The Harvest (7 page)

Zoe was determined to make him starve.

Still, she jumped when a movement flickered across from her, freezing as she did. Swallowing hard, she cradled the curved horn like it was a talisman that would ward off injury, and took a step forward. Three beings across from her mirrored the movement. None of them spoke.

“Babe?” she said, using the same endearment she had all those years before. No answer. She stepped forward again. The Shadows across from her drew closer as well, still silent. She tilted her head, and saw two of them imitate the movement. Cutting her eyes to the third, she realized that figure, also clad in owlish lenses, had as well. She lifted her hand as if in greeting, and they did the same.

Mirrors. A relieved sigh scuttled from her throat, but caught when a wispy shadow rose up behind her, kept rising in a tower of smoke that burned even in her mortal nose, and was tripled before her eyes. She froze as it suddenly retracted, leaving vaporous tendrils to dissipate in the air as it solidified over her right shoulder like ash caught in a mold.

Even as she strained through the dark glasses to make out his features, she knew she was the one creating them, expectation and memory joining forces to construct the man she remembered, like an architect building a house from the bones up. He wasn’t much taller than she, and slighter than one would expect of a man of great power. His hair was a sandy color—not quite brown, but not blond, either—and he had deep hazel eyes, like the moss of a clouded swamp. With a wide face and full lips, he couldn’t be called unattractive and that was no accident. Zoe remembered thinking that if she had to bed down with unadulterated evil, he could at least be good-looking.

Once he’d fully materialized, he slipped his arm over her shoulder, around her neck, his fingers coming to rest on her opposite arm. He squeezed lightly, pulling in tight to whisper in her ear.

“Darling,” he said, his endearment for her returned. His voice was raspy, pure male, and honed.

But his embrace wasn’t as cold as she remembered, his breath not as septic sour, and though Zoe knew it was only because her senses were blunted with mortality, it made it easier to ignore the rot she knew lay ready to engulf her if not for the fragile membrane of his skin. Before she’d been able to scent out festering venom and bacteria, and at the end she’d even begun to expect infection, like she too was contaminated, even though she was super. But now she could anticipate nothing about him, including this unexpected welcome.

Realigning her thoughts—and Zoe was a pro at that—she let go of the knowledge that he could kill her with a swift snap of those gentle fingers, or crack her like a walnut between the lever of his strong arm and body, and turned into him instead. The sigh that flew from her body was one of relief, not fear. Her arms clung to him with gratitude, not entreaty, and she lifted her lips to his icy ones as she’d done countless times all those years past to utter her heartfelt lie.

“I knew you’d allow me to return.”

He pulled away to study her face, taking in the changes since he’d last seen her—few, as she’d aged well—though he studied her eyes in particular.

No, not her eyes, she realized. His reflection in her glasses. Her thoughts as they materialized on
his
face. So she let memories wash over her, easy now that she was seeing and scenting and touching him again, and his features sharpened further. His brow grew in smooth, the whorls of his earlobes became delicate and defined. She thought she saw his eyes flash dark, but his expression brightened as the room did, degree by degree, until they were standing face-to-face in a room of reflected angles and light.

Have fun,
Lindy had said, and now Zoe knew why. This was the one room in the house that had undergone a complete renovation, and it was why he hadn’t needed to move. Here—in the place that’d once been the Tulpa’s bedroom, where Zoe had lied time after time, and betrayed him the night she’d gone to kill his creator—he’d built a funhouse, full-sized mirrors to reflect a true picture of the inhabitant’s intent. Reflect it upon, and for, him.

It explained why no one had accompanied her inside. It was harder for the Tulpa to solidify when multiple people projected their expectations upon him, and it was uncomfortable for him to exist under the weight of too many people’s gazes at once—he’d actually feel himself mutating and changing under their conflicting emotions. So only the person he was most interested in reading could initially face him directly. Now that he had fully solidified the others could come in, pick up on it without risking influencing the image, or causing any embarrassing mutation. But she hoped they wouldn’t. She had a better chance of convincing him to spare her life if they remained alone.

So they stood as a couple, reflected back on themselves in dozens of shapes, sizes, and angles so that not an inch was omitted or hidden from his sight.

“You are the most clever man,” she said, letting her realization play out on her face as she caught his eye through one of the mirrors and smiled seductively. “In addition to being the most handsome, of course.” She whirled back toward him, intending to draw him closer again. “God, how I’ve missed you.”

He caught her arms, stopping her short—again, gently— and held her in place. It was something Zoe had forgotten. He didn’t move from one position to another. He glided. And that wasn’t something she had to imagine. He had the ability all on his own. “Oh, I’ve missed you as well, Zoe,” he said, smiling back.

She shut her eyes and held her breath as panic threatened to thread through her veins. She let him sense her uncertainty. It was only natural for her to question whether it’d been a good idea to come here, so she let him feel that hesitancy as well. When she opened her eyes again, he was staring over her shoulder at his mirrored self, waiting to see what emerged. But there was only the Tulpa as she’d always seen him, and she suddenly felt like she’d never been gone, or escaped him, at all. “Please, baby. You have to let me explain.”

