Because I might be this sign, this portent, signaling his super-troop’s ascendancy over my evil, overlord father. Yeah. Sure. I rubbed at my eyes. I was fading now, this whole conversation and night blurring in my mind. “Well, what if I don’t want any part of this superhero, crime-fighting bullshit? What if I just want to live a normal life like all the other…mortals out there?”
“Do you?”
“Yes.”
“No.” Warren folded his arms across his chest. “You can’t.”
“You said I had to be willing,” I argued.
He inclined his head. “There have been those, though rare, who’ve chosen not to fight. They knew the facts, they’d grown up in the Zodiac, and decided to leave it while they could. There’s a procedure that’s somewhat painful and has minor side effects—no worse than Paxil, really—but it will clear your mind forever of any paranormal knowledge or powers.”
“I want that.”
“Jo—”
“I want it! Now!” I did. I didn’t know what the hell I was going to do next, but I knew I didn’t want any part of a world of conduits, enemies, and astrological superheroes.
“Jo, all those operations were performed premetamorphosis.” He shook his head. “It’s too late for you.”
Too late by one day. I stood, needing to pace, to think; needing air and time, and someone to make sense of this all. I felt trapped inside a foreign world where the rules had been upended on top of me. I didn’t speak this language of star signs and Shadow agents, and I didn’t want to. “Look, I don’t want to be a superhero freak like you, okay, Warren? I don’t want to fight crime, and I don’t want to smell pheromones or kill bad guys. I just want to go home! I want…I want my fucking life back!”
He motioned to the door. “So leave.”
“I will,” I shot back, heading that way.
“Fine.”
“Fine!”
He lobbed his parting blow. “Just know if you walk out of here now you’ll be labeled a murderer.”
“It was self-defense!” I said, whirling back. “He attacked me and murdered my sister!”
Warren blinked. “I’m not talking about Butch, Joanna.”
I shook my head but it came out in a jerky motion. I opened my mouth but no words fell from it. The room faded and I felt my knees buckle. I leaned against the wall, taking long, deep breaths, and waited until I could stand again. I’d been wrong, I thought, to believe this guy had any characteristics resembling sanity. He was as crazy as I first thought.
“They’ll frame you for Olivia’s death,” the psycho was saying. “Your true father, and all his henchmen. They’ll set up all the physical evidence, and there won’t be a thing you can do about it. Then, after the trial, when you’re in jail and awaiting injection on death row, they’ll find you by your scent—by then a soured mixture of bitterness and hate—and they’ll kill you cold.”
“But I didn’t do it,” I said breathlessly.
“Your car is at the scene of the crime.”
“You told me to leave it there!”
He shrugged. “Your prints are all over the place—on your martini glass, and I’d imagine on your sister’s body as well. They’re especially dense in the bedroom where she was murdered.”
“And so are yours!” I shot back. “And Ajax’s and Butch’s!”
He looked at me blankly. My eyes widened and I sucked in a quick breath, remembering Butch’s impossibly smooth fingertips. “Give me your hand,” I said in a whisper.
Warren held it out, palm up. Though his palms were rough and callused, the tips of his fingers were smooth and opalescent, almost pearlescent as they gleamed up at me. I ran a finger over the pad of his thumb, rubbing lightly. It was like touching a marble.
“None of us has fingerprints, Jo.”
I looked up into his face. “I do.”
“You’re different. You’re—”
“Don’t say ‘innocent,’” I said through gritted teeth. I’d never felt less so in my life.
“I wasn’t going to,” he said quietly. “I was going to say you’re a latecomer to all this.”
I couldn’t believe this. I had to get out of there. There had to be a way. “Well, what about motive? Anyone who knows me—us—knows Olivia and I love each other. I’d never harm her.”
“Not for anything?”
“No!”
“Not for money?”
“Why would I? I have money of my own.”
“But she has more.”
“She has—” I stopped, and felt my face drain of color.
“You lost your inheritance today, did you not?” I knew he was just playing devil’s advocate. I knew it, and still I could see his point; how it would look to the rest of the world.
“How did you know that?” I asked, my voice small.
“I told you. You’re being watched.” He moved aside as I sank beside him on the bed. “By instruction of an unsigned note Olivia was handed the entire Archer legacy. Some people would see that as reason enough to kill.”
“But I wouldn’t.”
“You’re a fighter,” he pointed out. “Aggressive. A loose screw.”
“So is half the fucking population, Warren! It doesn’t make me a killer!” I thought of Butch. “It doesn’t make me her killer.”
“But you had motive. And you were there.”
“So was Butch!”
“You can’t prove it. You won’t prove it,” he corrected, before I could speak. “Our blood is like water. It soaks into the ground, it feeds the earth, but leaves no trace of ever having been shed. That’s why there won’t be a trace of Butch’s blood in your sister’s home. There won’t even be yours by now. Just Olivia’s. And your fingerprints.”
I swallowed hard. “I thought you were going to help me.”
“I am helping you. I’m telling you how it’s going to play out. By tomorrow morning this is going to be all over the television, in all of the newspapers. ‘Heiress Daughter Killed by Jealous Sister.’ Your face will be plastered in every newspaper in the country. You’ll be infamous.”
I’d have been better off dead.
“Or…”
I glanced up at him sharply. “Or?”
“Or I can take care of it for you. We can take care of it,” he corrected.
“Can you bring her back?”
“No.” His voice and expression gentled and the kindness softening his doe brown eyes almost killed me. I looked away. “But we can make sure the world doesn’t find out about what happened tonight. That’s our job. To protect the people of this city from those who would hurt them as Butch hurt Olivia. To make supernatural events appear normal. Ever hear the saying, ‘What you don’t know won’t hurt you’?”
“I’ve never believed that.”
He gave a slight shrug. “That’s because you didn’t know any different.”
I stood gingerly, testing my legs, and returned to the dresser to study the woman I saw there. If she’d looked unfamiliar before, she looked downright foreign now.
“They were setting me up,” I finally said, gazing at Warren through the mirror.
He nodded. “That’s what they do.”
“And what about you? Is that what you do?”
“We work to counteract their acts, yes. Usually we’re a bit more successful than this.”
A bitter laugh escaped me. I closed my eyes.
“Look, I know it’s a lot to take in. Shit, it’s a lot even if you’ve been raised in this lifestyle, and there’s more yet”—he held up a hand when my lids flicked open—“but you have a decision to make, and you have to make it quickly. We need you, we want you in our organization, but you have to come willingly.”
A superhero, I thought numbly. Good versus evil. Shadow agents. Paranormal battles. “I don’t know.”
“Okay.” He blew out a long breath, and for the first time I saw the signs of fatigue weighing on his browned face and sunken shoulders. “Okay,” he repeated, “there is one thing I can do for you.”
I stared at him through the mirror.
“You have twelve hours before your scent returns. One thing about turning a conduit on its owner, it’s such strong magic that you can wander this earth like a ghost. That’s called the aureole. Neither mortals nor agents will be able to discern your presence unless you’re standing right in front of them. It’s a gift. Like you don’t even exist.