The Touch of Twilight Page 28

  Irritated, I waved them away, and glanced over my shoulder to make sure we were still alone. All I needed was Ginny or Janet coming in to find me talking to the mops. “How about creating your own identity, like any other person?”

  “Please. Most people don’t even create their identities,” she scoffed. “They just stumble upon them. Just like Regan stumbled upon the woman you attacked in that dark street.”

  I fell still. “You saw that?”

  “I saw that, then Regan ambush you, and the way you cried like a baby afterward.”

  She’d been there, and she hadn’t helped. “And let me guess? You wouldn’t have cried if you were me?”

  “It wouldn’t have happened if I were you, though it did make me wonder.” Shimmering color rose again like a wave inside her. “If you were that torn up over one person, how would you feel about thousands?”

  I opened my mouth.

  “Uh-uh,” she warned, and lifted her arm to point one razored nail above the doorway. “One little poke, and Valhalla will crumble.”

  A fissure appeared above the doorframe, a slim almost-shaft of light lasering through the alternate reality and into ours, and I quickly snapped my mouth shut again.

  “Don’t even fucking think about it,” she warned, voice as sharp as her nail. Above me, the building rumbled.

  I cursed my stupidity. I shouldn’t have used the mantra as leverage. “Okay, I’ll try to figure out your little riddle, but you have to stop that.”

  The doppelgänger smirked. “You’ve got forty-eight hours.”

  Was that it? That would make it the day of Kimber’s metamorphosis. “I’m kinda busy on Sunday. Maybe you could get back to me during the workweek?”

  She didn’t even dignify that with an answer. “Figure out my ‘riddle’ or give me your beating heart, it really makes no difference to me, but if I don’t have one of those things by the end of that period, I won’t just take down this hotel, I’ll pulverize this city.”

  Her willingness, the easy way she said it, stole my breath. “You have no conscience, do you?”

  “You could always give me yours.” She batted her lash-less eyes prettily, before squaring on me again, all business. “No? Then let me be clear. I’ll take the energy I need, one way or another, and I’ll take more than your heart. I’ll take over your life, and sweetie? I’m already close. One more viewing and I’ll have you.”

  She was close. I could see it in the colors swimming inside her, like concrete being mixed before it solidified, though this would form skin.

  A noise sounded outside the room, and she glanced that way, orbs shifting oddly to give her a cross-eyed look. “I’d prefer the other option, if you figure it out. It’s the most powerful, it’ll mean we can coexist in this world, she’d prefer it, and—of course—it’s something the Tulpa wants to prevent more than anything.”

  Before I could ask again who “she” was, the doppelgänger lunged close. I jerked back, but if she’d really been trying she’d already have me. “Just mark my word, Joanna Archer. I will survive, no matter the cost…and I know you understand the need to survive, don’t you, dear?”

  And her face suddenly morphed into an exact approximation of my younger one, streaming with imagined tears, and an unholy cry that ricocheted off the shelves behind me. Glass tinkled, my blood went cold, and the stack of masks on the shelves behind me clattered to the floor. But the sound was gone as quickly as it came, and all of her swirling color and power was gone in that same instant. It’d taken everything out of her, but it had also done the job. She had briefly become me, my history laid bare on her face, and I was shaken.

  “Two days,” she said, voice nothing more than a bubbly whisper, and then she swirled like a mini-hurricane taking form and flight, and whirled through the room, and out the vent near the doorway.

  I exhaled shakily, then let my knees buckle under pretense of picking up all the masks. “Cleanup on aisle one,” I muttered, but the joke didn’t amuse me. Her point had struck as intended. I too had fought hard to survive. And now that I’d finally found a place, a home, within my troop and my city, she could take it all away.

  Forty-eight hours.

  She had a point about the Tulpa, though. What was he so desperate to achieve that he’d blow his own hole through the fragile terrestrial plane? Why was he willing to work with me now when never before? And despite the breaches in reality, the claws and teeth and threats, and all those fucking bubbles, the question remained: who was the greater threat?

