The Scent of Shadows

30

“Did you really call the Tulpa ‘Pops’?” Warren asked, holding up the latest manual from Master Comics. I glanced at the title. It arched across the cover in bold silver letters. The Archer, it said. Agent of Light.

I’d picked it up for Warren the previous day, thinking he’d enjoy reading it while he recuperated. My experience in the comics store was markedly different than the first time. Carl had nearly flown to my side, taking liberties by grabbing my chin with one fuzzy palm, twisting my head from side to side, ostensibly to get his drawings right. I finally had to tell him I’d shoot an arrow up his nose to get him to stop. The twins peppered me with questions about the sanctuary and my eye shields, and even Sebastian had asked, shyly, to see my bow and arrow. Zane, however, merely nodded my way and said my trading cards would be in soon.

“Your twisted sense of humor must be rubbing off on me,” I told Warren, inwardly pleased as he chuckled and continued to leaf through the comic. He’d been in the sick ward for over a week, and his color was only now coming back. Still, Micah said he’d been lucky. Ajax had skewered his insides with a mortal weapon, not his conduit. The latter, he’d said, would have killed Warren too quickly for Ajax’s liking.

Instead I had arrived, Ajax had died, and Warren would now heal. Meanwhile, the latest comics, both Shadow and Light, showed our enemies backing off, licking their wounds, forced to rethink their strategy against us now that Greta was no longer marking us for destruction.

And now that there was a new Archer among the agents of Light.

“Lunch,” Chandra announced, entering the room with a loaded tray. She was careful not to look my way—as she’d been for the past week. Goaded by Greta, it was Chandra who had slipped the newspapers under my barracks door that night, and she’d since apologized unflinchingly, like a recalcitrant inmate waiting for her sentencing. I’d acknowledged her apology gracefully, if stiffly, but if anything, it made her more antagonistic toward me.

This was further inflamed by my swift, unanimous acceptance into the troop the day before. She hadn’t opposed the vote when given the opportunity to do so, and there’d been no further jabs about my resemblance to a rogue agent, but she’d been sure to wonder loudly about my true identity in front of the others. It was a little obvious, even for Chandra, not to mention totally unnecessary. Ever since Greta had revealed that I was not really Olivia Archer, they’d all been watching me curiously. Though that, I thought, was certainly better than suspiciously.

“Wonderful!” Warren set the comic aside. “Lasagna, chocolate cake, and a nice pinot, I hope.”

“Try oatmeal, water, and a few sliced greens.”

“Damn.”

That drew a smile from Chandra, but after running a quick hand over his forehead, she only nodded her satisfaction and left the room without another word.

“She’s still not talking to me.”

“Give her time. She’s a good person deep down.” He dug into his oatmeal, while I wondered exactly how deep that was. “Meanwhile, the first sign of the Zodiac has been fulfilled, and the legacy of the Archer grows. You’ve become rather well known in the paranormal world. How does it feel?”

I shrugged, recalling that I’d once told him I didn’t want to be a part of this world. A superhero, I’d scoffed. A freak among freaks. “It’s easy to idolize someone from afar. Most of the people reading those,” I said, pointing to the comic, “don’t know me at all.”

“Rena knows you. She thinks the sun rises and sets on your shoulders.”

I quirked a brow. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but Rena is a bit impaired when it comes to matters such as, oh, say, the sun.”

“But she’s a damned good judge of character.”

And I had to agree with that. She’d been willing to trust me when no one else had. I’d have never been able to prove Greta’s culpability without her. For that, I, and Warren, owed her much.

He turned back to his comic, and I watched him for a bit. Greta had told me that something in Warren’s past had made ruthlessness a virtue, and knowing what it was—that the man lying before me had killed his own father—I also wondered what he’d do from now on to make sure it’d been worth it. He’d already proven himself willing to give up everything for the troop. The group was worth more to him than the individual. I liked Warren…but I was going to be careful to keep that in mind.

“Tell me something, Warren,” I said at last.

“If I can.”

“Did you know there was a traitor in the sanctuary?”

After a long pause, he shook his head. “No. I didn’t believe it. I wouldn’t believe it.”

“Then why was it so important to you that my true identity be kept a secret from the rest of the troop?” I asked him, shaking my head. That had thrown me. It’d even made me wonder, for a time, if he wasn’t the real mole. “Why didn’t you want that revealed if you trusted these people so much?”

“Because your arrival was the last prediction Tekla made before Stryker died. She knew…something.” Warren dropped his head back on his pillow, his expression glossed over in one of pain, but it wasn’t for himself. Guilt popped up in him, washing over his outline in a wave of mustard yellow the thickness of tar, its scent as sharp as tear gas. “I don’t know if she foresaw his death or her own imprisonment, but she made me swear never to reveal your true identity once you were found. I didn’t want to break my last promise to her.”

