She straightened at that. “But you’ll look.”
“Of course,” I answered immediately, and she smiled—a hint of the old Vanessa streaking through her gaze before she turned away. I put a hand on her arm. “Wait. You could . . . help.”
The smile turned bitter. “No ties, remember?”
“Not even for a little while? Until we’re sure?”
Tilting her head at the sky, she studied it, though the stars were invisible from the city’s heart. “Tekla told me long ago that it was my fate to sacrifice myself for life’s greatest gift. I didn’t know what it meant then, but it makes sense now. She meant love. She meant Felix, and I’ll do so gladly, and do you know why?”
I shook my head.
“Because Felix has already given me the greatest gift of my life. He chose me. I was the kairos of his heart, see? And every woman, no matter how strong, has that core need . . . to be the one. To be chosen.”
She turned again, and this time the grays widened their circle. However, Vanessa paused at the perimeter. “You know, Tekla said something else too. More recently. It was a prophecy. It’s what sent Warren off into his war room, and made Felix leave for good.”
“What was it?”
“After you were gone she holed herself up in her lab. She wouldn’t eat, didn’t sleep that we could tell. You know how she gets.”
Obsessed. Literally crazed. But about me? Tekla let me sacrifice my soul to Midheaven. She’d thought of it, and urged it.
“When she finally did come out,” Vanessa continued, squinting at me, “she said you were lost to us, and you would never be fully super again.”
My heart sank. But what about my ether? So I didn’t have the ability to imagine things into existence?
“Why would that send Warren on the warpath?” Vincent asked, stepping protectively to my side. I smiled up at him, earning a wink in return.
“Because Tekla also said that despite all of your limitations, you would bring to pass an apocalyptic event.”
I snorted before I could stop myself, causing Vanessa to draw back, but I couldn’t help it. “I can barely run without tripping. And now I’m up there with the four horsemen?”
But Vincent lifted his chin. “What event?”
“The sixth sign of the Zodiac,” she said simply, which shut everybody up, and she was coherent enough to know she held us all spellbound. An old, familiar smile flashed, but it was gone before I could even count it there. “It’s anarchy, Joanna. It’s Warren’s worst fear. It’s the dismantling of the troops as we know them.” Looking at me, Vanessa straightened her spine and folded her hands in front of her, a perfect imitation of Tekla’s demeanor. “True freedom for all arises from the Serpent Bearer,” she intoned with imperious perfection.
The Serpent Bearer.
I gasped, and Vincent leaned forward, which had Vanessa stepping back. “That’s the sixth sign of the Zodiac?”
No wonder the Tulpa wanted to learn more about it. He specialized in keeping people in thrall.
No wonder Warren wanted me dead. His troop meant everything to him.
“I don’t even know what the Serpent Bearer is.”
Vanessa’s eyes darted again to the Shadow manual. I looked down, then slumped, and fought the urge to bang my own head against the ground. The sixth sign was fully explained in this week’s manual of Light. I’d picked wrong and would have to wait a week before returning to the shop—and all the dangers that lay like a minefield in front of it—again.
A small smile touched her lips. “Don’t worry so much. You can’t bring on an apocalypse if you’re dead. Fate has already decreed your connection with the Serpent Bearer.”
“So you believe Tekla?” I asked, and Vanessa nodded. “Why?”
“Because you were the first to find it,” she replied, tilting her head.
“The Serpent Bearer?” I looked around at the men, who looked back, as flummoxed as me.
“No, Joanna.” Her mouth quirked, but her eyes took on a wistful look and she shook her head. “Freedom.”
11
It was as if the very word freedom fired something inside Vanessa. In the first real display of life she’d shown since knocking into me, she bent her knees and shot to the alley’s nearest rooftop before any of us could react. It wasn’t her normal balletic motion either. Instead her joints looked hinged, which was ironic since everything else about her was undeniably unhinged.
“V!” I called, though she was already too far gone. She’d bolted like we, or someone else, were giving chase. “Vanessa!”
Vincent finally shushed me with a hand on my shoulder. “Let’s get out of here. The blowback will have attracted someone’s attention.” And though forced outside the comic shop’s invisible boundary, Warren probably hadn’t wandered far.
