City of Souls

18

“Yo, Rainbow Brite,” Skamar said, meeting me around the corner. I hoped we looked like two neighbors swapping recipes on the street corner. Or, from the way Skamar had her hands fisted on her hips, at least like two women fighting over the same man. That, at least, wasn’t too out of the ordinary. “What the fuck are you doing?”

“Don’t criticize her,” I said, ignoring the latter half of her question. I walked a bit farther so we could duck beneath the concealing shade of a giant plum tree. “I’m being Olivia. What the fuck are you doing?”

“Oh, just dodging the Tulpa.”

“You mean he’s here?” I couldn’t keep the panic from bleeding into my voice, and I cleared my throat, remembering that revealed emotion normally caused my troubles.

“Not yet. But he’ll find me. He always does.”

I wanted to tell her that I’d been trying to find her, but the fatigue in her voice had me softening toward her, as did her explanation. It couldn’t be easy. She’d only come into full being a month ago, and had been fighting nonstop ever since. Not exactly the homecoming most newborns were given in this world.

“Look, I’m sorry for showing up here. I had to get you alone.”

My full attention narrowed back on her, along with my hard gaze. “You’re not going to try to eat any of my vital organs again, are you?”

She gave me a tight smile. “It no longer appeals, no.”

Good. Devouring the organs, and particularly the heart of the person whose face and life a doppelgänger mirrored-and I mean that in a twisted, funhouse sort of way-was the fastest, most efficient means of becoming a fully realized entity. Fortunately, I’d satisfied her greed for life with something even stronger than my flesh: her name. Skamar meant star in the Tibetan tongue. I’d thought it apropos for someone who’d begun life as a mere thought-form constructed out of the myth and meditation so critical to the eastern culture.

“You look different.”

What I meant was she didn’t look like me.

When we’d first met, Skamar was a doppelgänger, the evolutionary precursor to a full-fledged tulpa. Sporting a body of ripples and waves, one as malleable as tensile foam, she’d shone with a light that made her skin snap with every movement, like a diamond in the sun. Intent upon killing me and taking over my life, that bubble and light had solidified into a body mirroring mine so closely in both physical aspect and mannerism that even I wasn’t able to discern the difference. However, in the weeks since I’d last seen her, Skamar had taken on an identity of her own.

Thin and small and pale, she’d have been plain too, were her features not so sharp. Her short hair was blunt and red, her matching lashes so light she looked bald-eyed, but her lips were defined even without color, and her nose arrowed between cheekbones you could hang laundry from, wide and high. I’d have commented about one of Jane Austen’s characters inadvertently wandering into an action flick, but I didn’t think she’d appreciate it.

Her clothes were dark, but silk and lightweight, obviously chosen for comfort and mobility rather than warmth. Not remotely appropriate for a chilled winter day, I thought, but from the looks of them-tattered and bloodied-she’d been wearing them awhile.

For a moment I wondered what I’d choose to look like were I given physical creative carte blanche. As much as I loved my sister, and had come to accept my transformation into her, I wouldn’t have been a buxom, blond socialite who needed a calendar just to keep up with her physical maintenance.

“I need more power, Joanna. The energy from the name-giving is no longer enough.”

“What? You want a middle one? Fine. Matilda. Take it.” I flicked my hands at her, more of a nervous gesture than a dismissive one. “Be merry.”

That almost earned a smile. “Skamar is sufficient, thanks. But a true live birth in this world is always recorded in written form. Mine still hasn’t been.”

I drew back at that. “Like a birth certificate?”

“Exactly.”

“Dude. You were born of thought and, like, bubbles.” She’d been practically see-through when we first met. “No offense, but the drones down at County probably won’t certify someone who could have once passed as a bath product.”

“The manuals, Joanna. My name must be made public in the manuals of Light.”

Again, the manuals. But the sharpness in her voice obliterated my sarcasm. A chill passed through me as she glared, and I checked my attitude. It was a good idea to remember that the creature in front of me wasn’t an ordinary woman. In fact, one got the idea that she could take over my troop if she wanted to, the same way the Tulpa had waltzed into the top position with the Shadow agents. Right now, however, she was focused on one thing.

“It’s the only way I can harness that.” She was pointing at the sky.

I looked up and winced. “Ozone? Smog? Unusual cloud coverage?”

“Power.”

So that was what was spinning behind those wispy layers, just as Hunter claimed on my recent return from the underground. The sky now appeared blown up with fog that glowed with soft blues and greens, which bounced off each other, making them appear alive.

