The Touch of Twilight

16

“The last time I saw you,” I said to the Shadow agent who entered the storeroom, “You were hemmed in by a bunch of children who were using you as an electric pincushion.”

Zell Trexler didn’t know I was there, and if my voice hadn’t caused him to jump and nearly fumble the ax he’d drawn in the adjoining hallway, the words would have. Though a senior Shadow agent, Zell was afraid of me. Or at least very wary. The first time we’d met he’d been absolutely certain his leader, the Tulpa, knew all. But the Tulpa hadn’t known of my existence, and Zell had been further blindsided two months later when it was prophesied that if the third sign of the Zodiac came to pass, he would die at the Kairos’s hands. My hands. I knew this because of my ability to read the Shadow manuals, so even though Master Comics was a designated safe zone, he still blanched when he saw me striding his way. I anticipated his instinctive reaction to run, and shifted my eyes to the threshold, throwing up a wall to block his path.

The Shadow Scorpio nearly peed his pants. “You can’t hurt me here!” From the nerves straining his vocal cords, it sounded more like he was trying to convince himself.

“Then why are you backing away?”

“What do you want?” He put a cart with all the latest manuals between us, the glyph on his chest sparking to life despite the lack of danger. His cheekbones pressed against the thinning skin of his face, an aggressive reflex to fear, like a cobra’s flaring hood.

“A sense of purpose, enthusiasm for my work, and a good retirement plan,” I told him, leaning against an aisle divider. “What about you?”

He smirked, licking his lips as he visibly calmed, though that also could’ve been because I was talking and not shooting. “What do you want?” he repeated more coolly.

“An audience with your leader.”

“The Kairos wants to convene with the Tulpa?” he sneered, but I could practically read his thoughts like a ticker was inching its way over his forehead. The rise of the Shadow side.

I rolled my eyes. “The third sign is the rise of the dormant side. It doesn’t mean I’m joining the Shadow side.”

“What else could it possibly mean?”

Good question, but I didn’t let him know I thought so. “It means the Shadows need to find themselves a new Seer. The whack job on the corner of Sinatra Boulevard gives more accurate prophecies than your psychic.”

He swallowed hard. He was wearing a suit, and I wondered what he’d been doing when I “called.” “So what do you want with him?”

I looked at him like he’d just flatlined.

Zell folded his arms over his deceivingly slender chest. “I’m not calling him until you tell me why.”

I sighed like he was testing my patience. “Let me tell you how this is going to play out, Zell. The Tulpa wants to talk to me. I’ve decided to talk back. You, a peon prewired to do his bidding, are here to facilitate that conversation. So you can channel the fucker now, or I’ll call him to me with my mind, and he can climb through your chest cavity to reach me. Capisce?”

Zell swallowed hard, and I gave him a couple of moments to swallow that hard pill. He was a senior Shadow agent, I wasn’t even half that, yet I could usurp his authority at will. I could ask for his death, and for that of all his allies, and if it meant my coming over to the Shadow side, chances were the Tulpa would grant it. It was clear he hated me for it; he stared at me without blinking for so long it was as if he’d frozen there, then he cracked his neck in preparation, first one side and then the other. I backed off and took a seat in one of the leather armchairs.

Two minutes later I was still sitting there as Zell continued limbering up. “Is this going to take long?” I asked, smoothing a wrinkle out of my pinstriped slacks.

He cracked an eyelid, annoyance burning in his gaze. “Hey, you try rearranging the organs inside your body to host another person. It’s not exactly comfortable.”

I wanted to say, That’s called pregnancy, you big pussy, but I didn’t want him wondering how I knew. Besides, a pregnant woman’s body had nine months to rearrange itself. Zell had fewer minutes than that, and watching the way his chest cavity unnaturally gave way to the roiling going on in his belly gave me the heebie-jeebies. But when he finally did settle himself, I watched. I shuddered as his cry roiled over the high-ceilinged room, and scratched lightly at my own skin when his ripped, beginning at his bottom lip, straight down his middle like he was being butterflied. Finally there was nothing recognizable of Zell in the mass of pulsing organs and skinned bone, just the flaps of skin falling open and shut like fish gills against a skull that had whipped a full circle on his neck stump.

