City of Souls

19

I dressed for the crossing like I was prepping for war, in a black leather jacket with a Mandarin collar, matching boot-cut pants cut low for movement, and thick-soled boots…perfect for ass-kicking. What can I say? Though I knew what the women in Midheaven considered feminine-I left on the necklace Suzanne had given me in deference to that-I was going to stick with the tried and true: I’d go in fists flying, assuming guilt before innocence, and take what I wanted by force if that was the only way to get it done. Sure, beneath all this armor was a spray-on tan, and breasts that had a serial number stamped on a silicone shell, but I still felt most powerful when strong, limber, and packing an attitude I could fire like an Uzi.

“Putting the ‘bomb’ in bombshell,” I muttered, sidestepping down the storm drain’s embankment. I’d brought a giant bottle of ice water, and was wearing the mesh belt again, with one important addition: a knife to rival Mackie’s, in case it came down to another duel, mano a mano. My goal was to remain downstairs-talk to Tripp, look for Jacks, scan the Most Wanted board, before fighting my way back to my lantern. Whatever happened, I did not want to go upstairs.

If it was cold outside, it was going to be absolutely frigid in the catacombs of the Las Vegas underground. Ice, milkweed, and escaped bahai grass crackled underfoot as I approached the tunnels, all hidden beneath a wreathing mist that trailed ominously into the concrete drain. I stole a final glance at my glittering hometown as a wind gust raced across the entrance, its chill fingers reaching out to beckon me back. In the distance, the Strip was as brilliant and bold as an ice floe, snapping back at the inclement weather with LID billboards, pastel spotlights, and heated gas that blistered the air. I smiled, then softened my gaze so it all blurred; the colorful ice floe melting as I turned away.

I found the shoulder bag I’d looped around the drain, and shoved all the gaming chips with the remaining bits of my power into my pockets before I dumped my cell phone inside. I’d leave the bag here, but I was going to keep the chips on me from now on…no matter what world I was in.

As I was using the same storm drain as the first time I’d accessed Midheaven, I was surprised when it veered in an altogether different direction than I remembered. But I figured as long as the pipeline wound over unfamiliar terrain and looped improbably around on itself, as long as everything remained abnormal, all was normal, right?

So I found my way back to the concrete cupboard simply by putting one foot in front of the other, careful all the while to watch and listen for Regan. I could tell by the fractious sounds emanating from the south end of the valley-rumbling belches and ear-splitting squeals-that Skamar was keeping the Tulpa occupied. I’d heard on the car radio that some the mortal weathermen were beginning to make dire predictions about the bulging sky, and even an evangelical diehard had picked up on it, spouting his apocalyptic predictions. I would have liked to stick around long enough to hear someone blast back that an apocalypse generally included the entirety of humanity and not just a city built on gaming tables and dancing girls, but I couldn’t wait any longer. Even if the sky didn’t fall, Li wouldn’t last much longer, and very possibly, neither would Skamar. So with their faces fueling my resolve, I again spun the dial on the lock, and lined up the Archer glyph so the combination tumbled like fates falling into place.

“In and out, Archer. Make it fast,” I murmured, licking my lips as I focused on the candle. Dread washed through my body at the sight of that pinched taper, and I couldn’t help wondering how many days or weeks of my life I’d lose this time around. At least now I knew what to expect. I also had something to look forward to-or back at-once I was there. Hunter would get my message and be waiting for me upon my return. So, shaking, I leaned forward and blew. Nothing. I’d forgotten to grasp it at its base, linking my energy and-I now knew-my soul to it. I did so, blew again, and this time the candle snuffed out.

Smoke wrapped around my body, somehow managing to be both insistent and light. I heard a sound, faint chaos stirring inside me so that my thoughts bolted and scattered. Then my mouth was pried open. My soul screamed. And my world disappeared once more.