That made sense, I thought, nodding slowly. If Greta had discovered who I really was, it wouldn’t have been long before the Tulpa did as well.

“Okay, but there’s one other thing I don’t understand.” I pointed to my chest, where his second heartbeat had once resided. “Why did I stop feeling you in here? Did the mark Micah gave us wear off?”

He shook his head. “Once I knew you were coming for me, there was no need for you to feel that kind of pain. It would have hampered your ability to perform. You needed all your concentration for the task at hand.”

“So you took it all upon yourself,” I murmured.

“I knew you wouldn’t keep me waiting long.” He shrugged, but there was a world of pain in the movement. It made me want to kill Ajax all over again. Seeing it, Warren changed the subject.

“What do you think of Tekla?”

I couldn’t help but smile. He knew what I thought of her. I’d been spending nearly every waking hour with her since my return, listening to her rant about the “quacks” who read palms or tea leaves instead of looking to the skies. I tried to follow her astrological lectures on planets and houses, elements and polarities, meridians and angularity, but it wasn’t easy. She spoke in code more often than not, had a tendency to begin mumbling to herself in the middle of a conversation, and—most disturbing—mourned Stryker’s passing at the beginning of every hour. I also caught her studying me in the odd moment, worried eyes roving my face like she was reading something interesting and possibly disturbing there. Still, I found her fascinating. “She’s been telling me stories about my mother.”

Warren’s face took on a faraway cast, and one side of his mouth lifted in a bittersweet smile. “There’s a lot to tell.”

“Do you…” I had to stop, and try again. “Do you think I’ll ever find her?”

“In time. If it’s safe. And if Zoe wants to be found.” I caught his hesitation and lifted a brow. “For now, don’t you think it’s enough that you’ve found yourself?”

I nodded slowly. There were still things I didn’t know, still places I couldn’t go—like Olivia’s computer, her true mind—but there were other doors open to me now.

“Thank you,” I told him. “For that. And for…well, all of it.”

His reply was cut off by Gregor’s arrival. He appeared in the doorway and waved his lucky rabbit’s foot at me. “Anyone who wants to cross with me had better come now. My shift starts in an hour.”

Gregor had recovered more quickly than Warren, and was already back to driving cabs, fighting the evil in Sin City in his own superstitious way.

“I have to go,” I told Warren, and stood.

He waved me away, flicking his hand in the air like it was nothing to him. Like there hadn’t been tears in his eyes a moment before. “Good-bye, Olivia. Be careful.”

“Aren’t I always?” I said. I ignored his sudden coughing attack, and smiled as I looked back from the doorway. “See you on the other side.”

Las Vegas, my Vegas, has two faces. There’s the frenetic carnivalesque face of the Strip; pliable, garish, and bright, catering to forty million visitors a year, and striving to make each of their dreams come true…for a price. Then there’s the small-town desert face; dusty, lined with age, and artless, with no pretense or need for it…the one I grew up in. One is all glitz, while the other is barren, but I see both faces—the light side and the dark—as one big, blank slate, like the great baby blue swath of sky arching over the valley itself. You can scribble your own fate across that relentless skyline, and I love that about this city. I also understand why others come here, taking refuge among the glitz and gild, the noise and lights, the talking and screaming and singing and laughter, the smoke and the drink…and forgetting there’s anything at all beyond the garish casino walls.

Being a local, I’d always taken my refuge in my home. Being a loner by circumstance and profession, I also found it in my darkroom. But now my home was no longer mine, and my darkroom—where I spent as many hours lost in the smell of developers and toners as those tourists do in front of the green felt tables—was just a sad reminder of the person I could no longer be. So after I left Warren and the sanctuary, I decided to do what people had been doing in this valley for over a hundred years. I had to create a new refuge for myself. After all, anything’s possible in Vegas, right?

But first I had to say a proper good-bye to Olivia.

“Are you sure you want to do this, darlin’?” Cher looked at me over the top of her shades, blue eyes filled with concern above the mirrored rims. She was driving again, and I jerked my head at the road, swallowing hard, though that wasn’t the entire reason I was feeling shaky.

“I’ve already stayed away too long.”

We turned into the long gravel lane of the cemetery’s back entrance, bumping along in silence until we were dumped into the graveside lot. I looked out the window at the yawning stretch of lawn and let my eyes blur so the headstones didn’t hump out quite so much, and the flowers left by those still living weren’t as garish against the dying winter sky. I grasped my own bouquet tightly in my lap and wondered if my mother had been by yet to visit.

“Olivia?”

