The Touch of Twilight

by Vicki Pettersson

  It would’ve been enough—she was pinned and practically submitted—but I wasn’t feeling merciful. Yanking on her conveniently swinging dreads, I clamped the mask over her face with my other hand, muffling her protests.

  “Tell me what you see when you look at me now, Kimber. Because I’m not begging, and I’m certainly not pitiful.” She shook her head, pushing against me, then tried to shake it faster when I stilled it, hand on her chin. “Tell me!”

  The sound of the world rupturing came on the heels of the impact that knocked me down. Cowering on my knees, I wrapped my arms over my head, the pain inside so great, my gray matter must have swelled in seconds. As vessels throbbed against my skull, and the ripples of vibrational impact ate my scream, I thought of death, wished for it, because nothing could hurt as much as being caught in the lengthening furrows of destroyed sound.

  Concussion after concussion beat at me, each stronger than the last, but relief never came. It was at the precise moment that I gave up, blind with pain, deaf and mute and numb all over, that silence crashed over me. I must have been screaming the whole time because my vocal cords were sore, but nothing came out now but a guttural squeak.

  A voice sounded next to me, sweetly. “She can only speak if she puts the mask on willingly.”

  I jolted on the ground, whirled despite my body’s protest, but when I saw the doppelgänger, my empty hands fell limply to my side, and my mouth dropped open.

  “Force it upon someone and they can’t speak or reason,” she said, froth spewing to the ground as she took a step toward me, her mouth moving to imitate mine and speak at the same time. The grotesque and smooth mutation would have been fascinating if not so worrying. She had, I realized, begun to look like me. The me beneath Olivia. “Or breathe.”

  But I wasn’t listening to the words. In fact, I’d forgotten Kimber entirely.

  “How did you get in here?” I whispered…barely.

  The doppelgänger smiled with her razored teeth, motioning to my walls. “You left an opening. I walked through it.”

  She certainly had. And she sealed the opening behind her. Whatever it was making her my ethereal twin also allowed her to manipulate my thought matter. I swallowed hard.

  Not, I thought as she took another step forward, a comforting thought.

  19

  Okay, so I wasn’t entirely trapped. I could dissolve the walls I’d made with a directly channeled thought, but all my energy was understandably concentrated on the being in front of me…too strong, too unpredictable, and far too close for my comfort.

  “I meant how did you get into the sanctuary?”

  “I’m everywhere you are. I’m like the air you take into your lungs and the carbon dioxide you breathe out again. I’m a part of you.”

  “And let me guess,” I said wryly, gaining my feet and backing away as far as my walls would allow. “You want me to be a part of you too.”

  She thrust out her bottom lip, chagrined. “You’re referring to my little slip in control, aren’t you? I was rushing things a bit, I know, but sometimes it’s easier to take what you need. Devouring a still-pulsing heart is like mainlining pure power. It would allow me to hide in plain sight, or appear and disappear without restriction, heedless of worlds or planes or boundaries. Like you, I’m impulsive sometimes. That…and so goddamned hungry.”

  Her voice dropped, and my mind flitted to the conduit I no longer possessed…not that it would work on a partially materialized doppelgänger. Besides, what would happen if she was a part of me? Would I suffer if I shot her? I covered my confusion with a snarl. “Stop licking your lips. It ruins the apology.”

  “I don’t expect you to forgive and forget. I never do, and we’re made from the same cloth, so to speak.” She chuckled at that, though I had no idea what it meant. “So I’ve decided to appeal to your reason instead. We should do this properly.”

  She tilted her luminescent head, the curve of her skull shaping and reshaping itself in layering bubbles. Even her skull was morphing more quickly in approximation of the old me. Her snapping, effervescent hair had shortened, the droplets releasing themselves above the shoulders, and she looked taller, her build paper-thin, but taking on more substance with every passing moment as the gaseous sheen shifted over, around, and through her frame. It was eerie to see my features taking shape in a pearly phosphorescent ooze. The Tulpa’s words slid through me.

  Wait much longer and you won’t even have the ability to choose…She’ll just take over your life.

