Cheat the Grave

motherfuckers.

John froze as he gazed down at the paper. “I’m your father’s attorney,” he finally said, leaden-voiced.

“My father’s dead.” I returned his earlier words, my feathery voice gone flat.

He sputtered in a mixture of indignation and poorly concealed disdain. A corner of the Tulpa’s mouth rose slightly, and words rose in my mind with it. I knew them as his will, like a collision between his spirit and mine, and also knew I had a small ability to control them, but I didn’t.

“And I don’t like you.” My mouth moved oddly over the syllables. It was like licking Braille, tongue catching on the individual hooks and sounds.

“Listen, Olivia-”

“It’s Ms. Archer,” I said sharply, this time my voice all my own. “To all of you. Now vote.”

The Tulpa sat back in his wheelchair, as if a mere observer, his will withdrawn. Moments later the votes were counted, and John was out. The bombastic attorney remained motionless a time longer, eyes fixed straight ahead, brows bunched, though he didn’t bother arguing. He’d obviously seen, felt, and done this before. Finally he stood. “This is not over.”

And he left. Weighty silence returned to the room, punctured only by heavy sighs.

“Well, that was very uncomfortable.” I pushed back from the table, my chair thudding behind me. “Let’s try this again tomorrow, and see if it doesn’t turn out better.”

Picking up my handbag, I patted my pocket to make sure the phone-my lifeline to Warren and the troop and help-was still on me, and made my way down the table. “My secretary will schedule something. Oh, and don’t forget to invite…” I waved in the Tulpa’s general direction. “… him.”

I was almost out the door by then, and proud of how airy I sounded while sharing a room with a man who could insert his thoughts into my mind.

“Ms. Archer?”

These words were voiced and not merely thought.

“Olivia.” I turned slowly and inclined my head. “Please.”

“Olivia,” the Tulpa purred, wheeling closer. “You dropped something.”

I glanced down and found the crumpled paper with my carelessly drawn mythic doodle in his hands. He smoothed it out for me, then jerked and stilled.

Should I wait for him to toss me from the fifteenth floor window, or just throw myself from it now?

His voice betrayed no emotion. “This is interesting.”

When dealing with a man constructed of lies, truth was always the best policy. “I saw it last night. It was on a box used in a treasure hunt, a game we were playing. For some reason I couldn’t get it out of my mind.”

The Tulpa held the paper out to me, though he didn’t release it when I took hold. “Perhaps I could take you to lunch and we can discuss it further?”

“Kiss-ass,” Brian muttered lowly. The Tulpa, facing me, whirled in his chair unnaturally fast. The room fell silent again.

They fear him without knowing why, I thought, as Brian’s face went ashen. It didn’t matter how frail he seemed. Never mind the paranormal battles forcing him to conserve energy. A whisper of quiet madness told them he’d willingly pin them to a board, dissect them like frogs, and do it while they were still alive. And for just one moment that madness screamed.

Despite my own survivor’s instinct, I stepped closer. “Perhaps, Brian, you’d like us to take another vote?”

As the Tulpa and I looked at him together, a thought raced through my head.

The Shadow will bind with the Light.

It wasn’t the Tulpa’s thought. It was a prophecy, but I told myself it had nothing to do with me, or this. I was no longer Light.

Brian, meanwhile, couldn’t seem to catch his breath. “N-No. You’re right. You two go have your lunch. We’ll finish up here.”

“No.” I tucked the wrinkled sheet of paper in my bag, just to get it out of sight. “You are finished. However, I’d be most grateful if you’d catch my consultant up to speed on that…stuff you were talking about earlier.”

Turning to the Tulpa, I forced myself to meet his eyes. Tar black, their intensity made mine dilate, and time unexpectedly slowed. Blinking fast, I managed, “A rain check for lunch?”

My father’s voice was schooled again, his features as smooth as mine. “I’ll call for you soon.”

And he said it like I’d come running.

8

After beaming some overly cheery farewell, and donning my shades, I took a private, recessed elevator down to my personal garage, where Kevin was already waiting. I had to admit, certain aspects of Xavier’s lifestyle were easy to get used to…and after the last few moments spent holding it together, I was grateful not to have to single-handedly battle rush hour traffic.

Instructing Kevin to head to the hospital where Cher was recuperating, I dropped my head back against the soft leather seat. I waited until we’d flipped onto the boulevard…then I began to shake.

Mind control. Holy shit.

I guess I shouldn’t have been so surprised. A tulpa, in the traditional sense of the word, was a thought-form. Where the rest of us poor sots had to crawl into this world through blood and bone, a tulpa was a being birthed from another person’s imagination. This tulpa, however, developed enough free will to loose himself from his creator’s reigns, and then took over the Shadow side of the Zodiac. That he’d done so with barely a dust-up was a testament to his brutality and power. Unfortunately for that still-growing power, his creator had died before providing the Tulpa with a proper name, so “Tulpa,” though meant only as a title, was what he was called, and what he’d forever remain.

Thus while being a tulpa granted him extraordinary abilities, like adjusting his appearance depending on the viewer’s expectation-and friggin’ mind control!-it also hamstrung him. Without a proper name to cement him in the real world, to ground him and allow him to manifest permanently, there was a limit to his power.

One that might yet lead to his downfall.

Because there was another tulpa in town, this one created by my mother specifically to battle him. And the work she’d begun, sinking the past decade into visualizing his enemy into existence, I had recently finished by giving the creature a name: Skamar. In doing so, I’d redoubled her energy, and her power.

So you can imagine how peeved I was when, entering the hospital, Skamar appeared from nowhere, sneaking up behind me to give me the equivalent of a paranormal wedgie. Squealing as she sniffed at my neck, I put a hand to my thudding heart. “Damn it, Skamar! You trying to kill me?”

“Not anymore,” she murmured, remaining close. Thin, small, and pale, she’d have been plain too, were her features not so sharp. Her short hair was blunt and red, her matching lashes so light they made her look baldeyed. Yet her lips were defined even without color, and her nose arrowed between cheekbones so high you could hang laundry from them. She looked like a Victorian lady who’d been misplaced in the ages, which was deceiving. Skamar had once been so hungry for life, she’d been willing to take mine. And right now she was inching forward in a liquid glide, still impossibly and preternaturally graceful…and still sniffing at me. “You’ve been with him. ”

I smirked. “That’s right, Sherlock. He waltzed into my conference room at Valhalla this afternoon. Where the hell were you?”

“Permanence has its limitations.” Meaning she could only be one place at a time.

“Okay, then how about a warning next time you sneak up on me?”

“Well, I would have called first,” she said sarcastically, “but I didn’t know I was tracking you. I thought I’d found him.”

She wouldn’t say the Tulpa’s title, I knew. Every utterance about another being gave them a degree of energy,