Vicki Pettersson - Cheat the Grave

“You’re welcome,” I muttered, gazing at the photo in the paper, taken mere minutes before Mackie’s attack. The Tulpa was sitting straight-backed in his wheelchair, eyes shut. I thought of all his powers-mind control, the ability to morph into new shape and form, to enter dreams and steal breath, to create black holes and inflict pain without ever touching a person. Shaking my head, I consoled myself with Io’s assertion that he hated the Shadows as well as the Light.

To be honest, it wasn’t much consolation.

Meanwhile, the photo angle had also caught Warren leaning against his pillar, a hard scowl blighting his face as he stared straight ahead. If I’d only assumed he hated me before, I decided, swallowing hard, this picture certainly put the question to rest.

But that wasn’t why I shuddered in the street’s cold center. No, Mackie’s bent head caused that, bowler hat propped atop as if on a peg. Another shiver went through me at the memory of his living knife carving out Skamar’s chest, and I half expected his head to swivel on the page, his blackened tongue pushing forward as he hissed.

The next photo was a blurred shot of the ensuing chaos, and of all the people the Tulpa had ordered into the water via mind control, piled atop one another like battling carp. I’d told Carlos the entire story while he dyed my hair in an old paint bucket, which had him more convinced than ever that I was not only immune to the Tulpa’s mental manipulation, I would be the one to stop him entirely.

“You may be a mortal,” he said when I protested, “but you’re still a part of him. You can still kill him by turning his own power against him, even that of his mind.”

I’m sure he meant that to be reassuring, but his words had the opposite effect. Didn’t that mean the Tulpa could do the same to me? Wasn’t it possible it worked both ways?

And I still had no idea why the Tulpa was so concerned about the symbol of a snake wrapped around a stick. What was the Serpent Bearer-its purpose, its meaning-and why was it so important to a man who could already manipulate others with his mind alone?

All I knew right now was that I was mortal, and the Tulpa was all-powerful, and that was yet one more thing Warren could blame me for. At least the agents of Light were too busy battling back the newly invigorated Shadows to patrol the city’s invisible border. For now, the grays were free to enter and exit the city at will. Yet I knew Warren hadn’t forgotten us, or the child of Shadow and Light living in Midheaven. Hunter’s child.

Tucking both the paper and those particular worries away for now, I arrived at my destination, but froze short of the property line. The house where Ashlyn, another child of the Zodiac, had lived was vacant. The grass was already browning, there was a lockbox on the handle, and the window where my daughter’s gaze had found mine was bare.

“Shit,” I said under my breath.

“I moved her after you shot out the living room window.”

Turning, I saw a woman dressed in gray running sweats, a walnut ponytail as freshly dyed as mine pulled through a ball cap shielding most of her face. Though obviously fit-and now I knew why “Suzanne” had always treated fitness, and running in particular, like religion-she walked steadily, carrying a stainless steel toolbox. Odd enough to earn her a second glance, I thought, but probably not a third.

“Oh, that?” I said lightly, like my heart wasn’t threatening to jump through my chest. “I was just trying to get your attention.”

She set the toolbox on the ground, tucked her hands into her jacket pockets, and gazed at the house where her granddaughter used to live. “Well, all kids act out sometimes. It frees them emotionally from parental control, or so I’ve read.”

I didn’t bother answering. It was small talk, and had nothing to do with where we were today. “Dare I ask how you got away from Warren?”

“Do you need to? I fucking walked.” Lowering her chin and voice, she stared at the house like it was her enemy. Like it was Warren. I’d never seen that look on her face before, not in person, and it rattled me. Suzanne as Zoe. Zoe as warrior, as Archer, like me. I swallowed hard, and changed the subject.

“How’s Cher?” I asked.

“She’s in L.A. They decided she needed a specialist for her arm. I don’t think she’ll be coming back for…a while.”

I nodded once. “And the arm?”

“Clean break.”

“Lucky,” I said. “Whoever pushed her must have known what they were doing.”

She turned her gaze on me then, and it was afire. “She is lucky. Had she been in the front row of that marital shitstorm, she probably wouldn’t have survived.”

I nodded again. So I wouldn’t be seeing Cher for a while. My initial pang of regret surprised me, but I wouldn’t have seen her anyway. I was no longer Olivia, and Cher was no longer safe in Vegas. Not with the Tulpa pulling every possible thread to get to me. Maybe someday I could visit her on the beach. Still, I sighed. Cher’s companionship was the loss of something I hadn’t even known I’d valued.

Glancing back at the house, I decided I was glad Ashlyn was far away too. “So is that it, Mom? Hurting someone is okay as long as it’s for the greater good?”

And just like that we were no longer talking about her stepdaughter, but her real ones.

If Zoe felt the same storm of emotions, she didn’t show it. She appeared almost defiant in her mortal flesh, a woman who’d made hard choices under hard circumstances and wasn’t about to apologize to anyone for it. That was okay. I knew what that was like, and I wasn’t looking for an apology.

But Zoe didn’t know that yet. “I wouldn’t ask anyone to do something I’m not willing to do myself,” she said woodenly, staring down at the tool chest.

I nodded. “Like become mortal?”

She glanced at me sharply. “That was your choice.”

“Ah, but look who I had as an example.” A friggin’ superhero. And one who’d given over all her powers to save me. So had there really been an alternative? Was there any way I could have simply allowed a little girl to die in a flooded tunnel while I stayed relatively safe, and very much alive?

Sure, I thought, huffing lightly. But as Zoe Archer’s daughter, I think the guilt would have eventually killed me.

Zoe, not one to take any criticism without a fight, argued back. “But you had an advantage I didn’t. You spent your formative years outside the troop. I, on the other hand, was raised inside it, groomed for a position in the Zodiac, primed and nurtured to become the Archer of Light.” She laughed humorlessly. “I mean, I had no idea you could actually bleed just by knocking into something, or that it would hurt to stub your toe, or get a paper cut. I even had to alter the way I had sex-”

“Too much information,” I sang, cutting her off.

She smiled thinly, as I wanted. God, there was history behind us. There was so much to ask her, so much to say. A part of me wanted to rail, to ask questions I’d agonized over all through my teen years, while I was punching nylon bags and sparring mitts. But now didn’t feel like the time for hard words, and I wasn’t as angry with her standing next to me. I remembered my back against hers as we faced off against Mackie and the Tulpa. How we’d clung to each other when uniting against Warren.

No. It wasn’t anger at all. It was sympathy. And sadness. And a boatload of understanding. Life was not a straight shot. It veered dangerously. Sometimes all you could do was hold on tight and hope for the best.

“Do you want to know the hardest thing of all?” Zoe asked, voice soft as she frowned into the distance again.

“Worse than the physical weakness, far worse than the loss of powers, was the emotional isolation. Always before, I’d been a part of something. I’d acted independently, of course, going undercover for months without contacting the troop, but that was different. I was doing it for them. It counted, and they were counting on me. But all of that disappeared along with my powers. For a while I wished I was dead rather than mortal.”