The Neon Graveyard

by Vicki Pettersson

  I remained kneeling on the floor until I was sure my revulsion had passed, then wiped my mouth with the back of my hand as I glanced back at Carlos. “He . . . Hunter called it, the child, a name . . . he called it Lola.”

  Carlos shook his head. “It was never a child, Joanna. It was of this world, but birthed in that one. And nothing born in Midheaven has a soul.”

  “That’s why she force-fed it slivers of everyone else’s soul.”

  Carlos nodded, but added, “Initially she planned to hook it up to her sky, a sort of power plant . . . like an incubator, or an artificial heart. She thought finishing the sky would provide enough power to make the soulless creature develop naturally.”

  “But then, all those years ago, Warren locked the entrance leading to Midheaven. And nobody entered again for years.”

  “And so she slowed the flow of energy. Recycled it. In the end she was resigned to simply keeping that soulless being alive.”

  “Did it work?”

  Carlos’s face twisted. “Did it look like it worked?”

  I shook my head. And yet Solange still thought my soul, my power to create—along with the last third of my soul—would make a difference. That’s why, using Hunter, she’d lured me back. She’d held hopes, still, of mothering the Kairos.

  I shuddered. “Did . . . did Hunter know?”

  Carlos inclined his head.

  I blew out a breath, unable to imagine what that had felt like. The child he’d spent years searching out—crossing worlds, risking and taking lives, leaving and losing me—was an unrecognizable beast. Something to be pitied and feared, and probably shot twice.

  “How could she?” I whispered, instinctively wrapping an arm around my own belly.

  Carlos huffed. “You never know what someone’s capable of when it comes to their children.”

  I thought of my mother and nodded. I thought of Ashlyn, the child I’d given up, and nodded again, because there’d been strength in that decision too. I thought of the child I carried now, just over a decade later, and how I was determined not only to keep it safe, but find its father, and carve out a future of . . . what?

  I didn’t know. Not yet. But I straightened, took a deep breath, and reordered my thoughts. My child was not an it, but a she. Carlos scented a girl in my womb, and that’s what had gotten me moving again in the stupa. Yes, a child was absolutely enough to keep you going. “So what are we going to do?”

  The sound that emerged from Carlos’s throat was more bark than laugh. “You mean after what you’ve already done?”

  “What we did,” I remind him coolly, because he’d been the one to drive the blade into the chimera’s neck.

  Carlos’s laughter fell away, and he leaned forward in his chair. “Joanna, every time you enter that world, one that long operated in brutal efficiency, you ripped it apart.”

  “They tried to kill me!”

  “You destroyed soul power by lighting it on fire.”

  “An accident.” One little fire in an Old World saloon and you never lived it down.

  “You escaped multiple times.”

  “And Solange still invited me back for more,” I said, teeth clenched, getting tired of this devil’s advocate.

  Carlos quirked a brow. “You also stole the heart of the man that she, in her twisted way, still loved. That she believed could give that world, and more, back to her.”

  But no man in Midheaven could do that. It was a place devoid of creation. All they could do was recycle the existent energy. Or rip out the souls and powers from new arrivals. But that wasn’t creation. So it was natural that she’d turn to the one man who’d given her a child before.

  And now he was in more trouble than ever.

  Carlos was shaking his head before I even opened my mouth. “It would be suicide for you to ever enter that realm again. You’re mortal, remember? You are vulnerable, even with the power to create something from nothing.”

  “Anything from nothing.”

  “Doesn’t matter,” he replied, just as sharply. “She knows you have it and she’ll be prepared. Since you just murdered her child, I doubt she’s going to ask for it back nicely.”

  “You murdered her child,” I muttered, but that was splitting hairs. I knew he was right. Solange would blame me for all of that and more. There was nothing to be done about that. But there was still Hunter. “What if it were you, Carlos?”

  “Then I’d already be a shrunken head on a string,” he said dryly. “But if I were him? I’d want you safe. You, and the baby we’d made together. The one in full possession of its soul.”

