by Kim Harrison
“Fruit?” Damian offered, plucking an apple from the cornucopia.
Zoe swallowed hard, hands shaking slightly as she cut through white meat. “It’s decorative,” Zoe informed him. “I didn’t mean for it to be…”
He took a bite of the crisp skin, his thin lips littered with sugar.
“…eaten,” she finished on a sigh. She looked to the Tulpa for support, but he was busy watching himself in his mirrored wineglass. He wouldn’t let them injure her, yet, but he’d let them have their fun. “Choose one, then. It doesn’t matter to me.”
“Really? Then it doesn’t matter to me, either.” He lifted the entire basket and deposited it in front of her so that a few nuts rolled loose. “You choose.”
Zoe considered before gingerly choosing a ripe pear, scooping up the loosened nuts and depositing those on her plate as well. Then she set to righting the cornucopia, making it look as ornate—if less stacked—as before. Damian snickered and immediately yanked free a grape bunch before passing it around the table so the others could do the same. Zoe pursed her lips, but said nothing. The Tulpa had steepled his fingers, observing them all over the top like an amused parent watching his children at play.
Zoe decided to begin. “You care nothing about this—or me—I see.”
“On the contrary, darling. Time hasn’t lessened my feelings for you. It’s strengthened them.”
Lindy popped a handful of berries in her mouth, snickering.
“And mine for you,” Zoe said softly, looking down, pushing a walnut across her plate with her index finger.
“Then why hide from him?”
She glanced up to find the man directly across from her leaning in, feigning interest. Licking his lips. Wasp thin, he reminded Zoe of a snake, that tongue seemingly testing the air, tasting it, honing in on her. His grandmother had been one of Zoe’s first victims after she ascended to her star sign. His name was Ajax; he was the new Shadow Virgo.
Zoe leaned back and blotted her lips with her napkin. “I wasn’t hiding from him…or any of you. I was hiding from them.”
Everyone looked toward the Tulpa. Zoe waited. Sixteen years was a long time to have hidden from both sides of the Zodiac, but she willed him to believe it. Willed them all. The Tulpa stared, blank-faced, before motioning for her to continue. So she told them the story she’d rehearsed, the past she’d invented, the history she now believed, passing it along so they would believe it as well. It was true that Zoe had killed the Tulpa’s creator, Wyatt Neelson. But her intent, she said, wasn’t to destroy the Tulpa, but to strengthen him.
“Do you remember the way we spoke of him?” she asked, stopping to address the Tulpa as the others listened carefully. “About the way he clung to you even after you broke free of him to assert your independence. You said he was dead weight, like a stone attached to the string of a kite that would otherwise sail free.”
“So you decided to sever that weight yourself.”
“No,” Zoe shook her head. “I went to convince him to give you a name.”
The Tulpa froze and silence settled heavily over the table. Because even though Wyatt had visualized the Tulpa to construct a fully developed consciousness, he’d refused to give the Tulpa a name. There was power in a name. It was why Adam named all the earth’s creatures in the bible, giving himself power over all of them. Why in Jewish tradition a child’s intended name wasn’t revealed until after they were born. It was why cultures all over the world were superstitious about sharing names, and why all parents chose their offspring’s names so very carefully.
And it was why the Tulpa desired one so very badly.
Zoe reminded him of that now. “You’d refused to see him for months, and that had taken its toll on his psyche. He was unkempt, mumbling like a crazy man about abandonment, and having nothing to show for his life’s work. When I told him what I wanted, that we even had a name picked out—” Here the others looked back and forth between them, curiosity stark on their faces, but Zoe continued on blithely. “Well, he only laughed, then spat at my feet. It angered me.”
She bit her lip and the tears welled. “I snapped. I told him I was the most important person in your life now, not him. That he may have created you but I was also supernatural, and that we were creating something new between us. That’s when he lunged.” She swallowed hard, drawing a shaky hand across her brow before letting it drop. Her voice fell to a whisper. “I don’t know…I guess I’d begun to think of him as one of us, as having powers, being able to detect intent. Plus I was furious with him for his crazed rebuff. I swear it was only meant to be a slap…but it was enough to kill him…and to reveal that I’d once been Light. I knew once you found my psychic imprint on the kill spot you’d be so enraged you’d never hear me through. So I fled.”