“But someone has to go after her,” I pleaded, because I couldn’t. I looked from face to face, causing Roland to shift uncomfortably on his feet, and Oliver, Gil, and even Foxx to look away. But it was Gareth who stepped forward, shaking his head. “She doesn’t want to be followed.”
“Since when does that matter?” I asked, cocking a hand on my side, and was immediately distracted from my moral outrage. Were my hips widening?
“Since Kai just answered my text,” Gareth said, recapturing my attention as his fingers flew over his phone’s keypad, an obvious response. “I told him about the sixth sign: True freedom arises from the Serpent Bearer. He wants us to meet him at the Cheyenne observatory.”
Roland groaned. “He’s going to make us sit inside that stupid bubble again, isn’t he?”
“It’s a planetarium.”
“It’s crap,” Oliver said before Gareth had finished, which earned a high five from Roland, though they both started walking anyway. “I can see the stars better with my naked eyes.”
But I couldn’t. Realizing it, and that Kai’s location had been chosen for my benefit, he cleared his throat. “The van is around the corner.”
So we sped up the 15 into north town, where the blocks sprawled longer and wider and the dogs were meaner and mangier. The community college had the only planetarium in town, which showed you how much Vegas valued its natural sciences. Maybe if they stuck showgirls on the moon it would get more play.
“I don’t get this whole Serpent Bearer thing,” Foxx grumbled from the front seat. “I mean, it’s a symbol of healing, a constellation, and it’s supposed to bring about the sixth sign of the Zodiac?” He huffed, staring out his own window.
“No, Vanessa said Jo is supposed to do that,” Oliver corrected, pointing at me. “The Serpent Bearer is just a part of it.”
“Vanessa didn’t say it,” I corrected lowly. “Tekla did.”
Gazing back at me through the rearview mirror, Oliver whistled under his breath. “Man, I read about her before. You want to talk crazy, she’s the maddest hatter.”
“But always right,” I said, somewhat grudgingly. I stared at the noise barrier separating the freeway from the residential neighborhoods, the glitz of the Strip now so far behind that it could belong to some other desert town altogether. Tekla was mystical and loony, sure, and while her prophecies didn’t always turn out as expected, they inevitably came to pass—even those facing the greatest odds.
But this latest prediction was especially confusing. The idea that I—mortal, pregnant, and outgunned—could bring about some sort of paranormal apocalypse felt more like a fairy tale. Like I was still powerful. As if an A-bomb rested in my chest. I shook my head, feeling about as dangerous as a gnat.
“Holy shit.” Oliver pointed up, and we all leaned forward to find a bright light cleaving the sky in two. As we drew closer it was easy to distinguish Kai. His hair was a blond flame against the surrounding darkness, and he waved at us to join him on the rooftop before disappearing over its ledge.
“Subtle,” Foxx commented, clamoring from the car.
But minutes later, after a climb up a stairwell so dark it’d make a deep-water diver claustro
phobic, and after Foxx and Vincent had gone ahead to make sure it was safe, we were there too, hovering vulnerably beneath the bent sky. It was obliterated by the spotlight but I could still feel it arching there, almost oppressive in its vastness.
“What’s with the bat signal?” Gareth asked, inching to the rooftop’s center like the rest of us.
“It’s called hiding in plain sight, brah.” Kai ran a hand over his dreads, came back picking his fingernails. “The college kids sail this rooftop all night.” He pointed to a triad of bolted-down tables and wire benches. Candy wrappers and cigarette butts created a light, festive litter, and you could see how a stressed-out coed might like finding temporary escape up here. “It’s a bodacious make-out spot, and the astronomy professor chats with the hot coeds up here every Thursday.”
“It’s Friday, moron,” Foxx said.
“Don’t rag me, dudes, or I won’t tell you what I found out about the Serpent Bearer.” He emphasized the last words like he would voodoo priest, then leaped to a bench and whirled, eyes shining. “I did it! I know what the Serpent Bearer is. Or, more exactly, who it’s about.”
“Get in line, Sherlock,” Foxx said, jerking his head at me. “It’s her.”
