“Olivia! No!”
And gently rubbed a fingertip over the star.
Tekla was there, slapping my hand away…too late. A crack sounded as the star clamped down over my hand like a Venus flytrap, and my fingertips immediately went numb, dozens of stinging barbs puncturing the printless pads. An acute and tortured scream echoed across the parking lot. Then, just as abruptly, the tiny star released me, and all five points curled in on themselves, a fundamentally protective gesture.
We all stared questioningly at Warren, clueless superheroes, down to the last.
Warren looked like he wanted to scream as well, but instead blew out a breath and leveled a maddened look at me. “Okay, so this is the point where I tell you all not to peel off the scabs of the wounded reality.”
“No,” Tekla corrected sharply. “We passed that point about a minute ago.”
Warren shot her an equally livid glare…and another at me.
Ew, I thought, glancing back. Was that what I’d done? “Sorry,” I muttered, to him and the Universe.
“Why can’t we touch it?”
“You said there are others?”
“What’s a double-walker?”
“Well, that perked them right up,” Tekla said, walking away.
Warren sighed again, then looked off into the sky as if the answers to all our questions were written there. “Come on, then.”
“Where to?”
“Someplace safe.” And as he began limping away, I thought I heard him add, “With lots of alcohol.”
5
We reconvened at the Downtown Cocktail Lounge on Fremont Street, a touchstone in Vegas’s emerging entertainment district that was helping turn the promised downtown revitalization into less of a longstanding joke. The surprising thing about DCL was its refusal to cater to tourists. With a dim interior, low-key vibe, and not one overpaid celebutante or slot machine in sight, everything about it screamed “locals’ bar”…including the hidden front door.
However, watching tourists scratch their heads as they tried to find their way in was only part of the location’s appeal. It was also a newly designated safe zone, which explained why we were meeting there. We couldn’t be ambushed by Shadow agents in a safe zone-or tulpas or hopefully bubble beings-so they were good places to while away the hours between dawn and dusk. It was only in the fractional seconds of the sun and moon’s momentary truce that we could cross over into the safety of a true alternate reality, and not merely the flip side of this one.
There was also no better place to gather than one that served stiff cocktails and funky world beats via the DJ’s laptop 24/7. That too kept the children away. Warren put his hand in the air to call over the waitress as we settled ourselves around the large communal table. We spoke of nothing in particular until drinks were served, at which point I sucked down half the tonic-laced vodka before telling the others about the mask connecting me with the Tulpa, how it’d enabled us both to breathe beneath the massive weight of the black hole, and how his anger had been tinged with fright for the woman who bent gravity to her will.
Micah tilted his head, his analytical and scientific mind clearly whirring. As our troop’s Seer, Tekla was as sharp as they came, but even she looked perplexed. However, Warren, who’d taken time to change and shower so the DCL employees didn’t move the hidden door entirely upon his approach, perked up at this. “Olivia, I need you to think. Can you tell me what this being smelled like?”
“Sure,” I said, and closed my eyes to strengthen the memory. My sense of smell had dramatically improved with my metamorphosis at the age of twenty-five into something superhuman…but it hadn’t stopped after that. Experience and applied practice had increased my ability to distinguish textures and patterns in the delicate dance of air molecules, and I was developing a better language and vocabulary to describe sensory nuance.
My encounter with the woman was still fresh, so I easily picked apart the medley forming her essential scent. Despite the frightening encounter, it was a pleasure, for once, to dissect something not reeking of rot and decay. “The top note was herbal, like fresh-cut chives or sweet green onion, but lightly so, as if dug up too early. She was empty inside, so maybe that’s why it’s not more potent, like the scent could disappear with a puff of breath…” I trailed off, thinking of dandelion spores drifting in the wind, but didn’t say it. She wasn’t human, and so her genetic makeup would be different, but I had a hard time thinking of it as insubstantial. She’d clawed at me with sickle- sharp nails. She had substance…but what was it?
“And the heart note?” Warren pressed.
The most important and telling scent, that of her soul.
I frowned, trying to pinpoint it, but shook my head after a minute. It just wasn’t there. “It’s like a big white space in my mind. I can’t even locate the aromatic clues.”
Warren remained silent for so long, both looking at me and not, that I started to think he didn’t believe me.
“What was she, Warren?” Jewell asked, twirling around a strand of soft brown hair in one delicate hand. She was so silent I often forgot she was there, and I knew she felt out of her element, like she’d come so late to her star sign that she’d never catch up. But what she lacked in natural talent, she made up for in perseverance. The confidence needed to back it up would come with experience.
“Isn’t it clear?” Riddick, also new to his sign but lacking Jewell’s reticence, tapped his fingers on the polished tabletops. Light from the red votive candles made his smooth fingertips shine. “It’s the double-walker the Tulpa was talking about. The one he wanted Olivia to destroy.”
Nice to know he-and the Tulpa-had such faith in me, I thought as I gingerly fingered the claw marks still scoring my chest. It was both itchy and sensitive to the touch, and my palm felt wonderfully cool against the wounded flesh. I stilled my fingers when I realized Hunter was watching, but every other head was turned toward Warren.
“So what’s a double-walker?” Vanessa asked, reading my mind. “Someone who can walk freely on both sides of reality?”
“A logical conclusion,” Warren answered, absently swirling his glass. “But no. Its more common name is doppelganger. Do any of you know what that is?”
“It sounds German.”
Vanessa arched a brow at Felix. “Got something against the Germans?”
“Well, the umlaut thing is kind of annoying.”
“Can we please focus here?” Warren muttered, stirring his whiskey.
“Don’t be shallow,” Riddick told Felix. “I love the Germans.”
“You’re an American who’s never even left this city, much less the country,” Felix countered. “What do you even know about the Germans?”
“I know they’re not French.”
“Focus!” Warren’s yell silenced the whole lounge. Even the DJ’s beat seemed to momentarily pause. Riddick had the sense to look abashed, and the rest of us averted our eyes, but Felix-no stranger to his leader’s admonitions-only sipped at his rummed-up Coke.
“Okay, geez. Double-walker, doppelganger…no clue. Enlighten me.”
“A doppelganger,” Micah informed us, “is a living person’s ghostly twin. Usually evil.”
They all looked at me.
I choked on my drink. “Who, me? A double of me? No way-that thing didn’t look anything like…either one of mes.”
Though not everyone knew I was Joanna Archer beneath Olivia’s glossy exterior, they did know I wasn’t the ditzy socialite I presented to the rest of the world. With them I was the Kairos, purported savior of the paranormal realm, steadfast troop member, with a sharp demeanor and acid tongue to match. Basically I was myself…but cuter.
“No, but it smelled like you.” Warren smiled grimly. “As a double, it’s still shaping, taking its clues from studying
