The Scent of Shadows

8

“Police! Open up!”

The words rang in my ears as I came to, lying next to my own vomit. Feeling leaden and hollow, I pushed myself to my knees, then my feet, allowing a moment for my head to stop spinning. My mouth was dust-dry, my eyes crusted over with tears. I didn’t know how long I’d been laying there, but the night sky had cleared outside the destroyed window, and though the lights of the city still rendered the heavens starless, a soft, crisp breeze blew against my back.

Another knock sounded urgently at the front door, and I drifted into the living room to answer it, my feet reporting hollowly on the tile floor. My martini sat perched on the coffee tray where I’d left it, next to my still unopened gift. Tears stung my eyes again, and I had to blink them away as the pounding continued. A neighbor had finally rang the cops. I wondered why they didn’t just knock it down, but swung it open anyway.

Ajax stared back at me. “Hello, Joanna. I’d have come sooner, but I was…detained.”

Shocked, my response was delayed, and when I slammed the door he caught it easily, wrenching it open again. I backpedaled as he shut it behind him. He made no move to attack, instead cocking his head to one side, like he’d just thought of something. “Why, Joanna, dear, there’s something different about you.” He sniffed delicately at the air before snapping his fingers smartly and pointing. “I’ve got it. You’ve changed your hair.”

He did step forward then, and I retreated into the sunken living room. I knew he would kill me. I was injured and he was fresh, angry, and knew better than to underestimate me, unlike Butch. He also had all the inexplicable powers that Butch possessed, and I didn’t know if I could fight that again…or even if I wanted to. What was the point? I’d never been more alone in my life.

“Now,” he said, crossing his arms over his body. This time he unsheathed two serrated pokers, one in each hand. “Where did we leave off?”

Okay, so I’m alone. I swallowed hard. Get over it.

Pounding sounded behind me, and I turned and stared, not quite believing my eyes. There, clutching the parapet of the building, was the homeless bum I’d run over, still looking disreputable, and still popping up in the strangest of places. He was mouthing something, pointing and jerking his head toward the bedroom. I turned back to find Ajax as awestruck as I, his mouth open in obvious displeasure.

“Warren,” he said, lowering the pokers. “I should skewer you through your useless Taurean heart.”

“Warren?” I said.

“Shut up, Ajax, you pathetic excuse for evil. Who dressed you this morning? Certainly not your mother. You look like some B-movie cliché.”

I glanced back and forth, less concerned that they knew one another than with their being able to converse between a thick plate of soundproof glass. And that I could hear every word.

“Don’t talk about my mother!” Ajax said, enraged.

“She should’ve swallowed that load, dawg, that’s for sure. Don’t worry, she’ll make up for it tonight.” And he began to make a repetitively lewd motion with his private parts. Right there on the ledge.

It took another meaningful look from him to realize he was buying me time. Afraid of telegraphing my intent, I fled without glancing back. I heard Ajax’s curse, his feet pounding across tile, but I had the bedroom door slammed, locked, and was already halfway across the bedroom before it crashed open again.

“Give me your hand!” On the other side of the glass, Warren stretched out his own.

“Shit,” I said, looking down. The breeze was much stronger out there.

“Give me your hand now!” he repeated, and pulled me forward from my center of gravity. I cursed again, but was half pulled, half lifted out onto the ledge, and just out of Ajax’s reach.

“Bitch!”

“Come and get her,” Warren taunted. I’d rather he not, I wanted to say, but the bum was already moving away, palms against concrete and glass, back against the building. “This way.”

He paused at the buttress, and held onto me until I was steadied on the ledge. Then he turned and continued moving toward the living room windows. I hesitated. “He’ll see us.”

Warren glanced back, his hair swirling around his head like some mad professor’s. “It’s the only way. There’s a staircase that leads to the roof. On that side, there’s nothing.”

