Cheat the Grave

5

I left immediately after Tripp. Warren hadn’t been exaggerating when he said he could tell the rogue agent had been there. What he’d probably smelled was a combination of brimstone and sweat, a strong enough aroma that I could conjure it from memory alone. Add to that the residual emotion from all of us that now tainted the place-my own injured fury included-and I had no doubt it would soon attract the attention of a Shadow.

Or Mackie.

God, I thought, rubbing a hand over my face. Sleepy-fucking-Mac.

Legend had it he was the oldest living agent in our hemisphere. Rumor claimed he was the most vicious too. History and hearsay aside, I knew he was as crazed as a hatter sucked down a rabbit hole, and he’d literally taken over my dreams just weeks after I lost all my powers. Only recently had I been able to reclaim my night hours for this world.

And faced with the responsibility of taking over Archer Enterprises, I had plenty in this world to keep me busy. Yet Mackie’s attack made my last dream appear more ominous than nightmarish.

In it, the saloon those in Midheaven called the “Rest House” was just as I remembered: the shining bar, the poker tables, the “most wanted” posters featuring every agent who’d dared to enter pinned at the far wall. Even the haze that made the entire room look like a cameo browned with age had been there. Who knew you could dream in sepia?

Mackie was there too, skinny hook nose visible in profile beneath his bowler hat. Yet slumped in his usual stupor before his battered piano, he couldn’t compete with the real star of the show. Because perched on the center poker table like a prize was the woman I’d been turned into through a crafty combination of medicine and magic: my dead sister, Olivia.

“Mom is looking for you,” she said, glancing up from filing her nails and sending me a prissy little finger wave, utterly nonplussed to see me emerging from an opaque wall of smoke.

Yet I was dumbfounded. I’d rarely dreamed of Olivia since her death, and while early on my reaction was to flee to wakefulness, in the latter stages of my grief I’d clung to her visage like a security blanket. Maybe that was why I’d ceased having them. My neediness was likely too weighty for the dream state. So, surprise kept me flat-footed in this dream, even as I edged away from Mackie.

Yet he remained slumped inertly over his ivory keys, bowler hat and piano top all covered in a thin layer of dust. Had I actually entered Midheaven, he’d have straightened like a marionette’s toy to compose a jaunty tune…flattering, true, cryptic…and one that would mark the last third of my soul’s siphoning into Midheaven.

Since Mackie didn’t seem inclined to engage in any macabre jam sessions during my dreamscape, I ignored him, and turned back to the women I saw every day in the mirror, yet missed so much. “You shouldn’t be here.”

Olivia lifted a perfectly waxed brow and motioned with one hand, pointing out two things: there was no one else in the room, and it lacked its usual furnacelike heat. So like me, she was in no real danger. Besides, even Sleepy Mac would struggle to murder someone who was already dead.

And, in spite of that, Olivia looked great. A dress I recognized as Chanel cupped her catwalk body, and the understated gold on her neck and ears was fine, though it dimmed in contrast to her bright blue eyes, fixed on me with unconcealed amusement. She swung her legs like a child, showing off her Blahniks.

“I like your hair that way,” I told her, and she preened, straightening her back so all the bits boys liked protruded in perky agreement.

Then she frowned. “But you haven’t done a thing with yours since I…left, have you?”

I glanced at my image in the bar’s smoky mirror. A person’s true physical form was always revealed in Midheaven, and so there I was again, the Joanna Archer of old, the appearance I’d been born with, though disconcertingly less familiar than it had once been. I was dark-eyed and-haired, where Olivia had been light. I was longer and lanky, as obsessively muscular as I could make myself in a slim, feminine frame. Olivia’s curves, by contrast, were a battleship boom that hit you dead center, a bull’s-eye in the gut.

Yet I was no longer comfortable weighing our differences, no longer felt wholly like either of us. These days, I was a mash-up of the women we used to be. So I turned from the mirror. “Where’s everybody else?”

Because the green felt tables were empty of players, the chips representing personal powers and soul slivers all neatly racked before the empty dealers’ chairs. Even the bar was barren, which was good. No bartender meant no drink, and imbibing was what drained one of the willpower and ability to leave this place. Again, the absences helped confirm this as a dream. The real Midheaven would never pull its guards.

“The only people you need to worry about are in this room. They are the ones who will affect you most in these next months.”

My turn to raise a brow. My dead sister and a comatose psychotic with a soul blade tucked beneath a bowler hat? Yeah. They were going to be real effective.

