The Taste Of Night

10

“What, in this particular Universe, were you thinking?”

I’d been back in the sanctuary just long enough to take a shower before my reaming began. Warren stood before me in the astrolab, a dome-shaped room with a ceiling of stars, though right now the bright lights were whitewashing the galaxy into oblivion. The room was scattered with books and papers and maps, pencils, rulers, scales…all more mathematical than mystical. This was Tekla’s office, where she mapped out her natal charts and made her predications. Currently, though, she was observing Warren and me from a stool in the corner like a bird on a perch, and damned if she wasn’t the most watchful, calculating creature I knew.

If she were avian, though, she wouldn’t have been a bird of prey. No, she was small and brown, like a malnourished sparrow; and though she’d lost some of the gauntness she’d possessed when I’d first met her months before, she was still sharp-featured, with lines of perpetual worry and fatigue webbing her eyes. The others assured me she’d always looked this way; that her son’s death last year had only accented what was already there. The lines were a product of knowing too much of fate’s design…and being able to do too little about it. I looked to Tekla for help, but it was clear we weren’t going to have any sisterhood moments right now. Her eyes were trained on me just as narrowly as our leader’s, and I swallowed hard as I looked down and picked some dried cement out from under my fingernails.

Okay, so it’d been stupid. My shoe was stuck in the boneyard’s perimeter, and while that could be taken for a mason’s mistake-if you didn’t look too closely-the backpack that’d half made it into the boneyard with me was clearly made of material, zippers, leather, and lacing. Apparently bits of it were showing on the outside of the boneyard wall as well, but the bigger problem was that its presence there had kept the barrier separating the sanctuary from the rest of the world from fully closing. Oops.

“I’m sorry,” I said again, but I was having trouble keeping the contriteness in my voice by this point. Warren heard it, which only furthered his tirade.

“…and to use a conduit of Light to purposely destroy a wall meant to protect your troop from the Shadow’s harm is not only irresponsible, but borders on the treasonous!”

“The barrier’s not destroyed,” Tekla said from her corner stool.

Now he whirled on her. “It’s compromised!”

“I was angry!” I said in my defense. “I just saw the cab through the dust and took aim. Besides, you cross over on foot all the time.”

“I follow the route set by Gregor. And I make sure the barrier’s closed behind me!”

“Enough.” Tekla stood and began walking toward me. I automatically shrank back. It wasn’t that I didn’t like her; I did. She was the troop’s Seer, and a bit off because of it, but she was powerful. So much so that her deep lavender aura was visible to me even with my diminished abilities. If I stared at her too long, her outline burned beneath my lids every time I blinked. I held my breath now, anticipating the worst. “I’ll work with the Archer on rebuilding the breach-agents should know how to repair walls if they’re going to tear them down.” I swallowed hard at the censure in her tone, looking away. “And then we’ll work on controlling her temper.”

My gaze swung back to her suspiciously.

Warren screwed up his face, just as perplexed. “That’s it?”

Tekla tilted her head at him. “It’s timely, don’t you think? There’s the maze in the boneyard representing the Tulpa’s labyrinth. And other walls that need to be constructed and deconstructed at will…”

Warren’s expression immediately cleared, and he smiled as he looked back at me. “The barrier…among other things.”

“Hey, I enjoy cryptic banter as much as the next girl,” I said with mock cheerfulness before letting my face fall. “But someone wanna clue me in here?”

Tekla turned her sharp gaze on me again. “You’re going to remain within the sanctuary until we’re sure you can’t be goaded into jeopardizing our troop’s security.”

“I haven’t-” I was about to say I hadn’t jeopardized anything, but I had. Never mind the wall…I’d let a Shadow initiate live in hopes she’d feed me more information about Joaquin’s whereabouts. I’d then met him in neutral territory the next day. Wait until Warren and Tekla found out about that.

“I haven’t hurt anyone,” I said instead, which was true. It just happened to include Regan, a mortal enemy. So I changed the subject. “And what about Chandra? She tried to tattoo skid marks on my chest.”