  My phone trilled in my bag behind me, shaking me from my thoughts, and I lunged to turn it off, knowing Ginny would have some rule against that. But then I saw the number.

  I lifted the phone to my ear. “Speak.”

  When I heard the voice, I also lifted my eyes, and while my gaze remained focused on absolutely nothing, after a brief moment a smile as wicked as the doppelgänger’s spread over my face. And as Gregor continued talking, that smile widened.

  22

  If there was anything that visually spoke of the Las Vegas of my youth, it was the sleek mid-century modern homes built in the decades before my birth. The clean lines, decorative block work, and butterfly rooflines were cool and wildly futuristic for their time, and the desert sun reflected off walls of sheer glass—in some cases, bulletproof—as if to light the world stage.

  Birthed in what was now the center of town, the Paradise Palms neighborhood was one of these aging beauties, with customized homes of sanded stucco and sweeping driveways, each at a respectful distance from its neighbor. The address Gregor had given me over the phone belonged to a lot backing up to what was now called the Las Vegas National Golf Club. But, I thought, as I started up the long walkway early the next morning, when Brynn DuPree had lived here the club had still belonged to the Stardust, and the contemporary glamour of its parent casino was reflected in the homes where Las Vegas’s most sophisticated players once lived.

  The lockbox was set aside, the Realtor had already been by to prep for the open house later that day, but I didn’t worry about that. Stepping inside a foyer that opened directly into a sunken living room, it felt like I was stepping back forty years in time. The light bulbs didn’t even appear to have been changed in that time. It was as if Brynn had stepped out for a liquid lunch with girlfriends and would be back any moment.

  How many martinis had the Shadow Cancer imbibed in these rooms? I wondered, wandering over the high-gloss terrazzo floor. How many nights had she put on furs and heels to take in a post-hours set with the Rat Pack? How many men had she lured back here to show off her glass-top bar…to torture and to kill?

  I sniffed, caught the skein of Regan’s scent on the velvet fabric of a streamlined lounge chair, and knew she’d spent some time here. Not a lot…it wasn’t saturated with her odor, but some. So why was she selling it now?

  I stepped up into a wide dining room overlooking a sheltered reflection pool, thinking perhaps she’d realized I was closing in on her real life. I guess she didn’t want me springing up behind her one night while she was propped on her vintage sofa with a bag of Cheetos. Or maybe my mention of an agreement between the Tulpa and myself had her second-guessing her leader, her place in the troop, and my place above her if I ever did switch sides. She could be selling this safe house for another, one even the Tulpa didn’t know about. It wouldn’t be the first time, I thought, remembering the underground lair I’d been trapped in two months earlier.

  But whatever it was she thought I might do, it was spooking her enough to have her selling a family home she’d held on to all these years. Out of nostalgia for the mid-mod period? I wondered, or had a young Regan DuPree created a few memories here of her own?

  I reached the kitchen, and it was all I could do not to let out a covetous sigh. Sure, these Shadow bitches were spoiling like soured herring inside, but damn they had good taste in homes. The cabinetry was sleek, white, and sliding, clearly custom-made. A futuristic metal vent hovered over what was clearly the or
iginal aqua-colored stove, which matched the empty refrigerator and built-in counter appliances. The ceiling angled sharply upward into the backyard, adding to the space age feeling of weightlessness and light. I sniffed and found no bottom note of cooked food to add weight to the air, but there were herbs lined in sharply angled pebbled pots, fresh dirt mingling with the mint and tarragon and basil to snag my sensory attention. It reminded me of Ben, I thought, looking past the plants and out onto the expansive lawn dotted with round stone pavers. But then everything did. Even the gardener, I thought, spotting a man kneeling in the hedgerow.

  I froze as the man suddenly looked toward the house. Maybe the reminder was so pronounced, I thought woodenly, because it was Ben.

