The Touch of Twilight

5

We reconvened at the Downtown Cocktail Lounge on Fremont Street, a touchstone in Vegas’s emerging entertainment district that was helping turn the promised downtown revitalization into less of a longstanding joke. The surprising thing about DCL was its refusal to cater to tourists. With a dim interior, low-key vibe, and not one overpaid celebutante or slot machine in sight, everything about it screamed “locals’ bar”…including the hidden front door.

However, watching tourists scratch their heads as they tried to find their way in was only part of the location’s appeal. It was also a newly designated safe zone, which explained why we were meeting there. We couldn’t be ambushed by Shadow agents in a safe zone-or tulpas or hopefully bubble beings-so they were good places to while away the hours between dawn and dusk. It was only in the fractional seconds of the sun and moon’s momentary truce that we could cross over into the safety of a true alternate reality, and not merely the flip side of this one.

There was also no better place to gather than one that served stiff cocktails and funky world beats via the DJ’s laptop 24/7. That too kept the children away. Warren put his hand in the air to call over the waitress as we settled ourselves around the large communal table. We spoke of nothing in particular until drinks were served, at which point I sucked down half the tonic-laced vodka before telling the others about the mask connecting me with the Tulpa, how it’d enabled us both to breathe beneath the massive weight of the black hole, and how his anger had been tinged with fright for the woman who bent gravity to her will.

Micah tilted his head, his analytical and scientific mind clearly whirring. As our troop’s Seer, Tekla was as sharp as they came, but even she looked perplexed. However, Warren, who’d taken time to change and shower so the DCL employees didn’t move the hidden door entirely upon his approach, perked up at this. “Olivia, I need you to think. Can you tell me what this being smelled like?”

“Sure,” I said, and closed my eyes to strengthen the memory. My sense of smell had dramatically improved with my metamorphosis at the age of twenty-five into something superhuman…but it hadn’t stopped after that. Experience and applied practice had increased my ability to distinguish textures and patterns in the delicate dance of air molecules, and I was developing a better language and vocabulary to describe sensory nuance.

My encounter with the woman was still fresh, so I easily picked apart the medley forming her essential scent. Despite the frightening encounter, it was a pleasure, for once, to dissect something not reeking of rot and decay. “The top note was herbal, like fresh-cut chives or sweet green onion, but lightly so, as if dug up too early. She was empty inside, so maybe that’s why it’s not more potent, like the scent could disappear with a puff of breath…” I trailed off, thinking of dandelion spores drifting in the wind, but didn’t say it. She wasn’t human, and so her genetic makeup would be different, but I had a hard time thinking of it as insubstantial. She’d clawed at me with sickle-sharp nails. She had substance…but what was it?

“And the heart note?” Warren pressed.

The most important and telling scent, that of her soul.

I frowned, trying to pinpoint it, but shook my head after a minute. It just wasn’t there. “It’s like a big white space in my mind. I can’t even locate the aromatic clues.”

Warren remained silent for so long, both looking at me and not, that I started to think he didn’t believe me.

“What was she, Warren?” Jewell asked, twirling around a strand of soft brown hair in one delicate hand. She was so silent I often forgot she was there, and I knew she felt out of her element, like she’d come so late to her star sign that she’d never catch up. But what she lacked in natural talent, she made up for in perseverance. The confidence needed to back it up would come with experience.

“Isn’t it clear?” Riddick, also new to his sign but lacking Jewell’s reticence, tapped his fingers on the polished tabletops. Light from the red votive candles made his smooth fingertips shine. “It’s the double-walker the Tulpa was talking about. The one he wanted Olivia to destroy.”

Nice to know he-and the Tulpa-had such faith in me, I thought as I gingerly fingered the claw marks still scoring my chest. It was both itchy and sensitive to the touch, and my palm felt wonderfully cool against the wounded flesh. I stilled my fingers when I realized Hunter was watching, but every other head was turned toward Warren.

“So what’s a double-walker?” Vanessa asked, reading my mind. “Someone who can walk freely on both sides of reality?”

“A logical conclusion,” Warren answered, absently swirling his glass. “But no. Its more common name is doppelgänger. Do any of you know what that is?”