  So should I be thankful that her teeth were still blinding white and unnaturally sharp? I didn’t know, so I continued keeping my eyes on her when Kimber groaned wordlessly behind me.

  “She told me you were a smart girl, a nice girl. Well, not nice. But good. Good-ish.” She was still drinking in my features, her own shifting so that even the words ran over themselves with that rippling voice.

  “What are you talking about? Who?” I said sharply, though more out of a need to buy myself time than any real interest. I was silently repeating the Tulpa’s mantra to myself, though having trouble remembering it now that my impulsive and dangerous double had broken into my sanctuary. And he’d been adamant that it needed to be exact.

  “I’m supposed to be patient and wait for you to offer your energy to me,” the doppelgänger was saying, interrupting my mental gymnastics. “Then I can return to where it will redouble upon itself, assimilating so that flesh and bone knit together in strong mortal weave…but that all takes so much time. That’s why I stumbled before. And why you need to help me.”

  “Okay,” I said, playing along. I had the mantra now; I just wasn’t sure I wanted to use it. If I did, I’d belong to the Shadow side…no turning back. For the time being, I was just glad I had it at my disposal. I was shit at multitasking multiple attempts on my soul. “Just tell me exactly what you want.”

  That had bubbles blowing off her like steam. Her teeth, the only solid thing about her, snapped together in a cruel parody of a smile. “Don’t be a fucking idiot, Joanna!”

  Oh God. How did she know my real name?

  “You’re supposed to be smart! She said you’d understand!” She was whining now, alternately furious and desperate, exasperation making her sweat so perspiration rolled like pearls down her face. “Everything we say and do and think is channeled into one thing. Vibrations. Energy. I’d burn the energy, the magic in it, if I even suggested it. I’d touch on the exact same vibrational matter I need you to, but in a different way.”

  “And matter is all that matters.” I was murmuring Chandra’s words to myself, but the doppelgänger heard.

  “Exactly so! So if you would just think. Then you could do it now and I’ll be stronger, faster, more, real, him, me…” Her entire face flashed, like lightning trapped in a bottle, and layers of light bled in her gaze, white orbs rolling like marbles. She was becoming frantic, and had almost lifted her arms, reaching out to me with razored nails before catching herself and pulling back. She wrung her hands, and bubbles frothed between her palms. “Do it properly, okay? It’ll be faster that way, almost instant. Formal isn’t necessary, no, but proper. Informal, common. That’s a given.”

  She tilted her head to the other side when I said nothing, airy eyes swirling with mist, earnestness making them wide. “I won’t kill you, and we’ll be friends. Because friends give, and given is best. Anyone can inherit it, so inheritance means nothing.”

  I licked my lips, not relaxing even if she didn’t look like she was going to kill me at this moment. Another moment was coming on fast. “I just need, um…a little plain English here.”

  That didn’t piss her off like I thought it would. “Plain English! Exactly so!” The doppelgänger licked her beautiful lips, and I took a step backward. She still looked hungry. “I need a noun. One noun, two aspects, right?”

  I half expected her to pull on her ear and say, Sounds like… So I waited for the pantomime to play out. And waited. I swallowed hard. “Come again?”
<
br />   She ignored me, still rambling. “The first aspect is the sense—you know a lot about senses, right?—and then there’s a referent…but of course that’s already inside you. Your Shadow side…but you still need another…”

  And it was all going so well until her words trailed off in a hiss. Her teeth elongated in her mouth, saliva dripping, and she looked right through me like I was nothing more than a bag of bones.

  “Flank her,” came the order from behind me…and I realized she was looking at Warren, who’d burst through the Orchard’s door, the rest of the troop close behind.

  “Not yet, Phantom,” the doppelgänger snapped at Warren, and he looked stricken at her tone. She turned back to me, eyes fierce white marbles. “Just give it to me. One noun, two aspects, a sense and a referent. All you have to do is think! Quick!”

  Oh yeah—that was going to happen with my fanged and clawed double salivating in front of me. I shook my head, swallowing hard. “I’m sorry. I don’t know—”

  “Idiot! Stop apologizing.” She no longer looked like me. Her face was almost roiling, it was morphing so quickly into different oval, heart, and square-jawed aspects. Her eyes alternately slanted and rounded, and her skin looked thinner, weaker, in some places than others, like a balloon squeezed at one end. “Do it now, or I’ll tell everyone here your real name.”