“Which you’d have recovered from.” Warren blew the issue off, and waved away my gaping protest. “Chandra’s going to be a different color than the rest of the human race thanks to your hijinks in the practice maze. I think that makes you two even.”

Sure, because a two-ton vehicle and a paintball were sooooo similar.

Warren read my thoughts and smiled thinly. “But what Tekla’s saying is this: the second sign of the Zodiac says that Shadow and Light will square off on a cursed battlefield. In the Zodiac mythology battlefield is often equated with playing field.”

“Yeah, ’cuz war’s just so much fun.”

Warren ignored me. “The maze out front is a mockup of the Tulpa’s labyrinth based on blueprints seized at Valhalla. We need someone to learn how to get to the center of that maze in record time, and this is the perfect time to train for it. The paranormal world is quiet, the Shadows have been in hiding since your accession-”

I snorted before I could help myself.

Warren froze. “What?”

I bit my lip, trying to keep my face straight. “Well, you don’t really think they’re in hiding, do you? Quivering in their shadowy little lair?”

“You know differently?” he asked shortly.

“No,” I said, because I didn’t. Not for sure. But Regan had hinted at some evil plan, so I did too. It eased my conscience a bit at having let her live. “But I doubt they’ve just given up wreaking chaos and destruction in favor of another hobby.”

“Oh, but they have. At least for the time being. It’s clear the Tulpa wants you to switch sides, so he’s pulled back, probably hoping to lull you into thinking he’s not all that bad, that they’re just like us.” He rolled his eyes, and Regan’s words again skittered through my mind. You think we’re wired differently than you, but it’s not true…we’re like you. Oblivious to my thoughts, Warren shot me a stubbled grin. “As long as the Zodiac is balanced-twelve of them, twelve of us-then there’s peace in the mortal world. That’s all I care about.”

It was true; Warren wasn’t one of those, myself included, who thought the best way to save humanity was to annihilate the Shadow side. No, he believed the entire Universe was one giant scale that needed to be kept in balance, that even he was just ballast to be positioned at a fixed place and time to keep his troop, his valley, and his mortals safe.

I gave up trying to argue with him on that point. “So an entire troop of habituated bad guys is going to stop causing mayhem and pain just because one dude wants to win me over?”

“Yes.”

“Well, I don’t think so.” I muttered, shaking my head as he dropped into a swivel chair next to Tekla’s desk. “It feels like the calm before the storm to me. It feels like they’re coming after us.”

“And you have so much experience in these things, do you?” He leaned back, lacing his fingers behind his neck.

Now my voice was hard and loud. “Hey, I may be relatively new to this game of paranormal hide-and-seek, but I’ve spent my entire adulthood on the offense against danger and attack, and my gut is telling me something’s going to happen, and that we won’t know what it is until it’s too late.”

Warren gave his head a sharp jerk, causing his lank hair to sway against his shoulders. “It doesn’t work that way, Olivia. As long as our numbers are equal, there’s cosmic balance in the city. There’s no way they can attack us directly. We’re too strong.”

I had to admit it seemed far-fetched, even with Regan’s warning. How could they wipe us all out in one fell swoop? They had no leverage. We were stronger than we’d been in years.

Tekla, who’d returned to her perch and had been observing all this with a sort of detached scrutiny, cleared her throat. “Perhaps Olivia’s objections have more to do with a personal desire than any intuitive hunch.”

I stiffened, and the room got very still, very quiet. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I’m talking about Xavier. The Tulpa. Joaquin.” Her smile didn’t reach her eyes. “You’re saying we should destroy them before they have a chance to do the same to us, but what else do you want? Vengeance perhaps? We’d understand if you did.”

My jaw clenched involuntarily, and I forced it to relax before whispering. “No. You wouldn’t understand.”

She tilted her head to the side, still birdlike. Still watchful. “I too have lost someone dear to me. And at the hands of the Shadow Aquarian.”

Yes, I wanted to say, but after Joaquin murdered your son you’d been safely cocooned in this sanctuary. I’d had to go it alone in a world of Xaviers and Joaquins and Tulpas.

“Are we done here?” I asked Warren, heading to the door before he could answer. I didn’t look at Tekla at all.

