The Scent of Shadows sotz-1

by Vicki Pettersson

  I stared at her in disbelief. “You blame yourself?”

  “A mother always does.” Then, more softly, “Even a blind old surrogate like myself.”

  I didn’t know what to say to that, and so the minutes ticked by, marked by the clock next to my bed, the soft glow of numbers finally blurring as my fatigue rose. The candlelight was relaxing, the incense finally doing its trick, and I would have fallen under, probably waking when it was all over, if it weren’t for the sob that escaped the darkened corner.

  “I always have to let them go,” Rena said, voice cracking in naked emotion. “Just sit here. Sit on my hands, even if those hands are clenched in fists.”

  I swallowed away my fatigue and turned my head back to her in the faint candlelight. She looked like a battle-scarred angel in her shapeless robe; lost and, for a woman with so many charges in her care, entirely alone. “Would you go? If you could, I mean?”

  “I would sacrifice myself for each of them, over and over,” she said, every word solid and sure. She straightened in her chair. “I would take that pain in your gut and wrap it around myself so tightly it could never get loose and touch one of my children again. I would burn my eyes from my sockets every day from now to death if it meant saving even one.”

  “Because you’re a mother, and that’s what a mother does,” I said, nodding, thinking of my own. Not that any of her sacrifices had ultimately mattered. Here I was, trapped, and as much at the mercy of these people as I’d been at Joaquin’s hands years earlier.

  “No,” Rena said, surprising me. I squinted at her in the dim light. “Don’t you get it yet? It’s because I’m Light, and that’s what we do. That’s what Warren did for Gregor, what he’s doing for you. It’s why the rest of them are willing to sacrifice themselves for him.”

  Because he was Light.

  “Oh, my God.” I blinked once, my heart thumped twice, and I slowly rose to a sitting position in bed, careful not to let the dizziness pooling in my head topple me again. “That’s it.”

  Rena started, and her rocking faltered. “What?”

  I felt a leap in my belly as I leaned over and flipped on the light, and I felt my own excitement transmuted, knowledge registering with Warren. I snuffed what remained of the incense, reached for the water on the nightstand, and touched the glass to my cheek to cool the skin. Then I drank deeply to clear my mind, dousing what I could of the flame in my belly and ignoring the rest. Snagging my duffel bag, I rifled through it, pulling out the first dark article of clothing I could find. It was a black cat suit, half cotton, half nylon, and deplorably low-cut, but that couldn’t be helped.

  “He’s of the Light. They’re of the Light.”

  They’ll take away my voice.

  The pieces were coming together rapidly now, but it felt like a slow progression, like the evenly spaced ticking of a clock when I was already running out of time.

  “My God, why didn’t I see it before?” See it, I thought, and almost giggled.

  My eyes for your voice.

  “Where are you going?” Rena asked, leaning forward when she heard the rustling of my clothes. I rushed past her into the bathroom, where I knotted my hair messily at the nape of my neck and splashed cool water on my face, clearing my senses further. I was going to need help, I thought, glancing back at her through the mirror. What I had to do was near impossible. What I had to prove was unbelievable, even to me.

  “Not me. Us,” I said, returning to the doorway. I stared down at her, and she was so focused on me I would’ve sworn she could see me. She rose, face inches from mine. “It’s time to stop your rocking and praying, Rena,” I told her, grabbing her hand. “We’re going to go save your favorite son.”

  24

  Sneaking across an entire compound of supernatural beings was a tricky business, though simplified by the knowledge that the handful of people I most needed to avoid were either sequestered away like a hung jury or taking turns in last minute sessions with Greta, mentally preparing them for the battle to come. It was this that gave me confidence as I steered down a sick ward as empty and hushed as a morgue. This, I thought, and a note I was sure Tekla had written me just after her son had died.

  Obviously I didn’t have a key to her room—her cell—but the viewing window on the door should help, and my plan was to get her attention by tapping lightly on that. Not loudly enough to draw anyone else’s curiosity, I hoped, but sufficiently hard to call her close so she might tell me what to do next. I just prayed she’d respond to me a little more favorably than last time.

