A latch handle shot from beneath the middle shelf.
I couldn’t hold back my surprised laugh. Of course it would be all four at once. Xavier Archer always had wanted it all. Grabbing the handle and yanking it up, I pulled the heavy hinged door wide and entered the secret room.
Dual scents of sandalwood and soot hit me, the molecules and motes still heavy with remnants of the rituals Xavier had performed here. Obviously no one had aired out the room since his death, and for once I was thankful I’d lost my overly keen sense of smell.
After locating and lighting a thick, squat candle-the room lacked both electricity and contemporary furnishings-I shut the false wall behind me to prevent the scent’s escape, then gave the odd room a long onceover.
It’s like a movie set. Though all the furnishings-the pillows and throws, the incense and gold Buddhist statues-had been imported directly from Tibet. Xavier’s fetish for authenticity, and undoubtedly the Tulpa’s insistence on it, was apparent in every carefully chosen item. Colorful rugs in primary colors were rolled like yoga mats in the corner of the room. Bowls of bronze, silver, copper, and wood were stacked on a shelf above those, while another held an astonishing array of incense and candles, caught in stark relief against the whitewashed walls. I held the candle and the photo out in front of me and began comparing objects.
Intricate singing bowls, originally meant to worship the Buddhist gods, sat next to simple mallets lined on a rough-hewn shelf. I compared my photo to those, again coming up empty.
Dropping to the rug I’d once seen Xavier worshipping upon, I remembered the way Helen had stood at his back, forcing him to his knees and holding him there. The look on his face had been one of fear laced with agony, and while shock and lifelong animosity kept me from feeling sorry for him then, when I knelt on the very same pillow and viewed the room from his perspective, I couldn’t help feeling a sympathetic twinge.
The air was cooler and less cloying on the floor than when standing, so I crossed my legs and reached for the sole item still propped in the room’s center, a handheld prayer wheel. I’d researched the things after watching Xavier chant with one, and I gave this wheel an experimental flick of my wrist. Its weight surprised me as the metal cylinder inside clicked and the ballasted chain whirled to release the universally revered sound “Om” into the room.
I flicked my wrist again, then again, finding it strangely soothing. A mortal mind focused on the ritual of worship would easily fall into a trancelike state, bringing them closer to the object, or personage, of their worship.
In return for a few slivers of their soul.
Despite the thought, I flicked the prayer wheel again. The tonal notes sat up in the air, not loud but with an even hum, but since I wasn’t worshipping anyone, I was safe enough. One thing I’d discovered in my year with the agents of Light was that intention was what gave a person’s actions, and life, meaning. If one lived focused on their greatest desires to the exclusion of all else, then the Universe would move and redirect energy to provide the desired results. I flicked the wheel again and caught a rhythm. The chain reeled around, sending the magic out into the Universe.
So what was my intent? My greatest desire? Certainly not to ration out what was left of my soul to the Tulpa.
But seeing him dead? Yeah, that would be nice. I’d love to watch all the negative energy responsible for the Tulpa’s powers spiral out-whirl, whirl, whirl-dissolving harmlessly into the Universe. But then what? I frowned. Leave Warren free to run this valley the way he saw fit? That no longer seemed right either.
The prayer wheel whirled steadily now; I’d caught my rhythm.
Finding my mother was an obvious driving need, maybe because her desertion hadn’t been absolute. Zoe Archer straddled the divide between here and gone, super and mortal, truth and lies. She was like oxygen to me, invisible but vital, and as long as she was out there, I would want to find her. I could admit that much-whirl, whirl-at least to myself.
And then there was Hunter.
I shut my eyes, flicked my wrist and recalled his face. “Hunter…”
Why was it so hard to let go of someone who’d so carelessly released me? It hadn’t been done in a void after all, not like Zoe, her whereabouts unknown. No, he’d left me for another woman-one he’d courted against troop rules, one he’d married, and one he’d chased after for years, even after meeting me.
So why?
Because he’d regretted his decision. I’d seen it in those underground tunnels, lurking in him like an undiagnosed disease. At the last, right before he abandoned this world, a small part of him wanted to stay, wanted me to understand. Wanted me.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with you. Not even in the darkest corner of that beautiful soul.
Yes, Hunter had known my darkness, tasted it, and even taken it on when sharing the aureole. But ours wasn’t a onetime connection. It was a magic that reared its head every time we touched, when we made love, both of us willing it to grow stronger.
That was what Trish meant when she’d spoken of a soul connection.
So would it have lived between us if not for the aureole? How beautiful would he have found me without it?
Would I even have had a chance of capturing his interest in my current fragile, mortal, state?
Whatever the answer, it neither changed the past nor the one thing that kept bucking whenever I mentally tried to say good-bye: Hunter had offered up his body as a soft place for me to land in a season where everything was hard. I’d been on my heels in my new role as the Kairos, part of a world I hadn’t known existed. My sister’s death had rocked me back further. And, in the hours before the first time we made love, the shock of finding my childhood lover locked in the embrace of a mortal enemy had flattened my will to live.
For a while Hunter made all of that better, if not okay. And it hadn’t been a one-sided seduction. I could own up to my part in it all. I hadn’t turned to him as much as I’d fled, finding solace in his strength and peace in his acceptance. Hunter had helped steady me in my new life.
The magic of the aureole connecting us? That was just fucking icing.
“Jo?”
My hand came to an abrupt stop as I opened my eyes, the sacred sound from the prayer wheel breaking into two syllables, then down into silence. I was on the floor of what looked and smelled like a Babylonian garden.
“Oh, hell no.” The syllables scratched the air like stencils.
“That’s what you get for flinging around a prayer wheel,” I muttered, standing cautiously and trying to blink away the reality before me. But there was no blinking it away.
I was in Midheaven. Again.
21
I couldn’t tell who’d called me. Between the whirring of the prayer wheel’s chain cutting air like newly sharpened shears, it had been a fractured sound, like a computer getting a hard boot. But at least I knew where I was.
Another elemental room, I thought, glancing about, my breath echoing hollowly in the tinny air. What else could it be? It was both as shockingly ornate as the odd water room, and as mysterious as Solange’s fire room, yet singularly different than both. Weighed down beneath the scents of verdant foliage and humidity, it would have also been as dim as a late-lying sunset were it not for the twinkling lights strung across drooping boughs by the hundreds. A tentative, almost playful breeze pressed against me, and I shivered as I glanced up at a ceiling hidden by viny whips and a cover of evergreen and pine. More lights winked like stars between the branches, and I shivered again, recalling Solange’s sky of soul-encrusted stars.