The Scent of Shadows

22

Doors that won’t open, elevators that won’t come when you call…they’ll come now.

Intending to test this theory, I entered a locker room almost oppressive in its silence, my heels clicking sharply on the cement floor. The lockers fanned around me like sentinels guarding the perimeter of the circular room, and there was the faint hum of energy coursing through the illuminated emblems. My eyes went immediately to the centaur, glowing steadily and reassuring in a soft green neon.

I tried to ignore the five dormant signs, but Warren’s admission kept sneaking up on me—ten agents, not five, had been murdered in the past few months—and the unlit glyphs belonging to those agents looked like bullet holes to me. Soundless, colorless, empty voids where no light could penetrate as long as their deaths remained unavenged.

Dragged from the recesses of a broken mind, the true memory of my mother made me believe that I could do that. Avenge them. I turned my attention back to my locker. Whatever was inside this steel trash bin was going to help me be the woman she’d given her life for me to be. It would teach me how to be the Archer. It would help me create a safe place for myself in this world again.

So forgetting about the empty eyes of the fallen star signs bowing around me, I put my hand to the palm plate. The button in the middle lit up in a red, inviting square.

“Just so you know,” I said, whispering into the locker’s horizontal slats, “the answer to my own life’s mysteries aren’t inside of you. They’re inside of me.” I pressed the button, a bittersweet smile touching my face. “My name is Joanna. I’m the Archer of Light.”

And as easy as that, a click, and the latch released. I shook my head. All I’d had to do was take a trip down into myself…and come back as a different person.

The photo Warren had shoved in the day before wasn’t lying at the bottom of the locker as expected, but was taped to the inside of the door, along with three others, and my breath caught as I viewed the four together.

The first was of my family as I once knew it. My mother, bent forward, one arm around Olivia, another around me. We were all wearing matching smiles, and it looked like we were at Disneyland. Xavier was in the picture too, but he was relegated to the background, arms folded resolutely across his chest, studying the domestic scene as if wondering who those people were. His impatience with the moment was set in his shoulders, though I couldn’t read his expression. His face had been cut from the photo.

The second was of my mother alone, obviously taken at the sanctuary. She wore a black bodysuit that clung to the muscles of her able body, her bright hair gathered high atop her head, arms stretched forward as she aimed some sort of weapon at an invisible enemy. Her face wore an expression I’d never seen before—determination, hatred, strength—and I smiled looking at it.

Then Ben’s picture, a smile lifting one side of his mouth as he slept, dreaming of a future that would never be. I traced his jaw in the photo, remembered how it’d felt beneath my fingertips. This photo would also serve as a reminder that some loved ones had to stay tucked safely away. My mother had taught me that much.

Finally, Zoe with another woman. Their arms were thrown about one another’s shoulders, and they were laughing into the camera, looking impossibly young. It meant nothing to me, but it obviously had to her, so it would remain.

The only remaining item was nestled in the corner on the floor, a small package wrapped in brown postal paper, secured with aging twine, with a note tucked between the folds of the paper. I weighed it in my hand. Sturdy and small—the length and width of one palm—it was weighty for its size. Removing the note for later, I ripped open the packaging.

“Ha!” I laughed in triumph. My mother’s conduit. I glanced back up at the photo, compared the two weapons, and mimicked her stance. My conduit. Thumb-sized arrows were lined in a chamber much like a gun’s, waiting to be cocked. Flat-headed, the bowstring was made of some shiny and supple wire, while the body of the weapon shone like onyx stone. Anxious to see what she’d said, I fumbled with the accompanying note, addressed to: The Archer.

They’re coming for me. I’ve foreseen it. To keep me from speaking truth they’ll take away my voice. Help me. My eyes for your voice? Speak, and I’ll show you the way to redemption. To the outside world. To the traitor.

I gasped. This couldn’t have been written by my mother. I started over, noticing this time the crispness of the paper before my eyes fell to the signature, an initial only, the letter T. It was followed by a postscript.

