Here’s an agent, his story epic
Because he’s a ghost, even in plain sight
He’s Machiavellian, his life a grand trick
But he grounds it with his might.
Jaden Jacks, I thought, swallowing hard, was in the Rest House.
I don’t know whether the heat was finally sinking into my pores, or if the shock at seeing the man whom many in my world considered a ghost taking shape in front of me was what kept me immobile, but I didn’t move for what felt like a long time. Yet Jaden Jacks was clearly real, though at first no more than a blurry silhouette backlit by the wall of lanterns. His form solidified as the smoke from the snuffed candle cleared, and I got my first good look at the man I’d previously only known from Tekla’s ripped-up manual.
His skin was dark, the color of brewed tea, though light compared to the black clothes he sported. Battle wear, I saw, similar to mine. His hair was cropped close, so white-blond it was obviously bleached, which would have been funny except that it worked. Everything about him was daring and in-your-face. His musculature was dense beneath his fitted shirt, like tendons and marrow and bone had been baked, brick-hard. He flexed his fingers and the movement shot up the length of his arm in a fast twitch, so that even his shoulder moved. He was a force even at rest, and probably the strongest human being I’d ever seen.
But his eyes, I thought, inhaling sharply. His eyes were pure layers of sunlit amber.
Nostrils flaring, he took in the scent of the room as as-sessingly as his eyes took in the sights, both senses thrown out like weapons. He scanned the division of washed-out men at the poker tables, the women leaning over the banisters like colorful banners, and when he finished—and had determined no one was going to attack—he said one word only. “Solange.”
The deep voice rumbled through the room, through my body, spiking in my nerve endings to shake me from my numbness. I looked to Bill, whom Jacks had intuitively, and rightly, addressed, and saw the bartender’s lips thin to a narrow line, his rag moving in slow circles on the bar. A smile slipped onto my face before I could stop it.
Behold, dear viewers, this world’s male species reacting under threat.
“Miss Solange doesn’t take unsolicited guests,” Bill replied shortly, eyes cutting to Mackie. Jacks caught the look and swiveled his head, but Mackie remained slumped, unresponsive and detached.
“Recognize him?” I whispered to Tripp.
He shook his head, and Jacks caught the movement, setting the full force of his attention on Tripp, who swallowed audibly, as recognition flashed in Jacks’s bright gaze. But shouldn’t Tripp recognize him as well? And how could this be the first pass on his Most Wanted poster? Warren said Jacks was, and had been, over here for some time now.
Except, I suddenly realized, his energy wouldn’t register here if he’d used someone else’s soul for the crossing. I glanced back at the brand new Most Wanted poster, and decided I’d been right the first time. It really was a woman featured there. He was using another innocent to gain entry. Just as he’d used the changeling’s the first time.
So he’d murdered a woman simply for an audience with Solange.
“Tell her Jaden Jacks is here,” he said to Bill, and without waiting for a reply or even glancing at me, he made his way to the staircase. I moved to stop him, but Bill’s eyes flipped in their sockets, and I braced, just in case he was reacting to me. His head did, indeed, turn my way, but then he grimaced, like he’d bit into a lemon, before the expression smoothed out into a smile. He gestured, magnanimously, up the staircase. “She already knows.”
The other men began to grumble. Bill bent his head, muttering as he scrubbed at the bar. Mackie remained immobile. I expected someone to stop Jacks, but nobody even tried, and he took the stairs two at a time, stance wide as he paused at the top, head tilted as he wondered which way to go.
No, not wondered. Determined.
“Wait!” I yelled, but he only nodded to himself and cut right, utterly ignoring me.
“Shit.” I sighed. The last thing I wanted to do was head up those stairs. The real-time sink was there. I knew it. Everything was slowed on the lower level of the rest house, the life energy of the men conserved by as little movement or thought as possible. But up where the women moved in color, adornment, fluidly, easily…weeks could be lost just exchanging pleasantries. Yet I couldn’t return home without any means of helping Li or Skamar or my troop. Better a quick, or even slow, death here—lost trying—than returning to fight a helpless battle.
