Cher gasped, offended. “I am not a bit religious, and you know it.”
“Look,” I said, blasting through a reddish stoplight. “She doesn’t sound well enough to travel right now. Why don’t you call Dr. Porter and give him her symptoms. He might be able to prescribe something over the phone and fax a prescription to a pharmacy down there.”
“You think?”
What I thought was that the last thing I needed was for those two to come back to town, setting up two more big bull’s-eyes for Regan to train her sights on. What I said was “I sometimes manage it, yes. Call me if Suzanne gets any worse. And give her a big smooch from me.”
I didn’t just say it because Olivia would have. Both Cher and her mother had grown on me, and I was as protective of them as if they were my own family. Natural, I suppose, since I didn’t have any left. Keeping them out of Vegas wasn’t just necessary because of Regan; now I had the doppelganger to contend with. If she knew about me she might know of Olivia’s friends as well.
The next call I made had to be done in person. It was almost closing time when I walked back into Master Comics, and I’d intended to head straight to the storeroom-flipping off Zane on the way-only pausing long enough to pick up this week’s Shadow manual, the Light presumably still not showing up. But one look at the little girl peering up at me with wide and hopeful eyes was enough to have me dropping to my knees.
“Oh, Li,” I whispered, cupping the soft oval of her face in my hands. There were no bandages covering the claw marks marring her face, an effort to get the wound and stitches to dry out, and my heart broke as I wished I could help her heal faster.
“It doesn’t feel as bad as it looks,” she said, in an attempt to be brave, tilting her head so her straight hair swung over the angry red slashes. The fissure in my heart widened.
“Yes it does,” Jasmine cut in sharply, standing at Li’s right side, one hand dropped protectively on her shoulder. It reminded me of Helen’s hands on Xavier, though I didn’t know why. “She screams when my mother cleans it, and now the rest of her skin is starting to crack. She looks like Humpty Dumpty.”
Li blushed furiously, which only accentuated her scars and made the cracking Jasmine was talking about more noticeable. She was right. Li’s once pristine skin now resembled a chaotic inner city road map. Blue veins and red vessels had risen to canvass the thinned-out skin, and I noted her eyes were beginning to bulge a little too.
Jesus, I thought, it even looked like the muscles beneath the skin were thinning. How did I fix this?
“You know you should be a little more sensitive,” I told Jasmine. “This could kill you too.”
“I’m not the one with draining life energy, and besides, I’d rather die as a hero than live as a weak mortal. I’m never giving up my powers.”
“You’re not superhuman, Jasmine. I am.”
“Really? Then how can I do this?” And she bent over and lifted me from the ground as easily as I would a suckling babe. With one arm.
I blinked, bit my lip, then asked without turning around, “Carl? How can Jasmine pick up a hundred-and- twenty-seven-pound woman?”
“One-thirty-two,” he corrected, and Jasmine nodded as she balanced me. Bitch. “Part of the broken changeling deal, Archer. You’ve blitzed a chunk of her humanity and replaced it in the changeling vessel with your own
I raised my brows, peering down at Jasmine. In answer, she dropped her arm and I landed on the ground. Crouching, I peered up at her. “Not even to save your sister? An innocent?”
“I’m superhuman,” she clarified, before gesturing to me with her too-strong hands. “You’re the superhero. You fix it.”
“She’s going to die if you don’t help her!”
That gave her pause, causing her little jaw to tighten, but only for a moment. “She’s mortal. She’s going to die anyway.”
I shook my head in disbelief, and glared at her so hard and long, she finally looked away, pursing her lips. “You’re right,” I whispered. “You’re no hero.”
I bit my lip and turned back to Li. “I’ll fix this, sweetheart. I swear I will.”
She nodded without hesitation. “I know.”
Tears staining my eyes, I thought about Regan’s black makeup compact settled in the bottom of my bag, but Li and I had vastly different coloring, so it wouldn’t do her any good. I’d ask Chandra, and see if something similar couldn’t be made for the changeling. “You should go home and rest.”
“But you might need me.” And, more faithful than Old Yeller, she followed behind as I made my way to the counter. Zane was there, studiously ignoring the goings-on in the shop as he ran a pencil across a sheet of paper, the marks disappearing as swiftly as they were made. The half-dozen changelings, save Jasmine, crowded around me, shouting out questions about what Zane “saw” and suggestions on how to make the ink appear. Zane ignored them out of habit; I did so because I couldn’t get Li’s tattered face out of my mind.
I leaned on my elbows to peer up into Zane’s face. His nose twitched.
“We’re about to close,” he said, moving his papers aside and continuing his work.
“Get ahold of the Tulpa for me.”
He didn’t even look up. “What do I look like, your local operator?”
“I know you can get ahold of him.” My voice hardened. “Now help me.”
He flipped his greasy hair back from his forehead, equally greasy. It immediately fell into his eyes again. “I don’t have time to help you work out your daddy issues. Now get out of my light. I’m busy writing a manual you’ll probably never get to see.”
I folded my arms. “Look, Zane, I don’t know what happened to the changeling. I wore her aura but I got it back to her on time. If you have any idea what I can do to fix it, you should tell me.”
He sneered as I pulled back, so I decided to try appealing to his morality. “Fine, don’t do it for me. But look at Jasmine. Shit, look at Li-”
“I see them every day!” he screamed back in my face, gesturing widely with his writing hand. “While you’re out trying to figure out who to screw, I practically live with the little kids your bad decisions are destroying!”
Spit flew from his mouth, and my own fell open, while the kids in the half moon around us froze, unnaturally silent. Zane threw down his pencil, swallowed in an obvious effort to control himself, and when he got his breathing back under control, he said, “I want to help them, I do. But you’re the only one who can mend the changeling.”
I let his previous remarks go, and said in my own heroic show of control, “How?”
He chewed at his bottom lip like he was struggling to hold back words, and had to munch down on the syllables to stop them from pouring out. Finally, in a strangled voice, he managed, “That’s not the right question.”
“Then give me the answers and we’ll work backward from there.”
“This isn’t
“No, because that’s a game.
He stared into my eyes for a long moment, frowning like he was using telepathy on me, willing me to understand his thoughts, and when I only stared back he finally shook his head. “I can’t help you.”
I sighed, deflated, then pointed to the manual he was working on as I turned toward the storeroom. “Why don’t you pull up an armchair while you write those things?”
“Fuck you.”
“Trite,” I shot back over my shoulder. “Good thing you’re not thinking up the dialogue too.”
I bent, ordered Li to stay at the front of the shop despite her protests, then bypassed the walls of anime, manga, and comic book carousels. I stalked past the cabinet containing the Zodiac manuals. Two members of the pimple brigade followed.
I entered the long hallway. They shadowed. I exited into the library-esque storeroom. More of the same. By the time I’d scooted around the fireplace I’d become almost paranoid in my awareness of them. Then I made the mistake of making eye contact.
“Hey, lady. Can we talk to you for a minute?”
“I don’t actually speak Klingon,” I muttered, scanning an eye-level shelf with my fingertips. I wondered how many silent alarms I was setting off for Zane, and decided to touch every manual on every shelf. Fuck him.
Undaunted, the kid introduced himself as Kade, his friend was Dylan, before continuing. “See, here’s the thing. Halloween’s coming up, right? And you’re going to be out canvassing the city, right?”
