Shadow Hunt Read Online Free Page A

then it was entirely his fault.
    What was he doing with that ?
    She looked back at him and bored her gaze into his profile, but he would not turn his head.
    Look at me!
    Her attendant stepped back from patting her down. “Do you wield Shadow?”
    The black box went back into Cam’s pants pocket.
    “No,” Ellie said in a strangled voice. She had a shadow, but it wasn’t made of the magic stuff. Actually, she didn’t know what it was made of—a bit of her soul, perhaps—which was the opposite of what the attendant meant. “No,” she said again.
    Cam had a ring, and she guessed it had to be for her. If she let her shadow go right now, her dark self would dive for Cam’s pants, which was not the way she wanted to meet Gunnar Martin or his murdering lackey Slight.
    “Very good,” the attendant finished. “If you will just pass through these doors, you will find another car waiting to take you through the wards and up to the main house. Enjoy your stay at Martin House.”
    Cam had obviously chosen to ignore that the attendant had exposed the ring. He was coolly explaining that only his eyes were touched with Shadow, augmenting his vision, and that the rest of him was human. The explanation didn’t move his attendant until Cam went into the story of how his eyes had gotten that way, at which point, a call was made.
    The attendants waited silently for the reply.
    Ellie looked to Cam, at a loss about so many things and yet on the brink of such danger. A murder. Talion. Martin House. The Dark Age. And now a diamond ring. Ummmm?
    Cam shrugged, finally brought his black gaze over. “My grandmother’s. I had it sized to fit you months ago. Been imagining you showing it off, you know, like girls do when they’re happy.”
    She shook from the inside out. “You get that this is not the time, right?”
    “Yeah, well, tell me a better one,” he argued back, right there in front of the attendants of the enemy. “I didn’t mean for you to find out like this, though.”
    What was he thinking bringing that thing along? He’d gone insane. They had work to do. Dire, ugly work.
    Cam’s attendant was back with his answer. “Your altered eyes have been approved.” The attendant turned to Ellie. “If you are the woman who was accompanying Dr. Kalamos when his vision was altered, then we’re told you do possess Shadow. Please declare it now.”
    Ellie shook her head. “I don’t have a drop of Shadow inside me.” She was tempted to mention Brand’s name just to get them through, but didn’t want to spend that currency before even getting inside the main building.
    Cam stepped to her side. “She doesn’t have Shadow. If she did, my touched eyes would see it.”
    The attendant bowed his head slightly in acknowledgment. “I’m sorry. We have other information.”
    Slight-gathered information, no doubt. How else could Martin House know?
    Ellie kept herself still, but she was squirming inside. “I have a shadow, but not Shadow, as in magic.” But they weren’t going to buy it. No one did without seeing her shadow for themselves.
    “Ma’am, surely you understand that with tensions as they are in these dark times, we cannot let you pass without declaring.”
    She sighed in exasperation. Sooner or later her shadow was going to make an appearance anyway.
    “Fine,” Ellie said. “But I really don’t know what she’ll do right now.”
    Go after Martin or Slight? Dive into Cam’s pants? Or worse? This never got any easier.
    Ellie let herself go, and her shadow stepped out of alignment, bare breasts leading. The intensity of Ellie’s anger diminished, her mind becoming clearer.
    The two attendants’ expressions remained remarkably controlled. But then Slight could be invisible, so maybe a naked shadow wasn’t that big a deal.
    Her shadow climbed up on the table, knees open, crouching to pounce like a feral cat.
    Her deepest self was interested in the attendants, even trumping Cam’s ring. Interesting.
    A flush of