Hunter put a hand to his mouth, wiping it with the back of his palm, eyes as wide as coins as we laid Marlo flat. I slid a pillow under her head, and as I did she momentarily came around, uttering one strangled, questioning word. “Hunter?”
Hunter covered his mouth fully then, hands shaking, eyes tearing up above them, and I wanted to tell him it would be okay, but I caught sight of my own horrified face in the mirrored wall behind him, pale and desperate and horrorstruck, and knew that was a lie. None of this was ever going to be okay again.
By the time we woke Micah and moved Marlo to the sick ward, it was too late. She was still breathing, but it was a shallow, halting exhalation, the kind I’d once seen in a puppy that had developed parvo and lay limply in my palm before expiring. I didn’t even have to look at Micah’s blighted expression to know Marlo would soon do the same. I wanted to leave the ward and go back to my room, alone, so I could shower away the scents of anise and burned flesh, and try to make sense of the equally scorched thoughts bubbling in my head.
Warren, however, made Hunter and me return with him to the cantina, and had us walk through the scene over and over again, though now the lights were on high, and the music and television off. It still smelled like scorched spices, though, and Hunter shuddered as the scent washed over him. I reached out to touch him, but he jerked away and wouldn’t look at me. We spent the next hour exhausting Warren’s questions, but came no closer to finding out how Marlo had been infected. She’d never left the sanctuary, so the most frightening thought was that others could be walking around with this poison in their bodies, ticking bombs that would explode without warning, and-as we found out at four A.M.-eventual death.
Later, in my room, after I’d run water as hot as lava over my body and my skin was bright red, I lay back on my bed and let the thoughts, tangled like twine, unravel in my brain. Fatigue had me following each thread only so far until I drifted off, only to awaken abruptly, my heart momentarily picking up pace with a new bone to gnaw. Finally, sometime around six in the morning, an idea rose in my mind. My body went numb as the idea crystallized, growing hard as a stalactite, the sharp tip pointing down, directly into my gut. I opened my eyes slowly, blinked twice, and rose in a single smooth motion to dress.
Weaving through hallways too sterile and quiet, I shot up to the boneyard, where I knew I would be alone. I climbed down the ladder affixed to the heel of the Silver Slipper and ducked under a fiberglass champagne flute, just in case some industrious employee showed up early. Then I dialed the number stored under “Received Calls” on my cell phone. This time, now that it was too late to do anything, Regan answered.
“Yes?” she said, oh-so-sweetly. She didn’t sound sleepy at all.
“You bitch,” I said, voice rasping from my chest. “You wanted me watching the fireworks. You knew I’d breathe in that virus, and the curse of the second sign, and take it back into the sanctuary.”
“Uh-uh-uh,” she said, and I could envision her blond ponytail swaying. “If you recall, I told you not to return to your sanctuary.”
Which was a surefire way to make sure that I did. “Bitch,” I repeated, closing my eyes.
Regan laughed that tinkling laugh of hers, and it rang out over the line like cracked bells. It was a sound I was beginning to hate. “Have an eventful night, did we? I can just imagine the panic in that place right now. I mean, what happens when your sanctuary becomes a battlefield?” The question was rhetorical, and I didn’t even attempt to answer, but her next words snagged my attention like cotton caught on a thorn. “You won’t stop this, Joanna. It’s futile to even try. This virus is going to spread throughout the valley like a brushfire, and nothing can change that.”
And we didn’t have a cure. I closed my eyes, leaning my head against the giant champagne flute. “And what are the Shadows going to do while that happens?”
“Take a page from the agents of Light,” she said, the smile evident in her voice. “We sit back and do nothing.”
The dig hit home, and my knees buckled beneath me. I glanced around like there was someone in the boneyard I could turn to for help, but in the morning light the retired signs showed their age, rust stains and naked bulb holes stark under an already unrelenting sun. It looked like an abandoned carnival, all the patrons fleeing once the illusion broke with daylight. “I’ll find you, you know,” I said to Regan, hunched over my knees. “I’ll find you, and this time I’ll kill you for what you’ve done.”
She scoffed, and her mocking voice fell flat. “Give it a rest, Joanna. Your whole vengeance-till-death bit has gotten old. You haven’t killed Joaquin and you bartered away your two chances with me. Besides, I could pass right under your nose two weeks from now and you wouldn’t even recognize me.”
“Your metamorphosis,” I said, my veins icing over once again. They could turn her into a man if they wanted to. He could ask me out on a date and I wouldn’t even know it was him. Her.
“That’s right. Happy Birthday to me,” she said, and laughed again.
“It just makes you fair game,” I told her, needing to believe it myself. “Remember, I’m inoculated to this virus as well. When you finally do come out, I’ll be waiting.”
“Oh, no,
20
The last time the leader of troop 175-paranormal division, Las Vegas-picked up a weapon, he’d used it to slay his father. Warren Clarke hadn’t touched any weapon since, and to understand why, all you had to do was read the manual depicting the confrontation between him and his rogue father. I’d paid a near fortune to Zane to do just that, and the bloodbath that’d popped up at me from within those pages had given me nightmares for weeks. I saw firsthand how Warren had gotten his limp. And I saw how far he’d go to protect his troop, even from another agent of Light. Even from someone who was already
It was that, more than anything else, which had me waiting until near dusk to enter the briefing room where Warren had gathered the other star signs. I was the last to arrive, my face impassive under the weight of ten other gazes, my hair pulled back into a severe bun, gelled and fastened at the nape of my neck. I wore no jewelry save the ring my mother had left me, though the blank slate of my frame was marred by the bright summer dress I knew the others would immediately recognize as Olivia’s costuming, the face I presented to the outside world. Not one I normally wore about the sanctuary.
Warren’s eyes were narrowed, he already didn’t like what I was going to say, and I let my eyes move over him impassively because I’d been ready for that, just as I was ready for Gregor’s curiosity, and Micah’s scrutiny. Riddick and Jewell were merely attentive, and I felt a pang of regret move through me at the thought of never knowing them better. Vanessa knew I was up to something, clear by the reservation in her posture, and the genial boyishness dropped from Felix’s face as soon as I’d entered the room.
I hesitated when I spotted Rena. We hadn’t spoken since our confrontation at the launchpad, and now it was probable that we never would. I glanced at Warren. “Where’s Tekla?”
“She’s not coming.”
“I wouldn’t have asked everyone to be here if it wasn’t important,” I said, and felt my annoyance rise enough to momentarily overtake my nerves.
“I doubt it’s as important as charting our next move,” Chandra said from her chair in the corner. She was leaning on the back two legs. One push, I couldn’t help but think. “Not that we’d have a next move if it’d been left up to you.”
“Chandra,” Rena chided, and relief spun in my veins. She’d forgiven me, then. Too bad I was about to disappoint her again.
“I’m just saying, Tekla has enough to do without having to worry about this one’s latest hysterics-”
“We all know what you’re ‘just saying,’ Chandra,” Felix interrupted sharply. “Now shut up and let Olivia talk.”
I’d have shot him a grateful look if I’d thought he’d still be on my side five minutes from now. As it was, I just got on with my task, turning to look at Hunter for the first time.
He was a shade of his former self, and if Carl were drawing him now, it would be in charcoal, all the life and vitality leached from his image. Red pockets were smudged beneath his eyes from lack of sleep, too much drink, or both, and his face was drawn, cheeks sunken, like he’d lost weight overnight. He saw me studying him and raised a
