The Neon Graveyard (22 page)

The silence in the room quickly grew deafening. I bit my lip, looked away, and then whispered, “I’m going to try to remove the mask again. Please let go. Please don’t be afraid.”

I reached down.

No dice.

“Okay,” I said, nodding, biting my lip. “Then how about this. Vanessa needs you, Felix. She’s going out of her mind. Your glyph has expired back at the sanctuary so the others are already acting as though you’re dead . . . upon Warren’s declaration, of course.” Felix would well know that his troop leader would act the same were it anyone else. Nothing personal, but the troop came first. Warren believed the good of the whole always trumped that of the individual. “But Vanessa, she knows you’re not gone. Of course she knows. She’s yours.”

I waited for that to sink in. It might take a bit more time beneath a mask that had a stranglehold on his consciousness.

“So you need to let go of your earthly body if only to give her relief. Let her bury you. Let her mourn. She won’t ever be able to move on, to live or fight or even just take a solid breath, if she knows you’re still alive in the one way that truly counts. You’d feel exactly the same.”

I’d like to say the mask had popped off after that. That asking for forgiveness, fervently wishing I could take back the mistakes leading to Felix’s death, and invoking a great love was the magic combination that unlocked a soul from its tortured body. But anyone who’d ever prayed or begged or cried at a deathbed knew miracles didn’t happen—not like that. Whatever great power that had made us wasn’t interested in our feelings, but in seeing what we did after the tears had dried, all the way up until our end—no matter how bitter, or supernatural, it might be.

So I sighed and resorted to another thing he’d loved his entire life: his sense of duty. “All right then, Felix. How about this? I’m going after the fuckers who did this to you, but I need your help to do it.”

I waited. Then repeated, “Do you hear me? I’m going back. I’m going in. And I. Need. Help. From you.”

And I leaned close just in case someone with super hearing was lurking outside the door, and whispered every detail of my vengeful, homicidal, reckless, and suicidal plan into his ear.

Then I waited. I took a deep breath. I closed my eyes.

And when I opened them again, it was with warm tears streaming down my face and the mask cradled in my hands.

17

“Y
ou sure it’s safe up here?”

I peered over the roofline of Master Comics at the concrete ground—cracked, though that didn’t mean there was any give in it. Chandra joined me, though she was more concerned with scanning the perimeter than with the thirty-foot drop. And why not? I was the only one with mortal bones.

“You know it is,” she replied, eyes narrowing at a movement she spotted five hundred feet away, but one I could not. She relaxed after a moment, so I did as well. “You’ve already been zapped by Zane’s little remote control sensor.”

I wrinkled my nose at the memory, and skirted her a sidelong glance. “Yeah, but I thought that was just to deter me from breaking into his place.”

“Apparently it deters lots of things,” she muttered, turning back to the roof’s center where the self-appointed head changeling was staring out over his starry domain. Dork.

“What’s Zane been doing that he’s so tired all the time, anyway?” I called out to Carl, but he just shrugged as he tested the device that would zap anyone who decided to start a world war on the comic shop’s rooftop.

I fisted my hands on my hips. “It’s because I’m gray, right? Only true Shadow and Light are worthy of Zane’s most prized secrets?”

Carl pointed the device at me. “It’s because you’re a pain in our collective asses and I wouldn’t be up here freezing my gonads off if it weren’t for you.”

I lifted my arms in mock surrender. “Gawd, who needs Zane. You sound just like him.”

But I didn’t press the issue. Of all the changelings, only Carl remained behind when Chandra and I had come asking for help. He’d also let us carry Felix’s casket through the shop and Zane’s upstairs apartment—after knocking Zane out with Ambien-laced Scotch and tucking him into bed. That way, he said, the old dude would be absolved of any wrongdoing in helping us secure the rooftop location.

Not that we were doing anything wrong. We were just saying good-bye.

Chandra had done most of the heavy lifting. Carl and I wouldn’t have made it down the hallway leading to the storeroom on our own, never mind up the staircase. We then maneuvered carefully through Zane’s living quarters, careful not to bump the twin bed with the snoring blob bundled up tight, and then up onto the rooftop. Now Felix was settled, and all there was to do was wait for Vanessa.

“You can go now,” Chandra told Carl, when it became clear he was intent on waiting as well. Even in the dark his quick flush became apparent, and he opened his mouth to spout what was sure to be some foul retort. Yet he changed his mind at the last minute. “Just don’t mess the place up.”

“Yeah,” I scoffed, kicking at a stray soda can. “ ’Cuz it’s a fucking palace now.”

