The Touch of Twilight

21

“Don’t mind her,” Janet said as we left Ginny and her grim disapproval behind. “She’s been fixated on you ever since the article came out in Desert magazine.”

The one detailing the perks and privileges of Las Vegas’s glitterati. It was the last interview Olivia had given before she died.

“The columnist called me ‘socially promiscuous,’” I said, baffled why a bad interview would interest, much less antagonize, anyone.

“Yeah, and she wishes she was getting some,” Janet said, smirking as she began our tour of the storefront. Janet was a typical college kid with straight brown hair and the freshman ten. There was a hint of the right coast in her voice, buried beneath a sorority smile, and I felt myself nodding hypnotically as she droned on about layout, merchandising, and the importance of product location, all the while aware of Ginny’s hard stare burning through my neck. I placed my hand there, making sure the obnoxious cocktail ring was in plain view as I pretended to rub my neck. Olivia had mentioned the ring in the Desert article. Let that fuel Ginny’s raging schadenfreude, I thought, turning my attention back to the crowded mishmash of collectibles.

Just in case giving your money away to the casino didn’t do it for you, I thought wryly, you could always throw it away. The shop was a monument to the unnecessary: T-shirts, stuffed bears, perfumes-What did a Viking smell like, anyway?-shot glasses, key chains, used dice and cards, snow globes, and a wall cooler filled with vodka…all stamped with the Valhalla logo. Xavier should’ve just lifted a leg to mark the place, and been done with it.

I let myself smile at that, but it fell when I spotted the two security guards canvassing the shop from outside the glass wall. Clearing my throat, I looked away.

“Is security always so vigilant about watching the gift shop?” I asked Janet as we headed to the back.

“They’re probably checking out the new merch,” she answered pointedly, causing me to blush while she shot the guards a cheery finger wave. I kept my eyes averted, relaxing only after we’d disappeared into the storage room, and away from Hunter’s frown. “Or at least Kevin is. Even you wouldn’t have a shot with the big one. He doesn’t date Valhalla employees. Come on, we’ll start over here.”

With no way to immediately steer the conversation back to Hunter and his dating proclivities, I let Janet lead me through a maze of cardboard boxes.

“This is our stock area. Basically we’re supposed to unpack, sticker, and shelve all items back here until they can be moved out front.”

“Exciting,” I deadpanned. I was surrounded by towering shelves of crap.

Janet smiled in understanding. “Everyone starts out in here. It’s not all bad, though there is a solitary confinement feel to it. But it gives you a chance to know the inventory, the pricing-and believe me, you’ll know it down to the last cent-before you get onto the floor. Besides, you can listen to some tunes if the radio is getting reception.” She hit an old boom box on its side, and the tinny voice of early Madonna piped out at me, overlaid with static.

Screw Olivia. I was out of here.

“Here’s where we stash our purses and totes.” Janet opened a closet doubling as cleaning supply storage, and cleared some space on the floor with her foot. “You’re supposed to have a clear plastic purse so security can see we’re not stealing anything from the hotel. The Balenciaga will have to go.”

She gave a wistful little sigh as I dropped the bag onto the concrete next to the Windex, and so did I. The animist’s mask was still cradled in the bottom of it, and a clear plastic purse would raise questions about such unusual items, though Regan had relieved me of the burden of hiding my conduit. I’d taken to using an ankle strap to carry a few edged weapons beneath my uniform. They wouldn’t kill an agent, but used right they could slow one down. So there was an upside to wearing this much shapeless polyester. Yay.

“So maybe that’s why the security guard won’t date employees,” I said, angling under the pretense of a little girly gossip. “He knows all the secrets we carry around with us in our little bags.”

“It’s more like he doesn’t want to mix business and pleasure,” she replied, before a knowing glint entered her gaze. “Or business and business, in his case.”

I raised my brows. “What do you mean?”

“It turns out our illustrious head of security has an interesting little hobby on his off-time,” she said, and swung open a top cabinet containing office supplies…and Hunter’s ad for adult entertainment taped to the door.

“That’s, uh…” Not good. “Interesting.”

Janet leaned against the wall, a dreamy smile playing on her lips as she ran a finger along the image of Hunter’s bare torso. “It’s Valhalla’s open little secret…at least among the women. God knows what would happen if it got out among the suits.” She straightened, looking stricken, as if I’d elbowed her in the gut. “You’re not going to tell your father, are you? Oh geez, if I’d have-”

“Of course not. Relax.” I angled my gaze back at the shirtless photo like I hadn’t seen the real thing only a couple of evenings before. “Anyone ever try calling that number?”

