“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
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.
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
“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.
“Well, I can. It smells like the earth’s core; sulfur and heat. It smells like things buried deep; rotting flesh, gorging worms. Evil at work.” I was moving across the hallway as I said this, and I ended up in front of Hunter. I leaned into him, an almost seductive move; one knee bending into his body, the flesh of my forearm brushing his, my breath warm on his neck. I inhaled deeply. “Not like you. You smell like the smoke rising from a living campfire. Like the green wood and the grasses and the wild things that spice embers bursting in the air. Don’t you think?”
“If you say so.”
“What?” I drew back and looked in his face. “Can’t you smell yourself?”
He stared back at me, unblinking. “I can smell emotions, sure. I smell adrenaline and perspiration when I work up a sweat, but the basic compound that makes up my molecules is too familiar to me. I can’t identify it.”
“So you can’t identify it on, say…” I looked around, as if searching for a target. Found it in Greta. “… her?”
Hunter looked from me to Greta and back again, frowning.
Micah stared at me, openmouthed. “I can.”
“I can too,” Vanessa said, and furrowed her brows. “I smell Gregor as well.”
“This is ridiculous,” Greta blustered.
“Micah too.” Gregor nodded. “And Warren.”
It was my turn to smile smugly. “Scents are attached to emotion. When Greta discovers something deeply personal through hypnosis, she tags it. When you think of that particular emotion, you emit a pheromone that calls to the Shadow agents.
“But as she’s marking you she also takes a vial of your essence and injects it into herself so that her true scent becomes invisible to each of you.”
“Anosmia,” I heard Felix whisper.
“She binds herself to you the way Micah bound Warren and me. The way she was trying to mark and bind me when I woke up in her office.” I saw a movement at the end of the hallway, and motioned Rena forward. “Of course, you don’t have to take my word for it.”
They all turned, sensing the movement, except Greta, who kept her eyes hard on my face.
“There’s a reason she keeps lovebirds in her room and office…” Greta turned too, then. “And it ain’t love.”
We all watched Rena’s slow approach, and I heard Greta’s breath quicken. After that I could only sense the growing curiosity of the others as Rena drew closer.
She held a kitten. Black and white, with tufts of wild fur, it was sleeping peacefully, its breathing easy as it lay cupped in her palms. A small smile was fixed on Rena’s destroyed face as she stopped a foot in front of Greta and held out the slumbering animal.
For a moment nothing happened. Then, on the next tiny intake of breath, the kitten’s body stiffened, its eyes