“Olivia. Olivia!” His voice followed me out and into the hallway, and I heard the uneven gait of his limp, a pronounced slap-and-drag, as he ran to catch up to me. “Jo.”

My real name stopped me. I turned to face him in the sterile hallway, my face as blank as the concrete walls. “Why?” I asked him harshly. “Why wait for the Shadows to strike first? Why not head them off?”

Warren suddenly looked as tired as he did grave. “I want peace.”

“And I want them all dead.” The words shot from my mouth, and I looked away before Warren could see how much I truly meant them.

He ran a hand over his face and sighed. “If you just trust me, and wait, I swear you’ll have your revenge. Xavier’s a mortal, and your hatred of him is petty, and must be let go. But,” he said, before I could protest, “the Tulpa will pay. Joaquin will pay.”

I searched his lined and sunburned face, and inhaled deeply to be sure he was telling the truth. I’d have taken him at his word months before, but Joaquin’s words had wormed their way into my brain, and now I had to wonder.

He lies to you. He doesn’t want you to know the extent of your powers. He thinks you’ll turn on him.

And I looked at him then, really looked at him; seeing past the lank and greasy hair, the face that was usually grime-streaked and the body normally draped in a beggar’s clothes, and I saw the man who led this city’s fight against evil, one who’d tricked me into this lifestyle because it suited his troop’s needs, but who’d also held my hand in those early days, saved my life, and told me about my fucked-up parentage.

Including the fact that my mother was still alive.

But he asked too much, I thought, turning away from him so he couldn’t see the tears stinging my eyes. I’d joined his troop, learned the truth about my mother, and took up the star sign she’d abandoned in order to keep me safe. I’d accepted that she didn’t want to be found, and agreed not to look for her. For now. I’d given up a life that may not have been perfect, but it’d been mine. I was dead to all those who’d known or ever loved me, and the things I loved, like photography, were dead to me.

I’d even stayed away from Ben.

And even if Warren was right about the Tulpa-and he’d really stopped targeting the agents of Light because of me-he was dead wrong about Xavier. He hadn’t seen the way the man had treated me, or the rampage he’d gone on after my mother had left. Warren didn’t know about the piles of clothes he’d burned, the jewelry he’d given to the maids, or the pictures he’d made Olivia and me cut up while he watched.

And he’d especially watched me.

Because even though Xavier knew nothing of superheroes, portals, and paranormal battles, the timing of my mother’s disappearance hadn’t been lost upon him. His eyes burned hard and hot into mine as he slammed album after album down in front of me, studying my reaction like I might know where she’d gotten to. Like it was my fault she’d gone.

“Not like that, Joanna!” he said, wrenching the scissors from my hand so the photo I was halfheartedly holding fluttered to the ground. “If you want people to respect you, and not walk all over you”-because, of course, the rape had been my fault as well-“you have to destroy them utterly! You have to obliterate them from this earth. Like this.” And he cut and cut until my mother’s face lay like confetti at our feet.

Joaquin had nearly killed me just because I was Zoe Archer’s daughter.

Xavier had made me feel guilty because of it.

And the Tulpa had been behind it all.

So they’d all pay, I thought, smiling in spite of myself. With their lives, their money, their power. With whatever they valued most.

“Okay,” I finally lied, turning back in time to see the relief flooding Warren’s face. “Tell Tekla I’ll start tomorrow.”

He nodded, satisfied with that, and turned from me to limp away. I watched him disappear back into the astrolab, and waited until the door shut behind him. I’d stay in the sanctuary and train like he wanted, but I’d do it for my own reasons. I needed to be stronger and smarter from now on, so I’d push myself, study my lineage and the legacy of the Kairos, and I’d learn what I needed to from Tekla. So that soon, very soon, I could go after Joaquin myself.

The smart thing would be to retire to my room for the rest of the evening. It would give me a chance to calm down, give Hunter time for a cold shower, and nullify the possibility of running into Chandra…which was the last thing I needed right now.

Naturally I did no such thing.

