"Trust me, Phaedre." She stood, brushed off her pants, and headed to the door Warren had exited through.
The movement was quicker than the human eye, so Zoe found herself sprawled facedown across the bed without knowing how she'd gotten there. Phaedre was straddling her, so close Zoe could scent the mint on her breath and the powder of her perfume; pleasant, were it not for the wand tip pointed at Zoe's throat.
"Warren said you stay," Phaedre murmured in her ear, meaning the bodily assault wasn't anything personal.
Zoe craned her neck to peer into Phaedre's face despite the risk of a fiery death. "And what the troop leader says, goes, right?"
Annoyance flickered behind Phaedre's jewel-green eyes. "I understand it might grate, Zoe, especially considering your former status, but maybe it's time you listened to someone other than yourself."
Zoe dropped her head and lay limp, knowing she'd get up only when—if—Phaedre allowed it. "You want to put your conduit away? It's a bit of overkill."
Phaedre shifted atop her, but that was for her comfort, not Zoe's. She inched the wand closer to Zoe's left eye, her favored point of insertion. "Bother you, does it? Make you nervous? Because the Tulpa doesn't have a conduit, you know. He is a conduit. A whole being through whom energy is conducted, amassed, multiplied. That's why he can affect the weather, move things with his mind, manipulate environments and—most importantly—read your intentions."
"I know all this," Zoe said, testily. She twisted again and this time Phaedre got up, letting her turn. "I'm the one who told the rest of you, remember?"
"So then you also know that he's been working on the time/space continuum, using special relativity to attempt to return to the past?"
Zoe pushed herself to her knees. It was evident from her silence that she hadn't known. So how had Phaedre? "The manuals?" Zoe guessed.
Phaedre inclined her head. "He's conducting experiments, gathering energy around him to return to the moment of his gravest betrayal. When you, Zoe, exposed his vulnerability."
"That's not possible," Zoe whispered, kneeling in the ratty bedspread, mind whirling. Was it?
Phaedre pursed her lips wryly as she rose and tucked her conduit back in her pocket. Zoe gave an inward sigh of relief.
"He thinks there's only a finite amount of energy available on this earth, in this valley in particular, and since he's bound to Las Vegas and can't derive energy from outside this city, he's working on creating more of it here, storing it. Hoarding it, if you will, for himself."
"And that's what he'd use it on?" Zoe asked, noting she looked as bewildered in the opposing dresser mirror as she felt. "Saving Wyatt?"
Phaedre laughed humorlessly and shook her head. "He's not going back to save his creator, Zoe. He's going back to kill you."
And even as Zoe's mind whirled with disbelief, she knew it could be done. Anything was possible, if the mind believed strongly enough… and the Tulpa possessed an iron mind. "He'd need a tremendous amount of energy," she murmured. So how was he getting it? What law of physics or powerful magic—or both—would enable him to contract time and alter the terrestrial setting?
Phaedre shrugged. "We haven't figured it out yet. All I know is if you show up on his doorstep, plain as day and clothed in mortal skin, you'll save him the trouble of having to find you in the recesses of time. And you'll die for nothing."
Not nothing, Zoe thought, standing. Because now she was more determined than ever to get her granddaughter back. Whatever the Tulpa was doing and however he was deriving power, she was sure it involved Ashlyn.
"I need to speak to Warren." Zoe started, then smiled grimly when Phaedre took a warning step forward. "He can hold me down himself if he's so inclined."
It was Phaedre's turn to smirk. "He just might," she said, but motioned to the door.
The manuals Phaedre had referred to recorded the battle between good and evil in the Nevada desert as it'd gone on for the past rnillennium. In the mortal world the manuals were called comic books, and were devoured by the young minds that lived the stories out in their imaginations, and in turn, gave energy to the agents and troops through their detailed daydreams and belief. The connection between reader and agent was very much a partnership, and without one the other would fail to thrive.
So everything Zoe had done—both accomplishments and defeats—was recorded in either the Shadow manuals or the Light, depending on the sensitivity of the information there. Any knowledge that could give one side dominance over the other, thus unbalancing the zodiac, was omitted. That's why Zoe's pregnancies hadn't been recorded on either side, and why neither the Tulpa nor Warren knew where she'd gone when she disappeared.
Thus, every agent had secrets they knew lay solely in their own minds, and even the most senior troop members couldn't help but wonder about their allies' lives as well as their enemies: what wasn't being revealed?
So what exactly were the manuals omitting about Zoe and her relationship with the angry, stubborn man on the other side of that door?
Well, it wasn't the part about the bond they'd forged growing up as teens in the paranormal safehouse known as the sanctuary. The bloom of their subsequent love affair, around the time she was nineteen and he twenty-four, was also well-documented—much to their embarrassment at the time—as was the bloody coup that'd led to Warren's meteoric rise in rank to become the youngest troop leader ever. Zoe had been pictured firmly by his side.
No, the omissions began after all that, when Zoe herself had taken up her star sign and began to hunt the Tulpa, a task that would make her famous for her bravery, single-mindedness, and willingness to give up personal happiness in return for their enemy's blood. Maybe what angered Warren most wasn't that she turned her back on him in order to fulfill these duties, but that the original assignment had been his idea. He'd ordered her into the Tulpa's lair and life—and bed—with his blessing. And in time it became his curse.
Because the manuals did record how good she was at her job. They showed in exacting detail how clearly the Tulpa, and later Xavier, fell for her ruse. Soon, every small, helpful, important detail she brought back about the Shadows' plans and machinations were met by her troop leader's knowing and bitter sneer. Eventually Zoe stopped coming back at all.
So the wedge between the two former lovers grew with time, expanding with secrets until the girth that lay between them was too wide for either of them to attempt crossing. And when Zoe disappeared this final time—after the daughter Warren knew nothing about had been brutalized by the Shadow Aquarian—she hadn't even considered telling him why she was leaving, where she was going, or what she intended to do. She didn't want to argue, and besides, she barely knew the answers herself.
All that mattered now was that Joanna and Olivia were safe. She'd given up her chi and her place in the troop to ensure it. And now she would hunker in close by, watchful, as she'd failed to be the first time, and wait for the moment when Joanna would rise up and stake her claim in the Zodiac. Because Zoe's greatest secret wasn't merely omitted from the manuals, it was the one the Seer had told her never to utter, not to Warren, not even aloud to herself.
Her eldest daughter was both Shadow and Light, and when she was ready and had overcome the tragedy that would shape her future, she would be mightier than all of them put together.
So Warren and Zoe didn't have a love story that began with "Once upon a time." And, inevitably, it wouldn't end with "happily ever after" either. But Zoe had a job to do, and she was still enough of a heroine to see it through to the end.
"Are you ready to listen?" Zoe began, moving across Warren's dim motel room. He'd stiffened as he sensed her presence, but hadn't looked up from the paper he was pretending to read.