my sickbed, at a time when I believed the supernatural world had abandoned me altogether.
Cher, misinterpreting the wince on my face, smoothed the hair back from my forehead. “Don’t worry. I’ve brought enough alcohol and chocolate to last the night. We’ll bar the door with a chair back like we did when we were kids.”
“Sounds great,” I lied, because it sounded dangerous. I couldn’t allow Cher, or anyone else, to remain in this house any longer than necessary. If Mackie knew I was here- and odds were he did-he wouldn’t wait long before trying for me again.
Suzanne appeared just then, and clapped like a schoolgirl upon seeing me. “Oh, good! I was starting to get worried. And hungry. Arun flew in his personal chef from Delhi. Get ready for some Tandoori to-die-for!”
I momentarily wondered what it was like to live in that brain.
Cher, used to it-a party to it-reached over the bedside to hoist an overnight duffel. “I brought the letters too.”
“Letters?” I asked absently, watching Suzanne apply poinsettia lipstick.
“The ones I told you about before?” She crossed her arms, piqued. “On the party bus, remember?”
“Nah. It kinda fell out of my head when you got hospitalized,” I told Cher, though I did remember now-the letters her birth mother had written when she found out she was dying.
“I thought tonight would be a good time to reminisce.”
I glanced at Suzanne. Weren’t we supposed to be celebrating? Looking forward, not back? But Suzanne shrugged as she caught my gaze through the mirror, seemingly more concerned with her updo than anything else. “Oh, I think it’s a wonderful idea. We’re products of our pasts, after all. And of the people who shaped them. I’m not jealous when it comes to love. I want my baby to feel as much love as possible.”
Cher teared up. “Aw, Momma…”
“Besides, my psychic told me it’s not too late to have another baby with Arun. Fingers crossed that your replacement is on the way!” She did just that.
“Momma!”
“What’s in the box?” Suzanne asked, pointing at whatever Helen had left in there to flatten me.
“Nothing,” I lied, but she was already lifting the lid. Her movement slowed, then froze altogether, though her eyes darted to my face and away so quickly I knew I’d been right. Helen’s intent was to sully the celebratory mood. I held out a hand for the box, wondering why some people thought making someone feel bad would make them feel better.
The only blessing was that it wasn’t Olivia really opening this box. Had to give it to Helen, I thought, shaking my head. She sure knew how to hit below the belt.
Cher had told Helen that tonight’s gathering was about mothers and family…but the photo I held was devoid of either. It was of my college graduation, three people glaring into the afternoon sun with false smiles plastered over sweating faces. Olivia’s had been bright and eager, almost frantic in her hope to wring some happiness out of the occasion. Mine was as stiff as the cardboard in my graduation cap. Xavier’s wasn’t even that, just a half squint, and a meaty-jawed scowl as he gestured for the photographer to hurry up. Of course, my mother was absent entirely… just as she’d been for nearly the entire previous decade. And that was what Helen was so clearly pointing out.
Yet even before my mother left, we hadn’t been the Cleavers. Xavier was only present on this day because it was expected. He’d hopped from his limo, posed for this moment upon Olivia’s request, before tossing me this sterling silver frame and an unsigned graduation card with the down payment for my own house, then disappearing again. Both his absence and the money were readily accepted. We all knew he wanted me out of the mansion as badly as I wanted escape.
I filled that new home with items that spoke to the person I’d become-photography equipment and a darkroom, modern pieces with Asian accents-taking nothing from the mansion, including this frame. I shook my head again. Olivia had been so desperate for a normal family life that even a farcical photo of a broken, unsmiling family had moved her.
“What’s that say?” Suzanne asked, pointing to the frame’s lower edge.
I read the inscription. “‘Making an impact is easy. Making a difference is hard.’”
I scoffed at the irony, musing how he’d only ever accomplished the former, but halted in mid eye roll. “Huh. That’s funny.”
“Really?” asked Cher, tilting her head. “I think it’s profound.”
“No, I mean I know someone who used to say that.”
“Xavier?” Suzanne guessed, pointing at the quote’s attribution.
“Someone else,” I murmured, biting my lower lip. Someone I hadn’t known when this photo was taken.
Of all the agents of Light, I’d spent the most time around Tekla. She wasn’t comfortable with me at first, nor I with her. Though sparrow-slight, she was too powerful to induce relaxation, with a sense of the otherworldly about her that set her apart from even those in the Zodiac. As the purported Kairos, I’d been much the same. We were also mutually indebted to one another, having saved the other’s ass more than once.
So we were an unlikely pair, the Seer and the reluctant new Star Sign. I wondered now if she’d taken me under her wing because she’d seen Fate’s plans for me-my fall from the troop’s grace, my restored humanity, my lost loves-and wanted to prepare me, or maybe even provide a soft spot while she could. After all, with the murder of her son the year before, her mothering instincts had no obvious outlet, and I doubted it could just be turned off. Perhaps she saw me as the daughter she never had.
We had certainly butted heads like mother and daughter.
“Goddess damn!” she’d said once. “You’re birthing plant life from thought and giving it roots in the world. You’re not smashing sandcastles. Try to use a bit of finesse!”
And Tekla waved her hand over her own giant pot of soil, the gesture so elegant it was probably Kabukiinspired. I’d looked down at my pot and given it the middle finger. Tekla scowled.
“Well, maybe it’s the Shadow in me that keeps life from growing,” I said, shrugging. Bringing living things to life was a skill particular to the Light.
She’d lifted her sharp chin. “Maybe it’s stubbornness of spirit and a prideful mind.”
“Maybe it’s indigestion.”
But despite all the maybes, she did teach me. We spent hours in the sanctuary’s dojo together, sparring with our bodies and minds and words…and occasionally smiling. We never talked about our losses on or off the mats. I think we both dwelled on those too much when we were alone to indulge when there was a task at hand, and another person in view.
And then one day she took me into her astrolab. It was more geek dome than observatory, a den detailing her obsession with the stars, and piled high with the mathematical tools she used to read the sky. It may as well have been a space station
“Can you point out the twelve constellations that comprise the Zodiac?” she asked imperiously.
“No.”
“That’s okay. I only want to show you one.” She pointed to a constellation west of my own, Sagittarius. It looked like just another clump of stars to me. “This is Ophiuchus, and its brightest star is a white dwarf. It’s feeding on matter from its neighbor, a red giant, and quickly approaching its maximum possible size. It’s highly unstable.”
Like you, I remember thinking, as she craned her neck upward. “Maybe it should go on a diet.”
Tekla’s mouth firmed, but she otherwise ignored me. “It will go supernova soon. It will be a violent explosion, one that will outshine entire galaxies for a time.”
“‘Soon’ meaning thousands of years from now, right?”
She shrugged. “Or tomorrow.”
I’d eyed the star nervously because there was a reason she was telling me this. Tekla didn’t waste energy on trivialities.
“Don’t worry. It won’t affect earth in the least. And after it goes supernova, turning into the thing it was meant to be all along, all that will remain of it will be a little pulsar. Just another tiny neutron star freckling the face of the night sky.”
“So it just disappears?”
She shook her head. “It’s displaced, dispelled. The matter comprising it simply goes somewhere else, and all