“Anyone? Practically everyone. You have to leave your personal information-name, address, phone-on a machine and he’ll call back after he’s checked on it, on you, and everyone you know. A Valhalla employee has never gotten through, though I know of a couple friends of friends who did. They were all dark-haired and -skinned, though. He seems to have a type.”

She looked at me apologetically, but I was secretly agreeing with her. He probably did prefer a certain type, though not for any reason Janet might entertain. If Hunter was only looking for a specific physical template, chances were he was also seeking a specific person. It was a she, it was someone who was involved in some way with escorts-my guess was a Shadow agent, targeting them-and, for some reason, she was important enough to have him creating an elaborate and very public persona that put his job at Valhalla at risk. Meanwhile, he was hiding it all from Warren.

So was this really why Hunter hadn’t wanted me working at Valhalla? Was he afraid I’d come closer to discovering what he was doing, and why?

After a brief run-down of the inventory, Janet left me alone with a bar code reader and went back out front to help with the registers. I spent a mind-numbing twenty minutes scanning codes on the bottom of Venetian-style masks-big sellers back in the Viking age, I guess-before boredom forced me to practice my fight stances in the door mirror at the back of the room. Pretending it was my lost conduit, I whipped the scanner from my cleavage, my hip, from behind my neck, and I was practicing spinning to nail two attackers in quick succession when I heard a hushed but distinct “Psst…Archer.”

I whirled, and the laser of the bar code reader landed square between the eyes of a five-foot human being, those eyes widening before he ducked. It took me a moment to recognize Kade; seeing him outside the hallowed halls of Master Comics was disconcerting. Stripped of context the visual no longer made sense. But, I thought, as Dylan popped up behind him, seeing the two of them together brought everything back into mental focus.

“What the hell are you doing here?” I straightened, running a hand over my hair, aware I was blushing.

“The Shadow Cancer was just at the shop.”

“Regan?”

“No, the other Shadow Cancer,” Dylan lisped, and ducked back behind Kade when I glared. “We tried to call you like Douglas calls her but you weren’t answering.”

I didn’t tell them I’d been at the state prison. They’d read about it in the manuals soon enough. Maybe. “So what did she want?”

Dylan peered around Kade’s shoulder again, and when he saw I wasn’t going to zap him with the bar code gun, shrugged. “She picked up a manual from Dougie, flipped through it while he whispered in her ear, then ran out of there like her house was on fire.”

Mind racing, I thought back over the events of the last few weeks. It was probably the manual that showed me trailing her after I’d discovered how she’d targeted Ben. I’d planted bugs in the townhouse belonging to “Rose” too. Dammit. One less resource at my disposal.

“Any idea what was in it?” Kade asked, when he saw my short nod.

“Some.” I wondered briefly if I could get Zane to let me in the store after hours to see what the latest Shadow manual said, but decided it was probably against the rules.

“Who are you talking to?”

Panicked, I motioned for the boys to disappear. They ducked back behind a stack of boxes containing Valhalla waist packs, and I skirted to the opposite side of the room, making sure Ginny could hear me. She did, and came marching that way.

“Nothing. No one,” I said brightly, propping the scanner up in one hand.

Ginny looked around suspiciously. “I thought I heard voices.”

“I think the radio is getting interference from the security tower. There was something about a guy passed out naked on the fifty-fifth floor. I thought that was kinda a weird thing for the DJ to say.”

Ginny gave me the zombie stare. “All right. Well, we need these coffee cups dusted off and brought onto the floor. The shelf out front is starting to look spotty.”

Oh, tragedy. “Sure. I’ll be right there.”

She looked at me a moment longer as if expecting me to stand on my head for her, and I stared back blandly as if expecting the same. After she finally disappeared, I let my expression fall and spun. “You guys are going to get me fired my first day on the job.”

“I don’t think she likes you,” Kade said, stepping out from behind the boxes. “When you’re as attuned to visual charges as we are, you can tell something like that. Her aura’s all muddled when she looks at you.”

“You guys can see a person’s aura?” I asked, drawing back when they both nodded. I hadn’t known that.

“Why you working in this dump anyway?” Dylan piped up, twirling a pewter thimble on his middle finger. “Next time she gets all tyrannical on your ass-”

“With that jacked-up aura-”

“You should say, ‘Fuck you, lady!’” He waved his fist in the air, pointing at the shop door. The thimble went clattering to the floor.

Kade did the same. “Yeah, fuck you in the ear!”

