City of Souls

by Vicki Pettersson

  A male attendant wearing nothing but a white loincloth and a beautiful smile met us just outside the dressing room. “Champagne?”

  “Absolutely,” Suzanne murmured, scooping a flute off the silver tray before cutting her way to the center of the ballroom. I lifted my own glass, smiling as I watched her go. The ballroom Arun had rented for the night was decked out like an elaborate Roman temple, with white pillars, busts of forgotten emperors and gods, and mosaics of Apollo and Alexander the Great. Landscape portraits hung along walls draped in silks, and white candles of all sizes pooled off waist-high pedestals, threatening to set the guests afire.

  There was a make-it-yourself sachet bar at the back of the room, while more menservants wandered about with expensive lotions and perfumes, others carrying silver trays bearing exotic fruits, fresh vegetables, mini-quiches, and sandwiches. It was, I thought, a brothel and buffet mixed into one.

  Snagging a sampling of strawberries dipped in chocolate, I followed Suzanne to the front of the stage, looking to the press row for Vanessa. Eyes stared back at me, a few bright bulbs flashed, but none of them were my ally’s. I checked my phone for a message once seated, but there was still nothing. Maybe she’d had a breaking story to follow. She usually covered the crime beat, investigating anything that hinted of Shadow activity. Our aliases were carefully chosen so we could search out our enemies and thwart their plans. Or, if really lucky, take them out if it did nothing to impact the mortal population. It had been mere curiosity—the same curiosity Lena and Madeleine exhibited in the bathroom, minus the envy—that’d had Vanessa begging for a ticket to this event.

  “These mortals are capricious, aren’t they?” she’d said, glancing over the perfumed and embossed invitation when I handed it to her. She was asking me because while she’d been reared as a member of the troop, I’d been raised as one of the mortals they protected. My metamorphosis last year from normal human being into twenty-first-century superheroine had taken both allies and enemies in the paranormal world by surprise. As for me, up until that point I’d thought superheroes were pop culture myths. That the emerging glyph on my chest, which now lit under attack, was just a severe case of heartburn.

  That the attack that nearly killed me as a teen had been random.

  I thought of Suzanne, and her stepdaughter Cher, who had been Olivia’s first and only best friend. “Well, these particular ones are capricious.”

  “Oh, not them. I think your friends are great.”

  I didn’t correct her about the women being “my” friends, as I might have in the past. Like everything else that had been Olivia Archer’s—her luxury condo, her car, her cat, and her wardrobe—what was hers was now mine. This had been difficult at first, and I was a bit thrown by how quickly people had forgotten me—Joanna Archer—and the tragic circumstances of my “death.” But I had a new life now, and all these women were a part of it.

  But I was interested in what Vanessa thought of my mortal playmates. They were flighty, weak, shallow when the tide was out—everything she was not. So what could she possibly find likable? “How so?”

  “Well, first of all, they didn’t have the advantage of growing up in a matriarchal society. I’d hate to be seen as the weaker sex.” She shuddered, and I half smiled, knowing what she meant. Zodiac women enjoyed an elevated status the rest of the world’s women couldn’t fathom. “They also have to deal with lessened physical abilities, so they rely more on their minds and feminine skills to get what they want.”

  Which reminded me of Cher’s unwritten motto: Flirting—it’s a tool, not a weapon.

  I shook my head. “They just don’t know any better. It’s the ignorance of being mortal.”

  And before enduring an attack that had broken my body and spirit, I’d been gleefully ignorant. But all of that—mortality, injury, getting by in a man’s world—was well behind me. I had powers that enabled me to heal from man-made weapons, run faster, leap higher, and be stronger than any human could ever conceive. I could materialize walls from thin air and conjure plant life amid the most arid of terrain. My lungs had expanded like wings in my chest, and my every sense soared with each inhalation. It was like giving sight to someone who’d been blind since birth.

  Mortality, I knew now, sucked.

  Vanessa shook her head, like I’d said it aloud. “Not for your mother. She knew what she’d be giving up, and she chose mortality.”

