The Neon Graveyard Read online

  “Did she give you this too?” Carlos asked, holding up a solid gold pendant, now broken in four separate pieces. I’d worn it to my stepfather Xavier’s funeral.

  “Mother said it would shield me from the evil eye.” What it protected me from, again, was Solange—this time as she threw me down a flight of stairs, momentarily dislocating my aetheric spine. Though no longer useful in its current condition, its bright gold scrollwork design was important. Known as a kundan, or hand flower, it was similar to the mandella in that it was a protective emblem. “See?” I said, pointing to the seven multicolored gems. “Those represent the planets, and the enduring strength, perseverance, and triumph of the soul.”

  “That’s why you wear that,” Carlos said, pointing at my wrist, and nodding. “I wondered. It’s so . . . girly.”

  I glanced down at the matching gold bracelet. He was right. It never left my body. “This was a supposed thank-you for throwing my mother’s wedding rehearsal dinner.” A dinner turned horror show, I thought, shuddering with the memory.

  “All these baubles,” Carlos murmured, gazing back into the box.

  All this time. All these gifts. I finally nodded. “Quiet weapons for a fierce woman.”

  Carlos looked up. “A mother.”

  After a moment I smiled. “Yes.”

  Carlos nodded to himself and replaced the broken kundan back in the box. “You know, I was only half kidding earlier, when I said I’d expected this pregnancy to slow you down.”

  “I believe your exact words were ‘make you softer,’ ” I said wryly, stroking Buttersnap’s head. The animal felt like a warm bearskin rug.

  “Nothing wrong with being soft, weda,” he said, soft lashes curling up as he lifted his gaze. “But if we don’t find a way to get you back into Midheaven soon, we’ll have to wait until after the baby is born.”

  “No,” I said immediately. Forget the Tulpa’s power, the Shadows’ dominance, the way the Light had abandoned me. Forget my mortality or that I was supposed to lead the supernatural underworld. Midheaven held a man who dominated my dreams, yet he was still more real to me than even the life forming in my belly.

  Yet time was an issue. My pregnancy left me both jumpy and exhausted at the end of each day. The chance to enter and exit Midheaven with additional grays—with Hunter—was slipping away like hourglass sand. “No,” I said again, panicking. “No way.”

  “I don’t want to take unnecessary risks,” Carlos said, shaking his head. “Not now. And certainly not after you just played pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey with the Tulpa’s nose.”

  “Ah, but the look on his face was priceless.”

  “Jo.” The single word was light, but I knew a command when I heard it, and I dampened my grin. Unless I wanted to be locked in this room for the next few months, I needed to choose my words carefully.

  “Look, Io once told me a secret about the Tulpa,” I said, referring to the ward mother down the hall . . . the one who’d once been charged with rearing this valley’s Shadow agents. There was a time I’d have killed her without blinking, but outside of Carlos, Io was now my closest—and only female—friend. “She said he doesn’t hate the grays because we stand up to him, or despise humans because he considers them weak. He doesn’t even hate the Light more than the Shadows. He hates us all, down to the last.”

  “Because we’ve all made our way into this world through blood and bone.”

  I nodded. “The Tulpa has no mother, and in a matriarchal society like ours, that’s true power. So he knows he has no real claim as troop leader, not if someone with more power and a true lineage pops up.”

  “He hates us precisely because we live.”

  “That’s right.”

  “But hates you more than everyone else, amiga.”

  “Not everyone.”

  Carlos shook his head. “Your mother? Zoe Archer has fled the valley. This toolbox alone is proof of that. She is forever out of his reach, while you are not. So forgive me if I don’t find that overly comforting.”

  But I did. My mother was out of harm’s way, and so was that first child I’d borne and given up for adoption a decade earlier. She too had needed to escape the Tulpa’s relentless pursuit.

  And now I had a second child to protect.

  “I’m going to take a catnap,” I said, leaning forward and closing the toolbox. Buttersnap growled at the word cat but I shoved my plate her way and that shut her up. “I need to be fresh for tonight’s rave.”

