The Scent of Shadows

6

“Come.”

The word, the last Ben said to me before we parted ways, hummed through my mind as I drove to Olivia’s, like a bee addicted to the pollen of the same sweet flower, refusing to settle and be silent. Come.

I was holding the card he’d pressed into my palm before I drove away…and before I returned for one last kiss and drove away again. He’d printed his home address on the back of it, with a message saying he’d leave the door open for me. Just in case. I almost put the card in my purse before deciding against it. It was very schoolgirlish of me, but I wanted it close and instead tucked it into the hollow of my back as I headed into Olivia’s building.

Unlike me, Olivia lived in the center of town, buying a condo in a chic residential high-rise that came with its own valet, dry-cleaning service, and a twenty-four-hour concierge. Though it wasn’t my style, I had to admit the place was stunning, and convenient for those who wished easy access to the six mile stretch of neon playground a mere block away. Gleaming plate-glass windows bowed high into the sky, reflecting the polished wood interior in its shimmering sheets. Discreet lighting dotted the complex’s foyer in artful little niches, and the design was duplicated in Olivia’s apartment nine floors above.

I stepped from the elevator and was poised to knock when the door flew open to reveal my sister, clad in bright coral sweats, an even brighter smile lighting her expectant face. There were some things only a sister could understand. A giggle escaped me, surprising us both, and that was all the encouragement she needed. She squealed, her high-pitched voice shattering the sound barrier, and wheeled me inside before the dogs came running.

“You look fabulous, brilliant, stunning!” she rattled in quick succession, before pressing a finger to my swollen lips. “And you’ve been kissing! Tell me, tell me, tell me!”

“Can I get a drink first?”

“Martinis are already prepped,” she said, and disappeared with a skip into the adjoining kitchen. “I’ll bring them to the living room.”

I grinned at this sign of her excitement and headed into the core of the apartment.

The kitchen, where Olivia could be heard happily singing to herself, lay to the left. The bedroom was tucked around a slip of an alcove off to the right. I crossed the penthouse foyer, stepped down into the sunken Italian-marbled living room, and found myself facing a sheer wall of glass revealing the un-real estate of the Las Vegas Strip. It was a block so densely lit it could be seen from the stars. Tossing my coat over an overstuffed armchair, I positioned myself in front of the window to wait.

I felt framed, a statue displayed on a very high shelf, out of reach, and almost eye level with storm clouds so thick they reflected the city’s lights back on itself. Strange. The effect was one of condensed power, like electricity boxed between concrete and cloud, the light in between magnified to manic proportion. As the storm’s muffled rumble signaled its approach from the west, I turned my back on the wild city and relaxed in the bright and feminine luxury of Olivia’s home.

Olivia—again, unlike me—had surrounded herself with things. Beautiful, numerous things. There was a collection of fine crystal on a floor-to-ceiling sweep of built-in shelves. She had a preference for Scandinavian designs; the clean lines of Orrefors mixing with the bright, whimsical creations of Kosta Boda. Next to that was a marble fireplace, unlit and unused except as a holding place for some of the trees and plants that seemed to sprout from nearly every corner and niche in the room. I rubbed the leaf of a wildly trailing spider plant, wondering how she did it. The things absolutely thrived under her care.

Instead of a sofa, she’d placed an oversized daybed with high scrolled sides in the middle of the room, piling it high with bright chenille pillows. A large tray inlaid with mother-of-pearl and onyx sat in the middle of the bed and was used in place of a coffee table. Candles burned everywhere—colored ones, scented ones, tea lights and tapers—and a television unit, rarely used, was tucked inconspicuously off to the side.

Despite this colliding mishmash of color and items, Olivia’s home managed to feel airy and alive. She even had a cat skulking around here somewhere, full of attitude and ever waiting to trip a person up.

I lifted a copy of the latest computer journal from the tray, and noted it was already thumbed through, dog-eared, and marked in places. The first time our father—her father—had caught Olivia reading a scientific journal, we were all clustered around the breakfast table, pretending to be a normal, well-adjusted family. I’d known for a while she’d been reading Popular Science and Computers Today, and was teasing her about it, calling her a technogeek and, on my more caustic days, Bill Gates’s wet dream.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Xavier had said, staring from her to the magazine that had fallen from her hand.