“That’s the unclaimed power given off every time the two of us fight but don’t win. Neither of us can lay claim to it.”

“So stop fighting.” That seemed kinda obvious.

“And let him just kill you instead?”

“Oh.”

Her expression said I told you so. I swallowed hard, looking with renewed respect at the sky. The unclaimed power of two tulpas whipping above like an energetic freeway. “So what happens if all that energy is funneled into either of you?”

“If I get it? I’ll reduce him to ash. If he does?” She swallowed hard. “He’ll knock me from the globe like a figure from a chessboard.”

“But you’re beating him! I heard him in those tunnels. He was gasping for breath. He needed to be encased in total darkness just to heal.”

In solitude and silence. Safe from eyes that might impose expectation upon his figure and form, which would siphon off the very energy he was trying to recoup. So now that we knew his lack of permeability was a weakness, why weren’t we trying to exploit it?

“Speaking of the tunnels. Your mother was not happy to learn you’d been in there.”

“Then tell her to take it up with me herself,” I said smartly. “Besides, I tried to find you. Warren wanted me to ask you about walking the line. I just got lucky and found it myself first.”

“You didn’t get lucky, Jo. Quite the opposite.” And she looked at me like I’d lost something irreplaceable.

Please don’t let it be irreplaceable.

I hid my fear under a thin layer of bravado. “Well, I think we should all go back in together. Ambush the Tulpa after one of his battles with you. He’ll be alone, his energy at its lowest.”

“Let me worry about the Tulpa. You fix that changeling. And get those manuals written. But stay away from Midheaven. I haven’t shown you-” She whirled in response to something I could neither see nor feel. “Fuck. He’s on the move again.”

“But-”

Turning back, she grabbed my shoulders and shook me hard. “I’m doing my best to keep him away from you, Joanna! Now, please. Fix those manuals.”

An explosive gust thrust me backward, and I was alone in the expanse of a breath. My shoulder angled awkwardly into the tree trunk, but my grunt was drowned out by Skamar’s battle cry. A second later the two tulpas reengaged, the sound like a rocket firing across the valley.

Save the life of a little girl, restore safety for my troop, not to mention power to both the agents of Light and Skamar. And now, I thought, cringing as I looked above, keep the sky from falling in and crushing the entire city. It would’ve seemed like a full plate but for one thing. It all hinged on healing one little girl.

I needed to find her now.

I ducked into dark pockets created by the low-lying blue haze and slowly made my way to the modest development where the Chans had their home, keeping to side streets and dusty lots. Unfortunately, Midheaven was actually the second-to-last place I wanted to go. The very last was the Chan household, where an eight-year-old little girl, Jasmine’s sister, was suffering because of something I’d done.

In a newer section of town, their tract home was virtually indistinguishable from those around it, but the small figure reclining on the gentle slope of terra cotta tiles helped me locate it, as did her scent: dried berries, Bonnie Bell, and Bubblicious. Slipping into the concealing shadows offered up by the cloud haze and the overgrown fronds of a giant pepper tree, I leapt to the roof as quietly and quickly as I could.

Even so, Jasmine didn’t look surprised when I dropped down five feet from her. She only waited, as I did, to see if anyone else in the household had heard. When it was clear no one had, she turned her great dark eyes up to me. “I knew you were coming.”

“See me?”

She frowned, hesitating, then shook her head.

“Smell?” I asked, because ever since I’d displaced a portion of her chi with my own, she’d been gaining some of my more desirable abilities. This was part of the problem. Jasmine thought she was becoming a superhero and she refused to give up those powers.

“Not until you got close,” she admitted, tucking a lock of black hair behind her ear, the color shiny and rich even in the fractured light.

“Then how?”

“I felt it. Like I…sensed you.” She put a hand to her belly. “Do you know what I mean?”

I did. The second I’d reached her side I’d felt a corporeal recognition, like my veins ran in her body, my blood pumping in her heart.

I dropped next to her, huddling close in the cool air as clouds began to roil and pop in the distance. Neither of us was immune to the elements, so I was relieved when she didn’t object, and not just because of her body heat. She’d been prickly with me since we’d butted heads over her unwillingness to pass on her changeling status to her younger sister.

Her appearance had altered since I’d last seen her, though. Her dark hair now graduated sharply into an uneven bob, and was streaked on the left side with pink and blond. Her clothes were equally chaotic, blacks and plaids with thick military boots, and she had her backpack next to her, like she regularly waited on the rooftop for her bus. It was still Hello Kitty pink, but the cute icon’s eyes had been taped over by dual X’s, making the round mouth more resemble a scream.

