Holidays Are Hell

by Kim Harrison

  Because there’d been one chink in the Tulpa’s impenetrable paranormal armor. And Zoe Archer was it.

  She was stepping from the car even before Warren had come to a full stop, and the crisp November air greeted her brightly as the morning sun hit her face. It was easy to turn nostalgic on a day like this, a holiday when one should be with family and friends, feasting and giving heartfelt thanks for this life’s blessings. She hugged her homemade cornucopia tight to her chest, and its weight and scent and purpose grounded her, giving her strength to push those wistful thoughts away. Leave them for the mortals who had use for such things.

  She slammed the car door and had already begun walking away when she stopped. They never said goodbye. It was considered bad form, indicating a deficit of confidence, and was usually unnecessary. But she didn’t want to just walk away from Warren, not again, not without at least some solid sense of closure. So she backed up and waited until he’d lowered the driver’s side window, then stared down into that face she’d loved almost as long as she’d breathed.

  “There’s something you should know, but I can’t tell you—” She couldn’t really tell him anything. Certainly not the truth. “It’s about the legend. The rise of the Kairos.” The woman who was both Shadow and Light, and whose powers would forever tip the paranormal scale in favor of good or evil, whichever she chose.

  Whichever her daughter, Joanna, chose.

  Zoe squinted against the light as Warren sat back, studying her carefully as she measured her words. “The Kairos lives. She’s going to rise up under your command. Watch and listen for her. She doesn’t know it yet, but she’s hurtling toward her destiny even now.”

  Warren had fallen stock-still. He was listening, and hearing, her now. “Where, Zoe? Tell me how to find her.”

  She shook her head and quickly held up a hand, staving off his protest. “She’s in hiding, Warren. Even from herself. You won’t find her until her metamorphosis.”

  “Which is when?”

  That head shake again. “I’m sorry, but that’s all I can tell you.”

  She thought he’d be mad, start railing about lies and secrets, trust and duty. But he simply leaned back against the leather seat and squinted up at her in the sharp morning light. He could see it out here, she thought. The veil between worlds was wide enough on this hopeful, thankful day that her intentions were clear in the light. And clearly Light.

  “I didn’t say it before,” he finally said, admiration and, yes, love sharpening his words. “Happy Birthday, Zoe.”

  She gave him a wide smile, then turned to face the long walk leading to the stark white house, up the steps that were almost silvery in the brilliant sun, where she casually rang the doorbell. When it opened, she said what she’d been thinking; her wish for Warren, a vow for the day’s work, a final goodbye. “Happy Thanksgiving.”

  The woman who answered the door was named Lindy Maguire. She was frumpy, matronly, favoring lace collars and long skirts, and she was also the Shadow’s Leonine sign on the Zodiac. Like all Leos Lindy was ruled by the sun, and like most, also ruled by the heart. She had long ago set aside personal aspirations in order to remain as close as possible to the Tulpa, so it was natural that Lindy was acting as vanguard for his home. Natural, too, that she hated Zoe.

  Lindy’s delicate nostrils flared as she examined Zoe, scenting out humanity as she ran her eyes skeptically over the cream slacks and overcoat, though she didn’t place her until Zoe opened her mouth.

  “Damn, Lindy,” Zoe said, studying the woman’s beehive. “Still stuck in the sixties, I see.”

  Recognition had barely flashed in Lindy’s eyes before Zoe found herself crushed against the wall, blood welling in her mouth as she thought, I used to be that fast…but I hit harder.

  “Uh-uh-uh,” Zoe said, shaking her head as much as she dared. Lindy’s conduit was out—Zoe hadn’t seen her draw that, either—and the honed nail file was pressed against Zoe’s larynx, so that breathing was no longer the best way to stay alive. Zoe shifted her eyes to the camera trained on them from above. “Don’t want to ruin all his fun, do we?”

  Lindy cursed under her breath, then let up, but not before flicking the file just enough to draw blood. Zoe hissed at the flash of pain—it still surprised her—and Lindy’s frown turned upside down.