I glanced behind me, swallowing hard. There was a swatch of material hanging from the jagged glass, torn from my blouse when Warren pulled me out, but no sign of Ajax.

“Joanna?”

“Okay.” The word escaped on an exhalation and I nodded. We inched around the corner, my feet a mere inch shorter than the ledge’s width. I traversed the facade, gaining on him, but a gust of wind slapped at me, and Warren grinned as I hugged the facing.

The living room windows shone like gems in front of us, and the light inside was a beacon, calling me back to reality. What the hell was I doing out here?

“Ready?” Warren said.

I nodded, took a deep breath, and followed.

Ajax appeared inside the cozy living room, framed like a slide in a projector. He was in a warrior’s stance, legs wide, arms cocked, hands fisted around the pokers. Warren seemed unconcerned and kept inching along the ledge, a turtle on a tightrope.

“What do we do if he breaks the glass?”

“Try not to get hit.”

I turned around. “I’m going back.”

“Joanna.” His voice froze me in place. I turned to find his crazed eyes sober upon mine. “There is no going back.”

He was right. What would turning from a possible death to a more certain one do for me? It wouldn’t bring Olivia back, or change the fact that I’d killed a man without remorse; and I seriously doubted I could sweet-talk Ajax into changing his mind about doing the same to me. Besides, how many times had I prayed for God to take away the past? To change events so I could wake up and be happy and normal and…like Olivia. Never once had my prayers been answered.

Or had they?

I looked at the man leading me. Sent from the heavens or not—and I had to admit it was unlikely—I knew one thing: he was not who he seemed. He also held the answers to the events that had plagued me the past twenty-four hours. And I wanted those answers. Besides, I told myself, he was right. There never was any going back.

“I’ll follow you,” I said, and Warren’s face lit in absurd elation. “If you promise me two things.”

His brows drew together again.

“First, you have to tell me what the hell is going on, and I mean all of it.”

“Done! Easy-peasy,” he said, and leaned toward me confidentially. “And second?”

“And second? Take a fucking shower.” I wrinkled my nose. If he stunk before, he positively reeked now.

“Such a sweet girl. Glad you’re on my side.”

“I’m on my side.” I edged out, and Ajax appeared again, poised as he’d been before.

“You two finished yakking yet?” His lips moved on the other side of the glass, but his voice bloomed next to me. “Can we get on with this?”

“By all means. I’ve got a date with your mama. Gotta get a move on.” Warren hopped from one foot to the other with a sharp, jeering cackle. This infuriated Ajax and he rushed the window. I lunged for a vertical post, clinging to it with whitened fingertips. Warren did not, making himself a target.

I squeezed my eyes shut and averted my face as the poker lanced through the window. No crash came. Whirling back, I saw the tip slide through the glass as easily as trout through water. Warren dodged, wrapped his hand in the tattered hem of his duster coat, and seized the triangular blade before Ajax could withdraw. He yanked, the blade screeching and stuttering through the glass to the hilt. Ajax’s face slammed against the pane, and I gained another post before he’d recovered.

“Let. Go.” He spaced the words evenly, one eye riveted on Warren.

“You let go.”

Ajax must have sensed the futility in arguing with someone possessing the rationale of an asylum patient. That, or he was sick of eating glass. He pulled away and released the poker. “That’s okay. I have another.”

Viper fast, quicker than I’d have guessed, he had the second weapon spearing through the window, angling toward my gut. I assume everyone has a moment of terrified realization right before their death. I was no different. That sliver of a blade was the sharpest thing I’d ever seen. I anticipated pain, knew I’d be skewered through, and wondered if I’d feel the impact when I fell to my death.

Wondered, briefly, if Olivia had.

I didn’t feel it. I waited, eyes squeezed tight, and still it didn’t come. Having already braced myself for the hereafter, I found this relatively unnerving. I opened one eye. Ajax and Warren were staring at me, wide-mouthed and wordless. I looked down. Bending halfway to the hilt, the steel blade looked rubberized. Then its ruined tip began dissolving, dripping onto the stone ledge, and then down the side of the building like liquid mercury. Nonplussed, I glanced back up at the two men. Were supernatural beings supposed to look that surprised?

