I choked on the white-hot heat as it rolled like lava into my mouth, rising into the soft tissue of my brain as I fell. I was being vacuumed down into a trough of invisible flame, fire biting at my cheeks and ears, sinking in like pokers behind my eyes. I screamed, but the sound was wrenched from my mouth.
“What’s taking her so long?”
The sweltering words slid past me as I continued to fall. More heat invaded me, radiation now; attacking my fevered flesh, piercing my veins, seeking bone.
“She’s coming now. Hear that?”
Hurry, I thought, knowing I was near to blacking out. Charred. I grew dizzy and my lungs felt close to imploding. Only when I landed with a hard thud did I realize there was any air left in my chest to lose. I crumbled, but sucked in air like I was Nessie coming up from the bottom of the loch.
“That was graceless,” I heard Chandra say.
I rolled onto my hands and knees, facedown, gulping down air, thinking I’d never breathed in anything so crisp, cool, balmy, or sweet in my life. It set the sores in my mouth to drying, and they crackled as I winced. They were on my lungs too, where they remained wet and aching.
“Olivia?” Hands on my shoulders. I whimpered and jerked away, and not just because my flesh sizzled at the contact. I was pissed off and feeling vulnerable; exposed and lost, dizzy and disoriented, and betrayed by the very people who were supposed to be protecting me.
And I was so very fucking hot.
Why hadn’t anyone told me what to expect? Or what to do? Why had they just left me up there, alone and burning? I couldn’t get the question out, though; not past the air I was trying to suck in. I started shaking, an improvement over the stinging paralysis, but not by much.
“What’s wrong with her?” Felix this time, voice hesitant and low.
My eyes, scalded, refused to see—I couldn’t even tell if they were open or closed—and my head throbbed where it had whipped back against the top of the slide. But that was nothing compared to the pulpy blisters I felt rising in my brain. I knelt on my haunches, curled into myself and wished for death.
“A little dramatic, don’t you think?”
“Shut up, Chandra.”
“Olivia?” Warren’s hands again. This time I let him turn me over. There was a collective gasp…which probably wasn’t good.
“What happened to her?”
“God. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“Get Greta,” I heard Warren say. “Hurry.”
“We could have killed her ten times over by now,” Chandra muttered, and I felt Warren shift. “I’m just saying! It’s a weakness. The Tulpa will find out about it. He’ll use it against her.”
“He won’t find out if nobody tells him. Besides, he shares the weakness.”
“What happened?” I finally managed. The words were catching like splinters in my throat. I pushed them out anyway. “Why did that hurt so much? Why won’t my eyes stop tearing up?”
“They’re not tears,” Chandra said, and this time she sounded apologetic. “It’s blood.”
I touched a hand to my face.
“I’m so sorry, Olivia.” Warren’s voice was low but panicked, and alarm beat at my chest as I felt him hovering over me uncertainly. “It’s my fault. I forgot, and it’s my fault.”
“Forgot what?” I asked, raising my face, as blind as a baby chick. I could only imagine how I looked.
“The Shadow in you. It can’t take the Light.”
I didn’t know what to say to that.
And then there was another voice, a scent like rainwater and sage, and a cool, feminine palm on my shoulder. A wet cloth with herbs was pressed gently over my eyes. “Shh, honey. I’m here. It’s going to be all right.”
“She’s hurting, Greta.” Warren sounded scared.
“I know,” the woman answered. “Bring her to my rooms. I’ll take care of her.”
Strong arms lifted me. There was the click of heels leading the way. And there was Warren’s breath, cold and small, in my ear. “I’m so sorry.”
I felt a tear fall, imagined its crimson path as it trailed over my cheek, and thought, So am I. I leaned into Warren, still smelling burning flesh. So was I.
17
The woman, Greta, asked if she could give me something to knock me out, and I whimpered my agreement, thinking she could knock my head clear from my shoulders if it would just stop the pain. Such drastic measures, thankfully, were not needed, and she administered a shot that had me slinking blissfully into the ether within moments.
When I woke, the room was pitch-dark, but crowded. The darkness I quickly attributed to cloth bandages wrapped loosely around my head. The crowdedness was because…well, there was a crowd. But over the voices rising and falling around me, I thought I heard birds chirping—did the Silver Slipper have an aviary?—and I knew I smelled at least two dozen roses, which I identified as Double Delights from the slight spice wafting from each petal. My eyesight might have been questionable, but the sniffer was still in top form. Yippee.
“We can’t let her leave the same way she came in,” Felix was saying. “It could kill her.”
The thought of crossing through that big, rounded, silver toe again immediately set my pulse to throbbing.
“Well, she can’t stay here forever.”
“Greta never leaves the compound,” Micah pointed out.
“Greta’s a psychic,” Chandra muttered. “Not a superhero.”
They’d been going on like this, I took it, for a while. The forces of evil may have been hard at work in Vegas tonight, but the superheroes of Zodiac troop 175 were arguing back and forth like opposing teams on a baseball diamond. They were also speaking about me as if I wasn’t there. Worse, like I was, and couldn’t understand a thing they were saying.
I did understand, of course. I was a superhero, and superheroes didn’t die. I almost had, and they were all scared to death because of it.
I shifted against what felt like a veritable sea of pillows, and all chatter ceased. “So basically what you’re all saying is that I’m trapped here?” Five pairs of eyes, felt rather than seen, landed on me. “Trapped in the Silver Slipper, right?”
“Uh,” said Warren, after a bit. “Yeah.”
I nodded as if to myself and pursed my lips. “But I’m safe?”
“Safe, but not very useful,” Chandra muttered from my right.
“Safe and useless sounds just fine right now,” I replied.
“The point is, we can’t let her out of the sanctuary anyway until we figure out how Ajax found her so quickly,” Micah said. “I implanted her new olfactory scent myself, right after Chandra blended it. It was fresh, and completely enshrouded her natural scent. I even underscored it to link her to Warren.”
I hadn’t known that.
“Micah’s right,” Warren said. “I still say we should hypnotize her, find out that way—”
“Warren, we’ve already discussed this.” Greta’s voice grew sharp. There were steel edges behind that soft exterior, it seemed. “She’s been through enough.”
“But Ajax should’ve had to go through me.”
That statement was met by silence. I remembered Warren’s angry words once we’d safely reached the cab. What did you do to call him?
“Well, I didn’t ring him up and ask him to meet me there, if that’s what you’re thinking.” I could just hear that conversation.
Ajax, darling, let’s begin again. I need to make a quick stop first at the Quik-Mart, but we can murder an innocent girl while we’re there, just for old times’ sake. I know how you like that. Got anything sharp and pointy to play with? Something that bursts into flame upon impact, maybe?
Cool fingers touched my skin, and the bandages were gently lifted away. I blinked like a newborn into the light. Actually it was quite dim in the room, but my vision felt raw. It worked well enough, at least, to fix upon the two wide brown eyes smiling into mine. Attached to them was the scent I’d already mentally filed under Greta.