City of Souls

5

Setting out to find Skamar and actually doing so were two different things. She’d been at war with the Tulpa essentially from the moment she’d been “birthed” or fully realized in this world, so she didn’t have a home, any contact information, or even the ubiquitous cell phone. Still, randomly wandering the city was the least effective way of finding someone in short order. So the next morning, under an unseasonably warm sky, I headed to the one place I knew I could leave word that I was looking for her.

The parking lot of the pink-stuccoed strip mall where Master Comics was housed was only half full when I drove by, but I parked a few blocks away at a day spa Cher had once dragged me to, and walked back.

Although none of the Shadows knew about my Olivia Archer cover identity, I still felt exposed just waltzing up to the building in the middle of the day. Perhaps I should have taken the added precaution of approaching via a portal. It wouldn’t necessarily have kept me from being spotted by an observant Shadow, but the black and white camouflage might get me past the inattentive.

“Too late now,” I muttered, reaching the storefront. I visually tagged two portal entrances-one alongside a sewer grate, and another above the passenger side of an abandoned car-options if I had to flee, priceless in a world where I suddenly found myself with too few.

Oddly, I also found the entrance locked. I glanced around, but the OPEN sign was bright orange against the glass front, and the hours of operation hadn’t changed. I gave the door another tug, and when it didn’t budge, found a sliver of space between a Green Lantern poster and the ever-popular Spider-Man and peeked inside. The shop was teeming with children. I saw Kylee and Kade, two of the newest changelings, and Douglas, the little shit who used his body to shield the Shadows from harm when they were in the shop, but none of them looked my way. Even when I rapped on the glass, they just continued perusing comics and playing games too complicated for the mind of someone as simple as me.

“Excuse me.”

I glanced over to find a skinny kid staring up at me, arms so straight at his sides I wanted to tell him to fall at ease. He was watching me open-mouthed, as if mesmerized by a movie screen. As if, I thought with a degree of annoyance, he was watching a horror flick. Unwilling to continue with the absurd stare-down, I stepped aside, and he pressed his back against the glass, inching toward the door. I got a whiff of adrenaline and fear, but before I could grab the handle he slipped inside, cowbells jangled…and the door rocketed shut behind him. I stepped back, looked around, and tried to follow. It might as well have been a handle attached to a cement wall for all the good it did.

What was going on?

Squinting between Spider-Man’s legs, I saw the kid who’d slipped inside point to me, and a man’s head popped into view. I waved…with my middle finger.

Zane Silver scowled in reply. He was the shop’s owner…and though he looked like a nerd who got off on things like freeze-dried ice cream and collectible sock monkeys, he was really a seventy-three-year-old man trapped in time. It was that whole “great power requires great responsibility” maxim at work. He had the ability to mentally watch the events of our world and record them in comic book form-a gift, sure-but ever since he’d accepted the position of record keeper, he couldn’t resign until someone else took over the duty. Nobody’d been willing to in a good half century, so a retirement including bridge games and gumming his food was a long way off.

Drawing back, Zane then reappeared outside of what I’d begun thinking of as his command center, circling the counter grumpily to head my way. I rolled my eyes, straightened, and waited for him to let me in.

“What the hell-” I began as soon as the door swung open.

“Go away!” he snarled, and began pulling the door shut again. I barely got my foot wedged between the door and frame.

“Let me in, Zane! It’s dangerous out here.”

“That’s because you’re out there. Now go away.”

And with that, he stomped on my foot, kicked my leg out of the way, and pulled the door shut.

“Evil, psychotic, geriatric Martian…!” I hopped on one foot while cradling the other, and decided to stop complimenting him. He couldn’t hear me anyway. Fine. If the old coot wasn’t going to let me in this way, I’d break in via the rooftop skylight. That’s what I’d done last time.