  “I must be dreaming, because every sense I own tells me the mighty Zoe Archer is a mortal.” She wrinkled her nose as she said the word, like it befouled the air around her. And while she was gloating, reveling in being the first to know, and at holding her longtime foe at a distinct disadvantage, Zoe discreetly shifted her weight…and plowed her fist into Lindy’s already flat nose.

  She probably felt no more pain than a pinch, and the blood was only a trickle, but Lindy’s eyes watered as her nose mended itself, shifting back into place with an audible crack. Zoe smirked and picked up her toppled cornucopia.

  “Mortal doesn’t mean pushover.”

  “No. It means walked-over.”

  “Just tell him I’m here,” Zoe said curtly.

  The house quaked like the hills of San Francisco.

  Lindy grinned as she swayed. “He knows.”

  As, it seemed, did everyone else. As Zoe was escorted beyond the foyer and into the core of the house, doors began to swing open. She didn’t make eye contact as speculative whispers turned to hissing, and curiosity turned hostile. Instead she let her eyes stray over the shoulders of her enemies—Raven was here, she saw, and Polly and Damian; they leered at her as she passed—but she ignored them all and searched out the rooms she remembered and recognized by layout, pretending to look for the Tulpa. There was neither anything resembling a nursery, nor any sign of a child. He’d called these his drawing rooms when she was living here, and she was surprised to find nothing had changed. Not even the furnishings. Even after Zoe’s infiltration that first time, even though he knew she’d returned to the Light and reported every secret detail of his lair—and she knew them all—he’d stayed put.

  Arrogant bastard, she thought, as Lindy smiled back at her from over one slim shoulder. That arrogance would be his downfall.

  She wiped away the thought like cleaning a slate in her mind. Imagination was what was needed to keep her alive through the day. So instead of thinking that the Tulpa was stupid as well as manipulative and cruel, she thought of him as trusting and hopeful, just waiting for the day Zoe would return to him.

  “I’ll take that.” Lindy said, holding out her hands for the cornucopia once they’d reached the end of the hallway. It was an unnecessary precaution. Nothing on the physical plane could injure the Tulpa. But Lindy wasn’t about to release Zoe without letting her know she wasn’t trusted. Zoe almost thanked her. It was a good reminder after the relative ease of the entry.

  “It’s a gift,” Zoe said lightly. “and it’s not for you.”

  Lindy could’ve easily wrested the cornucopia from Zoe’s grasp. Instead she reached out and deliberately plucked the finishing piece, a sugared plum, from atop the carefully arranged mound, leaving a hole where the fruit had been. She bit into it without breaking eye contact, and juice ran down her chin as her mouth curved upward.

  “Attractive,” Zoe commented dryly. “And the manuals still speculate why you’ve no heir to your star sign…or prospect of spawning one.”

  Lindy’s expression snapped, anger pulling it tight at the center, but she didn’t use the fist clenched at her side, and she didn’t tear the cornucopia from Zoe’s hands. Security tapes had shown Zoe entering with the piece. If she didn’t walk in with it now the Tulpa would wonder why.

  And if there was a weapon hidden in the cheerful basket, he’d want to shove it down her throat himself.

  There was a pedestal perched next to the door, one that had once held a fern, but now sported a blood-red scripture box with twin dragons on each wooden side, a lone bright spot in the long bare hallway. That was one difference, Zoe thought. She hadn’t seen any living thing—plants, animals, humans—in t
he house. Because Shadows didn’t count, she thought as Lindy slid open the box’s ornate lid, and pulled out a pair of gold-rimmed aviator glasses. “Put these on.”

  Zoe screwed up her face. “I’m not going to meet the Tulpa in glasses that make me look like I’m stuck in the eighties.”

  “Put them on,” Lindy repeated, her voice brittle.

  Zoe sighed, shifted her gift to one arm and accepted the glasses, her confused gaze winking up at her from the mirrored lenses. “Why?”

  “Because I said so.” Lindy rapped the door twice with her knuckles and it immediately swung open to reveal a dim and deep interior. It wouldn’t have been intimidating…if there’d actually been someone manning the door. Lindy saw Zoe hesitate and the cruel smile was back on her face. “Have…fun.”

