Shadowshaper by Daniel José Older Page B

the kitchen table, feeling like someone had splashed cold water down her insides. She knew she was in trouble, and tonight, for the first time in her life, she’d felt like death itself was staring her in the face. But, somehow, hearing that these strange shadows thought so too made it even worse. “I don’t know what to say.”
    “So I got on the next bus here.”
    “Didn’t you have Culebra gigs?”
    “Yeah, I canceled them.”
    “Wow … Thanks, Juan.”
    “You’re my sister and you were in trouble. And there’ll always be other gigs. I told Gordo to see if he could set us up a acoustic show over at El Mar for tomorrow night. You know, for old time’s sake or whatever.” Gordo was a big ol’ Cubano cat who had been teaching Juan music since he was little. He sat in with Culebra when they played New York gigs. “So what happened to Robbie?” he said, prodding his spatula into the yellow, lumpy concoction. A pungent garlicky aroma filled the kitchen. “He just up and disappeared? That kid’s always been a weirdo.”
    “Imma slap him next time I see him,” Sierra said. “Leave a girl alone like that when there’s all kindsa phantoms and thugs around.”
    “Yeah, that ain’t right. Can you get me two plates?”
    Sierra suppressed a smirk — it still gave her a little glint of pleasure to be taller than her older brother. “So lemme see if I have this right,” she said, setting down two plates. “From what Robbie said, the shadows are spirits wandering around, and then a shadow shaper comes and gives them a form, yeah?”
    “Right.” Juan set out the silverware and got Sierra a glass. “Like a painting or a sculpture.”
    “And the shadow spirit goes through the shadowshaper into the form, yeah?”
    “And then the shadows become more powerful and can do cool stuff and whatever.”
    “That what the official manual says, Juan? They can do cool stuff?”
    “You know what I mean!” Juan shrugged and heaped a few lumps of steamy egg and yucca scramble onto the plates.
    “What was Abuelo’s form that he did, though?”
    “He was a storyteller, remember? Apparently that’s pretty rare and powerful. Usually it’s painting, like Papa Acevedo.”
    “A storyteller? I mean, he always told us cool bedtime stories, but …” Sierra sighed. The list of things she didn’t know about her grandfather seemed to get longer by the minute.
    “Yeah, he was bad with it. I mean, from what I hear. Never saw him in action. But I heard if someone was coming at him, he’d just stand there all quiet-like and mutter to himself, right? And then whatever it was he was mumbling about would literally take shape around him, like materialize from the ether and go after the bad guys or whatever. The shadows would do what he wanted them to do. Abuelo was a straight G with it.”
    And now Lázaro couldn’t even form words , Sierra thought. She sighed again. Too many thoughts crowded her head, and all of them were tainted with the image of that shadow creature lurching toward her and the golden shrouds’ inhuman laugh.
    “So, you don’t know what that thing was?” Sierra asked.
    “The mouthy thing that jumped you? Never heard of anything like that. Or the golden things. That’s on some other level. All I ever seen is the tall, lanky shadow dudes. Sorry, sis.”
    Sierra shook her head. “It’s fine.” She ate quickly, said good night, and hurried upstairs. Someone was after her, after all the shadowshapers. Maybe Wick had the answers. She climbed into bed and spread the professor’s file out in front of her.
    Alas, I cannot create. I am a man of science. My only powers are those of observation and analysis. I cannot conjure something out of nothing like the painter Mauricio Acevedo or Old Crane, the metalworker.
    The spirits, for reasons still unclear to me, shun my every attempt to channel them into my unfortunate sketches. I can send them into others’ work, even enliven some inanimate objects, and once