Vicki Pettersson - The Scent of Shadows

I raised my chin. “And who has access to your minds?”

Her mouth opened, faltered, and closed. I looked around, meeting every eye, letting the silence grow heavy in the hallway. “Not just your minds, but your laboratories, and not just your labs, but the sick ward. And in the sick ward is the one woman who knows the truth.” I turned away from Chandra to face Greta again, whose color had risen to spot her cheeks in uneven blotches. “Why don’t you tell them the real reason you locked Tekla away?”

She twisted her pearls in her hands like she was counting off rosaries, and her voice was deliberately meek when she spoke. “She broke, inside, when Stryker was killed. Her mind weakened and she couldn’t discern reality from fantasy.”

I shook my head, said to the others, “She didn’t get weaker. She got stronger. More intuitive, more talented. The Zodiac lineage is matriarchal, so the power released when Stryker died reverted back to Tekla. So, isn’t it interesting this was when Greta had Tekla committed? Locked up in a soundless room, not to be seen or heard by anyone. Nobody, that is, but Greta herself.”

“Warren put her away!” Greta said, that cool voice rising.

“Uh-huh.” I nodded my head. “And who planted that suggestion in his mind?”

I waited, but nobody spoke. A good sign, and I turned back to Greta with a grim smile. “You waited two years, biding your time, gaining confidences, winning trust. Learning what you could from Chandra and Micah, preparing for Stryker’s metamorphosis. Then, after you used his death and Tekla’s grief to secure her position for yourself, it was easy to mark the rest. You had access to all their files—their horoscopes, their natal charts and lineages—so you knew how to enter their minds. Ply them with a little tea, get their own imaginations stirred up, and you ensured they’d come to you for hypnosis.”

“God,” someone breathed.

“You took away Tekla’s son and then you took away her gift, her talent.” I found I was breathing hard. “You took away her voice.”

There was a long pause, silence while each person took this in, considered it, and while Greta looked around, waiting for someone to speak up in reply. I couldn’t read anyone’s aura—emotions were too high, the air a roiling mix of gaseous color—but I didn’t have to in order to watch Greta’s color rise. She squared on me and took up her own defense.

“If I took away her voice,” she said, her own growing hard, “then how was she able to accuse you of being a traitor just yesterday?”

“She wasn’t accusing me. She was using what was left of her faculties, after being pumped full of enough drugs to fell an elephant, to beg me to find the traitor. Funny how she had to stop after you pumped her up yet again. Funny how that’s when the Tulpa was able to use her psionic powers to get through to me.”

The first flicker of fear crossed Greta’s face, and her voice was child-light. “How can you say these awful things to me?”

I looked again and saw it wasn’t fear. It was Shadow. I smiled. “Because I’m her voice now.”

The false outrage dropped from Greta’s face. She spun to face the others. “Tekla was the Seer. A full-fledged member of the Zodiac troop, and far more powerful than any half mortal. Why didn’t she speak out against me? Why, if she knew who I was, would she say nothing?”

They all looked to me.

I pulled Stryker’s comic from behind my back, lifted it and opened it to the page I’d already marked. They’d all been there, of course. They knew what had happened. But I watched as fresh grief spread through their faces, and on the page Tekla rose in a gown bloodied by her son’s death, screaming in grief. I couldn’t see the page myself, but, just as they had outside the Quik-Mart when I’d heard them the first time, the words boomed clearly from its pages. “There’s a traitor among us!”

I shut the comic and the voice died, leaving only silence, and the thud of my heart beating loudly in my ears.

“That person, that traitor,” I said softly, “can only be someone left alive in this sanctuary. It’s not me because I just arrived. It’s obviously not Warren. Is it you, Hunter?” His expression tightened, and I spoke before he could answer. “Nope, can’t be. Because it’s not the weapons that malfunction, is it?

“Perhaps Gregor’s the Judas. After all, he’s the one who left the boneyard open to infiltration by the Shadow side. Then again, I seriously doubt he’d have cut open his own bowels just for good effect.” I turned to the next star sign. “How about you, Micah? Granted, you could have handed me over to the Tulpa when I was lying unconscious under your care…or better yet, even killed me yourself.”

I shifted again. “I suppose it could be Chandra. She has the chemicals, the talent, the opportunity. But she’s not a real part of the Zodiac, and that means she’s nothing more than a tool for the real mole. A dupe. A pawn to be used, then discarded.”

“Fuck you,” she said, but she sounded more hurt than angry now.

“Or,” I said, whirling so I was facing all of them again, “is the mole the person who had access to us all? To Warren, whom I saw leaving Greta’s office right before his capture. Who risked all to bring me here, then suddenly—after one brief session—no longer trusted me. No longer trusted himself.”

“This is ridiculous. So far-fetched!” Greta said. “How can any of you listen to this? You know me…and she’s of the Shadows!”

But it was too late to effectively play that card, and I continued on as if she hadn’t spoken. No one stopped me. “Warren was disoriented. He told me you’d just hypnotized him, and when I came in after him you tried to do the same to me. But it didn’t work, did it? I awoke before you finished and there was a funny scent in the air, like metal ground into a fine powder. Something frightened you and you panicked and dropped the vial.”

“It was you. I saw the Shadow in you.”

“Saw it?” I asked coolly. “Or recognized it?”

She couldn’t hold back any longer. Her scream hit my face. “You don’t know any of this for a fact! You’re making it up! My father was an agent of Light!”

“Your father was a Gemini. Dual-sided, dual-faced, right?”

“Are you questioning his loyalty?” She spit in my face. I was guessing from the shock around me that this was a side of Greta none of the others had seen before. “He gave his life for this organization!”

I wiped the spittle from my cheek. “And I bet that really tore you up, didn’t it?”

“Excuse me,” she said, folding her arms over her chest, “but as long as we’re speaking of fathers, need I remind you who yours is, Olivia? Oh, but that’s not your real name, is it? Who’s the one keeping secrets now?”

I made sure my breathing was controlled, then said softly, “No, you don’t need to remind me. But might I remind you that neither goodness nor evil is inherited. Both must be chosen.”

She lifted her chin, her heart-shaped face hard with defiance. “If I’d chosen to betray the Zodiac troop, then the people I’ve lived with for two years—the supernatural people!—should have been able to scent the shadow in me. They specialize in detecting intent.”

“You mean they can’t?” I asked, feigning surprise. I already knew why this was, of course, but I didn’t want to explain it. It was important they discover it for themselves.

“I don’t smell anything,” Felix said, shaking his head.

“Neither do I.”

“Greta’s right,” Hunter said at last. “At least one of us would have been able to recognize something wasn’t right about her.”

The others shook their heads as I met their eyes in inquiry. When they landed on Greta, she smiled smugly. I returned the smile, causing hers to shake at the edges.