City of Souls

all.

“Nothing,” Hunter said, dropping into the tunnel from the ledge above. I wasn’t surprised. Regan had probably already planned for this eventuality.

“She’s been following me,” I murmured, knowing he could hear, though my head was bowed. “She knows about my daughter. She told the Tulpa about Ashlyn.”

Shock kept him silent for long seconds, and I kept my face hidden. I didn’t want to see the disbelief and blame in that gaze. “But you haven’t gone near Ashlyn…have you?”

I shook my head before daring a glance up. “Someone’s been helping Regan. She says it’s an agent of Light.”

He stared for a long moment to see if I was serious. Then he pulled out his cell phone. “We have to tell Warren.”

“Wait.”

His eyes flicked to me under brows that furrowed, but he punched his speed dial and put the phone to his ear. I spoke faster, knowing Warren would come on the line soon.

“Hunter, no. Please. He knows things.” He knew what that place would take from me and let me go anyway. “He’s kept secrets from us…Jaden Jacks, he was Light.”

I could tell the second Warren came on the line. Hunter stiffened, wide eyes searching my face. “I have her.”

Knowing Warren would hear if I even made a sound, I pleaded with my expression alone. Hunter threw up a hand. He didn’t know what to do.

“Yes,” he said, to Warren’s inquiry. I held my breath. “Yes. At dawn.”

He put his phone away without saying good-bye…or anything about Regan’s alleged ally. “Your explanation had better be damned good.”

I slumped, grateful for the reprieve. I needed time to reorder my thoughts, not just soak in everything that’d happened to me in Midheaven, but what I’d learned of Warren, of Regan…and to figure out what do to now that the Tulpa knew of Ashlyn too.

Oh my God. The Tulpa knew about Ashlyn.

“What the hell happened to you over there?” Hunter meant Midheaven but he gestured at me like I was in a full body cast. I glanced down at the halter, the bangles and armbands, the rings like industrial screws, the chaps now overtight at my hips, then flattened him with my own hard look.

“You can’t possibly think this was my idea.”

“I’m not talking about that. You’re bleeding.”

“No, it’s…” Regan’s, I was going to say as he lifted my hands. My palms were only lightly scraped, but it was easy to scent the blood with our magnified senses. The larger injury was where the cross bolt had grazed my thigh. If not for the leather chaps, I’d certainly have noted it sooner.

But I shouldn’t be noting my palms at all.

“Midheaven,” I lied breathlessly. I couldn’t say why, but I didn’t want him to know that I’d gotten these injuries after I’d returned. My shocked suspicion about what they were, and why, was unwanted, even now while it was still forming. “Um…you heal like a mortal if you’re injured over there.”

Hunter’s fingers slid gently but firmly up my arm. “And this one?”

The scar from Mackie’s knife. Leave it to Hunter to catch everything. “I got it first. So, it’s healing first.”

“That makes sense.” His baffled expression cleared and he nodded. “Even mortals begin healing in a week.”

An involuntary shudder racketed my spine. “Sorry?”

Hunter’s eyes swirled with the same dark confusion, and even when they cleared I felt lost in their pooling depths. I staggered. His firm touch grew supporting. “Whoa there. Easy.”

A week? As in seven whole days?

“What day is it?” I managed.

“Thursday,” he said haltingly. “The twelfth.”

The words swirled, making me dizzy, causing my knees to buckle for the second time that night. I’d left on the third. Over a week ago. Well, at least that explained why Regan hadn’t seen me enter the pipeline when she claimed to have been there for days.

Dazed, I pushed past Hunter, fully exiting the tunnel this time to study the landscape. Sunk between two concrete slopes, there wasn’t much to see, but the tunnel water was frozen in slick and shallow rivers, brackish weeds trapped between crevasses crunchy with ice. That never happened in early November. Not in Vegas.

Hunter had joined me, again with a supporting hand on my arm, but I jerked away and looked straight up…into a blistered sky. “What happened?”

He tore his gaze from me long enough to join me studying the sky. A liquid cobalt haze, threaded through with a shock of violent green, had replaced the pewter gray that had been swirling when I left. Lightning flashed behind bulging clouds, infusing the vivid colors with a solid core of pure electricity. It would have been pretty if it hadn’t looked like it was going to fall down around the city’s shoulders.

“It’s the result of the tulpas’ battles,” Hunter explained. “All their expended energy is being released over the city, but as long as neither side wins, it has no place to go. It can’t hold for much longer.”

An electrical storm created directly above the most powerfully lit city on the planet. The atmosphere burning so violently it couldn’t help but cave in. Great.

“Jo?” He edged in to block my view of the sky. “Midheaven?”

“Yeah, okay.” I blew out a breath. Focusing on the facts would give me a mental foothold. I’d just have to come to terms with losing a week of my life step by step. “Ruled by women. Crazy ones.” I gestured at my body again, and blew at a strand of hair escaped from ribbon and braid.

“I don’t know. They seem all right to me.”

I smirked, but the humor settled me. I remembered everything; the pain of the passage over there, the daguerreotype and the wall of Most Wanted posters, the poker game and what it cost. Thirst and heat, and how they were used against you. The women drawn in watercolor, the men in charcoal. Yet when I opened my mouth, every one of those images snaked away. It was irritating how tangible everything was until I tried to voice it. As soon as I tried to speak, something would shift inside, and the words would slide away.

I shrugged, and shook my head. “It won’t let me.”

“What?”

I threw up my hands. “I mean, I remember everything, but I can’t tell you about it. Silence like that has to be some sort of…I don’t know, fail-safe.” And I wondered if Warren knew that too. Still, I’d been able to mention what I learned about Jacks to Hunter. I looked at him and pursed my lips.

“Jaden Jacks. Solange. Harlan Tripp.”

“What?”

I nodded to myself. So I couldn’t speak of what happened over there, but I could talk about the people there. Those were the only ones, though. Shen was only a wisp of a memory, Boyd was a lump in my throat. Mackie disappeared the fastest. “Wow, okay. So only people who came from this world.”

Hunter gave me the appropriate look for someone who’d taken to conversing with herself, and again took me by the arm. “Let’s go. You can try to recall more when we’re somewhere safe.”

I glanced up at the sky, fought the impulse to duck, and wondered exactly where that would be. Because I’d returned to a scarred world, an embattled troop, and a leader who-if my intuition was right-was turning out to be as ruthless as the enemies we fought.

Worst of all, I had an unwanted suspicion about what gaming chip Shen had stolen from my pile. Shaking my head, I followed Hunter out into the open night.

Forced to wait until dawn to cross back into the boneyard, we returned to the warehouse. Without our safe zones, it was still the most secure place on this side of reality. The Shadows could theoretically get to us there, but they’d have to go through a hell of a lot of artillery to do so. We were quiet on the drive over, Hunter still furtively studying my appearance from the corner of his eye, and me staring out the window like a moody teenager. Maybe it was psychosomatic-the shocking knowledge that I’d lost a week of my life to another world slowly sinking in-but Las Vegas was suddenly what appeared unreal. It was like returning to a childhood home. Though I had an intimate knowledge of the terrain, I no longer felt a part of it.