“Ah-ha! Eureka! I found her, Ajax! I found her!”

“I found her, you noxious bag of air.”

“Yes, but too late. Too late, and now look. She’s too strong for you! Just as we’d hoped. Just as I knew!”

“She’s not!” To prove it, Ajax yanked the first poker from Warren’s grip, which he’d loosened in his excitement, and thrust again. An inch away from my body it melted like snow. He tried again, with the same results, then dropped the stub with a cry of rage.

By now Warren was almost doubled over with laughter, tears streaming down his dirty cheeks as he wobbled precariously from one foot to the other. “Too strong! Too strong!”

“I don’t understand,” Ajax said to me. “You can’t have that kind of strength. You’re an innocent.”

“Yeah, that’s what Butch said. Right before I killed him.”

“Butch was here?”

“What? Can’t you smell him?” I asked nastily, bolder now that I was safe. Not counting the two hundred foot drop behind me. “Why don’t you use your nose? Sniff him out?”

They both stared, like I was the abnormal one there. Warren found his voice first. “You can’t smell the dead, Joanna. You’ve erased his scent, his essence. It’s as if he never existed.” He turned to face the man on the other side of the glass. “Isn’t that right, Ajax?”

Ajax had begun to shake. “You bitch. You fucking bitch.”

“Are you disrespecting me, Ajax?” Warren said. “Are you? Because if you are—”

“I think he’s talking to me.”

“Oh,” Warren said. “Go ahead, then.”

“I’m going to kill you, you know that?” Ajax told me. “I’m going to find you and I’m going to fucking kill you.”

“How?” Warren asked. “You can’t scent her, therefore you can’t find her.”

“Temporary. When the aureole wears off I’ll be on you like peanut on butter.”

Stupid thing for a homicidal anorectic to say.

“Or like a cat on a mouse.” Warren pointed at Ajax’s feet.

Ajax screeched, and wheeled backward. Luna hissed and began to stalk him, her butt swaying in a mean saunter, tail high and shaking. Ajax continued backing away, casting uncertain looks around him to make sure there were no other feline attackers. Shaking, he made his way to the door.

“This isn’t over,” he said, pointing at me. “Not by a long shot.” Then he fled out the front door just as Luna charged.

“We can go in now,” Warren said.

Luna met us inside the bedroom window. She was licking a paw—buffing her knuckles, it seemed—as she waited for us. She moved over as I climbed through, and wound about my legs, probably expecting a treat. I scooped her up and buried my face in her fur the way Olivia had. The purr shook her body and reverberated into mine.

“I didn’t know your sister had a cat.”

But somehow he knew I had a sister. Had a sister, I thought again, and felt the tears well. “Yeah. She did.”

Warren fell still. Inhaling deeply, he glanced at the window before turning back to me, and his expression—usually so crazed and wild-eyed—was blighted. “Oh God, Joanna. I’m so sorry.”

“You don’t smell her anymore, do you?” My voice was small and didn’t hold much hope. Warren only stood there. I looked away. “Neither do I.”

“We have to get you out of here.”

“Yeah,” I agreed, not caring where we went. “Let’s get me out of here.”

Warren didn’t speak as we walked the five blocks to a roadside motel—not to me, at least—and that was fine. He did, however, keep up a babbling monologue—something about baboons on Mars—which had the few pedestrians we did encounter steering a wide berth around us.

Beneath the garish red flash of a neon sign, a clerk wordlessly handed Warren a room key, and gave my blood-soaked and torn clothing a quick once-over without the slightest change of expression.

Oh yeah, I thought, noting the way Warren’s shoulder-bent stoop gradually straightened as we crossed the dusty asphalt lot, this bum had a lot to answer for.

