The Scent of Shadows Free with Bonus Material (19 page)

I straightened and reached for the first Light title.

“Stop!” Carl grasped my arm.

“What?” I said, yanking away. This kid was beginning to freak me out.

“If you touch that book and you’re not really an agent of Light, then you’re going to get the biggest shock of your life, and I mean literally! I’ve seen it before, and it ain’t pretty.” He shook his finger at me, a frown marring his furry brow. “A girl like you can’t walk around with those sorts of skid marks, if you know what I mean.”

I ignored the innuendo and glanced behind me at Zane, who was leaning against a wall, leafing through
Spider-Man
, but listening closely enough that his mouth was twitching. He caught my look and nodded, concurring.

I turned back to the kid. “So, you’re saying a Shadow agent can’t read the Light comics, and vice versa?”

“That’s right, blondie. Keeps the sides from cross-pollinating.”

“So if I’m an agent of Light and I touch this,” I said, pointing to the lead Shadow title, “I get zapped?”

“You won’t,” he said with surety, crossing his arms over his puny chest.

I didn’t think so either, but my belief had nothing to do with what series I touched. I reached for the Shadow title, paused just to hear the weird kid’s breath quicken, then yanked the title from its rack. Nothing.

“I told you!” He pointed, jumping up and down. I grabbed another, then another, and every Shadow title down to the
ground as Wolfie continued to holler manically beside me. “I told her she was evil! Did you see?”

“I saw,” Zane said mildly.

It meant nothing, I told myself, then said it aloud. “It doesn’t mean anything!”

Zane shrugged and turned back to his comic.

“It means you’re a freakin’ baddie, baby,” Wolfie said, jabbing his finger through the air. “A Shadow agent bent on death and destruction!”

I slid my eyes to the racks as he continued to jeer, then started grabbing more books. He stilled abruptly, mouth hanging open. I snatched the last Light title from the lower rungs of the rack, straightened, and grinned at him.

“You’re not supposed to be able to do that!” he stuttered. “Zane, what’s going on?”

“Guess you don’t know the Zodiac series as well as you thought,” I retorted, turning to smirk at Zane. “Comic books that zap you. Please.”

But Zane had gone chalk white, and the comic he’d been leafing through fell heedlessly to the floor. He stared at the pile of comics in my arms, then back up into my face.

“Light and Shadow,” he finally said, softly. “So you’re the one.”

I drew back, not entirely certain what he meant, but answered with what my gut told me was true. “Yeah,” I said. “I guess I am.”

Whatever that meant.

Dumping the pile of comics in the trunk of my car, I decided to walk the two blocks to the day spa despite my three-inch Christian Louboutin boots. Air was what I needed after the claustrophobic environ of Master Comics, though smog is what I got, toeing the sidewalk with cars zipping by me at forty-five miles an hour. I still couldn’t shake the feeling of being watched, but it didn’t take long to realize it probably had more to do with my outfit than any paranormal activity. I gamely ignored the whistles and
honks aimed my way, even from the group of high school boys who raced by again in the opposite direction just to comment on specific body parts, and wondered how Olivia had handled this all those years.

Unfortunately, the catcalls from the teens had elicited the attention of a group of workers doing pavement repair just ahead of me. They paused to watch my approach.

“Shit,” I muttered under my breath. “Not today.”

One worker whistled as I waited for traffic to subside. I’d have to pass in the street to avoid the wet pavement. I ignored him, and spotted an opening in the wake of an enormous SUV. The same kids who’d already passed me twice. The passenger leaned out the window this time, making lewd motions with his fingers and tongue. This, in turn, seemed to embolden the three men on the pavement. Still ignoring them—a lone woman’s sole defense when confronted with the pack mentality—I stepped into the street.

“Check the unit, boys!”

I kept walking.

“You don’t want to miss this one,
mijos
. Sweet as a split peach.”

Almost there. I gritted my teeth.

“I bet her rim jobs could oil a semi.”