I jolted in my seat. Cher had been saying my name.

“Yeah,” I said, shaking my head to clear it. “I’m coming.”

I could do this, I told myself. I would do this. I would stand outside this car with my sister’s best friend, then I’d walk across the lawn in my sister’s shoes and bend over and place these flowers on my sister’s grave.

Which bore my name.

“Who’s that?” Cher asked when I’d finally found my legs.

I shielded my eyes, looked where she pointed, and sighed. I knew just who it was, even from that distance. “That’s Ben Traina.”

He was sitting cross-legged at the foot of a headstone, and he could have been a statue himself if the wind hadn’t betrayed him, rustling the dark curls that kissed the nape of his neck.

“Poor boy looks lonely,” Cher said, and he did. But he also looked self-contained, straight-spined, and resolute.

“You said before that he looked mentally unstable.”

She bit her lip, studying him, before shooting me a wavering smile. “Stability is overrated. Come on. Let’s go keep him company.”

He heard us coming and half turned, standing once he saw who it was. I made introductions, Cher and he shook hands, and then there was a long silence as we all stood, facing the grave.

“Back on the force yet?” I asked, just for something to say.

“You keep asking me that.” He sounded amused, at least, which was a step up from annoyed.

I shrugged. “You were a good cop.”

“Well, now I’m going to be a good P.I.”

I felt my brows winging up. “Really?”

He nodded. “I decided to go out on my own. Take only the cases I want, and concentrate on those until they’re solved.”

I clenched my jaw, determined not to speak. If I did I’d probably start a fight over my sister’s grave. But I was worried. I knew he’d loathed certain constraints as a cop, though he hadn’t crossed any moral lines yet, not even with my death. I knew this because I’d turned our fates around, and I’d been trailing him. He was still looking for Ajax, but it was with a sort of despondent hope, and not the fiery anger that had frightened me so much in those early weeks of my death.

But what kind of man would he be without his badge? What would he become without his “second pair of eyes” to filter the evils he saw? Sought? How would he keep his world bearable?

“Oh, a private investigator?” Cher said, breaking into my thoughts, just catching on. “Like Magnum, right? I loved that guy. Really hot. You’re a teeny bit shorter, sugar, but I guess there’s no height requirement. Do you have to pee in a cup on really long stakeouts? I wonder how I’d manage that?”

She went on and I would have been annoyed if I didn’t know her better now. Plus I could sense her nervousness. Her cell phone finally cut her off in mid-explanation of how great she thought it’d be to have a purse with a secret hidden camera, and did we think Gucci made one like that? Ben and I smiled at one another over her head as she turned to answer the call. She listened for a moment, nodded, then said to me, “Mama wants you to come for supper next week. Or lunch. She says she’s met a perfect man for you, so when’d be good for you?”

God, I thought. Never? “Uh…maybe Thursday?”

“I’ll set it up,” she said, and strolled away through the plots to arranging my dating life. I sighed before thinking of Ajax and reconsidering my reluctance. It wasn’t like Cher and her mother could do any worse than I already had.

“Want to sit?” Ben asked as Cher’s voice died away.

“Okay.”

I realized I was clenching the bouquet, and forced myself to relax. My palms were green with marks from the stems, sticky with the juice of the newly cut flowers. I placed them next to the bunch already lying on the grave, my store-bought buds looking almost plastic next to the wide, spicy blooms I knew Ben had grown himself. I don’t know how long we sat in front of the grave that day, in front of the headstone bearing my name, letting the wind caress our cheeks, the cold from the ground seeping up into our bodies and bones.

“How’s your father?” Ben finally asked. It took me a moment to realize who he was talking about. I’d already stopped thinking of Xavier as my father.

“He’s fine,” I said, mentally adding: ignorant, arrogant, despicable, and blind to the fate I had in mind for him. “He’s just fine.”

We were silent again.

“I was just thinking,” Ben finally said, “of the time when Joanna chased that boy from the school bus. Do you remember that?”

I nodded. It wasn’t as if I could forget. He had pulled my sister’s hair and made her cry. He had called Olivia a tease and a slut. She had only been ten.

“I got mad at Jo for that. I told her I was the one who was supposed to fight the guys. I was the one who was supposed to protect my girlfriends. I told her I would keep you both safe.”

And the boy who’d felt that responsibility was now the man who carried that guilt solely on his shoulders. I lowered my head, and as I did, glanced at his hand on the ground next to me. I remembered how that hand felt caressing my body, and desperately wanted to take it in my own, not caring if we crushed the stems of still-living things between us, if we could only reestablish that link. I wanted to give him comfort, and peace, and take a measure more of it for myself.

