The Touch of Twilight

she’d placed in Ben’s home. I wondered what she’d felt when she discovered she’d murdered her own father.

Not that I got a chance to ask. She didn’t call again and wasn’t answering the number that’d shown up on my phone’s caller ID. But the subsequent eruption of destroyed window fronts and car windshields in Ben’s neighborhood spoke of a rage just winding up, telling me I’d hit the jackpot when guessing who her love and weakness and regret and hope was centered around. I reminded myself she’d been the one to throw down first. She’d targeted my first love, and had, over the past few months, attempted to wrench away every foundation-both supernatural and mortal-that’d stabilized me.

But who would’ve guessed even a month ago that she was the one with more to lose? And now she had, I thought, the flats of the desert a buttery blur as I sped back into town. Gone was the house her mother had bequeathed her, the father she denied, and the man she’d targeted because she was so covetous of what belonged to me. Not wanting to face Warren yet, I called Gregor and said we’d need to place extra surveillance on Ben’s home, though I didn’t say why. Then I disconnected and settled in to wait for Regan to show herself. It was only a matter of time.

I’d be ready.

24

The city’s annual benefit for the North Las Vegas Children’s Fund was always held two weekends before Halloween. Though it was a costume party and ostensibly linked to the popular holiday, the timing meant there’d be no competing events to distract the city’s moneyed and elite. Not that it mattered. This benefit was Vegas’s premiere fall function, and this year would see practically every major headliner on the Strip contributing performances. None of that made a difference to the kids at Master Comics, but they acted suspiciously like normal children when costumes and candy were involved, and since the event fell on a Saturday, Zane decided to close the shop early so the little rugrats could get their Halloween groove on early.

And so it was shortly after one, an hour after I’d left Chandra unconscious and tied up in the middle of a barren desert canyon, that Zane toddled up the spiral staircase to his personal living quarters above Master Comics to find me squatting in his flat.

“About time, dude,” I said, flipping through what looked like an original script to Whedon’s Serenity. My esteem for Zane grudgingly rose a notch. “I was beginning to think you never took a break.”

Comics, mail, graphite pencils, and pads went flying, and a steaming cup of black tea dropped to the floor in an impressive crash. Zane flung his arms out before him as if to ward off laser beams that might shoot from my eyes, and I lifted a brow and flipped another page. Man, I really missed Malcolm Reynolds. Zane stared at me a moment longer, then down at the luxury Persian rug, soaked with tea and studded with shards of expensive porcelain. He opened his mouth.

“Don’t blame me for that, man. It’s entirely too weird that you drink your tea like a prissy old Englishwoman.”

“Fine china elevates the experience,” he replied through clenched teeth, then bent over with a huff to collect his papers, slapping those that’d gotten soaked against his thick, jeans-clad thigh. His microwaved pot pie had landed facedown on the floor, but he flipped it back over and it looked salvageable. “That was my favorite cup and saucer.”

I straightened, impressed by his recovery. I didn’t know if an agent had ever broken into the shop before, much less his private quarters, but he seemed almost bored by my appearance here…and that just wouldn’t do. “Nice selection,” I said, motioning to a squat bookshelf with rare printings of every major graphic series ever written, including the script I’d pulled down.

He drew back at what he perceived was a verbal attack. “Entertainment reading isn’t a crime, and Whedon’s instinctive grasp of the primeval laws of the Universe is revealed as clearly in his ’Verse as any ‘true’ manual written throughout the history of-”

“Yeah, yeah.” I stood, waving off the rest of his explanation. I swear to God, get the guy started on the mythos of any particular worldview and he might never shut up. “I just have one question to ask you, and then I’ll leave.”

He looked at me like he’d bitten into something sour.

I leaned over and patted the platform of the nearby bed, inviting him to sit. Zane slouched on the edge like he was being told of his imminent execution, and listened listlessly as I explained how the doppelganger was stalking me, but had been told by someone to wait for me to offer my energy to her, so that she could return to where it would redouble upon itself.

“So she hasn’t been creating the breaches in the fabric of our reality just for the fun of it.” I settled back, draping my arms across the sides of the afghan-covered armchair, and crossed my legs. “There’s something that keeps drawing my double back to the flip side of this reality, and do you know what I think?”

“I know you’re going to tell me.”

“It’s Midheaven.”

“The myth?”

I raised a brow. “Is it?”

He shrugged. “They say so.”

“What do you say?”

His turn to raise a brow. “You’re asking the record keeper for his opinion? That’s a first.”

“So?”

He stared for a long moment, then huffed. “I know there’s something.”

“How?”

He leaned forward, palms splayed on his knees. “Because if the original manual was somewhere in this city, on this plane, I’d have found it by now, and I’d have my ticket out of this adolescent hellhole.”

The original manual-a.k.a. Zane’s obsession-documented the split between Shadow and Light, foretelling that troops would one day be located in every major city around the world, as well as predicting the rise of the Tulpa. The means to killing the Tulpa was also supposed to be inked in its pages, but no one could confirm that because our city’s sole copy had been lost. Agents kept looking, though, because the knowledge in that one manual was so great it could forever tip the scale of power in favor of the troop that possessed it.

So Zane’s point was valid. If the original manual still indeed existed, it certainly would be well hidden in a land everyone had dismissed as a myth. But what interested me more right now was his ending statement, so I watched carefully as he crossed to his bookcase where he pulled out a lighter and cigar I recognized as a Graycliff. Xavier smoked the same. And suddenly it was as clear as day. He no longer looked like one of the iPod people. He had the hunched-over mien of either a street fighter who’d been tapped too many times…or an octogenarian.

“Exactly how old are you, Zane?” He looked no more than twenty-seven, but the books and furnishings and comforts he surrounded himself with put him closer to…

“Seventy-three last March.” He sighed, blowing out a thick stream of fragrant smoke. “I’ve been this valley’s record keeper for almost half a century.”

That explained a lot. “Made a deal with the devil, huh?” I said wryly, nodding when he pointed to a cognac decanter. “Did the original record keeper trick you into it?”

“Oh no.” He poured two snifters of honey-gold liquid, and crossed to hand me one. I didn’t even have to taste it to know it was quality. I could smell the silky finish from across the room. “He laid it all out, my obligations, my restrictions, my abilities. We’re required to tell the truth to any potentials we have in mind for the job. I just haven’t found anyone in the last half century as stupid as I was to take it on.”

“And you can’t just leave it?” I asked, sipping lightly. Zane was more relaxed, friendlier now that he had someone to talk openly with. I could imagine it got pretty lonely being the only person in a group who remembered World War II. Or even the Looney Tunes.

“I can’t leave this building, Archer, never mind the city or state.” He snorted gruffly, and scratched at his chin. “The voices would drive me crazy.”

No wonder he was always in such a bad mood. There was a cantankerous seventy-three-year-old in that non-