That one, plus the accompanying laughter, stopped me cold. Adrenaline surged, tsunami waves wracking my core and my vision turning red. The oncoming traffic was racing toward me again, and I still had time to spring to the opposite walk and continue on my way, but I didn’t move. I couldn’t. I didn’t want to.

Whirling to face the snickering men, I caught the halfhearted attempts to cover their grins. Ignoring the horns blaring behind me—with irritation now, rather than admiration—I began to saunter back the way I’d come.

“Check the unit, boys,” I said coldly, the wind of the passing cars whipping my hair into snapping coils around my head. My heels clicked sharply on the pavement as I
advanced. “You don’t want to miss this one,
mijos
,” I said, watching the laughter die on the faces in front of me as something in my face—probably those eyes Carl had commented on—revealed something lurking inside Olivia’s frame. “I bet her rim jobs could oil a semi.”

I stopped in front of the man who’d last spoken. He was my height; plain, not bad-looking. He shifted, and I answered his hesitant smile with a tight one of my own. Then I stepped forward, into his face, his space. Right into his universe. Staring directly into his eyes, I ran a hand over his chest, down his stomach, and into his pocket. The two other men began to laugh, a mixture of discomfort and excitement. I kept my smile fixed even as the man began to breathe hard. Wet cement clung to his fingers, and I could smell the McDonald’s breakfast he’d had that morning, the type of soap he’d showered with, the emotions seeping through his pores. I lifted his wallet from his pocket and thumbed through it.

“Hey.” He shook himself, as if from a dream.

“Is this her?” I said, flipping to a photo of a brunette. “She’s pretty.” I pulled the photo from its plastic cover. Karen, and his name was Mark. I saw it on his ID. I looked back up at him and smiled cruelly. “Too bad you’re right about her, Mark.”

“What are you talking about?” He didn’t quite manage the laugh this time.

“You know what I’m talking about,” I said sweetly, leaning into him. “The nights when she comes home later than you. When her lipstick’s too fresh, and her eyes too dark, and she smells like secrets and someone else’s soap.”

The other two men stopped laughing as well.

“Actually, come to think of it,
mijo
,” I said, pivoting partially to face the second man, “it smells a lot like your soap.”

Mark froze beside me, while the second man’s eyes grew wide.

“What?” I said, mimicking his expression. “You really thought he didn’t know?”

I folded the wallet and handed it back to Mark, but he didn’t see. He was staring blindly at his friend, who in turn was glaring at me.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,
puta
,” the man finally said, his eyes full of hatred. Someone should have told him the adage about protesting too much.

“Here.” I tapped Mark with his own wallet. He jolted, then took it, not looking at me.

It was then that I saw his hands were shaking.

A sudden wave of sorrow washed over me. Shock rolled into me like an earthquake, and it came from the man named Mark, who truly loved his wife Karen; and yes, who he knew, deep down, was having an affair with his good friend. What had I just done?

Looks can’t hide your true identity. It’s the eyes that give you away…the soul behind them. The intent. The Shadows.

Olivia would have never done this. I’d come over here intending to hurt these men, and I’d used this ability, whatever it was that Micah had said made me special and
heroic
, to injure an innocent. A mortal. A man.

My anger was gone. It was a small thing compared to the shame filling my lungs, strangling my breath. I had to get out of there, away from Mark’s injured gaze and the pain I had caused. As the two men began to argue, I turned, passing by the third.

“Bitch,” he shot from beneath his breath. And at that moment, who was I to argue? “You have issues!”

“You have no idea,” I muttered, and with that, walked right through the construction zone, my heels sinking into the newly poured pavement. I knew the sidewalk, my Louboutins, and the lives I left behind me would never be the same again.

I hurried the rest of the way to the day spa, imagining I could hear voices behind me rising in accusation and denial, anger and refute. I found myself wondering if those three men would ever work together again, if they’d ever be a team, or holler at girls in the street again. Doubtful, I thought now, but somehow took no pleasure in that.

Light and Shadow
, Zane had said.
So you’re the one.

“What have I done?” I asked aloud. Another question I couldn’t answer.

“Never mind you, darlin’.” Cher’s voice popped up seemingly from nowhere. “The question is what have I done?”

