City Of Souls (32 page)

I opened my mouth to agree, but hesitated again. What if Jacks returned to Vegas and used whatever information I’d given him against my troop? What if he asked who I really was, and my Olivia Archer cover was blown? What if he returned and told the Tulpa everything Regan was still holding close to her shredded chest?

What if I went back with nothing and the sky fell, and Li Chan died at the age of eight?

I leaned against the London window, where it was—surprise—raining. “A dance for information, then?”

“A tango,” he replied with a twist of his lips, “for things we can use to harm one another later.”

“How dysfunctional,” I remarked lightly.

“Most relationships are.” Another light sparked in his beautiful eyes. “Note, I saved you the trouble of falling in love with me first.”

“Only because you know the separation will be a bitch.” I gave him a broad smile. “Did you have an actual question?”

He cocked his head to the left. “I’d like to know what you think you’re fighting for?”

I drew back before I could stop myself. “What kind of question is that?”

His grin was an unnecessary reminder of our agreement. “One that will tell me what you risked to get here.”

It was clever. Big guy. Body like a weapon. Yet Jacks already knew, as I was learning, that not every battle was fought with bow-and-arrow, or fists. “You should be able to guess at that if you’ve done your homework. I mean, don’t you know who I am?”

“You sure that’s the question you want to ask?”

“No,” I said immediately, retracting it.

He raised his brows, then shrugged, so I’d continue wondering just how much he knew. “I know why you’re here. That’s different, though, than why
you
think you’re here.”

“Boring superhero crap.” I waved a hand through the air. “Save the world, all that. You wouldn’t understand.”

“Ah, but I understand that no one acts without some deep internal motivation. So why is this personal for you? What would you cross worlds to save?”

I bit my lip and stared at him so long that hours probably passed in Vegas. I don’t know what I was searching for. Maybe some inkling that the agent of Light he’d once been was still living inside that bulging frame, some show of remorse. Something I could connect to.

But the more I stared, the more I saw our differences. We’d switched lives, I realized. I’d become an accepted part of the troop he’d left. He now worked alone, and the self-will that had gotten him thrown out so long ago had calcified into unwavering self-preservation. It was all he knew, all that made sense. So trying to explain why I’d give up my very soul for the chance to save someone else was like trying to explain chocolate to a caveman. It was a decadence he’d never live to know.

“You’re morally bankrupt,” I said instead.

“Untrue. I’m as honest as a person can be while impersonating two people at the same time.” The intimation being that I was not. “Now answer the question.”

I backed up to where he’d been standing when I’d entered, and looked out on a wind-whipped Vegas. She was taking a beating on the other side of the peaceful pane. I tapped my smooth fingertips off the glass, and they chinked unnaturally. “That,” I finally answered, pointing. “I’m doing this for my home.”

“I already told you, that answer isn’t going to cut it. You can’t tell me you feel for all of Vegas. It’s not personal enough.”

I shook my head. See? I knew he wouldn’t understand. “I didn’t say Vegas. I said home.” I swallowed hard, and continued to stare out that bleak window. “It’s a place…borne out in a person.”

An awkward silence bloomed as he waited for me to continue. I lifted my hand to the window, thinking of Ben—because I’d once told him he was my home—and of Jasmine and Li, of my troop and Cher and the mortals I felt a kinship with because I’d been one once. And though I was here for all that, it was Jacks’s question that made me realize I’d come primarily for
me
. I wanted my city saved for
me
. I wanted my troop secured so I’d have security. I’d finally found a place where I fit in, felt whole, and saw—for the first time—an actual future. It included being a twenty-first century superhero. And, getting really personal, it included Hunter.

Hunter, who made my mouth dry up just by walking away. Who made it water when he came back, like I was anticipating the best meal of my life. I thought of how my fingers involuntarily twitched when I caught sight of him, how I reached for him without even realizing. Around Hunter, all my senses came to life. Not dormant ones, not long-lost ones, but present ones, brightly alive.

“I was with him just before I left.” I thought of the night we’d spent together, the madness in our lovemaking, the awareness of how fleeting precious things could be. The need to consume and rage and hold on all at the same time. I sucked in a deep breath, and the memory wrapped around my heart like a shell protecting the life within. I smiled. “Yeah. He’s why I’m really here.”