“Hold it down!” I hissed, throwing a worried glance over my shoulder. “Better yet, get out.”

“But we have more to tell you.”

I sighed and rolled my eyes. Of course they did. “And you couldn’t text me like any other tweener geek?”

Kade ignored that, his expression so serious it looked misplaced on a face still rounded with baby fat. “You haven’t suddenly lost the ability to imagine plate-glass windows into existence, have you?”

I’d done it less than three hours earlier. “No, why?”

“Because Jasmine can do it now too.”

“Yeah,” Dylan added, “and she’s using it to box in Li.”

“What?”

My response was reflexive, but Dylan explained it like it needed repeating. “She’s using your power to trap her sister in one corner of the comic book shop.”

“But don’t worry,” Kade said, too late. “We spiked her Surge with sleeping pills.”

He motioned me over to the far wall where a giant black silk bag tied with a white ribbon lay slumped against the floor. He untied the ribbon. Inside was a writhing, tied up, nonsleepy-looking Jasmine.

I was so fired.

I rushed over and ripped the masking tape from Jasmine’s mouth. She howled in pain, and would have leaped to rip out Kade’s jugular if I hadn’t stopped her. They were right; she was getting stronger.

“Fucktard!” she yelled, nailing Kade with her gaze.

“Nubcake!” Dylan yelled back, inching away. I shushed him again, shooting him a warning gaze of my own, and retaped Jasmine’s mouth. Then I shoved her back in the bag. She kicked out, striking a wall unit filled with pewter Valhalla replicas, and I struggled to catch them before they hit the floor. I wasn’t going to make it through this shift. I knew it.

“Please kill her now,” Kade said, once I’d returned them to their shelves.

Jasmine began kicking again.

“No.” I kicked back, but just enough to still her. She grunted, then curled into a fetal position. “I’m not going to kill her for something that’s my fault. But I might kill you if you lose me this job.” I tensed, hearing the clacking of Ginny’s heels as she headed my way again. “Hide!”

They hid, I feigned dusting, and after a few terse, pointed, petty words, Ginny disappeared again.

“Dingy aura,” came Dylan’s muffled and disembodied voice.

“Lots of adults have that, man.” Kade popped up on one side of me, Dylan on the other. “That’s what happens when you grow up, right?”

The boys sighed, and for a moment I shared their despondency, knowing what they were in for-mortgages, nine-to-fives, credit card debt, two weeks’ vacation a year. But no evil beings trying to steal their auras. That was a positive.

Finally Kade sighed and turned his head up to me, though his expression was still serious. “Look, Archer, you may not like it, but you have to do something, okay? She’s growing in power every day. Soon even we won’t be able to control her, you know?”

I sighed and put a hand on his shoulder. He was mildly sweaty from dragging Jasmine around behind him, and I removed my hand. “Okay, I’ll figure something out, but you have to leave. Now. I need this job.”

They began to shuffle toward the door, dragging Jasmine along behind them. I didn’t know how they’d gotten in unseen, and I didn’t want to know how they were getting out.

“Wait!” I whipped back around, mid-thought.

“Make up your mind,” Dylan said, one hand on his hip. “This bitch is heavy.”

Jasmine kicked at him.

“You guys are still looking for the manual about Jaden Jacks, right?”

A look passed between them, and for the first time they looked uncomfortable. Kade swallowed hard. “We’re trying, but it’s hard, okay? We can read the Shadow manuals, but every time I think of telling you the information, it all gets muddled in my head. I put the manual back, and five minutes later I can’t remember where I put it.”

“Our short-term memory is blitzed.”

“Like Alzheimer’s for kids.”

I frowned, forgetting all about Ginny and coffee mugs and kids in bags. “That doesn’t make sense. I can read any Shadow manual I want. It’s just a matter of finding the right one.”

“Maybe, maybe not. After all, how will you know if you never come across it?”

They were right. It was like the tree-falling-in-a-forest scenario. Would it make a sound if there was no one there to hear it?

“Either way, I don’t think we’re supposed to help you. Sorry.”

“Wait, wait.” I held out a hand, biting my lip. The boys looked at me attentively, and even Jasmine stilled. “Okay, try something else for me, then. I need to know if there’s ever been a Shadow woman targeting men who…” How to clean this up for the preteen set? I wondered, and then really looked at them, two kidnappers with a girl in a bag at their feet. “Who sell their bodies for money. Call boys, if you will.”

Kade didn’t even blink. “We’ll try, all right? But we should start charging you for this shit. It isn’t like we don’t have better things to do than babysit your broken changeling and research your sexual abnormalities.”