Halting, I glanced around the street. No Cher. Her Corvette was backed into an opposing slot, but there was only one vehicle in front of the day spa, a shiny red BMW. I walked to the other side of it to find her crouching furtively by the driver’s door.

“You hit a car,” I said, unnecessarily. “Again.”

Cher had to be infamous within her insurance company.

“It’s only a little bitty ding,” she retorted, digging in her
purse. “Come on over here and keep watch. I’m going to fix this.”

She pulled out a bottle of red nail color and began dabbing at the door.

“Cher, this is an accident. You have to report it.”

“It’s not an accident until you’ve been caught.” She blew on the door and tilted her head. “Another coat, I think.”

The absurdity of the moment hit me, contrasting sharply with the moments just past, and laughter—somewhat hysterical, I admit—began to bubble up inside of me. There was no cruelty here, no nefarious activity or laws of an alternate universe at work. It was just Cher. Neither Shadow nor Light. Just my sister’s best friend in all her blinding shades of fuchsia. “You missed a spot.” I giggled.

“Thanks, Livvy-girl.”

I was smiling when
he
caught my attention. I sucked in a surprised gasp. The man stood between the building and sidewalk, too still. At least, I thought, my smile fading, I knew now why I’d felt followed.

“Hey, Cher,” I said quietly. “I’ll be right back.”

Her head popped up halfway. Barbie-Kilroy. “Who’s that?”

“A cop.”

Cher squealed and ducked.

It took both forever and not long enough to reach Ben’s side.

So much to say, yet no words would ever be enough. So I said the simplest, truest thing that came to mind. “God, Ben. You look like shit.”

His half laugh came out strangled, like he hadn’t used it in a very long time. “And you look beautiful. As usual.”

He’d always been rugged, even as a boy, but now there was more sadness than toughness lining his face, and his penchant for imagining and brooding lived too close to the surface of his eyes. I sucked in a breath of salty sorrow. “I know you’re undercover, but do they really let you go into work like that?”

He glanced down, shrugged. “I’m kinda taking some time off.”

“How much time?”

“Just a bit. Just until I get my head together. I don’t know.” He shoved his hands in his pockets and shuffled his feet. “How have you been, Olivia?”

Olivia. Be Olivia
. I took a deep breath. “Uh…not quite myself, actually.”

“I know what you mean.” He ran a palm over the back of his neck. “I’m sorry for your loss.”

I wanted to say it’d been his loss too, but the words backed up in my throat. “How long have you been following me?”

“Just today. Well, yesterday too. I had some sort of misguided notion you needed protecting, but that’s probably just my own guilty conscience at work.” He laughed again, but it was too bitter to be funny. “I was going to help you with those guys back there, but you seemed to take care of them too. You must get that all the time.”

Yeah, I’d taken care of them, all right. I looked at my shoes, flecks of cement on the bright red bottoms, and felt my own guilty conscience spring to life. “Did you need something, Ben?”

“I did…do, actually.” He reached for his back pocket. “Can you tell me anything about this picture?”

I knew what he was going to show me even before he pulled out the photo. The mug shot must’ve been taken the night Ajax attacked me in Valhalla. I recognized the suit hanging slack on his body. I’d given him the injury that lay bandaged on his neck. Shit, I could practically smell the rot through the photo paper.

I swallowed hard and handed the mug shot back. “Terrible lighting. But at least he doesn’t have his chin resting on his fist. I hate that pose.”

“It’s a mug shot, Olivia,” Ben said through gritted teeth. “You’ve never seen this guy before? Sure you don’t know him?”

“Oh my God!” I said in mock alarm. Ben straightened expectantly. “Puh-lease don’t tell me this is one of those guys from that blind dating reality show. I knew I shouldn’t have given them my number.”

“Never mind,” he said, sighing, and I could practically see him deflate. After a long silence he said, “I know it probably doesn’t matter now, but what about that night? Do you remember anything at all about…anything at all?”

“I’m, uh, still working through all that.” I looked away like I didn’t want to talk about it—and I didn’t—but I wasn’t fast enough to miss the way his lips thinned in frustration. Ben had never looked at me that way before. Like he was disgusted. Like I was weak.

