Usually I kept missives like this in a keepsake box near my bedside. I figured it was as close to sleeping with Ben as I’d ever get again. But this time I stood, tore the page from the pad, and folded it before sliding it through the open slat. A buzzing rose from inside the locker, like a hive of bees growing closer. I took an involuntary step back, but there was only a sudden stillness pressing down on the room, and then the latch clicked softly open.
“Next time,” I said wryly, swinging open the door, “just give me a knife and ask for a vein.”
So what was this thing that’d required so much of me, demanding an admission I hadn’t even allowed myself to study too closely? It was small, for one. In fact, it fit in the palm of my hand; a gilt jewel box with a gold clasp, and velvet the color of the midnight sky cushioning what was inside.
“My precious,” I hissed, unable to help myself as I lifted the ring from its cushion. Holding it, however, all humor drained from me. I’d seen this ring before. It’d been years, and I couldn’t be sure when it had disappeared, but my mother had disappeared along with it.
It was too heavy and wide to be considered feminine, but the sheen off the metal-not gold or silver, and certainly not platinum, though it had that heft-was so muted it was nearly opaque, light catching only in the dual grooves hedging a cloudy gray stone. I tilted it back and forth in the light before slipping it on. It was too large for the ring finger of my right hand, but it nestled nicely against the knuckle of my middle finger and, I was pleased to see, looked like it belonged there. And when it began to glow, a gentle pulse in the dim, cavernous room, I knew it did.
“I hope you don’t think one ancient piece of tin makes up for leaving me.”
I was talking to my mother now, and because I could do that anywhere and garner the same result, I shut the locker and headed back to the elevators, careful not to leave the cat stranded behind me. But I thought about my words. My mother had turned my life upside down by leaving, and even though I now understood why, sometimes I couldn’t help but wonder: did she even feel an ounce of the guilt and shame and ineffectiveness that I had after failing Olivia? Because that’s what she’d done by leaving. She’d failed me. No matter the reasons, she’d abandoned me when I’d needed her most.
And if she came to me with tearstained eyes and a face I barely remembered, would it be enough? Would it make up for my having to go it alone in the world-both of them-while she knew where I was, what I was going through, and chose to stay hidden anyway? I couldn’t answer that. My feelings for her were muddled now. She’d gifted me with weapons, power, strengths I had sought ever since someone had tried to make a victim out of me, and she was apparently still giving gifts. Everything, I thought sourly, except herself.
“And what kind of mother does that?” I whispered, rubbing the ring with my thumb.
I couldn’t answer that question. I had no maternal instincts. Whatever soft feelings I did possess had been reserved solely for my sister, Olivia, who was long gone. And for Ben, I thought. Though the only way I could show my love for him was to stay far, far away. So unconditional love was foreign to me now, and I didn’t even know if I’d want my mother to open up that part of me again. What if she left a second time? Would I be able to survive hurting that much again?
These questions occupied me so completely that it wasn’t until I was back in my room that I realized the sacrificial note I’d pushed through the slats, as well as the disks I’d deposited for safekeeping, had been nowhere in that locker. Like they’d never existed, I thought, studying the odd ring. Like they’d been eaten by the darkness.
The bloodline of both sides of the Zodiac is matriarchal. The lineage of the star sign runs through our veins. So generation after generation, women took up the mantle of power and responsibility for the troop’s succession, making sure even if they died, their house’s legacy continued. But it was the first-born women who were most powerful, and some star signs-both male and female, both Shadow and Light-spent lifetimes attempting to make up for that lack.
Brynn DuPree, Regan’s mother, inherited her star sign after her three older siblings died in quick succession, what the Shadow manuals described as “mysterious and dishonorable” deaths. All had used their conduits to take their own lives, though there had been no perceivable impetus or inkling that any would do so. I’d have thought suicide was what made the deaths dishonorable as well, but that wasn’t it. They’d died outside of battle, and in the Tulpa’s judgment, that was a far graver offense.
Brynn, meanwhile, had been killed by her opposite on the Zodiac, a much younger and surprisingly handsome Cancer of Light, Gregor Stitch-our superstitious, one-armed taxi driver-who’d lured her into a confessional, heard her out, then gave her five Hail Marys before burying a flanged-bladed mace into her core. But it was as I read about her life, not her death, that I found the best explanation for her daughter’s actions the day before.
Regan’s father had been a mortal priest. The human element didn’t weaken anything, the bloodline still passed through the mother, but unlike the Light, Shadows didn’t fall in love with humans. They hunted them.
The Shadow manual Jasmine had found for me described Father Michael as ascetic, pious, and deeply committed to the Church, his greatest passion helping those in his flock attain immortal life. Brynn’s definition of immortal life was obviously a bit different from Father Michael’s, and
And that might explain why Regan had kept my true identity to herself when she discovered I was masquerading as Olivia. Like her mother, she possessed information she could use to her sole advantage. It also explained why she thought I could be so easily “turned” to the Shadow side when she’d allowed me to kill Liam. Unlike her father, I hadn’t even taken vows.
But what about her warning not to return to the sanctuary? Was it a ploy meant to try and draw me to the Shadow side? And why would a woman raised in the Shadow lifestyle really turn against another Shadow, give a sworn enemy the aureole, and hand that enemy complete control over her own life?
To gain my trust, she’d said, but that was foolish. If she was caught by the Tulpa, no matter her reason or excuse, she’d be dead before she saw another splitting dawn. Besides, would a woman ambitious enough to murder her own troop member really be content sitting at my “right-hand side”? I sincerely doubted it. There was a deeper motivation there, I thought, studying the pages detailing Brynn’s life. A dark passion inside her rivaling that of her mother.
So the question remained. What was Regan really after?
I couldn’t answer that yet, but that wasn’t enough to keep me from using her…and not just for the information she might provide about Joaquin. At least that’s what I told myself.
