The Touch of Twilight

6

I’d never had to explain myself to my sister, and that was one of the things I missed most after she died. Olivia alone had known me in and out; she knew what had driven me to learn to fight, she knew the reason I’d picked up photography and the safety I felt hunched behind that lens, and she understood why I took both skills onto the neon-slicked streets at night. Olivia knew both why I hunted and why I cried.

And when our mother left us when I was sixteen, and she three years younger, Olivia alone had known how much that had truly hurt.

Percentages and statistics abound about the disorders shadowing abandoned children into their adulthood, and they’re not pretty. For a long time it looked like I’d end up one of those depressing statistics. By the time my mother disappeared I’d also endured assault, near death, and an unwanted pregnancy. I was then raised by a man who blamed me for all those things, one who piled my mother’s abandonment on top like a little something extra. In short, my entire youth was an emotional Molotov cocktail, but with Olivia’s consistent, gentle help, I had picked the fucker up and thrown it right back at the world.

Surprisingly, during this time Olivia’s worldview hadn’t altered much at all. She was considered a flighty creature, her naïveté and mercurial nature attributed to too much beauty and money and an inherited position at the top of Vegas society. But I knew my sister as well as she knew me. She was lively but she was also stubborn; she stuck when my mother ran, and nursed me back to health with a powerful combination of admonishment, challenge, and tough love. She’d cried and begged and yelled, forcing me to climb from my sickbed if only to get away from her.

She’d been there in the beginning, when as a preteen I’d first fallen in love with Ben; she’d been there in the middle-with me in the desert when I was attacked coming home from his house-and she’d been there at the end, alive long enough to see it all come full circle, when time and maturity erased the guilt and shame keeping Ben and me apart, and the romance we all thought had been lost forever was reignited.

The only thing Olivia never knew was that I was the reason she had died.

That night, the genesis of my twenty-fifth year on this earth, had marked the onset of my metamorphosis into the supernatural realm. Opposites attract, and when my pheromones flared with my burgeoning powers, I was tracked by my enemies-the Shadows-and marked for death. They succeeded only in killing the kindest, purest love I’d ever known, sending Olivia to her death in my place.

Warren had saved me, and then begun schooling me in the finer points of paranormal warfare, but along the way they’d had to arrange it so my former life-and everyone in it-was wiped from existence. My sole constant, my sister, was dead and gone. My life as Joanna Archer was over.

But my obsession with Ben was not.

What can I say, except the man haunted me? He invaded my consciousness in the same way the ocean washes up on the beach, with sweeping tides of longing and regret, and with such power and raw force, I often woke with the taste of salt from my tears clinging to my skin. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t bitter over what I’d lost…twice. Sometimes, even awake and allegedly in control of my emotions, I’d be scouring this city like an avenging angel when a glimpse of dark curls, broad shoulders, and an easy gait would cause my breath to hitch painfully in my throat. Each time it was like a fresh wound carved over my heart, reminding me again of what was no longer mine.

The shared dreams, entrusted secrets, and heartfelt promises. The softest lips, hardest body, and sweetest tongue. The man who promised to love-always and only-me.

Because, Regan aside, I was to blame for the dark turn Ben’s life had taken. If not for my death the second time, he wouldn’t have thrown off the constraints of his badge, his shield, to become a P.I. And if I hadn’t let him know I was still alive, only to disappear on him yet again, there’d be no bitterness shellacking his gaze, turning it into a cold, hard thing. No, if Ben was susceptible to Regan’s machinations, it was because I had injured him, enabling her…and now I needed to do something about it.

Once again, I turned to Olivia. I clicked on her computer, and bent over the keyboard, my face awash in the bluish-green light. I was intent on finding out for myself if Regan’s words were true. A part of me couldn’t help thinking I should let him go, that the kindest thing I could do for Ben Traina was to allow him to fade into the ebb and flow of a normal life and erase my existence from everything but his past.

But I needed to know if he was capable of killing a man in cold blood. And no matter what I found-because I was a hero, because I was responsible-I then had to get him back.

Olivia Archer-heiress, minor celebrity, and Louis Vuitton addict-was also a computer genius. Self-taught, she had run an underground website operating as a sort of clandestine cocktail party for hackers worldwide, a soiree that put some serious weight behind the term networking. She’d been able to circumvent top-level security systems with no more effort than it took to apply liquid mascara, while I still had trouble seeing the need for either. My way of getting around computer passwords was to punch a hole through the center of the screen.

