Yes. He wouldn’t tell them anything he didn’t think they needed to know. And here was Felix, powerless to do anything to help heal the one person he loved above all others, his impotence palpable. What he needed was an outlet for all that pent-up anger. He needed to feel like he could help her, even if after the fact. I’d seen the same look on my boyfriend’s face years ago, right after I was assaulted, but in a way it was worse for Felix. After all, he was a superhero.
I bit my lip and considered him. His cover identity as perpetual college student and playboy fit him perfectly. I remembered Vanessa once telling me that Felix had Neptune in his Eleventh House, which supposedly meant he was dreamy and irresponsible, basically the complete opposite of a normal Capricorn. At the time, though, she’d been on a rant about him forcing her to track a possible Shadow alone while he danced the night away at a new technobar. Never mind that he’d found the Shadow at the same club.
“He’s impulsive, unreliable, and can’t be depended upon to even tie his shoes!” Vanessa had fumed, not entirely wrong. He often left his shoes untied. “He has no work ethic beyond seducing coeds out of their clothing, and you would think that with the goat as his glyph he’d have some sort of ability to see things through, but nooo!”
While all her accusations were undeniably true, Felix also had a laugh as lithe as his body and mind, and he could sense-and even alter-the mood of a room with his playful energy. I suspected his much maligned mischievous nature, like the frat-boy persona, was exactly what had attracted the serious-minded Vanessa in the first place.
And it might come in handy at Xavier’s. My view of the place was, after all, colored by familiarity and loathing. My energy would also be divided by having to hide that, so I could probably use an extra pair of eyes. Perhaps Felix would see something I could not.
Plus he was cute, a necessity for any of Olivia’s romantic interests…or conquests. Riddick would’ve been a better match-his cover as a successful dentist satisfied Xavier’s standards of suitability as a match for his beloved daughter-but Felix was the one standing in front of me. Xavier would probably just think Olivia was slumming again, the boy nothing more than another trivial pursuit.
Besides, it would be a good way for Felix to expel some of that pent-up fury.
“You’ll do,” I finally said, motioning him to the passenger side.
“Thanks,” he said flatly as he angled around the nose of the car. “I’ll do what?”
“I have to pay a visit to my other daddy. Or Olivia’s, that is. You’re going to come along as my plaything.”
He said nothing, but his sigh was long and drawn, his mutterings incoherent. Clearly it wasn’t exactly what he’d had in mind. I shot him a sweet smile as I settled in next to him. “Oh, and we’ll go ahead and kill one of the Tulpa’s most loyal Shadow agents while we’re there.”
Felix’s head shot up then, and for the first time he looked like his old self.
I filled Felix in on the Archer household as we drove to the compound-the personnel, the layout…the strange little room shaped like a Tibetan burial mound.
He nodded impatiently before asking, “And Lindy Maguire? How do we get to her?”
Ah, Lindy. The woman who once massacred an ally’s entire family just because her leader said to. The Shadow so in love with the Tulpa that any woman seen as a threat met an inexplicable, early demise. If she’d known who I really was, she’d have killed me in my sleep years ago, and not just because I was one of the Light. Lindy Maguire and my mother had a well-documented, decades-old feud due to Lindy’s infatuation with the Tulpa. I’d long wanted Lindy taken out because of this, among other things, but Warren’s cooler head had prevailed.
“If we kill Lindy,” he’d said, “the Tulpa might send someone more attentive to watch over Xavier and his assets. And ‘Helen,’” he said, referencing her alter ego in the Archer household, “has never looked at Olivia as anything more than a dizzy airhead.”
No, like Xavier, she’d always saved her pointed criticism for me, Joanna. If Xavier had made my young life a living hell, Lindy/Helen had aided and abetted. I obviously hadn’t known then that she was an agent monitoring Xavier for the Tulpa, but I did now. And I was going to use that information to help bring down her beloved Tulpa.