  The sun was in his eyes, so even though he’d seen me through the kitchen window, I knew he hadn’t made out my features. He lifted a hand, one stranger acknowledging another, and I hesitated before edging around the slick, white counter, and through the glass slider wall. The gesture was appropriate, I thought, swallowing hard. Sometimes I felt like we’d never before met.

  He recognized me—or Olivia—as soon as I stepped out onto the stone patio. The curious expectancy left his face and as it fell, my own blood ran cold. I fitted on a smile, trying for friendly warmth, though the Olivia of old would’ve reached out and hugged him as soon as they met. I wasn’t sure I could risk the pain if he turned away, so I didn’t.

  “Hello, Ben,” I said, shading my eyes as I sauntered toward him.

  “Olivia.” He wiped his brow with a forearm, but otherwise left his hands hanging loosely at his sides. “Just in the neighborhood?”

  “Sure. I saw the open house sign and thought I’d stop in,” I said breezily, ignoring the censure that’d bubbled up with his words. “What about you?”

  “This is my friend’s house. You remember me telling you about a woman I met online a few months ago, don’t you?”

  “Oh, sure.” Too fucking well. “I do.”

  He paused as if waiting for me to say more, squinting as the morning sun brought out the caramel in the waves of his hair. Oddly, it didn’t soften him like it used to. “Well, I told Rose I’d plant some greenery for the open house, add a little color to the hedges and pots so it looks like an oasis in comparison to all the cookie-cutter properties out there.” He looked around, and despite his stiffness with me, sighed wistfully. Ben loved old properties like this. “It doesn’t take much.”

  It didn’t; the landscaping had had forty years to mature, and had obviously been maintained by a professional both loving and adept. But Ben sighed again as he turned back in my direction, and I froze under the weight of his gaze…and his scent.

  “What are you really doing here, Olivia?”

  I didn’t answer, eyes flicking over his face assessingly, pausing on the scar below his hairline, the dark hair long enough to curl over his nape, and back to his eyes, which seemed too deep and hard in the bright morning light…not that I was one to talk. But it wasn’t his eye color that was bothering me. It was the smell I’d picked up beneath the clean sweat on his skin, something acidic that had sunk into his pores and was souring there. Like the fermenting of cider vinegar. Like Regan.

  “Sorry,” I said, shaking my head, trying to loosen the thought’s hold. It wouldn’t budge. “What did you say?”

  “Why are you here?” he said slowly, as if daring me to repeat my first answer. The fingers of his left hand twitched before he placed them on his hip, and the look he gave me was as dark as any I’d ever shot.

  I’ve come to kill the woman who’s trying to turn you into a monster.

  I smiled again, even though the emptiness of unanswered questions hummed around us like a dial tone. We were so disconnected, this man and me. Standing right in front of each other with an entire unseen world between us. Unseen by him, anyway. “I’m always looking to acquire new properties, Ben. This one is a masterpiece. The interior is flawless, the furnishings vintage, the flooring original. I wanted to see for myself if the foundation was sound, or if the structure had any problems. If not, I’ll have the plumbing inspected,” I lied and lied and smiled. “We’ll see.”

  “High-rise living getting old?”

  I thought of my sister falling to her death. “It has its down sides,” I said softly.

  “So thinking of joining us mere mortals on the ground, then?” He was teasing, but that sharpness was still there, like flint, indicating a spark of something more. The word choice was peculiar as well. What the hell had Regan been telling him?

  “You takin’ shots at me, Traina?” I pouted and turned away, ostensibly to study the kidney-shaped pool, the scattered light of the trees falling softly across its surface. “Never thought I’d see the day. Must be that new girlfriend of yours making you forget who your old friends are.”

  “I haven’t forgotten anything,” he said, the censure in his voice equaling my own. “But Rose is very selective, and she knows how to make a man feel special. For example, she only brings people here once she knows she can trust them. And once she’s gained that trust, she doesn’t blow it away with lies or abandonment.”

