The Neon Graveyard

The Final Sign of the Zodiac

Vicki Pettersson

Please visit http://www.Demonoid.me for more books from our generous members.

Baileyd

Dedication

To Shirley Landberg—thank you for always saving me a spot at your kitchen table.

Contents

Dedication

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Books by Vicki Pettersson

Copyright

About the Publisher

Prologue

You need to know two things about the Las Vegas I inhabit, and the first is this: It is drawn down the middle as if by a line of coal, a gray delineation separating good and evil, right and wrong . . . Light and Shadow. I’ve crossed that line many times now, fighting for life, delivering death, sometimes unsure why I was doing either. I’ve acted nobly in times of great danger, and fearfully when trust would have served me better. Whether super or mortal, and I’ve been both, I’m about as fallible as they come. Yet given the circumstances—given the damned year that I’ve had—I think I’ve done pretty well. I can sleep at night. Or I would be able to were it not for the second thing that you need to know, and that is this:

Another world exists beneath this infamous sea of neon, below the cracked flats of the Mojave, below my birthplace and home. Though I can only visit it in focused dreams now, I once journeyed there, leaving behind the sun-baked asphalt and hard-packed terrain, slipping through the cracks of the city, and into the snaking tunnels that devoured and delivered me to a world closer to the earth’s core than our own. It’s a world ruled by women, and open only to those considered super: heroes, villains . . . it doesn’t matter. This middle terrain doesn’t care if your duty is to save lives or take them. It just wants you to enter. But it’ll demand a prime cut of your everlasting soul in return.

I know. It sounds like fantasy.

So now I’m mortal again, and can no longer access that underworld, yet I still hold the knowledge of the place inside me, along with everything it contains. And as long as I do, my midnight hours will be spent mentally canvassing it for my captive lover. The father of my unborn child. The man I think I could love in any world without lines or boundaries or end.

That’s why my waking hours are spent trying to bust my way back in. I’ve been working it out, you see. Thinking hard. And though I’ve more to lose now than ever, I’ve more to gain as well. In other words, it’s time for me to draw my own damned line. I’m not running anymore. Not taking one step backward. Not giving one small inch. This time I’m the one doing the chasing.

And God help anyone who gets in my way.

1

“Gil! Your team takes the right flank. Fletch and Milo, you boys go left. Hold tight until my signal, okay?”

Eight rogue agents in tan fatigues slid away, single file, at Carlos’s command, looking like paramilitary rebels who’d gotten lost in the wrong desert war. The blustery spring day hovered over the stony Mojave, the sky’s wide blue face a violent stamp, matching the troop’s mood. The men’s bodies appeared edged in contrast, as flinty as the rock face at my back. It’s probably just me, I thought, blinking hard. I was so used to concealing myself with night that everything struck by full daylight appeared unnaturally stark.

“And Gil?” Though I barely heard Carlos’s low hiss from his position next to me, Gil’s head immediately popped back into view. “Draw them in close.”

My heart bumped in my chest, though I couldn’t make out Gil’s whispered reply at all. Gareth, the youngest, knew it and piped up helpfully from my other side. “He said they don’t exactly have a choice.”

To his left, Vincent strained forward. “Damn, they’re fast.”

We returned our gazes to the ravine below, where the Shadow agents who patrolled the Las Vegas valley, and now ran its supernatural underground, were currently studying our abandoned camp.

“And that can work in our favor.”

The three of us turned to Carlos with raised brows, but he only lowered his binoculars and peered over the cliff, into the ravine. “We need them a little reckless. And we can create recklessness by getting close enough for them to instinctively chase. We’ll break them apart after that.” He kept his hard gaze arrowed straight ahead. “Separate one sheep from the pack.”

That’s all we needed. Settling into the thought, I trained my gaze on the one I wanted. Lindy Maguire. The Shadow leader’s loyal majordomo, a woman who’d acted as warden to the prison of my youth, and the first Shadow I’d ever met—though I hadn’t known it at the time. Planted in the Archer household to run the mansion, the estate—the entire mortal family living there, including me—she’d masqueraded for years as a housekeeper when not openly fighting for control over the valley’s mortal population.

She was Shadow incarnate, her rotten attitude a perfect reflection of the blackened bone, cracked nail beds, and charred tissue lying dormant under her fleshly disguise. I couldn’t scent emotion anymore, not like when I was an agent of Light, but if I could, Lindy—and all the Shadows gathered in that distant ravine—would smell like disease. An invasion as insidious as pus thickening in a wound, a walking, talking plague, miasmic and born for no other reason than to lay waste to anything that was kind and good.

But Lindy Maguire had one giant weakness. She was as lovesick and loyal to her leader as she was dismissive and disdainful of mortals. That made it all the more poetic, I thought with an inner smile, when not just one but two of the mortals she’d been charged with watching had turned out to be agents of Light.

“They’re gonna be suspicious.” Built like a sprinter and just as jumpy, Oliver stuck a cigarette into his mouth, though he didn’t light it. Our enemies would be able to scent it, even from three-quarters of a mile away.

I bit my lip because he was right. It wasn’t like us, rogues, to bait either of the valley’s ruling troops in raw daylight.

“Nah, they’re gonna be hungry,” Carlos corrected, flashing teeth like a wild dog, and he was right too. The Shadow leader was undoubtedly putting some not-so-gentle pressure on his troop to find, and kill, me. I was reputedly the only thing or person left who could be used against him, my father.

A tulpa.

Turning from the chaotic scene below, I pressed my back against the warm rock face, sucked in a deep breath, and looked up at the sky, trying to calm my nerves. I was as mortal as those I’d once fought to defend. Moreover, I was pregnant, a state that—once I’d gotten over the surprise of it—I had simply decided made me more dangerous, not less.

Still, it was one more reason we needed to act now.

“Wedita?” Carlos had caught my thoughtful gaze, and concern brimmed in his great brown eyes. “You okay? We can fall back if you want.”

“Don’t coddle me, Carlos.” I rechecked my weapons—a saber with a sidearm, an antiquated silver trident, a knife with its victims’ souls living in its blade—then turned back toward the ravine. Though it was still early spring, the sandstone was warm against my palm. “We’ve got them this time.”

“There’s Tariq,” Roland said, binoculars pressed against his eyes, chin resting on striated limestone. “And Harrison. I hate that fucker.”

Carlos shot him a hard look. “Don’t be a hero, comprende?”

“Nah,” Roland scoffed. “Those days are behind us, right Vincent?”

Cracking his knuckles, Vincent didn’t even blink. “I was never a hero.”

“Don’t be a villain either,” Carlos said, shooting him just as sharp a look. “Joanna’s gotta make the kill.”

“Yeah, yeah.” The glance the former Shadow angled at me was hard, but accepting. Not so much an I-don’t-trust-you look as it was a puking-doesn’t-count-as-a-weapon-got-it? look.

Yet the voice that popped up behind me was unmistakably honed. “Up for it, princess?”

Jared Foxx, the newest rogue, was sizing me up as I turned. Big deal. The other grays were still doing the same with him, proven when Vincent—all beef, all Bronx—turned on him. “Don’t mess with the mortal.”

This time I didn’t mind the coddling. My real battles lay in the future. Foxx wasn’t worth it.

“They will,” Foxx said, jerking his head back at the ravine. “So if she’s going to spook or go girly on me, I’d rather know it now.”

“Why?” asked Neal, next to Carlos. “So you can run first?”

I glanced between the two men. You didn’t have to know either of them particularly well to know there was a history between them. Both were from San Francisco, though while Foxx had been Shadow, Neal was formerly Light.

“Fuck you, Saito,” Foxx sneered, hissing. “Your family hid behind their foremothers’ kimonos. Some lineage.”

Neal lifted his chin. “And yours never gained enough strength to be considered real warriors.”

The response was fast, I only caught a whip of wind as Foxx raced by, but Carlos intervened. One hand on each man’s chest, he yanked, then pushed, sending them both to their knees. “Enough! We’re on the same side. Not Light. Not Shadow. Gray now. Got it?”

I looked at the rest of my troop. Fourteen men in all, including those who’d just slunk away, and all but Neal and Carlos had been Shadows. Yet out here we were rogues, each cast from a troop, like me, or run out of a city, like Carlos. As such, we walked the line between both Light and Shadow, accepted by neither, hunted by both.

Yet I was the only woman, and for what we sought, that was key.

“Light, Shadow, gray . . .” Foxx lowered his square, stubbled jaw, and jabbed a finger my way. “What I’m asking is if she’s yellow.”

Again I didn’t see the movement, only felt the gust as Vincent whipped by. Though the fist that met Foxx’s jaw would have flattened me cold, he took the blow like a heavy bag. Then, black Irish eyes fired, he staggered, and reared up for more.

“Fuck all of you! I know all about her! This heroine.” Foxx’s bloodied mouth turned up, souring on the word. “Joanna Archer. The supposed Kairos.”

“You mean you’ve read about me in manuals.” I remained leaning against the rock and quirked a brow, alert but calm. “Yet reading isn’t knowing.”

“Yeah? Then here’s what I know,” he said, facing me full-on with that dark, steady gaze. Vincent growled a warning next to him. Foxx didn’t even blink, but his mouth twisted. I kinda wanted to twist it right off of his face. Knowing he could scent it, I let my defiance ride the air like oil floating atop water.

“You’ve been in hiding your whole life.” His chin lowered as he started my way. “Masquerading as a mortal until you turned twenty-five—”

“I was mortal until then.” At least, as far as I’d known. My mother had hidden me well, so my arrival on the paranormal scene had been a surprise to all.

“After that, you allowed yourself to be turned into your dead sister just to stay hidden from the Shadow side.”

Allowed myself to be turned into Olivia Archer? I almost laughed. I hadn’t even been consulted.

He was in front of me suddenly, that jabbing finger now poking at my chest. “I also know you’re gonna need a bigger weapon than your sharp tongue if you want to take down a senior Shadow agent.”

I drew down on him as fast as mortality would allow. Foxx wasn’t expecting it, so it was fast enough. “Like this?”

I tucked my soul blade almost lovingly beneath his chin, my breath hot and fast against his cheek as I leaned in close. His amplified sense of smell ferreted out the chalky thread of my resolve, which was enough to shove the issue of my mortality aside, and keep his ass still.

“Let me tell you a little secret about this knife. It’s not just another conduit. Not merely a weapon that can kill both mortal and supernatural beings. No, it can cut the life out of anyone, and stores those doomed souls in its curved blade. Sometimes the soul’s trapped energy gets so riled up that the tip glows, red as a hot poker. Other times, if you listen close, you can hear a scream bend along its shining edge.

“I sleep with this knife beneath my pillow, so I’ve heard the secrets those murdered souls have to tell. Their lost hopes and dreams. Their cries for justice. It reminds me of a music class I took when I was a kid. Everyone singing at the same time, individual voices raised and vying for attention, yet expressing the same lament. If you’re interested, I’d be happy to add yours to the chorus.”

He hesitated, then shook his head, barely.

“Then here’s a little something else you need to know about me, Foxx. Something the manuals apparently left out.” I pressed the knife tip against the blue-green artery in his neck, and waited until his eyes widened. No one else moved. “If I want you to touch me? I’ll invite you to do so. Until then, keep your hands to yourself, shut your hole, and hold the fucking line so I can shake off this mortality once and for all.”

I might not be the Kairos, dammit, but I was determined to be the savior of my own life.

Foxx’s body remained stiff for another long moment, weighted options flitting behind his irises. Yet whatever he saw in my return gaze had them all dropping away . . . though admittedly the magical blade probably had something to do with it. I was the only one who could touch it without burning my flesh. I was the only one of the grays who could touch any conduit at all.

Foxx apparently knew that too. He drew back slowly, which I allowed, and when he finally returned to his position at the south side of the slanted rock face, I tucked my blade away and turned back to the ravine along with the others.

It was Gareth who finally broke the silence. “Pregnant chicks, man. They’re so edgy.”

A chuckle rode the group like a breeze as everyone relaxed.

“It’s okay,” Carlos said, kneeling again next to me. “We want her edgy.”

“I’ve got all sorts of edges these days,” I murmured, focusing on the spot I’d been studying before. Shifting, I shielded my eyes with my hands. “Where’d Lindy go?”

A voice, hard as granite, thumped over my right shoulder. “I’m right here, you edgy bitch.”

“Shit!”

She swooped before I could duck, but not before the closer rogue agents formed a wall. I still ended up with the wind knocked from me, pinned against the rocky outcropping, but I was alive. And for whatever reason, Lindy allowed me to stay that way—backing off, at least momentarily. She fell into line with six ally Shadows, each holding a weapon, each eyeing me, and each levitating.

I frowned, and risked lifting my head a little. “You’re levitating?”

Lindy chuckled, her wiry gray hair flaring over her shoulders as she rose a foot higher. Impressive . . . though I hated to admit it. “Once again, the power has shifted. The Shadow side of the Zodiac is more dominant than ever. Thanks to you.”

Foxx flicked a glance at me, as if to say, I knew it.

Lindy spread her long, thin arms wide. “You should all be more careful. Those who hang around Joanna Archer tend to get”—she gave me a pointed, and somehow knowing, smile—“left hanging.”

I said nothing. Lindy was obviously taunting me about something, but the meaning was lost on me. Besides, talking wasn’t swinging, and verbal sparring was one area where we were still equals. “Hey, I’ve been meaning to ask, how’re the digs? I hope you haven’t changed the wallpaper. My mother loved it.”

Lindy’s mouth thinned. If there was anyone she hated more than me, it was my mother. Forced to sit by and watch as her leader chose another woman over her, they’d all had to eat crow when that woman was revealed to really have been a disguised agent of Light. Yet Zoe Archer was well out of reach now, so I—who’d also long fooled Lindy as to my real identity—naturally bore the brunt of her anger. “I like the hair,” she said, fighting—for a moment—like a girl. “Have to change it often?”

As she referred to my need to constantly alter my identity, her hooded eyes scanned the long bob, currently pulled into two low ponytails behind each ear, and the chocolate brown hue. I’d altered it once since discovering I was pregnant, back to its natural color so I wouldn’t have to touch it again. Ah, irony. I wouldn’t take a chance with chemical dyes, but I’d stand in front of an army of Shadows and bait the agent who hated me most.

“Not as much as you might think. I generally keep my cover identities for years.” She rose even higher in the air, piqued now, but I didn’t give her a chance to respond. Separate one sheep from the pack. Let’s see if I couldn’t lure Lindy into a little recklessness. “So has your sugar daddy reprimanded you for falling asleep at the wheel when you were supposed to be watching the Archer household?”

“I did not fall asleep.” She lowered her chin and I got a glimpse of the woman I better knew. Though employed as a housekeeper, she’d never possessed a subservient attitude. In addition to being a supernatural bitch, she was a petty counter of slights, she hoarded information to use against others later, and she was obsessively proud. “I knew everything that went on in that house! Or learned of it all, sooner or later.”

“Mostly later.” I muttered, and Oliver—who’d leaped in front of me with that sprinter’s grace—growled a warning. I checked my attitude. It was the gray’s asses that were on the line here.

“Even belated knowledge can be deadly, Joanna,” Lindy shot back, again offering up that brittle smile. Yet she still didn’t lunge. The other Shadows ringed us like the walls of the Colosseum. So why weren’t they pressing their advantage?

Then, spotting movement, I flicked a glance over their heads. When I returned my gaze to Lindy, I offered up a secretive smile of my own. “So true.”

A Shadow cursed, startling the others, drawing their heated focus away from me. They quickly spotted what I had, a second ring of grays as unexpected as Highland mist as they appeared over the cracked desert terrain. Gil and his crew, who hadn’t waited for Carlos’s signal after all.

The look on Lindy’s long, sallow face was priceless, and I beamed as her gaze darted from one gray to the next in a silent, stunned count.

“There can’t be that many,” she muttered, but she was still counting. Shadows could have only twelve agents in their troop—one for each star sign on the Western Zodiac. But as outcasts, grays weren’t bound by that law. “It’s a trick.”

I made a considering noise in my throat. “Then it’s a deadly one.”

And Carlos dropped his hand. The grays snapped like bands into three distinct flanks, though surprisingly, Foxx remained behind with me. The Shadow agents all had conduits, while the grays only drew mortal guns, so while we couldn’t kill them, we’d certainly give them pause.

“You dare?” Lindy’s enraged snarl was for us all, though her eyes were back on me. “You would fight us? Take us on for some worthless, trampy, troublesome mortal?”

“Don’t call me worthless,” I muttered, slowly moving my hands to my pockets.

“Fine. Hang with her.” That word choice again. That smile again. “Die with her.”

And the Shadows swarmed. I dropped to the ground, fumbling at my cargo pocket. The soul blade was fearsome, but it was a close-range weapon. Against a Shadow, I’d be dead before I could swipe. Finally I withdrew a gun with liquid vials for bullets.

Softening my vision as Carlos had taught, I let the sky, the rock face, and all the figures around me—both those moving and those holding their ground—blur into a two-dimensional landscape, like a photo on the wall. We’d practiced this on the pancake terrain of Frenchman’s Flat, where our cell was hidden. Thank God too. If not, I’d never have seen the breach in my wall of allies, the sawed-off javelin pointed my way. I fired into that blank space, flying backward at the gun’s report, and heard a scream slap back. It was accompanied by the scent of charcoal and hot bile. Even I could scent the Shadows this close.

“Again!” Oliver yelled, and I found another hole. The grays were playing chicken with my weapon, having to trust I wouldn’t drive a projectile through their backs. I tried not to think about the even bigger hole that would appear if I did, and fired again.

Another breath of vomit hit me, this one wheezed from the chest of someone too surprised and slow to avoid the liquid bullet. The Shadows stuttered. Only seconds had passed, yet they suddenly realized someone here had the ability to wield a conduit. Unfortunately that somebody was stuck behind a group of grays who couldn’t.

So why weren’t the Shadows using their conduits?

“They’re running!” Wonder threaded Gil’s words as he shifted and gave chase.

I didn’t dare lift my head, instead focusing on the holes of bright blue sky. But the circle of men protecting me loosened and, like autumn leaves, they too began falling away.

“Go for Harrison!” Carlos yelled. “He’s hit!”

So that’s who screamed, I thought, as Roland shot forward, leaving only his reply behind. “Hate that fucker . . .”

Alone within moments, I’d have backpedaled like a crab if there was anywhere to go. But as battle cries burst like invisible bombs in the air, all I could do was make myself as small as possible, guard my mortality, and wait to see who—Shadow or gray—returned for me first.

2

I didn’t have to wonder for long. Foxx must have been ordered back, because he yanked me into a sitting position, then turned his back, alert, while the other grays gave in to their lust for the chase. It wasn’t often that rogue agents got a chance to flex their offensive muscles. Defense was the heart of our existence. Yet even with Foxx parked in front of me, there was suddenly too much space. I could choke on all this air, I thought, my panic attack hitting belatedly. Were it not for Foxx’s chiding earlier words, I might even have given in to the unsettling roll threatening to overtake my stomach. Instead I swallowed hard against it and kept both hands on the antiquated gun. He turned only briefly, eyeing me with narrow-eyed incredulity.

“So you can really do it? Hold anyone’s conduit?” He hadn’t yet been with us for the practice sessions, and his look questioned my nod as he scanned the perimeter again for Shadows. “Even if they’re alive?”

Every rogue asked me the same thing. I wasn’t sure why I could handle the magical weapons when no other rogue could. For them it was like holding a live wire that’d misfire, malfunction, and generally act like a two-year-old hopped up on soda and Pixy Stix, though with more ominous, painful results. But not me. I could even handle those the Shadows left behind.

“Even if they’re holding the other end,” I said, voice tight.

“Then how about taking this one,” said a voice, rising victoriously behind me. Gil leaped to the rock face, the Shadow troop’s Virgo, Harrison, wedged into the crook of his right arm like a walnut in a nutcracker. The other hand held Harrison’s black leather jacket . . . wrapped around a serrated poker.

“Hello, Mr. Lamb,” I said, finding my feet and a smile as Gil dumped him in front of me. Harrison lunged, but the other grays were swarming again, and surrounded the injured Shadow, fourteen to one. Oliver pushed him into our circle’s center where he ricocheted off Vincent before falling to his knees. I glanced up, squinting as I searched for movement, but the only thing surrounding us was that same blue sky.

Harrison was alone.

I glanced back down. “You know what happens next, right?”

“Sure,” he said, trying for nonchalance, though his voice shook through the syllable. It tended to happen when faced with one’s final living moments. I’d been there enough to know. “Question is, do you?”

“Of course. I kill you with your own weapon,” I said, just to see his Adam’s apple bob, “and in doing so gain the power to walk this world as an immortal.”

And render my frail humanity a nonissue. Then I’d use the temporary power to enter another world. A woman’s world.

“The aureole won’t last forever.” He tried to lift his chin, but I could tell the thought depressed him. He probably wished his death would amount to more than providing me with a short span of immortality. I wished the protective magic would last forever too, but alas. You took what you could get.

“No, just twelve hours. Long enough.” And it couldn’t happen soon enough. His allies might return.

I unwrapped his poker from within the folds of his jacket, keeping my movements sharp and steady, aware that all eyes were trained on me. I took an extra second to glance Foxx’s way; he shifted when he saw me looking. Then, as fast and hard as mortal strength would allow, I speared Harrison through his soft belly.

A pained grunt, a collective groan as the decaying scent of his stewing organs was released into the air, and Harrison went limp. I waited for the power of the aureole to overtake me, closing my eyes when it did not, trying to remember how the magic felt as it’d washed over me the previous two times I’d managed it. But there was nothing, and at Harrison’s soft chuckle, I opened my eyes again.

“The aureole is a great magic,” he said, tucking his hands behind his head as if lounging at a resort pool. The poker lodged in his middle wobbled, looking odd and causing a wince, but nothing more. “But do you want to know what my favorite kind of magic is?” he asked, grin spreading. “Sleight of hand.”

And he yanked the poker from his center.

“Shit!”

By the time I’d been thrown to the ground, the blow was a memory. Carlos’s weight kept the knocked breath from reentering my body, and I groaned to let him know it. Shifting, his own reply was pained. “It’s not a conduit.”

And he yanked the weapon from his side.

His speed saved me. How ironic would it be to survive nearly a year and a half in the supernatural underworld, only to get taken out by a mortal weapon? I sat up, still reeling from the protective blow, shaking and confused. “What the hell was that?”

Harrison cocked his head, the only part of his body visible beneath the mound of grays who’d tackled him. “Something that can flay you to the bone, but has no effect on me whatsoever.”

Carlos, too, was holding and handling the poker to absolutely no ill effect.

Why on earth would Harrison carry a mortal weapon instead of his conduit? I shook my head, trying to clear it, but disbelief ruled, despite what I could so plainly see with my own eyes. “You’d never go far without your conduit.”

Dirt smeared his face, blood caked his shirt—already drying and disappearing, his body healing fast—and still I saw the stark nakedness stamping his gaze. As unbelievable as it was, he really didn’t have his conduit.

“You’re not the only one trying something new,” he said, bitterness carved into each word. The false conduit had been a neat trick, but it was spent now, and the only one up his sleeve.

Carlos straightened, heart-shaped lips pursed as he stroked the slim line of his mustache with forefinger and thumb. “The Tulpa ordered you out on the streets without your weapons?”

Harrison jerked his chin defiantly. “He knows what you’re trying to do.”

Carlos and I looked at each other, my own concern reflected in his dark eyes. If that was true, we were screwed. How would I ever gain temporary immortality if I couldn’t kill Shadows with their own weapons?

Despite being supine on the ground and recovering from a chest wound, Harrison began to laugh. “You really don’t get it, do you? The Tulpa doesn’t care that you’re his daughter. Not any more than he cares that I’m his agent.” That bitterness leaped into his face again, strangling his laughter. “All he cares about is power.”

He hiccupped, shook his head, then dropped it and fell silent. Feeling Harrison’s surrender, Vincent rose from straddling him, and pressed a boot to his chest, while Carlos and I went to confer.

“What do you think?”

Carlos shrugged. “No reason for him to lie.”

No. Harrison knew he was going to die.

“It’s clever,” Carlos went on. “We need to turn an agent’s personal weapon against them in order for you to gain the aureole. If the only agents in the valley carrying conduits are agents of Light, then it forces us to go after them.”

I shook my head, and took a step back. My old troop may have turned their back on me, but I couldn’t kill one of them in cold blood. I couldn’t even see doing it in the heat of battle. We’d shared meals and laughter and tears together as allies. Maybe they could easily forget that, but I could not.

Carlos rubbed his hands over his eyes, his face and head. “So what do we do? Change tactics? Wait for the Shadows to take up arms again and find us?”

I jerked my head, hand automatically rising to my belly, which was happening more and more these days. “No time. Besides, I’d rather be hunter than prey.”

Carlos shook his head, his shoulders relaxing, his gaze softening to a liquid caramel. “I keep thinking this baby will make you softer, amiga, more vulnerable. If anything, it’s been the opposite.”

I looked at him for a long moment, dangerous in black, which matched his hair, his mood, but somehow, never those shining, expressive eyes. Sometimes his unwavering belief in me was what made me feel most vulnerable. I cleared my throat. “Weird. I’m, like, famous for my soft side.”

Vincent’s harsh, raised voice broke into our conversation. “What are you doing?”

He was straddling Harrison again, knees pinned against the Shadow’s shoulders, one great hand circling his throat. Harrison tried on another laugh, but it came out strangled beneath all that compressed weight. “Just lying here,” he rasped. “Trapped beneath you.”

“No, you’re doing something.” Vincent said, and Carlos and I stepped closer. “Don’t forget, I was a Shadow too.”

“What’s to do?” Harrison asked, but his eyes were sparkling as he gazed up at him. “No. I’m all yours. Take me away.”

I glanced up at the bland sky. The city was visible in the distance, a fuzzy mirage of spearing, glinting buildings, but that was all. Yet I glanced back down at Harrison with narrowed eyes. “Pick him up.”

He was too relaxed, too resigned. Too still.

“Where is it?” I asked, as he hung like a rag doll between Vincent and Gil. The original leg wound, where I’d struck him through the wall of protective grays, oozed freely. Harrison only stared past me, and through me when I shifted.

“Where is it?” I repeated, my voice stiff and low as I took out the gun I’d originally shot him with and pointed it at his other leg. His jaw clenched, but he said nothing. Carlos, though, was immediately by my side.

“What?”

“In your gut?” I asked Harrison, angling the gun’s barrel up. Then I lifted it higher, letting it trail his skin just enough to make him shiver. “Your throat, maybe? Your fucking brain?”

Planting myself directly in front of him, I forced him to finally look at me. “Where,” I asked coldly, “would the Tulpa put a tracking device in one of his own agents?”

Harrison closed his eyes, a smile rising wide upon his face. Vincent sucker-punched his kidney, but that wouldn’t help. We’d get nothing more out of Harrison today, or ever.

I looked back at the sky. Levitating Shadow agents were an impressive show of their side’s increasing power, but the Tulpa could actually fly. So if this smug fucker had a tracking device somewhere in his body—and the other Shadow agents had already reported back to their leader—it wasn’t going to be long before Daddy Dearest made an appearance.

I put a hand on Harrison’s shoulder. “You can stop smiling now.”

“Don’t tell me how to die,” he said, jerking away from my touch. Vincent and Gil, a good degree less gently, forced him back to stillness. “Just make it fast.”

“Don’t tell me how to kill.”

I dropped the gun to the ground, and while his gaze followed it, pulled out my soul blade and plunged it through the bulging blue artery in his neck. He screamed as the poison of countless trapped souls attacked his bloodstream, while every gray around me flinched. I twisted the blade, eliciting another wild howl. Someone gagged behind me. They could smell agony and death in the blade, as easily as gangrene in a Ziploc baggie.

Harrison was too heavy for me to hold, and since Vincent and Gil had both taken two full steps away from the olfactory destruction, I fell with him, collapsing atop to yank out the blade, before plunging it in again, quickening his death, taking care to miss bone. It made things easier on us both.

When I finally stood again, my knife dripped blood, its handle griddle-hot in my palm. I didn’t have the aureole, but Harrison’s soul had been pulled into my blade, so there was no energy for the Tulpa to track. Wiping its edge clean against my pants, I safely sheathed it again, and turned to face the others.

Gareth, our youngest, was grinning. “Still wondering if she’s yellow, Foxx? ’Cuz you look a little green.”

But Oliver’s breath hitched next to him, his gaze fastened on the sky, same as Foxx. “It’s not her. It’s him.”

The furied scream hit us like a whip, cracking in the air around us, and making the ground shake. I pivoted to find a speck, no larger than a bullet, soaring over Vegas’s horizon. Carlos, Milo, and Fletcher all grabbed me before I could curse, and we all did the only thing possible with the Tulpa bulleting our way. We ran.

A tulpa was a person, a being imagined into existence through the strength and will of an extremely powerful and focused mind. Think of Buddhists lying for hours on a cold, marble floor without so much as twitching a muscle. Think of monks dedicating every waking moment to training their minds into single-tasked submission. That was the kind of person and focus required to birth a tulpa into being.

But the Tulpa was more than a mere thought-form. Once he’d gained a physical body and enough power, he’d loosed himself from the tethers of his creator’s mind, and taken on free will. And what he’d willed was to rule over what he saw as the most powerful paranormal organization in his dusty, desert birthplace, the Shadow side of the Zodiac.

Yet my mother had killed his creator before the Tulpa had been gifted with a proper name, and naming something was what really gave it a place in this world. Unfortunately she’d also had to get up close and personal with the Tulpa to do so, which unexpectedly landed her knocked up with me.

And I thought my pregnancy had been a surprise.

So while the Tulpa had extraordinary powers—like the ability to alter every aspect of his appearance, and mind control over mortals—many of those selfsame strengths spoke to a limited strength. The constant morphing into any physical form actually underscored his inability to manifest permanently in the world. His managed control of mortal minds only showed that he couldn’t manage agents, outside of those Shadows he ruled. Limits meant weaknesses. Weaknesses meant he could be killed. We just needed to figure out how.

Later, though. Right now we were busy running for our lives.

Milo—wiry and quicker than the others—was carrying me, which I hated. Bouncing and backward, I risked raising my head but wished I hadn’t. The bullet-sized speck was now a rocket, the Tulpa’s hard, pointed expression clearly visible. I didn’t know how many miles were left until we reached the boundary he couldn’t cross, but it was too many. As if sensing it, the Tulpa jerked up, head and body tilting slightly, before launching himself forward with a renewed sense of purpose . . . right toward me.

I cursed, and Milo found another burst of speed. The fleeing bodies and labored breathing of the other rogues briefly dropped behind me, then Milo finally slowed. We made it, I thought, as Milo settled me on my feet. We were safe on the other side of the boundary only rogues could cross. I smiled gratefully into his dark opal eyes, struck with the sudden urge to kiss his black, bald head. He smiled back, just as grateful.

But Neal Saito wasn’t as lucky.

The Tulpa struck like a tornado, and Neal screamed, reaching toward the rest of us, toward safety, as he was plucked from the ground.

“Oh God,” I whispered, taking a step forward. Milo stopped me with one hand, so I knew the boundary was close.

“So. There really are quite a few of you,” the Tulpa said conversationally, touching down softly, Neal scruffed in his right hand. “I was going to have my troop flogged for lying.”

Gone was the smooth, unlined skin I’d last seen him wearing. Absent too was the colorless hair and long unmarred limbs. Instead ashen gray skin covered a hooknose and hairless skull, where ears rose into spearing horns. Talons the length of my middle finger made his wide right hand look deformed, though his left—victim of the blade I now carried at my side—was made harmless by a black glove. Unfortunately it was the right hand that had Neal, and he was pierced like he was hanging in a slaughterhouse.

I tore my gaze away from Neal’s pained expression and forced myself to meet eyes that glowed like hot coals even in the full day’s light. I’d once had eyes like that. It was the only thing I didn’t miss about not having powers.

“Aren’t you going to ask how I’ve been?” he said in a smoky voice, the corners of his mouth curving into arrows. He’d told me once that this appearance was a mask, but now I knew it for a lie. Who would choose to have veined spikes rising from their back? “What I’ve been up to?”

“We already know,” Carlos answered flatly.

“I doubt that.” Head pivoting my way, his brow quirked like a dart, his every expression honed. “Curious to take a guess, daughter?”

He studied my short black bob, which was new, and my Playmate body, which was not. Though I preferred my original lean, athletic form, I hadn’t had the time or inclination to rid myself of the appearance I’d been forced to don upon entering the Zodiac world. I’d made peace with that, though. I no longer saw weakness in Olivia’s feminine form. Besides, my pregnancy would change me again yet.

Providing, of course, I survived the length of it.

So my birth father and I stared at each other across the invisible barrier, neither liking what we saw. His monstrous strength made me hope I’d spent more time in my mother’s gene pool. My mortal weakness probably had him hoping the same.

“What you’ve been doing?” I finally said, summoning hubris from my position of safety. Maybe, in concentrating his ire on me, he’d forget about Neal. “Probably forging chaos in the black smithy of your soul. But . . .” I snapped my fingers. “That’s right. You don’t have a soul.”

The Tulpa’s brows cut low, and he carelessly flicked out his right index finger. Neal screamed and grabbed at his face. I decided to hold my tongue.

The Tulpa made no such resolution. “Come.”

His mind pulled me forward. I felt its drag, his will trying to exert itself over mine, and knew any other mortal would find it irresistible. I’d seen the robotic response his suggestions elicited, an impulse so strong it overrode confusion and fear so that one inexplicably found oneself doing his bidding. Agents could resist it—the only movement on this side of the line was Fletcher and Milo inching closer together—but as a mortal I shouldn’t have been able to. Carlos believed I possessed a natural immunity as the magical creature’s daughter.

And then there was Neal. Dangling like a hooked worm, and even with pain threatening to overtake his mind, he still managed a small shake of his head. He didn’t want me crossing that line, no matter what the Tulpa did to him. I blew out a hard breath and returned my gaze to the monster holding him. “No.”

“Worth a try.” The Tulpa shrugged.

His arm elongated unnaturally, the flesh extending like another joint was hidden inside. Neal rose higher in the air, and even the seven-foot creature gazed up at him. “You were once Light. I can smell it on you, though it’s now faint, like dried herbs. What’s your name, young man?”

“Fuck you,” Neal managed, though his face was caught in a grimace. It was a look repeated in empathy, if not intensity, on the thirteen faces around me. Vincent even made a move forward, but the Tulpa’s black-eyed gaze halted him in his tracks.

“Well, unfortunately for Fuck You,” the Tulpa went on, with a bland nod, “there’s a much more powerful law at work here.” And now he turned back to me.

“See, enemies are one thing. You expect them to stab you in the back, to stab you in the front, and you don’t even call it a betrayal.” He shifted quickly, and a barbed nail caught Neal just beneath his shoulder. Crying out, he arched his back. Carlos made a pained sound to the right of me. “See? An enemy’s strike? Why, it’s practically the most truthful thing that can lie between two people.

“Yet former allies? People who were once of the same breed, the same pack? Those you once trusted to have your back, whom you invested time and secrets in, and maybe even a bit of that fair emotion called love?” He drew Neal close, patted him none too gently on the head with the gloved hand, then lifted him even higher. Neal’s body swayed with the movement, agony lacing his moan. The Tulpa merely raised his voice to be heard. “Well, those are the betrayals that hit the hardest. A rift between enemies is nothing personal, after all. But a mishandling of friendship, kinship, loyalty? Why, that’s nothing but personal.”

Though Neal was the one pierced above him, the verbal jab was for me. Everyone had read the manuals documenting my poor treatment by the Light I’d trusted. Yet I’d since been accepted by others—I’d accepted myself—so the Tulpa couldn’t hurt me with that now.

Carlos attempted to redirect the conversation. “None of the grays, even our former Shadows, ever belonged to you.”

“They’re all mine.”

“Not on this side of the line.” Carlos said, stepping forward.

“Well, Fuck You didn’t make it, did he?” And as the Tulpa held Neal’s body straight to the side, he closed his eyes, and fell completely still.

“What’s he doing?” I heard Foxx whisper.

“He’s in a trance,” Vincent said, his voice a low rumble next to me.

Gareth stepped up to the other side. “Or he fell asleep.”

“No,” I said softly, though they were both nearly right. I withdrew my gun, cocked it, and stepped as close to the invisible boundary as I dared. “It’s a lesson.”

Neal, sensing the odd stillness, squinted over at us, saw my stance, my new weapon, and winced. He blinked once, a flash of gratitude and good-bye, before his entire body began shaking.

The howling hit us first, scratchy growls and snaps ferried across the desert floor on an unseen wind. The coyotes themselves appeared from nowhere, rising from the desert floor, made from the sand. They blazed over the selfsame terrain, a half dozen in all—dusty and craggy, gritty bodies swirling with debris, the thorns from tumbleweeds comprising their ribs, sandstone chips forming their teeth. Their snarls were the sound of winter wind howling over the desert, though rolled up and rounded off in snapping syllables of fury.

Neal made no move to defend himself as the six beasts drew close, and at first I thought it was because he wanted it over quickly. My second thought was that he trusted me to put him out of his misery. But then I realized the Tulpa had drawn back, arm still outstretched, barbed fingers still splayed, his muscles tensed as he gradually forced Neal to arch back, exposing belly and arteries and neck. The death he’d manifested would be fast, but he was going to make sure it wasn’t painless.

Somehow—despite the horror in the act, the terror at seeing those dust devils barreling our way, and the fear that hadn’t yet settled from my own frenzied flight through the desert—I managed to lift my gun, steady my sights on the chest of my ally gray, and fire four clean shots into his core.

Neal jolted with each—it was fast, but it was still a death—and someone cried out behind me. And I couldn’t stop shooting. Knowing better than to aim at the Tulpa—any weapon only made him stronger—I fired at the beasts. Heads and limbs blew up, dust clouds exploding into the sky before settling harmlessly back to earth. A firm hand landed on my forearm, causing a hiccup in my shot. “You’re wasting ammo.”

I swallowed hard, but relaxed at Carlos’s touch, though a shudder went through me when I found Neal, prone on the desert floor as if the Tulpa had flicked him away. But the sand coyotes hadn’t gotten one bite.

A slow, staccato clap shattered the shocked air. I glared at the Tulpa, and felt the anger I’d inherited from him start to burn. Were I my old self, my supernatural self, my eyes would be as black as his now were.

“Impressive,” he said, still clapping. “And so gratifying to see that the rumors are true. You can still touch the magical weapons.”

“You already knew that,” I said tightly.

“We were told.” He shrugged and tucked his gloved hand behind his back. “But you know those agents of Light. Can’t trust a thing they say.”

“You lie.” The Light wouldn’t have told him that. Not even my former leader, Warren, the man who’d discovered me, lied to me, discarded me . . . now hunted me.

“You should be thanking me, daughter. I’ve taken up your grievances with your former allies. I’m bringing to account those betrayers of your trust and heart.” He winked, which pulled his sooty skin in odd directions, and added, “Daddy has your back, baby.”

A vision of Lindy’s earlier smile flashed in my head, along with the taunt that’d hung in the air like grave marker. Those who hang around Joanna Archer tend to get left hanging. Forget Neal’s quick death. Disembowelment would be getting off easy for any agent of Light who fell into the Tulpa’s hands.

“Speaking of the Light, conveniently, leads me to the real reason I’m here.” He glanced back at Neal. “Though that was fun.”

“I will save you the trouble of asking,” Carlos said coolly, sunlight catching the deep flecks in his eyes like minerals mined from the earth. “We will never align with you against this valley’s Light.”

“Oh.” The Tulpa feigned disappointment. “How will I ever get on?”

Carlos’s jaw clenched. “Then what?”

The Tulpa’s mouth thinned into a sharp line. “I want you out of my city. All of you. I will soon wipe the Light from this valley, that’s inevitable, so my advice to you is to run, and far. Especially you, my poor outcast, erstwhile daughter.”

I risked a glance at Carlos, who’d fled his native Mexico in exactly those circumstances. Mortals had long attributed that country’s rising problems to drugs and the overlords that profited from them, but the real issue lay in the Shadow troop’s steadfast control of Mexico City. When an entire troop of Light was annihilated, another could never assemble . . . at least not formally. If the Tulpa could do the same in Las Vegas, the entire southwestern United States was in for some major paranormal turbulence.

“You can be killed too, you know,” Carlos said lowly.

The Tulpa laughed. “An unsubstantiated claim.”

“You’ve been injured,” I reminded him, darting a glance at the gloved hand he’d allowed to fall to his side.

This time he growled. “Not by the likes of you.”

No. The being who’d cut two fingers off the Tulpa’s left hand hadn’t been “the likes” of anyone. But the means by which he did it? I lifted the blade. I possessed it now.

The Tulpa composed himself by glancing again at what remained of Neal. Then he offered the whole of us a bland smile, and turned back to the city.

“Hey, Daddy?”

He turned and cocked a brow.

“You’ve got something right here.” I pointed to my own face, indicating his nose. Then I lowered my chin, narrowed my eyes, and used the only power left to me—that of my mind.

A smile began forming on the Tulpa’s face when nothing happened, but then there was a small twitch. The left side of his nostril twitched again. He frowned . . . and the entire center of his face shifted, and for just one moment, his nose vanished.

The gust from the Tulpa’s sneeze would have knocked me flat were it not for Carlos’s hand steady at my back. As it was, thirteen grays rocked back on their heels, but the thunderstorm of anger that rode the Tulpa’s brow was worth it.

“How did you do that?” Gareth whispered, awestruck and now behind me.

I ignored him, preferring not to wonder how . . . and really not knowing. I was the Tulpa’s daughter, but Zoe Archer’s daughter too, and she was a woman with a nuclear power plant for a mind. Though gone, she’d left me with instructions, and admonitions, on the power of a mortal mind.

“You’re not the only one with extraordinary abilities, Pops,” I said, arrogant despite everything I didn’t know. “Don’t forget it.”

“And you should know,” he warned, lifting two feet into the air with the ease of a helium balloon, “I never forget.”

Yet he jerked as he tried for greater height, zigzagging one way and then the next. I’d rattled him, I thought, smile widening. He recovered fast, though, and his body shot up like a rocket, hurtling across the desert with the thrust and sound of a fighter jet. He was a speck above the Las Vegas skyline a moment later. Another, and he was gone.

“I was wrong.” Foxx said woodenly. I turned to find his eyes wide, gaze locked on my face. “You’re not just mortal. You’re crazy.”

I returned my gaze back to the city I refused to leave, and the fight I just couldn’t seem to quit.

“It’s hereditary,” I said.

3

Unable to enter the city without attracting notice, or achieve the death we sought there anyway, we gathered up Neal for burial and returned to our cell to regroup. Located on the far reaches of Frenchman’s Flat, best known for Nevada’s infamous nuclear testing projects, the blasted terrain was unreachable by the agents bound to the city, as well as mortals easily discouraged by electric fences and unsmiling men with big guns.

The government patrols had orders to shoot any unauthorized trespassers on sight, but they never caught sight of us. Like ghosts, we were the movement caught from the corner of their eye, the itch between their shoulder blades, the feeling that made the hair on the nape of their neck stand on end. A rumor had also begun circulating at the nearby test site that beasts the size of small SUVs haunted the night terrain, making even the most steadfast soldier wary of the area at the hour we were most active.

All in all, it was the perfect hideout for the grays—throwaway agents who’d banded together and were now forming a troop of their own.

Now that this previously guarded secret was out in the supernatural world, I was shocked at the number of rogues who’d trekked across the Mojave to find us. It’d only been weeks since Las Vegas’s warring troops had learned of us, but our existence was already being reported in manuals across the nation. Eighteen rogues had arrived so far, including Foxx and Neal, the physically imposing Gil, and a star- and sky-loving geek named Kai. We didn’t keep everyone—after all, there was a reason each had been driven from their home troops, and some rightly so—but our numbers were steadily growing.

As with Neal, we lost some to battle, while others had been lone-wolfing it for so long that they found the structure of troop life, as loose as ours was, too stifling. Those agents would fall silent in our meetings, nod at our plans to enter the city—to enter a place called Midheaven and free the men trapped there, bringing them into our fold—but would inevitably be gone by morning, the only sign they’d been there at all a smudged footprint as they slipped into the night.

It didn’t matter. The more active we were, including those stealth comings and goings, the more the manuals spoke of us. The comic books would otherwise be filled with the actions of the Tulpa and his troop, or Warren’s battle for Light. Our mere existence stole coveted page space from the troops, along with the energy from the young minds reading them. The Shadows, especially, were still stronger, but thus far there was nothing either side could do about it. Meanwhile, the rogues just kept coming.

“We’ve got company,” Gil muttered as we approached the sinkhole, finding two such men waiting outside the clearly booby-trapped entrance. They shuffled uncomfortably from foot to foot as a team of thirteen grays—bearing one dead—swooped their way. The men around me sniffed at the air as we slowed, reading everything their acute sense of smell could tell them about the duo: were they once Light or Shadow, how long had they been here, what did they have for breakfast . . . did they mean us harm?

Upon sighting me, one of the men nudged the other, and though Vincent had already set me on my feet, he and Oliver drew tight around me. Fletcher and Milo, holding Neal’s body between them, shifted to take up the rear. Meanwhile Carlos led a forward flank of nine to greet the newcomers. As we drew to a stop before them, and Carlos began to speak, the second reason they hadn’t entered the sinkhole rose like a black cloud from within it, ambling directly toward me.

“Hey, Buttersnap,” I said, nuzzling the cause of the test site’s whispered rumors under her chin. The giant dog responded by unfurling a tongue as long as my forearm and lapping at my hand, practically swallowing it whole. For some reason the beast had taken a liking to me, which was surprising as she’d once been a Shadow warden. She didn’t care for mortals, and she rabidly loathed agents of Light.

Guess my father’s heritage was more potent than I thought, I mused, scratching behind ears the size of army boots. Though after the demonstration in the desert, it wasn’t an especially comforting thought.

My protectors took a step back now that Buttersnap guarded my side. The newly arrived rogues took two.

“Fletch, Milo, take Neal’s body to Io for cleansing. We’ll bury him at midnight, and honor him before the evening’s . . . festivities.” Carlos gave the newcomers an apologetic smile, though he didn’t elaborate. Not yet. “Meanwhile the rest of us will retire to the commons.”

The shorter man’s shoulders slumped with relief. His partner held himself autocratically, looking like an English butler despite his torn T-shirt and jeans, but he too let out a visible sigh of relief, and Carlos gave them a little nod. “You’ve come a long way and are probably hungry.”

Carlos’s standing policy was to welcome any rogue, though they wouldn’t be allowed to stay until they were thoroughly vetted and had agreed to the grays’ objectives and rules. They also wouldn’t be allowed alone with me. I was mortal, pregnant, and—Carlos believed, wrongly—still the reputed Kairos, a sort of savior to my chosen troop. He wasn’t going to take a chance that some rogue would attempt to gain himself a vaulted place in the manuals at my sake. Of course Buttersnap helped disabuse most of that idea as well.

Our bunker was a burned-out post-apocalyptic sinkhole, a dystopian’s wet dream, but also pretty homey. Though it was a far cry from the mansion I’d grown up in, I was comfortable in these cable-lined passageways and rough dirt rooms, all studded with stout candles, carved benches, and talismans cemented into the walls by the dozens of rogues who’d visited here. I had no idea what that said about me, but it was enough that I relaxed degree by degree as we descended into the hidey-hole.

Next we made our way through a room containing a second sinkhole, this one covered by protective wiring and surrounded by blasted rubble. I trailed my hand along a charred scrap of metal that might once have been a car, one of many melted and mutilated objects left over from the atomic cities used to test nuclear survivability. As one might expect, not much survived.

On the other side of this testament to humankind’s propensity for destruction was a simple iron door that led to our version of King Arthur’s round table. The sparse, circular room held sandy alcoves lined in hemp pillows, barrel tables, and flat-topped sawhorses, which currently contained heaps of beef, rice, and the best frijoles north of the border. Stomach growling, I practically dove into my usual alcove, the newly arrived men forgotten. Impending motherhood had lent my appetite an edge I didn’t remember from my first go-round a decade earlier. Of course, I was only sixteen that time, and a bit preoccupied with recovering from a life-threatening attack, so the finer physical details of pregnancy were a bit hazy. Still, I didn’t know I could be so hungry. These days I could medal in competitive eating.

When I finally came up for air, it was because I was tugged by the room’s silence. Though the dog weighing more than a MINI Cooper was giving me a disgusted stare, every man in the room had his gaze politely averted, save Carlos. He gazed at me openly, and with amusement. He could hide his feelings when he had to, but one of his most striking characteristics was that he chose not to. He was vulnerable to each of the rogues in one way or another, giving them whatever they needed, whether a sympathetic ear or the shirt off his back. It had the odd effect of making them more vulnerable to him too.

Carlos smiled, his teeth bright against his honeyed skin, reminding me of an old silent film star. “We were just talking about the Shadows’ odd behavior. They’ve obviously captured someone. Maybe even killed one of the Light.”

I looked down so no one would see the worry in my gaze, and nodded as I poked at the last of my rice. “It would seem that way.”

“There’s been nothing about it in the manuals yet,” Gareth pointed out. He had the best luck scoring the comic books. As the youngest of us—and with his lanky build and spiky blond hair—he fit right in with the mortal kids and teens hungriest for our stories.

“Maybe it occurred in the last couple of weeks,” Vincent said, the Bronx in his voice barreling through the room.

It took time for our actions to show themselves in comic book form. Once they did, the kids could imagine and believe in us, and we’d use that mental energy to fuel our battle against our enemies. Those in the troops could read only their own side’s manual, but I could read all—back issues, new ones, Shadow, and Light. So as weak as my return to humanity made me, I still had abilities that made me unique—the weapons, the manuals, the soul blade that had taken two fingers from the Tulpa, which never left my side. Without these things, I wasn’t sure even the staunchest gray would tolerate, much less follow, me.

Except Carlos, I thought, refilling my plate and returning to my bench. His belief in me remained steady even when my own wavered.

“Be nice if we could find out for sure,” Vincent went on. “It might help in our campaign against the Light.”

“We’ll look into it,” Carlos told him, but his voice was soft and we traded a brief glance. He knew I didn’t feel the same way as Vincent, the other grays . . . or even the Tulpa. Not when it came to the Light. I just couldn’t count my former allies as enemies yet. Not all of them, anyway.

“We know nothing of the Light in this valley,” said one of the newcomers, who called himself Joseph. I didn’t need super senses to know he’d been a Shadow. There was a look to all of them, something that lurked like a shark beneath still water. Everyone here, save Carlos and the late Neal, possessed it. Even me. Maybe that’s why he held the manual he’d been hiding out my way. “But we have this . . . it’s how we found you. It shows the Shadows relinquishing their conduits at the feet of their leader.”

I crossed the room and took it from him, secure enough with my troop of grays—especially Carlos, next to him—to risk getting close. I then dropped it on the room’s center table, and waited for the others to draw close.

“It’s why Harrison was so bitter,” Carlos said, as I turned the page.

Panels that would have previously flared to life in my hands remained flat, the action one-dimensional. I’d once been able to elicit an air-popping “Pow!” or “Bang!” from these pages, along with echoing battle cries, agonized death howls, and colorful bursts of furious action. Yet compared to everything else I’d lost, it was a small thing, so what caught my attention was the accompanying text. “Holy hell. The Tulpa is making his own agents cross into Midheaven.”

“According to this,” Joseph said, having joined us, “the Tulpa has sent three agents to Midheaven already. None have returned.”

“Men rarely do,” I muttered. I knew because I’d escaped twice. Midheaven was a woman’s world, entirely separate from our own, and fueled by the soul energy of the men trapped there. “It’s a pocket of distended reality. It requires a third of your soul in return for passage. It changes you at the cellular level.”

My throat closed up on me after that, and though Joseph looked at me funny, the other grays were used to it. It was a cosmic law: I couldn’t speak of what happened in Midheaven to anyone who hadn’t been there.

“Then what does the Tulpa want over there?” Foxx asked, hands on his hips. “Why weaken his dominant position against the Light by sending his agents to a place from which they never return?”

“The child,” I said, because everyone knew about that. The new Kairos.

The only one, I thought with a heated flush. Because although I might still possess the required divided lineage, I no longer had any power. That meant I couldn’t be this world’s “chosen one.” Fine with me. The designation had put a bull’s-eye the size of the state on my chest. Still, I felt the newfound lack like it was a personal failure. “He’s trying to get to Solange and Hunter’s child.”

My throat wanted to close up again, but this time it was only because I hated putting that woman’s—that goddess’s—name next to that of the man I loved. Yet it was the realization that their non-love child was the Tulpa’s, and probably Warren’s, true objective that had us all exchanging wary glances.

“Control the Kairos and he could easily rule three distinct realms,” Carlos said thoughtfully. The mortal world, the supernatural one, and the twisted, hidden underworld as well.

“Forget risking his agents’ souls,” said Fletcher, shaking his head. “What wouldn’t he risk for that?”

“That’s why he wants us out of here. Less competition. Less . . .”

“You,” Carlos said softly. Because as a woman, one who’d been to Midheaven before, I was the one most likely to beat him to it.

If in the meantime the Shadow agents didn’t understand how Midheaven stripped a man bare from the inside out, they were discovering it pretty quickly . . . and too late. Few men could enter and survive that woman’s world. Question was, did the Tulpa know that? Or even care? After all, as a soulless being, he had nothing to risk, lose, or barter for entry into that world. It was hard to impart empathy to someone who’d never been in a vulnerable position, and the Tulpa had been powerful from the first thought.

“No.” Foxx stepped away from the table. “It don’t make sense.”

I looked at him. My impression so far was that he was impatient, edgy, but shrewd. Yet he’d been subdued since returning to the cell, and in a normal, well-adjusted person I’d say it might have something to do with Neal’s death. However, I couldn’t give a former Shadow the benefit of either of those things. Still, something in the calculated way he spoke, the furrowing of those dark brows, made us all perk up. “What?”

Looking at me, he licked his lips. “They didn’t even try to kill you when they had the chance. I’m not sure we could have withstood that ambush if they had . . . certainly not all of us. Even Harrison pulled his punch there at the end. I saw him hesitate.”

It was a valid point. Lindy hadn’t attempted to kill me outright, and she hated me more than did anyone else, save the Tulpa.

The proverbial light flicked to life in my mind like a fat neon sign. If the Tulpa captured me, he could harness the last third of my soul, enter Midheaven and wield my female energy once there. And he didn’t even need to draw me close to the underground entry to do it. Capture me alive and he could just put his mouth to mine in reverse resuscitation, suck out the remains of my slivered soul, and race there himself. It would also rid him of my presence in this world so that I was no longer a thought, much less a threat to him, his goals, and his troop.

“He wants her alive,” Carlos finally said. “That’s how he plans to take over Midheaven.”

We’d circled around the issue after that, and while there was a lot of speculation about the varied ways the Tulpa could strip my soul from my body and use it to take over the female-dominated underworld—each more gruesome than the other—we got nowhere. By the time Gareth suggested our enemy might ingest my soul by literally consuming my beating heart, my frijoles were threatening to climb back into my throat.

I rose quickly, and the sudden movement had the effect of quieting the room, but it was only after shutting the door behind me that I took a deep breath. Though maybe that wasn’t the wisest decision considering the atomic radiation coming off all the anteroom debris. The collection had grown so greatly that there was barely room to walk around the sinkhole scarring its center. I skirted car parts, twisted girders, and household riffraff from headboards to china . . . all shattered and scorched within an inch of existence.

“Hey, Marge,” I muttered, passing a charred mannequin, but Marge didn’t answer. The bitch.

At any rate, I thought as Buttersnap loyally joined my side, what more was there for anyone to say? Despite our efforts these past weeks, we were back to square one, and still with no way to get into Midheaven. Without the ability to quickly increase our numbers, we couldn’t survive in this valley . . . or anywhere else. And soon I’d be too far along in my pregnancy to walk without a waddle, never mind kill a Shadow as I had today. Forget about rescuing Hunter.

God. Hunter.

Sighing as I maneuvered down my wing’s dirt passageway, I ran a hand along the rough, brutalized walls. It was getting harder to wait, and harder to think of Hunter trapped in that other world. Though he was a superhero, though he was still stronger than me, I had to fight the urge to rush into those tunnels and take up his defense. Something had shifted inside me since learning he was trapped there.

No, that wasn’t quite right. Something had shifted upon our first touch, the first taste. And now that I knew Hunter had never betrayed or truly left me, my mind was locked and loaded on him with a near-violence. Which was surprising if only because the fury arose from considering him precious.

In short, Hunter was mine. Not in the possessive, I didn’t believe people belonged to each other that way, but in the part of me that had shifted to make room for him, much like my body was shifting to make room for the child we’d created together. I needed to get to him. I didn’t care how much stronger than me he was . . . strong people needed soft places too.

So that’s what had shifted. I could now be someone else’s soft spot.

I sighed again, letting my fingertips trail over the embedded stones, glass shards, jewelry, and bits of clothing—talismans placed there by grays in homage to their respective pasts. There were parts of everyone’s life, it seemed, that were better left behind. So when my hand passed over my talisman, I didn’t give it any more weight or thought than the others. The photo I’d cemented there—the people in it too—belonged to another time and place.

The electricity didn’t run as far back as my room, so the candle wax coating the walls spilled over onto the floor, making it necessary for Buttersnap and me to stagger our steps. My room was similarly utilitarian. All it contained were five squat candles waiting to be lit, and a bed still stamped with my imprint from the previous night. The walls appeared to have been carved with dull spoons, and the floor had been given even less consideration than that. I waited for Buttersnap to lie down, and after lighting the candles, settled against her.

“Good girl,” I said, patting her hubcap-sized head, and dodging her responding lick as I leaned forward to open a stainless steel toolbox. Forget solitude and rest. This was what I needed to calm me. My mother had given me this box only weeks earlier, before fleeing the Las Vegas valley for good. At that point, her long-held cover identity had finally been blown, and having done all she could to protect me, she had a new charge to care for: my birth daughter, Ashlyn. A future agent of the Zodiac.

I’d gotten no further than settling the box in front of me before a knock sounded at the door. “Come in,” I called, unsurprised, because I already knew who it would be.

“I brought you another plate,” Carlos said without preamble, giving me a smile too sweet for a leader of an underground band of brigands. I took the food with a murmur of thanks, rolling a tortilla before giving a sheepish shrug.

“Guess I did leave rather abruptly.”

“I don’t think anyone could blame you,” he said lightly, closing the door, though he remained standing. As his eyes darted to the toolbox, I realized I wanted to talk to someone about my mother. Carlos knew of her, had even met her once, and respected her as well. He’d certainly be a captive audience. More than that, though, the conversation with the grays had shaken me. There were so many people trying to kill me. Carlos, at least, wasn’t one of them.

Sure, he had his own reasons for wanting me on his side, but unlike Warren—who’d manipulated me into joining the Light—Carlos had been completely upfront about them. In return, I’d been honest about helping him as long as that got me to Hunter. So far we’d both kept our word . . . though neither of us had met our goal.

“It’s okay, you can look,” I said, when his gaze lingered on the box. I motioned for him to look through it. “I decided that if the Tulpa is after my soul, I need to arm myself as thoroughly as possible.”

He dropped cross-legged across from me and eagerly opened the box, though he frowned up at me almost immediately. “And this will help you do that?”

I didn’t fault his uncertainty. Inside was the most unassuming and unlikely cache of weapons ever seen. Glittery and girly, there wasn’t a honed blade in the bunch, though that made sense. Men were generally direct in dealing out treachery, but a woman’s bag of tricks was an endless supply of smoke and mirrors; strengths disguised as weaknesses, agendas hidden three layers down. Infinite flexibility that, if mastered, could be applied to everything: appearance, identity, home.

“My mother lived a long time as a mortal. It makes sense that most of her weapons were defensive.”

“Yeah, but . . . what the hell is this?” Carlos said, wrinkling his nose as he pulled out a small bag of dry, green powder. When mixed with lemon juice it created the paste needed to apply the intricate designs in henna tattooing. Nothing overly special, much less magical, about that. What was notable were the accompanying design templates, one of which had been applied to my skin at a bridal shower shortly before my first journey into Midheaven.

Who armored you? Solange had asked me then.

“I hadn’t known then,” I said to Carlos, explaining all this, “and neither could Solange, but the intricate mandella my mother had chosen for me was actually a protective charm.”

She’d left the henna unsealed so the visible design would immediately wash away, but the imprint left behind had allowed me to escape Midheaven before Solange could effectively rape my soul.

“Did she give you this too?” Carlos asked, holding up a solid gold pendant, now broken in four separate pieces. I’d worn it to my stepfather Xavier’s funeral.

“Mother said it would shield me from the evil eye.” What it protected me from, again, was Solange—this time as she threw me down a flight of stairs, momentarily dislocating my aetheric spine. Though no longer useful in its current condition, its bright gold scrollwork design was important. Known as a kundan, or hand flower, it was similar to the mandella in that it was a protective emblem. “See?” I said, pointing to the seven multicolored gems. “Those represent the planets, and the enduring strength, perseverance, and triumph of the soul.”

“That’s why you wear that,” Carlos said, pointing at my wrist, and nodding. “I wondered. It’s so . . . girly.”

I glanced down at the matching gold bracelet. He was right. It never left my body. “This was a supposed thank-you for throwing my mother’s wedding rehearsal dinner.” A dinner turned horror show, I thought, shuddering with the memory.

“All these baubles,” Carlos murmured, gazing back into the box.

All this time. All these gifts. I finally nodded. “Quiet weapons for a fierce woman.”

Carlos looked up. “A mother.”

After a moment I smiled. “Yes.”

Carlos nodded to himself and replaced the broken kundan back in the box. “You know, I was only half kidding earlier, when I said I’d expected this pregnancy to slow you down.”

“I believe your exact words were ‘make you softer,’ ” I said wryly, stroking Buttersnap’s head. The animal felt like a warm bearskin rug.

“Nothing wrong with being soft, weda,” he said, soft lashes curling up as he lifted his gaze. “But if we don’t find a way to get you back into Midheaven soon, we’ll have to wait until after the baby is born.”

“No,” I said immediately. Forget the Tulpa’s power, the Shadows’ dominance, the way the Light had abandoned me. Forget my mortality or that I was supposed to lead the supernatural underworld. Midheaven held a man who dominated my dreams, yet he was still more real to me than even the life forming in my belly.

Yet time was an issue. My pregnancy left me both jumpy and exhausted at the end of each day. The chance to enter and exit Midheaven with additional grays—with Hunter—was slipping away like hourglass sand. “No,” I said again, panicking. “No way.”

“I don’t want to take unnecessary risks,” Carlos said, shaking his head. “Not now. And certainly not after you just played pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey with the Tulpa’s nose.”

“Ah, but the look on his face was priceless.”

“Jo.” The single word was light, but I knew a command when I heard it, and I dampened my grin. Unless I wanted to be locked in this room for the next few months, I needed to choose my words carefully.

“Look, Io once told me a secret about the Tulpa,” I said, referring to the ward mother down the hall . . . the one who’d once been charged with rearing this valley’s Shadow agents. There was a time I’d have killed her without blinking, but outside of Carlos, Io was now my closest—and only female—friend. “She said he doesn’t hate the grays because we stand up to him, or despise humans because he considers them weak. He doesn’t even hate the Light more than the Shadows. He hates us all, down to the last.”

“Because we’ve all made our way into this world through blood and bone.”

I nodded. “The Tulpa has no mother, and in a matriarchal society like ours, that’s true power. So he knows he has no real claim as troop leader, not if someone with more power and a true lineage pops up.”

“He hates us precisely because we live.”

“That’s right.”

“But hates you more than everyone else, amiga.”

“Not everyone.”

Carlos shook his head. “Your mother? Zoe Archer has fled the valley. This toolbox alone is proof of that. She is forever out of his reach, while you are not. So forgive me if I don’t find that overly comforting.”

But I did. My mother was out of harm’s way, and so was that first child I’d borne and given up for adoption a decade earlier. She too had needed to escape the Tulpa’s relentless pursuit.

And now I had a second child to protect.

“I’m going to take a catnap,” I said, leaning forward and closing the toolbox. Buttersnap growled at the word cat but I shoved my plate her way and that shut her up. “I need to be fresh for tonight’s rave.”

Illegal desert raves had become our best way of finding new rogue agents.

“Rest as long as you need,” said Carlos, standing. “I can take care of the recruiting.”

I narrowed my eyes. “I thought you said it would help for me to be there. That it’d convince any uncertain rogues that we’re more than talk.” Had he changed his mind because of today’s close call? Or because the talk down the hall had unsettled me?

“Ah, Joanna.” He reached out to help lift me to my feet. “Always so hard on yourself. Let me figure out how to deal with these new developments. You don’t have to take everything on your shoulders.”

“But—”

“No.” He squeezed my hands before letting them go. “There’s always been a good chance the Shadows would take precautions against you gaining the aureole. I’ve been considering backup plans for some time now, and after I think on it a bit more, I’m sure one of them will do.”

“Like what?” If the Shadows weren’t carrying conduits, how on earth would I find a way to turn their own weapons against them?

“If I tell you now,” he said, winking as he opened the door, “you’ll just think it’s your concern. Now get some sleep, stay healthy. The rest will take care of itself.”

I didn’t see how, but then, that was how life worked in any world. You did your level best, stayed alert on the journey, and trusted your next step to reveal itself when needed. Hopefully it wouldn’t lead directly off a cliff. I joined him at the door. “You’re killing me, Carlos.”

“No. I’m keeping you alive,” he said, giving me that gentle smile over his shoulder again. “Go see Io if you can’t sleep.” She had odd herbs to induce peaceful sleep, though her strong massaging fingers were just as potent. Yet as choleric and out of sorts as I was feeling, I didn’t feel like being soothed and I certainly didn’t want something to knock me out.

“And wedita?” he said, pausing only steps into the bumpy hall. There was a twist on his tone that made me tilt my head as Carlos hesitated before shaking his head, as if changing his mind. “Sleep well.”

And he disappeared around the craggy corner, his shadow stretching so long in the candlelight that it appeared to be guarding the hall. Then it, and his footsteps, faded and I shut the door.

“Carlos is wrong about one thing,” I told Buttersnap, sighing as she sidled up to me, looking for more to eat. Her body was a giant ember. Her mere presence fended off the room’s chill. I leaned against her, and companionably she leaned back. “There would be something wrong if I just went soft.”

Because there was a man waiting for me, suffering and enslaved, in another world, and I’d face a thousand tulpas for him alone.

“And the real irony is,” I told Buttersnap, “Hunter has made me softer than ever.”

4

The weekend desert raves had become our best way of entering and exiting city boundaries without notice. Scattered among a group of apathetic teens, all bundled against the desert night in fleece hoodies and cargos, we looked like a writhing sea of military escapees, talking and laughing, dancing and drinking, the desert thumping underfoot.