  Yes, Hunter would want that.

  I looked away, biting my lip to keep it from trembling. The thought of just leaving him there, imprisoned by that madwoman, wouldn’t fully form in my mind. I rejected it like rotted food.

  “Look,” said Carlos, in an overly reasonable voice. “I told you before, we can return there later. As a troop. We’ll find our way back when we’re strong, and when we’ve figured out a way to fight her.”

  A lot of whens in that sentence, I thought, staring into Carlos’s good eye, pinched with earnestness and resolve. And I knew he didn’t want to hurt me. He’d looked out for me even before we’d met, and was only continuing to do so now. Yet if I agreed now? None of us would ever step foot in Midheaven again.

  Still, I nodded. “You’re right. I only have one highly volatile power. I lost my soul blade in Midheaven. The best thing to do is to be levelheaded. Formulate a plan. Go back as a team.”

  His face softened with relief. “Right.”

  I glanced at the room housing Felix’s body. “What about him? Do you think Io can free his soul?”

  “I don’t know. I hope so.”

  Looking down, I bit my lip. “Can I have a few moments with him? Alone, maybe?”

  He nodded, and placed a comforting hand on my shoulder. “Of course. I’ll send Io back in a half hour.”

  I stood and reached for the door.

  “Joanna?” When I turned he was smiling. “Thank you.”

  No sweet endearment to soften the words. No gentle Spanish to embellish them either.

  I smiled back. “You’d have come after me too, amigo.”

  He inclined his battered head. “It would be my honor and duty. But I’m thanking you for listening now.” He hesitated, throat working like he was swallowing coal. “I can feel the strength of your love for that man. I would die fulfilled, live fulfilled, if a woman someday loves me as well.”

  Then he rose, and using the rough, sandy wall as a crutch, turned and hopped away. When I was sure he’d gone, I entered Io’s workroom and gazed across the room at Felix’s remains, where an animist’s mask had been forced over his beautiful face, and his soul was crouched fearfully inside.

  I closed the door softly behind me and whispered, “I need your help.”

  I didn’t want to be in that room, alone with the body that used to be Felix, remembering how close we’d been or that he’d once told me how the world only made sense when he and Vanessa were together.

  Yet more than all that, and probably because of all that, I didn’t want him spending eternity as a conscious being trapped in decayed flesh, which was the opposite—if not dissimilar—of the fate of those shrunken heads in Midheaven, who’d had their skin charbroiled and set to swing.

  I certainly didn’t want Vanessa to see the man she loved like this. He needed to be buried, and she needed closure. There was also no question that I was going to return him to the Light. I’d already told Carlos as much, and though his lips pursed in a mien just short of disapproval, he told me he’d make arrangements. Warren be damned—and Carlos too, if he tried to stop me—this good man had been loved in life, and he deserved to be venerated and honored in death.

  So I steeled myself against the sight of him, motionless beneath the sheet Io had slipped up to his neck, and tried to notch my fingertips beneath the living mask somewhere along the jawline. I tested it gently at first, then pul
led, though it seemed undignified to use much more force than that. Besides, the mask remained as much a part of his face as his nose, as if it’d grown there, and had been additionally Super Glued, then nailed for good effect. There wasn’t a bit of give in it, so I stepped back, perched one hip on the table next to him like I would if he were merely sleeping, and leaned in close to the mask.

  “Felix. Can you hear me? It’s Joanna. Jo Archer. You remember me?”

  The mask just stared back, hollow-eyed, its painted scream round and red and silent. I hadn’t really expected a response, but disappointment still had me leaning back. It was probably best that Carlos had lost my soul blade in Midheaven. Otherwise I’d be tempted to force the damned thing free. I knew, if Felix were able, he’d beg me to do as much.

  Instead I tried again. “I know you can hear me. Io told me she sensed you in there, and I do too. In a way, I mean. I don’t really have that gift. But you don’t need to be afraid of her, or anyone, anymore. You’re safe now, Felix.