Look behind you.

A hand fell on my shoulder. I yelped and whirled around, automatically tucking the conduit behind me.

“You got it open,” Vanessa said, jerking her head at the locker. Chandra, to her left, said nothing, but her jaw clenched convulsively.

I shifted to stand in front of her, and she stiffened when I shot her a knowing look. “Well, someone delivered a little package to my room earlier, and it kept me from sleeping. So I thought I’d come up and give this a try again. Funny, isn’t it? That something meant to hurt me led me to this?”

Chandra’s cheek twitched. “Congratulations,” she said, but I could tell by the dark violet hue ringing her body that she didn’t mean it.

Vanessa cleared her throat and pointed at the note clutched in front of me. “What’s that?”

“Just a note from my mother,” I lied, turning away to tuck it back into the wrapping with the conduit. I settled the package in the locker and was swinging the door shut when Chandra stopped me.

“Hey! It’s Tekla!” She pointed to the photo of my mother and her friend, which answered the question as to who the other woman in the photo was. And, I thought, might answer who the note was from as well. Who else but a woman with the Sight would speak of lending me her eyes?

In exchange for my voice, I corrected mentally, as Chandra and Vanessa crowded in closer. But what was I supposed to say on her behalf? And to whom? The knowledge was emerging inside me, I could feel it like the stirring of bees in a hive, but it was deep still, too remote to be understood. But…

There’s a traitor among us.

I swallowed hard. That wasn’t just the babbling of a madwoman, I thought. Tekla had known this was coming, and wanted my help.

“Your mother was beautiful,” Vanessa said, turning to me. “I’ve always loved that photo.”

My brows lifted before I could stop them. “You’ve seen it before?”

“Oh, sure. That’s one of her trading cards.” She shrugged, and tucked a loose curl behind her ear. “I guess she liked it as well.”

“It seems so,” I agreed, while nervousness grew inside me. I didn’t really know either of these women, and since I was still trying to figure out what was so important about the items in this container, their studied gazes made me feel exposed. As if they were looking inside of me as well.

A traitor. Among us.

“What’s that?” Chandra asked, pointing at the package, providing the opening I needed. With a flick of my wrist I slammed the locker shut.

“Nothing,” I said coolly, and leaned against the door. It was nicely symbolic, if I did say so myself. “What’re you guys doing up here?”

“Nothing,” Chandra said, her voice like arctic ice.

“You guys,” Vanessa sighed wearily, and left to open her own locker.

“I don’t have time for this,” Chandra muttered, heading back to the exit. “Meet you down there, okay, V?”

Vanessa nodded and rummaged around in her locker. “Tell the others. Just because Warren’s gone doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do it.”

“You got it.” Chandra left, and now I was staring at Vanessa.

“What do you mean he’s gone?” I asked, coming closer.

Vanessa shot me an irritated glance, and waved me out of her light. She’d sunk to the floor and was holding a rag in one hand and a can of oil in the other, alternately polishing and squirting at a steel club the width and length of my forearm. There was another piece of metal at her side that looked like nothing so much as a large nail file, but I didn’t know for sure. More superhuman toys, and I’d had my fill for a while.

“I mean, he left an hour ago to retrieve Gregor,” she said, bending close to her work. “If he’s made the crossing, they’ll be back soon. Otherwise they’ll wait for dawn.”

I bit my bottom lip, wishing I’d gotten to see Warren one more time before he’d left. I could’ve shown him this note. And with us linked the way we were, he’d have known what happened to me in Greta’s office as soon as he saw me. With just a look, one sniff, he’d know I was someone he could trust. We could have figured this out together.

Instead, I stood in frustrated impotence before Vanessa, all the newly acquired power and energy swirling in my bloodstream, flowing in my bones, straightening my spine…and with nothing to do with it. I sighed, attracting Vanessa’s attention.

“You look different,” she said, peering up at me as she picked up the large nail file. “Did you do something with your hair?”

I shook my head, and glanced toward the door. “He’s really going to leave the city without protection?”

