tipped, more lethal. A most fashionable backup weapon, I thought, studying myself from the side. The street fighter in me approved.
“Thanks, Mom,” I said, pocketing my conduit. There was only one item missing from my supernatural arsenal. Unfortunately, I had to go to Greta’s holding cell to get it.
You had to give it to her, I thought, peering through the cell’s window. For a woman facing imminent death, she was admirably composed. Though chained to a concrete floor, hands and feet bound in front of her, she sat with her back straight against the stone wall, head back, eyes closed. She even looked relieved. Like she’d been performing the same play over and over and had been longing for some new dialogue. With a crisp turn of the key in the lock, I entered the room, intending to give it to her.
She didn’t look up.
“How’s it feel, Greta?” I asked, closing the door behind me, my voice reporting hollowly off the stone walls. “To be helpless, locked up, wondering what’s to become of you?”
“You should know.” She motioned with one hand, chains clanking as she indicated the entire sanctuary. “Your cell is just a little bigger.”
I advanced upon her, showing her that even a confined place could shrink upon itself. She just leaned her head back and closed her eyes again. “Tell me, what was it like knowing you were sending Warren to his death?”
“What, you’re the psychologist now?” She sneered. “Savior of the Zodiac didn’t fit quite right?”
I shrugged. “Just wondering.”
She pulled her knees into her chest. “Keep wondering.”
I shifted to lean against the wall, crossing my legs at the ankles. “You should tell someone, don’t you think? I mean, otherwise your deeds won’t get written down. You’ll be just one more stiff in the body count at the end of a comic book.”
She glanced up at me with disdain. Her chignon had fallen loose, and her skin was smudged beneath overly dark eyes. The Shadow sat on her features like a defiant child. “You think that’s why I did this? To gain recognition for infiltrating the Zodiac troop when I was fated to be nothing more than a talented mortal? A mere half- breed?”
The detail in her answer told me that was exactly why she’d done it. “You tell me.”
She was silent for nearly a minute. “No. I don’t think I will.”
“You’d better,” I sang the words softly.
That got her attention. She studied me carefully for a moment, then snickered. “Or what? You’re going to kill me?” She tightened her arms around her knees. “That doesn’t frighten me.”
“Death doesn’t frighten you?” She pursed her lips, but otherwise ignored me. “But insignificance did. It frightened you enough for you to betray your father’s people.”
“Oh God, don’t try that psychological shit on me! You’re no good at it.” She shifted irritably, chains rattling like pennies in a glass jar. “That’s not why I did it.”
“Then why?”
“You know why!” she bellowed suddenly, and I could see in her fevered gaze she really believed it. “You told me yourself this afternoon.”
I thought back. Then began to nod slowly. “Ah.”
“Yes, ahhh,” she said mockingly. Madness danced in her once kind eyes. “Power. Having it. Using it. Controlling others with it. I was more powerful than the most powerful. More powerful than all of you.”
I raised a brow, taunting her without words.
“I’d have cracked you eventually too,” she said quickly, too loudly. It made me smile, and she went on in a rush. “I’d have found out who you really were and used that knowledge to plant the mark so deep no one would ever find it.”
I shook my head. “I don’t think so.”
“I did it to everyone, even Tekla, the so-called Seer. And me, a half-mortal.” I looked at the pride on her face: there wasn’t even a trace of regret for the lives she had cost.
“No,” I said in a low voice, “you’re not even half that.”
Her eyes narrowed to black pinpoints and she studied me, looking up my body and back down again. A slow smile began to thread from one side of her face to the other.
“You’re going after him. You think the mark Micah planted will lead you to him.”
“It will,” I said flatly, “and I’ll bring him back safely.”
Abruptly, she howled with laughter, throwing her head back like a wolf to the moon. When she was done, finally, she wiped the tears from her cheeks. “You
“I won’t fail,” I said, tucking my hands into my cargo pockets, finding what I needed in the right-hand side. “You’re going to ensure that.”
She hooted again. “Don’t count on it.”
I slipped an ugly smile over my pretty face. Her malicious grin wavered, then fell.
“Have I ever told you about my sister?” I asked, pushing off from the wall to stand in the middle of the room. Greta didn’t answer, giving a good imitation of a person at ease. “She was similar to you in that she was half Light, half mortal, though I always thought of her as being entirely good. All innocence. Completely pure of heart.”
“Not like you, then,” Greta murmured, taunting me with what she knew.
“Not like you either.”
There must have been something jagged in my voice, something I couldn’t hold back, because she did look at me then. She studied me for a moment, then shrugged and fixed a petulant expression on her face. “She sounds like a bore.”
I didn’t rise to the bait. My love for Olivia had lain plain on my face, hanging like ripened fruit to be plucked. It was an easy target for Greta, and I couldn’t be angry she’d taken it. Besides, I was hoarding my anger, letting it build inside me until later, when I’d call upon it. When it’d be most needed.
I closed my eyes and conjured up the clearest picture of Olivia possible. I wanted Greta to be able to see. “She was anything but boring. She was beautiful. When she walked into a room, people used to stop just to watch the magic in her movement. She was so blond the sun could have taken lessons in shining from her. So voluptuous the mountains around this valley shook with envy. ‘Too much woman,’ I used to think. Too much hair and flesh, too many curves and softness. It was overwhelming.”
I could sense Greta’s interest despite herself. “So she looked like you. So what?”
I opened my eyes and smiled. “Yes. She looked exactly like me. Exactly.”
Greta’s brows furrowed, then rose in twin surprise, eyes going wide as realization dawned. “You’re the sister! You’re her, the one who died!”
“What? Didn’t you do your homework, Greta?” I asked, head tilted. “Don’t you even know my name?”
She looked at me, her face bleeding one emotion into another—fear, amazement, doubt, surprise—eyes zipping around my face like furious flies, never landing. “But you’re
“I studied her too. And, remember, I had a lifetime to do so.” She had no response to that. “You want to know what I learned in becoming someone else? Something you apparently never picked up?”
She flinched at the insult.
“I learned it doesn’t matter what mannerisms you pick up, or what clothes you wear,” I said, sweeping my left hand down my body, “or what mask you try to hide behind…be it beauty or psychology. The shadows inside you can’t stay hidden forever.”
We both knew I was talking about her, but she jerked her head at me. “You remember that when what you’ve tried to keep hidden becomes unearthed like a rotted corpse.”
“That’s the difference between us,” I said. “I’m not trying to hide my shadows anymore.”
And I pulled back the curtain on my one-woman play, just enough to let her glimpse what lay beneath—anger and pain over Olivia’s death; hatred for the Tulpa, Ajax, and anyone aiding their side; disgust over the wasted lives of people meant to be super…and the inherited and shadowed urge to take it all out on her.
“I’m not afraid of you,” Greta said, voice shaking.
I didn’t answer, but turned instead toward the door like I was ready to leave.