Kai looked at me, then scrunched up his nose and tilted his head. “She’s not Greek.”
The others looked at me too. After a moment of silence, I nodded. “He’s right. I’m not Greek.”
Oliver, leaning over the ledge, checking on the car, the surroundings, interrupted, “Man, you sure we shouldn’t turn off the spotlight? I can see your lion’s mane from a mile away. Literally.”
Leaping down to unzip a backpack at his feet, Kai shook his head.
Foxx let out a frustrated sigh. “Then please tell us you didn’t bring us into fraternity land just to stargaze.”
“Nope.” Kai threw a giant book down onto the metal table and smiled. He was practically vibrating with excitement as he flipped it open to a marked page. “I called this meeting to talk about classical Greek mythology.”
Foxx cursed, pacing away, but Gareth grimaced. “Will there be a written exam?”
Kai pointed at the open book. “Know that constellation I was talking about at the rave? Well, meet Ophiuchus.”
We clustered around the table and stared down at a bare-chested man with loose sashes covering his essential bits, and wide arms grasping the opposing ends of a giant snake. “Pretty hot,” I commented, figuring it was my duty to provide the sole female point of view, though Milo agreed. Fletcher elbowed him.
“ ’Cept for them fucked-up dreads,” Gil said. “I know a girl down on MLK who could clean that nappy shit right up.”
But I was looking at the star system underlying Ophiuchus’s nappy dreads, a chart dividing his body into units, like a shining, celestial bone structure. Kai waited another moment, then cut the spotlight by ratcheting down a sledgehammer switch. The stars above popped so fiercely it felt momentarily like I was hurtling through space toward them. Even Foxx let out an awe-filled whistle.
“Whoa,” said Oliver. “I’d totally make out up here.”
Gil cut his eyes sideways. “Step away from me right now, man.”
“So legend has it that long ago this dude right here, Ophiuchus, was walking around in the Greeky forest, enjoying nature and picking berries and shit . . .” A collective shudder circled the group. As former troop members, whether Shadow or Light, we were all city folk to the core. “And that’s when he saw a snake bringing another snake some totally righteous herbs.”
Gareth tilted his head as he looked down at the giant snake Ophiuchus was holding. “What, like in its mouth?”
“No, in his handbag,” Foxx retorted, and made a motion that Kai should hurry it on. “Of course his fucking mouth.”
Kai snapped his fingers to regain attention. “So these bits of moss and plants and greenery had, like, amazing healing powers. When combined in the right way they could alleviate pain with only the rub of a small poultice. One sip of a properly balanced tincture and, dudes, it could cure everything from the common cold to venereal disease.”
He paused, then shrugged at our collective blank faces.
“Okay, I made that last part up. But these herbs brought that second snake back to full health. You’re talking about a beast that should have bled out and died, but within minutes, it was slithering away with the best of them. Totally chillax, right? So, like, old Ophiuchus followed the little beastie back to its den, where he discovered and snagged more bodacious healing herbs, and thus the secret to immortality.”
“What was it?” Foxx asked, crossing his arms.
Kai scoffed. “It wouldn’t be a very good secret if I told you, would it, broski?”
“Which means you don’t know.”
“Not the point.” He jammed a thumb at the Greek guy. “Ophiuchus is the point . . . of everything. The point of origin.” He smiled the smile of the scientifically obsessed, but scratched at his chest like a beach bum awakened too early. “See, being a crusty old Greek guy, he was also one fucked-up motherfucker.”
Foxx drew back. “I’m a quarter Greek.”
“I said old, didn’t I?” Rolling his eyes, Kai turned back to me. “So this fucked-up old Greek guy was in love with two mortals. Sisters.”
Gareth took a guess. “Fucked-up old Greek chicks?”
“Precisely, brah! So of course they had to die a young, violent death.” He dismissed the abysmal fate of ancient women with a half shrug. “But then Mr. Hey-I’m-Going-to-Heal-the-World used his little snake charm to bring each bitchin’ cooha back to life.”
We all waited for more, but Kai only raised his brows. Then Vincent gasped. Milo and Fletcher both cursed silently under their breath, and I scratched my head, trying to read the awe in all their faces and figure out what a “bitchin’ cooha” really was. But once there was a satisfactory amount of comprehension, Kai rushed to the finish.
