The Scent of Shadows

11

They buried me on a cold, blustery January day. I watched the live coverage on the local news from the bed of my enforced convalescence, while a makeup artist dutifully applied the pallor of the sick to my healthy complexion. It had to be Olivia lying in that casket, cold in my place, though I hadn’t asked and neither Micah nor Warren had said. The anchor’s voice-over seemed obscenely cheerful to me as he followed the procession of Nevada politicians, Stripside entertainers, and business associates of Xavier’s flocking to pay their respects to a woman most had never met. It was big news, even in this transient and jaded city. I had to admit, it was like some overwrought adolescent fantasy, being able to watch people mourn my passing, to hear how very much I’d be missed.

Mostly, though, it was just a sad procession of acquaintances detouring through the graveyard on their way to drinks that night, and then on to the rest of their lives. Scattered among them, however, were the few people who’d truly known and loved me. Asaf, who would be quoted in the following day’s paper as demanding a full-scale investigation into whether more than one person was responsible for my death. He grieved for me, and I for him.

Then there was an old friend I’d only seen a handful of times since high school, but who had such enormous tears streaming down her face, it made me want to lunge for the phone to tell her I was all right. Or at least alive. I was also surprised to see Olivia’s friend, Cher, looking lovely as she stood graveside, and not a little alone.

Then there was Xavier. He stood a bit apart from everyone else, appearing dignified if a little bored at the whole affair, and the sound bite accompanying a close-up of my casket was of him saying how grateful he was that I’d saved Olivia’s life. “She sacrificed herself for her sister, and this is what gave her death, and therefore her life, true meaning.”

I felt no anger over the words. He had clutched me in his arms the day before, thinking I was Olivia, shedding tears as real as he was capable of producing. As useless and distracted a father as he’d been to me, at least he’d loved Olivia, and I was gratified she’d had that much.

Then another man appeared. Lean in silhouette, he flanked Xavier’s left shoulder, his empty blue eyes snaking this way and that.

“Ajax.” I leaned forward on my hospital bed, squinting at the image. Looking skeptical, and dangerous in an ebony trench coat, he turned his attention to the camera, nose twitching. “You bastard.”

“Do you mind, ma’am?” The makeup artist, some girl named Raine, raised a pierced brow, sponge in hand. She’d been dabbing until circles appeared beneath my eyes, and creating fading bruises on my cheekbones for Xavier’s visit later that evening. I’m sure she wondered why, but I knew Micah was paying her enough not to ask. I ignored her, and turned my attention back to Ajax. He was gazing to the left, the wind lifting the hair from the nape of his neck as he sucked in a big mouthful of it.

“I’m right here, you rat-fucking bastard,” I said, and my breath caught when he turned and looked directly at the camera. A look of such hatred passed over his face I thought for a moment he’d heard me. Then his eyes fired like torches and a knowing smile jerked at one corner of his mouth. The same smile he’d shown me at dinner when he claimed he was going to kill me.

But he hadn’t heard me, and despite the look, he hadn’t seen me either. I knew, because just then he turned and stepped from the frame to reveal exactly what—who—had caught his interest.

“Oh, God.” I had to put a hand to my mouth to prevent the wail that threatened to rise from my chest. “God. Ben.”

He wept openly, shamelessly, tears running over his cheeks, his mouth contorted in pain. He shook off the consoling arm of one of his colleagues, and there were more than a few, all in uniform and looking awkward around their comfortless friend. Ben, I thought, who had kissed me so passionately I’d forgotten about danger. Ben, whom I’d safely left behind to go to Olivia’s.

Ben. Who thought he’d lost me yet again.

Now I was weeping, and Raine had silently retreated, uncertain what she should do next. In my searing horror and grief over Olivia, in the consuming fury that had impelled me to take another person’s life, and in my shock at finding myself with a whole new identity, I had utterly forgotten Ben.

But what was this? I sucked in a breath and held it there, tears drying instantly in my eyes. Helplessly I watched Ajax approach Ben and speak words that had his head jerking in surprise. Of course the sound was muted, the anchor’s solemn voice-over blabbing on and on about my place in society—my father’s place, really—and Olivia’s estimated inheritance now that she no longer had to share it with another. But I saw Ajax’s mouth move. His thin lips went wide with the syllables, exaggerating the words, as if he knew I was watching and wanted me to follow, and understand.

