I finally found a secondary key to overlay the primary map. It contained all the suspected locations of Shadow entry into our alternate reality, though why Warren wanted that studied was beyond me. I pored over the maps so long my eyes blurred, and eventually even the insistent throb from the injury to my thigh couldn’t keep me awake.
Hunter’s predawn rap on the door had me jolting from my slumped position before I even knew I’d fallen asleep. He’d given the steel door an extra hard knock and I cursed him as I wiped drool from the map, then gathered up my things. I collected the copies I’d made and rolled them to fit in my bag along with my mask and manual-feeling a sharp pang of loss that I wasn’t also carrying my conduit-then put the originals back in place before whipping open the door.
Hunter’s eyes only grazed mine before he wordlessly whirled toward the south bay. I followed him into a cool predawn glow punctuated with the city’s fading lights. He waited as I buckled up, eyes hidden behind mirrored lenses, thoughts and emotions equally veiled. We found Gregor, and crossed realities in a hard, cold silence.
Yet we didn’t part ways once inside the sanctuary, instead heading straight to the lab. Chandra was already there, partitioned off from the rest of the room and bent over her baby, an ornamental rock garden composed of the same porous sandstone that gave the nearby Red Rock Canyon its name. She was dressed in sweats, her hair haphazard at best, as she measured from three pails of grit, sand, and peat for layering among the sandstone crevices. A steaming cup of joe was perched on a rocky red outcrop, but I could tell it hadn’t hit her yet. She even snapped at Hunter before he explained about Regan, the compound, and the tracking device, though he left out the details of my run-in with her the previous night, which had me softening toward him all over again.
Toying absently with the ornamental grass fountaining from the terraced slope, Chandra confirmed it was indeed possible to bury a tracking device in a synthetic blend of tinted putty, and though expensive and time-consuming to design, the technology had been around for some time. At least among the supernaturals.
“Get undressed,” Chandra told me, switching shoes as she jerked her head toward the sterile half of the lab, and regarding me like I was the biggest ass she’d ever met. It was hard to argue. “We have to be sure it’s entirely gone.”
Hunter left without another word and I disrobed again, though unlike his examination the night before, Chandra’s clinical stare left me cold. She wore gloves as she scraped my skin, and said nothing more. As chagrined as I was that she knew I’d been played by Regan once again, I was still relieved to know the cause of Regan’s near-constant presence. A tracking device I could understand. I could even respect the balls it’d taken to trick me into accepting it. It was certainly preferable to thinking she’d developed some sort of ability to be omnipresent in my life.
“I attributed the itching to the doppelgänger,” I told Chandra, speaking aloud while I worked it out for myself. “She scratched my chest, and that’s where I first felt the tingling.”
“Because you applied more makeup there than anywhere else.” She paused, fingers light on my arm, before continuing without meeting my eye. “It makes sense you’d be focused on that instead of your arm or leg.”
I caught myself before I drew back in surprise, but Chandra felt my muscles tense beneath her touch. She kept her eyes on her work, double-checking my arm as I continued to stare. Had she just stood up for me?
She cleared her throat. “Where were you when you felt the device go live?”
Everywhere, I thought, glancing around the sterile room. Other than the bright rock garden behind the glass partition, it was all white and chrome and flat, open spaces. “I’ll have to think about it. I’ve been wearing it for two weeks.”
“Write it all down. We’ll triangulate your locations. Maybe Regan has positioned herself, or at least the equipment used to find you, square in the middle.”
In the middle of the city. In the middle of my life. I sighed, not caring Chandra was close enough to scent my fatigue. Regan had attacked my body and tricked me into doing the same to an innocent. Hunter had all but obliterated me emotionally…it was nice to be somewhere safe and let someone else make the decisions for a moment. I closed my eyes and listened to the soft scrape of the blade, knowing even though she didn’t like me, Chandra wouldn’t hurt me. Not right now, anyway.
In fact, she was being unusually gentle. “Turn left. Into the lamplight.”
My thoughts blared in the deep silence, and they weren’t even proper thoughts, but fragments and images warring for space in my mind. I needed some real sleep to push them all away, but I’d settle for something to beat against. My eyes slitted open and I regarded Chandra coolly. She smelled like linen, as sterile and lifeless as the room, and with no emotional peg to hang my hat on. I’d make do.
“So, what?” I said, clearing my throat, setting the bait. “No lecture on how wrong and screwed up and impulsive I am?”
The tweezers faltered, her lips thinned as she fought the retort that wanted to come, but she swallowed it down. “You did talk to me about a compound for the injured changeling, and you even mentioned Regan had made you think of it. You didn’t know about this technology, but I did, and I should have put two and two together. Here, you moved again. Back to the left.”
Okay, I thought, my frown falling into an open mouth, someone had obviously spiked Chandra’s coffee with a passive pill. Because she never, ever conceded shit to me. And while she hadn’t come right out and apologized, it wasn’t far off.
So maybe if Chandra was going to take baby steps toward reconciling our partnership-or at least try being civil-I could too.
“Can you still do it? Duplicate the sample, I mean?”
I explained about Li, and how she’d looked the day before at Master Comics. That led to her questioning what I’d been doing there to begin with, which led to the revelation that Dylan and Kade had suggested I kill Jasmine…and if I’d started off well, the tightening of her jaw as I continued to speak let me know she was beginning to rethink her open-mindedness. But full disclosure-or as near as I could come-was needed if I was going to convince her to help. Besides, as soon as the manuals of Light started appearing again, she’d find out anyway. If I held back now, it’d be worse when she did.
But the roundup didn’t sound so good. And I hadn’t even included my agreement to work with the Tulpa, my latest run-in with Regan, or how I’d nearly killed an innocent.
“Look, before you can say it, I know I screwed up with Jasmine. I’m trying to figure out what I did wrong so I can fix Li and bring the manuals back to their original state, but in the meantime I could use some help on this. You didn’t see her, Chandra. That little girl was falling apart before my eyes. Like the Tulpa’s touch had infected her and the poison was spreading. It was awful, and she’s just a baby.”
Chandra watched me, saying nothing, and I looked down at my linked hands, finally allowing myself to feel the guilt coiled up in my gut as well. I swallowed hard so my voice could be heard. “I’d switch places with her if I could, take it all on myself. I’d die if it meant this little girl could have her life back, but I don’t know how to do any of those things.”
She drew back, her hair still fucked up, but her eyes less blurry, and her expression nonplussed. “You would, wouldn’t you? Even with all…this.” She motioned down the length of my body, indicating the glossy package.