Vicki Pettersson - The Touch of Twilight

“Look, there’s something you need to know.” Chandra hesitated, and I felt the tension return as I suddenly realized I was on the receiving side of a confession. And from her body language, I gathered I wasn’t going to like it any better than she did. “It’s about the animist’s mask, and what you see. You don’t have bad chi , or if you do it’s not like…a head cold.”

A head cold? “What?”

She sighed, her usual self-assurance gone as she cleaned off her instruments without looking at me. “What I mean is, it’s not catching. Kimber lied about seeing her own destruction in the mask. She didn’t see anything. I thought it was a joke when she told me, she said she was just playing a bit…”

I fell stone-still. So that’s what she meant about being petty.

“But you let them all believe…?” I couldn’t even finish the sentence. After all the effort and trouble I had fitting into this place, all the time and energy spent convincing these people they could trust me, that despite my Shadow side I belonged in this troop…

Holding her hands up in front of her, Chandra did look at me now. “I just found out, I swear. I thought about telling Warren, but he didn’t seem too concerned to begin with, so instead I decided you might want to take care of it yourself. I know how you are when someone-”

“-is petty?” I asked bitterly.

She nodded, biting her lip as she looked at her fingers again, at the floor. Anywhere but at me.

“You’re starting to know me well.”

She did look up now that my voice had gone flat. “Just don’t go overboard-”

“Wow, you are starting to know me well.”

She winced. “She was just having some fun…in her way. It wouldn’t have come to anything. The danger to you from the doppelgänger is still real, so I mean, it changes nothing, right?”

She was already regretting telling me, and I put a hand on her arm-comforting, not threatening-so she wouldn’t have to second-guess me, so she knew exactly what was coming. “No, Chandra,” I said, very clearly. “It changes everything.”

Chandra was wrong about something else as well. I could be petty, and had metaphorically tweaked her nose enough times that she knew it. She was hoping I’d take the high road here, but there was a difference between a joke and a malicious rumor, and Kimber had crossed that line without even knowing me. I didn’t know if her assumptions matched Chandra’s original impression of me, if this glossy exterior had her convinced that nothing of import or use lay inside, but she’d clearly decided taking the Kairos down a few notches would be a good way to establish a foothold in the troop. My troop.

One thing I’d learned in my short time as a Zodiac member was that while we were all capable, we were also all proud, and since we had the same essential hierarchy as a pack of wolves, the internal battle for position was as bloody and fierce as our wild counterparts’. When a combatant threw down, the issue wasn’t resolved until one agent had clearly, if figuratively, pinned and submitted the other.

And that’s what I planned to do to Kimber now as I snatched up the animist’s mask from its wall peg in the astrolab, and headed to Saturn’s Orchard, where I knew Kimber spent every morning honing her kata.

She was still warming up when I entered, sitting lotus-style on the mat in the middle of the pyramid-shaped room, using meditation to bring her mind in balance before she engaged her body. Her image was reflected back on itself in the mirrored walls, and I had a moment to consider how serene she looked sitting there, almost like a monk with her hands splayed over her knees. Then the door slammed shut, her eyes winged open to find me, and the peaceful image was ruined.

Her upper lip curled in a sneer and she shut her eyes dismissively, though her countenance held a stiffness it hadn’t before. Her spine straightened, her awareness of me making her self-conscious when what she really needed to be was wary. Ah well, I thought, turning my shoulders. Live and learn.

I unfurled the mask, whipping it like a skipping stone so it clattered across the floor and struck her thigh hard enough to leave a bruise. She yelped, eyes flying open as I began my slow stalk, keeping to the perimeter of the room. To her credit, she stayed where she was even though my heart rate was up and my fury scented the air. I kept my stride even.

“You want what?” she said, still dismissive, pale dreads standing out like long corn husks against her loose black clothing.

“Some quality time with my newest, bestest girlfriend,” I said in Olivia’s highest dulcet tone, throwing in a breathy sigh to punctuate the difference between my soft words and my aggressive actions. An invisible wall soared high and solid in my wake. I could feel it like it was tethered around my waist, beginning to take on drag. My goal was to make it around the entire room before Kimber realized what I was doing. My voice, my words, my looks-all the things she’d underestimated-helped. “After all, you’re the only one who understands what it’s like for me under that mask. You’re the only one in this big ol’ world who shares my ill chi .”

All right, so it was a bit of overkill, but she’d fall for it a little longer. I cut my fourth wall short, reinforced them all with a quick pulse of my thoughts, then cut a direct path to Kimber, where I hovered too close, too long, before lowering myself into a mirrored cross-legged position. Our knees touched. I smiled sweetly. Kimber scowled, pushed back fractionally, and handed me the mask.

“I don’t think so.”

“Just put it on. Just once. I want to know what you see. Is there ash raining on the city as it goes up in a conflagration? Is there mutiny among the remaining citizens? Wait, I bet it’s the way they’ve turned to cannibalism, right? You look like you’ve seen the absolute worst of it.”

Her serene expression had been blighted, and her lips had thinned into nonexistence. “I said no.”

I thrust out my bottom lip. “Please?”

She cursed under her breath, stood smoothly, and tossed the mask onto my lap. “Begging,” she said as she turned toward the door. “You’re fucking pitiful.”

By the time she hit my first wall, my pitiful self was standing as well. She reared back-confused, shocked, pained-and turned to me holding her nose.

“Come,” I said, motioning her way, all the pleading drained from my voice.

“No.” Her voice was strained now; she was trying to push down her panic, still holding on to her low estimation of me. “I’m not going to-”

“I’m not talking to you.” I cut her off, still motioning, still concentrating. The wall behind her struck her backside first as it continued its slow glide my way. I hadn’t learned to control the speed yet, but I could erect them, I could move them, and I could shrink the space inside them so thoroughly they could crack a nut. I smiled, and the other three walls shimmered as they began to close in.

“What are you doing?” She was panicked now, pushing back with her weight, heels stuttering as the wall continued inching forward.

“Don’t be afraid. We’re in the sanctuary, after all. Someone will be along to help you…shortly.” Chandra hadn’t tried to stop me, but she knew when I left the lab I hadn’t intended to make nice with Kimber. “Maybe I’ll even let them.”

She was fighting it fully now, all that arrogant Zen master bullshit absent under the realization I could do something she could not. What can I say? Surviving something like walls materializing to trap you inside them, which I had, made the mastery of the skill a priority. I stopped all four walls when we were only feet apart, where they vibrated with an intensity that raised the hairs on my arms.