Inside out, the bloodied lids fluttered over the crimson orbs and I could practically see Zell’s thoughts extinguishing as the Tulpa took over his consciousness. “Ah, Mr. Trexler. It figures he’d be the one to receive your call. He regularly canvasses the shop by loitering in the adjacent alley. He likes to spook the children as they leave. I’ll have to tell him to cease now that I’ve told you of it.”

“I’m sure he’d appreciate that. Zell doesn’t seem too fond of me.”

“You’re not an easy person to like.”

I smirked. “Thanks, Daddy.”

“I take it you’ve reconsidered my offer to work together? Rid this plane of the double-walker? May I ask what prompted this change of heart?”

I smirked at his emphasis of the word heart. “I’m sure you’ll agree that it’s in everyone’s best interest to get rid of the doppelgänger as quickly as possible.”

If he’d had lips they would’ve pursed. “She scares you more than I do. I think I should be offended.”

“This plane is going to collapse under her continued attacks, and besides, she scares you too. I keep wracking my brain, wondering why, because I know it’s more than her ability to unbalance us all, not that I expect you to tell me. I’ll have to do a little research into the history of tulpas and doppelgängers.”

“So until then we join forces.” A bloodied stump of a tongue darted out to lick those nonexistent lips.

“Under one condition.”

Surprise twisted his features. “You’re making conditions now?”

“You can’t tell anyone we’re working together,” I said flatly. “I want this to be between you and me alone. We combine our powers and work together to eliminate the doppelgänger, but I don’t want anything to do with your troop.”

That was true enough, but it wasn’t all. What I really wanted was to keep this agreement between us from Regan. She’d been content to keep my Olivia identity to herself because not only did it give her an advantage over the other Shadows in securing my death, it gave her a sense of power to know something the Tulpa didn’t. However, she might spook if she found out the Tulpa and I were speaking. She might tell him about Olivia. She might kill Ben as a warning to me.

“I already told you,” the Tulpa said, scratching his rib cage. “You’re no longer welcome in my troop.”

I inclined my head. “Then you have no problem keeping your Shadow agents out of the loop.”

“Only if you’re kosher with abandoning the agents of Light for the time being.”

“I figured that was a given.”

The muscles in his cheeks stretched into a grin. “Agreed, then. So I’m going to give you a mantra that speaks to her natural frequency. The next time you see her, you must say it three times exactly the way I tell it to you. Saying it once will call her to you. Twice will bind her energy in place. The third time will bring me to your side.”

“I can do that?”

He chuckled darkly. “Oh, the things I can teach you, daughter.”

I went wide-eyed beneath my mask. “Like how to play catch? Roughhouse on the living room floor? Lessons on how to fend off unwanted advances…though it’s a little late for that, isn’t it?”

I hadn’t forgotten the Tulpa’s culpability when it came to the destruction of my entire adolescence, and he needed to know it. We might be working together now, but it was as a means to an end, and didn’t mean I liked it.

He folded one claw over the other. “Anybody can do it, provided they know how. This specific combination of words is set on the same vibrational plane as her energy.”

More vibrations, I thought ruefully. “And you know what that is, how?”

The answer flashed over his face. “I read it the moment I laid eyes on her.”

I grunted. Of course he had. “So it’s a spell.”

“You can think of it as a prayer if it makes you feel better,” he said, his smile mocking. “But it’s really alchemy.”

“Alchemy that can kill her,” I clarified.

He rolled his eyes, causing bloody tears to form in the inverted ducts. “You haven’t been listening. She’s pure energy. She can’t be killed. But she can be absorbed back into the universe, made harmless, dissolved back into raw matter like all spirits upon death. Then our world will regain its original cosmic resonance.”

And we could go back to killing one another. So, then, the equally important question was “And what about me?”

“You’re free to leave as soon as she’s bound. No need to stick around.”

Which was fine by me.

“Yet there is one more little thing.”

