“Thank you,” I told her.
She responded by alighting on the bed beside me, her weight barely making a difference. “Perhaps you can tell us what exactly you were doing when Ajax found you. Start from when Warren contacted you, all the way to Ajax’s appearance.”
I glanced around the room, frilly and feminine and filled with roses, and saw that the others, save Gregor, were all gathered at the foot of my bed. The chirping I’d heard earlier came from a large gold cage on a pedestal across the room, two bright lovebirds resting inside.
“Well, I packed and walked over to the Boulevard like Warren instructed, but there was this film that I needed to develop, and there seemed to be enough time, so—”
“So you disobeyed direct orders,” Chandra said.
“I’m not a Green-fucking-Beret,” I said, shooting her an annoyed glance, “and no, I didn’t disobey. I was one block from the pickup point. I was early. I didn’t know how long I’d be gone—here, I mean—and I wanted to take the pictures with me. That’s all.”
“Where are they?” Warren asked quietly. I looked at him closely for the first time. He’d already looked perfectly disreputable with his grimy clothes and greasy hair, but the rivulets of my dried blood on his shirt added a certain je ne sais quoi. I swallowed hard.
“My bag. Wherever it is.”
It was lying forgotten in the corner. I thought about letting Warren rustle through it, but stopped him as he yanked the zipper back. “I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” I said. “There are Shadow manuals in there, mixed in with Light.”
Warren held the duffel out to me. “Open it,” he ordered.
I snatched it and unzipped the bag. All eyes were heavy on my hands as I removed the Shadow side’s comics, then filled with curiosity as they tried to read the titles. I yanked out the Light series as well, putting Stryker’s on top.
“I was reading this one just outside the shop when I first scented Ajax.”
“May I?” Warren asked. I handed him the comic, and he began leafing through it.
“It’s about a guy named Stryker who was ambushed during his transforma—”
“We know about Stryker,” Chandra snapped, eyes hot. “Don’t speak about him like you knew him.”
“God, just leave her alone, Chandra.”
“Fuck you, Felix!” she shouted, then swung around the room, daring anyone to speak. When her gaze landed again on me, she curled her lips and shook her head in sharp disbelief. “She’s the first sign? What bullshit.” She whirled, and the lovebirds started in their cage, crying out as the door slammed heavily behind her.
“Go after her, Felix,” Warren said quietly.
“Fuck her.”
“Felix.”
Felix sighed, but left without another word. Micah shifted uncomfortably. “I’ll go too. They might need a referee.”
Micah left, and after a moment Greta put her hand on my arm. “It was only six months ago,” she explained in her calm and kind voice. “The wounds are still fresh.”
I nodded, understanding. After all, I’d seen Stryker’s death. Neck cords ripping, blood staining his mother’s robe, her heart-wrenching cries. Chandra was still a bitch, but I couldn’t fault her her grief.
“I’m sorry,” I said, meaning all of it.
Greta patted my hand, then stood to pour tea from a ceramic pot warming on a hot plate. “It’s all right, dear. Drink this. I pick and bag the herbs myself.”
“What’s this?” Warren asked, holding up the photo of Ben. I must have snapped it shut in the pages of the comic when Ajax had found me.
“Oh, my,” Greta said, staring at me sadly. “No wonder.”
“What?” I asked, looking from her to Warren and back, the steaming teacup forgotten in my hand.
“Anyone could have felt that,” she answered, shaking her head. I opened my mouth to ask what she meant, but I suddenly knew. It was so easy to grasp, I thought, when someone pointed it out to you.
Greta, reading my mind, answered anyway. “Your sorrow, dear. Such deep grief. That’s how Ajax knew where you were. Strong emotions—love, hate, grief, joy, hope—give you away if you don’t know how to control them.”
“That’s why we ordered you to stay calm,” Warren said, lifting his eyes from the photo. He still looked annoyed with me, but at least the muddy suspicion had cleared from his eyes.
Greta leaned in. “Who is it, anyway?”
Warren rudely snapped the comic shut, photo inside. He rolled it and pointed it at me. “We’ll talk about this later.” Then he too strode from the room, waves of fury left in his wake.
“Well,” I said finally, “can I clear a room or what?”
“Yes, well done,” Greta said primly, and I had to laugh despite myself.
She was a small woman, this Greta, with slim fingers and wrists, and tapering legs and ankles beneath a pencil skirt and lab coat. She wore sensible heels, sensible jewelry, and her chignoned hair had begun to gray at the temples. I’d have put her in the early fifties but for the knowledge hardening her caramel eyes. Greta was older, I decided, and probably tougher than anyone looking at her heart-shaped face could imagine.
“You seem to be healing fine,” she told me, returning to my side. “There shouldn’t be any permanent damage beyond the wound on your thigh.”
I touched the back of my thigh where Ajax’s conduit had nicked me as I ran. It had been stitched, and was only mildly sore.
“It’ll leave a mark—all supernatural weapons do—but the cut wasn’t very deep.” She resettled the bedsheets over me. “Your eyes were the more serious concern.”
“Has this ever happened before?”
“What? An injury while trying to enter the sanctuary?” she asked. I nodded. “Not to an agent of Light, no. One time the Ram on the Shadow side tried to enter the sanctuary by force. I heard by the time he reached the bottom of the chute there wasn’t enough left of him to wheel on a rotisserie. That was three years ago, though, before I got here.”
Before she got there? I leaned forward as she studied my eyes. I suppose she liked what she saw because she stopped squinting and smiled. “I thought you had to be raised in the Zodiac in order to be a part of the troop?”
“Oh, no. I came to it late, like you.” She propped a hip on the side of my bed. “My mother was mortal—gifted, sure, but mortal all the same. My father was the Gemini of the star signs. If troop hierarchy were patriarchal, I’d hold that star sign right now. As it is I’m lacking certain…physical gifts. Technically speaking I’m not really a part of the troop.” She smiled wryly but didn’t sound bitter at this twist of fate. “Still, between the two of them, I possess enough insight to contribute in an ancillary form. The other star signs come to me when they’re afraid their emotions—and therefore their pheromones—might get the best of them. And sometimes they just come to talk.”
“So…you’re like a shrink?”
She wrinkled her nose at my word choice. “A supernatural psychologist, if you will.”
“A…an independent?” I asked, remembering the manuals’ distinction between troop members and all others.
She laughed, then whistled from the side of her mouth. “Be careful how you use that word. Some would take great offense to being lumped in with the rogue agents.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Oh, I didn’t mean me. Like I said, I’m just an auxiliary member of the troop. My mother left when I was a child. My father died not long after—supernatural causes, of course—and I’ve been on my own ever since. Still, the Taurean Shadow targeted me about two and a half years ago. Apparently he and my father had some longstanding territorial dispute. Gregor found out about it, found me, and thought it his duty to bring me here. Eventually he convinced Warren of the same.”