  I narrowed my eyes, and my fingers flexed automatically. “Don’t,” I said coolly.

  “Olivia!” Warren had moved into my peripheral view, but I didn’t dare take my eyes off my doppelgänger. She was boxed in, but I was boxed in with her.

  “I’ll let you say mine,” she cajoled, drowning out his voice, ignoring him completely. He was behind her now, but couldn’t get at her through the walls, and she knew it. The rest of the troop had spread out evenly around the perimeter, but she didn’t spare any of them a glance either.

  I shook my head. “I don’t know yours.”

  “Olivia.” Warren’s voice again. “Break down your walls on my go.”

  He began to give the others orders, I saw all conduits lift—Vanessa’s steel fan flicking open, Felix’s edged boomerang, a flanged mace, hooks, and a short pole that flared into a four-tined military fork with the press of a button—but my double still didn’t seem concerned. Her liquid tongue darted out, and her gaze no longer rested gently on mine. “If you’re not going to soldier toward your destiny, then I’ll do it for you, but one way or another, you’re going to give me what I want.”

  I narrowed my eyes. “Don’t hold your breath.”

  And as Warren raised his arm, I closed my eyes and wished the walls away.

  Her response was a bubbling whisper. “You mean like her?”

  I opened my eyes in time to see Warren tackle her, but he fell through her body like it was made of mist. An instant later, all that remained of her was crazed, bittersweet laughter.

  “Dammit, Vanessa! I told you not to break the circle!”

  But Vanessa was kneeling over Kimber, wrenching the mask from her face. It gave in her grip with a sharp popping noise, and then Kimber took the deepest, loudest, greediest breath I’d ever heard. I winced. The mask couldn’t kill her, so she’d been suffocating all this time. It must have felt like eternity.

  Felix turned to me while Micah and Chandra tended to Kimber. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine. She didn’t do anything.” Though the conversation had left me more confused than ever. What the hell did she want from me? A noun? Two aspects and a referent? At least it was no longer my heart.

  “How can you say that?” Vanessa said, turning to look up at me so her long ebony curls whipped around her face. “Look at Kimber.”

  “Oh.” I swallowed hard, looking at the blue-lipped, pale-skinned initiate. “That.”

  Kneeling on her other side, Micah looked up at me in disbelief. “Don’t tell me…”

  So I didn’t. But once Kimber had finally regained her color, her breath, and her wits, she made sure not to leave anything out.

  I was duly reprimanded for forcing the animist’s mask upon Kimber, even though no one else had known doing so would trap her breath inside it either. I would’ve pointed out Kimber was uninjured—even initiates couldn’t be killed by anything fashioned by a mortal’s hand—and that she’d only fallen semi-immobile because it was hard to think when you couldn’t breathe. Yet that would’ve brought her absolute vulnerability to the doppelgänger to the forefront of the conversation, something I wasn’t especially anxious to point out.

  Of course, Kimber pointed that out for me as well…and was summarily reamed for pretending to see portents of evil and unmitigated horrors when she clearly had not. Warren stripped her of the right to leave the sanctuary again until after her metamorphosis, and as far as I was concerned, we were even. Yet one look at Kimber’s sullen face and it was clear she didn’t feel the same. Fine. So I knew she’d continue working to usurp my position in the troop…and she knew I’d be ready.

  “But how did the doppelgänger get in?” Tekla asked, once only she, Warren, and I remained in the dojo. Warren was staring up at the apex of the room distractedly, clearly wondering if its pyramid shape had anything to do with it. I just shook my head because the more pressing question was What did she want? “One noun, two aspects…” I wrapped my arms around my middle and shook my head. I had no idea what that meant.

  “Nouns have two functions,” said Tekla, standing across from me. “They describe and they refer. She mentioned your senses, and that your Shadow side was a referent, what lives inside of you. Does any of that make sense to you?”

  “Nothing. You?”