Zoe stared at her hands like she couldn’t believe she’d done it, and the others studied her—and the Tulpa—from behind their safe, shining lenses. The Tulpa continued watching his own reflection, and waited for Zoe to finally look up.
“So it was all an accident?”
She nodded, eyes trained on his too-calm face, like he wasn’t listening, though Zoe knew he heard every word. All syllables. Every breath drawn in between. “And all these years I’ve been wracking my brain, trying to think of a way to return to you and prove it’d been unintentional. I needed an excuse that the agents of Light would fall for, or a mission that would bring me back into your arms. Then I realized you’d never believe me. Not if I showed up here as before, with power, ability. Light.”
“We don’t believe you now,” said one of the others.
Zoe’s frustration showed even from behind the dark glasses. “Why would I lie? Why would I walk right up and ring the doorbell if I didn’t want this more than anything in the world?”
“It is a conundrum,” the Tulpa finally said, voice still too gentle.
Which meant he was indulging her out of curiosity. She took a bite of turkey and felt it catch in her throat. But curiosity was a good start, she told herself, swallowing. Curiosity could be turned into concern. Concern into desire.
Zoe shrugged one shoulder, and hugged herself. “I finally decided the only way to convince you of my sincerity was to come to you on this, your favorite holy day, when mortal observance and emotions could be tapped and channeled for your benefit and strength. If you use that power you’ll see I’m telling the truth. I’ve returned to you out of love. I miss you. I just…want to come home.”
She held up her hand when two of the Shadows opened their mouths to speak. “But I also knew that wasn’t enough. I had to prove myself, lose something irreplaceable, as I caused you to lose the creator. It took me a year to get up the nerve to actually do it. But I’ve shed it all for you—my past, my chi, my near immortality. I come to you with a basket of fruit to commemorate this holy day of bounty, thanks, and forgiveness. And I come to you only as a woman.”
It was all she had, and it was the truth. The Tulpa leaned back, lifting his cup, and finally smiled. Lindy’s head swiveled back and forth between them, her confusion and growing anger magnified on every mirrored surface. “Bullshit!”
Zoe’s eyes never left the Tulpa’s face, longing and hope naked on her own. “Just a little clue, Lindy…if you’ve had fifteen years to seduce this man and still haven’t made it into his bed, chances are it’s not going to happen.”
Lindy was fast, but the Tulpa was faster. A flick of the wrist and another mirror sprang up in front of Zoe, halting Lindy’s lunge with a resounding crack. She grunted and fell back into her seat, and the mirror—all the warning she’d get—disappeared.
“Returned with a woman’s weapons too, I see.” the Tulpa murmured.
Zoe looked at Lindy, who was straightening her glasses. Her hands were shaking now. “They’re all I have. I’ll be damned if I die without them.”
“You may be damned yet.”
“Shut up, Ajax.” The Tulpa finally took a bite from his own plate, continuing while he chewed. “You w
eren’t here before so you don’t know, but Zoe and I have always had a strong bond.”
“Opposites attract,” she agreed, before sadness again overtook her face. “Though it seems that too has changed. Like you.”
Again he checked his reflection in the mirror, studying what Zoe had created there. “I look exactly like before.”
“I mean on the inside. I don’t need extrasensory power to see you’re holding back.”
“And do you blame me?”
“I understand it,” she said, shaking her head. “But I regret it all the same.”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake…” Lindy half-rose from her chair, but the Tulpa held up a hand. Her mouth snapped shut, the words scuttling off into a growl. Zoe held back the smile that wanted to visit her face. Still, she knew they all could sense her satisfaction. It didn’t bother her, and it didn’t seem to bother the Tulpa, either. He pushed back his chair and stood.
“Walk with me,” he said, holding out his hand. The others stood. “Only Zoe.”
They floundered, looking around at one another. “Sir, please…”
“Shut up, Lindy.”
