Vicki Pettersson - The Touch of Twilight

“And matter is all that matters.” I was murmuring Chandra’s words to myself, but the doppelgänger heard.

“Exactly so! So if you would just think . Then you could do it now and I’ll be stronger, faster, more, real, him, me…” Her entire face flashed, like lightning trapped in a bottle, and layers of light bled in her gaze, white orbs rolling like marbles. She was becoming frantic, and had almost lifted her arms, reaching out to me with razored nails before catching herself and pulling back. She wrung her hands, and bubbles frothed between her palms. “Do it properly, okay? It’ll be faster that way, almost instant. Formal isn’t necessary, no, but proper. Informal, common. That’s a given.”

She tilted her head to the other side when I said nothing, airy eyes swirling with mist, earnestness making them wide. “I won’t kill you, and we’ll be friends. Because friends give, and given is best. Anyone can inherit it, so inheritance means nothing.”

I licked my lips, not relaxing even if she didn’t look like she was going to kill me at this moment. Another moment was coming on fast. “I just need, um…a little plain English here.”

That didn’t piss her off like I thought it would. “Plain English! Exactly so!” The doppelgänger licked her beautiful lips, and I took a step backward. She still looked hungry. “I need a noun. One noun, two aspects, right?”

I half expected her to pull on her ear and say, Sounds like… So I waited for the pantomime to play out. And waited. I swallowed hard. “Come again?”

She ignored me, still rambling. “The first aspect is the sense-you know a lot about senses, right?-and then there’s a referent…but of course that’s already inside you. Your Shadow side…but you still need another…”

And it was all going so well until her words trailed off in a hiss. Her teeth elongated in her mouth, saliva dripping, and she looked right through me like I was nothing more than a bag of bones.

“Flank her,” came the order from behind me…and I realized she was looking at Warren, who’d burst through the Orchard’s door, the rest of the troop close behind.

“Not yet, Phantom ,” the doppelgänger snapped at Warren, and he looked stricken at her tone. She turned back to me, eyes fierce white marbles. “Just give it to me. One noun, two aspects, a sense and a referent. All you have to do is think! Quick!”

Oh yeah-that was going to happen with my fanged and clawed double salivating in front of me. I shook my head, swallowing hard. “I’m sorry. I don’t know-”

“Idiot! Stop apologizing.” She no longer looked like me. Her face was almost roiling, it was morphing so quickly into different oval, heart, and square-jawed aspects. Her eyes alternately slanted and rounded, and her skin looked thinner, weaker, in some places than others, like a balloon squeezed at one end. “Do it now, or I’ll tell everyone here your real name.”

I narrowed my eyes, and my fingers flexed automatically. “Don’t,” I said coolly.

“Olivia!” Warren had moved into my peripheral view, but I didn’t dare take my eyes off my doppelgänger. She was boxed in, but I was boxed in with her.

“I’ll let you say mine,” she cajoled, drowning out his voice, ignoring him completely. He was behind her now, but couldn’t get at her through the walls, and she knew it. The rest of the troop had spread out evenly around the perimeter, but she didn’t spare any of them a glance either.

I shook my head. “I don’t know yours.”

“Olivia.” Warren’s voice again. “Break down your walls on my go.”

He began to give the others orders, I saw all conduits lift-Vanessa’s steel fan flicking open, Felix’s edged boomerang, a flanged mace, hooks, and a short pole that flared into a four-tined military fork with the press of a button-but my double still didn’t seem concerned. Her liquid tongue darted out, and her gaze no longer rested gently on mine. “If you’re not going to soldier toward your destiny, then I’ll do it for you, but one way or another, you’re going to give me what I want.”

I narrowed my eyes. “Don’t hold your breath.”

And as Warren raised his arm, I closed my eyes and wished the walls away.

Her response was a bubbling whisper. “You mean like her?”

I opened my eyes in time to see Warren tackle her, but he fell through her body like it was made of mist. An instant later, all that remained of her was crazed, bittersweet laughter.

“Dammit, Vanessa! I told you not to break the circle!”

But Vanessa was kneeling over Kimber, wrenching the mask from her face. It gave in her grip with a sharp popping noise, and then Kimber took the deepest, loudest, greediest breath I’d ever heard. I winced. The mask couldn’t kill her, so she’d been suffocating all this time. It must have felt like eternity.

Felix turned to me while Micah and Chandra tended to Kimber. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine. She didn’t do anything.” Though the conversation had left me more confused than ever. What the hell did she want from me? A noun? Two aspects and a referent? At least it was no longer my heart.

“How can you say that?” Vanessa said, turning to look up at me so her long ebony curls whipped around her face. “Look at Kimber.”

“Oh.” I swallowed hard, looking at the blue-lipped, pale-skinned initiate. “That.”

Kneeling on her other side, Micah looked up at me in disbelief. “Don’t tell me…”

So I didn’t. But once Kimber had finally regained her color, her breath, and her wits, she made sure not to leave anything out.

I was duly reprimanded for forcing the animist’s mask upon Kimber, even though no one else had known doing so would trap her breath inside it either. I would’ve pointed out Kimber was uninjured-even initiates couldn’t be killed by anything fashioned by a mortal’s hand-and that she’d only fallen semi-immobile because it was hard to think when you couldn’t breathe. Yet that would’ve brought her absolute vulnerability to the doppelgänger to the forefront of the conversation, something I wasn’t especially anxious to point out.

Of course, Kimber pointed that out for me as well…and was summarily reamed for pretending to see portents of evil and unmitigated horrors when she clearly had not. Warren stripped her of the right to leave the sanctuary again until after her metamorphosis, and as far as I was concerned, we were even. Yet one look at Kimber’s sullen face and it was clear she didn’t feel the same. Fine. So I knew she’d continue working to usurp my position in the troop…and she knew I’d be ready.

“But how did the doppelgänger get in?” Tekla asked, once only she, Warren, and I remained in the dojo. Warren was staring up at the apex of the room distractedly, clearly wondering if its pyramid shape had anything to do with it. I just shook my head because the more pressing question was What did she want? “One noun, two aspects…” I wrapped my arms around my middle and shook my head. I had no idea what that meant.

“Nouns have two functions,” said Tekla, standing across from me. “They describe and they refer. She mentioned your senses, and that your Shadow side was a referent, what lives inside of you. Does any of that make sense to you?”

“Nothing. You?”

“No, but I’m not the one a doppelgänger broke into the sanctuary to have a chat with.”

“Because she’s a part of me,” I murmured, running my hands over my face and hair. “At least that’s what she said. Made from the same cloth. Everywhere I am.”

Warren put his hands on his hips, still straining as he gazed at the pyramid’s apex. He was clean-shaven, clothed in white…obviously taking the night off from indigence. “You know, for the girl who’s supposed to be the savior of the Zodiac, you’re pretty high-maintenance.”