  “She did it for me.” And that was why and how I had all my powers. Zoe Archer had given hers over to me to save me from that long ago attack. But then she’d disappeared.

  “But it’s her very humanity that keeps her safe. That fragile flesh is as strong an armament as an Amazon’s shield. She has the power to totally disappear. Becoming one of these capricious humans is her supernatural legacy. Now that’s power.”

  But power and legacy weren’t the words that came to mind as I sipped my champagne and looked around now. I wished Vanessa were there so I could see what she’d make of the male attendants in oversized diapers, and the sparkling white runway soon to be filled with bridal lingerie. At least I didn’t have to be in the show this time, I thought, staring up at the runway. Maybe I was actually getting better at navigating the world as Olivia Archer.

  “I’m sorry again about the henna,” Suzanne said, settling next to me in a puff of scent and silk and crystal embroidery. Lightbulbs flashed like mad from the photographer’s row as Cher joined us. “I know how long you waited as it was applied.”

  “It wasn’t exactly a hardship.” I’d been massaged and served finger food and drink the whole time. I patted her hand, careful to keep the printless pads of my fingertips—the one true giveaway of my Zodiac status—from touching her soft hand.

  “Well I, for one, am extremely disappointed,” Cher said, sending a little finger wave to Madeleine and Lena just behind us. She was dressed similarly to her stepmother, having gotten fully on board with the whole “ethnic thing,” as she called it. Her lengha had gold threads and colored gems handcrafted throughout, and revealed her navel, where another bright gem winked merrily. “I was test-

  Suzanne settled the fishtail of her gown around her legs. The shimmering jacquard winked elegantly in the pooling candlelight. “You mean for when you and your old man move into the double-wide?”

  “Mama, your southern Baptist roots are showing! Tattoos are not trashy. They’re mainstream now. Just ask Angelina Jolie.”

  “I will, next time Arun and I vacation with their clan in St. Moritz.” She made sure to say that loudly enough for Madeleine to hear. I smiled and sipped my wine. “And these weren’t just random designs or tattoos. Arun helped me assemble the collection, explaining each one’s significance in his culture.”

  “They were beautiful,” I said, thinking again of the assorted mandalas. The delicate whorls and dots of the one I’d chosen had been almost mesmerizing…all the way up until they washed down my drain.

  “Arun says they’re magic,” Suzanne replied, edging close, her tone dreamy at the magic of the man. Short courtship or not, she truly appeared to be in love. “They establish a sacred place on the body.”

  “Oh, well that’s probably why they washed off,” Cher said, waving the whole issue away. “There are no sacred spaces left on our bodies.”

  I snorted before I could help myself. At some point in the last year my acute grief over Olivia’s death had lessened to the point that my mind skipped more to the memories of her happy life, much of which included these two women. I’d even begun thinking of my impersonation of her as a sort of tribute, a way to keep her memory alive. Cher and Suzanne had been her greatest friends, and for that alone I’d be ever grateful, but their friendship helped cloak my real identity now, and that added weight to my gratitude.

  So as the lights dimmed to low, I smiled as one of the biggest weapons in my undercover arsenal began clapping her hands excitedly. “Oh, goodie!” Cher giggled. “Here we go.”

  The elegant notes of a violin filled the ha
ll, the notes of Pachelbel’s Canon swelling as the chiffon curtains at the runway’s entrance slowly parted. Every smiling face turned Suzanne’s way. There was a smattering of applause and a delicious surge of anticipation, an emotion I could now pick out by scent. It was sugary and light, like softened vanilla and whipped cream. I inhaled deeply of the collective emotion…

  And a big cake rolled into the room.

  I tilted my head, sniffing. Shit, I couldn’t tell the difference between the anticipation and the cake?

  “Is it someone’s fucking birthday too?” Madeleine muttered under her breath, as the giant cake slowly made its way down the runway. It was frosted entirely in white with red roses, giant chunks of glitter sparking from each bloom’s center. Madeleine’s remark was too low for Suzanne and Cher to hear, but I had no such problem. I turned and she sunk back in her seat at my glare. One word from me and she’d be sitting out the wedding of the decade. She smiled weakly, and I turned back around.

