Bitter Demons

36. Mrs. Shadowford's Desk

Wednesday night, Mrs. Shadowford and Ella Mae left for the meeting of the Order of Shadows. Zara was left as a guardian and babysitter. I knew she normally wouldn't let me out of her sight, so I had to come up with an excuse to get her out of my hair for a while.

"I fell at practice on Monday, and I just haven't been feeling well ever since," I said. This, of course, was a lie. My shoulder felt better than ever, thanks to Jackson and his mysterious new ability. Zara didn't know that, though. For all she knew, it was the worst pain of my life. I certainly played the academy award winning part of a girl in pain, my face twisted in a grimace. "I just want to go lie down and be still for a while."

"You poor thing," she said. "Want me to bring you anything to drink?"

I shook my head. "No thanks, I'll probably just grab an ice pack and go to sleep. You don't need to worry about me."

"If you need anything, I'll be in the living room watching TV with Courtney," she said. "She's quite a pleasant girl to be around. I wonder why she isn't on the cheerleading squad. She seems to have some real power."

"That's a good question," I said. One I actually wanted to explore, but not tonight. Tonight was all about Mary Anne. "I'm sure she'd love to learn more. Where's Mary Anne tonight? Is she watching TV, too?"

Zara's face darkened. "She's a strange one," she whispered, throwing a look up the stairs toward Mary Anne's room. "She said she prefers to be in her room alone."

"That's pretty typical," I said. "Well, good night then, Zara. Sorry I'm not hanging out tonight."

"I understand," she said. "Hope you get some good rest."

I gave a huge sigh of relief when she disappeared into the TV room with Courtney. I disappeared into my room and, with my new source of energy and focus, was able to quickly make myself invisible. Cautiously, I opened the door and checked to make sure Mary Anne wasn't watching from her room. The coast was clear, so I tiptoed down the stairs and crept past the TV room.

Courtney and Zara were watching an episode of American Idol, and Zara was saying, "I wonder why you never see any good witches on this show. I know at least a dozen witches who can sing better than any of these people."

"How can you tell when someone is a witch?" Courtney asked.

It sounded like they were going to be sitting there for a while, which gave me at least an hour to search Mrs. Shadowford's suite. The lock on the door was surprisingly easy to open. It was exactly the same as my lock upstairs, and lord knows I'd practiced on that one enough to know how to unlock it.

I passed through the door and closed it tight behind me. I dropped my invisibility and was amazed at how much energy I still had. Before the confirmation ceremony, being invisible for more than five minutes gave me the worst headache and made me feel sick to my stomach. Now, I didn't even have the slightest twinge of an ache.

I didn't want to raise too much suspicion by turning on the lights, so I conjured a tiny purple orb that gave off only a dim light. The light hovered near my shoulder and followed me as I made my way through the office. In the semi-darkness, the clutter of trinkets and statues in the room gave off hundreds of sinister shadows.

A tea cup sat on Mrs. Shadowford's desk, a withered teabag sitting on the saucer. That woman and her tea. I moved around to the far side of her desk and felt a tingle of fear slip up my spine like a whisper. I did not want to find out what Mrs. Shadowford would do to me if she caught me going through her things. I had to be very careful not to disturb anything.

Her big wooden desk had a row of drawers across the right side. The top drawer was full of pens and rubber bands and paper clips. Nothing unusual. The middle drawer held a stack of letters addressed to someone named Millie and an old camera that looked like it was about fifty years old. The bottom drawer was exactly what I'd been looking for-rows of files.

The folders were arranged by last name in alphabetical order. I thumbed through until I came to Mary Anne's folder. It wasn't as thick as I expected. I pulled it out and looked for a place to sit while I studied it. Since Mrs. Shadowford was in a wheelchair, she didn't have a desk chair, or anything. I decided to sit down on the floor where I would be hidden by the desk if anyone came through the door unexpectedly.

Mary Anne Marsters' file was suspiciously bare. No birth certificate or school records from her previous school. None of the paperwork said where she was born or where she lived prior to coming to Shadowford. The only interesting piece of paper in the whole file was a letter from a case worker somewhere in the state of Georgia. The letter said that Mary Anne seemed depressed and did not work well with her peers. Nothing new there. But it also said that on more than one occasion, her foster family had complained that she kept breaking the windows in her bedroom. The families believed she was smashing them on purpose, but they never saw any scratches on her hands or body from the glass and couldn't figure out what she was using to smash the windows.

That was it. There was nothing more of note in Mary Anne's entire file. Well, except for the fact that most of her information was missing. I placed her file back in the folder and searched for my own as a comparison. Mine was much thicker and looked exactly like I expected. A copy of my birth certificate, adoption papers, records of various foster homes I'd been placed in throughout the years, comments from Mrs. Meeks, my case worker, and school transcripts all the way back to Kindergarten. As tempted as I was to look through what my teachers and social worker had to say about me, I knew I was on borrowed time and didn't want to push my luck.

Then my finger landed on a file labeled Jackson Hunt. I paused. Why would he have a file here in Mrs. Shadowford's house? Most of the names were female, and I assumed they were records of the girls who had lived here at one time or another. But Jackson's file was an unexpected temptation.

My hand hesitated over the folder. He'd been so reluctant to tell me the truth about his past. Almost everything I knew, I'd found out from Isaac that night at the old hospital. Jackson had only confided in me about his brother, but never about how he'd ended up coming to our world or why he was human now.

Maybe it was wrong, but I couldn't resist. I needed to know.