Hopping from the poker table, Olivia tossed me a knowing look as she sauntered to the bar. Once there, she lifted to her tiptoes, floated to a seated position atop the length of polished mahogany, and recrossed her tanned legs. “They’re coming now. They had to wait until you got here first.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s your dream, silly.” Smiling, she gestured to the wall behind me, and I turned in time to see the paneled oak begin to smoke, then backed away until I was pressed against the bar. I felt better with Olivia at my side, and as if intuiting that-and who said she couldn’t in the dream state?-she rested her hand atop my shoulder. “There they are.”

And I was suddenly standing across from three of my former troop members: Warren, Tekla…and Hunter. Their gazes were cautious, and they shifted away from Mackie as a group, but didn’t look surprised. They also didn’t look any different than they did in the real world. Warren donned his favored hobo gear, though the authentic limp in his injured leg was even more pronounced. Tekla was wrapped in a traditional salwar kameez, favored for movement and ease. And Hunter was borne forth in the shape of the man I’d begun to love, even though his arrival in Midheaven meant he should be taking his true form as Jaden Jacks: bigger, both blonder and darker, and completely unknown to me.

“Why haven’t your appearances changed?” I blurted, and immediately tried to settle. Why should I feel panicked? It was my dream. But they all ignored me, continuing to stare at Olivia, expectancy on Tekla and Hunter’s brows, wariness upon Warren’s.

“They can’t see or hear you,” Olivia said, and they all cocked their heads. “I have to translate.”

“Why?”

“Because for the intents and purposes of this dream, I get to be your T-Rex brain.”

She smiled down at me, and unexpected laughter burst from me. T-Rex brain was something we’d coined years ago when discussing a friend who refused to believe her boyfriend was cheating. She’d told us she wanted proof. But T-Rex brain was a primitive knowledge, a fact or piece of information that lay between two people in spite of denial or proof. It was knowledge at the cellular level-he’s cheating, the secretary can’t be trusted, the maid took the money-and whether both parties openly admitted it or not, they knew.

I’d told Olivia then that some people called this their lizard brain, and she’d wrinkled her nose before informing me that she personally drew the line at anything that slithered, thus the new moniker-something that was large, primal, and strong.

In glancing at Hunter again, I wondered if that was why I was having such a hard time forgetting him. I hadn’t ever felt he’d been lying to me…though it could be hard to tell. Emotions clouded the T-Rex brain.

But at least I understood Olivia’s purpose here. She would allow me to step over that emotion, and learn what I needed to from the safety of this dream. So at least something was making sense.

“Of course, there’s another reason you’re invisible,” she said, before gesturing to the mirror behind her. “None of them see you for who you really are. Not yet.”

“And you can?”

“I’m dead.”

It was the first time she’d said it so bluntly, and a look like storm clouds passed over her face. I winced. “I’m sorry-”

“Shh. We’re beyond all that, you and me.”

Yeah, we were. And while I was still tortured by her death, and that it’d come indirectly because of me, the actual memory of it was rubbed out, a blueish line drawing more than a full-colored panel of pain.

“Besides, we’re bound as sisters, no matter what realm we inhabit.” Including Midheaven, apparently. Olivia gestured at the others. “So what would you have me tell them?”

The words “Fuck off” blasted through my head, and though I didn’t say it, Olivia shook her head. “One by one. Address them each honestly, have your say, and you’ll thereby forever banish them from your thoughts and dreams.”

If only life were that easy.

“Once you decide a person has no control over you,” Olivia continued, “they no longer do.”

I sighed. “So tell them what I really think, and they’ll disappear?”

She shook her head, curls bouncing. The trio across the room watched, mesmerized. Meanwhile, Mackie stayed slumped. “You say it, but I’ll tell them. Then they’ll go away…as long as it’s the truth.”

Hesitating, I sighed, but not because I found it hard to tell the truth. I often told a hard truth. Yet voicing what I really wanted to say to these people was painful…so also why it would be so powerful. I turned to Warren, who was leaning on his good leg, arms crossed, and took a deep breath.

“I trusted you, Warren, and you treated me as badly as you would a Shadow. Even when I proved myself willing to give my life for you, for the troop, for a mortal, you still believed the worst of me. Why did you just throw me away?” My voice cracked, and I was glad he couldn’t hear it. He remained impassive, looking at Olivia with the cool detachment of a person who knew his place in the world…and everyone else’s too.

Olivia lifted her chin, and in a voice as fragile as bone china, said, “Your days are numbered, old man. You’re going down so hard the earth will quake.”

I gasped, whirling on her. “That’s not what I said!”

She shrugged. “But it’s what needed saying. See?”