  The music altered, the Canon disappearing beneath a low, techno throb, like a heartbeat picking up pace, and the genteel society women were suddenly sitting straight in their seats, straining to keep their eyes on the cake as it glided down the forty foot catwalk. Maybe it was the lowered lighting, maybe the free-flowing champagne, maybe the cake itself amidst a group who allowed themselves to lunch only on lettuce and white wine, but the emotion I now scented was a growing hunger, the biting hook of cinnamon and allspice and a small dusting of pepper. The cake began a slow rotation too, and the music swelled.

  “That’s not a birthday cake,” Lena cried next to Madeleine, standing to clap her hands with everyone else. “It’s—”

  “Beefcake!” Cher jumped to her feet as the top of the cake burst open, sparkly icing flying, music pounding, women screaming, and a shirtless man suddenly gyrating like his hips could power a vehicle.

  “That’s some filling!” Suzanne, the forty-something-year-old blushing bride, squealed in my ear.

  Cher clapped madly on my other side.

  I took one good look at the man’s face and spewed champagne all down the front of my enhanced bust line.

  Coughing, I wiped the tears from my eyes, and made brief eye contact with the dancer, still humping air, his pelvis doing things that were illegal in Suzanne’s home state.

  He paused in his dance of love long enough to locate me. Thank God superheroes didn’t have the power to kill with looks alone. Because my ally and onetime lover—Hunter Lorenzo—shot me a look so wilting I would have keeled over in that moment. Instead, I swallowed hard, and set down my champagne glass, excusing myself to little notice. Hunter kept dancing, Cher pulled out some bills, and Suzanne headed to the stage to cop a feel.

  I didn’t laugh.

  Vanessa hadn’t shown. Hunter had just burst from a cake. I didn’t know exactly what that meant, but like another superhero spotting the bat signal against the night sky, I knew that whatever it was, it couldn’t be good.

  2

  “That was horrifying.”

  “No, it wasn’t that bad,” I assured Hunter as I handed him a towel. We were backstage, shuttled to a corner of the dressing room while models wearing—or not wearing—lingerie trotted out pieces for Suzanne’s trousseau. I mentally marked a particularly cute peignoir for later. “You’ve actually got rhythm.”

  Unamused, Hunter snatched the towel from my hands and wiped icing from his chest. I found myself staring a moment too long, and looked away before he could catch me. It was the first time we’d been alone since the end of our affair a month ago, and by “affair” I meant something that’d ended almost as soon as it began.

  As he turned his back—his beautiful back—to me, I pulled on a black trench coat and reminded myself that starting a relationship on the rebound was asking for heartache. Though the tension between Hunter and me had gradually eased, that didn’t mean we were back to normal. Our interactions were stilted, the pauses filled almost to bursting with everything we were trying not to say, or even think. There was absolutely zero innuendo or sexual tautness, and there’d always been at least that. Even my teasing had no effect, as if what once stood between us had never even existed.

  It’s resolve, I thought as I switched into sturdy soled boots. I knew how it felt to have an indecision finally put to rest. I’d done the same with my last boyfriend, Ben, so I recognized the hardened glaze shellacking Hunter’s once soft feelings for me. When resting on me, his expression was faraway yet focused, like he was seeing past skin and blood and bone and laying his mind’s eye at the base of my spine.

  It wouldn’t have been so bad, I thought, tucking my heels into my bag, if I didn’t have the memory of how he’d once let that knowing gaze linger on places only lovers found of interest. He’d once captured and followed the length and shape of my fingers, clearly reimagining them on himself. He’d memorized the curve of my wrists, which he once held and bit and raised above me in bed in willing surrender. He’d run his jawline along the muscles in my calves, taking pains to caress them before sliding them around his sides, covering himself in a second skin.

  All of that was suddenly barricaded behind a wall of something he wanted more, but as there was no end to the things on this earth a man could want, I had no idea what it was.