Instead, I sniffed. Scented brimstone on the air—faint, but briny with heat and ill will—and left my hand where it was. Then I spotted the token Ben had brought along with him. Not flowers.

“That’s Joanna’s, isn’t it?” I pointed at the silver chain glinting in the sunlight as it hung from one side of the tombstone.

He nodded, swallowing hard.

“I…haven’t seen that in a long time.” How did he get it? The last time I’d seen it, it’d been in this graveyard, circling Ajax’s neck as he tortured the man beside me.

“Well, it was lost for a while.”

Oh, come on. I needed more than that. “So you found it?”

“It was mailed to me. Last week.”

Last week. But Ajax couldn’t have mailed it then. I’d already killed him days before. “Odd,” I commented, hoping my suspicion came out sounding airy. Very odd.

Ben didn’t answer, and I decided it wouldn’t hurt to play up to Olivia’s airheaded reputation a little bit more.

“Oh, hey,” I said, as if I’d only just remembered. “You ever find that guy you were looking for? That one in the jailhouse photo?”

“Mug shot,” he corrected with a sigh. “No. I think he’s…disappeared.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, glancing over at him.

“That’s okay,” he said, too reasonably. “There are others.”

Something flashed behind his eyes, and I had to look away. It wasn’t exactly the look Ajax had pulled on me in the restaurant…for one, his skull didn’t leap out at me. And it wasn’t the glint of pure sadistic glee that Butch had worn in the moments before Olivia’s death. But I couldn’t kid myself. It was close enough to being the look of a killer that it made my belly flip-flop within me. And it looked all wrong on Ben Traina’s face.

And you’re partly responsible for putting it there.

I was. And I had no idea how to fix that.

Ben finally stood. “Well, I’ve been here for a while. I’m going to go.”

“Okay.” I nodded, afraid if I looked up he’d see how desperately I wanted him to stay.

“You wouldn’t want…to go get a bit to eat or anything, would you?”

I steeled myself to the vulnerability in his voice and shook my head. I also frowned at the question. “I can’t. I came with Cher.” And then, so there’d be no mistake, added, “And I have a date later.”

“Of course you do,” he said, but there was no bitterness in his words.

“Maybe another time?” I said, knowing it’d never happen.

“Maybe,” he said, knowing the same.

He left, and after a moment, when I was sure he wouldn’t see me, I turned to watch him walk away. I wasn’t going to give up on him. My second death had wrought changes in him that’d been lying dormant since my first. But as uncomfortable as his sudden fierceness and vigilance made me, I wouldn’t give up. Because God, I thought, watching him, could that man love.

“‘There is always some madness in love,’” I quoted as he paused to say a few words to Cher, the two of them huddled close in the late winter wind. They were braced like they’d survived the worst of the season and were now merely waiting for it to end. My mortals, I thought, protectively. I’d defend them both to my death.

I turned back to the grave.

The headstone was made of rose marble, black veins running through the surface in defiant streaks. It wasn’t what I’d have chosen, but it fit Olivia perfectly. “I’m sorry it took so long for me to visit,” I told her. “I’ve been…busy.”

It was three months to the day since she’d died. Three months since I’d assumed her identity. And this really was the first chance I’d had to catch my breath. It made me wonder what I’d be doing if none of this had happened, and Olivia was still alive, and I was still Joanna Archer.

Probably still lingering in the shadows. Snapping pictures of every man who looked my way.

I sighed, not sure I’d want that back. I’d want Olivia alive again, of course, but walking around in her skin had forced me to do two things: put down my camera, which I had been using as a shield, and take off the mask of the woman I once thought I was. Underneath I’d been surprised to find I wasn’t so unlike Olivia. She wasn’t the opposite of me in every way that counted. She wasn’t as weak and vulnerable as I’d once believed. By accepting that, I discovered myself in her. Still me, I thought, but more so.

I told her. “I’m more like you than I ever would have believed.”

And what a strange world it was when a woman had to lose herself in order to find herself. But these last months had taught me that I was more than the culmination of past experiences, and much more than could be evidenced in my physical body and strength alone.

And so who was I now?

It seemed to be the question everybody wanted answered. But, as I’d told Greta, it really did depend on who was looking. And if someone were looking now, they’d see a beautiful young woman bent over the grave of her sister, her feelings evident in the way her hands shook as she released her battered floral offering, the way her shoulders hunched against the constant press of the wind. She looked, I knew, like a woman with no dreams.

But.

If they sucked in a deep breath of the same wind, fresh from her flesh, they might—if they used their sixth sense—perceive another emotion. One belied by that delicate body. A sentiment as strong as any elemental fury. And one that cast all shadows into light.

I do dream, the scent would tell them. I dream in fierce color. And the hue is always red.