“Warren?” She shrugged, looking down, and pressed a button I hadn’t noticed before. Five steel claws burst from one end of the bar. She began sharpening them with the large file. “That’s what he said.”

“But what about all the innocents? What about the city?”

“It’ll just have to survive without us.”

“It’s Las Vegas,” I said, drawing the words out.

“I know.” Vanessa rolled her eyes as she tossed her rag back into the locker. “Kinda makes you wish you were born in Kansas, huh?”

I forced thoughts of Warren, and trust, aside and tried to decide on the most logical next step. Unfortunately, I hadn’t thought that far ahead yet. “So what do we do now?”

“Nothing to do but wait,” she said, standing and moving a safe distance away. With a deft flick of her wrist the steel bar arched open, a yawning half smile followed by the curling claws. It was a fan, similar to the kind used in the Victorian era, but far more deadly. She fanned herself delicately and glanced at me from behind it. “My conduit. You like?”

“It’s beautiful,” I said, allowing the touch of jealousy I felt to tinge my words.

That stunning smile lit her soft, round face as she flipped it closed, pleased. Then she snuck another glance up at my face, and cleared her throat. “Listen, a few of us are meeting over in the cantina for drinks. Want to join us?”

I wrinkled my nose. “A cantina? You mean…like a superhuman kegger?”

She laughed at that, flipping her fan open and closed, slicing it through the air in a deadly dance of familiarity. “Yeah, I guess so.”

I hesitated. I certainly didn’t want to walk into a repeat of the day’s earlier performance, me against them…because even though I sensed mistrust swirling between them, they were still unified in their uncertainty about me. Then again, going would give me a chance to study each of them individually. Nobody knew about my note from Tekla…or about my session with Greta. Vanessa was right. Why wait for Warren?

“You did really well today,” she said, glancing over at me as I continued to remain silent. She put away the file in a large tool chest, and tucked the fan into the small of her back. “Not just against Chandra, but Hunter too. Most people find him too intimidating to effectively spar against.”

“He was intimidating,” I said, not adding: Right up until the moment he pissed me off.

“Well, you didn’t look intimidated,” she said, then paused. I could feel her choosing her words carefully. “You looked powerful. Frightening.”

And there it was, out in the open. She shut her locker door, turning to me, and unlike in Saturn’s Orchard, she met my eye. “Look, today, when we did nothing…I just want you to know we’re not like that. We protect our own. We stick up for one another. We were just reacting, or not reacting, to the Shadow in you. I’m sorry things got out of hand. We all are.”

I glanced at the double doors Chandra had just disappeared through and made a disbelieving sound.

Vanessa answered it with a sigh of her own. “Look, Chandra’s one lifelong ambition has always been to serve this troop as the Archer. Every child of the Zodiac grows up dreaming of what it’s like to be an agent of Light.” She touched my arm, willing me to understand. “Your arrival here was a big blow to her, but she’ll come around in time.”

I remained unmoved, refusing to look her in the eye as I said, “She wants to vote me out of this troop. She called me a…an independent.” A rogue agent.

Vanessa’s impatience got the best of her and she snapped, “Yeah, and in doing so revealed her greatest fear. Because if you’re this generation’s Archer, what does that make her?”

I opened my mouth, before closing it again. Vanessa was right. Chandra might have the trust I so coveted from the rest of the troop, but she’d never be the person she aspired to be as long as I was living. I knew what that was like, not getting to be who you truly wanted.

I looked down, finding I was unconsciously rubbing at my arm. The puncture marks from Hunter’s whip could still be seen there. Injuries from conduits, I remembered, always scarred. “I don’t know if I can handle too many more training sessions like that,” I said, letting a trace of my own vulnerability show through. It’d be interesting to see what Vanessa did with it. Interesting…and telling too.

“It’s not just you, okay?” Vanessa glanced at the door to make sure Chandra had really left and no one else had arrived. “Things have been boiling over for weeks, months now. It’s never been like this before, we were all raised together, and we keep putting on a front like everything’s okay, but it’s not. It’s just…not.”