The scent of eastern herbs and western medicines wafted from her open window, but I didn’t look her over for signs of injury. Jasmine hadn’t suffered physical injury when I’d failed to give her back the whole of her borrowed aura. No, it was her younger sister, Li, who was living proof that I truly had screwed it all up.

I bent my head to my knees, resting for a moment.

“Where have you been?” she finally asked. “I felt weak, like when you have the flu and can’t lift your limbs…but I felt it in my mind too.”

That made sense. The link between us probably didn’t extend to different words. Entering Midheaven must have severed the connection between us, halving both her chi and mine. “I had to go somewhere else.”

I explained to her about Midheaven and the pipeline, that I was searching for Jacks and a way to heal her, though I skipped the part about the dead changeling. I ended with an account of my return, including that Regan was again in the Tulpa’s good graces. “Skamar has kept the Tulpa too busy for him to get to you, but Regan has been following me everywhere. It’s not inconceivable that she might end up here.”

Her round face scrunched up. “So what are you doing now? Dropping the bread crumbs?”

“I’ve changed up my routine, smartass,” I said tightly. “And I was thinking you could go somewhere safe until all of this is over.”

She wrapped her arms around her knobby knees, turning away. “I can take care of myself.”

I shifted, crouched in front of her and waited until she met my eye. “Jas, I can’t protect you. I have no conduit, half my natural power is being filtered into you, and there’s no safe zone for me on this side of reality. That means if Regan gets tired of trying to pick up my trail, she’s going to come after the people closest to me, and hello chi-sharing superhero-wannabe, that’s you.”

She said nothing, just stared straight ahead with her jaw clenched stubbornly, expression unreadable.

I tried again. “Look, I just wanted to come check on you and Li. Make sure…”

Jasmine read the fear in my hesitation, and swooped in for the kill. “Make sure she’s not dead?”

I ran my hand over my face. “Jesus, Jas.”

She scoffed, then jerked her head in the direction of the lighted window. “See for yourself.”

I hesitated. “Parental units?”

“Both at work. They need the insurance.” She stared up at me, her gaze challenging. “Go on. Superhero.”

I glanced at the window almost fearfully, but dusted myself off and stood. Jas was right; I needed to look for myself. To prove I could look in the bedroom of a dying child as clear-eyed as I could face down a rotting Shadow agent. I’d look, even if it scorched my soul.

But peering into that room wasn’t at all like facing fire. It was like dropping into an endless pool of water without first taking a breath.

She lay facing away from the window, tiny body outlined beneath her pile of blankets. Her dark hair was a black hole against the white pillow, tangled strands that had once been glossy with good health now dulled. Her breathing appeared even but indistinguishable over the machines monitoring her vital stats, and though hidden behind privacy screens, they were like another presence in the room.

I was just breaching the surface of seeing all this for the first time, and aching for breath, when she turned. Her eyes, so similar to Jasmine’s-if you didn’t count the blood vessels weaving over the whites-found mine like she knew I’d be there. As if she’d been waiting. The hope in that gaze, displaced in a face that was little more than skin smoothed over bone, crashed over me like a wave. The vessels seemed to have dried up inside her body, the percentage of water needed to fuel a human being half what it should have been. The three marks across her charcoal cheek, where she’d taken a hit from the Tulpa on my behalf, were jet black. Her lashes had all fallen out. The weave of hair tangled across that pillow shifted…a wig.

Li didn’t have the strength to wave-the tiny hand faltered on its way up-but she smiled and it was achingly beautiful.

The strike of a match behind me sounded like an arrow slicking through the dim sky, and I flinched before I saw Jas’s amused profile outlined behind cupped hands. She deliberately didn’t look at me, and I grabbed at that momentary privacy, letting my face crumble as I bent my head. This was an image I’d never be able to erase, no matter how many worlds I hitchhiked my way into.

Mind stunned, I moved away from the window. Jasmine silently handed me the cigarette as I hunched next to her, even closer this time, as if she could warm me. I sucked in smoke, before handing it back to Jas. She took another drag, her smooth features lighting up prettily behind the orange glow.

“Jasmine-”

“No.”

I wanted to wring her scrawny preteen neck. “Why? Just pass on your post to Li! Give her changeling status. Move on as nature intended.”

She whipped her gaze to mine so fast I jerked back. “Because passing the post on to Li isn’t the cure-all you think it is. Your chi will still be divided, just in her body instead of mine. The Zodiac will still be unbalanced. Your manuals will still unwritten.”

