Cheat the Grave

22

“What are you doing here?”

The Tulpa’s tone was ice, his eyes narrowed, and if I could still have seen auras, I knew that his would be bright red.

When in doubt, I thought, the taste of tin still sharp at the back of my throat, answer a question with a question.

“What happened?”

“You tell me, dear.” He straightened, leaning on a cane, his voice still sharp. “I walked in and found you sleeping in the middle of the floor. I had a hard time rousing you. In fact, you seemed to be in some sort of meditative trance.”

The last two words were said in the same tone a judge might use on a defendant…one he’d already found guilty.

Pushing the fear away, I stretched and yawned loudly. “Too much wine, I guess. I was missing my father, so I came to his office to be-I don’t know, near him somehow. I was thinking how much he’d like to be at this dinner…” The Tulpa’s brows arched, and I quickly amended my statement. Xavier would have loathed the festivities and not allowed it on his grounds. I shot the Tulpa a knowing smile. “I mean, everyone who is anyone is here, and he was so smart he could probably get Arun to put up the capital for some new business venture…”

The Tulpa twisted his cane handle thoughtfully. I hurried on. “So I was looking at the pictures on the mantel when I brushed up against those poky things out there, and found this.” I motioned around the room, suddenly no more spacious than a honeycomb cell. The Tulpa’s eyes following my fingertips certainly made me feel like I was about to get stung.

I dropped my hand to my side…too fast. A shift in expression and suddenly the elderly visage he’d donned for

“Olivia’s” benefit grew into points and angles. Shit. I started speaking quickly. “So I came in, picked up one of these old toys, and suddenly I was out like Kim Kardashian on a Saturday night.”

He didn’t laugh. In fact, the word “toys” had the dark brow lowering further. I tried on an innocent smile, but it sat forced on my face. The Tulpa stilled like an empty beach minutes before a tsunami.

Kill him, Joanna, I thought, swallowing hard. Kill him, gain the aureole, free the rogue agents in Midheaven. Turn his own weapon against him.

I glanced at the singing bowls and mallets. What was I supposed to do? Bonk him over the head with a handheld prayer wheel?

“H-How did you get here?” I asked, pushing to my palms. “I didn’t see you at the party.”

Meaning I hadn’t invited him.

“I stopped by on a whim. The guard at the gate knows me. Then Helen told me you were here.”

I recalled the scraping noises earlier at the door and fought not to sag. There was simply no way a mortal could escape these people’s notice.

“It’s an interesting room,” the Tulpa said, pretending to look about. “Do you remember your father as being particularly…religious?”

I tilted my head, pretending I didn’t know what he was asking as I continued my search for a weapon. A prayer flag up the nose? Stab him with incense? “No, of course not. He was a Christian.”

He didn’t laugh. But he didn’t strike me or smite me or, like, eat me either. Instead he held out his hand to help me up.

I rubbed a hand over my face like I was clearing the cobwebs, then accepted his offer with the other. He lifted me so smoothly it was like taking a magic carpet ride to my feet. When I looked up, the Tulpa’s gaze was also smooth…and boring into mine. His fingertips played beneath mine as he traced my prints. I prayed Io’s handiwork held up under the soft scrape of his fingernail. If not, I’d next feel my bones cracking beneath his palm.

But the charming smile from the boardroom had returned, if sporting an edge it hadn’t before. “I think, my dear, that I can be a significant influence in your life.”

I almost laughed. He already had that pretty well covered.

“I have enough people telling me what to do, thanks.” I inserted a little pout in my tone, petulance topping it off like a sticky sweet cherry. “The board of directors wants me to hand control over to them, my secretary tries to hold me to my father’s rigorous work schedule…” the Tulpa snorted. Xavier hadn’t done a whole lot of work in his waning months. “Even my housekeeper keeps badgering me about responsibilities.”

There. If I got through this alive, if he thought I was becoming suspicious or annoyed or fed up at Lindy’s perceived place in this household, maybe he’d tell her to lay off. It would buy me the space I needed to inspect the mansion for more of its secrets. Sure enough, the Tulpa’s top lip thinned.

“Now what in particular would a housekeeper be badgering you about?”

Inching toward an ornate gold-plated blade on a triangular base in the corner, I gave him a look that said, Exactly! “Household budgets and stolen cars and moving back in here.”

