The Scent of Shadows Free with Bonus Material (48 page)

“I’m sure it’s on your to-do list.”

He shook his head, features sunken beneath his wide-brimmed hat. “Nope. Mackie’s the one lookin’ to settle up with you.”

Mackie.
The name alone sent a shiver crisscrossing my spine. Also known as Sleepy Mac for his ability to fall into a comalike state to keep his energy from being drained by the women of Midheaven. A reported member of the Nez Perce tribe, he was the world’s oldest living agent. I didn’t know how he’d found his way into Nevada, or even if he’d started out as Light or Shadow, but I did know you didn’t get to be as old as he was by being merciful. “I thought I’d imagined him busting through the bus’s rooftop.”

But I remembered the skeletal face clearly. I’d seen the leathery visage in recurring nightmares, the screaming mouth a sharp whir in my mind, the deadened gaze that could burn holes of decay in my body with a mere glance.

“Carving through,” Tripp corrected, and shifted to reveal what he’d been working on. Himself. He’d been using a hand torch to cauterize a wound already festering with pus. He gestured with it, unnecessarily adding, “With his magic blade.”

And when an agent of the Zodiac said “magic” like it was a special thing, it was worth fearing. Mackie reportedly stored the last bit of his soul—the small part Midheaven hadn’t drained away—in his knife’s blade. He kept it protected there, always on his person, and it did his will almost independently of him. That was why Tripp wasn’t healing.

“What the fuck is Mackie doing outside of Midheaven? Who unlocked the entrance?” Someone who wanted me dead?

And why hadn’t
that
list gotten any shorter?

Tripp resettled his hat on his head. “I thought it might have been you.”

I shook my head.

Tripp shrugged. “Well, I didn’t waste time askin’. I saw Mackie go through the lantern on that side of the veil and waited till I was sure he was gone ’fore diving out myself.”

The pagoda lanterns were the exit on Midheaven’s side, while a pinched taper buried in Vegas’s underground sewer system marked this side. When the flame was extinguished, an agent’s body was wrapped in a solid wall of smoke, ferrying them to the other world. But even Mackie couldn’t have exited without someone removing the lock that secured the entrance on this side. And while entering Midheaven would still cost an agent one-third of their soul—the price of a round-trip ticket to another world, and no wonder there was no great rush—exiting meant freedom.

But who would allow that?

I bit my lip. “No one else got out?”

“You know how it is over there. No one even tried.”

Hunter hadn’t tried.

I frowned, but stopped following the thought when I realized Tripp was watching me closely.

“So how’d you find me?” I asked, clearing my throat.

Tripp’s shrug allowed it hadn’t been easy. Only true identities were revealed in Midheaven. I was Joanna Archer over there, my appearance reflecting the old me—muscular limbs on a slim frame, black bob and dark, unamused eyes—rather than this bubble gum, Barbie Doll packaging.

“I didn’t,” he finally admitted, lighting a strange little cigarette. He blew out the smoke, and though yards away, it choked my pores. I shook against my bindings, which seemed to amuse Tripp. “Mackie tracked you and I tracked him. After eighteen years, I could pinpoint that mean fucker anywhere. His power tastes black.”

I couldn’t help it. The opening was too great and inviting, and though I was all trussed up, Tripp had forgotten the gag. “And what did the power you stole from me taste like?”

I was referring to the chips I’d lost to him over a game of soul poker in Midheaven—two odd triangular symbols, their meaning still unknown to me. Not that it mattered much now.

Spitting a stray bit of tar from his tongue, he scoffed. “I won it from you.”

“Then traded it away.” For some alone time with a woman.

“Tell me you blame me.” And he said it so defiantly I really wanted to. But I couldn’t. Ruthless barter was the way of that world. Come to think of it, it was the way of this one. “That’s what I thought. And now that that’s settled . . . you’re going to help me.”

“Why, Harlan Tripp,” I said, in my sweetest southern drawl, “why on earth would I deign to assist the likes of you?”

No amusement this time. He leaned forward, still seated, but far closer than I ever wanted him. In a voice rumbling like a far-off streetcar, he whispered, “Because I know who you are. Your father killed my entire family, outlawed me, and sent me on the lam. The only thing that kept me going in that seventh level of hell was the thought of killing him, his sycophants, and everyone else who done me wrong.”

I lay silent for a long moment, trying to scent the heat of his bitter fury, and feeling only the warmth of that strange cigarette’s smoke. If I could move I would have waved it away, though I had a feeling it would cling to my hands with its deceptive warmth.

“Tripp,” I finally said, licking dry lips. “You and I are not on the same side, got it? Never have been, never will be.”

I could appreciate the idea of a world unpopulated by the Tulpa and his Shadows—after all, my birth father had tried repeatedly to kill me, too—but even were I still an agent with powers beyond a mortal’s, still in possession of a lineage marking me as special, I would never work alongside a man like Harlan Tripp.

A ghostly smile flashed on his ruddy stubbled face. “I will tear off long, precise strips of your flesh with these pliers,” he whispered in a lover’s voice, and holding up the sharp tool, “until you are.”

I swallowed hard, but said nothing. Letting a Shadow know I was mortal was a direct invitation to the grave.

“I’ll start with your eyelids.”

I didn’t need to smell my fear spiking, I could feel my heartbeat screaming. But Tripp’s responding grin was short-lived. Inhaling sharply, head swiveling toward the glass door, he dove for me and began roughly working away my ties. They were belted around the entire case. Apparently he’d been serious about the pliers.

“Done it now, haven’t you?” I said, as he cursed, my relief making me punchy . . . though I wasn’t out of this yet. “What are they? Two blocks away? Three?”

I tried to remember how far off I could scent another agent. Three was my best effort. The most senior of agents could double that distance.

“I’m better than that, missy. I haven’t smelled pure Light in so long, I could pinpoint them on a map.”

It was a dig, but all I could think was, Pure Light. “They’re not Shadows?”

He frowned, like I’d spit in his eye.

Even as my heartbeat bumped faster at the thought of seeing my old troop, the look gave me an idea. “Let me take care of them.”

He was scrabbling at my ties, growing more anxious, and an edgy Shadow was a homicidal one. “Don’t fuck with me, Archer.”

“Just hide. I’ll distract them. I’ll tell them you’ve already left.”

Tripp stilled, stared, and sucked in one long breath.

I held his gaze. “It’ll be the fastest way to get rid of them, and it’ll throw them off your trail too.”

He dropped his odd, handrolled smoke on the floor and stomped on it as he angled his gaze toward the door. He either had to leave me there or kill me. Even I could tell there wasn’t enough time to untie me. “Why would you?”

“I like my eyelids where they are,” I said wryly. “Besides, they’re not coming here for me.”

Either the ticking clock or my genuine bitterness decided it for him, because he soon nodded. “Chisel me, woman, and so help me, I’ll find a way to kill you. Even if it’s my last act ’fore death.”

“I know.”

He backed away, disappearing into the shadows.

“Take my ID with you!” I hissed after him, because if Warren thought even a rogue Shadow knew my cover identity, he’d alter my memory, my mind, and my life altogether. It wouldn’t have anything to do with my general safety either. He’d do it only to protect the troop.

So I took a steadying breath after Tripp and my belongings disappeared and resettled my head on the hard glass top as if napping there. Then I waited in silence, mere moments from facing an entire cadre of superheroes. The agent of Light. The troop that had abandoned me completely.