“Jas-”

“I said no. And don’t ask me again either. I don’t want to be that, okay?” She motioned to Li’s window, scattering ash. “I want to live.”

I glanced at the sky. The day was strong enough now that rays of light had crept through the cloud breaks to find our bodies. They trailed out in stingy pockets, shifted, and tried again. “You don’t know that maturing will kill you.”

“You don’t know that it won’t.”

True. But if I didn’t come through, one of these sisters was going to die a death that would accomplish nothing. It might buy the agents of Light a little more time. Maybe slow the downward spiral in power that so aptly mirrored Li’s deteriorating health. But it wouldn’t get the manuals written, or transfer a vast amount of power to Skamar. It wouldn’t save my shiny, irreverent city from what amounted to a cataclysmic electrical storm raining down like God’s wrath. Only one thing would do all that.

We fell silent again. Jas smoked and brooded. I bit my lip and worried. Clouds roiled and moved across the sky like scattered gray silk; beautiful, if you didn’t know it was the result of massive cosmic destruction.

After another moment, Jasmine flicked the spent cigarette over the roofline. “Look, it’s not that I don’t want to help her, okay? I want Li to get better…”

But if Jasmine gave over the split chi that would enable Li to heal and take her place as the changeling of Light, she might break in turn.

“Would you switch with your sister?” she asked suddenly, voice rising with emotion. “Be dead in her place, if it means she would live?”

“Yes.”

I wasn’t trying for a politically correct answer, or even to convince Jasmine that she should do the same. But yes, I would have done that for Olivia. In an instant. I would do it still.

“That’s because her death was quick,” Jasmine scoffed, flipping her backpack over her shoulder. “It was violent, yeah, but it was a moment’s choice. Not a choice moment after moment.”

I saw what she meant. She was envisioning herself lying ashen against those white linens, sweating out her body’s nutrients, being drained of her vitality.

“You’re saying it would have been easy for me?”

“I’m saying take a look at all the good things you’ve experienced since then, and then wipe them from your mind. I’m watching Li, and as much as I love her, my mind keeps drifting to the things I don’t know-the people I’ll never meet, the career and maybe family I’ll never have. I don’t…I don’t want to die a virgin.”

“The first time sucks anyway.”

She shook her head, unamused. “What about all my other firsts? Don’t I have a right to those either?”

I glanced up at her. Sometimes I forgot I was talking to a girl whose prom was still years away. It was easy to forget that these kids were as divided in their lives as we were…at least up until it was time for them to grow and age and live as mortals. But…“What about Li’s?”

“Why are hers any more important than mine?”

I looked at her with her crossed arms and forced pout, and remembered what it was like to be that age. Not long after that I would be attacked, and my life as irreparably damaged as Li’s. But at Jasmine’s exact age I had lived for the day, by the day, my future unwinding in front of me like a long hopeful road. “Look, Jas, I’m working on it.”

She turned to me. “So let me help.”

“It’s mostly grunt work,” I lied. “Not even any fighting,” I lied some more. “Just hours of sitting there, staring at nothing. Like a stakeout. You’ll be happier waiting here.”

“But I’ve never been on a stakeout before!”

“That’s because you’re thirteen. You need to survive a few slumber parties first.” She turned away again, and I sighed. “Look, I just don’t want you to return to your mother with pieces missing, you know?” One Chan sister down was enough.

“Then protect me. You can move faster than a speeding bullet, right?”

“I can move faster than a speeding softball. I haven’t really tested the bullet theory yet.” And I could barely protect myself.

“Oh.”

“Look, just watch out for oddities or, you know, walking corpses. Stay safe.”

She blew out a breath that lifted her hair from her forehead. “Don’t talk to strangers, yeah, yeah. Got that memo…”

My cell phone vibrated in my pocket, and I pulled it out, hoping to see a message from Hunter. I didn’t recognize the number. The voice, though? That was unforgettable. I rose to my feet on the slanted rooftop, staring off into the blue haze. “What do you want?”

“You. On your knees before me. Your skin shredded so finely it looks like angel hair.”

I motioned for Jas to get behind me, get inside, get away, and scanned the perimeter of the house. Everything and nothing moved beneath the roiling, mobile sky. Yet Regan couldn’t openly walk the streets in her condition. “So you want to be twins?”

“That’s right. Except for your sense of humor. I fucking hate that.”

I started to reply.

“I have to wonder, though, if it’s something little Ashlyn inherited.”

I drew a blank, my mouth stuttering shut. I decided to wait to see where she was going with this.