“Because Tekla said there was a traitor?”

She hesitated before nodding. “And no matter how much Warren denies it…well, look around.”

She gestured at the dormant glyphs, and the feeling of emptiness reached out to snag my attention again.

“Look, just come to the cantina,” she said, voice soft and imploring. “Let us start over.”

I’d have liked to have just said yes, but I had to wonder why she was being so open and friendly. I’d probably have jumped at the chance if only there wasn’t one big question mark surrounding her. Could she be the traitor?

Only one way to find out, I thought, and because of that I gave her a nod that had her smiling as she led me from the locker room.

“What are you guys celebrating, anyway?” I asked, our heels clicking in tandem against the stone floors.

“We’re not,” she said. One hand on the frosted double doors, she sighed, and turned her head to stare past me, back into the cavernous room. Her gaze landed on the dead Scorpionic glyph, so dark her eyes were almost smudged. “We’re remembering. It’s been six months to the day since Stryker was killed.” And she pushed open the door and disappeared.

The cantina was probably the most surprising room in the sanctuary so far, with couches in cubes of midnight velvet clustered around silver tables, the silver accenting echoed in the corner bar. As Vanessa made herself at home behind it, I looked up to find a ceiling glowing with stars, and shapes in the form of constellations—the Big Dipper, the Little, and others I recognized but couldn’t name.

There was a fish tank spanning the length of one wall, its occupants floating around in colorful, blissful ignorance. The opposite wall held a flat screen television. Sting was crooning softly about watching every step I took, and I smiled as the steel candles on each table shot to life as Vanessa pushed a button. It was more ultralounge than cantina, I thought, sinking into a velvet chair and the feeling of being enveloped in a futuristic womb.

“The four elements,” Vanessa said, gesturing around the room. “Fire, earth, water, air.”

I frowned. I saw the air amid the stars above, fire in the slim candles, and water, obviously, represented by the fish tank. But earth? I looked to Vanessa.

She smiled wryly. “From dust to dust.”

Us, I thought. We represented the earth, and the passing of all beings from it. Well, it certainly lent poignancy to the occasion.

“Maybe I shouldn’t be here,” I said, watching Vanessa stir one of two pitchers she’d filled with vodka, some sort of syrupy schnapps, and at least three other juices. The liquid was turning a disturbing shade of brown, like overbrewed ice tea, though Vanessa didn’t seem worried.

“You’re one of us now.” Taking in my skeptical expression, she tapped the spoon on the side of the sink and set it down. “I mean it. You just have to let the others get used to it…uh, you. That can’t happen if you seclude yourself away.”

I knew that, of course. But somewhere from the locker room to here all my I-am-the-Archer-hear-me-roar power had trickled away, and the thought of sitting in this intimate little enclave with five people who needed to “get used to me” was less than inviting. “I don’t want to intrude. I didn’t know him.”

“Well, I did, and he’d have liked you. Not just your looks, but your spirit.” She placed one pitcher in the stainless steel refrigerator to chill, and brought the other, along with two tumblers, over to me. “Stryker said we reinvented ourselves every time we stepped outside the sanctuary. Your effort, he would say, just your intention in being here, should be met with respect for what you left behind. He’d want you here.”

Her words settled me, so when she poured me a cup and held it out to me, I accepted it and sipped, tentatively. I took a larger swallow when I found it fruity and bright on the tongue, and it left my palate to settle gently in my belly with a low, glowing warmth. I’d stay. I’d watch. For a while anyway.

Then the door swung open and Chandra strode in, her brows burrowing down when she saw me. “What is she doing here?”

I didn’t snap back because what Vanessa had told me about Chandra had softened me a bit…and the drink was slowing my tongue anyway.

“Looks like she’s drinking,” Felix said, following her in. He flashed me his boyish smile, but I could see the worry lingering beneath it. Worry over the occasion? Or, like Vanessa earlier, worried about me, frightened of me? I couldn’t tell.