He opened a gray door, ushering me inside, and flicked on a light to reveal an equally dismal room. The requisite bed, dresser, and bedside tables were so nondescript I barely saw them. I dropped into one of four chairs flanking a battered round table and slouched with my back to the wall, head back, eyes closed. Every once in a while a car would pass along the road behind the building, tires humming and splashing in the puddles left by the storm, before fading away again into a soundless void.

Warren picked up the phone, and speaking lowly, ordered someone named Marty to bring us food. Gone was the feebleminded lunatic who’d taunted Ajax, the one I’d hit with my car. This was a man in charge, who apparently gave orders he expected to be obeyed. I didn’t understand it, but that was a pretty common state of mind for me these days. All I knew right now was that I didn’t want to eat whatever he’d ordered. I didn’t even want to drink…imagine that. Instead, I felt like keeping my eyes closed, mindlessly counting cars passing outside the room until forever itself had come and gone.

“You should shower,” Warren said at last, breaking the silence. His voice was still cracked, dusty with dehydration and disuse, but his words were appropriately somber.

“You should shower,” I retorted, though the usual heat was lacking from my words. They were wearied, weak, and shaky. Like my knees. Like my life.

“Fine. I’ll shower.”

I didn’t move when the bathroom door shut, or when I heard the shower start up. I didn’t move when the knock came at the door, or when a man entered, uninvited, with a tray of bread and lunch meats that made my stomach do an unsettling flip-flop. When he left, I still sat there. Finally, I pushed myself to my feet and crossed the room to stare in the mirror at a woman I no longer recognized. She was dark-eyed and disheveled. She had blood beneath her nails and a stone where her heart used to be. She had killed a man in cold blood and hadn’t an ounce of regret.

“Who the fuck are you?” I said hollowly. The woman stared back. She had no answers for me.

The bathroom door opened and I turned to find Warren watching me, still bearded, but clean-faced and clear-eyed. He had on fresh clothing; a gray T-shirt and baggy blue sweats, worn but odor-free and unsoiled. His hair was snarled and matted, but it was pulled back relatively neatly. Only the uneven gait remained totally unchanged. He wobbled, crossing to the tray to make himself a sandwich. When he finished, he took a seat across from the one I’d been slumped in and looked up at me expectantly.

“Tell me what happened.” He didn’t baby me, and he didn’t beg, just as he hadn’t pleaded with me to shower or to eat. He gave me nothing to rail against, no reason to argue, and so I found myself obediently seated as before. Perhaps he could give me answers. And maybe the answers would provide some relief to the grief and guilt rising like a geyser inside of me again.

I explained as much as I could remember of the night’s events, and when I was done, waited for his response. Warren continued to chew, pausing mid-bite to nod thoughtfully. “That’s why you were able to resist Ajax’s conduit. I’d heard of it being done before, but I’ve never actually seen it myself.”

At my look of incomprehension, he explained. “A conduit is a weapon made especially for the individual operator, a weapon of great energy and power. A conduit, by definition, channels energy. In this case, intent.”

“You mean because the user intends to kill someone else with it,” I said dully.

He nodded. “Here’s the thing, though. Not only can’t a conduit be duplicated, it leaves no trace of existence in the physical world. You literally melted Ajax’s, without lifting a finger in defense.”

Even I was curious how that had happened. “And?”

“It was because you’d just killed another Shadow agent—that’s what we call those in our enemy army—but it was more than that,” he hurried on, excited now. “You used Butch’s conduit on him. You turned his own magic against him. No agent can heal from the blow of his own weapon.

“But, most important, was your motive. Intent. You slew him in vengeance, pure and simple. An ‘eye for an eye’ and all that. Powerful stuff. We don’t practice that much.”