Instead I slipped along a corridor where a red neon stripe skated along the floor, lighting my way, marking my forward progress while simultaneously dimming behind me. I ran my hand against the wall, letting symbols for horoscopic glyphs, planets, polarities, and the four elements appear and disappear beneath my touch. With the floor glowing beneath me like I was starring in some old Michael Jackson video, I halted in front of a solid concrete wall, flicked my wrist, and the wall folded back to reveal a gilt-glass elevator. When something sleek rubbed against my left calf, I jumped and looked down to find a tawny feline glaring up at me, poised on her back haunches, eyes locked on mine.

“Come on, then,” I said, and the furry little warden followed me in before the doors whisked shut behind us.

I glanced down at the cat once the elevator started its descent. She was sitting primly, facing forward like me, her tail curled tightly about her, as self-contained as if she were alone in the steel box. “You don’t think I’m acting like a rogue agent, do you?” I asked her, because of course that’s what had been left unsaid in the astrolab. It’s what Tekla meant when she claimed I was jeopardizing the troop, why she’d insisted I stay in the sanctuary. It was the reason neither of them wanted me out there on my own. They hadn’t needed to say it in order for me to feel it. The possibility was as real to them as my joining the Shadow side, and they were constantly on guard against both.

Thing was-and I’d never say this aloud-I wasn’t entirely unsympathetic toward the plight of the independents. Most, I’d discovered, were simply agents displaced by unrest and unbalance in their own cities. Well, I certainly knew what that was like. And often they were all that was left of a troop decimated by the opposing side. I mean, what were you supposed to do-where were you to go?-when life as you knew it no longer existed? When the family you’d been raised with had been targeted and murdered, one by one? I knew what that was like as well.

So it didn’t seem fair to me that every independent was labeled a rogue and forced to retreat to towns or suburbs too small to warrant concentrated attention. Not only was that mind-numbing for a cast-out urban dweller, but to take on and survive enough opposing rogue signs to make a name for oneself? Those were odds even the most hardened Vegas bookie wouldn’t touch. Gathering enough allies to build another troop? Near impossible. Most small towns didn’t have enough of a human population to warrant one. And though it was possible for independents to join a city’s already established troop, it was rare. Most Zodiac signs had been ancestrally filled for generations, and the battle to keep the signs within a given family’s lineage was fierce. Warren, I thought wryly, would know that better than most.

My feline companion and I stepped out into a passageway facing a set of smoked-glass doors. I held one open, let the cat saunter in ahead of me, and followed her into a dimly lit room that arched around us like a steel womb.

And it was a womb of sorts. Cavernous throughout the middle, with an echoing concrete floor, the high ceiling looked to be drawn upward to a single prick of light, a bright star holding together the sides of the room. Though the walls curved elegantly into a 360-degree circle, length after length of paneled sheets gave the illusion of an octagonal shape. There were twelve emblems, two per sheet, and each individual panel represented one of the twelve zodiac signs. Grouped in pairs as they were, they looked like they were eyeing the entrance I’d just come through with great suspicion.

There was also another pair of eyes trained upon me, but these held surprise rather than mistrust, and-if I wasn’t mistaken-a healthy dose of awe.

“Hello,” I said to the young woman I’d seen earlier in the boneyard, feeling free to regard her with as much curiosity as she was showing me. She was petite, at least five inches shorter than I was, and slim-boned, though that meant nothing in the world of supermechanics. Pretty in the way of Victorian debutantes and romance heroines, she had a head of cascading mahogany curls Botticelli would kill to paint, and guileless eyes that sparkled with hope…a handy trait for a hunter of conniving, vicious, and deadly supernatural beings.

“You’re the Archer,” she said, the awe seeping into her voice.

“And you’re…” I couldn’t think of a polite way to say it. “Very green.”

She grimaced, revealing green gums. “Micah says it’ll wear off sometime tomorrow. It’s kind of embarrassing, but at least I’m not alone. Marlo,” she said, and held out a hand.

“Who tagged you, Marlo?” I asked, the question echoing through the room as we shook hands.

“Vanessa.”

“She’s a good shot,” I said sympathetically.