“But you live in the Greenspun Residences, don’t you?”

Though anyone would know that, the Tulpa wasn’t asking out of mere curiosity. Regan Dupree, the Shadow Leo, had been meting out information about me to the Tulpa by the spoonful to advance her own precarious position and get back in his good graces. She’d told him the Kairos was residing in the same building as Olivia before I managed to kill her.

The Tulpa leaned against the wall. “I’m assuming you have friends there? Neighbors? People you greet in the hallways…who help you with your groceries?”

“No one in particular,” I said, and was about to say more, then thought better of lying. “Though one woman has been particularly friendly since Daddy’s death…”

“And what’s her name?” His voice smoothed out even further, tugging on my consciousness, so my head teetered on my neck. It was the same fizzy loss of control one had after doing shots on no sleep and an empty belly. I didn’t even have to feign dizziness as I struggled for words.

“I don’t think she ever told me. Odd, huh?”

“But she lives there?” The dream state intensified, and though I could fight the mind control- somehow I could fight it-I slouched a bit more. “Oh, yeah. She couldn’t gain such regular access otherwise.”

“And what does she look like?”

“She has red hair…” I frowned, pretending to think on it further. “And blond, and brown. Once even blue. But the red is best on her.”

“A disguise, then?” he muttered, as if to himself. I reached for the gold knife, folded my palm around the upright handle.

“Wigs, anyway.” I yawned loudly, feeling the buzz lessening. Good. His suspicion was lifting. “Big party girl,”

I added, and pulled upward. The knife didn’t budge. It was welded to the base.

To hide the homicidal movement, I caressed the ornate bell propped next to the knife, before letting my hand drop.

He jerked his head. “Come with me.”

And a giant pulse, a vibrational flash, had me stepping forward before I could stop it. I went with the impulse, though reminded myself to be more on guard as we returned to Xavier’s office. If he really suspected me, I might end up grabbing hold of a knife and thrusting it into my own belly.

“Ever see one of these?” He pointed with his cane to a booklet lying on Xavier’s great dark desk. A comic book. A manual.

I fought to keep my expression neutral. If the Tulpa was asking me about it, the people in my building, and what I knew of Xavier’s religious habits-all while attempting to hoodoo me into eliciting the truth-then I wasn’t even close to being off the hook.

“Yeah,” I said as calmly as I could. “My sister used to read those rags.”

“Did she ever show you one?”

“Joanna knew I’m loyal to Vogue. ”

“Not her,” he said through clenched teeth. “The girl. In your building. Did she ever try to give you one of these?”

“Of course not. I mean…she’s cool.”

The Tulpa lifted his chin. “There are cool things in there. Look for yourself.”

I glanced down and recognized the Shadow Pisces, Adele, caught in profile on the cover. Her face was iron, black smoke billowing behind her as she stared back at me. I feigned a shudder. “Her outfit is atrocious.”

“There are other pictures.”

He wasn’t going to let up, so I sighed and took the manual. Opening it, I demonstrated what he was really interested in. The manual didn’t come to life in my hands. No thought bubbles appeared above the heads of the featured Shadow agents. No cracks of battle or death cries lifted into the air. An agent of Light would have been zapped by the Shadow manual with the first touch.

I flipped through the pages faster, and the tug on my mind lessened. I finally threw it back onto the desk next to Xavier’s folder and said the one thing I hoped would have him backing off. “This is a very strange conversation.”

The Tulpa, never one to want to appear odd in front of mortals, broke with that desire and stared straight into my eyes. Another pulse of thought energy throttled through me, this one so violent I saw white. “Well, I think you have some very strange questions, Olivia. Some strange suspicions of your own. I think you came in here to discover the answer to one of them in particular.”

And he withdrew the photo Cher had given me earlier, clearly stolen from my body while I was having a tea party with Hunter in the wild forests of Midheaven.

That alone would be enough to have my head swimming, grasping for an answer. But the additional mental tug and weight returned, like he’d captured my gray matter on a hook and was pulling me to an unknown shore. Flipping open Xavier’s binder to a marked page, he slid it in front of me, and there, beneath Xavier’s infamous tight-assed script, was the haunting symbol I’d been searching for. The one on the chest that had borne me paranormal weaponry.

The same one the Tulpa grasped tightly in his hands now.