  Illegal desert raves had become our best way of finding new rogue agents.

  “Rest as long as you need,” said Carlos, standing. “I can take care of the recruiting.”

  I narrowed my eyes. “I thought you said it would help for me to be there. That it’d convince any uncertain rogues that we’re more than talk.” Had he changed his mind because of today’s close call? Or because the talk down the hall had unsettled me?

  “Ah, Joanna.” He reached out to help lift me to my feet. “Always so hard on yourself. Let me figure out how to deal with these new developments. You don’t have to take everything on your shoulders.”

  “But—”

  “No.” He squeezed my hands before letting them go. “There’s always been a good chance the Shadows would take precautions against you gaining the aureole. I’ve been considering backup plans for some time now, and after I think on it a bit more, I’m sure one of them will do.”

  “Like what?” If the Shadows weren’t carrying conduits, how on earth would I find a way to turn their own weapons against them?

  “If I tell you now,” he said, winking as he opened the door, “you’ll just think it’s your concern. Now get some sleep, stay healthy. The rest will take care of itself.”

  I didn’t see how, but then, that was how life worked in any world. You did your level best, stayed alert on the journey, and trusted your next step to reveal itself when needed. Hopefully it wouldn’t lead directly off a cliff. I joined him at the door. “You’re killing me, Carlos.”

  “No. I’m keeping you alive,” he said, giving me that gentle smile over his shoulder again. “Go see Io if you can’t sleep.” She had odd herbs to induce peaceful sleep, though her strong massaging fingers were just as potent. Yet as choleric and out of sorts as I was feeling, I didn’t feel like being soothed and I certainly didn’t want something to knock me out.

  “And wedita?” he said, pausing only steps into the bumpy hall. There was a twist on his tone that made me tilt my head as Carlos hesitated before shaking his head, as if changing his mind. “Sleep well.”

  And he disappeared around the craggy corner, his shadow stretching so long in the candlelight that it appeared to be guarding the hall. Then it, and his footsteps, faded and I shut the door.

  “Carlos is wrong about one thing,” I told Buttersnap, sighing as she sidled up to me, looking for more to eat. Her body was a giant ember. Her mere presence fended off the room’s chill. I leaned against her, and companionably she leaned back. “There would be something wrong if I just went soft.”

  Because there was a man waiting for me, suffering and enslaved, in another world, and I’d face a thousand tulpas for him alone.

  “And the real irony is,” I told Buttersnap, “Hunter has made me softer than ever.”

  4

  The weekend desert raves had become our best way of entering and exiting city boundaries without notice. Scattered among a group of apathetic teens, all bundled against the desert night in fleece hoodies and cargos, we looked like a writhing sea of military escapees, talking and laughing, dancing and drinking, the desert thumping underfoot.

  Not that the outings were without peril. This was how a good half-dozen rogues had found us, and if they could reach us, so could the troops. So we always used unlit dirt roads, zero signage, and cryptic word of mouth for directions. We also set the impromptu destinations as close to the boundaries dividing the city from the cell as possible. The invisible border restricted the Shadow and Light within it like a cowboy las
soing a calf, and I always watched from outside that intangible loop as a stream of headlights wound over the high desert like a glowing snake, dozens of teens bursting from its belly.

  Tonight I was struck by a surprising pang of jealousy as I watched the other mortals lose themselves in the big bass throb that sent cacti and jackrabbits into shock. Plastic horns and whistles and glow sticks whipped through the night, and voices arched like war cries over the craggy bedrock while the scent of burning wood and yucca stood up in the air. There’s nothing quite like a desert rave. Something about disappearing into the arid flats is akin to being locked in a slick embrace. Or maybe I just remembered it that way from a youth when raves were a way to escape my parents, the city, and everything else that so sharply defined me.

  At two in the morning, the other grays broke away from the main group, joining me on the “free” side of the line. We stood out over there, clearly separate from the other partiers. If a mortal drifted close, they were offered a drink and unobtrusively escorted back to the mass of flailing limbs. If, on the other hand, a rogue agent appeared, they’d also be given a drink, then dropped into a seat of honor next to a small blazing fire and interviewed.