Then he sighed heavily…and I didn’t like
that
at all.

“Look, Traina, don’t get all huffy and impatient on me, okay?” I said, my high voice rising even higher with indignation. “I’ve had some memory loss. There’s a lot I can’t recall.”

“I’m sorry, of course.” His face softened. “But if there’s anything you can remember about Jo, about that night, anything…you’ll call, right?”

I nodded, a soundless lie.

“I don’t know—” he began to say, then stopped before trying again. “I don’t know if she told you about our date, or if she got the chance, or—”

He swallowed hard, and I watched his throat work. The throat I’d kissed and nuzzled just weeks earlier. I knew what it smelled and tasted like, and suddenly I knew the words that were going to come from it. “Olivia, forgive me for dredging up the past, but there’s something I’ve wanted to say for a long time now.”

I shook my head, felt the mass of blond hair bounce. “Ben—”

“Please, let me say it. I should have said it to Joanna, but I didn’t, and now—” He broke off, face crumbling.

I bit my lip, nodded once, and braced myself for what I was sure would be a heartbreaking speech.

“I just wanted to say I’m sorry.”

Genuinely surprised, I drew back. “For what?”

“Being weak. For not standing by your sister when she needed me. I caused you both pain.” His voice broke again, and the words I’d been expecting came through in that awful sound.

Tears welled in my own throat and eyes. “She never blamed you, Ben.”

“I know. I hated myself enough for the both of us.” He ran a hand through his hair, causing it to stick up further in wild, curly tufts. “God, I think I was afraid she’d end up like my mother, just this shell who’d once been vibrant and beautiful and solid but who’d let one man change her, and hollow her out.”

Ben never talked about his parents. I was so surprised he was doing so now, with Olivia, that I remained silent.

“He told me it was my fault, you know. He said that’s what happened when a man couldn’t take care of his woman, and as much as I know he was just saying it to hurt me, I think a part of it sunk in. Not here, but here.” He pointed to his head, then his heart.

“Your father was an ass, Ben.” I didn’t care if it sounded like Olivia. It was something he needed to know.

“I know.” He nodded. “But those words stayed with me. I let them torture me, just like my mother let his words destroy her, and I lost out on the chance to know who Joanna had become—lost a whole fucking decade—just so I could imagine her as she was.”

“You were young.” A tear slid down my cheek, and I brushed it away, hoping he hadn’t seen.

“She was younger,” he said vehemently. “So were you.”

“What happened that night made us all who we are today,” I said, trying to calm him. “And Jo…Jo liked who she was.”

He nodded after a bit. “I liked who she was too.”

He’d stopped ranting, but the sorrow rising off him was twined with such guilt and fury and denial that the sickly
combination, oily and raw, would eventually eat him alive. “Ben, please,” I said softly, moving closer. “You have to let her go.”

“She did
not
come back into my life in the eleventh hour just to let me know what I was missing!” The words burst from him so fiercely, it was as if they’d been gathered on the tip of his tongue, waiting for a lit fuse to ignite them.

“Shh.” Jesus, I thought, stepping back. “Okay, Ben. It’s okay.”

But that was a lie, and he shook his head violently, knowing it. “And there’s more to this whole thing than a botched break-in and two people falling to their deaths. I know it!”

“How do you know?” I said quietly. “You weren’t there.”

“I know because I know Jo!”

What could I say to that? A part of me thrilled to hear those words. But if he didn’t leave this one alone, he was putting us both in danger again. I hardened myself to his sorrow. “This isn’t one of your mysteries that need to be solved, Ben. You can’t put a happy ending on this one.”

“Then I can at least get an answer that satisfies me.”

“The police say she died.”

“I don’t care. She came to me that night, Olivia! She came to me and we made love, and she was supposed to be dead already—” Shit. He was right. “But she was in my arms, warm, alive, and—”

“I saw her, Ben,” I finally said, hating to hurt him, but seeing no other way. “I saw her fall.”

