“What the hell-” I began as soon as the door swung open.
“Go away!” he snarled, and began pulling the door shut again. I barely got my foot wedged between the door and frame.
“Let me in, Zane! It’s dangerous out here.”
“That’s because you’re out there. Now go away.”
And with that, he stomped on my foot, kicked my leg out of the way, and pulled the door shut.
“Evil, psychotic, geriatric Martian…!” I hopped on one foot while cradling the other, and decided to stop complimenting him. He couldn’t hear me anyway. Fine. If the old coot wasn’t going to let me in this way, I’d break in via the rooftop skylight. That’s what I’d done last time.
Bound to the building as surely as he was bound to his service, Zane worked on the lower floor and lived on the upper, with groceries, mail, take-out food, and dry-cleaning-for all his valuable T-shirts-delivered to his door. If he even attempted to leave-and he hadn’t in the time I’d known him-then the voices in his head that helped transcribe our world’s events would turn on him and drive him into madness.
I kinda felt sorry for the guy, even as I removed a skylight pane for my break-in. After all, I’d probably be cranky too if World of Warcraft action figures were the highlight of my existence. Then pain splintered my limbs like sliv ers of glass were being inserted via my nail beds. Sizzling sounded nearby, and I found myself on my back, staring up at a blank, blue sky. I blew a tendril of burnt hair from my eyes, wondering if my appendages were missing from my body. Because I couldn’t feel any of them.
“Wow! That was great! It was like she was yanked backward on a fisherman’s hook!”
“Awesome.”
“Do it again!” The first voice said, and I felt a light thump on the rooftop as someone hopped up and down. “Zane! Zane! Make her do it again!”
I grunted in objection and pushed myself to a sitting position, having to squint to focus. Two blurred silhouettes sharpened, but blurred again when they shifted. A rat’s nest of shit-brown hair appeared behind them at the half-open skylight, followed by chunky cheeks and a body that had to be wedged through carefully to access the roof. Zane joined the two nimble preteens already there, a remote control in his hand. I looked at it balefully.
“About time, Archer. I’ve been dying to try out my new toy.” Zane put his hands on his hips, belly jutting from below his T-shirt as he inspected me for damage. He, and the changelings, knew exactly who I was, what I looked like, and what I was trying to do. They weren’t allowed to say, just as they couldn’t tip the balance the other way and reveal those selfsame details to us about the Shadows.
“Let me guess,” I said, wiggling my toes. All still there. “You’ve got cameras up here?”
“Sensors, man!” The first kid, whom I now recognized as Dylan, was so excited he had to draw heavily on his inhaler. Shoving it back into his pocket, he pointed. “Under that wadded up newspaper…inside that Coke can over there too.”
“Awesome, huh?” said the other kid again. Kade. He had a habit of turning every statement into a question.
The high-pitched excitement did nothing to help the buzzing in my head. “Please, please, piss off.”
“My mother would be mad if she heard you talk to me like that.”
“She can-”
Dylan knew what I was going to say. “Don’t talk about my mother!”
“Yeah, because politics, religion, and mothers are off limits,” I muttered, clamoring to my feet. The jolt had been a thankfully short, if powerful, shock.
Zane was looking at me with a down-turned mouth. “You really shouldn’t talk to kids that way.”
“They’re not going to remember it anyway,” I said. All memory of this time in their lives would be erased upon onset of puberty. Just as it should have been for Jasmine, I thought, reminding myself why I was there. “Besides, they shouldn’t go around electrocuting people.”
“Zap this bitch again, Zane!” Dylan was still pissed about his mother.
I held out my hands as Zane cocked his thumb above the red button. “Look, I just need some help.”
“You’re dangerous, Archer. You could get us all killed. Just look at Jasmine.”
“I didn’t touch her!”
“You did. You touched her inside. You displaced part of her chi with your own. You’ve split her soul in half.”
Accidentally split it in half. I sighed. “Okay, but I’m trying to figure out how to fix her. The manual detailing how to do that would be a big help.”
Because such a thing had been done before. An agent named Jaden Jacks had displaced a changeling’s aura, and the details of how he’d ultimately fixed the kid were somewhere in the Shadow manuals. It was just a matter of finding it, impossible without spending months in the effort…and if Zane wouldn’t let me in.
As expected, he shook his head. “As record keeper, I can’t reveal anything that might unbalance the equilibrium of the Zodiac. I work for both sides.”
Shadow agents couldn’t read the manuals of Light, and vice versa. It kept a sort of cosmic balance between the two sides. But I could read both sides, I thought irritably, because I was both. This had caused the Shadow manuals to be altered somewhere-there were fewer thought bubbles detailing what a featured Shadow agent was planning; more once they’d already acted-so I didn’t see why Zane couldn’t just throw me a bone.
“I’m trying to bring it back in to balance,” I said.
He shrugged. “You fucked up and now karma is weighing down the scales in the Shadows’ favor. You’ll have to find it yourself.”
“Why don’t you just kill Jasmine?” Kade said snottily.
I took a threatening step toward him instead.
Wide-eyed, he backed straight into Dylan, who landed flat on his butt. I smirked. His voice cracked as he yelled. “What? Like you haven’t thought of it. You’re half Shadow! You live for that shit, right?”
“If your mother could hear you now,” I muttered, because I hadn’t thought of it. It would have never occurred to me…but now it was in my mind. I turned back to Zane, who was watching me closely. “Is he serious?”
“See! She’s interested!”
“Shut up, Dylan.” I glared over my shoulder. He fumbled his inhaler. “I’m…curious.”
“It’s simple, Archer. Jasmine’s like a leech, sucking your power from you in long, slow pulses. If you want to reunite your split aura in your body, along with all the powers she’s been siphoning off, then she’s gotta die.”
It wasn’t the first time these kids had said that. They knew of Jaden Jacks and the changeling he’d injured, though the report of the child’s death was more of an assumption. The kid and Jacks hadn’t been seen since, not even in a manual, and that was odd. Full-fledged troop members couldn’t leave the valley. It was one of the maxims that ruled our existence.
“Jas knows it, too,” said Dylan. “That’s why she doesn’t come around here anymore. Well, that…and because she’s spending time with Li.”
Li. I swallowed hard. Li, who was eight years old, and clamoring to take over Jasmine’s position. Li, who’d somehow been injured when the Tulpa had attacked me. Li, who was deteriorating by the day because of that injury, and would continue to do so until I figured out a way to fix her sister.
And that’s when the manuals had stopped being written. That’s what was keeping the fourth sign of the Zodiac from coming to pass.
“Look, I don’t want to kill Jas.” Or her little sister. “I want to find the manual that shows how Jacks healed his changeling, or find Jacks himself. Barring that, I need to find Skamar so she can tell me how to ‘walk the line.’”
I muttered this last bit, rolling Warren’s words over in my mind, still having no idea exactly what they meant.