The Touch of Twilight

13

Half an hour later I was alone with Warren in what amounted to a crow’s nest above the cavernous expanse of Hunter’s workshop. There was a bed pressed against two walls near the back, a simple press-wood desk pushed against the forward railing, which was where I was seated, and nothing but a tattered rug in between. Hunter didn’t use the place often, preferring instead to return to the sanctuary each evening, crossing realities as faithfully as most people put in their nine-to-fives.

Half the troop had left, though Vanessa and Riddick were talking in low voices as they waited for their partners, while Hunter showed Kimber the conduit he was designing for her. I watched her gesture excitedly below us, beaming, no doubt telling him it was just how she’d envisioned it while wearing the animist’s mask.

The evil, life-sucking mask.

“It started with the Tulpa,” I told Warren, hands cupped around a cup of coffee so bad it was soothing for its heat alone. I’d shifted the chair so it was sideways to the desk, and Warren stood, cross-armed, five feet away, near the ladder leading below. “I distinctly saw him sitting in a throne above the entire city. He offered Las Vegas to me, said it could be mine.”

I told him the rest, the multiple masks, my mother’s face beneath. My mother who’d handed me a heart. My mother, whom I’d killed.

“Hm…” he said, like that was significant, looking out over the cavernous workshop.

“Hm, what?” I asked. Warren’s eyes were tight, whatever scene he was playing out in his mind superimposed over the inactivity of the workshop, but then they relaxed and he turned to face me.

“You can’t let what happened with the mask scare you. You’re a good person, Joanna. Even when you act impulsively, even when you’ve gone against my orders or spoken out of turn-”

“Who, me?”

He ignored that. “You’re doing so from a moral seat. More importantly, even if the third portent of the Zodiac is the rise of your Shadow side, I believe you’d find a way to overcome that and do what’s right.”

“I want to believe you,” I said, shaking my head, palming my cup. “But I just had a vision where I killed my own mother by hand, and I know myself-even this new version of myself-by now. The rage and exultation when my hands were around her throat…that was real.”

“And so was the horror when you realized who it really was.”

“Yeah, but by then it was too late!” And that was my constant fear. That no matter what abilities my kairotic powers gave me, my late entrée into this paranormal morass would leave me flat-footed when it mattered most. That was why I had problems sitting on my heels, waiting for direction. Besides, eight months of the strongest supernatural support couldn’t erase a decade of self-reliance. Other than Olivia, the people I’d counted on most had always abandoned me.

He leaned against the railing, reminding me of the way the Tulpa had shifted, his throne tottering on that thin ledge. Seeing my shudder, Warren winced, sighed, and dug into the pockets of his long, filthy duster.

“I wasn’t going to give you this yet. But since you seem to be a slave to that which you’ve seen both in visions and reality-”

“Hey!” I said, jerking so hard I spilled coffee over my hands and knees. I sat the Styrofoam cup on the desk, and flicked droplets from my wrists before wiping them against my pants. “The things I’ve seen could make grown men weep, then drool, then do nothing but rock in a corner for the rest of their lives.”

“Exactly.” He pulled out a crumpled stack of papers stapled together at the corner and handed them to me. “I checked into Regan’s account of what happened the night you left Ben alone with a man named Ernest Thompson, a.k.a., Magnum, in a barricaded alley called Dog Run. As you asked.”

I narrowed my eyes and cautiously took the papers from him, then scanned the first page. A drug dealer named Magnum had been found facedown in the dirt of a public housing lot, a single bullet to his head. The report called it self-defense, but I knew that wasn’t possible. I’d left Magnum knocked out at Ben’s feet just as the sirens from his backup came wheeling around the corner. There was no way Magnum had woken up and threatened Ben in those intervening seconds. The report began to shake in my hands.

“Why are you showing this to me now?”

