I was just breaching the surface of seeing all this for the first time, and aching for breath, when she turned. Her eyes, so similar to Jasmine’s-if you didn’t count the blood vessels weaving over the whites-found mine like she knew I’d be there. As if she’d been waiting. The hope in that gaze, displaced in a face that was little more than skin smoothed over bone, crashed over me like a wave. The vessels seemed to have dried up inside her body, the percentage of water needed to fuel a human being half what it should have been. The three marks across her charcoal cheek, where she’d taken a hit from the Tulpa on my behalf, were jet black. Her lashes had all fallen out. The weave of hair tangled across that pillow shifted…a wig.
Li didn’t have the strength to wave-the tiny hand faltered on its way up-but she smiled and it was achingly beautiful.
The strike of a match behind me sounded like an arrow slicking through the dim sky, and I flinched before I saw Jas’s amused profile outlined behind cupped hands. She deliberately didn’t look at me, and I grabbed at that momentary privacy, letting my face crumble as I bent my head. This was an image I’d never be able to erase, no matter how many worlds I hitchhiked my way into.
Mind stunned, I moved away from the window. Jasmine silently handed me the cigarette as I hunched next to her, even closer this time, as if she could warm me. I sucked in smoke, before handing it back to Jas. She took another drag, her smooth features lighting up prettily behind the orange glow.
“Jasmine-”
“No.”
I wanted to wring her scrawny preteen neck. “Why? Just pass on your post to Li! Give her changeling status. Move on as nature intended.”
She whipped her gaze to mine so fast I jerked back. “Because passing the post on to Li isn’t the cure-all you think it is. Your chi will still be divided, just in her body instead of mine. The Zodiac will still be unbalanced. Your manuals will still unwritten.”
“Jas-”
“I said no. And don’t ask me again either. I don’t want to be that, okay?” She motioned to Li’s window, scattering ash. “I want to live.”
I glanced at the sky. The day was strong enough now that rays of light had crept through the cloud breaks to find our bodies. They trailed out in stingy pockets, shifted, and tried again. “You don’t know that maturing will kill you.”
“You don’t know that it won’t.”
True. But if I didn’t come through, one of these sisters was going to die a death that would accomplish nothing. It might buy the agents of Light a little more time. Maybe slow the downward spiral in power that so aptly mirrored Li’s deteriorating health. But it wouldn’t get the manuals written, or transfer a vast amount of power to Skamar. It wouldn’t save my shiny, irreverent city from what amounted to a cataclysmic electrical storm raining down like God’s wrath. Only one thing would do all that.
We fell silent again. Jas smoked and brooded. I bit my lip and worried. Clouds roiled and moved across the sky like scattered gray silk; beautiful, if you didn’t know it was the result of massive cosmic destruction.
After another moment, Jasmine flicked the spent cigarette over the roofline. “Look, it’s not that I don’t want to help her, okay? I want Li to get better…”
But if Jasmine gave over the split chi that would enable Li to heal and take her place as the changeling of Light, she might break in turn.
“Would you switch with your sister?” she asked suddenly, voice rising with emotion. “Be dead in her place, if it means she would live?”
“Yes.”
I wasn’t trying for a politically correct answer, or even to convince Jasmine that she should do the same. But yes, I would have done that for Olivia. In an instant. I would do it still.
“That’s because her death was quick,” Jasmine scoffed, flipping her backpack over her shoulder. “It was violent, yeah, but it was a moment’s choice. Not a choice moment after moment.”
I saw what she meant. She was envisioning herself lying ashen against those white linens, sweating out her body’s nutrients, being drained of her vitality.
“You’re saying it would have been easy for me?”
“I’m saying take a look at all the good things you’ve experienced since then, and then wipe them from your mind. I’m watching Li, and as much as I love her, my mind keeps drifting to the things I don’t know-the people I’ll never meet, the career and maybe family I’ll never have. I don’t…I don’t want to die a virgin.”
“The first time sucks anyway.”
She shook her head, unamused. “What about all my other firsts? Don’t I have a right to those either?”
I glanced up at her. Sometimes I forgot I was talking to a girl whose prom was still years away. It was easy to forget that these kids were as divided in their lives as we were…at least up until it was time for them to grow and age and live as mortals. But…“What about Li’s?”
“Why are hers any more important than mine?”
I looked at her with her crossed arms and forced pout, and remembered what it was like to be that age. Not long after that I would be attacked, and my life as irreparably damaged as Li’s. But at Jasmine’s exact age I had lived for the day, by the day, my future unwinding in front of me like a long hopeful road. “Look, Jas, I’m working on it.”
She turned to me. “So let me help.”
“It’s mostly grunt work,” I lied. “Not even any fighting,” I lied some more. “Just hours of sitting there, staring at nothing. Like a stakeout. You’ll be happier waiting here.”
“But I’ve never been on a stakeout before!”
“That’s because you’re thirteen. You need to survive a few slumber parties first.” She turned away again, and I sighed. “Look, I just don’t want you to return to your mother with pieces missing, you know?” One Chan sister down was enough.
“Then protect me. You can move faster than a speeding bullet, right?”
“I can move faster than a speeding softball. I haven’t really tested the bullet theory yet.” And I could barely protect myself.
“Oh.”
“Look, just watch out for oddities or, you know, walking corpses. Stay safe.”
She blew out a breath that lifted her hair from her forehead. “Don’t talk to strangers, yeah, yeah. Got that memo…”
My cell phone vibrated in my pocket, and I pulled it out, hoping to see a message from Hunter. I didn’t recognize the number. The voice, though? That was unforgettable. I rose to my feet on the slanted rooftop, staring off into the blue haze. “What do you want?”
“You. On your knees before me. Your skin shredded so finely it looks like angel hair.”
I motioned for Jas to get behind me, get inside, get away, and scanned the perimeter of the house. Everything and nothing moved beneath the roiling, mobile sky. Yet Regan couldn’t openly walk the streets in her condition. “So you want to be twins?”
“That’s right. Except for your sense of humor. I fucking hate that.”
I started to reply.
“I have to wonder, though, if it’s something little Ashlyn inherited.”
I drew a blank, my mouth stuttering shut. I decided to wait to see where she was going with this.
“Ah, that finally shut you up. Now…” She took a breath so deep it gurgled in her cracked chest. “Sit back down so we can talk.”
I angled my head, squinting at the house across from us. “Where are you?”
“Sit your ass down.”
I checked to make sure Jasmine was back inside, and sat. How traumatized would the kid be, I wondered, if I took an arrow to the heart on her rooftop?
“That’s better.” Regan paused, letting me wonder how she could see me, obviously enjoying the attention. “I was wondering when you’d check on your changeling. Nice of you to care.”