He was silent for a long moment. “The papers said you couldn’t remember anything.”

Oops. “That’s the last thing I remember,” I said. “I’m sorry. She’s gone.”

His jaw clenched stubbornly. “Then I want to find out why. Why’d she return to your apartment, huh? Why didn’t she just go home? Why did she leave me at all?”

I turned away to pace, to try and think this whole thing through, though I hardly knew where to begin. I didn’t know
how to act because this life as Olivia, as a crime-fighting heroine, was not yet fully mine. But there was one thing I did know. I glanced back at him. “You’re not working with the police on this, are you?”

“I told you,” he said, not meeting my eye, “I’ve taken a leave of absence.”

I shook my head.
My God. He’d gone vigilante
. The department said it was an open and shut case; I was sure Warren and Micah had worked hard to make it so. Now Ben, of all people, was opening that door again.

“No, Ben. This is not what she wanted,” I said, before correcting myself. “It’s not what she
would have
wanted.”

“Oh, Olivia.” He looked at me like I was hopelessly naive. For one moment I actually thought he was going to rumple my hair. “Vengeance is exactly what she wanted. And I’m going to get it for her.”

“Ben,” I said, my voice a sharp contrast to his overly solicitous one. “That wasn’t what she was doing. That wasn’t the goal.”

“Really? Did you ask her? Because I did. I asked what she’d do if she ever found the man who attacked her, who attacked you both. She said she’d kill him.”

I
had
said that.

“Joanna was often glib that way.” I swallowed hard, thinking fast. “But what she really wanted was to face that man down and let him know she’d survived it. That she’d survived him. She wanted to look that…that monster in the face and let him know not only didn’t he kill her, but he didn’t break her.”

Ben’s jaw set stubbornly. “‘It is better to be violent, if there is violence in our hearts, than to put on the cloak of nonviolence to cover impotence.’”

Yeah, and thank you, Mahatma Gandhi, for that one.

I pretended I didn’t hear him, and put a gentle hand on his arm. “Don’t let this break you, Ben. Joanna wouldn’t want that.”

For a moment I thought I’d gotten through. His face
cleared and he looked young and lost, but it was only for a moment. His expression hardened again, and shadows seized his eyes.

“Stop looking at me that way,” he said softly, jerking back from my touch. “Everyone’s looking at me like I’ve lost it…”

You mean like the way they used to look at me.

“…like I’m crazy, and I don’t know what I know. But I know what I saw, Olivia! Joanna was in my bed and in my arms at the time they’re saying she was already dead…” Shit. I was going to have to ask Warren how to clear up that one. “And I may be angry, sure, but I’ve never been clearer on what I need to do. In fact, I think I’m more in my right mind now that I’ve been in, oh, at least a decade.”

And I couldn’t help but notice his eyes did look clear. But his scent was that of futile regret, and his guilt had soured upon him.

“I’m sorry,” he said, catching my look. This time he was the one to lay a hand on my arm. Olivia’s arm, I reminded myself as his touch shot a tremor through me. “I shouldn’t have come to you with any of this but…you’re all that’s left of her.”

“I know.” And at least I could give him that comfort. I pulled him into a hug, resting my palms on the hard plane of his back, and for a moment—just one—I let myself go. I shut my eyes and hugged him like I was me and nothing had changed and there was still a storm brewing on the far horizon. I pretended we’d never left the restaurant that night, and wondered if Ben could feel the regret of that decision in my arms. I squeezed harder, because maybe through the force of that hug I could put him, us, back together.

Yet the reality was we had lost one another. Again. There was no fixing this, and I should have just said to him there were no answers to be found. Only the truth, which he could never know.

“I’m going to find him, Olivia,” he said, his promise warming my head, ruffling my hair. “I’m going to hunt him down, just as Joanna would have, and this time I’ll kill him. I’ll take away everything and everyone that means something to him. I’m going to annihilate his world so thoroughly he’ll never be able to piece it back together.”

“I have to go now,” I said, pulling away, hating his words. Hating who he reminded me of. Hating, I thought, the scent of rot seeping through each syllable.