I folded my arms over my chest, but inclined my head so he’d continue.

“A condition of my own.” He lifted his chin, and I saw red beads, like sweat, rolling down his throat. “If you use this mantra to get rid of the doppelgänger, then as soon as I exterminate her, you must come willingly to the Shadow side. You come into my domain, learn what I have to teach, give me a chance to show you everything you didn’t know you were missing.”

I suddenly felt like a fish on a line. “You mean if I use it, I belong to you.”

“It makes sense, doesn’t it? I’ll have saved you, and the world, from her cannibalistic designs, her basic destructive force. You’ll owe me.”

And it was a good way to facilitate the rise of my Shadow side. I shook my head. “I’ll never owe you a damned thing.”

“Not if you’re dead,” he quickly agreed, narrow tongue darting out to lick at the corners of that inverted mouth. “The only other way to stop her chaotic attacks on this reality’s plane is to give her what she wants. You watch, each time you run into her and don’t bind her with my magic, she’ll have taken on more of your appearance, your mannerisms, your aspect. The collapse of this world aside, wait much longer and you won’t even have the ability to choose sides. She’ll just take over your life. A new model…one that will make the old one obsolete.”

He watched me steadily through Zell’s blood-slicked orbs, but I said nothing for so long, he must have despaired of an answer at all. He shifted on his feet. I sighed and met his gaze. Just because I had the mantra didn’t mean I had to use it. And at least using it was a known risk. So much about my double-my twin, as he called her-was still unknown. I finally nodded.

“Good. I figured you wouldn’t be willing to speak in a foreign language-”

When the words were powerful enough to bind another being into place? “You got that right.”

“So I’ve translated the mantra for you from the original. You must repeat it exactly as I do.” His eyes rolled back into his sockets to show only white as he pulled the words from memory. “‘I, Joanna Archer, pledge…’”

“I, Joanna Archer, pledge-”

“Not now!” The irises whipped forward in his skull, flaring red. “You don’t want the energy released before its time. My God, the things you don’t know! Just repeat it silently over and over again. Memorize it.”

I did. But as I did, I thought. He wanted me to bind the doppelgänger so he could come along and destroy it. Yet basic science held-and he’d said himself-that energy could never truly be destroyed, only transmuted into a different state. The Tulpa had called it alchemy, stressing that inflection and tonal intonation were important. I didn’t know anything about mantras, but I did know they had to be directed at something…someone.

“So what do I call her?” I asked, thinking the damned thing might backfire on me.

“Call her nothing. Her name isn’t needed for the spell to work.”

“You mean the prayer?” I said dryly.

The remark didn’t require an answer, and he didn’t give one. He just turned away and began to head toward the long hallway.

“Wait! Aren’t you going to…” I waved up and down at the length of his host body when he turned to regard me, one hairless brow cocked.

He smiled, dripping blood. Zell’s suit was shot. “Not quite yet.”

I watched him walk out, dripping fluids, and moments later heard screams of terror pinging within the shop front. It sounded like a roomful of children were being massacred. I rolled my eyes and removed my mask, pulling down my tight bun to run fingers through my hair.

As the screams died out front, I wondered why the Tulpa was being so reasonable about all this. Agreeing to disagree wasn’t in his nature, and I could feel the synapses in my brain aching to fire, but the new connections weren’t being made. There was something he wasn’t telling me, something he needed me for beyond binding the doppelgänger. Who knew? Maybe Kade and Dylan could help me figure out what that was as well. Until then, agreeing to work with him to rid our city of the doppelgänger was the only constructive thing I could do.

Zane didn’t even look up as I left the Master Comics. He’d flipped the sign to closed on the glass door, and enlisted those changelings who hadn’t fled to help him clean up the blood Zell’s entrails had smeared over the stumpy blue-gray carpeting and-more disturbingly-the front window. I didn’t know exactly what the Tulpa had done out here, but it looked like he’d wiped the place down with his pancreas. And though I didn’t think it was entirely fair, the dark looks of the remaining changelings had me acknowledging I had released a force I couldn’t control upon them. Even Li merely shot me a closed-lip smile before throwing a blood-soaked paper towel in a lined wastebasket. I silently swore that next time I had to call on the Tulpa I’d do it in a different safe zone. One with fewer preteens to scare.