Not that the outings were without peril. This was how a good half-dozen rogues had found us, and if they could reach us, so could the troops. So we always used unlit dirt roads, zero signage, and cryptic word of mouth for directions. We also set the impromptu destinations as close to the boundaries dividing the city from the cell as possible. The invisible border restricted the Shadow and Light within it like a cowboy lassoing a calf, and I always watched from outside that intangible loop as a stream of headlights wound over the high desert like a glowing snake, dozens of teens bursting from its belly.

Tonight I was struck by a surprising pang of jealousy as I watched the other mortals lose themselves in the big bass throb that sent cacti and jackrabbits into shock. Plastic horns and whistles and glow sticks whipped through the night, and voices arched like war cries over the craggy bedrock while the scent of burning wood and yucca stood up in the air. There’s nothing quite like a desert rave. Something about disappearing into the arid flats is akin to being locked in a slick embrace. Or maybe I just remembered it that way from a youth when raves were a way to escape my parents, the city, and everything else that so sharply defined me.

At two in the morning, the other grays broke away from the main group, joining me on the “free” side of the line. We stood out over there, clearly separate from the other partiers. If a mortal drifted close, they were offered a drink and unobtrusively escorted back to the mass of flailing limbs. If, on the other hand, a rogue agent appeared, they’d also be given a drink, then dropped into a seat of honor next to a small blazing fire and interviewed.

Tonight had yet to see any potential allies, so we had to make do with small talk until—if—one made himself known.

“Why’d you do that thing to the Tulpa?” Gareth said suddenly, tilting his head. “With his nose?”

A half a dozen curious gazes turned my way, and I shrugged. I guess tonight wasn’t going to be a night for small talk.

“He wants people to think his ability to morph into any shape or form is a strength,” I answered.

“Isn’t it?” Foxx asked, his voice wry.

“Can be,” I conceded, offering up a grim smile. “But real people can’t just rework their facial features according to whim. And I just wanted him to know that I know it for weakness. Besides, it’s one thing to tell all of you that the Tulpa isn’t all-powerful. That there’s a way he can be beat—”

“But by showing us a weakness—” provided Fletcher.

“You begin to believe.” I nodded. “And if a mere mortal, using nothing more than her mind, can impose her will upon him—”

“Then we can too,” he said, crossing his arms. Backlit by the bonfire, he looked like a Gulf War soldier. “And what about Harrison? You could have used one of the old conduits to kill him.”

“Sometimes the antiques malfunction.” I shrugged. “I didn’t want to take a chance in such a high-pressure situation.”

Milo, next to Fletcher, scoffed quietly. “Yes. You’re the epitome of caution.”

“You’re talking about that nose thing again, aren’t you?”

They all stifled chuckles at that.

“Anyway, it’s not like messing with him will make him hate me more,” I said, with a shrug. “That whole speech about the mishandling of kinship, and loyalty being a personal betrayal? It revealed his thoughts . . . and a fear. He knows that though mortal, I’m still a part of him.”

“And that’s what makes you dangerous.”

Because while the Tulpa could change physical form like he did underwear, enter dreams like the sandman, steal breath like a cat from a baby, throw mortals in black holes so they disappeared forever, and cause acute pain without ever lifting a finger . . . his own powers could also be used against him. And he’d die as certainly as a snake from its own venom.

Now, I thought, watching the mortals jump and dance and flail in the night, if we could only figure out how.

With that thought, the day’s events began flashing in my mind like a macabre slide show, and I shifted on my feet, antsy. Despite telling my allies that shifting the nose from my father’s face was so they would believe it possible, the reality was that I’d also done it for me. I needed to believe. I should be able to blow up coyotes made of dust with a thought, not a trigger finger. And I should think of the Tulpa as a sort of ghost, a haunting—not my father, a leader, or a threat.

Yet when the mental picture got stuck on an image of Neal hanging in the air, pierced by the Tulpa’s talons, I whirled from the frenetic dancers, still sweating and singing into the long night, and searched for distraction. After a moment of thought, I went in search of one of the men who’d been charged with burying our fallen gray.

Though that wasn’t why I wanted to talk to Kai.

A rogue from San Diego, Kai was one of our newer members. I wished I could say he was one of our rave success stories, and while it was true we’d found him literally dancing in the dark, I’d since learned he’d just been there for the party. Having recently been driven from his troop for “indiscretions” he wouldn’t name, he was traveling cross-country when he stumbled upon us, and decided a bed in a blown-out bunker was as good a place to hang his hat as any.

Carlos had been dubious at first. There was no drive in the kid, he said, and indeed, Kai didn’t use any more energy than necessary to get through the day. He certainly had no great desire to fight for freedom in the Las Vegas valley, yet when Kai declared his matriarchal lineage was that of a Seer—something our ragtag troop sorely lacked—Carlos relented. It had since turned out that he was the second son of a woman who was related to a Seer by marriage, and he had never been properly trained in the mysteries of the sky.

He’d never been trained for anything, I mused, spotting the man-child curled up on a blanket on the outskirts of camp. Everything about Kai—from his bleached, dreaded hair to his deep tan to his preference for flip-flops and cutoffs—said that life was just one big excellent adventure, and a vague head nod accompanied every conversation, like his neck was part metronome. In his defense, he did have an obvious passion for the stars, but he often went off on tangents about how much gnarlier they were when seen from the surf of the Pacific.

I’d quickly discovered in my few dealings with him that you had to have an enticement to get him to do anything, and right now I did.

I kicked at the lumpiest part of the blanket meant to shield him from the firelight. “Wake up.”

“Man, I was chillin’ in dreamland, dude,” he said, but the immediacy with which he answered told me he’d heard me coming. “Gotta get my Z’s in.”

“How ’bout when you’re dead?” I suggested, raising a brow as he sat up and scratched at his spiked dreads.

“Might not be long, hanging with you,” he shot back, stretching noisily. Glancing up, he scratched at his chest and regarded me with a raised brow. He already knew what I wanted. It was what I always wanted.

“Make any progress on those maps I gave you?” I asked anyway.

“Shaa,” he scoffed, rolling his eyes. “Been kinda busy fending off wicked desert coyotes and burying the dead. Doke shit like that, ya know?”

“Excuses, excuses,” I said, and held up the manual Joseph had brought us this afternoon. Kai’s eyes lit like a kid’s on Christmas. He’d been burying Neal, so he hadn’t seen it yet, and comic books—unsurprisingly—were his passion.

I put my left hand on my hip and hid the manual again with my right. He could easily take it from me, which he considered before his gaze darted over my shoulder. Vincent, I knew, stood nearby, and I smiled when Kai’s gaze finally returned to me.

“Maps,” I said.

Groaning, Kai simultaneously slumped and looked into the sky, muttering something I couldn’t hear but had Vincent snorting behind me. “Step into my office,” he said louder, and scratched his ass.

He lifted his floor mat—knocking over a large bag of Cheetos and three cans of Mountain Dew dangling on a six-pack ring—and I yanked out a pocket flashlight and took a seat across from him, watching as he pulled out a cache of maps. Yawning widely, Kai took his time sorting through his papers—most of which were astrological calculations none of us were sure he could even read—until he found the three that I wanted.

These maps had been stolen from a warehouse in central Vegas by a gray named Harlan Tripp. It was a place the Light had designed for their weapons master, so he could create and customize conduits, the magical weapons that matched and amplified a particular agent’s strengths. Yet that weapons master—Hunter Lorenzo, my Hunter—had also secretly created these maps.

Viewed together, they depicted the underground system leading to Midheaven . . . except that they didn’t. Some entrances lay in the wrong places, and others were missing entirely, which I’d double-checked by placing them next to the official map created by the city’s Flood Control District. Each time I studied the trio of maps, I prayed I’d learn something new. That I’d magically discover some clue as to their meaning and purpose . . . any small thing to tell me what the hell Hunter had been doing.

Obviously he’d been searching for a way into Midheaven. He’d been obsessed with finding the woman who’d escaped there with his unborn child. The child of fate, I thought, biting my lip. The one the Tulpa was after, that we all now knew was the true and sole Kairos: a now seven-year-old who was a perfect blend of Shadow and Light.

A half sibling, I acknowledged with a now-familiar shock, to the baby I carried now.

Yet other than laying bare incorrect entrances to a paranormal underworld, the map wasn’t particularly spectacular. Every agent already knew of the fifty-mile pipeline that wound beneath the city, though if they’d followed Hunter’s wrongly marked routes, none would have ever gotten in. Which might have been for the best, I thought, with a small sigh.

In any case, each time I’d entered the tunnels, they’d twisted and turned in impossible angles, growing warmer and narrower the farther I ventured inside. Even entry via the same tunnel wouldn’t ensure you wound up traversing the same path. Switching it up was the paranormal world’s way of letting you know you were broaching a new realm, and a final warning to keep all but the most determined travelers at bay.

“Man, I don’t know why you keep lookin’ at those things,” Kai said, throwing a fistful of Cheetos into his mouth as he leaned in from the other side. “Nothing’s changed. It’s as boglius as ever.”

“Maybe coming at it fresh will let me make new mental connections.” I didn’t have the experience of a lifelong troop member, or the knowledge that a Seer had, but I had wits, instinct, and a naturally suspicious nature, and all three were telling me this was a bullshit cover. Hunter had been hiding something. If I could find out what, I might be able to get to him.

I lifted my gaze to Kai’s. “And maybe you could start earning your keep by helping me.”

Kai shrugged, unaffected as he licked orange fingertips, then pointed to the map on the left. “Check it. So, like, yesterday, before we went off on our latest suicide mission? I was scoping the view with the infrared and then the black light, and then I let the strobes go for a bit because that was totally boss . . .”

I sighed.

“What? Anyway, sometimes things are written in, like, invisible ink or black light pens and shit, it’s an old cartographer trick, you know?” But he didn’t wait for my response, instead pulling out a jeweler’s loupe. “And when I put this Betty under the magnifying glass I found this.”

He pointed to one of the wrongly marked entrances, then handed me the loupe, the same sort I’d used when I was a photographer. Holding it between my thumb and forefinger, I pressed it over the giant dot on the map.

“A little higher,” he said, crunching. As far as I could tell, Cheetos were his sole nutritional staple.

Bringing the flashlight closer, I slid the loupe over the paper, pausing when I caught a faint squiggle. One that elongated into an entire word. I drew back. “Pisces?”

“Don’t look at me, man. I’m a Leo.” He shrugged, then jerked his chin at the marking.

I bent over the map again. I had a basic knowledge of the Western Zodiac, but those raised in a troop, including Hunter, were ruled by the stars in the sky. Their lineage was tied up with mythology and astrology, as if the constellations themselves were their actual forefathers. If Hunter had tagged the entrance with a star sign—and then erased it—it meant something.

“So he named the tunnel entrances?”

“The not-entrances,” Kai corrected. “Totally nutter, right?”

Totally. Even for an obsessed man like Hunter. “Any others?”

He pointed to the connecting map. “Here, also erased.”

I let my eyes travel over the map like a ticker tape, trying to see it, trying not to; moving close, then back again for distance. “What do you think it means?”

“Dude had a crap sense of celestial navigation.”

I scowled.

“I’m serious, man. Looking at this you’d think he couldn’t MapQuest his way through the Universe.”

I shook my head. “He can map the skies as well as you.”

He’d done so for me as we lay in each other’s arms beneath a rendering of the constellations. He’d been a bit breathless as he explained about black holes and dead stars and their place in the Universe, and while I liked to think that had a little to do with my naked body warming his, his love for skies had been fierce.

“Then he was hiding something from someone with full frontal access to that warehouse, man,” Kai said, with a shrug.

“Warren.” My former troop leader still led the Light—and their campaign against me—even after destroying my life, and Hunter’s. At first Warren had seemed like a sort of mad fairy godfather, but I’d learned the hard way that being Light didn’t necessarily mean being right. Nothing, no one, was allowed to interfere with his troop’s supremacy. He might be on the side of good in this paranormal battlefield, but he was just as ruthless as the Tulpa.

Then again, Hunter could have been hiding something from Tekla. She was a real Seer; powerful, mystical, and she studied the Universe’s mysteries like medical students studied anatomy. Kai was nothing like her. In his defense, though, he’d never betrayed me like Tekla. She’d recently admitted that she’d been the one to advise Warren to send me to Midheaven—costing me slivers of my soul, my love, and nearly my life.

“Whatever,” Kai shrugged, popping open a warm can of Mountain Dew. “I done all I can with these. Too bad you didn’t know what your man was up to before you got tossed from the troop. Then you could have stolen every map in that warehouse.”

But the agents of Light had since shut it down, clearing any sign of their time there, and confiscating all of Hunter’s belongings.

Kai scratched his belly and stretched. “Then again, maybe Lorenzo just biffed it.”

“Hunter Lorenzo doesn’t fuck up,” I said immediately, then blushed at my use of the present tense, as if Hunter was still here, active and alive. He was, in a way. Alive in my mind as surely as his child was alive inside my body. “I’m just saying those aren’t random markings. There’s a reason behind everything Hunter does.”

“So maybe he had another hidey-hole. A loose floorboard or ceiling panel. Something like that.”

I shook my head. “Too obvious.”

And Warren would have scoured the entire warehouse by now. There wouldn’t be a dust bunny, much less an untouched wall panel. Forget about a map. I wished now that I’d taken a photo of that sky rendering over Hunter’s bed. “That one was marked wrongly as well,” I said absently.

Kai looked up from picking orange dust from his nails. “Come again?”

“Oh, this rendering of the night sky he had posted in the warehouse’s crow’s nest. It wasn’t like this though. All the constellations were in the right place, but he tracked the frozen stars as well.”

“Dead stars?”

I looked over as Kai’s voice sharpened.

“Yeah,” I said slowly. “Black holes.”

Giant stars that’d evolved, contracted, and died. The largest ones, Hunter had explained, had the shortest lives. I sighed at that.

“Hidden in plain sight,” Kai muttered, nodding to himself before glancing at me. “Think it’s still there?”

“I don’t see why not.” I shrugged. “But Warren knows Tripp and I broke in before. It’ll be locked up tight.”

Kai scoffed. “They won’t bother with patrol now. Not with the Tulpa going commando on their asses.”

“So it could be worth a look?”

Kai looked at me like I’d been smoking ganja. “Bra had a mishmash of dead stars hanging above his bed. If he does everything for a reason, like you say . . . ?”

Kai trailed off, and I turned my attention back at the map, peering through the loupe once more at Hunter’s tight, scribbled writing. Pisces. Kai was right. A man overly fond of maps had been making notations, hiding the proof, and putting himself to sleep by looking at black holes.

It was worth more than just a look.

“Now. The manual.” He held out his hand for the comic book Joseph had given us. I pulled it out, but held it back.

“One more thing.”

“Aw, man!” Kai flopped back like a rag doll, and wriggled there for a little bit. I just waited, and when he finally sat up again—still whining, face still pained—I had the flashlight pointed at a page I’d marked. One with a panel featuring the Tulpa.

He was dressed in the skin of a mild-mannered professor, but pacing a room that looked to be used for formal worship. I pointed to the corner where a sand tablet sat on a table, a small rake used to erase the tablet’s images parallel to its side. But this drawing had yet to be erased.

Kai squinted at it, then looked back at me, the light playing over the left half of his blank face. “So?”

“So this symbol is important to the Tulpa. It looks to me like a snake wrapped around a stick. You’re supposed to come from a long line of Seers. What does it look like to you?”

Kai tilted his head. “A snake wrapped around a stick.”

I pulled back the manual and began to stand.

“Okay.” Kai spoke quickly, holding his arms up to me in supplication, like I was taking off with his weed money. “It’s the Serpent Bearer, okay?”

I straightened. “You know what that is?”

“You don’t?”

Immediately I called the others over. Once they were gathered, I told them I’d shown Kai a picture of the symbol the Tulpa was so interested in. He’d killed for it, fought for it, and was chasing it still. If he wanted it, so did we—and first.

“You know what this is?” Tilting his head, Fletcher stepped forward, and the other men crowded closer as well. Kai shrank on his mat, cringing like a dog that expected to be kicked.

“I told her I did, man.” He jerked his head at me. “In her world—the mortal one, I mean—it’s the healer, dudes. You know . . . it’s on the back of ambulances, doctors’ business cards, that sort of thing. The snake and staff, get it?”

I fought the impulse to hit myself in the head. No wonder it looked familiar. It was so obvious, so normal, we hadn’t seen it at all.

“Motherfucker,” Milo whispered, feeling just as stupid as I did.

“What’s the Tulpa going to do with a doctor?” Gareth asked, crowding closer. The rave behind us had been forgotten.

“Heal people just so he can kill them again,” cracked Gil.

Vincent folded giant arms over his chest. “Maybe he’s planning a resurrection, dudes. Just in case.”

I shook my head. “He can’t be killed now.”

“Seriously?” Kai leaned back on his palms, looking from face to face. “You shoobies really don’t know what this is?”

“The fuck’s a shoobie,” retorted Vincent.

I put a hand on his chest. “You really do?”

Kai snorted. “There.”

We all craned our necks to where he pointed.

“Just north of Scorpius? See the star cluster?” I quickly located the Scorpio star sign, one of the twelve on the Western Zodiac, and well known to us all. However, this other cluster was not. “That’s Ophiuchus. The god of healing. The Serpent Bearer.”

My jaw dropped.

“It’s a fucking constellation?” someone said behind me.

A tingle went up my spine. I didn’t know why the Tulpa would be interested in the Healer’s star cluster, but in the world of the Zodiac, constellations ruled all. Shivering, I pulled my short coat tighter about me and handed Kai the manual.

“Research this symbol and that constellation, Kai. Find out the history behind both. The mythology. If it’s Buddhist in origin, study the Buddhist texts. If there are ties with Latin, find the root.”

“Shaa. I’ll get right on that,” he said, reclining and turning away from us all.

“Where’s Carlos?” I said, turning to Milo. He’d already told me Carlos had gotten hung up doing something else, yet he hadn’t mentioned anything to me earlier. Milo looked at Fletcher, but we were interrupted by Gareth, running our way.

“We got company,” he announced, his rooster-comb hair bouncing as he came to a stop in front of us. His eyes were wide, and whatever emotion the others scented on him made them all straighten and turn to the border as one. Vincent, Milo, and Fletcher all edged in front of me so I had to push to my tiptoes. “Another rogue?”

Vincent grunted. “I don’t think so. She smells . . . Light.”

She? I inched from behind my would-be protectors, immediately spotting the female form, backlit by bonfires and utterly motionless. My breath left me . . . and stayed gone. “Chandra,” I still managed.

Vincent’s head tilted my way. “A friend of yours?”

“Not exactly,” I said, but started forward anyway.

“So what does she want?” he called out behind me.

I just shrugged—flanked by Milo and Fletcher—and headed to my old troop mate, my old enemy, to find out.

5

“That’s interesting,” I said by way of greeting, inclining my head at the steel baton Chandra had palmed, two-fisted, in front of her. The rogues might come to us weaponless and covertly, but Chandra was a full-fledged troop member now—given the Archer sign when I left—and she stood, chin jutted daringly as her eyes raced over the faces of the grays behind me. I crossed my arms over my chest, and stopped short of the boundary line. “Who made it for you?”

“We took on a new weapons master,” she answered, making no move to lay aside the weapon, instead looking at Milo and Fletcher like she was dividing their bodies into zones, calculating where to strike first. I did the same with her, noting slight differences from the last time I’d seen her . . . mostly in the dark shadows smeared beneath her eyes.

The rest of her was close to the same. Same strong, stocky legs arrowing into a surprisingly slim waist, wide swimmer’s shoulders, and thick chestnut hair, now half a foot longer than when we’d first met. Hard to believe I’d once mistaken her for a man. The softening of her features felt like a visual sigh, as if she’d long been holding her breath and had finally let it go. It wasn’t even that her physical appearance had changed, I realized, but that her very essence, her chi, had clearly softened.

She still looked like she’d whack the first rogue to cross that line.

“So is the new weapons master from Arizona?” I asked, trying to distract and smooth out the tension. We didn’t need to risk injury at Chandra’s hands—or, more to the point, her weapon—or vice versa, giving Warren yet another reason to hunt us. Besides, while Chandra clearly wasn’t here to join the rogues—she’d never turn against her beloved troop—she wanted something badly enough to be talking to me. I couldn’t imagine what was so important that she’d come all the way out here for that.

She lifted her chin. “They’ve been a good sister troop to us.”

“You mean they harbor the same concern over the grays spilling into their territory that you do.” It was a statement, not a question, so before she could bother with an unsatisfying answer, I asked, “Is he as good as Hunter?”

“She,” Chandra corrected, glancing down at her baton. After a moment she added, “And no, she’s not.”

Her answer both pleased me and pissed me off. This woman had known Hunter all her life. She’d once looked up to him with admiration and awe, yet she’d turned her back on him because that’s what Warren decreed, and I just couldn’t let it slide.

“So I take it my crossbow didn’t work for you?”

The conduits could be passed down from mother to daughter, and from the moment I’d touched the crossbow there was never any question it was anything other than mine. But an agent with an entirely new bloodline generally had to have their own made, and while Chandra had long coveted my palm-sized bow and arrow, the magical weapons chose the bearer as much as the opposite. There was no forcing the issue if the weapon simply decided it wasn’t yours.

“It doesn’t matter,” she said, though her shrug was stiff. “Warren’s keeping it locked up tight.”

I snorted at that. Obviously Warren couldn’t just leave a magical weapon lying around, and as a mortal I was supposed to be unable to utilize it anyway, but my anger at his pinching my conduit was more than that. I wanted and needed it to help me live. He thought I should be grateful to be alive at all.

Yet why was he so intent on guarding the weapon now? Turning it against me at this point was overkill. Dead was dead, and in my case, the average kitchen knife could achieve the same results. Then again, Warren knew I wasn’t his greatest fan either. He’d want my former conduit in his hands in case he found himself, however improbably, on the pointy end of my soul blade.

“So he still worries about me, huh?” I asked, shoving my hands into my pockets.

Chandra leveled me with a dark stare. “A former ally is more deadly than a constant enemy.”

“Don’t have to tell me,” I muttered, though I wasn’t sure I’d consider Chandra a former ally. She’d long lobbied for the troop’s Archer sign, and had been helpless to do anything but watch as the coveted star sign was unceremoniously dropped into my lap. That, along with my initial lack of knowledge and interest, had infuriated her. Yet my lineage trumped her experience. Considering everything that’d happened to me in my short time as the Archer of Light, I thought wryly, Chandra was probably okay with that now.

Of course, that just meant whatever had her trekking all the way out to the Mojave’s ass side had to be important.

“How’d you find me?” I asked. Who else knew that we were raving for rogues? The dueling sides of the Zodiac could track each other through the scent of elevated emotion, but rogues, by necessity, were experts at masking their stronger feelings.

“Well, it wasn’t by your sassy new do,” Chandra finally replied, tilting her head. I let her look: I had nothing to hide. Seeing that, she nodded once to herself. “It looks good on you.”

I had to fight to hide my surprise. “Well, it’s more to hide from the mortal population than anyone else now. The Tulpa has already seen me like this. So have all the Shadows.”

“Yet as far as those in the real world are concerned, both daughters of the Archer dynasty are now dead.” One from a nine-story fall from a high-rise, the other victim of an international kidnapping. Now that the sensationalism surrounding both deaths had died down, the local socialite scene was a bit less shiny than before, and most people appeared more annoyed than distraught by our “passing.” It was as if someone had changed the channel during their regularly scheduled programming. “How does it feel?”

“Freeing,” I said honestly. I could be whomever I chose now. And while my forced approximation of my sister had turned out to be good for me in many ways, it was a relief to lay down that bubbly blond package too. The identity felt like clothing that no longer fit—dated, uncomfortable, and belonging to another time and era. So Chandra was right. Both Archer girls belonged to the past.

“So you’ve finally stopped hiding,” Chandra said in an overly showy voice.

“I never hid. I was as transparent as I could be when thrown into a hidden underworld where half the population was already seeking my death.”

“Well, you did a good job,” she said, crossing her arms. “All that bubble-gum gloss certainly had me fooled.”

Already forming a retort, my mouth snapped shut. Had Chandra just paid me a compliment?

“Of course, you did seem to revel in the Olivia Archer disguise.” She lifted her square jaw at my raised brow, then shrugged. “The power it brought you at least. Your last act, in particular, was exceedingly annoying.”

“Oh.” My lips twitched, and I lowered my eyes, fighting a smile. “That.”

My last “act” as Olivia Archer, heiress and newly minted owner of Archer Enterprises, was to have a sign moved from the Neon Boneyard, the place where the city’s old, historic signage was collected and stored. The sign I chose for removal was a fifteen-foot, bulb-studded Plexiglas shoe that had once spun above the Silver Slipper Hotel and Casino, and outwardly it was a philanthropic gesture. The historic sign was restored to its former glory and erected downtown for the photo-snapping pleasure of hundreds of tourists nightly.

But the agents of Light had used that Slipper as an entrance to their underground sanctuary, which lay deep beneath the Boneyard. Mounting it on what was essentially the world’s largest stripper pole was a big middle finger in Warren’s direction, petty but satisfying when I thought of the expression that must have stormed over his face once he learned of it.

Chandra snorted, recapturing my attention, but her sturdy face remained blank. Glancing at my guards, she jerked her head at the wide expanse of desert. “Can we walk?”

I looked at Vincent, who inclined his head after a long moment. “You stay on your side of the line. She stays on hers.”

So with bass thrumming against our backs, Chandra and I turned from the glow sticks and whistles on her side, the campfire littered with rogues on mine, and strode into the desert in much the same way we’d interacted as troop members. Together . . . yet very much apart.

The word cosmos means “harmonious order.” Solange—ruler of all Midheaven, keeper of my love, and bitch supreme—had told me that. She’d also said that if you could read the skies correctly you could anticipate what would happen next; that nothing was in the sky by mistake.

I craned my head up at the cosmos as Chandra and I began to walk, looking for harmony or order. Either one would do. Yet the sky above merely winked and flared, flirting impersonally as stars shot across its poker face.

When we were far enough away that the music no longer rattled pebbles and bones, I stopped to face Chandra across the chill spring night. “So I don’t suppose you’ve come all this way just to tell me where the Sanctuary’s new entry is?”

“ ’Fraid not. Just in case Olivia can reach from beyond the grave and move it again.”

“So why are you here?” And how? We hadn’t thought the Light knew about the raves. Chandra’s appearance meant they obviously did . . . so why weren’t they swarming?

“Felix is missing.”

She said it like the words were burning her tongue, and watched for my reaction. She got one too. I jerked back, the breath leaving my body in an almost painful whoosh. Whatever I’d been expecting, it wasn’t that.

“Felix?”

Felix was party boy, playboy, and superhero all rolled into one. He had a laugh as lithe as his body, a joke ever ready on his tongue, and a conduit that fit his personality perfectly: an edged boomerang that looked like a plaything but killed with honed precision. Felix had been one of my closest friends in the troop—someone I truly did consider an ally—and despite everything, I still mostly thought of him that way.

“Vanessa was the first to know.”

Of course she was. Other than opposing star signs, lovers were most attuned to an agent’s death.

“And?” I asked, though the strain around Chandra’s eyes had my throat closing on me.

“His glyph went dark. Two weeks ago.”

An ache shot through my chest, my knees buckled, and I sank to the desert floor. The glyph she referred to was both on an agent’s chest—the superhero symbol popularized in comics—and in the troop’s sanctuary. In a room representing the troop’s star signs and powers, these symbols pulsed with life as long as an agent’s body pulsed with blood. The star sign snuffed out only when the agent died.

Chandra dropped down across from me, the pain I felt etched across her wide brow. We stared at each other, sharing grief across the invisible line.

Felix, who sang badly and danced well. Felix, who was impulsive and dreamy and impossibly mischievous. Poor Vanessa. Poor everyone. I looked up, wishing the sky would show me some of its infamous “harmonious order.” But either I couldn’t read it, or Solange was wrong and there was nothing there at all.

“It wasn’t us,” I managed, my voice croaking from me in syllables so stilted it sounded like a different tongue.

“We know,” she said, speaking the same broken language. Her shoulders slumped, her round cheeks suddenly glistening with tears. Her open vulnerability was so strange I almost thought it a ruse, that she’d been ordered to use my affection for Felix to get to me, but all I saw was grief.

Felix.

I closed my eyes. “So why are you here?”

“Because even after his glyph went dormant, Warren refused to cease his campaign against the Shadows. He said there was no point in sending out a search party, risking the rest of the troop, or losing ground against our enemies if Felix was already dead.”

I winced, and the small hope that Warren would someday care for people more than causes splintered and fell to dust. “Sounds like Warren.”

Chandra looked away. “That’s not all. The next day Vanessa was gone.”

“No.” And this time my voice shattered.

“Not dead,” she clarified, and waited for my relieved sigh. “Just gone.”

But I could tell there was more than that. “And?”

“I let her go,” she said quickly, her eyes tearing up again. “I somehow knew she wouldn’t come back, and I let her do it anyway. If I’d said anything, Warren would have known I allowed it. He’d have seen or scented it on me. He’s been increasingly . . . suspicious since you left.”

She meant paranoid. Having always mistrusted those on the outside of the troop, its recent mutiny from the inside—first from a woman named Greta, then Hunter’s longtime hidden obsession, then my refusal to obey his ruthless commands—he was now turning that same calculated consideration within.

Chandra sniffled, running a hand under her nose before lifting her head. “I haven’t been sleeping well. So I went up into the Boneyard before dawn, you know how you sometimes did?”

Yes. I’d watched dawn emerge over the battered signage of the Neon Boneyard countless times. There was something peaceful about the spent remnants of our city in those hours. I’d often wished I could press my ear against some kitschy tin castoff and let its metallic secrets slide into my ear, curled shavings whispering of the past.

“I was trying to get my head straight for that day’s campaign. It’d been a late night. Some of us met in the cantina to talk about Felix,” she explained, “so I was surprised when I heard someone emerge from the chute.”

Chandra was going to call out when she saw Vanessa, but thought of the way she must have been grieving, and left her alone. “She walked straight to the retaining wall. By the time I got the nerve to yell, it was dawn, and she was walking through it.”

Because if you knew when and how to look, you could pass into the yard magically.

“She didn’t say anything?”

Chandra shook her head, long bangs slapping at her cheeks. “She didn’t even turn her head, just kept walking like she never even heard me.”

I bit my lower lip. “When was this?”

“A week ago, Tuesday.”

I tried to think of all the places I knew of that Vanessa might find comfort; retreats and hidey-holes where she couldn’t be found unless she wanted to, but there weren’t a lot of options. Either she was alone in places accessible to Shadows, or in safe zones and havens that the Light would check. The latter had already occurred if Chandra was searching me out, so I shook my head. “I haven’t seen her.”

Her shoulders slumped, her outline breaking against the distant city lights in a way that made me want to reach out to her, this frenemy of mine. “But she can’t go far, right? I’m sure you’ll find her soon.”

“She left this.”

Vincent suddenly appeared next to me. I startled at the movement, but Chandra didn’t react at all. She’d known the grays would be watching us, and slid the weapon forward until it lodged itself against the invisible barrier. Then, because I could, I reached over and took it.

It was a pretty steel fan with flanged blades that flared to reveal a steel clawed tip. A debutante’s homicidal flirtation. I swallowed hard, though not at its elegant deadliness. I’d never before seen it outside of Vanessa’s hands.

“You think she’s gone rogue?” I asked, and Vincent grunted in surprise behind me, though he’d fallen back into the shadows.

“She’s gone somewhere,” Chandra said sadly, the shock in my voice helping her recover somewhat. “And with your new connections, you have the best chances of finding her.”

“I told you. I haven’t seen her.”

“But you can ask around, right?” She looked up hopefully. “You know people now . . .”

Ask around. Yeah, right. And then I’d ask the Tulpa out for a nice round of golf. “I have my own problems.”

“Please.” She didn’t lower her head or look away, the plea a straight volley toward my heart. There was a time when this woman would have cut off one of her own limbs before showing me weakness. But I wasn’t the only one to suffer heavy losses this past year. I recognized that . . . for the first time, recognized myself in Chandra.

Could she be doing the same with me?

She watched me silently, just waiting with those dark circled eyes. I finally sighed. “Does Warren know you’re here?”

“He won’t care if I can bring her home.” She shook her head hard, convincing herself. “Warren feels guilty over the way things were left between them. He doesn’t say it but I see it. He’ll take her back if we can just find and talk to her.”

Of course he would. He couldn’t afford to lose another agent. Even their loyal sister troop in Arizona would start refusing to send valuable second daughters and sons to a troop that was clearly flailing. His resources were rapidly dwindling, and I couldn’t help but be glad.

Chandra knew exactly what I was thinking. “Look, I know how you feel about Warren, and his views of you are pretty much the same. But when it comes down to it, the Tulpa’s increasing power isn’t good for any of us.”

It was true. Forget the Neon Boneyard; if the Tulpa reigned with impunity, the whole city would be a neon graveyard.

And Warren hated me for that too. Though my every choice had been for the Light—live with them, fight with them, save them—each had inevitably weakened their position against the Shadow. I had no doubt that at this point even battling the Tulpa took a backseat to washing the city streets with my mortal blood.

“Warren’s not asking to work with us, Chandra. He wants us out of the picture more than he does the Shadows.”

At least with them he’d always strove for balance between the two sides. His philosophy regarding their place in the valley was very yin/yang. Can’t have the good without the bad, and all that. Rogues, though, were unpalatable in every way. A good rogue, he’d always said, was a dead rogue.

“Vanessa won’t last long on her own. Not without her conduit, not in this frame of mind. We’d just like her back with us so we can help her heal. At the very least, we want to know she’s safe.”

I stood and dusted the dirt from my jeans. I hated that the troop’s worry over Vanessa made me melancholic over their complete abandonment of me. Carlos’s open acceptance was gradually helping me realize I’d never really belonged with them, but I just wished that fact didn’t hurt so much.

“I don’t assist the Light anymore,” I said stiffly, tucking Vanessa’s conduit into my pocket. Why not? No one else could use it.

“I’m not talking about helping our cause,” she said, her own reply gone cold. “I’m talking about Vanessa.”

I shrugged. “It would be the same thing.”

Jaw clenched hard, she lowered her head and shook it. “You know, Warren’s right. You’re our troop’s greatest problem.”

I turned back to the bonfire, and the other outlaw grays. Back where I belonged.

“Let me finish.” Chandra jogged to catch up on her side of the line. “He’s right. Rogues can’t be trusted. Anarchy can’t be allowed in this valley. But, at times, he might just be a little obsessive.”

“You don’t say,” I said wryly, still walking. Vincent’s footsteps sounded closely behind.

Chandra darted a glance backward, then spoke more hurriedly. “He gets tunnel vision when it comes to the troop’s safety even in the best of times, and we’re far from that now. But he’d die for us if he had to. Same as always.”

I whirled on her, my finger jabbing so close to her chest it was probably on her side of the boundary. “Because ‘same as always’ is all you know, Chandra! But I knew something different before Light dropped into my life like a bomb, and I know something altogether different now!”

“What does that mean in terms of helping Vanessa?”

“It means gray is the new black,” I snarled, and started walking again. It meant you couldn’t do what you’d always done once you discovered a new way, a better way, existed. It meant that if Vanessa had gone rogue I’d welcome her to the grays with arms open wide.

Chandra stilled, then sighed. “Warren won’t stop until you’re all dead. You know that, right?”

“You can tell Warren that this time I’m the one who won’t stop.”

“Oh, he knows,” she said, turning away. “And he’s ready.”

And with both Felix and Vanessa gone from the troop—something Warren would undoubtedly find a way to pin on me—there was more reason than ever for him to wish me dead.

“Chandra?” I called after her. “You never said how you found me.”

She shot a bitter look over her shoulder. “Felix was watching out for you. He patrolled this goddamned boundary without Warren knowing. He told Vanessa about the raves. Vanessa told me.”

My gaze winged to the crowd of dancers swaying on the night wind, half expecting to see Warren emerge from the flashing laser sheets and flickering flames. I looked back at Chandra, confused.

And she hadn’t told Warren?

Still shaking her head, she turned away.

“Wait!” I yelled, taking a step after her. “How does it feel?”

She didn’t move.

I licked my lips. “Finally being the Archer of Light, I mean.”

She turned slowly, her silhouette washed out at the edges, and though the night and firelight competed for the planes of her face, her frown was plain. “Not like I thought it would.”

And before I could ask what that meant, she rocketed forward and was gone.

6

“We can look into it,” Vincent said, suddenly behind me, causing me to jolt. I was staring at the place Chandra had stood only seconds earlier, now nothing more than a smudged footprint on the unforgiving earth. He’d heard every word between Chandra and me, so there was no need to recap the discussion about Vanessa. “Maybe another manual will help us piece together her whereabouts.”

“And Felix too,” I said, because that had been Warren’s critical mistake. Chandra wouldn’t have traveled miles alone otherwise, risking her own life against the grays to talk to a woman she’d long resented. He should have recognized his troop’s need for closure when it came to someone as greatly loved as Felix. It didn’t matter if he was dead. What mattered was that he’d lived.

I certainly wasn’t going to abandon his memory to the Shadows, allowing his missing status to be his last defining act. Future agents would know that someone cared about him, dammit. Even if it wasn’t his own troop.

“You miss them?” Vincent asked, probably scenting my emotion.

I shivered. It’d grown colder out in the high desert’s black crevices . . . or maybe the question had just taken me by surprise. “I never really fit in with them, I guess,” I finally said, as we headed back toward our camp. “I mean, I tried, they tried. But the fact remained, I wasn’t full Light. I liked them though . . . some of them anyway.”

“Not Chandra.”

I hummed, unsurprised that he could sense the residual emotion remaining between us. “Not at first. And there really wasn’t much time after that.”

“But this Vanessa? And Felix?” He knew the answer even before I nodded. “Even though they abandoned you completely?”

I glanced up at his expression, half obscured, though he stood close. “You think I’m foolish to miss people who betrayed me?”

He shrugged, more admission than judgment.

I blew out a long breath. “Maybe I am. I wanted so badly to be who they wanted me to be.”

“It’s hard pretending to be someone you’re not.” He offered up a rare smile, fleeting and wry. “Then again, some friendships aren’t meant to last forever. They carry us through a certain time in our lives before being relegated to the past. Things change.”

“Nothing changed,” I muttered, half to myself. “I kept my part of the supernatural bargain. I sacrificed my life to save a young girl. To save them.”

“And became a different person because of it.”

“I’m the same as ever.”

“Really?” He stopped dead, forcing me to do the same. “So you’re the Joanna Archer of a couple years back, the vigilante mortal who once sought to kill the man who attacked her?”

“Sort of,” I answered, because I wasn’t sure. That woman—defiant and angry and disconnected—had to be a part of me still, though it felt like Vincent had described someone else, or a foreign land I’d once visited.

“Olivia Archer, then? The glossy socialite who used her looks as a shield and a mask?”

No, I’d never altogether been her. I’d taken on enough of Olivia’s identity to stay alive.

“And now you’re neither of those two women, yet you’re both. Again you’re something this world has never seen, and again trying to fit into a troop you’re supposed to lead. And you know what? Next year you’re going to be someone else again.” He jerked his head down toward my belly. “A handful of months into being a mother, and you won’t even recognize the woman who stands in front of me today. I think that’s why Warren is really pissed off.”

Tilting my head, I frowned at that. “What do you mean?’

“You changed the rules on him. Whether you meant to or not, and in a way nobody anticipated, you changed the entire world of the Zodiac.” We were almost back at camp, so near we could make out the expressions on the other grays as their heads turned our way, so Vincent stopped to finish what he wanted to say. “But that Warren? He’d rather see you dead than risk changing himself.”

My mind raced back. Warren had once dug fingers into my skin and told me that I was a wild rosebush that needed pruning. That he wouldn’t hesitate to cut off anything that threatened to weaken me . . . or the troop. I bit my lip. Maybe my new status as a gray wasn’t the problem. Maybe Warren’s resistance to a reality he couldn’t control was what needed refining. I looked at Vincent. “What about you? Do you miss your troop?”

Squinting into the sky, Vincent took a deep breath of the crisp, cool air. “Sometimes I miss who I was with them.”

I nodded. There were times I’d have done anything to change the fact that I wasn’t really the Kairos, or the chosen savior to the agents of Light.

“Well, I like who you are now,” I told him, patting his arm.

The rare smile flashed again. “I like you just fine too.”

Whoever I am, I thought as we turned back to camp. “Hey, Fletch,” I called out, holding out my hands as I approached the fire. “Did Carlos ever make it?”

Fletcher only glanced at Milo, who pursed his lips, but neither said a word.

“Come on, guys. You know Carlos. Dark hair. A little bossy. Can’t hold a tune worth a shit. Carlos?”

Milo finally sighed, his big chest deflating by degrees. “Just give it to her.”

“No,” Fletcher answered stiffly. “He said morning.”

“Give what to me in the morning?”

“What’s the difference?” Milo countered.

“In what?” I asked sharply, stepping forward.

Fletcher arrowed Milo with a last hard look, then shook his head as he dug around in his pocket. He handed me a folded letter over the low flames, and I felt the others gather around me. Storytime, it seemed. Though as I unfolded the paper I had a feeling most of them had already heard this one.

I’m afraid, mi amiga, that you were right when you said we could wait no longer. I don’t know a lot about pregnancy, but the early days of your second trimester will soon give over to the late ones, and then it will be rest that is needed, not action. More than that, the Shadows’ decision to cease carrying conduits means there’s no way for you to gain the immortality you need to enter Midheaven and free our ally rogues. At any rate, the Tulpa’s actions today have convinced me that it’s too risky to try. You are both a female and a part of him, and it’s your soul he covets in order to trump Midheaven’s matriarchs. And because soul power is what’s needed to approach Midheaven’s entrance, I have decided to use my own . . .

“No . . .” And, too late, I saw that Carlos had been planning this all along. This was what he’d been talking about when he said finding a way into Midheaven was not my worry, and that he’d figure out how to deal with the “new developments.” It was why he’d suggested I remain behind at the bunker instead of going to the raves, and said he’d been considering backup plans for a while now.

This, I thought, with panic bumping in my chest, was his backup plan. Sacrificing a third of his soul in order to enter a world where men were tortured and enslaved. Yet as unreasonable as that was, as much as I’d been able to tell him about the horrors he’d have to endure there, he’d clearly thought it out.

And because a third of one’s soul is needed to enter, I will still have two-thirds to spare . . .

“Dammit!” I crumpled the paper in my fist. Solange would trick him out of the rest of his soul, either through drink or gambling or feminine guile, and then she’d fashion the pieces into jewels and string them up in a makeshift sky. That’s why the men were trapped there. That was their purpose—to fuel that female underworld with their souls.

“You idiots!” I yelled, taking my frustration out on the men surrounding me. “You didn’t try to stop him? You just let him go?”

“We let him, Joanna, because you can’t go.” And, of course, that’s what they were all banking on. If I couldn’t gain the aureole in order to access Midheaven’s entrance, then they’d never have a large enough troop to succeed against the Shadow and Light. They’d forever be outlaws, banished to a desert bunker, scarcely better off than before. It was more than they’d ever have as paranormal outcasts, but the whole point of the grays was to provide choice. Carlos’s dream was for every gray to live openly, where and how they chose, and he was willing to risk anything to achieve it. Shaking, I smoothed out the note and forced myself to finish.

Our run-in with the Shadows today was informative but, if anything, it drove home our need for reinforcements. The entry is open, yet no rogues escape, so I must find out why. I promise, wedita, I will be careful, and I’ll find your baby’s father as well. What I need you to do is stay safe . . .

“That’s not going to help,” I answered aloud, panicked. He had no idea what awaited him in Midheaven. He was walking into a situation, a literal world, he didn’t understand. Worse, if Solange got ahold of him—and she would—what she’d force him to tell her would forever fuck up my chances to save Hunter. So it wasn’t enough for me to stay put, safe. I had to go after him.

Of course you’ll want to rush after me [the note continued, because he knew me], but remember this: While the Shadows and Light believe balance is key to survival, grays know that choice is what creates our fate. Balance yourself; survive. And I will choose my own fate.

“Fuck balance,” I spat out, crumpling the note in one hand as I looked up. “Go after him.”

“Joanna—”

I pulled my blade on Vincent, nearest, but the entire group had clearly scented my growing anger and I was immediately faced off against a baker’s dozen of wary rogues, all grouped on the other side of the fire. “Go, goddammit, go! Why are you all just standing here?”

But none of them could fathom Midheaven’s horrors either, and I was met only by silence.

My panic and anger grew. I knew I looked rabid, but I had to stop Carlos. They had to. “You don’t know what it’s like over there,” I said, swallowing down the heat scratching at my voice, trying for reason. “Midheaven will rip out his soul, and strip him bare. The longer he’s there, the less he’ll resemble the man you know. Listen to me!”

“Calm down, Jo.”

“I will not calm down,” I said lowly, gritting my teeth. Carlos was going to cost me my last chance at Hunter. “In a minute I’m going to get so riled up that—”

“That what?” Fletched risked a step toward me . . . though left with only mortality keeping me upright, it wasn’t such a great risk. “You’ll slay us all with your soul blade? Or head to the tunnels yourself with the Tulpa needing you alive and Warren wanting you dead? And do it all without backup?”

They wouldn’t go with me?

“Don’t you understand? We have to hurry,” I whispered, eyes wide. “Or I’m going to have to save him too.”

No one answered.

For a moment I considered running. It was how I used to move through the world . . . barreling forward with weapons and fists cocked, righteous determination flattening everything in my path. But Vincent was right. The Tulpa, the Light—agents on both sides—were all looking for me. I couldn’t afford recklessness. Not with Hunter’s life at risk. And now Carlos’s. Not, I thought, with a child growing in my belly, a fact I was finding harder and harder to ignore.

So, clenching my jaw, I tried reasoning with the grays again. “Look, the Tulpa has sent three of his most valued Shadow agents into that world and none have returned! They can’t . . . and Carlos will be no different. We have to stop him.”

“Stop Carlos?” Fletcher shook his head, and turned away.

“He knows what he’s getting into,” Milo said, but he didn’t sound so sure. He could sense my rising panic, they all could. They knew I’d seen things in that magical underworld that they could never imagine, so I let the scent of my emotions erupt from my pores like a volcano. I entertained the thought of Carlos burning, his soul enslaved, sliced to bits, his body discarded once fully relieved of that precious fuel. Worse, I actually allowed myself to think that Hunter might already be gone, and I just didn’t know it. Even I almost scented my anguish.

And still nobody moved.

I was about to start screaming when another thought stilled me as well. Someone else could help me get to Midheaven. She’d done so before, I thought, biting my lip. It was unusual . . . and dangerous, but it could be done. Besides, there was no choice. Carlos would perish quickly over there, and so would Hunter—if he hadn’t already—once Solange learned about us—and our baby. How ironic that in trying to keep me safe, Carlos had actually thrown me upon Midheaven’s doorstep.

Sheathing my blade, I stalked toward Vincent. “Take me to Io.”

I’d recovered enough from my shock by the time we reached the bunker to apologize to the other grays for my angry outburst, and thank Vincent for gallantly helping me back. Biting the hand that fed was one thing. Biting the only helping hand offered you was just plain stupid. Yet instead of heading directly for Io, I returned to my room one last time. I was still going to see the cell’s unofficial den mother. I simply had to arm myself first.

Pulling my short, dark hair back into a slick club, I inserted my razor-sharp chopsticks into the blunt ponytail, even though I knew they probably wouldn’t make the transition into Midheaven. Weapons made outside that world, conduit or mortal, never did. My clothes were already tightly fitted, hugging the smooth S-curves that had been sculpted onto my boyish frame in order to turn me into my younger, more voluptuous sister. The cover, like my mother’s, had worked wonderfully for a while. No one looked at an airheaded debutante and expected to see a sharp mind, never mind honed edges.

Though I wasn’t as comfortable in soft, round flesh as I’d been with my own stronger, leaner lines, I hadn’t bothered to alter them yet. My body was going to change yet again with the life growing inside it. Besides, the latent strength that was me was still underneath, and always would be, no matter what I looked like on the outside. I knew that now.

After donning the kundans from my mother’s toolbox, I took a moment to meet my own gaze in the mirror, mind-blanking in a way I hadn’t since I’d begun hiding in this bunker. For some reason it gave me confidence. I didn’t look as worried as I felt. And it was the warrior’s mind that I needed now, I thought, studying my narrowed eyes.

“Though the weapons don’t hurt,” I muttered, strapping a knife sheath to my right thigh. The soul blade had been forged in Midheaven and was composed of the same worldstuff as the rest of that place. So it would make the crossing just fine. One couldn’t be too careful when going head-to-head against someone who owned a piece of every soul who entered that realm.

Which brought me to the weapon I’d used the last time I’d done so. I pulled out a bag of gray-brown cigarettes, quirleys, and withdrew two, immediately tucking one away in my hip pocket, but holding the second long enough that my fingertips tingled with the contact. Putting the unlit stick to my lips, the tingle immediately jumped to my tongue, and even with mortality dampening my senses I smelled something curdled; the potential death in its smoke.

When I finally reached Io’s room, she scented it too, though she didn’t bother glancing up from the dissection she was performing. “You won’t get an opportunity to use that against Solange again. She’ll be ready.”

I instinctively winced at the memory of beautiful flesh burning from the inside out as the quirley’s smoke attacked Solange’s pores, soaking in like sulfuric acid. I still heard her scarred screams when I dreamed.

“I know. But they’re too powerful not to take. And there are others who wish to harm me there. You don’t seem surprised to see me.” I managed coolly, trying to discern what sort of animal she was working on. It looked like a mix between a starfish and a cucumber, but was undoubtedly neither.

Then again, I silently mused, Io probably wouldn’t be surprised to see every crack on the moon’s surface with her bare eyes. Black pupils took up the whole of her lidless sockets, and that unblinking stare caught everything.

“It wasn’t exactly a matter of ‘if’ you’d show up,” she said, giving one last frown to her work before covering it with a blue cloth. Snapping off her gloves, and wiping away the light powder dusting covering her dark hands, she finally looked up. “I know what you want here.”

To travel to Midheaven without my body. To astral-project into a world waiting to harm me.

“Did Carlos know I’d come to you?”

“Of course.” She shrugged one large shoulder, ropy with muscles, then patted at the cloud of hair that surrounded her head like a black halo. “He just hoped to get a good head start before you did anything rash.”

“Let me guess. He said something annoyingly cryptic like, ‘Fate will see to the rest,’ ” I said wryly, earning a short nod.

“I don’t have to tell you he’d prefer you not attempt to go after him at all.”

“I’d have preferred for him to discuss this with me first,” I said, throwing the letter down in front of her.

Io only shrugged. “I guess he knew neither of you were going to bend.”

And she turned away and began cleaning her tools in a rubber basin in the corner. Clenching my teeth, I leaned against the table centered in the room. I was getting tired of being so easily dismissed. “So you didn’t even try to stop him?”

“Should I have?” she asked lightly, scrubbing.

“After seeing me return from there with a gem Solange had fashioned from a man’s soul?” I said, feeling the shape of Hunter’s gem next to my heart, in the lining of my shirt. I carried it ever with me now. “Fucking A, you should have!”

I was backed up so fast my heels hit the wall before I knew I’d moved. Io, herself named after both a moon and a goddess, leveled me with that moonscape stare. “Look here, missy. The menfolk may be treating you with a soft hand because of your ‘condition’ but I know all about a woman’s body and the strength it holds. Creating something miraculous with blood and bone requires the same strength it takes to keep breathin’ on the hard days. It might be brave, but it still comes natural. Don’t curse at me again.”

I swallowed hard, nodded, and was allowed back on my feet. Normally I liked Io’s inability to mince words, but we were usually on the same side of things. Still, she was right, so I softened first. “I’m sorry.”

Besides, Io wasn’t named after just any moon. I’d looked it up. She was named after Jupiter’s worst moon, one that was bathed in sulfuric fumes, and that grew so cold each night it collapsed the atmosphere around it. It was best to stay on the good side of a woman with that violent namesake.

“Look, I understand you’re worried. I do,” she shot over her shoulder, altercation already forgiven and forgotten as she returned to her tools. “But Carlos knew what was at risk.”

“No, Io. He couldn’t know.” No one ever knew what the stakes were in Midheaven, not until they’d crossed over, and by then it was too late. I couldn’t speak of it, and they couldn’t dream of it. “And you’d have stopped him if you did.”

Because despite this world’s dangers, it was upon entering Midheaven that the real risk taking began. The invite was simple enough. Sit down in what looked like an Old West saloon. Play a hand of poker dealt by dealers with spinning eyes. Have a drink on the house from a bartender with unnatural speed and strength. But both the game and drink were never ending, and the very act of barter became the energy that fueled that woman’s world.

Meanwhile, as the men sweated in the pseudo gambling hall, atrophying in body and soul, the women lived at the top of a winding staircase where they created their own versions of nirvana. Four doors, four rooms representing the basic elements: earth, water, fire, and air. Each room was a tiny paradise created for and by the women who acted as goddesses there, indulging in pleasures both exotic and plain, entire micro-worlds fueled with the energy derived from a man’s soul.

Men, I thought, swallowing hard, like Carlos. Like Hunter too, though Solange had something special planned for him.

“Ever think he might have just done it anyway?” Io asked, drying her hands as she turned to me.

“Gone over there by himself? Knowing what I know?” I asked, immediately shaking my head. “No way.”

She smiled her disagreement. “Carlos sees you as the key to a new life for those of us who once believed ours was over. You’re hope for those who thought it lost, the bringer of a new world order and prophesied revolution. But with a target on your chest, and that child growing like a weed in your belly, fate remains in flux. He couldn’t just sit here and allow the probable to turn into the possible.”

Yes he could. I clenched my jaw against a scream. “He’d be safe.”

“He’d be miserable.”

Even through my worry, I knew she was right. That’s what hiding away did, whether it was from the world or yourself, your past, or even your dreams. It took absolutely no effort to have a miserable life. But building a glorious one? A life worth living and sharing with others? That’s what was hard.

“I should have anticipated this. I’ve been too complacent as well.” I gave my head a small, sad shake. I mean, had the Universe given me a lobotomy along with removing my powers? Why was I waiting for Carlos or Io or anyone else to give me a thumbs-up before blasting my way back into that world? To the life I wanted?

Because it felt so good to have someone on my side, like Carlos, who didn’t see me merely as a means to an end?

Because I didn’t want to lose the grays’ support by acting according to my own intuition and knowledge of that homicidal underworld?

No.

It was because I was scared shitless of losing the small remaining hope that Hunter was still alive, well, and also longing for me.

“Honey, biding your time ain’t the same thing as cooling your heels. You’ve gotten yourself into some pretty hairy situations by venturing out on your own in the past.”

“Rookie mistakes,” I muttered, looking away because it was true.

“Impulsive ones,” she said, knowing it.

“And I learned from them.”

First, I’d learned I could be powerful without being so hard.

Second, I’d discovered a former love didn’t necessarily mean a lost one.

Third, I’d discovered that naming something made it real and gave it power.

Fourth, there was a strength in being vulnerable.

And finally, I’d learned that as long as there was breath in the body, it was never too late to choose a new life path.

But what good were all those hard-earned lessons, I thought now, if I didn’t put them to use? “I’m the only one who can save those men, Io. And it can’t wait.”

Time passed differently in Midheaven. It ran backward or sideways . . . by some other means than that which flipped the earth around its axis. Carlos could already be well into his third pulse-slowing drink, and his fourth hand of poker. Soon he’d forget his reason for entering that realm altogether, or at least cease caring. He’d be spiritually bedridden, too sick and weak to get any better. And forget about finding Hunter. Once Solange learned everything from Carlos—and she would, she would—she’d sacrifice him just as readily.

Again, there was no explaining this to Io. She was a woman, yes, but she’d never been to Midheaven either. If she had, she would be helping me instead of lifting one disbelieving brow above her saucer stare.

“Listen up good, girly. I’m not helping you so you can go off and risk your hide for that man Solange thinks is hers. Or so you can settle old scores. You’re to help Carlos so that he can then help save your baby daddy . . . along with all the other rogues locked in that blasted underworld.”

But she would help me. I nodded, swallowing my relief. “That’s exactly what I plan to do.”

So Io prepped a needle. “Got your focus too?”

“You know I do,” I said climbing onto her worktable. A person needed someone or something to focus on in order to reach Midheaven astrally. Mine was always the same. Always Hunter.

“Just remember that you’re someone else’s focus point too. Solange wants you dead.”

It was a good, if unnecessary, reminder. Underestimate Solange, even in dreams, and it would be the last thing I managed to do. “It’s okay. I have something she wants.”

She wants your power, your ability to . . .

Damn, I wished Hunter had been able to finish that sentence before I’d been yanked from that world.

“Yeah? Well, just don’t forget she has something you want too,” Io said, turning to me with the syringe. “No telling what she’ll do to him if you cross her. Again.”

“Guess it just comes down to who wants it more,” I told Io as she swabbed my arm, and I blew out a steadying breath.

“Usually does,” she muttered. I rested one hand on my sheathed blade and the other on the destroying cigarettes, then closed my eyes. Feeling the needle’s telltale pinch, I simultaneously brought to mind a saloon, a man, and a homicidal goddess—willing myself back into Midheaven. Then I waited for the frantic buzz, the weighing fog, and the coppery taste of ozone cracking, all of which would mark my arrival in another world.

7

The biggest question, and one that had been asked of me countless times by the incoming grays, was that if I could astral-project into Midheaven, why didn’t I do it all the time? Why risk life and limb against the valley’s troops of Shadow and Light by trying to reach the actual physical entrance? Why not just cross via my mind, have a little chat with the men languishing there, and scoot them all out the door and back into the valley like good little rogue agents?

Good questions . . . with good answers.

Three things were necessary to accomplish incorporeal passage. First, you already needed to be a part of that world, woven into its fabric in a way that bound you submissively to the women who ruled there. With two-thirds of my soul currently fueling its fires, I certainly qualified. Second, you needed a means to transport you, a sort of magic carpet for your subconscious. Meditation could work, but loosening the stranglehold of the conscious mind was difficult when you knew war waited for you on the other side. That’s why Carlos had initially drugged me in order to see if I was indeed still a part of that world. I’d almost died proving it.

In fact, I’d almost died each of the three times I’d attempted projecting myself into Midheaven this way, which was why I hadn’t done it again since letting Solange know, in no uncertain terms, that I was coming for Hunter, and I’d willingly go through her to get him.

Of course, now that Solange knew I could access her realm astrally, I desperately needed the last of the three tools necessary to enter that world: Io. Because if push came to shove, and it always did, someone had to be there to pull me back out.

In the real world and with a physical entry, the crossing was facilitated by the snuffing of a candle buried deep in the underground tunnels. The resultant smoke screened in the body and sucked out the breath, along with the requisite soul payment. To leave Midheaven, you blew out the wick on an antique pagoda lantern, situated between era-appropriate oils of nudes lying in states of various repose. It was one of those burning lanterns that I’d last used to light my quirley, and attack Solange.

I focused, despite the floating sensation, on calling forth the world in my mind, envisioning the saloon, a room entirely washed in sepia, a solid visual marker that I’d entered another dimension entirely. Yet I was ever-aware of Hunter lingering at the periphery of my mind, like a coal at the foot of the bed. It warmed me, but I didn’t dare get too close. He was most likely trapped in one of the elemental rooms, where he’d be the hardest to reach, and where Solange was at her most powerful. I’d almost drowned in the water room, had been strangled in the earth room, and had been violently cast from the fire room where Solange dwelt alone. It was where she felt safest, and where I was sure Hunter would be.

And that’s why I’d brought along the knife.

The taste hit me first, a leaden bar coating my mouth, weighing me down and telling me I’d arrived. Then the rest of my senses returned, amplified, just as when I still possessed my powers. The air smelled of old charcoal and spent fuel, and felt like a sauna, drying to my wide eyes. I waited, expecting to see the saloon—the shining mahogany bar top directly across from me, poker tables sprawled about like a green felt forest, and a board with most-wanted posters containing the photos of all the men who’d entered, and expired, there. Hopefully Carlos’s image wouldn’t be among them.

Yet there was no light here, certainly no fire. Maybe something was wrong with my eyes, as it was the only one of my senses that hadn’t seemed to return to full capacity. My vision blurred as if my eyes watered, though my irises felt baked. And though dry, the cool lightness in the air was also disconcerting. It was not the choking haze associated with the room where men sweltered and burned, but a caressing sweep that felt less like a breeze and more like being licked.

The entire sensation put me in mind of June gloom on the California coast, and I waved my hand in front of me, watching the vapor undulate. That’s it. I was surrounded by mist. And there actually was some sort of light, though nothing direct or near. Nothing, for example, that I could use to light my quirley, and fire into the face of a goddess.

“Shit.” I had to be upstairs in one of the elemental rooms again. Probably the air room, the only one missing from my repertoire of near-death experiences.

But how the hell had I gotten here? I could access the elemental rooms because I knew where they were located, because I could envision them, and because as a woman I was free to move about as I wished in the twisted underworld. Yet when crossing astrally into Midheaven, you gravitated to your strongest mental connection, and I’d been thinking of the saloon . . .

“Joanna?”

No, I’d been thinking of . . .

“Hunter?” My heart began to pound.

A sigh, and the delicate wisps obscuring my view bent, curling outward like rolling carpet, and Hunter appeared, not five feet away. His unveiling was quiet, like a dream or a magic trick. Something I couldn’t trust. But God, I wanted to. He looked the same as when we’d first met; healthy and strong, gold-skinned, honey-eyed, with glossy black hair pulled back in a short club. Gorgeous, self-contained, powerful.

But his evident health made me trust his appearance here all the less, and I remained where I was. For weeks now he’d been deprived, punished, tortured. If the clouds were some sort of optical illusion, then so was he.

Besides, Solange had known him when he was a man called Jaden Jacks—a bigger, bulkier, blonder version of the man standing in front of me. She hated to be reminded that he’d ever been, or been with, anyone else.

Still, tears threatened to form in my eyes as he gave me that old wry smile. “How many times do I have to run you out of the same place?”

I gave a bitter laugh at the reference to my last astral foray into Midheaven. He’d saved my life then by risking his own, but I knew he paid for it in flesh afterward. His scream had chased me out of this world. So I’d have smiled at his exasperation if the false playfulness didn’t have me so fully on guard. Hunter’s natural inclination was to be serious and guarded. This was not the way he’d have normally greeted me.

My eyes darted to the cloud cover around me, but nothing else moved. “Don’t be silly,” I responded lightly, warily. “I’ve never been in the air room before.”

“But you’ve been in all the others,” he said, and that was my first hint . . . a subtle reminder that the element was different but the room was the same: dangerous.

“So can I move about?” I asked, waving my hand in the air. The thick mist around me kissed the movement, hanging from my fingertips like fringe before falling away. Then it re-formed. “Or am I going to fall off a cloud or something?”

“It’s all cloud. Cirrus and stratus right now. And as long as you’re in here, so are you.”

“Really?” I glanced down at my limbs, which looked normal enough. I did have the distinct feeling of floating, though. I took a step forward and watched the vapor shift around me, then another, this time catching the way it moved to support my body in an effortless roll. It was like fluid bones forming outside my body. In my world clouds were amassed by water vapor and frozen crystal. They scattered light and their color deepened with density. I didn’t know what these clouds were made of, but they were both dense and light—and, of course, pulsing with metallic ions. In any case, if I was as untouchable as a ghost, then movement wasn’t where real danger lay.

But there was danger here. I felt it like a field mouse under a hawk-strewn sky.

“That’s why the goddesses love the air room,” Hunter continued. “There’s no door. No windows, no walls. It’s totally devoid of shape or even ornamentation, yet they consider it the most feminine of rooms.”

“Why?” The water room had been alive, tinkling with sound and light. The earthy room was lush with greenery and verdant life. The fire room held a planetarium, and burned with the mysteries of the Universe. But Hunter summed up his case for this basic elemental room in one simple, irrefutable sentence.

“Because clouds are like women. Malleable, ever changing, and reflective of the world around them.”

They could also be tempestuous, barriers to clear-sightedness, and distinct indicators of a storm. So as hungry as I was for the sight of Hunter, I stayed attuned to the suspicious, shifting formations. “But you’re here,” I pointed out, taking a step forward. God, he was so close.

He paused, seemingly unnerved by the movement, then swallowed hard before saying, “I’m a man.”

A clear distinction in Midheaven. And as he’d been placed in the air room for me to find, it was a message from Solange as well. I might not be able to get to you but I can mark this man any time I want.

“Can I touch you?” I risked another step.

The expression that passed over his face was acute. I couldn’t tell if the pained look meant he wanted me to, or didn’t. “Actually, what I really need is for you to let me go.”

I couldn’t stop the wince, though what I needed to do was put emotion aside, and figure out why Hunter was saying this now. Was she hurting him? Was he brainwashed against me? Had he finally given up on us? Or was someone listening to us now?

“Really?” I nodded once. “That’s what you want?”

“It’s what I want for you,” he said softly.

The light dropped from the clouds like a victim of gravity, and the room darkened. It was a roiling response to his words, which gave me the answer to my unasked questions. I moved my right hand to my side, where my soul blade lay sheathed, but that was mostly for comfort. If I couldn’t be touched, neither could Solange. Either way, I thought, noting how resolutely Hunter had lifted his chin. I didn’t think that admission had been in the script, which meant he’d pay for his honesty later.

Unless I could somehow get him out of here now. This room did have a door. I’d seen it from the outside.

I decided to keep him talking. It would give me more time to figure something out, and hopefully learn if Carlos was here. Besides, if someone was feeding him lines—if someone was listening—I should give them something to listen to.

“You know,” I told him, in a falsely bright voice, “I never expected to see you again. Even the last time I was here, in the earth room, your arrival took me by surprise.” I huffed out a laugh. “At least that’s consistent.”

My words surprised him as well, and he frowned. “What do you mean?”

“You. Or at least your appearance in my life.” I shook my head. “It has been a surprise from the first.”

Not a cloud stirred. Yes, we had a very attentive audience. “I remember the very first time I saw you. The first instant, actually. No one has ever looked more heroic.”

“I don’t need to hear this.”

“Maybe I need to say it.”

“I want you to go.”

I gave him a small smile. “You were leaning against the wall of our training dojo, studying me with that dark-eyed gaze, the one you reserve for people you want to feel uncomfortable in their own skin.”

One corner of his mouth actually turned up at that, but quickly returned to a frown.

I hurried on. “You challenged me from the first. A lot of men would have gone easy on a woman, but you wanted to see what I was made of instead. Now that I know the kind of company you were keeping,” I said, referring to Solange, “I can’t say that I blame you.”

His half amusement turned to full alarm, but I cut off his reply by holding up my hand. The air around us shifted only slightly. “But you didn’t just challenge me that first time. You studied me. You dissected me.”

He’d told me then that people would look at my exterior—my shape, my curves, my softness—and underestimate me. “I hated you for that.”

“I know.”

“Yet you never underestimated me. We fought, hand-to-hand, and you didn’t hold back.”

