For the first time Joaquin looked unsure. He opened his mouth to speak, but I held up a manual of Light, one of the ones he couldn’t touch or read, and could only fathom what was inside. It was a red herring, contained nothing pertinent to this conversation, but he didn’t know that.
“Well, that’s a secret, isn’t it? Though it looks like you have some secrets of your own.” He tipped his chair forward and leaned his elbows on the table as he studied me. “Where is the rest of your troop, anyway? All still holed up underground? Did the revelation of the second sign scare them that much? Or don’t they know you’re acting independently?” Just in case I didn’t catch the inflection in his voice, he mouthed the word rogue to me.
“They’re biding their time,” I shot back, assuring him…and perhaps myself. “As for the second sign, a battlefield’s only cursed for those destined to die there.”
“And you’re so unconcerned that you can while away your hours looking for buried treasure?”
Again, that buried treasure remark. I tilted my head, thought, and went with my instincts. “Like you, you mean?”
He scoffed, but I saw the way his jaw tensed first. Interesting. “I admit, I enjoy slumming here every once in a while. I find the neutrality of this place intoxicating. It’s a fresh slate, a blank page, if you will,” he said, motioning again to Zane. “A void where anything is possible.”
But I could tell from the way he dismissed it that there was more to it than that. “But that’s not why you’re here today.”
“No, it’s not,” he said, surprising me with the ease of his admission. His fingers began winding themselves around each other again, like little snakes coiling to strike. “One of my friends has been missing since last night. I lost his trail after he disappeared through a portal and never returned.”
“And you think he stopped by for a little game of Dungeons and Dragons with your flunky over there?” I said, causing Sebastian to snarl again.
“I think a place that caters to both sides of the Zodiac is a good place to start looking when your friends vanish without a trace.” He tilted his head as if he’d just had an idea. “Strange that you’re here today, of all days. You haven’t recently seen a male Shadow with blinding blue eyes, about yea tall, have you?”
“Zane’s the record keeper,” I said, wanting to keep last night’s events to myself for as long as possible. “Ask him.”
“You’re the only agent of Light who’s been trying to unbalance the Zodiac,” he said flatly. “So I’m asking you.”
“Well, I don’t make it a habit of kibitzing with the Shadow side. As you know.”
“So is that a no, little Archer?”
My jaw clenched. “A resounding one.”
“Liar.”
“I’m not. I didn’t kill your Shadow agent.”
Joaquin leaned back in the tiny chair, somehow managing to give an air of dignified composure. It had to be challenging for a walking corpse. Steepling his fingers, he stared at me over the top of his hands. “Funny, but I don’t remember mentioning he was dead.”
I froze and began cursing my stupidity before realizing I could just tell him. I could reveal Regan’s identity, tell Joaquin about her betrayal of Liam, and she’d be dead before the sun set this evening. The problem was, she’d either offer my Olivia identity in return for her life, or be tortured into revealing it, and that’d put me in a worse spot than I was now. As it was, I still had two weeks to kill Joaquin, find Regan, and to get it all done before Warren really pulled the rug out from under me. I glanced across at Joaquin. Between the two, I’d take my chances with Regan.
Besides, baiting the man in front of me was a pleasure. “Well, admittedly, that big ol’ shillelagh was too mighty a weapon for a ‘little Archer’ like myself…but I used both hands when I bashed that Irish bastard’s skull in, and he didn’t seem to know the difference at all.”
Joaquin sat up so fast I think he surprised himself. Everyone else had gone unnaturally still, and that’s when I realized he hadn’t been joking about Liam being a friend. His face slackened and paled, and that brought a pure, genuine smile to mine.
I leaned forward and rubbed salt into the wound. “He screamed like a baby when I shattered all his limbs. Between the blood and snot and tears, I could barely make out what he was saying, but I have to confess. His begging made me feel so”-I took in a deep breath-“powerful.”
Joaquin had lowered his head, and I watched the rise and fall of his chest, saw when it finally slowed and he looked up at me from beneath his brows. His eyes were as hard and cold as I remembered them, and his hands weren’t exactly shaking on the card table, but they were twitching. This, I realized, was Joaquin in a fury.
“Come on outside, Archer,” he said in a voice soft as a viper’s. “You can even bring your little bow and arrow, as we already know what happens when you try to fight without it.” He made a motion, and I knew he was stroking himself under the table. He waited for my reaction, and though I wanted to swallow the bile that had risen reflexively in my gorge, I shook my head slowly, mindful of Jasmine’s protective aura. “Not here. Not now.”
I’d like to say that Regan’s promise to lead me to him-that old ace in the hole-had no effect on my decision. But even as I told myself that, I knew it wasn’t true. Without that, I’d be out the door already. This was the man who’d taken my innocence from me. Who’d taken Ben from me. For the latter alone he deserved to die.
But it also looked supremely confident for me to turn down an opportunity to fight in broad daylight, and I knew how such confidence could play on a person’s mind in the darkest hours of night, when they were alone but for the sharklike questions circling in their own mind. I wanted to poison Joaquin’s mind like that. I wanted uncertainty to seep into that rotted brain and slow his movements, jumble his thoughts, and make him fear the worst-case scenario.
So it wasn’t that I didn’t want to battle Joaquin right then, in broad daylight, with children pressed against the shop windows behind me, because I did. But I had Regan’s promise to help me further, and now I had Joaquin pissed enough to look for me himself. I’d use both those things to my advantage, and then he’d do more than die at my hands. He’d suffer first.
Right now it was enough that his smile had faltered, and his stroking had stopped. He knew why I was saying no. He recognized the Shadow in me as clearly as if he were looking in a mirror. I dropped my fists on the card table, and leaned so close I made his eye twitch. “I made a vow to run your rancid, decaying body down, and I’m renewing that vow now.”
He stood, perhaps more comfortable with a small distance between us, or maybe he just wanted to be taller. His lip curled as he looked down at me, and he ran a hand over his perfectly coiffed hair, either unimpressed by my words or giving a very good impression of it. “Your passion will be your downfall.”
I smirked. “Passion would imply that I give a shit about your presence on this earth. It’s much simpler than that,” I said, though it wasn’t. “I just want to hunt.”
And now I was speaking a language he understood.
“Agent of Light,” I said, in response to his stiffening posture. “Enemy. Duh.”
Carl snickered beside me.
Joaquin straightened his suit, pulling at the cuffs with those dangerous hands like he was an eighteenth-century dandy instead of a twenty-first-century supervillain. “Even the Tulpa can’t keep me from defending myself under such a bald threat, Joanna. You’ve opened the floodgates.” He jerked his head at Zane, recording our words. “I’ll give you your war.”
I shrugged. “Would you like a little tactical advice, then?”