“Okay, but I’m warning you, it might be something of a shock.”
“More shocking than being whacked on the head with a steel baton?” I said sharply. “Or more shocking than waking up officially dead?”
I felt my jaw moving, saw the reflected jaw working in the mirror, but no sound came out. I turned the mirror over, checked for a false back, pounded it against the bed twice, and peered into the glass again. Then I lifted my gaze to Micah’s anxious one. “It—It’s…Olivia.”
His face relaxed into a relieved smile.
“
I returned my gaze to the mirror. I certainly was.
And this time I passed out all on my own.
When I next woke, I was alone. The room was dark, and I thought briefly about calling for a nurse before deciding against it. Instead I reached for the stack of newspapers, but yelped when I lifted the first one. My fingertips were both sensitive and numb at the same time. I felt the structure and weight of the paper, even the fibers that comprised the page, but that was a deep knowledge, one born of previous experience. On the surface it felt like I was holding it between crystal gloves. I overturned my palm and stared.
My fingerprints were gone.
I tapped the pad of my thumb against my forefinger, expecting to hear a clicking like fingernails against glass, but there was only silence. The clink was felt, not heard, as if my bones were banging brittle and cold against one another. It was an odd feeling, slightly nauseating, though perhaps that would lessen with time. For now, I resolutely reached for the newspapers, prepared to feel trees screaming beneath my touch, and began to read.
The articles were stacked by date, most recent on the bottom, and the contents of each became increasingly surreal. They went into excruciating detail, not always flattering or correct, about me, my life, and my tragic demise.
The gist of the story was this: Joanna Archer had died after a botched break-in at her sister’s ninth-story apartment. I’d fought and struggled valiantly, but ultimately fell to my death along with my assailant, one Butch Lewis of Houston, Texas. However, I’d saved my sister’s life in the process.
How ironic was that? Hailed a hero in death when the reality was I’d been able to save no one. Including, it now seemed, myself. I sighed and read on.
Olivia Archer, reportedly in critical condition, had been relocated to a private facility where even her closest friends and family members, including the megawealthy Xavier Archer, were denied access to see or visit her. An anonymous source—and I had a pretty good idea who that might be—disclosed only that Olivia was stable but presently lying in a life-threatening coma.
I skimmed through the papers again, and thought, there it is. An entire life reduced to black and white. Summed up in a week, old news by the week’s end.
I picked up the mirror next to me and gazed again at a face I knew intimately well, and didn’t know at all.
“How?” I said aloud. Olivia’s singsong voice came out, but it was tinged with a weariness she’d never possessed. How was I supposed to look at her every day? It would be like facing a beautiful, accusing ghost, along with my own still-raw guilt over failing to keep her safe. But that wasn’t all I dreaded, and I knew it. Others looked at Olivia and saw softness and beauty and a feminine wealth of power. But I only saw weakness and vulnerability. A potential victim.
In turning me into my sister, Micah and Warren had unwittingly turned me into what I feared most.
“I saw you moving on the monitors.” I jumped, dropping the mirror guiltily, and looked up to find Micah peering through the doorway. He was waiting for an invitation. I nodded, and he came in, watching me like a keeper watches a caged lion. “Water?”
He poured from a plastic pitcher and handed me a paper cup. Then he folded his hands in front of his massive body and waited. The water was as crisp and fresh as any I’d tasted, and I finished it off at once. “Thank you.”
He smiled, reassured as he returned the empty cup to the table, then perched lightly on the side of the bed. He possessed amazing grace for such a large man. “How do you feel?”
I thought about it. None of the postsurgery blahs. In fact, I felt incredibly well for someone who was dead. Or in a coma. Much less who had marbles for fingertips. “Great, considering.”
“You should. You heal cleanly as well as quickly,” he said. “And I was very gentle.”
I knew it was his way of apologizing. “Thank you.”
His fleeting smile was swept away by furrowed brows and worry-filled eyes. “I thought you’d be pleased with the changes. I never stopped to consider how it might affect you to live in your sister’s body.”
“No offense, Micah, but all of this is new to me. Metamorphosis, people trying to kill me, never mind this acute—and cute, by the way—new sniffer.” My sigh reverberated dully throughout the room. “I had twenty-five years to grow used to my face, and now…I don’t recognize one thing about myself.”
I didn’t know who I was anymore. Joanna Archer? Olivia Archer? A twenty-first-century superhero, for God’s sake?
“Changing a Zodiac member’s identity after a supernatural incident is part of the clean-up process. This was a bit extreme, even for us. Usually we can prepare the subject better for change, but with you there simply wasn’t time. We don’t want to lose you, Joanna. You’re very special.”
I smiled humorlessly.
Micah sighed. “Look, I don’t know what Warren’s told you, but we’re on the verge of collapse. Three star signs have been killed in the past two months, and they weren’t novices either. They were full-fledged professionals, the elite—this generation’s Zodiac. That’s why we had to act quickly to secure you and alter your identity. Nobody can know who you really are, do you understand?”
I didn’t, but nodded anyway.
“And nobody knew Olivia better than you, right? You can act and walk and respond the way she did. It’s a bonus really that you don’t have to remember countless mannerisms and develop a whole new personality. It simplifies things for you.” He paused. “It also has the added benefit of keeping you close to Xavier Archer.”
“I don’t want to be close to him,” I said. Micah said nothing, which I was beginning to recognize as a bad sign. “What?”
“He’s in the waiting room. He hasn’t left in three days.”
“No.” I turned away, folding my arms across my stomach. He was waiting for Olivia, I thought bitterly. Not me.
Micah nodded, agreeing readily, too readily, with my wishes. When he held out a hand, I regarded it warily. “You feel up to moving around a bit?”
I didn’t, but my body ached so much from the lengthy immobilization that I took his hand and stood for the first time in days. Dizziness rolled into my head, but eventually I nodded to Micah that I was okay. He led me across the room to a chair situated next to a full-length mirror. “Sit here. Just get used to being upright for a while.”
I knew what he was doing. He wanted me to get used to my face, and to seeing myself the way the world now saw me. He swiveled the chair on its casters so I was in front of the mirror, and pulled a nearby table forward. Then he did something completely unexpected. Lifting a brush from the drawer inside the table, he began to comb through my hair.
“I knew your mother, you know,” he remarked, ignoring the way I stiffened. He just continued to brush gently from the ends of my hair to the roots, curling each section softly around his fingers before laying them aside. My eyes drifted away from my face and I began to see the dance of his fingers, that inborn surgeon’s skill. “You’re a lot like her, actually. You have the same cheekbones…well, had. Anyway,” he hurried on when I frowned, “your mother was gorgeous. And deadly. She could do things with a combat cane that I never saw before, or since. To tell the truth, I had a bit of a crush on her. We all did, I think.”
I still said nothing.
