Jasmine glanced up from her text messaging, unimpressed. “There’s a girl at my school named Cindy who can totally do that. She’s been in tumbling and gymnastics since she was, like, three and can touch her nose with her…”
Regan shuddered, and her ribs ruptured in her chest cavity. They splintered upward, jagged edges pricked with scraps of muscle, while toothpick-sized bits sprang out like thorns to keep enemies at bay. Unnecessary, I thought, swallowing hard. I didn’t want to get any closer. Her exposed ribs swung like they were on hinges, knit together on the opposite side, and her head rotated a hundred and eighty degrees on her neck.
Jasmine’s mouth snapped shut as the Regan-thing turned. “Cindy can’t do that.”
In turn, Regan’s mouth sprang open. A wet, guttural cry rose from the emptiness of her ravaged core, and bloody tears began to stream down her face. Those pale orbs widened, then protruded so I could actually see the tendons connecting them as they strained from their sockets. The Regan-thing blinked-or I thought it was a blink because even though her lashes and lids had wasted away, her eyes rolled three hundred and sixty degrees in their sockets-but when they appeared again, they were tar black and smoking.
“Shit…” Jasmine’s curse morphed into a howl and her jaw dropped open, elongating into a gaping maw. The rest of her skin softened, shimmered, and thinned, and she was suddenly as rubber-limbed and tensile as Douglas had been. Skittles, a Hello Kitty coin purse, and lip gloss littered the floor as she spun, whipping around to position herself before me. Her remaining aura deepened her skin color to near opaqueness, and her outline shimmered at the edges as her body expanded to my height and width, concealing me fully.
Apparently Li had been right; she had no choice but to help when I was truly in danger because she took two rippling steps backward, and I closed my eyes, stock-still, and felt coolness sweep over me, like a wave of air fresh from the sea. When I opened my eyes a second later, the world was awash in a pastel lavender hue. Jasmine’s body lay at my feet; knees tucked into her chest, eyes pinched shut. I sensed Li’s form prone on the ground next to her, but didn’t dare look for sure. Instead I carefully stepped over my changeling’s shell to face off against my father.
“There you are.” The Tulpa brushed at an invisible speck of dust on one bloody entrail. “I’ve been looking all over for you.”
“You don’t say,” I said dryly.
His eyes canvassed the room, passing over the shells of the changelings, lingering longer on the shelves over my shoulder, the question he wasn’t asking clear as they landed again on me. “Leave it to Regan to locate you first. Though when I sent out the message, I thought she might. She despises all agents of Light, though her hatred for you is almost toxic. Don’t know why.”
He was waiting for me to elucidate. I did. “Because she was born under a mushroom cloud?”
“Because she likes her luxuries,” he countered. “My agents are forbidden to eat, sleep, fornicate, or shit until a transmogrified message has been delivered-”
“Those are luxuries?”
“I sent this message out three days ago.”
“So Las Vegas is teeming with a troop of hungry, horny, sleep-deprived, bunged-up psychopaths?” No wonder the crime rate had spiked in the last forty-eight hours.
“I’ve decided to give you a second chance.”
“A second chance again?” I let my eyes widen into saucers and his-hers-narrowed. “What? You’re the one who declared apocalypse and tried to microwave me in your supernatural funk.” And he hadn’t been wishy-washy about it either.
“I’ve had a change of mind.”
“Obviously.” My eyes roved over his head in distaste. I didn’t even want to know what that membrane was covering all that coiling gray matter.
The Tulpa held out his hands-or Regan’s-in supplication, but the gesture wasn’t as winsome as he intended. Each digit was dripping with fresh blood. “We need to talk.”
And I was willing to bet Regan’s mention of the doppelgänger had something to do with that. Knowing that gave me an edge. “All right. Let’s talk about why you’re so afraid of a woman made of bubbles.”
He reached out and slapped me so fast, I gasped from the shock as much as the pain. He wasn’t supposed to be able to touch me in a safe zone and he sure as hell shouldn’t be able to reach through Jasmine’s protective shell. I put a hand to my stinging face, and felt wetness there.
The Tulpa brought his claws up in front of his face, smiled, and licked blood from his fingers. I didn’t know if it was Regan’s blood, Jasmine’s, or mine…probably a bit of each.
“Or you could choose the subject,” I said, like I thought I had a choice. He inclined his head. Easy to be agreeable when you knew you would get your way.
“I made a mistake,” he began, surprising me, though his sharp look had me holding back my first response. I didn’t feel like finding out what would happen if he really wanted to put his hands on me. “I thought you were…in league with the double-walker. It seemed likely after the way we last parted that you’d attempt to attract a double-walker for additional protection against me.”
Ye-ah. Because I knew exactly how to do that. I didn’t say that, though, choosing instead to play dumb. It wasn’t exactly a stretch. “Well, she can’t be my doppelgänger because she tried to disembowel me. And she doesn’t even look like me.”
“But she smells like you,” he said, and it came out a hiss because of his torn tongue. Those black eyes widened. “I wasn’t lying when I said your pheromones were all over her. Every disturbance caused by her unnatural passage into this realm sends up a cloud of eau de Joanna.”
“I’ve never seen her before in my life.”
“So? Consider what you know of supernatural phenomena-or more exactly, what you don’t know.” He smirked, and I thought: Sure, rub it in. I couldn’t argue, though. “Due to the rather surprising circumstances of your conception and birth, who’s to say there weren’t once two of you?”
I blanked at his meaning, not because I didn’t understand what he was saying, but because the idea was so foreign to me, and what I’d always known about myself, it took a moment for his words to sink in. Finally, I managed, “A…a twin?”
“One-the strongest, the Kairos-survived…while the other became a ghost.”
I blanked again. A twin. Was it possible?
“Too bad Zoe isn’t around to ask,” he said, echoing my own thoughts…though he could’ve been reading my expression. I’d been shocked into transparence. A twin. “Stranger things have happened,” he said, motioning down the body he temporarily possessed. “In any case, this double-walker has focused on you. The more interaction there is between the two of you, the easier it will be for her to become you.”
“But why?” I thought, so taken with the idea, I let my attention momentarily wander from the Tulpa. “Why now, I mean?”
“Why not?” He shrugged, the movement causing Regan’s shoulder to tear in three separate spots, and I tried to ignore the fresh blood staining Zane’s Persian carpet. Explain that one to the steam cleaners. “You’re the Kairos. You’ve finally come into your supernatural powers, something a double-walker seeking corporeal expression would find irresistible. But I saw your face when she appeared at the top of that scaffolding. You were as surprised as I. And you and your troop have as much to lose.”
So the others were right. He was just as worried about the doppelgänger’s increasingly debilitating explosions as we were. Further proof that she had to be stopped, and soon. “She tried to rip my heart from my chest before escaping,” I admitted, watching for a reaction. It was difficult through the decaying tissue and twitching tendons, but his eyes narrowed and his voice softened.