“Joanna,” he said softly, and I shut my eyes so I didn’t have to see if the look on his face matched the pity in his voice. “Your back has been to the wall so many times I’m surprised you don’t have a permanent imprint there. But the person who did this had a choice and still took the lesser action, and that’s what a person’s Shadow side is. The wrong decision even under the right circumstances.” He paused, thinking by doing so he was letting that sink in, but what filled the gap was another denial. I hadn’t seen it, so maybe Ben wasn’t the one who decided to be this man’s executioner. Warren took a breath. “You need to let us erase his memory. It’s the best way to get rid of Regan. It’ll be a fresh start for Ben. And for you.”

I wiped at my eyes. “No.”

“Joanna-”

“No!” I screamed, crumpling the report in one fist.

The warehouse stilled below, but Warren didn’t let the sound or sudden blooming smoke bother him. The alarm clock across from me reflected red-hot eyes in the glass front, but he didn’t let that scare him either. He waited, cross-armed, until my breathing had evened again, the smoke clearing. “I don’t have to ask your permission, you know.”

I knew. He could take chunks of memory away and Ben would become the person he’d have been if I’d never entered his life. And he wouldn’t think or speak or dream of me ever again. I pressed the palms of my hands to my eyes until I saw black spots, then pulled them away as a sigh stuttered from my chest.

“What’s the first thing you do when you wake up in the morning?”

I don’t know if he was more taken aback by the whimper in my voice or the change in subject, but Warren only stared, eyes jumping around my face like it was a puzzle he needed to put together. I managed a tired smile and smoothed the report back out over my knees. “You don’t have to tell me every little detail…in fact, don’t. Just your first thought.”

He shrugged after another moment. “Okay.”

“Now let me guess. You don your superhero cloak. You pound your chest. You yell, ‘Up, up, and away!’ and run from the Batcave, catapulting into the air.”

“You’re mixing up your superheroes.”

I looked at the man who was both troop leader and bum. That was the truth.

“If I’m on the streets,” he began, crossing his legs at the ankles, leaning back and humoring me, “I take a piss and try to find some food. If I’m in the sanctuary, I take a piss, a shower, and then try to find some food.”

“I told you not to tell me.” I winced, and he laughed, and it was suddenly a little easier between us. “The point is, you don’t wake up thinking, Hey, I’m going to save the world today! Right?”

He lifted a brow. “Do you?”

“No,” I said, but before he could ask anything more I leaned toward him, lowering my voice. “I wake up and think, There’s some fucker out there with a knife in his pocket. He’s going to go a little postal today. And he might do it around Ben.”

I licked my lips, aware of Warren’s gaze on me now, absent of humor. I stared back, equally serious. “I think about the people out there with too much artillery and too little brains and how today they might start firing, again, around Ben.”

“And what about the other two million inhabitants of our fine city?”

“Do you consider each and every one of them every time you intervene in human drama?” I replied shortly. “Maybe you should, and maybe I should too, but I’m too preoccupied with the one who best represents goodness and fairness and kindness to me, who represents them all.”

Warren slid the photo of Magnum back under my nose, a reminder that after an intervening decade I might not know Ben at all. But that wasn’t true…because if I didn’t know him, I couldn’t love him. And I did.

One side of Warren’s mouth turned up in a wry, humorless smile. “And what if you wake up one day and he’s the fucker with the knife and the mean opportunity?”

I shook my head. “I tell myself the truth. He’s under the influence of Regan, who comes from a long line of women who enjoy destroying the virtue in a good man. And then I remind myself that he spent years before that under my influence, and I don’t mean to let him get away without a fight.”

“So it’s a game?” he said quickly.

“Sure,” I said lightly, though it wasn’t. “A game of chance. And I want mine. Because I know if I can get him to talk to me I can fix this.” Because no matter what was printed on these pages or what Warren thought Ben might have done to another mortal on a night when he was cornered like a wild animal…I knew he’d listen. And if he listened I could alter whatever Regan had fucked up inside him already.

