Cheat the Grave

forget as well.”

“What I need to forget,” I said, squeezing air-whoosh! “Is that last shot.”

Yet Carlos’s words made me think of my old boyfriend, a mortal and my first love, who’d recently undergone a memory cleanse. I wondered if Ben had dreams featuring him in the arms of the woman he’d known as a boy?

Or of watching the daughter he never knew he had playing in her yard, his own dark curls lying damp on her forehead?

Had I done him any favors in allowing his memory to be erased? The idea had been to free him from the knowledge of the Zodiac world, and keep him from being targeted by the Shadows. Maybe the cleanse worked better on those who’d always been mortal. I propped the saber back in the chest with a sigh, picking up the gun instead. I sincerely hoped so.

“You know I’m right. You’ve tried to forget the past before.”

I looked up at Carlos, a breeze shifting long strands of hair across my face. He meant the attack that had claimed my innocence, and nearly my life, when I was a teen. Brushing my hair back, I again turned away. “I never forgot.”

“No, you fought.” He joined my side, arm brushing mine. “But you cannot fight who you are. You must accept it, let the knowledge wash over you, and allow it to change you. The truth forces you to become who you are meant to be.”

“I’m not Shadow, Light, a rogue agent, or a leader. I don’t have any power and-as you might have noticed-I don’t really play well with others.” Relaxing my shoulders, I sighted the target. “I’m human, and nothing else.”

He snorted next to me. “So you’re exactly like all those who are unaware of beings who fight to control this valley and every person in it? Is that what you really want? A return to ignorance despite the truth tunneling beneath your feet?”

Sometimes. It would be infinitely easier to believe people acted of their own volition for both their good and evil deeds. Like the guy who’d tried taking my wallet while I sat alone and defeated on the cold winter ground by a loading dock. Could he take responsibility for the impulse…or had a Shadow once whispered in his ear? Had a not-so-coincidental series of misfortunes sent him spiraling into self-indulgent madness, making him prone to exert his control over someone who appeared weaker? Or was he just a prick?

I fired. A bubbling green vial shot forward, the barrel burned. The target stayed intact. My shoulders slumped.

“Face it, Joanna,” Carlos said, moving behind me. “You’ll never be blissfully ignorant again, wish it as you may.”

Wishes don’t mean shit.

You must take action.

“I want to be normal.”

“That’s different for everyone, isn’t it?” He put his arms around me, guiding the gun back to the target. Sighting for me, he guided the weapon higher than I would have. The liquid vial gleamed in the sunlight. “You, mi weda, will be normal when you accept your destiny as Kairos.”

Warren once believed that meant working on behalf of the Light. The Tulpa had been hedging his bets toward the Shadows…though if what Io had told me was true, he hated agents on both sides of the Zodiac. And now Carlos thought I could represent neither…and both. The Shadow will bind with the Light.

And do what? Create gray?

We fired together. The target’s center exploded…and disintegrated in an acid burn. I lowered my arm. Satisfying…though not as much as if I’d done it on my own.

“Well, I still don’t understand why it has to be me. You’re El Jefe,” I said, giving Io’s words a bite she hadn’t.

“Those men look up to you, they’re your army. So why don’t you unlock Midheaven? Fight your own war.”

I’d had my share. Turning, I held the gun out to him. He ignored it.

“We need more than just the lock removed. We need a woman to enter and free our men.”

Because Midheaven was ruled by women who could move about freely, while the men were slaves. I thought of the abject bitterness living in Shen’s gaze. Even in dreams, even unwittingly, I’d told him what to do with my will alone. Wishing might not mean shit in this world, but in an entire realm created from thought? It was everything.

But Carlos knew nothing about Solange, or Hunter, or the way I’d been treated the two times I’d managed to enter. If possible, Midheaven was more dangerous to me than this world. “Let my mother do it.”

Since you’re so buddy-buddy and all.

“Mortals can’t get near Midheaven.”

“I’m mortal.” And I was exhausted. I dropped the gun back into the chest.

“But you won’t be.”

I turned at the smile in his voice. “Really? Got a phone booth I can change in? Maybe an invisible plane and bulletproof bracelets while you’re at it?”

“No. Only the opportunity to help you achieve what you’ve already done twice before…” He paused for an imaginary drum roll, smile widening. “Gain the aureole.”

And even jaded, tired, and mortal, I could see how well that could work. The aureole allowed a person to wander the earth like a ghost-no one could sense, touch, or even see them unless they willed it. Yet to acquire such power, you had to kill an agent with his own conduit, turning their own magic against them. As Carlos had said, I’d done it twice, something no one else had managed. I swallowed hard. The whole plan was starting to make sense. “Look, if I don’t convince the Tulpa that I’m Olivia Archer, he’ll take me out. And if Warren suspects for one instant I’m work ing with you, he’ll do the same.” As much as I’d like to believe otherwise, I knew that much to be true. “There’s no way I can just hide out here, or take time off to go traipsing off to another world to gather an army meant to usurp them both.”

Surprisingly, Carlos didn’t disagree. “So continue being Olivia. Attend your meetings at Valhalla. Live in the mansion as the Tulpa expects. We will watch for Mackie…as well as a chance for you to gain the aureole.”

A chance to kill a Shadow agent. And then re-enter Midheaven and usher every last trapped rogue-men who’d gone there to escape something unsavory in their past-back out into the Vegas valley. Yeah, that sounded like a good idea.

But I thought of Tripp, and how he’d been the one to step up against Mackie. I thought of the men I’d spent time with in Midheaven, washed out lithographs of their old selves, sweltering in heat no living thing should have to bear. Even Shen, as much as I disliked him, deserved to be free of a tortuous place that slowly siphoned his soul.

But how unlikely that they’d follow me, that I’d succeed, or even manage to escape once I was there.

How much that would piss off Solange and her ilk, who fed off the souls of the agents trapped over there.

I was smiling faintly at the thought when I had another. Looking at Carlos, I said sharply, “I’m not killing one of the Light. I know you’re all one giant paranormal Woodstock lovefest here, but that’s not how this is going to play out.”

“Si, mon. ” Carlos shrugged one shoulder, recrossing his legs on the desert floor. “Only Shadow. The Shadow.”

I jolted, self-preservation jump-kicking in my gut. “Which Shadow?”

“The one you’re closest to, of course.” Carlos squared on me, filled my vision, causing the desert and all other worries to disappear. Replacing them with a new one. “The Tulpa.”

I swayed, but shook off Carlos’s steadying hand. “The Tulpa can’t be killed.”

That’s what made him so effective and dangerous and powerful. Even conduits were useless against him. In fact, the energy spent trying to bring him down made him even stronger. He fed off the intent of his attackers. Even Skamar, another tulpa and the most powerful being to ever challenge him, hadn’t found a way to kill him outright.

“That’s because nobody ever tried to turn his own weapon against him.”

“But he doesn’t have…” I stuttered into silence under Carlos’s weighted stare. A magical weapon, a conduit, was as much an extension of an agent as a limb. Once made and bestowed, it was a part of them, and by striking