“Jaden Jacks. Solange. Harlan Tripp.”
“What?”
I nodded to myself. So I couldn’t speak of what happened over there, but I could talk about the people there. Those were the only ones, though. Shen was only a wisp of a memory, Boyd was a lump in my throat. Mackie disappeared the fastest. “Wow, okay. So only people who came from this world.”
Hunter gave me the appropriate look for someone who’d taken to conversing with herself, and again took me by the arm. “Let’s go. You can try to recall more when we’re somewhere safe.”
I glanced up at the sky, fought the impulse to duck, and wondered exactly where that would be. Because I’d returned to a scarred world, an embattled troop, and a leader who-if my intuition was right-was turning out to be as ruthless as the enemies we fought.
Worst of all, I had an unwanted suspicion about what gaming chip Shen had stolen from my pile. Shaking my head, I followed Hunter out into the open night.
Forced to wait until dawn to cross back into the boneyard, we returned to the warehouse. Without our safe zones, it was still the most secure place on this side of reality. The Shadows could theoretically get to us there, but they’d have to go through a hell of a lot of artillery to do so. We were quiet on the drive over, Hunter still furtively studying my appearance from the corner of his eye, and me staring out the window like a moody teenager. Maybe it was psychosomatic-the shocking knowledge that I’d lost a week of my life to another world slowly sinking in-but Las Vegas was suddenly what appeared unreal. It was like returning to a childhood home. Though I had an intimate knowledge of the terrain, I no longer felt a part of it.
I glanced up when we whizzed past Valhalla, the fountains out front reflecting the eerie colors of the sky. It looked like I could stand atop the giant hotel and reach my hand straight through the swirling clouds to take hold of the bolts being flung from one side of the valley to the other. As disconcerting as that was, I had more pressing problems. So while Hunter pondered the tattoo on my belly, I turned my mind to the surprise subject of Regan’s new “friend.”
An agent of Light betraying one of their own. I shook my head and blew out a hard breath. It wouldn’t be the first time. When I first came to the Zodiac, the troop had unknowingly harbored a mole. But it was hard to see any of the current star signs-most of whom had endured that betrayal-doing what that traitor had, marking an ally and sending them out in the world toward certain death. And everyone knew someone who died before she’d been stopped.
All but Kimber, I thought grimly. She was from our sister troop in Arizona, where we sent our initiates for fostering prior to metamorphosis, when they were still free to leave the city. Despite our allied status, Kimber had disliked me from the moment she arrived, but she had greater reason to hate me now that I’d cost her power. Warren had shunted her aside since then, rarely inviting her out of the sanctuary. She blamed me for that too. Never mind that it’d been an accident, I thought grimly. Or that I’d saved her life. So if I had to take bets, my money would have been on her as the one to betray me to Regan.
But what about Chandra? My emergence a year ago had usurped her place within the troop. She’d backed off from the more overt hostility-and seemingly accepted her auxiliary role in the troop, since we’d worked so well together in October-but was her reluctant acceptance actually a front? Could it be her way-a devious, better way-of dealing with me? Did she have it in her to work with a Shadow agent, a rogue agent even, in order to set up my fall?
I pondered it a bit longer before dismissing the possibility. My capture and death would certainly free up the Archer sign for her, but it would also weaken the troop, possibly annihilating it altogether. Her feelings toward me might be ambivalent, but she was committed to the agents of Light with every cell of her being.
Besides, Regan might have been lying. If the Tulpa thought she had a source that would lead him to me, he’d be likelier to reinstate her in his troop. No, I couldn’t peg any of my allies-my friends-as betrayers, unless something drastic had happened in the week I’d been gone. So I’d report the conversation to Warren and let him figure out a way to deal with it. We’d figure it out together.
But will you tell him about Ashlyn?
I let out a sigh, running a hand over my face.
“Are you sure you’re okay?”
I let my head loll Hunter’s way. “I’m hennaed, pierced, and just found out I lost an entire week of my life. What do you think?”
“Ah, but your sparkling personality is still intact.”
“Lucky for you,” I muttered. He snorted, and turned his attention back to the road. I searched his face a moment longer before saying, “Listen, thank you for not saying anything to Warren about a possible mole just yet. Something isn’t adding up. It’s like he knows things but isn’t sharing them with us.”
“Warren does what he thinks is right for the troop.” Meaning it wasn’t for us to know those reasons, just to obey them.
I shook my head and turned back to the window. “He’s ruthless.”
“We’re all ruthless, Joanna.” He said it like it disgusted him.
I looked back at his silhouette etched against the night, wondering what he meant. Then I pushed the wonder away, refocusing on Warren. “I think he locked people over there, Hunter. I don’t care if they were Shadows or rogues or the devil incarnate. He knew what that world was even if he didn’t know exactly what it did.” Maybe he’d even been there, and returned. Little would surprise me about Warren’s machinations anymore. “And, knowing it, he still sent me over there.”
As Hunter said, Warren did what he thought best for the troop. But how was it best to send me to a place he knew would steal time from my life? My powers? My soul? “And why wouldn’t he tell us that Jaden Jacks was Light?”
Hunter looked upset by that too, but raised his brows to erase the worry. “Also in our best interests?”
“Devil’s advocate,” I spat, annoyed with his automatic need to defend Warren. “Jaden killed that changeling. I saw proof enough of that…and I bet Warren knows it.”
Hunter’s breath stuttered from him. “Are you sure?”
“Yes,” I said, pleased he was finally listening to me. “So don’t argue just for the sake of arguing.”
“I’m not.” He gripped the steering wheel more tightly. “But if we’re going to go to Warren with accusations of moles in our troop and secrets kept from us all, then we’d better have thought it through.”
His use of the word “we” pacified me, and I blew out a breath. I waited until he’d relaxed, then said more calmly, “Do you know what it would take for our entire troop to be unaware that Jacks was Light? I mean, how could we not know one of our own? By my calculations, Jaden is only a few years older than me. That means Felix and Jewell and Vanessa should know him. It means you should.”
Hunter gave me the most unamused smile I’d ever seen. “Rewiring.”
I shook my head. “Would Warren do that to all of you?”
“I told you. He’d do anything if he thought it right for the troop.”
So, again, why? I tilted my head, looked again at the pressurized webbing of the sky threatening to spill its contents all over the city. “Maybe he’s protecting Jaden?”
Hunter scowled at me. “Protecting a guy who killed a changeling?”
“Well, I don’t know! You come up with a better idea.”
He studied the road, then finally shook his head. “I can’t.”
And that was the problem. No one could say exactly what Warren was doing and thinking, or why. As I thought about that, the pocket of night untouched by the neon or the strange night sky seemed to reach into the car and deepen. I shifted my eyes to Hunter’s face and set my jaw. “I’m not telling him about Ashlyn. It’s not that I don’t trust him. It’s just that…”