Startled by his sudden appearance, she nonetheless recovered, and lifted the periodical between two well-manicured fingers to use as a lipstick blotter. Watching from over the rim of my coffee cup, I’d been surprised to see that instead of angering Xavier, this seemed to pacify him. Olivia avoided looking at me for the rest of the morning. And I never teased her about her reading habits again.

I tossed the magazine back down and nestled myself among pillows the color of buttercream and scotch. There, I removed my weapons, placing my purse with the kubotan on the tray in front of me, along with the fixed-blade at my back. I left the short blade where it was; sheathed and secured in my boot. I felt too naked if bereft of all my weapons.

Olivia, carrying two oversized martinis, raised a brow at the knife settled between her vanilla candles and knickknacks, but there was no widening eyes or surprise. She was as used to my weapons as I was to her scholarly journals.

“Vodka martini, straight up, two olives stuffed with Roquefort,” she said, winking. “Just in case you haven’t already had an orgasm today.”

“Be still my heart,” I said, taking one of the glasses. She settled across from me and folded her legs beneath her.

“Happy Birthday!” she said, raising her drink in a toast. “Here’s to you always being older than me!”

“Thanks. I think.”

“And,” she said slyly, “here’s to Ben Traina bringing your hormones back into whack.”

I lowered my glass. “My hormones weren’t out of whack.”

“Yes, they were.”

“No, they weren’t.”

“Yes, they were.”

I scowled. She smiled sweetly. “So, is he everything you remember? Different? The same?”

How could I tell her? What words could explain how the edges of the boy had been whittled down into such a finely sculpted man? Sure, there were some sharp edges too—and I was determined to be careful of them—but how to tell her about the new passion ignited between us? That he made Michelangelo’s David look practically wilted? There was just no comparison between my girlish feelings for Ben and the thoughts I entertained now. Perhaps Olivia was right and he had brought my hormones back into whack.

“He’s more, Olivia. So much more.” And I left it at that.

Despite this inability to articulate my thoughts, Olivia was satisfied. Her eyes went dreamy and she sighed into the bowl of her martini. Reaching down, she absentmindedly stroked the cat that had appeared from nowhere—what was its name again?—and said, “You’re finally going to get laid.”

I choked on my cheesy olive. “Excuse me, but how do you know I haven’t been?”

“Because you’re always too tense,” she said, shaking her arms. I think she was illustrating how to relax. “You treat sex like a combat sport, like that ‘dog maga’ stuff you practice.”

“It’s ‘Krav Maga,’” I bristled, “and I do not.”

“You do,” she insisted. “You treat it like it’s a battle to be won. You wear your femininity like a badge, and you’re daring someone to make you flash it.”

“That’s ridiculous,” I said, pretending not to wonder at that. “Besides, none of my lovers have ever complained.”

“Because they’re probably afraid your viselike vagina would squeeze off their manhood. Like those credit card machines that suck up the card and won’t give it back.” And she laughed gaily, waving off my outraged cry. “Besides, we’re not talking about lovers, we’re talking about love, and you haven’t allowed yourself to go there since Ben.”

My mouth snapped shut. True. Even I’d thought those emotions had dried up like a shallow lake bed beneath the desert sun.

“Like you’re an expert,” I muttered.

“Darling, I fall in love on a daily basis,” she said, waving a hand around her. “I love that tree and this drink and Luna here.” Ah, that was the name of the beast twining about my legs. I reached down and scratched Luna behind her ears. Her throat rumbled. Outside, lightning flashed. “I love you,” Olivia continued, “and I love Ben for loving you too.”

I must have looked surprised at that. My hand stilled on Luna’s back.

“You know he does,” she said.

“Maybe he does,” I nodded cautiously, stroking the cat again, “and maybe I know it, but how do you?”

Olivia leaned forward. “Because how could anyone know the real Joanna Archer and not love her?”

I smiled at her sincerity but looked away. It wasn’t that the sentiment wasn’t appreciated, but her rhetorical question brought to mind that afternoon’s confrontation with Xavier.