I drove north, figuring I’d head downtown to scout the location in the Jaden Jacks manual before heading back to Olivia’s high-rise apartment. Sure, the Shadow agent’s trail had long gone cold, but I knew better than most that you could see the most amazing things if you just followed the streets.

Besides, I thought as I raced down Paradise, I couldn’t get back to the sanctuary tonight anyway. Dusk had already split, and if Warren wanted me to return at dawn he’d call, though I didn’t think that would happen. Not after Kimber’s harrowing experience with the mask-o’-death. I didn’t care what he’d said in the crow’s nest about trust; I knew the welfare of the troop came first with him. The care and feeding of my ego was no match for his sense of duty, and they’d probably all been relieved to find Gregor’s cab one occupant short when they’d crossed over at dusk.

He’d help you, a small, needy voice said inside me.

Yes, Warren would help me if I asked. But I’d told the Tulpa I wouldn’t involve my troop, and had no doubt he’d know if I reneged on the promise. The mask we’d stolen caused me to wonder about the other tools at his disposal. It made me question, too, how he’d learned of the mantra he’d given me to use against the doppelgänger.

I was so taken by this riddle that I passed right by the Holsum Design Center before I realized it was First Friday, and that parking would be impossible along any of the side streets. I whipped a U-turn to park at the Government Center on Grand Central Parkway, and waited there with other pedestrians for the trolley to come along and ferry us to the heart of the event.

First Friday was a monthly art festival, billed as a block party for the artistic set. Once a month the historic downtown area morphed into a showcase for street performers, local bands, fledgling restaurants, and antique stores. Old railroad homes once housing nuclear families were now rented by sculptors, photographers, and painters, and the city-funded trolley clanged along a circuit of exhibits, bars, and vendor booths that acted as an urban showroom for local talent.

To say the crowd was eclectic was a gross understatement. Teens sporting a decades-old punk rock look they thought they’d originated bumped hips with aging hippies and chic soccer moms for whom bohemian sensibility was more of a fashion statement than a way of life. I’d attended First Friday religiously before becoming Olivia and had even considered using one of the low-rent artists’ cottages on Colorado to showcase my photography, but alas. Saving the valley from noxious, demonic monsters had taken precedence. Scratching lightly at the rash underneath my turtleneck, I fought off nostalgia for a time when my greatest preoccupation had been framing and capturing the injustices mortals inflicted on one another. Ah, the good old days.

Most of the pedestrians hopped from the trolley at Antique Row, where the majority of shops and galleries were located. I waited until we’d picked up steam again, heading farther into the urban weave of surface streets until I saw a brightly lit building I remembered from past visits. It wasn’t a designated stop, so as soon as I was sure no one was looking, I jumped from the back of the trolley, hitting the wide parkway, immediately altering direction. Had anybody been looking, and blinked, they would’ve missed it. Paranoia: my new art form.

I arrived at another building, this one from the seventies that the city was billing as historic, right next to one from the fifties that almost was. I paused there to take in the scents of grilled veggies and salsa wafting from the nearby Mexican restaurant, and remembered the time Ben and I had come down here as teens. The block across from this had been one giant souvenir warehouse then, and we’d emptied Ben’s pockets of change, divided it, and split up to search out the perfect gift for each other…one that could be had for $2.73 or less. I’d gotten Ben a wallet with a faux sheriff’s badge, and he’d given me a plastic ring with a diamond the size of my earlobe. I still had it-or, at least, I knew where it was-stuck inside a secret cubbyhole of an antique desk in Xavier’s mansion.

Now his prison, I thought, as a lone cab inched its way past the building and up the street toward the beehive of activity on Antique Row. And revisiting it, and Helen, was something else I needed to get to. Though it wasn’t at the top of my supernatural to-do list, even if Xavier had looked ill. He’d phoned in his fate upon accepting the Tulpa’s patronage. Giving up your soul essence to help keep another being animated was bound to take it out of a person.

