The Touch of Twilight

hadn’t been the one to create it. It showed the Tulpa ringed in giant saguaros, a marble-eyed woman poised to take a bite from his shoulder. I waited for him to mention the manuals of Light-or lack thereof-but he was studying the cover, expression as alive as any changeling’s.

“This was a great issue to interpret. The Archer of Light always comes through.”

I blinked, surprised. “Thanks, Zane.”

“I’m not talking about you.” He scowled up at me, and slapped the comic down. “I mean Zoe Archer’s successful entree back into our world. Despite her humanity, she’s still a force to be reckoned with, with a mind and will so strong she created another living creature.”

I listened to his speech, and drew back from the counter as realization dawned. “Ew. Do you have a crush on my mother, Zane?” I asked, making a gagging noise when he colored. “Isn’t she a little young for you?”

Not looking at me, teeth clenched, he asked, “Is this going to be all?”

“No, it’s not all,” I snapped, suddenly tired of being treated like a gaming piece on some paranormal chessboard. My mother, Warren, now Zane…all moving me around at will. “How about acknowledging that I gave that doppelganger a name, turned it loose upon the Tulpa, and brought the third sign to life? I mean, I just annihilated every threat to my life, but I suppose that doesn’t warrant mention in here, huh?”

“Is the Tulpa still alive?”

“Yes, but-”

“And did you ever manage to track down the former Shadow Cancer?”

“No.”

“And has the fourth sign of the Zodiac been revealed?”

He already knew the answer to all these questions. “Your point?” I asked tersely.

“The point is that nothing’s changed. The Tulpa still wants your life-”

My turn to interrupt. “He’s busy defending his own.”

“Regan still knows who you are…and she has your conduit-”

“And she couldn’t sneak up on me if she were as well-wrapped as King Tut. I’d scent out her blood a mile away.”

He pinned me with his gaze then, eyes gleaming. “And even when the fourth sign of the Zodiac comes to pass, nobody will recognize it.”

My mouth stuttered before it fell shut. There was that. Jasmine still thought she was a superheroine in the making. Li was still deteriorating by the day. “I’m working on it,” I muttered, unable to keep the guilt from coloring my words. Hearing it, Zane pounced.

“Well, work harder. That changeling isn’t going to heal herself!”

“Oh, are we exchanging advice? Fine, then don’t forget to take your fiber, and the Fixodent should be applied liberally.”

Zane grumbled but rang me up, and I snatched the plastic back out of his hand. Later, Gramps.”

“Wait until you’re my age,” he called after me. “You won’t find it so funny!”

“Zane.” I turned, back against the door. “Do you really think I’m going to live that long?”

“Good point.”

I was too apathetic to let the comment bother me, and too late in meeting Gregor for the crossing to immediately rip into the manual. As soon as I was tucked in the back of his cab, though-and alone for a change-I flipped through it to relive the Shadow version of the events at Cathedral Canyon. I glanced up to find Gregor observing me through the rearview mirror, curious as he studied the flash of color and light rising from the manual to wash over my face.

“Learn anything new?”

“No,” I lied and looked back down. The manual shook in my hands. The cryptic ending was clearly meant “to be continued,” but that’s not what was most confusing. I’d simply never expected to see Hunter Lorenzo gracing the pages of a Shadow manual.

His expression held the same resolute calm it had when I’d left him at the warehouse, though it sat on his face like a sunken stone, like he’d settled something for himself inside. He was obviously in a building of some sort, but it had been drawn intentionally obscure, and all that was visible was yards of concrete and four slim windows that allowed a full moon to fall on that disturbingly peaceful face.

“People should have their greatest desires,” he told someone, and his voice lifted from the pages to wash over me, causing chills to break out along my spine.

I looked up, but Gregor had turned his attention back to the road, and clearly hadn’t heard. Disturbed, confused, and inexplicably sad, I flipped the manual shut just as dusk split down its thinning middle, and we rocketed through the wall and into the boneyard. The dust from our impact into an alternate reality hadn’t even settled before a strange pulsing glow seeped into the cab. For a moment I thought the Shadow manual had fallen open again, the recorded events springing to life once more on my lap. Yet in the next, I realized the light was coming from outside the vehicle, and I automatically reached for a conduit I no longer possessed.

I glanced at Gregor to find him half-turned, observing me again, but this time with an air of expectation, not curiosity. I frowned my confusion, but he merely smiled and jerked his head toward the center of the boneyard. Pushing open the cab door, I stood, then cautiously edged toward the glare. A few yards in, I entered a clearing of pulsing, streaming, gas-infused light. And Light. I turned around myself in the middle of the clearing to find agents gazing at me from varying vantages, their smiles as bright as the dilapidated signage they were perched upon.

Except none of it looked dilapidated with bright, flashing bulbs and streaming neon tubes, a carnival of the city’s history: Aladdin’s lamp, the marquees from the Frontier and Maxim, cafe arrows…and the Silver Slipper looming over them all. Its chipped paint flashed in the puncturing glow of hundreds of bulbs, the first time they’d been lit since 1988. It took my breath away.

My lower jaw had just swung shut when I saw Dylan and Kade waving at me from the tail of a neon yellow shooting star. The other changelings were fanned around the clearing’s perimeter, some with other agents, others with initiates of the same age, who’d obviously been let out for the night. But why?

“Wha-?”

Reaching my side, Gregor put an arm around my shoulder. “Now, Vanessa!”

A mishmash of individual lettering from the Dunes, the Landmark, the Hacienda, and the Sands sprang to life across from me, and my breath caught on a surprised, and touched, sigh. “Oh.”

Welcome, Joanna.

“Oh,” I said again, tears stinging my eyes. “It’s beautiful.”

“Skamar’s not the only one in possession of her true name now. We thought it good cause to celebrate.”

I sniffled, unable to say anything. But he was right. I’d felt it inside, like an inaudible click, as soon as the troop had learned I was Joanna beneath Olivia. It had been the power, the magic, the alchemy of being recognized.

A part of me was concerned, I admitted, watching the young initiates swing from the old Stardust constellation. They streamed past me, glowworm faces flashing with their laughter. If the secret of my identity was out among my troop, would it be long before the Shadows learned of it as well? After all, we’d been infiltrated once, and despite Chandra’s actions, she was still bound to be discontent at her displacement in the troop. And, of course, there was Kimber to consider. I scanned the boneyard, not finding her. She was a new and certainly antagonistic X factor.

Zane had also made more of a point than I’d wanted to give him credit for-Regan was still out there. She knew me as both Olivia and Joanna. The question was, would she use that knowledge as a bartering chip with the Tulpa, or would she come after me herself?

“Hi, Archer…I mean, Joanna.”

I looked down, smiled, and sank to my knees. “Li. How are you feeling?”

“I’m okay.” The makeup Chandra had made her had evened out the cracked egg aspect of her face, and she almost looked healthy in the fresh autumn night. She was dressed as a black cat, and it was all I could do not to reach out and scratch her behind the ears. “Aren’t the lights beautiful?”

I looked around again, catching sight of Jasmine talking to Rena, ward mother to our initiates. Even Jas looked impressed tonight…though she was wearing a typically angsty T-shirt that read, this IS my costume.

“They are,” I agreed, straightening.

“I don’t think I could ever live in a place of darkness.”