There had been. But, degree by degree, I was learning to let Olivia go. “It’s probably better this way. That thing was a ticking bomb. Anybody could have accessed that information.”
“Information,” he said, holding a piece of paper out to me. “Like this?”
I halted, eyeing it warily. “What is that?”
“Her address.”
I took it and shoved it in my pocket before he could see my hand shake. “Thanks.”
“Aren’t you going to open it?”
I shook my head. I wasn’t ready. The idea of it-a daughter, Ben’s and mine-was still too foreign to me. Besides, there was one person out there who still knew my identity, and even if she was currently content to keep that information to herself, I knew she’d be watching.
Hunter and I reached his room, the rain room as I’d come to think of it, and our arrival coincided with a long silence. We shifted uncomfortably, two superheroes completely at a loss, not meeting each other’s eyes…until we finally did. “Hunter, I just want to say-”
“Don’t.” He put a finger to my lips, not hard, but not gently either. “Or I’ll have Micah erase your memory too.”
I smiled and let it go, willing to do whatever was easiest for him. God knew I’d asked enough, put him through enough already. “Okay, but what about…I mean, where do
“Forward, baby,” he said, and his smile was bittersweet. “Always forward.”
“Not ‘up, up, and away’?” I too decided to keep it light.
He winced and let out a long-suffering sigh. “You’re ruining the perfect moment.”
I laughed, then stopped when he abruptly bent toward me, his palm wide and warm on my neck as he pressed his lips against my forehead. I leaned into him, tears stinging my eyes. He left me after that single kiss, and the words I wanted to say died in my throat as he locked his door behind him. I swayed in the hallway, eyes shut, tingling from my forehead all the way to my toes.
Once I’d regained my sense of balance, I went to the locker room and slipped the piece of paper with Ashlyn’s address through one of the slats, figuring it’d come back to me when I was ready. And when I could figure out what to do about this child, this daughter of mine, who was now burning her way through her first life cycle.
For now it was enough that I was the Archer, still one of the Light, and after fulfilling the second sign of the Zodiac, that I was one step closer to fulfilling my legacy as the Kairos. And, I thought, no matter what the Tulpa said about switching allegiances, the third portent of the Zodiac, I knew myself. My vow to topple the Tulpa’s organization burned in me, strong as ever.
“Why don’t you try to open it?”
I’d thought myself alone and jumped, turning to find Tekla looking gaunt and tiny and fragile, staring at me from across the room. Careful not to meet her eye, I swallowed hard and turned immediately back to the locker. “Okay,” I said, thankful for something to do.
I didn’t have to work at it this time. All I did was press my hand to the palm plate at the side and lift the latch. The door swung open with unexpected force, and manual upon manual spilled out at my feet. It took a moment, but I gasped when I realized they were all Shadow.
“But how-? There must be dozens!” I bent, filling my arms with them, trying to shove them back in the locker, until one title caught my eye.
“And there aren’t dozens, but hundreds,” Tekla said, stepping forward, careful not to touch any of the manuals.
“Do you think my mother left them for me?”
She shook her head, gazing down. “She can’t touch them. But someone did, which means you have a responsibility to find out why.”
“The original manual,” I said, more to myself than her. Perhaps even Joaquin himself had left them to me. He had to know that nobody else would search as diligently and ceaselessly for the original manual as me. I could well imagine him reasoning it all out. If he were to die, he’d still want his work to live on. “These are filled with clues that will lead me to it.”
And to the answer my mother sought her entire life. How to kill the Tulpa.
“So you’ve a new quest, it seems,” Tekla said, angling her head. “Now that Joaquin’s gone, I mean.”
I looked at her, surprised she had mentioned his name first. She shifted under the weight of my stare, but ultimately returned my gaze. And I saw the pain living inside her. “You stepped up, Tekla. Stryker would be proud.”
She lifted her chin and studied the glowing glyph on his locker, now her own. “I must seem like such a hypocrite to you. All my ramblings about intention and clarity of mind…but when it got down to the wire,
“No,” I agreed, and she sucked in a sharp breath. I put a hand on her arm. “You were just a mother who had lost a son.”
She stared at her hands, studying them for a long time, before looking back up at me. “It cost you to give Joaquin to me.”
“It would’ve cost me more had I taken the shot,” I said, before asking, “Are you sorry?”
She nailed me with her gaze. “Should I be?”
“Why don’t you open
She said nothing.
“Come on, Tekla,” I urged softly. Then I used Hunter’s words. “We have to move forward.”
She pressed her hands against her cheeks, then squared her shoulders, and turned. I stepped back, giving her space and privacy as she slipped across the room and lifted her hand. She’d barely touched the Scorpio palm plate when the locker swung open, seemingly of its own accord. In fingers that shook, she lifted out a photo taped to its back. I leaned closer. It was a boy with bright eyes and a body just sprouting the strength of a man. He was tall and lanky in his youth, and had a smile brighter than all the bulbs in the boneyard. I put my hand on her shoulder, and stared with her at the boy who was strong and good and hers…and gone. Stryker, in his boyhood, had been the perfect initiate of Light.
“No,” I whispered, when her shoulders had stopped shaking so much, and her sobs had quieted into intermittent sniffles. “I don’t think you should feel sorry for what you did at all.”
And Tekla cried again, with as much relief as grief, and after she’d cried herself out on my shoulder, I left her alone in the locker room with all that remained of her son.
Two nights later I had a clear shot at Regan as she and Ben dined al fresco, sitting on a bistro patio in the cooling breeze of an early fall, watching tourists weave among themselves on the Las Vegas Strip. Ben looked happy, or at least content, and I watched him with concentrated longing all the way up until he excused himself before dessert.
Regan looked content as well, like a cream-filled cat sunning herself in the late afternoon rays. She also still looked like me. But because her company seemed to satisfy Ben, I didn’t kill her as soon as he’d walked away. With all that had happened to him over the past few months-hell, with what I alone had put him through-I figured he was entitled to a few moments of cheer, no matter how hollow, false, or fleeting they might be.
I did, however, pin a note to the shaft of an arrow I’d honed myself, and when the waiters and foot traffic and cars had all cleared, lifted my conduit and sent that note spinning through the air, whistling all the way until it buried itself in the wooden tabletop, half an inch from Regan’s pinky finger.
She ducked for cover, then returned to her seat under the curious glances of the other diners once she realized she’d already be dead if I’d wished it. Picking up the note, her fingers trembled; and watching her lips move, I read along with her.
