“It doesn’t feel as bad as it looks,” she said, in an attempt to be brave, tilting her head so her straight hair swung over the angry red slashes. The fissure in my heart widened.
“Yes it does,” Jasmine cut in sharply, standing at Li’s right side, one hand dropped protectively on her shoulder. It reminded me of Helen’s hands on Xavier, though I didn’t know why. “She screams when my mother cleans it, and now the rest of her skin is starting to crack. She looks like Humpty Dumpty.”
Li blushed furiously, which only accentuated her scars and made the cracking Jasmine was talking about more noticeable. She was right. Li’s once pristine skin now resembled a chaotic inner city road map. Blue veins and red vessels had risen to canvass the thinned-out skin, and I noted her eyes were beginning to bulge a little too.
Jesus, I thought, it even looked like the muscles beneath the skin were thinning. How did I fix this?
“You know you should be a little more sensitive,” I told Jasmine. “This could kill you too.”
“I’m not the one with draining life energy, and besides, I’d rather die as a hero than live as a weak mortal. I’m never giving up my powers.”
“You’re not superhuman, Jasmine. I am.”
“Really? Then how can I do this?” And she bent over and lifted me from the ground as easily as I would a suckling babe. With one arm.
I blinked, bit my lip, then asked without turning around, “Carl? How can Jasmine pick up a hundred-and-twenty-seven-pound woman?”
“One-thirty-two,” he corrected, and Jasmine nodded as she balanced me. Bitch. “Part of the broken changeling deal, Archer. You’ve blitzed a chunk of her humanity and replaced it in the changeling vessel with your own chi. That’s why the manuals aren’t being written. Her personal energy is registering as yours, and Li’s isn’t registering at all. You could always try to convince her to give it back, though.”
I raised my brows, peering down at Jasmine. In answer, she dropped her arm and I landed on the ground. Crouching, I peered up at her. “Not even to save your sister? An innocent?”
“I’m superhuman,” she clarified, before gesturing to me with her too-strong hands. “You’re the superhero. You fix it.”
“She’s going to die if you don’t help her!”
That gave her pause, causing her little jaw to tighten, but only for a moment. “She’s mortal. She’s going to die anyway.”
I shook my head in disbelief, and glared at her so hard and long, she finally looked away, pursing her lips. “You’re right,” I whispered. “You’re no hero.”
I bit my lip and turned back to Li. “I’ll fix this, sweetheart. I swear I will.”
She nodded without hesitation. “I know.”
Tears staining my eyes, I thought about Regan’s black makeup compact settled in the bottom of my bag, but Li and I had vastly different coloring, so it wouldn’t do her any good. I’d ask Chandra, and see if something similar couldn’t be made for the changeling. “You should go home and rest.”
“But you might need me.” And, more faithful than Old Yeller, she followed behind as I made my way to the counter. Zane was there, studiously ignoring the goings-on in the shop as he ran a pencil across a sheet of paper, the marks disappearing as swiftly as they were made. The half-dozen changelings, save Jasmine, crowded around me, shouting out questions about what Zane “saw” and suggestions on how to make the ink appear. Zane ignored them out of habit; I did so because I couldn’t get Li’s tattered face out of my mind.
I leaned on my elbows to peer up into Zane’s face. His nose twitched.
“We’re about to close,” he said, moving his papers aside and continuing his work.
“Get ahold of the Tulpa for me.”
He didn’t even look up. “What do I look like, your local operator?”
“I know you can get ahold of him.” My voice hardened. “Now help me.”
He flipped his greasy hair back from his forehead, equally greasy. It immediately fell into his eyes again. “I don’t have time to help you work out your daddy issues. Now get out of my light. I’m busy writing a manual you’ll probably never get to see.”
I folded my arms. “Look, Zane, I don’t know what happened to the changeling. I wore her aura but I got it back to her on time. If you have any idea what I can do to fix it, you should tell me.”
He sneered as I pulled back, so I decided to try appealing to his morality. “Fine, don’t do it for me. But look at Jasmine. Shit, look at Li—”
“I see them every day!” he screamed back in my face, gesturing widely with his writing hand. “While you’re out trying to figure out who to screw, I practically live with the little kids your bad decisions are destroying!”
Spit flew from his mouth, and my own fell open, while the kids in the half moon around us froze, unnaturally silent. Zane threw down his pencil, swallowed in an obvious effort to control himself, and when he got his breathing back under control, he said, “I want to help them, I do. But you’re the only one who can mend the changeling.”