Something moved behind his gaze, a knowledge perhaps that we didn’t have, which in my case wasn’t exactly breaking news. It was nice not to have to fight him, though, and when he turned without another word, the lock to the sunroof catching with a firm click, Chandra and I both blew out a relieved sigh.

Then we settled into the most uncomfortable silence known to mankind.

It wasn’t that I hated Chandra. I never truly had, and I didn’t think she’d ever really hated me either. Real hate, I thought, grew out of full-blown wrongs and betrayals. In that sense, the Tulpa knew what he was talking about when we’d squared off on the desert floor.

What Chandra and I were doing here, joining forces from opposite sides of a divide we could have reached across at any time, was not that monumental . . . yet it was altogether new.

I glanced over at her, and she stiffened under my stare. I tried anyway. “How’d you find Vanessa?”

She gave me a look of surprise, like I’d grown another head rather than initiated a conversation, but I held her gaze, softly, which had her own fluttering away. “She found me. After she met with you, she gave me a single-use cell number and said to call her if we found anything. She also said she’d kill me if I didn’t.”

“She’s just not herself,” I said, earning another surprised glance. Believe me, I found it hard to believe I was trying to spare Chandra’s feelings too. I folded my arms around my shins. “Don’t take it personally.”

Leaning against the rooftop’s edge, our backs to the alley, not too close to each other but not too far away either, we gazed out at the neon sky. The city lights twinkled like there was no recession, no death, and no battle for its glowing soul.

I tried again. “What happened to your hand?”

Her severe mouth turned down. “What do you mean?”

I jerked my head at her left palm, tucked behind her, though it was clear her right arm was supporting all her weight. “You’re favoring it. You carried . . . him with the other. It’s also wrapped. I saw it peeking out beneath your shirt.”

“Observant, aren’t you?” she said, meeting my gaze for the first time.

“It’s been rather helpful in keeping me alive,” I answered in kind. And as agents couldn’t sustain injury through mortal weapons, it was clear Chandra had encountered some sort of conduit. If the agent wielding it was still after her, it would be nice to know what it was.

But Chandra just frowned at me a moment longer before returning her gaze to the roofscape. For a moment I thought she was going to remain as forthcoming as she ever was with me . . . which was to say not at all. But after another, she turned to face me fully, her dark hair swinging over her shoulders to frame her face. “You know, I’m not like you. I’m not special. Not extraordinary. I never have been—not in lineage or talent or looks or skills. All I’ve ever wanted was to be an agent. To be considered worthy of the title Light.”

I sighed softly. “And then I came along.”

“Yes.”

And in the Zodiac’s matriarchal world, lineage always won out over training, desire, or fairness. Chandra had known that. I had learned.

“I’m glad it’s you,” I said suddenly, almost before I knew I was thinking it. I ducked my head, but it was too late. Her gaze was arrowed in on me now, and her breath had caught. “The next Archer, I mean. You’re made for it. It should have been you all along.”

For a moment it looked like she’d agree, but then her shoulders slumped, and she shook her head. “It wasn’t your fault. Destiny, and all that shit. Whether I liked it or not.”

“Whether
I
liked it or not.”

“And you didn’t?” she asked, squinting over at me in disbelief. She’d held the desire to be the Archer of Light close to her chest for so long that it was clearly inconceivable that I didn’t covet the same.

“I wanted to fit in, of course. To do my part, to make—” I was going to say Warren, but I’d cut out my tongue before his name passed my lips favorably again. “I wanted to make my mother proud. But for me alone? Now that I’m out of the situation?” I shook my head. “No. I never wanted that position.”

“Not even the Kairos?”

I shook my head. “It’s too much like being the president. People pin their individual hopes on you, then tear you down when you either can’t deliver, or don’t do it in the way they desire.”

“Then what?”

Tilting my head, I pursed my lips. “I’d just like to be myself, I guess. I’d like to carve out my own place. Somewhere new if I must, but it would be nice to freely choose what my future looks like. And what it holds.”

She scoffed. “It doesn’t work that way, Joanna. Agents are born to a life of duty.”

“Then I guess it’s a good thing I’m not an—”

But I never finished because a gust of wind whipped over the rooftop, a rustle of clothing sounded, and soft-footed landings whipped me to my feet as four true agents of Light dropped directly across from me.

I made a surrendering gesture, palms up, though I had no plans to surrender as I backed away. Only to escape.

“I told them you were here.” Chandra’s voice was apologetic.

No shit
. I didn’t even look at her. And to think I’d been feeling sorry for her seconds earlier.

What remained of this valley’s twelve agents of Light stared back at me. Micah, Riddick, Gregor, Jewell. Another, Kimber, had been given a bus ticket back to her birth troop in Arizona once Warren deemed her insufficiently powerful. So save Warren and Tekla, that was the whole of the troop.