  Tonight had yet to see any potential allies, so we had to make do with small talk until—if—one made himself known.

  “Why’d you do that thing to the Tulpa?” Gareth said suddenly, tilting his head. “With his nose?”

  A half a dozen curious gazes turned my way, and I shrugged. I guess tonight wasn’t going to be a night for small talk.

  “He wants people to think his ability to morph into any shape or form is a strength,” I answered.

  “Isn’t it?” Foxx asked, his voice wry.

  “Can be,” I conceded, offering up a grim smile. “But real people can’t just rework their facial features according to whim. And I just wanted him to know that I know it for weakness. Besides, it’s one thing to tell all of you that the Tulpa isn’t all-powerful. That there’s a way he can be beat—”

  “But by showing us a weakness—” provided Fletcher.

  “You begin to believe.” I nodded. “And if a mere mortal, using nothing more than her mind, can impose her will upon him—”

  “Then we can too,” he said, crossing his arms. Backlit by the bonfire, he looked like a Gulf War soldier. “And what about Harrison? You could have used one of the old conduits to kill him.”

  “Sometimes the antiques malfunction.” I shrugged. “I didn’t want to take a chance in such a high-pressure situation.”

  Milo, next to Fletcher, scoffed quietly. “Yes. You’re the epitome of caution.”

  “You’re talking about that nose thing again, aren’t you?”

  They all stifled chuckles at that.

  “Anyway, it’s not like messing with him will make him hate me more,” I said, with a shrug. “That whole speech about the mishandling of kinship, and loyalty being a personal betrayal? It revealed his thoughts . . . and a fear. He knows that though mortal, I’m still a part of him.”

  “And that’s what makes you dangerous.”

  Because while the Tulpa could change physical form like he did underwear, enter dreams like the sandman, steal breath like a cat from a baby, throw mortals in black holes so they disappeared forever, and cause acute pain without ever lifting a finger . . . his own powers could also be used against him. And he’d die as certainly as a snake from its own venom.

  Now, I thought, watching the mortals jump and dance and flail in the night, if we could only figure out how.

  With that thought, the day’s events began flashing in my mind like a macabre slide show, and I shifted on my feet, antsy. Despite telling my allies that shifting the nose from my father’s face was so they would believe it possible, the reality was that I’d also done it for me. I needed to believe. I should be able to blow up coyotes made of dust with a thought, not a trigger finger. And I should think of the Tulpa as a sort of ghost, a haunting—not my father, a leader, or a threat.

  Yet when the mental picture got stuck on an image of Neal hanging in the air, pierced by the Tulpa’s talons, I whirled from the frenetic dancers, still sweating and singing into the long night, and searched for distraction. After a moment of thought, I went in search of one of the men who’d been charged with burying our fallen gray.

  Though that wasn’t why I wanted to talk to Kai.

  A rogue from San Diego, Kai was one of our newer members. I wished I could say he was one of our rave success stories, and while it was true we’d found him literally dancing in the dark, I’d since learned he’d just been there for the party. Having recently been driven from his troop for “indiscretions” he wouldn’t name, he was traveling cross-country when he stumbled upon us, and decided a bed in a blown-out bunker was as good a place to hang his hat as any.

  Carlos had been dubious at first. There was no drive in the kid, he said, and indeed, Kai didn’t use any more energy than necessary to get through the day. He certainly had no great desire to fight for freedom in the Las Vegas valley, yet when Kai declared his matriarchal lineage was that of a Seer—something our ragtag troop sorely lacked—Carlos relented. It had since turned out that he was the second son of a woman who was related to a Seer by marriage, and he had never been properly trained in the mysteries of the sky.

  He’d never been trained for anything, I mused, spotting the man-child curled up on a blanket on the outskirts of camp. Everything about Kai—from his bleached, dreaded hair to his deep tan to his preference for flip-flops and cutoffs—said that life was just one big excellent adventure, and a vague head nod accompanied every conversation, like his neck was part metronome. In his defense, he did have an obvious passion for the stars, but he often went off on tangents about how much gnarlier they were when seen from the surf of the Pacific.

