Kim Harrison - Holidays are Hell

She probably felt no more pain than a pinch, and the blood was only a trickle, but Lindy's eyes watered as her nose mended itself, shifting back into place with an audible crack. Zoe smirked and picked up her toppled cornucopia.

"Mortal doesn't mean pushover."

"No. It means walked-over."

"Just tell him I'm here," Zoe said curtly.

The house quaked like the hills of San Francisco.

Lindy grinned as she swayed. "He knows."

As, it seemed, did everyone else. As Zoe was escorted beyond the foyer and into the core of the house, doors began to swing open. She didn't make eye contact as speculative whispers turned to hissing, and curiosity turned hostile. Instead she let her eyes stray over the shoulders of her enemies—Raven was here, she saw, and Polly and Damian; they leered at her as she passed—but she ignored them all and searched out the rooms she remembered and recognized by layout, pretending to look for the Tulpa. There was neither anything resembling a nursery, nor any sign of a child. He'd called these his drawing rooms when she was living here, and she was surprised to find nothing had changed. Not even the furnishings. Even after Zoe's infiltration that first time, even though he knew she'd returned to the Light and reported every secret detail of his lair—and she knew them all—he'd stayed put.

Arrogant bastard, she thought, as Lindy smiled back at her from over one slim shoulder. That arrogance would be his downfall.

She wiped away the thought like cleaning a slate in her mind. Imagination was what was needed to keep her alive through the day. So instead of thinking that the Tulpa was stupid as well as manipulative and cruel, she thought of him as trusting and hopeful, just waiting for the day Zoe would return to him.

"I'll take that." Lindy said, holding out her hands for the cornucopia once they'd reached the end of the hallway. It was an unnecessary precaution. Nothing on the physical plane could injure the Tulpa. But Lindy wasn't about to release Zoe without letting her know she wasn't trusted. Zoe almost thanked her. It was a good reminder after the relative ease of the entry.

"It's a gift," Zoe said lightly, "and it's not for you."

Lindy could've easily wrested the cornucopia from Zoe's grasp. Instead she reached out and deliberately plucked the finishing piece, a sugared plum, from atop the carefully arranged mound, leaving a hole where the fruit had been. She bit into it without breaking eye contact, and juice ran down her chin as her mouth curved upward.

"Attractive," Zoe commented dryly. "And the manuals still speculate why you've no heir to your star sign… or prospect of spawning one."

Lindy's expression snapped, anger pulling it tight at the center, but she didn't use the fist clenched at her side, and she didn't tear the cornucopia from Zoe's hands. Security tapes had shown Zoe entering with the piece. If she didn't walk in with it now the Tulpa would wonder why.

And if there was a weapon hidden in the cheerful basket, he'd want to shove it down her throat himself.

There was a pedestal perched next to the door, one that had once held a fern, but now sported a blood-red scripture box with twin dragons on each wooden side, a lone bright spot in the long bare hallway. That was one difference, Zoe thought. She hadn't seen any living thing—plants, animals, humans—in the house. Because Shadows didn't count, she thought as Lindy slid open the box's ornate lid, and pulled out a pair of gold-rimmed aviator glasses. "Put these on."

Zoe screwed up her face. "I'm not going to meet the Tulpa in glasses that make me look like I'm stuck in the eighties."

"Put them on," Lindy repeated, her voice brittle.

Zoe sighed, shifted her gift to one arm and accepted the glasses, her confused gaze winking up at her from the mirrored lenses. "Why?"

"Because I said so." Lindy rapped on the door twice with her knuckles and it immediately swung open to reveal a dim and deep interior. It wouldn't have been intimidating… if there'd actually been someone manning the door. Lindy saw Zoe hesitate and the cruel smile was back on her face. "Have… fun."

Zoe wondered at the deliberate word choice, but slid the glasses over her eyes like she hadn't noticed, and smirked. "We always do."

Zoe would've given her life just then to be able to smell the bilious jealousy she knew was seeping from the woman's pores, but the cursing and chattering behind them told her the other Shadows did scent it. Knowing an impending riot when she saw one, she stepped smoothly into the room and watched as the door swung shut on the demonic faces glaring at her from the hallway.

Then the vacuum of silence was absolute.

The glasses accentuated the room's dimness and Zoe thought that was their purpose. So she emptied her mind and tried not to let it unnerve her; tried, too, not to think of all the empty space around her, or how she could be cut down where she stood without even knowing the blow was corning. She knew fear stank like something pickled and old, and the Tulpa fed on that fear.

Zoe was determined to make him starve.

Still, she jumped when a movement flickered across from her, freezing as she did. Swallowing hard, she cradling the curved horn like it was a talisman that would ward off injury, and took a step forward. Three beings across from her mirrored the movement. None of them spoke.

"Babe?" she said, using the same endearment she had all those years before. No answer. She stepped forward again. The Shadows across from her drew closer as well, still silent. She tilted her head, and saw two of them imitate the movement. Cutting her eyes to the third, she realized that figure, also clad in owlish lenses, had as well. She lifted her hand as if in greeting, and they did the same.

Mirrors. A relieved sigh scuttled from her throat, but caught when a wispy shadow rose up behind her, kept rising in a tower of smoke that burned even in her mortal nose, and was tripled before her eyes. She froze as it suddenly retracted, leaving vaporous tendrils to dissipate in the air as it solidified over her right shoulder like ash caught in a mold.

Even as she strained through the dark glasses to make out his features, she knew she was the one creating them, expectation and memory joining forces to construct the man she remembered, like an architect building a house from the bones up. He wasn't much taller than she, and slighter than one would expect of a man of great power. His hair was a sandy color—not quite brown, but not blond, either—and he had deep hazel eyes, like the moss of a clouded swamp. With a wide face and full lips, he couldn't be called unattractive and that was no accident. Zoe remembered thinking that if she had to bed down with unadulterated evil, he could at least be good-looking.

Once he'd fully materialized, he slipped his arm over her shoulder, around her neck, his fingers coming to rest on her opposite arm. He squeezed lightly, pulling in tight to whisper in her ear.

"Darling," he said, his endearment for her returned. His voice was raspy, pure male, and honed.

But his embrace wasn't as cold as she remembered, his breath not as septic sour, and though Zoe knew it was only because her senses were blunted with mortality, it made it easier to ignore the rot she knew lay ready to engulf her if not for the fragile membrane of his skin. Before she'd been able to scent out festering venom and bacteria, and at the end she'd even begun to expect infection, like she too was contaminated, even though she was super. But now she could anticipate nothing about him, including this unexpected welcome.

Realigning her thoughts—and Zoe was a pro at that—she let go of the knowledge that he could kill her with a swift snap of those gentle fingers, or crack her like a walnut between the lever of his strong arm and body, and turned into him instead. The sigh that flew from her body was one of relief, not fear. Her arms clung to him with gratitude, not entreaty, and she lifted her lips to his icy ones as she'd done countless times all those years past to utter her heartfelt lie.