Micah wasn’t far behind, and he beelined for me, bending over to check again that his handiwork had survived the afternoon, his own worries about me apparently resolved. But after a moment he cupped my chin, eyeing me curiously. “You look different somehow. Can’t put my finger on it, though. Are you feeling okay?”

“Actually, I feel great. Like I just woke up from a long nap.”

“Sounds auspicious,” he said warily. I went ahead and watched him back. After a moment he blinked, then shrugged as he lowered himself into a seat, the bulk of him barely fitting between the armrests.

“If you believe in fairy tales.” Chandra dropped her weight into a chair across from me, but I was saved from having to think of an Oliviaesque reply by Hunter’s sudden appearance. He too paused when he saw me, and colors around him shifted from black to silver to gold as the energy spiked between us. I had no idea what that meant.

He settled himself next to Chandra, and I had a moment to think he’d be a joy to photograph. He was so composed in the flesh that a still shot wouldn’t have made much of a difference from what I was seeing then, but at least I could study him at length—searching for what exactly ran beneath that still facade—without him knowing I was doing it. If, that was, I ever had the nerve to point my camera his way. “So. We’re all here.”

All save Warren and Gregor. And Tekla, came the unbidden thought, even though she wasn’t supposed to count. I took another sip of Vanessa’s concoction, and looked around at what was left of Zodiac troop 175, paranormal division, Las Vegas.

“What do you all do?” I asked, suddenly curious. I wasn’t just trying to ferret information out either. I really wanted to know. “On the outside, I mean?”

Warren was a bum, Gregor a cab driver. Olivia had been a socialite—I supposed that’s what I was now—so it seemed the point was to plant Zodiac agents within the entire social spectrum of the Las Vegas valley; matched, I was sure, by the Shadow agents in one form or another. So what about everyone else? “I know Micah’s a physician, but what about the rest of you? Who are you when you’re not being…you?”

“College student,” Felix offered, saluting. “UNLV.”

“Yeah,” scoffed Chandra. “For the past eight years.”

“Hey, it’s not my fault! Warren keeps making me change my major.” He turned back to me and winked slyly. With his tousled hair and ready laugh, I could imagine him as the most popular guy on campus. “I keep an eye on our initiates, those close enough to metamorphosis to give off strong olfactory signals. I’m also on the lookout for the Shadow initiates. Fraternities, parties, clubs, that’s where the young ones are most likely to be.”

“Stryker was a crime scene analyst with Metro,” Vanessa offered, lifting her cup, reminding us all why we were there. Cups were lifted all around. We drank to his memory, and Vanessa refilled the cups. “It was the perfect way to gain access to fresh kill spots.”

Nobody spoke for a moment, and I knew they were remembering the warehouse where Stryker had been ambushed. A kill spot. I drank some more.

“Well,” Micah finally said, shattering the silence. “We’re not the only ones who’ve lost star signs this year. Chandra alone is responsible for two Shadow kills.”

“Not me,” she retorted, tipping her cup back. “I’m not a star sign, remember.”

“You identified the suspects,” Vanessa soothed.

“But Hunter took them out.”

“We partner well together,” he replied modestly. “Most fire signs do.”

Spotting my confused expression, Micah expounded further. “Chandra works at Sky-Chem, the largest chemical lab in the state. She can use DNA to identify the Shadows or initiates who go searching for a job.”

Chandra’s lips pursed as her eyes went from Micah to me; she was fighting the urge to tell the story herself—doing so meant she’d have to speak to me—but pride ultimately won out. “I found the first one, their Capricorn star sign, through a urine sample when he applied as a bouncer at a strip club. It was easy for Hunter to go in after that, pretend he was there for the girls. The other was a hair test, the Shadow Virgo.”

Hunter saluted her with his cup, a look passing between them, and as much as I disliked Chandra, I had to admit it was a brilliant cover. Every hotel in town sent their employees—and there were thousands—for mandatory drug testing; as did the government agencies, the police department, and the entertainment venues. Still, I wasn’t ready to compliment her. I turned to Vanessa.