I let his previous remarks go, and said in my own heroic show of control, “How?”
He chewed at his bottom lip like he was struggling to hold back words, and had to munch down on the syllables to stop them from pouring out. Finally, in a strangled voice, he managed, “That’s not the right question.”
“Then give me the answers and we’ll work backward from there.”
“This isn’t Jeopardy.”
“No, because that’s a game. This is about a little girl’s life.”
He stared into my eyes for a long moment, frowning like he was using telepathy on me, willing me to understand his thoughts, and when I only stared back he finally shook his head. “I can’t help you.”
I sighed, deflated, then pointed to the manual he was working on as I turned toward the storeroom. “Why don’t you pull up an armchair while you write those things?”
“Fuck you.”
“Trite,” I shot back over my shoulder. “Good thing you’re not thinking up the dialogue too.”
I bent, ordered Li to stay at the front of the shop despite her protests, then bypassed the walls of anime, manga, and comic book carousels. I stalked past the cabinet containing the Zodiac manuals. Two members of the pimple brigade followed.
I entered the long hallway. They shadowed. I exited into the library-esque storeroom. More of the same. By the time I’d scooted around the fireplace I’d become almost paranoid in my awareness of them. Then I made the mistake of making eye contact.
“Hey, lady. Can we talk to you for a minute?”
“I don’t actually speak Klingon,” I muttered, scanning an eye-level shelf with my fingertips. I wondered how many silent alarms I was setting off for Zane, and decided to touch every manual on every shelf. Fuck him.
Undaunted, the kid introduced himself as Kade, his friend was Dylan, before continuing. “See, here’s the thing. Halloween’s coming up, right? And you’re going to be out canvassing the city, right?”
“Why are you asking me questions you already know the answers to?” I retorted distractedly. I was nervous about what I was going to try, but I didn’t see where I had a choice.
“So, with the changeling of Light broken and the manuals of Light going unrecorded you could technically switch sides, and align yourself with the Shadows without anyone knowing the difference.”
Was swatting him like a fly out of the question? “For the last time, I’m not a Shadow.”
“But you could appear as one on the outside…even if you weren’t feeling it on the inside, right?”
“Wrong.”
Dylan piped up, breathy with excitement, verbally punctuating his sentences in all the wrong places. “Yeah, cuz, like, once I was reading National Geographic—”
Kade punched him. “You were looking at the boobies.”
Dylan reddened, and spoke faster. “And they had these little Thai dudes who dressed up like women and not only did no one ever know the difference
, they were better-looking than most real women.”
“Minus the boobies.”
He nodded vigorously. “So we were thinking you could do the same.”
I blinked. Faced them fully. Blinked again. “Dress up like a Thai woman?”
“No,” said Kade. He had a habit of speaking primarily in questions. He was a bit taller than Dylan, blonder too, while Dylan possessed a bit of a lisp. “I mean, pretend you’re something you’re not in order to fix the changeling, but without the paranormal boundaries levied on the agents of Light. Because you’re already dual-sided, kinda like Storm and Mystique, right?”
“More like Clark Kent and Superman.”
Their mouths dropped open. “You mean you’re a dude too?”
My jaw clenched. “I mean I’m already two people at the same time.”
“Nice,” Dylan said, looking me up and down appreciatively.
“Not as good as those Thai dudes, though.”
“I’m not a—” Forget it. I wasn’t going to get into a conversation about transgenders with a kid who read National Geographic for the boobies. “Was there something you boys wanted?”
“We’ve been doing a little reading, catching up on the Zodiac history, right?”
“I’m sure.”
“And we think we found a way to help Li. Did you know someone else broke a changeling before? This manual shows how he fixed it.”
“Really?” I accepted the Shadow manual to stare down at a giant of a man with biceps twice the size of my neck. He was dark-skinned, so his blond crew cut was obviously dyed, though his penchant for girly grooming didn’t make him any less fierce. I didn’t recognize him.
“Yeah, man. Jaden Jacks totally iced the changeling of Light.” Jaden Jacks. What was that, his porn name? I wondered as Dylan pointed to a panel where Jaden was half shadowed, beckoning to someone from in front of Master Comics. “He coaxed the kid away from the shop late one evening, disappeared around the corner next to the sandwich shop, and the other changelings never saw him again.”
