“Believe me, once was enough.” She leaned forward to study the drama unfolding below.
“What did you do to that poor woman?” I finally asked.
“Nothing.” She tilted her head prettily. “She did it to herself.”
“Because she was a prostitute? Because she made her living off the streets?”
“Now, Joanna,” she sang-she seemed to love saying my real name. Shooting me a sly smile, she blinked twice. “You know we don’t play favorites when it comes to harming mortals. Besides, how could we be in this alley as well as at the other hundred and eighty-seven places at the same time this brutality was occurring?”
“A hundred and eighty-seven?” I repeated faintly. That was more than in the past…what? Five years combined?
“That’s what the preliminary reports have confirmed,” she said, and I was sickened to hear a note of pride tinge her voice. If there was any doubt she was Shadow, it was gone now. “Who knows how many have yet to be found.”
All I could think to ask was, “Why?”
That little laugh tinkled out of her, subdued given the other agents, but infused with delight. “Chalk it up to collateral damage, Joanna. We had to cast our net far and wide. I told you we had something big planned for the agents of Light. The real question is how.”
I didn’t know. How did a person burn to death with marks on only ten percent of their body, at most? How did it happen all over the city at approximately the same time? How were the Shadow agents doing it seemingly from remote? And how was this to affect the troop? The same gnawing sense of anxiety I’d had when talking to Regan on the phone came over me, that unease as I’d watched the fireworks from the boneyard, feeling I was missing something so obvious it was staring me right in the face.
I gasped and looked up to find Regan doing exactly that.
“It’s a virus,” I said softly, and watched recognition dawn mockingly on her face. She tilted her head slightly, a silent indication to go on. “It’s airborne, released with the fireworks from atop Valhalla. The spores needed time to drift, to settle, to infect. That’s it? That’s the plan? To make thousands of people sick just so you have a chance of infecting one or two agents of Light?”
I couldn’t think of anything more heartless and inhumane. I recalled the way the gunpowder had possessed a peppery note, how the sky had filled with smoke-God, with disease-and the ground in the boneyard had disappeared in a haze of filmy, infested clouds. A cursed battlefield. The second sign of the Zodiac.
I swallowed hard, pressing a hand to my lips. I knew my thoughts were flashing across my face like a ticker on television, but I couldn’t stop them. I’d stood in that boneyard, breathing deeply, trying to scent out the irregular notes on the wind…and that had been just what the Shadows had wanted.
I imagined myself in the place of the woman sprawled carelessly and obscenely on the ground below me, imagined what had to occur inside the body to end up that way, and I couldn’t help but shudder.
“Don’t worry, Joanna.” Regan leaned forward until her eyes found mine, and she smiled reassuringly. “You’re immune.”
Then she blew me a kiss, and lifted her brows as if to say, See what I mean?
I didn’t…and then I did. The ground swayed beneath me so suddenly, I had to grab on to the ledge to steady myself. The air left my body in a relieved and astonished whoosh, and I closed my eyes, remembering the way Liam had reacted in the aquarium when Regan had kissed me.
“You infected me,” I said, faintly.
“I protected you,” she corrected, and when I opened my eyes she smiled again. “I gave you immunity. Looks like you owe me another one.”
“I owe you?” I asked incredulously. “For setting a deadly virus loose on the valley?”
“Don’t be dramatic,” she said, and rolled her eyes. “Only a small percentage of the population is susceptible to this strain, and even they had to be in the infectious range when the spores fell.”
So the agents below couldn’t contract the virus by touching the corpse…and they’d all been safely ensconced in the sanctuary the night of the fireworks. So that was a relief. But still. “The valley’s almost two million strong!”
She winced, seemingly sympathetic. “Urban living’s a bitch.”
I looked back down at the woman on the ground, knowing that whatever her occupation, whatever her reasons for being out on these streets, she didn’t deserve this. No one did.
“They don’t appreciate you, you know,” Regan said, mistaking my pained expression for the agents, who were packing up and getting ready to move out. “You should be down there with them, not up here squatting, having to do your job from afar.”
A small flicker of resentment stirred in me at those words, but I smashed it down, refusing to open my mind to it. “They’re just doing what they think best.”
She made a falsely considering note in the back of her throat. “And look where it got them. Had they been more proactive in the past six months, like you, this might have been stopped.”
I looked at her sharply. “Could it have been?”
She shrugged. “We’ll never know, will we? You should cut your losses, Joanna. Come with me and I’ll show you all that’s truly possible. As your ally I’ll make sure you’re never lacking in knowledge, assistance, or friendship. We’ll be the best in generations, you and I. The strongest, the most powerful.”
“The most evil.”
“Tomato, to-mah-to.” She flicked a pebble she’d been toying with over the ledge, then grinned. “At least come and see how much fun we’re having watching your buddies chase their own tails. We have a pool going…how many mortals will die before the first agent of Light figures out how to stop it? I’m taking the over.” She laughed again, this time louder, and I knew the sound had been heard because there was a tensed shuffling below us, then dead silence.
I didn’t care. I was ready to haul her giggling ass over the side of the ledge-discovery and punishment be damned-and she must have sensed it, because before I found my feet she was away, positioned in the middle of the rooftop, the ancient air-conditioning unit safely between us. From there she pulled a slip of paper from her bosom and held it aloft.
“What is it?” I whispered sarcastically. “More protection?”
“Joaquin’s home address.”
My eyes went from hers to the paper and back again. She stared at me knowingly. “Gotta protect myself as well, don’t I? You stay there long enough for me to put it on the ledge behind me, and it’s yours. Deal?”
I didn’t want to make any more deals with this psychopathic bitch, but I didn’t have long to make a decision. The agents were active again below, disposing of the body, dispersing to their next locations, most likely heading back to the sanctuary. I had to get there first…but what to do about Regan? I’d let her live once already, and look what had happened.
Then again, she’d let me live twice. I bit my lip, thinking fast. I’d already be in a heap of trouble when my deeds in the aquarium were found out, but that wouldn’t be until next Wednesday, another five days. The question was, could I find Joaquin and exact my revenge before Warren read the new manual? Because one thing was certain: once he found out what I’d done, he’d never let me exit the sanctuary again.
I glanced back at the paper between Regan’s fingertips. An address. Well, it didn’t get much easier than that, did it?
A shout sounded below me, and I knew I had to move quickly. I nodded, then settled back into a docile crouch. Regan backed up, scooping up a shard of glass without taking her eyes off me, and secured the note with it on the opposite ledge. Then, without glancing, she stepped backward, dropping from view.
Her gleeful yell followed her descent.
I launched myself forward as alarm rose in the alley, yanked the paper from beneath its weight, and vaulted to the rooftop across from me. Somersaulting out of my landing, I kept sprinting until I ran out of rooftops, then leaped to the ground in a blind freefall, feet bicycling madly in the air. I landed in a crouch and took off from there. I didn’t dare look back, or stop, and by the time I reached my car I knew no one had followed.