Except for Felix and Vanessa, I amended, sidestepping toward the skylight Carl had locked. Still, it was four against one. Five if you counted Chandra’s two-fucking-faces. Bad odds even if I weren’t a mortal.

Or a gray.

“Joanna—” Micah, the most senior of this group, held out a hand the size of a large brick to stop my lunge. I stopped, but mostly because I caught the way shadows roiled and shifted like liquid marble beneath his skin. That was a result of getting an indirect face full of smoke from a quirley like the one I’d attacked Solange with. Yet Micah’s eyes were clearer than the last time I saw him. A talented physician, he’d figured out a way to master the living smoke’s accompanying pain.

“We won’t hurt you,” he said, his voice a charred rumble as he stepped forward.

I took another step backward. “Gee, I think I’ve heard that one before.”

“Joanna—” Chandra reached too.

“Shut up.”

Jewell, careful not to move in my direction, clasped her hands in front of her. Though nonthreatening, it was a calculated gesture. She posed as a schoolteacher in the valley, and conservatively dressed the part. But no mere schoolmarm could pull the limbs from my body with her bare hands, so I remained wary.

“We just want to be here”—her eyes darted briefly to the coffin—“for Felix and for Vanessa. We’d like to comfort her, if we can.”

“You can’t,” I said shortly.

“But at least let us . . .” A tear rolled down her cheek, and she couldn’t finish.

“We need to grieve too,” Gregor said, and when I turned to face him, my own hard expression broke. One-armed, bald-headed, tattooed, and fierce, he stood across from me with puffy eyes and a tear-streaked face. The stricken look made me take another step back, but they all held where they were, including Chandra—weapons sheathed, hands where I could see them.

And they all looked exhausted.

I cared. God help me, I did. Like a battered wife remembering a time when her husband seduced her instead of struck her, I still remembered what it was to be one of them. Just because I knew it was irrational to trust those who’d betrayed me didn’t mean I didn’t wish I could.

Yet I remained wary for Hunter. For the child alive inside me. For the grays and even those wretched shrunken heads stuck in a world everyone else was happy to merely forget.

Fuck these guys and their belated sorrow. I had things to do.

But then—eyes on the coffin that held their troop brother and friend—Jewell spoke again. “Felix . . .”

Her voice broke on the second syllable, rising like a question, punctuating the air so that the sole note held all our unspoken thoughts and sorrows . . . and in those, I realized, we were still united.

You had so much to live for.

It’s too soon.

Why?

We could have stopped it.

Could we have stopped it?

Oh my God. No.

Not Felix.

I sagged against the air-conditioning unit. Seeing it, the agents of Light relaxed in turn, each shifting their gazes from me to the rooftop’s center, where the coffin lay like a sacred altar.

Then, suddenly, their gazes shifted again.

She appeared as silently as a ghost, rail-thin from the weight she’d lost even in the short time since our last meeting in the alley not far from here. Her body wavered in the gentle breeze as if spineless, and her limbs were wiry, and looked eerily long. The only part of her that remained inflexible and hard were her eyes, which darted around like she didn’t know where to aim, but she’d start shooting randomly if anyone so much as twitched.

No one moved.

“Where?” she finally said, voice even smokier, raspier than Micah’s. “Where’s my Felix?”

T
he sudden and odd cock of her head told me when Vanessa spotted the coffin. She was perched on the rooftop ledge, high enough to loom over everyone save Micah, and the city lights glared behind her as if she were backlit on one of Vegas’s main stages. Detaching herself from the illusion, she dropped silently to the rooftop. She then straightened, and strode directly to the rooftop’s center. Everyone else stepped back. And when she finally put her hand to the coffin lid, we averted our eyes.

Yes, we were all gathered here for the same reason. But in some ways this was not a loss that could be shared. Grief was a place every person had to go alone, a lonely country populated by mistakes and a futile desire to turn back time for an impossible “do-over.” We all felt such regret to varying degrees now—acutely and honestly—but none so much as Vanessa.

I stared hard at a peeling spot on the roof’s bumpy surface. It wasn’t something that should have had to play out before others, on a city rooftop, in an open location. Yet how often had our private moments been displayed in comic books for the entertainment of young minds? After all, the most emotional moments were fantastic fuel, evoking intense reactions and belief. This was vital in sustaining the Zodiac world, so in all probability this moment would live on in the minds of thousands anyway. At least for now Vanessa was veiled beneath the stars that ruled our world, and ringed by those who understood as much of her grief as anyone could.