Cheat the Grave (5 page)

“By a rogue, right?”

His single-mindedness made me want to scream. “Don't ask me shit when you already know the answer! Harlan Tripp did this, and you'd better watch your ass because he's after you next!”

I said it for Harlan's benefit, to let him know that though I wasn't handing him over to Warren, I wasn't anywhere near on his side. If he thought I'd align myself with him against the agents of Light—that I was going to “re-engage” with this world at all—I'd disabuse him of that
now. Getting a dig in at Warren's expense was just a bonus. “All the rogues in Midheaven would be after you if they knew what you'd done.”

Warren lifted his chin, pulling the skin along his jaw tight. “Then don't open the gateway to Midheaven again.”

“I didn't do it
this
time. Mortals can't. It hurts too much.” Warren's gaze sharpened and I clarified, in case they'd forgotten: “The child I gave my life for in those fetid tunnels learned that the hard way!”

“Okay.” It was a grudging murmur, but sympathy was on my side, so there wasn't much more he could say. And so as abruptly as he arrived, he turned back to the door, motioning to the others.

“Asshole,” I muttered, and he paused mid-limp.

I winced. Of course he couldn't let it go, not with the whole troop watching. Pride was his personal Achilles' heel. I forced my gaze from the floor because now wasn't the time to back down, but when he turned, a rare flush colored his cheeks. “Remember your place, Joanna,” he said softly.

“You never let me forget.”

“But I can. With one command I can make you forget who you were, or that you were ever superhuman.” He spun on his heel and spat his rejoinder at the same time. “Remember that too.”

Survival instinct kept me quiet, but what stunned me into stillness was how the others followed without complaint, how Vanessa no longer met my gaze, and how not one of them said good-bye. Again. It's okay, I thought, biting my lip when the door finally swung shut. I didn't need to say anything. Let their shame speak for me. Let their guilt scream. Because after sacrificing my every power for their troop, I'd never be entirely absent from their lives. Not as long as I lived.

 

“You really got no power?”

I was slumped against the counter in sudden and complete exhaustion, but hastily wiped the tears from my face
as Tripp drew closer. It was a pointless action. He could smell my every emotion. Besides, what did it matter if Tripp saw?

“I still play a mean game of tennis.” The aftermath of the confrontation had my stomach twisting on itself, but I bit back the bile threatening to overtake my throat. I wouldn't allow them to turn my own body against me too. “But you'll have to find a different doubles partner for what you have in mind.”

Tripp tilted his head and frowned. “So they kicked you out?”

I massaged my arms where the bindings had chafed. “I'm no use to them.”

Which meant he now knew me as useless too. My greatest secret, my greatest weakness, in the hands of a Shadow. I glanced up at the clock on the wall, wondering exactly how many seconds I had left to live.

But Tripp remained where he was, faced off across from me like we were going to have a shoot-out. He nodded once. “So that's why you got no aura. I thought it was my eyes. They just ain't right over here.”

He rubbed at them like that might change, but made no move yet to kill me. “How did it happen?”

I told him about Jasmine, the child I'd given over my powers to save, and how doing so had restored balance to the Zodiac at a time when the Tulpa had been on the verge of gaining it all. “I had to give her everything—my powers, my aura, all but the last third of my soul.” I'd used the rest of it as payment to enter Midheaven twice. I sometimes wondered how I was still alive, never mind animate and able to stand upright. Wasn't the loss of your soul like removing your aetheric spine? What was left of me but a mind and shell? And was that enough to keep me moving through the world? “But it saved her, her younger sister, the city. And my tr—the agents of Light.”

Squinting at me, he shifted on his feet. I braced for a blow, but he only said, “Like your mother did with you.”

“You know that story?” He'd been stuck in Midheaven for eighteen years, and my mother had given over her powers to save my life when I was sixteen, only a decade before. But Midheaven's newest resident seemed to be angling for Mackie's position—trading in other people's stories for his own personal gain.

Yet I couldn't think about Hunter's abandonment right now. For some silly, stupid, girly reason it made me want to ask for that killing blow.

Tripp rubbed at his chin. “That's fuckin' crazy.”

