I was aware of someone behind me and realized Tim had stepped through the door. But—had Daniel seen Tim? Or was he indicating someone in the house?
Like Dags?
Wait—did he think that Dags and I were—?
Daniel got in his car and backed down the drive.
The wind kicked up. The tattered pages of magazines and newspapers rustled around me. Tim stood to my right. “Jemmy, Dags, and Maureen are in the basement. Steve and Alice are cleaning up.”
I nodded. It seemed I was stuck in time. Not moving back but seeing no way forward.
No future.
“Want to go see Nona?” Tim said. “I’ll go with you.”
I wiped at the tears on my cheek. I wanted to talk to Dags. I wanted to ask him why he’d needed Dr. Scorpius—Fenrir—and know when he’d last spoken to Joe. But I was too tired. I nodded. “I’ll go get your rock.”
IT was a nice drive—me behind the wheel of Elizabeth (Mom’s Volvo) and Tim in the passenger seat. The sun eventually broke through the clouds, and the temperature was just right if a little chilly. March. Spring—when love and life come to bear fruit.
Fuck ’em all.
Let me say right here—I want a new life. I’m done with this one. This isn’t the one I ordered. I was supposed to be in love with a cute cop, and he was supposed to love me, and marry me, and we would have a nice life with lots of wild sweaty nights on the coffee table and make little Wraiths.
So what the hell? Where did this go wrong?
I’ll tell you—that stupid night at the Bank of America Plaza. TC shows up drilling holes in people, sucking their souls, then poof. I’m a Wraith, and I’m shoving my hands into people, killing them—my former best friend for one—being controlled by two creepy body-possessing freakoids—I get away thanks to some help. I lose my mom, then in one swoop I lose my abilities (I hate saying powers—that is just too superhero) and my boyfriend.
My life sucks!
I was on autopilot, both physically and mentally. Whenever I was confused or upset, I’d always gone to my mom.
So call me a freak.
I don’t care.
My mom had always been my best friend—even during those instances when her death by my hand seemed imminent due to her overexuberance during my fragile childhood years (the snowflake incident comes to mind)—and I had always tried to be up-front and honest with her.
And she with me.
And now she wasn’t there.
Instead, she lay sleeping with her eyes open in a palatial-looking facility with pristine shrubbery and grass that looked like no human foot had ever stepped on it. The tiled floors were so clean I had to take care walking on them lest I fall and break my butt bone. Even sneakers—my Converse high-tops—had difficulty maneuvering on the polished surface.
The lady at the desk waved at me when I came in. “Been a few days.”
I nodded but didn’t speak, not wanting to have to explain the reappearance of my voice. I turned left to the end, then right at the nurses’ station toward what they called the Terminal Ward.
Where patients, usually the dying, lingered in a state of eternal decay. I think I heard the term noble rot once. Fits.
I hated this place. All these places. I wanted my mommy home and not here in this building of despair. The air was so thick with it I was choking on the inside. But even as I neared her room, I noticed the absence of something.
Ghosts.
Shades.
I’d grown so used to seeing the images lingering on the astral plane that I barely paid attention to them. My subconscious could always pick out the living from the nonliving, the more vibrant colors from the monochromatic.
But there weren’t any.
Yet I could see Tim beside me. He was half-visible, but still there. And I could see him. Why could I still see him and Steve? Or Maureen and Alice for that matter?
More questions—no answers. Welcome to my life.
I came to a stop in the middle of the hall and looked around. It was as if someone had come through the place and simply removed everything. There weren’t any more dark, moving shadows in the corners that whispered. No more dead loved ones waiting on their spouses or childhood friends.
It was all . . . gone.
Or was it that I couldn’t see them anymore?
I put my hand to my face and moved quickly to Mom’s room. Her name stared back at me from the door tag, WYNONA MARTINIQUE, and I yanked the door open.