Better things like plugging into their PlayStations. “I know. I appreciate it,” I said, giving them a placating smile, which dropped as they grunted and turned toward the door. With one final thump, they lugged Jasmine around the corner and were gone.

I went back to gather up Ginny’s precious mugs-three in each hand, eight more pressed between my arms and body-noting the closet containing our personal belongings was slightly ajar. I kicked it shut on my way to the storefront, but when I returned for more mugs a minute later, it was open again. A faulty latch? A coincidence? Even before I whipped the door all the way open, I knew I couldn’t get that lucky.

Hunter’s picture was still splayed lewdly on the door, the purses still slumped forlornly next to the cleaning supplies…but eyes like silver swirling moons blinked at me from the dark recesses of the back wall.

“Who’s the hottie?” the doppelgänger asked, eyes going slanty as she shifted them toward Hunter’s ad, her gurgling voice sounding hollowly in the closet. Because she didn’t immediately lunge at me, I glanced behind me, and up, spotted the security camera, and figured the suds spilling out onto the floor could be explained away by the cleaning products. A translucent woman with marble moon eyes could not. I began to shut the cabinet.

“Shut that door and I’ll scream so loud, that pudgy mortal will fire you on the spot.”

“So do it,” I said, stepping back, challenging her with words alone. “Because then she’ll come running back here, and that’s the last thing you want. Isn’t it?”

I’d put it together after her appearance in the sanctuary. She’d fled both times my troop had arrived to save me, but not because she was afraid of them. It was because she couldn’t take on my form when distracted by so many other conflicting faces and energies. Confronting me was pointless unless we were alone.

One side of her mouth lifted like it was unattached from the rest of her face, and as unnerving as that was, it was also confirmation I was right.

“So you do exercise that muscle in your head after all. Wouldn’t know it by your flat-footedness back at your sanctuary.” She sneered at the irony, and I didn’t blame her. I’d been no safer there than I was now.

I took another step backward.

“Hey, if you want to soul-stalk someone else, be my guest.” I had mugs to polish.

“It would be significantly easier on us both if you would just figure it out.” She stepped forward, still all iridescent curves, though there seemed to be a sharpness of light that gave her a molten look, like honeyed chrome. She was getting closer to solidifying. “You wouldn’t even try to give me a proper noun.”

Couldn’t, not wouldn’t. The latter implied a choice, and I’d had too few of those lately. I blew out a breath, and she copied the look. “Listen, your attitude and your riddles annoy me. If you’re not going to tell me straight up what you want, then lose my supernatural phone number. I don’t want to hear from you again.”

“I can’t just tell you. It’s a tandem law in both our worlds.” She was annoyed, and it made her voice sound like static and crossed wires, turning her every syllable into a hiss.

“And exactly what other world are we talking about?”

“I told you before.” Her marble eyes rolled a three-sixty. “Midheaven.”

The myth. Great. My imaginary friend came from an imaginary world with imaginary laws. I felt a sudden urge for an imaginary cocktail. “Well, I’m still playing catch-up with our Universe’s”-apparently flexible-“boundaries. Wanna run that rule by me again?”

Her frame was diaphanous in the harsh storeroom light, and parts of her body came in and out of view as she stalked back and forth in front of the closet. “Words, spoken aloud, are given life and vitality. The spoken word becomes record. Think of weddings or vows of office. Nothing comes into being until thought is given voice via the breath of a living being. That, and action.”

It was the same thing the Tulpa had told me when giving me the mantra; why he hadn’t wanted me to say it aloud then. Nothing happened if I merely thought about binding her. But if I spoke the words the power would be released, the doppelgänger would die…and I’d belong to the Shadows.

But maybe I could use it without using it.

“Action, huh?” I bit my lip like I was considering it, and the doppelgänger mirrored the movement, lips shifting, nose twisting, then twisting back. For a flash second, I recognized myself. “Action like tearing the veil between two parallel worlds?”

Her eyes blazed. “The right word from you and it’ll all stop.”

“Oh, I know.” And I told her about the mantra, left out the Tulpa’s conditions, and watched as color drained again. A tremor passed over her, the bubble wavering but not bursting. I smiled, and this time there was no mimicking movement. “I want the vibrational chaos to stop. Let our reality heal. And leave me alone.”

I finally seemed to have an edge. Unfortunately, as with many, this one came with a steep fall.