I frowned, not liking the way that sounded. That wasn’t how it had happened. Vengeance was something requiring forethought, and cold-bloodedness. Warren didn’t see the way that monster had carved into my sister’s perfect and delicate skin. Or the way he’d tossed her like refuse from the side of a building. “You’d have done the same thing.”

“Maybe, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t hard to do. You killed a senior Shadow agent, without training, knowledge, or a weapon of your own. We work for years to instill that sort of instinct in our troops and still often find ourselves on the losing end of the battle.”

I looked at him warily. “Who’s ‘we’?”

“I told you before. Zodiac troop 175, division Las Vegas—”

“Fucking superhero shit!” I pounded my fist on the table, a gesture so swift and violent it surprised us both. I pointed my finger at him. “Don’t start that again! I just watched my sister die and could do nothing about it! Nothing! And neither could you!”

“No,” he said softly. “Not this time.”

“‘Not this time’?” I stood, knocking my chair backward as I stalked to the door, throwing it open. “Not any time, nutcase! I’m out of here.”

“Hope your shoulder feels better.”

I froze. Then backed up to look in the dresser mirror. Checked my hands. Then sank onto the edge of the bed. “No wounds.”

He shrugged, almost apologetically. “Fast healers.”

Like him. Like Butch. I dropped my head in my hands. What was happening to me? Here I was healing while Olivia lay dead, her final scream still spiraling in my mind.

“Why her?” I whispered, shaking my head. “Why not me?”

Warren didn’t answer. He just sat there as I sobbed, unashamed and unable to stop, weeping in a way I hadn’t for a decade. Bile rose to coat my throat, and I ran to the bathroom.

When I returned, Warren was still picking at his food, though he seemed to have lost his appetite as well. I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand and took a deep drink of water. It did nothing to erase the cloying sickness from the back of my throat.

Lowering myself to the edge of the bed, I said, “What happened to me tonight?”

Warren took a deep breath. “It’s called metamorphosis. It’s a transformation that marks the beginning of a third life cycle. It happens to all of us when we reach a quarter century in age. Because you were so well hidden, we couldn’t locate you until you began emitting the hormones, the pheromones, that come with the transition.”

“Which is why Butch was sent to kill me at that exact moment,” I surmised.

Warren nodded. “It’s a time of change, one that signifies a move into great power, or at least access to that power. Problem is, the exact moment of transition is also a time of great weakness. You’re frozen, as unable to act or react as a marble statue, though most of our members describe it in terms of heat, a rush of energy into your core.” That, I thought, jibed with what I’d felt. “We usually place our initiates in a sort of safe house, surrounded by our other members, where they can go through the process without risk to themselves or any near mortals.”

Like Olivia. “Why didn’t you do that with me?”

“Because the initiate has to be willing. You’ve been hidden so long your true nature was buried, even from yourself. We couldn’t find you in time to enlist you, much less educate you.”

“So how’d Ajax find me?”

“Opposites attract. You’re always more attuned to that which you fear or hate.”

I let out a hollow laugh that broke down into a tattered cough, and shook my head at the irony of that. So why hadn’t I known what to do about Butch? Why had my instinct only kicked in after it was too late?

“So, that’s how it works,” Warren said, after I motioned for him to continue. “We couldn’t locate you until our enemies identified you first. Then we could only hope that it wasn’t too late.”

Which brought me back to my original question—why me? “I think you’ve got the wrong heroine.”

Warren leaned forward, one corner of his mouth lifting in a small smile. What was most unsettling about this was how normal, and sane, that smile looked there. I rubbed at my eyes. “You’re special, Joanna, even among us. Your mother was also a member of the Zodiac troop. She was the Archer.”

I looked at him sharply and my heart began to pound. Nobody had spoken of my mother in nearly a decade. “You know my mother?”

“You were born on her birthday, right?”

I nodded, both surprised and not that he knew this.

