Ajax ran his tongue over his teeth, letting it flicker over the chain again, chin lowered as he leaned forward. “Just so you know, he’d be dead by now…except for one thing.” The look on his face turned feral. “It’s so much harder on you both with him alive.”
Then he blew me another tainted kiss. “See you soon, Jo.”
I was breathing hard by the time the screen went blank again. My tumbler was empty but I was perfectly sober. I tried to slow my breathing, but what I really wanted to do was punch something. The sonofabitch had been here, I thought furiously. I’d seen immediately that the room was as it was now, all of Cher’s homey touches in place, as opposed to Olivia’s taping session, where her surroundings looked more lived in.
He’d also been in my house. In Asaf’s studio. Within reach of Ben. And I couldn’t protect them, I thought wildly, because I wasn’t allowed to go near them. Not as me, at least.
I lifted my head, catching the movement in the pane of glass opposite me. The sun was high in the afternoon sky and rays bounced from the windows, a tangible layer between the city and myself. Superimposed upon that, however, was a sharper image. I stared, and took in the female form reflected there. It was a body of silken curves and shining hair, hiding myriad psychic scars and a spine of steel.
“She’s beautiful,” I murmured, staring at myself. And that was the problem. I still looked in the mirror and saw someone else. Like the city beyond that pane of glass, my interior landscape was overlain by Olivia’s image. Olivia’s body. Olivia everywhere.
But this was an Olivia the world had never seen. Her full lips were pressed thin with rage. Her eyes were dark and dead, and cold with hate. I closed those eyes, breathed in deeply as Micah had taught me…and emptied myself of it all.
I could feel the life pulsing from the living plants around me. I sensed Luna curled into a protective ball in the next room, and I scented the lingering traces of all the people who’d recently passed through the apartment.
Ajax had been there exactly two days earlier, noon sharp. He hadn’t bothered masking his scent. He wanted me to know and hate that he’d been here, and to fear him as well.
Instead, I pushed that hatred and fear and knowledge aside and imagined myself—the woman I remembered myself to be—merging with that soft shell of flesh reflected in the glass. When the room was entirely clear of emotion, I opened my eyes.
She stood as before. I glanced down at the photo of us on the couch then back up. Olivia and me in both. Olivia and me in one. “Show me,” I said aloud. “Show me how to be you.”
Cher claimed I had no goal and no purpose. Well, now I did. Now I fucking well did.
I put the vodka back into deep freeze, and made a pot of coffee so strong and black it burned like acid in my stomach. Then I watched the disk again. And again. I studied Olivia, and I studied the montage that was my former life with increasing objectiveness, and when I was done, I studied him.
Three pots of coffee later, when the sun had set and the Strip was sprawled like a glittering invitation below me, I glanced again at the woman superimposed upon the city. She wasn’t quite whom she was meant to be, but she was different. Not a superhero, to be sure, but Cher would be gratified. She was no longer a completely empty shell.
“She’s learning how to live,” I said, and I picked up my new cell phone and turned it back on. In the light reflecting from that glowing pane, my sister and I both smiled.
13
I still had questions about my new life, but at least I knew why Warren had said not to contact him until I had Olivia’s mannerisms, habits, and thought processes down pat. If I didn’t wholly believe I was Olivia, nobody else was going to either. So, while Warren and Micah had promised answers, I decided to seek them out myself. With an hour to spare before a scheduled “date” with Cher, my first, I decided to use the time for research.
“Not just research,” I corrected, aloud. “Mythology.”
Only two blocks from the salon where I was to meet Cher was the comic book store that Micah had mentioned to me. I swung into a parking spot in front of an L-shaped strip mall that also housed a beauty supply store, a video store, and the most familiar sign of modern-day suburbia—Starbucks. As I stepped from Olivia’s TT, I sniffed lightly at the wind. I’d had the nagging feeling of being watched ever since leaving the apartment, but I hadn’t scented or seen anything peculiar. The cars closest to mine belonged to patrons of a sandwich shop three doors down, so I dismissed the feeling as nothing more than nerves and headed for the entrance of Master Comics.
“Oh yeah,” I muttered, looking at a life-sized Aqua-Man painted on the shop’s windows, “this looks like exactly where the answers to the world’s paranormal mysteries are kept.” I walked in anyway.
A jangle of cowbells announced my arrival. I briefly surveyed the place—noting the comics and animé were shelved alphabetically, and the most valuable editions were secured behind glass cases—then noticed the hanging silence. I looked down at my leather minidress and the skintight knee-high boots—which, I’d been horrified to discover, cost more than a payment on my Jag—and grimaced. It’d seemed a conservative enough outfit that morning, but I realized now it was somewhat inappropriate for visiting an establishment frequented by teenage boys.
I compared myself briefly with one of the buxom beauties on the cover of a nearby comic and found I held up nicely. This would explain why the looks I was getting from the half-dozen other patrons were less lascivious than hopeful. Too bad I didn’t have a gold lasso in my pocketbook.
I settled for sauntering up to the register, manned by the only adult in the place. I gave him Olivia’s most encouraging smile. “Hi.”
The man didn’t answer, just stood there, tongue half exposed between his chubby lips. Perhaps he was just shy…though the saliva pooling at the corner of his mouth couldn’t have been normal. I tried again. “Hello, earthling?”
A voice popped up beside me. “You look just like Daphne of Xerena.”
I turned my head, saw no one, then looked down and recoiled. Hairy ten-year-old, or large midget, it was a tough call. “Excuse me?”
“Daphne, the Xerenian princess whose shadow detaches to fight crime worldwide while she’s sleeping. Do your heels turn into switchblades?” he asked, bending over to look for himself.
Ten-year-old. Definitely. “Sorry. No.”
He straightened, plainly disappointed, and I got a clear look at his face. Tufts of hair sprouted from his cheeks in aberrant fashion, and muddy brown eyes peered up at me from beneath bushwhacked brows. “Let me guess, Wolf-Man?”
He rubbed a hand along his voluminous sideburns and shook his head. “Growth hormones. They just have the added benefit of making me look like a superhero.”
I wanted to tell him that Eddie Munster wasn’t much of a hero, but refrained when he pulled a claw from behind his back and made to lunge for me. After the month I’d had, he was fortunate I saw the nails were made of plastic. Another nanosecond and he’d have been eating my Dior handbag.
I raised a brow. “Cute.” He growled menacingly.
I realized then exactly where I was. A role-playing, hormone-ridden den of iconic culture. An adolescent precursor to Playboy magazine and Internet porn. I studied a half-dressed heroine on one of the rags behind the case. Warren probably felt right at home here.
Turning to the man behind the counter again, and ignoring the growling noises emanating from Wolf-boy, I tried another smile. “I’d like some information on superheroes, please.” I felt like an idiot as soon as the words were out of my mouth, a feeling intensified by the way the guy just continued to stare, but I waited. And waited. “Do you speak English?”