The Conclave of Shadow Read Online Free Page B

small, dusty mooplings. That shot had been on the cover of every periodical that month.
    My inexplicable discomfort grew, an impending twitch between my shoulder blades that refused to shake loose. I had no desire to be a part of this. I skirted the crowd around the ‘Be a Skyrocket!’ interactive exhibit, which looked more like a full-body video game than something belonging in a museum. Moving further around the edges of the atrium, I traced the history and accomplishments of Argent back to her origins, until I came to the exhibit I was most curious about and least wanted to visit.
    â€œShoulda figured I’d find you over here,” said a voice behind me in a soft, Midwest drawl.
    â€œTom.” I didn’t look at him, didn’t look away from the blank paper face of the figure in the familiar suit, trench coat, and fedora. They’d done my mannequin in a dark grey instead of creamy white, and the lighting in the installation was purposely dim, a corner of darkness in the bright, space-age atrium. I’d braced my hands on the railing to counter a strange sense of vertigo, looking up at self-not-self.
    â€œIt’s good, though. The exhibit, I mean. And also, this display. Good to remember where we come from.” Tom Carter came up beside me and thumped the little placard explaining that Mr Mystic’s association with Argent had always been complicated. I suspected Abigail Trent’s snark behind the carefully worded text.
    I sighed and released my grip on the railing, forced my flirtation with the uncanny back to manageable levels. There was no deeper truth hidden in the display’s shadows, nothing to learn here that I didn’t already know from news clippings and my grandfather’s rarely updated journals. “In this case, it’s hardly memory that draws me. It’s narcissism.” I paused, tilted my head since he wouldn’t be able to see my smile. “And of course, avoiding the crowds. Professor Trent was to have been my buffer, but it seems she prefers the canapes to my company.”
    â€œHeh, that woman and free food.” Tom’s smile charmed, even in the dim light. That was Skyrocket. He brought his own light and energy with him wherever he went. He’d even managed to banish my dour musings. “You know, I could take you around. Introduce you. There’s folk who’d like to meet you but don’t want to impose. And there’s others who wouldn’t mind a catch-up. La Reina says you still owe her for a dust-up you two got into way back in the day.”
    â€œDo I? Fascinating. She has a better memory than I do, it seems.” I glanced around the room, recataloguing the attendees. Yes, it was a minefield of relationships I didn’t fully trust or comprehend, but it was also as Tom said – a chance to unearth old stories that might help put the rest in context.
    And also, I realized as I noticed several staff photographers eying Tom and myself with cameras poised, a chance to make my fans incandescently happy with a bit of inadvisable gay-baiting.
    â€œWhy yes, Tom.” I placed my hand on his arm. “As my official escort seems to have abandoned me, why don’t you lead me through the rounds?”
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    â€œâ€¦ S o there I am , flying across the Huangpu River with the Old Man dangling by his armpits and the biggest damned firefight I ever did see going off in the smog above our heads, and me only minutes out of recovery.”
    â€œBy the armpits? Really?” asked a young Canadian Ace with the too-on-the-nose sobriquet of The Mountie, who’d been gazing at me like an eager puppy since Skyrocket took me up to the living roof and into the orbit of a group of younger Aces. Beyond the group rose the rooftop’s grass-covered model of the seven hills of San Francisco. Plexiglas bubbles inset into the domes allowed light to stream up from the atrium, limning a scatter of whalebone –