I felt laughter bubbling up in my throat, bitter as bile, and I held it back because I knew it’d come out in a scream, and I was afraid it would never stop. Swallowing hard, feeling light-headed, I said, “Don’t tell me what to think about what I’ve seen since you entered my life. Don’t tell me what to laugh at, or what’s funny and what’s not. I’ll fucking howl at the moon if I feel like it. And,” I added, pointing my finger at his chest, “don’t ever, ever tell me how to feel!”
And then I really did start laughing. I laughed and laughed until the manic sound soured and turned to tears. Then I cried and cried.
And then I cried some more.
16
The rest of the cab ride was spent in stony and uncomfortable silence, and as we sped up Industrial, heading under Flamingo Road, I dully watched the sun setting behind the Palms and felt the darkness rising, eyeing me from the east. Gridlock had set in on I-15, parallel to us, and I could see people singing and talking from behind their windshields, suspended on that strip of highway, momentarily delayed on the way to the rest of their lives.
Meanwhile, as the world went on revolving around me, I tried to answer Warren’s questions for myself. How had Ajax found me? Had I done something to call him to me? I tried to think back, but my memories were blighted by screams and pain, and Ajax’s particular scent had slithered beneath my skin to suck at my pores. The questions continued to pile up before me, and like those drivers on the freeway, I felt stuck in eternal gridlock.
And why would Warren ask if I’d murdered another person? Could he really believe I could do it? Did I, in some chipped and faulty corner of my heart, believe it of myself? I thought about the construction workers again, and how power-drunk I’d felt as I used my senses and words to blow holes into their worlds. I had tried to justify it in my mind, telling myself they’d deserved and asked for it; but the truth was, even though I hadn’t killed that man named Mark, or the other man who was sleeping with his wife, I had altered their lives in a horrible and irrevocable way. And wasn’t that a death of sorts? Wasn’t that a way to murder Mark’s hope, in his own fallible heart, that he was wrong in suspecting his best friend and wife?
I put a hand to my mouth and stared blindly out the window, deciding I didn’t want the answers to all my questions.
We pulled abruptly into a half-empty parking lot behind Tommy Rocker’s Cantina, a favorite hangout for locals who wanted to be near the Strip but not necessarily the tourists. Two men emerged from the bar, looking innocuous, just colleagues enjoying an after-hours drink before facing the drive home, but I recognized them as the men who’d chased Ajax. The shorter was dark and severe-looking, but the taller appeared happy and light, bouncing on his toes as he approached the cab. The paranormal world’s answer to Laurel and Hardy.
The doors opened for them. “Is it taken care of?” Warren asked as they slid in.
“Of course,” the first man said. He slouched low, not even glancing at me. “The place was absolutely stinking with her scent.”
“It’s fine,” the other man countered sharply, and they both fell silent.
The cab began moving again, but this time my view of the freeway was blurred by fresh tears. The “it” Warren referred to was really a “she.” I wondered what the headlines would read in tomorrow’s paper. Teen Dies In Botched Hold-Up. Or, Tragedy At Quik-Mart. One thing I was certain it wouldn’t read was Novice Superhero Destroys Yet Another Life. Warren and his friends would see to that.
I sniffled involuntarily at the thought, and the tall man—the one I’d seen leap to face Ajax across the aisle dividers—turned to me with a small, sympathetic smile.
“Here,” he said, holding out my duffel bag. I swallowed hard, took it, and clutched it to my chest. The first man had turned too, but there was no kindness in his face. He rolled his eyes at my tears and turned back around.
“And Ajax?”
“The usual,” came the answer. “Smoke, mirrors, all that Shadow shit.”
The kind man was still watching me. I wanted to tell him to turn around, but right now he seemed to be the only friendly face in the cab. I tried to look nonthreatening. He held his hand out over the back of the seat. “I’m Felix.”
“Here we go,” the other one muttered.
Felix smiled. “So you’re the new Archer. We haven’t had an Archer in the Zodiac since your mother.”
I lifted my hand. “I’m Jo—”
“This is Olivia,” Warren interrupted, and I flushed, feeling his glare.
I dropped my hand back in my lap and turned away from them both. The other man in the front seat mumbled something I couldn’t quite hear, but I had the distinct feeling it wasn’t complimentary.
“Shut up,” the driver said, and we all did.
There was a sense of urgency to the way the cab maneuvered through traffic, around—and in one case over—barriers, and something about the way the light shone through the windshield really did make the city seem divided in two.
“Are we going to make it?”
“We’ll make it, but someone else is going to have to drive.”
“You’re staying on this side, Gregor?” Felix asked. The others also seemed surprised.
“Just until dawn. Someone has to watch the city. Besides, nothing interesting is going to happen with her,” he said, jerking his head in my direction, “before morning.”
“That’ll be a nice change,” I murmured to no one in particular, though Warren grunted.
“Be careful, Gregor. We don’t know if they have intel on you or not.”
“I think if they did they’d have gotten to me by now. I’m not exactly the strongest of the star signs.” Gregor held up his right arm for my benefit. It ended just above the elbow. “I found a lucky penny today, though, and I have my trusty rabbit’s foot. I’ll be fine.”
Warren turned to me. “Like I said on the phone, you can only make the crossing at the exact moment where light and dark are divided evenly in the air. Something to remember if it’s midnight and you’ve been tracked. You’ll have to survive for six more hours before seeking sanctuary.”
“Gawd,” the man up front crossed his arms and mumbled, “she doesn’t even know that?”
I shot forward in my seat, feeling the anger rise in me again. So far I was a complete failure as a superhero, and had a pretty dubious self-image as a human being, but I still had a grasp on my pride, if a tenuous one. “Look, mister, I don’t know who you are or what you’ve got against me, but I’ve never seen you or any of your Kryptonite-fearing buddies before Warren over here jumped in front of my car—”
“Was run down, technically.”
Felix turned to Gregor. “I don’t fear Kryptonite. Do you?”
“So let’s get something stick straight between us. I didn’t ask for this. I’d be more than happy to never know anything about crossings or metamorphoses or any of this other weirdo, paranormal bullshit, but here I am. So get over it. Apparently I have to.”
The man had turned in his seat and watched me through slitted eyes. There was something odd about the texture of his anger; odd, and familiar at the same time. I felt like I should recognize him, or one of the components that made him him, but I didn’t.
At the end of the long silence that followed, Gregor eased the car over to the side of the road, shifted to neutral, and swiveled in his seat to face me. “Olivia, this is Chandra. She’s one of our best blenders in the chemistry lab. She made your new signature scent for you.”
She.
I felt the anger drain from my face and body, along with the color. I did a mental head slap, thinking the familiar thread in Chandra’s genetic makeup was her sex. Female. Hello.