My condolences.

Ben had already reached out to shake his hand when recognition flashed over his face, freezing it for an instant, and he didn’t move while Ajax pumped his hand with an overly firm grip, a snaking smile taking the place of his faux compassion. I saw the instant Ben tried to yank his hand away, you could catch it if you knew to look for it, but Ben’s friends—sharp-eyed cops though they were—didn’t. They heard the words. They caught the back and forth pumping of a solid handshake. They saw only one man offering sympathy to another.

But I saw something else.

A slim silver chain snaked around Ajax’s neck, taunting. I gasped, putting my hand up to my own naked throat, and Ajax shifted and smiled. The chain glinted in the thin winter air.

And Ben lunged for his throat.

The commentator interrupted his live report as Ben’s friends yanked him back, hands pulling at his arms, his torso, his neck, while Ajax plastered an innocent look on his face. Ben was yelling now, his face red and wild, hair falling over his forehead, his suit jacket raised up around his chest. The commentator was attempting a play-by-play, but he must have been prompted to go to a commercial. There was enough time to see Xavier’s head swivel as he observed the ruckus with a slight roll of his eyes. Then Ben was yanked from the frame. Ajax shot the camera, and me, a victorious smile.

“No!” I screamed, leaping for the television just as the picture cut off. Makeup went flying, the bedside tray clattered to the floor, and I slapped my palms on the screen once, twice, then sent a fist flying through it. Raine let out a terrified squeal and backed into the corner. “You stay away from him! You leave him alone!”

I yanked the television from its mount and sent it crashing across the room. The sound was divine; satisfying and gloriously destructive. A switch flipped inside me, and havoc coursed through my limbs. And suddenly I couldn’t stop. I threw everything—the monitors, the machines, the cords, the tables and plastic chairs. All the while a voice, my true voice, was severing the strands of my new vocal cords. “I’ll kill you, I’ll kill you, I’ll kill you…”

Olivia, so good and sweet and pure, never had a chance against Butch, and my heart had broken at that fact every day since her death. And my mother, who would have been able to fight him, hadn’t been there to protect her; ever since I learned the real reason for her absence, my heart had bled for her too.

But never once had I allowed it to break for myself. I had breath, and I had life, and I told myself that was enough, and more than I deserved. But after seeing Ben’s face, his all-consuming anguish, there was no stopping it. I screamed, and broke, and shattered everything around me, so it would represent how I felt, so it would match my insides; everything torn and stripped, raw and aching. So tired. And so very, very sorry.

When I’d finished—two minutes, two hours, or two years later—I found myself curled into a fetal position, rocking back and forth in the corner of a demolished and empty room; the makeup artist had long since fled, the lights busted on the walls, their counterparts swinging on bare wires from the ceiling, machines toppled and silent and dead.

“Joanna.”

I looked up. Warren’s appearance, as sudden as the first time I’d seen him, surprised me, as did his use of my real name. He’d been calling me Olivia for days. He was dressed the fool again; an unwashed, unwanted bum reeking of desperation and desertion, but his eyes were trained on me with a sort of sober ferocity, and that brought fresh tears to my eyes. He was really seeing me. “Now the true healing can begin.”

I shook my head slowly, then harder, and covered my face with my palms. This wasn’t healing. This was attack; the way antibiotics assault a foreign agent planted inside the body, though in this case I was the foreign agent. I was the virus inside.

“I am not dead,” I told him through stiffly splayed fingers. He knew this, of course, but I needed to hear the words for myself. “I’m not. I feel more, and I smell more. I’m more alive than I’ve ever been.”

“Olivia—” he began, crossing the room.

But I cut him off and backed away. I didn’t want consoling words or generic explanations. “I’m not Olivia! I’m not weak or vulnerable! I’m not…” That good, I thought. “That innocent.” What I was was alive, damn it, and I wanted someone, anyone, to know it! No, that wasn’t quite true either.

I wanted Ben to know it.

Warren crouched in front of me. “It’s enough that you know who you are. As long as you know, the rest won’t matter. In time.” And something in his tone made me think he’d had occasion to tell himself the same thing.

