The Touch of Twilight

by Vicki Pettersson

  It’d worked too. While the frail shell of Jasmine’s auraless body had been safely cocooned back at my high-rise condo, I revealed myself and my continued existence to Ben. The idea had been to simply comfort him, assuage the grief he’d been feeling over my apparent death, and kiss him in parting. But I’d miscalculated both his grief and mine, and after finding solace together, I’d left in the middle of the night, sneaking away without explanation, thinking it best. Treating him, I realized now, like he was a pawn. It was a gross understatement to say Ben had reacted badly, knowing I was alive, but furious at me for returning only to disappear again. That fury was what had opened the door to Regan, who’d been more than happy to let herself into his life.

  But as much as I was to blame for that botched effort, I hadn’t screwed up when it came to Jas. I’d been extraordinarily careful to get her aura back to her under the twelve-hour mark. Her body hadn’t wasted away, her soul hadn’t expired.

  “Wait a minute. Did I miss this issue?” Chandra yanked the comic from me, flipping through the pages faster as if that would make the story appear. She almost looked frantic.

  “Come on, Chandra,” Carl said, holding his hand out for the manual. “You know how these things work. The events directly affecting the battle between Shadow and Light are withheld from Zane and me until the time when revealing it won’t tip the scales in favor of one side or the other. We didn’t know she’d caused irreparable cosmic damage, and therefore you didn’t either.”

  “But we all know now,” Douglas said, and he laughed like he should be wringing his hands and twisting a mustache.

  “So what does this mean?” I asked, ignoring him and motioning to the manual no one could read.

  “It means you’d better fucking fix it,” Chandra said, causing Douglas to laugh harder. This time we both turned on him, and he instantly sobered. Chandra turned an equally dark gaze on me. “If they can’t read it, we don’t get their thoughts or energy or any of the good juju enabling us to do our job.”

  I bit my lip and looked hopefully at Zane. He gave a short jerk of his head, knowing what I was asking. “You were clothed in the aura of the changeling of Light. The Shadow manuals haven’t been affected.”

  I closed my eyes. Fuck. So while the Shadow mythology would continue to be written, their legacy continuing to grow, the agents of Light were stuck in a sort of supernatural moratorium. We would fall behind degree by degree, and eventually we’d lose ground in the fight for the city.

  “Fix her!” Chandra yelled, frantic now.

  I opened my mouth to yell back, realized my frustration, though equal, was misplaced, and whirled on Jasmine. “Leave!” I said, pointing to the door.

  She scoffed, snapped her gum, and pulled out her iPod.

  Carl pulled up beside me, looking up in dark exasperation. “That’s not going to work, Archer. You broke something inside her. Li is supposed to assume her position, but she can’t until Jasmine matures, and for that you have to repair her.”

  I threw my arms into the air. “Well, what am I supposed to do? Order her to have her period?”

  The boys around us started gagging. Jasmine reddened to a lovely rose-colored shade. And Li continued gazing up at me adoringly. Shit.

  I sighed and knelt before her. “Jasmine. You really don’t remember who I am?”

  She gave me a hard stare, and for a moment I thought I saw a flash of regret, the girl I knew waving at me from behind those deep oval eyes. Then she lifted her chin. “I know who you think you are. And I don’t think it’s appropriate to promote that sort of pathology in trusting children.”

  I drew back at that, straightened, and found myself face-to-face with Chandra’s pointed glare. Again. “What?”

  “You haven’t told anyone about this, have you?”

  “I didn’t know about it until now!”

  She began shaking her head madly. “It’s something a Shadow agent would—”

  “Oh, don’t fucking start that again,” I interrupted, voice lifted to drown out hers. “I’m getting so tired of people saying the third sign of the Zodiac is the rise of my Shadow side! I’m not going to do anything to harm the agents of Light!”

  “Except maybe you can’t help it. It’s like these kids hitting puberty and having to pass into adulthood. They may not want to, but biology helps determine one’s destiny. You may not want to be part Shadow but that’s your nature, as well as the Light. The sooner you start respecting that your compromised physiology has made you different—”

  “She means a freak,” Douglas edged in.