“So was I. I’m a Taurus, though, the Bull of the western Zodiac, also after my mother. Our lineage is matriarchal,” he explained, sunburned hands wrapped around one knee. “I suppose you can call it an inheritance of sorts. Every generation twelve men and women are born, raised, and trained to keep order in their part of the world. When all twelve positions are filled, there is peace and cosmic balance. Every major city in the world has a Zodiac troop, though the suburbs are patrolled by independents.” He frowned at that, as if the word tasted bitter in his mouth.

“Independents,” I repeated, my brows raised dubiously.

“Rogue agents,” he said in an exaggerated whisper.

“Superheroes?” I pressed, and he shrugged.

“For lack of a better word, yes. We live in the city of our birth, pay our taxes, and hold normal jobs, but in the meantime we scent out Shadow agents, our polar opposites on the astrological chart, and destroy them.”

I shook my head to drown out the words. They didn’t make any sense anyway. “I still don’t see what this has to do with me. I’m not a superhero. I’m—”

“Something never seen before,” he finished for me, and leaning forward, looked into my eyes. “You, Joanna, are the first sign.”

I rubbed a hand over my face and did a quick calculation. “Sorry to interrupt this fantasy in progress, but Sagittarius is the ninth sign of the zodiac, not the first.”

He shot me a look like I was the crazy one in the room and began cleaning the crud from beneath his fingernails. “Unless you define ‘sign’ as the portent signaling our ascendancy over our enemies. Your discovery means just that. It’s the first sign. You’re the first sign.”

Oh.

He paused, mistook my blighted look for one of confusion, and rubbed a hand over his beard. “Think of us as a metropolitan police force, but for the paranormal.”

“Then you suck,” I said bluntly. “Crime has risen eleven percent in the last year alone.”

Warren smiled and shook his head. “We can’t control what mortals do, Joanna. Ever hear of free will? Individual choice? All those universal checks and balances set up since the beginning of time? We do what we can on the physical plane—if we’re in the right place at the wrong time, that is—but our real job is to counteract the criminal activity of the Shadow side.”

“Such as?”

“Like the bombing of the Catacombs casino last year, and the tear gas released through the air ducts simultaneously at five Strip properties in June. The ambush of the governor’s motorcade three months ago. Oh, and the hostage situation out at the air base. I took care of that one personally.” He blew on his knuckles, pretending to polish them on his shirt, and there was that maniacal glimmer I was coming to recognize as his alter ego.

“I never heard about any of those things.”

He looked at me. “Exactly.”

I frowned. “So what does any of this have to do with me? You said yourself members have to be raised and trained for years to fight paranormal crime.” Did those words really just escape my mouth? I shook my head. “Why can’t you find someone else to take up the Sagittarius sign?”

“The Archer,” Warren corrected.

“The Archer, then,” I sighed, uninterested in the semantics. “There has to be someone else who wants the job.”

“Because you’re different in one way from the rest of us. A way that’s been spoken of in our mythology, taught in our classrooms, but none of us, even in previous generations, has ever seen.” Leaning forward, eyes going maniacally bright, he said, “You have a characteristic that makes you exceedingly dangerous to our enemy, Joanna, and, very possibly, even more powerful than the most learned of our troops.”

“Let me guess. I can leap tall buildings. Fly faster than an airplane, blah blah blah.”

“You were born on your mother’s birthday, true,” Warren said, ignoring the sarcasm, “but you were born on your father’s birthday as well.”

I recoiled slightly. “My father?”

“Not Xavier. Your real father.”

I crossed my arms and watched him with wariness and suspicion, and more than a little interest. “And he was?”

“Not was,” he said, shaking his head, a frown overtaking his expression. “Is. He’s the leader of our opposition. He’s our enemy. Your enemy.”

My enemy? I drew back. What the hell did that mean? I mean, up until twenty-four hours ago I wasn’t aware I had any enemies. “You mean he’s like Butch and Ajax? Some sort of…demon?”