  “I’m safe too. And I know you always wanted that for me. Chandra told me you followed me to make sure the grays were taking care of me. Thank you for that. I know the only reason you didn’t approach me was because of Warren, and if I’d grown up a part of that troop, man, I wouldn’t be so gung-ho to help a girl who’d brought home nothing but trouble from the start.”

  Sure, I’d acted heroically at times, saved the troop, even. Yet they wouldn’t have needed saving so desperately had I not been there to begin with. Being the reputed Kairos had brought hope to the troop, but it’d also brought sorrow.

  I sighed. “You were raised to abide your troop leader, to trust that he or she knows best, and I understand that. I wish I had it. It would certainly make life easier if I could just divide things right down the middle, right or wrong, black or white. But my worldview has always been muddied. I guess you know that.”

  I gazed down at the animist’s mask. There was no movement, but I pretended I could see him staring back at me, and kept speaking as though he could hear me too.

  “I also know who did this to you. I mean, you’re too good to simply get caught, Felix. No way.” But I’d put it together in the hours since finding him hanging upside down, soul drained, body discarded. After all, I’d found him in the mansion that had once housed a figurehead—my stepfather, Xavier—and that was run by a Shadow agent—the pseudo housekeeper, Lindy—and ruled by the unseen—the Tulpa. Those three people had also been a team, a troop of sorts, something familiarity had made me forget.

  And that had caused Felix’s death.

  “Remember the time I asked you to accompany me to the mansion? Xavier had ordered me there, we didn’t know why at the time, but I was still disguised as my sister then, and you acted as my latest boy toy.” And what we learned that day was that Xavier was dying, and that I, posing as Olivia Archer, was going to inherit the whole of Archer Enterprises.

  In a world where secret identities meant leverage, it had been a coup. The money and influence that Archer Enterprises would provide the Light was more than we’d ever had before, enough that it would make a difference in our war against the Tulpa. It also gave us, specifically me, a place to start chipping away at the Shadows’ operation from the inside. Test holes and weaknesses in his troop, and maybe even find a few chinks in his paranormal armor. Eventually I’d hoped to pound in a few of my own.

  Unfortunately the opposing team had gained leverage for themselves that day. They’d learned who Felix really was.

  “I left you downstairs with a tray of tea and scones,” I remembered, voice softening. I’d left him there while I’d gone upstairs to learn that the years of being the Tulpa’s lackey had finally taken their toll on my stepfather. “We could smell Xavier’s encroaching death, remember? It was sickness and rot. The Tulpa had done that to him, siphoning away his mortal soul for his own use”—and we now knew what that was—“but Lindy Maguire had as well.”

  And she was the reason Felix had gone with me. It was an opportunity for a little payback after Vanessa had been tortured, dismembered, and used as bait.

  “You would have killed Lindy that day. You had your boomerang out, arched over her head as she fixed a plate of blueberry scones. She’d have been dead before reaching for the clotted cream. But I stopped you.”

  Because killing Lindy within the confines of that mansion would have alerted the Tulpa of our access to the same, and thus, Archer Enterprises. And while Lindy hadn’t thought anything of the way I’d flown into the sitting room, chalking it up to just one more example of Olivia Archer’s annoyingly flighty behavior, she hadn’t forgotten it either. “After the Shadows learned I was masquerading as my sister, she went back and studied the tapes.”

  Tapes I’d forgotten about completely. The cameras stationed around that household were ubiquitous, and they’d obviously honed in on Felix pulling up from his deathblow. She’d seen how close she’d been to death, and so she’d studied him—features, movements, mannerisms, and clothes—she’d stalked him, and eventually found something that’d led her right to him.

  But in reality, that something had been me. I was at fault for bringing him there, for not erasing the tapes later, for not remembering them at all.