  I pressed against walls, crouching around corners, and narrowly avoided running straight into Hunter, apparently on his way to his session with Greta. I watched as he knocked on her door, and had to duck back around the corner when he whirled to sniff suspiciously at the air. Then I heard the door open and Greta’s voice welcoming him inside.

  I peeked again. The only light in the entire corridor was the glow eking from the office’s shaded window. Tekla’s room, diagonal to that, was utterly dark. I suspected I had ten minutes, perhaps less, before the next agent arrived for their session, and while it seemed enough time, I’d be standing in plain view for the duration. Even ten seconds was enough to ruin it all.

  When the light in Greta’s office dimmed, I made my move. My boots echoed on the tile like gunshots, but keeping my nervous energy contained so no one would detect my presence through anything but direct sight was a far greater concern.

  Reaching the door, I shook the handle. Locked, of course. For a moment I considered taking it as a sign. Who knew what I would find beyond that door? Tekla might be completely mad by now. Frothing at the mouth, rocking in a corner. I was taking a big chance on what amounted to nothing more than a hunch on my part. Then again, as Rena had said after I told her what I intended to do, if what I thought was true, I’d be taking a bigger chance by doing nothing at all. So I took a deep breath and turned to peer into the window.

  Two great brown eyes stared back, inches from my own. I screamed, muffling the sound with my palm, hoping it wasn’t too late. The brown eyes rolled in response to my girly reaction, and I dropped my hand, embarrassed. Not only was Tekla not frothing, she had apparently been waiting for me. I swallowed my fear and embarrassment and stepped back up to the glass.

  Clarity. That’s what I saw there. Not the lunacy I’d been told to expect, or the grief immortalized on the pages of Stryker’s comic. Not the helplessness and pleading that’d shadowed her gaze the day before. There was a hint of fury, and bitterness, I saw, pulling her mouth tight, but more than anything there was a ferocious lucidity. In that singular look I saw exactly why Tekla had been locked away. And what my role was in all this.

  “Can you hear me?”

  No, but I can read lips, Tekla mouthed back. She went on, her mouth exaggerating the words so I could read them, but I was distracted by the sound of pounding feet and looked away.

  “Shit.” I pulled my conduit from the top of my left boot, palming it, wondering even as I did what I intended to do with it. Tekla must have wondered too. Her large, expressive doe eyes widened and her mouth moved again.

  “What?” I asked, leaning closer. The pounding, more than one pair of feet, was growing closer.

  She pointed at me, her index finger tapping on the glass, and repeated herself. It looked like she wanted me to shoot myself. I shook my head, indicating I didn’t understand. Just then Micah and Chandra rounded the corner, their own conduits held out in front of them.

  “Olivia!” Micah shouted at me. “Get back!”

  Chandra, holding what looked to be a normal gun, had drawn on me. Her eyes were expressionless, but still cold.

  “We have to let Tekla out.”

  “What you have to do is get away from that door,” Chandra ordered. “Now.”

  I swallowed hard, but didn’t move.

  “Olivia, Tekla is sick.”

  “No, she’s not.”

  “You looked in her eyes, didn’t you?” Micah
lowered his weapon, which was good, but took a step toward me, which wasn’t. I sighted on him, and he took back that step. “Damn it, Olivia. That’s why we don’t want anyone down here. That’s why the doors to the sick ward are supposed to be kept shut.” He and Chandra both glared at one another. “She’s ill, but she’s still powerful enough to influence a weaker mind. She can make you believe she’s all right, but as soon as we release her, she starts ranting again.”

  “Maybe she’s telling the truth.”

  “Just step away from the door.” He was speaking to me in the same voice people used to coax jumpers from ledges, and it made me grind my teeth. I might be insane, but it wasn’t because I’d looked at Tekla.

  “Maybe she’s not crazy,” I continued, concentrating on keeping my arm steady, “and she’s really just pissed off because no one will listen to her.”

