“Felix.”
Felix sighed, but left without another word. Micah shifted uncomfortably. “I’ll go too. They might need a referee.”
Micah left, and after a moment Greta put her hand on my arm. “It was only six months ago,” she explained in her calm and kind voice. “The wounds are still fresh.”
I nodded, understanding. After all, I’d seen Stryker’s death. Neck cords ripping, blood staining his mother’s robe, her heart-wrenching cries. Chandra was still a bitch, but I couldn’t fault her her grief.
“I’m sorry,” I said, meaning all of it.
Greta patted my hand, then stood to pour tea from a ceramic pot warming on a hot plate. “It’s all right, dear. Drink this. I pick and bag the herbs myself.”
“What’s this?” Warren asked, holding up the photo of Ben. I must have snapped it shut in the pages of the comic when Ajax had found me.
“Oh, my,” Greta said, staring at me sadly. “No wonder.”
“What?” I asked, looking from her to Warren and back, the steaming teacup forgotten in my hand.
“Anyone could have felt that,” she answered, shaking her head. I opened my mouth to ask what she meant, but I suddenly knew. It was so easy to grasp, I thought, when someone pointed it out to you.
Greta, reading my mind, answered anyway. “Your sorrow, dear. Such deep grief. That’s how Ajax knew where you were. Strong emotions—love, hate, grief, joy, hope—give you away if you don’t know how to control them.”
“That’s why we ordered you to stay calm,” Warren said, lifting his eyes from the photo. He still looked annoyed with me, but at least the muddy suspicion had cleared from his eyes.
Greta leaned in. “Who is it, anyway?”
Warren rudely snapped the comic shut, photo inside. He rolled it and pointed it at me. “We’ll talk about this later.” Then he too strode from the room, waves of fury left in his wake.
“Well,” I said finally, “can I clear a room or what?”
“Yes, well done,” Greta said primly, and I had to laugh despite myself.
She was a small woman, this Greta, with slim fingers and wrists, and tapering legs and ankles beneath a pencil skirt and lab coat. She wore sensible heels, sensible jewelry, and her chignoned hair had begun to gray at the temples. I’d have put her in the early fifties but for the knowledge hardening her caramel eyes. Greta was older, I decided, and probably tougher than anyone looking at her heart-shaped face could imagine.
“You seem to be healing fine,” she told me, returning to my side. “There shouldn’t be any permanent damage beyond the wound on your thigh.”
I touched the back of my thigh where Ajax’s conduit had nicked me as I ran. It had been stitched, and was only mildly sore.
“It’ll leave a mark—all supernatural weapons do—but the cut wasn’t very deep.” She resettled the bedsheets over me. “Your eyes were the more serious concern.”
“Has this ever happened before?”
“What? An injury while trying to enter the sanctuary?” she asked. I nodded. “Not to an agent of Light, no. One time the Ram on the Shadow side tried to enter the sanctuary by force. I heard by the time he reached the bottom of the chute there wasn’t enough left of him to wheel on a rotisserie. That was three years ago, though, before I got here.”
Before she got there? I leaned forward as she studied my eyes. I suppose she liked what she saw because she stopped squinting and smiled. “I thought you had to be raised in the Zodiac in order to be a part of the troop?”
“Oh, no. I came to it late, like you.” She propped a hip on the side of my bed. “My mother was mortal—gifted, sure, but mortal all the same. My father was the Gemini of the star signs. If troop hierarchy were patriarchal, I’d hold that star sign right now. As it is I’m lacking certain…physical gifts. Technically speaking I’m not really a part of the troop.” She smiled wryly but didn’t sound bitter at this twist of fate. “Still, between the two of them, I possess enough insight to contribute in an ancillary form. The other star signs come to me when they’re afraid their emotions—and therefore their pheromones—might get the best of them. And sometimes they just come to talk.”
“So…you’re like a shrink?”
She wrinkled her nose at my word choice. “A supernatural psychologist, if you will.”
“A…an independent?” I asked, remembering the manuals’ distinction between troop members and all others.
She laughed, then whistled from the side of her mouth. “Be careful how you use that word. Some would take great offense to being lumped in with the rogue agents.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Oh, I didn’t mean me. Like I said, I’m just an auxiliary member of the troop. My mother left when I was a child. My father died not long after—supernatural causes, of course—and I’ve been on my own ever since. Still, the Taurean Shadow targeted me about two and a half years ago. Apparently he and my father had some longstanding territorial dispute. Gregor found out about it, found me, and thought it his duty to bring me here. Eventually he convinced Warren of the same.”
“That was nice of him,” I murmured, wondering why no one had done it with me. Or Olivia.
“Oh, nice has nothing to do with it. Duty comes above all else for those raised in the Zodiac. Above family, spouse, or anything comprising a normal life. If something’s not good for the organization, then it’s simply not done. If it is, then everything is done to make sure it succeeds.” Absently, she toyed with the small pearls circling her neck. “That’s why Warren’s so concerned about you. He’s put a lot of hope into you, you know. He doesn’t trust easily. Not to mention he’s risked a great deal.”
I hadn’t thought of that, actually. I’d been so preoccupied with my own worries and loss I hadn’t even considered what defending me might have cost him. “Like what?” I said, really wanting to know.
She gestured at me, letting the pearls drop. “Well, consider for a moment, what if he’s wrong? Then he’s brought a wolf into our midst. A Shadow among the Light.”
“I’m not a Shadow,” I said irritably.
“But are you Light?”
I didn’t answer. How could I know?
She smiled kindly and laid a hand over my own. “Look, I can only imagine what this has all been like for you, but if Warren seems a bit brusque it’s because his primary concern is keeping this troop safe. He’s looking for reasons his star signs are being killed off. His duty as a leader is to protect them, and so far he’s failing.”
“Tekla said there was a traitor.”
Greta look startled, then relaxed when she realized what I was saying. “You mean in the manual you read? Right before Ajax found you?”
I nodded, and she rose to pour us more tea. “Poor Tekla,” she said as she took my cup from my hand. “She’s not even with the troop anymore.”
“She’s not?”
She began shaking her head, then paused. “Well, she’s here, of course—she’d be a danger to herself and the entire troop were she to be released outside the sanctuary—but Warren’s had her tucked away in the sick ward since shortly after Stryker was killed.”
Something in her tone caught my attention. “You don’t agree with that?”
Greta shrugged, but it wasn’t smooth, and she absently fingered her pearls again. “She rants whenever she sees anyone, of course. And she says the most awful, accusing things. Still…I don’t know. I think she’s in there somewhere, desperate to get out. I’d rather help her than lock her away. Maybe someday I can.”
So there was no traitor. Just a heartsick woman who’d had to watch her son die before her eyes.
She returned to my side, again handing me my cup, sighing to herself as I accepted it. “You seem like a sweet girl, Olivia. But if there’s one piece of advice I would give you, it’s this: nobody’s really what they seem.” She stood motionless as she looked at me hard, willing me to understand. “Take Warren, for example. When he’s out there in the real world he looks and acts and, unfortunately, smells like a career bum. You look at him and see exactly what you’d expect roosting on the corner of Casino Center Drive.
“Meanwhile he’s working day and night to stop the Shadows from injuring or influencing mortal lives and