The smell was the same. That of urine and Pine-Sol. I sniffed, wondering why I was crying, as I moved to the woman on the bed and looked down at her.
In the beginning, Nona had been a unique case, the doctors said. Though she was in a vegetative coma, there had been no deterioration of her muscles, no impairment of higher brain functions, no bone loss. Nothing. It was as if she were simply sleeping.
But lately that had changed. Whatever it was that was keeping her together had shifted, and now her body was dying like all the other coma patients in the center. Her prognosis was dire. They weren’t sure what to do.
I did. I knew what was preventing her from getting up and walking out the door. Her soul. I noticed I couldn’t see her cord anymore either—but was that because it was gone or because I’d lost that part of me that once saw such things?
“Mom,” I said in a little voice. I pulled the chair up and took her hand in mine. It was cold, her fingers like ice, and I noticed a strange shadow over her face. I couldn’t make out where it was coming from though. “If you can hear me—wow—that’s sort of different isn’t it? Wondering if you could really hear me. But—things have changed, and I’m not sure why. I don’t know if it was something I did, or shouldn’t have done. I think.” I sighed. “But I’m talking now, notice?”
Silence.
“It’s nice—but it’s also disappointing. I somehow had it in my head that when I got my voice back, you and Rhonda and Daniel and Tim and Steve would be there with me. And everyone would be happy.”
More silence.
“Mom, I think I’m in a lot of trouble.”
Silence, and then . . .
“Zoë, my love, you don’t know the half of it,” said my mother’s voice.
7
Tuesday afternoon
MOM?
My mom opened her eyes and turned her head. She smiled—
Only there was something very creepy about it.
And her eyes . . . her eyes were wrong.
“Well, aren’t you gonna give your dear old mommy a hug?”
My eyes widened as her left hand clamped down hard on my right one. I couldn’t pull my hand free. She was grinning at me—but her smile looked like that of a skull.
I grabbed hold of the bed rail with my left hand and tried to use it as leverage to wrench my hand free—but her grip continued to crush my fingers, and I gasped.
“Yes, yes, that’s it,” she said. “A little pain . . . with a little pleasure . . . right, lover?”
In that instant I realized this wasn’t Nona—there was something else inside of her empty body. But how? The Triskelion pendant should have prevented—
Her neck was bare. It was gone!
“Surprise! I thought this was the best way to talk to you, love. Without interference.”
This was TC.
I started shaking as my mom sat up. I heard long-unused cartilage crack as he wiggled her eyebrows at me. He winced then and stuck out her lower lip. “Zoë, you need to tell Nona to take better care of this body—there are some serious problems in here.”
“GET OUT!”
He held up Mom’s free hand, the right hand, the one that wasn’t crushing mine. “Uh, uh, uh—is that any way to speak to your poor old mommy?”
I stopped struggling and glared at him, looking out at me through my mom’s eyes. “What are you doing in there? Where is my mother? How did you get rid of the Triskelion?”
“Tsk, tsk, tsk,” he said in her voice. “I’m afraid I can only answer on
e of those at a time.” He put Mom’s free hand to her chin. “Let’s see, which one first?”
I tried pulling away from him again, only I couldn’t move my hand. Hell, I couldn’t even really feel it anymore.
“Ah—I think I’ll go from easiest to hardest.” He smiled at me again with her mouth, and again it was the most garish thing I’d ever seen. “So to start, the easiest would be what I’m doing inside your mother’s body.” He glanced down and made a face as if he’d smelled something disgusting. “I’m in here because of the hocus-pocus your Guardian friend’s bitches are trying. You know they’re trying to contain me, don’t you?”
I really didn’t know what they were doing. “They have your finger.”
“Yes—and with that bit of myself they’re working on a mojo that will either banish me or hold me. But they don’t realize that as long as I’m inside a body, their spells and magic can’t hurt me.” He widened Mom’s grin. “Unfortunately, much like a Wraith, a Symbiont leaches energy from the living shell. And I’m afraid Nona’s energy is somewhat limited.”