Fortunately, Olivia’s more obvious talents had recently come to good use. Two months ago I’d managed to secure the contact information for a well-known hacker in Switzerland, and had flown him in on Xavier Archer’s private jet, plied him with wine and women and other latent adolescent fantasies-come-true, and a story about needing a partner in my expanding business. Actually, I could’ve probably spoon-fed him SPAM and sent him back to Europe on a dinghy, and still met with the same enthusiastic results. He took one look at his voluptuous “partner,” a second at the bankroll, and readily agreed. So we determined he would take over the web business while I would meet with the big players in person, if needed. We spoke once a month by videophone on a scrambled line, and whenever he geeked out and starting talking over my head, I just leaned forward and gave him a nice cleavage shot.

Sorry, Olivia, I’d think, as he stuttered off into silence. But it was just so easy.

So Maximus X had set up a satellite security system I could access by remote, though I’d still had to go in and plant a camera and audio in Ben’s house by hand. I had full access to Ben’s accounts, and if he was pissed at me now, he’d be livid to know I could view his every keystroke with one click of my mouse.

But it was for his own good, I thought, sighing as I typed in Rose, gaining immediate entrée into his private journals. At least that’s what I told myself.

I skimmed through the early entries, a faithful retelling of a young boy’s turmoil-the emotionally absent mother, an abusive father-because it was a story I already knew. I lingered over the words detailing the dark side of his work as an officer-what he’d seen and what he’d done-and how both could climb inside you if not for the badge acting as a barrier for your soul.

However, that line of thought had abruptly ceased when he quit being a cop, and it was then that a darker, more cynical Ben emerged. Leaning close to the screen, I could almost see in the pixels the downward spiral of his mental health, the story written between the lines. He’d once told me he wrote mysteries as a hobby, but the incoherent ramblings filling the screen looked more like horror to me. I had to close my eyes a handful of times, consciously willing myself to breathe, before I could continue. This was torment I had caused. Not Regan, not his parents, but me. I had to stop reading altogether when he said he’d had to get it all out on paper just so it’d stop burning him on the inside.

I skipped forward and began reading again on a random page when his heart had clearly hardened toward me. I should’ve known Regan was telling the truth about that. She was getting to him-drawing on his bitterness, bringing anger to the forefront of his psyche-because that’s what Shadows did to humans. It was like watching a cat bat at a single-winged moth, toying with a life just for amusement.

Similar, I saw, to the way Ben and his brothers had toyed with Charles Tracy.

I leaned forward and began to read the entry with Tracy’s name. It chafed that Regan knew about him, this childhood bully Ben and I had known, though she’d probably discovered it from this very account, an entry detailing one week in my fourteenth year, right after Ben and I had banded together to make sure Charles never victimized another child in our school again.

Of course, Ben hadn’t really needed me. I might have already developed a healthy sense of right and wrong, but I wasn’t yet physically strong. Meanwhile, Ben came from a military family; his father was retired air force, one older brother was in the reserves and working as a mechanic, the other in the marines, though at the time of this incident he’d been on leave. I’d remembered all this well because Ben hadn’t been able to hide the bruises on his torso, and though he’d grinned at me when recounting the antics of his older brothers, he’d done so with a split lip, his front tooth missing. He’d told me with a crooked smile that he didn’t care-it made him tough and built character-but then Charles Tracy made fun of him in front of a student assembly, and Ben didn’t show up to school for three straight days. It was okay, though-or so I’d thought then-because neither had Charles.

And now I knew why.

Ben’s father had served in Nam, and when he wasn’t using his family as a punching bag, he’d regale his boys with stories of his non-government-sanctioned activities. When Ben came home from that assembly, pissed and humiliated about Charles’s taunts, his brothers decided to test the effectiveness of wartime tactics on a thirteen-year-old. They abducted Charles on the way home from school, told him they were going on a little desert camping trip, and pulled out a sleeping bag to prove it.

They used military grade twine to bind him inside that bag, laid him out at the base of an old Joshua tree, and rigged a water cooler to release one icy droplet at a time onto the center of Tracy’s forehead. According to the entry Ben didn’t have a hand in this, but he didn’t try to stop it either. It was only water and it couldn’t really hurt, right? Besides, it was just as likely he would end up in Tracy’s position if he said anything at all.

Who was the bully now? his brothers wanted to know, laughing as they prodded the immobilized Tracy with sticks from their campfire. By morning Charles was unable to form words, moaning incoherently, and he had a welt on his forehead the size of red walnut. While the elder Trainas brewed instant coffee and ate bacon over a campfire grill, Charles still begging and moaning like an animal behind them, Ben was sick behind a giant saguaro.