I was shaking as the Rest House revealed itself, smoke and vision clearing gradually to reveal the bar like a mahogany snake across from me. My hands were empty; the water bottle hadn’t made it over. The knife in my belt was gone too. Dammit. I frowned as Bill gave me a little wave from behind the bar. The silver-eyed dealers just stared, and the torpid denizens merely shifted their eyes before turning back to their cards. Mackie’s acknowledgment extended only to a tip of his hat and, of course, the second verse of my personal song. The murder ballad, I realized, that he’d begun on my initial visit here.

When that temper bursts to life, dear

Her pretty eyes, they flare to red

But that black heart has its own fear

Which may strike her down instead.

“Cheery,” I deadpanned. His head swiveled my way, as if on a hinge, and he grinned that skeletal smile, adding an extra flourish to the song’s finish.

I turned my eyes to the wall with the Most Wanted posters, gaze locking on my yellowed sheet in time to see more features being burned into the fraying paper. The whole of my surname was now visible, and the O and A clearly outlined in the first. One more entry and they’d have my portrait in full. I’d be stuck there forever.

Bullshit. I wasn’t going to return here, ever. I was going to find Jacks-ask, force, coerce, convince, kill him, if it meant getting what I wanted-and then take the information back home, save my world, a child’s life, fix the manuals of Light, strengthen my troop, keep Ashlyn safe, and live up to the designation of superhero and Kairos.

In that order.

For now, I searched out that asshole, Tripp. My eyes landed on Shen.

“How you healin’ over there, Miss Olivia?”

“Better than you would if I laid hands on you,” I shot back. “In any world.”

He grinned, and despite my words I knew I’d be in trouble if I took one threatening step toward him, so I dismissed him and went back to searching for Tripp.

He was actually at the bar, and it was clear he was suffering, the teetotaler giving in to temptation. I smiled as our eyes met, his weakness invigorating me. I wanted to tip his head back and pour that cloying liquid down his throat. I wanted it to permeate his every cell and slow his movements like sap running down a tree trunk. I wanted his power stolen from him as thoroughly as mine had been ripped from me. I strode across the room, boots reporting off the hard pine floor. The feeling of all eyes on me made me feel powerful, even as the heat seeping in from behind that bright red door began its invisible assault.

“Welcome back, Miss Olivia,” Bill said, with his easy friendliness. I fought the urge to stuff the bar rag down his throat.

“Bill.” I angled my head his way. I caught my reflection in the mirror. Old Joanna-dark-haired and dark-eyed, pissed. “Hello, beautiful,” I said to myself, then turned. “Tripp.”

Tripp licked his bottom lip, his mustache twitching with a knowing smile. “Told you you’d be back. One taste of the power afforded women in this world, and the other is easily abandoned. Especially irresistible to Shadows too.”

“I’m not back to stay, and for the last time, I’m not a Shadow agent.”

He scoffed, and leaned his elbows on the bar, addressing me though the back mirror. “Well I am, on both counts apparently,” he muttered, but got over his bitterness quickly enough to shoot me a dark look. “And I recognize one of my own. You are Shadow. Look at your fucking eyes in that picture.”

He jerked his head toward the wall, but I didn’t follow his gaze. I’d already seen my father’s eyes staring back at me, and I shrugged away the comparison.

“In any case, why not return to a place where you’re untouchable?”

I raised a brow.

Tripp scoffed at my arch look. “Your exit didn’t count. You destroyed gaming chips. You wasted valuable fuel when there’s too little of it to begin with. Besides, first rule in the Rest House: don’t piss off the piano player.”

“And speaking of our homicidal little entertainer,” I said, glancing over at the man who’d fallen still and silent again, like a giant mechanical doll. “When do you think Mackie’s going to come after you?”

Tripp jolted at that. “Why would he? I play by the rules.”

“You don’t drink, which allows you to win all of the hands-”

“Have you seen how long it takes these fuckers to finish a hand?”

Good point. “But you don’t give up any powers that way. In fact, you haven’t given up much beyond the initial soul energy it took to cross, have you? The people running this show are bound to get sick of that after a while. Even the freebies in Vegas dry up when you don’t play.”