“Says the man who just went up against Death's blade.” And he'd done it to keep Mackie from slaying me. I took a tentative step forward. “Warren doesn't know Mackie is here, does he?”

Because the leader of Light had spoken as if Tripp were this world's greatest threat.

Tripp leaned back against the glass case, favoring his injured leg. “Don't look like it'd matter if he did.”

I hunched my shoulders because he was right. “So why is he…here?” Why'd he cross worlds to kill me? “I mean, I know I pissed him off by escaping Midheaven…” By knocking that soul blade from his homicidal grasp, I remembered, swallowing hard. “But that was the first time I escaped. He didn't even notice me the second.”

“Ha!” Tripp shook his head, like I was the village idiot. “Ol' Sleepy Mac notices everything. He files it away. The knowledge lurks in his smile when he comes to kill a man later, like it's been carved on his teeth.”

Carved like a marionette's toy, I thought, remembering the way Mackie moved; seated and slumped one moment, pulled straight and erect the next. Pouncing in a full lunge after that, the leather of his skin shifting over his skull in lieu of any real expression. It was like the cross section of an old oak renumbering its rings. There was nothing natural about it.

“But that don't mean he's here of his own volition.” Tripp
lit another cigarette, though this one seemed normal. My skin didn't tingle, the smoke didn't press against my pores. Thinking of Micah, I couldn't help my relieved sigh. “No, ma'am. Mackie don't have enough of his own willpower left to make them sort of choices. That's what makes him so dangerous.”

I shrugged. “And?”

Tripp huffed, a trail of smoke zinging from the side of his mouth. “It's Miss Sola wants you dead, girl.”

“Solange?” I almost choked on the name.

“She ain't talked about nothin' else since you left.”

Solange. The most powerful woman in that realm, and one who'd once dismantled everything inside of me—all the bits that made me “me”—without ever touching my body. I cringed, remembering the way my spirit had jigsawed free of my physical body before being thrown down a flight of stairs. Sure, it'd come back together at the bottom of the staircase, but had it been a physical repiecing, my thighbone would have been connected to my neck bone. I didn't know if I'd recovered or just gotten used to the feeling, but I did know that of everything I experienced in my year as an agent of Light, I'd never been so thoroughly frightened as I was by Solange's soft, gorgeous rage.

“Why?”

“'Cause when them divas and goddesses and matriarchs discovered they done released the woman with lineage divided equally between the two warring sides of the Zodiac, the uproar was cataclysmic. Even in that world, you're legend. The
Kairos
, both Shadow and Light, the Zodiac's ‘chosen one.' It's a great loss for the females who care only for power.”

I shook my head, but it didn't stop my mind from spinning. Sure, I was still technically equal parts Shadow and Light. Believe me, if I could change my parentage, I'd have done so long ago. But why would Solange want me dead? I was no longer the Kairos. The woman who could bring
to life the portents that would have one side of the Zodiac asserting dominance over the other.

But you once were, I thought, trying to remain reasonable. And only one person could have told Solange all that.

My God, Hunter. Will your betrayals never stop?

Tripp studied the air around me, trying to match it up to the emotions unraveling from me like a knot. He gave up, gaze landing back on my face, implacable. “I don't know why Miss Sola hates you so much. I ain't seen her so riled up 'bout a person before. Not that I envy you the distinction. But if you help me, Joanna, I'll keep you from Sleepy Mac.” He paused, his next words sounding near a vow. “And anyone else who moves to harm you.”

I thought about it, automatically repulsed at the idea of working with a Shadow. Even if he was the only person with a hand extended to me now.

Except for the one who sent you that note
.

Yeah, I thought, biting my lip. That anonymous dogooder had been a
huge
help tonight.

Angling my head, I gave him a quick once-over. “You're really trying to kill the Tulpa?” He nodded, and I immediately shook my head. “Helping you will put a bull's-eye on my chest, Tripp. From both the Shadows and the Light.”

He shrugged. “Don't make you different from any other rogue agent.”

“Except for the whole mortality issue,” I said, but he shrugged again. Near fuming, I ticked some of my shortcomings off finger by finger.
Maybe I should drawl 'em
. “I can't fight with you, protect you, or travel the world as you do anymore. I'm not fast. I've no strength. I have nothing to offer you.”