  The insinuation was clear, and I thought, It was a mistake to come out here. I looked around the cool, dappled yard like I was searching for escape. He looked like the man I loved, and smelled like the woman I hated. And he was probing at Olivia to see how much she knew.

  I glanced back to find challenge blazing in his eyes, so fucking angry and righteous and cavalier, it made me want to run away screaming. But what about the scent that’d dusted his breath? How soon would it begin spilling from his pores? When would it be too late to save Ben from Regan’s destructive grasp?

  When they make love? When she really gets to him? When he reaches the point where there’s no returning to you?

  I should just allow Micah to erase some of his neurological pathways, literally changing his mind so my existence was forever whitewashed from his memory. Then Regan would no longer be able to use him as a weapon against me. But did reason ever prevail when the heart was involved? What would remain of Joanna Archer if Ben forgot about my existence? If no one retained at least a mental record of a life lived, then had it been lived at all?

  They were important questions because the person I was becoming, through experience and the march of time in the opposite direction of that which I’d have chosen for myself, was a person even I had trouble believing could exist. A superheroine. The Kairos. An individual who controlled the destiny of thousands.

  Which brought up an even more pressing problem: I had one day left to find out what the doppelgänger needed from me before she either devoured my heart or blew Vegas to smithereens just to spite me. I needed to go, but…

  I looked down at the row of white peonies he’d been planting. They were frilly and fragrant, and their petals would turn crispy under the full glare of a relentless summer heat, but in late October when the sun’s touch had gentled, they looked wispy and promising. He had an artist’s touch and a lover’s mind when it came to his gardening. I knew it offered him escape from whatever worries occupied his mind, and he was at peace when surrounded by a quiet landscape and rich earth. The fear that had been knotting up inside me loosened.

  There were parts of Ben yet untouched by Regan’s foul influence. There was still time. And, I thought, as I stared at those fragile white blooms, as any good gardener knew, you don’t pull out the whole garden just because there were a few weeds. You uproot the dead stuff, prune everything back, and start again.

  I looked back up at Ben, considered everything I’d given up to so convincingly become Olivia…my home and work and body and self. I thought of the parts of my new life I’d so completely embraced…my strength and powers and responsibilities and troop. I thought too of the extraordinary man I’d continued to reject, Hunter, and I suddenly knew what I needed to do.

  I would tell Ben everything. It would be no different than the mortals we used to help hide our supernatural activities, no different t
han the mortal/agent love matches of the past, even if Warren did believe my kairotic state made it too risky. Because didn’t kairos really mean “the right or opportune time”? And the time to save Ben—along with the rest of the world—was now. I had to do it immediately, before Regan’s influence burrowed in so deep he’d end up in a jail cell with slashes over his wrists and fingertips.

  And after I told him, I’d kiss him as me, I’d infuse him with my scent, my touch, my taste. And it would make all my past and present sacrifices worth it. I could embrace my new life while holding on to what made me care about humankind at all. My first love.

  “Listen,” I started, whirling back to face him. “I’m chairing a pre-Halloween party for the North Las Vegas Children’s Fund tonight at the Viva Las Vegas Wedding Chapel. Know where it is?”

  “The Boulevard.”

  I nodded, but had to pause to swallow hard. “If you want, if you show up, I can make sure…she shows up as well.”

  Graveyard silence spread over the yard, and Ben fell so still for so long that I grew afraid he wouldn’t speak at all. “You know?” he finally asked, vocal cords tight in his throat.

  “Of course.” I looked away, and closed my eyes until my breathing normalized. Then I looked back, my own voice stronger. “Um…it’s a costume party. So, naturally, she’ll be wearing a mask—”

  “Naturally,” he said wryly.

  I jerked, but then took a step toward him. “Look, Jo has good reasons for what she’s done. You know her—”

  “I thought I did.” Folding his arms, he took a step back.

  “Just give her a chance to explain,” I said, advancing on him again, forcing him to meet my gaze, not begging, but damned close. He only shifted feet. “Just give her a chance.”