The souvenir warehouse was gone now, and sections of the boxy brick facade had been painted by different artists. The bright canvas was then divided into three stories with a red steel staircase perched off one side. There was a glass-blowing studio at street level drawing a big crowd of onlookers, a tapas bar on top, which would see its best business as an after-party to the event, and an infamous tattoo parlor sandwiched in between where some pop starlet had made one of many mistakes on a drug-fueled binge that’d landed her at the drive-up chapel after this…and on the cover of the tabloid papers by sunup.

I gazed up at the wide, open windows of the ink parlor, idly wondering where Hunter had gotten the tattoo I’d seen on his shoulder. It was intriguing that he believed fear and desire were flip sides to the same coin, as if one couldn’t exist without the other. Did I believe that? I wondered, as a burly man leaned over the windowsill, saw me looking, and waved at me to come on up. Hunter had made no secret of his desire for me, so it made me wonder if there was a bit of him fearing me as well-or, at the very least, the intensity of the attraction. So, then, was his recent decision to pursue me in spite of the danger…or because of it?

I pointed at my watch, signing to the man I had somewhere to be, and waited for another cab to pass before crossing the street, annoyed by the way my thoughts had flitted back to Hunter rather than sticking on Ben. I knew what was bothering me, what kept my psyche sliding from the thought of him like wheels over an oil slick. Warren’s report and Ben’s alleged homicidal turn had coupled with his refusal to speak with me, and I suddenly felt like I didn’t know the man at all. Distance and bitterness and whatever had crawled into Ben in the years since I’d first known him had me unable to guess what he wanted anymore, so it wasn’t any surprise Hunter’s relatively simple desire to bed me was easier to face in comparison.

I reached Casino Center, pulled out the manual the boys had shown me, and held it up, aligning the skylines. There. The exteriors of the surrounding buildings had changed, but the streets had not. The same alley disappeared behind the artist’s tents now pitched before Third Street, across from one of the city’s most popular antique stores, The Funk House. The first changeling had been killed in that alley, and I needed to slip in there. But it’d be best to approach it from its opposite, less populated, side, so I headed out onto Main Street, where I slipped past Dust, an edgy gallery with contemporary exhibits, and had just passed a store devoted to overpriced urban footwear-a DJ working two tables, the minimalist concrete room packed with teens-when I saw the cab again. I knew it was the same one because there couldn’t be two drivers canvassing this area with a wool jeep cap turned backward. This time, however, he wasn’t doing a slow crawl; impatience wafted from his open window as he waited for the pedestrians to clear, the backseat of his cab empty. That’s how I knew I was being followed.

I dove into the next doorway I came upon, a bar with gouges in the floor, team trophies lining the walls, and an inexplicably large jar of pickled pigs’ feet next to the register. Two men holding pool cues over a neglected table straightened when I came in, but I ignored both them and the stares from those who swiveled on their red patent leather stools. I wasn’t looking for a game. I needed a way out.

I headed straight to the back of the bar and pushed through the kitchen entrance. The slit-eyed cook never looking up from his portable television as I exited into the back alley. My nostrils flared as I first pivoted left, then took off in the opposite direction, following the scent of decay.

Following Regan.

It wasn’t hard to put together, and I did it as I ran. The little shit in Master Comics had called Regan again after overhearing my conversation with Dylan and Kade about Jaden Jacks, and Regan had either tracked me, or correctly guessed I’d research the events in the Jacks manual immediately. My money was on the latter, as we all knew fixing Jasmine was a priority.

So Regan DuPree knew I was here…but I knew she was too. I knew her scent as well as I did my own, and offensive though it was, it would take a miracle to dislodge. Regan, I decided as I rounded the block, didn’t have another miracle left in her.

I blew by an apartment building, wind at my heels, knocking over a child’s bike, leaves and debris rustling in my wake. I flattened myself against the building’s short side, double-palmed my crossbow, and eased into the adjacent side street.

