telling. It was only recently that I’d begun to realize his quietude was much like his indigent cover, designed to make us overlook him…and that he had such a great stake in our lives. Meanwhile the wheels were turning behind that sturdy frame, his mind ever-working, and all to an end that he’d already pinpointed at his personal destination. “They want to make a trade.”
I swallowed hard. There was only one person they’d be willing to trade the life of a full-fledged agent of Light for-only one thing we had that they wanted. Our world’s chosen one. The Kairos. Me.
I was careful not to let Felix see my face as my stomach roiled.
“No trade.”
“Of course not.”
Felix frowned and bit his lip, and he didn’t look at me.
I took a breath. “Wait. There has-”
Tekla stayed a hand on my arm, but spoke loudly enough for Felix to hear. “No, Jo. We’ll get her back without risking you. Now put on your mask. And start searching for a portal. We can’t enter a safe zone on this side of reality.”
We found one, and we entered it as a team, as one.
3
At one time only three people knew I was masquerading as my sister, the socialite and casino heiress Olivia Archer. It had been a month since the other agents of Light found out I was Joanna Archer beneath all this Stepford perfection, but other than Regan DuPree-now an outcast and rogue agent-the entire Shadow Zodiac was still clueless about my cover identity. Everyone in the mortal world believed Joanna Archer had died a year ago in a fall from a high-rise building, and it was out of this destruction of my old identity that my true life was birthed. In order to keep that life, it was imperative the Shadows never discover my Olivia Archer identity.
So I made one last check of my mask before we collectively slipped under the turned-up eaves of a strip mall impersonating a Chinese temple. The red tile rooftops appeared black in the moonless night, and we stole past the crowded restaurants on the lower levels, where menus I couldn’t read were pressed against the windows and the people inside were munching contentedly on dim sum and pot stickers. Ignoring the scent of steamed food, we instead followed that of fresh blood and rotting flesh, heading one by one up a wide concrete staircase to the empty furniture stores above.
Antiques shops comprised most of the retail space, Buddhas and dragons and Shaolin warriors all peering out from the window displays in wary dismay, but we kept going, the macabre scents intensifying as we neared a Chinese bakery. The Shadows weren’t even trying to conceal their location.
Warren, sotto voce. “Make a net.”
We put some distance between us, so the splitting of ranks would appear natural, though we were running short a couple of agents. Chandra, whom I’d displaced, was now serving the troop in an auxiliary role only, and Kimber was no longer strong enough to run with us. As she blamed me for that lack, I didn’t exactly mourn her absence. Yet it was at the moment that everyone pulled out their conduits that I felt most vulnerable. That now- rogue agent, Regan, had stolen mine after being expelled from the Shadow troop. I had to settle for a mortal weapon until Hunter could make me a new one. The Micro Uzi was a poor substitute for a conduit, but you took what you could get.
The bakery was abnormally large, with giant plate-glass windows sporting tiered wedding cakes that overlooked the ornamental patio and the lights of passing traffic on Spring Mountain Road beyond. There was no way to sneak up unseen, but we didn’t need to in a safe zone. So we walked single file through the sole glass door, propped open to let the scent of Shadows-and Vanessa-waft outside.
The table and chair clusters had been cleared from the room’s center, and bakery cases lined the opposite wall, while red paper lanterns set on a low glow shot an eerie light through the cavernous shop’s middle. There were coffee and tea stations, and a curtained doorway leading into a kitchen, but the Shadows were clustered at one side of the elongated room, tilting our attention that way. It was like they were baiting us. But for what?
And then, as they parted ranks, I decided they’d been luring us in for a close-up of the carnage they’d wreaked upon Vanessa’s once pristine body. She was trussed to a chair like a victim in a gangster movie, except the ropes wrapped only around her core, leaving limbs and remaining appendages free for further attack. But they’d dispensed with the toying games now. In addition to her shorn hair and missing nose, and the ear and digits we’d already found, there was a foot lying beneath her chair.
It was all I could do to hold back a wail.
Felix didn’t. His cry rose out of him like a siren, but guttural and borne from his belly. He strained forward, but Gregor and Micah were already flanking him in anticipation. They held him until he stopped struggling, but his voice had awoken something in Vanessa. She lifted her head, which had been lolling, and though it took her a moment to focus, seeing us brought her to life. She shook her head from side to side, gurgling as she strained against her bonds, eyes bulging, the movement making the blood flow free in her mouth again. After all she’d been through, it was a testament to her will that she could still move at all.
Other than the man securing her, the Shadows fanned out, and we each gravitated almost unconsciously to our opposite on the Zodiac. Felix dutifully followed Sloane, the Shadow Capricorn, who fucked with him by arching the farthest away from Vanessa. Though I didn’t will it, I found myself bisecting the room to stand directly in front of our captured Leo. My opposite, the Sagittarian Shadow and their troop leader, was missing.
“So what now?” Warren finally asked. I could tell by the tightness constricting his voice that it rubbed him to ask, but right now the Shadows were firmly in control.
“We wait,” said the man securing Vanessa, the man-I could tell from scent-who’d defiled our Zodiac’s Leo. This was the first time I’d met him, but I recognized him from the Shadow manuals. Harrison Lamb was Micah’s opposite, the Shadow side’s new Virgo. I’d killed his uncle Ajax nine months earlier, and because of Ajax’s prowess and brutality, Harrison hadn’t been expected to succeed Ajax until later in life.
Yet despite his sudden rise in rank, he was surprisingly self-possessed. He moved with grace, wore his paranoia with an ease that said he’d rather be wrong than dead, and hardly made any effort to withhold the smell- or in the Shadows’ case, the
In short? Shadow.
Harrison stretched and yawned, bloodied fingers splayed to the ceiling like he was completely unconcerned that a six-foot, seven-inch agent of Light was creeping up on him. In contrast to his current posturing, Micah was a gentle soul where his troop was concerned, using a sweet disposition and his surgeon’s skill to attend to our health. Though his fury sat atop his emotions like oil upon water, I could already see him calculating how to put Vanessa back together, how to reattach and regrow and erase all the damage the Shadows had done.
Harrison saw it too. “Don’t worry, Micah. We used mortal knives to cut away the fat. They all regenerate… eventually.”
But it would be an excruciating process. We couldn’t die from the strike of man-made weaponry, but we felt the pain just as acutely.
Micah’s jaw clenched and he took an involuntary step forward. Harrison unsheathed a barbed poker from the holder behind his back, immediately stilling the advance. The unspoken message was clear. If Micah kept moving, Harrison would instead drag Vanessa outside the safe zone and use his personal weapon upon her…and then she’d never heal.
“So what are we waiting for?” I asked. For us to give in? For my allies to turn me over? To allow Vanessa to go to her tortuous death without a fight? I narrowed my eyes on Harrison’s responding grin, thinking if that were the case, it was going to be a long wait.
Vanessa’s renewed struggle drew every eye. She was wild, almost fierce now, gagging on the blood her movement caused to seep from her mouth and nose. Harrison leaned down like he was concerned, then looked in
