City of Souls

27

In addition to the support of two flighty, mortal women who’d never wavered from my side, it helped somewhat that I had achieved my goal. I discovered Thanksgiving week that in my last completed task as a superhero, I’d finally brought the belated fourth sign of the Zodiac to life. This effectively ferried Jasmine on to the next phase in her life, healed Li, strengthened the agents of Light, caused the manuals to be written again, and gave Skamar a recorded name.

By transferring the rest of my soul, and all of my powers, over to Jasmine in the depths of that flooding pipeline, I had reunited an aura within the changeling, making her whole again. Skamar was resurrected…and though I’d missed what had proved to be a stunning climax, I’d read later in the first printing of the manuals of Light that she screamed to life under the power of a broken sky, and rocketed from her cross to pin the Tulpa to the ground with only her thumb. He managed to flee, but she followed, trailing sizzling sparks, like stars, behind her.

As for the fourth sign of the Zodiac-what we’d all been wondering for months now-it had proven more obvious than the previous three: the Kairos will sacrifice herself for a mere mortal.

Good thing I hadn’t known that one beforehand.

The fifth sign, or portent that one side of the Zodiac was gaining dominance over the other, was also brought to light. I had my driver pull into the strip mall parking lot at Master Comics, and waited in the car while he went inside, partly because I didn’t want to risk an appearance by Olivia Archer in the shop-not only because I was lacking powers, a conduit, support, or a troop-but mostly because I couldn’t bear facing the changelings. Despite saving one of their lives and restoring the balance between the two sides of the Zodiac, I had a feeling they too would turn their backs on me, and I couldn’t take that. Not yet.

This intuitive feeling was confirmed when my driver reemerged empty-handed, and thoroughly confused as to why the owner of the shop had refused to sell him a mere comic book.

“Did you tell him who I was?” I asked, sounding a lot more imperious than I felt as he peered in the passenger’s window to give me the bad news. He clearly expected to be sent back into the shop.

He’d also not only told Zane who the comics were for, but offered more money for them, and expressed an interest in a number of collectibles as well…all to no avail. His frustration and pure wonderment at the situation-and I was sure part of this was due to my interest in a comic book to begin with-was etched across his normally placid face.

I sighed and leaned back in my seat. “Get in the car, Kevin.”

“But-”

“It’s fine.” I shook my head. “It’s…fine.”

But just as we were sliding from the curb, a figure darted in front of the town car. Kevin slammed on the breaks, narrowly avoiding the small child. He cursed her and wiped his brow, but I slid the tinted back window down and took a good long look at the healthy, glowing, beaming girl.

“Hi, Miss Archer,” Li said in a high voice that was as strong as I’d ever heard it.

I could only nod.

“Zane has reconsidered your driver’s offer. He’ll take the money along with your word that these remain…collector’s items only.”

I cleared my throat. “They’re for my personal collection.”

Kevin looked puzzled as he watched Li hand me the small stack of comics through the open window. Our fingertips touched as she drew her hands away, and I felt a light squeeze on my pinky, so fleeting I might even have imagined it.

“Thank you,” I managed in a whisper.

“No. Thank you.”

Li turned away, and I twisted in my seat to follow her progress around the back of the car, until she leapt back onto the walkway. “Wait!”

I fumbled at the console until Kevin finally lowered the opposite window for me, and Li turned.

“You, um, you look familiar,” I was stuttering, and I reminded myself that high emotions could sometimes be scented. “D-Do you have a sibling?”

“An older sister, but…”

“But?”

She frowned, pretty face pinching up. “But we don’t hang out much anymore. She’s…moved on.”

The air whooshed out of my chest like it’d been kicked. “Oh, well. I’m sure you’ll be close again one day. When you grow up.”

The faraway look disappeared as her eyes met mine. Her beautiful, unmarked face widened in a perfect smile. “No rush.”

Then she skipped back into the comic book shop, bells jangling before the door shut firmly behind her.

“Weird kid,” Kevin commented, before catching my hard gaze. “B-But seems sweet.”

I looked down at the manuals, randomly flipping one open. Nothing jumped out at me or flashed or sounded from the pages. Just a normal comic book for a normal person. I let it fall shut on my lap and leaned my head back as we slid from the parking lot. “No, you were right the first time. She’s about as weird as they come.”

I pored over the manuals once I was alone in Olivia’s old penthouse. My driver had been reluctant to leave me and John-the-overbearing-lawyer had sent Angie knocking on my door, but I sent her back and used the mechanical wheelchair to ease around Olivia’s penthouse. Someone had put up ramps that ran from the kitchen into the sunken living room, and cleared enough space for the chair. If I still had my powerful sense of smell, I could have said exactly who it was, but the olfactory clues had long disappeared under my mortal nose. So I threw my meds down the sink, shook up a stiff cocktail, and started reading.

