She licked her lips, and I saw her teeth had squared in her mouth, the middle two slightly crooked, but only if you knew to look. I swallowed hard. Almost there. Almost me.
“I know it doesn’t seem like it, but I really am on your side. I have been all along. But another agent of Light will figure it out. Eventually.” She sighed, like she was imagining things differently, then sighed again. “Maybe it’s like that mask. It’s just too close to your face to see it clearly.”
I turned my head to find the animist’s mask sprawled right next to me. I hadn’t yet gotten a chance to return it to Xavier’s and had forgotten I even had it with me until now. It must have fallen out of my bag when she’d tackled me, and it stared up at the sky of splintered reality like it saw something I couldn’t.
I had a thought, smiled slightly, and gazed at the fragile webbing above us, as if at the same spot the mask had pinpointed. The doppelganger, looming over me, frowned. Then she turned her head to see what I did, which gave me my chance. “You can eat my heart, but you’re not going to become me.”
I’d had enough of people doing that, and I slapped the mask over my face before she could turn back around.
I jerked beneath her, head flying back to hit the concrete with the g-force of pure chaotic violence. The doppelganger howled above me, but the mask was already fusing greedily to my skull. The synthesis happened in the snap of fingers, and colors too bright to see swirled behind my lids like whipping snakes. I couldn’t see out, and felt for a moment like I couldn’t breathe either. I concentrated on that alone, breathing in and out, and eventually the dizziness lessened, colors fading until I was deathly calm and the mask only pulsed gently against my cheeks.
Then it all ceased, and this time there was no vision, no dream, to replace it. My mind was whitewashed, shallow breathing echoing loudly in my ears, punctuating the silence, my thoughts lost even from myself.
“Olivia?” the doppelganger asked, then “Joanna?”
“What?” Hollow…like the mask.
“What do you see?”
She meant what did I think about what I saw…but I saw nothing. “J-just so you know, you can’t remove this mask. It has adhered to my face.” Better. Almost like myself.
“No shit,” she said, her weight shifting as she fell back on her heels. “Not until the trapped stream-of- consciousness has played your future out in full. After that it will release, and I can look until my little heart is content…no pun intended.”
But her black humor didn’t interest me. It was what she’d said before that, revealing a purpose to the animist’s mask that no one had correctly guessed.
“It tells the future,” I whispered. But that meant my future was blank. I sat in the silent wake of those punishing sheets of light, in total solitude, without even thoughts to keep me company. I’d seen destruction to the city before, death to the inhabitants, my troop, the being on top of me, along with the Tulpa and my mother. So maybe that had changed? Either I was really going to die now, or maybe…“It’s mine to write.”
Or rewrite. I took a deep breath, and thought back on the chain of events since I’d last donned the mask, all the things that could have altered the destiny I’d viewed before. The past twenty-four hours alone was enough to send me reeling. There was my visit with Zane, discovering Ben with Regan at the chapel, my night with Hunter, and the single-minded search for Regan that had finally landed me here. I recalled, and followed, my own progress down the Boulevard, and when the static overtook me this time, I let go of the thought thread, and freefell into my own mind.
Lightning punched a blackened desert floor and I was streaming out to Cathedral Canyon, meeting the others for Kimber’s metamorphosis, biting down on ozone as the world readied for another star sign. Next I flashed to an image of me standing over the fractured gorge, buffeted by the vibrations of impending violence, much of which I would cause. It went on this way until the blank slate reappeared, and my future lay unwritten again. Then my breath again filled my ears, harsh and rattling, but not with fear this time. With excitement. I glanced up, and this time I could see out the slits of the mask to the wide, blackened eyes staring back at me.
“Oh,” I whispered, as my fingers blindly found the mask again. But what I meant to say was
The mask released me with an audible snap. The doppelganger reached for it.
“Not so fast, Hannibal.”
I slipped the mask from my face myself, easy now that it’d already told me its story, and ran a hand over my sweat-dampened hair. “What would you say if I told you the third sign of the Zodiac was about to come to pass?”
She didn’t look as impressed as I thought she should, and smiled wickedly, teeth bared. “Same as before…I’m hungry.”
I smiled back. “And I’d say come and get it.”
It took some time-too much of it-to collect what I needed and put my plan into action. Namely, one Zell Trexler, for whom we had to wait for over an hour before he came sauntering around the back of Master Comics, a freshly lit cigarette flaring between his lips. The smoke only blunted his senses for a second, but if I’d had my conduit with me it would’ve been enough to kill him. In the next second, his head shot up and his hand found his ax, which he could fling with such deadly accuracy I quickly jerked back behind the illegally parked van where I’d been hiding. Fortunately, due to the prophecy that he was to die at my hands, my disembodied voice was all the weapon I needed. “Thank God you’re here. I was afraid the Tulpa really had tipped you off.”
The cigarette was discarded, red ash burning down to nothing in the gutter. “Tipped-?”
“He told me about your little penchant for frightening the changelings as they leave the building,” I interrupted. “You’re such a dick.”
“I’m brokenhearted that you think so,” he said, sounding more like himself. Defensive, but still arrogant. “I suppose you’re looking to score another meeting with Daddy, huh? Too bad he’s no longer taking your calls.”
Because, I knew, the Tulpa had what he wanted. He’d given me the mantra that would trap the doppelganger, call him to finish her off, and place me in servitude from now until eternity’s end. Using it would be icing on his cake-o’-death. Still, I had to be sure.
“I guess I’ll have to use his answering machine like everyone else.”
Zell just scoffed as he backed down the alley, returning the way he came.
“Hold up. What’s the rush, Zell? Hot date?” I tapped my fingers on the hood of the car so he could tell I hadn’t moved. “Just remember, bite the pillow and you’ll be fine.”
“Fuck off,” he shot back, unable to help himself. “You only wish you knew.”
Which told me all I needed to know. “Oh, but I already do. Haven’t you heard? The Tulpa’s given me a way to join the Shadows.” I peered through over the driver’s side mirror to find him looking skeptical, though he was no longer moving away. “I thought I could ride with you to the rendezvous point for tonight’s ambush.”
He was silent for so long that if I were still hidden, I’d have thought he really had left. But I was watching, and saw the uncertainty, followed by resignation, creep over his face. “How ’bout I just give you directions?”
“That’s nice of you,” I said, my tone companionable.
Zell sneered in his reply. “I’m bighearted that way.”
“But I’d rather come with you anyway. It’s a long drive, I could use the company…and you drive a Prius, right? So practical.”
“No.”
“Hm, that almost sounded definitive.” Taking a chance, I did step into view now. His eyes traveled over my body, encased in unrelieved black, and lingered on my mask. “I guess I’m going to have to force you.”
“Force me? Honey, you don’t even have a conduit anymore, and by the way, Regan has been bragging for days about the way she tricked you into attacking a mortal. You’re the laughingstock of the Shadow side.”
That did it.
“You’re right,” I said after a moment, voice deadly soft as I lowered my head, stepping closer. “I no longer have a conduit…but I do have a friend with very sharp teeth.”
The doppelganger landed so softly behind him, he didn’t even hear her. But as he turned again to leave, her grin verified my claim. “How big did you say that heart was?”