Bound to the building as surely as he was bound to his service, Zane worked on the lower floor and lived on the upper, with groceries, mail, take-out food, and dry-cleaning-for all his valuable T-shirts-delivered to his door. If he even attempted to leave-and he hadn’t in the time I’d known him-then the voices in his head that helped transcribe our world’s events would turn on him and drive him into madness.

I kinda felt sorry for the guy, even as I removed a skylight pane for my break-in. After all, I’d probably be cranky too if World of Warcraft action figures were the highlight of my existence. Then pain splintered my limbs like sliv ers of glass were being inserted via my nail beds. Sizzling sounded nearby, and I found myself on my back, staring up at a blank, blue sky. I blew a tendril of burnt hair from my eyes, wondering if my appendages were missing from my body. Because I couldn’t feel any of them.

“Wow! That was great! It was like she was yanked backward on a fisherman’s hook!”

“Awesome.”

“Do it again!” The first voice said, and I felt a light thump on the rooftop as someone hopped up and down. “Zane! Zane! Make her do it again!”

I grunted in objection and pushed myself to a sitting position, having to squint to focus. Two blurred silhouettes sharpened, but blurred again when they shifted. A rat’s nest of shit-brown hair appeared behind them at the half-open skylight, followed by chunky cheeks and a body that had to be wedged through carefully to access the roof. Zane joined the two nimble preteens already there, a remote control in his hand. I looked at it balefully.

“About time, Archer. I’ve been dying to try out my new toy.” Zane put his hands on his hips, belly jutting from below his T-shirt as he inspected me for damage. He, and the changelings, knew exactly who I was, what I looked like, and what I was trying to do. They weren’t allowed to say, just as they couldn’t tip the balance the other way and reveal those selfsame details to us about the Shadows.

“Let me guess,” I said, wiggling my toes. All still there. “You’ve got cameras up here?”

“Sensors, man!” The first kid, whom I now recognized as Dylan, was so excited he had to draw heavily on his inhaler. Shoving it back into his pocket, he pointed. “Under that wadded up newspaper…inside that Coke can over there too.”

“Awesome, huh?” said the other kid again. Kade. He had a habit of turning every statement into a question.

The high-pitched excitement did nothing to help the buzzing in my head. “Please, please, piss off.”

“My mother would be mad if she heard you talk to me like that.”

“She can-”

Dylan knew what I was going to say. “Don’t talk about my mother!”

“Yeah, because politics, religion, and mothers are off limits,” I muttered, clamoring to my feet. The jolt had been a thankfully short, if powerful, shock.

Zane was looking at me with a down-turned mouth. “You really shouldn’t talk to kids that way.”

“They’re not going to remember it anyway,” I said. All memory of this time in their lives would be erased upon onset of puberty. Just as it should have been for Jasmine, I thought, reminding myself why I was there. “Besides, they shouldn’t go around electrocuting people.”

“Zap this bitch again, Zane!” Dylan was still pissed about his mother.

I held out my hands as Zane cocked his thumb above the red button. “Look, I just need some help.”

“You’re dangerous, Archer. You could get us all killed. Just look at Jasmine.”

“I didn’t touch her!”

“You did. You touched her inside. You displaced part of her chi with your own. You’ve split her soul in half.”

Accidentally split it in half. I sighed. “Okay, but I’m trying to figure out how to fix her. The manual detailing how to do that would be a big help.”

Because such a thing had been done before. An agent named Jaden Jacks had displaced a changeling’s aura, and the details of how he’d ultimately fixed the kid were somewhere in the Shadow manuals. It was just a matter of finding it, impossible without spending months in the effort…and if Zane wouldn’t let me in.

As expected, he shook his head. “As record keeper, I can’t reveal anything that might unbalance the equilibrium of the Zodiac. I work for both sides.”

Shadow agents couldn’t read the manuals of Light, and vice versa. It kept a sort of cosmic balance between the two sides. But I could read both sides, I thought irritably, because I was both. This had caused the Shadow manuals to be altered somewhere-there were fewer thought bubbles detailing what a featured Shadow agent was planning; more once they’d already acted-so I didn’t see why Zane couldn’t just throw me a bone.