“It sounds German.”

Vanessa arched a brow at Felix. “Got something against the Germans?”

“Well, the umlaut thing is kind of annoying.”

“Can we please focus here?” Warren muttered, stirring his whiskey.

“Don’t be shallow,” Riddick told Felix. “I love the Germans.”

“You’re an American who’s never even left this city, much less the country,” Felix countered. “What do you even know about the Germans?”

“I know they’re not French.”

“Focus!” Warren’s yell silenced the whole lounge. Even the DJ’s beat seemed to momentarily pause. Riddick had the sense to look abashed, and the rest of us averted our eyes, but Felix-no stranger to his leader’s admonitions-only sipped at his rummed-up Coke.

“Okay, geez. Double-walker, doppelgänger…no clue. Enlighten me.”

“A doppelgänger,” Micah informed us, “is a living person’s ghostly twin. Usually evil.”

They all looked at me.

I choked on my drink. “Who, me? A double of me? No way-that thing didn’t look anything like…either one of mes.”

Though not everyone knew I was Joanna Archer beneath Olivia’s glossy exterior, they did know I wasn’t the ditzy socialite I presented to the rest of the world. With them I was the Kairos, purported savior of the paranormal realm, steadfast troop member, with a sharp demeanor and acid tongue to match. Basically I was myself…but cuter.

“No, but it smelled like you.” Warren smiled grimly. “As a double, it’s still shaping, taking its clues from studying you.” I recalled how hungrily the woman had watched me, and how she could form and re-form at will. “The more impatient doubles, those most greedy for life, have been known to attack their living counterparts.”

I nodded wryly. “You mean eating my heart would be a good way to more fully materialize in the physical world.”

He shrugged. “In short.”

Great. So I had two strong, evil, ethereal beings after me. I signaled the waitress for another drink.

Sitting with her hands folded in her lap, Tekla took up the lecture. “Most doppelgängers aren’t this strong. Their sphere of influence is limited to causing confusion in their double’s life-appearing to family and friends, haunting their double, mimicking them, or at best giving bad advice. They’re the paranormal equivalent of a knock-knock joke.”

“Well, anyone who thinks that thing is funny didn’t stick around for the punch line.”

Brown eyes swimming with sympathy, Vanessa put her hand over mine.

“Here’s what I want to know,” Hunter broke in for the first time. “Why was she trying to convince Olivia to enter that particular portal?”

Warren nodded at Tekla to continue.

“A doppelgänger can’t just walk into this reality if she didn’t originate here. She has no opposite or negative. No flip side. Her energy-or lack of it-doesn’t register, and so the portals won’t allow her passage.”

“Okay, but what’s she doing over there? Or over here?”

Well, the “over here” was apparent. She wanted me, whom she’d dubbed the golden ring. In both my worlds…

So, then, as to the “over there”…

“That must be the other world she was talking about.” I sat up straighter, looking at Vanessa and Hunter, Felix and Riddick in turn. “She told the Tulpa she’d take me with her. That he’d never touch me in the middle of heaven.”

I remembered this because I’d looked up into the sky then, searching for her meaning, and watched a man disintegrate instead. I closed my eyes now, but opened them again in time to catch the rest of my troop exchanging strained looks. I shifted my gaze to find Hunter frowning at me. “Do you mean Midheaven?”

I didn’t know-did I? I frowned back.

“But that’s not a world,” Jewell blurted out. “It’s an angle in the birth chart.”

“Right,” Felix added, sprawled in his chair. “Basic astrology. It’s located in the house of reputation…what we want to be known for.”

“The Tenth House,” Tekla confirmed, nodding.

“Well, it’s what the bubble lady said,” I retorted, a little too sharply before slumping. These people had been raised in the sanctuary, trained in fields of astronomical study-including astrology-from birth. I didn’t have that advantage. My mother had shielded me from any knowledge, study, or course that might attract the attention of the Shadows. Or help me now.