“Oh, he’s much worse than that.” Warren’s face darkened. “And much stronger. Our troops are being depleted. Murdered. Basically, he’s finding ways to kill off our star signs. In response, we’re having to harvest our initiates younger and younger, before they’re ready. But you…you might be the answer to stopping him.”

Because I might be this sign, this portent, signaling his super-troop’s ascendancy over my evil, overlord father. Yeah. Sure. I rubbed at my eyes. I was fading now, this whole conversation and night blurring in my mind. “Well, what if I don’t want any part of this superhero, crime-fighting bullshit? What if I just want to live a normal life like all the other…mortals out there?”

“Do you?”

“Yes.”

“No.” Warren folded his arms across his chest. “You can’t.”

“You said I had to be willing,” I argued.

He inclined his head. “There have been those, though rare, who’ve chosen not to fight. They knew the facts, they’d grown up in the Zodiac, and decided to leave it while they could. There’s a procedure that’s somewhat painful and has minor side effects—no worse than Paxil, really—but it will clear your mind forever of any paranormal knowledge or powers.”

“I want that.”

“Jo—”

“I want it! Now!” I did. I didn’t know what the hell I was going to do next, but I knew I didn’t want any part of a world of conduits, enemies, and astrological superheroes.

“Jo, all those operations were performed premetamorphosis.” He shook his head. “It’s too late for you.”

Too late by one day. I stood, needing to pace, to think; needing air and time, and someone to make sense of this all. I felt trapped inside a foreign world where the rules had been upended on top of me. I didn’t speak this language of star signs and Shadow agents, and I didn’t want to. “Look, I don’t want to be a superhero freak like you, okay, Warren? I don’t want to fight crime, and I don’t want to smell pheromones or kill bad guys. I just want to go home! I want…I want my fucking life back!”

He motioned to the door. “So leave.”

“I will,” I shot back, heading that way.

“Fine.”

“Fine!”

He lobbed his parting blow. “Just know if you walk out of here now you’ll be labeled a murderer.”

“It was self-defense!” I said, whirling back. “He attacked me and murdered my sister!”

Warren blinked. “I’m not talking about Butch, Joanna.”

I shook my head but it came out in a jerky motion. I opened my mouth but no words fell from it. The room faded and I felt my knees buckle. I leaned against the wall, taking long, deep breaths, and waited until I could stand again. I’d been wrong, I thought, to believe this guy had any characteristics resembling sanity. He was as crazy as I first thought.

“They’ll frame you for Olivia’s death,” the psycho was saying. “Your true father, and all his henchmen. They’ll set up all the physical evidence, and there won’t be a thing you can do about it. Then, after the trial, when you’re in jail and awaiting injection on death row, they’ll find you by your scent—by then a soured mixture of bitterness and hate—and they’ll kill you cold.”

“But I didn’t do it,” I said breathlessly.

“Your car is at the scene of the crime.”

“You told me to leave it there!”

He shrugged. “Your prints are all over the place—on your martini glass, and I’d imagine on your sister’s body as well. They’re especially dense in the bedroom where she was murdered.”

“And so are yours!” I shot back. “And Ajax’s and Butch’s!”

He looked at me blankly. My eyes widened and I sucked in a quick breath, remembering Butch’s impossibly smooth fingertips. “Give me your hand,” I said in a whisper.

Warren held it out, palm up. Though his palms were rough and callused, the tips of his fingers were smooth and opalescent, almost pearlescent as they gleamed up at me. I ran a finger over the pad of his thumb, rubbing lightly. It was like touching a marble.

“None of us has fingerprints, Jo.”

I looked up into his face. “I do.”

“You’re different. You’re—”

“Don’t say ‘innocent,’” I said through gritted teeth. I’d never felt less so in my life.

“I wasn’t going to,” he said quietly. “I was going to say you’re a latecomer to all this.”

