Vicki Pettersson - The Touch of Twilight

He tilted it, sighing. “Jo. I am worried about you. I don’t like that Regan was the one to find you in Master Comics. I don’t like that she knows your true identity, and could spill the Olivia/Joanna connection at any time. I’m scared to death of the way the Tulpa managed to touch you in a designated safe zone.”

“Don’t forget the way an animist’s mask had to be ripped from my face,” I said, rubbing my jaw. It was sensitive-aching as if there was a scar there, though the damage couldn’t be seen or felt beneath my fingertips. Micah was right. I’d already healed.

“That too,” he said, not unkindly…but not overly solicitous either. “But unless you’re willing to be locked up in the sanctuary for the foreseeable future-”

“Hell, no.”

“Or give us leave to reconstruct Ben’s memories?”

“No.”

“Then I need to get on with the running of this troop.”

“But…” But Zane’s words had gotten to me. I could admit it here, alone with a man who’d overcome his suspicion of me before. “You know I didn’t break the changeling on purpose, right?”

His irritation instantly disappeared. “Of course not. The others don’t think so either,” he added, because it was clear that’s what was really bothering me. I’d been outside the troop’s good graces before, more than once. I didn’t want to go there again. “The new manuals are being written, even if they aren’t being read. We’ll find out how to fix Jasmine-which is what I’m going to go research now-and then all those written words and images will bloom to life, bringing a fresh wave of energy and force to our cause. Supply and demand at its best.

“Until then, the children who follow the Light side of the Zodiac can feed their insatiable imaginations with the older manuals. Those can sustain them, and us, for a long time.” He pushed back his trench coat so it billowed out behind him, and began descending, mindful of the leg that gave him so much trouble.

“Warren?” I said suddenly, and the top of his head appeared again, eyes mildly irritated. I rushed through my question, but mostly because I needed to. “Why don’t you erase Ben’s memory without asking me? I mean, you could, and there’d be nothing I could do about it.”

He leaned forward, feet on the staircase, elbows on the floor, to stare up at me. “Because I know what’s involved in a slow good-bye. The release of long-held dreams is a kind of death, with all the emotional stages that go with it, including anger, though you’re not quite there yet. It’ll be hard enough once you are, and I’d rather it not be directed at me.”

“I see. A selfish ploy to avoid the brunt of my wrath.”

His smile was tight-lipped. “You’ll release him when you’re ready.”

I wouldn’t. Not ever. But I sat prim and proper as he finished his spiel.

“Just try to prepare yourself to do it sooner rather than later. For his sake. For yours. And for ours.”

Not even for all the inhabitants of this city.

A wry smile flickered at one corner of Warren’s mouth, and he shrugged, still thinking I was in denial. The belief bought me time, so I said nothing. Without another word, Warren did disappear beneath the sightline then, reappearing seconds later on the ground floor below me. I followed him with my eyes, relieved I’d come clean about the Tulpa and what he’d asked of me…but curious about Warren’s reaction.

This was the guy who freaked out at the slightest perceived imbalance in the Zodiac. So why wasn’t he freaking out now? The changeling of Light was broken, the manuals couldn’t be read, my chi had apparently become the supernatural equivalent of foot funk, and the Tulpa suddenly wanted to be friends. And what the hell had he been thinking when I told him how the Tulpa planned to rid this world of the doppelgänger? Because the expression that’d slipped over his face had looked like excitement, not concern.

Below, Vanessa glanced impatiently at her watch. Kimber still fondled her unfinished conduit, looking younger and friendlier and dreamier than any future Shadow killer should. I couldn’t blame her. Her metamorphosis was scheduled two weeks from now, and it was the event an initiate looked forward to from the time they first learn of their preternatural destiny. I glanced at Hunter, thinking I should’ve told Warren about his call boy identity. If he was telling the truth, and Warren wouldn’t care, there was no reason not to mention it. Except I owed him. He’d kept my Joanna identity from those who didn’t already know it, as well as the bigger secret Warren knew nothing about-my daughter.

So I sat back in the crow’s nest and watched Vanessa finally yell at Kimber, who reluctantly handed the weapon back to Hunter before disappearing through the bay doors. Then I sucked in a deep breath filled with the warmth of toasted fruit, so heavy and round I wanted to take a bite. The scent of Hunter.

He glanced up at me sharply before he relaxed, and a languid smile visited his face. I’ll be your secret keeper, he’d once said to me. But he’d said it with heat, looking at me the way he was now, meaning that and so much more.

“I’ll be your secret keeper too, Hunter,” I murmured, pushing away the memory even as it rippled through me. “But that’s all.”

I used my Shadow manuals often. Most had belonged to my first enemy, the man who thought it was fun to attack little girls on steamy desert nights. I now possessed them because our diminutive, assessing, and steady troop Seer, Tekla, had gone apeshit on his putrefied ass, literally shredding him to bits, saving my life…and saving a bit of herself in the process as well. The next week Joaquin’s extensive stash of meticulously organized Shadow manuals had somehow shown up in the sanctuary, though whether he’d bequeathed them to me, knowing I’d continue the work he’d started-finding a way to kill the Tulpa-or whether they’d somehow been appropriated on my behalf, I still couldn’t say.

I also didn’t walk around advertising my possession of them, not with the third sign of the Zodiac looming over our heads like a giant question mark. So I waited until the next day, when most of the others had been called to clean up Shadow activity on the East Side, before pulling an armload of them from my locker, and taking them with me back to the barracks for some late night reading.

It was in one of these that I found an account of the last time the Tulpa had sent his agents out via “message-by-minion.” He hadn’t been kidding about the missive’s hold over his troop. The manual depicted his investigation of one of his own, a Shadow agent named Tripp who’d balked at orders to murder his own family. Instead he’d warned them, and they all rabbited. Their effort to escape the Tulpa, a plan that revolved around some rumored underground for former agents, was foiled by a long-forgotten confidence in the Shadow Gemini, whom he’d told about his safe house in nearby Mount Charleston. Though the Gemini was, in truth, a genuine ally, after a month of no food or sleep or the ability to eliminate bodily functions, his will was thoroughly broken.

The family’s slaughter a week later-three generations of Shadow Aquarians-had shaken the foundations of that side’s Zodiac. It was a brutal act even by the Tulpa’s lofty standards, and the final panels showed a meeting-sans Tulpa-swearing it would never be allowed to happen again.

It must have pissed off Joaquin too, I thought as I left my room, because the manual was dog-eared, and he’d even scrawled in the margins, using that strange hieroglyphic alphabet I’d seen lining the walls of his underground cavern. These, however, were punctuated with giant exclamation points.