He snarled, resettled his cowboy hat over his head, and swirled his drink. “It’s a game to them. A novelty. They want to see how hard they can push me. How long I can withstand their temptations.”

“But, Harlan, you’ve already been here a very long time.”

His eyes snapped back to mine, and I let knowledge shine through in my smile. I’d looked him up after Warren’s mention. My ability to read the Shadow manuals was still coming in handy.

“I’m willing to tell you how long…for information that can help me bring down your old master, the Tulpa.”

He looked away, but there’d been hesitation in his gaze. “You got the wrong Shadow agent.”

I looked around the room like I didn’t care, wiping my brow as I watched slow hands being dealt. The soles of my feet were starting to burn. Tripp didn’t move. Time for a different approach. “Why didn’t you ever try to escape?”

He looked surprised at the question, but shrugged stiffly after a moment. “I did. Right after I first arrived. The dealers tried to stop me, same as you. Every time I made a move toward our lantern, Mackie would raise that knife. Then they stopped trying. They realized before I did that someone had locked the entrance from the other side.”

The memory blanketed his face like a fever. There’d probably been a moment of exhilaration, where he thought he’d had them all bested, only to be followed by a dizzying plummet as he realized he had nowhere to go. I swallowed hard, and told myself to remember who this guy was. He destroyed mortal lives…and once belonged to the troop that most wanted me dead.

“And now? Why don’t you try again? Why didn’t you attempt to come with me? Follow me? Help me?”

“You’ve only been gone half an hour,” he said, and glanced back down at the glass in his hand. He tipped it to one side, watching the liquid run down the sides of the glass, and missed the way I goggled. A half an hour on this side of the candle? My God, time wasn’t just altered over here. It was turned inside out. “But I was thinking about it.”

“And yet you hold a glass of death in your hands.”

He pursed his lips and shook his head. “Lady, I may not know how long I’ve been here, but I can tell it’s long enough that I have no place left back home. You think I’m not a part of this world just because I haven’t sipped from this glass, but I am. As much as I’ve fought against it, my energy has been bleeding out of me in a slow trickle. I am a leaky faucet.”

He looked me up and down, and frowned. “I don’t know who you are, and can’t even guess at your lineage and sign, but I know this: whatever I had in that world is long gone.”

We didn’t say anything for a long time. I knew what Warren would say about Tripp’s ennui. Good riddance. And before this conversation I would have thought the same. But knowing how long he’d been holding out the hope to return, I couldn’t help but admire his fight.

Tripp mistook my silence as implicit agreement. “See? I told you you’d like this place.”

“You’re wrong, Tripp. I chafe at certain things that go on in our world,” and I made sure to include him in that equation, recognizing him as more than just a thread in the fabric of this one, “but I don’t want anyone else to feel lesser just so I can feel more.”

Harlan looked at me like he was seeing me for the first time.

“Well, isn’t this a peach,” Bill interrupted, grin wide as he looked over our shoulders. Tripp and I turned together. “Two new songs in one day.”

The first thing I saw was Mackie lifting his head and arms. The second was a cloud of smoke billowing from my lantern in lapping waves, building an opaque wall as an acrid scent rolled across the room and threatened to make me sneeze. A bright flash, the daguerreotype capturing a new image, and suddenly a figure began taking shape before our eyes. It was obviously a man, broad-shouldered and thick-necked, tall, though his features were obscured in the swelling haze. I glanced over at the wall of posters to see a delicate image burning through a new page, the angles tapered, and drawn so finely that it almost looked feminine.

Because it’s the first pass, I thought, turning my attention to the most assuredly not feminine form solidifying before us. The smoke abated and the man lifted his head. My jaw dropped as he scanned the room. It snapped shut as his gaze stilled on mine. He smiled.

“Oh, my God.”

Here’s an agent, his story epic

Because he’s a ghost, even in plain sight

He’s Machiavellian, his life a grand trick

But he grounds it with his might.