Warren shifted where he sat and I found I couldn’t meet his eye, not with tears in my own. I glanced back down at the warehouse, and saw Hunter placing the foam template I’d handled earlier in a locked cabinet shoved against a concrete wall. When I’d finally recovered my voice, and was sure it wouldn’t crack in my throat, I whispered, “Not yet. Please.”

I saw him stiffen from the corner of my eye, shift uncomfortably, and knew I’d said the wrong thing. Pleading was a weak emotion, and Warren responded best to the logic of the mind. “You need to focus on the Tulpa.”

I started to laugh. The sound spiraled, escaping me in a raw and wild vortex, like a tiny tornado tearing through the workshop. The agents below fell silent again and looked up, trying to see what was so funny. It made me laugh even harder.

“Focus on him,” I gasped, wiping at my eyes, then bent over to pick up the papers I’d caused to splay all over the floor. More calculations and drawings, more templates, more weapons. I tapped them on the desk in a halfhearted effort at neatness before tossing them down. “Every one of us is so fucking focused it’s like living under a microscope.”

And I told him what the Tulpa said about the doppelgänger being fixed on me, that a fleshly relic-my heart-would allow her full physical manifestation, and that she’d stop at nothing to get it. I also told him the Tulpa no longer wanted me as one of his Shadows. “I have ill chi. He said we could work together to kill the double-walker because I had as much to lose as he, but that’s all he wants.”

I picked up my now-cooling coffee, and thought again of my unyielding hands around my mother’s neck. Maybe the Tulpa was right. If that’s what the future held for me, maybe I was a danger to everyone around me.

Warren had straightened during my telling and was absently running a hand over the scruff at his neck. “And he claimed to scent your pheromones every time the doppelgänger ripped a hole into this world? Did he say exactly what that smelled like?”

Of all the bits of information to latch on to. I rolled my eyes. “Are you listening to me? The Tulpa asked me to work with him.”

Warren’s eyes found me again, and he shrugged. “Then you have a decision to make.”

“What?” I drew back so suddenly, my coffee sloshed in my cup. I was making a mess of the crow’s nest, I thought, rubbing at the wet floor with my shoe. Warren offered a handkerchief, but I took one look and knew if I touched it I’d add vomit to the mix. Did he have to take his vagrant persona so seriously? “Okay, Warren? Not to shoot myself in the foot here, but aren’t you at all worried the third sign of the Zodiac is the imminent rise of my Shadow side? Isn’t that your greatest fear right now, what with my biology permanently on the fence and all?”

“Why? Because the Tulpa wants you to work with him?” He leaned against the railing again, rubbing at his bad leg. “I’m not concerned with what the Tulpa wants. It’s you I’m concerned with. And, Jo?” He leaned forward to loom over me. “You’ve proven yourself, okay? Sure, you fuck up regularly, and you’re stubborn, and your quest to keep Ben in your life is one of the stupidest-”

“Thank you,” I said loudly before he could screw up the rest of his compliment.

Warren smiled. “Besides, the Tulpa is obviously more worried about this doppelgänger than he is about you.”

“He said she could be some long-lost twin of mine. He told me one of his agents would have to meet with me if I decided to work with him to get rid of her.”

That unseeing look came over Warren’s face again. Suddenly he was backing down the wooden staircase. “I have to go.”

I threw my hands up into the air, palms up. “Oh, sure. Don’t mind me. I’ll hang out here. A sitting target for heart eaters and other things I never knew went bump in the night.” My voice had escalated with true panic, so I wasn’t surprised when his head popped back up.

He tilted it, sighing. “Jo. I am worried about you. I don’t like that Regan was the one to find you in Master Comics. I don’t like that she knows your true identity, and could spill the Olivia/Joanna connection at any time. I’m scared to death of the way the Tulpa managed to touch you in a designated safe zone.”

“Don’t forget the way an animist’s mask had to be ripped from my face,” I said, rubbing my jaw. It was sensitive-aching as if there was a scar there, though the damage couldn’t be seen or felt beneath my fingertips. Micah was right. I’d already healed.

