Vicki Pettersson - Cheat the Grave

She dipped her head in understanding. “That’s my girl.”

Leaving the toolbox at my feet, she turned and walked away.

I don’t know how many moments passed. Eventually Buttersnap shifted restlessly between two cookie-cutter houses, and an old woman in a tattered bathrobe and toeless slippers slipped outside to pick up her paper. I gave a wave that had her scurrying back inside, then picked up whatever new lethal baubles my mother had given me, and left before the nosy neighbor could call the police.

As I walked, I thought of what Zoe said about the anonymity of mortality, and how what she did no longer mattered on a large scale. I wished I’d spoken up then. I wished I’d told her that everything a person did, big or small, really did matter. It mattered to the ones you loved. Or, at least to the ones who loved you.

In fact, I thought, sucking in a breath of the sharp, cold air, when you were mortal your actions probably mattered even more.

The run-in with my mother settled something inside of me. Sure, I had a boatload of pressing things on my mind-survival, the loss of my life aboveground, Warren’s race with the Tulpa to see who could kill me first- but Zoe and Cher and Ashlyn were all still alive, and the knowledge that they were finally safe was like a salve on my consciousness.

Also safe, at least for the time being, was the family that remained behind…those who had chosen me.

It was because of them, and that choice, that I wound my way through the passageways beneath Frenchman’s Flat at three o’clock the next morning, running my hands along the walls of caked candle wax, careful not to set my newly dyed hair alight. I was searching for a blank smooth spot on the wall, finally locating one about three feet before entering Marge’s anteroom. I went straight to work, wiping it down and then filling it in with the plaster I’d gotten from Io. Then I took the family photo in its expensive silver frame, the one Helen had thought would flatten me on a night devoted to families, and pressed it until the cement and glue overtook its sides.

It was my talisman. The past I’d escaped. The connection I was giving up now that I was a part of the cell.

I looked at the lost family I’d once been a part of, wondering at the path that had led me from the grandest home to a blown-to-shit crater radiating death. Then I thought about all the other mortals who went it alone in the world. Most people didn’t have another family to turn to where life leaned on them, cold and hard.

I fingered Hunter’s soul stone, which lay ever in my pocket, and it suddenly didn’t matter how I got here. Those reasons were now a part of someone else’s life; I was no longer the Archer, the Kairos, or even Olivia. Yet each of those things had made me the Joanna I was today, and for that I was grateful. Despite the hardships I faced, I had a reason to get out of bed every morning.

Sure, my reason was sitting in a world of heat lightning, and my mortal body was nothing more than a dangling electrical wire. True, women waited for me over there, the strongest being a sadistic monster obsessed with my demise. But what could I say? The memory of Hunter’s pained scream made me want to clean my blades, take up all the arms I wasn’t supposed to be able to touch, and show Solange the true meaning of obsessive violence.

Which brought me back to the conversation with my mother: after all these years, I finally knew exactly who I was.

I was Joanna Archer, a mortal with some extra benefits. I had a family of chosen friends, who had also chosen me. I was gray, an amalgam of light and shadow, which made me both dawn and dust, and in the world of the Zodiac, that was where the web between reality and its flip side was at its thinnest…and open to pure possibility.

The box my mother had given me contained things she’d clearly spent a long time collecting, including instructions on how to live a dual existence, plainly hidden in the cache of letters Cher had believed were left by her birth mother.

There were some baubles I didn’t yet know what to do with, and makeup I assumed was more than it seemed. The box was, indeed, a catchall-a life literally objectified-and one I’d certainly pore over later. I also had Xavier’s binder, which if I wasn’t mistaken contained information on something called the Serpent Bearer, a little tidbit the Tulpa was so desperate to discover he’d openly attacked a mortal.

Then there were Zoe’s more obvious gifts-the old conduits that no one could explain why I could still touch- which I had to confess gave me a thrill. I also possessed a weapon no one else knew about, one I’d handpicked myself from a cooling body, and wore it always on me now. The curve of Mackie’s knife was constantly warm, too, as if the souls of the dead still lingered inside.

I was starting to gather my army around me, my weapons and resources…all the things I’d need to take another world by storm.

Meanwhile, Io was charged with changing, or fixing-I wasn’t really sure which-the inside of me. The rogues, I was coming to understand, believed a person’s inner balance was the most important factor in both their actions and the reactions those provoked.

“Your chakras are still blocked,” she chided, leaning over my prone form, the light behind her framing the black cloud of her hair in the now-familiar thin purple halo. She pushed my ribs aside, and still unused to that, queasiness welled inside of me. I swallowed it back and closed my eyes. “You’re already getting yourself a new shape here, though. Even without the outer alterations. Look at all these deformities. I wish you could see them.”

Her obvious fascination made me glad I couldn’t. “So, if they were visible on the outside…what would I look like?”

“Hunchbacked. A mutant. Something new.”

Then why did I still have a connection with Hunter, one so strong even Solange couldn’t break it? One that called to me through the wall separating our worlds? Io, who specialized in such connections, was aching to find out. That’s why I was lying here like a science experiment, trying to keep an image of dissected frogs out of my mind as I rested my hand atop Buttersnap’s tar-black head.

“So what about Hunter?” I wasn’t shy about asking how we were connected. Not when Io could so clearly feel or see or sense it anyway. But I was self-conscious about how I still thought of him, and corrected myself before she could. “I mean Jaden.”

“No, you were right the first time.” Her haloed head lifted softly, gaze pinned to mine. “He is Hunter to you, and always will be.”

Yes, I thought, swallowing hard. That felt right. “Hunter, then.”

Her hands did some invisible work over me, mouth pulling tight while her lidless eyes remained wide. I was growing used to her appearance, and had even begun to find some beauty in the giant eyes. They were like two black moons reflecting back a bruised earth.

Wonder what that made me?

After a few long, silent minutes, she turned to me with a sadly wistful smile and confirmed what I’d already known. “There is nothing left of the aureole you once shared with Hunter. Only the ghostly imprint of its presence.”

Disappointment visited me at that, a small sinking that went under without a fight. Feeling it, Buttersnap licked my hand, but Io put her hands on my shoulders. She leaned so close the opaque orbs of her eyes turned into an eclipse, and then told me there was a connection all the same.

I left Io’s table feeling dazed, drained, but strangely peaceful in a cloudy fuguelike state that only energy work-or extreme trauma-could achieve. I’d just experienced both. Needing to be alone for a bit, I bypassed the main hall and headed up the packed earth ramp leading back to the surface. Carlos’s words about night crawlers and how they lived on long after those mightier had fallen, revisited me.