Jaden Jacks, I thought, swallowing hard, was in the Rest House.

I don’t know whether the heat was finally sinking into my pores, or if the shock at seeing the man whom many in my world considered a ghost taking shape in front of me was what kept me immobile, but I didn’t move for what felt like a long time. Yet Jaden Jacks was clearly real, though at first no more than a blurry silhouette backlit by the wall of lanterns. His form solidified as the smoke from the snuffed candle cleared, and I got my first good look at the man I’d previously only known from Tekla’s ripped-up manual.

His skin was dark, the color of brewed tea, though light compared to the black clothes he sported. Battle wear, I saw, similar to mine. His hair was cropped close, so white-blond it was obviously bleached, which would have been funny except that it worked. Everything about him was daring and in-your-face. His musculature was dense beneath his fitted shirt, like tendons and marrow and bone had been baked, brick-hard. He flexed his fingers and the movement shot up the length of his arm in a fast twitch, so that even his shoulder moved. He was a force even at rest, and probably the strongest human being I’d ever seen.

But his eyes, I thought, inhaling sharply. His eyes were pure layers of sunlit amber.

Nostrils flaring, he took in the scent of the room as as-sessingly as his eyes took in the sights, both senses thrown out like weapons. He scanned the division of washed-out men at the poker tables, the women leaning over the banisters like colorful banners, and when he finished-and had determined no one was going to attack-he said one word only. “Solange.”

The deep voice rumbled through the room, through my body, spiking in my nerve endings to shake me from my numbness. I looked to Bill, whom Jacks had intuitively, and rightly, addressed, and saw the bartender’s lips thin to a narrow line, his rag moving in slow circles on the bar. A smile slipped onto my face before I could stop it.

Behold, dear viewers, this world’s male species reacting under threat.

“Miss Solange doesn’t take unsolicited guests,” Bill replied shortly, eyes cutting to Mackie. Jacks caught the look and swiveled his head, but Mackie remained slumped, unresponsive and detached.

“Recognize him?” I whispered to Tripp.

He shook his head, and Jacks caught the movement, setting the full force of his attention on Tripp, who swallowed audibly, as recognition flashed in Jacks’s bright gaze. But shouldn’t Tripp recognize him as well? And how could this be the first pass on his Most Wanted poster? Warren said Jacks was, and had been, over here for some time now.

Except, I suddenly realized, his energy wouldn’t register here if he’d used someone else’s soul for the crossing. I glanced back at the brand new Most Wanted poster, and decided I’d been right the first time. It really was a woman featured there. He was using another innocent to gain entry. Just as he’d used the changeling’s the first time.

So he’d murdered a woman simply for an audience with Solange.

“Tell her Jaden Jacks is here,” he said to Bill, and without waiting for a reply or even glancing at me, he made his way to the staircase. I moved to stop him, but Bill’s eyes flipped in their sockets, and I braced, just in case he was reacting to me. His head did, indeed, turn my way, but then he grimaced, like he’d bit into a lemon, before the expression smoothed out into a smile. He gestured, magnanimously, up the staircase. “She already knows.”

The other men began to grumble. Bill bent his head, muttering as he scrubbed at the bar. Mackie remained immobile. I expected someone to stop Jacks, but nobody even tried, and he took the stairs two at a time, stance wide as he paused at the top, head tilted as he wondered which way to go.

No, not wondered. Determined.

“Wait!” I yelled, but he only nodded to himself and cut right, utterly ignoring me.

“Shit.” I sighed. The last thing I wanted to do was head up those stairs. The real-time sink was there. I knew it. Everything was slowed on the lower level of the rest house, the life energy of the men conserved by as little movement or thought as possible. But up where the women moved in color, adornment, fluidly, easily…weeks could be lost just exchanging pleasantries. Yet I couldn’t return home without any means of helping Li or Skamar or my troop. Better a quick, or even slow, death here-lost trying-than returning to fight a helpless battle.

The predicament made me hate Jacks all the more. I pushed from the bar without another word and headed up the stairs.