  “The sooner you can start approaching aberrant situations from a new beginning point.”

  I wasn’t hearing this. I wasn’t a mutant, I wasn’t weird. I wasn’t a freak. “It was an accident!”

  “It’s suspect,” she said simply, and I had no answer for that. She shook her head as she turned away. “You want me to believe it was accidental, you’ll have to make it right. Or else we’ll all pay the price.”

  “Chandra, wait,” It rankled to call out to her, but she knew more than I did, and I could use her help on this one.

  “No. I have to let Warren know about this.” She pushed open the front door, bells muting but not completely drowning out her muttered “Someone does.”

  Some partner, I thought, watching her walk out the door, but I didn’t follow.

  “Forget her, Archer. She’s deadweight.”

  No, she was more than that. She was right. But I’d deal with Chandra—and the rest of the troop—later. Right now I needed to stay focused and use my gifts—gifts, dammit!—to read both the Shadow manuals and the Light. Given time and luck, I knew I could find clues to the original manual, which contained the secret to the Tulpa’s immortality. Killing him wouldn’t just fix the problem with Jasmine’s interrupted development, it would forever settle the question as to whether I could overcome my biology. After all, wipe out the Shadow and all you were left with was Light.

  “Here’s the way I see it,” Zane started, when the door had shut behind Chandra.

  “Oh God,” I said, turning to find him staring at me impassively. Zane made conspiracy theorists look like cheerleaders.

  “You conned an impressionable young girl into giving you her aura, stole her chi, and broke the manuals detailing the exploits of the agents of Light. Your strength will grow because of your inclusion in the Shadow series, while the others in your troop will grow weak and impotent, and you can now rise to the head of your troop unchallenged.”

  It almost seemed plausible…if you were a complete nutcase. I leaned onto his newly polished glass top. “Cute theory…and dead wrong.”

  “Is that right?”

  “Hey, Mr. CSI, why don’t you let the agents worry about the detecting work, so you can continue playing armchair quarterback in this particular playing field?” I straightened and he dove for his Windex. “Now I’m looking for—”

  “The original manual, blah, blah.” He sprayed fervently, and I took a step backward as he tapped his head with his index finger, rag in his hand. “You don’t think I already know? It’s not here, we don’t have it. Move on, little girl. Go play in someone else’s sandbox.”

  He wished, I thought as he dismissed me with his frenzied polishing. Zane’s lifelong quest was to find and possess the original manual, but no one knew exactly why. Certainly he’d be able to auction it off to the highest bidder, making himself a multimillionaire and incurring the debt of the Tulpa’s slayer in the process…but I didn’t think he was after mere money. He was too passionate about his work, and when he wasn’t drawing manuals, he was poring over them; studying them, dissecting them. It made me wonder if he’d ever had the opportunity to hold out on us; if maybe there was something Zane knew that had never made it into the written text.

  “You’re a dick,” I told him lightly.

  “Yeah, well at least I’m not an evil, chi-stealing bitch.”

  My hand was on his throat before I even knew I’d moved
and there was a sooty cast to the air, not unlike the smoke that’d swirled in Xavier’s lair, though this didn’t have the overlaying trail of incense to soften the odor. Glancing down into the spotless glass case housing Star Wars collectibles, I saw a fabulous hairdo and two eyes glaring like burning black marbles. I loosened my grip on Zane’s neck.

  “No,” I said, dusting his shoulders, though he was wearing a ratty Farscape T-shirt and not a suit. I ignored both his flinch at my suddenly deep voice and the surprised exclamations from the group of the kids now backing away from me. I cleared my throat, but I was still angry, and my words scratched at my larynx. “You’re not a bitch. You’re just a mortal with a God complex. So remember who the fuck you’re talking to.”

  I didn’t know if it was fear or anger that had him shaking, but his hands were unsteady as they knocked mine from his shoulders. “You touched me,” he said, in an incredulous whisper. “You’re not allowed to touch the record keeper!”

  Obviously.