Vanessa blew a dark curl from her forehead and leaned my way. She had a way of imparting information like she was telling a secret, and it’d served her well as a reporter. Shoot, I knew what she was doing and it still worked. “I think she was messing with you, Olivia. Midheaven as a place is a myth. As Tekla said, it’s nothing more than an angle on the astrological chart…an important one, but it’s not a physical location.”

“Then what is she doing over there?” I asked slowly, thinking the question obvious. I was a little behind in my astrology lessons, but my critical thinking was up to par.

Half the troop looked to Warren. Tekla closed her eyes. Hunter, who never drank anything harder than water with bubbles, merely swirled his glass thoughtfully.

“I don’t know,” Warren said after a moment.

We looked at Tekla, who also shook her head.

I wanted to run. Or scream. Or both. I’d been attacked three times in one night, and if the senior members of the paranormal troop I belonged to couldn’t tell me why, nobody could. Hunter reached over and placed a hand on my knee, staying it. I hadn’t even known it was twitching. Then I realized Vanessa had taken my hand again and I was squeezing hers, my own like ice. I shot her an apologetic half smile and loosened my grip. I nodded at Warren, who was watching carefully to see that I could relax before continuing.

“One thing is clear,” he said, leaning back again. “Whatever the doppelgänger’s doing, it has the Tulpa on his heels.”

“Why would she be any more important to him than to us?” said Micah, shifting his large frame, though he still couldn’t have been comfortable on the narrow bar stool. “The destruction of matter affects the Shadow side as much as it does us. It could be he simply wants to stop her before it’s too late.”

“Too late for what?” I asked.

Reluctantly, Jewell whispered in my direction. “For the world to heal. Each successive explosion, or breach, that the doppelgänger carves into our reality weakens the fabric of our world. Haven’t you noticed them getting longer? And more debilitating?”

“So it’s like dynamite? Each one builds on the one before it?”

“And the last will be the capstone,” Hunter said tonelessly.

I looked to Tekla. “And she doesn’t care?”

She shrugged her small shoulders. “She’s neither Shadow nor Light. She has no conscience-she has yet to draw that from you-and cares nothing for that which doesn’t somehow feed into her plans.”

“So let me see if I have this straight,” I interrupted, feeling a selfish but mounting need to prioritize. “This creature, whom even the Tulpa is afraid of, can blow holes through realities, has no conscience, and can lay waste to both sides of the Zodiac-not to mention the mortal realm-and she’s after me?”

“Sucks to be the Kairos,” Felix muttered in his cup. Hunter punched him. I didn’t feel a bit sorry as the breath whooshed from his chest.

“Look, the doppelgänger didn’t find you. She found the Tulpa’s black hole, and you happened to be there. There’s no reason you can’t remain active, living your life, continuing your work.”

“What kind of work?” Riddick asked Warren, leaning forward so his rangy frame obstructed my view of Felix. “I mean, what do we all do in the meantime?”

Warren, in turn, leaned back. “We count on the Tulpa being distracted by the doppelgänger. So no more efforts to merely balance the Zodiac-this time we target him as well.”

We all stared at him in baffled silence. Warren’s stance had always been that our job was to maintain the balance of the valley’s Zodiac. Twelve of them and twelve of us. His mission was to keep the peace, allowing the mortals in the realm we patrolled to make their own choices, ones outside the unfair influences of people who were stronger and had more knowledge than they did.

What was yin without yang? he liked to say. How could you know good without knowing evil?

Even as the Shadows continually sought to upset that balance, Warren held us to a higher standard of responsibility. Our power, he claimed, made us accountable.

But something in this conversation had him abandoning this long-held stance. I’d told him of the Tulpa’s initial threat to kill me weeks ago, and we hadn’t gone on the offensive then. I glanced around the table to find varying expressions of surprise and wonder…and also sniffed out a burgeoning skein of excitement.

But I tended to be a bit more cautious when it came to Warren’s motives. Sure, he could just be looking out for the good of the troop, but what if that wasn’t all? What if he secretly agreed with the Tulpa and thought the third sign of the Zodiac was the rise of my Shadow side? Because if that was Warren’s real fear, he’d never say it out loud. He’d just give orders and expect them to be followed.

Like he did now.