I couldn’t believe this. I had to get out of there. There had to be a way. “Well, what about motive? Anyone who knows me—us—knows Olivia and I love each other. I’d never harm her.”

“Not for anything?”

“No!”

“Not for money?”

“Why would I? I have money of my own.”

“But she has more.”

“She has—” I stopped, and felt my face drain of color.

“You lost your inheritance today, did you not?” I knew he was just playing devil’s advocate. I knew it, and still I could see his point; how it would look to the rest of the world.

“How did you know that?” I asked, my voice small.

“I told you. You’re being watched.” He moved aside as I sank beside him on the bed. “By instruction of an unsigned note Olivia was handed the entire Archer legacy. Some people would see that as reason enough to kill.”

“But I wouldn’t.”

“You’re a fighter,” he pointed out. “Aggressive. A loose screw.”

“So is half the fucking population, Warren! It doesn’t make me a killer!” I thought of Butch. “It doesn’t make me her killer.”

“But you had motive. And you were there.”

“So was Butch!”

“You can’t prove it. You won’t prove it,” he corrected, before I could speak. “Our blood is like water. It soaks into the ground, it feeds the earth, but leaves no trace of ever having been shed. That’s why there won’t be a trace of Butch’s blood in your sister’s home. There won’t even be yours by now. Just Olivia’s. And your fingerprints.”

I swallowed hard. “I thought you were going to help me.”

“I am helping you. I’m telling you how it’s going to play out. By tomorrow morning this is going to be all over the television, in all of the newspapers. ‘Heiress Daughter Killed by Jealous Sister.’ Your face will be plastered in every newspaper in the country. You’ll be infamous.”

I’d have been better off dead.

“Or…”

I glanced up at him sharply. “Or?”

“Or I can take care of it for you. We can take care of it,” he corrected.

“Can you bring her back?”

“No.” His voice and expression gentled and the kindness softening his doe brown eyes almost killed me. I looked away. “But we can make sure the world doesn’t find out about what happened tonight. That’s our job. To protect the people of this city from those who would hurt them as Butch hurt Olivia. To make supernatural events appear normal. Ever hear the saying, ‘What you don’t know won’t hurt you’?”

“I’ve never believed that.”

He gave a slight shrug. “That’s because you didn’t know any different.”

I stood gingerly, testing my legs, and returned to the dresser to study the woman I saw there. If she’d looked unfamiliar before, she looked downright foreign now.

“They were setting me up,” I finally said, gazing at Warren through the mirror.

He nodded. “That’s what they do.”

“And what about you? Is that what you do?”

“We work to counteract their acts, yes. Usually we’re a bit more successful than this.”

A bitter laugh escaped me. I closed my eyes.

“Look, I know it’s a lot to take in. Shit, it’s a lot even if you’ve been raised in this lifestyle, and there’s more yet”—he held up a hand when my lids flicked open—“but you have a decision to make, and you have to make it quickly. We need you, we want you in our organization, but you have to come willingly.”

A superhero, I thought numbly. Good versus evil. Shadow agents. Paranormal battles. “I don’t know.”

“Okay.” He blew out a long breath, and for the first time I saw the signs of fatigue weighing on his browned face and sunken shoulders. “Okay,” he repeated, “there is one thing I can do for you.”

I stared at him through the mirror.

“You have twelve hours before your scent returns. One thing about turning a conduit on its owner, it’s such strong magic that you can wander this earth like a ghost. That’s called the aureole. Neither mortals nor agents will be able to discern your presence unless you’re standing right in front of them. It’s a gift. Like you don’t even exist.

“My team can hold off until just after dawn. That’ll give you time to make a decision. Use it. Think about what I’ve said. You can refuse the offer, but once you do there’s nothing we can do to help you.”

I nodded at last. “Thank you.”

“I’ll wait here. Come back to me with your answer, or consider coming back to me as your answer. Otherwise…” He shrugged, and looked truly sorry. “You’re on your own.”