“I was just lucky to be included. Initiates aren’t usually invited to train with the troop, but Tekla prophesied dangerous trials ahead for me, so Warren said it was okay to start my advanced training early.”

I wouldn’t have sounded so joyous about grave tribulations in my future, and told Marlo as much.

“Oh, but it’s an honor,” she said, wide eyes going even wider. “Tekla usually only forecasts the fates of full-fledged star signs. All the initiates she’s ever cast for-Hunter and Zoltan and Mace and Stryker-have gone on to do great things. I’m the youngest yet.”

Hunter was certainly accomplished, but Zoltan and Mace were before my time so I didn’t know anything about them. Stryker, though, had been ambushed and murdered in the process of metamorphosis-no longer an initiate, but not yet a star sign-and I wondered if she’d thought of that.

Instead of mentioning the dubious honor of being aligned in fate with Stryker, I changed the subject. “So you must be the Libran initiate, am I right?”

Marlo nodded enthusiastically. She was only a couple of years younger than I, but her sheer excitement made her look much more so. “I’ve been training for a few weeks now. Hunter says I’m making great strides. He’s already designing a weapon he says will play on all my strengths.”

I raised a brow. You didn’t need super senses to tell she’d already developed a super-sized crush on our weapons master. She’d probably grown up idolizing all the older troop members, I told myself. Plus she and Hunter had both been born and raised in the Zodiac. They might make a good match in the future, probably a great one. Libra and Aries were opposites on the Zodiac wheel.

So why was jealousy shooting through my blood like warmed quicksilver?

“That’s great,” I told Marlo, and quickly crossed to the panel with an outlined rendering of a centaur on it. It glowed, reassuringly bright, and the tension drained from me as I looked up at it. As I glanced around at the eleven other emblems circling the room, most lit like mine, satisfaction coursed through me. Most of these signs had been dark when I’d first come to the sanctuary, dead like Stryker’s. The troop had been systematically “depleted” by the Shadows…Zane’s fancy way of saying murdered. But we were back up to ten members now: the Libran sign waiting for Marlo to mature enough to undergo metamorphosis, and for Tekla to either take up the Scorpio sign or pass it on. So far she’d refused to do either, and Warren seemed content to let her contribute solely from within the sanctuary.

I pressed the button next to the slats just below my sign, and spoke my password clearly and directly into the opening. Nothing happened.

“Wha-?” I slapped my palm against the metal panel, and cursed. “Not again.”

Repeating my password met with the same results. I sighed. The panel, actually a door, and the words, really a combination, were the only thing between me and the panel’s contents. Sometimes I hid things in there, and every once in a while I opened it to find a gift-some small trinket like a photo or article of clothing-though nobody could explain how or when it’d gotten there.

More often than not, however-especially lately-this happened. Which meant it now contained some important object, one that would eventually be helpful to my fight in the Shadows, if only I could get to it.

I went ahead and pushed the disks I’d carried with me through the slats, waiting to hear them thunk to the ground on the other side. I was met with only silence. “What kind of superhero can’t get into their own locker?” I muttered blackly, jiggling the latch below.

“Try giving it an offering.”

I turned to Marlo, who was busy spoiling the cat splayed on a stamped concrete star. She’d kept her distance, but was watching me carefully. “Sorry?”

“An offering,” she said, standing, wiping cat fur off her black trousers. “They can be testy sometimes. You might have to bribe it.”

“I’ve already put something in there.”

“Yes, but that was probably to keep it safe, right?”

“That’s what a locker’s for.”

She shook her head. “You need to give it something that’s the opposite of safe. These things are tools. You must be approaching a growth spurt in your education. Feed it something it can use to assist you in the future, and it’ll trade you whatever’s inside for that info.”

I’d have to go back down to the barracks and find something there. “I don’t have anything.”

“Here,” she said, turning away. “Try this.”

I watched her stride over to the Libran locker, and cocked my head. “You have a locker already?”