But he was wrong, I thought as he held out a hand. It mattered because Ben mattered. What this was going to do to him—again—mattered. But I took the hand anyway. It was the only one being offered to me.

Warren pulled me to my feet and steadied me before him. “I know who you are too. And I promise I won’t ever forget.”

“I’m Joanna,” I said, and allowed myself to weep. I was both Light and Shadow and knew now that I always had been, but more than that…“I’m still me.”

I remained in the hospital another week. Even Xavier’s raging and threats weren’t enough to get Micah to release me into his custody. I was safer there than I’d be anywhere on the outside, and Micah wanted to keep me hidden until he was sure they’d completely masked my old scent and he could provide me with a new olfactory identity as well.

“We have to make sure it’s perfect. Ajax is especially good at scenting out the identities of new agents,” Micah told me one day as he toyed with my hair again. “Probably because he takes it personally.”

“Personally? Why?”

Micah shook his head, muttering something about Warren and his damned secrets, before continuing, louder, “Ajax’s mother betrayed the Tulpa by crossing over and trying to become Light.”

I turned in my chair to face him. “You can do that?”

Micah forcibly turned me back to the mirror. “Oh, yes. Just like humans, we always have a choice in who we want to be.”

I thought that was a damned ironic thing for him to say to me, but Micah had resumed flat-ironing my hair—I’d apparently become his favorite new doll—and missed my pointed look in the mirror. “We took out three of their Zodiac signs in as many weeks because of her advice.”

At least I knew now why Ajax grew so incensed when anyone mentioned his mother. “So did she stay…Light?”

Micah shrugged. “She may have, if she’d lived long enough. We changed her identity, masked her scent, did everything we could to make her ‘invisible’ to the Shadows. Only one person could have located her.”

Someone who’d been inside her, I realized. Someone who’d been of her. “Ajax let the Tulpa kill his own mother?”

“Oh, no,” Micah said, putting down the brush. “When Ajax found her, he did it himself.”

My own sense of smell was also blossoming in ways I’d never have imagined. The bouquets that filled my room were like floral injections into my bloodstream. The roses bled color behind my eyes, carnations spiced my palate. The first time I stepped onto the hospital’s outdoor patio I almost fainted at the assault of textured scents there. I could smell emotions too; the gaseous heat of anger, the seepage of cloying suspicions into the pores, and the dry vibration of denial as the dramas of the hospital played out around me.

But Warren was wrong about the rest of the world not mattering. I grieved for Ben daily, and, though I’d never given it much thought before, found myself also mourning my old life; longing for my house, my darkroom, my clothing, my old body. I couldn’t believe how much I’d taken for granted; the ability to move about in the world as myself, and speak my mind without wondering first if it was something Olivia would say.

I was a disappointment, if not a complete failure, at this last task. Xavier would frown when I automatically responded caustically to one of his remarks, leaving my bedside not long after. And Cher would fall uncharacteristically silent when I reacted to one of her bubble-brained ideas with nothing more than a blank stare. Micah explained to them that I wouldn’t seem totally myself for quite some time, that hiccups in my character were to be expected, and I was experiencing prolonging trauma from seeing my sister plummet to her death. That, at least, was true. But he never explained how to recover from that.

He did, however, fill me in on the Zodiac’s history, answering my questions as rapidly and thoroughly as I fired them, still feeling guilty, I think, about turning me into my sister.

When Warren first told me about the Zodiac troop, I pictured cartoon figures, hyperbolic symbols of the forces of good pitted against evil flying through the air, wearing ungodly amounts of spandex, and bright capes fluttering behind them like bulletproof banners. But Micah spoke of an organized, if otherworldly, quest for personal power, dominance over city politics and influence over community mores, and gradually the bright primary colors of Saturday morning cartoons were replaced by stark slashes of blurred action. The human drama of life and death played out in my imagination on a canvas of black and white…one occasionally splattered in bloodred. In other words, it was our reality of Shadow versus Light.

We’d always been here, Micah said. We weren’t extraterrestrial like Superman or Captain Marvel, and we hadn’t always been referred to as superheroes. But as long as there’d been humans, there’d been individuals who could access places and planes others could not. People who were faster, stronger, better healers.

