The Touch of Twilight

But I wasn’t listening to the words. In fact, I’d forgotten Kimber entirely.

“How did you get in here?” I whispered…barely.

The doppelganger smiled with her razored teeth, motioning to my walls. “You left an opening. I walked through it.”

She certainly had. And she sealed the opening behind her. Whatever it was making her my ethereal twin also allowed her to manipulate my thought matter. I swallowed hard.

Not, I thought as she took another step forward, a comforting thought.

19

Okay, so I wasn’t entirely trapped. I could dissolve the walls I’d made with a directly channeled thought, but all my energy was understandably concentrated on the being in front of me…too strong, too unpredictable, and far too close for my comfort.

“I meant how did you get into the sanctuary?”

“I’m everywhere you are. I’m like the air you take into your lungs and the carbon dioxide you breathe out again. I’m a part of you.”

“And let me guess,” I said wryly, gaining my feet and backing away as far as my walls would allow. “You want me to be a part of you too.”

She thrust out her bottom lip, chagrined. “You’re referring to my little slip in control, aren’t you? I was rushing things a bit, I know, but sometimes it’s easier to take what you need. Devouring a still-pulsing heart is like mainlining pure power. It would allow me to hide in plain sight, or appear and disappear without restriction, heedless of worlds or planes or boundaries. Like you, I’m impulsive sometimes. That…and so goddamned hungry.”

Her voice dropped, and my mind flitted to the conduit I no longer possessed…not that it would work on a partially materialized doppelganger. Besides, what would happen if she was a part of me? Would I suffer if I shot her? I covered my confusion with a snarl. “Stop licking your lips. It ruins the apology.”

“I don’t expect you to forgive and forget. I never do, and we’re made from the same cloth, so to speak.” She chuckled at that, though I had no idea what it meant. “So I’ve decided to appeal to your reason instead. We should do this properly.”

She tilted her luminescent head, the curve of her skull shaping and reshaping itself in layering bubbles. Even her skull was morphing more quickly in approximation of the old me. Her snapping, effervescent hair had shortened, the droplets releasing themselves above the shoulders, and she looked taller, her build paper-thin, but taking on more substance with every passing moment as the gaseous sheen shifted over, around, and through her frame. It was eerie to see my features taking shape in a pearly phosphorescent ooze. The Tulpa’s words slid through me.

Wait much longer and you won’t even have the ability to choose…She’ll just take over your life.

So should I be thankful that her teeth were still blinding white and unnaturally sharp? I didn’t know, so I continued keeping my eyes on her when Kimber groaned wordlessly behind me.

“She told me you were a smart girl, a nice girl. Well, not nice. But good. Good-ish.” She was still drinking in my features, her own shifting so that even the words ran over themselves with that rippling voice.

“What are you talking about? Who?” I said sharply, though more out of a need to buy myself time than any real interest. I was silently repeating the Tulpa’s mantra to myself, though having trouble remembering it now that my impulsive and dangerous double had broken into my sanctuary. And he’d been adamant that it needed to be exact.

“I’m supposed to be patient and wait for you to offer your energy to me,” the doppelganger was saying, interrupting my mental gymnastics. “Then I can return to where it will redouble upon itself, assimilating so that flesh and bone knit together in strong mortal weave…but that all takes so much time. That’s why I stumbled before. And why you need to help me.”

“Okay,” I said, playing along. I had the mantra now; I just wasn’t sure I wanted to use it. If I did, I’d belong to the Shadow side…no turning back. For the time being, I was just glad I had it at my disposal. I was shit at multitasking multiple attempts on my soul. “Just tell me exactly what you want.”

That had bubbles blowing off her like steam. Her teeth, the only solid thing about her, snapped together in a cruel parody of a smile. “Don’t be a fucking idiot, Joanna!”

Oh God. How did she know my real name?

“You’re supposed to be smart! She said you’d understand!” She was whining now, alternately furious and desperate, exasperation making her sweat so perspiration rolled like pearls down her face. “Everything we say and do and think is channeled into one thing. Vibrations. Energy. I’d burn the energy, the magic in it, if I even suggested it. I’d touch on the exact same vibrational matter I need you to, but in a different way.”

“And matter is all that matters.” I was murmuring Chandra’s words to myself, but the doppelganger heard.

“Exactly so! So if you would just think. Then you could do it now and I’ll be stronger, faster, more, real, him, me…” Her entire face flashed, like lightning trapped in a bottle, and layers of light bled in her gaze, white orbs rolling like marbles. She was becoming frantic, and had almost lifted her arms, reaching out to me with razored nails before catching herself and pulling back. She wrung her hands, and bubbles frothed between her palms. “Do it properly, okay? It’ll be faster that way, almost instant. Formal isn’t necessary, no, but proper. Informal, common. That’s a given.”

She tilted her head to the other side when I said nothing, airy eyes swirling with mist, earnestness making them wide. “I won’t kill you, and we’ll be friends. Because friends give, and given is best. Anyone can inherit it, so inheritance means nothing.”

I licked my lips, not relaxing even if she didn’t look like she was going to kill me at this moment. Another moment was coming on fast. “I just need, um…a little plain English here.”

That didn’t piss her off like I thought it would. “Plain English! Exactly so!” The doppelganger licked her beautiful lips, and I took a step backward. She still looked hungry. “I need a noun. One noun, two aspects, right?”

I half expected her to pull on her ear and say, Sounds like… So I waited for the pantomime to play out. And waited. I swallowed hard. “Come again?”

She ignored me, still rambling. “The first aspect is the sense-you know a lot about senses, right?-and then there’s a referent…but of course that’s already inside you. Your Shadow side…but you still need another…”

And it was all going so well until her words trailed off in a hiss. Her teeth elongated in her mouth, saliva dripping, and she looked right through me like I was nothing more than a bag of bones.

“Flank her,” came the order from behind me…and I realized she was looking at Warren, who’d burst through the Orchard’s door, the rest of the troop close behind.

“Not yet, Phantom,” the doppelganger snapped at Warren, and he looked stricken at her tone. She turned back to me, eyes fierce white marbles. “Just give it to me. One noun, two aspects, a sense and a referent. All you have to do is think! Quick!”

Oh yeah-that was going to happen with my fanged and clawed double salivating in front of me. I shook my head, swallowing hard. “I’m sorry. I don’t know-”

“Idiot! Stop apologizing.” She no longer looked like me. Her face was almost roiling, it was morphing so quickly into different oval, heart, and square-jawed aspects. Her eyes alternately slanted and rounded, and her skin looked thinner, weaker, in some places than others, like a balloon squeezed at one end. “Do it now, or I’ll tell everyone here your real name.”

I narrowed my eyes, and my fingers flexed automatically. “Don’t,” I said coolly.

“Olivia!” Warren had moved into my peripheral view, but I didn’t dare take my eyes off my doppelganger. She was boxed in, but I was boxed in with her.

“I’ll let you say mine,” she cajoled, drowning out his voice, ignoring him completely. He was behind her now, but couldn’t get at her through the walls, and she knew it. The rest of the troop had spread out evenly around the perimeter, but she didn’t spare any of them a glance either.

I shook my head. “I don’t know yours.”