“I saw even then who you were,” he acknowledged, his customary seriousness back. That’s how I knew these words were truly his. “Besides, I had to fight all-out. You told me straight up that you always used the weapons available to you.”

“Still do,” I said darkly, but that was a mistake. His expression closed and suddenly we were no longer back in the relative safety of the past.

“Just get out. Please. And don’t come back.”

“I wish it were that simple. I do. It would certainly be easier for me. But this is not like entering a dojo where the battle is contained, even if we are in one elemental room. And we’re not on opposing sides anymore. If you’re here, then so am I. If you’re injured or being injured, then so am I.”

He looked angry at that, but it wasn’t anything Solange didn’t already know. She was already using him against me.

“I would stay away from you if I thought it meant you would suffer less,” I added, to let him know I wasn’t ignorant of what he was trying to do—still being heroic in the only way left to him.

“I’m fine,” he said, teeth gritted.

“If that were true, baby?” I shook my head. “You wouldn’t be begging me to leave.”

My endearment hardened him again. “I don’t want you here.”

The cruelty in his voice was like nothing I’d ever heard, which was again how I knew it for false. Words were weapons in this place, even coming from Hunter’s mouth.

“But here I am. Here we are.” I sighed and squared my shoulders. “Besides, it would be rude of me to leave without saying hello to Solange. Especially after she’s been such an attentive audience.”

A moment of strained silence gave way to a chuckle stirring the air.

The clouds winding around my body from the ground up slipped over my neck, then slid seductively past my left ear, along with Solange’s breath. “How did you know?”

I kept my gaze fastened on Hunter’s face, counting on his assurance that I was like these clouds, that like Solange, I couldn’t be touched. “Because I’m not the only woman who uses all the weapons available to her. I’m not the only one who should never be underestimated.”

“Very good. Some people—even those who ought to know better—still haven’t learned that.”

The cirrus and stratus thinned, shifting and breaking apart until there were clear pathways in three different directions. The cloud cover remained above and below, and thickened at the corners until I stood at the center of a cross. Yet Solange didn’t appear, just the three other women I was most familiar with from this world; Diana, who’d first appeared to me as a slick, sensuous saloon girl. Nicola, as self-contained and autocratic as a sexy robot. And Trish, fresh-faced, voluptuous, and deadly as a viper.

Each woman sat on cloud formations shaped like settees, thought the soft tendrils wrapped around their draping limbs, allowing them to nestle in deep. But where was Solange?

My gaze darted back Hunter’s way, but his face was as blank as the dark clouds behind him. Then Nicola, a woman so severe in stature and physicality that a cut of her eyes felt like a slash to the skin, shifted.

“You look confused, dear Joanna,” she said, and I jumped. That wasn’t her deep, sultry voice. It was Solange’s.

“Things have changed a bit around here.” This time Trish’s mouth moved, but again, Solange was speaking through her.

“I’m clearly doing a bit of spring cleaning,” she added, the words coming from Diana’s mouth, causing me to whirl. She was the woman I knew best. She still looked calculated, draped across the cloud cover that was both a part of her and not, and all of them wore their beloved silks and jewels and makeup. Yet there was something lacking from their expressions. Joy? Spirit? Life? I couldn’t quite put my finger on it.

More alarming was Solange’s calm voice. Although I’d figured out that she was watching, her demeanor—at least as presented through these women—was the exact opposite of the last time I’d heard her. She’d raged, I’d attacked, and then she screamed. Her placidity now meant she felt in control, a disconcerting thought even if her voice wasn’t coming from other people’s mouths. Controlling them. Maybe pointing out that she always had.

“In any case, it’s nice of you to visit,” she said through Trish. Her enunciated cadence looked strange coming through lips that had always produced breathless thoughts. “And after sending such a lovely gift. Soul slivers are so much more personal than, say, flowers.”

Well, that put to rest the question as to whether Carlos had arrived. Damn.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I answered as blandly as I could manage.

Solange ignored that, her voice jumping back to Diana. “I have to say, we’ve received quite an influx of fresh meat ever since you revealed to your world that Midheaven was more than myth. I mean, the last three agents were the usual fare,” she said, meaning Shadows. Her voice skipped to Nicola. “But this one is delicious. It’s been so long since I tasted pure Light.”

I held my breath, choking back alarm, hoping she’d take my stillness for nothing more than self-preservation. It would be worse for Carlos if she knew I cared. Still, I could feel her gaze upon me from each side. The three women—or their bodies, at least—were positioned around me like security cameras. Solange was using them to view me from every angle, save Hunter’s, of course. I glanced at him, but he remained unnaturally still.

“Well, Midheaven’s not exactly hidden,” I said, managing to keep my voice even and conversational. “It’s merely underground.”

“The perfect condition for a goddess culture to grow and thrive,” she answered, again through Trish, her tone gone wry. Again, it looked all wrong. The lips were moving, but her eyes—or what was behind them—remained marble still. Possessed? In a trance?

Dead?

“Practically the only way for a woman’s world to exist at all,” she continued, causing my gaze to dart to Nicola. That’s when I saw it. Maybe it was because Nicola was the strongest, most antagonistic, of the three women. But the absence was more pronounced in her than Trish. She might be a woman in a woman’s world, still breathing, lips moving, but the predatory look she’d always worn was gone. It was only in its absence that I realize it had been her greatest adornment.

What the fuck was going on here?

Nervously, I shifted from one foot to the other on air that was more a part of me than not. How had Solange neutered these women of their power? And more importantly, could she do the same with me?

She wasn’t attacking. Not outright. Probably because I was wearing my protective kundans in plain sight. Still, that didn’t mean she couldn’t injure me enough that I wished I were dead. Glancing back at Hunter, I decided it wouldn’t be a bad idea to have my own weapons at hand, and I slid one hand into my pocket for the matches, the other drawing out my magical, deadly quirley.

“Try that trick again and the new puppy will fry.” Now her temper was up, and I cringed as each word slapped at me from another side.

“Let me see who it is.” I straightened as if I didn’t care, but let my hands fall to my sides. My arrival just after Carlos’s had raised her suspicions. After maiming her with smoke, I should have been reluctant to return here for any reason at all.

“He’s downstairs,” she said plainly, voice hijacking Diana’s throat. “You’re welcome to go see him, though. You just have to imagine a solid door into existence.”

“What?”

“You’re the daughter of a tulpa. It should be natural to you. In fact, I know it is,” she said slyly, voice once again slithering across my skin like a satin ribbon. It tugged at me, turning me back to Hunter.

I panicked for a moment, thinking the sound might invade him too—wondering how I could stop it—but then a speck appeared behind him, suspended in the air, and lit like a bright coin. I squinted, my depth perception blown off course by the cloud layers. But the thing was illuminated as if a firefly dwelled inside, and after another suspended moment, it swayed drunkenly and began floating my way.

“It won’t bite,” Solange said as Trish shifted. The sphere stopped in front of me. I hesitated, then reached out to snag it from the air, surprised to find it warm, almost scalding, in my palm. It cooled as I flipped it over and ran my finger over the symbol embossed on the other side. It was either a cross with two lines bisecting it at opposing angles, or a very simple star.

“Recognize it?” Nicola again, and since the words were soured with cruel humor, it actually sounded like her. Of course I did. This was the currency of Midheaven. Personal energies, emotions, abilities, and powers—were the building blocks of a viable life-form, thus the very things that could be turned into fuel to create any world these woman desired. I’d been forced to give over this very chip in a hand of soul poker to a Shadow agent who’d then bartered it to Solange.

But what was it? The ability to imagine objects into existence? A power I’d once possessed because I was the daughter of a tulpa, an imagined being? I flipped it in my palm again. And if so, why the hell would she give it back?

“I can’t just imagine something out of nothing,” I said, because if Solange was trying to get me to do it, odds were I shouldn’t. Yet the chip pulsed against my fingertips like it wanted to push through my skin, and as the reverberations thrilled up my arm, another thought rushed through me. I’d lost four chips over here in total.

Four powers that hadn’t been drained from me when I sacrificed all the others back home.

The question must have blazed like a wildfire across my face because Solange’s chuckle beckoned slyly. “Yes, dear. There’s a way to get them back.”

Four chips.

I couldn’t help myself. “How?”

“You have to take action, of course.” The shrug was in her voice. “After all, you get nowhere if you just dream of a thing.”

“You mean walk the line.” She wanted me to return to Midheaven physically, through the tunnels—exactly what the grays and I had been trying and failing to do. It figures, I thought, palming the chip. I couldn’t enter Midheaven corporeally without my powers, but I couldn’t get my powers without entering Midheaven. “I don’t believe you.”

“But you want to.”

I did. In Midheaven even I could make out the thick, honeyed scent of my hope.

“Your friend here tells me you call yourself a gray now.”

I whirled toward Diana before I could help it. Her mouth lifted in response, but again, it was the only thing on her that looked alive. Shit, if Carlos had relayed that much, he’d been here longer than I’d thought. Again, time moved differently in Midheaven than it did in the real world. “He said that you were night crawlers. That much like us, you must burrow underground.”

I grimaced. It wasn’t my favorite analogy. “Your point?”

“Only that I understand having to burrow deep.” It was the free-form voice again, moving clouds, crawling across me toward Hunter, and I turned to follow. “That there’s some work that must be done out of sight of the world above.”

Another chip appeared, suspended in the same place as the first, and began to saunter my way. “But did you know that night crawlers have the ability to regenerate? It’s true. You can actually grow two whole worms from a properly bisected specimen, each capable of viable life. Two halves become two wholes.”

I squinted at the new chip. “You’re saying my powers exist over here, independently of me.”

The chip came to a halt before me, but when I reached out this time, it vanished.

Laughter replaced it, and clouds scattered. “I’m saying you’re not as broken as you think you are.”

I ran my fingers around the single, rare chip she’d given me. “Are you helping me?”

“Of course not,” she said, as cloud cover moved to veil the other three women. I wondered if it would be the last time I saw them. “I’m helping me. But if I can thwart your world’s Shadow and Light in the process? So much the better.”

Liar. She was giving me this power so I could taste, feel, and remember those I’d lost. And so I’d “walk the line” below Las Vegas’s streets, and return to her physically.

“Start with imagining light, since Light is how you identify. You’ll see. It’ll be simple for you to create it out of nothing. After all, things appear brightest when it’s dark. The rest will come easily after that.”

And the rest was what she wanted. She was providing a power she intended to take back for herself, because once I crossed over physically—for Hunter, for Carlos, for the rogues and my powers—she intended to strip away the last third of my soul.

Yet I still couldn’t help but squeeze my hand around the chip, and it throbbed in response, like it was sentient and wanted to be a part of me again too.

“That story earlier,” she said suddenly, voice far away like she’d been leaving but had suddenly changed her mind. “Why’d you tell it if you knew I was here?”

“You want me to know you can reach out and touch Hunter at any time. That’s why he’s in this room.” And because I now knew she wanted more than what she could take from me here, I smiled. “I simply wanted you to know the same.”

And because I was also as much a fighter as when Hunter and I met, I whirled and kissed him hard. He jerked, more in surprise than any effort to pull away. He really hadn’t thought I could touch him—neither had Solange, else I don’t think she’d have allowed us so close—but I knew different. We were connected. He lived, via his child, inside me. And after a second more of my lips demanding an answer from his, I got it. He kissed me back—a fervent kiss, a last one—before a bolt of lightning wracked the ceiling.

I jerked away to find black clouds roiling, angry edges tinged in green. The classic hue of an impending storm. Wind whipped my hair into a frenzy, cutting at my body, and a cloud curtain enveloped Hunter. I reached out . . . but he was gone.

I squealed as another bolt singed me, the sound raking my eardrums, and mentally reached for Io. The responding tug was immediate.

“When I come back,” I yelled, “it won’t only be for my powers.”

Somehow she heard me. “Jaden will always belong to me!”

Her use of Hunter’s old, discarded name wasn’t lost on me, but I’d broken her façade of control, and I just smiled as Io pulled me away.

“You can’t compete romantically with a goddess!” Solange screeched loudly, quickly, like she needed me to hear it before I was gone.

“Fortunately you’re also a crazy, homicidal bitch,” I said. “It levels the playing field a bit.”

And I was loosened from the world, the whipping tornado dropping away like a door was slammed on it, and I floated free, safe, and carrying a chip containing one of my four remaining powers.

Yet Solange’s words chased me still.

“Mi casa es su casa,” she said, I assumed in honor of Carlos. But I didn’t need fluency in another language to interpret the subtext. Translated directly into bitch-speak it meant Solange wouldn’t just be anticipating my return . . . she’d be looking forward to it.

She’d be lying in wait.

Having a supernatural power ripped from your body is like being cold-cocked from behind. The first time I’d fled Midheaven, forced to leave powers behind, there’d been a wave of dizziness, followed by a bolt that tingled simultaneously through all my limbs. Numbness then whisked through me, and my lost powers were ripped away like teeth from the root. As with any extraction, there was a latent soreness and temporary sensitivity, but I returned to my world unharmed . . . if a thoroughly different person than when I’d left.

Having a power returned in that veiled passageway between worlds wasn’t much better. The old spot where this ability had once lived in me had long healed over, and suddenly it was being assailed again, though this time without the benefit of numbness to assist me through the trauma. The now-foreign power was a gut punch, though I couldn’t gasp because there was no air between worlds. I didn’t know how I looked, but I felt like a landed trout, mouth and lungs wide, straining for air that would never come.

But worse than the pain was the shock at the invasive burrowing, like a centipede with a tiny torpedo nose was pushing aside flesh as it wormed into some organ I couldn’t name. It finally disappeared inside after a final shake of its relentless, barbed tail, but a shudder broke out along my spine when tiny teeth attached themselves to my sacrum, belly up.

Something brushed against the life growing inside me, and there was an aggressive jostling, like a territorial battle was being played out in my own body. A gut churn of nausea I hadn’t experienced since the first weeks of my pregnancy rose to my throat, but then everything stilled, and my breath returned in a harsh wheeze. I opened my eyes to find Io staring at me.

While her black skin could never go pale, it was as ashen as I’d ever seen it. If possible, her discus eyes were wider than normal, and her mouth was O-shaped, frozen, forming an unspoken word.

But her strong arms caught me as I heaved and rolled off the table, facedown on the floor where a single gaming chip dropped from my clutched palms. I watched it roll across the floor and come to rest against Buttersnap’s left paw. The giant hound sniffed at it, and tilted her head questioningly at me. Then she shuffled backward when I, in response, began to puke.

Io got me back onto the table, hindered in no small part by Buttersnap, who, despite her abnormal size and supernatural strength, still acted like any other dog when faced with vomit. After shuttling the whining beast from the room, Io returned to my side to probe gently at my middle, careful not to do anything to induce more vomiting. It wasn’t out of the realm of possibility. She could maim with her index finger, kill with her pinky.

“Lordy. This can’t be.” She gazed wonderingly up at my face. “You have your ether back.”

“Awesome.” I hadn’t even known it was missing. “What’s an ether?”

“Ether.” At my elongated blank stare, she shook her head, whistling in disbelief. “Your quintessence.”

I broke the word down. Quin-tessence. Quinta essentia. Five, or fifth essence. That was as far as I got. My Latin sucked.

But Io obviously knew. “ ‘Let there be light, said God; and forthwith light ethereal, first of things, quintessence pure, sprung from the deep.’ ”

I looked at her in surprise. “That’s friggin’ Milton.”

“You know him?”

“I studied the classics as an undergrad.” I used to collect quotes, lovely little bits of language and wisdom that’d helped me through the angst of my teen years . . . though that seemed like a long time ago now. I squinted at Io suspiciously. “But how do you know him?”

Her wide-eyed awe shifted into a knowing smile.

My mouth fell open. “You’re kidding me! Shadow or Light?”

“Hard to tell from the text, isn’t it?” she said, one dark brow quirking.

“Wow. Milton.” I shook my head, momentarily distracted. “So what does it mean?”

“Well, let’s see if your understanding of the elemental world is as strong as your classical education. Name the four basic elements.”

“Air, fire, earth, water.” Same as the rooms occupied by the women in Midheaven. Why was I not surprised there was a connection here?

“And ether is the fifth.” Having recovered somewhat, she gave me a solemn nod. “The Pythagoreans were the first to name it. Said it was the essence that flew upward at creation to comprise the stars.”

“So my ether is somehow related to the stars?”

“Every life and death is.” Thus every person was tied into the Universe too. What I needed to know was what the fifth element—ether, essence, stardust, what-the-fuck-ever—was doing attached to my spine. “So what does it mean to me?”

“Ether is distilled spirit, the purest and highest concentration of energy in both the heavenly bodies and in every living being under those skies. We’re interconnected with each other and all the Universe.”

“So when I lost it, I lost touch with the Universe?”

She shook her head. “You lost touch with yourself. Ether makes you patently you. It’s your individual power, the element that indisputably trumps all the others. Scent, taste, touch, sound, and sight . . . ether is the sense that, well . . . makes sense of it all.”

“But how is it a power?” I meant how could I use it to take the battle to Solange.

“You locate it in yourself, harness it, and use it to get what you want out of life.”

Well, I could locate it handily enough now, I thought, rubbing at my lower back. I knew where it was . . . what I didn’t know was what it was.

“Oh, no one can tell you that,” Io said when I told her as much. “That is . . . not unless they had somehow handled it or possessed it too.”

Our gazes locked. Like Solange had.

I squinted, thinking. She’d told me her house was my house. That I couldn’t compete with a goddess. That I wasn’t as broken as I thought I was, and that I could regenerate. I looked at Io, and narrowed my eyes. “She said that imagining things into existence was natural to me.”

And not only did it make me squirm to think that Solange had known what my essence was before I did, it kinda pissed me off. Plus, even though it had apparently reattached itself to my spine, I didn’t feel any different than I had before entering Midheaven. Now that I’d stopped puking anyway.

Io shook her head, her hair backlit and threaded with light as she hovered over me, the black orbs of her eyes absolute. “What else did she say?”

“That was it.” I shrugged. “I couldn’t see a thing. She had the room blocked off somehow, like she’d drawn a curtain over the entire world.”

“Interesting . . .” And her tone said, And not in a good way. “So she allowed you to cash out your most personal power in hopes you’d use it to return to Midheaven through the tunnels.”

“Gee, Io. You say that like you suspect she’s up to something.”

Io didn’t smile. “You can’t trust her.”

“I know. But it doesn’t mean she’s lying. And it helps explain what Harlan Tripp told me before he died.”

I’d first met Tripp in Midheaven where we’d been pitted against each other in a particularly competitive game of soul poker. However, back on this side of the smoky veil, we’d become unlikely allies, and he’d ultimately given his life over to save my own. But before he died, he told me I was still a high roller. Still a player, and still in the game.

“You don’t look too excited about that,” I said, after telling Io this.

“I’m just a former ward mother. It don’t matter much what I think,” she said, then surprised me by placing her hand on my belly. Her expression softened so much it looked painful. “But I know one thing for sure. You need to be extra careful now.”

“It’s an opportunity,” I told her, and rose from the table with a smile.

“Be careful,” she said again, shaking her head.

“Don’t worry,” I said, reaching for the door.

“You got a power you don’t know what to do with,” she called after me.

No, what I had, I thought, shutting the door with another small smile, was one foot back in the Zodiac world. Now I could do what Carlos wanted, access the underground tunnels, save the rogues trapped in Midheaven, and save him.

Locate it in yourself, harness it, and use it to get what you want out of life.

An image of Hunter raced through my mind and my smile widened.

8

Grays were always the last to know what happened in the world of the Zodiac. As outcasts, we couldn’t just enter a comic book shop and snap up the latest manuals detailing this valley’s supernatural war. Current issues, like the one Joseph had brought us, were rare, and we most often relied on bootleg copies, written and drawn by memory and word of mouth. It was an oft-entertaining way of relaying information, but could also be unreliable. Sometimes we’d get lucky and steal one from some unsuspecting seven-year-old’s backpack, but that was rare. Grays were even more unlikely to mix with the mortal population than Shadow or Light.

The kids who read and obsessed over the Zodiac series were also possessive of their manuals and territory. Since they were naturally suspicious of any adult who dared enter their shop, the secretive den of high fantasy and zit cream, interacting with them felt more like a hazing than a conversation. So my hope, when I entered city boundaries the next day, was that my past involvement with the agents of Light—as well as my willingness to die for one of the kids’ geeky little peers—would compel them to help me.

Because now, more than ever, I needed what was in those manuals.

“Carlos won’t like it,” Vincent said, after I told him of my plan. “He ordered us to stay with you at all times. Someone has to make sure you’re safe.”

“Grays can’t enter the shop,” I reminded him. Even there they were outcasts. “I can because I’m also mortal.”

“And the shop is a safe zone,” Milo pointed out. “No one can touch her once she’s inside.”

“Provided she makes it,” said Foxx, crossing his arms, and we all glared at him.

But there was no choice.

In addition to being a hotbed of prepubescent angst, Master Comics was Las Vegas’s outpost for all things Zodiac. There, information about the Zodiac world was passed around in trading cards and hushed whispers, and it was the one place I knew for sure I could discover more about the constellation Kai had pointed out at the rave. The one the Tulpa was so determined to find.

“Look, the only other option is to wait in a bombed-out sinkhole in the middle of the desert.” I let that hang in the air for a while. Despite the inherent dangers in forming this ragtag group of grays, I knew these men liked being relevant again. They were back in the game, counted among those who made things happen in our world, instead of ghosts whose final acts had been to fail.

Besides, if we turned back now, it wouldn’t be long before the grays disbanded; slowly drifting apart like oil beads floating atop water. The newer ones, like Foxx, would go first. No one would make a big deal of it. Personal choice and the right to change one’s fate and mind was something Carlos adamantly preached, yet that defection would soon be followed by others. No announcements, no acknowledgment, just the rest of us performing a silent mental count the next morning over a meal of tortillas and rice, taking note of who’d slipped away. Wondering who would be next.

No, I thought, looking back at the shop door now. There was nowhere else to go but forward . . . and for me, specifically, that meant straight through the three hundred yards that lay between the shop door, and the grays gathered behind me.

“I don’t see anyone,” Gareth encouraged, peering around the brick face into the L-shaped parking lot.

“They’re Zodiac agents,” Foxx reminded him, slumped against the wall. “You won’t see them until they strike.” He jerked his head at me. “She won’t see them at all.”

“Shut up, Foxx.” Milo, so large and dark he nearly blotted out the sun, turned toward me, concern welling in his dark eyes. “Steady but fast, Jo. They don’t even expect us to enter the city, so no one will be looking here.”

It was more hope than promise, but I nodded, and took the first step. I didn’t sprint toward the pink-stuccoed building, though I had to fight the desire to break into a fast jog. Especially after the scent of garbage from a nearby Dumpster reminded me of Warren, and had my fragile stomach flip-flopping on itself. I continued down the street like some apathetic, overaged Goth girl, feigning a yawn as I stepped over a patch of sidewalk someone had stepped in before it’d dried. The heel prints and shoe size matched mine perfectly, but I just tucked a hand into the pocket of my loose cargos, fingering my sheathed soul blade, and kept moving at an even pace. Finally reaching the shop, I yanked the door open, the attached cowbell jangling like an open nerve.

There, in a dimly lit shop that looked like a gamer’s basement and smelled like a jock’s shower, over a half-dozen kids turned my way, gazes both curious and knowing. As if on some silent mental cue, they nodded as one and, gravely, the skinniest preteen spoke.

“Check the unit, dudes,” Dylan said. “The Archer’s back.”

“I liked your other costume better,” Dylan said, giving me a deliberate up-and-down as I let the door shut behind me.

I glared at him until he was forced to take a hit on his inhaler. “It wasn’t a costume. It was a cover identity.”

“Whatever,” piped up a voice beside me. I glanced down to find Kade, a kid who’d clearly cut his hair, Bieber-style, with children’s scissors and a funhouse mirror. “It was way hotter.”

“It’s nice that they let you keep your boobs,” piped up a small voice behind me, and I turned around to find Li Chan—happy, healthy, whole—the child I’d also saved while giving over all my powers for her sister’s life. Li had once been as close to death as possible while still breathing, but she now bounced on her toes in full health, tilting her head as her eyes grew wide. “They even look a little bigger.”

“They didn’t let me keep anything,” I said, flushing, before quickly shaking my head. “I mean, these are mine. And I didn’t ask to . . .”

Wait. Why was I talking about my chest size to a bunch of socially challenged rugrats? I looked around the dingy shop at the eight prepubescent children, and shook my head. “Where’s Zane?”

Zane Silver, owner of Master Comics, was an ubiquitous presence, and not because he didn’t want to leave shop grounds, but because he couldn’t. Ever. His geeky persona was as much a mask for him as my sister’s identity had been for me . . . and as convincing too. Because beneath his rat’s-nest hair and chunky, pockmarked cheeks was a seventy-three-year-old man trapped in a twenty-seven-year-old’s body.

Bound and sworn to the duty of record keeper, Zane was charged with recording the events of the Zodiac world in comic book form until some other dumber-than-shit kid agreed to take his place. It was a critical position because it allowed the kids to think, speak, and dream of us—in other words, to believe. That strong, young mental energy was critical for our survival, and when the kids hit puberty and moved on, there had to be another group ready to take their place.

Zane, however, had languished in this shop for decades, growing older on the inside, remaining ageless on the outside. Additionally, if he didn’t record our stories or if he got some wild hair and tried to leave the premises, the voices in his head would drive him to madness. It was as Faustian a deal as was ever made.

“Resting his old bones,” piped someone from across the room and I nearly sighed in relief. Carl Kenyon, the series’ penciler, and head dork. His punk-rock edge had taken on a decidedly Davy Jones feel, and today he sported a skinny black tie, rolled shirt sleeves, and black pencil jeans about four inches too short. “He’s not feeling well.”

“Hey, Carl. You look different.”

“Things change.” He shrugged and pushed himself onto the U-shaped countertop splitting the room, while jerking his chin at me. “And I could say the same for you.”

I shrugged too. “You know how it goes.”

“I know how it goes for you.”

I let that one slide. It was hard to argue. “So what’s going on? Zane just left the shop untended?”

“It’s not untended,” Carl said, swinging his arms wide, affronted.

“Yeah, what are we?” asked Kade, bouncing beside me like a coiled spring. “Window dressing?”

“She didn’t mean that,” said Li, lifting her chin, then smiling up at me loyally.

“ ’Cuz you’re not that pretty,” I said to Kade, sinking to his level. I couldn’t help it. Something about the little shit made me want to stick out my tongue and fire spitballs.

Douglas, a bony beanpole who rooted for the Shadows, glared at me from the gaming tables. He was the changeling who protected Shadow agents if a warring agent of Light appeared in the shop at the same time. Changelings deterred conflicts within the safe zone by literally morphing into living shields, with fangs, to keep the peace.

But right now Douglas better resembled a pit bull with an old bone. “You think we’d let anything happen to this place? We’re keepers of the gates. We’re the first line of defense between that sad, bleak place called reality and the powerful Universe ruled by the Zodiac! We protect, serve, and still manage to keep up a collective 4.0 GPA, give or take a hundredth of a point.” At this, he glared at Dylan.

“Yeah, yeah,” I said, waving my hand as Dylan took another anxious pull on his inhaler. “But I need to talk to an adult.”

“Zane’ll be fine with letting us take care of it,” Carl said, leaning back on his palms.

“Zane’s not fine unless he has eight ounces of prune juice with his early bird special.”

“You shouldn’t even be here,” Douglas said, lanky body coiled like a cobra about to strike. “You’re just a mortal claiming to be a part of a supernatural splinter group, though you have no powers, aura, or even cold, hard cash.” And the way his fists bunched said that because of all of that, he thought he could now take me in hand-to-hand. I kinda wanted him to try. If I were ever going to hit a kid, this would be the one. “You’re no different than us.”

“I bathe,” I pointed out dryly, thought that wasn’t the sole difference. Whatever noxious mixture of magic and science turned these hormone bags into protectors for their chosen sides of Shadow and Light was pretty powerful juju. More than I had at this point, really.

I looked around, wondering if any of these kids would stand for gray. Unlikely. Kade was glaring at me like I’d just discovered his Playboy stash, and I caught Dylan mining for nose gold from the corner of my eye. Li, though she loved me for my sacrifices for her and her family, was decidedly the changeling for the Light.

Carl banged his heels against the counter cabinet, something I’m sure drove Zane crazy. “Ever think that Zane just doesn’t want to see you?”

“Ditto, geek pie, but you still show up here every day.” I shot him a sweet smile and raised my voice to drown out his protest. “And I’m not here for me. I need help. I’m going to free Hunter Lorenzo from Midheaven.”

The room fell silent, and I mentally patted myself on the back. Hunter had been one of their favorites. Even Douglas had collected his trading cards.

“You serious?” asked Carl, in a low voice.

“You think I’d risk my life, as well as this really cool Goth girl cover, otherwise?”

“I do like those boots,” Li said sweetly.

“She’s still ancient,” muttered Kade.

Carl, at least, stayed focused. “So you want the latest manuals.” He jerked his head at the reinforced glass case protecting the manuals of Shadow and Light, then bit his lower lip.

“Do you have them?” I raised my brow, he lifted his own pierced one, and we both crossed our arms.

“Hot off the press.”

“But it’ll cost you,” piped up a new voice. With a sense of déjà vu, I looked over. And down. There, I found a new addition to the nerd squad.

I looked back at Carl. “Who’s the twerp?”

“Oh, that’s Donny. Don’t mind him. He’s still in training and a bit of a spaz.”

“Hey!” said Donny, spazzing.

“It’s true. Donny fucked up and protected the wrong agent last week,” Li told me, in a voice a soprano would envy. “We had to use Crisco to pry his aura from Douglas’s.”

“It was an accident! She was pretty. She didn’t look like any Shadow I’d ever seen. Not like this pseudo agent. You’ve got wannabe Shadow written all over you.”

I sighed and looked around for another friendly face. Even a sane one would do. All I got was Carl, laughing as he threw Donny a key. “Why don’t you escort the former Archer of Light to the manuals. Let her pick one out.”

Donny swelled with the importance of his mission. Yanking his pants high, he jerked his head at me. “Fine. But don’t try anything funny. I’m a changeling with the power and authority to stomp your ass!”

Using nothing more than my mortal strength, I lifted the little shit high in the air, tightening my grasp as he began to squirm. “I understand you might be feeling powerful just because you suddenly know the secret password to Weirdo World, but in case you haven’t heard, I’m a mortal with a history of violence, a jumpy trigger finger, and absolutely zero fondness for other people’s children. So you’d do well to just unlock the manuals and keep the mouthing off to a minimum.”

I glanced over to find Carl half smiling, almost looking nostalgic. “That okay with you?”

He shrugged but repeated, “Remember, you only get one.”

“Wait a minute. What the fuck, Carl?” Douglas was suddenly by my side, finger pointed at Donny. “Why does the noob get to escort her?”

“ ’Cause she’s not a Shadow agent, douche bag,” said Li from my other side, her high voice curling around the last word like a warm, wool sweater.

Douglas whirled on her. “Well she ain’t Light either, Li, so you need to step back. This is a safe zone. A haven of neutrality. And if anyone’s going to escort her to the manuals, it’s me.”

Li smoothed out the pleats in her skirt. Sharply. “We’ll all escort her.”

I looked back at Carl, who gave me a cheesy thumbs-up. I hate you, I mouthed to him, which made him nod cheerily.

So I made my way to the back of the shop flanked by the changelings of Light and Shadow, and a strange newbie who couldn’t seem to tell one from the other. And while they battled over my supernatural virtue with vicious mutters and glares, I came to a stop in front of the locked, wood-paneled cabinet holding the latest manuals.

“They’ve got a new series sidebar,” I said, surprised, as I studied the manual of Light. Tekla was featured on the cover, backlit as she emerged from a dark tunnel, but unmistakable in a long salwar-kamiz, her weapon palmed, anchor and chain outlined against a full moon.

“Yeah, Carl’s idea,” Donny said, warming to the subject, if not to me, as he keyed the lock. “Don’t you love the tagline? Fighting for a New Dawn.”

“A new dusk,” Douglas corrected, pointing at the Shadow manuals. “And the Light readership is fading.”

Not a surprise, really. These comics were aimed at an American audience. Losing was worse than cheating.

“And your rogue troop is stealing energy from them both,” Donny told me. I looked down at Li, who hesitated, her loyalty to me warring with the truth, but eventually she lowered her eyes and nodded.

“Just like a Shadow,” Douglas said, smugly.

That was enough. “I’ve never been Shadow and you know it,” I said bitingly.

“See!” Li stuck out her tongue.

But I turned toward her, shaking my head. “But I’m not Light anymore either, Li. I’m not sure I ever was.”

“Sheesh,” said Donny, scratching his nose. “No wonder you lost all your powers. You can’t make up your mind what you are.”

I only frowned at him.

Carl was suddenly behind us, mouth twitching as he leafed through a Spider-Man. “Nice job getting your ether back, though.”

I froze, then tilted my head. “You can tell?”

“We let you in, didn’t we?” he said, turning back to his comic.

Ether is the sense that makes sense of it all.

I turned back to the carousels.

“Choose Shadow!” Douglas said, presenting his sides’ tower like a game show host. “It shows how the Tulpa is orchestrating his attacks against the Light!”

That did sound good . . . though I hesitated, unwilling to lend the Shadows more energy by reading and believing this text. I was a mortal . . . and God knew I was a believer.

“Choose Light!” said Li, widening her stance and placing her hands on her hips. “It reveals the sixth sign of the Zodiac.”

“Really?” The signs of the Zodiac were really portents, weighty events that brought about huge shifts of power in the Zodiac world. Five had already come to pass, and we’d all been waiting anxiously to find out what the sixth one was.

“Who cares?” Donny said impatiently. “Just because you know the future doesn’t mean you can do anything to change it.”

I turned my back on all four of them, and after another moment’s consideration, reached for the Shadow manual. They were the more powerful of the two troops. Besides, Felix’s disappearance was weighing on me and I already knew the agents of Light had no idea what had happened to him. If I could put a timeline to the Shadows’ action in the past few weeks, maybe I could find out where he was . . . or had been last. There was no reason to share that with these kids, though.

“See? She’s a Shadow at heart! Can’t fight your genes, dudes.”

“Shut up, Dougl-ass,” I said, before turning to Li, her face crestfallen as she stared at the manual in my hand. “Sorry, Li. But this manual will at least tell me where the Shadows are concentrating their strength. They’re a greater threat right now than the Light.”

“Okay, but when you return from Midheaven, triumphant over your enemies and with your one true love by your side, then you’ll consider rejoining the agents who battle for the good of mankind, right?” She paused, before adding, “I know some of them miss you.”

I winced at that, and at the hope lighting her eyes, but I couldn’t lie. Kneeling in front of her, I reached out and wrapped my hand around hers. “I’m sorry, Li. But when I return, it won’t only be with Hunter. My hopes are that it’ll be with enough rogue agents to prevail over the warring factions of Shadow . . . and Light.”

Her expression altered into abject sadness, like something inside her had fallen off a cliff, but then a sharp movement to my left had her straightening and me automatically stepping back. A shadow stretched, emerging from the hallway leading to the storage room, accompanied by a harsh clap. “Very admirable.”

The eight changelings in the room shifted, an almost imperceptible shuffle to attention, morphing from lackadaisical slackers to a staggered formation of miniature soldiers. All but Douglas, I noted, swallowing hard. The Shadows’ changeling sat back to enjoy the show.

Meanwhile, the newbie, Donny, remained by my side, looking bewildered. But Li shot one last sad glance back at me and reluctantly moved from my side to that of the room’s newest occupant, a true agent of Light.

I moved, too, making sure my back was against the wall . . . which was how I found myself squared off against my former troop leader, Warren Clarke.

9

“Well isn’t this interesting,” Warren said, entering the room soft on his feet, despite the pronounced limp he’d gained in a long-ago battle. He was dressed as an indigent, his favorite disguise, though his trench had been replaced by a new-to-him marine’s jacket in deference to the warming weather. The faded and tattered black cargos were the same, though, and despite their thinning soles, so were his boots. His hair was ragged, looking as unpredictable as the rest of him, and though the grime beneath his nails and on his neck wasn’t authentic, it smelled like it . . . even to me. It was a look calculated, in whole, to make mortals both see him and not.

Yet there was nothing of the man who’d brought me into the troop just over a year earlier. His carriage was stiffer, his jaw tightly clenched, and something hard, almost brittle, shellacked the gaze that had once regarded me with compassion. Of course there was a history between us now, but no acknowledgment that I’d ever saved his life, or vice versa. Certainly not that we’d once fought side by side to retain choice and freedom for the mortals populating this city.

No, I thought, sighing heavily, something had broke inside Warren, something vital to his ability to take himself out of those blown-out boots and put himself in someone else’s shoes. And whatever it was, he clearly blamed me for its destruction.

“A mortal allowed to peruse the stacks of Master Comics. To buy the sacred manuals, no less.” Warren glared at Carl, who had somehow lost all his bold teen swagger and retreated behind the relative safety of the counter. Only half of his head was visible over the cash register as he watched Warren sniff at the air. I watched too, and caught the stiff tilting of his head. “Or, wait . . . are you mortal?”

But he didn’t wait. He lunged faster than I could blink, because despite some sort of power called ether, I was no different than any other living human.

Except for those who were also changelings. The children around me reacted immediately, little limbs stretching like rubber bands, elongating like putty, their prepubescent bodies thinning like shields. Two flanked the entrance, guarding against chase, and against other agents entering the safe zone . . . now a war zone. Surprisingly, Donny moved in front of me, his outline shimmering like sun off a summer lake, his body ripping as it softened and thinned out to expand and cover me. I caught the awed horror in his wide gaze, and realized he’d never done this before. He looked as surprised at protecting a gray as at the way his jaw unhinged, elongated, and extended into a gaping yawn.

Testing the monster-formerly-known-as-Donny, Warren launched himself forward, plowing into the changeling’s chest at full force. I cringed, but Warren dropped like he’d hit a brick wall. I’d have laughed if he hadn’t been so clearly willing to break his own neck in an effort to get to me.

Li, sporting fangs and a body that was all loosened tendons and joints, and blackened to opaqueness, ambled to Warren’s side as he rose. I was no real threat to her charge, but Warren ignored her flat, outstretched palm and pushed himself to his feet.

“Oh yes,” he said, flipping his hair from his eyes, and rubbing the bump on his forehead as he glared at me through Donny’s flattened form. “This is very peculiar.”

Feeling my adrenaline bump, Donny growled, the guttural sound emanating from his throat that of a wildcat, not a child.

“Now, now.” Warren said, using the voice of a lion tamer as he took a halting step closer, looking at me with a smile that was slyer and meaner than I’d ever seen. “So you seem to have some sort of power back. Though it’s small, and not nearly all of it.”

“How can you tell?” I asked, lifting my chin.

“Your aura is still missing.”

“It was missing even before I gave up my powers to save the Light,” I retorted, reminding him that were it not for my actions, he wouldn’t be standing here. My aura, though, had been compromised even before that. I’d been through a lot of battles in one year. To think of them all at once was like considering the injustices of oils spills, abused animals, and the sex slave industry all at the same time. It was just too much.

“This is different, though,” he argued, rubbing at his chin. “This is a blank spot surrounding your entire body. An aetheric black hole.”

I glanced at Carl, the only kid who hadn’t turned into a seven-foot Gummi bear, but his expression was the equivalent of a shrug. “It’s like you’re a zombie, dude. Dead, but animate. Sorry.”

“Don’t be. She did it to herself,” Warren said harshly. “Besides, it’s a good analogy. The walking dead. That’s exactly what you’ll be if you try to bring those rogues back from Midheaven.”

I felt my face go red. I hated being told what to do by people who had my worst interests at heart. “You can’t stop the grays, Warren. The days when you picked off rogue agents one by one are over. We’re a legitimate troop now.”

His brows rose at that. “Then you count yourself among their numbers?”

I didn’t bother answering that. “The days when it was only Shadow and Light battling for control over this valley are numbered as well.”

“Sounds nefarious, Joanna,” he sneered. “Sure you’re gray and not Shadow?”

“This has nothing to do with my heritage,” I spat back. He’d used that against me long enough. “I’m letting you know straight up what my intentions are. At least one of us can tell the truth.”

“You’re only telling me because I already heard it upon exiting the storeroom,” he scoffed, arms hanging deceptively at his sides. “And good thing too. Because it gives me a chance to tell you a long-awaited truth.”

I folded my arms over my chest. “So hell finally is freezing over.”

He took a step forward. “Don’t call me a liar in front of all these impressionable young minds.”

“No choice,” I said curtly, inching back, though Donny had shifted. “Since I once believed everything you said.”

Lowering his chin, Warren licked his lips, and spoke very quietly. “First I’m going to take this manual,” he said, holding up one of the comics that had obviously been archived in the back, “and use the information inside it against the Shadows. Then I’m going to find the bastard child that Hunter managed to create with that abomination Solange—”

“They’re all in Midheaven. You’ll never—”

“And I’m going to raise her as Light,” he continued, only a touch louder, like I hadn’t spoken. “Then, when that’s all in place, and the true Kairos is secured in my troop, I’ll attend to every last rogue littering this place. I’ll scrub my city clean, as I always have. As the Light always will.”

“It’s the grays’ city now too, Warren,” Carl blurted, then reddened, sinking back behind the counter as Warren and I both turned to him, incredulous. He swallowed hard, then lifted his head. “That’s why we write about them. They’re legit.”

“You’re not supposed to take sides, changeling.” Warren’s words were so tight they were almost scrawled in the air.

“I don’t.” Carl sucked in an uneasy breath. He was shaking too. “I pencil for both the Shadow and the Light. But I still call it like I see it.” Then he ducked back behind the register.

“Meaning you choose gray,” Warren said flatly.

Though I didn’t know why, I felt the need to pull the heat from Carl. Maybe because he was just a kid, just a mortal. Maybe because piling it on my shoulders wouldn’t really move the needle by even a degree. Warren’s hate for me was already absolute. “Meaning he doesn’t see me as being drawn down the middle, black and white, like some people I know.”

Warren’s gaze moved back, less a sharp look than a tossed grenade. And I, I realized, had just pulled the pin. “It doesn’t matter. Not what he sees, or draws. This shop is going to close in a few hours, and do you know what that means?”

The blood drained from my face, and I swayed. The changelings would leave. The doors would be locked. And every agent—Shadow, Light, or gray—would be forced outside the safe zone once again to fend for themselves.

“I’ll wait for you outside, shall I?” Warren said, and for the first time since his appearance, he offered up a real smile. He almost looked peaceful as he gazed at me, knowing he had me trapped. I would have to leave. And once I did, there’d be no escaping him in my mortal state.

I thought about it a moment longer, then reached into my pocket and speed dialed from my cell. Putting the phone to my ear, I glanced back up in time to watch Warren’s eyes narrow. “Hey, it’s me. Yeah, a spot of trouble. Warren Clarke is going to exit these doors in a couple of minutes. Yeah—yes. Right here in front of me. So, listen, if he lingers inside the perimeter, swarm him. No, it’s okay,” I said, gifting Warren with a real smile of my own. “He’s alone.”

Warren’s nostrils flared as I clicked off the phone. “I can call my agents too, you know.”

“But they won’t get here in time.” Because if he didn’t walk out these doors in the next two minutes, I would. Then the changelings would force him to wait inside until I was safely away.

I tilted my head, waiting to see what Warren would chose. Sit on his hands and wait for me to be whisked from sight? Or leave first, dodging fast so that the grays didn’t converge upon him all at once?

“Clever, Joanna,” he finally admitted, laughing wryly. “Someone taught you well.”

“I think for myself.”

“Which is what got you in this mess.”

“No, that was you.”

He frowned, as if considering my words, like this was a real exchange and not a verbal sparring match. Then the reflective look disappeared, the lines of his weathered face deepened back into stubbornness, and he turned to the door like he was stalking it. Li trailed behind dutifully, the suction noises of her Gumby-like limbs the only sound within the shop, save for Donny’s labored breathing.

Hand on the door, Warren paused before pulling it open. “I understand that you and your troop of merry men like to think you concern us as much as the Shadows do, but you couldn’t be more wrong. You’re not a tenth of the enemy they are, and without even an ounce of their power. You’ll all be gone shortly, while our sides carry on, still surviving, promoting balance for those mortals who choose to implement it in their lives. Just as we always have. Just as it’s always been.”

“Then why keep coming after us? If you’re so unconcerned, I mean?”

“Sport,” he said, showing his teeth. “And I’m only after you.”

Just the agent he’d found, trained, manipulated, threw away, attacked. Just a woman, a mortal. No more than that, but somehow less than those he was supposed to protect.

He was crazy, I suddenly realized, studying those hard eyes. Unreachable too. The man who’d once shown me kindness and offered baby steps into the Zodiac world—granted, after throwing me into the deep end—was MIA, and in his place was an enemy as absolute as the Tulpa.

What was it the Tulpa had said about betrayal? I thought, squinting. That it was expected of enemies. But that a betrayal of friendship was impossibly personal.

Killing me was something Warren was taking very personally.

“I will chase you from this city, then find a way to break you once you’re beyond it,” he said softly, madly. “I will relieve you of the notion you were ever the Kairos, and see your remains scattered over the four corners of this earth. You’ll go down in the annals of our history as the impostor you are and I, Warren Clarke, will be known as the agent, the man who finally broke through your resistance.”

“Maybe,” I conceded, trying not to think about his words too much. Donny was already frothing at the mouth. I swallowed hard. “But you’ll also be known as the troop leader who can’t be trusted to stand behind his own agents.”

The statement sat on the air—Hunter’s name, Felix’s likely death, and Vanessa’s defection all unspoken. “You’re not the man who brought me into this world.”

He wasn’t at all who I thought he was.

“You should talk,” Warren snapped, stepping toward me before he could stop himself. Donny roared. It sounded like a soprano cracking on the downswing, but it might be formidable someday. Warren ignored Donny’s elongated fangs, and sneered at me. “You, with all your identities. All your masks.”

I shook my head. “I don’t wear masks anymore.”

And maybe that was what he really objected to. It was hard to manipulate someone who’d laid themselves bare, who had no need or desire of pretense, and whose actions were backed up by solid, straightforward belief. He might want to kill me, but no matter how I died, I’d do it while truly being seen.

Warren pursed his mouth. “I don’t know why you can still handle conduits. I don’t know why these changelings would help you, seeing that whatever power you’ve regained is sitting mute inside you like a lockbox with no key.”

So he hadn’t heard the part about the return of my ether . . . though he was right about my inability to access it. I had no clue how to do that.

“But I’m glad you’re making this a challenge, Joanna,” he said stiffly. “It’ll be that much more satisfying in the end. After all, how much better to prevail over someone who provides resistance than besting someone who just falls beneath your sword? Resistance, after all, makes life exciting. Puts the spring in your step when you get out of bed in the morning, gives purpose to your day.”

He meant killing me was his life’s new passion. “I’m not resisting you, Warren. I’m surviving after you abandoned me. You lied to me. You used me.”

“Tekla told me you’d see it that way,” he said, voice almost serene. She must have read his chart or cast lots or studied her beloved stars. The mishmashing of methods seemed to work . . . and it was another betrayal of me.

“It’s not one of her predictions. You’d feel the same.”

“Not a prediction, no . . . but a gift.” He looked even crazier, I thought, when not raging. “See, she also told me you appeared in my life to show me who I really am, and who I’m meant to become. So if I’ve changed, it’s because you changed me. If I act differently toward you, it’s because you facilitated it.”

“Why would I advocate you trying to kill me?”

“Because you need killing.”

I clenched my jaw. “Is that right?”

“It ain’t no lie,” he said, showing teeth. Then he turned, swung the door wide, and with a whipping gust and the sound of a far-off Cessna, was gone.

“Why are you guys suddenly helping me?” I asked Carl once I’d choked down scalding tears—angry and indignant ones; not sad—and, of course, made sure Warren had really left. I felt silly, as if asking revealed some sort of vulnerability to the little twerp, but really, what was there to hide? As penciler of the valley’s entire Zodiac series, he knew more about me than any agent who, for all their powers, could read only one side or the other of the manuals. I had to believe that drawing a person’s actions somehow imbued you with a deeper knowledge of their emotions, and a greater understanding of their personality and actions.

Besides, with Zane taking a siesta, there wasn’t anyone else to ask. The other kids were impressive enough in monster mash mode, but they were rank-and-file. They knew what they were told, and did the same. As proof, Donny was hyperventilating on the floor now that he’d returned to his regular form, and though I adored Li, she could never truly align herself with me, not when it came right down to it. So as the others gathered around Donny, both congratulating and teasing him about popping his changeling cherry, it was Carl’s gaze that remained fixed on me, his expression a cross-section of pity and doubt.

Or maybe indigestion. It was hard to tell with him.

“You sure you don’t have any idea what your ether does?” he asked, voice quiet and almost hopeful. He was nudging me, which made it clear, once again, that I’d have to figure it out by myself. If only I could figure out how.

The power to imagine things into existence.

I leaned across the glass countertop. “Solange just gave me back that power so I could cross physically into Midheaven.”

“A woman who thrives on other people’s soul power gave some back to you? Without demanding anything in return?” He shook his head, and blew out a hard breath that had his hair standing up even more. “I don’t like it. Maybe going over there isn’t the best idea.”

“No choice, my friendly little mutant. Those men trapped in Midheaven will never make it out on their own. They’ll remain on a slow boil until the last of their energy has been consumed to create Solange’s dreamland. Then they’ll be tossed like refuse on the molten core of that world.”

“And you’re going to save them?” he asked, doubt pinging through every syllable. “With what? Bravado? Wishful thinking? One sole power that you don’t even know how to use?”

“I’m just going to be the helping hand I wished had once been extended to me.”

“How very maternal of you,” he said pointedly, eyes skimming my stomach.

Jerking back, my mouth fell open, though my throat wouldn’t work. Carl grinned. He knew. Somehow this little shit knew that I was pregnant. Which meant it wouldn’t be long before everyone else did too.

He saw me glancing at the other kids, and after doing the same, making sure none was listening, he leaned in close. “You’re running out of safe zones, Archer. Maybe you should listen to both troop leaders. Leave town while you still can. Start a life somewhere where you’re not surrounding by those who want to cleave your head from your body.”

I gave him a smile. That had been almost sweet. “Do I seem like the white-picket-fence sort of girl to you, Carl?”

“No, you seem like the blood-soaked-walls kind of girl to me.”

That wasn’t as sweet.

“Just sayin’, you might want to amend your ways. You’ve more enemies than friends right now.” He pushed to a seated position atop the cabinet across from me, sitting on Zane’s most precious collection of superhero figurines. “Do you know I spend almost fifty percent of my work day penciling the grays these days? You guys are draining the energy from both Shadow and Light.”

So no matter what Warren said, I still had the power to influence the war in this city. I smiled when I told Carl that.

“That’s one way to look at it,” he said, huffing and pulling at his tie. “Another way is to acknowledge that you have a big fat bull’s-eye between your eyes.”

I sighed. “Can I go now?”

He shrugged. “The boys should let you pass.” I looked over at the two guard changelings battling for a headlock next to the front door, grunting and arguing over who would have come out on top had they been tested. At least their fangs had retracted.

I threw some bills onto the counter for my chosen Shadow manual, then strode to the door before they changed their minds. “Thanks, Carl. Later dweebs. Li.”

“Hey Archer?” Carl stopped me as I hit the door, the same place Warren had paused before. Yet when I looked back, he waffled uncertainly, words jerking from his mouth like tugs on a fishing line. “Study the signs.”

I drew back. “The signs of the Zodiac?”

What did they have to do with anything? I mean, they were important heralds as to our world’s events, sure, but they were too cryptic to be useful as guides.

He shook his head. “That’s all I can tell you . . . and only because you brought the others to pass.”

I glanced at Li, then back at the locked cabinet where the sixth sign was locked in the manual of Light. Carl was already shaking his head. “Sorry. You’ve already made an official purchase. You’ll have to wait until next week if you want the Light.”

The dweeb bots and their stupid rules. “Fine. Tell Zane I hope he feels better soon.”

“Sure.” His face twisted like he’d just tasted something new and was uncertain whether he liked it or not. “I’ll do that.”

I peeked out the door cautiously, finding the street empty, though the changelings wouldn’t have let me pass were Warren still outside. Still, I kept my stride even because, as Carl warned, there were still other enemies afoot. Enemies in this world, enemies in the next. Maybe I could imagine some allies into existence, I thought wryly. That would be nice for a change.

10

Study the signs.

Carl’s parting words trailed me as I headed back to the waiting grays. As he’d said, the signs of the Zodiac were all portents I’d helped bring to pass. They were also cryptic, mysterious, and open to a multitude of interpretations.

Contrary to what one might initially believe, the signs of the Zodiac had nothing to do with the astrological wheel. Instead, as portents, they were indications that one side in the fight between good and evil was finally gaining dominance over the other.

The first “sign” of the Zodiac, then, had been the rise of the Kairos. A year ago everyone had been saying that was my unexpected arrival on the paranormal scene. Imagine my surprise when, out of nowhere, I’d learned I was a superhero charged with protecting mankind from the overt influence of the Shadows.

Imagine my further disbelief when told I was the legendary Kairos, or the savior of whatever side I chose to fight on. That was before I’d been reduced again to a mortal, of course, and long before we all learned of Solange and Hunter’s fated love child.

The second and third signs followed quickly. The fourth portent of the Zodiac was my own near-death drowning, while the fifth sign was the most recent development: The Shadow would bind with the Light. Bind with it, I thought, stepping into the mouth of the alley, to create gray. The rise of the rogues as a legitimate troop also renewed both the Shadows’ and the Lights’ desire to see us wiped from the earth’s surface. They might be sworn enemies, but they had a common enemy in us.

Or, more specifically, in little ol’ mortal me.

Because now it was time for the sixth sign of the Zodiac to be revealed, and while Donny was right, knowledge wouldn’t allow me to alter fate, it might help to anticipate it.

Study the signs, I thought . . .

Then my back struck the Dumpster eight feet behind me. I wheezed even though I’d never had a chance to take a breath, and hoped whatever just popped in my spine wasn’t important. I also scented something rancid that had nothing to do with the garbage behind me. I had a moment to think, Warren, before a face filled my line of vision, so close my eyes nearly crossed.

“Is he in there?”

The whisper was cracked, the breath soured. Wild eyes—not Warren’s—searched mine, and I had time to see the mouth opened again before another collision wiped the face away. I whirled with the motion, but steadying hands found me and I screamed before my vision righted itself. If I waited it would be too late.

“Don’t hurt her!” I yelled, straining forward. And when the world finally stopped spinning, I ran for the woman who’d once laughed, fought, and cried with me. She was pinned beneath Milo and Fletcher, seconds from the beating of her life.

“It’s okay.” I stilled them with a hand on each shoulder. “It’s Vanessa.”

Yet I was only sure of the latter of those statements. It was definitely Vanessa, though it took me a moment to really recognize her. She was warm flesh hanging off bone, rumpled clothes hanging off that, and little else.

“Don’t hurt her,” I repeated, jerking loose of Vincent’s restraining grip. He was only trying to protect me, but I shook him off and bent close anyway. No, I couldn’t be sure she wasn’t here to kill me, but the blow that’d knocked the breath from my lungs could have done so much more. She’d come out of nowhere, and yet I lived.

Is he in there?

“Vanessa?” I said, but that failed to get her attention. Her head lolled from one side to the other, eyeballs following a second later like they were loose, rolling in their sockets. She looked everywhere except the faces crowded around her. “Hey, V?”

It was Felix’s pet name that caught her attention. She lifted her head, eyes rolling to a stop on my face. Then her lower lip, thinned and chapped and pale with dehydration, began to wobble. “Felix . . .”

A murmur of sympathy escaped me, and I put a hand on her cheek. “I know.”

She searched my face a moment longer before her head dropped to the pavement with a sickening thwack. I winced when she hit it again, even harder, and Milo suddenly used his restraining hand to create a cushion between her and the pavement. It didn’t matter. Vanessa was beyond caring what anyone else might do to her. I’d seen it in that brief look. The worst had already happened in her life, and she had no desire to see any more.

“Help her up,” I told Milo. Foxx made a sound beside me like he was going to object but I cut him off with a sharp look. He had to scent the desperation, exhaustion, and grief on this woman. As a rogue he’d felt all those things at one time too. His jaw clenched, he still didn’t like it, but he stepped back with a sigh. Vanessa was no threat to any of us.

Milo and Fletcher lifted her gently to her feet, where she wobbled before leaning against the wall, doing the minimum necessary to remain standing on her own. My heart broke as I stared, remembering the first time I’d met her—a vibrant, powerful, bronze-skinned warrior, with a head of soft, full curls and honey-lit eyes. Yet these last months had been unkind. She’d been tortured, and though the only remaining evidence of that was her shorn hair—those once-gorgeous curls were now worn pixie-style—shadows passed behind her gaze in unguarded moments.

And then, Felix.

My memories of them together must have scented the air because she refocused her dulled gaze on me, hope like a painful stain in her eyes. “Are you sure he wasn’t there?”

I shook my head. “He wasn’t, honey. I promise.”

Vanessa winced, then seemed to note the other grays for the first time. She straightened, wiping her palms along her hopelessly wrinkled shirt, as if to smooth out both it and herself. “Well, did Zane say anything? Maybe he let something slip? Or maybe there’s something about Felix in the Shadow manuals?”

Her eyes darted to the manual I still held, but I managed to regain her attention by answering her first question. “Zane wasn’t there either.”

“That’s what Chandra said.” She tilted her head, thinking on that, which would have been reassuringly normal if it wasn’t done as slowly as a bug considering its prey. Geez, I thought, holding my breath so she didn’t scent my alarm. And I thought I’d lost a few mental steps after Hunter had left.

“You’ve seen Chandra?” I asked, trying to keep her focused.

She nodded, but her gaze had wandered back in the direction of Master Comics. “But that’s strange, right? Zane should be there. There are just so many people . . . not where they’re supposed to be.”

I didn’t blame her for being shell-shocked. Everything she knew of the world, all she’d taken for granted as true and right, had just been upended on its head. Her troop leader hadn’t protected them; he had, in fact, lied to them all. The war for the city wasn’t really about the mortal right to choose between good and evil, or even balance between the two warring sides as Warren claimed. It was about power, plain and simple, and who had more of it.

Guilt stuttered through me because I too was something that shouldn’t exist in Vanessa’s world, less a mixture of opposing forces split evenly down the middle than a blending of the two sides. Like some stubborn weed, I thought, that flourished in the happenstance cracks of a dry lakebed, a miracle for existing at all. Vanessa, though, was a hothouse flower. So used to being surrounded and protected by sanctuary and Light that the lack had to be a shock. Even when young, I’d known shadows existed. But Vanessa? She’d only ever known Light.

“Come with us, V,” I said, holding out my hand. “We’ll get you some food, shelter. A warm bed and bath. You won’t be alone.”

“No. I have to stay away.”

“From the grays?” I asked, saddened.

“From ties that bind. I need to be loose. Move quickly. Stay flexible.” Her eyes darted demonstratively. “Felix always said I was the one who settled him. I made things right, no matter what. And I can’t do that, I can’t find him, if I’m tied down.”

“Is that why you ran away from the Light?”

Her brow drew down. “It’s why I dream about him out there, alone, waiting for me. Everyone tells me he’s dead just because his glyph went dark back in the sanctuary, but so did yours, you know. And you’re still alive.”

I fought to keep my expression from altering. That was different. I’d pushed my powers into another person, a sacrifice of the spirit as much as the body, though now it seemed powers remained in Midheaven still. Maybe that’s why I’d survived.

But Felix had likely been ambushed by the Shadow agents and dispatched of his life in the following seconds. Vanessa knew that because when I didn’t answer, she swallowed hard and looked away. “Nobody can prove he’s gone. Maybe he defected from the Light without telling me. His glyph would have died then too. But if not . . .” She winced considering the option before mentally brushing it away. “Well, you wouldn’t like being left out there alone, would you?”

I just looked at her.

Her face flushed then broke. “I’m sorry,” she said between tears, shaking her head. “It wasn’t me. Felix didn’t want to leave you out there, neither did Gregor. Micah was trying to concoct something in his labs that would allow you to enter our sanctuary even though you were a mortal again. You know Micah.”

Ever the physician, I thought, smiling slightly. Somehow it helped to know that as I was mourning the loss of my place in the troop, they had been doing the same for me.

“Even Tekla argued your case at first. Said the stars had taken on a novel pattern in the sky.” Vanessa nodded when I drew back in surprise. “It’s true. She said we had to be open to new ways of viewing both the heavens and the earthly events they influence. But you know how Warren is.”

I nodded. Brave. Stubborn. By the book. A total prick.

Vanessa shot me a watery, wobbling smile. “So when it looked like you were going to be okay, or at least able to get on with your mortal life, we all thought maybe it would be best. And then you found the grays.”

No, then I’d been attacked by a madman from another world—an attack the Light refused to prevent, which was how I met Carlos and the grays. Weaponless, troopless, with no allies or defense, they had stood with me when no one else would—were doing so now, even as I had a conversation with my past.

But there was no point in arguing with Vanessa. She hadn’t made the rules that’d kept her from reaching out to me. She’d only followed them. But she wasn’t even doing that anymore . . . and when someone tossed out the moral underpinnings that upheld their entire world, it was a reason to worry. Especially when there was nothing to replace it with.

“Chandra was looking for you,” I told her, knowing how much it meant to have someone who cared. In case it helped, I added, “Both of you.”

“Chandra is bound by troop law. They all are.” Her face hardened. “Please don’t forget that we only knew what we saw in the manuals and were told by Warren and Tekla. You were lucky, Joanna. You escaped to another world and life. Literally.”

I shook my head, amazed how different our perceptions were of the same events. “I was trapped in Midheaven. Hunter still is.”

Vanessa’s eyes narrowed on my face. It was as focused as I’d seen her since being knocked into a brick wall. “So you’re going back?”

My kneejerk reaction was to clam up, even though I knew Vanessa no longer reported to Warren. Not that it mattered. He’d already heard of my intentions while lurking in Master Comics’ storage room. I cursed myself silently for that. No doubt he’d doubled his attention on the tunnel entrances now. “There are other men over there too.”

Vanessa’s brows furrowed as she looked around at Vincent and Milo and Fletcher. At Foxx and Gareth and the half dozen other men that she’d been taught didn’t count. It looked like she was seeing them for the first time as people, rather than a minority that needed to be exterminated. Finally, almost imperceptibly, she gave them a small nod. “Do you think Felix might be there?”

I doubted it, though the possibility couldn’t be ruled out. Everything about Midheaven had been considered a myth until recently. “I don’t know.”

She straightened at that. “But you’ll look.”

“Of course,” I answered immediately, and she smiled—a hint of the old Vanessa streaking through her gaze before she turned away. I put a hand on her arm. “Wait. You could . . . help.”

The smile turned bitter. “No ties, remember?”

“Not even for a little while? Until we’re sure?”

Tilting her head at the sky, she studied it, though the stars were invisible from the city’s heart. “Tekla told me long ago that it was my fate to sacrifice myself for life’s greatest gift. I didn’t know what it meant then, but it makes sense now. She meant love. She meant Felix, and I’ll do so gladly, and do you know why?”

I shook my head.

“Because Felix has already given me the greatest gift of my life. He chose me. I was the kairos of his heart, see? And every woman, no matter how strong, has that core need . . . to be the one. To be chosen.”

She turned again, and this time the grays widened their circle. However, Vanessa paused at the perimeter. “You know, Tekla said something else too. More recently. It was a prophecy. It’s what sent Warren off into his war room, and made Felix leave for good.”

“What was it?”

“After you were gone she holed herself up in her lab. She wouldn’t eat, didn’t sleep that we could tell. You know how she gets.”

Obsessed. Literally crazed. But about me? Tekla let me sacrifice my soul to Midheaven. She’d thought of it, and urged it.

“When she finally did come out,” Vanessa continued, squinting at me, “she said you were lost to us, and you would never be fully super again.”

My heart sank. But what about my ether? So I didn’t have the ability to imagine things into existence?

“Why would that send Warren on the warpath?” Vincent asked, stepping protectively to my side. I smiled up at him, earning a wink in return.

“Because Tekla also said that despite all of your limitations, you would bring to pass an apocalyptic event.”

I snorted before I could stop myself, causing Vanessa to draw back, but I couldn’t help it. “I can barely run without tripping. And now I’m up there with the four horsemen?”

But Vincent lifted his chin. “What event?”

“The sixth sign of the Zodiac,” she said simply, which shut everybody up, and she was coherent enough to know she held us all spellbound. An old, familiar smile flashed, but it was gone before I could even count it there. “It’s anarchy, Joanna. It’s Warren’s worst fear. It’s the dismantling of the troops as we know them.” Looking at me, Vanessa straightened her spine and folded her hands in front of her, a perfect imitation of Tekla’s demeanor. “True freedom for all arises from the Serpent Bearer,” she intoned with imperious perfection.

The Serpent Bearer.

I gasped, and Vincent leaned forward, which had Vanessa stepping back. “That’s the sixth sign of the Zodiac?”

No wonder the Tulpa wanted to learn more about it. He specialized in keeping people in thrall.

No wonder Warren wanted me dead. His troop meant everything to him.

“I don’t even know what the Serpent Bearer is.”

Vanessa’s eyes darted again to the Shadow manual. I looked down, then slumped, and fought the urge to bang my own head against the ground. The sixth sign was fully explained in this week’s manual of Light. I’d picked wrong and would have to wait a week before returning to the shop—and all the dangers that lay like a minefield in front of it—again.

A small smile touched her lips. “Don’t worry so much. You can’t bring on an apocalypse if you’re dead. Fate has already decreed your connection with the Serpent Bearer.”

“So you believe Tekla?” I asked, and Vanessa nodded. “Why?”

“Because you were the first to find it,” she replied, tilting her head.

“The Serpent Bearer?” I looked around at the men, who looked back, as flummoxed as me.

“No, Joanna.” Her mouth quirked, but her eyes took on a wistful look and she shook her head. “Freedom.”

11

It was as if the very word freedom fired something inside Vanessa. In the first real display of life she’d shown since knocking into me, she bent her knees and shot to the alley’s nearest rooftop before any of us could react. It wasn’t her normal balletic motion either. Instead her joints looked hinged, which was ironic since everything else about her was undeniably unhinged.

“V!” I called, though she was already too far gone. She’d bolted like we, or someone else, were giving chase. “Vanessa!”

Vincent finally shushed me with a hand on my shoulder. “Let’s get out of here. The blowback will have attracted someone’s attention.” And though forced outside the comic shop’s invisible boundary, Warren probably hadn’t wandered far.

“But someone has to go after her,” I pleaded, because I couldn’t. I looked from face to face, causing Roland to shift uncomfortably on his feet, and Oliver, Gil, and even Foxx to look away. But it was Gareth who stepped forward, shaking his head. “She doesn’t want to be followed.”

“Since when does that matter?” I asked, cocking a hand on my side, and was immediately distracted from my moral outrage. Were my hips widening?