I flipped the comic shut. “You want me to kidnap Jasmine? And what, keep her in my superhero locker for all of eternity?”
“No, dude,” he said, flipping it open again, pointing to the last series of panels. “You gotta kill her. I’m sure there’s still some square footage left in this desert that doesn’t already have a body in it.”
I narrowed my eyes as Kade and Dylan high-fived. Catching my look, the little aliens sobered. “Don’t worry. We won’t tell.”
“Yeah, she’s been a real bitch lately.”
I heard a snicker, and glanced up in time to see the Shadow changeling duck back into the hallway. Nosy little eavesdropper. And what a juicy nugget to report back to the Shadows.
“I’m not going to kill Jasmine,” I said evenly, loud enough for Douglas to hear.
“But she’s been using your superpowers for evil! Yesterday she wrote, ‘I will rule supreme’ over all the Warcraft gaming tables!”
I thought of the way Jasmine had lifted me in the shop, effortlessly, and with more than a little misplaced pride. She was definitely growing stronger, and apparently the more power she gained, the less sympathetic she grew to her sister’s plight…and the less likely it seemed she’d willingly release the power as well. Not good. But I didn’t know what to do about that yet, and I certainly wasn’t going to kill her. “Look, guys, intentionally causing injury to someone weaker than yourself is evil. You don’t kill someone because it might help your cause down the line. Understand?”
“Yeah…but she made Li stand on the table and repeat it a hundred times.”
“What?” My head jerked, and Kade nodded as he worried a zit under his chin.
“Well, it makes sense, doesn’t it?” he said, stretching his neck. “Li is a threat to her burgeoning superpowers. If Li becomes the changeling of Light, then Jasmine will have to accept her mortality. She’ll have to grow up. She’ll have to get married and have babies.”
They both shuddered where they stood. I heard Douglas groan from the hallway. The little shit was still there.
I glanced back down at the Shadow manual. Jaden Jacks had killed the changeling downtown. I recognized the garish skyline. “So you guys are saying if I kill Jasmine, Li will become the changeling, the manuals of Light will be printed once more, and all will be balanced and well again?”
They looked at each other. I caught Kade’s eye and lifted my brows. “Right?”
“Well, we’re not sure. Jacks either disappeared or took a new identity immediately after. There’s no way to follow up when the manuals omit those sort of details.” Omit them so neither side of the Zodiac gained leverage over the other. “But, hey, if you’re really two people at the same time, then you can let your Shadow side come forward, off the little bitch, and then your Light side can take credit for healing Li, right? You can totally keep this identity.”
I sighed and handed the comic back. “I can’t kill a little girl.”
Neither of them reached for it. “Hey, either Jasmine dies or Li does, but one way or another, this shop is going to be down one less Chan come the end of the year.”
So that was how long I had. Two months to figure out how to fix Jas. Why couldn’t Zane let me know that?
That’s not the right question.
I bit my lip. “Do you guys think you could do a little research for me? Try and find out what became of Jaden Jacks after he killed the changeling?”
“We could try. Zane doesn’t charge us for looking at the manuals. Not if we return them without stains.”
I closed my eyes and lowered my head, pinching the bridge of my nose between thumb and forefinger. “All right. Thanks.”
“Don’t mention it,” Kade said, obviously pleased to help. The boys couldn’t tell me anything that would unfairly unbalance the Zodiac, but it wasn’t as if there wasn’t anything in here I wouldn’t eventually discover for myself. I could read all the Shadow manuals; it was just a matter of time, and of looking in the right place. It would help to have a few extra pairs of eyes on the manuals…and on Jasmine. “Do you want us to send Jas back?”
“Yeah,” said Dylan, patting his jeans pocket. “I brought a Taser in today. I could prod her skinny ass down the tunnel.”
“No. That’s okay, I have it covered,” I said, shaking my head free of the image. The two boys left, I heard them scuffling with Douglas in the hallway, their voices growing fainter as they returned to the shop, and I tucked the manual in my bag without looking at it again. I’d find a way to fix Li without killing her older sister. Maybe what I was going to do next would help, I thought, pulling out my mask. But I didn’t want to risk further injury to Li if the Tulpa injured me through Jasmine’s aura again. I’d just have to trust the mask I was donning now would do its job. So I slipped it over my eyes, and began envisioning the Tulpa crossing the threshold across from me.
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.
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