Vicki Pettersson - The Touch of Twilight

“You’re an American who’s never even left this city, much less the country,” Felix countered. “What do you even know about the Germans?”

“I know they’re not French.”

“Focus!” Warren’s yell silenced the whole lounge. Even the DJ’s beat seemed to momentarily pause. Riddick had the sense to look abashed, and the rest of us averted our eyes, but Felix-no stranger to his leader’s admonitions-only sipped at his rummed-up Coke.

“Okay, geez. Double-walker, doppelgänger…no clue. Enlighten me.”

“A doppelgänger,” Micah informed us, “is a living person’s ghostly twin. Usually evil.”

They all looked at me.

I choked on my drink. “Who, me? A double of me? No way-that thing didn’t look anything like…either one of mes.”

Though not everyone knew I was Joanna Archer beneath Olivia’s glossy exterior, they did know I wasn’t the ditzy socialite I presented to the rest of the world. With them I was the Kairos, purported savior of the paranormal realm, steadfast troop member, with a sharp demeanor and acid tongue to match. Basically I was myself…but cuter.

“No, but it smelled like you.” Warren smiled grimly. “As a double, it’s still shaping, taking its clues from studying you.” I recalled how hungrily the woman had watched me, and how she could form and re-form at will. “The more impatient doubles, those most greedy for life, have been known to attack their living counterparts.”

I nodded wryly. “You mean eating my heart would be a good way to more fully materialize in the physical world.”

He shrugged. “In short.”

Great. So I had two strong, evil, ethereal beings after me. I signaled the waitress for another drink.

Sitting with her hands folded in her lap, Tekla took up the lecture. “Most doppelgängers aren’t this strong. Their sphere of influence is limited to causing confusion in their double’s life-appearing to family and friends, haunting their double, mimicking them, or at best giving bad advice. They’re the paranormal equivalent of a knock-knock joke.”

“Well, anyone who thinks that thing is funny didn’t stick around for the punch line.”

Brown eyes swimming with sympathy, Vanessa put her hand over mine.

“Here’s what I want to know,” Hunter broke in for the first time. “Why was she trying to convince Olivia to enter that particular portal?”

Warren nodded at Tekla to continue.

“A doppelgänger can’t just walk into this reality if she didn’t originate here. She has no opposite or negative. No flip side. Her energy-or lack of it-doesn’t register, and so the portals won’t allow her passage.”

“Okay, but what’s she doing over there? Or over here?”

Well, the “over here” was apparent. She wanted me, whom she’d dubbed the golden ring. In both my worlds…

So, then, as to the “over there”…

“That must be the other world she was talking about.” I sat up straighter, looking at Vanessa and Hunter, Felix and Riddick in turn. “She told the Tulpa she’d take me with her. That he’d never touch me in the middle of heaven.”

I remembered this because I’d looked up into the sky then, searching for her meaning, and watched a man disintegrate instead. I closed my eyes now, but opened them again in time to catch the rest of my troop exchanging strained looks. I shifted my gaze to find Hunter frowning at me. “Do you mean Midheaven?”

I didn’t know-did I? I frowned back.

“But that’s not a world,” Jewell blurted out. “It’s an angle in the birth chart.”

“Right,” Felix added, sprawled in his chair. “Basic astrology. It’s located in the house of reputation…what we want to be known for.”

“The Tenth House,” Tekla confirmed, nodding.

“Well, it’s what the bubble lady said,” I retorted, a little too sharply before slumping. These people had been raised in the sanctuary, trained in fields of astronomical study-including astrology-from birth. I didn’t have that advantage. My mother had shielded me from any knowledge, study, or course that might attract the attention of the Shadows. Or help me now.

Vanessa blew a dark curl from her forehead and leaned my way. She had a way of imparting information like she was telling a secret, and it’d served her well as a reporter. Shoot, I knew what she was doing and it still worked. “I think she was messing with you, Olivia. Midheaven as a place is a myth. As Tekla said, it’s nothing more than an angle on the astrological chart…an important one, but it’s not a physical location.”

“Then what is she doing over there?” I asked slowly, thinking the question obvious. I was a little behind in my astrology lessons, but my critical thinking was up to par.

Half the troop looked to Warren. Tekla closed her eyes. Hunter, who never drank anything harder than water with bubbles, merely swirled his glass thoughtfully.

“I don’t know,” Warren said after a moment.

We looked at Tekla, who also shook her head.

I wanted to run. Or scream. Or both. I’d been attacked three times in one night, and if the senior members of the paranormal troop I belonged to couldn’t tell me why, nobody could. Hunter reached over and placed a hand on my knee, staying it. I hadn’t even known it was twitching. Then I realized Vanessa had taken my hand again and I was squeezing hers, my own like ice. I shot her an apologetic half smile and loosened my grip. I nodded at Warren, who was watching carefully to see that I could relax before continuing.

“One thing is clear,” he said, leaning back again. “Whatever the doppelgänger’s doing, it has the Tulpa on his heels.”

“Why would she be any more important to him than to us?” said Micah, shifting his large frame, though he still couldn’t have been comfortable on the narrow bar stool. “The destruction of matter affects the Shadow side as much as it does us. It could be he simply wants to stop her before it’s too late.”

“Too late for what?” I asked.

Reluctantly, Jewell whispered in my direction. “For the world to heal. Each successive explosion, or breach, that the doppelgänger carves into our reality weakens the fabric of our world. Haven’t you noticed them getting longer? And more debilitating?”

“So it’s like dynamite? Each one builds on the one before it?”

“And the last will be the capstone,” Hunter said tonelessly.

I looked to Tekla. “And she doesn’t care?”

She shrugged her small shoulders. “She’s neither Shadow nor Light. She has no conscience-she has yet to draw that from you-and cares nothing for that which doesn’t somehow feed into her plans.”

“So let me see if I have this straight,” I interrupted, feeling a selfish but mounting need to prioritize. “This creature, whom even the Tulpa is afraid of, can blow holes through realities, has no conscience, and can lay waste to both sides of the Zodiac-not to mention the mortal realm-and she’s after me?”

“Sucks to be the Kairos,” Felix muttered in his cup. Hunter punched him. I didn’t feel a bit sorry as the breath whooshed from his chest.

“Look, the doppelgänger didn’t find you. She found the Tulpa’s black hole, and you happened to be there. There’s no reason you can’t remain active, living your life, continuing your work.”

“What kind of work?” Riddick asked Warren, leaning forward so his rangy frame obstructed my view of Felix. “I mean, what do we all do in the meantime?”

Warren, in turn, leaned back. “We count on the Tulpa being distracted by the doppelgänger. So no more efforts to merely balance the Zodiac-this time we target him as well.”

We all stared at him in baffled silence. Warren’s stance had always been that our job was to maintain the balance of the valley’s Zodiac. Twelve of them and twelve of us. His mission was to keep the peace, allowing the mortals in the realm we patrolled to make their own choices, ones outside the unfair influences of people who were stronger and had more knowledge than they did.