The predicament made me hate Jacks all the more. I pushed from the bar without another word and headed up the stairs.
20
The air was cooler on the landing, and seemingly less dense, as if the molecules were fat and inflated to dizzying effect. I’d been weighed down under the influence of drink upon my last ascension, and I wondered if this was how the women upstairs felt all the time, like they were tropical breezes off an island, the cool of a Caribbean drink in the palm. Breathing up here, I decided on my next woozy breath, was a bit like learning to walk on the moon.
The door leading to Solange’s observatory stood ajar, and its hinges squeaked as I pushed it open, letting Jacks know I was there. He remained as he was, back turned as he gazed out one of the tiny windows, a strong hand pressed to the glass so the sheen of his smooth fingertips was reflected there. Those twelve squares emitted the only light in the room, which was otherwise empty—no mine cart, no Solange.
As I approached the first bright square, Jacks shifted, moving away like he didn’t want me too near, but never fully turning my way. Attention still on him, I glanced out the first small, shining pane to see what he was studying. It was obviously another room, though fogged, with dull shapes weaving in and out of the wispy layers. None drew close enough to identify, and though obviously human, the movement reminded me of fish in an aquarium. Odd, I thought, as the shimmering landscape rippled, gray where it was nearest, melting into opacity farther away.
I moved to the next window, thinking maybe this was why he was here. Maybe there was something else he was searching for…plus, it had the added benefit of bringing me closer to him. But I halted when I discovered this was a different scene entirely. A bustling cityscape I didn’t recognize until I spotted the triangular, Art Deco building looming across from me. There was only one early-century building like that and it was in Manhattan. The stairwell I was peering from was obviously a subway station, and a steady stream of people barreled by in a full-throttle thrust before disappearing underground.
The next window, still closer to Jacks, offered up a half view of an ornate mosque, and in the following one I immediately recognized Buckingham Palace, the guards immobile like human statues. I had no cultural moorings on which to plant myself for the one after that, except to know that the concave tiles and dramatic, sweeping eaves meant it was somewhere in Asia. But if those exotic sights perplexed me, I was absolutely astonished by what I saw next, though not because it was unfamiliar.
This, I thought with a gaping mouth, was a cityscape I recognized all too well. As if through the lens of a periscope, I found myself peering out on the faux settings of New York, Monte Carlo, and a make-believe castle. It was unmistakably Vegas.
“The pipeline,” I whispered, making out the spot where I’d entered minutes before. I leaned heavily against the wall, my thoughts of Jacks momentarily diverted. What were these things? Pipelines from around the world? “Oh my God.”
I’d been right. Midheaven was a way around the restriction about leaving the Las Vegas valley once we were full-fledged troop members. This, I was suddenly certain, was what Warren had been keeping from us. This was what the Shadow agents, and Jacks, had long known. This was why there were so many lanterns spaced along the wall below.
Which explained the varied agents in the Rest House, the full bloom of women behind lacquered doors, their differing races and colors and backgrounds…yet other questions bloomed in their place. What was at the o
ther end of each pipeline? A candle, as it was for me? And while the Old West was appropriate for Vegas, it didn’t hold for Asia or London. So was it hypothetically possible for me to get to London this way? To China?
Jacks had taken the opportunity of my distraction to place himself between the exit and me, and he smiled when I glanced sharply at him. We began to circle one another in that way, each keeping our back to the wall.
“Pretty from a distance, huh?” he said, jerking his head toward the Vegas window.
“Pretty from up close,” I corrected.
“You think?” He pursed his lips in disagreement. “I’ve always thought it looks like an old lady who went to bed without taking off her makeup. A bit sad, and in need of a good scrubbing.”
I tilted my head, continued my careful sidestep. “That why you came here? Take a little vacation from it all, play some poker…strip away part of your soul?”