“I’m trying to bring it back in to balance,” I said.

He shrugged. “You fucked up and now karma is weighing down the scales in the Shadows’ favor. You’ll have to find it yourself.”

“Why don’t you just kill Jasmine?” Kade said snottily.

I took a threatening step toward him instead.

Wide-eyed, he backed straight into Dylan, who landed flat on his butt. I smirked. His voice cracked as he yelled. “What? Like you haven’t thought of it. You’re half Shadow! You live for that shit, right?”

“If your mother could hear you now,” I muttered, because I hadn’t thought of it. It would have never occurred to me…but now it was in my mind. I turned back to Zane, who was watching me closely. “Is he serious?”

“See! She’s interested!”

“Shut up, Dylan.” I glared over my shoulder. He fumbled his inhaler. “I’m…curious.”

“It’s simple, Archer. Jasmine’s like a leech, sucking your power from you in long, slow pulses. If you want to reunite your split aura in your body, along with all the powers she’s been siphoning off, then she’s gotta die.”

It wasn’t the first time these kids had said that. They knew of Jaden Jacks and the changeling he’d injured, though the report of the child’s death was more of an assumption. The kid and Jacks hadn’t been seen since, not even in a manual, and that was odd. Full-fledged troop members couldn’t leave the valley. It was one of the maxims that ruled our existence.

“Jas knows it, too,” said Dylan. “That’s why she doesn’t come around here anymore. Well, that…and because she’s spending time with Li.”

Li. I swallowed hard. Li, who was eight years old, and clamoring to take over Jasmine’s position. Li, who’d somehow been injured when the Tulpa had attacked me. Li, who was deteriorating by the day because of that injury, and would continue to do so until I figured out a way to fix her sister.

And that’s when the manuals had stopped being written. That’s what was keeping the fourth sign of the Zodiac from coming to pass.

“Look, I don’t want to kill Jas.” Or her little sister. “I want to find the manual that shows how Jacks healed his changeling, or find Jacks himself. Barring that, I need to find Skamar so she can tell me how to ‘walk the line.’”

I muttered this last bit, rolling Warren’s words over in my mind, still having no idea exactly what they meant.

“What did you say?” Zane asked sharply.

“I said I need to find Skamar. If I leave a message with you, can I be sure she’ll get it?”

“Skamar’s in hiding. She needs safe zones to recover from her battles with the Tulpa, and you’ve done away with those.” I opened my mouth to object, but he was already waving that subject away. “But go back to the part after that. About walking the line. Who told you that?”

I tilted my head, caught by his sudden interest, and his seriousness. “My troop leader.”

He lifted a brow. “Warren Clarke?”

“No. Jabba the Hutt. He also said to tell you he needs an octogenarian to help round out his criminal empire. You may have a future yet.”

Zane scowled. I was about to write off his question, but then I remembered how anything that happened in Las Vegas’s underworld ended up in a manual within two weeks. I continued staring at him until the silence elongated uncomfortably between us. From the expression blanketing his face, I knew what he’d say even before the question was out of my mouth. “You know about Midheaven too, don’t you?”

“Of course. I know everything relevant to our world.”

I’d asked him once before if he thought Midheaven was a myth. At the time, though, I hadn’t had Warren’s permission to do so.

“Let me guess. You can’t tell me anything about that world, right? Some sort of cosmic checks-and-balances, right?” That would be right in keeping with the same powerful law that prevented the changelings from telling their favored troop members about the opposing side’s actions. The same reason the little sickos who favored the Shadows knew, but couldn’t tell, of my Olivia Archer cover identity.

“I can’t tell you,” he confirmed, with a shrug, “but not because it’s forbidden. Midheaven’s energy doesn’t register over here. That’s why it’s not in any manual. It’s another world entirely.”