The following week rumors of torture circulated around school, but the Traina brothers denied it, their father backed them, and Ben said nothing at all. I finally cornered him in fourth period gym class and asked him about it outright. He looked me in the eye, sincere and earnest and intent, and he lied.

Charles Tracy, once one of Olivia’s greatest tormentors, returned to school like a ghost of his former self. His harassment of her-of everyone-abruptly stopped, and I’d thought it was because Ben and I had finally set him straight. Eventually I’d stopped worrying about him, stopped seeing him as a threat, and finally-like a ghost-he disappeared altogether.

So what did this confessional entry say about Ben’s actions? What explanation did he have for allowing the torture, then lying about it afterward? Had he hidden the truth from me because he was afraid I’d judge him or because he was ashamed of what he’d done?

No. He’d hidden it because he wasn’t.

“It’s exactly what Regan is looking for,” I murmured, lacing my fingers beneath my chin. These words were the smoking gun Shadow agents looked for in the mortals they targeted as beards, allies, or victims. And yet I was having trouble reconciling the boy portrayed here with the man I’d left sleeping in my bed a month earlier. As for the drug dealer in Dog Run, I didn’t care what it might look like-what this entry alone might hint at-there was no way Ben could kill another human being, take a shower, and then make love to me only hours later. It would mean he’d been caressing me with lethal fingers, and that just didn’t compute.

But the entry on Charles Tracy forced me to consider one thing that’d niggled at me since Ben’s reintroduction into my life. What else, in the name of justice, had Ben decided to take into his own hands? What else had he done behind the shield of his badge and not felt ashamed about? And did I really want to excavate the answer to those questions?

You’re going to lose him. It’s only a matter of time.

I could feel the chaotic energy balling inside me, and swallowed hard, closed the file, and calmly shut down the computer. I sucked in a long breath, holding it before letting it spiral out of me like a string of yarn, then left the room to put on some tea. I was determined to put the issue aside until Warren could do his research to confirm for sure the dealer, Magnum, was dead. I walked back to Olivia’s bedroom, reasoning that even if he was, Warren’s account would be markedly different from Regan’s. Opening the closet doors, I stepped inside to the scent of cedar and expensive leather, and gently pushed aside a wall of little black dresses.

Then I punched five holes through a false back, the report muffled by the clothes and soundproof foam I’d installed four months earlier.

I didn’t know what had happened in that dark alleyway last month, but I did know this: Ben was the victim here.

I’d opened the door to his life and Regan had walked through it. She was like her mother that way, insinuating herself into the life of the vulnerable and unsuspecting, and filling his mind with ideas he’d never have otherwise had. Five more fucking holes. Plaster crumbled on thousands of dollars’ worth of shoes.

I knew what it felt like to be a pawn in someone’s twisted game, and it was my job to keep that from happening to others, mortals, Ben. And. I. Would. Not. Fail.

Because there was also the issue of that unwanted pregnancy I mentioned before, the one I’d once believed had been the result of violence. Ben had a child out there he didn’t know about, and I’d be damned if Regan was going to be the one to reveal that.

“She won’t tell him,” I swore, breathing hard, “and she won’t tell the Tulpa.”

And, of course, there was only one real way to ensure Regan’s silence. I’d have to make it look like an accident to keep Ben from suspecting my involvement, and I’d have to act without the troop’s knowledge too. They weren’t yet aware of Ashlyn’s existence either.

But Rose/Regan would die. She’d walk in front of a cab or bus, drop down an elevator shaft, or fall prey to a mysterious illness. And Olivia would be there to console Ben.

And, eventually, when he was ready, so would Joanna.

A harsh glint of red rebounded off metal hangers, belt buckles, and far too many sequins and crystals as I left that closet, but my blazing eyes didn’t concern me. Neither did the smoke trailing behind me like a wispy, lashing tail. I didn’t worry or fear that the third portent of the Zodiac really did mean my Shadow side was rising up to overshadow the Light in me. This was the real world-one with superheroes and demons and the soul of the city at stake-and brutal machinations demanded brutality in return.

And mothers, I was discovering, did what they had to to protect their children. I had a daughter who would someday ascend to my star sign, the Archer, though like me at that age she didn’t yet know it. But when she did finally find out, she’d want to know who her real father was, and I’d be damned if I told her he was once a good man who’d been tainted and tormented and turned by the Shadows. I was determined to protect them both from that possible future.

Because the story of a little girl with a monster for a father had already been told. It was ugly, and it was mine.