Cheat the Grave

32

The run-in with my mother settled something inside of me. Sure, I had a boatload of pressing things on my mind-survival, the loss of my life aboveground, Warren’s race with the Tulpa to see who could kill me first- but Zoe and Cher and Ashlyn were all still alive, and the knowledge that they were finally safe was like a salve on my consciousness.

Also safe, at least for the time being, was the family that remained behind…those who had chosen me.

It was because of them, and that choice, that I wound my way through the passageways beneath Frenchman’s Flat at three o’clock the next morning, running my hands along the walls of caked candle wax, careful not to set my newly dyed hair alight. I was searching for a blank smooth spot on the wall, finally locating one about three feet before entering Marge’s anteroom. I went straight to work, wiping it down and then filling it in with the plaster I’d gotten from Io. Then I took the family photo in its expensive silver frame, the one Helen had thought would flatten me on a night devoted to families, and pressed it until the cement and glue overtook its sides.

It was my talisman. The past I’d escaped. The connection I was giving up now that I was a part of the cell.

I looked at the lost family I’d once been a part of, wondering at the path that had led me from the grandest home to a blown-to-shit crater radiating death. Then I thought about all the other mortals who went it alone in the world. Most people didn’t have another family to turn to where life leaned on them, cold and hard.

I fingered Hunter’s soul stone, which lay ever in my pocket, and it suddenly didn’t matter how I got here. Those reasons were now a part of someone else’s life; I was no longer the Archer, the Kairos, or even Olivia. Yet each of those things had made me the Joanna I was today, and for that I was grateful. Despite the hardships I faced, I had a reason to get out of bed every morning.

Sure, my reason was sitting in a world of heat lightning, and my mortal body was nothing more than a dangling electrical wire. True, women waited for me over there, the strongest being a sadistic monster obsessed with my demise. But what could I say? The memory of Hunter’s pained scream made me want to clean my blades, take up all the arms I wasn’t supposed to be able to touch, and show Solange the true meaning of obsessive violence.

Which brought me back to the conversation with my mother: after all these years, I finally knew exactly who I was.

I was Joanna Archer, a mortal with some extra benefits. I had a family of chosen friends, who had also chosen me. I was gray, an amalgam of light and shadow, which made me both dawn and dust, and in the world of the Zodiac, that was where the web between reality and its flip side was at its thinnest…and open to pure possibility.

The box my mother had given me contained things she’d clearly spent a long time collecting, including instructions on how to live a dual existence, plainly hidden in the cache of letters Cher had believed were left by her birth mother.

There were some baubles I didn’t yet know what to do with, and makeup I assumed was more than it seemed. The box was, indeed, a catchall-a life literally objectified-and one I’d certainly pore over later. I also had Xavier’s binder, which if I wasn’t mistaken contained information on something called the Serpent Bearer, a little tidbit the Tulpa was so desperate to discover he’d openly attacked a mortal.

Then there were Zoe’s more obvious gifts-the old conduits that no one could explain why I could still touch- which I had to confess gave me a thrill. I also possessed a weapon no one else knew about, one I’d handpicked myself from a cooling body, and wore it always on me now. The curve of Mackie’s knife was constantly warm, too, as if the souls of the dead still lingered inside.

I was starting to gather my army around me, my weapons and resources…all the things I’d need to take another world by storm.

Meanwhile, Io was charged with changing, or fixing-I wasn’t really sure which-the inside of me. The rogues, I was coming to understand, believed a person’s inner balance was the most important factor in both their actions and the reactions those provoked.

“Your chakras are still blocked,” she chided, leaning over my prone form, the light behind her framing the black cloud of her hair in the now-familiar thin purple halo. She pushed my ribs aside, and still unused to that, queasiness welled inside of me. I swallowed it back and closed my eyes. “You’re already getting yourself a new shape here, though. Even without the outer alterations. Look at all these deformities. I wish you could see them.”

Her obvious fascination made me glad I couldn’t. “So, if they were visible on the outside…what would I look like?”

“Hunchbacked. A mutant. Something new.”

Then why did I still have a connection with Hunter, one so strong even Solange couldn’t break it? One that called to me through the wall separating our worlds? Io, who specialized in such connections, was aching to find out. That’s why I was lying here like a science experiment, trying to keep an image of dissected frogs out of my mind as I rested my hand atop Buttersnap’s tar-black head.

“So what about Hunter?” I wasn’t shy about asking how we were connected. Not when Io could so clearly feel or see or sense it anyway. But I was self-conscious about how I still thought of him, and corrected myself before she could. “I mean Jaden.”

“No, you were right the first time.” Her haloed head lifted softly, gaze pinned to mine. “He is Hunter to you, and always will be.”

Yes, I thought, swallowing hard. That felt right. “Hunter, then.”

Her hands did some invisible work over me, mouth pulling tight while her lidless eyes remained wide. I was growing used to her appearance, and had even begun to find some beauty in the giant eyes. They were like two black moons reflecting back a bruised earth.