“Don’t tell me that the prophesied savior of our world is willing to forego destiny for a mere man? I mean, what
is
this world coming to?”

Guess I didn’t have to worry about hiding who I was.

“Don’t make fun of this.” I turned on him slowly, like a mountain lion on an elk. He’d do well to remember I wasn’t without claws. “You asked, and I’m being as honest as I possibly can. That’s how much this means to me.” That’s how much
Hunter
means, I realized. I’d have made the trip over here, risking soul and life and personal power, for him alone. That was about as personal as it got.

Jacks’s nostrils flared again, and I knew my discovery was pouring from me in some sort of perfumed scent. I briefly wondered what love newly realized smelled like, and was instantly frustrated by the thought that this foul being was the one to scent it for the first time instead of Hunter.

Nicely done, I silently berated myself. Taking the moment from the man it belongs to and giving it to another. To a child-killer, I thought derisively. A soul-stealer. The idea of it, though repulsive, gave me another.

I stepped closer. My voice too became more intimate as I neared him. The chasm between the man before me and the one I was thinking of was wider than RedRockCanyon, but I could use the emotion to get what I wanted. A world ruled by women, right? So could it be as easy as Solange said? Just embrace the contradiction. Be comfortable with myself…and lull Jacks into doing the same. I licked my upper lip, tilting my head so I was gazing directly into his eyes. “How do I fix the changeling of Light?”

Jacks’s eyes flickered, watching my tongue. “You can’t.”

“I have to,” I said, stepping closer. “Otherwise the Tulpa will win. The Light will snuff out. The world will collapse.”

“Only part of it.” He lifted a shoulder, but otherwise remained still. I continued my advance.

“My world,” I said as blithely. I was so close that had I still been encased in Olivia’s flesh, my breasts would have been brushing his chest. “My home. Tell me how to fix her.”

He swallowed hard. “Haven’t you figured it out yet, Archer? Human beings are fragile creatures. What do you think happened to that girl’s
chi
the very moment yours invaded?”

I drew back a tad at that. “Invaded? My powers have been funneling into her, making her stronger.”

“Yeah, and if you pull them back now, there’ll be nothing to keep her upright. It’ll be like removing her etheric spine. Her soul energy is long gone, departed for deep outer space. Not destroyed, of course, but reabsorbed, re-imagined into the fabric of the Universe.”

“No.” I shook my head and swallowed hard. “Her death is not an option.” Nor was Li’s. Nor the city’s.

That careless shrug again, and he moved in, suddenly taking me up on my advances. I stiffened, wanting to vomit on his shoes. “It all depends on what you think of as death. Energy is always transmuted, and used for something new.”

I jerked away from his hand on mine, pulling back again when his index finger trailed my wrist. “Is that how you justify murdering that changeling? A child? And the woman, whomever she was, whose soul power you used for passage this time?”

He grinned, and it wasn’t at all handsome. “I was wondering how long it’d be before you snapped. It takes a lot of energy to pretend to be something you’re not. To feign being in love with someone you’re not.”

As if I could ever love a poison like you
. “What would a murderer like you know about love?”

“Because that’s why I crossed over too.”

And as if on cue, the door opposite the entrance swung wide. Solange stood in silhouette, delicately draped in deep-plunging, sophisticated black, posed like Erté’s muse.

She stepped forward so that her features took focus just in time for me to catch the narrowing of her eyes. She scanned Jacks, me, the way our bodies were angled toward each other’s. She inhaled deeply…and her features grew even more pointed.

“What the hell is going on here?” Her arms dropped to her side. She advanced upon me, the seductress suddenly replaced by a warrior princess, and I stepped back even though I had nothing to feel guilty about. “You’re not supposed to be here.”

“Well, Jacks and I—”

Her earrings, the same fine fragile hoops as before, swung at her lobes as she jerked her head. “Jacks and you
nothing
! He’s here to see me, and it took him long enough.”

I held up my hands. “No. I mean, yes. I just—”

“Get out.” She pointed one slender arm at the door, black silk pooling to the ground.

“But—”

Jacks was suddenly by her side. “My wife wishes for you to leave.”

“Wife?” Shock made my voice too loud.

“Out!” Solange repeated, matching the tone.

