“I still play a mean game of tennis.” The aftermath of the confrontation had my stomach twisting on itself, but I bit back the bile threatening to overtake my throat. I wouldn’t allow them to turn my own body against me too.
“But you’ll have to find a different doubles partner for what you have in mind.”
Tripp tilted his head and frowned. “So they kicked you out?”
I massaged my arms where the bindings had chafed. “I’m no use to them.”
Which meant he now knew me as useless too. My greatest secret, my greatest weakness, in the hands of a Shadow. I glanced up at the clock on the wall, wondering exactly how many seconds I had left to live.
But Tripp remained where he was, faced off across from me like we were going to have a shoot-out. He nodded once. “So that’s why you got no aura. I thought it was my eyes. They just ain’t right over here.”
He rubbed at them like that might change, but made no move yet to kill me. “How did it happen?”
I told him about Jasmine, the child I’d given over my powers to save, and how doing so had restored balance to the Zodiac at a time when the Tulpa had been on the verge of gaining it all. “I had to give her everything-my powers, my aura, all but the last third of my soul.” I’d used the rest of it as payment to enter Midheaven twice. I sometimes wondered how I was still alive, never mind animate and able to stand upright. Wasn’t the loss of your soul like removing your aetheric spine? What was left of me but a mind and shell? And was that enough to keep me moving through the world? “But it saved her, her younger sister, the city. And my tr-the agents of Light.”
Squinting at me, he shifted on his feet. I braced for a blow, but he only said, “Like your mother did with you.”
“You know that story?” He’d been stuck in Midheaven for eighteen years, and my mother had given over her powers to save my life when I was sixteen, only a decade before. But Midheaven’s newest resident seemed to be angling for Mackie’s position-trading in other people’s stories for his own personal gain.
Yet I couldn’t think about Hunter’s abandonment right now. For some silly, stupid, girly reason it made me want to ask for that killing blow.
Tripp rubbed at his chin. “That’s fuckin’ crazy.”
“Says the man who just went up against Death’s blade.” And he’d done it to keep Mackie from slaying me. I took a tentative step forward. “Warren doesn’t know Mackie is here, does he?”
Because the leader of Light had spoken as if Tripp were this world’s greatest threat.
Tripp leaned back against the glass case, favoring his injured leg. “Don’t look like it’d matter if he did.”
I hunched my shoulders because he was right. “So why is he…here?” Why’d he cross worlds to kill me? “I mean, I know I pissed him off by escaping Midheaven…” By knocking that soul blade from his homicidal grasp, I remembered, swallowing hard. “But that was the first time I escaped. He didn’t even notice me the second.”
“Ha!” Tripp shook his head, like I was the village idiot. “Ol’ Sleepy Mac notices everything. He files it away. The knowledge lurks in his smile when he comes to kill a man later, like it’s been carved on his teeth.”
Carved like a marionette’s toy, I thought, remembering the way Mackie moved; seated and slumped one moment, pulled straight and erect the next. Pouncing in a full lunge after that, the leather of his skin shifting over his skull in lieu of any real expression. It was like the cross section of an old oak renumbering its rings. There was nothing natural about it.
“But that don’t mean he’s here of his own volition.” Tripp lit another cigarette, though this one seemed normal. My skin didn’t tingle, the smoke didn’t press against my pores. Thinking of Micah, I couldn’t help my relieved sigh. “No, ma’am. Mackie don’t have enough of his own willpower left to make them sort of choices. That’s what makes him so dangerous.”
I shrugged. “And?”
Tripp huffed, a trail of smoke zinging from the side of his mouth. “It’s Miss Sola wants you dead, girl.”
“Solange?” I almost choked on the name.
“She ain’t talked about nothin’ else since you left.”
Solange. The most powerful woman in that realm, and one who’d once dismantled everything inside of me-all the bits that made me “me”-without ever touching my body. I cringed, remembering the way my spirit had jigsawed free of my physical body before being thrown down a flight of stairs. Sure, it’d come back together at the bottom of the staircase, but had it been a physical repiecing, my thighbone would have been connected to my neck bone. I didn’t know if I’d recovered or just gotten used to the feeling, but I did know that of everything I experienced in my year as an agent of Light, I’d never been so thoroughly frightened as I was by Solange’s soft, gorgeous rage.
“Why?”
“’Cause when them divas and goddesses and matriarchs discovered they done released the woman with lineage divided equally between the two warring sides of the Zodiac, the uproar was cataclysmic. Even in that world, you’re legend. The Kairos, both Shadow and Light, the Zodiac’s ‘chosen one.’ It’s a great loss for the females who care only for power.”
I shook my head, but it didn’t stop my mind from spinning. Sure, I was still technically equal parts Shadow and Light. Believe me, if I could change my parentage, I’d have done so long ago. But why would Solange want me dead? I was no longer the Kairos. The woman who could bring to life the portents that would have one side of the Zodiac asserting dominance over the other.
But you once were, I thought, trying to remain reasonable. And only one person could have told Solange all that.
My God, Hunter. Will your betrayals never stop?
Tripp studied the air around me, trying to match it up to the emotions unraveling from me like a knot. He gave up, gaze landing back on my face, implacable. “I don’t know why Miss Sola hates you so much. I ain’t seen her so riled up ’bout a person before. Not that I envy you the distinction. But if you help me, Joanna, I’ll keep you from Sleepy Mac.” He paused, his next words sounding near a vow. “And anyone else who moves to harm you.”
I thought about it, automatically repulsed at the idea of working with a Shadow. Even if he was the only person with a hand extended to me now.
Except for the one who sent you that note.
Yeah, I thought, biting my lip. That anonymous dogooder had been a huge help tonight.
Angling my head, I gave him a quick once-over. “You’re really trying to kill the Tulpa?” He nodded, and I immediately shook my head. “Helping you will put a bull’s-eye on my chest, Tripp. From both the Shadows and the Light.”
He shrugged. “Don’t make you different from any other rogue agent.”
“Except for the whole mortality issue,” I said, but he shrugged again. Near fuming, I ticked some of my shortcomings off finger by finger. Maybe I should drawl ’em. “I can’t fight with you, protect you, or travel the world as you do anymore. I’m not fast. I’ve no strength. I have nothing to offer you.”
“You can give me your blood.” He waved his cigarette in the air. “I mean your bloodline.”
I shook my head, swallowing hard. “What does that mean?”
“The Tulpa doesn’t know you’re mortal yet, right?”
“Right.”
“So we use you as a lure. Ask him for a meeting, then fake anger over Warren treating that ex-boyfriend of yours-”
“He wasn’t my boyfriend,” I interrupted, giving the phone Warren had left me a hard glance. Hunter and I hadn’t gotten that far before our mutual pasts had reared up to trample the present. As for Warren? I wouldn’t have to fake anything when it came to him. Though, in a move as inexplicable as a woman who went back to an abusive husband, I pocketed the phone.