Vicki Pettersson - The Touch of Twilight

I sighed and handed the comic back. “I can’t kill a little girl.”

Neither of them reached for it. “Hey, either Jasmine dies or Li does, but one way or another, this shop is going to be down one less Chan come the end of the year.”

So that was how long I had. Two months to figure out how to fix Jas. Why couldn’t Zane let me know that?

That’s not the right question .

I bit my lip. “Do you guys think you could do a little research for me? Try and find out what became of Jaden Jacks after he killed the changeling?”

“We could try. Zane doesn’t charge us for looking at the manuals. Not if we return them without stains.”

I closed my eyes and lowered my head, pinching the bridge of my nose between thumb and forefinger. “All right. Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it,” Kade said, obviously pleased to help. The boys couldn’t tell me anything that would unfairly unbalance the Zodiac, but it wasn’t as if there wasn’t anything in here I wouldn’t eventually discover for myself. I could read all the Shadow manuals; it was just a matter of time, and of looking in the right place. It would help to have a few extra pairs of eyes on the manuals…and on Jasmine. “Do you want us to send Jas back?”

“Yeah,” said Dylan, patting his jeans pocket. “I brought a Taser in today. I could prod her skinny ass down the tunnel.”

“No. That’s okay, I have it covered,” I said, shaking my head free of the image. The two boys left, I heard them scuffling with Douglas in the hallway, their voices growing fainter as they returned to the shop, and I tucked the manual in my bag without looking at it again. I’d find a way to fix Li without killing her older sister. Maybe what I was going to do next would help, I thought, pulling out my mask. But I didn’t want to risk further injury to Li if the Tulpa injured me through Jasmine’s aura again. I’d just have to trust the mask I was donning now would do its job. So I slipped it over my eyes, and began envisioning the Tulpa crossing the threshold across from me.

“The last time I saw you,” I said to the Shadow agent who entered the storeroom, “You were hemmed in by a bunch of children who were using you as an electric pincushion.”

Zell Trexler didn’t know I was there, and if my voice hadn’t caused him to jump and nearly fumble the ax he’d drawn in the adjoining hallway, the words would have. Though a senior Shadow agent, Zell was afraid of me. Or at least very wary. The first time we’d met he’d been absolutely certain his leader, the Tulpa, knew all. But the Tulpa hadn’t known of my existence, and Zell had been further blindsided two months later when it was prophesied that if the third sign of the Zodiac came to pass, he would die at the Kairos’s hands. My hands. I knew this because of my ability to read the Shadow manuals, so even though Master Comics was a designated safe zone, he still blanched when he saw me striding his way. I anticipated his instinctive reaction to run, and shifted my eyes to the threshold, throwing up a wall to block his path.

The Shadow Scorpio nearly peed his pants. “You can’t hurt me here!” From the nerves straining his vocal cords, it sounded more like he was trying to convince himself.

“Then why are you backing away?”

“What do you want?” He put a cart with all the latest manuals between us, the glyph on his chest sparking to life despite the lack of danger. His cheekbones pressed against the thinning skin of his face, an aggressive reflex to fear, like a cobra’s flaring hood.

“A sense of purpose, enthusiasm for my work, and a good retirement plan,” I told him, leaning against an aisle divider. “What about you?”

He smirked, licking his lips as he visibly calmed, though that also could’ve been because I was talking and not shooting. “What do you want?” he repeated more coolly.

“An audience with your leader.”

“The Kairos wants to convene with the Tulpa?” he sneered, but I could practically read his thoughts like a ticker was inching its way over his forehead. The rise of the Shadow side .

I rolled my eyes. “The third sign is the rise of the dormant side. It doesn’t mean I’m joining the Shadow side.”

“What else could it possibly mean?”

Good question, but I didn’t let him know I thought so. “It means the Shadows need to find themselves a new Seer. The whack job on the corner of Sinatra Boulevard gives more accurate prophecies than your psychic.”

He swallowed hard. He was wearing a suit, and I wondered what he’d been doing when I “called.” “So what do you want with him?”

I looked at him like he’d just flatlined.

Zell folded his arms over his deceivingly slender chest. “I’m not calling him until you tell me why.”

I sighed like he was testing my patience. “Let me tell you how this is going to play out, Zell . The Tulpa wants to talk to me. I’ve decided to talk back. You, a peon prewired to do his bidding, are here to facilitate that conversation. So you can channel the fucker now, or I’ll call him to me with my mind, and he can climb through your chest cavity to reach me. Capisce ?”

Zell swallowed hard, and I gave him a couple of moments to swallow that hard pill. He was a senior Shadow agent, I wasn’t even half that, yet I could usurp his authority at will. I could ask for his death, and for that of all his allies, and if it meant my coming over to the Shadow side, chances were the Tulpa would grant it. It was clear he hated me for it; he stared at me without blinking for so long it was as if he’d frozen there, then he cracked his neck in preparation, first one side and then the other. I backed off and took a seat in one of the leather armchairs.

Two minutes later I was still sitting there as Zell continued limbering up. “Is this going to take long?” I asked, smoothing a wrinkle out of my pinstriped slacks.

He cracked an eyelid, annoyance burning in his gaze. “Hey, you try rearranging the organs inside your body to host another person. It’s not exactly comfortable.”

I wanted to say, That’s called pregnancy, you big pussy , but I didn’t want him wondering how I knew. Besides, a pregnant woman’s body had nine months to rearrange itself. Zell had fewer minutes than that, and watching the way his chest cavity unnaturally gave way to the roiling going on in his belly gave me the heebie-jeebies. But when he finally did settle himself, I watched. I shuddered as his cry roiled over the high-ceilinged room, and scratched lightly at my own skin when his ripped, beginning at his bottom lip, straight down his middle like he was being butterflied. Finally there was nothing recognizable of Zell in the mass of pulsing organs and skinned bone, just the flaps of skin falling open and shut like fish gills against a skull that had whipped a full circle on his neck stump.

Inside out, the bloodied lids fluttered over the crimson orbs and I could practically see Zell’s thoughts extinguishing as the Tulpa took over his consciousness. “Ah, Mr. Trexler. It figures he’d be the one to receive your call. He regularly canvasses the shop by loitering in the adjacent alley. He likes to spook the children as they leave. I’ll have to tell him to cease now that I’ve told you of it.”

“I’m sure he’d appreciate that. Zell doesn’t seem too fond of me.”

“You’re not an easy person to like.”

I smirked. “Thanks, Daddy.”

“I take it you’ve reconsidered my offer to work together? Rid this plane of the double-walker? May I ask what prompted this change of heart?”

I smirked at his emphasis of the word heart . “I’m sure you’ll agree that it’s in everyone’s best interest to get rid of the doppelgänger as quickly as possible.”