“So this is how we’re going to play it. We break up into pairs. I don’t want anyone out there alone. Felix and Jewell are a logical duo as they can canvass the party circuit most thoroughly. Vanessa and Hunter will join forces…a reporter and a security guard aren’t necessarily the most natural match, but sometimes there’s no accounting for taste.”

“Thanks a lot,” Hunter mumbled, and Vanessa leaned over and gave him a playful peck on the cheek. I felt no jealousy at that, just a wave of relief at not being his partner. I didn’t need the additional distraction.

“Micah and Tekla should make a handsome older couple, though we’ll have to find a different occupational cover for you,” he said directly to Tekla. “A physician wouldn’t likely find himself in accord with a psychic.”

“You mean the opposite, I’m sure,” Tekla said, tone imperious.

“Ouch.” But Micah slung a big arm around her diminutive shoulder, and lightly squeezed. If they made an odd couple, I thought, it wasn’t because of their vocations, but their sizes.

“I’ll pair up with Riddick since he’s working on his self-control…” A snicker rose, and I hid my own smile behind my glass. Riddick had gone after the Shadow’s Capricorn in full mortal view, causing a ten-car pileup on the 15, which took a cleanup crew half a day to set up as a semi driver’s loss of control. But at least he’d taken some heat off me for a while. It was nice not being the only troop member to get busted for overreaching.

“So I get Gregor,” I said, and tapped Gregor’s fist with my own-and he only had one; his other arm had been cleaved off above the elbow.

“Nope. Gregor needs to be available to us all. He can use his cab to ferry us to drop points, as we’ll be spreading out to canvass the city.” He nodded, addressing Gregor directly. “But I don’t want Gregor alone either, so I’m going to bring in Kimber.”

Kimber was an initiate I hadn’t yet met, but I ignored that. My stomach did a steep pitch and roll as I realized who that left. “Wait, wait. That means-”

“Don’t argue with me on this, Olivia,” Warren said, holding up a hand even.

“But then how will you know how very wrong you are?” I said, though it was only for form’s sake. He’d already made up his mind. I thought of Chandra, the only one left in our troop, even though she wasn’t a full-fledged star sign. I thought of how she hated me, how I didn’t much care for her either…and how our pairing would be like mixing oil with water.

“It’s not wrong. You were both born under the Sagittarius sign. You’re on the same side. You want the same things.”

Which was precisely the problem. Chandra had been raised believing she would be the next Archer in our Zodiac. She’d only had a year left until her metamorphosis when I arrived on the scene; unexpected, uninvited, and the Kairos to boot. Naturally she hated me.

“I’d be happy to pair up with Chandra,” Vanessa said, and I whipped around to stare at her. “Or Olivia. It doesn’t matter.”

“No, Warren’s right.” Tekla was unmoved as my mouth fell open. Shaking her head, she said, “It’s time these two put their childish games behind them and started working together. You’re both a part of this team.”

I noted she didn’t say troop-she couldn’t, because as long as I was alive, Chandra would never be a true troop member, but it was clear she wasn’t going anywhere. And neither was I.

“What about the doppelgänger?” Hunter asked pointedly. It, she, was still on all our minds.

Warren acknowledged it with a nod. “We have an advantage there. Because we now know of the breaches, we can triangulate them and find out exactly where she’s based on the flip side. Next time she breaks through, we’ll be waiting.”

“To do what, exactly?” Felix asked, breath recovered.

Warren and Tekla looked at each other again. “We’ll work on that.”

“But one thing is sure,” she added, so seriously we all fell still. “She has to be stopped, for all our sakes.”

After a spooky moment where we all silently pondered that, we ordered another round. Then we spent the rest of the evening hashing out details-how we’d smoke the Tulpa out, how we’d target any establishment with the Archer name on it, and what we’d do once we were confronted with the Tulpa himself. We sat there until our table was littered with empty glasses, until the graveyard waitresses had gone home, bleary-eyed, and the day-shift girl appeared, less interested in why our motley group was still drinking at five in the morning than if she was going to get a tip. The splitting dawn found us all crammed, knees to chins, in Gregor’s cab as he ferried us to the Neon Boneyard, a yard filled with dilapidated signage that also served as cover for our sanctuary. We crossed the alternate reality, crashing through a brick wall that immediately congealed behind us, then left the cab in the middle of the yard and hoofed it to the chute tunneling to our subterranean sanctuary. Before I got there, however, Warren cornered me privately.

