The Touch of Twilight

I arrived at another building, this one from the seventies that the city was billing as historic, right next to one from the fifties that almost was. I paused there to take in the scents of grilled veggies and salsa wafting from the nearby Mexican restaurant, and remembered the time Ben and I had come down here as teens. The block across from this had been one giant souvenir warehouse then, and we’d emptied Ben’s pockets of change, divided it, and split up to search out the perfect gift for each other…one that could be had for $2.73 or less. I’d gotten Ben a wallet with a faux sheriff’s badge, and he’d given me a plastic ring with a diamond the size of my earlobe. I still had it-or, at least, I knew where it was-stuck inside a secret cubbyhole of an antique desk in Xavier’s mansion.

Now his prison, I thought, as a lone cab inched its way past the building and up the street toward the beehive of activity on Antique Row. And revisiting it, and Helen, was something else I needed to get to. Though it wasn’t at the top of my supernatural to-do list, even if Xavier had looked ill. He’d phoned in his fate upon accepting the Tulpa’s patronage. Giving up your soul essence to help keep another being animated was bound to take it out of a person.

The souvenir warehouse was gone now, and sections of the boxy brick facade had been painted by different artists. The bright canvas was then divided into three stories with a red steel staircase perched off one side. There was a glass-blowing studio at street level drawing a big crowd of onlookers, a tapas bar on top, which would see its best business as an after-party to the event, and an infamous tattoo parlor sandwiched in between where some pop starlet had made one of many mistakes on a drug-fueled binge that’d landed her at the drive-up chapel after this… and on the cover of the tabloid papers by sunup.

I gazed up at the wide, open windows of the ink parlor, idly wondering where Hunter had gotten the tattoo I’d seen on his shoulder. It was intriguing that he believed fear and desire were flip sides to the same coin, as if one couldn’t exist without the other. Did I believe that? I wondered, as a burly man leaned over the windowsill, saw me looking, and waved at me to come on up. Hunter had made no secret of his desire for me, so it made me wonder if there was a bit of him fearing me as well-or, at the very least, the intensity of the attraction. So, then, was his recent decision to pursue me in spite of the danger…or because of it?

I pointed at my watch, signing to the man I had somewhere to be, and waited for another cab to pass before crossing the street, annoyed by the way my thoughts had flitted back to Hunter rather than sticking on Ben. I knew what was bothering me, what kept my psyche sliding from the thought of him like wheels over an oil slick. Warren’s report and Ben’s alleged homicidal turn had coupled with his refusal to speak with me, and I suddenly felt like I didn’t know the man at all. Distance and bitterness and whatever had crawled into Ben in the years since I’d first known him had me unable to guess what he wanted anymore, so it wasn’t any surprise Hunter’s relatively simple desire to bed me was easier to face in comparison.

I reached Casino Center, pulled out the manual the boys had shown me, and held it up, aligning the skylines. There. The exteriors of the surrounding buildings had changed, but the streets had not. The same alley disappeared behind the artist’s tents now pitched before Third Street, across from one of the city’s most popular antique stores, The Funk House. The first changeling had been killed in that alley, and I needed to slip in there. But it’d be best to approach it from its opposite, less populated, side, so I headed out onto Main Street, where I slipped past Dust, an edgy gallery with contemporary exhibits, and had just passed a store devoted to overpriced urban footwear-a DJ working two tables, the minimalist concrete room packed with teens-when I saw the cab again. I knew it was the same one because there couldn’t be two drivers canvassing this area with a wool jeep cap turned backward. This time, however, he wasn’t doing a slow crawl; impatience wafted from his open window as he waited for the pedestrians to clear, the backseat of his cab empty. That’s how I knew I was being followed.

I dove into the next doorway I came upon, a bar with gouges in the floor, team trophies lining the walls, and an inexplicably large jar of pickled pigs’ feet next to the register. Two men holding pool cues over a neglected table straightened when I came in, but I ignored both them and the stares from those who swiveled on their red patent leather stools. I wasn’t looking for a game. I needed a way out.

I headed straight to the back of the bar and pushed through the kitchen entrance. The slit-eyed cook never looking up from his portable television as I exited into the back alley. My nostrils flared as I first pivoted left, then took off in the opposite direction, following the scent of decay.