“But one Warren now wants me to enter.” Because he knew, or at least thought, that Jaden Jacks was over there? Or that Jacks could tell me how to fix Jasmine? It would make sense. Zane clearly didn’t know what had happened to the kid, and as he’d said, he knew everything that happened in this world. But how was I going to get to Midheaven if I couldn’t find Skamar in order to learn how to walk this “line”?

“It has to be because of the safe zones,” Zane was muttering, shaking his head like he was perplexed. “He’d never reveal its physical existence otherwise…”

Yeah, what about that? I fisted my hands on my hips. “Why?”

“Because it’d be better if it didn’t even exist,” he said in that eerily serious way that made me want to giggle and shiver at the same time. “Midheaven is a pocket of distended reality. It’s distorted, and a place for people-usually rogue agents-to hide. It serves as a way to escape detection as they made their way into the valley.”

“Ahh…” Now it was making sense. Rogues were agents, either Light or Shadow, who’d been cast out of their home troops either due to personal infractions or political unrest. In other words, if their troop was disbanded or destroyed. If that happened, they were free to leave the city they’d formerly served and become independent agents. They officially became rogues when they entered another largely populated city, where another troop already resided. There could only be one star sign for each position on the Zodiac, so even entering a city with a full Zodiac was seen as a challenge. We had orders to slay them on sight. That’s why Regan was no longer a threat. No one on either side of the Zodiac would stand up for her now. “So Warren didn’t tell us about Midheaven because of the rogue agents.”

“He didn’t tell you about it,” Zane said direly, “because it’s a twisted place, and it twists you in return. You go in one person, you come out another.”

“Experience shapes people,” I countered.

“Midheaven strips them.”

Shaking my head, I decided this was already turning into an infinite circle. Find Skamar to find Jacks to fix Jas and restore our safe zones. Yet I needed a safe zone in order to find Skamar and Jacks, to fix Jasmine and restore those safe spaces. “What a clusterfuck.”

I hopped to the ledge, already considering my next step-beyond the one that would have me leaping thirty feet to the alley floor-when Zane, still in zealot-geek mode, stopped me.

“Don’t you want to hear the song?”

I looked up at the bright, wide sky, wondering when the minutia of this world was going to stop bitch-slapping me. I stepped off the ledge and turned.

“I love songs,” said Kade. Dylan hit him. Anxious to get on with the business of saving the world, I’d like to have done the same, but Zane was already clearing his throat, straightening formally, and widening his stance. Then he began crooning like he was headlining at the Sands with a half-full martini in one hand.

Beneath the neon glowing bright here

Lies a land of starry skies

Look below dear, not in the middle

But kill the rushlight in two tries.

“Wow,” I said, and he shot me a rare smile. “Put on a button-down shirt and a few gold chains and you’d have yourself a career.”

His face fell. “Shut up.”

“No, seriously. You’re not half bad.”

“It’s not funny!” He began pacing, fat face clouded and red. “You’ll memorize that if you know what’s good for you. That shit can save your life!”

I thought of all the other shit that was supposed to be helping me too. “Let me see if I’ve got this right. I’ve got to find a tulpa, walk the ‘line,’ enter Midheaven, and find a Shadow agent…and the only clue is a badly written murder ballad?”

He pursed his lips, then shrugged. “Pretty much.”

I hit the ledge again. “Good-bye, Zane.”

“Don’t come back here, Archer. Not unless you’ve fixed this.”

Twisting, I cocked a fist on my hip, but my brows drew together when I saw what he was holding aloft. It was a beat-up photo of a freckle-faced boy, sandy-haired and lanky with youth. I’d never seen the kid before, but I knew who he was. Zane would only carry a worn photo of one kid with him at all times. “Jacks’ changeling.”

“His name was Ricky,” he said, voice edged in granite. “And I don’t want to lose any more.”

He meant changelings. Jaw clenched, I swallowed hard. “You haven’t lost this one yet.”

And I was going to do everything in my power to make sure we didn’t. Even if it meant entering a fabled world armed with nothing but a song.