She was picking her way through the street’s middle, a dark figure with a sharp, swinging bob, and I was pleased to see her looking tentative. Her scent was the same as it’d been in the shop, and in the bathroom before that: smugness like smoky marshmallow, crazy like cheap liquor, and as spoiled as fermented flesh.

I thought of all the times and ways she’d eluded me, how she’d pawed Ben so possessively, and threatened to either blow him to bits or shrivel his soul until it matched her own. As she neared the last quarter length of that alley-nearly safe-I thought of what Gregor told me about her parents and decided that playing fair was overrated. Her death, I thought as I lifted my weapon, would be a relief to us all.

The damned toddler was what saved her. His screech as he ran from the street festival announced his arrival at the mouth of the alley, a tiny bolt of flying limbs accompanied by his mother’s panicked, exasperated cry. I lowered my weapon as they appeared in quick succession, the frantic mother whipping him back to her side where he cried out again. They drew lines in their battle of wills, right there between the two bland apartment buildings.

Regan didn’t slow. In fact, her confidence lifted at the sight of them, and why not? I’d never attack with witnesses present. Their arrival also gave her options, other lives to play with in this cat-and-mouse chase with me, and I decided right there and then: not again.

I rushed her. It wasn’t as fast as an arrow through the heart, but the timing was perfect. I cleared twenty yards in the seconds it took for the mother and child to slip from view. Regan hadn’t taken three steps before I was on her, momentum driving me too close for a fully extended punch. I settled for the more lethal elbow to the temple, driving downward with all my supernatural might just as she shifted, brows furrowing…

On a face that wasn’t Regan’s.

I pulled up short, but it was too late. The blow still connected and the woman fell, probably without even knowing she’d been hit. Not a deathblow, I pleaded silently, my breath sounding loudly in my ears. Please, please not a deathblow. But through my pleading, and as I cradled a clearly mortal body in that ragged silence, I battled back confusion. I could still scent Regan on this woman, in her, a sensory record of a life touched by Shadow. And when I coupled that olfactory knowledge with the woman’s appearance-a build similar to my old one, the blunt hair exact, but a face that was nothing like Regan’s or mine-my confusion was snuffed, and my blood went colder than the thin stream of that which was trickling from the mortal’s ear, onto the ground.

It’s you she’s after.

And she’d use anything and anyone-including an innocent-to get to me. I’d have bent to study the track marks I knew studded the veins in her arms, but Hunter’s reminder sounded again, more insistent this time.

It’s you she’s after.

I dove to my left, only because I happened to be leaning to my right, just as the bell-like laughter sounded down the alley. Luckily there was a jumble of shopping carts and construction debris to block me from view, but still my heart pounded, my own emotion now up and easily scented, and I looked back at the woman sprawled in the middle of the street regretfully. I hated to leave her, but I had no way of knowing if Regan was alone.

Back to the wall and using the construction material as a shield, I shakily inched my way again to the bar’s rear exit. I’d come full circle, but it was the knowledge that I had to get out of here now that had me lightheaded.

The moment I touched the handle of the kitchen door, it rocked into me with a force that should’ve been impossible on spring hinges. My skull cracked on the steel doorframe, then with one good yank on my arm, I was pulled inside. I let my knees buckle-they wanted to, anyway-and narrowly avoided a blow to the head. I could have also eluded the foot in my gut if my attacker was mortal, but the blow nailed me true and square and sent me sprawling on the kitchen floor, joining the unconscious cook and an obscenely large cockroach scuttling past my head. All I could think as Regan squashed it beneath her boot, was Clever bitch. She’d predicted I’d recognize the cab and had made the driver drop her off in front of me on his previous circuit, along with a woman she’d probably culled from the herd of mortals days ago. Why was it only clear now, when it was too late?

“You…”

She’d plucked an innocent from the world, one she made sure looked like her-me-from behind, then marked her with her own olfactory scent. She made me kill the mortal because watching that would be so much more fun than doing it herself.

Regan just nodded to all those unspoken accusations, her other boot pinned at my neck. “And you thought I was just another pretty face.”