“Since Kai just answered my text,” Gareth said, recapturing my attention as his fingers flew over his phone’s keypad, an obvious response. “I told him about the sixth sign: True freedom arises from the Serpent Bearer. He wants us to meet him at the Cheyenne observatory.”

Roland groaned. “He’s going to make us sit inside that stupid bubble again, isn’t he?”

“It’s a planetarium.”

“It’s crap,” Oliver said before Gareth had finished, which earned a high five from Roland, though they both started walking anyway. “I can see the stars better with my naked eyes.”

But I couldn’t. Realizing it, and that Kai’s location had been chosen for my benefit, he cleared his throat. “The van is around the corner.”

So we sped up the 15 into north town, where the blocks sprawled longer and wider and the dogs were meaner and mangier. The community college had the only planetarium in town, which showed you how much Vegas valued its natural sciences. Maybe if they stuck showgirls on the moon it would get more play.

“I don’t get this whole Serpent Bearer thing,” Foxx grumbled from the front seat. “I mean, it’s a symbol of healing, a constellation, and it’s supposed to bring about the sixth sign of the Zodiac?” He huffed, staring out his own window.

“No, Vanessa said Jo is supposed to do that,” Oliver corrected, pointing at me. “The Serpent Bearer is just a part of it.”

“Vanessa didn’t say it,” I corrected lowly. “Tekla did.”

Gazing back at me through the rearview mirror, Oliver whistled under his breath. “Man, I read about her before. You want to talk crazy, she’s the maddest hatter.”

“But always right,” I said, somewhat grudgingly. I stared at the noise barrier separating the freeway from the residential neighborhoods, the glitz of the Strip now so far behind that it could belong to some other desert town altogether. Tekla was mystical and loony, sure, and while her prophecies didn’t always turn out as expected, they inevitably came to pass—even those facing the greatest odds.

But this latest prediction was especially confusing. The idea that I—mortal, pregnant, and outgunned—could bring about some sort of paranormal apocalypse felt more like a fairy tale. Like I was still powerful. As if an A-bomb rested in my chest. I shook my head, feeling about as dangerous as a gnat.

“Holy shit.” Oliver pointed up, and we all leaned forward to find a bright light cleaving the sky in two. As we drew closer it was easy to distinguish Kai. His hair was a blond flame against the surrounding darkness, and he waved at us to join him on the rooftop before disappearing over its ledge.

“Subtle,” Foxx commented, clamoring from the car.

But minutes later, after a climb up a stairwell so dark it’d make a deep-water diver claustrophobic, and after Foxx and Vincent had gone ahead to make sure it was safe, we were there too, hovering vulnerably beneath the bent sky. It was obliterated by the spotlight but I could still feel it arching there, almost oppressive in its vastness.

“What’s with the bat signal?” Gareth asked, inching to the rooftop’s center like the rest of us.

“It’s called hiding in plain sight, brah.” Kai ran a hand over his dreads, came back picking his fingernails. “The college kids sail this rooftop all night.” He pointed to a triad of bolted-down tables and wire benches. Candy wrappers and cigarette butts created a light, festive litter, and you could see how a stressed-out coed might like finding temporary escape up here. “It’s a bodacious make-out spot, and the astronomy professor chats with the hot coeds up here every Thursday.”

“It’s Friday, moron,” Foxx said.

“Don’t rag me, dudes, or I won’t tell you what I found out about the Serpent Bearer.” He emphasized the last words like he would voodoo priest, then leaped to a bench and whirled, eyes shining. “I did it! I know what the Serpent Bearer is. Or, more exactly, who it’s about.”

“Get in line, Sherlock,” Foxx said, jerking his head at me. “It’s her.”

Kai looked at me, then scrunched up his nose and tilted his head. “She’s not Greek.”

The others looked at me too. After a moment of silence, I nodded. “He’s right. I’m not Greek.”

Oliver, leaning over the ledge, checking on the car, the surroundings, interrupted, “Man, you sure we shouldn’t turn off the spotlight? I can see your lion’s mane from a mile away. Literally.”

Leaping down to unzip a backpack at his feet, Kai shook his head.

Foxx let out a frustrated sigh. “Then please tell us you didn’t bring us into fraternity land just to stargaze.”

“Nope.” Kai threw a giant book down onto the metal table and smiled. He was practically vibrating with excitement as he flipped it open to a marked page. “I called this meeting to talk about classical Greek mythology.”

Foxx cursed, pacing away, but Gareth grimaced. “Will there be a written exam?”

Kai pointed at the open book. “Know that constellation I was talking about at the rave? Well, meet Ophiuchus.”

We clustered around the table and stared down at a bare-chested man with loose sashes covering his essential bits, and wide arms grasping the opposing ends of a giant snake. “Pretty hot,” I commented, figuring it was my duty to provide the sole female point of view, though Milo agreed. Fletcher elbowed him.

“ ’Cept for them fucked-up dreads,” Gil said. “I know a girl down on MLK who could clean that nappy shit right up.”

But I was looking at the star system underlying Ophiuchus’s nappy dreads, a chart dividing his body into units, like a shining, celestial bone structure. Kai waited another moment, then cut the spotlight by ratcheting down a sledgehammer switch. The stars above popped so fiercely it felt momentarily like I was hurtling through space toward them. Even Foxx let out an awe-filled whistle.

“Whoa,” said Oliver. “I’d totally make out up here.”

Gil cut his eyes sideways. “Step away from me right now, man.”

“So legend has it that long ago this dude right here, Ophiuchus, was walking around in the Greeky forest, enjoying nature and picking berries and shit . . .” A collective shudder circled the group. As former troop members, whether Shadow or Light, we were all city folk to the core. “And that’s when he saw a snake bringing another snake some totally righteous herbs.”

Gareth tilted his head as he looked down at the giant snake Ophiuchus was holding. “What, like in its mouth?”

“No, in his handbag,” Foxx retorted, and made a motion that Kai should hurry it on. “Of course his fucking mouth.”

Kai snapped his fingers to regain attention. “So these bits of moss and plants and greenery had, like, amazing healing powers. When combined in the right way they could alleviate pain with only the rub of a small poultice. One sip of a properly balanced tincture and, dudes, it could cure everything from the common cold to venereal disease.”

He paused, then shrugged at our collective blank faces.

“Okay, I made that last part up. But these herbs brought that second snake back to full health. You’re talking about a beast that should have bled out and died, but within minutes, it was slithering away with the best of them. Totally chillax, right? So, like, old Ophiuchus followed the little beastie back to its den, where he discovered and snagged more bodacious healing herbs, and thus the secret to immortality.”

“What was it?” Foxx asked, crossing his arms.

Kai scoffed. “It wouldn’t be a very good secret if I told you, would it, broski?”

“Which means you don’t know.”

“Not the point.” He jammed a thumb at the Greek guy. “Ophiuchus is the point . . . of everything. The point of origin.” He smiled the smile of the scientifically obsessed, but scratched at his chest like a beach bum awakened too early. “See, being a crusty old Greek guy, he was also one fucked-up motherfucker.”

Foxx drew back. “I’m a quarter Greek.”

“I said old, didn’t I?” Rolling his eyes, Kai turned back to me. “So this fucked-up old Greek guy was in love with two mortals. Sisters.”

Gareth took a guess. “Fucked-up old Greek chicks?”

“Precisely, brah! So of course they had to die a young, violent death.” He dismissed the abysmal fate of ancient women with a half shrug. “But then Mr. Hey-I’m-Going-to-Heal-the-World used his little snake charm to bring each bitchin’ cooha back to life.”

We all waited for more, but Kai only raised his brows. Then Vincent gasped. Milo and Fletcher both cursed silently under their breath, and I scratched my head, trying to read the awe in all their faces and figure out what a “bitchin’ cooha” really was. But once there was a satisfactory amount of comprehension, Kai rushed to the finish.

“They were the first mothers, dawgs!” He jumped up and down. “This is the story of the troops’ origins.”

Gil pounded one hand into his other fist. “Man, I know this story! My momma used to tell it to me at bedtime. Just the recovering from death part though. She said nothing about snakes.” He scratched his head and after another moment, made a face. “Man, she’d be so disappointed to find out those sisters were Greek.”

“No way she could know,” Kai said, dropping to the bench and leaning back on his elbows. “They hightailed it out of there pretty fast after being brought back all Lazarus-style.”

“Why?”

“Yeah.” Gareth nodded. “Why not stick around and show some real gratitude to ol’ snake boy?”

“Pig,” I said flatly, not looking at him.

“Because of Zeus, brohah,” Kai explained, but high-fived him anyway.

“I’ve heard of him,” I said, proud that something from my classical background had stuck.

Kai’s head bobbed in a loose nod. “The alpha god found out about the horny dude’s nefarious deeds, and was totally not amused.”

“Because he wanted the sisters for himself?” We all looked at Foxx, who grimaced in return, though it wasn’t exactly far-fetched given the bulk of Greek mythology.

But Kai shook his head. “Because he couldn’t exactly have the whole human race becoming immortal. What if someone else developed a sudden fondness for, like, lightning bolts and scepters?”

“Or threesomes.”

What if, I thought, as the other men pondered Foxx’s hypothetical, an entire race of gods rose from the mortal population to rival the existing ones.

Not gods, I corrected, looking around, but superheroes.

“So what happened?”

“Duh. Zeus used one of his bright badass bolts to zap the horny Greek dead.”

“That’s it?” Gil frowned, hand out, palms up.

“Well, and then he stuck him up in the sky to be remembered forever as a constellation.” Kai shrugged. “I guess he felt bad.”

“ ’Cause if anyone knew what it was like to be horny,” Gareth nodded, “it was Zeus.”

“I don’t think that last part was in the mythology,” I whispered to Gil.

“Damned sure ain’t the way my momma told it.”

“Okay.” Shaking his head, Foxx crossed his arms. “All this is very interesting. We now know the ancient Greeks were horny, nappy-haired murderers.” He jabbed a finger at me. “But what does Ophiuchus have to do with our own fucked-up not-Greek chick?”

“Everything, brohah.” Kai clasped Foxx on the shoulder, but let his hand drop when Foxx stared down at the offending limb. “Before Zeus decided to rearrange the cosmos like it was his own personal chessboard, the sun passed through twelve constellations. But they’ve shifted. Today it crosses through thirteen.

“There are people in our world—astrologers, Seers—who follow a moving zodiac rather than the fixed one. They use something called sidereal time to calculate the Earth’s orientation to the galaxy, not the solar system.”

Foxx snarled. “Speak English, geektard.”

“It’s basic, hodaddy. If Ophiuchus’s constellation were included in the Western Zodiac—and sidereal astrologers think it should be since the sun travels through his body—”

“And nappy hair,” muttered Gil.

“—then those born between November 30 and December 17 would be Ophiuchians. Milo, you wouldn’t be a Taurus, but totally a Gemini.”

“That explains a lot,” Fletcher muttered.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Milo turned on his partner, offended. I glanced around at the other grays to find them doing the same, second-guessing each other’s star signs.

But then Kai threw down an enlarged photo of the sky Hunter had mapped out over his bed, the one I’d gazed at in his warehouse, in his arms. I looked back up, and Kai nodded. At some point since we’d last spoken, he’d made it into the warehouse and back with this. “Your boyfriend was a mondo cartographer, my little mahina.”

“Tell me about it,” I said, meaning it.

“Remember when I said this map was wrongly marked?” Not waiting for my nod, he pulled out another of Hunter’s maps, the underground tunnel system we’d studied at the rave, trying to work out what Hunter was doing while marking and then erasing all the entrances leading to Midheaven. His smile grew broader and he laid a tracing of the tunnel system over Hunter’s wrongly marked sky. Thirteen constellations, including Ophiuchus’s, popped.

As he lifted his head, Kai’s smile was in his eyes. “The entrances to Midheaven align with the moving Zodiac, not the fixed one. He claimed he tracked dying stars, right?”

I nodded mutely, close to understanding but still wanting him to spell it out.

“He was punking you all, man. He marked the twelve fixed signs in case someone was suspicious, but he knew about Ophiuchus.”

Freedom arises from the Serpent Bearer.

“So there’s another entrance,” I whispered weakly. “One not linked to the existing system.”

Kai’s head bobbed, his dreads flopping. “Totally nar nar.”

That’s what the Tulpa has been looking for. Ophiuchus. The Serpent Bearer. A way into Midheaven.

“Let me see that.” I bent over the maps, making sure the constellations were aligned with the tunnel entrances. There was prominent star where all the tunnels converged, but I slid my index finger away, to a long scribble that stood for the fucked-up old Greek dude who loved two sisters so much he brought them back from the dead. “Where is that?” Vincent asked, squinting as he bent low. It was like looking at the city from the backside of the galaxy.

“Summerlin,” Kai said, jerking his head west.

“Uh-uh.” Oliver, who drove the most, shook his head. “North of it.”

“And west of the loop,” I said, referring to the beltway that circled the whole of the valley like a snake eating its own tail.

“Looks like Lone Mountain,” Vincent said, and I froze. Lone Mountain was a road laid across the valley from east to west, but its euphonious namesake crouched along the city’s outskirts like a grouchy hunchback.

“Joanna? You okay?”

Dizzy, I pushed from the table, feeling Vincent’s steadying hands on my back before it’d even registered that I’d lost my balance. My inhalation was an involuntary reaction of horror, revulsion, and fear . . . along with a sharp click of recognition. My exhalation was the release of all those things as I locked eyes with each gray, everything finally snapping into place.

The Tulpa knew this entrance led to Midheaven, though he had yet to discover where it was.

Warren had no idea it existed at all.

But Hunter had known all along.

“I know this place,” I managed, dizzying again. Vincent took my wrists, holding them gently but firmly, until my breath steadied and I opened my eyes. Craning my neck, I gazed directly up into Ophiuchus’s face. “I almost died there.”

12

Joaquin’s lair.

The last time I’d been here, the ceiling was writhing. Scorpions, vinegaroons, every size spider the desert could hold, and the snakes that stalked the terrain like lethal little ninjas . . . all were gone. It seemed they too had fled the abandoned place, fearing it, knowing it for abnormal.

We’d entered as I had upon my first visit to this hillside hell, through a secret passageway in a tract home squatting like a hen above us. Unlike that initial foray—when I’d been alone and walking into an ambush—there was a foreclosure sign up in the weed-choked yard, and the home was empty, even of the guard dogs Joaquin had used to secure the location from the agents of Light.

The trap door leading from the hallway closet to the underground vault was the same though. I showed the others how to access it—a false interior wall that flipped to drop a person underground on the wall’s backside. And on Milo’s backside too, I thought ruefully, as a muffled curse floated up before the wall swung shut. He and Fletcher—and, surprisingly, Kai—had insisted on going first, and I just as readily insisted on letting them. I’d barely escaped being murdered and buried alive in the manmade hollow back when I had powers that could rival anyone’s. I certainly wasn’t going to hop blindly into the literal snake pit now that I was mortal.

But Milo called out to us after a minute, enough time to canvass the short, squat tunnel leading into the mountain without venturing too far by themselves. “Man, there are Zodiac symbols etched everywhere, shoobies . . . some I don’t even know,” Kai said, when we’d all joined them.

Glancing up from dusting off my jeans, I caught the nearest etchings, deep-cut whorls painted in the side sweep of Gareth’s flashlight beam. I angled my own beam upward as well where more carvings hovered on the ceiling. “They’re stamped all over Midheaven too.”

Vincent ran his hand over a spiral surrounded by spikes, a corona of light. “There’s no way one man could have done all of this himself. This place looks ancient.”

“But Vegas isn’t,” I said. Troops only formed around the most populous cities—places where the battle between Light and Shadow, good and evil, had a mortal population to draw energy from.

“Big deal,” Foxx answered, impatiently taking the lead. “Have you seen how quickly they throw up mega-hotels in this city? This place was a breeze to build in comparison.”

It was an unfair comparison, matching mortal skills against whoever had dug the two rooms tripling the square footage of the home above . . . and that wasn’t even counting the path leading to them.

“So where’s the Serpent Bearer, princess?” Foxx tossed a look over his shoulder.

“There are two more rooms that way,” I said, pointing to where the tunnel fell and then rose again into the mountain. That’s how we found ourselves dumped in a surprisingly opulent room . . . or at least part of it was opulent. The other half had been caved in like an MMA fighter’s face.

“It’s like an underground consignment shop,” Fletcher muttered, gaze narrowed on a Louis XIV chair smashed into bits beneath a ragged boulder.

“But none of it’s junk,” Milo said, lifting a Ming vase, and he was right. The room had once contained a sampling of fine furniture from every culture known to mankind. For some reason Joaquin had loved—no, craved—authenticity. But I’d once been tied to Fletcher’s destroyed chair, helpless until the Light had arrived like the Western cavalry. So I felt nothing but satisfaction as I stared at the heap of wood crushed beneath the resulting hillside collapse.

Other cave-in casualties: Chinese ceramics and hand-blown glass, now littering the floor in pretty shards; priceless Oriental rugs, half buried, an antique farm table now splintered perfectly for firewood. What remained of the room was taken up mostly by a giant oak bed. It’d been clipped during the cave-in, yet clearly moved since. A stack of aged first-edition novels stood in for two missing legs, though the bed was otherwise fine. Even clean.

I ran a finger over a waist-high bookcase. Only a light coating of dust. “You know, back when I had my own place, I could barely keep it free of the valley’s dust.” Yet this place—composed entirely of rock and sand—barely had a particle out of place.

“I smell him,” Foxx said, suddenly beside me.

I mentally knee-jerked to Joaquin. The memory of being caught in his crowbar grip was so strong I even caught a whiff of his soiled breath.

That’s why Kai’s answering nod took me completely off guard. “Your brohah Hunter must have returned here after they busted you out.”

Blinking, I looked around, superimposing Hunter upon the decorous cave in lieu of Joaquin. That would explain the relative neatness of the place, every surface wiped clean. New bedsheets too, though I shuddered to think of Hunter sleeping underground, alone.

“He’d been devising an attack for a long time,” I said. First upon Joaquin and his guard dogs. Then Midheaven and Solange.

“So why didn’t he follow through? He was far ahead of everyone else, save Joaquin, that is. Why didn’t he use the entrance?”

I blinked at Gareth. “Me.”

Light finds Light, that’s what my troop had said after saving me from Joaquin. I’d thought at the time that they’d located me by my glyph, the star symbol on my chest that had lit from within when in danger. But Hunter, I realized, already knew exactly where Joaquin and I would be. He gave up this entrance—and the chance to find his daughter—to save me.

I thought back to Hunter’s long absences, and his surly and noncommittal replies whenever asked about them. The agents of Light had just assumed he’d been laboring in his workshop, fashioning the weapons we’d carry into battle, devising tactics and outlining plans of attack. But he’d circled back here again, even after Joaquin was dead.

God, the man was relentless.

Stepping close, I arrowed my flashlight into a hole Hunter had punched into the rubble. It was half the size of a full-grown man, but twice as wide. Agile but big, Hunter would need the room. There were also support beams propped intermittently within, and I stepped forward, studying them closer. Ah, so that’s what became of the antique bed’s legs.

“Wait a minute,” Vincent pulled up next to me. “You can’t go in there.”

“It’ll hold,” I said, having utter confidence in Hunter’s engineering. And despite the sprawling mound of debris, the earth seemed to have settled. “It’s packed tight.”

“Doesn’t matter. You said he couldn’t have entered Midheaven this way, right?”

“Else he would have,” I answered, starting forward again.

But Vincent stayed me with a hand. “Then he didn’t break through to the other side yet. And you . . . can’t.”

Sighing, I put my head down, then stepped back and gestured him toward the tunnel entrance. But as he ducked, I muttered, “ ‘They also serve who only stand and wait.’ ”

Quirking a brow, Vincent angled a glance back at me. “You know Milton?”

“Who doesn’t?” I smiled wryly, returned to the foot of the bed, and settled in to wait.

While the grays dug, I set up a makeshift vanity out of a bronze paperweight and a mirror cracked with someone else’s bad luck. The light was dim, but Oliver had found matches and a few tapers in addition to our flashlights. This, I thought, looking around, was probably what it felt like to be trapped along the ocean floor, the same all-encompassing oblivion of sound, darkness as thick as oil. Were the creatures native to this habitat still here, they too would be considered just as odd-looking as their water-dwelling counterparts; their skins and armament suited toward survival in a place most human eyes would never see.

I pulled out my shoulder bag, and my mother’s henna kit, intent on drawing another kundan on both my chest and inner wrist.

“Pretty,” commented Foxx from the corner, as I began painting my wrist with the readied paste. He was sprawled in a chair close to those thickening shadows, his features blurred, his only movement the occasional flare of a cigarette as he flicked ash over the earthen floor.

“Don’t let pretty fool you,” I murmured, keeping my head down and on my work. I didn’t give a shit what it looked like to Foxx. Eyeliner, kundans . . . it was all the same to him. But this was ceremony. This was ritual.

I was preparing for war.

Meanwhile, Oliver had perched himself at the makeshift tunnel entrance, shouting loud encouragements to Vincent, Milo, and Fletcher, while alternating curious glances my way. I finished the design, slapdash and a bit wobbly, but clear enough.

Just then there was a victory cry, then a deep rumble. Cringing, I glanced up at the ceiling, but the shift had occurred on the pile’s other side. A puff of dust billowed from the hole, blown as if from a giant’s mouth, and Milo emerged in a quick, crablike crouch. The black-skinned man was so caked with dust he looked like a mime. I had to shut my eyes after that, hiding my face in the sleeve of my shirt until the bulk of it dissipated.

When I finally looked up again it was through a haze that obscured even sound. Milo’s voice as he called in to Fletcher and Vincent seemed as far-off as Ophichius. “Y’all cool?”

A moment of silence, then Fletcher appeared, beckoning like a specter before disappearing again. Milo eased back in, careful not to bump, and possibly dislodge, the support beams. Oliver hesitated, and Foxx angled a longing glance at the corridor leading back to the house.

I, in turn, ambled forward with the conviction of a woman with no other choice. I’d come too far. Burrowed too deep. The oppressive anteroom held no answers, and despite the freedom of the sky above and Ophiuchus’s presence in it, we’d exhausted this world’s resources for the time being. “You coming?”

“What if it caves and we’re trapped there?” asked Foxx.

“Then I’ll eat you first,” Gareth replied, bumping his shoulder as he followed me in. I didn’t know if Foxx would follow. I didn’t care.

I wandered a few feet into the dark, coughing lightly on the knock-back from the dust, which filtered through our flashlights in fractured golden spurts, both there and not. Then our beams began catching on objects like they were swimming out at us from the mist. As the density of the dust lessened, I made out candelabras and tapers standing like stoic sentries, and knew we were in.

A light flared, as one of the thick, black candelabras was set to burn. As the room began to glow, we turned around ourselves in silence, the faint scent of stale champa still evident in the air, like the room had been holding its breath. Rows and rows of cylindrical crevices stretched from floor to ceiling, honeycombed bookshelves that had once held a vast collection of Shadow manuals. Joaquin’s private collection, I remembered, though they were now empty. The grays poked through the cubbies anyway, while I crossed to the simple trestle table parked in the room’s middle.

The place felt more like a wine cellar or church than a supernatural library, I thought, glancing around. And unlike the anterior room, this one had always been kept clean and orderly. Gold candlesticks, paired. Austere chairs, the same. Everything matched up in symmetrical simplicity. A thirteenth entrance, without a partner, should certainly stand out. Yet the walls were smooth as bone, the floors the same. If this room had a face, I decided, turning around myself, it’d be expressionless. Lots of eye sockets, yes, but otherwise blank.

“A poker face,” I muttered, striding to one of the walls.

“What?” asked Vincent, who’d read my mind and was feeling the seams on the whitewashed wall face.

“Oh, nothing. It just reminds me of Midheaven.”

And that lurked like a mugger nearby. The knowledge inhabited my mind like oxygen in the blood, and I automatically reached for the blade against my side. Two-thirds of my soul had been retrofitted to that place, so in some ways I was more a part of that world than this one.

I paused halfway around the room, feeling an odd angularity in the wall. Narrowing my eyes, I marked the place—located directly across from the room’s entrance—then traced my steps back to the doorway. Warm palm, cool rock, smooth as bared teeth . . . in every place but one.

“It’s not even,” I said, stepping into the doorway, the best place to view the room as a whole. “It’s also not round.”

“What?”

“The room,” I said, stepping back inside. “See the slant of the walls? They’re rounded, but only because they reach an apex at the top. There are multiple walls here. It’s not perfectly round.”

“Maybe it’s your stellar eyesight,” commented Foxx. I didn’t spare him, or the chip on his shoulder, a glance.

“No, she’s right,” Vincent said. “Count the walls.”

After a brief argument over whether the doorway constituted one wall or two, we assigned one gray to every other wall, and began again that way. “Thirteen,” said Vincent, and the others nodded in consensus. One for each star sign on the moving Zodiac.

“Yeah, but where does it start?” Gareth asked, looking straight up. The Western Zodiac started with Aries, but we needed to find Ophiuchus, located in the Zodiac wheel between Sagittarius and Capricorn. While Kai tried to calculate which way was north—quite a feat while trapped in the base of a mountain—Foxx and Oliver took random guesses, almost coming to blows when their answers didn’t match up. Ignoring them, I angled my eyes to the trestle table. “Did any of you have training rooms, or dojos, in your sanctuaries?”

And just like that, every gaze hit the center of the room. Dojos too had apexes—at least the one belonging to the Light had. Unlike these pockmarked walls, that room had been smoothly mirrored and shaped like a pyramid. While its primary function had been to provide a safe place to teach and train the agents for combat in the real world, the room also reacted to emotion, mirrors fogging over, flashing onyx during the heat of battle. The victorious agent’s star sign popped on those reflective surfaces. And so did the pinpricked Universe . . . if you stood in the room’s center.

“Somebody move that fucking thing,” said Vincent, gesturing toward the trestle. Foxx took two great steps, tucked one arm beneath the antique table, and flipped it with enough unnecessary force that Oliver had to dodge its skittering length. “Hey!”

I’d have rolled my eyes if they weren’t already firmly focused on the symbol etched into the hard-packed earth. A snake wrapped around a staff. “The Serpent Bearer.”

Our curious knot tightened and Kai bent to one knee, careful not to touch the symbol. “Gnarly. I bet Joaquin didn’t even know this was here.”

“I bet he did,” I muttered, thinking back. Joaquin had barricaded himself in this room to escape the Light during my rescue. Looking back down at the centered symbol, I couldn’t help but remember one of Tekla’s favorite sayings. Take your mark in order to leave your mark.

Literally.

Yet Midheaven required a third of a person’s soul for entry. Joaquin’s aura had always been full. Ugly, but sharp.

“Shit,” I finally said, awed. “It isn’t connected to the tunnel system.” Just as Ophiuchus wasn’t connected to the fixed Zodiac. “It’s a free fucking pass.”

Nobody moved. Suddenly this was it. This was the place and moment in time I’d been straining toward since discovering Hunter was being held against his will. Though I was unable to even approach the pipeline entrance, this was a way around my mortality. A way to enter too without giving up the last third of my soul. Yet I still hesitated.

“Sorry,” I said, embarrassed that I didn’t just leap onto the symbol with a cheesy smile and a saucy wave. “Just give me a minute.”

“It’s okay.” Vincent said quietly. “And we’ll wait here.”

“No.” I shook my head. “If someone finds it, or picks up our scent and follows us  . . .”

“One yank of a bedpost and this place becomes our tomb,” Foxx finished for me. I made a face. So glad I could count on him for support.

“You can’t follow me in either. I wouldn’t wish . . . that on any of you.” I did wish I could tell them about the men over there. How their bodies were set eternally to slow boil. How over seemingly innocuous games of poker they were forced to pit their personal powers against one another just so they wouldn’t be made to burn as fuel for a woman’s world.

Thinking of that—of Solange, and of Hunter at her whim—steeled me.

I took one last look at the men who now made up my troop, former Shadows to the last—and in Foxx’s case, probably a Shadow still at heart. But they’d fought for me and kept me safe. And even if they didn’t believe in me, they believed in what we were doing. And they knew what it was to leave home and step into a place that was completely unknown.

“Go back to the cell,” I told them. “We need to be sure that Carlos has a troop to return to.”

“We’ll at least see you gone first,” Vincent said softly.

I swallowed hard and gave him a nod, touched. Then after patting the kundan pendant I’d threaded through my hair, then the matching bracelet, I rubbed off the newly applied henna at my wrist, knowing the stain would remain beneath. Grasping my blade tight in my right palm, I stepped onto the Serpent Bearer. It shifted beneath my feet, living up to its name, while the smooth sandstone walls bled onyx. The burning tapers were blinding in contrast, and I squinted until—in the order of the Zodiac, Aries to Capricorn—the constellations popped up on the walls. The pinpoint pricks of each star speared against the pervading black.

A long exhale sounded to my left. “It’s beautiful.”

But beautiful things could be deadly, I thought, just as Sagittarius appeared. A force leading me to it tugged at my feet, knees, hips, and shoulders. I wobbled, fighting to remain in place, but realized everyone else had gravitated naturally toward their own star sign. Milo and Fletcher were side by side as always, though. They were both Pisces.

I trained my gaze on the black spot where Ophiuchus resided in the night sky. It was the holdout, the renegade constellation, and as if to prove it, it burst into view with double the intensity of the rest, a red-rimmed hue permeating its core as if backlit in blood. A hum electrified the room. They were all there.

Thirteen signs of the Zodiac.

True freedom for all arises from the Serpent Bearer, I thought, and the dusty snake writhed beneath my feet. It slipped up my left calf in an invisible caress, smooth and gritty at the same time, growing like the black snakes on Fourth of July, erupting from its own dusty body as it twined about my legs. The thought that it might climb over my entire body birthed panic in me and the slither constricted at my ankles, threatening to tip me forward. Directly toward Ophiuchus, I realized.

Take your mark to make your mark, I thought, swallowing hard. Then Foxx unexpectedly called my name. Glancing over, and it took more than a little effort, I saw him standing stoically in front of the Cancer sign. Oddly, with the change in focus, the snake’s invisible spiral slowed, even loosened, and my ankles steadied.

Foxx’s eyes were half lidded and unreadable as usual, and he looked severe with starlight playing off his slanting face. I raised my brows at the wordless challenge that always warred between us, but instead of responding in kind, his forehead knit lower. “It is . . . brave.”

I swallowed hard. His dangerous approval was almost worse than the warnings.

“And stupid,” Kai added, probably scenting the pulse in my nerves. “But totally brave.”

The insult helped numb me again and I took a deep breath and turned back to Ophiuchus. The movement around my ankles resumed, and I reached for the sky with my free hand—for Ophiuchus, the Serpent Bearer—making sure the other was wrapped tight around my blade. The sandy serpent really came to life then, reaching up through me, pushing me to my toes, supporting me even as it thrust me toward the Universe. I must have vaulted all the way to the ceiling because the next thing I knew, I’d gotten ahold of the constellation’s lowest hanging star.

Then, palm burning, I fell.

13

Blackness, pure and raw as a midnight grave.

That was my first thought. My second?

Shoulda brought a lighter.

Yet I hadn’t been sure what to expect when entering Midheaven via an entrance not connected to the others. Due to the pitch-black surroundings, I wasn’t even exactly sure I was in Midheaven—there certainly hadn’t been any sense of arrival. Nor was there any sign of the saloon—no gambling tables, no bar . . . no staircase leading upstairs where the women ruling this dark world dwelled. Where Solange kept Hunter.

And if I couldn’t find the stairs, I couldn’t find him. So was that why she’d decked the place out like a black hole? Was this room—or wherever I was—booby-trapped to the teeth? Maybe a trap door awaited me only feet away, one leading to a pit filled with wild wolves, or very simply a supernatural cell I’d never escape? After all, she ruled this world. I swallowed hard. She could create anything she wished.

And ostensibly so can you, I told myself, taking one trembling step forward. She wants your power to create the world as you wish it to be. Okay Hunter, I thought, testing another step as his long-ago words revisited me. If you say so.

The thought of Hunter trapped somewhere above me like a bird in some bloody, gilded cage got me moving. Grip tight around my blade, I began walking, one hand extended into the abyss. Then something small and hard brushed against my head.

“Ow,” said a voice in my ear, and the hard thing knocked into me again.

I jerked away, backing into something else—small, hard, and equally vocal.

“Fuck! Watch where you’re going!”

I squealed, switched directions again, and felt a flailing at the back of my head. It reminded me of bird wings caught in a net. Jerking away and breathing hard, I stilled. There was a muffled chuckle from across the room, and then silence descended again. “Hello?”

“I think we’ve already established that you’re not alone.” It was the first voice that had addressed me, now gone wry. I felt like I should know it too, but the darkness was so complete I was experiencing something like mental vertigo. I simply couldn’t place it.

“Sorry, but it’s dark.” I swallowed hard, eyes wide in the impenetrable abyss.

“Another astute observation,” came a woman’s haughty voice from somewhere to my right. “And really, what did you expect?”

I’d expected a washed-out saloon holding a bunch of men too listless to save themselves, along with a bright red door holding back heat and light so fierce it glowed around the edges. But not greater nothingness than even that which had greeted me when I’d entered Midheaven astrally. Though Solange didn’t seem to be here this time. No one was attacking me, and as caustic as the unseen people were, they weren’t acting in deference or speaking in careful code—something they’d be sure to do were the queen bee present. Even this world’s goddesses were afraid of Solange.

“Can someone please turn on a light?” I asked, though I was getting the feeling we were all trapped in the same metaphorical boat.

“You’re the one who did this.” Another voice. Another woman. “You turn on a light.”

“D-Diana?” I asked, turning to my left. “Is that you?”

A sound of assent. It really was her voice this time, and not Solange’s emanating from her mouth. “And Trish. And Nicola.”

“And everyone else you managed to murder.” The aforementioned Trish was standing somewhere to my right. I whirled, but even squinting, even though my eyes should be somewhat acclimated and able to make out shapes or shadows, I still saw nothing. I was less worried now, though. Trish’s verbal assault notwithstanding, I remained unaccosted, and I ignored her words as she was obviously alive.

“I told you she was a danger to us all.” That was Nicola, severe as ever. As if I was any danger to the goddesses running this world. Thrice now Solange had chased me from Midheaven, and each time I’d been too busy trying to salvage my own life to take anyone else’s. I hadn’t murdered anyone.

“Well, I’m glad she’s here,” Trish said, voice still airy and bright. “I’m tired of hanging out down here.”

There was scattered laughter at that, a few snorts and groans at what was obviously an inside joke. At least her words let me know I’d made it into the right place. From the number of male voices whispering around me, the other trapped rogues were all here too. Though why were the women downstairs? Females ruled upstairs, men were enslaved down here. That’s the way this place worked . . . or had. I’d last seen these women draped like mannequins in the air room, so something had obviously changed since then.

“Why are you down here?” I directed my voice to Diana, noting one small blessing—it was no longer scorching hot in the gambling hall.

“Punishment” came her wry reply. “We weren’t supposed to let you in last time. Or let you go.”

“On the up side, we now have front row seats to the show.” Trish, still cheery . . . still ominous.

“There’s no show if Solange doesn’t know Joanna’s here.”

I couldn’t stop the relief from washing through me. So entering through the Serpent Bearer had worked. My soul energy, and thus presence, hadn’t yet registered in this world.

The first man’s disembodied voice sounded again. Why couldn’t I place it? “I wouldn’t know if she hadn’t bumped into me.”

I’d definitely bumped into something. No way had it been a human being, though. “Sure you guys won’t turn on a light?”

“We lack the capability, and even if we did we wouldn’t help you.” Nicola’s voice was so contemptuous I could practically see her raised chin. “You’re destined to incinerate. At least we get to watch.”

Trish concurred cheerily. “Front row seats . . . minus the popcorn.”

A mournful male sigh from across the room. “I miss popcorn.”

“Look, help me out and I’ll do the same,” I said, addressing them all. “I’ve come to free you all.”

“Delusional as always.” Nicola’s voice launched over the room, an invisible rainbow of contempt, spite, and bitterness. “There is no helping us. Once she discovers you’re here, you won’t even be able to help yourself.”

I thought of Solange’s willingness to give me a power that would lead me back to her home turf, and of Io warning me I couldn’t trust that. But then I thought of Hunter, and Solange’s assertion that I couldn’t compete with a goddess. “Okay . . . so what if I imagined a light into existence?”

“Oh, I don’t know about that.” Trish’s feathery tone took on a worried hook. “We could get in trouble.”

A scoff from a man who hadn’t spoken before. His soft drawl was lined in melancholy. “What more could she possibly do to us?”

“Don’t even say that,” Diana snapped.

“But I can do it?” I asked, bringing us back to the subject. “Using the playing chip Solange gave me, right? She said I had the ability to imagine things into existence. She told me to try and imagine light.”

“Yes, I see power burning in you,” said the first man. “Small, but dense. And light is natural for you. Archer is a fire sign, after all. Though you could just use the matches on the bar.”

“Shut your mouth, Shen!” Diana yelled now, and that was the anchor I needed to place the voice. Shen, a man I’d battled with over a poker table, and who hated me simply because I was a woman . . . and he was a man trapped in a woman’s world.

So why the hell was he defying Diana in order to help me now?

“Or what?” Shen replied sourly. “You sew it shut?”

More grunts and giggles.

“You can’t see this either, Archer,” said another man from behind me, “but Diana is not amused. She’s shaking her head.”

Full-out snickers now, including a man immediately behind me guffawing like a donkey. Tired of the innuendos and inside jokes, I whipped my hand out, circling until I hit something. The brays turned into all-out cries that floated beside me like a pendulum. “Bi-i-itch!”

“Be quiet, all of you.” It was Nicola, and unsurprisingly her voice quieted the rest. Diana was beautiful, powerful. Trish possessed dangerous curves and a sweet demeanor, both of which concealed cruel intentions. But Nicola was as autocratic as a French queen. When she spoke, others ate cake. Even my first instinct was to listen. “You’re going to wake her.”

It fell spookily silent again as we all listened for Solange. Finally Shen whispered. “As if she sleeps.”

“Yeah,” agreed another, making me wonder how many men were still here, trapped literally in the dark. “She’s probably occupied with one of her play toys.”

“Don’t worry. They’ll both be down here soon enough. She’ll want their energy, too. She needs every ounce she can get.”

My heart bumped hard in my chest. I didn’t know what had befallen those around me, but their black humor didn’t fool me. I didn’t need super senses to ferret out the sad desperation around me. They were as trapped here as Hunter and Carlos. “So if I got that one power back, can I get the others as well?”

Solange had said it was possible. She just hadn’t allowed how.

“If you leave with them, sure.” The shrug was in Diana’s voice. “But you’re never leaving.”

Shen, again from my left. “Did you really come back for us?”

“To free you, yes,” I answered, and it was true. Freedom for Hunter and Carlos. For the other rogues. For me too.

“So Carlos was telling truth?” Shen said.

I straightened, my vocal cords drawing tight. “You saw him?”

“Briefly.”

So that’s what caused his change of heart. He believed Carlos. Good.

“Shut up, Shen!”

“Oh, fuck off already, Diana! You don’t tell me what to do anymore.” Then back to me. “I’ll help you, Archer. But you must promise to set me free.”

“I told you, that’s why I came. Just help me find the bar, the matches, a lantern. I’ll take it from there.”

“She’s full of shit,” Diana said harshly.

“I don’t care,” Shen said evenly, before his voice resounded back my way. “I will do better than that. Solange returned a power that allows you to create anything you want through imagination alone. I can help you harness that power.”

“How?”

“You must first locate it. It can be found beneath your sternum. Not near your heart, though. Look for it as far back as your spine will allow.”

I wondered momentarily if this was some Eastern medicine hoodoo before deciding stranger things were possible. So I focused as Shen said, and tried to locate some sort of power by pushing at my middle. I even closed my eyes, which underlined my desperation. I was in Midheaven—thus danger—and already in the dark. I finally sighed, and opened my eyes to more blackness.

“Useless mortal.” Nicola—still autocratic and arrogant. Still bitchy. I kinda wished Solange had kept her voice.

I crossed my arms. “I got back here, didn’t I?”

“Oh yeah.” She snorted. “Great job there.”

“Ignore her,” Shen said and I turned my head back in his direction, frowning now. “Try this. Remember what it felt like when the glyph on your chest began to glow? Well, your restored power possesses the same natural warmth. Instead of trying to find it, try to find lack surrounding it. Feel the emptiness of all other missing powers. Think of abilities you gave up, the feeling you had when using them. That will let you know exactly where they once resided.”

“Okay,” I said hesitantly, unsure if that would work. I’d grown so accustomed to being powerless that that’s what felt normal now, and did anyone really feel or note the mundanely normal? Yet I had once had known something more, so I focused on that.

Much of my physical weakness could be attributed to the healing time needed after enduring a near-drowning, but losing the ability to run like a cheetah had been akin to falling completely immobile. Jumping had once felt like flying, yet now I could barely skip rope. The losses were similar to phantom limbs, psychic aches accompanied by torturous flashes where I thought I could still move through the world like an able-bodied agent.

The only difference between me and someone who’d survived a land mine? My losses had been cut from my soul. So even though I normally tried not to focus on lack, it was easy to feel once I turned a mental spotlight on it. After all, it was everywhere.

Shen responded to my sound of assent. “Good. Now locate the small section that feels crowded and full. It should be like an island jutting from the sea. Isolated. Bright.”

And suddenly it was easy to do, perhaps because the sea of emptiness was so great. “Got it.”

“All right.” He sounded surprised at that. “Now just warm it up. Thaw it out. Visualize literally curling your mind around it. Pretend you’re uncoiling your gray matter so that you can wrap it around that power like a thermal blanket.”

“Or you could ask Solange to uncoil it for you,” said Diana helpfully, “I’m sure she’d be happy to help.”

I swallowed hard at that and opened my eyes. My loss of concentration made her laugh. Most of the men laughed with her, though Shen wasn’t one of them.

“Shut up!” he snapped. “I’m making progress, I can see it.”

His words only increased my worry over their odd ability to see me while I remained blind. Maybe keen eyesight was just one more lost sense, but it just didn’t feel right, not even for Midheaven. “What do you mean ‘see’?”

“Focus and you’ll find out,” Nicola said, her rare encouragement causing me to shift uncomfortably.

Ignoring her, I closed my eyes again, and probed the sore spots inside me. It was easier now, like touching a newly healed scar. So as soon as I spotted the small “island” that was my power to imagine anything I wanted, I hopped onto it. I wrapped my desire for it—for any and every power lost to me—around it, and I squeezed with my will. Please, please, please.

I begged for light.

And I began to glow. The opaqueness dropped from the room like a tablecloth yanked by its edge. I saw the floor first, still uneven knotty pine, though the playing tables had been cleared entirely. The bar was visible if only because I could make out my outline in the mirrored back, but it was as if a child had used a special pen to color within the lines, covering over and erasing my features with a wash of dawning light.

Trish’s voice was awed. “You look like that baby’s toy. The worm with the face that lights up in the dark.”

A glowworm. She was right; I could see it through the mirror across from me. There was the same heat that’d once warmed my glyph, but without the symbol on my chest to keep it from spilling into the rest of my body. Weird. Now my whole body was softly alight from within.

Oddly, I still spotted no one else. Maybe they were all just spirits. Ghosts, then? But ghosts were a form of energy, which was exactly what Midheaven ran on. Solange wouldn’t squander it. She wasn’t sentimental when it came to other people, their resources, their wishes. Their lives.

I was squinting so hard at the darkness, trying to catch sight of a human somewhere nearby, that I nearly missed what I’d initially took to be a small pendant lamp. I did a double take when the lamp’s eyebrows shot up. Then it smiled.

I yelped, and the warming light inside me snuffed like a taper between two wet fingers. I practically fell to my knees in the darkness as I realized what—and who—I’d been bumping into. Mutters rose around me as I fought gagging. I was embarrassed even as the bile rose in my chest, but I was also pregnant, shocked, and horrified by the small, shrunken expression.

So as I continued to retch, Shen—my offended helpmate—muttered above me. “Well, fuck you very much too.”

The desire to curl into the fetal position was near-overwhelming, but the greater desire, to stay alive, got me standing again. Still, a shudder rode my body like a nauseous wave, and I shook it off by doing as Shen had suggested, focusing on my loss . . . and more importantly, my ability to create that low-burning light. What I’d just seen—what I thought I’d just seen—made it more imperative to navigate this room than ever.

My lone power was easier to access this time, and I imagined planting my footing soundly on that island of isolated power—my ability to create something from nothing. Mentally braced, I warmed that power with my will, and was surprised at how quickly I began to glow. It helped to settle me. This was an inborn ability, as natural as breathing. Maybe Shen was right; maybe it was because I was a Sagittarian, a fire sign. It made sense that light would be my first creation.

And no wonder Solange wanted it. Harness this, and in time there’d be nothing she couldn’t create. But learn to use it, and it would be the same for me.

So I used the glow from an outstretched limb to locate the bar, the aforementioned book of matches, and then lit the pagoda lanterns lining the wall left of the staircase. The room remained silent as I did this, though I could feel hard stares on my back, which made me fumble my strike and almost drop one lamp’s glass top. Only when they were all burning steadily did I pocket the remaining matches and turn.

Dozens of shrunken heads hung from the rafters like macabre mini-piñatas. Bodiless, and each the size of a shriveled apple, they swayed in a sourceless breeze. My smile was long gone as I realized that every animate, miniaturized skull had priceless gems for eyes, and each shining pair was focused on me.

“I’d clap,” said one of the heads centered in the room, which I belatedly recognized as Shen, “but I’d hate for you to get a big head.”

Nobody laughed at that. I swallowed hard, and weaved nearer to him. As horrifying as it was to think of a human being trapped in that shriveled sphere, I couldn’t stop staring. I had simply never seen a shrunken head before.

He was tough as bark, his Chinese features obliterated, his skin unnaturally darkened to a muddy brown. I didn’t know what caused the coloring but I did know that shrinking a head required a scalping—including a careful harvesting of the whole head and face. Shen’s skull had obviously been discarded, the loose skin carefully reshaped around something smaller than a man’s fist. His mouth was flattened as if burned by a steaming iron, then stitched so that strings, rather than teeth, were visible between his lips when he spoke. The tissue left over from his destroyed neck would have been hanging loose except that it was puckered and black. Cauterized. I shuddered. “What happened?”

“What always happens,” Shen said wearily, rolling eyes of green jade. The motion caused his head to twirl on its string. His hair was singed in back, allowing me to catch sight of the stitches puckering his neck and skull, and I swallowed hard. As he rotated back again, the jade found me first. “Solange had a tantrum.”

“And chopped off your heads?” She shrank the heads of everyone in Midheaven? Then hung them from strings in the gambling hall? I swallowed hard. While they were still alive?

“She took soul energy, yes . . . but also didn’t want us to see.” The thread in his lips pulled unnaturally, causing his words to escape strangely, and me to think of the voice-overs in Japanese movies.

“See what?”

“Her.”

“Shit,” I said softly, the single word infused with apology. I was the reason they were all disembodied, eyeless, with strings threading their mouths and sutures in their heads. That’s why she hadn’t shown herself in the air room when I’d crossed over astrally, why she’d spoken to me through the women instead. But how could I have known that blowing smoke in her face would have such a disastrous effect. All I’d been trying to do was stop her from hurting Hunter.

“How are you . . .” I stumbled.

“Speaking?”

“Alive.”

“We’re not. Only conscious. The spent soul energy is in the gems. That animates us. Eyes are window to soul, right?”

I rubbed my own temples. So Solange had dismantled her planetarium. She had long fastened the gems made from these people’s souls to the roof of her false sky, planning for the day when the constellations were complete, and she’d be all-powerful. My soul was to be the finishing touch. “And the elemental rooms?”

“Gone,” Diana volunteered bitterly. “Everything she created in Midheaven, everything that required soul energy, has been destroyed. Look around. The entire world is tattered at the edges.”

Just like Solange, I thought, catching sight of the room’s corners dropping into an abyss even light couldn’t touch. She really was vain—and I’d really hurt her—if she’d annihilated an entire world just to use the power to pretty herself back up.

Nicola joined Diana on the bitterness train . . . though with a face like a large raisin and gold topaz eyes, I didn’t blame her. “She made sure nothing more exists than what you, Joanna Archer, need in order to get to her.”

“So why the hell did she give me back the most valuable of my own powers?” I muttered. And one with the power to create anything she desired? Couldn’t she create a new face for herself? Did she have to destroy everyone else just to accomplish the same thing?

“She knew you’d be back,” Trish said, her voice holding a resigned sigh. Her eyes were sapphires, the same cornflower blue she’d sported in life, though her audacious voluptuousness was only a memory.

“She also didn’t know how to use it.”

“Shut up, Shen!”

“I’m sick of you saying that!” Shen yelled, and the little head jerked forward, beginning a swinging motion that turned into a full-blown pendulum.

Trish’s brows tightened so low over her shriveled face she looked like a prune. “What are you doing?”

“You don’t rule this world no more, and I’m tired of your shit!” And he launched himself at her, the strings in his mouth opening just wide enough for him to latch on to a knotted length of her lank hair.

“Get off me, you rotted walnut! Get him off!”

“Everyone quiet. Do you want her down here?”

I certainly didn’t. I reached forward and disentangled the strings. “Let her go.”

Shen released Trish with a growl.

“Did he mess up my curls?” Trish blew upward, sapphire eyes rolling. “Did he?”

“I said quiet!” Diana snapped before turning to me. “Can you leave now?”

I wished. “Not yet. What about the new one. Carlos?”

If she’d had shoulders, Diana would have shrugged. “Just another rogue, nothing special. He’ll be down here soon enough.”

“But if all of our soul energy isn’t enough to fuel her needs,” Nicola said, cauterized lips lifting into a snarl, “one more rogue won’t make a difference.”

I swallowed hard, and Diana’s ruby eyes dropped. Her mouth pursed tight in envy as they slid over my neck. “And Hunter?”

“Ah, her obsession, her pet,” she replied, cold gaze regaining mine.

And her lure. I could almost hear her think it.

“We don’t know,” she went on, the strings pulling at her lips strangely. “She’s kept him upstairs. Back in the fire room.”

So I started for the staircase.

“You’re a fool for returning,” Nicola snarled as I passed, and I paused, still not liking her, but pitying her all the same. The last time I’d seen her she’d reminded me of an Asian Audrey Hepburn, with spectacular eyes and sharp, porcelain features. Now there was nothing left of a real human being, much less the severe, stunning woman I’d left behind.

“There’s no question that there’s something unique about you,” she said, shriveled nostrils flaring. “If I had the power to create anything, as you supposedly do, I’d create a life of comfort and abundance. Yet you choose to return to a world where you’re hunted, sure to die, and for the basest of desires, a man.” She scoffed, the strings in her gnarled lips yanking at their corners. “Well, now instead of living with him in your world, you get to die with him in hers. How romantic.”

I leaned close to Nicola’s face, mindful of her ability to bite. “This estrogen farm isn’t a world. It’s an overreaction.”

“You’ve still got no chance against its goddess.” Nicola shook her head, causing her string to sway, but that golden topaz gaze stayed pinned on me. “You’re already dead, and you don’t even know it.”

“Yeah?” I said, straightening, brows raised. “Well, my head’s not the one hanging from a fucking string.”

And, admirably resisting the urge to give her skull a flick, I turned and headed up the stairs.

14

Moving as stealthily as I could up the staircase’s center, I held tight to my soul blade, more anxious than ever. The room below me had once been filled with full-sized human beings bartering bits of their souls just for survival. Now the men so desperate to survive had no hope of ever doing more than that. Even the other women, in a woman’s world, hadn’t escaped Solange’s crazed ambition.

However, my more immediate concern was what she’d done with the two-thirds of my soul she already possessed. Two gems. Enough for eyes, I thought, unable to withhold a shudder, even though those had been deformed, unusable for her sky. Yet as imperfect as they were, I still recall Hunter saying she could control me with them. And she’d once placed one of them in her mouth, blowing through her teeth to send her breath, and will, to scour my lungs. So could she also shrink-wrap my head around a sliver of consciousness before hanging me from the ceiling?

I swallowed hard . . . but kept walking. Solange might manage to kill me—or make me wish for death—but if I didn’t hurry, she’d definitely do so to Carlos and Hunter.

The hallway leading to the fire room—Solange’s room—was both too short and too long. I was at the door before I knew it, and a quick glance in the opposite direction confirmed that the entrances to the other elemental rooms—water, air, and earth—had been blotted out. The landing opposite me dropped off into smudged nothingness, like a television screen gone blank, and I wondered what would happen if I approached that absolute darkness. Would stepping into something that had been erased from existence do the same to me?

Whatever the answer, it was clear Nicola was right. Solange had left just enough of Midheaven intact to allow me an avenue back. The upside was that I knew what to expect beyond this door. First was a viewing room with windows overlooking tunnel entrances to a good half-dozen entries worldwide. A girl had to be kept entertained when ruling her own underworld, after all.

But more importantly, located directly above the dim viewing room was the planetarium Shen had mentioned, and even though Solange had dismantled her soul-encrusted recreation of the night sky, I knew that’s where those things I considered precious, Hunter and Carlos, would be. So before I was scared off completely by the thought of my consciousness being ripped from my body and shoved into a shell, I readied my blade and threw open the fire room door.

The place had been stripped of its supernatural wallpaper. All the viewing windows were gone, though it wasn’t a complete void. Nestled like a nest egg in the middle was an object as jarring for its contents as for what the rest of the room lacked. And despite her reported aversion to being seen, Solange had left one candle burning.

After all, I thought, sucking in my breath as I inched forward and caught sight of the egg in this particular nest, she still had work to do.

He was laid out like a sacrifice, clothed as I’d last seen him in a white guayabera and loose black slacks, though bound to a wooden cart I recalled from my sole previous visit to this room. In keeping with Midheaven’s Wild West theme, it was a replica of an old mining cart, though the inside of this one was swathed in black silk. But, I thought, stepping closer, I didn’t think it was because Solange was overly concerned with Carlos’s comfort.

His limbs were cornered and bound, the thick rope causing red welts where he’d strained against them. The pulleys used to raise the cart into the planetarium above were made of the same material, though those were lax. I was careful not to touch anything as I stole a glance at the hole carved into the ceiling’s center. Total darkness loomed beyond the entry’s gaping mouth—neither Solange nor her beloved soul stars anywhere in sight. No Hunter, either.

She was either asleep up there, or tucked behind the door that stood somewhere on Carlos’s opposite side. Unless she’d decimated that too. It was too dark to see and there was no time to investigate now. It was clear from Carlos’s coloring that I needed to move fast. I leaned over him, thankful he wasn’t a shrunken head, hoping he was merely asleep.

“Carlos?”

His eyelids flipped open like he’d been waiting. Yet only one dark eye expressed hard disbelief. The other glittered. I covered my face with my free hand, shaking so hard I nearly dropped my blade. The skin around Carlos’s mouth pulled into a marionette’s facsimile of a smile . . . and threads pulled at his lips as he spoke. “I knew you’d come.”

But too late. Solange had begun. “My God, what has she done?”

He opened his mouth to reply, and though he didn’t cry out from the pain, the effort caused tears to stream from his eyes. The socket cradling the gem—an iridescent stone with spectacular warmth—dripped red with blood. I settled him with a hand on his shoulder. “Shh. Don’t speak. Let me work.”

Thank God for the soul blade. In a world fueled by chi, using the damned thing was as effective as jamming a knife into a socket. It cut through Carlos’s thick bindings like they were liquid, the murdered souls inside writhing so greatly in response to the action that the blade actually wavered in my hand. I tightened my grip so it wouldn’t nick Carlos, and moved to his leg. I needed to be careful. Cutting him with the soul blade, and in the world where it’d been created, would be like rubbing poison into an open wound.

Meanwhile, my mind raced. She kept them alive while she shrunk their heads? While she pulled their faces from their skulls and replaced their eyes with gems? My stomach roiled and I clenched my teeth. I put a hand on my belly as if to calm the fetus inside, but removed it just as quickly, unwilling to allow the thought of this horror coming anywhere near the baby nestled safely inside.

I instantly forgave Nicola, Diana, and all the other talking heads their bitter anger. But why the hell had Solange kept them alive at all? It obviously wasn’t for the company. Would taking all their lives simultaneously provide some sort of final thrust of energy, like the last booster on a rocket ship? And for what? To regain the beauty my quirley had destroyed? Could anyone really be that vain?

The wondering cost me. There was a metallic click, then a whir, and the ropes lying slack against the cart’s sides drew taut. Carlos’s bloodstained eye went wide with horror as the cart began its slow ascent. Panicked, I nearly reached for its rough-hewn side, realizing just in time that the motion would alert Solange—above—to my presence. So I raced to its other side as it rose past my breastbone and sliced again, striking through the cord restraining Carlos’s left leg.

But I was too slow. Within the space of two steps the cart had risen to shoulder height, leaving Carlos’s left arm, and final restraint, out of reach. I couldn’t just let him go. Not knowing what awaited him above. And no fucking way was I leaving without Hunter now.

Not this time.

Slipping my blade into my waistband, I leaped for the cart’s crossbar, now two feet over my head, letting it lift me into the air. Within moments the blackness of Solange’s planetarium engulfed me, and I too was just a dark blur rising.

It was only after the cart came to a jarring halt that I realized Solange couldn’t be there. The hole in the ceiling was only large enough for the one cart—and Carlos took up the entirety of that—while the planetarium was as smooth and curved as the inside of a glass bowl.

Twisting, I looked down at viewing room below us, but it stubbornly refused to live up to its name. I saw nothing. Solange had to be down there, though. Perhaps this was simply where she kept Carlos when she wasn’t “working” on him.

Which meant she might keep Hunter up here too.

Taking a deep breath, I swung my legs forward so they wrapped around the crossbar, then leveraged myself to the side where a support handle was welded to the cart’s rear. Carlos groaned as his makeshift bed teetered, angling so steeply it threatened to spill him from its side. I righted it with my body weight as a string of mostly unintelligible words rang down on me. “No mas . . .”

“Shh . . .” I soothed, stilling so the cart did too, though not even I was comforted. Closing my eyes, I breathed in deep, and like a rock climber without a rope, imagined my moves—a long reach with my right arm, a swift lift of my left knee, plant my foot at the cart’s base first, while I prepped for the sway, and propel myself up into its interior on the inevitable backswing. I’d have to keep my movements compact if I were to minimize Carlos’s pain.

The visualization worked, and I was upright with only a small bit of fumbling and that due to a necessary shift in my center of gravity. The geek-sock from the comic books shop was right. This baby was starting to make itself known.

Just a little longer, I thought, and bent to stroke Carlos’s forehead. He startled at the touch, opened his eyes, and looked at me like he’d forgotten I was there. Maybe he had.

“No—” The strings pulled at his mouth. I placed a finger over his lips. His skin was clammy and hot. He jerked his head, sunstone eye flashing in its socket. “No, Joanna. You must go. Go now—”

“And you must be still and quiet, my friend,” I said, stilling him so I could cut his final restraint. Then I tucked the knife away, but kept my hand firmly on his chest. I didn’t want him sitting suddenly and toppling us both.

“Look—”

“No, you look.” I smiled down at him, meeting his new gaze with one of my own. “I’m not leaving without you.”

Even the gem took on a wild look as his eyes widened. “Look . . . up.”

I whirled, hand on the knife at my back . . . but there was no one there. The state of the once-violently beautiful planetarium, though expected, was shocking. Only a few stars remained to scatter light, the backlit gems doing their best to spark off each other, casting a spooky illumination over the rest of the room. What there was of it anyway. The gem nearest the cart was close enough to reveal the surrounding pockmarked area, a constellation raped of its soul bits.

Though the room was round, and the wall impossibly far away, I reached out anyway. The holes where the stars used to lay looked wet, the abscesses giving the impression that they were bleeding black.

The wall was too far, but I did touch something else. Barely discernible, as light against my fingertips as butterfly wings, a gossamer wave rose like a zip line in the frail light before unexpectedly pulsing outward. It was like a stone dropping into the middle of a black pond, though this ripple fractured into branches instead of waves. Carlos uttered a warning behind me, but it was too late. The silky quiver continued upward by the yard to reveal an arterial tangle of complicated threading. The movement crested over the room’s center and a pattern emerged, a concentric enlarging of circles, angled crookedly, lopsided if studied alone, but many patterns were like that. I drew back and took in the thing as a whole, the threaded spokes, the resultant wheel . . . and that’s when I spotted them.

A shining strand simultaneously struck the two opposing sides of the room where bulbous masses appeared pinned, one much larger than the other. I craned my neck to keep them both in view at the same time as the ripple corkscrewed faster and faster up what looked like giant cocoons, the lines striking a tangle of others so that the bulging sacs nearly sparked. Even Carlos stilled behind me at the sight, and when the first, smaller one began to shift, I knew why.

The rotating backside of the gossamer shell was transparent. Backlit by the remaining stars, it was also easy to make out its contents. Despite the occasional surge of light, still sparking from my inadvertent touch, a solid form lay outlined in the suspended middle, curled like a lima bean, hunched in the fetal position.

Appropriate, I thought, swallowing hard as the thing’s head swiveled my way. It had the mismatched proportions of a baby; a giant head tottering on a too-long neck, with elongated limbs and a soft, distended belly. It could have been the lighting, or the layers of its silky shell, but the thing’s skin was mottled, nearly pearlescent in some areas, while close to black in others. Its eyes were milky globes of pure white, too small for the lidless sockets, though even unblinking I knew the creature was looking at me. There wasn’t one strand of hair on the body—no brows or lashes even—and the skin appeared poreless, like soft plastic poured over bones as thin as pencil leads.

I lost my ability to scream as the monster banged its head against its soft cage. Carlos found it for me, an unmistakable yelp of anticipatory pain as the tangled thread above us thundered. Leaning back, I put a hand on his shoulder to hush him, but mutely shifted my gaze to the room’s other side.

Because rolled up in the opposite corner? In the giant spiral of sticky, gleaming threads? A body I knew mainly from comics . . . and a man I’d know anywhere. Hunter’s great form was hunched as well, though in his case it was because he was overdeveloped rather than the opposite. Even beneath the gossamer layers, his hair was a tar black club, and his skin still possessed its natural dark color, though thankfully it wasn’t mottled like the other . . . being’s.

Still, he didn’t look healthy. Though he would never be compact, his muscles had a clenched appearance, and his cheeks were hollow. Dehydrated, probably. The eyes were the same, though. Gorgeous honey globes fringed with black lashes, as beautiful to me as any gem . . . and thankfully they weren’t yet that. But they were as horror-ridden as Carlos’s as he stared down at me from thirty feet away, his mouth opened in a giant negation of what he was seeing.

My own eyes darted back and forth from his globular shell to the other as the vibrations from my touch faded, and I finally realized where I was. Not a planetarium any longer. Not standing at the edge of the Universe. Rather, at the corner of giant, and once-again invisible web.

So, I thought, biting my lip. Where was the spider?

The hairless being began to screech, the sound a mixture of something from Jurassic Park and a teen girl’s sighting of Robert Pattinson. If disturbing the web hadn’t gained me unwanted attention, the upset creature’s ongoing cry surely had. I glanced back at Hunter, trapped, as the noise continued.

Fast, then. But a hand wrapped firmly around my ankle as I reached for the web. It was a good thing I looked before I struck out because it was Carlos’s imploring gaze I nearly kicked in. His other hand found my pant leg. “No, Joanna. He can’t be reached.”

I didn’t know what he meant. That I couldn’t reach Hunter or that even if I did he was still lost to me, but I did know it wouldn’t be for lack of trying. “Let go, Carlos, and do it quick. Unless you want your hands to go the way of your eye.”

His face fell, disappointment and sadness etched in lines that hadn’t been there only days earlier, but he released his hold, knowing I meant it. I couldn’t have made it this far if I’d had more regard for anyone’s life—including my own—than I did for Hunter’s.

Yet when I craned my neck again, he was shaking his head too, pounding at the cottony sac, every strike causing it to splinter with light. It looked like a lightning storm inside, but I didn’t have time to admire it, or to mind his objection. The motion was vibrating the attached threads. The web now glittered with movement. The upside was, it’d be easy to make my way up to him. The downside? I’d be as easy to see as a spotlit starlet.

The threading was strong yet flimsy, and every movement—repositioning my hand, my feet, even reaching for another strand—threatened to flip me into the blackened abyss. I hoped my power of creation extended to a trampoline if I fell.

The vibrational shock was a Richter seven by now, worsened by the continuous cries of the sac creature now propelling itself back and forth in a consoling rock. I was also messing up the web. Approximately every third movement saw me grabbing a strand in the wrong spot and pulling it loose . . . and I was only halfway to Hunter. How the hell would I get back down?

Then I became stuck. Residue, I realized, looking at my palm. A filmy layer from the silks I’d already touched, the heat from my palm warming and softening it into a gluey compound meant, I knew, to halt me altogether.

I cursed under my breath, and tried to move faster, but a new vibration whipped me against the web, which saved me, but also caught me in its dangerous fibers. The monstrous creature ceased crying. Carlos cried out. Hunter pounded on his prison shell.

And she dropped down in front of me, so close my eyes nearly crossed.

She was naked, not that it mattered, because she was also gristled from head to toe. Body blackened like bacon left frying in a pan, her former beauty was impossible to imagine, even for someone who’d seen it. I’d known the smoke I’d blown in her face would attack her body. I’d been warned not to inhale from the quirley once it was lit, lest the poisonous tendrils reach into my lungs and do the same to me.

But I’d never dreamed a weapon could so thoroughly and continually attack a person from the inside. It looked like Solange had been flash-fired and kiln-baked at the same time. Forget third-degree burns—this had rendered her skin tissue nonexistent, and my guess was the fat had been burned from her as well, because what bubbled on the surface of her face was smoke-dried strips of muscle tethered to bone. Parts of her body—her skull, left clavicle, and elbow, her entire right side from hip to knee—were blown-out chunks of bone, as if tiny explosions had erupted inside her marrow, fusing her into a new, unrecognizable shape. I found her ears only by sighting the earrings dangling from oddly angled cartilage. One was located near her charred forehead, the other down by her chin.

Kundans, I realized with a jolt. She had armed herself with the same defensive weapons as those adorning my body, and I could have hit myself for not realizing it before. She’d never been fond of ornamentation like Diana, or affectation like Nicola, so I’d once thought beauty was her greatest weapon. But she’d worn this pair of earrings every time I’d seen her, and if this was what the quirley had done to her with the kundans’ protective powers, I didn’t want to know what would have become of her without them.

I looked away from the earrings, lest she discern my thoughts, gaze darting over her destroyed skull like I was having trouble taking it all in. Not exactly hard to fake. This was what someone would look like walking out of a microwave set to high, left to run, and starting to smoke.

Yet the top of her skull was the most extraordinary sight of all. The hair on her head was pristine; a shiny, healthy, deep auburn—with highlights or lowlights or both—and such a great contrast with the physical wreckage beneath it that its presence was a mockery. I looked her over from head to toe, and she let me, her sooty gaze fastened on me in unflinching defiance. I had done this to her, and she wanted me to see it.