  “No, but I’m not the one a doppelgänger broke into the sanctuary to have a chat with.”

  “Because she’s a part of me,” I murmured, running my hands over my face and hair. “At least that’s what she said. Made from the same cloth. Everywhere I am.”

  Warren put his hands on his hips, still straining as he gazed at the pyramid’s apex. He was clean-shaven, clothed in white…obviously taking the night off from indigence. “You know, for the girl who’s supposed to be the savior of the Zodiac, you’re pretty high-maintenance.”

  At least he sounded more bemused now than angry. I watched him bend to pick up the animist’s mask, groaning softly as he put all his weight on his good leg. “I want you to keep this,” he told me, holding it my way. “Put it in your room, lock it up. I know you won’t put it on, and I don’t want to risk anyone else”—and here he looked sharply at Tekla—“being tempted to do it.”

  “Including yourself, I presume?” Tekla said, coloring slightly. I’d seen her in a rage before, and the stillness surrounding her now, like a vacuum opening up around her, was the calm announcing that storm. I swallowed and shot Warren a hard look, but he knew Tekla’s moods too, and had already looked, and moved, away.

  “Yes, including me,” he conceded, and the air loosened again.

  Great, I thought, glancing down at the painted face as a stonelike dread settled in my belly. My horrific visions and Xavier’s stolen soul essence had been enough to skeeve me out before, but now the mask could endlessly suffocate an agent as well. No way would I be able to sleep if it was secreted away in my room. The best place for it would be back outside Xavier’s office, in the reconstructed stupa. That would keep it out of the hands of those who wanted to use it as a supernatural bong for their next visionary fix, and it would also give me an excuse to once again visit, and study, my dear old housekeeper, Helen Maguire. It was the only cause I had to smile as we all exited the Orchard.

  20

  There was no time to return the animist’s mask to Xavier’s the next day. Instead, I went to visit one Laura Crucier, a coma patient at Sheep Mountain Medical’s ICU, who lay completely motionless, just as she had days earlier when someone had left her unconscious at the hospital’s entrance. Apart from the machinery angled around her bed like electric sentinels, the main difference now was the clustering flowers and frames and stuffed anim
als adorning every available flat surface. Asleep, she was an island unto herself. In the living world, she was deeply loved.

  “The Archer Foundation has found itself in the enviable position of a budget surplus this year,” I told the hovering hospital administrator, without removing my eyes from Laura. I could envision her greasy hair shining and swinging. I wanted to bulldoze some color into her cheeks. The man remained behind me, giving me room, but I could scent oiled anxiety leaking from his pores. It battled in the air against the dozens of waterlogged roses. “I heard from a friend of a friend of Ms. Crucier’s story and the wonderful job you’ve done with her.”

  “Well, we have hope that, with time and continued care, she’ll recover.”

  “Fully?” I asked, turning to face him for the first time.

  He looked for a moment like he’d been blinded by a camera’s flash, and his smile stuttered over his face as he backtracked. Olivia, the heir and benefactress and socialite, blinked. Waiting. “Well, no one can say for sure, but we certainly haven’t given up hope.”

  I turned again to face the unconscious woman, the silent moments counted off in Laura’s heartbeat. I knew the man was waiting for me to speak first, that the hope and time and continued care he’d spoken of would be made infinitely easier with what he wasn’t asking. And while he continued not asking for money, and I continued staring, and Laura’s heart kept beating, I couldn’t help but think, How could I have not been able to tell the difference between a Shadow and a mortal?

  These bodies, these mortal shells, were as fragile as blown glass, accumulating nicks and scratches and chips in the surface over the years, unless like Olivia, they were carelessly dropped, allowed to shatter into pieces. I, of anyone, should’ve been able to tell; I’d lived as a mortal, had the aspect of a Shadow, and possessed an alleged Light facet that should’ve been able to stop that blow before it landed. Regan was right; I had to start taking responsibility. I was almost a year in the Zodiac, a year without my sister, whose life and body was also destroyed because of me, and I wouldn’t believe I’d learned nothing in that time. I couldn’t keep accidentally chipping away at other people’s lives. Otherwise, it’d all been for nothing.