“And you?”

She leaned back, crossing her long legs. “Reporter for the Las Vegas Sentinel. Crime beat. See, Stryker would be first on a scene, analyze the evidence, and if it looked like a paranormal hit, he’d call me. He’d cover the case, search and bag all the otherworldly evidence, and I’d write it up in a palatable version for the mortals. So ‘Agent of Light Takes Out the Shadows’ Twelfth House’ becomes ‘West Las Vegas Man Hangs Himself in Garage.’ That was one of my better ones.” She toasted herself, draining her cup.

“I see,” I said slowly, swirling my drink, watching as a small whirlpool formed there. I stilled the cup and glanced up at Vanessa. “Or ‘Shadow Agents Track New Archer’ turns into ‘Heiress’s Sister Plummets to Death.’”

The laughter immediately died from Vanessa’s eyes. Shoulders slumping, she touched my arm, and I could see the others noting her acceptance. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be joking. But it’s all for the greater good, you see.”

I nodded finally. It wasn’t her fault, after all. I was just being overly sensitive, sentimental, and probably getting a little drunk. I needed to slow down and focus. “Well, it’s a dirty job, but—”

“Yeah, something like that.” We tapped our cups together. Chandra scowled, dipping her face in her own cup. The others also seemed well on their way to being truly shit-faced, but my own drink seemed to be turning on me, the sweetness now cloying in my mouth. I pushed my cup away and turned to Hunter. He was the only one not drinking. He was also the only one who hadn’t answered yet. I raised a brow.

“Director of Security,” and before I could ask, he added, “Valhalla.”

I gaped at him, and now my mouth went dry. “You’re trying to infiltrate the Archer organization? Like my mother did?”

The drink might have been making me a little slow, but I immediately recognized how easy it’d be to act as a liaison between the Light and Shadow sides if he literally worked for the Tulpa’s organization.

“Not trying,” he said, steepling his fingers. “I’m doing it.”

And I didn’t know if that was a jab at my mother or at me. He tossed me a half smile, also unreadable, but was clearly pleased at my obvious confusion.

“Someone has to,” Chandra said.

“Chandra,” Micah said in a warning voice. I sighed inwardly, but was careful not to let my fatigue show. I was getting better at hiding my emotions too.

Chandra’s mouth quirked slightly at one side, but she gave no other sign of having heard him, and unlike Hunter and me, she wasn’t trying to hide anything. Her eyes were swimming with drink, but that wasn’t all. Deep pockets of hatred and resentment covered her entire psyche. I didn’t even have to probe to see the mossy plum color radiating sickly around her. In her eyes I hadn’t just usurped her place in the Zodiac, I’d stolen it out from under her. And her dreams of becoming this troop’s Archer floated, dead and bloated, on the surface of her gaze whenever it lit upon me.

I caught Vanessa, her own silent gaze imploring me to let it go, so I stood, ostensibly to retrieve the other pitcher of alcohol, and with the half-drunken hope that when I returned with it, Chandra would do the same, or at least have found something more interesting to look at. But she was still there, sneering as women had sneered at Olivia so often before. Judging as they had. She held out her cup for me to serve her, then had the nerve to say, “Your mother failed us all when she deserted her star sign. And look who she deserted it for. What a waste.”

The contents of the pitcher I was holding—fruit bits, sweet and sticky, citrus-infused alcohol, ice chips—were poured over her head. It was my turn to sneer, but she was standing and had slapped the satisfaction off my face before I even saw her move.

“Girl fight,” I heard Felix say.

“Superhero girl fight,” I corrected, and wheeling back, steered an elbow into her temple. The force of my action turned me around on myself, so I followed it up with a backward elbow to the nose. Chandra staggered, as surprised at this as I’d been at the slap, but she didn’t fall, and the drunken brawl was on.