“Ever wonder what a mortal would be capable of if he or she utilized more than just ten percent of their brain at any given time?” he asked me one day while fine-tuning the work he’d done on a tooth I’d chipped but Olivia hadn’t.

A few mortals do use more than that, of course, and even one percent is enough to make a perceptible difference. For example, there are those individuals who can control pain enough to, say, pin themselves with a foot-long needle—in one side of their body and out the other—with no apparent damage done and no blood to show otherwise. There are others who can spontaneously inflict a sort of self-hypnosis, slowing their bodily functions enough to place themselves into an almost catatonic state. This was particularly helpful, Micah said, if there’s some mortal injury done to the body and no medical help readily available.

So it was possible, in part, for humans to attain greater strength and control and ability…given a healthy amount of discipline and practice. “For us, though,” and here Micah winked as he peered into my mouth, “it’s as natural as the blood moving through our vessels.”

Yet even we have our limits. We might be able to manipulate the boundaries of our minds and bodies, but we’re still bound by the universal laws of gravity and physics, and a good deal of our abilities can be explained by quantum mechanics, something Micah said humans are only marginally beginning to understand…and which I didn’t understand at all.

So, though free of mortal law, we were still confined by universal law, which is why the troops had developed ways for science to augment our abilities; chemistry to mask our pheromones, biochemistry to study how different we really are from human, and genetics, because—like mortals—we’re constantly evolving, even still.

I laughed, however, when Micah claimed even astrology was considered a science. I couldn’t stop myself, though I wish I had when he drew back, leaving a suction hose hanging from my mouth, his fierce expression made fiercer by the sharp dental instrument held aloft in his hand. “Myths—Greek, Roman, Neopagan—die out, Joanna. But you can’t kill the stars. Astrology is a science. Maybe not a well-understood one, but back in the day doctors like me were called shamans. Scientists were called mystics, and these were the mediators between the visible and invisible worlds. There’s no difference between the cabalistic and medical fields, not if you really think about it. Both still have impenetrable secrets, and if you can’t bring yourself to believe that, just remember this: every life and death is written in the stars.”

But I was struggling with something much more basic than that. I was having trouble wrapping my brain around the idea that I wasn’t human, that I was something…extra. Something other. Micah, realizing this, tried to simplify things for me.

“Look,” he said, a smile reaching his eyes, my insult about the science of astrology all but forgotten. “Think of us as being related to mortals in the same way primates are. We’re long removed cousins, but on the opposite side of the developmental spectrum.” And then he shot me a full smile. “What? You didn’t think the human race was all there was, did you?”

Yeah, I kind of had. But there was no denying what had happened to me. Or the things I could do now. My lungs felt like they’d been expanded to twice their size. I could run without losing my breath…fast too. I could climb without fear of falling, because I could fall without fear of dying. Metamorphosis had changed every molecule, and I didn’t even need Micah to explain that. I knew it as soon as I began healing from injuries any mortal would’ve died from.

So, I accepted Micah’s explanations, and began viewing the once colorful world—of Vegas and comics and the world in all its varying shades of gray—in terms of black and white. The bruises applied by the makeup artist—a new one; Raine had refused to return—were now applied in a light dusting. I grew used to seeing Olivia’s face greet me every day in the mirror. And the day would soon come, I knew, when I’d have to step beyond the sanctuary of the hospital walls and face my new life as her. And, as strange as it sounded, as some sort of superhero.

“She’s going to get too muscular,” Warren complained one day when I was training outside. It felt amazing to move, and I reveled in the stretch and give of my muscles as I jumped and lunged and lifted. I longed for the discipline of my Krav Maga gym, yet I knew if I walked in there like this, as Olivia, Asaf would die. From laughter.

“She’s not,” Micah argued from his position on the shaded porch. It was one of the few times since that first day the three of us had been together, and unsurprisingly, we’d picked up exactly where we left off. Squabbling like kids. “I’ve layered her in soft tissue. She’s well-protected.”

“What am I? A fucking Christmas ornament?” I asked, punching at the weighted bag.

“I don’t know why you’re bothering with your mortal skills anyway,” Warren said to me. “You’re faster and stronger than you’ve ever been. A human could never touch you. Once you acquire your personal weapon, your own conduit, you’ll be nearly invincible.”