I was looking for a reaction…but all I got was an admission.
“All but the last part,” he said coldly.
My heart rate snapped to attention as I stared, but I tried to play it cool, though it was taking all of my formidable acting abilities to stand in the same room as him and not swing. “She’s making you wait,” I said, like I wasn’t thinking of planting a boot—or a grenade—in his chest.
“It’s what women do.” The shrug was in his voice. He was looking at me, waiting for her, and standing in a world where he was a second-class citizen, yet he didn’t look a bit concerned. He’d killed at least two mortals so he could bounce between worlds, and it weighed upon him like cigarette ash. I inhaled, expecting to find a deadened rot, similar to a Shadow’s, but the scent emanating from his giant body was green, like money or opportunity, and so round on the air it was almost three-dimensional.
Not like the men downstairs, I thought, breathing in deeply again. Scent appeared to be attached to energy here; maybe the others had bartered away too much of both, and what was left had been watered down into an imitation of its former odor. This man’s blood was rich, like elixir, and it didn’t seem fair. It was also probably vain of me to wonder in that moment what exactly I smelled like, and if it was this heady and dizzying too.
But Jacks was here to see Solange. Beautiful, dangerous Solange, who had knowledge of the stars, who smelled sweet and frosty like ice wine, and who was also of our world.
Which reminded me. “I have a question for you.”
He began to smile, already knowing I was going to ask how to fix the changeling. Everyone in my world knew what was happening there. “And you’ll give what for the answer?”
“Your life,” I answered coolly.
He laughed, but I couldn’t tell if it was because or in spite of the threat. “And if I want yours in exchange?”
I thought of the sky falling over Vegas.
Skamar’s desperate plea for power.
An unstoppable infection festering on Li’s ravaged baby face.
It wasn’t an entirely unreasonable request.
I swallowed hard.
Jacks began circling again, and this time I stood my ground. He folded his arms when he drew to a stop in front of me, so close his body heat lapped at my skin. His rich eyes had darkened in the depths of the dim room and now resembled dry sap, with life still caught within. “Here’s what we’ll do,” he said, voice so low only the rumble escaped his throat. “We’ll trade answers for answers. But I get to ask as many questions as I want. You only get the one.”
I opened my mouth to agree, but hesitated again. What if Jacks returned to Vegas and used whatever information I’d given him against my troop? What if he asked who I really was, and my Olivia Archer cover was blown? What if he returned and told the Tulpa everything Regan was still holding close to her shredded chest?
What if I went back with nothing and the sky fell, and Li Chan died at the age of eight?
I leaned against the London window, where it was—surprise—raining. “A dance for information, then?”
“A tango,” he replied with a twist of his lips, “for things we can use to harm one another later.”
“How dysfunctional,” I remarked lightly.
“Most relationships are.” Another light sparked in his beautiful eyes. “Note, I saved you the trouble of falling in love with me first.”
“Only because you know the separation will be a bitch.” I gave him a broad smile. “Did you have an actual question?”
He cocked his head to the left. “I’d like to know what you think you’re fighting for?”
I drew back before I could stop myself. “What kind of question is that?”
His grin was an unnecessary reminder of our agreement. “One that will tell me what you risked to get here.”
It was clever. Big guy. Body like a weapon. Yet Jacks already knew, as I was learning, that not every battle was fought with bow-and-arrow, or fists. “You should be able to guess at that if you’ve done your homework. I mean, don’t you know who I am?”
“You sure that’s the question you want to ask?”
“No,” I said immediately, retracting it.
He raised his brows, then shrugged, so I’d continue wondering just how much he knew. “I know why you’re here. That’s different, though, than why you think you’re here.”
“Boring superhero crap.” I waved a hand through the air. “Save the world, all that. You wouldn’t understand.”
“Ah, but I understand that no one acts without some deep internal motivation. So why is this personal for you? What would you cross worlds to save?”