“You need to put last night’s loss aside,” he said so bluntly it made me wince. It was as if I’d been gingerly fingering the memory of Vincent’s death, and he’d come along and ripped off the scab. I didn’t look at him as I ran my hand along the rim of a giant fiberglass coin. It’d once spilled from a neon slot machine high above one of Vegas’s first bars. Warren stilled the movement by putting his hand over mine, but I didn’t look up. “I know the Tulpa wants you to believe Vincent’s death was your fault, that you could’ve prevented it if you’d gotten there faster or acquiesced to his will, but you weren’t and you couldn’t. And that guilt you’re carrying around can be scented a mile away.”

“Again?” I thought I’d been hiding it well. He nodded, and I sighed. “He told me there’d be a war if I didn’t join him. This was the first victim.”

“We’re already at war, Joanna.” Warren’s use of my real name startled me into looking at him. It always surprised me to see him like this, clear-eyed and serious, probably because he’d been manic and verging on the psychotic when I first met him. I still wasn’t sure the crazy bum persona was entirely an act. “He murders mortals because he enjoys it, and he toys with them first because he knows it’ll affect us. It’s always been that way. We can’t save them all. We simply have to prioritize, and you come first.”

I sighed, knowing he was right, but hating the gross randomness of it all. Someone was waking this morning, showering and dressing as they always did, and might end up dead by day’s end because some powerful, immoral being willed it. I had a hard time being at all objective about that. Maybe because I’d once been that person.

“Then let me ask you something else, Warren. I know you said this other world, this Midheaven, doesn’t exist-”

“It doesn’t, and she’s not there, Jo,” he said quietly, and this time the understanding in his voice made me wince. “The myth that is Midheaven, the fairy tale? It’s like something out of a horror flick. It’s a twisted place, as the story goes, a giant pocket of distended reality, and it changes people. If it did exist, and if your mother had been there all this time, she wouldn’t be the woman you once knew. She wouldn’t even be someone you’d like to know.”

“But how else could she so thoroughly drop off the face of the earth?” How else could she have left me so completely?

“She didn’t. She’s a mortal. She’s on this plane, and I think she’s still in this city.”

I leaned in, my eyes searching his face in the dark. “Can you scent her?”

“No.” He shook his head. “But she’s still out there. She’s working on behalf of the Zodiac in some way. She’s doing some small part-whatever she can in that mortal skin-to help us. I know that.”

“How?”

This time he was the one who drew closer, and his voice was surprisingly fierce. “Because I know her, and that’s what she does. She’ll never stop. Not until she’s dead.”

But was he only saying that so I wouldn’t be tempted to look for her myself? I could never tell with Warren.

My goodness, is that a mask or blinders? Either way, it works brilliantly.

I shook the doppelgänger’s voice from my head and squared my shoulders.

“Okay,” I told Warren, lifting my chin. “But I have one other thing to ask of you.”

He looked wary until I explained myself, then smiled as if he understood. He couldn’t-he didn’t know what it was to love a mortal-but he swore he’d look into Regan’s account of what had happened in Dog Run, and I was satisfied enough with that. I had to know that the thug I’d left lying unconscious in the dirt of that ghetto alleyway, alone with Ben, had still been alive when the cops had arrived seconds later.

However, Warren did have one condition. He made me swear not to go after Regan again until our business with the Tulpa, and the doppelgänger, was resolved. After agreeing, I followed him to a building-sized shoe made of silver fiberglass and light bulbs, the only thing separating our sanctuary from the rest of the world. I donned the mask that barred the supernatural security system from detecting-and attacking-the Shadow in me, and followed Warren down the steep chute.

My fingers remained crossed the whole way down. Regan might be a lesser worry than the other two nefarious beings angling for my life, but with a little rub of my metaphorical heel, she’d soon get smaller still.