Olivia, sensing that, quickly changed the subject. “Don’t you want to open your present?”

I nodded, but didn’t reach for the package in the corner of the coffee tray. “I need to ask your help with something first.”

“Want me to take Ben for a little ride? Break him in for you?”

“I think I can handle that on my own,” I replied dryly.

“Too bad,” she said, demurely sipping her martini.

“I want to find out who my real father is,” I said. “I think Xavier knows, but he’s keeping it from me.”

“Why would he?”

“Knowing him, it’s probably just a power trip, something he can use to keep me under his thumb.” I frowned and tapped my finger against my glass. “But I was thinking about it this afternoon. What if he knows where the guy lives? What if Zoe mentioned it to him at some point?”

“What if,” Olivia finished for me, “she returned to this man when she left Xavier?”

I smiled at her use of his name. “So you’ll help me?”

She looked at me like I had the mental capacity of a two-year-old, which was unsettling. “I’ve already begun.” She rose and jerked her head, indicating I should follow. I did, leaving my present, my martini, and Luna on the couch behind me.

Mother Nature was apparently determined to make the city of light look like a dimly flickering bulb. The glass wall extending through the bedroom normally offered up a 180-degree view of the valley’s surrounding mountain ranges. Tonight, though, the oddly low cloud cover kept us from seeing even two feet beyond the glass. Lightning slashed at the sky, and as thunder rumbled directly overhead, I shuddered, thankful we were safely inside.

I turned my attention to the computer console, and sure enough, the machine was already on, bathing the corner of the room in an unflattering greenish hue. Circling to the other side, I saw the screen dancing with lipstick tubes and bottles of fingernail polish. I’d have wondered where Olivia found such a thing, but knew she’d probably designed it herself. Then I watched as she positioned herself in front of the monitor, placed acrylic against the ergonomic keyboard, and became the Olivia Archer most people never imagined.

Her fingers flew, following paths that could as easily access data from government sites as blow through a game of FreeCell. She’d gotten her first fake ID this way, and as a teen I’d had her pull up my psych evaluations as well.

Joanna Archer is suffering severe physical and mental trauma due to the attack and subsequent sexual assault she endured six months ago. Well, duh.

Olivia hummed absently, her eyes fixed on the screen, brows pulled down despite repeated botox injections, and glossed mouth pursed in pretty concentration.

She had discovered computers around the same time I had escaped into Krav Maga. Our mother had left no indication that she would ever be returning, and our father had so thoroughly removed himself that neither of us even thought of turning to him, and I was emotionally unavailable, which left Olivia to fight her demons alone.

I’ve always felt guilty at how I shut her out in those early days, but this—a skill few possessed—was the good that had come from it, as strange and unexpected as a lotus blooming in a trash heap. She’d developed an identity outside of her physical body, one completely at odds with the way others thought of her. She may have had a body manufactured in Sin City, but she had a mind to rival the finest graduates of MIT.

In short, she was an unnaturally talented, self-taught computer genius.

With an underground website catering to hackers and their faceless clients, her business generated a far greater income than her generous monthly allowance from Xavier. There were bulletin boards on everything from the technology needed to take care of outstanding parking tickets to assistance establishing offshore bank accounts, and help in funneling untraceable money into those accounts. Her screen name? The Archer, of course.

Because Xavier had discouraged Olivia’s interest in anything beyond basic cosmetic application, she’d developed the habit of working at night, an M.O. that served her exceedingly well. To the outside world it appeared she slept all morning, spent her days shopping or lunching with the ladies, and partied all night. But most of the time she could be found here, and this, I’d realized, was Olivia’s warrior side. The part of her that flipped the bird at Xavier and everyone else.

“See,” she was saying, pointing at a graphic flashing at the top right corner of the screen, “there are multiple levels to break through in order to access your birth records. Shouldn’t take more than an hour. We’ll see if Mom covered her tracks as well as she thinks she has.”

I nodded like I understood, but was distracted by the tool bar at the bottom of the screen. Another screen was currently in use. “What’s that?”

