling the whole way as if his lungs were full of glass.

  As he raced down West Fifty-first Street, the shards twisted deeper, rooting around with agonizing ferocity. Something was wrong, something was wrong. His insides were already shredded when he raced up the stairwell to the brownstone attic they shared with two spinsters. The door to his ma’s room was open. The other boarders and the police formed a wall in the narrow entryway, too thick for him to push through, but he could smell the blood.

  She didn’t come out of surgery until Thursday—morning, maybe, though he’d lost all sense of time and space, dimensions folding and tearing and unfolding all around him. The whole world was at once too bright and also nothing but shadows; the hospital was full of thin shapes that scurried away when he looked at them head-on. He could only smell bleach and the blood staining his hands. The doctor will be with you soon, and maybe it had been soon, but it felt like another century.

  Once the doctor arrived, Liam wished he hadn’t.

  Five blows to the cranium and spinal column with a tire iron. Sustained damage to cerebral cortex, jaw, malar bone. We had to extract the right eyeball.

  Might never fully recover.

  Her speech is—

  The doctor’s words were only whispers, a taunting wind that blew and blew. He’d failed again. He’d thought they were safe at last, that he could leave her alone while he went to school, that they didn’t have to worry anymore, but he’d been so wrong.

  He sat on the edge of th
e twin mattress that smelled like witch hazel. Stared at his mother, her good eye. She stared through him.

  What started it this time? he wanted to ask, he wanted to scream. But he already knew the answer: his father needed no reason at all. Just a belly full of whiskey after a night drinking with his red-armbanded friends.

  They’d thought his father was dead, for a while. He’d been quiet, absent long enough. Liam had daydreamed about an accident at the docks, a cable snapping free and a crate crushing him beneath it. Maybe he’d been trampled at one of the German-American Bund rallies. Liam had stopped scanning the papers and obituaries, stopped snooping through his mother’s mail. He’d been so sure Kieran Doyle had slipped back into whatever dark and gruesome crevice he called home.

  Why he found them didn’t matter—whether he’d come looking for money, a home-cooked meal, wifely duties fulfilled. To gloat over some new family he’d forged, maybe, or chastise her over their sissy of a son. To spout more of his hateful venom, the kind that used to poison every meal they ate together: that the Germans had some good ideas, the jobs of hard workers like himself needed protection, his family came over the right way and America had no room for more. He’d found them again, and because Liam had let his guard down, because he’d dared to believe he was in control, it was ripped away from him once more.

  You’ll need someone to care for her. A grown-up, the doctor stressed, looking him over in his ill-fitting suit. So he made the arrangements, reaching for his slender wallet with numb fingers. Moved them both to a rented room in Princeton, just a few blocks from campus. Divvied up his food stipend, added a few hours to his library shifts. The numbers still wouldn’t add up.