  I’d quickly discovered in my few dealings with him that you had to have an enticement to get him to do anything, and right now I did.

  I kicked at the lumpiest part of the blanket meant to shield him from the firelight. “Wake up.”

  “Man, I was chillin’ in dreamland, dude,” he said, but the immediacy with which he answered told me he’d heard me coming. “Gotta get my Z’s in.”

  “How ’bout when you’re dead?” I suggested, raising a brow as he sat up and scratched at his spiked dreads.

  “Might not be long, hanging with you,” he shot back, stretching noisily. Glancing up, he scratched at his chest and regarded me with a raised brow. He already knew what I wanted. It was what I always wanted.

  “Make any progress on those maps I gave you?” I asked anyway.

  “Shaa,” he scoffed, rolling his eyes. “Been kinda busy fending off wicked desert coyotes and burying the dead. Doke shit like that, ya know?”

  “Excuses, excuses,” I said, and held up the manual Joseph had brought us this afternoon. Kai’s eyes lit like a kid’s on Christmas. He’d been burying Neal, so he hadn’t seen it yet, and comic books—unsurprisingly—were his passion.

  I put my left hand on my hip and hid the manual again with my right. He could easily take it from me, which he considered before his gaze darted over my shoulder. Vincent, I knew, stood nearby, and I smiled when Kai’s gaze finally returned to me.

  “Maps,” I said.

  Groaning, Kai simultaneously slumped and looked into the sky, muttering something I couldn’t hear but had Vincent snorting behind me. “Step into my office,” he said louder, and scratched his ass.

  He lifted his floor mat—knocking over a large bag of Cheetos and three cans of Mountain Dew dangling on a six-pack ring—and I yanked out a pocket flashlight and took a seat across from him, watching as he pulled out a cache of maps. Yawning widely, Kai took his time sorting through his papers—most of which were astrological calculations none of us were sure he could even read—until he found the three that I wanted.

  These maps had been stolen from a warehouse in central Vegas by a gray named Harlan Tripp. It was a place the Light had designed for their wea
pons master, so he could create and customize conduits, the magical weapons that matched and amplified a particular agent’s strengths. Yet that weapons master—Hunter Lorenzo, my Hunter—had also secretly created these maps.

  Viewed together, they depicted the underground system leading to Midheaven . . . except that they didn’t. Some entrances lay in the wrong places, and others were missing entirely, which I’d double-checked by placing them next to the official map created by the city’s Flood Control District. Each time I studied the trio of maps, I prayed I’d learn something new. That I’d magically discover some clue as to their meaning and purpose . . . any small thing to tell me what the hell Hunter had been doing.

  Obviously he’d been searching for a way into Midheaven. He’d been obsessed with finding the woman who’d escaped there with his unborn child. The child of fate, I thought, biting my lip. The one the Tulpa was after, that we all now knew was the true and sole Kairos: a now seven-year-old who was a perfect blend of Shadow and Light.

  A half sibling, I acknowledged with a now-familiar shock, to the baby I carried now.

  Yet other than laying bare incorrect entrances to a paranormal underworld, the map wasn’t particularly spectacular. Every agent already knew of the fifty-mile pipeline that wound beneath the city, though if they’d followed Hunter’s wrongly marked routes, none would have ever gotten in. Which might have been for the best, I thought, with a small sigh.

  In any case, each time I’d entered the tunnels, they’d twisted and turned in impossible angles, growing warmer and narrower the farther I ventured inside. Even entry via the same tunnel wouldn’t ensure you wound up traversing the same path. Switching it up was the paranormal world’s way of letting you know you were broaching a new realm, and a final warning to keep all but the most determined travelers at bay.

  “Man, I don’t know why you keep lookin’ at those things,” Kai said, throwing a fistful of Cheetos into his mouth as he leaned in from the other side. “Nothing’s changed. It’s as boglius as ever.”