The Tulpa, as suspected, had gotten to Jasmine. The deed was drawn in black and white in the brand-new manual of Light, though parts of the experience were missing. That was fine; I was more interested in what had happened to Warren when he returned to the troop without me. His confession was spelled out in full-how he’d been trying to get rid of Hunter because he was worried that the weapons master was a distraction to me, just like Ben. My guess was that anything to do with Hunter would now be omitted because to mention him was to mention his alter ego, Jacks, and Midheaven. My troop knew nothing about either of those things. I could only hope that the fate of both would be revealed in time. There was nothing now.

The manuals did show an argument breaking out between the senior troop members and Warren, the former wanting to at least contact me and thank me for my sacrifice, Warren forbidding it. That made me feel marginally better, though nobody ever disobeyed his orders by coming to see me. Warren’s argument was that after I’d “betrayed” them by leaving Shapiro’s Kitchen to follow Regan and Hunter, and by making the choice to give Jasmine my chi rather than taking it back, they no longer had an obligation to share anything with me. Micah brought up the idea of sharing some of his protectant with me…at least for a little while. Tekla then wondered if they should at least let me know about the advent of the fifth sign of the Zodiac.

“She’s no longer an agent,” Warren replied flatly to them both, his face half shadowed on the colorless panels.

Fine, I thought harshly, throwing that comic onto the granite countertop. Because the fifth sign of the Zodiac, the one that had yet to come to pass? The Shadow will bind with the Light.

“Have fun with that one, Warren,” I muttered darkly. “You asshole.”

I glanced at the manuals scattered across my lap, thinking I should put them all away for good. I should put blinders on and live as ignorantly-no, I corrected myself, as happily-as other mortals.

“Third time’s the charm,” I said, gathering the comics together to throw them in the trash. Time to start over. Again.

But when I lifted the lid of the bin in the kitchen, just as I was about to release the lot of them, I thought of my conversation with Solange in her planetarium. Nobody can walk through this life unchanged.

These stories were a part of my past now. If I was going to build on it, I’d have to remember it all, even if I couldn’t speak of it to anyone. Otherwise there’d be holes in my mind, and I’d be eternally on the edge, ready to totter into one. Besides, one year ago I’d been stripped of everything that provided my life with meaning. I’d then built a new one, as a superhero, and for the last year the job, the duty, the identity, and the goal-that need to restore balance-was all there was. I’d accepted that as the Kairos there were going to be sacrifices demanded of me, and though I had no clue what they’d be, or how they’d come to pass, for a while it was enough to know I had a place in this world.

And now Jasmine had a place in this world, her proper place. Li did too.

And Ashlyn was going to need help finding hers. Not to mention a safe place to hide from the Tulpa now that he knew of her. Skamar might be keeping him busy, but I knew he’d send Shadows to track the girl as soon as he had a chance. At least he didn’t know her full name, or if she was even still in Vegas, so she was safe from him for now…and from Warren.

I placed the manuals on the counter and returned to the bedroom to look out the window my sister had once fallen through…where it all began. I might not be an agent of Light, I thought, staring out over the city I’d saved more than once, or a protector of these people and this valley anymore, but I had experience in protecting my own. Even in a fragile mortal body-one I assumed possessed only a third of a soul, and lacked an aura altogether-I still possessed a spirit that was fiercer than ever.

Embrace your contradictions, Solange had said, looking like a goddess wheeling among the stars.

“Be myself,” I murmured, thinking it sounded simple…which was probably why it was so hard.

I glanced down to find Luna, white and liquid, pushing against the wheels of my chair, and I scooped her up, burying my face in her fur as I stared out the giant windows to the city below. The floodwaters had receded. Vegas was back to normal. The agents of Light wanted nothing to do with me.

“Maybe I’ll leave town for a while,” I said, nuzzling Luna’s head. She purred like a freight train. The cat had been like glue since my return, as if mortality made me more approachable. “Besides, one little human can’t make a difference, right?”

The cat looked at me like I was an idiot.

“I mean, what’s one person?”

But then I thought of Hunter, and the painful pang chimed again like a gong in my chest.

I thought of Jasmine and what I’d done for her alone.

I thought of Li, just a mortal girl, nothing more than a blip on the mental radar of someone like the Tulpa, and sighed.

Okay, so I could leave the city now and go on vacation, but I couldn’t lie to myself. I knew the worth of one person.

One person was a vote and voice.

One person was the difference between a resurrection or an apocalypse.

One person, I thought, as the neon blurred before me, was an entire world.