Her gaze followed my own, and I thought I saw her body jolt. The screen had my name on it. Mine and another.

“Nothing.” A quick dance of fingers and it vanished.

“Olivia,” I said, slowly enunciating each syllable of her name. “What was that? You’re not trying to find that…that child, are you?”

“No!” she said, too fast, and crossed her arms. It was more a protective move than a defiant one. I stared at her, hard. Olivia might be queen of the computer, but I knew body language.

“Don’t play affronted bimbo with me.” I jabbed a finger at the screen. “What’re you up to?”

Her cell phone rang just then, the theme from Pretty in Pink saving her from reply. I raised one brow, indicating we’d pick this conversation up later. Some things, and some people, were best kept in the past. She quickly turned her back to me and flipped the phone open. “Hello?”

I turned my attention back to the screen, letting thoughts of unwanted children fade from my mind. Slowly, the computer was working through the records at Sunrise Hospital. I studied it, toying absently with the chain at my neck as I watched the dates and files flash in front of my eyes, and wondered how Zoe had fooled everybody so thoroughly about my parentage for so long? And why?

Had she cheated on Xavier, and didn’t want to risk losing him, or his money? But then, why just up and leave sixteen years later? And why, at least, had she never told me? She knew there was no love lost between he and I.

“But it’s almost midnight,” I heard Olivia say in her best bubblehead voice. This was followed by a sigh that said the person on the phone already knew this and didn’t care. “Look, it’s just not a good time, Butch.”

She rolled her eyes when she saw my expression, and I shook my head. Butch? She was dating someone named Butch? “My sister’s over and we’re just having—”

I heard the timbre of a masculine voice arguing his point, but the boom of thunder drowned out the words. I picked up Luna, whose tail had gone bottle-brushed at the accompanying flash of light, and tried to stroke her fur back down into something resembling feline. Outside, rain began to pour in sheets over the glass walls.

“Yes, I know it’s raining,” Olivia was saying. “No, you can’t stay until the storm passes. You can pick up your things, but then you have to go. ’Bye.”

She threw the phone across the room and it landed on a pink sea of down comforter and frilly pillows. Then she stalked over to her closet and pulled out handcuffs. And a whip. I stared, openmouthed.

“Don’t ask,” she muttered, adding a studded dildo to the loot. “I thought it would be fun. That was before the condom broke. I panicked at the thought of wading around in his gene pool, you’ll see, and threw him out without giving back his toys. He’s come to collect.”

“Must have found a new playmate.” She gave me a sharp look, and I grinned. “No pun intended.”

“Fine with me. He was too obsessive for my tastes anyway. He wanted to lick me in the weirdest places. And he could spend hours smelling me. Not to mention he had more hair than a woolly mammoth.”

“Aren’t those extinct?”

“So we believed,” she said, and threw some sort of belt—I didn’t want to know what it looped around—into a pile that was growing at an alarming rate.

“Don’t worry,” I said, picking up a tube of lipstick with a penis-shaped wand. “If he gets overly amorous, I’ve got your back.”

“Not necessary,” she said, yanking the tube from my hands. I picked up Luna instead. “He looks like a Hell’s Angel, but he’s relatively harmless.”

I saw what she meant when she opened her door to a six and a half foot ape dressed entirely in leather a minute later. I actually thought he looked rather like a large bulldog, complete with sunken eyes and hanging jowls, and she was right—he was hairy. I could see where Olivia might balk at banging chromosomes with a physiological mutant.

“Jo, this is Butch.”

“Yes, it is,” I muttered, giving the giant a hesitant nod.

Luna apparently experienced a similar reaction. She took one look at Butch and sprung from my arms like an Olympic platform diver. “Ouch, shit!”

The bundle of fur wheeled across the marble floor, scrambling for purchase with a click-clack of sharpened nails, and disappeared into the bedroom. As I watched, the stinging marks on my arm became angry pink ribbons, then filled with bright red blood, promising scarring.

“Shit,” I said again.

“Are you all right?” Olivia rushed over, leaving Butch in the foyer.

“He never did like me,” Butch mumbled, shutting the door behind him.