I steadied the punching bag with my gloved hands and shot him a sidelong look. It was the “nearly” part that bothered me. “Invincible,” I repeated, jabbing with my right. “Like Butch? That kind of invincible? Or do you mean like Ajax? If I recall correctly, his weapon wasn’t so invincible.”

“Don’t get cocky.”

Micah chuckled. “She’s got a point.”

“Olivia doesn’t box,” Warren said, ignoring Micah. “She doesn’t fight.”

I stepped back from the bag and wiped my face with my forearm. Then I smiled wickedly, petulant at best on this angelic face. “She does now.”

“No,” Warren said, stepping forward. “You have to appear to the world just like the Olivia of old. There can be nothing of Jo in your words or your actions. Your life, and all of our lives, depend on that.”

I’d been alternating jabs and cross punches while he spoke, a rapid staccato of beats overlaying his words, but now I stopped, breathing heavily, and smiled. He didn’t smile back, which I couldn’t hold against him. Even I could smell my defiance. “Warren. What kind of person could watch her sister get thrown through a plate-glass window and not be changed in some way? People aren’t static, everyone grows. I’ve given a lot of thought about what Olivia would do, and I think she’d start studying Krav Maga.”

“Another good point,” said Micah.

“You’re just projecting what you’d want her to do.”

“I think I know her better than you.” Knew her, I corrected mentally, and started punching again, uppercuts this time.

“You’d better hope so,” he said. “Because it’s time to go.”

That stilled me. I lifted my chin, sniffed. “Where?”

“Back into the mortal world. Back into your life.”

Olivia’s life, I thought, and looked away. “I’m not ready.”

“Sweetie,” Micah said, the arbitrator, “if Olivia doesn’t return soon, the Shadow agents are going to get suspicious.”

“Won’t they be suspicious anyway?”

Warren shook his head. “Ajax saw you alive, but he didn’t see Olivia die. He didn’t even know she was there that night because by the time we showed up her scent had been—”

“Murdered,” I said dully, and combined my punches. Jab, cross. Jab, cross, hook.

“Anyway, we always disengage,” Warren said quickly. “Change our identities so even our closest friends and family won’t recognize us. That way the temptation to return to the old life is eliminated. Ajax knows this, so there’s no reason for him to look for you there.”

“Besides,” Micah added, “Olivia is Xavier Archer’s daughter, and anything with the Archer insignia on it is off limits. They wouldn’t dare touch her now.”

I raised a brow. Hadn’t my name been Joanna Archer? Hadn’t I been under the protection of that insignia when Ajax first attacked me? Warren shook his head, reading my thoughts. “Who do you think wrote that note to Xavier?”

Micah nodded. “It was more of a bullet than a letter. He should have just put a bull’s-eye on your forehead.”

I ripped my gloves off and reached for some water. “But won’t they be able to tell it’s me and not really Olivia? Smell me or something?”

He shook his head. “It’s different now that you’ve metamorphosized. You’re harder to track. We’ve also given you an injection for extra coverage. The only time your real pheromones might be clearly recognized is when you’re either injured or overly emotional. So practice the meditation exercises we’ve taught you every day,” he added helpfully.

Warren said, “And no fighting.”

No losing, I thought, but kept silent.

“Look, all you have to do for the next few days is hang around Olivia’s apartment,” Warren said. “If she kept a diary, read it. If she had a hobby, study it. Pillage her wardrobe, examine her photo albums, and create a past for yourself. Do everything possible to become your sister. When you’re ready, we’ll take you to the sanctuary.”

“Where you’ll meet the other star signs,” Micah added. “So you can learn how to be the Archer.”

“But first you need to learn to be Olivia. Only when you can fool even those who knew her best can we introduce you to the others.”

“Why only then?”

“Because if you’re not convincing, if you’re not Olivia,” he said soberly, “there’s only one other person you could be.”

“He’s right, Jo,” Micah said, noting my reaction. “Nobody can know who you really are, do you understand?”

I leaned my head against the nylon bag, suddenly weary. Then I tilted and looked up at the sky. It was an unending sprawl of baby blue above me, without a cloud to hide behind. “Is there no safe place?” I finally asked.

Nobody answered me. It occurred to me then that nobody could.