“You can give me your blood.” He waved his cigarette in the air. “I mean your bloodline.”

I shook my head, swallowing hard. “What does that mean?”

“The Tulpa doesn't know you're mortal yet, right?”

“Right.”

“So we use you as a lure. Ask him for a meeting, then fake anger over Warren treating that ex-boyfriend of yours—”

“He wasn't my boyfriend,” I interrupted, giving the phone Warren had left me a hard glance. Hunter and I hadn't gotten that far before our mutual pasts had reared up to trample the present. As for Warren? I wouldn't have to fake anything when it came to him. Though, in a move as inexplicable as a woman who went back to an abusive husband, I pocketed the phone.

“Whatever. But we get him to meet you alone, which will probably take more than one conversation. He'll be willin' to, though, 'cause you're his daughter and the Kairos …”

The Tulpa cared only about the latter. Outside of his initial shock in learning of my existence, he'd never given a shit that I was his daughter—but I didn't interrupt Tripp again. He couldn't see past his need for vengeance to converse about this intelligently or see anything other than his own bloodred obsession.

“And once he lets down his guard…bam! I'll be there. We'll make sure you're out of harm's way, of course. Then I'll paint the walls with his blood.” He puffed out his chest, drawing heavily on his cigarette.

And despite myself, despite the danger in playing chicken against a being who could kill me with a look alone, my heart skipped in my chest. Sensing it, Tripp almost smiled. I saved him from cracking his face with a brisk shake of my head. “No.”

His eyes narrowed and he licked his lips, then ran his tongue along his top teeth before slowly nodding. “Okay.”

I drew back in surprise.

Shrugging his broad shoulders, he flicked his cigarette to the floor. “I'll let you think on it.”

“Listen, Tripp—”

“No, Archer, you listen!” And he was suddenly inches from my face, his wide with fury and animate with hate. He jabbed his finger into my chest and I stumbled backward. The smoke of both cigarettes was on his breath, the first one trying to lasso me back. “I aim to kill that motherfucker, understand? Him and Lindy Maguire and every other Shadow agent who helped kill my family. I'm going to pull their veins from their limbs like straws, then suck 'em dry. I'll hang their muscles in jerky strips, and if you stand in my way, I'll fucking kill you too.”

He was breathing hard, and I glanced back at the closed door, my own heart racing. Any agent within a five-mile radius would be able to scent the sudden rise in his emotions, and they'd follow it right back here, to me. I didn't know what was preferable. The Shadows, the Light, or Tripp. But he caught my worried glance and calmed himself, his will tugging hot rage back into his physical shell. If I could still see auras, I bet he'd have been rimmed in black tar. But I saw nothing.

Which rather underscored my point.

“Look, you saved me from Mackie, so I won't tell the agents of Light of your quest.” It was the best any reasonable person could expect from me under the circumstances, though it remained to be seen if Tripp was reasonable. “But I can't get involved. You're a rogue agent, Tripp. That means you're free to flee the city. You can get away from Warren and the Tulpa and anyone who might know of your story and past. You can start a new life elsewhere. Don't underestimate the power of a new beginning.”

Tripp's anger evaporated so quickly it was like clearing an Etch-A-Sketch. “Well, I'll take that under consideration just as soon as you do, Archer.”

That wasn't the same at all, and I put a hand on Tripp's chest to push him back. Annoyed when I couldn't budge him, I ducked around his frame and peered into a tabletop
mirror to fluff my hair. “Las Vegas is my home. I'm not going to let them take that from me.” I'd been stripped of enough.

Tripp loomed behind me, gaze lost beneath the brim of his Stetson. “I might not be able to save you next time.”

I glanced at his leg, already festering with pus, though he'd just cleaned and cauterized it.

Which settled things pretty handily for me. I wasn't going anywhere near the underworld. If Tripp kept my identity to himself, and the agents of Light continued ignoring my existence, I could live in peace, in my city, as casino magnate Olivia Archer. I'd use the phone Warren had given me to tell them when Mackie showed up, and then they'd do what I couldn't…and what I seriously doubted of this lone rogue agent.