  Carl put a hand on my arm now that the smoke had literally cleared. “Hey, Archer. Look, maybe you should go.”

  His rebuke shamed me. I glanced around at the wide-eyed kids—including Jasmine—and frowned. What was I doing?

  “It’s the rise of her Shadow side!” Douglas called from behind a carousel displaying the entire Anita Blake series. “The third sign of the Zodiac is coming to fruition!”

  “Wait…I can feel it,” I said, turning his way and putting one hand to my chest. Douglas’s head popped out, eyes going wide. “Yes, here it comes…”

  Carl stepped forward. Zane stepped back.

  “It’s amazing,” I said loudly, my face going slack as I stared into an unseen distance. “It’s here…oh my God, it’s the rise of…”

  An unnatural hush overtook the shop.

  “My middle finger.”

  I smirked at Douglas and he scowled back.

  “Bitch!” he yelled, before ducking back behind the Executioner titles.

  “Evil, chi-stealing bitch,” I corrected, before turning again to Zane. He was looking at me with renewed disgust. This is what we, in the grown-up world, call irony. “Can I go look in the archives now?”

  “Whatever,” he muttered, picking up his pencil. “Just don’t ask me to help you.”

  I didn’t; instead I told him to do something anatomically impossible as I whirled to the storeroom.

  “You can go alone, and you may even look at the covers of the ancient ones.” He made them sound like artifacts rather than comic books. I’d have laughed but I wasn’t so sure that they weren’t. “But if you even think about slipping one from its protective cover, I’ll know it, and I’ll charge you. Handsomely.”

  I sneered back at him and pulled out a wad of bills Xavier had thrown me in hopes that I’d forget about my pipe dream of getting a job. “Take cash?” I said, and smiled prettily, turning away before he could answer.

  10

  Despite my bravado and anger over Zane’s accusations, I was shaken by the news about Jasmine, as well as Chandra’s reaction to it. It wasn’t her threat to tell Warren what I’d done that had me daunted. I screwed up pretty regularly around these paranormal parts—the product of a youth misspent as a mere mortal—and we were all used to that. But messing Jasmine up to the point that I’d effectively blown up the system keeping our world in balance…well, it was obvious that hadn’t been done before.

  One mark of the Kairos was the ability to do things others could not, such as reading both the Light and Shadow manuals. This was a physical manifestation of my ability to act on behalf of either side of the Zodiac, and it was why—despite repeated assurances to the contrary—the Tulpa still hoped the strength of his bloodline would win out over my mother’s. Messing up the cosmic balance to cataclysmic proportions certainly qualified as such, I thought wryly, and fueling the angst of a teenager wasn’t far off either. Threatening the record keeper—and, worse, feeling no remorse over it—was probably also a big supernatural no-no.

  And even though I knew Zane’s analysis of the situation was off, I wasn’t so sure my troop leader would pause long enough to hear my side of the story. I was certain Warren would be pissed.

  “Drama, drama,” I muttered, trying to push the worries aside as I headed down the surprisingly long, dark, and cold tunnel leading to the storeroom. We’d find a way to fix Jasmine, I’d get Zane to tell me which of the thousands of manuals would lead me to the original, then I’d kill the Tulpa, escape my doppelgänger, pick up the dry cleaning on the way home, and we’d all live happily ever after.

  And that highly probable plan hinged on the elusive treasure of knowledge buried in the storeroom.

  Taken one by one and read on their own, the comics recording our adventures were nothing more than paranormal parables, anecdotes to entertain the masses, a product to engage the imagination of readers in illustrative and written form. But together they formed a comprehensive map leading to the master manual. There were clues planted throughout the manuals supposedly leading to the original’s location, especially in the earlier ones. As time went on, the clues were spaced farther apart, but there was always something a knowledgeable reader could piece together. A template leading backward, all the way to the beginning.

  Since the earliest manuals were created prior to the widespread use of the printing press, each major world metropolis possessed only one handwritten and highly coveted edition. I didn’t expect to find one of those here; if there were such a treasure on the open market, it would be secured behind a case of unbreakable glass, protective wire, and a laser-tripped alarm. Frankly, I didn’t know why I thought I could find something nobody else had, including the Tulpa, but at least I was doing something.

