Shadow Touch Read Online Free

her shadow. If her shadow had been capable of seeing reason, they wouldn’t be at Segue, risking everything for help. They could have gotten along just fine back at home, coexisting with a degree of equanimity.
    “Which means,” he clarified, “you need to stay in approved areas. No one here can go everywhere they want, not even me.”
    Her shadow rubbed a breast suggestively.
    Ellie sighed.
    Dr. Kalamos’s face reddened, but he pressed on valiantly. “Can you agree to stay in approved areas?”
    Her shadow arched her back so her breasts jutted. “No,” she answered. “Who hurt your face?”
    Dr. Kalamos ignored the question and looked over at Ellie for direction.
    “She tells the truth,” Ellie said. “I’ve never heard her lie.” Not like me.
    “I do what I want to,” her shadow added.
    Way to put him at ease. Chances were they’d never let Ellie out of that cell now.
    A question glinted in Kalamos’s eyes. “Can I touch you?” he asked the shadow.
    “Oh, please touch me,” her shadow answered, spreading her legs on the seat of the chair and flaring her hips.
    Ellie wanted to die. Her shadow had always been bad, but this was mortifying to the core. Tears of humiliation pricked at her eyes, but she steeled herself against them and got to the point. “Can you help us? Your research said you were studying shadow.” Ellie gestured to her own. “Can you help me with that thing, or not?”
    But Kalamos was reaching toward her shadow. He grazed his thumb over the smooth surface of her shoulder, then tried to palm it. His hand went right through what appeared to be dark flesh.
    “You can do better than that,” her shadow said.
    Kalamos glanced back over at Ellie. “Is she a ghost? A manifestation of spirit, but tied to you somehow? Like a dead twin?”
    “I’m pretty sure she’s my shadow.” Ellie didn’t cast one, but it was hard to demonstrate in this ambient light.
    “Segue has ghosts,” Kalamos continued. “They are three-dimensional as well. And my understanding is that they are variably conscious of the living, though fixed on their own agendas. It’s similar to this behavior.”
    “Bor-ing,” the shadow said.
    The fact that Dr. Kalamos didn’t understand or accept the basics made Ellie’s humiliation all the more acute. She was going to have to articulate the worst. “No, she’s not a ghost. She’s my shadow. My dark half. She’s the most terrible part of me. Think Freud. Think id.” Ellie sharply gestured again to her shadow. “She is me. And I am her.”
    The shadow leaned forward. “I hate myself.”
    “Ditto!” Ellie cried.
    Dr. Kalamos furrowed his brow and stood up again. “She is you,” he repeated. “Like a reflection of your inner being?”
    Ellie sat back, exhausted. “Yes.” Finally, he was getting it. Really, she’d hoped for more. “And we need your help. I can’t live like this. I won’t.”
    Kalamos leaned against the door, his arms crossed over his chest, seeming to consider the problem with a bothersome nonchalance. “I’d like to help you, really I would. But this is out of my field of study—”
    “But you study shadows!” Ellie interrupted. At last she’d found someone whose life work was researching her condition. There was no way she’d let him stand there and deny it.
    “Ms. Russo, I study Shadow, which is completely different from your ‘shadow.’”
    The dark version of Ellie had her attention on the soldiers, whose guns rested at their chests.
    “Sounds the same to me,” the shadow said.
    Had she exposed herself for nothing? Ellie wondered. After all this, she’d made her life worse. The thought made the room tilt into a slow careen.
    “Shadow is Segue’s term for a newly discovered . . . element. My research involves examining its properties.” He shook his head. “It has nothing to do with an actual shadow, certainly nothing like”—he flicked a glance—“her.”
    Ellie felt weak. “Now what am I going to do?”
    Dr.