“But you’re beating him! I heard him in those tunnels. He was gasping for breath. He needed to be encased in total darkness just to heal.”
In solitude and silence. Safe from eyes that might impose expectation upon his figure and form, which would siphon off the very energy he was trying to recoup. So now that we knew his lack of permeability was a weakness, why weren’t we trying to exploit it?
“Speaking of the tunnels. Your mother was not happy to learn you’d been in there.”
“Then tell her to take it up with me herself,” I said smartly. “Besides, I tried to find you. Warren wanted me to ask you about walking the line. I just got lucky and found it myself first.”
“You didn’t get lucky, Jo. Quite the opposite.” And she looked at me like I’d lost something irreplaceable.
Please don’t let it be irreplaceable.
I hid my fear under a thin layer of bravado. “Well, I think we should all go back in together. Ambush the Tulpa after one of his battles with you. He’ll be alone, his energy at its lowest.”
“Let me worry about the Tulpa. You fix that changeling. And get those manuals written. But stay away from Midheaven. I haven’t shown you-” She whirled in response to something I could neither see nor feel. “Fuck. He’s on the move again.”
“But-”
Turning back, she grabbed my shoulders and shook me hard. “I’m doing my best to keep him away from you, Joanna! Now, please. Fix those manuals.”
An explosive gust thrust me backward, and I was alone in the expanse of a breath. My shoulder angled awkwardly into the tree trunk, but my grunt was drowned out by Skamar’s battle cry. A second later the two tulpas reengaged, the sound like a rocket firing across the valley.
Save the life of a little girl, restore safety for my troop, not to mention power to both the agents of Light and Skamar. And now, I thought, cringing as I looked above, keep the sky from falling in and crushing the entire city. It would’ve seemed like a full plate but for one thing. It all hinged on healing one little girl.
I needed to find her now.
I ducked into dark pockets created by the low-lying blue haze and slowly made my way to the modest development where the Chans had their home, keeping to side streets and dusty lots. Unfortunately, Midheaven was actually the second-to-last place I wanted to go. The very last was the Chan household, where an eight-year-old little girl, Jasmine’s sister, was suffering because of something I’d done.
In a newer section of town, their tract home was virtually indistinguishable from those around it, but the small figure reclining on the gentle slope of terra cotta tiles helped me locate it, as did her scent: dried berries, Bonnie Bell, and Bubblicious. Slipping into the concealing shadows offered up by the cloud haze and the overgrown fronds of a giant pepper tree, I leapt to the roof as quietly and quickly as I could.
Even so, Jasmine didn’t look surprised when I dropped down five feet from her. She only waited, as I did, to see if anyone else in the household had heard. When it was clear no one had, she turned her great dark eyes up to me. “I knew you were coming.”
“See me?”
She frowned, hesitating, then shook her head.
“Smell?” I asked, because ever since I’d displaced a portion of her chi with my own, she’d been gaining some of my more desirable abilities. This was part of the problem. Jasmine thought she was becoming a superhero and she refused to give up those powers.
“Not until you got close,” she admitted, tucking a lock of black hair behind her ear, the color shiny and rich even in the fractured light.
“Then how?”
“I felt it. Like I…sensed you.” She put a hand to her belly. “Do you know what I mean?”
I did. The second I’d reached her side I’d felt a corporeal recognition, like my veins ran in her body, my blood pumping in her heart.
I dropped next to her, huddling close in the cool air as clouds began to roil and pop in the distance. Neither of us was immune to the elements, so I was relieved when she didn’t object, and not just because of her body heat. She’d been prickly with me since we’d butted heads over her unwillingness to pass on her changeling status to her younger sister.
Her appearance had altered since I’d last seen her, though. Her dark hair now graduated sharply into an uneven bob, and was streaked on the left side with pink and blond. Her clothes were equally chaotic, blacks and plaids with thick military boots, and she had her backpack next to her, like she regularly waited on the rooftop for her bus. It was still Hello Kitty pink, but the cute icon’s eyes had been taped over by dual X’s, making the round mouth more resemble a scream.
The scent of eastern herbs and western medicines wafted from her open window, but I didn’t look her over for signs of injury. Jasmine hadn’t suffered physical injury when I’d failed to give her back the whole of her borrowed aura. No, it was her younger sister, Li, who was living proof that I truly had screwed it all up.
I bent my head to my knees, resting for a moment.
“Where have you been?” she finally asked. “I felt weak, like when you have the flu and can’t lift your limbs…but I felt it in my mind too.”
That made sense. The link between us probably didn’t extend to different words. Entering Midheaven must have severed the connection between us, halving both her chi and mine. “I had to go somewhere else.”
I explained to her about Midheaven and the pipeline, that I was searching for Jacks and a way to heal her, though I skipped the part about the dead changeling. I ended with an account of my return, including that Regan was again in the Tulpa’s good graces. “Skamar has kept the Tulpa too busy for him to get to you, but Regan has been following me everywhere. It’s not inconceivable that she might end up here.”
Her round face scrunched up. “So what are you doing now? Dropping the bread crumbs?”
“I’ve changed up my routine, smartass,” I said tightly. “And I was thinking you could go somewhere safe until all of this is over.”
She wrapped her arms around her knobby knees, turning away. “I can take care of myself.”
I shifted, crouched in front of her and waited until she met my eye. “Jas, I can’t protect you. I have no conduit, half my natural power is being filtered into you, and there’s no safe zone for me on this side of reality. That means if Regan gets tired of trying to pick up my trail, she’s going to come after the people closest to me, and hello chi-sharing superhero-wannabe, that’s you.”
She said nothing, just stared straight ahead with her jaw clenched stubbornly, expression unreadable.
I tried again. “Look, I just wanted to come check on you and Li. Make sure…”
Jasmine read the fear in my hesitation, and swooped in for the kill. “Make sure she’s not dead?”
I ran my hand over my face. “Jesus, Jas.”
She scoffed, then jerked her head in the direction of the lighted window. “See for yourself.”
I hesitated. “Parental units?”
“Both at work. They need the insurance.” She stared up at me, her gaze challenging. “Go on. Superhero.”
I glanced at the window almost fearfully, but dusted myself off and stood. Jas was right; I needed to look for myself. To prove I could look in the bedroom of a dying child as clear-eyed as I could face down a rotting Shadow agent. I’d look, even if it scorched my soul.
But peering into that room wasn’t at all like facing fire. It was like dropping into an endless pool of water without first taking a breath.
She lay facing away from the window, tiny body outlined beneath her pile of blankets. Her dark hair was a black hole against the white pillow, tangled strands that had once been glossy with good health now dulled. Her breathing appeared even but indistinguishable over the machines monitoring her vital stats, and though hidden behind privacy screens, they were like another presence in the room.