  Zoe wondered at the deliberate word choice, but slid the glasses over her eyes like she hadn’t noticed, and smirked. “We always do.”

  Zoe would’ve given her life just then to be able to smell the bilious jealousy she knew was seeping from the woman’s pores, but the cursing and chattering behind them told her the other Shadows did scent it. Knowing an impending riot when she saw one, she stepped smoothly into the room and watched as the door swung shut on the demonic faces glaring at her from the hallway.

  Then the vacuum of silence was absolute.

  The glasses accentuated the room’s dimness and Zoe thought that was their purpose. So she emptied her mind and tried not to let it unnerve her; tried, too, not to think of all the empty space around her, or how she could be cut down where she stood without even knowing the blow was coming. She knew fear stank like something pickled and old, and the Tulpa fed on that fear.

  Zoe was determined to make him starve.

  Still, she jumped when a movement flickered across from her, freezing as she did. Swallowing hard, she cradled the curved horn like it was a talisman that would ward off injury, and took a step forward. Three beings across from her mirrored the movement. None of them spoke.

  “Babe?” she said, using the same endearment she had all those years before. No answer. She stepped forward again. The Shadows across from her drew closer as well, still silent. She tilted her head, and saw two of them imitate the movement. Cutting her eyes to the third, she realized that figure, also clad in owlish lenses, had as well. She lifted her hand as if in greeting, and they did the same.

  Mirrors. A relieved sigh scuttled from her throat, but caught when a wispy shadow rose up behind her, kept rising in a tower of smoke that burned even in her mortal nose, and was tripled before her eyes. She froze as it suddenly retracted, leaving vaporous tendrils to dissipate in the air as it solidified over her right shoulder like ash caught in a mold.

  Even as she strained through the dark glasses to make out his features, she knew she was the one creating them, expectation and memory joining forces to construct the man she remembered, like an architect building a house from the bones up. He wasn’t much taller than she, and slighter than one would expect of a man of great power. His hair was a sandy color—not quite brown, but not blond, either—and he had deep hazel eyes, like the moss of a clouded swamp. With a wide face and full lips, he couldn’t be called unattractive and that was no accident. Zoe remembered thinking that if she had to bed down with unadulterated evil, he could at least be good-looking.

  Once he’d fully materialized, he slipped his arm over her shoulder, around her neck, his fingers coming to rest on her opposite arm. He squeezed lightly, pulling in tight to whisper in her ear.

  “Darling,” he said, his endearment for her returned. His voice was raspy, pure male, and honed.

  But his embrace wasn’t as cold as she remembered, his breath not as septic sour, and though Zoe knew it was only because her senses were blunted with mortality, it made it easier to ignore the rot she knew lay ready to engulf her if not for the fragile membrane of his skin. Before she’d been able to scent out festering venom and bacteria, and at the end she’d even begun to expect infection, like she too was contaminated, even though she was super. But now she could anticipate nothing about him, including this unexpected welcome.

  Realigning her thoughts—and Zoe was a pro at that—she let go of the knowledge that he could kill her with a swift snap of those gentle fingers, or crack her like a walnut between the lever of his strong arm and body, and turned into him instead. The sigh that flew from her body was one of relief, not fear. Her arms clung to him with gratitude, not entreaty, and she lifted her lips to his icy ones as she’d done countless times all those years past to utter her heartfelt lie.

  “I knew you’d allow me to return.”

  He pulled away to study her face, taking in the changes since he’d last seen her—few, as she’d aged well—though he studied her eyes in particular.

  No, not her eyes, she realized. His reflection in her glasses. Her thoughts as they materialized on his face. So she let memories wash over her, easy now that she was seeing and scenting and touching him again, and his features sharpened further. His brow grew in smooth, the whorls of his earlobes became delicate and defined. She thought she saw his eyes flash dark, but his expression brightened as the room did, degree by degree, until they were standing face-to-face in a room of reflected angles and light.