  “I bet she bragged about it before putting the mask on your face, didn’t she? She’d want to see your face when she told you she’d been the one to catch you.” Still no response from within that mask. I rubbed a hand over my face. “Please forgive me, Felix. I failed you. I handed you a death sentence without even knowing it, and I’m so sorry.”

  The silence in the room quickly grew deafening. I bit my lip, looked away, and then whispered, “I’m going to try to remove the mask again. Please let go. Please don’t be afraid.”

  I reached down.

  No dice.

  “Okay,” I said, nodding, biting my lip. “Then how about this. Vanessa needs you, Felix. She’s going out of her mind. Your glyph has expired back at the sanctuary so the others are already acting as though you’re dead . . . upon Warren’s declaration, of course.” Felix would well know that his troop leader would act the same were it anyone else. Nothing personal, but the troop came first. Warren believed the good of the whole always trumped that of the individual. “But Vanessa, she knows you’re not gone. Of course she knows. She’s yours.”

  I waited for that to sink in. It might take a bit more time beneath a mask that had a stranglehold on his consciousness.

  “So you need to let go of your earthly body if only to give her relief. Let her bury you. Let her mourn. She won’t ever be able to move on, to live or fight or even just take a solid breath, if she knows you’re still alive in the one way that truly counts. You’d feel exactly the same.”

  I’d like to say the mask had popped off after that. That asking for forgiveness, fervently wishing I could take back the mistakes leading to Felix’s death, and invoking a great love was the magic combination that unlocked a soul from its tortured body. But anyone who’d ever prayed or begged or cried at a deathbed knew miracles didn’t happen—not like that. Whatever great power that had made us wasn’t interested in our feelings, but in seeing what we did after the tears had dried, all the way up until our end—no matter how bitter, or supernatural, it might be.

  So I sighed and resorted to another thing he’d loved his entire life: his sense of duty. “All right then, Felix. How about this? I’m going after the fuckers who did this to you, but I need your help to do it.”

  I waited. Then repeated, “Do you hear me? I’m going back. I’m going in. And I. Need. Help. From you.”

  And I leaned close just in case someone with super hearing was lurking outside the door, and whispered every detail of my vengeful, homicidal, reckless, and suicidal plan into his ear.

  Then I waited. I took a deep breath. I closed my eyes.

  And when I opened them again, it was with warm tears streaming down my face and the mask cradled in my hands.

  17

  “You sure it
’s safe up here?”

  I peered over the roofline of Master Comics at the concrete ground—cracked, though that didn’t mean there was any give in it. Chandra joined me, though she was more concerned with scanning the perimeter than with the thirty-foot drop. And why not? I was the only one with mortal bones.

  “You know it is,” she replied, eyes narrowing at a movement she spotted five hundred feet away, but one I could not. She relaxed after a moment, so I did as well. “You’ve already been zapped by Zane’s little remote control sensor.”

  I wrinkled my nose at the memory, and skirted her a sidelong glance. “Yeah, but I thought that was just to deter me from breaking into his place.”

  “Apparently it deters lots of things,” she muttered, turning back to the roof’s center where the self-appointed head changeling was staring out over his starry domain. Dork.

  “What’s Zane been doing that he’s so tired all the time, anyway?” I called out to Carl, but he just shrugged as he tested the device that would zap anyone who decided to start a world war on the comic shop’s rooftop.

  I fisted my hands on my hips. “It’s because I’m gray, right? Only true Shadow and Light are worthy of Zane’s most prized secrets?”

  Carl pointed the device at me. “It’s because you’re a pain in our collective asses and I wouldn’t be up here freezing my gonads off if it weren’t for you.”

  I lifted my arms in mock surrender. “Gawd, who needs Zane. You sound just like him.”

  But I didn’t press the issue. Of all the changelings, only Carl remained behind when Chandra and I had come asking for help. He’d also let us carry Felix’s casket through the shop and Zane’s upstairs apartment—after knocking Zane out with Ambien-laced Scotch and tucking him into bed. That way, he said, the old dude would be absolved of any wrongdoing in helping us secure the rooftop location.