And then she’d want me to pay.

“Satisfied?” she asked in a voice as charred as the rest of her. I wasn’t, but refrained from shaking my head because, were our positions reversed, she would be.

“I thought you murdered everyone downstairs so you could fix yourself.”

“Impossible. The quirley was of me. I fashioned it here with the intent to cause harm, and as you know, intention is everything. In any world.”

And I’d used her own magic against her in a place where magic was everything too.

“It doesn’t matter. I’ve no need for vanity anymore. I’ve got what I want.”

My gaze flicked, unbidden, up to Hunter still suspended above us. He was thrashing on his silky prison, but as strong as he was, his actions made no sound and had even less effect. The sac undulated, the web shimmered, and Solange laughed.

“Oh darling. He’s all yours. Or he would be if I had any intention of letting either of you live.”

I ignored that last statement and shook my head. “No. You didn’t do . . . that to him just to lure me here. That’s . . .”

I couldn’t say it. But looking at Hunter, it was clear. That was personal. If her intention had merely been to kill us both, she’d have shrunken his head long ago. But he was alive. Trapped, stored above her, but still alive.

“Oh sure.” Solange shrugged, not denying it. “I thought for a short time that my husband and I might rekindle our old romance, maybe team up. I am Shadow, he is Light. We once created a child, the Kairos, between us. No reason we couldn’t do it again, right?”

There’s me, I refrained from saying.

“But he’s useless. Impotent, if you didn’t already know. Couldn’t rise with the sun in the east, if you know what I mean.”

I felt Carlos’s one good eye roll my way in warning, and I held impossibly still, very conscious of not moving my hand to my belly, and the life Hunter had birthed inside me. Instinct told me that death was preferable over Solange discovering that.

“Oh, don’t worry,” Solange said, tone ashy and wry. “I’ll still put him to good use. See, I’m going to fossilize him in amber. He will ever be as he is now. A pleasure to look at. My pet rock, if you will.”

I looked back up. Hunter had stopped pounding, and his hands hung at his sides, sticky and useless, his shoulders hunched as he resigned himself, I think, to being unable to do anything but watch me die.

“Now, let’s see,” Solange said, looming so close I smelled the ash on her shriveled organs, the smoke on her breath. I jerked back in revulsion, and the web at my back tightened its hold. Her face twisted at my reaction, causing a muscle strip to snap over her cheek. She slapped me, then loomed even closer. “What gem, my dear, do you think will best capture the hue and form of your last soul sliver?”

Her finger, grotesque and talonlike, trailed over my breastbone. I stiffened, waiting for its inevitable plunge into my chest.

She snarled. “I screwed up the first two times. I thought your soul power was strong enough for a mineral, and tried a diamond since you’re supposed to be so fucking special. Then a garnet, representative of your lifeblood. But now I realize your particular power is organic. Maybe a coral or ivory. Maybe jet.”

I looked into her gaze, her own eyes lit by nothing but madness, and thought, Shit. The quirley had flash-fried her brain. There was probably a coiled up strip of jerky rattling around where her gray matter used to be. She wasn’t just everyday homicidal. She was certifiable.

“Then again, a moonstone is the most important variety of the orthoclase, and having handled your soul twice now, I think that might fit you just fine. Orthoclase, as I’m sure you know, is derived from the Greek . . .”

Great. More fucking Greeks.

“Orthos means ‘right’ and kalo means ‘cleave.’ ” She bared stubs of blackened teeth. “Appropriate, don’t you think?”

“Not so much,” I said in all seriousness. It made her laugh again, and soot billowed from the holes in her throat.

“Yes, I think a moonstone will fit you fine. Mind, some orthoclase stones are intrusive, all right angles and flinty warm tones, but a moonstone is pristine. Sacred. So there will be no cuts in this one. I’ll polish it into a pear shape. The light will filter through it in a cloudy blue haze, and it will look like it’s floating. But it’ll be clean, yes. Something to be proud of, really. Your soul is still relatively clean. What do you think?”

“I’m not really an expert,” I said, which made her nod. “But I do have a question.”

She looked at me blankly.

“Why?” I asked. “I mean, you’re no longer creating some sort of supernatural power plant with this sky of souls. You’ve taken the life energy of everyone peopling Midheaven, and while that gives you more talking heads than FOX News, the place can no longer run. Yet you’re not using that collective power to renew your body . . .” Never mind beauty. “So what’s so important that you’d need all the men’s energy to fuel it, all the women’s even . . . especially mine?”

My question either surprised or pleased her because the patchy bone and blackened muscle lifted over her forehead, and she gave me a sooty chuckle. “You’re not as smart as you think.”

She turned, and I stared at her retreating form. She really did look like a spider. As if she heard my thoughts, she flipped her gorgeous mane of hair, and looked at me from over one charred, flaky shoulder. “Don’t go anywhere.”

Of course I started struggling free of the web as soon as she scuttled away, noting she was doing a far better job of traversing the threads than I had. The vibrations from my movements alerted her, and jarred her a little, but she didn’t turn around, or otherwise acknowledge me again, as she headed directly toward her other caged pet.

Her lack of concern was very concerning. I yanked at the webbing even harder, but it just grew stickier. Body heat plus web glue equals trouble. I’d store that for future reference if I ever got out of here.

Hunter resumed his pounding, sparks bursting from his soft cage in jerky undulations. I appreciated his concern, but it did nothing to aid my escape. Carlos too was yelling again, but I couldn’t stop to listen. Every time I pulled one limb loose of the gossamer silk, another seemingly shot up to secure me in place. By the time Solange reached her pet alien’s giant sac, I was covered in sticky strands from shoulders to ankles, pinned in place. Fuck.

“Come here, darling. Come here, baby . . .” Her croon was smoky as she slit the webbing open with the nail of her index finger, top to bottom. When the surgeonlike incision was made, she parted the thick webbing like curtains, and helped the pearlescent bald thing out. It nuzzled her cracked, hardened form, white against black, soft against gristled, then almost immediately turned to me.

“You look hungry, sweetie,” Solange told it, dropping what would have been a kiss to its bulbous head . . . if she’d still had lips. She left a scattering of charred ash there, but both were too focused on me to notice. “Well, go ahead. Dinner is served.”

Outside of its cage, the creature looked even more alienlike, though it possessed the same surefootedness as a spider, strangely graceful as four limbs—or more accurately, twenty talons—skittered unencumbered across the web. It was almost beautiful, possessing the same certainty of movement exhibited by a harpist picking across strings, except the web’s shimmer represented one note closer to death for me. I fought harder, and the thing’s teeth began to chatter.

Solange howled with wild, smoky laughter.

Time slowed in the strange way it does when you’re panicked and you know it. Thirty seconds, some voice said inside me. That’s how long you have to live.

Then something else began to shake the web. The hairless, clicking, homicidal beast dropped its head, and I followed its milky gaze to find Carlos fighting to get up to me.

“I’ll take care of him,” Solange assured her pet, and began threading her way down. The distraction gave me a chance to reach the one thing the magic of this world and web couldn’t touch, and when the creature lifted its head again, I was ready.

The webbing kept me from striking with the full force of my blade, but it only took one small nick in the pristine—and somehow, I knew, still forming—skin to send the beast howling. Shock and pain nearly wiped the features from its face, and silvery-black blood gushed from its arm as it fell back. Once its skin hit the web, it too was trapped in place. Solange screamed and the remaining stars flickered and dimmed as she rerouted herself my way. I yelled too, a battle cry as my soul blade sliced easily through the silky threads, and I regained movement.

Unfortunately I was still panicked and cut through strands I shouldn’t. Swinging free, I yelped as I slammed into the creature’s soft body, secured only by a thread wrapped around my left wrist. The thing screamed again, then lifted its mottled head and lunged.

My blade sunk to the hilt in the soft, wide, exposed underbelly, and when the fangs continued lowering, nearing my face, I gave it a good twist. And that’s when the souls in the blade finally leaped free.

Maybe it was because I was in Midheaven, where both the blade and this beast had dwelled for so long. Maybe it was because the creature in front of me was a blank slate, and the souls could slip inside it with ease unavailable to them when tearing life from something with full form and consciousness. Or maybe it was just time. Whatever it was, each soul trapped inside that knife appeared on the creature’s unformed features, the faces popping up in a smooth cascade of forgotten men and women.

And there were dozens. Most were male, probably rogues who’d ventured into Midheaven and were killed by the knife’s first owner, Mackie . . . though the first dozen or so were Native Americans, probably from his original tribe, the Nez Perce, now long extinct. Yet every face was caught in its death grimace, morphing so quickly on the creature’s three-dimensional canvas that they were gone practically before they appeared.

It was still too slow for me. Solange was in a full rage, her mouth extended so far in an open scream that the muscles attached to her jaw had snapped and hung like a blackened beard. But the violence got me thinking again as only violence could, and I yanked the blade free, and held it to the creature’s neck.

All movement ceased, the web stilled, though the souls now loosed in the creature’s malleable body continued jostling for expression on the putty face. Solange lowered her head in a smoky growl and the remaining stars in the sky dimmed until they snapped off with a soundless blink.

“I don’t need your fucking stars,” I rasped, and reached blindly for my other pocket. Extending my arm over what was now my prey, I flipped my blade around, fumbled . . . then lit a match from the book I’d pocketed downstairs. I flicked it at the web and it took off like brushfire, sizzling across the fine strands so quickly they barely curled before they were consumed—splitting, parsing, chasing Solange.

The fire forced her into a backpedal. I’d have gloated, but the defensive fire also cut the ties binding us, and we fell. I had enough sense to keep my grip on my blade and her pet, and rolled midair, making sure it was beneath me as we fell.

Carlos saw us coming. He leaped to the cart’s side, though there was a crack, and he screamed as we caught his leg. I felt bad, but chances were our next fall was going to hurt even more. Still holding tight to the creature, my insurance, I looked up to find Solange hiding behind the walls of the shell she’d cut it from, obviously safe from the fire in there. Which meant Hunter was too.

I looked at him, high above the blazing and quickly disappearing web, and my heart twisted in my chest. Yet his eyes had lost their hopelessness, and his brows were drawn down fiercely. Go! he mouthed, pounding on the sac again. I shook my head, opened my mouth . . . and Carlos wrapped his fist around my blade hand, and swiped at the ropes suspending the cart midair. I let out a cry, reaching up for Hunter, but had to close my eyes as we fell. I needed to imagine a damned trampoline into existence.

We landed so hard the blade clattered from my hand, breath knocked from my chest. I must have bumped my head too, because the next thing I knew the creature with white marbles for eyes was staring down at me, the knowledge of its inevitable death somehow visible in the blank stare . . . and the desire to take me with it honed on its teeth.

It lunged before its neck exploded in black blood, the soul blade imbedded there. I sputtered, wiped my eyes, and found Carlos looming over us both, one hand out to me. “She’s coming.”

We fled, leaning on each other. I had two good legs to his one, but his breath was stronger in his chest. We reached the viewing room’s outer door just as a siren’s cry rose behind us. Then the room behind us, the hall before us, and the entire saloon below, began to shake.

“Hunter!”

“You die now or come back later!” Carlos yelled, and I knew he was right. I wailed, but kept going, traversing the hallway in an outright flail. The violent tremors shaking the landing kept us from getting anywhere. Clutching the banister with one hand, I propelled Carlos forward so he could do the same, yet as we crawled forward, the staircase leading to the saloon and lanterns and freedom collapsed.

The door behind us flew from its hinges. I didn’t look; I could feel Solange’s misshapen bulk, and even more, her rage. Whatever power remained to her, in this world, was about to be unleashed on us. That knowledge alone gave me the courage to take the next, unthinkable step.

“Hang on to me!” I told Carlos, and I locked on to his forearm as I ran down the remaining length of hallway, where the other three elemental rooms used to be, and only a black void remained. Unable to entertain even a sliver of doubt, I leaped into the darkness, half dragging Carlos with me, but wholeheartedly pouring my every thought, my body, my last slivered bit of soul into the only thing I could wish for that might save us all: home.

15

Arriving home, if that’s where I was, was painful. My palms and knees took most of my landing, the shock of my weight a fiery bolt that had me face-planting on a surface that was, by contrast, shockingly cold. But whether prone or standing, hot or cold, my mind had not stopped fleeing. Or, for that matter, released the hope that I was so close, so very close, to saving Hunter.

To touching him. Hearing his breath. Knowing he was safe.

I rose to my feet, which alone jarred my bones, and turned my head upward, lifting my hands to the sky. To the darkness. To him.

The sound I made then was half scream, half growl, and nothing human. Carlos shifted and was on me fast, hand over my mouth, gaze boring into mine, mouth moving as he shook his head fast. But I couldn’t hear him. Blood roared in my ears. So he pulled me to his chest roughly, less to steady me than silence me, which ultimately worked. I couldn’t scream if I couldn’t breathe.

Letting me pull back marginally, he stroked my hair, cupping the back of my head as I shook uncontrollably. “Hunter—” I finally managed.

I’d seen him. I’d been so close. And now he was alone, literally, in that world with her. “Oh God, oh God, oh God . . .”

Carlos’s voice gradually returned and, as if someone had switched on a radio, muttered endearments in Spanish flowed around me like a river. I dropped my arms and melted into it, exhausted from the flight, the beating I’d taken, the loss of hope. Carlos finally pulled back, wincing in pain as he caught my face in his hands, and when I finally looked at him, I winced as well. The gem that had replaced his eye was still in place, sparking with light, though tears had washed most of the blood away. The sight of it momentarily shocked me from my mourning.

“It’s a sunstone,” Carlos said, either scenting my horror, or simply reading it in my face. “She said the red-gold platelets would complement my complexion.”

I didn’t laugh. “Does it—”

“Hurt?” he finished, when I couldn’t. He shook his head. “Not anymore. Though I confess, my leg has felt better.”

“Oh God! I’m sorry!” I looped his arm over my shoulders, then turned to do what grief had kept me from doing immediately, squinting into the room around us. Narrow windows lay slitted against a wall in front of me, casting cubes of dim light on what my face-plant had already told me was a marble floor. So it was dark outside of . . . wherever we were. Were we even in Las Vegas? Or in a different part of Midheaven?

Or, possibly, one of the places the old viewing room had once shown agents entering tunnel systems from around the world?

“So you must have been feeling nostalgic when you jumped into that black hole.”

“What?” I said, my voice scratchy from screaming.

“Look around. You, of anyone, should recognize this place.”

Despite his leg, he allowed me to propel him in a circle, though he grunted in pain when I jerked back at the sight of the gold throne. “Holy. Hell.”

I was in the home, the mansion, the estate where I’d been raised. In particular, I was in the room Xavier Archer had built under the Tulpa’s command—one filled with Tibetan artifacts, and shaped like a stupa, a traditional Tibetan burial mound.

And a stupa, I suddenly realized, was shaped exactly like the thirteenth entrance . . . the Serpent Bearer.

“Holy hell,” I repeated softly, as I stared at the only thing that could have distracted me from the loss of Hunter.

Tell me what you know about the Serpent Bearer!

The Tulpa had bellowed this at me once, though I hadn’t a clue what he was talking about then. He’d been seeking entrance into Midheaven, via the Serpent Bearer, for years. “He couldn’t find it,” I whispered, mind racing, “so he tried to build it himself.”

“What?” Carlos asked, not following.

“Stupas are Tibetan,” I told Carlos, pointing at the pinched ceiling. “Just like tulpas. He’d have studied the culture, learned everything he could about his origins. Looking at this room, I don’t think it’s too farfetched to say he became obsessed with everything about it.”

“Everyone wants to know where they come from.”

But as a thought form, the Tulpa was realized, not birthed. He didn’t actually come from anywhere. Knowing—as only a tulpa could—what the mind could produce when set to a task, he must have then wondered what other wonderful, terrible, powerful things they’d done.

And he’d found one.

Burial mounds that acted as connections to other worlds. And that used souls, which he didn’t have, as transportation.

“I don’t think he knows he’s done it,” I muttered, flicking at a prayer wheel. A phalanx of them led to the gold throne atop a dais; authentic, antique, and imported from Tibet. Same with the masks leering from the whitewashed walls, ones I already knew trapped soul energy inside their hollowed bowls. “Entering Midheaven requires a third of your soul, even when crossing via a stupa.”

“Usually the people in stupas are already dead,” Carlos said wryly.

But the Tulpa had built this one in the home where I’d lived. He’d needed space to build this strange, otherworldly pseudo entrance. So when I’d thought home upon entering Midheaven’s void, that mental energy had taken me back to this entrance in the first place I’d ever considered home.

“We must have fallen from the peak,” Carlos said, and I looked up. Even in the near-darkness I could make out a point where the room’s thirteen sides met, an apex as definite and sharp as a pinpricked star.

“So we can get back,” I said, thoughts gelling. Hunter was back there somewhere. Hunter, the rest of my powers . . . and now my soul blade. “Where’s the mark? If I stand on it, we can go now.”

I took two steps and was jerked back into place. “Wha—?”

I tried to jerk away but despite the eye, despite the limp, Carlos held strong. “No.”

“We have to! Hunter’s still there.” I tried to jerk away again, but kept my voice low. The last thing we needed was to get caught. “Solange won’t be expecting it. We can take her off guard—”

He shook his head. “There’s a better way.”

“But Hunter—”

“Will be there. Returning right now will be suicide and you know it. Think, Jo.”

I ran a hand over my head and blew out a hard breath, but as my blood began to slow, I knew he was right. Dying now wouldn’t help Hunter. “Fine. Then can you just tell me what the fuck we killed back there?”

Yet Carlos’s expression had changed. His head was tilted, chin lowered, and his one good eye bored a hole into me. If I didn’t know better, I’d say he was going to charge. I did know better . . . but took a step back anyway.

“Do that again,” he said lowly, leaning as far forward as his good leg would allow.

“What?”

“Breathe.”

I frowned, licked my lips, and inhaled deeply. Then I blew a stream of breath directly into his face, watching his reaction closely as he took it in. Even if I were an agent, I wouldn’t be able to scent myself. Agents never could. Yet Carlos both knew me and could break down air molecules with the power of concentration alone. Whatever had forced his concentration now was enough to pull it from his pain; enough too to cause him to jerk back and swallow hard. He grabbed my arm, his fingertips tense with urgency, the gentleness from before gone.

“Is it my soul?” I asked, immediately panicked. “Is it all gone?”

“Worse,” he said, and from the look on his face, I believed it. “Or I guess I should say congratulations.”

“What?” I shook my head, not following. “Why?”

“Because, Joanna”—his mouth quirked at one side, though he didn’t look happy—“It’s a girl.”

“It’s a—?” I shook my head to clear it. “You mean, I’m a . . . I’m having . . .”

Carlos just nodded. The room began to spin, but I forced it still.

“Shit. We have to get out of here.” And I knew with what was left of my soul that Hunter would understand. I was in my enemy’s lair and I stank of humanity, frailty, myself . . . and motherhood. Sure, I’d been sick in my pregnancy. I’d been a bit clumsy recently too, but nothing I couldn’t handle. Having my center of gravity shift on me, in me, was nothing compared to the way the world kept shifting around me. But this was different. It was the first time I’d felt internally vulnerable. Which was absurd, because anyone—Shadow, Light, or gray—could kill me with a backhanded swat. But only if they could find me.

And now I was far enough along in my pregnancy that they could . . . by scent.

A girl.

I squared my shoulders. “This way.”

Carlos had been here once before, so he knew how heavily guarded the mansion was. Now that everyone who was previously unaware the Tulpa regularly lurked here was either dead or banned from the house, my guess was that Daddy Dearest probably spent even more time under this roof. Also, our dear girl from the desert ambush, Lindy Maguire, was now firmly installed as the lady of the mansion. Therefore, instead of heading toward the rooms leading to the foyer, we whirled in the opposite direction to where the stupa dead-ended in an office.

Which was locked.

“I’ve got it,” I muttered, because I might be mortal and oozing the hormones that revealed my pregnant state, but unlike Carlos I had the use of both legs. I kicked the door open and we rejoined sides, ready to bolt together through the office windows. But we both startled at the sight of the room.

Lindy was doing a little redecorating.

The giant mahogany desk my stepfather had liked to work behind was gone, the antique rug that had sat beneath it also removed.

“Books are gone too,” Carlos muttered, staring at the floor-to-ceiling shelves, now empty.

“Lindy probably had trouble sounding out the big words.”

My gaze settled on a hinge in the wall across from us. Apparently she also saw no reason to hide the once-secret entrance that led to the hidden room just behind this one. It’d once been a place of ritual and smoke, where incantations and chants led to the slow stripping of my stepfather’s soul. Hiding it must have seemed unnecessary now that he was dead.

I shrugged as I looked back at Carlos, who hesitated a fraction too long before limping toward the heavily curtained window. His face was drawn tight with pain, but also etched with a fresh determination.

It stopped me cold.

“Come on,” he said, jerking his head.

Pursing my lips, I shook mine. “What do you not want me to see?”

He neither reacted nor looked at me. Even after surviving a woman who fashioned his soul into a shiny eyepiece, after facing down her hairless pet that, while four limbs short, best resembled a mutant arachnid, and after landing in the Tulpa’s sitting room, he hadn’t reacted like this. He had acted, yes. But he hadn’t reacted.

Turning, I ignored his soft protest, one he already knew was futile, and crossed to the secret door. Bracing myself for what Carlos’s heightened sense of smell had caught on the air; some nuance, some olfactory hook wafting from behind that passage, I peered inside . . . and the room spun.

In life, Felix had always worn a smile. But in death, he wore a mask. The ancient artifact was made of burlwood, with slitted eyes and elongated cheeks, its red mouth painted open in an agonized scream. No sound escaped it, though, because nothing could.

Felix had also once walked tall. Classically handsome, with that frat boy grin, he’d been irresistible to young women who liked their men pretty. That handsomeness would have eventually firmed up, hardening his fine features into something more befitting his confident carriage, yet he hadn’t been allowed the dignity of walking tall from life. He hadn’t been allowed even to stand.

Instead he hung upside down, and from the blood that had congealed inside his neck, chest, and shoulders, it appeared he’d been that way for a long time. It was as if something vital had been opened inside him, allowed to gush forth, causing him to drown internally on his own blood.

“Joanna . . .” Urgency wrapped each syllable.

“We take him.”

I didn’t know how I got the words out. My voice was tethered to my heart by a wire, and left my body in a staccato beat. I reached, jerkily, for a stool, then raised myself next to the body. I’d already forgotten, though; I no longer had my knife. For some reason that was what brought on the tears. I turned to Carlos, my arms spread helplessly.

“Here,” he said, once again acting, grabbing a welded ceremonial knife from a wall shelf filled with mystical hoodoos. He smashed the base against the doorjamb, and handed it to me without even looking over his shoulder to see if the noise had alerted someone to our presence. I nodded tearfully as I took it, thinking he was the truest friend I had.

After that, I stopped thinking. Moving rotely, I freed another man I’d counted as a true friend, and together we carried him—Carlos hobbled by his leg, me by my grief—back into the outer office, headed again toward those windows.

But I stopped, almost exactly where I had before.

“What?” Carlos said, his infamous patience getting a thorough testing.

I shook my head. “I’m not done yet.”

“Jo?” Carlos looked perplexed, though he had to feel my rage building. I didn’t think I could get ahold of it, much less rein it in, even if I wanted to. It would be like trying to capture a tomcat with city slicker hands, except this cat had razor fangs and hooked claws and laser eyes that glowed red. Like a monster’s, I thought, letting it go. Like a tulpa’s. Like my father’s.

So what I meant to say to Carlos was Hold tight. I’ll be right back. What came out was “Stay.”

He swallowed hard, and stayed.

God bless Solange for giving me back the power to create, I thought, heading back to the stupa. And Shen for teaching me how to harness it. Because creation was the exact power I needed to wreak total destruction.

Imagine a torch into existence.

I imagined a nuclear core.

The warming light I’d accessed with Shen’s help in Midheaven flared again, though this time I didn’t beg for it. I demanded it. Heat radiated from my chest, already fueled by my anger, and grief made sparks shoot from the enlarging fury, which shot through my body like a pulse line.

Closing my eyes, I held perfectly still as I concentrated on that power, allowing it to coalesce, gathering the energy from my limbs, pulling it all in. I’d never before felt anger wind up inside me, or had to rock on my heels just to keep it reeled in. I didn’t do it this time either. Instead I opened my eyes slowly and viewed the world through a cornea burn.

I didn’t touch the wall, trying to will my palm to heat it, trying to set the Tulpa’s beloved stupa ablaze. That would be like sitting hearthside, coaxing flame to life. I didn’t try to do anything. Instead I took the scream that’d been building in my gut since seeing Felix—no, since seeing Hunter suspended above me in a webbed cell—and I fast-pitched it into the room, aiming for the apex, willing all thirteen walls to incinerate.

The blowback knocked me into the office, and for a moment the only sound was an internal sizzle. My body was fine, but the inside of my skull felt aflame. It also felt good. If I had to choose a word, I’d even dare to call it righteous. It was a clean burning anger, and there was a fuckload of it.

Carlos’s hand on my arm had us both jerking away. The fury I couldn’t control—that, I suddenly admitted, I didn’t want to control—was threatening to consume me, and as I stared hard up at him, I realized I was seeing everything through a red-gold cast. That thought, along with the flame-crackle from the next room, made me realize my eyes were glowing like my father’s. It seemed seeing red wasn’t just an expression in my family.

For his part, Carlos looked like he didn’t recognize me, his brows furrowing over his one good eye, Felix prone by his feet. I don’t know what he saw in me, if it was my father’s aspect that put such abject horror on his face as he stared down at me, or a foul characteristic all my own. All I could think was how nice it would feel—how very peaceful it would be—to step into the stupa, the flame, and simply burn.

“We have to go!”

I shook my head and realized Carlos was yelling. He was also sweating, the muscles in his throat pulled tight as he glanced nervously over his shoulder. Looking back, he pointed at Felix—poor Felix, already dead—and I knew he was right. They both deserved better than this. So I settled my rage—or at least moved it aside—and heaved Felix with Carlos, making for the window and our escape.

But at least I’d sent a fireball into the Tulpa’s life first.

16

“He’s been soul sacrificed.”

Emerging from her workroom, Io pulled off her plastic gloves, Buttersnap bumping her side as she closed the door behind her. Carlos and I had been banned to the anteroom while she worked on Felix—Carlos because he wasn’t exactly useful with his lack of mobility and sight, me because I couldn’t sit still. Even now, my leg bounced, my fingertips rapped, and my nerves jangled with the residual energy from blowing up the Tulpa’s stupa.

“Jo?” Carlos’s hand on my arm made me jump.

“I guess I already knew that.”

But Io’s confirmation was still a jolt. She’d been working for the last two hours to pry the mask from Felix’s face, but I’d dealt with the mystical objects before and I knew it wasn’t possible. They were animistic, created for and by a culture that believed everything, even inanimate objects, had a soul. The masks possessed by the Tulpa were particularly unique. They directed soul energy from the wearer and converted it into raw energy for the Tulpa. He might have ordered Felix killed, but it hadn’t been a wasted death.

I’d seen the mask forced on a human being before, smoke billowing from the eye and mouth holes as the wearer suffocated inside, and I couldn’t help but wonder, however unwillingly, about Felix’s last moments—what he’d thought, how he’d felt—and just how long the Tulpa’s torture had lasted.

Carlos sat stoically, and I shut my eyes and sucked in a deep breath, trying to mind-blank. The embers of my fury were still there, ready to flare with even an errant thought, but burning down the cell wouldn’t serve us well. It certainly wouldn’t bring Felix back.

I glanced up at Io as she leaned over to check on Carlos’s injured eye. His leg was already healing, but Io had already confirmed his eye would not. “So is Felix’s soul still in there?”

Gently lowering Carlos’s bandage, she nodded. “The mask is clinging to the body even though that has begun to rot. My guess is that the Tulpa tried to strip him of his soul, and Felix kept him from doing so by joining with the psyche already living in the mask. He’s essentially hiding there.”

I flinched from the thought. The idea that there was still some sort of consciousness locked in that wasted body was too horrible. Yet I liked the idea that Felix had fought until the end. “So he bested him. Even in death.”

“Yes, but now he’s stuck.”

I nodded. Like any living thing, the animist masks were fickle. I’d forced one on another agent once and she’d been helpless to detach it. She would have suffocated endlessly, years even, if someone hadn’t removed it for her. Yet I’d donned the same mask willingly, twice, and while it’d helped save my troop and hometown the second time, the time before that it’d ripped the flesh from my face. “Does he know . . .”

“That he’s dead?” Io finished for me. Every bit of her great globe eyes was black with sadness. “I imagine so. But he’s too afraid to pull away. I’ll either have to force the mask from his face, or cut it. But I can’t remove the mask without taking . . . you know.”

I held up a hand. “Leave it.” I wanted to remember Felix as he was in life; his face pristine, always with a ready smile. Not skinless and ripped from the bone.

“Jo, we can’t bury him with the mask,” Carlos said. “Never mind that it’s a powerful totem and artifact. His soul is still trapped inside. Do you understand?”

I nodded. We’d be burying him alive.

“That bastard. He did this on purpose,” I said, tears welling. Death was one thing, even murder could be done cleanly. But this sort of brutality was literal overkill. “Felix was good. Pure Light. The Tulpa hated him for it.”

But how on earth had he gotten to him? The Shadows had never even come close to capturing Felix before. He’d been a senior agent before he’d even turned twenty-seven, he was as paranoid as a terrorist, as disciplined as a navy SEAL.

Io inclined her head. “The sacrifice was messy too. I think the Tulpa is becoming desperate in his search for a way into Midheaven.”

I smiled cruelly at that. “Then he’s out of luck. Unless he has another stupa lying around.”

The news that the Archer estate was ablaze hit the airwaves before we’d even exited the city. Of course, firefighters raced to put out the inferno in this valley’s first family’s storied home, but the stupa was gone. I’d seen to that.

So the Tulpa would have no more reason to strip other people’s souls in an effort to power his entrance into another world. Not that it was any consolation where Felix was concerned.

“And now for you,” Io said, heading my way with a loaded syringe.

I eyed it warily. “It won’t hurt the baby, right?”

“Not at all. Can’t say the same for anyone who scents that child in you, though.”

I winced. “It’s really that strong?”

“Girl, you smell like hothouse flowers, and wind ferried from the moon’s craters. It’s life, green and full. Promising and perfect.”

I knew it shouldn’t, not now, but for some reason that made me want to smile.

So as Io set about prepping my arm to inject a compound that would hide the scent of my pregnancy from anyone with the supernatural sense to discern it, I turned my mind back to the Tulpa, and his attempt to enter Midheaven.

“At least there’s nothing over there anymore. I half wish the Tulpa had found a way in. I could have blown up the stupa with him locked on the other side.”

“But then he’d have what he desires,” Carlos said. “You don’t want that, do you?”

“Solange destroyed most of that world,” I said, pressing a cotton ball to my shoulder where Io had administered the masking agent. “There’s nothing else there.”

Though that was a lie. Hunter was there. Which meant soon I would be too.

“You’re forgetting about the child. The Tulpa still wants to rule and control and use the Kairos.”

I sat back. Of course. Hunter’s child with Solange. A kid who was half Shadow and half Light. The only person, other than me, to have ever been both. And wasn’t that, she, who everyone wanted?

Solange initially fled to Midheaven so she could keep that power, as the child’s mother, to herself.

Hunter had followed, if not for the same reasons, then with the same ruthless purpose.

Even Warren had sacrificed agents, betraying those raised in his beloved troop, in the obsessive quest for this one fated individual.

Glancing again at Carlos, I couldn’t help rethink his reasons for entering Midheaven. He’d said it was to free the rogue men trapped there, but even his emerging troop of grays would benefit from luring the child back as a rogue.

Was that why he’d left without telling me? Had he been so intent on finding that child before the Tulpa or Warren that he too had risked my life, and Hunter’s, to do so?

I swallowed hard, trying to dampen my growing confusion. Carlos would sense it if I wasn’t careful. His brow was already beginning to furrow. I wanted to trust him, but I was so used to lies and betrayal that it was more surprising when people treated me well.

“May we have a minute, Io?” Carlos asked softly.

“You kicking me out of my own wing?” she said, but was already ambling away, her hair backlit like a lampshade from the nearby torch. Knowing Carlos and I couldn’t speak of Midheaven in front of her, she disappeared around the corner without another word.

Carlos turned back to me. “Do you know what a chimera is?”

A random question, I decided, but I’d go with it for now. “Do I want to?”

He shook his head, but told me anyway. “It’s a creature designed with multiple animals parts. The ancients believed that—”

“Wait, let me guess. The Greeks, right?”

“You know this one?”

I scoffed. “They get around.”

“Well, the Greeks believed chimeras were immortal creatures. Fire-breathing monsters with the body of a lioness, the tail of a snake, and the head of a goat.”

“A family pet, then,” I said wryly, unable to see what this had to do with anything.

“Hardly. And even though such a creature is unlikely—”

I snorted. Among the unlikely things I’d seen in the past year were doppelgangers that turned into tulpas, children who morphed and stretched into protective changelings, alternate dimensions and realities and worlds, and—let’s not forget—Real. Life. Superheroes.

I specialized in the unlikely.

“There are doctors today who have worked hard, enlisting biology, botany, and a healthy imagination to create chimeras out of disparate entities. Are you following me?”

“Sure,” I nodded, rolling my eyes. “Some mad scientist tried to stick the limbs of a monkey on a beanstalk, then glued it to a dachshund just to see if it would bark.”

Carlos gave me the world’s blankest stare. “Joanna, I understand you’re upset, but try to be serious.”

“No, you be serious!” I yelled, before I could stop. “Someone I once cared for—still care for!—was just soul sacrificed, and you’re talking about some nonexistent creature the Greeks cooked up for storytime while gathered around their goddamned fire pits!”

“No,” he said, with a gentle shake of his head. “I’m trying to get you to see that with the right tools and . . . mindset, it’s possible to bring something to life, to keep something alive, that shouldn’t be.”

“Are you talking about him?” I said lowly, pointing back to the room where Felix lay, trapped in his own deteriorating body.

“No,” he defended, clearly feeling my banked anger rise. “I’m talking about what you just saw in Midheaven. What we just killed there.”

I drew back. I thought back. Then I sat back, swallowing hard. “Th-that . . . thing? The spider thing? That was a chimera?”

I tried to recall its specifics, what parts might belong to what sort of animal. The spider part was obvious. It crawled about that web with unnatural ease, despite having no more limbs than I. I had no idea what sort of creature had lent its milky white eyes, though. Or the hairlessness that made it look marbleized. Maybe both were a natural result of biding in the dark. Were there such things as albino spiders? I opened my mouth to ask, but Carlos was shaking his head.

“That wasn’t a creature made of disparate parts, Joanna. Unless you count the patchwork bits of soul from every person who has ever passed through Midheaven proper.”

“Are you telling me Solange busted up her sky of soul gems, and made that . . . thing, a chimera, with the energy instead?”

“The sky was a sort of power plant. Energy to feed it all along. And it was never for Solange.”

“So she killed everyone in Midheaven, and erased all the elemental rooms from existence, in order to feed their souls to her pet monster?”

“It wasn’t a monster, Joanna.” He bit his lower lip. “It was a child.”

Shock, then disgust flooded me so quickly I felt like I was freezing and burning at the same time. Time and vision constricted, along with the air in my chest, and I was suddenly no longer sure if I was standing or seated.

But I was absolutely certain that I was going to toss my cookies if I didn’t get a grip. Fast.

And as the shock wore off, the reality sunk in, my sudden understanding helped steady me. I mean, only one thing would keep Solange from hoarding every ounce of soul energy for herself. One reason alone would have her siphoning the power fueling that twisted world, eradicating its rooms and reducing the men and the women who’d dwelled there to talking heads—backup generators, I realized. Reserves, if she needed them.

The only real reason to take a life, I decided, or many lives, was to save another—either yours or someone you loved. And with Solange, it was the latter. With Solange, it was her child.

Hers . . . and Hunter’s.

I lunged for the corner as bitterness coated my throat. Carlos waited in silence, and as my body recoiled violently, trying to separate itself from my thoughts. I wondered how he could be so calm. Maybe he’d gotten all his freaking out over with when his eye was being retrofitted with a priceless gem. Maybe he’d been around the child, the chimera, long enough that it no longer fazed him. But it fazed me. I shuddered, remembering the way it’d screamed when I nicked it with my blade, how it’d scrambled away, and Solange had soothed it with gentle, mad words. I heaved again.

I didn’t want to think about it. I didn’t want to know what went into keeping that thing-child alive because knowing would never allow me to understand Solange. Nothing would. Even after all I’d seen and done in the Zodiac world, I literally couldn’t wrap my brain around that kind of mad ambition. Maybe at one time she’d possessed an understandable desire—to birth the Kairos, to be the mother of a child meant to change the supernatural underworld—but that desire had morphed and soured into an unhealthy obsession. And a wish granted at any cost was, in truth, a curse.

I remained kneeling on the floor until I was sure my revulsion had passed, then wiped my mouth with the back of my hand as I glanced back at Carlos. “He . . . Hunter called it, the child, a name . . . he called it Lola.”

Carlos shook his head. “It was never a child, Joanna. It was of this world, but birthed in that one. And nothing born in Midheaven has a soul.”

“That’s why she force-fed it slivers of everyone else’s soul.”

Carlos nodded, but added, “Initially she planned to hook it up to her sky, a sort of power plant . . . like an incubator, or an artificial heart. She thought finishing the sky would provide enough power to make the soulless creature develop naturally.”

“But then, all those years ago, Warren locked the entrance leading to Midheaven. And nobody entered again for years.”

“And so she slowed the flow of energy. Recycled it. In the end she was resigned to simply keeping that soulless being alive.”

“Did it work?”

Carlos’s face twisted. “Did it look like it worked?”

I shook my head. And yet Solange still thought my soul, my power to create—along with the last third of my soul—would make a difference. That’s why, using Hunter, she’d lured me back. She’d held hopes, still, of mothering the Kairos.

I shuddered. “Did . . . did Hunter know?”

Carlos inclined his head.

I blew out a breath, unable to imagine what that had felt like. The child he’d spent years searching out—crossing worlds, risking and taking lives, leaving and losing me—was an unrecognizable beast. Something to be pitied and feared, and probably shot twice.

“How could she?” I whispered, instinctively wrapping an arm around my own belly.

Carlos huffed. “You never know what someone’s capable of when it comes to their children.”

I thought of my mother and nodded. I thought of Ashlyn, the child I’d given up, and nodded again, because there’d been strength in that decision too. I thought of the child I carried now, just over a decade later, and how I was determined not only to keep it safe, but find its father, and carve out a future of . . . what?

I didn’t know. Not yet. But I straightened, took a deep breath, and reordered my thoughts. My child was not an it, but a she. Carlos scented a girl in my womb, and that’s what had gotten me moving again in the stupa. Yes, a child was absolutely enough to keep you going. “So what are we going to do?”

The sound that emerged from Carlos’s throat was more bark than laugh. “You mean after what you’ve already done?”

“What we did,” I remind him coolly, because he’d been the one to drive the blade into the chimera’s neck.

Carlos’s laughter fell away, and he leaned forward in his chair. “Joanna, every time you enter that world, one that long operated in brutal efficiency, you ripped it apart.”

“They tried to kill me!”

“You destroyed soul power by lighting it on fire.”

“An accident.” One little fire in an Old World saloon and you never lived it down.

“You escaped multiple times.”

“And Solange still invited me back for more,” I said, teeth clenched, getting tired of this devil’s advocate.

Carlos quirked a brow. “You also stole the heart of the man that she, in her twisted way, still loved. That she believed could give that world, and more, back to her.”

But no man in Midheaven could do that. It was a place devoid of creation. All they could do was recycle the existent energy. Or rip out the souls and powers from new arrivals. But that wasn’t creation. So it was natural that she’d turn to the one man who’d given her a child before.

And now he was in more trouble than ever.

Carlos was shaking his head before I even opened my mouth. “It would be suicide for you to ever enter that realm again. You’re mortal, remember? You are vulnerable, even with the power to create something from nothing.”

“Anything from nothing.”

“Doesn’t matter,” he replied, just as sharply. “She knows you have it and she’ll be prepared. Since you just murdered her child, I doubt she’s going to ask for it back nicely.”

“You murdered her child,” I muttered, but that was splitting hairs. I knew he was right. Solange would blame me for all of that and more. There was nothing to be done about that. But there was still Hunter. “What if it were you, Carlos?”

“Then I’d already be a shrunken head on a string,” he said dryly. “But if I were him? I’d want you safe. You, and the baby we’d made together. The one in full possession of its soul.”

Yes, Hunter would want that.

I looked away, biting my lip to keep it from trembling. The thought of just leaving him there, imprisoned by that madwoman, wouldn’t fully form in my mind. I rejected it like rotted food.

“Look,” said Carlos, in an overly reasonable voice. “I told you before, we can return there later. As a troop. We’ll find our way back when we’re strong, and when we’ve figured out a way to fight her.”

A lot of whens in that sentence, I thought, staring into Carlos’s good eye, pinched with earnestness and resolve. And I knew he didn’t want to hurt me. He’d looked out for me even before we’d met, and was only continuing to do so now. Yet if I agreed now? None of us would ever step foot in Midheaven again.

Still, I nodded. “You’re right. I only have one highly volatile power. I lost my soul blade in Midheaven. The best thing to do is to be levelheaded. Formulate a plan. Go back as a team.”

His face softened with relief. “Right.”

I glanced at the room housing Felix’s body. “What about him? Do you think Io can free his soul?”

“I don’t know. I hope so.”

Looking down, I bit my lip. “Can I have a few moments with him? Alone, maybe?”

He nodded, and placed a comforting hand on my shoulder. “Of course. I’ll send Io back in a half hour.”

I stood and reached for the door.

“Joanna?” When I turned he was smiling. “Thank you.”

No sweet endearment to soften the words. No gentle Spanish to embellish them either.

I smiled back. “You’d have come after me too, amigo.”

He inclined his battered head. “It would be my honor and duty. But I’m thanking you for listening now.” He hesitated, throat working like he was swallowing coal. “I can feel the strength of your love for that man. I would die fulfilled, live fulfilled, if a woman someday loves me as well.”

Then he rose, and using the rough, sandy wall as a crutch, turned and hopped away. When I was sure he’d gone, I entered Io’s workroom and gazed across the room at Felix’s remains, where an animist’s mask had been forced over his beautiful face, and his soul was crouched fearfully inside.

I closed the door softly behind me and whispered, “I need your help.”

I didn’t want to be in that room, alone with the body that used to be Felix, remembering how close we’d been or that he’d once told me how the world only made sense when he and Vanessa were together.

Yet more than all that, and probably because of all that, I didn’t want him spending eternity as a conscious being trapped in decayed flesh, which was the opposite—if not dissimilar—of the fate of those shrunken heads in Midheaven, who’d had their skin charbroiled and set to swing.

I certainly didn’t want Vanessa to see the man she loved like this. He needed to be buried, and she needed closure. There was also no question that I was going to return him to the Light. I’d already told Carlos as much, and though his lips pursed in a mien just short of disapproval, he told me he’d make arrangements. Warren be damned—and Carlos too, if he tried to stop me—this good man had been loved in life, and he deserved to be venerated and honored in death.

So I steeled myself against the sight of him, motionless beneath the sheet Io had slipped up to his neck, and tried to notch my fingertips beneath the living mask somewhere along the jawline. I tested it gently at first, then pulled, though it seemed undignified to use much more force than that. Besides, the mask remained as much a part of his face as his nose, as if it’d grown there, and had been additionally Super Glued, then nailed for good effect. There wasn’t a bit of give in it, so I stepped back, perched one hip on the table next to him like I would if he were merely sleeping, and leaned in close to the mask.

“Felix. Can you hear me? It’s Joanna. Jo Archer. You remember me?”

The mask just stared back, hollow-eyed, its painted scream round and red and silent. I hadn’t really expected a response, but disappointment still had me leaning back. It was probably best that Carlos had lost my soul blade in Midheaven. Otherwise I’d be tempted to force the damned thing free. I knew, if Felix were able, he’d beg me to do as much.

Instead I tried again. “I know you can hear me. Io told me she sensed you in there, and I do too. In a way, I mean. I don’t really have that gift. But you don’t need to be afraid of her, or anyone, anymore. You’re safe now, Felix.

“I’m safe too. And I know you always wanted that for me. Chandra told me you followed me to make sure the grays were taking care of me. Thank you for that. I know the only reason you didn’t approach me was because of Warren, and if I’d grown up a part of that troop, man, I wouldn’t be so gung-ho to help a girl who’d brought home nothing but trouble from the start.”

Sure, I’d acted heroically at times, saved the troop, even. Yet they wouldn’t have needed saving so desperately had I not been there to begin with. Being the reputed Kairos had brought hope to the troop, but it’d also brought sorrow.

I sighed. “You were raised to abide your troop leader, to trust that he or she knows best, and I understand that. I wish I had it. It would certainly make life easier if I could just divide things right down the middle, right or wrong, black or white. But my worldview has always been muddied. I guess you know that.”

I gazed down at the animist’s mask. There was no movement, but I pretended I could see him staring back at me, and kept speaking as though he could hear me too.

“I also know who did this to you. I mean, you’re too good to simply get caught, Felix. No way.” But I’d put it together in the hours since finding him hanging upside down, soul drained, body discarded. After all, I’d found him in the mansion that had once housed a figurehead—my stepfather, Xavier—and that was run by a Shadow agent—the pseudo housekeeper, Lindy—and ruled by the unseen—the Tulpa. Those three people had also been a team, a troop of sorts, something familiarity had made me forget.

And that had caused Felix’s death.

“Remember the time I asked you to accompany me to the mansion? Xavier had ordered me there, we didn’t know why at the time, but I was still disguised as my sister then, and you acted as my latest boy toy.” And what we learned that day was that Xavier was dying, and that I, posing as Olivia Archer, was going to inherit the whole of Archer Enterprises.

In a world where secret identities meant leverage, it had been a coup. The money and influence that Archer Enterprises would provide the Light was more than we’d ever had before, enough that it would make a difference in our war against the Tulpa. It also gave us, specifically me, a place to start chipping away at the Shadows’ operation from the inside. Test holes and weaknesses in his troop, and maybe even find a few chinks in his paranormal armor. Eventually I’d hoped to pound in a few of my own.

Unfortunately the opposing team had gained leverage for themselves that day. They’d learned who Felix really was.

“I left you downstairs with a tray of tea and scones,” I remembered, voice softening. I’d left him there while I’d gone upstairs to learn that the years of being the Tulpa’s lackey had finally taken their toll on my stepfather. “We could smell Xavier’s encroaching death, remember? It was sickness and rot. The Tulpa had done that to him, siphoning away his mortal soul for his own use”—and we now knew what that was—“but Lindy Maguire had as well.”

And she was the reason Felix had gone with me. It was an opportunity for a little payback after Vanessa had been tortured, dismembered, and used as bait.

“You would have killed Lindy that day. You had your boomerang out, arched over her head as she fixed a plate of blueberry scones. She’d have been dead before reaching for the clotted cream. But I stopped you.”

Because killing Lindy within the confines of that mansion would have alerted the Tulpa of our access to the same, and thus, Archer Enterprises. And while Lindy hadn’t thought anything of the way I’d flown into the sitting room, chalking it up to just one more example of Olivia Archer’s annoyingly flighty behavior, she hadn’t forgotten it either. “After the Shadows learned I was masquerading as my sister, she went back and studied the tapes.”

Tapes I’d forgotten about completely. The cameras stationed around that household were ubiquitous, and they’d obviously honed in on Felix pulling up from his deathblow. She’d seen how close she’d been to death, and so she’d studied him—features, movements, mannerisms, and clothes—she’d stalked him, and eventually found something that’d led her right to him.

But in reality, that something had been me. I was at fault for bringing him there, for not erasing the tapes later, for not remembering them at all.

“I bet she bragged about it before putting the mask on your face, didn’t she? She’d want to see your face when she told you she’d been the one to catch you.” Still no response from within that mask. I rubbed a hand over my face. “Please forgive me, Felix. I failed you. I handed you a death sentence without even knowing it, and I’m so sorry.”

The silence in the room quickly grew deafening. I bit my lip, looked away, and then whispered, “I’m going to try to remove the mask again. Please let go. Please don’t be afraid.”

I reached down.

No dice.

“Okay,” I said, nodding, biting my lip. “Then how about this. Vanessa needs you, Felix. She’s going out of her mind. Your glyph has expired back at the sanctuary so the others are already acting as though you’re dead . . . upon Warren’s declaration, of course.” Felix would well know that his troop leader would act the same were it anyone else. Nothing personal, but the troop came first. Warren believed the good of the whole always trumped that of the individual. “But Vanessa, she knows you’re not gone. Of course she knows. She’s yours.”

I waited for that to sink in. It might take a bit more time beneath a mask that had a stranglehold on his consciousness.

“So you need to let go of your earthly body if only to give her relief. Let her bury you. Let her mourn. She won’t ever be able to move on, to live or fight or even just take a solid breath, if she knows you’re still alive in the one way that truly counts. You’d feel exactly the same.”

I’d like to say the mask had popped off after that. That asking for forgiveness, fervently wishing I could take back the mistakes leading to Felix’s death, and invoking a great love was the magic combination that unlocked a soul from its tortured body. But anyone who’d ever prayed or begged or cried at a deathbed knew miracles didn’t happen—not like that. Whatever great power that had made us wasn’t interested in our feelings, but in seeing what we did after the tears had dried, all the way up until our end—no matter how bitter, or supernatural, it might be.

So I sighed and resorted to another thing he’d loved his entire life: his sense of duty. “All right then, Felix. How about this? I’m going after the fuckers who did this to you, but I need your help to do it.”

I waited. Then repeated, “Do you hear me? I’m going back. I’m going in. And I. Need. Help. From you.”

And I leaned close just in case someone with super hearing was lurking outside the door, and whispered every detail of my vengeful, homicidal, reckless, and suicidal plan into his ear.

Then I waited. I took a deep breath. I closed my eyes.

And when I opened them again, it was with warm tears streaming down my face and the mask cradled in my hands.

17

“You sure it’s safe up here?”

I peered over the roofline of Master Comics at the concrete ground—cracked, though that didn’t mean there was any give in it. Chandra joined me, though she was more concerned with scanning the perimeter than with the thirty-foot drop. And why not? I was the only one with mortal bones.

“You know it is,” she replied, eyes narrowing at a movement she spotted five hundred feet away, but one I could not. She relaxed after a moment, so I did as well. “You’ve already been zapped by Zane’s little remote control sensor.”

I wrinkled my nose at the memory, and skirted her a sidelong glance. “Yeah, but I thought that was just to deter me from breaking into his place.”

“Apparently it deters lots of things,” she muttered, turning back to the roof’s center where the self-appointed head changeling was staring out over his starry domain. Dork.

“What’s Zane been doing that he’s so tired all the time, anyway?” I called out to Carl, but he just shrugged as he tested the device that would zap anyone who decided to start a world war on the comic shop’s rooftop.

I fisted my hands on my hips. “It’s because I’m gray, right? Only true Shadow and Light are worthy of Zane’s most prized secrets?”

Carl pointed the device at me. “It’s because you’re a pain in our collective asses and I wouldn’t be up here freezing my gonads off if it weren’t for you.”

I lifted my arms in mock surrender. “Gawd, who needs Zane. You sound just like him.”

But I didn’t press the issue. Of all the changelings, only Carl remained behind when Chandra and I had come asking for help. He’d also let us carry Felix’s casket through the shop and Zane’s upstairs apartment—after knocking Zane out with Ambien-laced Scotch and tucking him into bed. That way, he said, the old dude would be absolved of any wrongdoing in helping us secure the rooftop location.

Not that we were doing anything wrong. We were just saying good-bye.

Chandra had done most of the heavy lifting. Carl and I wouldn’t have made it down the hallway leading to the storeroom on our own, never mind up the staircase. We then maneuvered carefully through Zane’s living quarters, careful not to bump the twin bed with the snoring blob bundled up tight, and then up onto the rooftop. Now Felix was settled, and all there was to do was wait for Vanessa.

“You can go now,” Chandra told Carl, when it became clear he was intent on waiting as well. Even in the dark his quick flush became apparent, and he opened his mouth to spout what was sure to be some foul retort. Yet he changed his mind at the last minute. “Just don’t mess the place up.”

“Yeah,” I scoffed, kicking at a stray soda can. “ ’Cuz it’s a fucking palace now.”

Something moved behind his gaze, a knowledge perhaps that we didn’t have, which in my case wasn’t exactly breaking news. It was nice not to have to fight him, though, and when he turned without another word, the lock to the sunroof catching with a firm click, Chandra and I both blew out a relieved sigh.

Then we settled into the most uncomfortable silence known to mankind.

It wasn’t that I hated Chandra. I never truly had, and I didn’t think she’d ever really hated me either. Real hate, I thought, grew out of full-blown wrongs and betrayals. In that sense, the Tulpa knew what he was talking about when we’d squared off on the desert floor.

What Chandra and I were doing here, joining forces from opposite sides of a divide we could have reached across at any time, was not that monumental . . . yet it was altogether new.

I glanced over at her, and she stiffened under my stare. I tried anyway. “How’d you find Vanessa?”

She gave me a look of surprise, like I’d grown another head rather than initiated a conversation, but I held her gaze, softly, which had her own fluttering away. “She found me. After she met with you, she gave me a single-use cell number and said to call her if we found anything. She also said she’d kill me if I didn’t.”

“She’s just not herself,” I said, earning another surprised glance. Believe me, I found it hard to believe I was trying to spare Chandra’s feelings too. I folded my arms around my shins. “Don’t take it personally.”

Leaning against the rooftop’s edge, our backs to the alley, not too close to each other but not too far away either, we gazed out at the neon sky. The city lights twinkled like there was no recession, no death, and no battle for its glowing soul.

I tried again. “What happened to your hand?”

Her severe mouth turned down. “What do you mean?”

I jerked my head at her left palm, tucked behind her, though it was clear her right arm was supporting all her weight. “You’re favoring it. You carried . . . him with the other. It’s also wrapped. I saw it peeking out beneath your shirt.”

“Observant, aren’t you?” she said, meeting my gaze for the first time.

“It’s been rather helpful in keeping me alive,” I answered in kind. And as agents couldn’t sustain injury through mortal weapons, it was clear Chandra had encountered some sort of conduit. If the agent wielding it was still after her, it would be nice to know what it was.

But Chandra just frowned at me a moment longer before returning her gaze to the roofscape. For a moment I thought she was going to remain as forthcoming as she ever was with me . . . which was to say not at all. But after another, she turned to face me fully, her dark hair swinging over her shoulders to frame her face. “You know, I’m not like you. I’m not special. Not extraordinary. I never have been—not in lineage or talent or looks or skills. All I’ve ever wanted was to be an agent. To be considered worthy of the title Light.”

I sighed softly. “And then I came along.”

“Yes.”

And in the Zodiac’s matriarchal world, lineage always won out over training, desire, or fairness. Chandra had known that. I had learned.

“I’m glad it’s you,” I said suddenly, almost before I knew I was thinking it. I ducked my head, but it was too late. Her gaze was arrowed in on me now, and her breath had caught. “The next Archer, I mean. You’re made for it. It should have been you all along.”

For a moment it looked like she’d agree, but then her shoulders slumped, and she shook her head. “It wasn’t your fault. Destiny, and all that shit. Whether I liked it or not.”

“Whether I liked it or not.”

“And you didn’t?” she asked, squinting over at me in disbelief. She’d held the desire to be the Archer of Light close to her chest for so long that it was clearly inconceivable that I didn’t covet the same.

“I wanted to fit in, of course. To do my part, to make—” I was going to say Warren, but I’d cut out my tongue before his name passed my lips favorably again. “I wanted to make my mother proud. But for me alone? Now that I’m out of the situation?” I shook my head. “No. I never wanted that position.”

“Not even the Kairos?”

I shook my head. “It’s too much like being the president. People pin their individual hopes on you, then tear you down when you either can’t deliver, or don’t do it in the way they desire.”

“Then what?”

Tilting my head, I pursed my lips. “I’d just like to be myself, I guess. I’d like to carve out my own place. Somewhere new if I must, but it would be nice to freely choose what my future looks like. And what it holds.”

She scoffed. “It doesn’t work that way, Joanna. Agents are born to a life of duty.”

“Then I guess it’s a good thing I’m not an—”

But I never finished because a gust of wind whipped over the rooftop, a rustle of clothing sounded, and soft-footed landings whipped me to my feet as four true agents of Light dropped directly across from me.

I made a surrendering gesture, palms up, though I had no plans to surrender as I backed away. Only to escape.

“I told them you were here.” Chandra’s voice was apologetic.

No shit. I didn’t even look at her. And to think I’d been feeling sorry for her seconds earlier.

What remained of this valley’s twelve agents of Light stared back at me. Micah, Riddick, Gregor, Jewell. Another, Kimber, had been given a bus ticket back to her birth troop in Arizona once Warren deemed her insufficiently powerful. So save Warren and Tekla, that was the whole of the troop.

Except for Felix and Vanessa, I amended, sidestepping toward the skylight Carl had locked. Still, it was four against one. Five if you counted Chandra’s two-fucking-faces. Bad odds even if I weren’t a mortal.

Or a gray.

“Joanna—” Micah, the most senior of this group, held out a hand the size of a large brick to stop my lunge. I stopped, but mostly because I caught the way shadows roiled and shifted like liquid marble beneath his skin. That was a result of getting an indirect face full of smoke from a quirley like the one I’d attacked Solange with. Yet Micah’s eyes were clearer than the last time I saw him. A talented physician, he’d figured out a way to master the living smoke’s accompanying pain.

“We won’t hurt you,” he said, his voice a charred rumble as he stepped forward.

I took another step backward. “Gee, I think I’ve heard that one before.”

“Joanna—” Chandra reached too.

“Shut up.”

Jewell, careful not to move in my direction, clasped her hands in front of her. Though nonthreatening, it was a calculated gesture. She posed as a schoolteacher in the valley, and conservatively dressed the part. But no mere schoolmarm could pull the limbs from my body with her bare hands, so I remained wary.

“We just want to be here”—her eyes darted briefly to the coffin—“for Felix and for Vanessa. We’d like to comfort her, if we can.”

“You can’t,” I said shortly.

“But at least let us . . .” A tear rolled down her cheek, and she couldn’t finish.

“We need to grieve too,” Gregor said, and when I turned to face him, my own hard expression broke. One-armed, bald-headed, tattooed, and fierce, he stood across from me with puffy eyes and a tear-streaked face. The stricken look made me take another step back, but they all held where they were, including Chandra—weapons sheathed, hands where I could see them.

And they all looked exhausted.

I cared. God help me, I did. Like a battered wife remembering a time when her husband seduced her instead of struck her, I still remembered what it was to be one of them. Just because I knew it was irrational to trust those who’d betrayed me didn’t mean I didn’t wish I could.

Yet I remained wary for Hunter. For the child alive inside me. For the grays and even those wretched shrunken heads stuck in a world everyone else was happy to merely forget.

Fuck these guys and their belated sorrow. I had things to do.

But then—eyes on the coffin that held their troop brother and friend—Jewell spoke again. “Felix . . .”

Her voice broke on the second syllable, rising like a question, punctuating the air so that the sole note held all our unspoken thoughts and sorrows . . . and in those, I realized, we were still united.

You had so much to live for.

It’s too soon.

Why?

We could have stopped it.

Could we have stopped it?

Oh my God. No.

Not Felix.

I sagged against the air-conditioning unit. Seeing it, the agents of Light relaxed in turn, each shifting their gazes from me to the rooftop’s center, where the coffin lay like a sacred altar.

Then, suddenly, their gazes shifted again.

She appeared as silently as a ghost, rail-thin from the weight she’d lost even in the short time since our last meeting in the alley not far from here. Her body wavered in the gentle breeze as if spineless, and her limbs were wiry, and looked eerily long. The only part of her that remained inflexible and hard were her eyes, which darted around like she didn’t know where to aim, but she’d start shooting randomly if anyone so much as twitched.

No one moved.

“Where?” she finally said, voice even smokier, raspier than Micah’s. “Where’s my Felix?”

The sudden and odd cock of her head told me when Vanessa spotted the coffin. She was perched on the rooftop ledge, high enough to loom over everyone save Micah, and the city lights glared behind her as if she were backlit on one of Vegas’s main stages. Detaching herself from the illusion, she dropped silently to the rooftop. She then straightened, and strode directly to the rooftop’s center. Everyone else stepped back. And when she finally put her hand to the coffin lid, we averted our eyes.

Yes, we were all gathered here for the same reason. But in some ways this was not a loss that could be shared. Grief was a place every person had to go alone, a lonely country populated by mistakes and a futile desire to turn back time for an impossible “do-over.” We all felt such regret to varying degrees now—acutely and honestly—but none so much as Vanessa.

I stared hard at a peeling spot on the roof’s bumpy surface. It wasn’t something that should have had to play out before others, on a city rooftop, in an open location. Yet how often had our private moments been displayed in comic books for the entertainment of young minds? After all, the most emotional moments were fantastic fuel, evoking intense reactions and belief. This was vital in sustaining the Zodiac world, so in all probability this moment would live on in the minds of thousands anyway. At least for now Vanessa was veiled beneath the stars that ruled our world, and ringed by those who understood as much of her grief as anyone could.

I glanced over at Chandra, caught her eye, and gave a small nod. She had been right to tell them to come.

After hesitating for a long moment, Vanessa finally lifted the lid. Those directly behind her gasped, the sounds slithering into the night like rattling snakes. Even I winced upon glancing over, and I’d known what to expect.

Vanessa’s breath took on a wheezing note, and I was suddenly thankful I couldn’t scent emotions. Fresh tears rolled from Jewell’s eyes at the sound, and Micah’s great shoulders began to shake. Gregor and Riddick took a step forward, but sensing it—somehow feeling it through the ripples of her own pain—Vanessa jerked her head. Gregor put a hand on Riddick’s shoulder, and both remained where they were.

Meanwhile Vanessa pinned dark and deep eyes, abyss eyes, on my face. “Will he be in there?” she asked, jerking her head at the mask folded in Felix’s stilled hands.

So Chandra had told her. I’d mentioned on the phone that Felix’s soul was holding on, hiding out, and still alive and aware in that mask. I’d admitted that I’d freed it from his face by speaking of duty, and how he could gain vengeance upon those who’d killed him, even from beyond the grave. But what really did it was a second mention of Vanessa. I’d whispered into the mask that only by letting go of his earthly body would he have a chance to also say good-bye to her. And so he did. And now he would.

I swallowed hard because I knew what was coming next, but wrapped my arms around myself, and nodded at Vanessa.

The strongest stars above us twinkled randomly in the night. The roar of a far-off engine floated in the air. And a group of men and women who’d once been united as a troop held their breaths as if, for only a moment, they were still one. Sucking in a deep breath that blotted out the stars, the city, the rest of the world, Vanessa put the mask on.

The sound was like nothing I’d ever heard before. Even battle cries, even the Tulpa’s, had never sent a shiver down my spine like the one that Vanessa let out upon encountering her love. I ducked, hunching instinctively, defensively, against it. I didn’t even know someone so strong could make such a broken sound, though surely I’d done the same when I’d finally mourned my sister. Such pain didn’t feel and look the way it did when coming from another. It was alien, monstrous, and Vanessa’s mournful cry was a full-frontal attack.

It was a true death cry. Tulpas, shrunken heads, soul blades . . . nothing was as haunting as this. The same thought crossed the faces of those across from me. Riddick’s eyes glazed as his brows collapsed, Gregor’s face twisted, while Micah only dropped his head back to the sky, imploring and helpless despite his size and strength. Jewell gave in and crumpled to her knees, while Chandra’s fists clenched in impotent fury.

Yes, I thought, blinking away tears as jagged sobs rose to cut at the urban skyline. It was good that they were here. It was better to weep for Vanessa’s loss than for theirs. They, after all, had to continue on as if Felix’s death changed nothing. Like it was one more loss in a world where violence was a given.

But there was no violence as brutal as destroyed love. And no matter what came next for any of us, things had changed.

This moment, especially—this shared grief in particular—changed everything.

They did not follow as I made my escape into the night. I didn’t know how much Carl had seen or heard of the rooftop vigil—Vanessa’s scream, certainly—but it was enough that he was alert because he appeared almost as soon as I tapped on the skylight. I expected manic questioning on his part, but he only nodded at me wordlessly as I made my way back down the ladder, through the loft, and out into the restless cover of darkness.

Two blocks away, but still within sight of the shop, I stopped and leaned against the plate glass windows of a pawnshop, pushing a hand tiredly through my hair. It wasn’t smart or safe, but I closed my eyes and sagged against the cool glass for a moment. We’d been on that rooftop less than an hour but all of it had been spent lost in chasm between accepting Felix’s death and still wishing it otherwise. It felt like I’d been up there for days.

“Put it away for now,” I murmured, opening my eyes and straightening. I’d done what Felix had needed in order for his soul to accept death. My own acceptance of it could wait. Right now I had to keep moving. One foot in front of the other. Because there was another man, living and breathing, who needed me still.

And I could do it, I thought, sucking in a hard breath, nostrils flaring. Look what I’d done in the past twenty-four hours: escaped Midheaven, destroyed the Tulpa’s access to it, and seen Felix honored, if not properly, then wholeheartedly. Yet all those things might have been accomplished anyway, and Felix would still be here, if Warren had simply allowed us all, Light and gray, to work together against the Shadows.

If only he’d listened, I thought, crossing the cracked asphalt against a red light. The neon sign of a local’s bar was only half lit, the sandy stucco badly chipped, but the door buzzer and accompanying camera had me moving to the building’s shadowed side. If only Warren had been less rigid, and could entertain a new way of doing things.

We could have worked together, if not side by side, then in tandem. A tag-teamed bait-and-switch to augment each other’s causes against the Shadows. Because what Warren wanted wasn’t so different than what Carlos desired. Not at the heart of it.

Yet had it been a gray who was soul-sacrificed in the Tulpa’s hidden room, had it been Warren who’d found him instead of me, I knew he’d have left his perceived enemy to hang. Yet Carlos had carried Felix on his own back. Io had bathed his battered body. And I’d returned him to his people.

And, I noted, their so-called leader couldn’t be trusted to release his hate for anything not identifiably Light long enough to mourn one of his own. My anger flared at the thought, but cold reason pinched it out. Warren was well out of my reach. Steadying my breath, I kept walking. Strong emotions, ones that could be scented, could hurt only me now.

Evidenced by the figure that momentarily sidled alongside me, matching my pace.

“I was hoping you’d follow.” I glanced over at Vanessa who looked more like a cyborg than a person. She stood tall and resolute, same as she had in all the time I’d known her, but there was something steely about the way she moved. She was still flesh, blood, and breath, but the lack of emotion on her face made her seem mechanical, like I could flip a switch at her back and she’d cease existing altogether.