“Yeah…sort of. Well, no. It doesn’t really lock yet, or recognize my imprint, or respond to my voice…” She ducked her head like she was afraid I’d laugh, but I didn’t. I knew just how she felt. She pulled out a pad of paper and a pen from a duffel bag at the foot of her locker, and handed them to me. “So, anyway. Just write something about yourself and stick it in there, but make sure it’s something you wouldn’t want anyone else to know. Maybe a secret hope or desire. Something worthy of trade.”

“Worthy of trade,” I repeated, looking at the pad she’d pressed into my hand.

Her head bobbed rapidly. “Whatever’s in there is important enough that you have to work for it. The harder it is for you to access, the more useful it’ll be to you later.”

“Then why make it so hard to get?” I muttered.

“Because that’s how life works,” she said, shrugging it off in a way that made her appear even younger. “The most vital object lessons are the only ones worth striving for.”

I narrowed my eyes at her. “You’ve been talking with Tekla, haven’t you?”

“Just try it,” she said with a shy smile. When I didn’t move, she started. “Oh…right. Uh, let me know how it goes.”

“I will. Thanks.” I waited until she’d gone and then glanced at the cat. It returned my look before lifting a leg to clean itself.

Turning back to my locker, I slapped the pad against my thigh. “Something worthy of trade.”

Well, there was the way I’d broken into the boneyard, but Warren already knew about that, or my run-in with Regan, but I wasn’t about to admit that to anybody just yet. I thought of the jealousy that’d rushed through me when Marlo spoke of Hunter. Hm. That was certainly nothing I’d ever admit; it’d be mortally embarrassing if either of them knew. Was mortal embarrassment enough?

I wrote the admission down, folded the paper, and slipped it between the slats of the locker. Nothing happened. So I wrote another note-Fuck you-and slipped it through as well. A second later it was spit back out.

“Just testing,” I said. I kept thinking. Something I wouldn’t want anyone else to know. Well, that was easy. All my secret thoughts revolved around Ben Traina. How I didn’t want anyone to know how much he still occupied my waking hours. How my body warmed at the thought of him. How I’d broken into Warren’s cabinet in the record room and reviewed the file I knew he’d keep on Ben because of his past association with me.

I smiled bitterly at that last thought. Warren kept tabs on every aspect of his agents’ lives, easy since he watched most grow up in the sanctuary, and assigned them their identities once they began working on the outside. But then there was me. He was still puzzling out my past piece by piece, slow going since he didn’t trust my account not to be influenced by emotion, or some other agenda he didn’t name. And digging into my past meant digging into Ben’s.

After the attack on me, after Ben decided he was at fault for being unable to stop it, he responded by marrying someone safe-someone who wouldn’t sneak across the desert on moonlit nights-then blamed her for not being me. Warren’s notes indicated he’d been repeating his childhood, treating his new wife as his father had treated his mother, though I could’ve told him that.

I remember thinking I’d have argued with Ben as I studied those files. But the six-year-old records Warren had filched from a mortal shrink’s office indicated that this other woman hadn’t. I don’t handle breakable women with care, Ben had told the doctor…and there was a postscript that showed the psychiatrist believed him enough to be worried for the woman’s safety.

So Ben gave his sweet, breakable wife a divorce-even though she said she didn’t want it-and also gave her half of what he owned at the time. Fast forward a few years, and she was remarried-a banker this time, not a cop-and living in southern California with three dogs, two kids, and another on the way.

But this wasn’t about Ben, I reminded myself, tapping my pen against my bottom lip. This was about me, my neuroses. So I slid my back against the cold, unyielding metal, dropped to the floor, and began to write.

Dear Ben,

I have a photo of you, but I can’t seem to bring myself to look at it. I know exactly where it is, of course, tucked between an old picture of my mother when she was my age-looking expectant and smooth-skinned and impossibly fierce-and another of all the Archer women taken before the summer that changed our lives forever. But just because I don’t look at your image doesn’t mean I’ve forgotten you. I don’t need a two-dimensional print to bring back the memory of our skin burning the sheets beneath us, or the scent of rich musk as you slept beside me, or the need that curled inside me every time you looked at me. The real me.

Remember her?