“She,” Olivia corrected as Butch joined us in the living room. “She never liked you. And maybe she would have if you hadn’t stepped on her tail. Twice.”

Butch just shrugged. Big bad bulldog.

“You two stay here,” she said, catching my eye. That meant she didn’t want him following her into the bedroom. “I’ll just get your things and find Jo something to wash off with.”

She disappeared, leaving me with Leather Man. He was practically wearing the whole cow—when he started moving toward me I almost expected him to moo.

“Want me to take a look?” He held out his hand. I hesitated, without reason, though I generally didn’t need one. I didn’t know Butch, but there was some sort of unease or smothered energy that I didn’t like. The drop-point knife was still sitting on the coffee table, close enough to see, but far enough away to be as useful as a butter knife. Still, I had the folded blade in my boot, and was confident enough to hold out my arm for his inspection, testing us both. If there was something off about Butch, I didn’t want him around Olivia, and better I find out about it than she.

He took my wrist gently, gazing at the scratch almost clinically, a concerned enough expression on his fleshy face. I relaxed a fraction. Then he raised my arm and inhaled deeply of the wound, nostrils flaring. That’s when I saw.

The pads of his fingertips were curiously smooth, almost shiny with luminescence, and unlined. Without prints. I forced my arm not to tense beneath his touch and quickly returned my eyes to his face.

The lightning flashed outside, firing the room and slashing across his features to illuminate chiseled bone and hollow eyes; a skeleton’s bony sneer with teeth shaped like daggers. His hold tightened a fraction, just the fingertips, those too-smooth pads, but it was enough to make me still and wait for an opening to reclaim my arm.

As thunder rolled across the sky, Butch smiled lopsidedly. “Do you know what time it is?”

I didn’t look at my watch. “Yeah. It’s time for you to let go of my hand.”

His fingers tightened over mine, and given one moment more I’d have broken them, but he dropped my arm suddenly and walked away. Tensed, braced for a fight, this unbalanced me. He just drifted away like he’d never sniffed at my skin in an intimate way or held a look of naked hunger in those hollow eyes. Retrieving my long blade from the coffee table, I tucked it in the waistband of my pants, then grabbed the kubotan from my purse, concealing it in my pocket. And I followed him into her bedroom.

“I think that’s everything,” Olivia was saying. Her back to us both, she was bent over a mound of stilettos and boots emptied from her shoe closet. She continued talking, her voice a breathy staccato thrumming in the air, but I don’t think either Butch or I heard a word. There was something else going on, like the dark undercurrent stirring beneath a placid lake just before the monster struck. I inched toward Olivia, my back to the wall. Butch, strangely enough, kept his gaze on the bedside clock. It was one minute to midnight.

“Olivia,” I said in my quietest, deadliest voice. “Get behind me.”

Two pairs of eyes looked at me, but only one seemed surprised. Butch merely looked amused. I moved to my sister’s side.

“How about that. Ajax was right.” He shook his head wonderingly. “It was you all along. Hidden in plain sight. Xavier’s daughter, no less.”

Whatever the hell that meant. “I’m not Xavier’s daughter.”

He laughed. “Then whoever hid you knew what they were doing.”

“Excuse me? What’s going on here? Am I missing something?”

“I thought it was her,” Butch said, jerking his head at Olivia. “It was the closest I could come to scenting you, but once I was in her…” He shook his head in a sorrowful gesture. “I thought I was going anosmic.”

Then he slid a smoothly curving scimitar from behind the nape of his neck. I had to give it to these guys—whoever they were, they had unique weapons.

“Whoa!” Olivia’s breath escaped her in a whoosh. I don’t think I was breathing at all. “I’ve heard of unsafe sex, but this is ridiculous!”

“It was you we were after,” he said, ignoring her. “You I detected on your sister’s skin, your signature scent all along. But what I can’t understand,” he continued, looking at the bedside clock, tapping the flat edge of the blade against his palm like he was waiting, “is how you recognized me. You don’t fully come into your sixth sense for another…thirty seconds.”

Midnight. Like that homeless freak had said. Make sure you survive.