And I spun back in time to see Warren fall backward without taking a step, the smoke reclaiming him and his shocked expression like an incinerator.

“Now you can live your dreams your way.”

I shook my head. “I’m confused.”

“Life is confusing. It’s also messy and has no reason outside that which you impart to it.” Before I could respond, she jerked her head. “Okay, what about her?”

Biting my lip, I eyed Tekla. I didn’t know. Olivia had said she was one of the people most directly influencing me now, but I didn’t see how. As far as I knew, she’d turned her back on me as wholly as the rest of the troop. I glanced up at Olivia. “Well, what does she have to say to me?”

“Hmm, no one has ever asked that before. Yet as it’s clearly a question that demands a true answer, I think it’ll do.” Olivia nodded, then turned back to Tekla. “Speak, traitor!”

I gaped, automatically taking a step back. I’d seen Tekla reduce a man to shards with her mind alone, and while I hated the way she’d gone along with Warren’s wishes, abandoning me, I still respected her. Even in a dream state. “Um, Olivia…”

But Tekla, normally so stoic and sure, began to weep. “Not everybody has abandoned you, Jo. Remember, you’re not the only one doing the best you can to survive in a hard world.”

And the wall of smoke loosened its fingers, reached forward and reclaimed her too.

“There…see? Even questions can reveal truths and provide peace.” Olivia then frowned. “And now for him.”

Hunter. I turned back and stared at him for a long while before speaking. It was easier when he wasn’t looking at me. He continued to gaze up at Olivia with that Lost Boy look, soulful and bad and repentant all at the same time.

“Your betrayal was the largest,” I told him evenly. “I let you into my heart and my body, and now I can’t get you out of my mind. So, please, be a man about it and remove yourself. Because you’ve hurt me enough, and I need to be free.”

That was it. I swallowed hard, proud of myself. I’d practiced so many variations of that speech-outraged, sad, defeated, and depressed-that when the simple truth came out- I loved you, you hurt me, and now you have to let me go-it was like a baptismal. I felt renewed. I turned to Olivia and smiled.

She smiled back, sweet and with tears moistening her eyes, before turning to Hunter. “You are a part of me now, and I will love you forever.”

A relieved smile overtook his face, and he faded like a ghost. I whirled on her. “I’m going to kill you!”

Olivia laughed merrily. “I believe I have the advantage here.”

“Ugh, God!” I pulled at my hair. “Olivia! What the fuck?”

She laughed some more. “Yep. That’s about as T-Rex brain as you can get.”

I lunged for her, and in my dreams, she evaded. I gave chase, wanting to shake her and yes, just touch her, but she sidestepped once she reached the wall studded with pagoda lanterns. I swerved, reached forward to brace myself against it, and instead fell right through it, to the sound of Olivia’s fading laughter, muted by a thickening wall of smoke.

I knew the difference between reality and a dream, of course. There wasn’t going to be any heart-to-hearts between me and my former troop mates, never mind Hunter, who was lost to Midheaven and another woman’s arms. Olivia was truly gone, her only message to me a flash of guilt whenever I caught her face staring back at me from the mirror. Some wistful dream wouldn’t change all of that.

It also wouldn’t change the fact that Sleepy Mac had crept over into my waking hours. I could no longer pretend he was locked securely in another world, slumped before a piano, and waiting for me to offer up the last third of my soul. He was here, after me, his soul blade already poised in my direction.

I quickly shut off the thought, my fear of Mackie strong enough to bloom into scent. Besides, it wasn’t thought that was needed now, but rote movement; robotic limbs, a cold heart, and a quiet mind.

Yet shutting down emotionally somehow seemed a step backward. Hadn’t I just gotten over relying only on myself? Hadn’t I worked hard to become a part of something larger than me, earning a place in a troop and proving they could trust me? Even before Olivia reappeared in my dreams, when I was rehabilitating in Xavier’s mansion, I’d decided no one was going to strip me of my hard-learned lessons. I was determined to drive forward on the twin turbines of belief and faith. I would live, I would love again, dammit, and find others to trust…but I would do it on my terms.

Meanwhile, I needed to put one foot in front of the other, and stay ahead of Mackie. Maybe a former ally, like Tekla, would help me. Maybe not. But my sister was waving at me from the other side of death, and Mackie had breached the barrier between my world and his. I didn’t need my T-Rex brain to tell me that Harlan Tripp was right. It was only a matter of time until Mackie found me again, and next time there might not be anyone standing between me and his blade. Next time I might not get away so easily.

After all, there were only so many ways to cheat the grave.