Vicki Pettersson - The Touch of Twilight

“Duh,” Jasmine said to me. “I could, like, totally smell her from here. And I have allergies.”

“I’m not decaying,” the living corpse said evenly. “I’m becoming more deific, like my ancestors before me.”

“No,” I said, playing along. “You’re simply not aging well.”

The insult was right up Jasmine’s alley. “I’d recommend a face lift…if she had a face.”

“Now, Jas,” I chided. “She’s better off sticking to the basics. Eight hours of sleep, plenty of water…multiple skin grafts.”

Under the “Rose” persona, Regan’s reaction would’ve been no more threatening than a hair toss. But now she snapped her head back and forth, like a snarling dog, her emotions as exposed and raw as her mucus and muscles. As she struggled to regain her composure, I wondered again why she would show me this. I found out as soon as she resumed looking like a mere zombie, instead of a psychotic zombie. “I have a message from your father.”

I sighed. Of course she did. And that’s why she’d sought me out…though it still didn’t explain the freak show. “Let me guess. He wants to make good on all the back payments on my child support?”

Muscles ruptured as she clenched her jaw. “It’s about the doppelgänger that saved your life last week.”

Which confirmed Warren’s suspicion as to who, or what, the woman was. And that the Tulpa knew it too. I quirked a brow at Regan. “And he sent you?”

That didn’t make sense. If the Tulpa thought Regan knew where to find me, he’d have pummeled it out of her and come after me himself. At that point my Olivia Archer cover would be moot.

“He sent a message-by-minion.”

Li put her hands to her cheeks and gasped. Jasmine groaned and pulled out her cell phone again, checking out. I stood blank-faced, pretending I knew what that was.

“I just happened to be the first one to find you.” Her shriveled lips quirked. “Imagine that.”

From her words I gathered a “message-by-minion” was something that applied to all Shadow agents, a mandate that couldn’t be disobeyed. Apparently it also meant Regan had to take her reluctant revelation a step further. Literally. She widened her stance, lifted her arms in the air so the muscles split and bled, and took a moment to steady herself before lowering into a backbend. Her decaying spine cracked in five places.

Jasmine glanced up from her text messaging, unimpressed. “There’s a girl at my school named Cindy who can totally do that. She’s been in tumbling and gymnastics since she was, like, three and can touch her nose with her…”

Regan shuddered, and her ribs ruptured in her chest cavity. They splintered upward, jagged edges pricked with scraps of muscle, while toothpick-sized bits sprang out like thorns to keep enemies at bay. Unnecessary, I thought, swallowing hard. I didn’t want to get any closer. Her exposed ribs swung like they were on hinges, knit together on the opposite side, and her head rotated a hundred and eighty degrees on her neck.

Jasmine’s mouth snapped shut as the Regan-thing turned. “Cindy can’t do that.”

In turn, Regan’s mouth sprang open. A wet, guttural cry rose from the emptiness of her ravaged core, and bloody tears began to stream down her face. Those pale orbs widened, then protruded so I could actually see the tendons connecting them as they strained from their sockets. The Regan-thing blinked-or I thought it was a blink because even though her lashes and lids had wasted away, her eyes rolled three hundred and sixty degrees in their sockets-but when they appeared again, they were tar black and smoking.

“Shit…” Jasmine’s curse morphed into a howl and her jaw dropped open, elongating into a gaping maw. The rest of her skin softened, shimmered, and thinned, and she was suddenly as rubber-limbed and tensile as Douglas had been. Skittles, a Hello Kitty coin purse, and lip gloss littered the floor as she spun, whipping around to position herself before me. Her remaining aura deepened her skin color to near opaqueness, and her outline shimmered at the edges as her body expanded to my height and width, concealing me fully.

Apparently Li had been right; she had no choice but to help when I was truly in danger because she took two rippling steps backward, and I closed my eyes, stock-still, and felt coolness sweep over me, like a wave of air fresh from the sea. When I opened my eyes a second later, the world was awash in a pastel lavender hue. Jasmine’s body lay at my feet; knees tucked into her chest, eyes pinched shut. I sensed Li’s form prone on the ground next to her, but didn’t dare look for sure. Instead I carefully stepped over my changeling’s shell to face off against my father.

“There you are.” The Tulpa brushed at an invisible speck of dust on one bloody entrail. “I’ve been looking all over for you.”

“You don’t say,” I said dryly.

His eyes canvassed the room, passing over the shells of the changelings, lingering longer on the shelves over my shoulder, the question he wasn’t asking clear as they landed again on me. “Leave it to Regan to locate you first. Though when I sent out the message, I thought she might. She despises all agents of Light, though her hatred for you is almost toxic. Don’t know why.”

He was waiting for me to elucidate. I did. “Because she was born under a mushroom cloud?”

“Because she likes her luxuries,” he countered. “My agents are forbidden to eat, sleep, fornicate, or shit until a transmogrified message has been delivered-”

“Those are luxuries?”

“I sent this message out three days ago.”

“So Las Vegas is teeming with a troop of hungry, horny, sleep-deprived, bunged-up psychopaths?” No wonder the crime rate had spiked in the last forty-eight hours.

“I’ve decided to give you a second chance.”

“A second chance again ?” I let my eyes widen into saucers and his-hers-narrowed. “What? You’re the one who declared apocalypse and tried to microwave me in your supernatural funk.” And he hadn’t been wishy-washy about it either.

“I’ve had a change of mind.”

“Obviously.” My eyes roved over his head in distaste. I didn’t even want to know what that membrane was covering all that coiling gray matter.

The Tulpa held out his hands-or Regan’s-in supplication, but the gesture wasn’t as winsome as he intended. Each digit was dripping with fresh blood. “We need to talk.”

And I was willing to bet Regan’s mention of the doppelgänger had something to do with that. Knowing that gave me an edge. “All right. Let’s talk about why you’re so afraid of a woman made of bubbles.”

He reached out and slapped me so fast, I gasped from the shock as much as the pain. He wasn’t supposed to be able to touch me in a safe zone and he sure as hell shouldn’t be able to reach through Jasmine’s protective shell. I put a hand to my stinging face, and felt wetness there.

The Tulpa brought his claws up in front of his face, smiled, and licked blood from his fingers. I didn’t know if it was Regan’s blood, Jasmine’s, or mine…probably a bit of each.

“Or you could choose the subject,” I said, like I thought I had a choice. He inclined his head. Easy to be agreeable when you knew you would get your way.

“I made a mistake,” he began, surprising me, though his sharp look had me holding back my first response. I didn’t feel like finding out what would happen if he really wanted to put his hands on me. “I thought you were…in league with the double-walker. It seemed likely after the way we last parted that you’d attempt to attract a double-walker for additional protection against me.”

Ye-ah. Because I knew exactly how to do that. I didn’t say that, though, choosing instead to play dumb. It wasn’t exactly a stretch. “Well, she can’t be my doppelgänger because she tried to disembowel me. And she doesn’t even look like me.”