“Ah, that finally shut you up. Now…” She took a breath so deep it gurgled in her cracked chest. “Sit back down so we can talk.”

I angled my head, squinting at the house across from us. “Where are you?”

“Sit your ass down.”

I checked to make sure Jasmine was back inside, and sat. How traumatized would the kid be, I wondered, if I took an arrow to the heart on her rooftop?

“That’s better.” Regan paused, letting me wonder how she could see me, obviously enjoying the attention. “I was wondering when you’d check on your changeling. Nice of you to care.”

Her admonition, and her ability to see me, made me want to leap from the roof. I kept my voice even with great effort. “Your point, Regan? Because the cloud cover seems to be clearing up, and you’re not going to be able to catch a cab in your condition this far past Halloween.”

There was no way she could be there. Unless she’d arrived in full dark and planned to exit the same way. In a neighboring house? Looking out through a window? In that box tree hedge across the street?

“I’m tired of waiting for you to return to your penthouse, Olivia. Or show up at Valhalla for your shift-nice touch there, by the way-or to stop by and check on your former mortal lover.”

“That will never happen,” I said, which was true enough. Let her think I didn’t care. As long as I stayed away from Ben Traina, he was safe.

“Which is why I’ve had to come to you.”

“Changelings are out of bounds. You can’t touch Jasmine.”

“Oh, dear. You are fucking retarded.” Laughter wheezed from her again, and I clenched my jaw. “Your little ‘Wonder Twin’ doesn’t interest me. After all, there’s another little girl out there, with little bits of Joanna floating through her bloodstream.”

Icy fear kept me quiet now.

“What do you think?” Regan had no such problem. “A few choice slices with a butcher’s knife and she and I might be able to pass for mother and daughter.”

“She knows nothing about me,” I said flatly.

“Ah, but you know about her.” And that was all she’d ever cared about. How whatever she did to those I loved would affect me.

“So, what? I do as you say, and you won’t hurt her?”

“Oh, you’d think so, wouldn’t you? But predictability is also where you and I differ. See, I’ve already carved her up.”

The air left my body in one fell whoosh. I teetered on the rooftop as I stood, and took two quick steps before I caught myself. Regan giggled. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath.

“Well, you almost fell for it,” she said, her sliced tongue doing a strange dance over the words. “But for future reference, would you like to find her little corpse first, or just hear about it on the five o’clock news?”

Now her laughter dug, as sharp and deep as that butcher’s knife.

“If you hurt her…” I couldn’t finish the sentence. God. Ashlyn. My daughter…and Ben’s. Because of me…

“If I hurt her, I’ve hurt you,” she finished succinctly, and the line went dead.

I stood for a long while with the phone still pressed to my ear. Then I vaulted to the pepper tree, scurrying down it as quickly as I could without hurting myself, and studied the wide open road with all of my senses. Despite Regan’s words, there was no one, mortal or otherwise, on the street. I allowed myself one betraying sigh-infused with a relief that anyone with heightened senses could sniff-then pulled out my cell again and dialed Hunter’s number.

I looked back up at Li’s window as the phone rang. Jasmine’s silhouette was visible in the corner. Inside lay an innocent little girl, dying because she’d taken a wound belonging to me. On the outside-not close, but getting closer to me-was Regan. Her threats toward Ashlyn were horrifying because she’d do exactly as she said, no remorse, no second thought-just like the Tulpa, she’d injure a child in an attempt to get to me.

Not only that, I thought, as I began to walk, but that child would be eleven in a fistful of days-on my birthday, actually, like all the first daughters in the Zodiac-which wasn’t too early for a girl to start puberty. Once she did, her second life cycle would begin, her pheromones would flare, and everyone-Shadow and Light-would know of her existence. Then Regan and Warren would be the least of my worries. And her mortal mother wouldn’t be remotely able to protect her.

No, she’d need a superhero for that.

So, despite Skamar’s warning, was the soul sliver required to enter another world in search of a man who knew how to fix a changeling worth ensuring Ashlyn’s safety in this one? Damn straight, I thought, along with Jasmine’s and the little girl huddled in her bed above like a tiny mummy. I squared my shoulders and, with a final glance behind me, left a voice mail with the one person I trusted more than anyone else in this world. I didn’t want to see him. Hunter had sensed a vulnerability about me during the live-fire exercise at the warehouse, and perhaps even before it. If he knew I could be injured as easily as a mortal, he’d physically restrain me from crossing into Midheaven again. So I kept it short, telling him only what he needed to know in order for us both to keep moving forward. “Hunter. Tell Warren I’m going in.”