Free Burning in a Memory by Constance Sharper

up there connected to the next hall. The extra blankets sat in the nearby closet. His bedroom was the first on the right.
                  When he opened the door to his bedroom she wasn’t sure what to expect. There was only one large bed in this room with dressers taking up the rest of the space. The room was at least ten degrees cooler than the rest of the house making the navy blue comforter inviting. She perched on the edge of the bed.
                  “You’re not a big fan of decorating apparently,” she pointed out. This place screamed bachelor pad.
                  “Well, it’s not technically my room. I’ve only been crashing here for two weeks or so. This is Tony and Priya’s house.”
                  She perked up.
                  “Why are you staying here then?”
                  “It’s a temporary thing until we move to the new house. It’s also safer so long as Tony and I don’t tear into each other,” he explained.
                  “At least he wasn’t that bad earlier.” Anything had to be better than the incident at the pizza parlor.
                  “He was too distracted by the shade attack. I’m sure he’s going to give me shit for dropping you off and going alone. But don’t worry about him, he’s just a hot head,” Adam said.
                  She laughed and smiled for effect. She didn’t care about Tony when Adam sat so close to her. Despite the brutal attack, the shades had bought her extra time with him and she was determined to use it.
                  “It’s nice that you’re so close with your family though,” she said. “So Adam…”
                  He suddenly spoke before she could finish.
                  “Those monsters that attacked us were shades,” he said out of the blue. He took her off guard and she wanted him to explain.
                  “They’re called shades. They are magical, like mages, but they are inherently different. Try to understand…” he prefaced in a near whisper.
                  “Mages are just like humans. We are born, we have kids, and we continue our bloodline. Our bloodline just possesses the ability to do magic. But as far back as we have existed, so have shades. They’re something else entirely. They’re the closest thing to evil you may ever know.             
                  “They are like parasites, though. They don’t have their own corporal body so in order to survive they take over bodies of mages. The transformation is a permanent one. Once it’s done, they embody exactly what you saw outside your house. Follow so far?”
                  She nodded only to show her attentiveness. She’d heard this story over a million times and yet it sounded different every time. And every time, just like this time, she felt cold and increasingly uncomfortable.
                  “Shades range in strength just like mages do. It really depends on the shade and the mage it took over. The ones at your house were weak. They aren’t very threatening but they’re a bitch in large numbers. And they’ll attack mages for a number of reasons. Sometimes just to kill us before we can return the favor. Sometimes because they want to take our bodies.”
                  Her mind escaped her now, and she imagined the whole thing too vividly. The shade she pictured, though, was always Mistel. She pictured the woman with her crackling pale skin and platinum blonde hair. Mistel may have not looked like that as a child, but Adelaide could never see her as anything but a shade now. 
                  She wrapped her arms around herself.
                  “That’s crazy,” she said quietly, “and sad.”
                  Adam tried to grin at her, but his dimples didn’t