No word of the rooftop scene, or the emotion—rage, sadness, horror—that had her shaking minutes earlier, and when she answered, her voice was strong. “Of course I followed. Felix told me.”

I licked my lips, and nodded once. The magic in wearing an animist’s mask was a strange thing. I could at least thank Warren for teaching me that. I had no idea what Felix told Vanessa, but it was enough to erase the maniacal look from her gaze . . . and have her joining me now.

“He told me what you planned, matter-of-factly . . . which is not like him at all. But he said the best way to honor him, and see that he gains immortal fame was to help you, and make his death count. And that in order to do that I had to keep your plans from the Light. So how could I not follow?”

I jerked my head back at the shop. “They’re not.”

We turned and looked back at far-off rooftop together. It wasn’t so far off, however, that we couldn’t make out the five figures lined along its ledge, backlit like a living skyline, apropos for the agents charged with protecting this city. Vanessa finally sighed. “They can’t.”

And maybe it was the light, maybe it was the dark, but the weight of their responsibility suddenly looked burdensome, like it held them down even though they stood atop it all. Still, none of them moved. To mourn Felix was one thing. Following two rogues—worse, former members of their troop—would be a direct violation of troop law.

Vanessa tilted her head, and for a moment a bit of craziness eked back into her gaze. “You think they know what we’re going to do?”

“Probably, but I’m going to pretend they don’t.” I’d rather fool myself into believing they couldn’t smell the need for vengeance and action bleeding through our pores than think of them sitting by and doing nothing. Especially since I knew they felt the same inflamed impulse themselves.

“And what about your troop leader?” she asked, tilting her head. “Does he have any thoughts on your self-appointed vigilantism?”

“We don’t have a troop leader, but if you mean Carlos, then no. He thinks I’m merely doing what Felix would wish. He believes I’m still the Kairos. I have my ether back, you know.”

“I know. I can sense it.”

I raised a brow, but nodded. Of course she could. “It’s my personal power. The ability to create the world as I want it to be.” I laughed, and it came out more bitterly than I expected. Vanessa said nothing. “Still, Carlos also told me before I left the cell to steer clear of Midheaven.”

She pursed her lips. “But Hunter is still there.”

Jaw clenched, I gave a single nod.

Slowly Vanessa nodded too. “So when do we leave?”

“Is immediately okay with you?”

“I’d prefer a bit sooner, but it’ll have to do.” Then she held out her hand, offering me the mask that had, until recently, held what was left of her great love. Our eyes met as I reached for it, and she gave a small nod—of thanks, of relief, of something darker that I’d never be able to understand. But she didn’t smile. It was unlikely she ever would again, but for the first time since Felix’s disappearance she looked sane.

Well, homicidally sane. Sane like a loon. Yet for what we were about to try, it was exactly the sort of sane I needed.

“You know, if I really knew what to do with that power, I’d create a world where this couldn’t happen. I’d create one where someone as good as Felix wouldn’t have to wear a mask. Where none of us would.”

She didn’t say anything for a long while. Then she sighed. “Your world sounds . . . wonderful. Unfortunately, we’re stuck with this one.”

We paused for just one more backward glance. Then, wordlessly, we turned our backs on the entire troop of Light, leaving them gazing after us from their rooftop perch, their uncertainty so profound it almost stained the air.

18

We reached the mansion just after midnight. The home itself was pristine, the lawns still sprawling and green, the topiaries trimmed, the giant fountain in the circular drive bubbling with good cheer. Inside, lights burned low as if a family of four—or four hundred, given its size—were tucked in around the dinner table. The stupa had been located in the home’s center, no doubt to draw all the energy inward and up, so the fire damage was imperceptible from the outside, and all looked normal from the street. All, that was, but for the guard at the gate, who wasn’t mortal.

“That’ll teach me to keep my pyromania in check,” I said wryly, recognizing Tariq’s dark hair, stocky build, bushy brows. And his cockiness, of course. Who else would be bold enough to fall asleep on the job? Yet I remained wary. He was alone in the open? Fair pickings for any agent, or rogue, who came along?

“They’re careless,” Vanessa whispered, a low growl in her voice.

“They know there are only seven agents of Light left in the valley, and those are overwhelmed with both grays and Shadows now.” All while still trying to protect a mortal population. Thankfully the Shadows had momentarily lost interest in baiting mortals and using them as pawns, preferring instead to press their newfound advantage against the Light. If they could eliminate all, they’d have the entire city as their personal playing board.

“They’ve left more foot soldiers to patrol the city for Light,” she told me, staring at the guard box like she could torpedo it with her eyes. “Though if this egotistical prick is positioned at the home front, then whatever’s in there is worth protecting.”

We briefly held each other’s gaze before one side of my mouth lifted wryly. “Looks like Daddy’s home.”

And if the Tulpa was in residence, Lindy would be too.

“Still,” I said, blowing out a breath as I turned and pressed my back against the wall, “no reason to storm the castle.”

I jerked back at Vanessa’s hard look. I’d already told her about the tapes, that Lindy had tracked Felix through them, and undoubtedly captured him herself. Though Vanessa could surely sense my guilt over not remembering to erase the tapes before Lindy viewed them, and though she might eventually blame me for it later, right now she had someone else in her sights. And leaning forward, looking at me as I tried to dissuade her from her rightful vengeance, she looked positively honed.

“Who killed Felix?” Her tone was so low it could have been a death rattle.

“Vanessa, be reasonable. The Shadows are all . . .”

But I trailed off, knowing my words would make no difference.

“We leave Tariq where he is,” she ordered coolly. “Once we’re inside, once Felix is avenged and we’re gone, the Tulpa will take care of his lackadaisical watchman.”

True; if that was the way the next few moments worked out, the Tulpa would skewer Tariq like a kabob. Still, I glanced back at the guard shack. “But I need—”

“I know what you need,” Vanessa snapped, her earlier sanity instantly gone. She widened her eyes, her face pressed close to mine. “And I’ll give it to you if it’s the last thing I do. But you promised me vengeance for Felix. That’s what I need.”

I nodded, and not only because I didn’t have a choice. Were it Hunter lying in a rooftop coffin, her need would be my own. “It was Lindy. Even if the Tulpa ultimately trapped Felix’s soul within the mask, she caught him. Brought him here. She’s a foot soldier that way. Does what he says and worships him for it. There’s nothing she desires more than his favor.” His love, I thought, raising my brows at Vanessa.

Like a whetstone, my words sharpened her. Her eyes narrowed, nostrils flaring as she cut a glare back at Tariq, who’d shifted and drawn his hat down to cover the whole of his face. Then she turned, just as watchful and considering, back to me.

“I don’t think I like the way you’re looking at me.”

The next thing I knew, I was trussed up in the garden hose, and laid out on the center lawn like a yard gnome. If Lindy had been looking at the tapes just then, she’d have seen a dark figure, Vanessa, dart on the premises, drop me there like a housewarming gift, then ring the door and flee. If Tariq had been awake in his guard box, he’d have seen the same.

Dammit.

I was left to shiver in the wet grass, the night sky sprawled above me like a widow’s veil.

“You’ve got one job,” Vanessa had said, wrapping me tightly, suddenly as lucid and decisive as a commander. “You lie there and create. Remember the wall? The barrier Tekla taught you to imagine out of nothing?”

Of course. It’d helped bring down my first enemy, Joaquin.

“No wonder you were so good at it,” Vanessa muttered, giving the hose a sharp tug. “It’s your individual power, your ether. We should have seen it sooner. No matter. It’s the only power you’ve got.” She finished wrapping me. “Use it.”

Locate it in yourself, harness it, and use it to get what you want out of life.

“Glad you got such faith in me, V,” I murmured, just as a staccato rap literally shook the mansion’s double door. Lindy would check her beloved tapes before venturing outside, though, which gave me a few more minutes. I took a deep breath and closed my eyes.

It’d been a long time since I’d put Tekla’s lessons to use. There’d been no reason to try to create things from thought in the months since my returned mortality, and for a time the mere memory of my powers had been too painful to dwell upon for long.

However, my avoidance of those memories in the day hadn’t been enough to stop them from playing out in my dreams. I’d run them in my mind like a ballplayer envisioning his pitch. Sports psychologists claimed the mind didn’t know the difference between an action repeated in the mind and one performed in the body, and it was a good thing, too. As my body languished in mortality, my mind had continued to dream of my former abilities—being able to create concrete walls, invisible shields, and even birth plant life with the flick of my wrist—and the mental defiance was paying off now.

The last time I’d built invisible walls around me as a form of protection, I’d been trapped in a maze with Joaquin, right before he died. I’d like to say it was my impressive mental acuity that’d contributed to his downfall then, and that my invisible walls had held up under his superior skills and experience, but it wasn’t and they hadn’t. Tekla, and a totem left to me by my mother, had been the primary causes of his downfall.

Yet I’d been replaying those events since then, mentally reconstructing them like splicing film on a reel. I ran the memory in my mind right up until the point where things started to go bad—Joaquin using bare knuckles to bust through those wobbly, invisible barriers—and then I stopped and replaced the defeating images with one of unilateral success.

That’s how I’d come up with my new defense; not a shield boxing in my enemy that they could power through with enough blows, but one encasing my body like a carapace, a shell or second skin. One without the annoying inability to resist punctures or slashes or wounds. It was easier to imagine my body as a well-guarded island than to think I could ever impose my will on the outside world.

So I always imagined this unseen, and barely felt, shield as being as strong as bulletproof glass, but flexible as rubber. And since I knew how it felt to create a wall from nothing, from the ether—my ether—it was an easy mental sell. After all, a person confined to a wheelchair could still remember how to walk. If given back their mobility, they’d learn to stand and do it again.

So like Tekla’s walls, my new shield materialized first in the mind, rippling into existence like a brain wave before solidifying around my body. And every time I dreamed of this, I told myself that next time I’d be ready.

Like now.

The estate door cracked against the foyer wall. I smiled, thinking of all the times I’d wanted to stand up to Lindy and hadn’t. I realized I was looking forward to taking her on. But would my untried and newly imagined defenses be enough to hold up under the onslaught of two Shadows? Because when I turned my head, that’s how many figures darkened the double doorway, and were, even now, bounding down the steps, right toward me.

Knee-jerk panic had me shifting on the lawn before I forced myself to still and fight it back. It would do me no good . . . though at least now the scent of fear would lend authenticity to my surprise visit.

Just concentrate on keeping the new wall strong, I thought, closing my eyes. Flexible around my frame, but absolutely impenetrable. One chink in my armor and they’d find it. Once found, I was a goner.

Don’t think about that.

“Well, what do we have here?”

“Hello, Helen,” I said, invoking the name she’d used as her cover in the Archer household, but giving it a sour twist I’d never dared before. I opened my eyes. “Can’t say it’s good to see you.”

She loomed over me, her thin frame making her look like a scorpion eyeing her next meal. “But lovely of you to stop by anyway. To whom do we owe the honor of this visit?”

I kept my eyes steady on her squared, delighted face as a figure slipped into the mansion behind her back. Adele, a Shadow who proved that sometimes beauty really was only skin deep, stood at Lindy’s side. Were all things equal, I could best her in any battle, but they weren’t even close to that. Gritting my teeth like the answer pained me, I turned my head back to the sky. It was easier to imagine the shield cupping my body without looking at their faces.

The silence earned me a kick in the gut. It made me want to break into laughter—power, where I’d thought I had none!—but I forced a pained exhale from my gut. The rest of my response didn’t have to be faked. The blow cast my body half across the lawn, like a mallet striking a croquet ball, yet thinking me fragilely mortal, Adele had kept the blow from being a killing one.

Confidence whipped through me, reinforcing my shield like rebar, and I curled into myself as she stalked across the lawn. I faked a strangled cough as she loomed, shoving me to my back with her foot. Manicured, I noted. And in Louboutin heels.

“Answer the lieutenant,” she commanded, one red-soled heel planted on my chest.

“Th-the wha?” I asked in fake breathlessness.

Lindy opened her mouth to silence Adele, but the latter was a Pisces and from what I could tell, those born under that star sign rarely shut up. “You heard me,” she said, lifting her chin. “Maguire is now second-in-command.”

I barked out a laugh before I could stop myself, and before I could infuse it with even a hint of pain. “He gave you a title?”

Lindy swallowed hard. Infatuated women, women in love . . . women who’d given their entire lives over in service to a man in hopes that he would someday simply notice them . . . they wanted to be recognized with flowers, a ring, breakfast in bed, a private moment . . . or if a title was needed, as a wife.

Lindy might be a Shadow, a lieutenant for God’s sake, but she was still a woman. I lifted my head, catching her eye, and let one corner of my mouth lift in a knowing smile. “So do you get a badge or something? Like, I don’t know, a big gold star?”

Adele pulled back her foot again, and my smile fell as she aimed for my face. No way would she miss my big mouth. But Lindy calmly stopped her backswing, a move befitting a lieutenant, I supposed, though her grip was so tight the other woman winced. “Not out here. We’ll see who’s laughing . . . once inside.”

So Adele ripped the hose away, tossing me to her shoulder like she was King Kong and I was Fay Wray. I shut my eyes on the short journey to the mansion, reinforcing my shield, steeling myself as she began climbing the wide marble steps leading into the foyer. This wasn’t going to be a methodical or tactical invasion. Vanessa wouldn’t wait for them to gain their bearings, their weapons, or their wits. She also wouldn’t risk them scenting her rage or bitterness or sorrow. Which didn’t mean she wouldn’t use the emotions. She’d use them all right. A fury awaited . . . at best, only ten feet away.

And since I was expecting attack, the shining movement caught my attention first. First Lindy was standing, striding. Then she was flattened, crushed by a fallen chandelier, crystal splinters spraying the foyer in unlikely, sharp missiles. Vanessa hadn’t just dropped the chandelier, she’d thrown it.

Lindy vanished beneath the direct hit, while Adele managed a lucky backpedal—lucky for us both—before dropping me. We looked up in time to see Vanessa falling from the vaulted ceiling—snarling and crying out in a voice I’d never before heard. After that, the air blurred. The specifics were lost to my mortal vision, but I knew Adele tried to run. Vanessa anticipated it and plowed into her, whipping them both down the short steps into the formal family room.

Adele didn’t have a chance, I thought, backing into the corner. Unlike me, Vanessa possessed full strength, the element of surprise, and the drive of someone with nothing to lose. One thing she didn’t possess, however, were eyes in the back of her head. Lindy was up, tearing across the foyer before I could make a sound. Smoke trailed behind her, the classic battle sign of Shadows, and impeded my already poor vision, though I heard the impact of the two women.

It sounded like a train hitting a bus.

I rushed through the smoke toward the sound of thrashing, pulling an antique conduit from my pocket as I ran. How ironic. The weakest person here and I was the one with all the weapons.

I glimpsed Adele first, probably because she wasn’t moving. Her chest was as neatly caved in as a sinkhole. I shot her anyway.

The blast caused a hiccup in the fistfight whipping across the tall French windows, and the pause gave me a chance to aim my weapon at Lindy’s surprised, and bloodied, face. I only intended to hold her captive there—I’d promised Vanessa the kill—but my trigger finger twitched as the gun was knocked from my hand, and plaster exploded over the women’s heads.

Tariq had finally woken from his catnap.

The blow that rocketed my head back was a direct hit, too fast for me to see, much less stop. Lifted from my feet, I sailed back through the foyer, and ricocheted off the gold and marble console. Hands found my neck before I was fully slumped, and were it not for the shield coating my body like a second skin, my windpipe would have been crushed in seconds.

Instead the effort—and the confusing lack of results—gave me time to slip a trident from my arm holster and skewer Tariq between the ribs, up close and personal-like. I thrust my hips up, toppling him as he jerked away, then rolled to my knees as I fired my other conduit into his skull.

Then, whirling, I trained it back on the family room entrance.

Needlessly, I realized, a smile overtaking my face as I lowered my arm and rose to my feet.

Vanessa smiled back, though Lindy couldn’t do the same, even if inclined. Caught in a headlock that had her turning the color of a fresh plum, her eyes rolled back, and her body went lax. Vanessa kept her grip tight on the lieutenant’s neck. “You’ve got blood on your face.”

I shrugged. “It’s not mine.”

She raised her brows, the Vanessa I used to know emerging for a few scant seconds. “Not too bad for a mortal.”

I grinned back. “I have my moments.”

19

We left immediately. Someone would undoubtedly attempt to contact one of the newly deceased Shadows soon or, just as likely, show up at what had clearly become the Tulpa’s unofficial headquarters . . . maybe even the Tulpa himself. Either way, the empty guard box would put them on alert, and we needed to be far from the estate when that happened.

Yet carrying the body of a full-grown woman through the valley’s streets had a tendency to raise a few brows, even in Las Vegas . . . and especially when Vanessa kept choking out said woman every few minutes. Fortunately my deceased stepfather had left behind a fleet of luxury cars in which to kidnap the unconscious Shadow. I plucked the keys to a discreet Mercedes from a pegboard in the pristine garage, and we were spiraling out the gravel drive within minutes of our kills.

Kill spots, I thought, causing another shiver of adrenaline to rip through me. Whoever entered that mansion first would not only scent their allies’ deaths, but the mark of the hands that caused them. And, despite all odds, I would be one of them. It was just the hit of confidence I needed to ferry me on to my next task: Midheaven. Solange.

Hunter.

That was if I could keep Vanessa from murdering Lindy on the short drive to the nearest tunnel entry, I thought, glancing nervously at her through the rearview mirror. The way she held Lindy, the way she stared down at her, was different from anything I’d ever seen before.

It’s another type of mask, I realized, skidding to a stop on a gravel pocket, and grabbing the wooden mask from the passenger’s seat. Had I looked that way after my sister’s death? I wondered as we traversed the slope leading into the concrete tunnel’s mouth. Wearing an expression so hard it was nearly brittle? Had I possessed the same leashed violence, an anger that, at the slightest provocation, could easily turn rabid?

My inclination was to say no, that my actions—from erasing a man’s memory to chasing down the predator who’d victimized me—were reasonable. But Vanessa had a pretty good reason too. I mean, what better reason was there than avenging true love?

And violence changed you, there was no doubt of that. You had to don a mask when you lifted a weapon. It was necessary to shield the part of you that was human when relieving someone else of their humanity.

Knowing all that, I still didn’t miss a step as I strode into that tunnel, toward Hunter . . . and Solange. Yeah, I’d changed a lot in the past year and a half. But, I thought, touching the firearm in my pocket, not entirely.

I hadn’t been in the city’s drainage tunnels since my near-drowning there four months earlier. The underground system kept runoff from the valley’s mountain ranges from flooding the city, eliminating the threat flash floods posed to the world’s most glamorous casinos. Unbeknownst to the tourists—usually too busy looking up at the flashing lights to note the dark, sunken inlets punctuating the valley floor—over fifty miles of concrete wound intricately beneath the city streets. Few mortals ventured inside the cavernous maze, and those that did were usually homeless, often addicts, and always lost.

But no matter how far inside the system they were willing to go, no mortal could ever access its true supernatural core. The pipeline wound differently for mortals than those with supernatural powers, taking only the impossible turns, inclines, and curlicues for the latter, which was the most practical reason I hadn’t been back until now. I’d never have been allowed to find it without this power.

Yet since I didn’t possess Vanessa’s speed or strength or super senses, she canvassed the tunnel system for danger while I was forced to linger a mere ten feet inside the tunnel’s entrance with Lindy. So close to my goal, I thought, trying to temper my anxiousness, and still so far away.

Recessed enough to be hidden, but still benefit from the low glow of the nearby streetlights, I kept my gun at Lindy’s temple in case she woke, while Vanessa raced through the tunnels’ inner depths for any other occupants. The search was perfunctory. We were pretty sure where most everyone was—the Shadows called to the estate, the Light taking Felix home. So Vanessa returned before Lindy could stir again, tucking the woman under her arm like a rag doll, and jerking her head at me.

“No . . . Light?” I had to ask. Vanessa might not naturally consider them dangerous, and I was pretty sure our former allies wouldn’t hurt her, not yet, not without giving her another chance to return to them. But I was a known enemy of the state, and had been the moment I stepped from our rooftop truce at Master Comics.

“No one.”

Lindy mumbled, head rolling, and Vanessa tightened her grip until the muttering stopped. Sighing, Vanessa wandered the few feet back to the tunnel’s entrance, leaning against it with one arm, Lindy still clasped in the other at her hip. It looked like she was standing in a hollowed-out moon, the lights behind her lending her frame an unnatural neon glow. Though superimposed, she and the city appeared as one, as if she’d sprung fully formed from this smeared-at-the-edges, supernatural Vegas. I fixed the image in my mind. It might be the last time I’d see either her or the city again.

Then she turned, her profile a flat silhouette as she glanced down, giving Lindy’s neck a perfunctory squeeze. The limbs that had begun twitching to life stilled again. “Come on.”

The stagnant and stinking water at the pipeline’s entrance dried up as we ventured further in, and sound was reduced to a pressure, like palms cupped against the ears. Using the glyph on her chest to reveal the way, Vanessa lit our path five feet at a time. A buzzing, like bees trapped between skin and skull, let me know when we’d finally branched from the manmade portion and into the magical system. From there it was a mishmash of short passages leading nowhere, steep slides back into the tunnel depths, and a whorl of descending medieval stairs I thought would never end. We dead-ended once, dumped into a concrete clearing I didn’t recognize. Then I looked up.

“There’s the opening.” No matter what path the pipeline’s twelve supernatural entrances took in getting here, they all halted at an upward facing entrance, Midheaven’s doorway pinned at the core.

“It’s not too warm or humid this time, is it?” Vanessa said, dumping Lindy.

Because the vicious heat which had always emanated from Midheaven no longer existed. I wanted to explain to Vanessa that Solange had siphoned her world’s energy in order to incubate her monstrous child, but that world’s activities was still off-limits to this one’s. I just shrugged as I began removing my weaponry. No need to lose them in the passage over. They couldn’t be used there, and I might need them if I returned this way with Hunter. Vanessa would stay with them until then . . . or until it was clear that I wouldn’t be returning at all.

A new voice jarred me from my thoughts. “Let me guess. Finally putting the last third of that broken soul to good use?”

“Hey, Lindy,” I said in a friendly voice. Then I kicked her in the gut. “You’re finally awake.”

“So rude of me to sleep so long.”

“Well, you’ve never been known for your good manners.”

“So let me guess,” she said dryly, looking around. “You’re still looking to gain the aureole?”

I shrugged. “I wouldn’t turn it down.”

“Well, I don’t have my conduit. The Tulpa was right in confiscating them. So you won’t gain it through me.”

“Then it’s lucky I have an altogether different ending planned for you.” And I showed her the mask she’d used to kill Felix. The knowledge of her own death slid over her gaze like a lowered shade and she sank as if recoiling from the thought.

I handed the mask to Vanessa.

Surprised, Lindy looked at Vanessa, though realization, followed by recognition, quickly dawned and she finally looked into Vanessa’s face and really saw her, really scented her. “Oh, I see,” she said softly. “A regular kill spot then. More vengeance. How mundane.”

She forced a bored yawn. Well played . . . had she not begun to shake.

In contrast, Vanessa was the epitome of composure. “Felix died upside-down, right?”

“That’s right,” Lindy answered the question like she was enduring a police interrogation. If she had to die, she was going to do it stoically. “In order to harvest the entirety of the soul, we drain the body of all its essential fluids.”

They’d done it with my stepfather, Xavier, as well. Just more slowly in deference to his mortal fragility.

“And how many lives did the Tulpa blow through on his quest to enter Midheaven via his stupa?”

She sneered. “Enough to know he was on to something.”

“But not enough to accomplish it,” I said smugly.

“I’m surprised you never offered up your soul for passage, Lindy,” Vanessa interrupted, sneering back. “Or did you? I mean, you’ve been in love with the creature for years, right?”

“That man,” Lindy corrected, “is too transcendent to entertain something as base and unnecessary as love. His focus is on mystical supremacy, and rightly so.”

“Barf,” muttered Vanessa, rolling her eyes.

I pointed out, “He chose my mother.”

“A mistake he learned from,” Lindy snapped back.

“Oh, sure. After a dozen times or so.” It was hyperbole . . . but not by much. My mother had played the Tulpa like the world’s oldest fiddle.

“Your mother was a lying whore.”

I laughed. “My mother is free and alive, and destined to remain that way, which is more than I can say for you. Not only that, if the Tulpa actually did have a soul, we all know he’d have given it up—worshipfully, willingly—for her.”

“Maybe for her death.”

“But definitely for her life.” I leaned so close to Lindy’s face her breath could have been my own. “Admit it, Lindy. That vile creature loved her, and longed for her love in return. Meanwhile you had to sit by and watch as he chose her over you, time and again.”

“I have no need for him to choose me over her,” she spat back, though her vehemence—and her use of the present tense—contradicted her. Realizing it, she flushed, then lifted her chin. “I live to serve. I’ve been useful.”

I shook my head. “Oh, Lindy. Haven’t you heard? A woman isn’t put in this world for her usefulness.”

I caught Vanessa’s eye over Lindy’s head, and we shared a smile.

Lindy’s face, already long, drooped. “It doesn’t matter. I’m special to him.”

“Yes,” I said reasonably. “You’re a lieutenant.”

Her brows fisted. “He loves me in his own way.”

Amazing, I thought, even as I shook my head. “He didn’t even see you,” I said, straightening.

Vanessa stepped between us, free hand on my shoulder, the one holding the mask hanging at her side. “It’s okay, Lindy,” she said, and I frowned. “You did your best. You served him well until the end. Nobody has been more faithful to him than you.”

Lindy’s eyes bulged as she let out a strangled cry. “I did everything!”

Vanessa made a pitying sound in the back of her throat as she knelt. “It’s true. You were always there for him. Yet he never, even for a moment, appreciated you at all.” And she put a hand on Lindy’s shoulder as the other woman lowered her head, giving in to sobs I’d bet she’d never before released. Vanessa waited, touch light, like some benevolent evangelist comforting a member of her flock. When the sobs finally lessened, but hadn’t altogether ceased, she crooked her index finger under Lindy’s chin, lifting it so they were eye to eye. “So I have an idea.”

The tunnel fell silent.

Vanessa lifted the mask. “Let’s see if he appreciates you when you’re gone.”

I looked on with envy as Vanessa vaulted fifteen feet to the opening above us, Lindy’s convulsing body raised above her shoulders in order to access the single-file passage. I couldn’t currently swipe the bottom of a basketball net, never mind make that leap.

Vanessa’s head appeared in the opening a second later. “Good news. It’s unlocked.”

I let out a relieved sigh. I’d been afraid Warren might have come along after Carlos and locked it up yet again. That he hadn’t said two things. First, that the agents in the valley had quickly realized trading a third of their soul for entry into Midheaven was a raw deal. Second, and more importantly, Warren probably saw it as an easy way to get rid of me. After all, relieve the grays of the person he had once considered a weapon, and balance would be returned to this valley’s Zodiac. Either way, after all that’d happened since this entrance was discovered five months ago, a person would have to be crazy to enter now.

I sighed, hating that I fit the description.

“You’ll have to help me up,” I told Vanessa.

“Oh, right.” She immediately dropped back onto the concrete clearing, Lindy no longer a worry. She could struggle all she wanted, but the animist’s mask had been forced on her. She’d suffocate without end, her mind and body numb and tingling, her lungs ever on the verge of bursting.

Vanessa lifted me, and we landed lightly upon a planklike shelf, as roomy as a broom closet. The light from Vanessa’s glyph was amplified in the small space, and Lindy, propped in the corner like a mummy in a museum, looked spotlit.

Did I feel bad for her? No. Evil choice after evil choice marked her lifetime as she’d placed one foot in front of the other on an unerring path of destruction. Her personal history was a road of flame. She’d shown no sorrow for the horrors left in her wake, for neither the mortal lives nor the supernatural ones she’d so readily destroyed, and those cumulative decisions made her as responsible as Vanessa for her being here.

But maybe I had to feel that way. I was going after Solange. No, that wasn’t exactly right.

I was going after Hunter.

“You’re going to help me now,” I told Lindy, straddling her legs. Despite her literal breathlessness, I knew she could hear me. “But before you say anything, let’s review your options. First, we can remove this mask and you can lend me a third of your soul as payment for my passage into Midheaven. Second option, you don’t and you remain as you are now, suffocating indefinitely on your own soul energy. Now I know your knee-jerk response is to tell me to fuck myself, but I’d think hard about that if I were you.”

“Because after all,” Vanessa added, too cheerily, “the man you so emphatically serve won’t be able to fill your star sign because you won’t really be dead. Thus you’ll be weakening his troop, his cause, and him, out of stubbornness alone.”

“Decisions, decisions,” I said, shaking my head, giving our words time to sink in.

But Vanessa snapped her fingers, as if just remembering something. “We almost forgot the best part.”

I tilted my head. “Did we?”

“You know . . . the part where we kill Lindy first. The part where her suffocating soul is trapped in the mask just like Felix’s was. And how I’ll leave it there forever, attached to a body that’ll begin to decay even before you enter Midheaven. I’m happy to . . . I mean, since you’ve found the Serpent Bearer entrance and all.”

“I’d forgotten about that part,” I said, while pulling out a rusty trident, a conduit only I could hold. Reaching for a strange dial on the far concrete wall, I let Lindy ponder that while I lined up her star sign, the Taurus, with its mirror image on the Western Zodiac fanned around the dial’s center. Additional insurance that it would be her soul yanked for the crossing, and not Vanessa’s or mine.

“Hold tight to her body once she releases her breath—” Her life, I thought, as the wall rumbled. I pulled on the dial to reveal a tiny window. “And I’ll hold the candle.”

That’s what the shelf inside the small opening held, a taper that was ever-lit. That’s what would ferry my body to the other world.

“And lock the entrance behind me, okay? The last thing I need is someone ambushing me from behind.” Or, I silently added, thinking of Carlos, trying to stop me altogether. I’d have felt proud of myself, having covered all my bases, if I had an inkling what to do when I reached the other side.

“And you’ll leave through the separate entrance once you have Hunter?” Vanessa asked, pulling Lindy to her feet by her hair.

“Yep,” I assured her. “The Serpent Bearer.” I didn’t add that I hadn’t figured out where to access it from the Midheaven side yet. No reason for Vanessa to worry about that.

“Then I guess that’s it.”

Lowering my head, I sighed deeply. “Look, thank you—”

“Don’t.” She held up a hand and gave one shake of her head. “I should have helped you sooner.”

After a moment, I nodded.

She responded by picking Lindy up and propping her in front of the shelf that held the burning candle. I responded by cutting Lindy’s throat. A loss of life, but the air around us didn’t waver with the last breath. Grabbing the candle by its black wrought-iron base, I nodded at Vanessa.

She held Lindy straight, one hand poised at the mask’s edge, all the softness evident just moments earlier gone. “Don’t fuck with us, Shadow. If you hold your breath, or hesitate even one second to give your soul over for Joanna’s passage, it’ll cost you. She’ll still enter that world within the hour, but you’ll be stuck with me.”

I expected her to remove the mask then, but she only leaned closer. “I’ll reaffix the mask, take you back to the surface, and hang you upside-down—the soul drains entirely that way, you know. Then I’ll let ravens strip the flesh from your bones at summer’s height. I’ll let dogs gnaw on your bones. I’ll let beetles clean out the inside of your skull. But this mask will keep your consciousness alive, and I’ll take great pains to do the same just so I can toast to your smothering soul every morning over my first cup of joe. You murdered my main reason to live. So you can damned well become my new one.”

And before I braced myself, she ripped off the mask. Lindy’s face appeared—eyes bulging, blood oozing from her jaw and hairline, face so red it was purple. There was no hesitation. Every ounce of breath stored in that living mask rocketed toward my candle, snuffing it with her terrorized scream.

And I was gone.

20

The pain was the difference, I decided, as Lindy’s scream faded. The wall of smoke created by the extinguished candle still probed at me, seeking entry into my body via my pores, pressing against me like it was a searching, living thing. The noxious smoke still slow-crawled its way along my skin in prying tendrils, testing, the sulfuric stench forcing me to hold my breath. Yet it didn’t invade my bloodstream as before, vacuuming the air from my chest, and breaking down molecules and cells as it sheared away my soul. Finally a cool blast of air penetrated the void.

The sense of physical reality returned, and the abyss surrounding me lessened. Surprisingly, lights appeared first. The wicks in each boxy pagoda lantern glowed like reassuring beacons, but even brighter now, signals that safe harbor lay ahead. I knew that wasn’t true, of course, but as I’d been expecting more darkness, their luminosity along the paneled oak walls was an unexpected relief. I still wondered how soon it would be until Solange would sense the bump in energy created by the arrival of Lindy’s slivered soul. Because once she did, she’d be after me.

A quick survey showed the room was still cleared of poker tables, again awash in the same golden-brown patina of an early nineteenth-century photo, and still filled with dozens of shrunken heads. Even more macabre in the brighter light, their dried, prunelike heads were tufted with thin, patchy hair, and their tattered, tied and dyed necklines hung in jagged threads. Each glinting, jeweled stare was fixed on me, and each mouth gaped as far wide as the sewing strings would allow as they watched my gaze settle on the room’s newest addition.

The cocoon was larger up close. It had to be to accommodate a man as big as Hunter, though even I would have found it constricting. I assumed that forcing him to hunch—literally making him bow—was intentional. Carlos told me that Hunter refused to take on the appearance of Jaden Jacks—his identity when he and Solange had originally met—ever since she’d tried to kill me. It was a small defiance, but noteworthy enough in a world where Solange was never denied. There was also nothing she could do about it. He’d used a Shadow agent’s soul to make the crossing between worlds, as I just had, so she technically owned nothing of his soul.

Yet she had full possession of his body, and this close, it was clear that the time he’d already spent in the cocoon had worn on him. His skin was sallow, the circles beneath his eyes deep as beachside shallows. There was a fresh bruise on his face, and his lower lip was bloated and split. So he’d seen a small portion of Solange’s rage after their child’s death, I thought. Small, because if it were great, he’d already be dead.

But she was saving his death for me.

I darted between the heads, all oddly silent—undoubtedly ordered quiet by Solange—and found myself face-to-face with Hunter for the first time since he’d left me, alone, in Vegas. Face-to-face, that was, if you didn’t count the mounded layers of silken webbing trapping him inside. Thousands of tensile lines glinted in taunting iridescence, both a soft and deadly barrier between us, much like Solange.

Recalling how strong even a single strand had been, I didn’t dare touch it. Instead I looked around for something sharp.

“So. You like to play with matches.” The voice boomed, surrounding me. “You like to play with knives.”

She stood, poised at the top of the left-leaning staircase that led nowhere, as if making an entrance, like she was still beautiful instead of a woman trapped in a creature’s body. Again, all she wore were the simple gold earrings, the kundans, that she always had, now riveted directly to her skull. She stared down at me and there was nothing human in the gaze. All that lived in her now was madness, both bright and dark at the same time. The matchbook I’d used to set her web afire was in one seared hand, while Mackie’s blade was gripped tightly in the other.

“Unfortunately for you,” she said, trying for a smile, “so do I.”

That was a given, so I said nothing.

She tilted her head, and something cracked. “But how noble of you to return to save your love. Inventive too. I never did care for Lindy Maguire. She always defined herself by another person. Though it took you long enough to figure out how to force someone else into paying for your passage.”

“Ruthlessness doesn’t come naturally to me.”

“I know,” she said, clearly considering that my fatal flaw. “Which is why you’re now boxed in. Just as I planned all along.”

“So are you,” I told her coolly.

Charcoal flaked from her raised brow. “How do you figure?”

I shrugged. “Set this world afire, Solange, and you go up with it.”

“You forget. I know which of these lanterns leads to the thirteenth entrance. The Serpent Bearer will set me free.”

True freedom for all comes through the Serpent Bearer.

The portent, still to be fulfilled, was the only thing that kept me calm and focused. Sure, things looked bad now, but it was a miracle I’d lived this long. So I could milk even the slimmest of chances. “I forget nothing. Access that lantern and you’ll be met on the other side by a supernatural cabal.”

Her eyes rolled like loose marbles. “Please. I can easily terrorize your entire little troop of grays. Ask Carlos.”

“With your face alone, yes,” I retorted, then continued to lie. “But that’s not who’s waiting there.”

She had to think about it for a moment, and I took the opportunity to glance at Hunter. Was he drugged? Because he just stood, hunched and vacant-eyed, like he had nowhere to go and forever to get there.

“The Tulpa?” Solange finally said, then shook her head. “No way.”

“Why not? He hates you almost as much as he hates me.”

“Because if he knew how to gain soulless access to this world, he’d have already murdered us both.”

One side of my mouth lifted. “Then you’re the one who’s forgetful. You should know he’s much more cautious than that. He’ll send someone else along first. In fact, we shouldn’t have to wait much longer.”

Her eyes inched to my right before she caught herself, and I allowed myself a small smile. The thirteenth entrance, it seemed, was across from the pipeline’s, where I’d entered. That meant it was one of the two interspersed between the bar, the red door, and the wall of most-wanted posters hanging tattered and forgotten in the corner. Realizing she’d granted me that much knowledge, Solange’s face crackled as she motioned grandly around the room. “Then you won’t mind having a little party while we wait. As you can see, I’ve invited all your friends. Though they are being quite rude, aren’t they? Everyone say hello to Joanna,” she commanded.

“Hello, Joanna.” The softly swaying heads gave the expected, rote response, chiming like a classroom of recently disciplined children. I looked around, wondering what on earth there was left to do to these poor souls, when a new voice, belated and oddly bright, froze me in place.

“Hello, Joanna.”

My knees threatened to buckle, and I whirled, no longer concerned with Solange, heedless even of Hunter. I hadn’t heard that voice in almost a year and a half. Unless, of course, you counted the way it issued from my own throat after I’d become a superhero.

After I’d been turned into my sister.

Solange’s cackle surrounded me as I searched for the source of the sound, but I’d know that soft cadence anywhere, and when the next whisper came—my name again—I pushed through the heads to my left. They swung like angry pendulums, screaming their protests, and it was all I could do not to rip them down as Solange’s laughter rose as well.

She’s dead! It can’t be her! Yet I couldn’t stop the instinctive and feral need to protect my sister, even while knowing I’d already failed to do so. “Olivia!”

A shriveled head lunged for me, and I batted him away, dodged another, and wiped sweat from my brow. And then I heard her clearly, making such a lost, agonized sound right behind me, that when the same head lunged for me upon my return, I ripped him from the ceiling and cut his own cry short. Solange laughed harder. “Olivia?”

“Joanna? Here, I’m here.”

The voice was coming from a string-hewn mouth on a head the size of my fist, blackened and shriveled and topped with a grotesque matting of blond curls. I felt myself sway, but ironically, Solange’s now-maniacal laughter propped me back up. If she knew how it fortified me, I thought, swallowing hard, she’d shut the hell up.

Taking another step, I studied the dangling head. Solange had given it waxy lipstick that colored the strings, along with eyeliner, which lay smudged around gems the color of backlit blood.

“It’s me,” the strange mouth with a familiar voice said. “She brought me back to life. Saved me, even when you couldn’t. Even after you stole my body and life and left me to rot.”

My own head automatically jerked. “That’s not true.”

“It is. But Solange has given me new life . . . and a voice, even though you tried to steal that too.”

The accusations were said lightly, airily, but struck as sharply as a steel blade. I glanced back up at Solange, still looming at the top of the staircase, and her pleased laughter battered me, attacking from all sides though she never moved. I cringed, my shamed gaze flashing to Hunter, whom I saw shaking his head furiously before I again looked away.

Shaking his head, Joanna.

That voice, my inner one, was a gong, momentarily crowding out all the others.

Then Olivia’s was back. “I think you were always jealous of me. Always hated me. You could have saved me from that mortal fall—all you had to do was reach out—but I think you wanted me dead. Me, an innocent! And you, who were never truly that.”

I began to protest, but forced myself to bring my own voice back—and without looking at Hunter—his image back too. Shaking his head. He didn’t want me to believe this was true.

So as the desiccated head began spewing insults like poison, and with more vitriol and expletives and accusations than my sister would ever use, I examined the eyes closer and realized, of course, that they weren’t hers. They couldn’t be, after all; she’d never crossed into Midheaven, or given up precious ounces of her soul. But I had.

I pulled up a mental image of the deformed gems Solange had fashioned with my soul, sacrificed on my first two visits here, and came up with a match. No wonder the sound struck such a chord in what was left of my soul. Those words were soul-based fears. What if I had failed Olivia? What if wanting, needing to be different than my sister meant I did hate her in some way? What if I truly could have saved her from that fall?

I grew dizzy again, and this time the Olivia-head’s voice seemed far away, like I was going to pass out.

Hunter, shaking his head.

It was a trick. Solange’s laughter was a confirmation, but it was hard to uproot and deny the soul’s fears. So what I did next was one of the hardest things I’d ever done, and defied the most sacred part of me. I reached up, snapped the string, and silenced my sister’s voice, right in the middle of telling me how useless I was. Then I ran back to Hunter through a shocked and silent field of heads. If I would do that to my own sister, they seem to be thinking, what would I do to them?

But Hunter was the reason I was here, and I hastened my pace. Knocking a shrunken head aside, I narrowed my gaze on his silk-spun prison, put Solange’s sadistic trick behind me, and tried to figure out a way through.

Solange stopped laughing. “Step away from Jaden’s cell.”

“No.” Instead, I threw the head, stuffed with my soul gems, at the gooey mess. Imbedded in the sac’s side, it made a perfect handhold, and scoop, to tear at the gossamer cage.

Solange growled, smokily. “Fine.”

I looked up in time to see her arm shoot to the side, latching on to a thread of webbing that glinted as it stretched from her hand to the ceiling. She tugged, and I instinctively cringed before being doused by a wash of liquid. Not just liquid, I realized as I pushed sodden hair from my face, coughing. Petrol, I thought, catching Hunter’s eye through the webbing of his cell, now soggy and pasted together. A shudder passed between us.

Above, Solange lit a match.

Despite their previous orders to be silent, the heads behind me whimpered. Solange stared down at me, eyes heavy with hate and grief, then lifted another strand of webbing I hadn’t seen. It draped over the banister like a paper streamer . . . and I knew it would catch fire just as fast.

“You’ll incinerate too,” I tried again. “Destroy this world and you destroy yourself.”

“You think I care? You killed my child!” And she set the thread alight.

It sizzled like a fuse, and we all watched it—even Hunter, through his sodden, filmy shell. Solange let out a ragged, victorious cry as the thread began whipping down the banister, fire trailing in its wake. If I’d had a little more of Solange’s beloved ruthlessness I’d have lunged for one of the lanterns flanking the opposite side of the room. Instead I dove for Hunter as if jumping into a pool, using the head to rip at the shell before merely pushing the strands apart with my fingertips, digging my way in. The petrol actually helped at first, melting a few hundred strands together in a gluey, movable mass, but there were thousands. Hunter began digging as well, while smoke filled the room.

Solange stayed where she was, imperious and content to watch from above. Why not? She’d been scorched within an inch of her life. Now was her chance to watch us burn.

The dangling heads began to choke, then came sounds like corn kernels popping in hot oil. Something hit my back, dull but hard, and the screams erupted in earnest, followed by more pops. Closing my mind to what was happening behind me, I kept digging. Smoke danced as if alive, billowing in earnest, and the fire sped down the railing, closer by the second. Yet my palms were weighed down from the outside, the thick webbing pressing them together, as if folded in prayer. Yanking furiously, I realized too late that, like Chinese handcuffs, this only served to further tighten them. Then, unexpectedly, fingertips touched mine.

I looked up. Hunter was once again shaking his head, this time sadly. His mouth moved, and even though I couldn’t hear what he was saying, I could make out the word love forming on his lips again and again, so regularly it almost soothed.

The warmth and strength in that gaze and mouth and those fingers was greater in that moment than even the encroaching fire. I teared up as smoke pushed between us. I choked, but held Hunter’s gaze, as well as his fingers, tightening around mine. It’s not a terrible way to die, I thought, fighting to keep my eyes trained on his. As soon as the fire cauterized my nerve endings, I’d grow cold. Then I’d feel nothing. And, yeah, we would die, but I’d never carry the same questions and regret that lingered in my soul as I did after Olivia’s death. I knew I’d done everything I could to save Hunter. From the look on his face, he knew it too.

The smoke suddenly obscured everything. I cried out as I lost sight of Hunter, though I could still feel his fingers tensing around mine. Then the cocoon burst into flame.

“No!” I instinctively turned away as the fire leaped for my petrol-soaked body. My arms were aflame, and then my neck and hair, and then I was fully engulfed in fire . . . though those fingers remained, still clenched around my own.

He was safe in there, I remembered. So maybe if Solange had tipped him to which lantern connected the Serpent Bearer entrance, he still had a chance of making it out of Midheaven alive, after I was gone, after . . .

“What the fuck is this?” I heard next to me, and I glanced over, squinting. Solange’s enraged, blackened face—inches away—peered into mine. As expected, the fire didn’t bother with her, and it wasn’t even because of the lopsided kundans dangling from what used to be her ears. There was, very simply, nothing left on her body to burn.

“Why aren’t you frying?” she said, biting off each word.

I met her confused gaze with one of my own, then caught Hunter’s wide eyes through the clearing smoke—though fire still roared between us—before looking down. “Oh.”

The shield. My personal power. I’d never removed it after ambushing Lindy. Adrenaline and panic were running so hot and high through my body that I hadn’t realized I wasn’t feeling the pain associated with burning, only anticipating it.

“Oh,” I said again, shifting to see myself in the bar back mirror, immediately wishing I hadn’t. My true self was shown there, though the face and body I’d been born with looked like flaming saganaki. It was as if the remnants of my old self had gone up in flame. It made me wonder, if I survived this, what exactly I’d be left with.

Solange growled next to me. Another swift motion, and I was pushed to my knees by a second pounding wave of liquid. Only my hands, still cuffed in the webbing, remained aloft as I choked on the stew of smoke and water.

The greedy, controlling bitch hadn’t planned to burn down her world after all.

“How did you do that?” Solange asked in the sodden silence. I looked up at her through the lightening haze of smoke. Her face was indistinguishable from the soot floating like black snowflakes in the air.

“The best offense,” I told her, rising shakily to my feet. A good defense. “And the one part of me you still don’t possess.”

The power she’d returned to me hadn’t just ferried me back to her. It’d done so safely. The madness in Solange’s gaze seemed to suck the rest of the heat from the room as she leered close, fists clenched. “It didn’t do that for me.”

No shit. If it had she wouldn’t look like an ebonized Jack Skellington. “That’s because it’s mine. Just like him.” And you could never really take away something that truly belonged to another.

Bearing cracked teeth, Solange lifted Mackie’s shining blade. “But this is mine now.”

And the blade screamed as it raked forward to claim my life.

I dodged, I even felt Hunter trying to pull me to the side, but I knew it was too little and too slow, even were I not trapped and kneeling before her. Solange swung her arm down like a lumberjack, but her body suddenly disappeared and the blade jerked. Instead of finding my body, it imbedded itself in the cocoon. Hunter’s grip on my fingers released as struggle sounded somewhere on the floor to my left. The smoke had cleared enough for me to make out two solid forms, writhing bodies locked in a fight to the death, one clearly Solange’s, but the other belonging to someone I hadn’t even known was there.

And that’s when Hunter came to life.

Careful to avoid the tip or underside of the poisonous blade, he pushed the flat edge downward with his index finger. It didn’t take much. Mackie’s knife continued its confounding habit of annihilating everything it touched, and the webbing sliced open like linen. Once it touched the floor, Hunter reached out and reversed it, and began hacking at the shell. Using a weapon, he looked more like himself than he had at any other time since entering Midheaven.

A few moments more of skillful whipping, and he’d circled the blade around my hands, cutting them free. It was a hasty job, they were still bound snugly to each other, but at least I was able to back away. That alone was how I avoided a direct hit to the jaw from a newly enraged—and suddenly bloodied—Solange.

The blow still tossed me to my back. She was atop me immediately, more mantis than woman, and snarling into my face like a rabid dog. “I don’t care how long it takes to dismantle this shield from your body. You will die at my hands.”

“Okay.” Swallowing hard, and noting that one of her protective earrings was missing, I gave a short nod. “One question, though.”

“What?” Spittle, and someone else’s blood, rained down over me.

I winced. “Was your marriage to Hunter ever consummated?”

Her jaw clenched, visible bone flexing, and she glanced away, giving me my answer.

“Good.” Acting fast, I yanked at her other earring. “Consider yourself annulled.”

Mackie’s blade, now Hunter’s, entered her neck smoothly, turning her charred banshee cry into a protesting gurgle. She arched and tried to whirl, but the blade found bone, then bone again. Apparently all the souls trapped in the knife hadn’t been released into her malformed child, because they emptied themselves into her too, though instead of their features forming on her as they had the soft putty face of the chimera, they cracked through her ribs, their tortured screams mingling with her own. Her voice went utterly silent as the gristled muscles of her neck bulged, before it literally burst with a fresh scream from some undead soul. Singed, black flakes fell like ash, and a clump of marrow hit me hard enough to hurt. Cringing, I looked back up at her face to find the only softness in that body—her eyes—fixed hard on me. Then they too exploded in bone and soot, and Solange finally toppled. The handle of the most feared weapon I’d ever seen rolled to a stop at my boot. The blade had disappeared, just like everything created in this world eventually did. By the time the air had cleared, I saw too that there was nothing recognizably human in the pile of black bone and ash.

Solange was finally gone, dead in a world of her making.

I closed my eyes to the carnage. Although the talking head fashioned after my sister, using pieces of me, had long stopped, Olivia’s voice—that initial scream—echoed one last time through my brain. I knew it for an illusion, but another shudder struck me, and this time it zapped all my strength. Solange had known what to use against me, from the first time I entered Midheaven to the last.

And though I felt physically sound—if not entirely fine—I couldn’t help but wonder if she’d succeeded in destroying something inside me with this last trick. If, perhaps, she’d delivered a cut deeper than even the soul blade could manage, shattering my sanity, turning it into shrapnel. Wouldn’t she love that? I thought, feeling the room spin, and then myself begin to drift alone. I thought about just letting go, if only to get away from the resonant tone of that pitched death cry.

“Joanna?”

Shock had me sucking in a deep breath—I wasn’t alone—and I opened my eyes to the most amazing sight: Hunter—thinner, but alert; hollow-eyed but sharp; covered in his own sweat, armed, and standing on the other side of Solange’s corpse. Safe.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

If I hadn’t already been down, it would have been one hell of a swoon. I sucked in a deep breath to fight off the light-headedness, pushed carefully to my elbows, though I couldn’t manage more than that. All this time, all the battles over my life and my soul, and I was suddenly overwhelmed by the moment—success, freedom . . . a smile growing on the face of a man I hadn’t been sure I’d ever even see again.

I opened my mouth to ask the same of him, but all that eked out was a breathless, shaky squeak. Normally I’d have felt stupid for freezing up this way—normally it didn’t happen—but right now I was just happy it hadn’t happened sooner. I glanced back down at Solange, destroyed by souls she’d coveted, and shuddered.

Hunter drew my attention back to him by stepping over the ash and bone, and looming above me. “Come on,” he said, holding out his hand.

I stared at it, squinting like it might disappear if I blinked. Feeling sweat trickle over my brow, I found myself thinking that if this moment wasn’t real—if something tried to pull me back into another world to reveal this for a dream—I might just lie down here and never get up. I simply couldn’t fight anymore.

“Joanna,” Hunter said. “Just take it.”

His own weariness snapped me back into focus. I reached out and felt warmth reach to me. Yet unlike my most recent brush with fire, this didn’t burn. I buried my nails into his flesh, the soft palm, and though his eyes squeezed tight in a wince, Hunter didn’t pull away. Swallowing hard, I leaned just a little closer and breathed in the faintest scent of wood smoke and musk. But even more than that, I scented desire—familiar and much longed for—as heady as ripe greenhouse blooms. “Hi,” I finally said, sounding shy.

“Hi,” he answered, and pulled me close, wrapping me in all that warmth. His arms tightened when I sagged, and I closed my eyes again, this time in relief.

I did it, I thought, over and over again.

“Yeah, you did,” Hunter said, which was how I knew I’d been whispering it aloud. I leaned back to look up into his face. He pulled back too, but only far enough to plant the Universe’s softest kiss on my lips. “Thank you,” he said, his own whispered mantra.

And that’s how my breathing steadied, and my heart recovered its beat.

Finally I shook my head, which actually helped to clear it this time, and sucked in deeply of Midheaven’s air. It was tinny and clouded with residual smoke from fire and wasted souls, but I wasn’t complaining as long as I still breathed. “What the hell happened?”

“I don’t know,” Hunter said, pulling back, but not releasing me. “Something attacked her.”

“What?” I asked, looking around, before gasping. “They’re . . . all dead,” I whispered to Hunter.

Every single shrunken head sagged on its strings, heads drooped forward, jeweled eyes closed.

“They already were,” he whispered back, though there was no one around to hear. “Their animation was tied to hers.”

Yet another reason to be glad Solange was gone, on top of so many already.

So how? Who?

A memory flash of the creature, the chimera, reared in my mind, but no—I was sure Carlos had seen that thing dead. Holding hands, Hunter and I skirted Solange to edge toward the staircase.

The scent of blood hit us first, and there was a lot of it. The body, though turned away and shadowed, was identifiably human. Yet for some reason it was the shoes I recognized first.

I remembered admiring how quietly they slipped into Vegas’s underground tunnels. And now they’d slipped into Midheaven the same way.

“Vanessa,” I said, and rushed to cradle the dark, still head.

It turned out Hunter did know which exit led back to the Serpent Bearer entrance, though it wasn’t either of the two lanterns studding the far wall, as I’d originally expected.

“Are you sure?” I asked, still knelt and clinging to Vanessa as he pointed at the bright red door. The damned thing had been rimmed in light and heat in my previous visits here, so I’d thought it led closer to the earth’s core, not away.

Yet it was etched with the same whorling loops and symbols that lined Joaquin’s underground passageways, and when Hunter glanced at me, his face betrayed no uncertainty. “Solange confided the door’s purpose to me on one of her ‘trust me’ days.”

Unwilling to even entertain what else those “trust me” days might have included, I simply nodded and turned back to Vanessa. She was alive, but her face was scrunched in pain, and her bloodied legs were bent and curled in, like something vital had been removed. I didn’t know what Solange had done to her, but from the blood already pooled at her waist, it was likely catastophic.

“Help me lift her,” I said, still cradling her.

Hunter positioned himself at her head, but a soft utterance stilled us both. “No.”

“Just hang on a bit longer, V,” I said, gently cupping her cheeks with my hands. “I know a woman who can help. She’ll keep you going until you begin to heal.”

She laughed at that, spattering blood. Then she winced. “Please don’t move me.”

I glanced back up at Hunter. She was clearly dying . . . worse, it was obvious she didn’t wish to live. Given those two factors, it seemed cruel to cause her more pain just because it was the right thing to do.

“Besides,” Vanessa continued, in a voice that would have been dreamy if not so strained. “It’s nice here. I can see the stars.”

She gazed at the ceiling like it was the broad night sky, but I looked up and only saw softly swinging heads.

“Did Tekla ever tell you what a supernova is?” Vanessa asked, out of nowhere.

“Yes.”

“She loves them. Her violent, exploding stars . . .”

“I know. She told me that one of the stars in the Serpent Bearer constellation would soon explode.” I frowned at the memory, thoughts shifting like icebergs in my mind, slow but forging new terrain. “She said when something goes supernova, it turns into the thing it was meant to be all along.”

Gee, Tekla, I thought wryly. Trying to tell me something?

Despite her agony, Vanessa managed a small shake of her head. “She romanticizes it. It’s not the inferred meaning behind a supernova that’s so amazing. It’s the hard science. She never got that.”

“What do you mean?”

Vanessa’s eyes rolled, not derisively, but like she was going to pass out. I leaned close, stroking her head and murmuring her name, but after a moment, eyes still closed, she just picked up the conversation where we’d left off. “I mean us. Not just agents of the Zodiac, but all of us. Mortals. Animals. Plants and insects, even. Most of the atoms in our bodies—the oxygen we breathe, the calcium in our bones, the iron in our hemoglobin—all of it is from supernovae that blew billions of years ago.”

“So?”

She opened her eyes. “It means we are all, literally, children of the stars.” Then she gave me a consoling smile, as if I were the one who lay injured and dying. Softly she said, “It also means that good things can come from something that looks like total destruction.”

“Is that what this is, Vanessa?” I said, in a tone my mother would use. “Not a sacrifice, but suicide? Is that why you came after me?”

Because only now, removed from the literal heat of the moment, did I realize there’d been too much smoke for Solange’s nascent fire. Yet her flirtation with pyromania had masked Vanessa’s entry perfectly.

She half shrugged. “Had to make things right. No matter what. ’Member? Felix loved that about me . . .”

“Stop it! You could have returned to the Light, Vanessa. I know it.”

She raised her brows. “Yeah?”

“Yes.”

“Well, sometimes? When darkness surrounds you? It’s the approaching light that’s most brutal.”

I swallowed hard, shaking my head. “Then the grays.”

“Nah.” She smiled. “Can’t be tied down . . . not anymore.”

Damn her stubbornness. “He wouldn’t have wanted this, Vanessa.”

“This was destiny. Every life and death—”

“No. No!” I almost slammed my fist into the floor, but caught myself before I jostled Vanessa. “It is not written in the stars. These things are not fated. We change them daily, with every choice.”

She tilted her head toward me. “And I made mine.”

I winced at that.

“Shh,” she said, slowly lifting her arm and placing one bloodied hand on my cheek. “It’s okay, Joanna. Love is a damned good reason to cross worlds.”

And I couldn’t argue it. After all, that’s what I’d done. And knowing I’d probably fail, Vanessa had followed. My eyes widened at another realization, and catching it, Vanessa nodded. “Tekla’s premonition,” I whispered.

Tekla told me long ago that it was my fate to sacrifice myself for life’s greatest gift.

But she hadn’t been talking about Felix as Vanessa initially thought.

Vanessa’s eyes glowed in her sweaty face, and her rattling breath slowed in her chest. “Don’t let it have been for nothing. Please.”

I managed a nod while Hunter leaned close, his lips and the corners of his eyes pursed tight as he bent and kissed her forehead.

“That’s nice, but I can still smell Felix, you know. Just like before . . .” She inhaled as deeply as she could, then winced, her breath catching so long I wasn’t sure it would start again. But then her whole body relaxed, and one corner of her mouth lifted in a smile. “I would smell him everywhere—on my skin, under my nails, in my hair. Sometimes he slept, and lived, the whole night inside of me. I loved that,” she whispered. “I liked to think of him disappearing in me, so fully he was coming out my pores. I loved that,” she repeated, another tear streaking over her cheek.

After a full minute of nothing but the rattle of her breathing to punctuate the silence of the room, her head lolled my way. “Remember when you were telling me about your power? How you’d like to be able to create a world where loss like this couldn’t happen? One where none of us had to wear masks?”

I nodded.

“All you talked about was what you didn’t want. But creation is about what you do want. Maybe you should focus on something the world needs more of . . .”

I looked at Hunter, still awed by his presence, and knew exactly what she meant. Vanessa’s eyes crinkled knowingly when I dropped my gaze back to hers. Then she closed her eyes. “It’s a good reason to cross worlds . . .” she slurred, and finally dropped away, where we couldn’t follow.

21

It was over quickly, passage gained, crossing made. There was no smoke or fire as with the tunnel passage, no sacrificed soul required for entry. In fact, this time the passage was remarkable for being unremarkable. For a moment I felt a surge of relief. Not contentment, not with Vanessa weighing down my arms, but a feeling that there was still some sort of hope to salvage in the world, if only because I’d made it back to this room alive. And so had Hunter.

Then came a moment where I felt a kind of psychic pause, an unexpected hesitation so brief I wasn’t sure I hadn’t imagined it. It was like being plucked mid-step from my feet and suspended in the air. Silence pulsed through me, thudding in my ears, like a gong was planted at the base of my skull. The reverberations sent a metallic thrust buzzing across my tongue, and my sight clicked to black like a changing slide show before snapping back to white, obliterating sight, though not the gritty, slinking sensation of the Serpent Bearer emblem uncoiling from my legs.

The sensation oddly repeated itself along my arms to dissolve in my fingertips too, as if each of my limbs was tingling back to life after a long sleep. Then, just as suddenly, it was gone, and I stood swaying in the center of the mountainside stupa, fighting for my bearings.

All of this was why I was late in noting we weren’t alone. Strong hands yanked Vanessa from my grasp, pushing me back into another unyielding grip as my sight returned in static grains of black and white. Shock traversed the room on a zip line, a half-dozen voices crying out at the same time, and I was abruptly released. Stumbling, at first I thought I was literally seeing stars, but then the black tapers in Joaquin’s precious underground chamber snapped back into three dimensions, and my gaze moved from their lighted wicks to follow the movement clustered around Vanessa’s supine form.

“You killed her.”

Warren blocked the door, but Gregor and Micah had Vanessa folded between them, and Riddick and Jewell flanked them. As when I’d met him just over a year earlier, Micah’s size was the first thing I noticed. But the tears staining the healer’s eyes were a close second, and they were echoed in the gazes of the other agents of Light.

They were all there, I noted. Briefly ignoring Warren, and Tekla beside him, I thought of the last time I’d seen the others, converged on a rooftop to mourn and honor another of their own. As each of their gazes touched mine, I knew they were recalling the same—remembering too that the woman they now knelt around had been alive; that they had watched her walk away; that they had just let her go.

Then every gaze slid from mine and I also remembered that our rooftop truce had expired, and we were firmly enemies again. A brief glance at Chandra—alone on the room’s other side, with her arms crossed over her chest—confirmed it. Hunter stepped between us, blocking my view of her—a warning—before placing himself between Warren and me.

“Stay behind me,” he said sternly, clearly expecting an argument.

I couldn’t blame him. Usually Hunter could insist all he wanted and I’d still step forward for a fight. I’d also just stubbornly risked my life again to save his in spite of his warnings . . . and Warren’s, Solange’s . . . even Carlos’s. I knew there was no perceivable reason for me to stop now.

Yet my reason for hanging back was just the opposite of that: it was unperceivable. If love was a good reason to cross worlds, as Vanessa said, then the life created because of it was an irrefutable one. Hunter had fallen under Solange’s control because he thought it was his only chance to recover his child. If he lived and I died—if he found out our child had died with me—the sacrifice would have been for nothing. He’d never be able to go on after that. And he’d probably curse me for risking his child’s life all the way into his grave.

So his surprise as I tucked in tight behind him was palpable.

So was Warren’s. “Don’t tell me you’ve finally stopped confusing agreeableness with vulnerability?”

“I can actually honor the wishes of others,” I said, though his taunting words had me fighting to stay put. “Unlike you.”

“Don’t compare your selfish choices to those I’m charged with making as troop leader. You’ve considered only yourself from the day we met. I remain conscious of the whole of the troop.”

Neither of those things was true, but it wasn’t worth arguing now.

Warren had taken a lopsided, testing step in Hunter’s direction. I checked myself only because Tekla, still guarding the door, was perhaps even more of a threat. She had her weapon out, one similar to my old crossbow, but with a chain and retracting anchor to recover her missiles. I stared at it, numbness and exhaustion hitting me, before returning my gaze to those gathered around Vanessa, also armed. Who was I kidding? I didn’t have enough physical strength to take on a “Real Housewife,” much less a Zodiac agent. Yet I was still expected to fight.

What was wrong with these people, this Zodiac world, that they couldn’t just let me live?

“Joanna didn’t kill Vanessa,” Hunter finally said, breaking the silence with that dark, dusky voice. The others turned their faces up as if he were Lazarus, and why not? As far as they were concerned he was risen, a man come back from a world where men never returned. Their lifelong familiarity with him indisputably played a part in the automatic reaction, overriding any newfangled orders that he was the enemy.

Warren saw this, and took another threatening step forward.

I kept my eyes on him, mostly because I couldn’t look at Hunter at all. Tears were threatening to fill my eyes—God, we’d almost made it!—but I blinked, cleared my throat, and with a little more effort, emptied my mind of the thought.

“Vanessa gave her life for Joanna,” Hunter continued, the accusation—while the rest of you turned your backs—piggybacking on his inflection whether he intended it or not. Riddick briefly closed his eyes, and Jewell began to shake, but no one refuted it.

“A waste, then,” Warren replied coolly, either not noting his troop’s emotions, or choosing to ignore them. So much for being conscious of the whole of the troop. Nodding at Tekla to keep Hunter in her sights, he strode to the room’s center in his uneven slap-and-glide gait. There he eyed the Serpent Bearer with narrowed curiosity. “Though lots of people seem to lose their lives around Joanna.”

Then he flicked his gaze dismissively at Hunter. “Except you.”

“Sorry to disappoint,” Hunter replied, but like me, he remained cautious. One small move that Tekla didn’t like and he’d suddenly be sporting a very bloody third eye.

But Warren was disappointed. It was as clear as the bent nose on his face . . . at least to me. His back was to the rest of his troop, so only Hunter and I saw his thoughts flashing behind his eyes like fast-moving minnows. He was trying to figure out a way to kill Hunter without it looking like blatant homicide.

“Gregor, Micah,” he said suddenly. “Take Vanessa to the hospital. Revive her. Riddick, go with. You share the same blood type—”

“Warren, she’s gone—” Micah tried.

“I won’t accept that,” Warren said, angling his head sharply. My heart began hammering. To some it might look like he was broken up over Vanessa’s death, blaming himself, acting out of guilt and denial. Even when Zane eventually wrote this up in the comics, it would show a troop leader pulling out all the stops before acknowledging one of his agent’s deaths.

But I knew better. He was ordering away the people who might be most sympathetic to us. Yet there was no way to say that without losing that selfsame sympathy.

“Jewell, you remain here, but aboveground. Guard against Shadows.”

Which would leave us alone with Tekla and Warren, bedmates in their quest for troop power. And Chandra, I thought, catching her gaze before she bit her lip and looked away, but she was a well-known enemy of mine.

Well, at least our odds will be better, I began thinking . . . but that was before I realized no one had moved.

“Vanessa is dead, Warren,” Micah said, and for a moment I thought I scented soured regret, and a rancid bite of anger. The moment, and scent, were quickly gone. “I think we all have the right to know why.”

I wasn’t sure I’d ever seen Warren look so surprised. His brow was both furrowed and raised, and would’ve been comical were it not for his fighting stance. But every one of his agents was steely-eyed and -jawed. Chandra had her arms folded behind her back, probably cupping the steel baton I’d seen before. The others looked more relaxed, though I knew their weapons were also at the ready. Yet right now they were all looking at Warren, the only one who didn’t carry a weapon—other than Hunter and me, of course. He hadn’t donned one since ascending to troop leader. Since murdering his own father.

A little fact, I thought wryly, that probably should have given us all pause sooner.