“Leave you alone?” If she’d had brows they have risen up her forehead. “Darling, would that I could, but what am I supposed to do instead? Get a real job? Pimp drinks at the gaming tables? Entertain at children’s parties?” She pursed her lips, and bubbles flew from her mouth by the dozens.

Irritated, I waved them away, and glanced over my shoulder to make sure we were still alone. All I needed was Ginny or Janet coming in to find me talking to the mops. “How about creating your own identity, like any other person?”

“Please. Most people don’t even create their identities,” she scoffed. “They just stumble upon them. Just like Regan stumbled upon the woman you attacked in that dark street.”

I fell still. “You saw that?”

“I saw that, then Regan ambush you, and the way you cried like a baby afterward.”

She’d been there, and she hadn’t helped. “And let me guess? You wouldn’t have cried if you were me?”

“It wouldn’t have happened if I were you, though it did make me wonder.” Shimmering color rose again like a wave inside her. “If you were that torn up over one person, how would you feel about thousands?”

I opened my mouth.

“Uh-uh,” she warned, and lifted her arm to point one razored nail above the doorway. “One little poke, and Valhalla will crumble.”

A fissure appeared above the doorframe, a slim almost-shaft of light lasering through the alternate reality and into ours, and I quickly snapped my mouth shut again.

“Don’t even fucking think about it,” she warned, voice as sharp as her nail. Above me, the building rumbled.

I cursed my stupidity. I shouldn’t have used the mantra as leverage. “Okay, I’ll try to figure out your little riddle, but you have to stop that.”

The doppelgänger smirked. “You’ve got forty-eight hours.”

Was that it? That would make it the day of Kimber’s metamorphosis. “I’m kinda busy on Sunday. Maybe you could get back to me during the workweek?”

She didn’t even dignify that with an answer. “Figure out my ‘riddle’ or give me your beating heart, it really makes no difference to me, but if I don’t have one of those things by the end of that period, I won’t just take down this hotel, I’ll pulverize this city.”

Her willingness, the easy way she said it, stole my breath. “You have no conscience, do you?”

“You could always give me yours.” She batted her lash-less eyes prettily, before squaring on me again, all business. “No? Then let me be clear. I’ll take the energy I need, one way or another, and I’ll take more than your heart. I’ll take over your life, and sweetie? I’m already close. One more viewing and I’ll have you.”

She was close. I could see it in the colors swimming inside her, like concrete being mixed before it solidified, though this would form skin.

A noise sounded outside the room, and she glanced that way, orbs shifting oddly to give her a cross-eyed look. “I’d prefer the other option, if you figure it out. It’s the most powerful, it’ll mean we can coexist in this world, she’d prefer it, and-of course-it’s something the Tulpa wants to prevent more than anything.”

Before I could ask again who “she” was, the doppelgänger lunged close. I jerked back, but if she’d really been trying she’d already have me. “Just mark my word, Joanna Archer. I will survive, no matter the cost…and I know you understand the need to survive, don’t you, dear?”

And her face suddenly morphed into an exact approximation of my younger one, streaming with imagined tears, and an unholy cry that ricocheted off the shelves behind me. Glass tinkled, my blood went cold, and the stack of masks on the shelves behind me clattered to the floor. But the sound was gone as quickly as it came, and all of her swirling color and power was gone in that same instant. It’d taken everything out of her, but it had also done the job. She had briefly become me, my history laid bare on her face, and I was shaken.

“Two days,” she said, voice nothing more than a bubbly whisper, and then she swirled like a mini-hurricane taking form and flight, and whirled through the room, and out the vent near the doorway.

I exhaled shakily, then let my knees buckle under pretense of picking up all the masks. “Cleanup on aisle one,” I muttered, but the joke didn’t amuse me. Her point had struck as intended. I too had fought hard to survive. And now that I’d finally found a place, a home, within my troop and my city, she could take it all away.

Forty-eight hours.

She had a point about the Tulpa, though. What was he so desperate to achieve that he’d blow his own hole through the fragile terrestrial plane? Why was he willing to work with me now when never before? And despite the breaches in reality, the claws and teeth and threats, and all those fucking bubbles, the question remained: who was the greater threat?

My phone trilled in my bag behind me, shaking me from my thoughts, and I lunged to turn it off, knowing Ginny would have some rule against that. But then I saw the number.

I lifted the phone to my ear. “Speak.”

When I heard the voice, I also lifted my eyes, and while my gaze remained focused on absolutely nothing, after a brief moment a smile as wicked as the doppelgänger’s spread over my face. And as Gregor continued talking, that smile widened.