The Touch of Twilight

impulsively, even when you’ve gone against my orders or spoken out of turn-”

“Who, me?”

He ignored that. “You’re doing so from a moral seat. More importantly, even if the third portent of the Zodiac is the rise of your Shadow side, I believe you’d find a way to overcome that and do what’s right.”

“I want to believe you,” I said, shaking my head, palming my cup. “But I just had a vision where I killed my own mother by hand, and I know myself-even this new version of myself-by now. The rage and exultation when my hands were around her throat…that was real.”

“And so was the horror when you realized who it really was.”

“Yeah, but by then it was too late!” And that was my constant fear. That no matter what abilities my kairotic powers gave me, my late entree into this paranormal morass would leave me flat-footed when it mattered most. That was why I had problems sitting on my heels, waiting for direction. Besides, eight months of the strongest supernatural support couldn’t erase a decade of self-reliance. Other than Olivia, the people I’d counted on most had always abandoned me.

He leaned against the railing, reminding me of the way the Tulpa had shifted, his throne tottering on that thin ledge. Seeing my shudder, Warren winced, sighed, and dug into the pockets of his long, filthy duster.

“I wasn’t going to give you this yet. But since you seem to be a slave to that which you’ve seen both in visions and reality-”

“Hey!” I said, jerking so hard I spilled coffee over my hands and knees. I sat the Styrofoam cup on the desk, and flicked droplets from my wrists before wiping them against my pants. “The things I’ve seen could make grown men weep, then drool, then do nothing but rock in a corner for the rest of their lives.”

“Exactly.” He pulled out a crumpled stack of papers stapled together at the corner and handed them to me. “I checked into Regan’s account of what happened the night you left Ben alone with a man named Ernest Thompson, a.k.a., Magnum, in a barricaded alley called Dog Run. As you asked.”

I narrowed my eyes and cautiously took the papers from him, then scanned the first page. A drug dealer named Magnum had been found facedown in the dirt of a public housing lot, a single bullet to his head. The report called it self-defense, but I knew that wasn’t possible. I’d left Magnum knocked out at Ben’s feet just as the sirens from his backup came wheeling around the corner. There was no way Magnum had woken up and threatened Ben in those intervening seconds. The report began to shake in my hands.

“Why are you showing this to me now?”

“Joanna,” he said softly, and I shut my eyes so I didn’t have to see if the look on his face matched the pity in his voice. “Your back has been to the wall so many times I’m surprised you don’t have a permanent imprint there. But the person who did this had a choice and still took the lesser action, and that’s what a person’s Shadow side is. The wrong decision even under the right circumstances.” He paused, thinking by doing so he was letting that sink in, but what filled the gap was another denial. I hadn’t seen it, so maybe Ben wasn’t the one who decided to be this man’s executioner. Warren took a breath. “You need to let us erase his memory. It’s the best way to get rid of Regan. It’ll be a fresh start for Ben. And for you.”

I wiped at my eyes. “No.”

“Joanna-”

“No!” I screamed, crumpling the report in one fist.

The warehouse stilled below, but Warren didn’t let the sound or sudden blooming smoke bother him. The alarm clock across from me reflected red-hot eyes in the glass front, but he didn’t let that scare him either. He waited, cross-armed, until my breathing had evened again, the smoke clearing. “I don’t have to ask your permission, you know.”

I knew. He could take chunks of memory away and Ben would become the person he’d have been if I’d never entered his life. And he wouldn’t think or speak or dream of me ever again. I pressed the palms of my hands to my eyes until I saw black spots, then pulled them away as a sigh stuttered from my chest.

“What’s the first thing you do when you wake up in the morning?”

I don’t know if he was more taken aback by the whimper in my voice or the change in subject, but Warren only stared, eyes jumping around my face like it was a puzzle he needed to put together. I managed a tired smile and smoothed the report back out over my knees. “You don’t have to tell me every little detail…in fact, don’t. Just your first thought.”

He shrugged after another moment. “Okay.”

“Now let me guess. You don your superhero cloak. You pound your chest. You yell, ‘Up, up, and away!’ and run from the Batcave, catapulting into the air.”

“You’re mixing up your superheroes.”

I looked at the man who was both troop leader and bum. That was the truth.

“If I’m on the streets,” he began, crossing his legs at the ankles, leaning back and humoring me, “I take a piss and try to find some food. If I’m in the sanctuary, I take a piss, a shower, and then try to find some food.”

“I told you not to tell me.” I winced, and he laughed, and it was suddenly a little easier between us. “The point is, you don’t wake up thinking, Hey, I’m going to save the world today! Right?”

He lifted a brow. “Do you?”

“No,” I said, but before he could ask anything more I leaned toward him, lowering my voice. “I wake up and think, There’s some fucker out there with a knife in his pocket. He’s going to go a little postal today. And he might do it around Ben.”

I licked my lips, aware of Warren’s gaze on me now, absent of humor. I stared back, equally serious. “I think about the people out there with too much artillery and too little brains and how today they might start firing, again, around Ben.”

“And what about the other two million inhabitants of our fine city?”

“Do you consider each and every one of them every time you intervene in human drama?” I replied shortly. “Maybe you should, and maybe I should too, but I’m too preoccupied with the one who best represents goodness and fairness and kindness to me, who represents them all.”

Warren slid the photo of Magnum back under my nose, a reminder that after an intervening decade I might not know Ben at all. But that wasn’t true…because if I didn’t know him, I couldn’t love him. And I did.

One side of Warren’s mouth turned up in a wry, humorless smile. “And what if you wake up one day and he’s the fucker with the knife and the mean opportunity?”

I shook my head. “I tell myself the truth. He’s under the influence of Regan, who comes from a long line of women who enjoy destroying the virtue in a good man. And then I remind myself that he spent years before that under my influence, and I don’t mean to let him get away without a fight.”

“So it’s a game?” he said quickly.

“Sure,” I said lightly, though it wasn’t. “A game of chance. And I want mine. Because I know if I can get him to talk to me I can fix this.” Because no matter what was printed on these pages or what Warren thought Ben might have done to another mortal on a night when he was cornered like a wild animal…I knew he’d listen. And if he listened I could alter whatever Regan had fucked up inside him already.

Warren shifted where he sat and I found I couldn’t meet his eye, not with tears in my own. I glanced back down at the warehouse, and saw Hunter placing the foam template I’d handled earlier in a locked cabinet shoved against a concrete wall. When I’d finally recovered my voice, and was sure it wouldn’t crack in my throat, I whispered, “Not yet. Please.”

I saw him stiffen from the corner of my eye, shift uncomfortably, and knew I’d said the wrong thing. Pleading was a weak emotion, and Warren responded best to the logic of the mind. “You need to focus on the Tulpa.”

I started to laugh. The sound spiraled, escaping me in a raw and wild vortex, like a tiny tornado tearing through the workshop. The agents below fell silent again and looked up, trying to see what was so funny. It made me laugh even harder.

“Focus on him,” I gasped, wiping at my eyes, then bent over to pick up the papers I’d caused to splay all over the floor. More calculations and drawings, more templates, more weapons. I tapped them on the desk in a halfhearted effort at neatness before tossing them down. “Every one of us is so fucking focused it’s like living under a microscope.”

And I told him what the Tulpa said about the doppelganger being fixed on me, that a fleshly relic-my heart-would allow her full physical manifestation, and that she’d stop at nothing to get it. I also told him the Tulpa no longer wanted me as one of his Shadows. “I have ill chi. He said we