  “Get away from the goddamned door!” Chandra yelled, voice deepening as she dropped into a shooter’s stance, and I knew she would shoot me.

  Because if you’re this generation’s Archer, what does that make her?

  A rogue agent, I thought, swallowing hard as I stared down the barrel of her gun. And rogue agents killed their matching star signs, just so they could usurp them in the Zodiac.

  “Chandra,” Micah said, turning toward her.

  She didn’t look at him, just continued staring down her arm at me. “Put down your weapon and get away from the door.”

  I flicked my gaze at the window, but Tekla had disappeared. Back to Chandra, then, whom even Micah looked wary of. “Okay,” I said, which had her looking surprised…and not a little disappointed. “Just answer one question first.”

  “What?”

  “Micah injected Warren with a compound containing my pheromones. That’s how we’re linked, right? Chandra, are you able to create such a compound?”

  “Of course.”

  “That’s what I thought,” I murmured, and lowered my conduit.

  Micah tilted his head. “What are you talking about?”

  “She doesn’t know,” Chandra snapped, taking a step forward. “And she isn’t supposed to be here.”

  “With the chemicals from your lab and a little knowledge, could I do the same?”

  “Yes,” Micah said cautiously, brows drawing low.

  “No,” Chandra shot back. “It’s not just a little knowledge, it’s the right knowledge. This isn’t like makeup application. It’s called chemistry.”

  I nodded absently. “How did you know I was here?”

  If Micah was perplexed by my quickly shifting subjects, he didn’t show it. In fact, he seemed to sense direction behind the questioning, which there was, though I was making up the details as I went along. “We were alerted the moment you touched the door.”

  “Alerted how?”

  “What’s going on here?” Greta emerged from her office, followed by a heavy-eyed Hunter. “Chandra? Micah?”

  “Alerted how?” I repeated, louder, eyes lingering on Hunter for a few moments. He rubbed a hand over his face, hard, then studied the rest of us like we were part of a dream he expected to wake from at any moment.

  “We have a sensor on the door handle,” Chandra said to me. I could tell she was humoring me, answering my questions until they closed the distance between us. They weren’t too far off now. “Greta decided it would be the surest way to keep the general population safe.”

  “Greta did, did she,” I murmured, and my eyes locked on hers.

  “What are you doing down here, Olivia?” she asked, her voice a tad too sharp. “You’re not well.”

  “Not well?” I repeated, as if the words made no sense. “Not well like Tekla? That kind of ‘not well’?”

  Chandra made an impatient sound in her throat, almost a growl. “Olivia looked her in the eyes. I told you we should have covered that window.”

  “Tekla can ‘see’ what’s being done with Warren,” I said, noting Hunter had regained his bearings. He was watching me in that silent way of his, eyes narrowed as they moved from my face to the conduit in my right hand. “We need her in order to locate him.”

  “Nonsense,” said Greta. “She hasn’t spoken any sense in months.”

  “Because somebody ordered her to be locked in a five-by-ten-foot cell, not to be seen or heard by anyone! Somebody has taken away her voice!” And with four people looking at me like I was crazy, I was beginning to understand what that felt like.

  “You’re confused, dear,” Greta said, her voice soothing and light. “Looking directly into Tekla’s eyes will do that to you.”

  “No. I’m not,” I said evenly. “Just the opposite, in fact. I looked into Tekla’s eyes and for the first time everything became clear.”

  She looked at me for a long, silent moment. They all did.

  “I should have figured it out sooner. But, you know, everyone here trusts you so much.” I laughed at the irony of that. “Trusts you more than they even trust themselves.”

  “What are you talking about?” Greta was forced to ask, but I could tell she knew. I explained it anyway, so the others would know too.

  “I’m talking about the way you suggested to someone that I might like to read the day’s news, news that contained information that would hurt me. News that would send me running right to you.” I started walking toward her, my footsteps a deep and even beat, projecting more confidence than I felt with Chandra’s gun still pointed at my chest. “You wanted to hypnotize me, get in my mind just like you’ve done with everybody else. But there was only one problem. My mother was already there.”

