“It looks like…” I found I couldn’t finish. I cleared my throat and tried again. “It’s a…”

Cher gasped as she came up behind me. “I see it!” Her amazement, my horror, and the symbol on my chest were all reflected clearly in the glass across from us. Cher was the first to find her voice, and it was reverent. “It’s shaped like a stiletto!”

Shit. She could be right.

It was blurred, smudged around the edges, and not entirely drawn in—like a half-finished tattoo—but dammit, Cher just might be right. If I angled myself just so, squinting…

Damn. My glyph, I thought, turning to view it from another angle, was a fucking stiletto. But at least this time I didn’t have to wonder what Olivia would say.

“Well,” I said, and blew out a sigh. “At least it’s cute.”

15

I’d once thought myself a stranger to darkness, but as I drove back to Olivia’s apartment I thought back to my encounter with the construction worker earlier that day—cursing myself for remembering his name, Mark—and of the pain that had bloomed in his face as realization struck. At my words. Words Olivia would never have uttered. I shifted in my seat, uncomfortable with myself. Darkness, I was finding, came in many forms.

And what about what had happened in the comic store? Carl had seemed not only genuinely surprised that I could pull from both the Light and Shadow series, but I’d recognized that flash of fear as he looked from me to Zane and back at the comics in my hand.

So you’re the one, Zane had said.

The only one. Micah’s words hurtled back at me.

And then Warren’s, you’re the first sign.

I parked in Olivia’s spot in the underground garage, grabbed the comics from the trunk, and decided to read through them all tonight. I needed to fill in the holes Warren and Micah had left in my supernatural education…and in my life.

The phone was ringing as I slid the key in the door, and smelling nothing out of the ordinary, I jogged to the bedroom and grabbed the portable from its hook. Luna wound her silky body between my legs, nearly tripping me up.

“Hello.” I perched on the edge of the bed and leaned to stroke Luna’s head. She arched fluidly under my hand just as Warren’s voice reached my ear.

“Olivia, it’s time. We’ve got to get you out of here, to the sanctuary.” He sounded panicked and out of breath.

My hand froze on Luna’s back. “You said I wasn’t ready.”

“No choice. Every agent is ordered off the streets.”

“Why?”

“I don’t have time to tell you…hold on.” There was a muffled sound, like he’d placed his hand over the receiver or muffled it against his chest. After half a minute he was back. “Remember when I told you the Shadows had found a way to kill off our star signs? One by one?”

I nodded, though he couldn’t see it.

“Well, they’re tracking us; I don’t know how, but they have their next target. That’s why we all have to go.”

“Who are they after?”

There was another silence. “Me.”

I stood and paced to the window, where shadows, once again, were soaking into crevices along the valley floor. “But why do I have to go? You said I wasn’t ready. And remember, Olivia is an Archer. They won’t touch her, or me, right?”

“Joanna Archer,” he said, surprising me by using not only my real name, but my full name, “they don’t want me for my sterling personality. They want me because of you.”

Oh.

“Meet me at the Peppermill on the Boulevard. Walk, don’t drive. We don’t want Olivia’s car anywhere near the pickup point. There will be a cab waiting out back. Pack like you’re going to summer camp, and bring only what you need.”

I looked around the room, with no idea where to start. “How long will I be gone?”

“Long enough to learn what you need to, but not long enough for anyone to miss you.”

“That narrows it,” I muttered to myself. “What about Luna?”

“She’ll be taken care of.”

I paused as the image of Mark and his naked pain and disbelief crowbarred its way back into my brain. “I need to tell you something, Warren. Or ask you—”

“Later. There’s a window of opportunity for the crossing, but it’s short. We must hurry.”

“The crossing?”

“From your world into ours,” he explained impatiently. “It can only be executed the exact moment day turns into night, or vice versa.”

I drew back and actually looked at the receiver. “That’s called dusk, Warren. It lasts more than a moment.”

“Not the point at which the light and shadow are divided evenly in the air. Be there, mid-dusk sharp.” He hung up in my ear.

I scowled at the phone, then down at Luna. “Bossy for a homeless man, isn’t he?”

I packed swiftly, only throwing in items I was comfortable with…or relatively so, considering Olivia’s wardrobe. Nothing silk, nothing with heels, and no lace. Sure, the jeans I stuffed into the duffel bag were Sevens rather than Levi’s, and the sweats were velour lined with satin rather than simple cotton, but at least they were items I could move in. I could run. I could fight.

Figuring discretion was the way to go since Warren had been specific about not using Olivia’s car, I donned a turtleneck and loose slacks, both black, though I decided to bring her crystal-studded cell phone along; after all, Olivia couldn’t just drop off the face of the earth, could she? Then I started throwing in the usual toiletries.

Underwear, socks, hairbrush, toothpaste, lotion…camera.

“Oh, my God,” I whispered, freezing with the cheap cardboard camera in my hand. I held it in my palm as gingerly as I would a baby bird. On it were the last images I’d taken as myself; the images I’d snapped in those early morning hours before returning to Warren to tell him that yes, I would accept his offer to become a superhero.

The ones of Ben, smiling in his sleep because I was alive.

I looked at the clock. Did I have time? My heart thudded at the prospect of viewing these photos. I’d have liked to develop them myself, to play with the shadow and light in the confines of my own dark space, but I knew that wasn’t an option. My home was being watched, and even if it wasn’t, Warren would never agree.

Still, there was a one-hour photo shop located inside a Quik-Mart only one block east of the Peppermill. If I drove that far and hurried, I might be able to make it.

The drive was a short one. I parked a block away, then crossed an intersection and three stop signs on foot to get to the store. I was only harassed by one motorist and one panhandler, so I figured my day was improving markedly.

I was greeted inside the Quik-Mart by a sleepy-eyed girl who looked barely old enough to vote. Perhaps greeted is too strong a word because she actually looked disappointed to see me, like I’d interrupted her life-in-progress and she wanted only to go back to her regularly scheduled programming. I wanted to tell her I could relate.

“How fast can you develop this?” I asked, handing her the camera.

“The sign says an hour.”

“I need them in half that.”

“So does everyone else, lady. Can’t do it.” She pushed the camera back at me and turned away.

“This says you can,” I said, sliding a hundred beneath the box. She looked from the money to me, and returned to the counter.

“You’ll have ’em in twenty.”

She may have been lazy, but she wasn’t stupid.

I decided to wait outside, thinking twenty minutes was enough to get started on at least one comic. The November air was sharp, but freshly so, and comfortable enough with the turtleneck on. I sat with my back against a stuccoed pillar and pulled the stack from my duffel bag, wondering where to begin.

Light, I decided. Definitely. I chose the one with the earliest date—volume two, number twenty-five—and flipped it open to learn more about the “independents” Warren had so distastefully mentioned the night of my metamorphosis. Apparently independents—also known in less flattering terms as rogue agents—were a constant threat to a troop’s equilibrium. In a world where lineage meant everything, the competition for open star signs was fierce, and even those of the Light had been known to take out their matching star sign just for the opportunity to usurp them in the Zodiac. That meant the independents weren’t liked or trusted by established troop members, and were rarely tolerated within city boundaries.