Vicki Pettersson - The Scent of Shadows

I folded my arms. “So, basically, I’ve been bugged?”

“ I’m bugged,” he corrected, tapping his own chest. “It’s like I have a second heartbeat. I know when your pulse accelerates or slows, if not why. The blood running in your veins is like a current rushing through my ears. If you break out in a sweat, my body attempts to cool it. Basically I feel any metabolic change you go through. And yes, the sense of smell is that much greater.”

“A magnified sixth sense, then?”

“More like a seventh. An eighth.” He folded his hands in front of him. “Try it now, if you like. Think of something that unsettles you, and I’ll tell you the moment it enters your mind.”

“Okay.” I closed my eyes and kept my body very still. I thought of waking that morning in Greta’s scented room, the birds chirping softly on their perch, the relief that washed over me as I escaped my dream. I thought of giggling with Cher over fizzy water and peppermint lotion. Then I zeroed in on the memory of the man across from me, asking if I’d killed an innocent, somehow entirely certain I could.

“There.” My eyes shot open to find him pointing at me. “My second heartbeat accelerated, my palms broke out in a sweat beneath my own skin, but the overriding sense was one of anger. Maybe a touch of fear.” He angled his head. “What were you thinking of?”

“Xavier. How he used to treat me,” I said, well aware Warren could smell the lie on me. I didn’t care. The man was inside me, or I inside him, and with these sudden questions about his intentions, I was determined to keep some things to myself. “So could you feel what I felt when Ajax found me?”

“I scented your fear when he entered the building. Your anger when he killed that girl…” He paused, before adding, “And the sorrow before all of it began.”

I’d known it wouldn’t take him long to circle back to that. I avoided his gaze and moved from the doorway, opening the closet to peer inside.

“You have to stay away from him, Jo,” he said, but I wasn’t paying attention.

“Whose room is this?” I asked, jerking back from the closet in surprise.

“Yours now,” he said, joining me to stare at the evenly spaced clothing filling the racks and shelves, the shoes and boots lined along the floor. All black, all female. “But it was once Zoe’s.”

Our eyes met.

He said nothing about the eagerness texturing the air in lacy patterns between us, instead using the opportunity to pull out the photo of Ben he’d taken from me the day before. I inhaled sharply as he held it up in front of my face. “You don’t want Ajax to find him, do you?” he asked softly.

Ajax who would track him, torture him, and skewer his innocent heart. And enjoy it.

I lifted my eyes, laid them dead on his. “No.”

“Then train your mind. Don’t even think Ben’s name.” He spaced these last words so evenly it was as if he bit them off. I found I couldn’t meet his gaze. “If you don’t control your emotions, you’re putting both of your lives in danger. Mine too.”

This time I heard the plea in his voice. I wanted to tell him he didn’t know what he was asking, but he did know, and deep down I knew he had a right to ask it. What was my personal sorrow compared to the greater welfare of the troop? The city? The universe?

We stared at one another, tension spiking between us. Desperation oiled the air, as much his as mine, and finally I nodded. No more lives would be lost because of me. I could at least promise him that much. Warren sighed and leaned back on his heels, and as if by magic the air seemed clearer, fresher around us. It sparkled invisibly, and I sucked in a deep breath of it. Now things could be right between us again. Almost.

“One more question,” I said, and held up a hand as the guarded look returned to his face and the air glimmered less brightly. “Could you sense what it was like for me when I penetrated the sanctuary?”

His hands fisted at his sides. Now it was my turn to feel and scent and taste raw guilt in the air, and it went a long way toward soothing my anger. “I tasted the atoms splicing in your body. I felt the sizzle of them on my tongue. Your boiling blood reeked in my nostrils, and I could smell the marrow melting in your bones.”

I swallowed hard. I hadn’t exactly realized that that’s what had happened.

“Come on,” he said, palm reassuring on my shoulder. “I’ll show you the rest.”

We strode along corridors just wide enough for two bodies side by side. A strip of red neon, like a racing stripe, ran along the walls near the floor, lighting our footfalls and marking our progress, before dimming again behind us. In the brief volleys of light I could make out symbols on the walls—runic, perhaps, or some long-dead language I didn’t recognize—but we walked so quickly their shapes were nothing more than a flash burned on my retina, replaced in the next second by another, then another. Warren, used to them, took no note.

“Warren, what if I don’t gain any more power? I mean, what if I just tried to control my emotions and live a mortal’s life. Would they leave me alone?” These questions were more rhetorical than anything. We both knew I was beyond letting sleeping dogs lie. I’d seen too much. And there were too many deaths on my hands.

Warren shook his head. “They’d find you eventually. In the end you’d just have fewer ways of defending yourself. Crossing over into the Neon Boneyard via an alternate plane was the first step in gaining more power, a necessary one, because now you have the knowledge, even when you return to the mortal world. Entering the sanctuary was the second step because now you’ll be able to enter any portal closed to mere mortals.”

“Which means?”

“Which means,” he said, squaring on me, “you now have front row seats and an all-access pass to the supernatural realm.” I regarded him, unblinking. “What? Haven’t you ever had doors that won’t open when you twist the handle, though you could have sworn you saw someone else disappear inside only moments before? How about elevators that won’t come when you call them? Or the feeling that someone is watching you, only to turn and discover nobody’s there? Well, those doors and elevators—portals is what they really are—will now be open to you.”

He motioned to the wall in front of us. I looked closer, spotted a discreet seam running from ceiling to floor, and pushed. Nothing. I pushed harder with the same results, then looked at Warren. He ushered me back, then with another flourish of his hands the barrier separated and the walls folded back on themselves like a Japanese fan. Beyond lay a steel elevator, doors already open wide and inviting.

“Neat trick,” I muttered, getting in. “I thought you said they’d open to me ?”

“You need a little practice. And patience.”

I scowled and looked away, ignoring the censure in his voice. The elevator panels were mirrored in a smoky gilt frame, and revealed the strangest couple staring back. A fashionista in a dashing pink warm-up, and an indigent dressed up in someone else’s hand-me-downs. Barbie goes slumming.

“So these… portals , they’re a part of an alternate reality?”

“Exactly,” he said, pushing a button marked down. The doors whisked shut behind us. “You’ll have to be extremely careful at first. You won’t know what’s waiting on the other side of any given entrance, but you’ll learn.”

Visions of monsters lunging from the closet and from under my bed had me sighing. Dammit. I’d only just gotten over that phobia.

The elevator slid open and we stepped into a stunted hallway leading to a set of double doors, again in smoked glass.