“Your turn, Olivia.”
I didn’t want to. I knew it was my almost pathological need for control, a knee-jerk reaction caused by past helplessness that had me mentally rearing back when he held the animist’s mask out to me, but I thought I saw the wood twitch in his hand, and it didn’t look benign to me at all. It looked anticipatory. It looked hungry.
You’re safe, I told myself, taking the mask, feeling nothing but smooth wood in the weight against my palm. I was in the warehouse, in the panic room, surrounded by my troop. What could happen?
The magic slipped on easily, dimming my awareness of my surroundings like a sun visor, and the muscles in my thighs twitched as a facsimile of me strode forward to knock on the door of Xavier’s home office, a reproduction of my conduit loaded and locked.
The door was ajar and swung open like every horror movie cliché I’d ever seen. Apparently none too bright, the faux me made my way through the smoke of the exterior office to the hidden room beyond the far bookcase. I stepped through the threshold…and onto the roof of the tallest hotel in Vegas, recognizing the view from the apex of Valhalla. It was night, and the Strip was spilled out below me like a blinding waterfall, headlights and digital billboards cascading to and fro in a rapid river of activity that couldn’t reach me up here. Even the wind had been muted, I noted, looking around, which was when I spotted the two chairs balanced on the hotel’s ledge.
Not chairs, I thought, drawing closer. Thrones. Gold-plated, cushionless monstrosities I’d seen before, and I tilted my head as I slipped in front of the larger one, lifting my bow when I saw the Tulpa reclined there, dressed like a mafia don. I’d been anticipating him.
He tracked me with his eyes, the rest of him still, balanced on that ledge. I edged over to the smaller throne, and took a seat opposite him, my left foot dangling off into space. I wasn’t afraid, and I don’t know if his smile was because of that or in spite of it.
“All of this,” he said, motioning below, “Can be yours.”
I looked at the vibrant city, and despite the zinging neon, random flares, and bustling crowds, saw peace. The smooth currents of air rippling over the quiet desert made me homesick, if only because I was so clearly removed from it. “If?” I asked, returning my gaze to him.
He chuckled in answer, and bent forward to pick up a brown paper lunch bag. His throne wobbled, one gilt leg halfway over the ledge. Bulging at the bottom, the bag snapped open crisply, and he lifted out a sandwich wrapped in foil.
“Split it with me?”
The city danced below us. The air continued to swirl. I glanced back at the sandwich and after a moment more, inclined my head. A truce, if possible, would be nice.
He handed me half, not a barbed claw in sight, and I unwrapped it, first the foil, then plastic wrap.
“Meat, tomato, cheese, lettuce, and mustard…your favorite, right?”
My eyes came to rest on the bag now perched on his golden armrest, and I caught myself mid-nod, mid-bite. The bottom of the bag was oozing blackly. The sandwich pulsed once in my palm.
The Tulpa crossed his legs at the knee and smiled. “A divided heart, get it?”
I lunged, and knew from the air’s current that my throne had toppled from the ledge. Horns honked as it turned into a missile; mortals screamed. The Tulpa tried to get away, but his teetering throne banked, and he threw himself toward the rooftop…right into my arms. His jugular called to me, as brightly pulsing as the city below us, and I grabbed for it. I saw the seams only because I was so close, and ignoring the rest of his body, I squeezed. Two muted pops sounded, like snaps coming undone, then another jaw appeared above my pressing thumbs. With a howl of rage I tore the Tulpa’s face away, lifting so tissue and tendons ripped…and the doppelgänger gazed up at me with a smile.
“It’s better this way,” she choked the words out, strangling. “A person cannot be divided against herself.”
I squeezed harder. Her smile widened. And in the moment the light left her eyes, her shining skull popped like a balloon, suds and frothy bubbles flying everywhere. I yelled out in victory. The sun took to the sky like a comet…and revealed one more face beneath my clenched palms.
The jaw was slender and heart-shaped, the fragile skin smooth and too white. Frantically I wiped away the foam…and stared down into my mother’s waxy, sightless face.
I pivoted…and found the city rotting like a carcass beneath a scorching desert sun.
I could only stare as all the people I knew rotted with it.
“Olivia! Olivia! It’s off, stop struggling!”
It was only then I became aware of my voice, a sandpaper scream sawing through my brain. Get it off! Get it off! Make it stop!
A white-hot pain arched around my jaw as my cheeks parted from my bones, as if cleaved with a burning, jagged blade. “God! Oh God!”
“I had to,” said an unfamiliar voice. No, not unfamiliar. New. I opened my eyes, blinked back stinging tears, and saw Kimber staring down at me with those hard blue eyes. “The textbooks say it’s the most effective way of separating joined psyches. The skin should grow back.”
Skin? And should? I panicked, but then Micah pushed her aside, and my vision narrowed on him. His reaction would tell me whether I should worry, whether the biting cold all around my jawline was as serious as I thought. Whether the ripping of my own skin from my bones should be cause for alarm.
He wouldn’t meet my eyes as he spoke in an overly soothing voice, “It’s going to be fine.”
“Oh shit…” I began to cry.
“Shh.” He lifted his hands, fingertips pressing gently across my face. I was numb, and didn’t feel them. “No, it is. Your magic is already grafting the skin back in place. You’ll be as good as new in a few minutes.”
It would have been like consulting with any other doctor if he hadn’t used magic and grafting in the same sentence. Laughter wanted to bubble up out of me, except it couldn’t get past my throat, past the skin rent from ear to ear. I squeezed my eyes shut, and both wished for, and dreaded, my complete healing.
Because then I’d have to tell them of the vision contradicting all the premonitions they’d experienced. I opened my eyes and found Tekla ushering everyone from the room. Chandra was the last, and she looked back, met my gaze, and shuddered.
The sooner you start respecting that your compromised physiology has made you different, the sooner you can start approaching aberrant situations from a new beginning point…
Fuck you, Chandra, I thought, and let myself cry again. Just fuck you. Fuck the Tulpa…and fuck me too.
13
Half an hour later I was alone with Warren in what amounted to a crow’s nest above the cavernous expanse of Hunter’s workshop. There was a bed pressed against two walls near the back, a simple press-wood desk pushed against the forward railing, which was where I was seated, and nothing but a tattered rug in between. Hunter didn’t use the place often, preferring instead to return to the sanctuary each evening, crossing realities as faithfully as most people put in their nine-to-fives.
Half the troop had left, though Vanessa and Riddick were talking in low voices as they waited for their partners, while Hunter showed Kimber the conduit he was designing for her. I watched her gesture excitedly below us, beaming, no doubt telling him it was just how she’d envisioned it while wearing the animist’s mask.