“That too,” he said, not unkindly…but not overly solicitous either. “But unless you’re willing to be locked up in the sanctuary for the foreseeable future-”

“Hell, no.”

“Or give us leave to reconstruct Ben’s memories?”

“No.”

“Then I need to get on with the running of this troop.”

“But…” But Zane’s words had gotten to me. I could admit it here, alone with a man who’d overcome his suspicion of me before. “You know I didn’t break the changeling on purpose, right?”

His irritation instantly disappeared. “Of course not. The others don’t think so either,” he added, because it was clear that’s what was really bothering me. I’d been outside the troop’s good graces before, more than once. I didn’t want to go there again. “The new manuals are being written, even if they aren’t being read. We’ll find out how to fix Jasmine-which is what I’m going to go research now-and then all those written words and images will bloom to life, bringing a fresh wave of energy and force to our cause. Supply and demand at its best.

“Until then, the children who follow the Light side of the Zodiac can feed their insatiable imaginations with the older manuals. Those can sustain them, and us, for a long time.” He pushed back his trench coat so it billowed out behind him, and began descending, mindful of the leg that gave him so much trouble.

“Warren?” I said suddenly, and the top of his head appeared again, eyes mildly irritated. I rushed through my question, but mostly because I needed to. “Why don’t you erase Ben’s memory without asking me? I mean, you could, and there’d be nothing I could do about it.”

He leaned forward, feet on the staircase, elbows on the floor, to stare up at me. “Because I know what’s involved in a slow good-bye. The release of long-held dreams is a kind of death, with all the emotional stages that go with it, including anger, though you’re not quite there yet. It’ll be hard enough once you are, and I’d rather it not be directed at me.”

“I see. A selfish ploy to avoid the brunt of my wrath.”

His smile was tight-lipped. “You’ll release him when you’re ready.”

I wouldn’t. Not ever. But I sat prim and proper as he finished his spiel.

“Just try to prepare yourself to do it sooner rather than later. For his sake. For yours. And for ours.”

Not even for all the inhabitants of this city.

A wry smile flickered at one corner of Warren’s mouth, and he shrugged, still thinking I was in denial. The belief bought me time, so I said nothing. Without another word, Warren did disappear beneath the sightline then, reappearing seconds later on the ground floor below me. I followed him with my eyes, relieved I’d come clean about the Tulpa and what he’d asked of me…but curious about Warren’s reaction.

This was the guy who freaked out at the slightest perceived imbalance in the Zodiac. So why wasn’t he freaking out now? The changeling of Light was broken, the manuals couldn’t be read, my chi had apparently become the supernatural equivalent of foot funk, and the Tulpa suddenly wanted to be friends. And what the hell had he been thinking when I told him how the Tulpa planned to rid this world of the doppelgänger? Because the expression that’d slipped over his face had looked like excitement, not concern.

Below, Vanessa glanced impatiently at her watch. Kimber still fondled her unfinished conduit, looking younger and friendlier and dreamier than any future Shadow killer should. I couldn’t blame her. Her metamorphosis was scheduled two weeks from now, and it was the event an initiate looked forward to from the time they first learn of their preternatural destiny. I glanced at Hunter, thinking I should’ve told Warren about his call boy identity. If he was telling the truth, and Warren wouldn’t care, there was no reason not to mention it. Except I owed him. He’d kept my Joanna identity from those who didn’t already know it, as well as the bigger secret Warren knew nothing about-my daughter.

So I sat back in the crow’s nest and watched Vanessa finally yell at Kimber, who reluctantly handed the weapon back to Hunter before disappearing through the bay doors. Then I sucked in a deep breath filled with the warmth of toasted fruit, so heavy and round I wanted to take a bite. The scent of Hunter.

He glanced up at me sharply before he relaxed, and a languid smile visited his face. I’ll be your secret keeper, he’d once said to me. But he’d said it with heat, looking at me the way he was now, meaning that and so much more.

“I’ll be your secret keeper too, Hunter,” I murmured, pushing away the memory even as it rippled through me. “But that’s all.”