Then, from an ally I’d never have expected, I heard, “All right. I’ll play.”

Hunter shot me a raw, distant smile as I turned to him. “Your hypothesis is that Greta never leaves the sanctuary, therefore she can never be suspected of betrayal, right?”

“Never leaves,” I corrected, “because she can’t. Like me, she’s unable to exit through the chute. The Shadow side is too dark inside of her now.”

“I can’t leave because I’m totally vulnerable up there.” Greta’s voice was reasonable, as if she were leading a group therapy session. My gaze flickered her way, narrowing at the way her hands played uncertainly with the pearls around her neck, but I had to give it to her. She had her role down pat. “They would find me and hunt me down within a week.”

I blinked at her. “If you haven’t noticed, Greta, this is a suicide mission. And no one else seems particularly concerned with their own lives. Aren’t you the one who told me that duty comes before all else? If something’s not good for the organization then it’s simply not done. If it is—such as going after our troop leader—then everything is done to make sure it succeeds.” I shot them all a mirthless smile. “A true follower of Light, agent or not, would sacrifice everything if it meant saving this troop. Rena convinced me of that.”

“Would you?” Chandra said, arms folded across her chest. It looked like she was fighting to keep from reaching out and strangling me.

I looked at her coolly. “I’m doing it right now.”

“So how’d she get down here?” Hunter continued, with his usual single-mindedness, something I was grateful for at the moment. I blew out a hard breath as I turned back to him, and chose my words carefully. He didn’t look like a man who gave people a second chance.

“She’s half mortal. The other half is Light. Choices, however,” I told him before turning back to Greta, “can be made for either side.”

I saw Felix shaking his head from the corner of my eye. “So how does she tell the Tulpa who we are, then?”

Chandra frowned and turned on him like he was traitorous, but he just shrugged as he met her gaze, his eyes quickly returning to me. “She doesn’t. She marks you. After she gets you into her office, she alters your scent during hypnosis so the Shadow agents can locate you when you’ve left the sanctuary.”

“Not possible,” Chandra spit out, shaking her head.

“You just said it was possible. You said with the chemicals from your lab and a little knowledge—”

“The right knowledge—”

“Which you and Micah have,” I said, anger overtaking my fear for the first time. She was just opposing me as a matter of course. Well, fuck that. I jerked my head at her. “Where do you keep it? Notebook?”

“No. Nowhere anyone can find it.”

“Folder? Filing cabinet? Microfiche?”

“No, you idiot!” she exploded, brows slamming together. “In our minds!”

I raised my chin. “And who has access to your minds?”

Her mouth opened, faltered, and closed. I looked around, meeting every eye, letting the silence grow heavy in the hallway. “Not just your minds, but your laboratories, and not just your labs, but the sick ward. And in the sick ward is the one woman who knows the truth.” I turned away from Chandra to face Greta again, whose color had risen to spot her cheeks in uneven blotches. “Why don’t you tell them the real reason you locked Tekla away?”

She twisted her pearls in her hands like she was counting off rosaries, and her voice was deliberately meek when she spoke. “She broke, inside, when Stryker was killed. Her mind weakened and she couldn’t discern reality from fantasy.”

I shook my head, said to the others, “She didn’t get weaker. She got stronger. More intuitive, more talented. The Zodiac lineage is matriarchal, so the power released when Stryker died reverted back to Tekla. So, isn’t it interesting this was when Greta had Tekla committed? Locked up in a soundless room, not to be seen or heard by anyone. Nobody, that is, but Greta herself.”

“Warren put her away!” Greta said, that cool voice rising.

“Uh-huh.” I nodded my head. “And who planted that suggestion in his mind?”

I waited, but nobody spoke. A good sign, and I turned back to Greta with a grim smile. “You waited two years, biding your time, gaining confidences, winning trust. Learning what you could from Chandra and Micah, preparing for Stryker’s metamorphosis. Then, after you used his death and Tekla’s grief to secure her position for yourself, it was easy to mark the rest. You had access to all their files—their horoscopes, their natal charts and lineages—so you knew how to enter their minds. Ply them with a little tea, get their own imaginations stirred up, and you ensured they’d come to you for hypnosis.”

“God,” someone breathed.

“You took away Tekla’s son and then you took away her gift, her talent.” I found I was breathing hard. “You took away her voice.”

There was a long pause, silence while each person took this in, considered it, and while Greta looked around, waiting for someone to speak up in reply. I couldn’t read anyone’s aura—emotions were too high, the air a roiling mix of gaseous color—but I didn’t have to in order to watch Greta’s color rise. She squared on me and took up her own defense.

“If I took away her voice,” she said, her own growing hard, “then how was she able to accuse you of being a traitor just yesterday?”

“She wasn’t accusing me. She was using what was left of her faculties, after being pumped full of enough drugs to fell an elephant, to beg me to find the traitor. Funny how she had to stop after you pumped her up yet again. Funny how that’s when the Tulpa was able to use her psionic powers to get through to me.”

The first flicker of fear crossed Greta’s face, and her voice was child-light. “How can you say these awful things to me?”

I looked again and saw it wasn’t fear. It was Shadow. I smiled. “Because I’m her voice now.”

The false outrage dropped from Greta’s face. She spun to face the others. “Tekla was the Seer. A full-fledged member of the Zodiac troop, and far more powerful than any half mortal. Why didn’t she speak out against me? Why, if she knew who I was, would she say nothing?”

They all looked to me.

I pulled Stryker’s comic from behind my back, lifted it and opened it to the page I’d already marked. They’d all been there, of course. They knew what had happened. But I watched as fresh grief spread through their faces, and on the page Tekla rose in a gown bloodied by her son’s death, screaming in grief. I couldn’t see the page myself, but, just as they had outside the Quik-Mart when I’d heard them the first time, the words boomed clearly from its pages. “There’s a traitor among us!”

I shut the comic and the voice died, leaving only silence, and the thud of my heart beating loudly in my ears.

“That person, that traitor,” I said softly, “can only be someone left alive in this sanctuary. It’s not me because I just arrived. It’s obviously not Warren. Is it you, Hunter?” His expression tightened, and I spoke before he could answer. “Nope, can’t be. Because it’s not the weapons that malfunction, is it?

“Perhaps Gregor’s the Judas. After all, he’s the one who left the boneyard open to infiltration by the Shadow side. Then again, I seriously doubt he’d have cut open his own bowels just for good effect.” I turned to the next star sign. “How about you, Micah? Granted, you could have handed me over to the Tulpa when I was lying unconscious under your care…or better yet, even killed me yourself.”

I shifted again. “I suppose it could be Chandra. She has the chemicals, the talent, the opportunity. But she’s not a real part of the Zodiac, and that means she’s nothing more than a tool for the real mole. A dupe. A pawn to be used, then discarded.”

“Fuck you,” she said, but she sounded more hurt than angry now.