Following Regan.

It wasn’t hard to put together, and I did it as I ran. The little shit in Master Comics had called Regan again after overhearing my conversation with Dylan and Kade about Jaden Jacks, and Regan had either tracked me, or correctly guessed I’d research the events in the Jacks manual immediately. My money was on the latter, as we all knew fixing Jasmine was a priority.

So Regan DuPree knew I was here…but I knew she was too. I knew her scent as well as I did my own, and offensive though it was, it would take a miracle to dislodge. Regan, I decided as I rounded the block, didn’t have another miracle left in her.

I blew by an apartment building, wind at my heels, knocking over a child’s bike, leaves and debris rustling in my wake. I flattened myself against the building’s short side, double-palmed my crossbow, and eased into the adjacent side street.

She was picking her way through the street’s middle, a dark figure with a sharp, swinging bob, and I was pleased to see her looking tentative. Her scent was the same as it’d been in the shop, and in the bathroom before that: smugness like smoky marshmallow, crazy like cheap liquor, and as spoiled as fermented flesh.

I thought of all the times and ways she’d eluded me, how she’d pawed Ben so possessively, and threatened to either blow him to bits or shrivel his soul until it matched her own. As she neared the last quarter length of that alley-nearly safe-I thought of what Gregor told me about her parents and decided that playing fair was overrated. Her death, I thought as I lifted my weapon, would be a relief to us all.

The damned toddler was what saved her. His screech as he ran from the street festival announced his arrival at the mouth of the alley, a tiny bolt of flying limbs accompanied by his mother’s panicked, exasperated cry. I lowered my weapon as they appeared in quick succession, the frantic mother whipping him back to her side where he cried out again. They drew lines in their battle of wills, right there between the two bland apartment buildings.

Regan didn’t slow. In fact, her confidence lifted at the sight of them, and why not? I’d never attack with witnesses present. Their arrival also gave her options, other lives to play with in this cat-and-mouse chase with me, and I decided right there and then: not again.

I rushed her. It wasn’t as fast as an arrow through the heart, but the timing was perfect. I cleared twenty yards in the seconds it took for the mother and child to slip from view. Regan hadn’t taken three steps before I was on her, momentum driving me too close for a fully extended punch. I settled for the more lethal elbow to the temple, driving downward with all my supernatural might just as she shifted, brows furrowing…

On a face that wasn’t Regan’s.

I pulled up short, but it was too late. The blow still connected and the woman fell, probably without even knowing she’d been hit. Not a deathblow, I pleaded silently, my breath sounding loudly in my ears. Please, please not a deathblow. But through my pleading, and as I cradled a clearly mortal body in that ragged silence, I battled back confusion. I could still scent Regan on this woman, in her, a sensory record of a life touched by Shadow. And when I coupled that olfactory knowledge with the woman’s appearance-a build similar to my old one, the blunt hair exact, but a face that was nothing like Regan’s or mine-my confusion was snuffed, and my blood went colder than the thin stream of that which was trickling from the mortal’s ear, onto the ground.

It’s you she’s after.

And she’d use anything and anyone-including an innocent-to get to me. I’d have bent to study the track marks I knew studded the veins in her arms, but Hunter’s reminder sounded again, more insistent this time.

It’s you she’s after.

I dove to my left, only because I happened to be leaning to my right, just as the bell-like laughter sounded down the alley. Luckily there was a jumble of shopping carts and construction debris to block me from view, but still my heart pounded, my own emotion now up and easily scented, and I looked back at the woman sprawled in the middle of the street regretfully. I hated to leave her, but I had no way of knowing if Regan was alone.

Back to the wall and using the construction material as a shield, I shakily inched my way again to the bar’s rear exit. I’d come full circle, but it was the knowledge that I had to get out of here now that had me lightheaded.

The moment I touched the handle of the kitchen door, it rocked into me with a force that should’ve been impossible on spring hinges. My skull cracked on the steel doorframe, then with one good yank on my arm, I was pulled inside. I let my knees buckle-they wanted to, anyway-and narrowly avoided a blow to the head. I could have