“Signature scent?” I mimicked, my eyes also on the clock. “Kinda girly, don’t you think?”

“Well, I’m a right softie at heart.” He flashed those dagger teeth. “Tell me, Joanna, been smelling things lately? Interesting things? Foul things on the wind?”

I swallowed hard. “What, Ajax tell you that too?”

“Common knowledge. You’re turning twenty-five, right? That’s when the metamorphosis begins.”

“Excuse me,” Olivia said, “but do you two know each other?”

Butch smiled and took a step forward. “Not as well as we’re about to.”

“That’s enough, Butch. One more step and this stiletto’s going up your ass.” We all looked down at Olivia’s hand. I frowned, recognizing the ebony pump as one of her favorites. The same thought must have occurred to her. She dropped the shoe and picked up another. “This stiletto’s going up your ass.”

I sighed. Bless her for trying.

Butch returned his eyes to me. “Get ready, innocent. Your first real breath will also be your last.”

I only had a vague notion of what he was talking about, based on snippets from a very unreal last twenty-four hours, but I knew a real threat when I heard one.

Ten, nine, eight…the seconds inched by, midnight looming. Outside, thunder cracked like a whip overhead, and the sheet of pattering rain deteriorated into a full-force onslaught of sleet and hail. Wind whistled, rattling at the walls, and the building began to shake in palsied tremors. Some of Olivia’s knickknacks tinkled, others shattered, and then the core of the building began to rock on its braces. An explosion sounded as we crossed into midnight.

“Olivia, get back!” I had to yell as the tempest blew through the bedroom. It was like being at the top of a tornado’s funnel, poised to be sucked inside. Then the glass wall began to splinter, a sound like fingernails raking a chalkboard, sending spasms up my spine. I resisted the impulse to cover my ears, and went for the blade at my back instead. Butch tensed and raised his scimitar. A bolt of lightning arrowed the sky as Olivia screamed behind me, and there was a flicker of movement from the corner of my eye.

And then I saw nothing.

Molten licorice, smoking iron, and bright flames filled my mouth. I was singed, burning from the inside out, and my teeth felt like they were being collectively yanked from my jaw. I knew somewhere in my mind I’d been hit, and my fallen knife now lay uselessly on the floor, but that knowledge was the only lingering connection between brain and body. The synapses controlling movement had been severed by the bolt, much like how the muscles continue to twitch in a decapitated chicken’s body. I couldn’t tell if I was still standing or had fallen. In the whiplash of that storm, I totally lost myself.

Once, in my early teens, I’d ventured into the high desert during a flash flood, driven by a youthful sense of adventure and an even greater sense of invulnerability. A stray dog had been my unlikely companion that night, and as it galloped unevenly across the rocky terrain, I saw it struck by lightning. Its golden fur disintegrated instantly into ash, and smoke streamed from its body like a signal for help. When I reached the fallen animal’s side, its eyes were wide saucers, unblinking, and the heat emanating from that blistering body warded me off. This was how I felt now; sightless, terrified, and smoldering. And just before all my senses were lost, I felt an acute pain sear through my left shoulder.

Then there was nothing. No pain, no light, not even darkness. I couldn’t tell if my eyes were open or closed, and my body felt like I was suspended in water; numb, floating, and impervious from all sides. I knew I was in trouble, if not already dead, but I was unable to react, and had no idea how long I remained in this state.

It felt like forever.

It felt like a nanosecond.

Then the lingering tendrils of Olivia’s scream were back in my head, and a smell so putrid it clogged every cell of my body had me lifting my hand to my mouth to keep from vomiting. Realizing what I was doing, amazed that I could move, I lowered my hand again and, still sightless, located the edge of my boot. I flipped open the folded blade and threw it into the heart of that rotting stench.

The air exploded, and crashed over me in waves, like maggot-ridden garbage spilling from a bag, and the scream that accompanied it was inhuman. I fell to my knees, indescribably weak, and allowed my head to fall into my hands.

When I lifted it again, the world had miraculously righted itself and the bedroom was eerily silent. The strange indoor storm had abated. The glass wall was whole and unmarked.

And there was a dead man on the floor in front of me.