She lunged, but Felix was quicker, intercepting her just as neatly as Hunter stalled my own forward motion. Chandra and I both struggled and cursed, continuing a bit just for form’s sake, though neither of us had a chance of getting loose.

“Ladies, ladies,” Hunter said, sounding bored.

I slammed my head back against him, satisfied when I heard him grunt. Petty, but pleasing. And he let me go.

“I am finished apologizing for who I am,” I said, jerking away from him and whirling to face them all. Chandra wasn’t the only one who needed to know this. I was breathing hard, and I knew my aura had turned red with anger. “Your discomfort with me is your problem, not mine. Got it? I know who I am.”

And I did. I could be beautiful without being soft, and I could be tough without being bitter. Without becoming Olivia, without experiencing the world through her body and eyes, I would have never realized this on my own. I folded my arms across my chest and silently dared them all to speak.

“Finally,” Micah murmured from his corner, lifting his drink.

“Yeah.” My eyes flickered to meet his. “Finally.”

A gurgle sounded in my stomach. Then a rising of heat in my gorge. Suddenly, I shuddered, and my intestines seized. Pain wracked my body, and I screamed, collapsing and clutching my loins. A searing pain shot from my thighs to my chest, paralyzing my lower back, and I whipped forward. God, what was in that drink? The thought swam away as another series of slashing incisions, like hot pokers, scored my flesh. I felt singed and sliced as I curled into myself, my rasping cry dying out in breathless pain.

“What’s happening to her?”

I gave an uncontrollable twitch, then puked vodka, citrus, and blood.

“Jesus!”

“Olivia! What’s wrong?” Felix was there, but his outline blurred above me, tears and agony ruining my vision.

My organs felt skewered, like they’d been ripped out from inside me. I had to be dying, I thought. I hoped. “God,” I cried out, and this time arched backward as an invisible blade bumped along my spine.

“It’s inside. It’s my insides…” I looked at my hands, which had been clutching abdomen and thighs, expecting to see them drowning in blood, but there was nothing. Surprise had my mouth closing momentarily. The pain abated, no longer acute, but the spasms and heat lingered. A groan spiraled out of me, filling the cantina.

Micah had reached me at some point, and I regained my sense of self long enough to realize he was cradling my head in his lap, his physician’s hands searching, inspecting my ribs and stomach and legs, and finding nothing.

“It’s not me!” I doubled over again, a fresh wound cutting me open from sternum to pubic bone. It wasn’t me, of that much I was sure. This was a power outside myself, outside this room too. Still, waves of nausea built again in my stomach. I took a deep breath, but the air was metallic with the taste of blood. I groaned, writhed, and finally, near unconsciousness, lay still.

“It’s okay. Just stay where you are, take a minute.” Micah shifted, turning to the others, though I couldn’t see them. “Somebody go get Greta.” There were footsteps, then the report of the door.

“She’s not bleeding.” Hunter’s voice, laced with concern, which would’ve been gratifying if it didn’t scare the shit out of me.

“Maybe she drank too much.”

The pain had subsided, but the echo of it was still in my bones. I swallowed hard against the vomit souring my throat and the brighter scents of pain and fear.

“Maybe she’s allergic to the masking pheromones?”

“No, I tested the solution on a small patch of skin before I applied it. They’re a perfect match.”

It didn’t feel perfect, I wanted to say, but a tongue of swollen sandpaper inhabited my mouth. It was as if I’d been denied drink for a week instead of imbibing only minutes before.

Then the roil in my gut again, a tight coil of fear that wasn’t really mine. I couldn’t understand it. It was like the core of my body belonged to someone else. I managed to sit up with Micah’s help, his large palm warm and supporting on the small of my back.

“Maybe she—”

The door to the cantina swung open with a resounding bang. A figure was silhouetted in the shadows of the hall; a man of great bulk, middling height, and only one arm. The dim lights of the cantina made him appear a ghost, and bent at the waist, he wavered like one as well.

“Gregor!” Vanessa abandoned me for him. “God! What happened?”