I bit my lip and stared at him so long that hours probably passed in Vegas. I don’t know what I was searching for. Maybe some inkling that the agent of Light he’d once been was still living inside that bulging frame, some show of remorse. Something I could connect to.
But the more I stared, the more I saw our differences. We’d switched lives, I realized. I’d become an accepted part of the troop he’d left. He now worked alone, and the self-will that had gotten him thrown out so long ago had calcified into unwavering self-preservation. It was all he knew, all that made sense. So trying to explain why I’d give up my very soul for the chance to save someone else was like trying to explain chocolate to a caveman. It was a decadence he’d never live to know.
“You’re morally bankrupt,” I said instead.
“Untrue. I’m as honest as a person can be while impersonating two people at the same time.” The intimation being that I was not. “Now answer the question.”
I backed up to where he’d been standing when I’d entered, and looked out on a wind-whipped Vegas. She was taking a beating on the other side of the peaceful pane. I tapped my smooth fingertips off the glass, and they chinked unnaturally. “That,” I finally answered, pointing. “I’m doing this for my home.”
“I already told you, that answer isn’t going to cut it. You can’t tell me you feel for all of Vegas. It’s not personal enough.”
I shook my head. See? I knew he wouldn’t understand. “I didn’t say Vegas. I said home.” I swallowed hard, and continued to stare out that bleak window. “It’s a place…borne out in a person.”
An awkward silence bloomed as he waited for me to continue. I lifted my hand to the window, thinking of Ben—because I’d once told him he was my home—and of Jasmine and Li, of my troop and Cher and the mortals I felt a kinship with because I’d been one once. And though I was here for all that, it was Jacks’s question that made me realize I’d come primarily for me. I wanted my city saved for me. I wanted my troop secured so I’d have security. I’d finally found a place where I fit in, felt whole, and saw—for the first time—an actual future. It included being a twenty-first century superhero. And, getting really personal, it included Hunter.
Hunter, who made my mouth dry up just by walking away. Who made it water when he came back, like I was anticipating the best meal of my life. I thought of how my fingers involuntarily twitched when I caught sight of him, how I reached for him
without even realizing. Around Hunter, all my senses came to life. Not dormant ones, not long-lost ones, but present ones, brightly alive.
“I was with him just before I left.” I thought of the night we’d spent together, the madness in our lovemaking, the awareness of how fleeting precious things could be. The need to consume and rage and hold on all at the same time. I sucked in a deep breath, and the memory wrapped around my heart like a shell protecting the life within. I smiled. “Yeah. He’s why I’m really here.”
“Don’t tell me that the prophesied savior of our world is willing to forego destiny for a mere man? I mean, what is this world coming to?”
Guess I didn’t have to worry about hiding who I was.
“Don’t make fun of this.” I turned on him slowly, like a mountain lion on an elk. He’d do well to remember I wasn’t without claws. “You asked, and I’m being as honest as I possibly can. That’s how much this means to me.” That’s how much Hunter means, I realized. I’d have made the trip over here, risking soul and life and personal power, for him alone. That was about as personal as it got.
Jacks’s nostrils flared again, and I knew my discovery was pouring from me in some sort of perfumed scent. I briefly wondered what love newly realized smelled like, and was instantly frustrated by the thought that this foul being was the one to scent it for the first time instead of Hunter.
Nicely done, I silently berated myself. Taking the moment from the man it belongs to and giving it to another. To a child-killer, I thought derisively. A soul-stealer. The idea of it, though repulsive, gave me another.
I stepped closer. My voice too became more intimate as I neared him. The chasm between the man before me and the one I was thinking of was wider than Red Rock Canyon, but I could use the emotion to get what I wanted. A world ruled by women, right? So could it be as easy as Solange said? Just embrace the contradiction. Be comfortable with myself…and lull Jacks into doing the same. I licked my upper lip, tilting my head so I was gazing directly into his eyes. “How do I fix the changeling of Light?”
City of Souls Page 25
