Daughter of Gods and Shadows Read Online Free Page A

because those things were everywhere, even here and now on the Staten Island Ferry.
    On the surface they looked like people. To everyone around them, that’s exactly what they were, but to Eden, the tall, thin man reading the Post across from her revealed a mouthful of razor-sharp teeth and had eyes like an owl’s. The pretty woman standing at the bow of the ferry, wearing the Donna Karan knit dress and red-bottom pumps, had the face of a cat. And out of the corner of her eye, Eden could’ve sworn she’d seen a shadowed thing squeeze into a seat next to a window. The old woman sitting in the aisle seat nodded and smiled at it.
    Most kids were afraid of the bogeyman under the bed or the monster in the closet, but most kids outgrew those fears when parents said the magic words “You’re too old to believe in monsters.”
    The difference between Eden and those kids was that her mother never told her that.
    Lately, it seemed that the Staten Island Ferry was as far away from home as she would go now when she “ran away.” She could waste away an entire day and well into the evening riding this thing, pretending she had set sail on an ocean liner headed to the South Pacific. Eden stared out into the water, wishing away the rest of the world, listening to music on her iPhone and trying not to think about what was really going on.
    Rose wanted to talk. She always wanted to talk. Rose was scared. She didn’t have to say it for Eden to know it, but anytime you find somebody in your house floating above her bed with fresh bruises around her neck, then that’s a pretty good reason to be afraid. The bruises were real, and if they were real, then that probably meant that the monster in her dream, Mkombozi had been real, too, which meant—what, exactly?
    Eden saw things she didn’t want to see. Dreamed things she didn’t want to dream, and was living a life she didn’t want to live. Eden glanced down at the scars inside her wrists that reminded her how powerless she’d been to even take her own life.
    How old was she then? Eighteen. She’d been eighteen when she’d left home for the first time, rented a room in a cheap motel in Jersey, and tried to kill herself. It was as tragically romantic a suicide scene as a girl could come up with: candles, a tub full of water, and a naked and vulnerable teenager, crying, cutting horizontally instead of vertically to make sure she got the job done right.
    She’d woken up to Rose and Khale standing over her.
    â€œSilly, silly girl!” Khale fussed, lifting Eden out of the water as if she were a wet puppy.
    Eden cursed under her breath. “Damn! And I was nearly in a coma, too.”
    When they got her home, Dr. Rose expertly sutured her wounds, bandaged them up, and Eden was as good as new.
    â€œSomeone is watching, Eden,” Khale told her. “Someone is always watching.”
    Rose had sent Eden a text announcing that Khale was on her way to the brownstone, as if she were the Queen of England, and Eden should rush home to bow to her as she entered the house. She was the Shifter—the Great Shifter, Rose called her, but Eden had never seen her shift into anything.
    Khale was a mousy-looking woman around Eden’s age with oversize glasses and a fetish for coffee. Maybe she assumed that Eden would find her more relatable if she were just an awkward young woman, like Eden. Khale talked cool, was up on all the latest video games and music and clubs.
    Eden could see through the disguises of other Ancients, but seeing Khale’s true form was impossible for some reason. The Shifter made sure that Eden saw only what she wanted her to see. Maybe that’s why she was called the “Great” Shifter, because she was really great at being fake.
    She’d been trying to encourage Eden to open up about her “feelings,” but she immediately shut down when Eden finally told her, “I have no feelings,