  Have fun, Lindy had said, and now Zoe knew why. This was the one room in the house that had undergone a complete renovation, and it was why he hadn’t needed to move. Here—in the place that’d once been the Tulpa’s bedroom, where Zoe had lied time after time, and betrayed him the night she’d gone to kill his creator—he’d built a funhouse, full-sized mirrors to reflect a true picture of the inhabitant’s intent. Reflect it upon, and for, him.

  It explained why no one had accompanied her inside. It was harder for the Tulpa to solidify when multiple people projected their expectations upon him, and it was uncomfortable for him to exist under the weight of too many people’s gazes at once—he’d actually feel himself mutating and changing under their conflicting emotions. So only the person he was most interested in reading could initially face him directly. Now that he had fully solidified the others could come in, pick up on it without risking influencing the image, or causing any embarrassing mutation. But she hoped they wouldn’t. She had a better chance of convincing him to spare her life if they remained alone.

  So they stood as a couple, reflected back on themselves in dozens of shapes, sizes, and angles so that not an inch was omitted or hidden from his sight.

  “You are the most clever man,” she said, letting her realization play out on her face as she caught his eye through one of the mirrors and smiled seductively. “In addition to being the most handsome, of course.” She whirled back toward him, intending to draw him closer again. “God, how I’ve missed you.”

  He caught her arms, stopping her short—again, gently—and held her in place. It was something Zoe had forgotten. He didn’t move from one position to another. He glided. And that wasn’t something she had to imagine. He had the ability all on his own. “Oh, I’ve missed you as well, Zoe,” he said, smiling back.

  She shut her eyes and held her breath as panic threatened to thread through her veins. She let him sense her uncertainty. It was only natural for her to question whether it’d been a good idea to come here, so she let him feel that hesitancy as well. When she opened her eyes again, he was staring over her shoulder at his mirrored self, waiting to see what emerged. But there was only the Tulpa as she’d always seen him, and she suddenly felt like she’d never been gone, or escaped him, at all. “Please, baby. You have to let me explain.”

  “Explain why you betrayed me?” he murmured, only now that she’d spoken of it.

  “Explain how I managed not to,” she replied, and willed him to believe her with eyes, voice. Her mind. He must have felt it because after a moment he appeared to soften.

  “And is this a peace offering?” he asked, eyes flicking down to the cornucopia she still held.

  A small smile lifted one corner of her mouth. “Merely a cent
erpiece for your holiday celebration. I remember how you enjoyed Thanksgiving.”

  He had. It was his favorite holy day.

  “Then you plan on staying for dinner?”

  She lifted her free hand and removed her glasses, raising her head to gaze directly into the cold black depths of eyes she’d never thought to see again. “I was hoping,” she said softly.

  He nodded after a moment. “Good. Then over dinner you can offer your explanation to us all.”

  And he glided to the door to usher in his sycophants, movements impossibly smooth…and entirely too quiet for Zoe’s liking.

  Chapter 6

  Dinner was held in the same mirrored room, the hollowed out center suddenly taken up with an elongated black marble table, the cornucopia Zoe had made centered like a bull’s-eye. A gleaming table setting of mirrored plates, china, and crystal winked in the studded light of two shining candelabras. The Tulpa could now see himself above, below, and in the mirrored glasses of his half dozen guests. He’d become even more of a control freak since Zoe’s hard betrayal, which she understood. Ignoring the fact that he was the epitome of everything she despised—that he was the coldest, hardest heartache in this world—she instead pitied that he felt the need for it, and grieved for the suspicion thinning his lips. She sorrowed, mostly, that she’d been the one to put it there. Her eyes teared as she thought of the pain she’d caused, and she discreetly wiped the tears away behind the mirrored frame of her borrowed glasses, donned again like everyone else at the table.

  Across from her, Lindy glared at her from behind her own, much cooler, lenses.

  Zoe ignored her, as well as the disbelieving snort from the Shadow seated to her right as he scented her emotion. There was another man she didn’t know leering at her from her left, and two other favored agents flanking Lindy, but Zoe didn’t try to engage any of them in conversation. They took their clues from the Tulpa, and even though homicide lived in their mirrored faces, they’d stay their hands as long as he did.