And the dark shadows that lingered beneath them? I’d created those—and the reasons behind them—myself.
“Who do you think you are?” I whispered at the mirrored image. I watched the reflected lips move, then fall still, with no answer.
I returned to the bedroom, picked up the newspaper and studied the image of Karen Davis smiling up at me from an undated photo. After a moment I shoved it in my duffel bag for safekeeping and left. I wanted to find out for sure if, maybe, they were right.
Even while hoping against hope that they were wrong.
21
My emotions were under control by the time I reached Greta’s room. My eyes dry, face serenely composed—which, I knew, on Olivia only looked blithely unaware—and my energy carefully controlled. I didn’t want to run into any of the others without all my barriers in place. I half expected to find Chandra lurking around each sharp corner, sure she’d been the one to slip the paper under my door, but she was nowhere to be found. If it had been her, then she obviously thought her business with me complete.
I heard a shot of laughter from the direction of the children’s ward, saw a sole female cat out on patrol, two kittens stumbling along behind her, and increased my pace, intent on arriving at Greta’s undetected. I’d just turned the last corner, casting a final, furtive glance behind me, when I slammed into something, someone, who grunted and gave with the impact.
“Warren.” We both stepped back, each startled by the other, and I frowned when I saw the color drain from his face. “Are you okay?”
“Of course.” His words were as jerky as his movements, and he swallowed hard. “I’m fine.”
But I’d never seen him looking more disoriented. He was sweating, pale, and bleary-eyed, and all the crazed self-assurance I so readily associated with him was gone. In its place was a man who looked tired and old and scared. Whatever had transpired in the hours since I’d last seen him, it had left him uncertain and shaky.
“You don’t look fine. You look funny.” I sniffed lightly at the air. “You smell funny.”
“Well, we can’t all look as good as you, now, can we?” he snapped, a thin hand rising to rub at his face.
“Geez, Warren.” I drew back. “What happened? What did Greta say?”
“I’m not at liberty to discuss my therapy sessions with you.” I must have looked as injured as I felt because he cursed beneath his breath and tried to soften his words. “Look, Gregor’s been out there, alone, for over a dozen hours. I’m just…worried. I’m going after him.”
“But…why can’t someone else go? The Shadows have targeted you.” Because of me, I thought, and guilt speared through me now that I could see the toll it was taking on him.
“I’m the most experienced,” he corrected, standing taller. “We can’t lose Gregor. He’s the only one of us—other than myself—who’s held his place in the Zodiac for more than twelve months.”
“What about Micah? Or Hunter?”
He shook his head. “Talented, both of them, but they’re both new recruits. Micah’s not even supposed to be a star sign. He’s support staff, like Greta.”
“So it hasn’t just been five agents killed in the last few months—”
“It’s been ten. Ten of the finest,” he finished, voice weary.
“Jesus,” I said under my breath.
“We replenish the signs only to have them destroyed again. One, our Virgo, the very next day.” He looked at me, and his face was hard again. I’d seen this kind of determination before. I’d captured it with my camera on the faces of street people who knew all was lost but were determined to go on anyway. “I won’t lose another. I’m going out there, I’m going to retrieve Gregor, and then I’m going to shut down the Zodiac. We’ll wait until the troop is whole again, strong again. Then we’ll take on the Shadow warriors as a team.”
“You mean…leave the city vulnerable?”
He closed his eyes, and they moved like minnows beneath their lids, as if he were already watching the outcome of that decision. “We have no choice.”
“For how long?”
“As long as it takes to train up a new Zodiac force. A year. Maybe more.”
“A year!” I exclaimed, thinking of all the damage Ajax and his ilk could do in that amount of time. Thinking also of young teenage girls being attacked in Quik-Marts and the desert, and left there to die. “That’s too long.”
“Got a better idea?” His eyes snapped open, fired on me.
“Hey, don’t take it out on me! I’m just saying—”
“Well, just don’t!”
“God,” I exclaimed, balling my fists. “Why are you so upset with me? What did I do?”
“I’m not—” He cut off his words as he realized he was yelling, and inhaled deeply. On the exhale he continued. “I’m not upset with you, okay?” he lied. “Greta and I had some things to discuss and they’ve put me on edge. I’m sorry for yelling. I’ve got to go.”
His fear reached out to burn the lining in my nose. “Wait a minute. Things? Like me?”
“Things,” he mimicked sharply, “that are confidential. It’s not your business what I discussed with Greta.”
“It’s my business when you come out of that room treating me like a stranger. Like an enemy.” I folded my arms as he opened his mouth to deny it. “The conversation lingers on you, Warren. It smells like an industrial solution. It’s metallic and cold, and it’s heightening as we speak. Why were you discussing me with Greta?”
“I don’t have to tell you anything,” he whispered. “I’ve done enough for you.”
I drew back, surprised. Who was this man? I angled my head, exploring the air around him with my thoughts; nasal receptors probing like centipede legs.
“Stop it,” he ordered, and an invisible mental wall rose like a tower around him. He pushed past me and began stalking away.
“What the hell is wrong with you?”
“It’s you!” he yelled, whirling on me with hot and furious eyes. “Don’t you get it? It’s not me, it’s you!”
I stared into those angry eyes, watched as they banked, smoked, then dimmed. Unfeeling now. Apathetic. Dead. He’s shut down on me, I thought with injured wonder. He just closed me out, turned me off.
I felt my eyes grow wide, and my breath stuttered out of me on a whisper. “You bastard. You’re the one who brought me into this, remember? You yelled ‘Eureka!’ and jumped in front of my car! You knocked me out and made me into this,” I said, motioning up and down Olivia’s body.
“You want your life back, Joanna?” he asked, surprising me by using my real name so openly. I looked around but whipped my attention back to him when he took a step toward me. “Or, excuse me, I mean that empty excuse of an existence you called a life? Well, fine. Once we find a way to get you out of here, we’ll cut you loose. Physically. Mentally. Completely. Happy?”
I would have been; a handful of days, or even hours, earlier. But this was abandonment, and even less of a choice than he’d offered me before. So why now?
I tilted my head and took a step toward him. “You’re afraid of me.”
Alarm lashed through my gut like a whip, and Warren’s jaw clenched. He hadn’t wanted me to feel that, and tried to cover the slip with words. “We were wrong. I was wrong. We should have never approached you, never introduced you to the Zodiac at such a late age.”
I ignored his words, paying heed only to the emotions rippling like hot oil beneath the waxy exterior. “You don’t trust me.”
“I don’t trust the Shadow in you!”
My body jerked before I could control it and my heart skipped a beat. A wire of panic began to spread outward from the core of my belly. He’d been the last person in this subterranean hell I’d have expected to utter those words. Even though I suspected Warren of hiding secrets, I thought they’d had to do with Tekla or some troop dynamic I had yet to understand. But not me. Somehow, I’d taken it for granted, from the beginning, that he’d always be on my side. “And what about the Light? What about my mother’s side?”