Triumph thrilled through Zoe, warming her so thoroughly she didn’t even feel the chill of the Tulpa’s palm in her own. She smiled up at him, let him gaze into her glasses to see himself as she saw him—handsome, healthy, hers—and they exited the mirror room alone.
Zoe took it as a very good sign.
It was three in the afternoon when the Tulpa escorted Zoe from his mirrored room, and a part of her was aware, and surprised, that she’d lived that long. Trapped in a house with supernatural enemies who could snap her neck as easily as she had Wyatt Neelson’s, she’d expected the high drama of her return—in whatever way it played out—to have climaxed by now. Instead she’d gotten to explain herself, have dinner, and was now taking a promenade around the grounds. She was so in. She linked her arm in the Tulpa’s, squeezing lightly, thinking this might just be her best Thanksgiving yet.
Then she saw the boy.
He couldn’t have been more than seven, and he rounded the corner struggling with all his might against the hold of two women in long dark robes, their eyes as large as silver dollars and completely overtaken by blackened pupils. Their appearance, however, wasn’t what made Zoe’s heart stutter. They were ward mothers of the Shadow children, charged with raising and schooling the Shadow initiates until they metamorphosed into full-fledged agents, and Zoe’d seen them before. But this was no initiate. It was a mortal child with fat tears rolling down his cheeks, and fear etched on his face. He caught sight of Zoe, probably the only normal person he’d seen in this gloomy mausoleum, and lunged for her. “Help me, please! I want to go home! I want my mommy!”
Zoe had to force herself not to run to him as one of the ward mothers knelt in front of him, her blackened eyes drawing a scream from deep within his tiny chest. “Now, now. Let’s behave. You don’t want to scare the other children, do you?”
“Others?” Zoe said, before she could stop herself. The Tulpa only put one finger to his mouth, shushing her.
“Put this on, and you won’t be afraid anymore,” the ward mother said, pulling a wooden mask from behind her back, and slipping it over his eyes. Zoe had seen masks like this before. Countless Himalayan artifacts such as these adorned the Tulpa’s living areas, creations of that region’s animist tribes. It made sense that the Tulpa cherished objects created by people who believed souls inhabited ordinary objects as well as animate beings. But why put a middle hills tribal mask on a living, mortal child?
Well, the boy immediately calmed, Zoe saw, and why not? He could no longer see the woman looming over him with no eyelids, no tear ducts, no reason or inclination to blink. If he had, he’d see her looking up as she knelt before him, nodding once. Her partner nodded back, then in one swift motion slammed her palms on the sides of the child’s head, like a school marm boxing the ears of a naughty pupil. Zoe jolted, but the boy didn’t cry out. Instead he immediately stiffened and fell unnaturally silent. Then the mask appeared to begin melting, thinning out like the finest leather until it molded itself to the child’s face, encasing it fully from forehead to chin. The ward mother rose and, for the first time, acknowledged the Tulpa.
“A new recruit,” she said serenely as they steered the now-docile child to the left, and disappeared behind a pair of great oak doors, which shut with a sharp click.
“You’re distressed,” the Tulpa said, patting Zoe’s arm and drawing her closer.
She nodded stiffly and fought for control. “I’m just…confused. That boy was mortal, wasn’t he?” At the Tulpa’s nod, Zoe tried for a lighter tone. “You’ve never allowed mortals in your home before. And what was the mask for?”
“Would you like to see?” the Tulpa replied, motioning to the door.
She didn’t. She knew that much. She wanted to run from whatever was being done to that child behind those doors, but she thought of her granddaughter and nodded instead.
“It’s fitting that you should see this today, on Thanksgiving,” he told her before throwing open the great doors and spreading his arms wide. “Because this is my first harvest. And it’s a bumper crop if I do say so myself.”
They were lined on the floor in rows of five, wearing dark brown robes in the fashion of the ward mothers, each masked like the first boy, uniform but for their heights. They were all children, and from size alone Zoe guessed their ages fell between three and ten. Except for those along the wall, where another unblinking ward mother stood guard. There, cribs were lined up for the smallest of them. Zoe, aware of the weight of the Tulpa’s stare on her face, tore her eyes away. “I don’t understand.”