Sure, she was slightly damaged, chipped even, and cynical and tough enough to really resemble her mother there at the end, but you knew her intimately and loved her deeply, and you were nestled deep inside of her only moments before that photo was taken.

That’s the thing about that photo. I know that little half smile is on your face because of the broken, damaged, cynical, tough-and impossibly happy-me. And now that you’re gone-or I guess what I mean to say is now that we’re gone-looking at that photo is beyond me. I can barely look in the mirror anymore.

And it’s the not looking that makes me restless. I wander our sinful city like a ghost of my former self, seeking enough distraction to keep from giving in to the temptation to drive past your house. And if nothing in the gilded and grimy streets can do so, I head over to my sister’s high-rise condo where I climb out on a ledge far above the city, where the air presses against me even on the calmest of nights, and I close my eyes, feel the ribbons of light spinning on the other side of my lids, and wonder…will you ever smile that way again? Have you smiled that way since? And, if you have, who brought that smile to your face? The one reserved for me. The Joanna-smile.

I never try to answer that. I block it off in the same way I tuck away that aging photo. I just let the wind press me against the ledge until I begin to waver, and I open my eyes so the question fades in the glare of the electric river flowing below me. Then I climb back inside, avoiding all mirrors as I cross that palatial loft, and when I let myself out I’m balanced again. I can tuck you away and tell myself I’m ready to move on. But in truth I would give it all up and let him walk free…if only I could return to you.

Usually I kept missives like this in a keepsake box near my bedside. I figured it was as close to sleeping with Ben as I’d ever get again. But this time I stood, tore the page from the pad, and folded it before sliding it through the open slat. A buzzing rose from inside the locker, like a hive of bees growing closer. I took an involuntary step back, but there was only a sudden stillness pressing down on the room, and then the latch clicked softly open.

“Next time,” I said wryly, swinging open the door, “just give me a knife and ask for a vein.”

So what was this thing that’d required so much of me, demanding an admission I hadn’t even allowed myself to study too closely? It was small, for one. In fact, it fit in the palm of my hand; a gilt jewel box with a gold clasp, and velvet the color of the midnight sky cushioning what was inside.

“My precious,” I hissed, unable to help myself as I lifted the ring from its cushion. Holding it, however, all humor drained from me. I’d seen this ring before. It’d been years, and I couldn’t be sure when it had disappeared, but my mother had disappeared along with it.

It was too heavy and wide to be considered feminine, but the sheen off the metal-not gold or silver, and certainly not platinum, though it had that heft-was so muted it was nearly opaque, light catching only in the dual grooves hedging a cloudy gray stone. I tilted it back and forth in the light before slipping it on. It was too large for the ring finger of my right hand, but it nestled nicely against the knuckle of my middle finger and, I was pleased to see, looked like it belonged there. And when it began to glow, a gentle pulse in the dim, cavernous room, I knew it did.

“I hope you don’t think one ancient piece of tin makes up for leaving me.”

I was talking to my mother now, and because I could do that anywhere and garner the same result, I shut the locker and headed back to the elevators, careful not to leave the cat stranded behind me. But I thought about my words. My mother had turned my life upside down by leaving, and even though I now understood why, sometimes I couldn’t help but wonder: did she even feel an ounce of the guilt and shame and ineffectiveness that I had after failing Olivia? Because that’s what she’d done by leaving. She’d failed me. No matter the reasons, she’d abandoned me when I’d needed her most.

And if she came to me with tearstained eyes and a face I barely remembered, would it be enough? Would it make up for my having to go it alone in the world-both of them-while she knew where I was, what I was going through, and chose to stay hidden anyway? I couldn’t answer that. My feelings for her were muddled now. She’d gifted me with weapons, power, strengths I had sought ever since someone had tried to make a victim out of me, and she was apparently still giving gifts. Everything, I thought sourly, except herself.

“And what kind of mother does that?” I whispered, rubbing the ring with my thumb.

I couldn’t answer that question. I had no maternal instincts. Whatever soft feelings I did possess had been reserved solely for my sister, Olivia, who was long gone. And for Ben, I thought. Though the only way I could show my love for him was to stay far, far away. So unconditional love was foreign to me now, and I didn’t even know if I’d want my mother to open up that part of me again. What if she left a second time? Would I be able to survive hurting that much again?

