So despite my newfound power, status, and knowledge, I still had to kowtow to a mortal man I hated. There was a silver lining, though. Everything belonging to Xavier also belonged to the Tulpa. My real father was my fake father’s benefactor. In return for money, Xavier fronted the Tulpa’s many businesses. My ultimate goal? Bring them both down…but in order to do that, I had to stick close to a man I’d despised for years. Xavier.
So that’s one of the reasons why Olivia Archer-casino heiress and social debutante-regularly worked an eight-hour shift where she’d earn less than she’d spend on a bottle of wine. It was another way to get inside Valhalla’s hallowed walls, which we believed was the headquarters for the Tulpa’s organization. Xavier had initially refused me, and then, when he realized I wouldn’t be swayed, started me in the gift shop, hoping that would cure this inexplicable whim to actually work for a living. It hadn’t-I wanted more than spending money; I wanted retribution-and so the news that he wanted to see me at his home office before my shift even began had me holding back a smile…and had Ginny, my small-minded boss, grinding her teeth.
“Maybe he wants to give me a raise,” I told her with false excitement. More likely he was going to move me to a new, more socially appropriate department now that I’d proven I wasn’t giving up. Ginny huffed and turned away while my coworker, Janet, gave me a hopeful thumbs-up. I hoofed it down to Uniforms, used the adjacent locker room to change into a more Oliviaesque outfit, and handed in my work clothes for a fresh set that I might or might not need the next day. I locked these away in my appointed locker-I couldn’t be caught ferrying around a Valhalla uniform if a Shadow did happen to track me-then headed to my car in the employee lot, where I was both surprised, and not, to find Felix waiting.
“You my babysitter?” I asked, purposely keeping my tone light. Anything heavy looked like it would knock him over. He was dressed in his usual jeans, with a faded gray T-shirt, untucked, and hair streaked with caramel highlights, deliberately unbrushed. But the expression on his face wasn’t one I’d ever seen on him before. He’d aged a decade since the night before.
“Yes, and you’ve been naughty,” he tried, but his grin slipped from his new face. “Come here and let me give you a spanking.”
“My daddy would kick your ass if you tried,” I said softly.
“Your daddy wants to kick my ass anyway.” He snorted. “And yours, for that matter.”
I put a hand to his arm, steadying us both for my question. “Vanessa?”
“Micah’s taking care of her.” Tears welled so quickly, they’d clearly been lurking beneath the surface. “It’s going to take time, though.”
I nodded because there was nothing to say. Normally we healed in an instant from mortal wounds. But there was nothing normal about what the Shadows had done to Vanessa. “I’m so sorry, Felix.”
“It’s not your fault.”
I shook my head. “They were angling for me, and I broke the safe zones, plus-”
“Jo!” His voice must have come out even more loudly than he intended, because even he jumped. “They’re Shadows. They’d have done it anyway.”
I hesitated, biting my lip. “I saw you, Felix. When Warren told us they wanted to make a trade, Vanessa for me…” I didn’t look away when he flushed because I wanted him to know I’d seen…and I understood.
He looked me in the eye then, so serious it was like I didn’t know him. I didn’t know him, I realized in the next moment. Vanessa’s torture had changed him. He looked more like Hunter now; something had touched him in a way that he would always bear a scar. I too had the same sort of scar. “No. Warren was right. No matter what they did to Vanessa, we wouldn’t have made a trade. Not even a lateral one, agent for agent. And certainly not for…”
The Kairos. I cringed. The title didn’t make me feel special…and it certainly didn’t make me feel like the savior of the supernatural underworld. Instead it made me feel like a thing rather than a person. Again, all I could say was “I’m sorry.”
He looked down, and the warrior-look disappeared in the slump of his shoulders.
“Warren doesn’t know I’m here,” he said, blurting the confession out like it was burning his tongue. “He told us about Midheaven after you left. That he’d always known it existed, that he’d kept it from us for our own good.”
I wasn’t surprised. “Did anyone ask about the Shadow side?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, did they know about Midheaven even while we didn’t?”
Felix’s brows drew down like he didn’t understand why that was important, so I knew that no one had thought to bring it up. It was significant, though, because if the Shadows knew of it, and Jacks had disappeared with his changelings all those years ago, then he could have found the perfect way around our restriction upon leaving the valley. Jacks, and the kid, could be in Midheaven. So I bet that’s what Warren had been referring to when he said the answer to fixing Jas-fixing our world-was in that one.
I was so taken by the thought that I almost missed Felix’s whisper. “I think I hate him.”
I looked at him sharply, taken aback. “Who? Warren?”
Jaw set, he nodded. I swallowed hard, then nodded back in return. I don’t think Felix meant it, but he thought he did. I’d known, or at least suspected for a while, that Warren kept secrets from us. He so often wanted things his way, no questions asked, no explanation given. No wonder Felix was pissed. How often had Warren gotten what he wanted by omission? There was an entire world out there, sidled up next to our own, yet it had taken the destruction of our safe zones for him to even mention it.
Which meant he was probably hiding even more.
Not wanting to fuel an already volatile anger, I veered course a bit. “He didn’t happen to tell you how to get to Midheaven, did he?”
Felix cursed under his breath. “You know Warren.”
Yes. He wouldn’t tell them anything he didn’t think they needed to know. And here was Felix, powerless to do anything to help heal the one person he loved above all others, his impotence palpable. What he needed was an outlet for all that pent-up anger. He needed to feel like he could help her, even if after the fact. I’d seen the same look on my boyfriend’s face years ago, right after I was assaulted, but in a way it was worse for Felix. After all, he was a superhero.
I bit my lip and considered him. His cover identity as perpetual college student and playboy fit him perfectly. I remembered Vanessa once telling me that Felix had Neptune in his Eleventh House, which supposedly meant he was dreamy and irresponsible, basically the complete opposite of a normal Capricorn. At the time, though, she’d been on a rant about him forcing her to track a possible Shadow alone while he danced the night away at a new technobar. Never mind that he’d found the Shadow at the same club.
“He’s impulsive, unreliable, and can’t be depended upon to even tie his shoes!” Vanessa had fumed, not entirely wrong. He often left his shoes untied. “He has no work ethic beyond seducing coeds out of their clothing, and you would think that with the goat as his glyph he’d have some sort of ability to see things through, but nooo!”
While all her accusations were undeniably true, Felix also had a laugh as lithe as his body and mind, and he could sense-and even alter-the mood of a room with his playful energy. I suspected his much maligned mischievous nature, like the frat-boy persona, was exactly what had attracted the serious-minded Vanessa in the first place.
And it might come in handy at Xavier’s. My view of the place was, after all, colored by familiarity and loathing. My energy would also be divided by having to hide that, so I could probably use an extra pair of eyes. Perhaps Felix would see something I could not.