But she was beginning to. The horror of it was slowly sinking in as she watched a ward mother read to the silent, unmoving children from the Shadow manuals, introducing the mythos and lore of the paranormal world into impressionable young minds encased in living wood. Zoe pocketed her shades, bent, and passed her hand in front of the child nearest her. The girl didn’t move. That’s when Zoe saw the tiny pins anchoring the mask in place. There was a slot next to the temple where a perfume vial was cradled, half-full. Zoe swallowed hard. Not just a mask to keep out the light, then. Or one that merely limited expression. It was shackled to their skulls, and the drug did the same to their minds. Because children, she thought, as she straightened, should never be this unnaturally still and silent.
“It’s simple, really,” the Tulpa was already explaining. “It’s children’s belief in us and our mythology that grants us the energy to battle the Light. Problem is, children grow up. They become adults and stop believing in comic books, star signs. Me. So I came up with the idea of harnessing their minds, and of harvesting all that potential energy and intelligence and natural curiosity. They think solely of the Shadows. They study our history. They worship me.”
Zoe couldn’t help herself. Despite her mortal senses she suddenly recalled the smell and taste and touch of this creature’s festering spirit. Her Thanksgiving dinner spoiled in her stomach. “So they’re your slaves.”
“They’re my family,” he corrected smoothly.
“And the babies?” she asked, her eyes instinctively searching out Ashlyn in one of the cradles. At least they had no idea she was a child of the Light. They’d merely stolen her because the opportunity presented itself…as they’d stolen all these children from their families. “Surely they’re too young to contribute?”
“Oh, no. They’ve the most concentrated chi of all.” The Tulpa smiled. “I’d take them from the womb if I could.”
Zoe was glad they were no longer in the mirrored room, because for one moment his image flickered and the skeleton that flashed from beneath his skin wasn’t human. It was scorched bone: tooth, fang, and the invisible power that reared up from the bowels of midnight. Zoe quickly realigned her thoughts, glancing around to make sure none of the ward mothers had noticed.
The Tulpa, oblivious, went on. “Think how devoted the mind would
be if we could form specific neural pathways and manipulate a person’s thoughts from birth on. My children,” he said, arms again wide, “will make Wyatt’s mind look like a shrunken head.”
And that was how he planned on manipulating time. Using the chi of dozens of young, trained minds, he would bend natural law, and make reality conform to his wishes. Why not? Stranger things had happened.
“But how do you keep them so docile?” Zoe asked, playing dumb as the Tulpa motioned her to the front of the classroom.
“We limit their choices and experiences.” He grinned as he whirled to face her. “And we provide examples of what happens to those who attempt treachery.”
The Tulpa’s grin dropped, along with the floor beneath Zoe. She yelped, free-falling, and above her the previously mute children let out a collective cheer. Somehow, the evidence of health and life didn’t warm her.
Chapter 7
The drop was short, and she hit solid concrete, unsettling enough dust to have her coughing in the complete dark. Her first hint that she wasn’t alone was the threatening growl that came from her left. As if she didn’t already feel threatened enough. She swung around as an insistent whine and heavy panting emerged, closer to her right.
Wardens.
Fear reared instinctively. The animals sensed it, and the whining strengthened. But fear can still be attributed to my humanity, Zoe thought, whirling blindly again. Who wouldn’t be afraid, trapped in a dark underground pound?
“Uh…babe?” she tried, revealing her fear and all-too-human nerves in the shake of her voice.
“Still alive, then?” the Tulpa asked casually from directly above. Zoe looked up and saw his slim outline blocking the dim light from the children’s classroom.
The question was telling. It meant he hadn’t expected her to be. She felt a sniffling along her arm, a wet nose, then the tentative lick of a very large tongue. The Shadow wardens were dogs, paranormal pets that could scent out enemy agents and rip them apart in seconds. They were the only things, other than conduits, that could actually kill an agent. Well, thought Zoe, looking up again, conduits, wardens…and the Tulpa.
