could work together to kill the double-walker because I had as much to lose as he, but that’s all he wants.”
I picked up my now-cooling coffee, and thought again of my unyielding hands around my mother’s neck. Maybe the Tulpa was right. If that’s what the future held for me, maybe I was a danger to everyone around me.
Warren had straightened during my telling and was absently running a hand over the scruff at his neck. “And he claimed to scent your pheromones every time the doppelganger ripped a hole into this world? Did he say exactly what that smelled like?”
Of all the bits of information to latch on to. I rolled my eyes. “Are you listening to me? The Tulpa asked me to work with him.”
Warren’s eyes found me again, and he shrugged. “Then you have a decision to make.”
“What?” I drew back so suddenly, my coffee sloshed in my cup. I was making a mess of the crow’s nest, I thought, rubbing at the wet floor with my shoe. Warren offered a handkerchief, but I took one look and knew if I touched it I’d add vomit to the mix. Did he have to take his vagrant persona so seriously? “Okay, Warren? Not to shoot myself in the foot here, but aren’t you at all worried the third sign of the Zodiac is the imminent rise of my Shadow side? Isn’t that your greatest fear right now, what with my biology permanently on the fence and all?”
“Why? Because the Tulpa wants you to work with him?” He leaned against the railing again, rubbing at his bad leg. “I’m not concerned with what the Tulpa wants. It’s you I’m concerned with. And, Jo?” He leaned forward to loom over me. “You’ve proven yourself, okay? Sure, you fuck up regularly, and you’re stubborn, and your quest to keep Ben in your life is one of the stupidest-”
“Thank you,” I said loudly before he could screw up the rest of his compliment.
Warren smiled. “Besides, the Tulpa is obviously more worried about this doppelganger than he is about you.”
“He said she could be some long-lost twin of mine. He told me one of his agents would have to meet with me if I decided to work with him to get rid of her.”
That unseeing look came over Warren’s face again. Suddenly he was backing down the wooden staircase. “I have to go.”
I threw my hands up into the air, palms up. “Oh, sure. Don’t mind me. I’ll hang out here. A sitting target for heart eaters and other things I never knew went bump in the night.” My voice had escalated with true panic, so I wasn’t surprised when his head popped back up.
He tilted it, sighing. “Jo. I am worried about you. I don’t like that Regan was the one to find you in Master Comics. I don’t like that she knows your true identity, and could spill the Olivia/Joanna connection at any time. I’m scared to death of the way the Tulpa managed to touch you in a designated safe zone.”
“Don’t forget the way an animist’s mask had to be ripped from my face,” I said, rubbing my jaw. It was sensitive-aching as if there was a scar there, though the damage couldn’t be seen or felt beneath my fingertips. Micah was right. I’d already healed.
“That too,” he said, not unkindly…but not overly solicitous either. “But unless you’re willing to be locked up in the sanctuary for the foreseeable future-”
“Hell, no.”
“Or give us leave to reconstruct Ben’s memories?”
“No.”
“Then I need to get on with the running of this troop.”
“But…” But Zane’s words had gotten to me. I could admit it here, alone with a man who’d overcome his suspicion of me before. “You know I didn’t break the changeling on purpose, right?”
His irritation instantly disappeared. “Of course not. The others don’t think so either,” he added, because it was clear that’s what was really bothering me. I’d been outside the troop’s good graces before, more than once. I didn’t want to go there again. “The new manuals are being written, even if they aren’t being read. We’ll find out how to fix Jasmine-which is what I’m going to go research now-and then all those written words and images will bloom to life, bringing a fresh wave of energy and force to our cause. Supply and demand at its best.
“Until then, the children who follow the Light side of the Zodiac can feed their insatiable imaginations with the older manuals. Those can sustain them, and us, for a long time.” He pushed back his trench coat so it billowed out behind him, and began descending, mindful of the leg that gave him so much trouble.
“Warren?” I said suddenly, and the top of his head appeared again, eyes mildly irritated. I rushed through my question, but mostly because I needed to. “Why don’t you erase Ben’s memory without asking me? I mean, you could, and there’d be nothing I could do about it.”
He leaned forward, feet on the staircase, elbows on the floor, to stare up at me. “Because I know what’s involved in a slow good-bye. The release of long-held dreams is a kind of death, with all the emotional stages that go with it, including anger, though you’re not quite there yet. It’ll be hard enough once you are, and I’d rather it not be directed at me.”
“I see. A selfish ploy to avoid the brunt of my wrath.”
His smile was tight-lipped. “You’ll release him when you’re ready.”
I wouldn’t. Not ever. But I sat prim and proper as he finished his spiel.
“Just try to prepare yourself to do it sooner rather than later. For his sake. For yours. And for ours.”
Not even for all the inhabitants of this city.
A wry smile flickered at one corner of Warren’s mouth, and he shrugged, still thinking I was in denial. The belief bought me time, so I said nothing. Without another word, Warren did disappear beneath the sightline then, reappearing seconds later on the ground floor below me. I followed him with my eyes, relieved I’d come clean about the Tulpa and what he’d asked of me…but curious about Warren’s reaction.
This was the guy who freaked out at the slightest perceived imbalance in the Zodiac. So why wasn’t he freaking out now? The changeling of Light was broken, the manuals couldn’t be read, my
Below, Vanessa glanced impatiently at her watch. Kimber still fondled her unfinished conduit, looking younger and friendlier and dreamier than any future Shadow killer should. I couldn’t blame her. Her metamorphosis was scheduled two weeks from now, and it was the event an initiate looked forward to from the time they first learn of their preternatural destiny. I glanced at Hunter, thinking I should’ve told Warren about his call boy identity. If he was telling the truth, and Warren wouldn’t care, there was no reason not to mention it. Except I owed him. He’d kept my Joanna identity from those who didn’t already know it, as well as the bigger secret Warren knew nothing about-my daughter.
So I sat back in the crow’s nest and watched Vanessa finally yell at Kimber, who reluctantly handed the weapon back to Hunter before disappearing through the bay doors. Then I sucked in a deep breath filled with the warmth of toasted fruit, so heavy and round I wanted to take a bite. The scent of Hunter.
He glanced up at me sharply before he relaxed, and a languid smile visited his face.
“I’ll be your secret keeper too, Hunter,” I murmured, pushing away the memory even as it rippled through me. “But that’s all.”
14
I used my Shadow manuals often. Most had belonged to my first enemy, the man who thought it was fun to attack little girls on steamy desert nights. I now possessed them because our diminutive, assessing, and steady troop Seer, Tekla, had gone apeshit on his putrefied ass, literally shredding him to bits, saving my life…and saving a bit of herself in the process as well. The next week Joaquin’s extensive stash of meticulously organized Shadow manuals had somehow shown up in the sanctuary, though whether he’d bequeathed them to me, knowing I’d continue the work he’d started-finding a way to kill the Tulpa-or whether they’d somehow been appropriated on my behalf, I still couldn’t say.
I also didn’t walk around advertising my possession of them, not with the third sign of the Zodiac looming over
