Free Shadow Hunt by Erin Kellison

to be claimed by a House.
    Mathilde was ready for it, an opportunistic woman used to getting her own way. “You wanted Slight all along, didn’t you?”
    Cam glanced at Slight, who had his arms out, hands open, a posture of submission.
    “Cam?” Ellie asked. She understood their peril too.
    But Slight’s offer was a trick. Had to be. Slight couldn’t become a member of Martin House if he was dead. What was the point of that? These mages weren’t inclined toward selflessness. There had to be more to it.
    “You wanted the stray,” Gunnar said. “Well, there he is.”
    The shadow collapsed out of Mathilde’s hold and Ellie pulled her across the courtyard and into full union, visible to Cam—to everyone—in the flush of anger that suddenly colored her features, the dip of Ellie’s chin and narrowing of her eyes. The shadow’s fight was now Ellie’s fight.
    “There,” Ellie snapped. “My shadow won’t hurt anyone. We just want Slight.”
    Cam caught some kind of communication in the eye contact between Gunnar and Slight. A little . . . regard on the part of Martin House. This might just be Slight’s moment after all, his dream coming true after all his hard work.
    Cam’s mind worked fast to puzzle out the possible outcomes, but . . .
    Slight’s narrow expression went avaricious. The Shadows misting the spot where he stood began to churn, as if kicked up by sudden movement . . . and then he was gone.
    Had he disappeared to attack? Invisibility had been Slight’s advantage from the first.
    No . . . Cam peered more closely into the Shadows, the Twilight trees beyond the Seminary, and the grassy amble of lawns. There: Slight was running off, obviously trying to lead him away from Mathilde. Come and get me.
    Still didn’t feel right, didn’t balance in Cam’s head, but somehow he knew that talion for Marcie’s death was now or never.
     
     
    Ellie finally drew a decent breath when Cam stepped away from Mathilde. The mage bitch backed immediately toward her father. Yeah, run to Daddy.
    Ellie was always aware of her shadow’s nakedness, of her shadow’s hedonistic abandon where passions of all kinds were concerned. But Mathilde had made her a spectacle . . . in front of all these people....
    The other mages who’d gathered for this dirty little lesson now resembled a pack of wolfhounds panting to leap forward, but they didn’t. She and Cam still had the upper hand: the knife and her shadow.
    “Ellie.” Cam quickly cocked his head back and to the right. She figured that was the direction he’d seen Slight go.
    Right. If they were going to catch him, they had to go after him now. As it was, only her shadow had a chance of tracking and catching up to him.
    She and Cam met, wary, at the west corner of the courtyard, and backed into a run from the Seminary. They left behind the neat pathways. Slight had made a trail of flattened grass footprints across the lawn—none too subtle—to lead them away from Mathilde and her father. To protect Martin House.
    “I don’t like this,” Cam said to her.
    “Neither do I,” Ellie answered.
    But they were losing time. They took off across the grass, though Slight wasn’t visible anywhere. She pumped for speed and distance, Cam beside her. They couldn’t lose this chance. The chilly air in her lungs felt like crystal shards, but she didn’t slow down.
    Ellie focused her thoughts on Marcie. She thought of Marcie’s warm welcome, warm kitchen, warm smile. Thought of the night Marcie died, when Ellie had finally made it to the kitchen, not understanding why tears were streaming down her face and why a scream was lodged in her throat until she spotted Marcie’s lifeless body held in her shadow’s arms.
    Emotion turned in Ellie’s breast, grief surging, anger refocusing. She thought of Slight, the perpetrator of the crime, and released herself. The shadow sprang out of her body, a keening noise rising from its throat, and it sprinted forward, a hunter after