“You’re depressed.” Her voice no longer rippled in long echoes from that see-through throat, and I wondered how she’d managed to copy my tone, my cadence. Of all things to imitate, voice had to be the hardest.
“I’m tired.” And maybe a little depressed. The desire to curl into a fetal position was almost palpable.
“No, it’s more than that.” She tilted her head, eyes catching in the thin light. Those hadn’t changed at least. They still swirled like clouds caught beneath glass. “Could it be because the Shadow Cancer has your mortal lover?”
“Why bother asking the question if you already know the answer?”
She shrugged a slim, muscled shoulder and casually perched a hand on the bag at her side. Like we were just chatting, I thought wryly. As if she wasn’t here to kill me. “I wasn’t sure you knew about their carnal escapades…the way he took her on the park bench. How she opened to him on that rooftop.”
I closed my eyes. Regan was “marking” the city so no matter where I went, seeking her, I’d smell them, and I’d know.
“You two collected famous quotes as children, didn’t you?”
My eyes flipped open like shades. “How’d you know that?”
She ignored the question, continuing her dramatic monologue. “You swapped them back and forth in a secret language all your own, an ode to the love blossoming between you like a rose. And as we know, ‘A Rose by any other name…’”
Smartass. I waited for her to finish the quote, but she suddenly looked distracted, head twisting slowly from side to side like she was trying to work out a kink, or dislodge a thought. The drawn-out silence continued until I finally realized that no, it hadn’t. Buzzing, so faint at first it was like a swarming hive approaching from a distance, grew louder, but then the doppelgänger shook her head violently, her neck stretching so thin it was no wider than a candy cane. I thought, and was hoping, it’d snap, but then the buzzing dropped off like a switch had been flipped. The doppelgänger’s skull righted itself, a bit bobblehead-esque at first, but normal enough once she’d stilled.
“If she hasn’t gotten it by now, she won’t,” she muttered, like someone was standing beside her. She caught my raised brows, and almost looked embarrassed. “Give me your heart.”
Surely I’d known it was going to come to this? Otherwise why leave Ben with Regan last night? Why leave Hunter, who could have helped, today? Wandering the world in search of Shadows was only possible if there was still a world to wander, and sacrificing myself was the only way to ensure that. So I’d go down in the manuals as a hero, my death would return Jasmine’s chi to her in full, and it would certainly put a definitive ending to the question of the suspected “rise of my Shadow side.”
Still, fighting to the death was one thing, but simply lying down and submitting? I’d sworn that off a decade ago. “I don’t know why you can’t just tell me the answer to your riddle. A sense and a referent. One noun, two aspects. Especially now, when you’re going to kill me anyway.”
It’d be nice to know what-other than the city’s survival-I was dying for.
“That’s right. You don’t know. That’s exactly the problem.” As she took a step closer, the planes of her cheeks rippled, then settled into an unsettlingly familiar upward curve. One last viewing, and she’ll have you. “Look, if I could have told you before now, don’t you think I would have? You’d have figured it out long ago, we’d both have what we need. But like anyone, my actions must speak for themselves.”
“Your actions?” I scoffed, unable to help myself. “Well, let’s see. You’re unforgivably careless with the vibration of matter, and you want to kill me just so you can gain more power. So, all in all, your actions tell me you’re no different than the Tulpa.”
She froze at the insult, lips trembling slightly before they clamped shut. I stared at her. She stared back. Oddly, it went on this way for a while. When I still said nothing, she finally sighed. “I can’t wait any longer. I am sorry.”
The static sounded again, which would’ve been telling if I’d recognized it early enough. Before that could happen I was sprawled on my back, breath knocked from my chest, shocked that someone who had yet to take full corporeal form could weigh so much. The doppelgänger’s eyes glittered as they bored into mine, then raced over my face, seeing past the breathy, soft Olivia exterior to what was beneath. There was a slight adjustment to her nose, I saw it shift and stick, her heart-shaped chin squaring, the eyes deepening. When they darkened, the clouds disappearing in a pupil of black-literally the eye of the storm-I knew I was fucked.
She licked her lips, and I saw her teeth had squared in her mouth, the middle two slightly crooked, but only if you knew to look. I swallowed hard. Almost there. Almost me.
“I know it doesn’t seem like it, but I really am on your side. I have been all along. But another agent of Light will figure it out. Eventually.” She sighed, like she was imagining things differently, then sighed again. “Maybe it’s like that mask. It’s just too close to your face to see it clearly.”
I turned my head to find the animist’s mask sprawled right next to me. I hadn’t yet gotten a chance to return it to Xavier’s and had forgotten I even had it with me until now. It must have fallen out of my bag when she’d tackled me, and it stared up at the sky of splintered reality like it saw something I couldn’t.
I had a thought, smiled slightly, and gazed at the fragile webbing above us, as if at the same spot the mask had pinpointed. The doppelgänger, looming over me, frowned. Then she turned her head to see what I did, which gave me my chance. “You can eat my heart, but you’re not going to become me.”
I’d had enough of people doing that, and I slapped the mask over my face before she could turn back around.
I jerked beneath her, head flying back to hit the concrete with the g-force of pure chaotic violence. The doppelgänger howled above me, but the mask was already fusing greedily to my skull. The synthesis happened in the snap of fingers, and colors too bright to see swirled behind my lids like whipping snakes. I couldn’t see out, and felt for a moment like I couldn’t breathe either. I concentrated on that alone, breathing in and out, and eventually the dizziness lessened, colors fading until I was deathly calm and the mask only pulsed gently against my cheeks.
Then it all ceased, and this time there was no vision, no dream, to replace it. My mind was whitewashed, shallow breathing echoing loudly in my ears, punctuating the silence, my thoughts lost even from myself.
“Olivia?” the doppelgänger asked, then “Joanna?”
“What?” Hollow…like the mask.
“What do you see?”
She meant what did I think about what I saw…but I saw nothing. “J-just so you know, you can’t remove this mask. It has adhered to my face.” Better. Almost like myself.
“No shit,” she said, her weight shifting as she fell back on her heels. “Not until the trapped stream-of-consciousness has played your future out in full. After that it will release, and I can look until my little heart is content…no pun intended.”
But her black humor didn’t interest me. It was what she’d said before that, revealing a purpose to the animist’s mask that no one had correctly guessed.
“It tells the future,” I whispered. But that meant my future was blank. I sat in the silent wake of those punishing sheets of light, in total solitude, without even thoughts to keep me company. I’d seen destruction to the city before, death to the inhabitants, my troop, the being on top of me, along with the Tulpa and my mother. So maybe that had changed? Either I was really going to die now, or maybe…“It’s mine to write.”