“Not now,” he said, and there was nothing seductive left in his touch as he dragged me to the door.

“But you didn’t answer my question!” I jerked my arm away, and he grabbed it again. “I need to fix the changeling of Light and only you can tell me how.”

He spun me toward him after depositing me on the other side of the doorway, and still holding tight, leaned close. “You can’t. All you can do is take back your own energy.”

“What?”

“Kill her, Archer. It’s the only way to save everything you love.”

And he slammed the door in my face.

Only a moment of stunned silence passed, perhaps two, before I was pounding on the locked door, demanding reentry. I didn’t care who heard, what sort of energy I was expending, or who wanted it for their own. I was so desperate to get back in that room that I was only marginally aware of the women gathering to watch me at the other end of the banister. Meanwhile, my mind whirled.

Kill Jasmine? That couldn’t be the only way.

I continued pounding and yelling, therefore missed the rapid footsteps approaching from the other side, though that also could have been because they belonged to the smaller of the two persons who’d thrown me out. The door jerked wide, and I briefly saw Jacks’s silhouette by Las Vegas’s viewing window, but then Solange thrust her face in mine, her features contorted with fury.

I was clearly ruining her long-anticipated reunion with her husband.

Jacks was Solange’s husband!

She pushed into my space until she was halfway out the door, and I didn’t think I’d ever seen a woman so close to a blinding rage. Not Regan, when I’d taken the life of the last person who meant anything to her, and not even me when my bones baked closely to the surface of my skin, eyes glowing in a crimson replica of the Tulpa’s.

Because I was only
part
Shadow, I thought, swallowing hard. And for the first time I saw past Solange’s borrowed beauty—the adornment she put on using everyone else’s life energy—to the woman, the
Shadow
, that lay beneath.

Her bones were liquid, and rolled beneath her flesh. Her gaze was so white-hot it nearly sliced open the air on the way to me. Solange, I suddenly realized, was not left alone in this room and deferred to because she was especially beautiful. She owned it because she was especially dangerous. Power pooled around her like an electrical current, and I instinctively took another step back. She’d amassed more energy for herself in this world than I’d ever possessed, and it looked like she was about to unleash it all upon me.

Seeing my retreat for what it was, she inhaled sharply to rein in her anger. Clenching her jaw, those liquid bones rearranged themselves again, and she blew out a breath as hot as the air drying out the men below. It scared me more than if she’d screamed. “I’ll tell you what you want to know if you promise to leave. Immediately.”

Gladly, I thought, sighing as well. I nodded.

“To fix a displaced aura, to mend a broken human being, you must merely hold fast to one basic tenet. It’s both simple and hard. It’s also essential to your changeling’s—and your troop’s—continued existence.” She licked her lips, formulating words that I knew would be truth…but as slight and obscure as she could make it. I waited. “Put her, always, physically and otherwise, above yourself.”

I swallowed and shook my head. “I don’t know what that means.”

“That’s not my problem.” She began to shut the door again.

No, I thought, jamming my foot inside. I was too close to just leave now. “Just tell me—”

“Nobody gets anything for free here!” Her eyes fired again, like light catching on the facets of diamonds. “Now, leave!”

She thrust out a palm in my direction, and though it never touched me, a bolt sliced through my solar plexus, the shove staggering pieces inside me like a puzzle coming undone. A breeze swept over places air should never touch, and my mind, my emotion, my thoughts, and all the intangibles that made me
me
were pushed from my body. It was nauseating to both be there and not, and while my feet were bolted to the ground, everything that truly animated me flew backward, whistling against the wind, tumbling down the staircase to end up in a heap at the bottom of the stairs.

My body arrived a moment later. I sat up quickly—too quickly—and heard an audible snap. Sure enough, I wobbled, hesitated, then leaned over and puked on the floor. Still dizzy, room spinning, I remained on my hands and knees long after the howls of laughter and groans of disgust faded away. My vision was blurred and I had to pinpoint a solid object in order for it to clear, though when it finally did, I was sad to discover the object on the scarred wooden floor was the pendant Suzanne had given me, now broken down into four separate pieces. Slowly I gathered them up in my palm, and by the time I finally looked up, the women who’d gathered along the banister were gone, and most of the men had returned to their cards.