“Ajax,” he managed, before bending over himself. My body froze, even my shuddering stopped for an instant, and my eyes darted to the hallway behind him, half expecting to see Ajax there, the tip of his flaming javelin already pointed at my heart. “He found me last night, just after dusk. I don’t know how…I didn’t do anything…I didn’t—”

“Shh,” Vanessa said, arm over his shoulders. “Of course you didn’t. Come sit down.”

“I can’t…” He looked up at us with as pained an expression as I’d ever seen on another human being. “I can’t keep them in.”

I glanced down, unprepared for what supernatural beings could do to another nonmortal. His guts spilled forward, bulging from the hollow of his body, pink coils of twisting organs snaking from the cavity. His one good arm was plastered with blood.

“Oh, my God!” Micah left me so quickly I wobbled, then puked again, this time with shock and revulsion.

“I’ll take care of you,” I heard Micah say over my retching. “Don’t worry about a thing.”

“Did you see Warren?” Hunter asked. He was the only one who appeared remotely calm. I wondered if he was still reclined in his seat, ankle crossed over his knee, a detached observer. I couldn’t look, though. My eyes—like everyone’s—were fastened on Gregor.

His face collapsed upon itself, and red-tinged saliva bubbled from his mouth. “They used me as bait. He tracked my pheromones.”

The room fell dead silent.

“And Warren wouldn’t listen.” He was sobbing now, mouth wide. “I tried to tell him no, not to do it, but he never listens.”

“What? What did he do?”

“He traded himself for me.” Stunned by this news, nobody moved. Another helpless sob escaped him. “They let me go, but I was followed. I’m so sorry. I couldn’t close off the entrance to the boneyard by myself. And there was nobody to close it behind me.”

I gathered it was no small thing for a Shadow agent to infiltrate the boneyard. Still, what did it matter? Any enemy who tried to enter the sanctuary would fry, right? I opened my mouth to say as much, but another fiery assault wracked my body. My eyes bulged painfully from their sockets, my throat stretched and burning in a soundless cry. And I no longer cared about the sanctuary.

“They’re torturing him,” Micah said, kneeling next to me. “He and Olivia are linked, remember? She must be experiencing the residual effects.”

If this was residual, I never wanted to feel the real thing. Another slice, and I squeezed my eyes so tight spots danced there. I came out of it in time to catch the end of Gregor’s words. “—because he knows her true identity. We have to hand her over at dawn—”

“Or they’ll kill Warren,” Hunter finished for him. This time I did turn, arching my neck to find him. He sat back in his chair, eyeing me dispassionately, sizing me up like I was a sow to be sold at the country fair. I closed my eyes, wondering how I had ever thought him handsome.

“We can’t send her up, even if we wanted to,” Vanessa said. “She’ll incinerate herself before she even breathes fresh air.”

“Wha…?” Gregor grimaced. Felix quickly filled him in, and Gregor dropped his head back, groaning. I doubled over again.

“Stop it!” I screamed, to the sky, to Warren, to the torturers, and to a God I didn’t even know existed. I screamed until my throat was raw, and when I finished, a chuckle whispered like a heavy, bouncing wind across the room. Then the torture stopped. We all stared at one another.

“Your voice,” Hunter said quietly, eyes narrowed on my face. “Ajax heard it.”

“They’re linked,” Micah repeated.

I thought of Warren, the way he’d left that afternoon; agitated, angry, afraid. I won’t lose another! And I realized this must have been foretold. Of course, a man who believed the good of the troop came before that of the individual would do just that. He’d have known, and he’d have gone anyway.

“Oh, my God,” Micah said, realizing the same thing. He lowered his head into his hands, Gregor’s blood staining his temples and forehead and ears. “Ajax has been one step ahead of us the whole time.”

I conjured the image, my last, of Warren striding down the hall, trench coat billowing at his ankles, the need to do the right thing driving his limbs. My heart sank as I looked at everybody’s face. If this was a game, I thought, clutching my gut, we were one move away from losing it all.