Vicki Pettersson - Cheat the Grave

“Now what in particular would a housekeeper be badgering you about?”

Inching toward an ornate gold-plated blade on a triangular base in the corner, I gave him a look that said, Exactly! “Household budgets and stolen cars and moving back in here.”

“But you live in the Greenspun Residences, don’t you?”

Though anyone would know that, the Tulpa wasn’t asking out of mere curiosity. Regan Dupree, the Shadow Leo, had been meting out information about me to the Tulpa by the spoonful to advance her own precarious position and get back in his good graces. She’d told him the Kairos was residing in the same building as Olivia before I managed to kill her.

The Tulpa leaned against the wall. “I’m assuming you have friends there? Neighbors? People you greet in the hallways…who help you with your groceries?”

“No one in particular,” I said, and was about to say more, then thought better of lying. “Though one woman has been particularly friendly since Daddy’s death…”

“And what’s her name?” His voice smoothed out even further, tugging on my consciousness, so my head teetered on my neck. It was the same fizzy loss of control one had after doing shots on no sleep and an empty belly. I didn’t even have to feign dizziness as I struggled for words.

“I don’t think she ever told me. Odd, huh?”

“But she lives there?” The dream state intensified, and though I could fight the mind control- somehow I could fight it-I slouched a bit more. “Oh, yeah. She couldn’t gain such regular access otherwise.”

“And what does she look like?”

“She has red hair…” I frowned, pretending to think on it further. “And blond, and brown. Once even blue. But the red is best on her.”

“A disguise, then?” he muttered, as if to himself. I reached for the gold knife, folded my palm around the upright handle.

“Wigs, anyway.” I yawned loudly, feeling the buzz lessening. Good. His suspicion was lifting. “Big party girl,”

I added, and pulled upward. The knife didn’t budge. It was welded to the base.

To hide the homicidal movement, I caressed the ornate bell propped next to the knife, before letting my hand drop.

He jerked his head. “Come with me.”

And a giant pulse, a vibrational flash, had me stepping forward before I could stop it. I went with the impulse, though reminded myself to be more on guard as we returned to Xavier’s office. If he really suspected me, I might end up grabbing hold of a knife and thrusting it into my own belly.

“Ever see one of these?” He pointed with his cane to a booklet lying on Xavier’s great dark desk. A comic book. A manual.

I fought to keep my expression neutral. If the Tulpa was asking me about it, the people in my building, and what I knew of Xavier’s religious habits-all while attempting to hoodoo me into eliciting the truth-then I wasn’t even close to being off the hook.

“Yeah,” I said as calmly as I could. “My sister used to read those rags.”

“Did she ever show you one?”

“Joanna knew I’m loyal to Vogue. ”

“Not her,” he said through clenched teeth. “The girl. In your building. Did she ever try to give you one of these?”

“Of course not. I mean…she’s cool.”

The Tulpa lifted his chin. “There are cool things in there. Look for yourself.”

I glanced down and recognized the Shadow Pisces, Adele, caught in profile on the cover. Her face was iron, black smoke billowing behind her as she stared back at me. I feigned a shudder. “Her outfit is atrocious.”

“There are other pictures.”

He wasn’t going to let up, so I sighed and took the manual. Opening it, I demonstrated what he was really interested in. The manual didn’t come to life in my hands. No thought bubbles appeared above the heads of the featured Shadow agents. No cracks of battle or death cries lifted into the air. An agent of Light would have been zapped by the Shadow manual with the first touch.

I flipped through the pages faster, and the tug on my mind lessened. I finally threw it back onto the desk next to Xavier’s folder and said the one thing I hoped would have him backing off. “This is a very strange conversation.”

The Tulpa, never one to want to appear odd in front of mortals, broke with that desire and stared straight into my eyes. Another pulse of thought energy throttled through me, this one so violent I saw white. “Well, I think you have some very strange questions, Olivia. Some strange suspicions of your own. I think you came in here to discover the answer to one of them in particular.”

And he withdrew the photo Cher had given me earlier, clearly stolen from my body while I was having a tea party with Hunter in the wild forests of Midheaven.

That alone would be enough to have my head swimming, grasping for an answer. But the additional mental tug and weight returned, like he’d captured my gray matter on a hook and was pulling me to an unknown shore. Flipping open Xavier’s binder to a marked page, he slid it in front of me, and there, beneath Xavier’s infamous tight-assed script, was the haunting symbol I’d been searching for. The one on the chest that had borne me paranormal weaponry.

The same one the Tulpa grasped tightly in his hands now.

I abandoned the idea of killing the Tulpa in lieu of finding a way not to get killed. But he wasn’t going to make that easy.

“Tell me what you know of this emblem,” he ordered.

“You’re right-I saw it the other night, my friend took a picture of it for me because it looked familiar, and now I know why. It was in the binder.”

He remained unmoved. Literally. “Why?”

“I don’t know.”

“What did Xavier tell you?”

I blinked. “Teal and lavender are my best colors?”

The Tulpa’s eyes narrowed into slits while his nostrils widened. “Let me be clearer, Olivia . What has he told you about this image?”

I opened my mouth to reply but nothing came out. I stretched my vocal muscles but they only thinned in my throat, aching like the worst case of strep I’d ever had.

The Tulpa’s eyes flashed, sunlight burning over onyx, and his voice lowered about five octaves below Barry White’s. “You are dreaming, understand? When you wake, you’ll remember nothing of this conversation. But you will, always, tell me what I want to know. Now. What did Xavier reveal of the Serpent Bearer?”

I let my gaze lose focus, though my mind was as sharp as his tone. Serpent Bearer? My genuine confusion seemed to infuriate him. He moved a fraction of an inch-really just an extension of his neck-and willed his personal energy forward. I went airborne, sucking in a breath just in time for the fireplace to knock it back out. Muscles cringing around my spine, my legs shorted out, dropping me to my ass on the stone hearth. The next inhalation brought me no relief, but it did bring me a big fat wallop of mental manipulation. My eyes drained of moisture, the lids refusing to shut. I then rose like a marionette willed from above to slump before the Tulpa, while the power holding me there snaked like fingers in my brain.

“What do you know of the Serpent Bearer?” he repeated, voice rumbling, hypnotic and infuriated.

“Nothing,” said the probing power slipping out in my voice. But even through the tingling mental fog, I could see he didn’t believe me. There were too many small coincidences, things that didn’t add up-or worse, that did. Olivia shared a father with Joanna Archer, a penthouse in the same building, she had stumbled into this hidden room, possessed this symbol both in a book and a photo. Taken all together, it was probable I knew something. The Tulpa was intent on figuring out what.