"Explain why you betrayed me?" he murmured, now that she'd spoken of it only.
"Explain how I managed not to," she replied, and willed him to believe her with eyes, voice. Her mind. He must have felt it because after a moment he appeared to soften.
"And is this a peace offering?" he asked, eyes flicking down to the cornucopia she still held.
A small smile lifted one corner of her mouth. "Merely a centerpiece for your holiday celebration. I remember how you enjoyed Thanksgiving."
He had. It was his favorite holy day.
"Then you plan on staying for dinner?"
She lifted her free hand and removed her glasses, raising her head to gaze directly into the cold black depths of eyes she'd never thought to see again. "I was hoping," she said softly.
He nodded after a moment. "Good. Then over dinner you can offer your explanation to us all."
And he glided to the door to usher in his sycophants, movements impossibly smooth… and entirely too quiet for Zoe's liking.
Chapter 6
Dinner was held in the same mirrored room, the hollowed out center suddenly taken up with an elongated black marble table, the cornucopia Zoe had made centered like a bull's-eye. A gleaming table setting of mirrored plates, china, and crystal winked in the studded light of two shining candelabras. The Tulpa could now see himself above, below, and in the mirrored glasses of his half dozen guests. He'd become even more of a control freak since Zoe's hard betrayal, which she understood. Ignoring the fact that he was the epitome of everything she despised—that he was the coldest, hardest heartache in this world—she instead pitied that he felt the need for it, and grieved for the suspicion thinning his lips. She sorrowed, mostly, that she'd been the one to put it there. Her eyes teared as she thought of the pain she'd caused, and she discreetly wiped them away behind the mirrored frame of her borrowed glasses, donned again like everyone else at the table.
Across from her, Lindy glared at her from behind her own, much cooler, lenses.
Zoe ignored her, as well as the disbelieving snort from the Shadow seated to her right as he scented her emotion. There was another man she didn't know leering at her from her left, and two other favored agents flanking Lindy, but Zoe didn't try to engage any of them in conversation. They took their clues from the Tulpa, and even though homicide lived in their mirrored faces, they'd stay their hands as long as he did.
"Fruit?" Damian offered, plucking an apple from the cornucopia.
Zoe swallowed hard, hands shaking slightly as she cut through white meat. "It's decorative," Zoe informed him. "I didn't mean for it to be…"
He took a bit of the crisp skin, his thin lips littered with sugar.
"… eaten," she finished on a sigh. She looked to the Tulpa for support, but he was busy watching himself in his mirrored wineglass. He wouldn't let them injure her, yet, but he'd let them have their fun. "Choose one, then. It doesn't matter to me."
"Really? Then it doesn't matter to me, either." He lifted the entire basket and deposited it in front of her so that a few nuts rolled loose. "You choose."
Zoe considered before gingerly choosing a ripe pear, scooping up the loosened nuts and depositing those on her plate as well. Then she set to righting the cornucopia, making it look as ornate—if less stacked—as before. Damian snickered and immediately yanked free a grape bunch before passing it around the table so the others could do the same. Zoe pursed her lips, but said nothing. The Tulpa had steepled his fingers, observing them all over the top like an amused parent watching his children at play.
Zoe decided to begin. "You care nothing about this—or me—I see."
"On the contrary, darling. Time hasn't lessened my feelings for you. It strengthened them."
Lindy popped a handful of berries in her mouth, snickering.
"And mine for you," Zoe said softly, looking down, pushing a walnut across her plate with her index finger.
"Then why hide from him?"
She glanced up to find the man directly across from her leaning in, feigning interest. Licking his lips. Wasp thin, he reminded Zoe of a snake, that tongue seemingly testing the air, tasting it, honing in on her. His grandmother had been one of Zoe's first victims after she ascended to her star sign. His name was Ajax, he was the new Shadow Virgo.
Zoe leaned back and blotted her lips with her napkin. "I wasn't hiding from him… or any of you. I was hiding from them."
Everyone looked toward the Tulpa. Zoe waited. Sixteen years was a long time to have hidden from both sides of the Zodiac, but she willed him to believe it. Willed them all. The Tulpa stared, blank-faced, before motioning for her to continue. So she told them the story she'd rehearsed, the past she'd invented, the history she now believed, passing it along so they would believe it as well. It was true that Zoe had killed the Tulpa's creator, Wyatt Neelson. But her intent, she said, wasn't to destroy the Tulpa, but to strengthen him.
"Do you remember the way we spoke of him?" she asked, stopping to address the Tulpa as the others listened carefully. "About the way he clung to you even after you broke free of him to assert your independence. You said he was dead weight, like a stone attached to the string of a kite that would otherwise sail free."
"So you decided to sever that weight yourself."
"No," Zoe shook her head. "I went to convince him to give you a name."
The Tulpa froze and silence settled heavily over the table. Because even though Wyatt had visualized the Tulpa so completely to construct a fully developed consciousness, he'd refused to give the Tulpa a name. There was power in a name. It was why Adam named all the earth's creatures in the bible, giving himself power over all of them. Why in Jewish tradition a child's intended name wasn't revealed until after they were born. It was why cultures all over the world were superstitious about sharing names, and why all parents chose their offspring's names so very carefully.
And it was why the Tulpa desired one so very badly.
Zoe reminded him of that now. "You'd refused to see him for months, and that had taken its toll on his psyche. He was unkempt, mumbling like a crazy man about abandonment, and having nothing to show for his life's work. When I told him what I wanted, that we even had a name picked out—" Here the others looked back and forth between them, curiosity stark on their faces, but Zoe continued on blithely. "Well, he only laughed, then spat at my feet. It angered me."
She bit her lip and the tears welled. "I snapped. I told him I was the most important person in your life now, not him. That he may have created you but I was also supernatural, and that we were creating something new between us. That's when he lunged." She swallowed hard, drawing a shaky hand across her brow before letting it drop. Her voice fell to a whisper. "I don't know… I guess I'd begun to think of him as one of us, as having powers, being able to detect intent. Plus I was furious with him for his crazed rebuff. I swear it was only meant to be a slap… but it was enough to kill him… and to reveal that I'd once been Light. I knew once you found my psychic imprint on the kill spot that you'd be so enraged you'd never hear me through. So I fled."
Zoe stared at her hands like she couldn't believe she'd done it, and the others studied her—and the Tulpa—from behind their safe, shining lenses. The Tulpa continued watching his own reflection, and waited for Zoe to finally look up.
"So it was all an accident?"
She nodded, eyes trained on his too-calm face, like he wasn't listening, though Zoe knew he heard every word. All syllables. Every breath drawn in between. "And all these years I've been wracking my brain, trying to think of a way to return to you and prove it'd been unintentional. I needed an excuse that the agents of Light would fall for, or a mission that would bring me back into your arms. Then I realized you'd never believe me. Not if I showed up here as before, with power, ability. Light."