“You made me…”

“Puh-lease shut up. For once take some responsibility. You did it yourself.”

The tinny scent of the woman’s blood burned the lining of my nose, causing my eyes to tear up.

“Besides,” Regan went on, increasing her weight. “I told you not to fuck with me anymore. I thought the threat on Ben’s sad little life would do the trick…but then I found this.”

I glanced at the bugging device in her hand, less concerned about that than the ice pick poised at my heart while my conduit still lay unguarded outside the kitchen’s back door. “Maybe you missed it before.”

“I did not miss it!” Her hand disappeared into her pocket, and before I could speak again she withdrew it and pegged me with five other devices…all the new ones Gregor had planted. They stung my skin, fell harmlessly to the floor, and I lay extra still, trying not to look like I was planning to attack her.

Trying to figure out a way to kill her where she stood.

“What did I say about backing off?” She placed her hands on her hips, her conduit fisted in her right. Ben should see her now, I thought, eyeing her black on black street wear-perfect for the First Friday crowd-her hair slicked back behind her ears, looming over me with homicide in her eyes.

It’d be unrealistic if I played too nice, so I voiced my first thought. “Gee, Mom, I don’t know. What did you say?”

“I told you I’d kill him. But first I’ll tell him about your ugly secret, the daughter you don’t want him, or anyone, to know about.”

Yet here she was talking about it again. So, even prone on the floor, glyph glowing brightly beneath both boot and conduit, I wasn’t as scared as I probably should have been. I also wasn’t dead like the mortal in the alley, and even though my bones had risen to burn through my fragile skin, Regan read the thought.

“The Tulpa has said you’re not to be touched.” She ground her teeth together, and a smile began to spread over my face. “Not for a while anyway.”

Her left eye twitched, and I whipped my legs up, somersaulting backward to avoid the coming blow. Gotta love knowing someone else’s tell. “This is not touching?” I said, flipping my hair from my eyes as we circled each other again.

“It’s not killing,” she said, tone harder now as she tried to figure out how I’d anticipated the blow. “You can’t prove I touched you. The evidence is fading already.”

“So it seems we’re on equal footing once again.” In more ways than one, I thought, circling.

“You forget I know who you are, where you live, what your daughter’s name is. And I still have the man you love.” She licked her lips when she saw I wasn’t going to argue-all those things were true-and went on. “Have you looked up what I told you about Ben and that street thug yet? Read the account in his journal of how you appeared in a ghetto barricade, disarmed a criminal, then left Ben alone to mete out justice? I guess that makes you an accomplice to that murder as well, huh?”

Magnum hadn’t been an innocent, not like the woman still warm in the alley. He’d probably been born bad, yet he was mortal all the same, so technically under my protection and care. And I had left him sprawled on the floor of that barricade. But. “Ben didn’t murder that man.”

“Oh, Joanna,” Regan sighed, flipping her conduit in her hand. “Can’t you see? It’s not hard to push a man to his breaking point. Ben will kill again if I tell him to. In fact, his finger is already on the trigger. All I have to do is tell him where to aim.”

“He’s a good man.” My voice came out in a whisper.

Regan smiled. “A good man with a stain on his psyche. One you put there. And the longer I’m with him, the wider and deeper that stain will spread.

“Yes, I have plans for ol’ Benny-boy,” she went on, smiling. “He’s going to help me accomplish some of my long-term goals. And when I’m done with him he’ll be a cracked shell of the man you once loved.”

The bones beneath my lotion-soft knuckles fisted, the rings on my tensed fingers glinted, and Regan’s eyes widened. I hit her so hard, one of my diamonds was imprinted on her cheek, the memory of something precious carved into her fouled skin. Her ice pick fell as fast as a dart to connect above my knee. I crumpled, and she was spinning in the air, her left foot in my face as she whipped around me on her way out the door. My head knocked back, but I lifted it in time to see her fist lowering again. See it, but not stop it. The scream of panic and rage welling in my throat scuttled off like a roach in the light as my temple took the full force of the blow. There was a slow, almost arduous dropping, then nothing after that.