Wonder what that made me?

After a few long, silent minutes, she turned to me with a sadly wistful smile and confirmed what I’d already known. “There is nothing left of the aureole you once shared with Hunter. Only the ghostly imprint of its presence.”

Disappointment visited me at that, a small sinking that went under without a fight. Feeling it, Buttersnap licked my hand, but Io put her hands on my shoulders. She leaned so close the opaque orbs of her eyes turned into an eclipse, and then told me there was a connection all the same.

I left Io’s table feeling dazed, drained, but strangely peaceful in a cloudy fuguelike state that only energy work-or extreme trauma-could achieve. I’d just experienced both. Needing to be alone for a bit, I bypassed the main hall and headed up the packed earth ramp leading back to the surface. Carlos’s words about night crawlers and how they lived on long after those mightier had fallen, revisited me.

Pausing to pull one of Tripp’s quirleys from my pocket and pop it in my mouth as he used to do, thought about that. Olivia, and her aversion to slithering analogies, must have rubbed off on me because I decided she was right. It was disgusting.

“I’m not a night crawler,” I said to myself as I emerged into the cool night. “I’m a high roller, baby.”

With chips in my pocket, and a few cards still held against my chest. Still in the game. I searched the vast, black sky, ignoring the burning stars, eyes finally locking on the moon. Of all the gaseous orbs suspended in the bosom of the sky-of all Solange’s talk about stars and power-I preferred this gentle planet best. It was malleable, pliant, welcoming. Tonight’s was smeared at the edges, though vibrant at the center, at least until a tier of paper-thin clouds swept over its face. Within minutes they’d wiped it from the sky, leaving behind only a promising glow.

It was a reminder that something you thought you knew well could alter its appearance in a blink, and surprise you with entirely new features. If it could happen with a planet, then it could easily happen with a life.

It had just happened to mine.

And it made me wonder if you could ever know anyone well at all…including yourself. I did know this much. I didn’t want defenses so strong that I remained untouched over the course of my lifetime. Watching Caine turn physical contact into a perversion, one requiring pain just to feel anything, had taught me that much. Watching Warren’s stubbornness, even at the expense of the troop, underlined it. I didn’t want to be alone or inflexible either, not physically or in my mind. Instead I’d listen to Io, lean on her a little, maybe on Carlos too, and for the first time allow myself to feel even more because of my losses.

Glancing up again, I found Sirius in the sky, the star Solange wanted to craft with the remainder of my soul. I thought of the chips, and soul bits, I’d won for myself in poker, and wondered how I was ever going to cash those in, and if it was really even possible. Tripp hadn’t trusted me enough to say how at first, and in the end he’d been too busy dying. But he’d known. Which meant someone else did as well.

Footsteps sounded behind me, closing in, but I didn’t turn. I was fixed on that bright star again, feeling the loss of Hunter so greatly-and opening to that loss-that it moved inside me, deforming me yet again into something new.

“You know what?” I said, gaze still fixed on the Big Dog as I rolled the quirley between my fingertips. “I don’t believe it’s an agent’s job to preserve choice for the mortal population of this world.”

Carlos reached my side. He looked solid, smelled good, and felt safe. I shifted closer to him. “Then what?”

“We’re not meant to defend it. We’re meant to create more of it.”

For the mortals. And for us. We all had the right to choose.

Carlos inhaled deeply beside me, which made me wonder what exactly he was smelling. Probably red pepper, brine, and diesel oil, the earmarks of determination, stubbornness, and righteous anger. “Io told me.”

I nodded, waiting to see what he’d say next.

“So, even with this new information, you haven’t changed your mind?”

“Bitch has my man.”

He inclined his head. “It will be even more dangerous for you now.”

Every life gets sideswiped at one time or another. Sometimes even more than once. The question is, what do you do after that? Do you build something new out of the shrapnel…or do you just stay safe?

I knew what my mother’s answer was as surely as I knew she was still tunneling and plotting out there in the world. I turned my head and smiled at Carlos, sharing my answer with him. “Shows how much you know about women, Carlos. This will make me more dangerous.”

Carlos stared, face and scent unreadable to me, but he finally returned my smile before jerking his head at my quirley. “You’ll have to stop smoking, mi morena.”

“Oh, it’s okay.” I pulled the odd brown cigarette from my mouth, thought of Tripp, then shrugged. “I don’t inhale.”

Carlos gestured to the underground entry then. I nodded, he slipped a protective arm over my shoulders, and we headed back to my temporary home beneath the pockmarked craters of Frenchman’s Flat. The other rogues, he told me-the grays and the night crawlers, my new allies and troop-were waiting to offer up their congratulations. I placed one hand over my belly, where Io had told me the real connection between Hunter and me lay…and dropped the other over Mackie’s blade. No, I still wasn’t super. But I had breath, a blade, and I had choice.

It was enough for now.