These questions occupied me so completely that it wasn’t until I was back in my room that I realized the sacrificial note I’d pushed through the slats, as well as the disks I’d deposited for safekeeping, had been nowhere in that locker. Like they’d never existed, I thought, studying the odd ring. Like they’d been eaten by the darkness.

The bloodline of both sides of the Zodiac is matriarchal. The lineage of the star sign runs through our veins. So generation after generation, women took up the mantle of power and responsibility for the troop’s succession, making sure even if they died, their house’s legacy continued. But it was the first-born women who were most powerful, and some star signs-both male and female, both Shadow and Light-spent lifetimes attempting to make up for that lack.

Brynn DuPree, Regan’s mother, inherited her star sign after her three older siblings died in quick succession, what the Shadow manuals described as “mysterious and dishonorable” deaths. All had used their conduits to take their own lives, though there had been no perceivable impetus or inkling that any would do so. I’d have thought suicide was what made the deaths dishonorable as well, but that wasn’t it. They’d died outside of battle, and in the Tulpa’s judgment, that was a far graver offense.

Brynn, meanwhile, had been killed by her opposite on the Zodiac, a much younger and surprisingly handsome Cancer of Light, Gregor Stitch-our superstitious, one-armed taxi driver-who’d lured her into a confessional, heard her out, then gave her five Hail Marys before burying a flanged-bladed mace into her core. But it was as I read about her life, not her death, that I found the best explanation for her daughter’s actions the day before.

Regan’s father had been a mortal priest. The human element didn’t weaken anything, the bloodline still passed through the mother, but unlike the Light, Shadows didn’t fall in love with humans. They hunted them.

The Shadow manual Jasmine had found for me described Father Michael as ascetic, pious, and deeply committed to the Church, his greatest passion helping those in his flock attain immortal life. Brynn’s definition of immortal life was obviously a bit different from Father Michael’s, and her greatest passion was leading good men astray. Once Michael had fathered Regan, Brynn held his life in ransom. Blackmail was just the leverage she needed to involve him in some of her more heinous crimes, not only giving her a mortal ally to cover her own tracks, but ensuring he’d keep his big mouth shut about his own multiplying sins. By the time he was caught stalking a schoolyard five years later, the man in the mug shot hardly resembled the kind young priest who’d started out with such hope at the beginning of his clerical service.

And that might explain why Regan had kept my true identity to herself when she discovered I was masquerading as Olivia. Like her mother, she possessed information she could use to her sole advantage. It also explained why she thought I could be so easily “turned” to the Shadow side when she’d allowed me to kill Liam. Unlike her father, I hadn’t even taken vows.

But what about her warning not to return to the sanctuary? Was it a ploy meant to try and draw me to the Shadow side? And why would a woman raised in the Shadow lifestyle really turn against another Shadow, give a sworn enemy the aureole, and hand that enemy complete control over her own life?

To gain my trust, she’d said, but that was foolish. If she was caught by the Tulpa, no matter her reason or excuse, she’d be dead before she saw another splitting dawn. Besides, would a woman ambitious enough to murder her own troop member really be content sitting at my “right-hand side”? I sincerely doubted it. There was a deeper motivation there, I thought, studying the pages detailing Brynn’s life. A dark passion inside her rivaling that of her mother.

So the question remained. What was Regan really after?

I couldn’t answer that yet, but that wasn’t enough to keep me from using her…and not just for the information she might provide about Joaquin. At least that’s what I told myself.

Our mythology tells us the second sign of the Zodiac will soon be fulfilled.

And…

The Tulpa has found a way to wipe you all out in one fell swoop.

I didn’t believe either of those things, but Regan did, and that’s what mattered. I’d play on those beliefs so that Regan DuPree remained useful to me. But she was useful and dangerous, I thought, tucking the manual into my bedside drawer. And smart. Because it was a good scheme to play both sides. And I’d go ahead and let her live as long as I could do the same.