  I paused at the entrance, letting my eyes adjust to the dim room, its accompanying length and width, and its surprising decor. It had more in common with an eighteenth-century English manor library than an urban shopping center. The perimeter of the room was lined with mahogany shelves, filled with manuals and studded with index cards sporting dates and which side of the Zodiac was grouped there. Still, you could cram an awful lot of comics into shelves that soared from floor to ceiling, so finding one with a recognizable clue was a long shot, and it would take considerable time.

  I skipped past the foursome of leather easy chairs in the center of the room, resisting the urge to drop into one of them and fall asleep with my feet propped on the hearth of the ever-roaring fireplace. The last time I was here it’d been the peak of summer and the room was stifling with heat, but this time the fire shooting up the suspended flue was welcoming…and distracting.

  And I bet that’s why Zane had it here, I thought wryly. Invite the agents in, set them down for a warm cup of cocoa, and keep them from asking for help in pirating his beloved stash.

  So I circumvented the fireplace, scooted past the half-full shelves holding the latest issues, including those telling of my arrival on the paranormal scene, and slipped deeper into the storeroom. I slowed as I hit the section I knew held tales regaling readers with my mother’s exploits. There was the story of the way she’d killed the Tulpa’s creator, which I’d already read, but loads more that I hadn’t, including one everyone kept telling me about called “The Harvest.” Warren had promised me its issue number, but conveniently kept “forgetting” it every time I asked. I could search for it now, but again, there was time to consider. I also knew Zane had some sort of silent alarm alerting him to any disturbance, and had no doubt he’d do as he said and charge me an exorbitant amount of money for anything I touched. With a wistful sigh, I left those shelves and continued to the back of the room to begin my search for something leading to the original manual.

  I hadn’t been at it five minutes when a voice bloomed behind me. “Well, isn’t this an interesting coincidence?”

  I whirled, then narrowed my eyes across the length of the storeroom as Regan DuPree stepped inside. Douglas followed her, though he’d now assumed the form changelings took when
acting as protectors for their agents. His body looked like it’d literally been pounded into putty, his skin taking on the sheen of light reflecting off blackened water, blinding me to what was going on inside that pliant body. His jaw was misshapen, the softly curving cheeks of a preteen replaced by a hinged mouth the length of my skull. All the better to eat you with, my pretty, I thought, peering at the elongated teeth everybody in this world seemed to come equipped with but me.

  For now Douglas only flanked Regan, swaying in a slightly nauseating motion, but if she needed protection from me he’d throw his aura over her like a supernatural cloak. Her true form would then appear, replacing this pseudo Joanna she’d donned for Ben, and Douglas’s prepubescent body would fall to the floor, emptied of his life force, nothing more than a vulnerable shell until his aura was returned.

  Jasmine appeared then, looking bored and put-upon, and pushed past Regan without looking up from her cell phone. I couldn’t help but compare the sullen teen in front of me with my memory of the girl who had once been eager to help me, and had even consented to lay lifeless and fragile in a sea of jewel-toned pillows while I flitted around town wearing her aura. But whatever was broken in her was not on the outside. I’ll fix it, I silently swore, even as her gaze locked on mine, resentment clear in those giant eyes.

  Li, my would-be changeling, followed her sister so closely, she kept trodding on Jasmine’s heels, clearly trying to get her to hurry. Jasmine slumped when she finally reached my side, and Li bounced on the tips of her tiny feet. Douglas snickered, a soft squishing sound, like slugs underfoot.

  “A little sense of urgency would be nice,” I told Jasmine.

  She rolled her eyes. “Maybe you should’ve snapped your fingers and whistled.”

  “Why are you even back here if that’s how you feel?”

  “It’s the rules,” Li provided, obviously anxious to help in some way. “We’re obliged to assist our agents in the designated safe zone where we derive our powers and have sworn to do our part in keeping the Zodiac balanced.”