“Get out.”
“Not until I’ve had the talk with you I originally came for—without interference.”
I stopped pulling away.
“Now, let’s see—number two is, where is my mother? But I told you that already. I don’t know where Nona is. I no longer have the power to hold her. Like you being reduced back to a human, I too have been reduced to a simple, basic Symbiont.”
I stared at him.
“What were the other questions?”
“Where did you put the Triskelion?” I said.
“Oh, I just love hearing your voice on you, and not so much on me. Though, when you’re Wraith again, I’ll get it back.” He gave me a half smile. “As for the pendant, I don’t know.”
The weirdest part of this whole situation—save for TC in my mom’s body—was that I only truly believed the last statement.
“Those were all good questions, Zoë, but they weren’t the right question.”
Knowing TC the way I’d come to know him—I asked the fateful question. The one I hadn’t asked. “What do you want?”
He nodded approvingly. “I knew you were a smart girl.” He frowned. “Not so great on the boyfriend front. That policeman is such a dick.”
“Let go of my hand.”
“Promise not to run off?”
“Look, you ass-hat, there’s an insane cultist out there who wants me, body and soul. My mother is apparently trapped in some Abysmal dimension. My boyfriend thinks I’m sick and should probably be institutionalized. I’m not going anywhere. And I think you’ve broken my fingers.”
He let go.
The blood rushed into the starved fingers, and the pain was incredible. It was worse than anything I could remember—except for slamming back into my body through my cord. Now, that fucking hurt. This . . . it was pins-and-needles agony as the nerve endings woke up.
I couldn’t move my hand, and I was starting to see stars.
“You really need to eat a sammich or something,” TC said. “If you don’t have your health, then I’ve got nothing.”
I ignored him and sat back in the chair, cradling my hand in my lap. It hurt . . . bad. But I wasn’t going to let him see me squirm. “Get on with it.”
“Ah. To the point. Well, I’m sure you’ve noticed a few changes about yourself lately?”
I glared at him. I did not want him in my mom’s body.
“Of course you have. But you don’t have clue one as to what is causing it, or why, do you? Oh, of course not—you weren’t really the brains of your little Scooby Gang at all.” He smiled sweetly. “That was Rhonda.”
I gritted my teeth. Because I was mad, yeah, but also because the ache in my hand wasn’t letting up. It was throbbing, and with every beat of my heart there was shooting pain.
“Well, I’ll take that stern look on your beautiful face as a sign of interest.” He pressed Mom’s right hand to her chest as emphasis, just the way she always did when she was claiming innocence of something. He stopped and looked down. “My, your mother has ample mammary glands, doesn’t she?” And then he looked at me—or rather at my chest. “Yours are rather . . . small by comparison.”
Motherfuckerasswipe. “Stop feeling up my mom and get on with it.” But of course I couldn’t stop myself from glancing down. I’d always been quite proud of my breasts. I’d gotten mine before a lot of girls in my school. “And I’m average, by the way.”
“Sure you are. Ah, but where was I? Oh, yes—you being normal once again. I suppose you think it’s my fault?”
“I don’t know whose fault it is. I just know you tried to kill me and Dags in my mom’s house.”
“I did not try to kill you,” TC said in a serious voice. “I was trying to find the link between us—the one that connected us.”
I blinked at him. “By ramming your nasty-ass tongue down my throat?”
“You used to like it.”
“Screw you. You tried to kill Dags.”
“Yes, I did. Until the motherfucker bit me. And, with that piece of me, they’re trying to destroy me. But they can’t, Zoë. I won’t let them until we defeat the Phantasm.”
I blinked. “Say that again?”
“It’s the Phantasm, Zoë. He’s found a way to block your power.”
“The Phantasm?”