But I’d go ahead and give the pleasure of killing her over to Felix.
“Age hasn’t made her any less dangerous,” I told Felix now. Shadows were scary enough when acting out of duty, or because they simply liked wreaking havoc, but Lindy was even more brutal because of her obsession. “But we have the advantage here, so just keep your eye out, your emotions dampened, and your hands hidden.”
Felix glanced down at the shiny, smooth surface of his fingertips, where his prints were missing. “The biggest ‘tell’ in our paranormal identities, huh?”
“Yeah,” I said with a wry smile. “And Lindy, ‘Helen,’ will be looking.”
Once admitted through the guard gate, I cruised up the serpentine drive, kicking gravel as I skidded to a stop between the mansion and an eternally running fountain. Excess, I thought, staring up at a matching marble staircase, was a word Xavier Archer defined. And why not? He’d literally sold his soul to attain all this. He should make the most of it.
It was surprisingly windy as we climbed from the car, reminding me of the powerful gusts that held the valley captive every spring. They bit into the flesh now that it was winter, and we rushed up the white marble steps, ducking beneath a portico to ring a bell that chimed for miles. I rubbed my arms through my T-shirt and gave Felix a closed-mouth smile, knowing he was wondering what it was like to be raised with all this space and falsely winking splendor.
It’d been an emotional haunted house.
How appropriate, then, that the door swung wide to reveal the woman of the hour…and one of the primary people who’d made it that way.
“Pulling butler duty now too, Helen?” I stepped inside quickly, hiding the way Felix stiffened beside me. Neither of us had expected the Shadow to open the door. “Where’s Deluca?”
My voice bounced back from the ornate vaulted ceiling. It was important that I act as breezy and unaffected by my surroundings as Olivia always had. “Helen” caught and catalogued every action. At least now I knew why.
“He’s taking some time off,” she answered stiffly, nose high, skin sallow, and expression as disapproving as ever. All that was alive on her were those beady, assessing eyes. I met them openly. “I’m forced to take up his post.”
“Didn’t he recently take a vacation?” I asked, tilting my head so blond curls fell over my shoulder.
The visual cue that I was nothing more than a ditz, a nuisance, had her relaxing enough to shut the door behind us. She had yet to acknowledge Felix. Good. “This isn’t a vacation. It’s…a little more than that.”
I raised a perfectly waxed brow. Ralphie Deluca hadn’t taken a leave of absence in the twenty-odd years he’d been employed by the Archer estate. I paused long enough that “Helen” registered my deliberately blank look as impossibly vacant.
“Ah, well. This is my boy-” I broke off, pretending to stumble. “This is my friend, Nathan.” I took Felix by the arm, pulling him close. She’d think I was trying to pull a fast one on my father again by dating someone unsuitable, and would run to him with the news as soon as I left. Olivia’s flighty, unstable reputation would remain unsullied. “Nate, this is Helen…um, So-and-so.”
Helen surprised me by addressing Felix directly. “I anticipated your arrival, Mister…?”
“Stewart. Nate Stewart. Nice to meet you, Mrs. So-and-so.”
My laugh rang, genuinely. Felix liked getting his digs in too.
“But how’d you know I was coming?” he said before Helen could take offense. It was one of the traits that made him so likable, and it kept stoic, severe Helen off balance. “Olivia and I hooked up this afternoon rather… spontaneously.”
He let the memory of something hidden and secret ring in his voice. I flushed at the intimation in it, shuffling my feet. Wow. Those coeds didn’t have a chance.
Helen colored as well, before clearing her throat. “Well, it wasn’t
It didn’t surprise me that she wasn’t going to let my new friend near Xavier’s office. The last time she had, a valuable mask had temporarily gone missing.
“Actually, Nathan is looking to find a job at Valhalla.” I motioned toward the offices, and Felix half rose from the settee he’d just sunken down onto, his abject confusion perfect for the moment. “We want to ask Daddy if we can