  But I did know that despite our physical attraction, and a mental connection once forged through magic, Hunter had his own dark secrets. The ones I was aware of—an undercover callboy identity, a cameo appearance with someone in the Shadow manuals, a daughter no one else knew about—were only the beginning. Experience had taught me that beneath such jagged tips lay emotional icebergs, and Hunter, I thought, stealing a glance as he pulled a long-sleeved collared shirt over his head, looked like an unsinkable ship going it alone. For some reason, it made me fear for him.

  “What’s your problem, anyway?” I said, careful to keep my voice light. “I mean, this is well within your line of work, right?”

  I was referring to that secret work as a male escort, even though I knew it was only a cover in his search for someone, or something, else. Hey, I had to deal with the Jessica Rabbit references in my cover, so why should I let the facts stop me?

  “I don’t do that anymore.”

  “I know.” He’d sold his Mustang, cancelled his private number, and disappeared from the escort brochures, leaving behind only wistful memories of lonely women. What I didn’t know was why. I couldn’t tell from his demeanor whether he’d found what he was looking for or if he’d given up altogether. And the dead calm of his gaze told me he wasn’t saying.

  “So where’s the real stripper?”

  He jerked his head. “Still in the cake.”

  I snorted, and crossed to the corner to peer inside. Sure enough, there was a hunky stripper inside, sleeping like a well-built baby. “You climbed into a cake with another man?”

  “Shut up, Jo.” He crossed the room, and for a moment it looked like he was going to keep on coming, and that was something you didn’t want Hunter Lorenzo to do. I stepped back, but he only yanked his black pants from the center of the cake, checking them for frosting before pulling them on. “How else was I supposed to infiltrate the land of estrogen?”

  “You wouldn’t have had to if Vanessa had shown up.”

  “Exactly.” He flipped a cap on to conceal his hair and facial features.

  I frowned. “What?”

  “She’s missing.” He jerked his head to the door, assuming I’d follow. “Let’s roll.”

  Missing? I shook my head, but willed my feet into moving. “No. She’ll be here. I was just texting…”

  where R U

  The text had no punctuation. Vanessa, as I’d known earlier, would never do that.

  “Oh, my God.” No, I pleased silently. Visions of Vanessa laughing and smiling and blowing kisses raced through my head. Not her. Not anyone, but…the Shadows couldn’t have Vanessa. I picked up my pace.

  Hunter led me from the ballroom, careful to keep a discreet distance betwe
en us. I put an extra sway in my hips but kept up the pace. We had to get clear of Valhalla, and the Eye-in-the-Sky security system, before we could look like we actually knew each other. Here, in the Archer dynasty’s hallowed gaming halls, we were Olivia Archer and Employee.

  “We think they got her while she was on her way to you, so they shouldn’t be far.” Hunter nodded to another guard, who goggled at me when we passed. I shot him a smile that could melt iron and kept walking. “Same message sent to everyone on her contact list. Riddick, Jewell, and Warren were all together when they got it. It’s how we figured it out so quickly.”

  And Hunter, who acted as a security guard at Valhalla when not saving the world, had been the closest to me. I should’ve known he wouldn’t have taken off his uniform and climbed into a cake unless the situation was absolutely dire. “Whoever has her is trying to use her to get to me, aren’t they?”

  where R U

  He lifted one shoulder noncommittally, which meant yes, and pushed through the door into the open air. Beyond Valhalla’s ornate porte cochere and winding drive, Las Vegas stretched like a winking rainbow, light scoring the ground and sky.

  Hunter halted as we reached the fountains, lifting his phone to his ear. I bit my lip, waiting as he listened silently, nodded once, and hung up. “Gregor traced the call.”

  “Find the phone?”

  “Yes.”

  “And Vanessa with it?” My heart pounded as I waited for the answer.

  “Sorta.” He turned his back to the street and gazed back up at the casino.

  Worry washed over me from head to toe. “What do you mean ‘sort of’?”

  “The phone was wrapped in a package. With a bow.” His slumped shoulders gave away the bad news before he spoke again. “And her tongue.”

  We raced across Maryland south of the university, the busy street teeming with college students letting off weekend steam and enough traffic that we had to dodge headlights. The sound of laughter and music rang from the off-campus apartments, the gas stations were bright, and the restaurants dim but bustling.