  “You bitch. We don’t have to listen to this!” Chandra was rattled, her eyes traveling between Greta and me, and I knew I was right about the paper. But she’d also raised her arms again, and mortal weapon or not, at that distance it would make her point. As the hallway filled with the remaining star signs, however—Vanessa supporting Gregor as they emerged from his sick room, Felix just behind—Chandra became less and less of a threat. So I remained focused on the woman who’d been a threat to them all.

  “I don’t think I’d have put it together if it weren’t for the nightmares. I’ve never had them before. I’ve never seen the Tulpa, so I couldn’t fear him enough to have him lunging out at me in my dreams. I certainly haven’t ever allowed myself to dream about my past. But you opened all that up with your own special blend of alchemy. Chemistry, some call it. Let me ask you, when was the last time someone visited your office that you didn’t offer them a spot of tea?”

  Greta’s mouth opened, but I didn’t let her answer. It wasn’t really a question meant for her anyway. I could see the others puzzling it out as I began inching her way, though. “It’s so easy to plant mistrust in the minds and psyches of people who have full trust in you, isn’t it, Greta? They come to you after their greatest fears have erupted in their nightmares, and you cement those fears with your little sessions.” I halted, directly across from her, and folded my arms, my conduit still at hand. “You’re all looking at the reason your Zodiac has been depleted. Greta’s true role here is as a mole.”

  “Bullshit!” Chandra exploded, and her trigger finger trembled.

  “Olivia.” Micah’s patient voice barely masked his annoyance. It was the voice a parent would use on a naughty child. “Greta has never left the compound. Not in two years.”

  I lifted a shoulder. “The perfect cover.”

  Hunter moved in, clear-gazed now, which would’ve been a good thing if he weren’t eyeing me like a hawk. “You’re going to have to give us more than that.”

  “Hold the hermaphrodite off long enough and I’ll give you much more.” The pistol was precariously close to my temple. I swallowed hard and waited, knowing my fate swung on these next few moments alone.

  “Chandra. Stand down.”

  “What?” she exploded, whirling on Gregor, who had straightened as much as he could. “I can’t believe we’re listening to this! In less than two hours we’re going to battle with every Shadow in t
own.” Her breathing was ragged as she cocked the gun. “I say we start with this one.”

  Holding still as stone, I fixed my eyes on a point just above her head, not wanting to see when she pulled the trigger.

  “What you’re going to do is stand down,” Gregor said, his words spaced as deliberately as notes on a music sheet. “I’m in charge when Warren isn’t here, and the reason he’s not here is because he traded his own life for mine. If Olivia has something to say that’ll help get him back alive, then you will damn well stand down! Now!”

  His voice had risen, and ricocheted down the cavernous hall, echoing before dying away. I looked at him, standing there with only one arm protruding from his shapeless hospital gown, and the humor I so readily associated with him was nowhere to be found. He would’ve looked more the part of ailing patient if his stocky legs weren’t spread wide and his single hand weren’t curled in a fist. I thought of what Warren had said about him being the most senior agent left, and knew if I could get him to hear me out, the others would follow suit. Chandra’s barrel shook as it slid away from my body.

  Then, from an ally I’d never have expected, I heard, “All right. I’ll play.”

  Hunter shot me a raw, distant smile as I turned to him. “Your hypothesis is that Greta never leaves the sanctuary, therefore she can never be suspected of betrayal, right?”

  “Never leaves,” I corrected, “because she can’t. Like me, she’s unable to exit through the chute. The Shadow side is too dark inside of her now.”

  “I can’t leave because I’m totally vulnerable up there.” Greta’s voice was reasonable, as if she were leading a group therapy session. My gaze flickered her way, narrowing at the way her hands played uncertainly with the pearls around her neck, but I had to give it to her. She had her role down pat. “They would find me and hunt me down within a week.”