Vicki Pettersson - The Scent of Shadows

There was another silence. “Me.”

I stood and paced to the window, where shadows, once again, were soaking into crevices along the valley floor. “But why do I have to go? You said I wasn’t ready. And remember, Olivia is an Archer. They won’t touch her, or me, right?”

“Joanna Archer,” he said, surprising me by using not only my real name, but my full name, “they don’t want me for my sterling personality. They want me because of you.”

Oh.

“Meet me at the Peppermill on the Boulevard. Walk, don’t drive. We don’t want Olivia’s car anywhere near the pickup point. There will be a cab waiting out back. Pack like you’re going to summer camp, and bring only what you need.”

I looked around the room, with no idea where to start. “How long will I be gone?”

“Long enough to learn what you need to, but not long enough for anyone to miss you.”

“That narrows it,” I muttered to myself. “What about Luna?”

“She’ll be taken care of.”

I paused as the image of Mark and his naked pain and disbelief crowbarred its way back into my brain. “I need to tell you something, Warren. Or ask you—”

“Later. There’s a window of opportunity for the crossing, but it’s short. We must hurry.”

“The crossing?”

“From your world into ours,” he explained impatiently. “It can only be executed the exact moment day turns into night, or vice versa.”

I drew back and actually looked at the receiver. “That’s called dusk, Warren. It lasts more than a moment.”

“Not the point at which the light and shadow are divided evenly in the air. Be there, mid-dusk sharp.” He hung up in my ear.

I scowled at the phone, then down at Luna. “Bossy for a homeless man, isn’t he?”

I packed swiftly, only throwing in items I was comfortable with…or relatively so, considering Olivia’s wardrobe. Nothing silk, nothing with heels, and no lace. Sure, the jeans I stuffed into the duffel bag were Sevens rather than Levi’s, and the sweats were velour lined with satin rather than simple cotton, but at least they were items I could move in. I could run. I could fight.

Figuring discretion was the way to go since Warren had been specific about not using Olivia’s car, I donned a turtleneck and loose slacks, both black, though I decided to bring her crystal-studded cell phone along; after all, Olivia couldn’t just drop off the face of the earth, could she? Then I started throwing in the usual toiletries.

Underwear, socks, hairbrush, toothpaste, lotion…camera.

“Oh, my God,” I whispered, freezing with the cheap cardboard camera in my hand. I held it in my palm as gingerly as I would a baby bird. On it were the last images I’d taken as myself; the images I’d snapped in those early morning hours before returning to Warren to tell him that yes, I would accept his offer to become a superhero.

The ones of Ben, smiling in his sleep because I was alive.

I looked at the clock. Did I have time? My heart thudded at the prospect of viewing these photos. I’d have liked to develop them myself, to play with the shadow and light in the confines of my own dark space, but I knew that wasn’t an option. My home was being watched, and even if it wasn’t, Warren would never agree.

Still, there was a one-hour photo shop located inside a Quik-Mart only one block east of the Peppermill. If I drove that far and hurried, I might be able to make it.

The drive was a short one. I parked a block away, then crossed an intersection and three stop signs on foot to get to the store. I was only harassed by one motorist and one panhandler, so I figured my day was improving markedly.

I was greeted inside the Quik-Mart by a sleepy-eyed girl who looked barely old enough to vote. Perhaps greeted is too strong a word because she actually looked disappointed to see me, like I’d interrupted her life-in-progress and she wanted only to go back to her regularly scheduled programming. I wanted to tell her I could relate.

“How fast can you develop this?” I asked, handing her the camera.

“The sign says an hour.”

“I need them in half that.”

“So does everyone else, lady. Can’t do it.” She pushed the camera back at me and turned away.

“This says you can,” I said, sliding a hundred beneath the box. She looked from the money to me, and returned to the counter.

“You’ll have ’em in twenty.”

She may have been lazy, but she wasn’t stupid.

I decided to wait outside, thinking twenty minutes was enough to get started on at least one comic. The November air was sharp, but freshly so, and comfortable enough with the turtleneck on. I sat with my back against a stuccoed pillar and pulled the stack from my duffel bag, wondering where to begin.

Light, I decided. Definitely. I chose the one with the earliest date—volume two, number twenty-five—and flipped it open to learn more about the “independents” Warren had so distastefully mentioned the night of my metamorphosis. Apparently independents—also known in less flattering terms as rogue agents—were a constant threat to a troop’s equilibrium. In a world where lineage meant everything, the competition for open star signs was fierce, and even those of the Light had been known to take out their matching star sign just for the opportunity to usurp them in the Zodiac. That meant the independents weren’t liked or trusted by established troop members, and were rarely tolerated within city boundaries.

Fortunately, most of the time there was no disputing a star sign’s lineage; it went from mother to daughter, or if there was no younger female left, to the eldest son. But every once in a while a sign opened up with no obvious heir, and according to the manual, that’s when things got “interesting.”

I grimaced and flipped the page, remembering the way Warren’s mouth had curled when he spoke about the independents. Why did I get the feeling “interesting” was a euphemism for “deadly”?

I also had to wonder how my ascendancy into the Archer sign would be viewed by the star signs in his troop. If the Archer sign had been empty since my mother’s disappearance, might some of them liken my sudden appearance to that of a rogue agent? At the least, wouldn’t it be seen as “interesting”?

Not having these answers, and not liking the direction my questioning was taking, I quickly flipped that manual shut and picked up another. This time I ignored the chronological ordering and just snagged the one with the best-looking superhero on the cover, shoving the rest back into my pack. Stryker , it was called. Agent of Light.

“Stryker is striking,” I murmured, settling back. The rating on it was PG-17, and I could see why; leather clung to the man’s thighs, snug in all the right places, and a loose-knit cashmere sweater revealed tremendous biceps…as well as the glyph pulsing like a heartbeat on his chest. It was, in fact, pulsing on the page. Though no expert in astrology, I thought it might be the glyph for Scorpio, the sign and month before mine. Stryker was holding what I assumed to be a weapon, bent like a crossbow, but with a chain attached. Its use was totally unfathomable to me.

“I’d be willing to find out, though,” I said, my eyes grazing his figure again. Note to self: side benefit of being a superhero? Getting to know other superheroes.

I paused as my eyes caught the author’s name stretched across the top band in black stencil. Zane Silver. The same Zane who worked in the shop? I wondered, before my eye caught the second name illustrated there. Carl Kenyon, penciler.

“Wookie-boy?” I wondered aloud, shifting so the comic was lit from the streetlight above the store.

Ten minutes later I had a tenuous grasp on some of the events that had plagued me recently. I followed Stryker—a character, or a real person?—through a series of events leading to his metamorphosis. He’d been taken to an empty warehouse on Industrial and Pollack, and was surrounded by eleven other men and women, though it was difficult to tell one sex from the other. Each person wore a loose-fitting robe, white and dotted with what I took to be golden-threaded constellations.