“Fine.” The word was clipped with annoyance. “Joanna, do you care to tell us why Vanessa is the latest in the long trail of bodies left in your wake?”

“That’s not fair—” Hunter began.

I put a quieting hand on his shoulder. “I’d love to.”

Stepping from behind him, though not breaking the touch, I stared directly at the group on the floor. “She died from a broken heart.”

Warren exploded. “Bullshit!”

“I heard it crack,” I said louder, but ducked back behind Hunter. I had no defense against Warren, even if he didn’t have a weapon. But my words were weapon enough. They’d all heard Vanessa’s cry. It’d rung out across the city like the sky itself was shattering. “She died because you people can’t seem to care for anything good or soft in this world. You break it.”

“We’re at war!” Warren thundered, and though he was obviously trying to marshal the others behind him, he looked more rabid than convincing.

“Yes. And that’s why you’re losing it. You don’t even understand the basic joys you’re fighting for.”

“Worried for us, dear?” asked Tekla lowly.

A shiver went up my spine as I turned to her. “Worried, anyway,” I answered honestly.

“Well, don’t,” Warren said shortly. “We take our battles one at a time, and right now? It’s seven full-fledged agents of Light against two outcast rogues . . . or one and a half anyway.”

“You’re right,” I said, surprising him again. “My humanity does make me different. I don’t walk around playing God with other people’s lives. And I fucking fight for the things I love.”

My words sizzled through the room, and Gregor dropped back to Vanessa’s side like the strength had gone from his legs. Riddick slumped against a honeycombed wall, eyes squeezed shut like he was trying to push through it and disappear. Jewell still trembled. But Micah, dry-eyed and still frowning, didn’t move at all.

Warren’s stubbled, weathered face hardened further. “Well, thank you for the soapbox rant,” he replied stiffly. “But we’re doing fine without your morality tales. Or we will be once we have the Kairos on our side.”

And he looked back, greedily, at the emblem on the ground. I gaped, incredulous.

I wasn’t the only one.

“Wait a minute,” Micah said, shaking his head as he slowly rose from Vanessa’s side. “When we have the Kairos? You said we were here to look for Vanessa.”

I watched realization dawn on all their faces, a heartbreaking truth that I’d long known finally emerging: in their leader’s quest for this world’s chosen one, they were just collateral damage. What was a regular ol’ agent or two—or five, or all—if it meant gaining this world’s destined savior as his personal puppet?

Warren’s jaw clenched. “And now we have her.”

“Too late,” said Gregor, just as tightly.

“But with a chance still to gain the other.”

Hunter let slip an involuntary groan . . . and a muttered suggestion.

Warren’s head swiveled like a weathervane turning direction. “What?”

“I said be your own fucking Kairos for once.”

And no one, not even Tekla, argued with him.

I made a noise somewhere between a snort and a laugh, and though I was again tucked behind Hunter, I knew all had heard. But kairos was a word with two meanings. Yes, it meant the person destined to forever tilt power in favor of its chosen troop—team Shadow or team Light. Rah. Rah. But its secondary meaning, one less oft expressed, was a measure of time. It was the Supreme Moment: the short, perfect period in which something phenomenal could happen, if one would only act.

Warren lifted his chin. “You’re only saying that because you clearly couldn’t gain the chosen one yourself.”

“There is no chosen one,” I snapped, encouraged by the troop’s collective silence. Hunter stiffened in front of me, and I did too when I realized I’d just shown the last card in our precious hand.

“What?” Warren’s hard voice cracked to a whisper.

“The child is dead,” I said, lifting my chin.

“You killed her too?” Tekla asked, startled.

I shook my head, a slow left to right. “No, but I saved her from a fate worse than death.”

“That wasn’t for you to decide, Joanna.” Warren’s hard voice was a cracked whisper.

“Wait, why the fuck are we talking about this?” Micah said, and his voice sounded like there was thunder rising up inside him. I tried to remember another time when I’d heard him curse, and came up empty. “That girl wasn’t a part of our troop. Vanessa was. So was Felix. And . . .” He hesitated now, but plunged forward like a man diving into a whirlpool, knowing there was danger but forced by something outside himself to go on. “And so were Hunter and Joanna. What no one has told me yet—and by no one, Warren, I mean you, our leader—is why. Why the fuck are they all dead?”

Warren stared like he was hearing another language. Then something about him shifted, subtle, cobra-like. I wouldn’t have been surprised if his neck actually flared.

But Micah’s bravery, and righteous anger, was catching. It was a good question, and everyone wanted Warren to answer it. But just in case the subtext was unclear, I leaned forward.

“I think what Micah is asking,” I said softly, “is who you’re going to so blithely sacrifice next?”

“Don’t question me, you half-breed! If anyone has led us to this place—these deaths!—it’s you! I had it all firmly under control until you came along!”

“We know,” Hunter muttered.

“I’m troop leader!” Warren hollered, so enraged that chunks of earth fell from the sandy walls.

I gave a small head shake. “Not mine.”

“You’ve got that right,” he snarled, and reached into his pocket. Hunter widened his stance, and Tekla raised her anchored crossbow in response. Warren jerked his head. “Hold her, Chandra.”

She was behind me before I blinked.

“Bitch,” I whispered, feeling her hands on mine.

“I’m going to throw you both back into Midheaven,” Warren said, his fury barely contained. “And this time you’ll stay there.”

I glanced down at the shining key held between his dirty fingertips. In his other hand was a strange lock.

“It’s a new one,” he affirmed, as I squinted at the globe. It squished between his fingers, glowing, but possessing a definite keyhole center. It was like nothing I’d ever seen before. Warren glanced coolly at Hunter. “Invented by our new weapons master.”

“Let me guess,” Hunter said. “You’ve had one made for the tunnel entrance as well.”

“Already there.” He nodded, a cruel smile twisting his face even further.

“There are other ways to exit Midheaven,” I told him, as Chandra shifted behind me, securing both of my hands with only one of her own. It was humiliating.

“To other realms,” Warren replied, shrugging. “Not my problem.”

So just as he’d done since we first met, Warren was offering me an impossible choice . . . then making it for me.

Chandra shifted behind me.

I jolted in surprise, then fought off a cold, calculating smile.

Warren whirled away. “I’m going to tell you—all of you—just why I’ve been able to keep this valley so clean.”

Go for it, I thought, widening my stance. Because something phenomenal had just happened. Something that was textbook kairotic.

“Haven’t any of you ever wondered why rogues don’t flourish in this valley as in other major cities across the world?”

I snuck a glance at Tekla as Warren began his customary, exaggerated pace, making sure I was angled so we were all faced off against each other. For a moment I thought I’d gotten it wrong, but no . . . there. She shifted as well.

“It’s no great secret,” Warren continued, conversationally if not for the dagger in his voice. “But it is interesting. See, most rogues—and I suspect this is the case with you, Joanna—set themselves up to be caught. I mean, true agents can go thirty, forty years without having to alter so much as one cover identity. This is the kind of agent I am. The kind that true Light is.”

He glanced at Hunter, letting him know he was excluded from this group. I leaned into him, ostensibly to soothe, but hoped my actions said, Stay put.

“But most rogues leave little clues lying about to their secret roles. Ones that any canny enemy could pick up and study like the flawed facets of a jewel. And do you know why?” He didn’t wait for a reply. “Because deep down they loathe who they are. Their self-hate is so great that they’d rather be taken down by an enemy than live with their flawed natures.”

“Believe me, Warren,” I said, keeping him talking because I saw what he didn’t: Riddick frowning, Jewell gaping, Gregor clenching his one good fist. “The hate I feel right now has nothing to do with me.”

He shrugged off my contempt like an old coat. “You have to say that. It’s the classic example of protesting too much. Most rogues go to great lengths to explain away their bad luck when what they’re really describing are their faults. They, in essence, are the failures.”

“Well, you’re right about one thing. Vanessa is dead because of me.” I nodded, registering the surprise of the rest of the troop. “But she’s also dead because of you.”

Warren stepped forward, and I tensed, but his left foot nicked the Serpent Bearer symbol and the room bowed with black light. He jerked back, catching himself, then narrowed his gaze at me. He might hold the key to another world, I thought, adjusting my weight, but he had no interest in visiting there himself.

Yet his misstep was good. Our triangle with Tekla shifted into a single line. “You’re no leader,” I said, goading him on, and picking up the mental thread Micah had left lying out in the open, just waiting for a little tug. “At least the Tulpa directly attacks those he hates.”

“So you admire his hard-on for world dominance?”

“It’s better than your masturbatory leadership,” I replied, the cool one now.

“I’ll remember that tonight while I’m safe in my sanctuary and you’re locked in a world devoid of anything but what you create.” He tossed the key in his palm, and glared at Hunter. “If I were you, I’d start with food and shelter. You know,” he said, lips curling, “the basics. Bring her here, Chandra.”

“It’s not my fault she no longer loves you.”

I didn’t even know I was going to say it until the words tumbled from my mouth, but when the room fell still, I knew we’d reached the tipping point. I wondered if anyone had dared to mention my mother to him since they’d last met. Though they’d once been in love, the emotion had suffered. Like a porous cliff facing the sea, it had been worn away by time and events and the small acts that drilled holes in any life.

Of course Warren didn’t see it that way. Instead he’d fixated on a sole event, one that had harsh words flying between them because of me. His back, already ramrod straight, stiffened further, his hand white-knuckling as it closed over the key.

“Never mind, Chandra,” he said. “I’ve got this one myself.”

He started for me with a smile. Hunter tensed, but I smiled back. And faster than he could blink I whipped my conduit from behind my back, aiming for his shoulder, striking his chest.

“Oops,” I said, as he staggered backward into the wooden trestle, and dropped the key. “Rusty, I guess.”

Meanwhile, Hunter lunged for Tekla, but she wasn’t there. She was on the room’s other side, her anchor pointed at Warren as well. Hunter halted, dumbfounded, and Tekla and I stared at each other over extended arms. Slowly she lowered her weapon.

I directed mine at Warren’s chest for the killing shot.

“No, Joanna. It’s not your fight.”

I looked back up, finding Micah. He was standing stiffly at his full seven feet of height, again battling back tears. I thought of everything Warren had done to me—the manipulation, the lies, the way he used me as a pawn and then a weapon—and I realized he’d done that and more to Tekla. To Chandra, too. To all of them.

But it was Hunter’s hand on my arm that kept my trigger finger still. I pretended not to notice Warren watching me with a hate verging on madness, and allowed Hunter to draw me back.

“Oh, this is rich,” Warren said, letting out a long, bitter laugh, finally turning his attention to Tekla. “First you foretell of anarchy in the troop. And then you lead it.”

The prophecy Vanessa had told me about. The one that sent Warren into his war room, and that had made Felix run off for good. It’s anarchy, Joanna. It’s Warren’s worst fear. It’s the dismantling of the troops as we know them.

So who had really brought this about? Me? Or Tekla?

She lifted her sharp chin, and for a moment, lavender sparked before my eyes. Her aura, I realized. She was so affronted that even I could see it. “Don’t act so surprised Warren. I know you’ve had your eye on me. You’ve always thought me dangerous.”

“I’ve always thought you had a screw loose,” he shot back, but sticks and stones couldn’t hurt her now.

“But dangerous all the same.” Her tone turned censorious. “You should be careful not to so easily dismiss those you see as weak.”

And Chandra stepped forward, bending to pick up the magical key with burned palms. Warren and I saw them at the same time, and both our eyes widened. She’d been the one to steal my conduit—a rogue’s weapon—from him. Suddenly Warren wasn’t looking at Chandra like she was weak. It might have been the first time he’d truly seen her at all.

Then his calculating gaze darted between her and Tekla, trying to discern a way to break up this unlikely team. Finally his gaze landed on me.

“Stop.” Micah said, shaking his great head. “Before you even start, just stop.”

For a moment, all breathing ceased in the room.

“I was there, remember?” Micah went on, tears rolling down his face, unheeded. “I helped you strip this girl down to nothing and turn her into something she didn’t want to be.”

“I could have made her into the Kairos! If she weren’t flawed. If she weren’t—”

“If she weren’t already the Kairos,” Tekla said. “All on her own.”

Warren’s disbelief was perhaps the only thing we had in common.

“Look at her,” she said, jerking her head at me. “Look, and see something other than what you want or expect. Better yet, look around her.”

Warren’s gaze slid to me reluctantly, but after a moment his muddy eyes widened. “How did you do that?”

I looked down, wondering what they were all staring at.

“It’s your aura, baby,” Hunter finally said, voice awe-filled. “You’re awash in red.”

And suddenly I saw it. “I am, aren’t I? It’s my power.” My ether. The essence, or quintessence, that made me . . . me. The same worldstuff that arose at Creation to comprise the stars. I looked up, amazed.

We are all, literally, children of the stars.

But it didn’t matter to Warren. To him I was just a rogue. I realized then that no matter what I did or regained or created, Warren would never look at me and see anything but fault.

As if on cue, he spat on the ground. “Well, she isn’t Light.”

“And neither are you,” Gregor said, joining Micah. Jewell was crying in the corner, not that I could blame her. I felt much like doing the same. But Riddick had crossed his arms, and Tekla was dead calm as she took the key from Chandra.

“Your obsession has changed you, Warren. In refusing to recognize that power isn’t all that defines an agent, or a person, you have drifted from the Light.”

“I would never ally myself with the Shadows!” Spittle flew from his mouth as he pointed at me with his good arm. His left, now streaked with blood from the high chest wound, hung uselessly at his side.

Tekla lifted her chin. “Yet you have become one of them all the same.”

“According to whom, Tekla? You?” he snapped, fully enraged. “You aren’t exactly blameless. You’re the one who told me to send Jo to Midheaven!”

I looked to her. Yeah, what about that?

Not long ago, she’d refused to help me escape a madman named Mackie. She and I had taken a long, lonely road trip back into Vegas from the rogues’ boundary of safety, and she made it clear that she’d lost all belief in me.

Or maybe just let me think so.

“It was the lesser of two evils,” she said simply now. “If Joanna hadn’t entered Midheaven, she wouldn’t even have one power linking her to our world. You would have forced her to give it all up.” And now her tone turned bitter. “Just as you do with all of us.”

“I demand no more of you than I do of myself!”

“True.” Micah again, closing in. “But instead of demanding, my old friend? You should have asked.”

Warren flailed for an answer to that, but I couldn’t enjoy it. I was looking at Tekla thinking, As should you. The last few months had been the most painful of my life, and here she stood, telling us that she had known what would happen all along?

Had she really allowed me to risk my life time and again because fate “decreed” I was the Kairos?

Had she let me lose part of my soul because she believed it was for the best?

Warren wasn’t concerned with any of that now. His only concern was himself, and what happened next.

“You would all side with her, then?” he said, looking around without blinking. “After the years we’ve spent together?”

He fought back a wince when no one answered, but disgust twisted his mouth. “You are all gray then. All rogues.”

“No, Warren,” Chandra said, causing him to jerk back and look at her with that new gaze. “You are. Now get your ass on that emblem.”

Warren hid the fear relatively well, except that he was trying too hard to remain still. That’s probably why he ended up shaking.

“There are other exits,” he said, pushing to his feet from the trestle, standing on his own. He did as told, but defiantly, good arm swinging.

“Not our problem,” Tekla said, unaffected. She must have learned it from him.

And, of course, he’d have to find the exits, I thought, looking at Hunter. If there were any left. Solange had torn that world apart at the seams. But neither Hunter nor I said that to Warren. He’d find out soon enough.

“Go on,” Micah said, when Warren stopped short of the Serpent Bearer mark. But when Warren turned, the bigger man refused to meet his gaze. So instead—again—it settled on me.

“You know, I can’t figure it out.” He shook his head.

“What?” Because from my vantage point, he’d had it figured out long ago.

“You.” He said it wonderingly, and I started to think we were about to have our first real conversation since he’d expelled me from the troop. But then his expression fell. “I can’t tell if you’re more like your mother or your father.”

But before I could reply, Gregor and Micah flanked him.

“No,” he growled, struggling. He tried to reverse their grip. He tried to drag them with him.

Micah—taller, stronger, pissed—jerked hard, and there was a popping sound, and a cry from Warren. His right arm fell, hanging oddly.

“I’m your leader!” he bellowed, fury ripping the words apart. Micah growled his reply, and whipped him forward. Gregor held him still. And the Serpent Bearer emblem curled around his ankles.

“No!” he bellowed again as he was tipped forward. “No, no!”

But the sky and blasted stars swooped down, ripping away the sound, the man, yanking him into another world. The ragged breathing left in his wake was the loudest thing in the room. But while the others looked at one another, disbelieving, shocked at what they’d done, Warren’s final words haunted me. And I knew they always would.

I can’t tell if you’re more like your mother or your father.

Despite his expulsion from the troop, from this world, it seemed Warren wasn’t weaponless after all.

22

We left Midheaven’s thirteenth entrance immediately, and headed back into the real world . . . or at least the crowded antechamber linking the two. More candles and tea lights studded that room, a handful of which the troop had clearly lit on their way into the Serpent Bearer’s chamber. Eight chairs were pulled into a circle in the room’s center, and the heavy tapestry previously covering the bed now lay across the rutted floor beneath them. I wondered who’d put it there. The grays after seeing me off to Midheaven the first time, or the Light, right before my return?

Either way, someone had been having a good, old-fashioned powwow, and I turned to Tekla, thinking it was time we did the same. “Can you please tell me what the hell just happened in there?”

“Isn’t it obvious?” Chandra, baton still gripped in her right hand, had her familiar scowl on her face, though after what she’d just done, I wasn’t taking it personally.

“I think we just overthrew a troop,” Hunter replied, arm sliding protectively over my shoulder. Unlike the others, who labored silently before us with Vanessa’s body, he was clearly pleased about it . . . though all of us, down to the last, were awed. Such a thing hadn’t been done in this valley since Warren had accomplished it himself.

“I get why, clearly,” I said, running a hand through my hair. It was gritty with bunker dust and moist with sweat. I could use a shower, a meal, and about a weeklong nap. But first, “How?”

Tekla sighed, not out of impatience but weariness. Wisps of hair were pulled from her normally pin-tight bun and plastered to her gaunt cheeks. She didn’t hesitate in movement or seem to harbor regret, but a glassiness had overtaken her gaze too. Shock, I thought. Even when you were the cause of great change, it still altered the foundation of your world. I knew that well enough.

“Hold on,” she said, motioning to the chairs, before whispering to Gregor and Micah. They both nodded and, along with Jewell and Riddick, carried Vanessa’s body out of the room like pallbearers. Only Micah looked back, giving me a sad nod before he too disappeared. I took a seat across from Tekla and Chandra, and Hunter pulled his chair close to me.

For a moment Tekla only stared at an indeterminate place in front of her, self-contained but not really there at all, and I couldn’t help wonder what she was seeing . . . and if it coincided with the strongest memories I had of her: looking like a vengeful angel when she took down a Shadow agent in an abandoned warehouse, screaming at me in a training dojo over shattered walls she’d constructed out of thought, or just a few moments earlier, expression brittle as she locked her former troop leader in another world.

But Tekla went back to a memory earlier than all of those, back to the most painful moment of her life. “I have been a changed woman ever since I held my dying son in my arms. It’s a strange magic, the power gained in outliving your own child. When you get past the initial grief, if you do, you walk the earth knowing that nothing will ever pain you so acutely again.”

Hunter shifted uncomfortably, and Chandra raised her hand to place it atop Tekla’s, which lay motionless on her lap. I said nothing. The grief Tekla was talking about? None of us could share.

“It took me a long time to accept what happened. The world seemed muddied, confused. My thoughts were always clouded and heavy. I couldn’t find my way in or out of my own mind. Everyone thought I was crazy, and eventually I thought so too.

“And then I found the written account of another Seer, long ago, who’d endured a similar tragedy. Her daughter had died in her first battle. What she described next was exactly what happened to me.”

Dreams she couldn’t wake from, she explained. Her child speaking insistently in her mind, not letting go until she acted on what felt like commands.

“But they were really prophecies.” Tekla looked up, blinking like she was surprised to see us there. “That’s how I figured it out. When Stryker died, the Scorpion sign reverted back to me, and my talents instantly doubled. You see, I’m more powerful than the troop’s last three Seers put together.”

From the moment of Stryker’s death, Tekla had begun holding dual perspectives in her own mind. It was, she explained, like playing chess against yourself. “It’s the same game, but you’re looking at it from opposite sides of the board. Then I figured out that I wasn’t battling myself, but moving and calculating both sides to bring the match to its natural conclusion.”

And turning on Warren had been a crucial move. Like sacrificing your queen to end a stalemate.

“We thought you were going crazy,” Hunter said apologetically.

She inclined her head, a wordless acceptance. “Because Warren told you I was going crazy.”

“No offense, Tekla. But you looked crazy.” The first time I’d seen her she’d been wild-eyed and ranting. She’d also attacked me.

“I was banned from the astrolab,” she said, the memory making her defensive. “I was deprived of my charts and books, the tools I use to make sense of the world, and all while grieving, a time when nothing in the world makes sense. I was sedated, and held in solitary confinement. Then I was left there.”

“We were told she would harm us,” Chandra said quickly, speaking to me but looking at Tekla. This time it was the older woman who reached out to give comfort.

“I know,” she said quickly. It was obvious Warren had fooled them all.

“Meanwhile these perspectives, these voices—mine and Stryker’s, in tandem—they told me that something big was coming. They said we needed to be ready. And I would have to act subversively to bring about the change that would make all our sacrifices worth it.”

“And let me guess,” I said dryly. “You told Warren.”

She gave her head one shake, folded her arms in the wide sleeves of her robe, and took a deep breath. “He overheard me talking—to myself, my other voice, in my sleep.”

“He bugged her room. A wiretap in the sick ward,” Chandra’s nostrils flared. “How sick is that?”

“And when he didn’t like my predictions of the changes to come, he tried to force me to give up my star sign and my place in the troop.”

I believed it. How many times had he told me that nothing was changing? He’d set Hunter up to prevent it, casting him from the troop. He’d done the same with me. All to ensure . . . what? That the troop would go on under his leadership as it always had? That there’d be balance in the valley—an equal number of Light and Shadow to play out some twisted, eternal game of homicidal one-upmanship? It didn’t make sense.

“But you didn’t give up your star sign,” I said to Tekla, realizing he’d tried to do the same thing to her that he’d managed with Hunter and me. Somehow, though, she’d dodged it.

“I wouldn’t. Even through the fugue of drugs and Warren’s pressured coercing, both my voices were adamant about that.”

“And,” Hunter said slowly, golden eyes narrowed as he reasoned out his memories according to this new information, “the rest of us were preoccupied at the time with finding out why our agents, including Stryker, had been killed.”

There’d been a mole in the troop. A spy for the Tulpa who’d almost taken the agents of Light down from the inside. Which, coincidentally, was when I arrived.

Tekla nodded. “Of course it didn’t take any real power or clarity of mind to know that Warren was also a mole of sorts. I knew he was lost when he started ignoring my prophecies. Never before had he neglected to look to the stars. But suddenly his own will became more important than the sky’s patterns.”

And the stars had taken on a new order in the skies. That’s what Vanessa had told me. That Tekla claimed we had to be open to new ways of viewing both the heavens and the earthly events they influence . . . and that Warren wouldn’t listen.

“So anarchy?” Had that been the stars talking, or Tekla finally getting fed up with being ignored.

“Do you think Warren would ever change his mind? Start listening to reason?”

No. You didn’t need to be a Seer to know that would never happen. But I held up my hands. “I’m not sticking up for the guy, believe me. But I’m curious as to what it all means. What are you doing, Tekla? Taking leadership? Installing a democracy? Dismantling the troop?”

“Nothing that extreme, dear,” she said with a wry smile. “I merely mean to wipe out the entire Shadow troop. I thought you might want to help.”

Hunter and I stared at her, openmouthed.

“It’s the only way to bring peace to the people of this valley, Joanna. Surely you see that. And destroying them entirely will ensure another Shadow troop never assembles here again.”

“Will it?” Because there was always some rancid motherfucker more than willing to step into the Tulpa’s shoes. There was no shortage of power-hungry people . . . in any world.

Chandra stood, stretched. “Once an urban troop is destroyed the other side has a sizable advantage. It’s almost impossible to catch up again. Ask your friend Carlos.”

I already knew what Chandra meant. The Light had been driven out of Carlos’s hometown, Mexico City. The mortal population had faced an increase in drugs, crimes, and killings because of it.

And if Tekla could “see it all,” did that mean she was setting herself up to rule this city in the same way? “So then what?” I asked her outright. “The Light rules all?”

She shrugged.

Shaking my head, I stood as well. “I hate to say it, Tekla. But if you saw it all and didn’t help me? Didn’t even try to save me from a flood, from the Tulpa, from a woman who wanted to strip my soul into little pieces? Then I’m alive in spite of you, not because of you.”

“I follow the skies,” she said unapologetically. “The stars told me you would prevail—we all will—if we act not at the earlier moment, but in the most opportune one.”

She meant the kairotic moment, the supreme moment. In other words, as long as I continued to be the Kairos of my own life.

But Hunter shared my ire. “And that’s now?” he said, anger and disbelief crackling through each word, making his voice tight. “Now that Vanessa and Felix are dead? Now that the troop is weaker than ever? Now that the Shadows are more powerful than ever?”

We all looked at Tekla with raised brows. It was a good point.

Tekla sighed again, closing her eyes, momentarily slumped, before she straightened and rose as well. She crossed to us—nonthreatening, diminutive, powerful—and in the most motherly action I could ever recall, took each of my hands in her own and held them to her chest.

“There’s only been one other time in my life that I was so perplexed about the Universe’s intentions, and that was when fate decreed my beautiful, strong, and brave son should die, even before his first battle. Even before he’d truly begun to live.

“This was as great a loss. You were.” She shook her head at me, seemingly still confused. “Why would we find you, a woman so clearly gifted and unique, only to have you sacrificed and then go on as before? Like nothing had happened?”

So that was her perspective, I thought, trying to see it all from her side of the “board.” And she was right. Put that way, it made no sense.

Tekla went on. “So even knowing Warren was still suspicious of me, still watching, I disappeared into my labs, into the world of my books and charts and stars. I had to trust that the Universe would lay the answer bare for me, if only I knew how to look. And that, my friends, is the real problem with most people. They can’t see how their lives are to unfold because they don’t know how to look.”

“And you do?” I said, trying and failing the keep the skepticism from my voice.

Chandra made a sound across from me, like she wanted to defend her Seer, but Tekla only inclined her head, looking regal in her certainty. “For me it’s like reading Braille. For those like Warren, they are only interested in the message on the page of the sky if it says what he wants to hear.”

And she raised her brows, silently asking which sort of person I wanted to be.

“You told Warren that I should sacrifice my soul to Midheaven,” I said, reminding her of our conversation in the car.

She didn’t even blink. “I told you what you needed to hear.”

I clenched my jaw. “And how did it help me to think you wanted me dead?”

“You were made to act independently and with force. To drive yourself into the future. We all have to actively choose our own lives, Joanna. If you don’t claim your life for yourself, you won’t ever be of any use to others.”

“And you still think me . . . useful?”

“I still think you’re the Kairos, yes.”

I pulled away at that, not meeting her eyes, or Hunter’s. When I finally looked up, though, I was decided. “Vanessa said you believed I am forever lost to the Light, and that I’ll never be super again.”

Tekla must have seen my resolve, because she didn’t bother to soften her words, and ticked my points off on two slim fingers. “You are. And the full of your powers can’t ever be recovered.” And then she spread her arms. “Yet here you are. Still alive. Still influencing the stars.”

I tilted my head. “Bringing to pass an apocalypse?”

“Sitting in front of me with the ability to create your world as you want it to be.”

I looked at her for a long time. The room grew oppressively silent, and I imagined Chandra holding her breath behind my back, felt Hunter’s gaze hard on my face, and Tekla’s even harder one burning into my skin. I imagined snakes and spiders slinking along the walls, pausing in their buggy little tracks to eavesdrop on the future. Finally I looked up at Hunter.

As he searched my face, I saw a man twenty years his senior looking back at me, time and experience wearing on him, but the same steely and calculating resolve taking in the rest of the world. All of it. All of me. Finally he nodded.

I turned back to Tekla. “Tell us more about this impending apocalypse.”

23

And that was how Hunter and I—newly reunited and with barely a hello—ended up on our honeymoon.

Of course, being practical saviors-of-the-known-world, we skipped the wedding bells and the I dos and carried paranormal weaponry inside our luggage in lieu of a bridal trousseau, but we held hands until it was time to tip the bellhop in the honeymoon suite at the most prestigious hotel and casino in the world, Valhalla.

“The Hall of the Slain,” I murmured, spreading the weapons out on the table as Hunter closed the door behind me. They included key pieces from my mother’s hoarded arsenal, my newly reclaimed bow and arrow, as well as Hunter’s whip, retrieved from a hidden alcove in the underground pipeline. Tekla had given it back to him in the underground lair, along with an invitation to return to the Light. To sweeten the deal, she’d also included explosives. I ran a finger along one of the barbs on the whip, wondering if he’d accept. “The dwelling place of those who never die,” I still murmured. “Where dead warriors feast and gods abide.”

It was also the property I’d inherited upon my stepfather’s death, which he’d only owned and operated because he’d been the Tulpa’s mortal beard, a powerful front to the paranormal don’s otherworldly operation. Hunter had worked as head of security for years, and knew the place even better than I. He’d long been trying to ferret out exactly what the Tulpa was hiding on the twenty-fourth floor.

And now we knew.

“The third stupa will be just there,” Tekla had told us, pointing at a celestial map so marked up it would send Kai running for his dirty bong water.

Having apparently conferred with all her voices and charts and stars, Tekla explained that she’d matched up the first two entrances to Midheaven using the sky’s moving Zodiac, sidereal time, and a bunch of other calculations I’d never understand. Probably a small animal sacrifice and some south Caribbean hoodoo as well, but when she said there was a third and final remaining entrance, I didn’t doubt her for a moment.

That was why the Tulpa had built Valhalla. Why very few people were allowed up to the top floor. And since he was still seeking the Serpent Bearer, my guess was he’d had no more luck with Valhalla’s stupa than the one I’d already destroyed in the mansion.

But it meant he was still sacrificing souls. It also meant that, technically, Warren wasn’t really trapped in Midheaven. If he found out about Valhalla’s stupa, he’d be able to get out. So Hunter and I were to storm the castle from the inside and destroy the last remaining entrance into Midheaven.

Posing as newlyweds was a perfect cover. We could hole up in the suite closest to the twenty-fourth floor and put a DO NOT DISTURB sign on the door for anyone but room service. That gave Tekla the twenty-four hours she needed to organize the Light, who would enter the casino en masse, providing the distraction we needed to sneak up and destroy the stupa.

“Call this number,” I’d told her, handing her a slip of paper as she dropped Hunter and me behind a T-shirt shop on the famed Strip. “Carlos will help but it’ll take the grays at least twelve hours to sneak back into the city.”

Tekla flinched before she could stop herself, but ultimately nodded. She knew, as I did, that a direct call from her would allow a temporary truce, and the grays would come more quickly to help. “And I’ll call you when my team is planted.” Then she and Chandra returned to their sanctuary, leaving Hunter and me to get to Valhalla ourselves. There, we were to study her maps and blueprints, and wait.

It was full dark as I went to draw the curtains tight around the room, and the city was coming to life below me, a blur of slow-shutter action, light, and energy. I smiled down at it—its folly, its vice. People liked to point to Vegas as the center of moral decay, but every place, no matter how large or small, how flashy or plain, had a reason for being. It was a need born partly out of the surrounding terrain, partly by necessity, but wholly by those who peopled it. In Vegas’s case that meant the world at large.

So what need had created a mecca of illicit entertainment out of the Mojave’s litter box? What, I wondered, were people so desperate to escape in their real lives that they were willing to trade money and time and energy to disappear for even a few days into a town where they knew all those commodities were likely to evaporate?

Pleasure, for one. That was obvious enough. The desire for wealth was up there too. Love, definitely—or at least companionship. And all of it served up with good food, butler service, and a healthy side of Lady Luck to boot.

Yet after all I’d seen and done in the last year, I’d begun to think that most people were oblivious to the luck already bestowed upon them. I’d certainly been guilty of it. Sleepwalking through my present as I sought to escape my violent past. I’d been so focused on not being a victim, and so fearful of being seen as one, that I wasn’t heading toward a future I wanted as much as I was running away from one I didn’t.

And that could keep you treading in place for years. Even a lifetime.

On that thought, I let the curtain fall and finally looked at Hunter.

He remained by the door, but shifted on his feet when I turned, and ran both hands back through his hair. It was clean now, if a bit too long, though it obviously hadn’t been anything but finger-combed for a while. He did that now, an anxious habit, and my heart went out to him. He’d been left anxious for so damned long.

However, I was surprised to find myself suffering from an unexpected bout of shyness. I’d been so focused on moving forward, taking aggressive action, and not stopping until Hunter was free, that I hadn’t even thought what we’d do, or say—how it would be—after. To keep busy, I tucked my hands in my pockets, and jolted when my fingertips brushed the item I’d practically turned into a talisman.

“Oh, here,” I said, holding out the gem on which I’d pinned superstitious hope that it would ferry me back to him. Now he was here and it was his, I thought, as he strode forward to take it, his touch lingering. The question was, would he consider the same of me?

“Thank you.” He looked down at it, wincing slightly, probably remembering how I’d gotten it.

“I’m happy to see that, well . . .” I pointed at his eye, as clear and honey-hued as ever, as if Solange had never used her index finger to pluck it from his socket. “You know.”

“That I can see?” he asked wryly, before shaking his head. “That little torture session was for your benefit, Jo. It was just an illusion.”

“That time.”

He ducked his head, conceding that Solange had indeed tortured him. But he also squared his shoulders and straightened. “Well, I didn’t use my soul to pass into Midheaven, remember? So her control of me was limited. Or at least blunted. I was luckier than most.”

“Excuse me if I don’t excuse her,” I muttered, crossing my arms. “She was probably just being pragmatic.”

It was hard to be impregnated by a shrunken head.

“Well, she wouldn’t be able to lure you back if I were already dead,” he said. Then, perhaps realizing he’d intimated I’d returned only for him, he quickly added, “She wanted you back from the moment she discovered you were the Kairos. She was obsessed with you.”

I decided to alleviate his discomfort and conquer my shyness at the same time. “And she knew I was obsessed with you.”

Hunter froze, and for a moment I thought I’d miscalculated. But what else was there to do but leave it all out there for him to take or leave as he pleased? I was about to tell him I was carrying his child. If there was one thing I didn’t want, it was for that to color his reaction to me, or us.

Besides, Hunter and I had both shared rejection at each other’s hands. Having felt it, and having dealt it, it was now time to leave it behind, part of the skin we had both shed, along with our old lives.

How odd, I had the sudden thought, to think that of all the things I once was and still could be—Kairos, superhero, mother, Archer—the one that mattered most right now was disturbingly mundane: woman.

And every woman, as Vanessa had said, had at her core a need to be chosen.

I shifted closer, and he stilled even more, like he was a statue in the Hall of the Slain, or a vessel with something secured tightly inside. I reached out and touched him anyway. It was just an index finger lain along his cheek, a gentle rub over the stubble I’d imagined caressing in my silent midnight hours. But I traced his strong jawline like it was an etching, and his eyes closed a fraction, and then finally, thankfully, he leaned into my touch.

I smiled. It was a start. “I have to tell you something,” I said, determined that nothing lay between us. One way or another—either starting our journey or ending it here—this child in my belly would be the last secret we ever had between us.

I was thoroughly tired of secrets.

“No.” He shook his head.

I drew back at the odd, and unexpected, response. “It’s important.”

His eyes flickered, a shadow of impatience racing behind his irises. “And whatever it is just made the smile disappear from your face and worry cloud over your eyes. So I don’t want to hear it.”

“But you need—”

He pressed a finger to my lips, firmly enough that it might as well have been his entire palm. I had half a mind to bite the damned thing, but then he palmed the back of my head with his other hand and pulled my body close.

“What I need,” he said, lessening the pressure on my mouth to trace my lower lip with his finger instead, “is a few moments of peace with the woman who kept me alive while I was frying in that subterranean hellhole, and who risked her own too precious life to ensure I stayed that way.”

“Oh.”

It was then my turn to still as his thumb worked a slow whorl along my top lip, and I felt something in my belly unclench. It seemed I hadn’t miscalculated after all. Relief softened me further, and I slumped a bit, allowing him to mold my frame closer to his.

“Leaving you for that world was like stepping into the grave,” he whispered, stroking my face. I slid my arms around his neck, opening to him, letting myself go—letting all of it go . . . Midheaven, Solange, the grief I felt over Vanessa and Felix and everyone needlessly lost to us, and the rest of the world. Over the losses of the past, and even those yet to come.

Release wasn’t as hard as I’d thought, maybe because Hunter’s touch was there to replace the worries; something good and fine and strong enough to displace, if only momentarily, all the pain and strife, the conflict and the loss. His sand dune eyes drank me in as his head made a slow dip toward mine. Months after he’d last touched me, disappearing to chase down, not after, another woman, his warm, full lips found mine, and pressed home.

Sensation flooded me. His fingers were soft lace, playing lightly on my neck and face. His breath was bright with hope, and intertwined with mine it shifted into a silk tapestry that wrapped around us both. Colors bloomed on the backs of my eyelids, one pastel emotion layered atop another, layered again with each shift of his mouth, my tongue, the subtle hues dissipating and reappearing, intensifying, when I did the same.

My hearing fell away. An insistent buzzing filled my eardrums before settling in the solid breaststroke of a beating heart. I only knew I was breathing because my chest rubbed against his. I only knew I stood because his arms were still wrapped around my frame. This was what it was to be lost in another person. This was care for nothing and no one else but the man and the moment.

This was choice, and being chosen.

He finally pulled back, slowly, and each sense, starting with sight, sluggishly returned. I exhaled hard, licked the taste of him from my lips—which caused my eyelids to flutter again—before I gingerly tested the strength in my legs. I pulled back fractionally when I thought I could do so without swaying so I could focus on the whole of him, feeling oddly like I was looking at him with brand-new eyes. He smiled back, the first true smile he’d worn in a long time, and it was the most stunning thing I’d ever seen.

I shook my head. The onslaught of my senses felt like a sensual attack. I swayed, then shivered as his fingers trailed from my shoulders to my elbows. Relentless, he bent again to whisper in my mouth. “Stop me now or you’ll have to fight your way out of my bed.”

“Maybe I like to fight.” But I swayed again, causing him to chuckle.

“I’m sure that’s part of it.” He stroked my hair, cupped my neck, my shoulders, gaze tracing it all as if committing it to memory.

Oh, fuck it, I thought, running my hands up his chest. Unless the Tulpa busted into the honeymoon suite with coyotes made of sand, I was done fighting for now.

“I’m but a lowly mortal,” I told Hunter, with a solemn, resigned shrug. “True escape is beyond me.” But there was no escaping this man. Not for me, and I’d long known it. We both smiled. Hunter knew it too.

Which didn’t mean I was helpless. Instead of waiting for him to lift me in his arms in some overly romantic gesture, I put my hand in his, and led him to my bed. There was no way I would let him escape again either.

Somewhere, outside of Valhalla, the stars were pinned up for the night. Often in the springtime, winds would gust through the valley like heralds announcing summer’s fast approach. But the air itself was gentle in the desert, as if trying to atone for the relentless heat the months ahead would bring. People lingered in the open in this kind of weather. They breathed in deeply, filling their lungs with fresh air and kind light, while children’s laughter lingered in long notes on the air, even after the children were gone.

Hunter and I were aware of none of this. We made love in the pure silence of an elevated cocoon. What had once felt like my prison while my stepfather was alive was now the site of my greatest pleasure. Because even more satisfying than Hunter’s raw physicality was the way his gaze confirmed what I already knew—that he was seeing, wanting, only me, that I was exactly where I belonged, with whom I belonged.

That I’d finally caught the tail of my destiny, I thought, inhaling deeply, if only for these scant fleeting moments.

And because we both knew them for fleeting, we gave in utterly to our need. I wasn’t merely oblivious to the world outside, I was blind to everything in the room, including myself. All I saw was Hunter—his mouth, his tongue and hands, his body ever bowed toward mine, his cock both the softest and hardest thing I’d ever felt. His desire consumed me, like I was a phoenix begging to be burned to ash. I could die in such a way, I thought, as he pinned me beneath him, one hand above on my wrists, the other below, taking wetness for his own.

Yet I didn’t feel like I was dying. Living for sure, I thought, as his desire thrilled through me. The proprietary way he touched me didn’t make me feel weak; on the contrary, the way his thighs spread my own made me feel a rush of primal feminine power that had me opening further. I loved that I could take the full of his thrust, the same force he’d use in battle or attack, and absorb it within me. I felt strong taking it, inverting it, spindling it together into something so powerful it even banished, momentarily, the memory that we’d ever been apart. Had it all been a dream? I found myself thinking at one point. Or some reality show Hunter had turned off with the touch of his skin to mine.

And now we rolled, and he turned into me. The idea of something so simple—a retreat where Hunter and I could turn to the other any time we wanted—was what finally made me cry out. The simplicity of such a thing, unavailable to me, was agonizing. Outside of my grief for Vanessa, it was the first real ache I’d felt since leaving Midheaven.

God, I wanted this man. All of him, all the time. Even in the stronghold of my greatest enemy, with only a doorway to keep death away, I still wanted him. Alone, him always, mine forever—everyone else’s will be damned.

At some point, somehow—probably while flipping him, and taking my place on top—I must have uttered as much. Mine, mine, mine . . . was what was going through my head, when suddenly he cupped my face in those large, warm hands, stilling me, and raised his knees so that his thighs became barriers.

“I never gave myself to her,” he rasped, the wild need I felt alive in his own gaze. His need to take and reassure me at the same time undid me again, and tears welled. “I never gave her anything at all.”

No, but she’d taken things from him. I saw the knowledge, dark, behind his eyes. He wouldn’t say it, but he’d experienced things at Solange’s hands that made him a different man than the one who’d entered that world. I swallowed hard. “She knocked you around because of it.”

“She knocked everyone around.” And lifting his hand, he ran it along my jaw where Solange had struck me. The tightness around his eyes told me he was recalling the moment, the scent of her snarling, animallike fury and all the ways the day could have turned out differently.

I placed my hand over his, my turn to still him. “Not anymore.”

Then I slid both my hands up his arms, over his chest, bracing them against his shoulders, settling him back again. He could throw me with his hips, of course, but as I started a slow wave, my body undulating over his, I wouldn’t bet on it. I pressed my knees outward, pushing to the base, earning a groan before his hips rose.

“You belong with me,” I said, keeping my motion slow, pressing his shoulders firmer like I was preventing his ever leaving me again. “Wherever you go and whatever you do, from now on you do it only with me.”

His responding moan was answer enough . . . that and the way he flipped me, both throwing me down and cushioning my fall, but never leaving my body. I struggled for position, but he pressed into me, now placing me where he wanted. Then he pulled away, almost free, and hammered back with one solid pound. I simultaneously arched and shuddered, and wound my legs around his waist.

Using each other’s hips and bodies as leverage, we found a rhythm that was both sweet and brutal, a beat that demanded my full attention and breath, barely allowing me to recover from one stroke before the onslaught of the next. I clutched him, my body responding to his, urging him to bear down even more, marking time in breaths, measuring the depth of it in gasps.

“Not yet,” he muttered, breaking the rhythm, pulling away and rolling me at the same time. I was on my stomach before my head stopped spinning, the pillow half in my mouth, my own scent strong in my nose. “Only and always means you’ll give in to me too.”

Game until then, I turned, affronted. Pressing me back down, he leaned close. “You’ll have yours, of course. But not now.”

And he buried himself so fast and deep the slap of flesh was like a killing blow. Unaware that pride was at stake here, my traitorous body responded like hull to waves, crafted and made to endure storms. I moaned and lifted for him, pushing back even as he hammered into me again. As he braced a forearm across my shoulders, his breath was hot and hard in my ear. “I’m going to brand you on the inside. So that from now on wherever you go, and whatever you do, everyone will know you’re mine.”

He pushed my legs flat, and buried my answer into the pillow, though he wasn’t exactly waiting for my surrender. He took it, though. I reared back as he barreled forward and he felt, and claimed, it. Forcing his body into mine, he kept forcing until it was mine. And I did the same, his way. For now. For always.

I didn’t feel his weight or limbs atop me after that. I lost any sense of the pillow or bed beneath me. I felt instead that I was suspended, that there was only my molten core, two people inhabiting the same spot, existing in a singular moment, exactly where we both belonged.

Then I saw stars. And we went supernova. Together.

24

“How do you feel?”

Like you care? I thought, cracking an eyelid, and lifting a lazy brow. It was either thirty seconds or thirty minutes after we’d finished, hard to tell when I existed only as liquid, but I was leaning toward the latter if only because I felt marginally refreshed. Talk about a catnap.

“Well,” I said, my voice raspier than normal, “my left leg is a little numb from that thing we did with the pillow and your belt. I’m not sure the headboard’s ever going to be the same either.”

Hunter gazed at me dryly. “I meant how do you feel after facing down Midheaven’s queen bee?”

Brushing the hair from my face, I looked at him for a long moment. What was the deal with the sudden shoptalk? Solange was no longer an issue, pressing or otherwise, and we were momentarily removed from the war going on in the valley below us. So why the sudden swerve into seriousness? Was he trying to put some emotional distance between us already? Because our physical nakedness was a nonissue; warriors had a natural comfort with the body, so that wasn’t it. Even now, though Hunter’s voice had grown distant, our limbs had somehow meshed into a pile a master weaver would be hard pressed to untangle.

But the words we’d said and the emotions we’d shared while putting those warrior bodies to task? Those were the things that had really laid us bare.

“Oh, the easy feat,” I finally said with an exaggerated eye roll, lightening up since it seemed that was what he wanted. He responded still with a serious nod, so I shrugged and propped myself up on one elbow. “Not as bad as I thought. Thank goodness Vanessa prevented the full force of her punch.”

Though it hadn’t felt like it at the time. When Solange landed atop me I thought for sure my breaths were numbered. Hunter echoed the thought with a disbelieving sound in the back of his throat. He shook his head. “I saw that blow land.”

I shifted, pushing my hip against his. The intimate move was meant to test him, and when he shifted back, I smiled. “Well, maybe you need to get your oh-so-perfect eyesight checked.”

His gaze sharpened at my lifted brows, before the birth of a smile played at the side of his mouth. It was small, but real, so to me it was as wide and glorious as the Grand Canyon. I tried to swallow down the accompanying thrill as my belly flip-flopped, but that majestic smile spread, and so did mine.

Yet he still didn’t change the subject. “So other than your usual biting sarcasm, you’re feeling okay?”

“A little tired,” I admitted, though that could be due to our lovemaking as much as our escape from Midheaven, or midterm pregnancy. Yet I nixed the thought as his hand began a light play over my belly. The rub of his thumb traveling lower definitely had my fatigue lessening.

“Well, that’s to be expected. Normal, even,” he said with a scoff.

I tilted my head at the sound, wondering if that was his way of saying he already knew about the baby I carried inside me. Maybe his strong sense of smell was already ferreting out the changes in my body. Or maybe by joining our bodies again he was able to tell there was life between us?

Possible . . . but I didn’t think so. The child was a part of him. Thus harder for him to scent. Plus, his expression was open, even a bit anticipatory. Like he was waiting for an answer to a question I hadn’t even thought of yet.

“My ‘normal’ is a bit different than it was when we last saw each other, Hunter,” I reminded him, almost apologetically. “So . . . just be gentle with me.”

And I wasn’t speaking solely of my humanity. The echo of his cry in my ear as he climaxed still curled along my gray matter, and if he took that from me now—if he left or changed his mind or had some sort of regret at being yoked with a mortal—I didn’t know what I’d do. Screw mortality . . . this was vulnerability.

Hunter drew back, concern darkening his eyes, telling me he scented my panic. “But I thought you said you felt normal?”

He didn’t see it, I thought, breathing deep to calm myself. That I was his alone. That I was in love with him. That without him, I’d belong to no one. Not even, at least for a time, myself.

So I played it off, pretending that I was speaking only of my body. “You just have to be mindful of my mortality. The last time we played this hard I had bruises for weeks.”

He looked momentarily sorry for that, before rising to his elbows and bringing his hands from beneath the pillow to cup my palms. He wrapped his fingers around my free hand, then brought it to his lips. The extreme gentleness of the kiss made me blink in surprise. I tilted my head.

Maybe he did see. Maybe, I thought, tilting my head, he felt the same.

“You’re not listening to me. Or at least not hearing me correctly.” And despite his words, his voice was as tender as his touch. “What I’m saying, my dearest Joanna, is that mortality is not your normal state. And, as you’ve already said, you feel relatively normal.”

And he flipped our joined hands over, palms up, still linked, to reveal a cluster of playing chips. Poker chips. Soul poker.

I sat up so fast my head spun.

“It seems,” he continued, as I fought to draw air in my chest, “that power is very much like health. Something we only take note of when it’s gone.”

But his voice had turned into a buzz in my ear, hollow and suddenly distant. And my limbs were my own, my palms still cupped, but I stared down at my hands in wonder.

“Hunter—?” I said, though what I was really asking was, What does this mean? Are these really my powers? How did you get them? Oh my God, am I super?

He answered every unvoiced question succinctly by wrapping both of our fists around the recovered chips. “Tekla saw it. You are the Archer. The Kairos. The woman, it seems, with nine lives.”

“These . . . this is everything I lost in Midheaven.” I gazed at the chips while mentally cataloging the lost powers. A plain upward-facing triangle, representing my elemental sign, fire. A chip containing what looked like a tree holding aloft three moons. And an open-based infinity sign, one Shen had taken from me out of spite. One, I thought, tearing up, that represented my supernatural ability to regenerate, to heal, from all mortal wounds.

“You told me before I left for Midheaven that you played soul poker. You told me you lost.”

But I’d also won. I looked at Hunter. “I won one man’s sense of smell. Another’s ether . . . whatever his is. I have their chips too.”

I’d carried them back in a bag months earlier.

But Hunter shook his head. “I’m sorry. They’re useless unless those men physically return to this world.” And we both knew that wasn’t going to happen.

Still, it was hard to feel disappointed. I had a total of four powers back. Four, in a world where moments earlier I thought I’d had one.

“What do they do?” I asked, because Hunter would know better.

He leaned close, smiling at my excitement, happy to play teacher. “The triangle is the symbol for fire. It represents activity and transformation. Basically, it’s physical strength, darling. Try not to give it away again.

“This one,” he said, pointing to the slanted infinity sign, “is actually the sign for sublimation. In science it’s when something turns from a solid into gas. In astrology it can resolidify, while adhering to its vessel . . . that’s you.”

“Healing,” I said, simplifying things.

“Yes. You can heal again.” And he touched my chin where Solange had planted her fist. Squarely, I now knew.

“This is your ability to build walls around you. It might seem redundant since your ether is the power of creation, but that’s an offensive weapon. This allows you to play a mean defense.”

And I sorely needed both.

But what about the rush that accompanied the return of power? The way my ether’s return had forced me to my knees in Io’s lab? That power had rolled through me like head-to-toe thunder, but I’d felt nothing like that this time. Still, what I was sensing, scenting, finally made sense. No wonder I’d swayed upon reentering the underground stupa. Everything else had been drowned out as those three additional powers rushed back into me.

I gazed back up at Hunter, knowing I was gaping and wide-eyed, but unable to stop it. “So does this mean I can kill people with the flick of my wrist again?”

“There’s my girl.” Hunter’s voice was teasing again, but his eyes were still soft, and reflecting my own amazement, also brimming with tears. He’d brought me back my powers. He’d brought back myself. I shook my head, gazing down at the chips again in disbelief.

After a moment, he took a deep breath and slid to his back, and tucked his arms behind his head again. “So, uh . . . still think true escape is beyond you? I mean I’d be willing to give you a head start.”

My normal retort—quick and biting and playfully combative—didn’t come. I’d needed a good head start for so long now. Besides, what Hunter was really asking was if I still wanted to be here now that I had the freedom that came with my returned supernatural power. Did I still think he belonged with me, and I with him alone?

Oh my God. I’m me again.

I stared at the man whom I’d saved and who’d saved me in return. Whom I’d sided with at a time when he looked guilty of betrayal, recalling that he’d once done the same with me. I looked at this man whose touch I could recall in my sleep, whose mind I could rap against, yet still relish and respect. Who thought of me when I didn’t have the time, inclination, or ability to think of myself.

And I began to shake. Once I started I found I couldn’t stop and the chips slipped from my hands, falling silently on the bedcovers, to disappear into the rumpled sheets. Even my chin was shaking, a girlish and vulnerable reaction I’d always hated, and seeing it, Hunter’s half-teasing smile fell away. Despite daring me to escape, he reached forward, but that was as far as he got. I met him halfway, flinging myself at him so hard he flew back again, air whooshing from his lungs, his embrace of me also a defense.

My powers were one thing, I thought, hands flying over his frame, my mouth dropping kisses over his entire face. My life, normalized, was another. But this man and these powers together meant I could seek a new life altogether—we could—and that wasn’t something I’d ever take for granted.

He did belong with me. And I belonged to him also.

“Mine. Hunter,” I whispered into his chest, and his grip tightened around me, too. “Thank you. Thank God.”

“For?”

“All of it.”

I’d heard some people say that bad sex was better than no sex at all, and while what we did next couldn’t be called bad, it was certainly fumbling, desperate, and raw. We didn’t make love so much as throw ourselves at each other, and afterward—sweaty and each staring wide-eyed at the ceiling—we remained silent for a long time. Probably shell-shocked.

“I think I’m embarrassed,” I finally said.

Hunter snorted. “Don’t be. You’re not rusty at all.”

I slapped at him feebly, a blow he didn’t bother to dodge while he rolled from his back to his stomach, revealing scratch marks along his biceps and shoulders. Oops.

After I’d stopped blubbering like a Twi-Hard, I’d let loose of my death grip on Hunter’s neck, but I hadn’t let go. There was a time for explanation and words, and a time to just hold on tight and let your body speak up. Mine, apparently, was screaming in tongues, an overwrought babble of grateful relief, disbelief, and pregnancy hormones. Still, we made it through the wild lovemaking and collapsed into each other, our bodies loose with dissipating sexual energy and much needed respite.

But the glittering gem I’d returned to him, one he’d carelessly dropped bedside, caught my attention. I reached across him to pick it up and rolled it between my fingertips.

“Seems hard to believe that this is how Solange controlled everyone in that world. I mean, it’s so small. So pretty.”

Hunter only cracked one eyelid before letting it drop shut again. “Plenty of people fight for control of small, pretty things.”

I nodded, unable to argue that. “Well, all’s well that ends well,” I said, though I could afford to be nonchalant now that Solange was dead, Hunter was reclined in naked superhero glory next to me, and I had enough returned power to put mortality behind me. “Though good ending or not, one thing’s for sure . . . I’m never entering that twisted underworld again.”

Hunter made a growling noise in the back of his throat. It would have been intimidating if he’d bothered to open his eyes. “You should have listened when I told you never to go back the first three times.”

Using his arm as a pillow, I dropped my head down so that we were face-to-face. “Would you have listened to me if our positions were reversed?”

“Yes.”

Liar. I scoffed. “And then done what you wanted to anyway.”

“God, Jo.” He pushed to his elbows, dumping my head to the bed as he loomed over me. “What do you think I felt when I saw you appear in that web? Knowing she was lying in wait?”

“Same thing you’re thinking right now.” I wiggled my brows, and after a moment he sighed, lowering his head so we were eye-level again.

“That I want to spank you?” He shrugged. “Sorta.”

I ran my index finger along his hairline. “Perv.”

“Doesn’t make me a bad person.”

I laughed but kept stroking his forehead, as if my touch could smooth away ache. His eyes were open now, and he watched me steadily, but there was still an issue lying dormant between us, and I wanted it out of the way. “I’m sorry about your child. About what happened to Lola, I mean.”

His gaze sharpened, though he remained immobile beneath my touch. Then he pursed his lips. “That thing wasn’t my child. Besides, what happened to her was done a long time ago, and it was Solange’s doing—not yours or mine. I should thank you for putting that . . . creature out of its misery.”

I nodded then, deciding it wouldn’t hurt to feel him out a bit on the subject of children in general, and cleared my throat. “Well, I’m sorry then that you risked so much to help something beyond saving. It’s noble, though. Risking your life for your child.”

“No. It’s just parenting.”

I understood that well enough. Something fierce and feral had taken over when I’d believed Ashlyn was in danger. I’d given her up for adoption, and knew she was living with a family far better suited to raising her than I’d have been, so that’s why my belated ferocity had surprised me. It also gave me the fleeting thought that I might just make a good mother yet.

“I never knew . . . Lola,” Hunter continued, swallowing hard, having trouble saying the name he’d envisioned giving his child after seeing the mutilated creature she’d really been, “but when I thought she was out there, a daughter who was as much a part of me as my very limbs, I just went crazy.”

I drew back at that, confused. Hunter and I had once traded memories because we’d shared the magic of the aureole. I’d seen him welcoming a girl child into the world. I’d felt love wash through his heart, and seen the tears on his face. What did he mean he’d never known Lola?

But Hunter, oblivious to my thoughts, was still talking, and not wanting to interrupt, I put the question aside for later. “Knowing I had a daughter in the world . . . well, it wasn’t the same as any love I’d ever felt. I mean, lovers, even those who are married, always exist autonomously of one another, no matter how close they are or how long they’ve known each other. That’s why jealousy can flare in even the most intimate relationships.”

“Because you know that at some basic level this person exists separately from you. No matter how close you are, the landscape of their life is always tinted a different hue than your own.”

He nodded.

“And a child isn’t separate?” I asked, hand automatically moving to my belly. I stilled it on my bare side, not wanting to give myself away just yet. I already knew the answer to the question—my answer, anyway—but Hunter, not knowing that—and unable to scent my pregnancy because of Io’s compound—looked over at me anyway.

“Love is a choice. A child? A child is an earthquake,” he said gravely. “The life you knew before they’re born is obliterated by their existence. It’s all new terrain from there on out. That landscape, the hue you view the world through after that is caked in pitfalls and cracks and things that can hurt you. The world becomes a place you’ll never control again.”

I wrinkled my nose, and blinked. I’d never thought of it like that. There’d been no time. “Is that a good thing?”

“It’s devastating.”

And before I could tell him about our unborn earthquake, the bedside phone rang.

The intimacy vanished from Hunter’s gaze, replaced by a warrior’s wariness that—because I was twisted that way—I loved equally well. My own face went blank as he answered the phone, and after listening for a moment, he held out the receiver.

“It’s for you.”

I sat up. I had my cell with me. Who would be calling me on the hotel line?

“Having fun, dear? Is your honeymoon everything you thought it would be?”

I put the phone on speaker so Hunter could hear, then scrambled for my clothes—the jeans I’d worn, Hunter’s undershirt. I didn’t have time to be precious about it. The Tulpa was on the other line.

“Yes, yes,” his voice came in mock soothingness over the line. “I can practically scent your happiness from here. It’s . . . nauseating, really.”

“How did you know I was here?” I said, reaching for my weapons. The bow and arrow went into my waistband first. It felt like an additional limb, so it was the first thing I’d put on and would be the last to leave my body. I wished I still had the soul blade, the only weapon that could truly injure the Tulpa. Hunter would have his whip, but I would have all else. At least I hadn’t been stupid enough to come here unarmed.

But I had been stupid. That was clear enough.

“You must not have gotten the memo in the last board meeting. See, there’s this man who rules both the mortal and paranormal planes with equanimity as well as a lot of fucking finesse, if I do say so myself. He also owns this hotel you’re currently fornicating in.”

I loaded a green liquid bullet into a supernatural sidearm. He wasn’t the owner of me.

“So the fact that you’re in my hotel, in my city, and you don’t think I know everything that happens everywhere . . . well, that’s just downright annoying.”

“Gee, Daddy. Now you’ve hurt my feelings.”

“I’ll do more if you don’t get your ass down to the main casino in about . . . oh, ten minutes ago.”

I stilled at that, and looked at Hunter.

“Mind, I could come and get you myself,” the Tulpa said, his voice falling to a deadly soft whisper. “But I’d have to kill your dear friend Tekla first.”

Falling still, I closed my eyes. He had Tekla.

“Bring that pretty beau of yours, too. There’s plenty of room for everyone. You’re in the Hall of the Slain now.” And the smile in his voice lingered even after he’d hung up.

25

How does one prepare for battle to the death? Not in five minutes, that was for sure. Luckily I’d been preparing for the happy occasion all my adult life. Back when I carried a chip on my shoulder the size of the Tropicana—back when I’d been battling myself, one could even say—I used to project myself into violent situations everywhere I went. The kindly old man at the corner café? A likely Russian spy, with a Makarov pistol tucked into his military overcoat. The Goth girl behind the counter? Strung-out crack whore, willing to separate me from my life if it meant doing the same with my money. Cute boy smiling at me from behind his Wall Street Journal? Assassin. Vegas boys don’t read the Journal.

But no matter where I went, I anticipated ambush, I pinpointed exits, and I searched for Joaquin, the first Shadow agent—hell, the first person—who’d ever tried to kill me.

So after splashing water on my face in the locked bathroom of Valhalla’s honeymoon suite, I took one extra moment to study myself in the mirror, trying to see what exactly had changed since then.

Experience.

The knowledge that someone wanted me dead no longer fazed me. It just gave me something to put on my calendar. The fact that it was the being that’d originally sent Joaquin after me just made me write it in big, bold red.

No, what was more startling was my physical appearance. I was such a curious amalgamation of my sister and me these days. The surgical enhancements Warren had hoisted on me hadn’t yet been touched, so I still possessed Olivia’s impressive cleavage, her heart-shaped chin and slim nose. I’d removed the colored contacts, though, and my hair was back to its original chestnut brown. “Brown, gray, Shadow, Light . . .”

I can’t tell if you’re more like your mother or your father.

But why choose? All those colors and aspects were just more experiences layered atop each other. It didn’t matter whether I embraced or shed them, they’d left their mark, brought me here, and each remained—in one way or another—a part of me now. And that was okay. I wondered why I hadn’t seen that, and accepted it, before.

So there you are, I thought, realizing it on what might possibly be the last day I needed that calendar. Joanna Archer. Woman. Warrior. Sister.

“Mother,” I whispered, gaze dropping as I placed a hand on my belly. Immediately, like it’d been waiting for a sign, there was a fluttering, an uneven jump. I let out a surprised yelp and exhaled sharply, because I knew it immediately for something that was separate from me. As someone. As life.

“I can touch the conduits,” I said softly, as if to reassure my little hitchhiker. “I can touch all of them. Old and new. Shadow and Light.”

True, none of them had proven useful against the Tulpa. He fed on the energy expended in fighting him like it was nutrition. In mommy-speak? It made him grow big and strong. But there was one thing he’d never prevailed against before, and that was me. Because for some reason, buried among the layers of colors and titles and aspects lay a facet that made me tough to destroy. I was also a part of him. Partly imagined.

And wholly pissed-off.

I added one more title to my descriptive repertoire—Kairos—before yanking open the bathroom door.

Hunter was waiting.

“We have to find the stupa,” I said, joining him next to the table. Our tender moments were long gone. We were both in full fighter mode. “We have to destroy it now.”

“Or we could, you know, run for our lives,” Hunter replied wryly, but he was coiling his whip, newly oiled, as he said it.

“He’s been sacrificing people’s souls all these years—”

“Harvesting them,” Hunter corrected, testing the whip’s release, clearly pleased to have his conduit back. I felt the same about my bow and arrow. “Using the animist masks to store them. Hanging them on the walls.”

Hanging Felix upside-down, I remembered. Turning Xavier into a breathing corpse. Who knew how many others there’d been. “It has to stop.”

“Oh, I think he intends it to,” he said, voice clipped. “With you.”

Obviously, I thought, picking up the charges and handed them to Hunter. “So blow that bitch up before I get there.”

“Leave you?”

I raised my brows. “The eye-in-the-sky. Remember?”

“Of course.” He let out a long sigh and started tucking the explosives in the inner pockets of his leather coat. “They’ll be watching.”

A modern-day casino’s surveillance system made the government models look like baby monitors. They weren’t normally positioned in the hotel’s hallways, but Valhalla was run a bit tighter—for obvious reasons. And the Tulpa did know we were in the honeymoon suite.

“We have to make it look like you’re leaving me.”

So we concocted a plan that had him knocking me down and running for his life. Just one more betrayal of me, and totally believable when added to all the others. Besides, who would stick by my side when they knew the Tulpa was about to bring the house down around my shoulders?

But Hunter stood in front of me, unmoving, staring at me. “I don’t want to.”

I didn’t either. I put a hand to his face. “It may be the only way to stay together.”

His answering look was skeptical. It was the slimmest long shot we’d ever faced, though whatever the Tulpa had planned for us down in the casino would undoubtedly be slimmer.

“He knows we’re here. If he has Tekla, then she might have been compelled to tell him why. He’ll probably have the entire twenty-fourth floor on lockdown.”

I jerked my head. “My guess is that he’s going to want to show off a bit for his minions, so those who normally guard the stupa already have their invites for the show.”

“Okay, but his ‘usual’ is pretty strong.”

It was. I’d unwittingly entered the treasured room before, having chased and killed a Shadow agent within it. Accessed by a single elevator bank at the end of a long, empty hallway cheerfully christened the gauntlet, it was near impossible for agents to get to it without detection, and it was a place mortals couldn’t reach at all. You needed a supernatural hall pass to get there, and a lineage that ran all the way back to two women whose lives had been saved by a Greek god and a snake.

Yet, I thought, pursing my lips, once you had it, an alternate reality awaited. Doors, elevators, portals would open to you.

They’ll open to me. The thought thrilled up my spine . . . and gave me an idea. “Did you see a portal on the way in?”

I had stopped looking for the entrances to reality’s flip side because I wasn’t able to see them as a mortal, never mind access them.

Hunter’s eyes narrowed as the plan I’d barely conceived took root in his mind. Another thing I love about this man. He could mentally get from A to Z without a lot of detours. “There was one at the ice machines. Another at the main floor, just next to the buffet.”

I nodded. “That’s your backup, then.”

For a moment Hunter said nothing. Then he crossed to the window and parted the curtains that concealed the view to the world below. “Guess it’s time for me to blow the top off this stupa.”

One side of my mouth lifted in a humorless smile. And time for me to pay a visit to Valhalla’s main casino floor. A warrior’s paradise. The Hall of the Slain.

For once, I thought, following Hunter to the door, it wasn’t a gambling metaphor.

I am not a great actress. I laugh ahead of time when I’m telling a joke and lower my head sheepishly when telling a lie. But you don’t have to be a particularly brilliant thespian to feign being knocked from your feet by a two-hundred-forty-pound superhero . . . especially when you’ve just been knocked from your feet by a two-hundred-forty-pound superhero.

