City of Souls

effects of this place as fully as I. It was enough to make me feel he was a sort of ally.

“Hey, Tripp,” I said, lifting to my toes. He blinked, lifting his eyes from the cards. “Eighteen years.”

There was only his shocked gasp before the smoke from my extinguished lantern billowed and built, solid enough to ferry me back to my world, thick enough to dampen my scream.

21

I arrived back in the pipeline, fists clenched, trying to hang onto the intangible. But by the time I recognized the deep well of curving concrete beneath my booted feet, the chip I’d given Boyd-my ability to create walls from thin air-was gone. Alone, there was only my breathing, shallow and uncertain. And thank God, because the last time this tunnel had been peopled with enemies. As I calmed, I sucked in the silence and cried, just a little, in the dark.

Pushing past that inconveniently timed weakness, I then went in search of my shoulder bag. The depthless black of the pipeline enveloped me as if I were going farther in, rather than out, but after retrieving the bag-and dump-ing my remaining, dwindling chips inside-I continued to inch along in the darkness, unwilling to light the glyph on my chest and turn myself into a walking target. I knew where I was, but not when.

Disoriented, I dug in the bag and turned on my phone. There were another dozen messages from Cher, which I skipped, but what was really important was the date. Three days after I’d left. Not too bad. I’d traveled to a whole new world and still made it back in time for Thanksgiving. I called Hunter, still got his voice mail, and realized he’d probably be “working” at Valhalla, so left a message for him to call me back on his break.

Not trusting that I was steady enough yet to drive, I caught a cab. I didn’t care what Warren said, after dying from thirst, I needed a cool glass of water at my side; after Solange’s separation of my body from my soul, I needed refuge; after days where I’d had nothing but worry, and a heated night of passion, I needed to be in a place where nothing was required of me but to be. In short, I needed the sanctuary.

It was downtown, buried beneath the discarded remains of our city, in the Neon Boneyard. The entrance sat kitty-corner to the restored La Concha Motel lobby, a mid-mod building with a wavy roof I used to point and laugh at as a kid, but was now considered historic. My, how things change. Our lair was surrounded by a brick wall, which also divided two parallel realities.

The exact split between dawn and dusk lasted the scant moments it took the sun to evenly split the sky, and in that time the wall surrounding the Neon Boneyard became a murky, swirling coagulation of liquefied matter. If you knew how to look, you could see parts of it thinning, the discarded signage of Las Vegas’s yesteryear visible through shifting patches on the other side.

Still, you’d think the booming crash of a three thousand pound vehicle regularly hitting concrete would attract the Neighborhood Watch, but despite the explosion of cinder block and debris, and the squealing crunch of metal meeting wall, the dust acted as a sort of buffer. It didn’t absorb the sound as much as it sucked it in.

Even with erratic, supernatural winds buffering this cab, and with four of my powers stripped away-the two odd triangles I’d lost at the tables, the power to heal taken by Shen, and the one I’d just given over to escape a second time-the thought gave me peace. Entering the sanctuary would be like stepping back into the womb, so with every mile gained, Midheaven faded like a nightmare, something I’d endured mentally but not physically. The soul slices and abilities taken from me had yet to show their effects, but I imagined this was what a surprise cancer diagnosis was like; the sudden, dark knowledge that something was wrong inside of you warring with a feeling of familiar, if not perfect, health. The awareness that the worst was soon to come.

As for those beings peopling the twisted magical kingdom, I was happy to have escaped them. Jacks and Solange deserved one another…though her sudden show of jealousy had thrown me. How a woman like that could see me as a threat was boggling. Yet since Jacks himself claimed he’d returned for love, I was sure they had it all straightened out by now.

And still no real way to fix Jasmine. I sighed heavily. Solange’s advice was to put her above myself, something I didn’t really need to be told. I’d gone there, hadn’t I? Risked my soul. Lost my powers. I had no idea what else “put her above yourself” could mean.

“But I’ve heard that somewhere before,” I muttered as we pulled onto Flamingo. We passed Money Plays, the neon green sign reminding me of half-yard beers and games of table shuffleboard. Maybe the advice had come from Hunter, I thought, glancing wistfully at Money’s attached pizzeria. Possibly Warren.

Warren, who’d lied.

Because he’d told me Jacks was already in Midheaven, and Warren didn’t make mistakes that big. So why lie? What would be his true motive in sending me to a place where the cost of entry was a third of my soul, where women ruled ruthlessly, and where my powers were risked in games of chance? I decided to ask him as soon as I entered the sanctuary.

Meanwhile, Jacks had been even less helpful. He told me to kill Jasmine so that my chi could return to me. It was shocking that a former agent of Light could think such a thing, much less say it. If he were a Shadow agent, or worse, if he were the Tulpa…

What would he do if he were the Tulpa? What would I do?

I sat up so straight in the backseat that the cab actually rocked and the driver cursed.

“Strong winds,” I muttered, but he only frowned at me in the rearview mirror. I fumbled for my phone, again dialing Hunter’s number.

“The Tulpa doesn’t want me dead,” I said as soon as his voice mail allowed. “He needs me alive. If I die, my chi will unite again. In Jasmine.”

The energy would be reabsorbed in Jasmine’s body, the same way the energy of the people Jaden Jacks used for crossing into Midheaven was absorbed into that world.

“But the Tulpa can’t let that happen. Because then the manuals would be written again.” Our troop would be strong again. Skamar would have her recorded name. Li would be healed. Sure, he wanted Regan to bring me to him, he probably even wanted to punish me for all the trouble I’d caused him this past year-especially for siccing Skamar on him-but he didn’t want me dead. Yet.

“He needs me alive. He can’t touch me.” And I hung up without saying good-bye. There was a sonic boom in the distance, the tulpas warring over the black mountains, but I smiled grimly at the embattled sky. My powers had been taken from me, but I could walk freely on this side of reality, a power in itself. I’d cross over for now, work with the others to figure out how to use this knowledge to best the Tulpa, and we could all heal the Zodiac together.

After that, I thought, leaning my head back, I could truly rest.

I had the driver drop me at Town Square, a likely destination for Olivia Archer, with its upscale shopping and dining and nightlife. It was a straight shot down the Strip to the Peppermill, but also far enough away that I could approach by stealth. With my speed, one of the super strengths I’d managed to retain, I’d make it to the old-school Vegas lounge well in time for the dusk crossing.

But the low ceiling of cloud cover was throwing off my senses. The sun and sky were still there, somewhere, but the razored sheets of bulging gray obscured both. Gregor would have to sense the moment rather than using the light. I wasn’t worried. For us, the splitting of dawn and dusk was like the dissection of a vein. It might be a small thing, but we felt it when it happened.

I dodged onto Koval Lane, where a cluster of kids was hanging around outside a run-down apartment complex. They were bundled in clothing more suited to the East Coast than anything I’d ever thought to see in the desert, and one greasy-haired punk glanced up from blowing on his knuckles and hooted, obviously recognizing me as Olivia Archer. Grumbling, I rounded the corner and yanked a hooded sweatshirt from my bag-it would conceal my hair if not my shape-and slipped my mask on as well.

I cut through the parking lot of the Guardian Angel Cathedral, an unlikely dome created in the fifties, where visitors to the valley could go get their Catholic on before the day’s gambling began, and was just edging by the giant, and odd, odalisque out front when I heard the first whisper.

“Such a good day to die…”

The glyph on my chest shot to life, but when I whirled around I saw nothing.

“Over here…Archer.”