“They were the first mothers, dawgs!” He jumped up and down. “This is the story of the troops’ origins.”
Gil pounded one hand into his other fist. “Man, I know this story! My momma used to tell it to me at bedtime. Just the recovering from death part though. She said nothing about snakes.” He scratched his head and after another moment, made a face. “Man, she’d be so disappointed to find out those sisters were Greek.”
“No way she could know,” Kai said, dropping to the bench and leaning back on his elbows. “They hightailed it out of there pretty fast after being brought back all Lazarus-style.”
“Why?”
“Yeah.” Gareth nodded. “Why not stick around and show some real gratitude to ol’ snake boy?”
“Pig,” I said flatly, not looking at him.
“Because of Zeus, brohah,” Kai explained, but high-fived him anyway.
“I’ve heard of him,” I said, proud that something from my classical background had stuck.
Kai’s head bobbed in a loose nod. “The alpha god found out about the horny dude’s nefarious deeds, and was totally not amused.”
“Because he wanted the sisters for himself?” We all looked at Foxx, who grimaced in return, though it wasn’t exactly far-fetched given the bulk of Greek mythology.
But Kai shook his head. “Because he couldn’t exactly have the whole human race becoming immortal. What if someone else developed a sudden fondness for, like, lightning bolts and scepters?”
“Or threesomes.”
What if, I thought, as the other men pondered Foxx’s hypothetical, an entire race of gods rose from the mortal population to rival the existing ones.
Not gods, I corrected, looking around, but superheroes.
“So what happened?”
“Duh. Zeus used one of his bright badass bolts to zap the horny Greek dead.”
“That’s it?” Gil frowned, hand out, palms up.
“Well, and then he stuck him up in the sky to be remembered forever as a constellation.” Kai shrugged. “I guess he felt bad.”
“ ’Cause if anyone knew what it was like to be horny,” Gareth nodded, “it was Zeus.”
“I don’t think that last part was in the mythology,” I whispered to Gil.
“Damned sure ain’t the way my momma told it.”
“Okay.” Shaking his head, Foxx crossed his arms. “All this is very interesting. We now know the ancient Greeks were horny, nappy-haired murderers.” He jabbed a finger at me. “But what does Ophiuchus have to do with our own fucked-up not-Greek chick?”
“Everything, brohah.” Kai clasped Foxx on the shoulder, but let his hand drop when Foxx stared down at the offending limb. “Before Zeus decided to rearrange the cosmos like it was his own personal chessboard, the sun passed through twelve constellations. But they’ve shifted. Today it crosses through thirteen.
“There are people in our world—astrologers, Seers—who follow a moving zodiac rather than the fixed one. They use something called sidereal time to calculate the Earth’s orientation to the galaxy, not the solar system.”
Foxx snarled. “Speak English, geektard.”
“It’s basic, hodaddy. If Ophiuchus’s constellation were included in the Western Zodiac—and sidereal astrologers think it should be since the sun travels through his body—”
“And nappy hair,” muttered Gil.
“—then those born between November 30 and December 17 would be Ophiuchians. Milo, you wouldn’t be a Taurus, but totally a Gemini.”
“That explains a lot,” Fletcher muttered.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Milo turned on his partner, offended. I glanced around at the other grays to find them doing the same, second-guessing each other’s star signs.
But then Kai threw down an enlarged photo of the sky Hunter had mapped out over his bed, the one I’d gazed at in his warehouse, in his arms. I looked back up, and Kai nodded. At some point since we’d last spoken, he’d made it into the warehouse and back with this. “Your boyfriend was a mondo cartographer, my little mahina.”
“Tell me about it,” I said, meaning it.
“Remember when I said this map was wrongly marked?” Not waiting for my nod, he pulled out another of Hunter’s maps, the underground tunnel system we’d studied at the rave, trying to work out what Hunter was doing while marking and then erasing all the entrances leading to Midheaven. His smile grew broader and he laid a tracing of the tunnel system over Hunter’s wrongly marked sky. Thirteen constellations, including Ophiuchus’s, popped.
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