I’d met this creature in my dreams a few times, and only once in the flesh, if you could call it that. He was, by definition, the be-all and end-all of the Abysmal plane. I was never sure what that meant in the hierarchy, though. I didn’t know if he was like, say, the supreme evil, stroking a white cat.
Even though Nona and Rhonda had always cautioned me on what I called good and evil.
But in my brief encounter with him—with his warning not to make a deal with Trench Coat and his unhappiness at my decision—what I could tell about him was that he was powerful. It’d been like a low hum, the droning of an engine, the promise of something dark and terrifying and not something I wanted to draw attention from.
He’d also shown himself to me in the hospital—showing me chains that once bound him. He’d told me I could be much more. And I hadn’t understood that.
When compared to the Phantasm, the Archer lost a lot of his spooky factor. I also didn’t understand the reasoning behind TC thinking the Phantasm was out to get me.
So it brought up the question: “Why would the Phantasm do that?”
“Like I’ve tried to tell you before—you’re a threat to him. To his rule. To his kingdom. And so am I.” He lay back on the bed, and I realized that Mom looked paler than ever.
I sat forward. “What did you do to my mom’s body? She looks worse than before—are you draining her?”
Mom was staring straight ahead, and I got the impression he was no longer looking out through her eyes. “It’s not your mom . . . I lack power to keep control over her body. Her soul’s not here, but her attachment to it is quite—strong. I don’t have much time, so you have to listen carefully. The Phantasm is trying to get to me, through you. I’ve tried his patience long enough, and that last idea I had—because of you with Bonville and the soul contracts—backfired badly. Two of the souls he hoped to possess ended up as Guardian familiars.”
Uh-huh, this jibed with what those two had warned me about. “I thought Alice said it was the Phantasm that helped them—made them what they are?”
“You living souls really are stupid. The Phantasm lies, Zoë.
Yes, he helped Alice, and he did give her shelter, but only to gain both her soul and that of the younger bitch. About the only thing good that happened was you cleaning up the Shadow People mess.
“But he blames me for the creation of a new Guardian, though force-made. Irin are hard to come by, Zoë. Their survival rate in the past decade has been zero. And even you were derailed from your destiny”—he grinned—“by me.”
Irin. “Jemmy said that Irin were the offspring of man and angel.”
“To primitive man that’s exactly what they were,” TC said. “When an Ethereal being conceived a child with a living mortal woman—if the child survived—it would be an Irin. A Watcher for the Ethereal Seraphim. They guarded the borders between the planes.”
“Like border guards?”
TC made Mom’s face smirk. It was a stiff expression. “You could say that. But after the Bulwark, very few of them survived.”
Bulwark. Jemmy had mentioned that too.
“You really need to learn your own history, Zoë. Seems your mom’s been falling down on the job. Do you even know who your father is?”
I frowned. “My dad was Adiran Martinique. I know he was part of the Dioscuri Experiments that my great-uncle carried out. I know Great-Uncle was betrayed by Francisco Rodriguez, and the place where they had their experiments was burned.”
“Ah, but you know the truth of your dad, and you’re ignoring it.”
God, I hated it when he was right. Yes—I’d figured it out. With no real help from Rhonda or from Rodriguez. It was hinted at over and over again during the conversation with Rodriguez in the botanica, before he tried to kidnap me. After Cooper left, after Rhonda was banished, I’d become frightened, understanding why I was so important to Rodriguez and his group of crazies.
I knew that the unidentified body found burned to death in Domas’s lab was my dad. And that he’d died—physically—years before I was born. I’d been a freak since the day I was conceived, and my father and mother had fought to make sure I’d have a normal life.
I realized after Cooper had arrested Rodriguez why my mom had always been so secretive about my dad. Why she was surprised with what I could do, but not really.
I understood why she was afraid for me, and why she tried to tell me so many times that there were things out there that normal people couldn’t see, and that it was better they not know about.
There had been a lot to put together after that day—and I’d had to do it on my own.
“What’s your point?” I said finally. “What was the Bulwark?”
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