Vicki Pettersson - The Taste Of Night

She didn’t. As blond and pretty as she was, there was a merciless stoicism about her, the same as in a sociopath’s mugshot. But all her sociopathic outbursts lay latent in her future.

I shook my head. “I don’t get it.”

She sighed, like the story bored her but she’d indulge me anyway. “Look, I figured out who you were, and a few weeks later Liam followed me following you. The only way to keep him quiet was to tell him about your Olivia Archer identity. He said he’d let me kill you if he could take the credit.” She screwed up her face. “Liam was a sturdy agent, but he had absolutely no imagination whatsoever.”

She sounded like she was defending herself, and for a moment I couldn’t tell if she was talking to me or herself. Then the coy look returned, but this time it had an edge. “I understand his reasoning, of course. You’re slumming with the agents of Light right now, and fair game for anyone who finds you, but you’re also the Tulpa’s heir apparent, a woman who can walk both sides of the Zodiac with more freedom than the rest of us will ever know. You’re the reason all of us act, or lately don’t act. You consume the Tulpa’s every waking moment, did you know? You guide his every action and thought.”

She looked me over again, like she was trying to understand what the big deal was. Good luck. I’d been trying to figure out the same thing for the last six months. “You killed Liam because he didn’t want me on the Shadow side?”

“What better way to show you that I do?” she rejoined.

Boy, they trained these Shadows young .

“Well, good for you,” I said as she beamed. I shook my head. “No, I mean really. It’s good for you. He’d have killed you right after he did me.”

Regan looked startled at that.

“What?” I asked, tilting my head now. “You think Liam trusted you not to tell the Tulpa what he’d done? Or at least tell someone about your part in it?”

She started to say, “He wouldn’t…” but trailed off, knowing he would. He had trusted her just as much as she did him…which was why she’d taken the first shot. She looked away, fumbled for a cigarette, and lit it right beneath a NO SMOKING sign. I said nothing, knowing I’d given her a good shake.

“How long have you known?” I finally asked.

“What?” she asked, blowing out a long stream of smoke. “That Olivia Archer died six months ago, and Joanna Archer, her half-sister and the black sheep of the Archer family dynasty, has been living in her apartment, driving her car, and squatting in her skin ever since?”

She was just saying it to regain her footing, to feel more in control and appear less rattled about the thought of Liam killing her, but I swallowed hard. She really did know it all.

“I found out shortly after you became an agent of Light,” she continued, propping one foot behind her, against the pillar. “After Butch killed Olivia, and before you killed Ajax.”

My jaw clenched at the mention of Ajax, but I gave a stiff nod. It was what she wanted-a gold star for figuring out what no one else had-and it cost me nothing to give it to her. After all, I’d made sure neither Ajax nor Butch would ever harm me again.

Satisfied, Regan flicked some ash on the floor and smiled. “It wasn’t that difficult. I knew the agents of Light were trained to stay away from those they’d been close to in life. So are we. But the way I figured it, nothing about you was normal. You changed all the rules on us. I didn’t have to use supersensory powers or even be a full-fledged agent to figure it out. All I did was put myself in your place, then ask myself, ‘What would I do?’”

She was once again drawing parallels between her and me in a bald effort to forge some sort of tenuous link, one that was destined to fail…though she couldn’t know that.

“We thought no one knew,” I said, to encourage her further…and because it was the truth. There were only three others in my troop who did, and my heart sank as I thought of what this meant. I’d have to change my identity again. I’d have to invent a new life for myself.

I’d have to say good-bye to Olivia …

“No one else does,” Regan said.

I looked up at her sharply.

“Think about it and you’ll know it’s true. Half the Shadow Zodiac is like this guy.” She flicked her cigarette butt at Liam’s corpse. “They want to kill you just because you’re of the Light. The other half are looking out for their own interests, so they’d kill you anyway. That’s why your fa-the Tulpa, hasn’t pushed very hard for you to come to our side. He wants you to make your own decision, and he wants to give the rest of us time to get used to the idea.”

“And what about you, Regan? What do you want?”

“You.” The truth of her answer sat like acid on my tongue. “It’s been prophesied that your arrival on the Shadow side will usher in an era the likes of which have never been seen before. Our mythology tells us the second sign of the Zodiac will soon be fulfilled. I want to sit at your right-hand side when you rule this city. I want to tell my children and grandchildren I was born in the generation of the Kairos.”

I looked at her and smiled wryly. When most people heard of the zodiac signs they thought of the sun signs, the positions each of the twelve houses held on the horoscopic wheel. What Regan was talking about, though, was an actual portent signaling one side of the Zodiac’s ascendancy over our enemies. The signs were revealed only as the one before them was fulfilled, and the first sign had been the rise of the Kairos. That was me, and my discovery six months ago. Once I’d satisfactorily proven myself to be the Kairos-causing mayhem, destruction, and ultimate victory for my chosen allies, in that order-the second sign was revealed.

A curse upon the Zodiac’s battlefield .

Cheery, huh? Regan obviously thought this obscure riddle meant the Shadows would come out the victor, and therefore I, the Kairos, would have to switch sides. I could only assume this belief had been passed down from the Tulpa. Why else would he be content to sit back and let me come to him? Especially when the second sign indicated a battle had to be fought and won?

But there were two problems I could see with Regan’s theory. First of all, it just plain wasn’t going to happen. I’d shoot myself with my own conduit before becoming a Shadow. And second, even if I did want to switch sides, I doubted it’d be as simple as just waltzing into the Tulpa’s house and announcing my intentions. Nothing in this world ever was.

“You guys kill innocent people for fun and profit,” I told Regan, not caring if I sounded prudish. Murder just kind of niggled me that way.

“I haven’t killed anyone,” she said, ignoring Liam’s death. “See, that’s what I’m trying to tell you. You think we’re wired differently than you, but it’s not true. We have a job to do, and do it to the best of our abilities. Like you.”

I looked at her like she was a toddler with a fork and a light socket. This from the girl who’d just sacrificed a senior troop member to be part of the most wicked era in Shadow history. Yeah, I thought, unable to keep my eyes from rolling, she was just like me. “But there’s another reason you’re keeping my identity a secret, isn’t there, Regan? If you befriend and convince me to become your troop’s Kairos, you incur the debt of the Tulpa. And it’ll be your name that’s passed down for generations to come.”

Her jaw clenched, and she returned her hard gaze to mine, as if to say, So what?

“So what if I don’t play along?” I continued. “What if I just keep hunting Shadows?”

“Then after I become a full-fledged star sign-”