I also didn’t have to worry about producing crocodile tears or uncontrolled sobbing for the benefit of the surveillance system trained on me as I watched Hunter bolt for the stairwell. It wasn’t my style, and there was no turning back now.

There hadn’t been any turning back since I’d first been made aware of the scent of Shadows.

Yet I remained kneeling on my hands and knees for a long minute, head low so my hair hid my face. From the ceiling-mounted cameras it would give the impression of abject defeat. Then I picked myself up from the floor slowly, dramatically emphasizing weariness and mortality, and made my way to the elevator banks, where I waited to be ferried to the Tulpa. As he’d commanded.

The mirrored image that greeted me when the doors finally snicked open was probably not one to grace the halls of Valhalla before. Goth Barbie meets G.I. Joe, I thought, stepping in. And was it the low lighting, or did my eyes look significantly darker than they had just minutes before?

Not my fault, I decided, pushing the button leading to the ground floor. Miss Manners had never addressed this exact situation in her handbook of advice for young women. Maybe if she’d been fathered by a thought-form with strong filicidal inclinations, I thought, she’d have been a bit more sympathetic to my plight.

Still, seeing myself dressed like a warrior settled me, even as the elevator doors closed me in. The scene in Star Wars where Han Solo and company were nearly crushed by a trash compactor flashed through my mind. Such an act wasn’t out of the realm of possibility for the Tulpa, but I knew he had something greater planned for me on the ground floor.

I also knew I should be more frightened. The apocalypse Daddy Dearest had promised when I refused his initial offer to join the Shadows seemed about to come to pass. Yet fear—which I’d lived with almost constantly for over a year now—was having a hard time squeezing past the other base emotion suddenly ossifying in my chest.

It was not anger making blood rush through my veins to short out my breath and stunt my senses. No, this was harder and colder than that, brighter and starker than any gem in Solange’s doomed night sky. This, I thought, was the last third of my soul taking root in my body, and refusing to move for one more fucking person. I was fed up with others trying to shred it to pieces.

And I’d just gotten a glimpse of happiness, I thought, and watched my reflected eyes darken even further. A little bit of pretty in a life that had been bleak, and yes, a little too gray. For a short while there, I’d had something to look forward to that didn’t include bloodshed and battle or portents and power. And then this monster, unbidden and unwanted, erupted in my life again like a natural disaster . . . sudden and destructive, and altogether indifferent to the carnage he was intent on leaving behind.

Yet I didn’t cry on my descent, or ask, Why me? or wring my hands or rail against the gods. Instead I rechecked my weapons, touching each like they were talismans, before crossing my arms. I was more than a little indignant at the normalcy that nobody—Warren, Tekla, the Tulpa—seemed to want me to have. So no wonder my eyes were dark.

No wonder my trigger finger itched.

The bell above me dinged, ticking away floors like the timer on a bomb, and I forced myself to calm again. Concentrating, I mentally reached out to touch my four supernatural powers, the same way a nun would finger her rosary beads. Strength, healing, defensive walls, and my ether, the ability to create something out of nothing.

I closed my eyes and thumbed through these, straightening and shifting my weight as I located each along my spine, near my chest. Becoming reacquainted with extraordinary power felt like a deep stretch after a long period of bed rest. My body was willing and able to make the effort, but it was going to take a while to get back up to super speed.

I had approximately forty seconds.

And then the elevator stopped on the eighteenth floor, sliding open to allow in a couple about twenty years older than I was ever likely to see . . . even if I lived to double my age. I tempered my impatience by closing my eyes and counting to ten as they inched their way into the elevator. When I opened them again, the woman was staring at me from my left. The man from my right. The doors slid shut.

“Is there a convention in town?” the old lady finally asked.

I slid my gaze her way. “I don’t know.”

“No, Mildred. She’s in a show.” The man bent nearer like a gnarled old tree. “What show are you in, honey? One of those preposterous circus things?”

I glanced up, wishing the elevator would go faster. “I’m not in a show.”

The man waited, giving me a slow blink.

I sighed. He was breaking my concentration. I decided to find out if anything in his seventy-plus years had prepared him for the truth. “Actually, I’m with a group who’s trying to free mortals from the persecution of those who’d like to see them forever enslaved.” There. Succinct and true. And it explained the bullet belt at my waist.

They both backed against the wall so quickly you’d have thought I’d pulled out a rattler. “You’re the bastards who picketed Michael Jackson’s funeral, aren’t you?”

“What?”

“And Mister Rogers.” The man had grown alarmingly red in the face. “And Comic-Con!”

“Those Baptists,” the woman added with a hiss. “That so-called church that waves around those God hates the world signs.”

The man shook his bony fist at me. “Who the hell let you in Vegas?”

“No.” I squinted, holding up a hand. “No. We’re . . . a different group.”

When the elevator doors slid open a second later, they moved so fast I could have sworn they were half my age. But before I could do the same, the woman turned on me and spat. “There! I’ve set the evil eye on you. If you come within twenty feet of the Colosseum, you’ll be sorry. I’ve been waiting thirty years to see Elton John live. If you ruin ‘The Bitch Is Back’ for me, I’ll send you to your maker myself.”

Her husband gave a righteous geriatric fist pump and they scurried out of sight. I held the door of the elevator open with one hand and waited, half considering telling them to stick around for a real show-stopping performance of “The Bitch Is Back.” Instead I gave them time to get out of Valhalla, and into the cab headed for the Colosseum. The last thing I needed was yet one more evil eye.

26

Working hard to look a little less Baptist, I managed to make it all the way across the main lobby without attracting any other undue attention. One man did watch me stride through the adjoining atrium, narrow-eyed gaze caught on my thigh holster, but then a bachelorette party flowed by in the opposite direction, and his attention swiveled like a battle gun. A few other tourists took note of triggers and steel, but only angled to the side as I passed. When I stepped onto the slot floor, the attendants didn’t look up at all.

You’d think that after glimpsing a woman armed like a female Rambo, some primitive part of these people’s brains would override the sensory overload, the alcohol, and the ennui, to at least do a double-take. Not that I was surprised. A casino fire had once claimed the lives of a half-dozen slot zombies who refused to leave “their” machines because they were hot.

Guess that’s what ammunition is for, I thought, tucking my back against the last row of slot machines before reaching the pit floor. I pulled out an assault rifle left to me by my mother, and took a final steadying breath.

Then I rounded the slot bank, already firing.

The mayhem was instantaneous, the crowd’s primal brain finally kicking into gear. Oddly, it was those people farthest from me who reacted first. I kept shooting, aiming high as they fled, leaving screams and drinks and shopping bags behind. For some reason, the tourist closest to me—a wide-eyed, -bellied, and -mouthed man with a slot card hanging around his neck—didn’t move at all. Unsmiling, I tilted my head at him. “Go.”

As he broke for the main exit, I pivoted and aimed higher. Draped across the craps pit, like a luminous blanket, was a chandelier. I sighted its ceiling mounts and fired. As onetime heiress of this casino, I happened to know the gaudy monstrosity was composed of hand-cut Bohemian crystals with eight hundred LED lamps brought all the way from Prague at Valhalla’s opening. The five-ton chandelier dropped twenty-five feet and I crouched and covered as it became gorgeous shrapnel, exploding on the garishly carpeted floor.

The automatic bells and jingles of the nearest slots were phantomlike in the resulting silence, and my breathing was shaky and loud. Finally a voice, quiet and wry.

“Subtle.”

“Yeah, I’m famous for that,” I told the Tulpa, and straightened to face him across the vast expanse of Valhalla’s main casino floor.

He was elevated, sitting straight-backed and cross-legged atop a pedestal where, five times nightly, a Valkyrie would sing operatically and point to the men chosen for admittance into the mythological Valhalla. She’d do this while writhing enticingly around a pole, of course.

In contrast, the Tulpa was stock-still, his pale face blank of any expression or mark, but for the black eyes pinpointed on me. He looked bland and lifeless sitting there, but that was less comforting when you knew those insipid features could shift with a mere thought, transforming his face and him into a new being altogether.

That malleability is his weakness, I reminded myself, swallowing hard. The hallmark of a soulless being.

His long, elegant fingers—save the two that had been cleaved from his body—were folded around khaki-clad knees, and he wore a button-down shirt, his hair combed, gelled. He also reeked of decay; a noxious fermentation of stomach acid and sewer fumes. My acute sense of smell hadn’t been one of the powers returned to me, but it didn’t have to be. He wasn’t even trying to hide who or what he was anymore.

That probably should have scared me most.

I lifted my rifle and took aim at his chest.

“By all means,” he said, cracking a smile. “Fight me.”

I swallowed hard but held my fire, knowing a direct hit would only give him the energy he craved. Besides, I didn’t want to fight him, just distract him long enough for Hunter to reach the stupa, plant the bombs, and make his escape. All the better if I could save Tekla and the remaining agents of Light in the process. Yet it was hard to follow up such a spectacular entrance, so I pretended to look around for other dangers.

I didn’t have to fake my shock. Everyone was here. The agents of Light weren’t a surprise. Just as he said, they were trapped, each shackled to an individual blackjack table. Also unsurprising was the presence of the existing Shadow agents, who stood behind the tables as pseudo dealers, though since the troop of Light comprised only six star signs, there were Shadows to spare.

The extras, I quickly noted, had been assigned to guard the grays. And that was the true wonder. How had the Shadows trapped them all? I wondered, seeing Carlos, Kai, Vincent, and all the others gathered around a craps table in the lofty room’s center. The chandelier had missed them by inches, and blood trailed from their already healing injuries, but none moved to wipe it away. None moved at all. They were obviously bound, though I couldn’t see how. I tried to catch Carlos’s eye, but his expression remained blank.

How had the Shadows, the Tulpa, managed this?

And how the hell was I going to save them?

“You can’t,” the Tulpa said, reading my mind. “You won’t.”

“What have you done with them?”

“Masks,” one of the Shadows answered, unable to help himself. Not noting the Tulpa’s annoyed glance, he tucked his hands in his front pockets and snickered. “They’re all wearing them.”

I looked back at Tekla, but she was still blank-faced, still not looking at me. In fact, none of the Light or grays were. My direction, yes. But it was as if they’d been angled that way, like dolls arranged on a mantelpiece.

“Invisible masks,” added a female, who looked like the first man’s twin. Maybe the Tulpa had gotten a two-fer. “But just as powerful.”

“Why?”

“Because I need soul energy in order to enter Midheaven. And a lot of it.”

So his failed experiments with Felix, and who knew how many others, hadn’t put him off ruling this world, or the next. Or from gaining control over the child he still didn’t know had been born soulless, like him. There was no Kairos there, but that didn’t matter right now. What mattered was that failure had made him more ruthless.

“What about the energy you get from the people in this valley? The children won’t read of you anymore. Kill all the Light and there will be nothing to put in the manuals because there will be no one left to fight.”

“There’s always someone to fight,” he replied, and unfortunately he was right. Other Shadows, other Light, would creep into the valley. And if they stopped? Well, there were always the mortals.

“I won’t let you take them. Upstairs, I mean. Into the stupa.” I shook my head, and lifted the old gun. “I’ll kill every agent of Light, every gray, before I allow that.”

Because I knew they’d all rather die than be hung upside-down and drained of their souls. I certainly would.

“Oh, dear Joanna,” he said chidingly, gesturing to the empty casino. “Familiarity really does breed contempt.”

“What do you mean?”

“Don’t you know where you are?”

I frowned. I was at the Valhalla Hotel and Casino. The city’s most lavish gambling destination, which I’d briefly owned. But something in the Tulpa’s tone had me looking closer . . . and had the snickering Shadow agents falling silent. We all looked around the eerily empty casino, ignoring the slot bells now tolling for nothing. He was right. I was too familiar with this casino. So I disregarded everything that was similar to other properties, and concentrated on what made Valhalla different. The Tulpa, I suddenly realized, was here—and had always been here—for a reason.

But it was just a casino. Gambling kept this mecca running, so the focus had always been on the machines and tables. The Viking theme meant there were longboats jutting from walls, as well as ferrying guests to their rooms via a lazy river, and yes, the gilded walls bowed inward in a dramatic rendition of a heavenly Viking temple, but so did the Luxor’s and that was just . . .

A temple. I gasped, and looked up. The chandelier, which had obscured my sightline before, had left a gaping hole in the ceiling, and it was now clear that the walls didn’t arrow straight up as I’d previously thought. They inclined slightly, pulling ever toward the middle until they disappeared from sight. I did a quick count along the edges, and found thirteen.

“Shit.” The whole fucking building was a stupa.

And every agent in town had been lured into the base of it.

The Shadow agents seemed to collectively realize this at the same time I did, though another second passed with no movement at all. Then one of them cursed. Two others broke for the door, but the Tulpa waved his hand over the room as if casting a net. Eleven Shadow agents stiffened, pivoted toward me, and fell utterly still.

I’d seen him do this with mortals before. He could wholly control their thoughts, read their minds, and do what he pleased with their bodies. But never with an agent. Never his own. And never so many.

“You know, I don’t follow the stars the way the rest of you do. All this nonsense about reading the sky, being children of the stars, destiny and fate . . . it all smacks of desperation, you know?”

I did, but I wasn’t going to agree with him.

“Tekla and her ilk did get one thing right, though. You must bide your time. Wait for the slim opening where all that you’ve worked for builds to the point where ‘fate’ must give way to force. If you can sense it, recognize it, you can seize it.”

He meant the kairotic moment.

“They missed theirs,” he said, in a voice that warned he wouldn’t do the same.

“Y-you’re going to sacrifice them all?”

“Oh, darling girl. Aren’t you cute . . . excluding yourself from their numbers. But first . . . you’ve got something that belongs to me.” The Tulpa’s smile cut through each side of his face until there was an audible crack, and he finally rose, moving from seated to standing so smoothly it was like a waterfall running up.

Where the hell was Hunter?

“You might not be the Kairos, but there’s no arguing you can do things other agents cannot. I’m speaking of one strength in particular. One vital offensive skill. Do you know what that is?”

“The conduits.” Being able to wield any other agent’s weapon was the greatest offensive weapon I had. It was the only reason I was alive now. I blinked, and the Tulpa’s expression darkened as he saw me make the connection. “Oh my God. You can’t touch the magical weapons.”

I realized then I’d never seen him with one. He could resist them, but he couldn’t use one. In effect, my greatest strength was his greatest weakness.

Not that it did me a lot of good just now, I thought, watching his black eyes begin to glow.

“That’s my power that lives inside of you.”

I jerked my head. “No . . . conduits are made for specific individuals. They’re like limbs. They speak to an agent, react to their—” To their soul, I realized.

The Tulpa growled, cutting me off. “I obviously gave it away in siring you. And now I want it back.”

And ropy, veined muscles popped onto his thighbones as he leaped from the pedestal. The ground shook when he landed, and knifelike talons popped from his shoes, nail beds growing as he began walking my way.

“Stay back,” I said, raising my bow and arrow, pointing it at his chest, suddenly bulging with gray muscle.

“No.” He strode across shattered Bohemian crystal, barefooted.

I knew I shouldn’t shoot him. I knew that every ounce of energy spent countering him was absorbed for himself. Yet I couldn’t just let him keep coming.

So I frowned and envisioned his features shifting on his face. I’d done it before in the desert. His impermeability was a weakness. I could move things on his body, confuse him, use it against him.

He paused, face twitching, and I knew he felt what I was doing. He gave me a razored smile. “Oh, that’s right. I guess I don’t need this anymore.”

And he brushed his hands over his head like he was smoothing back his hair. Instead he came away with clumps of it, which dropped wetly to the floor. The entire scalp fell with the next swipe, and he flicked away blood until all I was staring at was blackened bone. As he began shedding the rest of his mortal flesh, swiping from neck down, I wondered again what was taking Hunter so long.

Meanwhile the Tulpa continued speaking to me, as if layers of skin, vessels, and muscle were supposed to be piling up around him on the ground. “This is much more comfortable. Especially as I mean to consume you wholly. Thank you for the idea, by the way.”

I hadn’t given him the idea, though I knew where he’d gotten it. I’d caused an agent to die in just that way, his body and power consumed from head to toe by another tulpa. Literally eaten alive.

“Hunter,” I whispered, praying he’d hurry. I was the one in need of a distraction now.

The Tulpa misinterpreted my cry. “Longing for one last kiss? Even after he deserted you? My, aren’t we loyal.” He laughed, sending the scent of graveyard rot to burn the lining from my nose. But even as I gagged, I didn’t cover my face. Instead I lifted my gun and fired it into his heart.

He angled his onyx skull until his neck cracked, and his whole body expanded a foot in circumference.

“Bide your time, silly girl,” he chided darkly. His mortal vocal cords had clearly snapped in his throat because his voice had altered and now resembled nothing so much as ash and smoke. The Tulpa’s ears had long sloughed away, but the canal they’d been hiding in elongated with a straining slide. It sounded like bone being sanded as they moved into honed points.

“You shot too soon and now look what happened . . .”

I fired again, shutting him up, then pulled my saber free as I lunged. The moment for biding my time was through. Thrusting, I harpooned him like a whale. I would go through him. I would kill him. I was of him. I was the one.

He cried out, more surprised than hurt, then again as I fired the gun at the old saber’s hilt. I used all the strength I had to yank, which was also a surprise, as he knew nothing about my returned powers.

Yet he was a fast learner. He let loose a war cry that rippled outward with his rapidly expanding body. Sweating, I swiped with my regular blade, slicing through his newly knit gray skin like shears through silk. He yanked away, still harpooned, and grabbed at his arm. For a moment he looked like he was going to backhand me. Instead he smiled.

And grew another two feet in circumference.

That’s when the blast hit, rocking thirteen walls. Gaming tables shuddered while the floor thundered, and a few of the agents trapped in the animist masks fell to their sides like chess pawns and didn’t get up. The Tulpa’s gaze arrowed up and he stared, momentarily stunned, trying to put together the impossible. It finally dawned: there was one agent he hadn’t managed to mask. One not trapped at the base of a stupa, choking on his own soul. One who not only hadn’t abandoned me, but was somewhere at the top of this building, destroying the Tulpa’s most prized room, along with his greatest shot at ruling dual realms.

The Tulpa’s eyes flared, flaming red from upper lid to lower. I jerked back, and though I imagined a wall—a shield, a barrier between us—it was too late. His arm shot out, and my nose broke under the weight of his great palm. My cry was muffled and I immediately began choking on rancid flesh and my own blood. I still felt the talons break the skin at the back of my skull. Then he dragged me across shattered crystal by my face, out of the casino.

I flailed as he raced faster, whipping corners so quickly my body careened into walls. My organs took the brunt of the blows—walls, corners . . . even the ceiling as he fled up. Up, into the heights of Valhalla. Up to see what remained of his own sacred hope.

Up into the apex of the world’s largest stupa.

27

I registered only movement. That and pain, though the latter finally overtook all else. I realized with a start that I was looking forward to the salt-and-pepper vision that meant I was blacking out. Here was death, literally staring me in the face, my fate written clearly in the stars, and I was flinching . . . at least until I was thrown to the ground.

My vision quickly cleared, but I moaned as my body burst to life with new aches. I couldn’t construct a shield now if my life depended on it, a thought that made me laugh . . . and spatter blood.

“Jo?”

I stopped laughing.

Squinting, I lifted my head and sucked in enough oxygen for me to again make the mental connection, stupa.

Yet the white marble staircase hadn’t been blackened by an explosion the first time I’d seen it, and the sunken room wasn’t littered with the cracked remnants of faux Roman pillars. I noted a face staring at me in a wide-mouthed scream, and recognized it as an animist mask—also missing from this room upon my first foray. There were a half-dozen others scattered about, some on fire. Screams lingered like specters in the air, both there and not, though that could have just been my mind playing tricks on me. And they could have easily been mine.

Because there was one other thing that hadn’t been here on that first near-death experience, and I squeezed my eyes shut, thinking that I must be hallucinating now. Hunter, after all, was too smart to remain behind after he’d destroyed the Tulpa’s greatest treasure. Too smart to face off against someone with fire dancing in their pupils and smoke pouring from a fang-studded mouth.

So why the hell was he standing across from me, feet planted atop another crumbling staircase, with the wall blown out behind him like a gaping jaw to reveal the bright city below?

“I detonated the first bomb from the camera room,” he explained simply, which meant he’d been watching the showdown in the casino via the security system. That’s why he hadn’t left. He’d seen me losing, about to die. Hunter shrugged a shoulder as I made a strangled sound, dark gaze fixed on the Tulpa. “But I thought I’d wait for you to get here before detonating the second.”

The Tulpa sneered. “By all means . . . fight me.”

Hunter’s whip, held in his right hand, flicked like an irritated tail. I wanted to scream for him to run, to exit the blasted hole behind him, climb from the ledge, and flee into the night. But Hunter wasn’t going anywhere. “No. You only grow stronger when someone acts out of hate or dissension or chaos. You’ll kill us if we try to fight.”

“I’m going to kill you anyway.”

“Your choice. But then you’ll never know where the Serpent Bearer is.”

The Tulpa’s focus homed in on him like a North Korean missile.

“It doesn’t require soul energy for entry into Midheaven either. Perfect for your needs, eh?” Then Hunter tilted his head consideringly. “Mind, if anything were to happen to your daughter, whom I love, I’d just push this button here—”

“Stop!” A sound like grinding rusted gears rose in the air. The Tulpa, growling. But there was a hiccup in the vibration, and after another moment, he took a tentative step my way. He held up a claw—one, I noted, that was missing two digits. “You’re right. I need her.”

Hunter inclined his head. “Yes.”

“But I don’t need you.” The monster moved, blurred, and knocked the detonator from his hand in one swipe. But while I still stared at the spot the Tulpa used to be, Hunter’s whip unfurled with a sharp crack to wrap around the creature’s neck. Barbs sank into flesh, and black blood welled. Hunter gave a tremendous yank.

Pissed, and instantly larger, the Tulpa yanked back.

Hurtling forward as if pulled by a speedboat, Hunter dive-bombed headfirst into the rubble of marble. The Tulpa reached up and gave another jerk on the whip, causing Hunter to bounce like a watercraft over choppy waves. He finally skidded to a halt at the Tulpa’s taloned toes.

This time I could see it coming. I cried out, too late, as the beast thrust those sharp talons into Hunter’s throat, crushing his voice box, cutting his jugular. Blood fountained and I screamed again. And then, before I could take another breath, the Tulpa lifted one of the burning animist masks from the floor and jammed it on Hunter’s face.

Hunter flailed, grabbing at the mask’s edges. His pained cry was muffled as he fought for breath, but then he abruptly stiffened and fell still. I yelled his name, knowing that as still as he was, his lungs continued to fight for air, and his heart beat in rapid panic. But this was an animist’s mask, greedy for a man’s soul, and it would remain attached to Hunter’s face for as long as the Tulpa wished it.

“You are not going to stop me from ruling as I’m meant to—every plane, every existence, every person,” the Tulpa said, bending to lift the detonator in one giant claw.

All I saw were Hunter’s vocal cords straining in his neck.

Unless I could stop it, I thought, panic snapping me into focus. It coalesced beneath my skin, and my eyes fired red. I thought of another stupa I’d blown up, no detonator needed. I might not know how to create the world as I wanted it, but I could damned well create fire.

Harnessing my anger was easy now that I knew how to do it. The warming light whipped to life via the glyph on my chest, so strongly it burned even me. I released it like a bullet and it caught the Tulpa as he was turning. He staggered, burning, and I gathered more sparks into my core. He dodged the second firebomb, which somersaulted into the jagged concrete behind him. A sound like thunder rolled over the room, and then more of the ceiling fell, revealing the sky.

I stumbled in the wake of the destruction but still managed to yank the mask from Hunter’s face. He took one great breath, but stayed still and unconscious. Yet the time inside the mask had been an unexpected blessing. It’d kept him from bleeding out and had given his body a small amount of time to heal. He wouldn’t die . . . not yet, anyway.

“What was that?” The Tulpa faced me full-on now, spiked shoulders hunched, head lowered like a bull.

Tucking the mask into my shirt at the small of my back so he couldn’t use it against Hunter again, I lifted my head from my crouch. “The power to create,” I said smugly, rising. “The one you’ll never possess.”

Yet, too late, I saw that he was also ringed in red, like a coal not yet banked. My heated power, I realized, was suddenly a part of him. He’d absorbed it, just like he absorbed all the energy that fought to destroy him.

Seeing this realization cross my face, he smiled. “Fire is destruction, dear. It’s chaos and ruin. A fascinating ability, true . . . but where the fuck do you think you get it?”

I sagged where I stood.

The Tulpa grinned. “I’m going to hang your boyfriend on my fucking wall.”

He lunged, but not for Hunter, and that’s what caught me off-balance. I reached for my holstered knife, but he was fast, and the crown of his spear-tipped head raked against the ceiling as he whipped around. I suddenly found myself dangling out above the airy void. The world swirled and dipped in front of me, and I screamed.

“This could have all been yours,” he called, moving his monstrous head from side to side. Wind whipped against me as my feet dangled over the hard, glittering pool of my hometown. “You never needed the power to create the world. I would have given it to you.”

But I shook my head too. Nobody could give you that. He stilled me with a violent jerk. “See, that’s your stubborn streak. You get it from your fucking mother. Ironically, you’re going to end up just like your sister because of it. The same outcome you fought off all those months ago.” Then he laughed. “It was all for nothing, Joanna.”

Cackling, he extended his reach, and I found myself lacking any support but the talons raking the soft flesh of my shoulders. I thought of everything I’d been though, from my mother’s desertion a decade earlier, the first attack by Joaquin just before that . . . and then a series of shocks: Ajax, Butch—the one who’d killed my sister—then Warren, who turned me into her. My childhood love rediscovered, before I’d been forced to let him go forever. It all played like a film reel in my mind, right up to present where I’d entered Midheaven, desperate to save Hunter, fighting all the way. Fighting so damned much.

A tear slipped from my eye.

The Tulpa laughed harder. Laughed, and moved one talon to my neck and squeezed. The shining whole of the Vegas valley blurred. It felt like my brain was swelling, blood vessels bursting to send geysers of color careening behind my eyelids.

“You know,” he said conversationally. “I don’t think I need that power after all. I mean, sure you can handle any weapon. But look where it’s gotten you.”

And he waved good-bye.

I reacted instinctively, grabbing and clinging to whatever I could . . . which happened to be him. He laughed again, a sound that tore at the sky, and I found myself pleading to the silent heavens. There was no reply.

I darted a glance down at the Strip’s cascading light, pouring over the valley like a river, and gripped him tighter. Even now my will to live—or my mother’s famed stubbornness—was so great I would cling to my greatest enemy. The irony wasn’t lost on the Tulpa. He raised his arms, muscles bulging like sandbags, and pulled me so close my nose touched his.

“Let go, dear,” he said softly, like he was giving me good, fatherly advice. “It’ll be over quickly that way. And just think what a relief it’ll be to finally stop fighting.”

I winced because he’d come so close to my own thoughts. But when I didn’t move, he reached over with his free hand and began prying my fingers, one by one, from his own. Whimpering, I looked straight up into the sky.

Maybe it was the new knowledge that thirteen constellations stared back at me. Maybe that I was composed of the same worldstuff as they, or maybe something up there had heard my prayers. Because I understood then, without even having to think. It was as clear as the dark matter that lay sprawled between the stars. All that blank space. All that nothing, I thought, returning my gaze to the Tulpa’s soulless eyes. Just waiting to be filled by someone with the power to create.

“Supernova . . .” I choked, and his brows pulled down like darts. What was it Tekla had said? When a star goes supernova, it becomes the thing it was meant to be all along.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

He’d know if he had spent a little more time wishing upon stars. Like Tekla, who loved the Universe’s mysteries. Like Vanessa, who’d admired the hard science behind it. Like the rest of us, who had atoms winging through our bodies—oxygen moving through lungs, calcium in bones, iron in hemoglobin—all of it birthed by supernovae . . . stars that’d burned out long ago.

“Just that we are all children of the stars.”

All of us, that was, except the Tulpa.

My gaze met his, and I had the satisfaction of seeing his eyes widen just before I pulled the mask from behind me. I slapped it on his face, bracing it at the edges, careful to hold it, and not him. Then I began moving things with my mind.

Rearranging the world as I knew it.

Creating the world as I wanted it to be.

There was no anger or heat to fuel the effort. No Gotcha now! or Die, motherfucker! to emphasize my victory. I didn’t beat against his will because there was, very simply, nothing there to beat against. He was right. I had to give up. Why spend energy on something that wasn’t there? This imagined entity had only grown into a monster because he’d been given so much care and thought in this world. His power had been cultivated by his followers, lionized in the manuals, and feared by his enemies. That’s what had allowed him to take on a life of his own. Or its own.

But people could change their minds in an instant.

I could change mine.

There was a rattle, like teeth chattering, and the Tulpa’s body began to shake. The sound reminded me of Solange’s chimera, but I just tightened my grip.

A gust of wind swiped at me, testing, while another licked at me from behind. Both were ripe with the rot of the Tulpa’s stewed breath, but I grounded myself in my mind, and thought of the Pythagoreans, and the way they’d first named the elements: air, fire, earth, water . . . and the fifth essence: quintessence. Ether.

For a moment, there was nothing. Even the wind fell still and silent, no more breeze carrying rot and decay, fouling up the balmy spring night. I stared into the mask, wondering if it could be that easy, if he could be gone—not without a fight, but after so much of it—leaving nothing but silence in his wake.

Then the most famous boulevard in the world—carved into the desert with brazenness and neon—shifted. The soldier-straight row of streetlamps marking its presence on the valley floor disappeared first, as completely as a seamstress’s cut cloth falling away. Darkness billowed in its wake.

The shredding continued with the largest and most famous hotels winking out one by one, stripping away all the chutzpah and glamour and neon from the city, before attacking the smaller business and clear-glowing streetlights crisscrossing them. My mouth fell open as the valley’s entire middle was swept into darkness.

It looked like a giant sinkhole had sprouted up in the Mojave. I could practically hear the televangelists now, squalling and judging, manufacturing emotion from the pulpit; pointing fingers and railing about retribution for our city’s wicked ways. Then the electricity began failing in the residential areas, the darkness taking large bites out of the grid, and I remembered that the Tulpa’s wicked ways included hiding under the veil of total darkness.

He could only manifest in a complete void. That was how he overrode a viewer’s expectation, and that’s what he was creating. A vacuum so great he could create himself anew. Bigger and better too, I thought, suddenly alarmed. Because he was using the energy of the most electrically charged city in the world to do it.

Shit.

A serrated chuckle sawed at the air.

The headlights on the cars disappeared next, and the sound of tires screeching and metal twisting popped throughout the shadow-pocked valley. Confusion rang in the distance, alarmed shouts of chaos feeding the energy the Tulpa was already stealing away.

The muscles in his arms went rigid, cramping, knotting into such an elongated moment of paralysis that I grew hopeful. Then they bulged, ropy veins popping on his thick gray neck, rising so that I only had a moment before the mask on his face splintered, and exploded.

I scrambled for purchase, slipping from his arms, falling to his waist, nails raking flesh that felt like a sheet fitted over concrete. Breathing hard, once again dangling, I jolted when the Tulpa spoke again.

“It takes tremendous energy to create light, Joanna,” he said, his voice razored and shredded. “But absolutely zero energy to create darkness.”

And darkness suddenly loomed everywhere. The whole of the Universe bore down on my hometown, so dense with cosmic gravity I felt I could take a bite out of it. It was a gorgeous collision of dark matter and burning light, alien galaxies pressing in on every side. The air was frothy with particles, the stars bright as candles, and everything was expanding, streaking, burning up, and being reborn at the same time.

The sky was the most alive thing I’d ever seen in my life.

Of course I’d never seen the constellations from the center of my bright hometown before—there’d always been too much neon to contend for people’s attention—so the soaring heavens also felt misplaced and strange, like I’d just woken to find a foreign language tumbling from my tongue.

A soft chuckle began to shake the Tulpa’s body, and I lowered my gaze from the stars. He laughed, shaking harder, and as I gazed up, a bright tear fell from the corner of one black eye, rolling down his face like candlelight. Suddenly he couldn’t hold it in any longer and he snorted, and let out a throaty roar. Neon and gas, electricity and fire—everything stolen from the city was in that laugh.

I cringed, turning my face down, feeling my hair singe, as his face turned into a white ball of light. There was no way to get my bearings, no chance of catching sight of my companions in the sky. Not the constellations, the dark matter in between. Not the stars threatening at any instant to go supernova.

I froze.

Good things, Vanessa had told me, can come from something that looks like total destruction.

I let the Tulpa laugh, keeping my eyes shut.

Fire, I thought, and envisioned a gorgeous, glowing natural disaster in front of me—an explosion of light, splintering and breaking up just as the mask had.

The laughter cut off in a jagged tear. Then came the first crack of heat lightning. The hair on my head and arms stood on end, but I kept my eyes shut, and when the next crash sounded, I envisioned bone crushing like nuts in a cracker.

Strong arms grabbed at me, then faltered. I fell, my chin catching on the jagged floor of the stupa, before I slid over the edge. Grabbing blindly, I almost jerked away when I caught hold of a giant talon. Instead I reached up with both hands and held tight. I didn’t dare risk opening my eyes. Seeing the Tulpa, even fallen, even with cracked bones, would ruin my vision of total destruction, so I imagined the rubble of the stupa piled on that body, pulverizing those broken bones down into dust.

No. Earth, I thought, and a grinding sound caused the building to shudder.

Suddenly the wind started up again, attacking from the void at my back, coming from nowhere, growling in my ear. It whipped my body side to side, circling for attack. Fine, I thought, and located the place inside me where all my lost powers had once been. Then I took that emptiness and imagined that same vast emptiness in the world. Air.

I couldn’t help but think that this was the world Olivia should have been born into, one empty of the evil that’d stalked me from birth. It should have been my birthright as well, but more than that, I wanted that empty space for my unborn daughter. So when rain blasted me next, moving in like a tsunami, I didn’t hesitate. I envisioned it pummeling that bone dust, breaking it down even further into molecules and atoms that disappeared, reclaimed by the night. Water . . . whisking it away.

Silence. Finally, peaceful and total silence. I bit my lip, opened my eyes . . . and found nothing. No Tulpa, and that was good. But no stupa either. No Valhalla. No Vegas. Only the stars above, swollen, gorging on darkness, feasting on the night. The Universe had reclaimed all its elements—fire, earth, air, water—before sneaking away like a thief, disappearing back into the Pythagorean night.

Well, not all the elements, silly.

I swear, I thought, smiling. My sister’s voice popped up at the strangest time.

“Ether,” I said aloud. Creation.

The world as it should have been without a being who was evil personified, imagined into existence. So many of our greatest fears, I thought, existed simply in our own minds.

And with that, Vegas roared back to life. I swayed, hanging from my jagged concrete perch, the neon puckering and pulsing below, like it was blowing kisses my way. As the light returned to the city in square blocks, it felt like the world was swirling. I looked up just in time to see the last of the deep galaxies wink at me, and then disappear as the city flared.

How awesome, I thought, as my purchase began to slip. How absolutely poetic that I got to see my beloved hometown one last time before I died.

28

I was locked at my armpits, arms extended as I searched wildly with my feet for something to stem from or reach. But I’d been held up by a talon that had been pulverized into nothingness, something I wished I’d thought of before.

I let loose a maniacal laugh as I slid to my elbows, feet dangling, gravity pulling me down. I tried to pull myself up, but succeeded only in sliding further. I caught the building’s edge with my palms, but one slipped and I flailed.

Then a strong hand encircled my wrist, gripping tight. Gasping, I looked up, expecting claws.

Instead, Hunter’s face appeared above me. “Told you we should have run for our lives.”

“Cute,” I gasped.

He pulled me up in one motion, and I lost myself for so long in his arms that when I looked up again it felt like an arrival. I smiled against his shoulder. Well, why not? Hadn’t I been working my way to him—to a moment of safety with him—all along?

The stupa—a mere room now, and a destroyed one at that—was bleary-edged this far up from the city, and its distance from that frenetic bacchanal below made it appear bathed in blue ash. One corner of my mouth lifted tiredly. I hoped they were partying hard, because the city really did have reason to celebrate tonight.

“You dropped something,” Hunter said, voice rasping as he finally pulled back. He raised his hand, and to my surprise I saw he held the gem I’d carried in my pocket ever since Solange had loosed it from her sky, the one she’d used to control him with. I swallowed hard, feeling his eyes on me.

“You said before that lovers were autonomous,” I reminded him. “You said that no one could ever really be a part of you.” Then, as if an afterthought, I added, “Well, except a child . . . which you likened to an earthquake.”

“I know. And yet I can’t help wish it otherwise.”

I took the gem, closing it in my fist to hide the sudden tremor in my hands. Then I swallowed hard and sighed. “We’ll never have a fairy-tale life. You know that, right?”

A wry laugh escaped him, and he gestured to the gaping hole in the wall. “I think that’s been fairly well established.”

I shook my head, utterly serious, cutting out his laughter. He needed to hear me on this. “You don’t understand. I will not love you gently, Hunter.”

“No?” The honeyed softness in his gaze hardened. After a moment, I realized it was done in challenge. “Then how will you love me, Jo?”

Recklessly, I thought, holding that steady gaze. With a rampaging heart, I decided, narrowing my own eyes. “Like a bull loves red.”

“Well,” he whispered, “I knew that as soon as you came after me. And kept coming.” He pulled me back to the edge, where room met sky, and sat down with his feet dangling over the side. Patting a narrow spot next to him, he smiled up at me. I smiled back . . . and took a seat on his lap. Utterly vulnerable.

Wrapping me tight in his arms, he whispered in my ear. “I told you a long time ago. You don’t have to be alone.”

I nodded and leaned back into him. He’d said I needed an ally. Someone who knew all my secrets, my Shadow side, and who would stand beside me anyway. I cocked my head, and looked back at him now. “You never looked at me as a weapon or a pawn, you know that? Not like Warren or the Tulpa or any of those who would use me to advance their troop, their cause.”

He’d never even seen me as a potential Shadow, I thought now. Or merely an agent of Light.

“No.”

And while the power of the aureole was what had connected us before, and the miracle of our child connected us now, he had known me—somehow recognized me—seen me. Though all my faults had been laid out before him like a minefield, he’d loved me from the first. And how could I have given that up without a fight? How could I give up the truest sort of magic of all? What would have happened to me if I’d just released Hunter to another woman and another world?

What would become of me if I was never truly seen again?

“So now I have a warning for you,” he said softly, seeing me come to this realization, the understanding that he’d loved me all along. “I plan on taking up a lot of room in your life.”

“I’ll give you plenty.”

He quirked a brow. “Well, I tend to sprawl.”

“I know,” I answered wryly, and turned back to face the city.

“What, no fight?” He cupped my chin, and looking at me, raised a brow.

I dropped a light kiss on his cheek. “Too tired, I guess.”

“Guess there’s nothing left for me to conquer or plunder, then,” he said, with a sigh.

“I didn’t say that,” I muttered, fighting back a smile. “Though . . . there is one last little thing you need to accept about life with me.”

He tilted his head, appropriately wary. Holding his gaze, hard, I looked into those liquid eyes, and leaned forward. Whispering, I said, “Baby? You’re gonna need to change your attitude about earthquakes.”

I leaned back, and after a stunned moment, we both smiled.

29

The jangle of a new cowbell on the comic book shop door announced our arrival, and all heads turned.

“Hello, earthlings,” I said, earning a familiar grumble that had some inferior emotion singing inside me. Hunter nudged me disapprovingly—he was of the mind that even mutant children who turned into rubberized monsters should be treated with the same respect afforded regular human beings—but he did so on the way to putting his arm around my waist, so I didn’t mind.

The shop was achingly bright in the late morning sun, though after the Tulpa had tried to pull a veil over the world the previous night, it was welcome. The obsessively ordered comics and manga titles popped with almost unnatural vividness, and the figurines and collectibles, hunched and ready for battle, looked more than ever like they were about to leap from their shelves. It was probably just my eyes. I was getting used to my returned strength, and had spent the previous hour feigning ignorance to a befuddled hotel clerk about a door I’d accidentally whipped from its hinges.

Or maybe everything just looked brighter when there were no Shadows about. They’d reportedly fled, scattering like cockroaches once the invisible masks had dissolved with the demise of the Tulpa. The eleven former members of the Shadow Zodiac were now rogue agents, independents . . . grays, though clearly none was welcome with Carlos and company. So for the foreseeable future, the valley would be scrubbed clean of malevolent beings intent on influencing mortal actions . . . though the situation was temporary.

Shadows, by nature, were ever-encroaching.

I located Douglas in his usual station at the back of the shop and gave him a smug smile while secretly hoping he toppled over as he balanced on the back two legs of his chair. It wasn’t that I was here to gloat—okay, maybe a little—but we were primarily here for back issues. Hunter wanted to see what had happened while he was away. I also wanted to pump Zane for a little more information on the magic of the aureole. I hadn’t forgotten about the memory Hunter and I had shared, the one where he’d joyfully witnessed the birth of his daughter in this world. Was it possible that the aureole operated with the same disregard of time as Midheaven? That it might actually show visions of the future as well as memories of the past?

Had I possibly seen Hunter celebrating the birth of our child all the way back on the first occasion we’d touched and kissed?

I was jolted from my speculation when Carl Kenyon, geek extraordinaire, leaped from the wall ladder where he’d been arranging DVDs and marched toward me, finger pointed angrily.

“What the hell have you done?” he yelled, coming to a stop in front of me. His blue-tipped hair was ruffled and had lost some of its spikiness, and the circles under his eyes rivaled those of an embattled politician. He flicked his gaze Hunter’s way. “Oh, hey Lorenzo.”

“Good to see you again too, Carl,” Hunter said wryly.

Li made up for Carl’s indifference by dropping the Kim Harrison graphic novel she’d been reading, and running to wrap herself around his leg. All the boys cringed as she squealed. “You made it, you made it! I knew you would! And you saved him, my heroine . . . and my hero. Yay.”

Douglas made a gagging noise from the back of the store.

“Yeah, yeah,” Carl pushed both Li and the acts of heroism aside. He gazed into my face as if haunted. “But something else happened too. Something big. There’s been a shift.”

“It’s her!” yelled Douglas. “She fucked up some cosmic law again! Broke a changeling or a safe zone or a world or something.”

“Why ya gotta bring up past mistakes?” Li whirled in my defense.

I put an arm on her shoulder. “Yeah, Douglas. I don’t keep mentioning your birth.”

Carl snapped ink-stained fingers in my face to regain my attention. “Did you cause that big power outage last night?”

“Why, did I mess up your connection to Second Life?”

“Check the attitude or I’ll draw you with a harelip,” he said, stalking away. “Besides, it’s not like we won’t find out soon enough.”

“True. But the energy provided by your musings? Your wondering? As you speak and dream and think of us until then? Pure power.”

“I’m not a frackin’ battery!” Douglas yelled, tipping his chair.

“Shuddup, Duracell,” I said as he picked himself up. Li giggled.

“Jo,” Hunter chided.

I smiled at him. I was just having a little fun. Douglas wasn’t necessarily a bad egg. Sure, he rooted for evil from behind the safety of his gaming figures, but he’d eventually outgrow this, moving on to other horrors like puberty and high school. Soon he’d forget about ever believing in supervillains and paranormal battles. Which meant he’d also forget about this conversation. So what was the harm?

“Fine,” I said, then looked questioningly back at Carl, now behind the register. “Zane?”

Pushing with his palms, he lifted himself onto a glass case of collectible cards. “Why do you want him?”

I’d crossed the room, leaped the counter, and was leaning over him before he could blink. “Why won’t you get him?”

It was the third time he’d refused to do so. Call me paranoid, but I was getting suspicious.

Without blinking, Carl stuck out his index finger, poked my shoulder, and pushed me away. “Back off, Archer.”

“Oh.” Hunter, suddenly counter-side, sounded surprised.

I looked at him. “What?”

“I see.”

“What?” I looked at Carl, then back to Hunter. “What do you see?”

“Zane’s gone, isn’t he?”

The blood drained from my head, and I took another step back. “Gone?”

Hunter sighed, nodding. “Carl is the new record keeper.”

I whipped my head around to gaze at Carl, horrified. He shrugged a shoulder. I looked down at Li, who’d resumed her monkey cling on Hunter. “And you didn’t tell me?”

“Hey, if I’m on a need-to-know basis, so are you.”

“Pow-ned!” Douglas fist-pumped at the back of the room, and fell off his chair again.

Hunter tilted his head at Carl. “So why are you asking what happened if you can already see it in your mind?”

As record keeper, he now processed and translated the storylines that inevitably ended up on the shelves, and he knew what happened almost immediately.

“Because it’s different this time,” he said, jerking his head like a horse shaking off flies. “I mean, it’s out there—in the world, the Universe, the aetheric—because the actions have already been taken. The manual is essentially already created, but it’s fuzzy in my brain. Like something’s still unresolved. It’s like nothing I’ve ever felt before.”

I was still trying to figure out how the hell he’d gone from geeky preteen penciler to the translator of all things paranormal. “I thought you had to agree to accept the position,” I interrupted, crossing my arms.

And who in their right mind would? The record keeper couldn’t leave the building. Ever. He’d age mentally, but remain in the body of a young man until someone else deigned to take over the role. His family, friends, and peers in geekdom would move on with their lives. Without him. In short, he was stuck in this city, this building, this spot, forever. “Didn’t you hear all the obligations and restrictions?”

Carl laughed a bit, then shrugged. “Don’t forget the abilities.”

“So you accepted it willingly?” I sagged against the opposite case. “But what about your life, Carl?”

“Hey, I’ve had it pretty good here so far,” he said quickly, defensively. “Food delivery. Free Internet access. All the comics I can read, surrounded by my friends every day. Don’t worry, I’ll keep growing older until I hit an age that makes me look like the shop’s owner, but beyond that? I’m forever young.”

He said it like that was a good thing, but announced it like he was selling something. In short? He sounded like a typical twelve-year-old.

I pushed myself up so I was sitting on the case across from him, something Zane would have expressly forbidden. “But what about other experiences? What about love?”

He wrinkled his nose. “Hey, just because you’re riding the bony pony again doesn’t mean everyone else wants to visit the petting zoo.”

Next to me, Hunter squeezed the bridge of his nose.

“Besides, we’ve got more important things to do, like discovering the location of the original manual and unraveling the mystery behind the Zodiac’s mythos. Knowledge is power, right? And we mean to rule the world.” He echoed Douglas’s pitiful fist pump . . . though without falling over.

I only stared back, unsure how to tell him that without love it would all be for nothing.

“What about your family?”

His gaze darted away at that, and he ran a hand through his hair. “Look, done is done, Archer, okay? Besides, this shop isn’t just a safe zone for agents, get what I’m saying?”

I remained silent for a moment, searching his face. When it only hardened further, I nodded. “Sure, Carl. Sure I do.”

Hunter leaned atop the middle of the U-shaped counter, another infraction under the last record keeper’s watch. “So what happened with Zane?”

“Man, it was freaky,” Carl’s eyes bugged in his skull. “As soon as we shook hands, sealing the transfer of power from him to me and ensuring the primeval laws of the Universe would be revealed in my mind”—I looked at Hunter and rolled my eyes—“he turned to dust. Poof!”

“Instantly,” Li added, nodding her head. I frowned. Should it bother me that she’d been here and wasn’t more disturbed by what had happened? Staring back into my face, she just blinked and gave me a dimpled grin.

Carl hopped from the counter and leaned back on his elbows. “Obviously if Zane had followed his natural life’s progression he’d be long dead by now.”

“So what’dya do with him? I mean, his family is clearly gone.”

“What do you think?” he said, looking at me like I was the freak. “We Hoover-ed his ass up and gave him a proper tribute.”

Then it hadn’t been him sleeping upstairs during Felix’s memorial. “So where is he now?”

“His ashes?” Carl asked, and I nodded. “You’re sitting on him.”

I leaped from the countertop.

“Just kidding.” Carl grinned as I joined Hunter’s side, then waved his hand through the air. “Li took him to her sister who took her with some friends who were going on a class trip to Cancun.”

“Did they have to buy an extra seat?”

“Nah.” Carl pulled a pad of paper from under the register and began doodling. “Stuck him in her makeup bag. Zane wouldn’t have cared, though. As long as he got there. He always talked about visiting another country. He was sick of these four walls. Called them his prison.”

“And you don’t think you’re going to feel the same way in a few years?” Hunter asked softly.

“Maybe. Within time.” Carl shrugged in the blissful fashion of the totally inexperienced. “Can’t say for sure, but until then? I got the power.”

Li left Hunter’s side long enough to give Carl a righteous high five, and he smugly jerked his chin at me. “So what about you? What’s your next move? Return to your former troop and battle for the Light? Remain with the grays and lead that troop to ultimate victory over all?”

“Funny you should ask, Carl. I was just going to see if Jo wanted to discuss her options over a long candlelit dinner.”

I looked at Hunter blankly. “You were?”

He looked back. “I don’t believe we’ve been on a proper date yet.”

Frowning, I thought about that. “The last date I had tried to kill me.”

“I can assure you the events will be different . . . though the ending will be the same.”

I raised my brows. “I’ll still end up fighting to the death?”

“You’ll still end up with me.”

Carl groaned behind the counter, not looking up. “I can’t believe I have to write this shit.”

“Yeah,” yelled Douglas, all four chair legs firmly planted on the ground. “Can you guys do your mating dance elsewhere? We have serious Zodiac business to attend to here.”

I looked at Hunter, who added a shrug to his smile. “I don’t know about you, but I’d rather dance.”

A matching smile bloomed on my face and, pulling him to the door, I kissed him. I could fill him in on the back issues myself later, preferably somewhere alone. As for the future, and anything the aureole might have to reveal about it? I decided I could wait and see for myself.

“Hey!” Carl called out to us just as Hunter reached for the handle. We turned. “Will one of you at least give me a hint as to what comes next? I’d like to get a head start on the next issue. These voices are burning a hole in my mind, man.”

“Sorry, Carl.” I shrugged. “I really don’t know what I’m going to do.”

Tekla had offered me back my position as Archer of Light. Carlos had allowed the same for the grays.

Carl threw down his pencil. “Fine, then what about you, Hunter? I mean, you’re returning as weapons master, right? You’re going to make some badass new conduit for her? ’Cause as the Kairos she’s going to need something representative of her supreme powers, like a lightning bolt or some shit like that.”

“I’ll get right on that.”

Snorting, I gave Carl a backward wave. “I’m okay with my bow and arrow for now.”

But with Hunter’s hand on the small of my back, and his gaze warm on my face, I suddenly realized I had other weaponry now. Forget a troop, I had a partner. Someone I trusted to protect me, and who trusted me to do the same.

And the child we’d created between us, I decided. That was my armament too. This little person, this being that I was supposed to nurture and protect, was, in some ways, the unlikely protector of me. Already she was making me choose things I otherwise wouldn’t, defining my life by her very existence. Defining too what my life was not. Or what it wasn’t any longer.

Which troop will you join?

I reached into my pocket and flipped one of the soul chips between my fingers.

Freedom for all arises from the Serpent Bearer.

I thought about that, and of the fixed stars ever looming overhead, their stillness an illusion. Right now the earth was roaring around the sun. The planets were flinging themselves madly on their hinges. The Milky Way rotating like some great wave always on the verge of cresting. As we talked about gray and Light, life and death, the Universe continued to expand above and around us, growing infinitely larger, bloated with endless choice.

I glanced back at Carl and Li and Douglas, and the five other preteens peopling the shop, and knew that even though the months and years would roll differently across the landscape of all our lives, the elemental chaos directing them was the same for us all. Our days would be lived out under the same celestial sky, given meaning only by the choices we made . . . or the ones that were chosen for us.

And with that thought, I suddenly knew exactly what I was going to do.

The Fireside Lounge at the Peppermill was not only Las Vegas’s original ultra-kitschy ultra-lounge—what choice was there with the dated seventies decor, retro cocktails, and waitresses outfitted like silver screen sirens?—it was also a known safe zone, though far less geeky than the preadolescent stronghold, Master Comics. So it was there that I asked the two people I considered the valley’s reigning troop leaders to meet me. I knew neither Tekla nor Carlos would agree to do so outside the safety of those walls. The Light and gray might be able to trust each other in time, but for now, Tekla and Carlos only agreed to meet because each considered me the rightful leader of their respective troops.

“I have something for you,” I told Carlos, since he’d arrived first, again demonstrating his unfailing trust in me. Seated across from him, next to a fire pit bubbling with water and flame, I smiled at him, but held out my hand before his expression could grow too hopeful. He was a good man who believed he was doing the right thing, and he’d been kinder to me than most anyone in the supernatural underworld. I didn’t want to mess with his emotions when I already knew I wasn’t choosing gray. His shoulders slumped as he took the chunk of silver I gave to him, and the light from the sunken fire pit caught his wince. Tekla, at my other shoulder, saw it too, and almost smiled. I stopped her cold as well. “And this is for you.”

She gazed down at her portion of the halved silver, squinting and unmoving, like she’d never seen the key before. She had, of course. Along with the lock to Midheaven she’d handed to me. “I don’t understand.”

“It’s the key to unlock Midheaven’s entrances. You have half. Carlos has the other. If either of you ever wants to enter that place again, you’ll have to work together.”

Carlos lifted his chin. “We would never want that world open again.”

“And we’d never work with rogues who might long to,” Tekla said stiffly.

I looked at the steely, small woman, heard her pointed, cold words, and softened toward her anyway. She was also working hard to do the right thing, using the only resources and knowledge she’d ever known. After fighting in tandem to help me bring down the Tulpa, they’d each withdrawn to their side of the philosophical line, knowing that whoever won the Kairos’s loyalty and favor would naturally trump the other.

I felt both Tekla and Carlos were right in their opposing positions . . . yet neither was right for me. “So don’t,” I told her, without emotion. “I don’t care.”

My tone, though absent of malice, didn’t touch her. All she heard was a decision that didn’t include her. The key disappeared into the sleeve of her robe as she folded her arms. Lifting her chin, she said, “Then you’re choosing not to lead the Light.”

For his part, Carlos, ever the believer, held out hope. “She doesn’t want to lead those who’d choose their allies based on lineage instead of deed.”

“I don’t want to lead any troop,” I said, correcting them both.

“But, weda—” he began.

“Joanna—” said Tekla, and I held up a hand to each.

“I’ve fulfilled what you both wished of me,” I said loudly, staring into the blue flames that leaped from the pit of boiling water. “I’ve done what each of you wanted since learning of the Zodiac world. Yet never once have I been asked what I wanted.”

The silence that followed was epic. Tekla only stared at me, as nonplussed as Carlos, who usually had no problem adjusting his point of view. But both their faces were etched with surprise, like it had never even occurred to them to ask. I laughed without humor when I realized that was exactly right. It never had.

“What I want,” I offered, since they still weren’t asking, “is to lead a life. Not two lives as two different people, even sisters. Even mine. Not a hidden identity with one foot in the mortal world and the other in that of the Zodiac. Just one world. One life. Mine.”

This only seemed to perplex them further. “But you brought the sixth sign to fruition,” Tekla pointed out eventually. “You are the Kairos. And there will be more signs yet.”

I didn’t doubt it. “Which is exactly why I have to leave. If I stay, both troops will be waiting for me to take up leadership. Someone will want to use me for their purposes.” I looked at Carlos and Tekla again, who exchanged uncomfortable glances. “Even you two will want me more on one side, yours, than the other. So as long as I’m around, neither of you will fully lead.”

Then I thought of Chandra, her forced deference to me, and for a position I still wasn’t sure I ever really wanted. “People will refuse to take up the star signs that are rightfully theirs.”

Carlos looked down, twirling the key between forefinger and thumb, his good eye narrowing in confusion. I imagined the one behind his eye patch doing the same. “But what about your destiny?”

Biting my lip, I nodded slowly. “I can’t really be the Kairos unless I stop trying to be someone I’m not. In order for any of this past year to have mattered—beyond the immediate circumstances, I mean—I have to simply be myself.”

Because every choice I’d made—from going on a blind date with a poker-wielding maniac to facing down a tulpa instead of fleeing the city—had led me to this moment. A person truly took their stand not while their heels were being pressed to the fire, but in the quiet moments of choice. And whereas it had always felt like my past had been some sort of mountain to climb and overcome, this moment felt like a field, wide and endless and green. For once I was in a place that felt like a newly opened gift.

Who knew such a place could exist after all that strife?

Leaning forward, I placed a hand on each of their knees. They both remained very still, bent slightly forward, as if listening closely. I hoped they were.

“War or peace,” I told them, smiling bittersweetly, “it’s up to you now, but you’ll both be stronger against any Shadows who try to infiltrate the valley if you stick together.”

And then I stood, giving one last glance around at the tables and walls studded with square mirrored tiles, the line of green neon cresting over the room’s similarly mirrored ceiling, the faux foliage sporting bright pink and red blossoms that drooped lazily over red velvet booths.

“I’ll miss you,” I muttered softly, and even I was unsure if I was talking to Vegas, to the grays, or to the Light. Slowly I climbed the small staircase leading from the rounded fire pit, tracing the polished gold railing with my fingerprints, and deftly dodged a cocktail waitress.

“Wait . . . where will you go?”

I looked back at the two troop leaders, united only in their wariness. Then I gave them a closemouthed smile, a little finger wave, and left.

30

Of course, we left under the cover of shadows.

After taking a cab through the all-night drive-through of an In-n-Out Burger, we had the driver drop us at a time-share complex on the Strip’s south side, where we jacked one of the residents’ Olds. The plan was to ditch that at Stateline, grab another, play the lotto, and be cruising through the dry lakebed toward San Bernardino before light began its soft caress of the sky.

Yet there was suddenly one last place I wanted to see before leaving the valley for good, and when I ran it by Hunter, he didn’t even pause before giving the steering wheel a hard jerk. The danger in it was small, after all. The Shadows had fled. The Light and grays wouldn’t harm us, at least not for now. And besides, everyone in the Zodiac world had clearly forgotten about the lonely destination.

Everyone but me.

We turned into the gravel lane of the cemetery’s back entrance, where headstones and unnaturally green lawns yawned along each side of the long road. In the predawn hour, where even the sharpest objects were smeared at the edges, it had the effect of making the narrow road feel like a bridge, as if what was buried underground supported that which lived on top. That was certainly true in my case, I thought, searching out the headstone bearing my name—Joanna Archer—cradled by my sister’s casket beneath.

“I don’t have any flowers.” I stopped short, suddenly panicked as I turned to Hunter. My voice was too loud and I looked around hurriedly, but Hunter kept his gaze trained on me, and put his hands on my arms.

“You’ve got something else in bloom,” he said softly, motioning me forward with a jerk of his head. “I bet she’d love to hear about that.”

I nodded after a moment, put a hand to his cheek in thanks, and continued on alone.

The crunch of my footsteps dropped into silence as I hit the turf, still wet from a late night watering, the arid spring night not yet warm enough to instantly dry the drops. Though I’d only been there once, I arrived at the grave without error, and dropped down next to it before my shaking legs could give out altogether.

“Nerves, I guess,” I told Olivia without preamble, greeting, or introduction. If she couldn’t hear me in whatever passed for the Great Beyond, then it wouldn’t matter. If she could . . . well, she’d already know I was nervous. And probably that I was leaving as well. This good-bye was primarily for me. “The folly of the living, huh?” I muttered.

Then the silence crowded in and I lowered my head. “Do you remember telling me that everyone has their own talents? You told me that yours was keeping us together. You said even though I didn’t trust a lot of things or people in this life, that I could trust that.”

I bit my lip, looking up into the cool, quiet sky. The day after telling me that—taping it as a birthday video message to me, actually—Olivia was dead. Yet she was right. Even now, I felt her with me. And it had nothing to do with the way I looked either. I wasn’t pretending to be her anymore.

I closed my eyes, thankful at least one of us had recognized that strength. She had kept us together. Kept me alive as well. Every day that I looked in the mirror and saw Olivia had been one more day of breath taken in a world that wished me dead.

Yes, I’d been the one to dispatch the Tulpa. Finally. And Tekla had orchestrated Warren’s ousting. Hunter had placed a soul blade between Solange’s vertebrae. But none of it would have been possible if this bright, bubbly, vibrant girl hadn’t lived. What an unlikely savior. What an incredible hero.

“Anyway, I wanted you to know that a day doesn’t go by that I don’t still think of you, and that altering my appearance hasn’t changed that. Leaving this city, our home, won’t either. I just wanted you to know I do trust someone else now. I’m more like you when I’m with him too. More, I don’t know, vulnerable, I guess. Anyway . . . I just wanted you to know.”

The silence moved in again, though it felt less uncomfortable, at least until a familiar tingle worked its way through the earth and up my spine. I looked over to find Hunter’s face pinched as well, and he joined me at Olivia’s grave, literally stepping to my side at the exact moment that shadow and light split the skies. The two warring factions of night and day battling for dominance despite the inevitable end result. Soon dawn would bear down on us like it was giving chase, but for now I jolted as it spread invisibly along the flat, unending terrain, stretching from one side of Vegas to the other, wiping out neon and sharpening all the other edges.

“We should go,” Hunter said softly. I nodded and let him lift me to my feet, though I paused for one glance back at the rose marble headstone.

“By the way, we’re naming her Olivia,” I whispered, smiling slightly. “Though we haven’t decided on a last name yet.”

Whatever kept us safe, I thought, seeing the same answer—and lopsided smile—on Hunter’s face.

“We’re going to let her pick out her own middle name, though,” Hunter added, surprising me—which Olivia would have loved. “After all, a woman should have a choice in deciding who she wants to be.”

For a moment I thought I heard my sister’s laugh.

Then the sun’s rays unraveled like ribbon across the lawn, the new day staking its claim. The far-off mountain ranges sat up against the soft blue sky, pale purples and pinks flowing from their peaks like extravagant robes trailing the valley floor.

It was, I thought, as we climbed back into the stolen car, a gentle arrival to a day that almost hadn’t come. And as we left the city, and the wide desert landscape reached out to claim us, I opened my window and breathed in deeply of the dry air, wanting to believe this day was the first of many good ones before us. Somewhere behind us, in the scooped-out innards of that bright basin, agents of Light crossed realities, grays slipped from the city’s edge, and mortals went on with their lives like true darkness would never touch them.

But no life was without its strain and strife, not if it was fully lived. Opening up to experience, even the good ones like trust and love, was to open yourself up to pain. I suppose the key was to not compound matters by making the rest of it unnecessarily hard. My need for control had certainly done that in the past. So I made a promise to myself in that moment.

I would make a concerted effort to reach for what was soft and good in this world. I’d find a place to settle into, and hold still so that this world’s good and soft could reach back and touch me as well. Olivia would have liked that.

And while there was still the possibility of being this world’s Kairos hanging over my head, I’d decided that having a kairotic nature really meant adapting to life’s ever-changing circumstances. And anyone could be the Kairos, really. They just had to be prepared to be the hero of their own life.

I turned around only once more that day. I wanted to catch the Vegas skyline disappearing behind the rocky granite hillside. Oddly the Valhalla Hotel and Casino, for all its power and prestige, couldn’t even be seen. It simply blended in with all the other gaudy monstrosities that collectively made the city awe-worthy, one more amazing thing in a city that never ceased trying to top itself. Still, I had to smile at the Stratosphere’s obnoxiously jutting spire. I couldn’t help but think of it as an indiscriminate middle finger given to anyone who thought bright, bulging cities shouldn’t exist in the desert. Yet a few miles later Las Vegas had disappeared altogether, scrubbed from existence in the way all tangible things eventually were—though distance, perspective, and time.

I turned back to find Hunter, still tangible, watching me. He gave me that slow, lazy smile that made my heart pulse in a strange, new rhythm, and put a hand on my knee.

“A little breather, baby,” he said, somehow knowing my thoughts. “Vegas will be there, but we need to catch our breaths.”

So we tucked in close and settled in for the ride. If we wanted to, I suddenly realized, we could go on forever. We could stop where we wanted and leave upon whim. We could talk about everything and nothing. We could do things that normal people did—find a place to settle down, make love until our strength gave out, laugh until our throats burned. A world had suddenly opened up before us, but only because we’d left another one behind.

“Every birth and death is written in the stars,” I heard Hunter murmur, the mantra of our past chasing us still. But he smiled at me as he said it, and it didn’t sound as fatalistic as before. Maybe because the dark matter in between—no, the gray matter—was all up for grabs.

I looked out the window again, my man beside me, my baby nestled safely in my belly. I was here because of the choices I’d made, and even in hindsight, I’d choose each of them again. But today I’d take those lessons learned and choose something else entirely. I’d leave this world’s conflict and battle to those who wished for it instead.

Still.

When I spotted a movement at the side of the long, dusty road, one that turned out to be a homeless man stretching with the full length of his long day, I trained my gaze on the side mirror and watched him as we passed. My trigger finger twitched against my rounding belly as he watched us back, and I thought of the crossbow hidden beneath my seat, which I’d also chosen to bring with me.

You never knew. However unlikely, one of those who wished for conflict might someday end up inside my white picket fence. They might mistake happiness for weakness. And in that case the choices made in my past wouldn’t be enough. I might have to revisit my definition of a kairotic nature, and reassert who I really am.

But I’m willing to do it. Anyone tempted to come after me and mine should probably know that if they find me they will also scent an emotion as strong as any elemental fury. They will taste my resolve like a bitter lozenge on the tongue. They will touch the air I breathe and come away with scorched fingertips. Keep coming after that, and I swear, they will also finally see the world as I do—in a whorl of fierce and fiery color. And they will know . . . the hue is always red.

Acknowledgments

It’s with immense gratitude that I end this series as I began it: with Miriam Kriss and Diana Gill at my side. Tom Egner has poured his great creative talents into this series, while Will Hinton and Emily Krump have done much to keep me sane. (I’m not sure they could say the same of me.) Copyeditors Eleanor Mikucki and Peter Weissman have made me better by simply doing their jobs so well, and Pamela Spengler-Jaffee and Christine Maddalena have led every cheer. Finally, my thanks to James, whose innumerable additions to my personal and professional lives must be filed under Intangibles, lest they become another book entirely.

About the Author

The New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of The Scent of Shadows, The Taste of Night, The Touch of Twilight, City of Souls, and Cheat the Grave, VICKI PETTERSSON was born and raised in Vegas. She still lives in Sin City, where a backyard view of the Strip regularly inspires her to set down her martini and head back to the computer.

www.vickipettersson.com

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Books by Vicki Pettersson

The Scent of Shadows

The First Sign of the Zodiac

The Taste of Night

The Second Sign of the Zodiac

The Touch of Twilight

The Third Sign of the Zodiac

City of Souls

The Fourth Sign of the Zodiac

Cheat the Grave

The Fifth Sign of the Zodiac

The Neon Graveyard

The Final Sign of the Zodiac

Copyright

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

NEON GRAVEYARD. Copyright © 2011 by Vicki Pettersson. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

Cover art by Don Sipley

FIRST EDITION

EPub Edition June 2011 ISBN: 9780062079572

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