“Explain why you betrayed me?” he murmured, only now that she’d spoken of it.

“Explain how I managed not to,” she replied, and willed him to believe her with eyes, voice. Her mind. He must have felt it because after a moment he appeared to soften.

“And is this a peace offering?” he asked, eyes flicking down to the cornucopia she still held.

A small smile lifted one corner of her mouth. “Merely a centerpiece for your holiday celebration. I remember how you enjoyed Thanksgiving.”

He had. It was his favorite holy day.

“Then you plan on staying for dinner?”

She lifted her free hand and removed her glasses, raising her head to gaze directly into the cold black depths of eyes she’d never thought to see again. “I was hoping,” she said softly.

He nodded after a moment. “Good. Then over dinner you can offer your explanation to us all.”

And he glided to the door to usher in his sycophants, movements impossibly smooth … and entirely too quiet for Zoe’s liking.

Chapter 6

D
inner was held in the same mirrored room, the hollowed out center suddenly taken up with an elongated black marble table, the cornucopia Zoe had made centered like a bull’s-eye. A gleaming table setting of mirrored plates, china, and crystal winked in the studded light of two shining candelabras. The Tulpa could now see himself above, below, and in the mirrored glasses of his half dozen guests. He’d become even more of a control freak since Zoe’s hard betrayal, which she understood. Ignoring the fact that he was the epitome of everything she despised—that he was the coldest, hardest heartache in this world—she instead pitied that he felt the need for it, and grieved for the suspicion thinning his lips. She sorrowed, mostly, that she’d been the one to put it there. Her eyes teared as she thought of the pain she’d caused, and she discreetly wiped the tears away behind the mirrored frame of her borrowed glasses, donned again like everyone else at the table.

Across from her, Lindy glared at her from behind her own, much cooler, lenses.

Zoe ignored her, as well as the disbelieving snort from the Shadow seated to her right as he scented her emotion. There was another man she didn’t know leering at her from her left, and two other favored agents flanking Lindy, but Zoe didn’t try to engage any of them in conversation. They took their clues from the Tulpa, and even though homicide lived in their mirrored faces, they’d stay their hands as long as he did.

“Fruit?” Damian offered, plucking an apple from the cornucopia.

Zoe swallowed hard, hands shaking slightly as she cut through white meat. “It’s decorative,” Zoe informed him. “I didn’t mean for it to be …”

He took a bite of the crisp skin, his thin lips littered with sugar.

“… eaten,” she finished on a sigh. She looked to the Tulpa for support, but he was busy watching himself in his mirrored wineglass. He wouldn’t let them injure her, yet, but he’d let them have their fun. “Choose one, then. It doesn’t matter to me.”

“Really? Then it doesn’t matter to me, either.” He lifted the entire basket and deposited it in front of her so that a few nuts rolled loose. “You choose.”

Zoe considered before gingerly choosing a ripe pear, scooping up the loosened nuts and depositing those on her plate as well. Then she set to righting the cornucopia, making it look as ornate—if less stacked—as before. Damian snickered and immediately yanked free a grape bunch before passing it around the table so the others could do the same. Zoe pursed her lips, but said nothing. The Tulpa had steepled his fingers, observing them all over the top like an amused parent watching his children at play.

Zoe decided to begin. “You care nothing about this—or me—I see.”

“On the contrary, darling. Time hasn’t lessened my feelings for you. It’s strengthened them.”

Lindy popped a handful of berries in her mouth, snickering.

“And mine for you,” Zoe said softly, looking down, pushing a walnut across her plate with her index finger.

“Then why hide from him?”

She glanced up to find the man directly across from her leaning in, feigning interest. Licking his lips. Wasp thin, he reminded Zoe of a snake, that tongue seemingly testing the air, tasting it, honing in on her. His grandmother had been one of Zoe’s first victims after she ascended to her star sign. His name was Ajax; he was the new Shadow Virgo.

Zoe leaned back and blotted her lips with her napkin. “I wasn’t hiding from him … or any of you. I was hiding from
them
.”

Everyone looked toward the Tulpa. Zoe waited. Sixteen years was a long time to have hidden from both sides of the Zodiac, but she willed him to believe it. Willed them all. The Tulpa stared, blank-faced, before motioning for her to continue. So she told them the story she’d rehearsed, the past she’d invented, the history she now believed, passing it along so they would believe it as well. It was true that Zoe had killed the Tulpa’s creator, Wyatt Neelson. But her intent, she said, wasn’t to destroy the Tulpa, but to strengthen him.

“Do you remember the way we spoke of him?” she asked, stopping to address the Tulpa as the others listened carefully. “About the way he clung to you even after you broke free of him to assert your independence. You said he was dead weight, like a stone attached to the string of a kite that would otherwise sail free.”

“So you decided to sever that weight yourself.”

“No,” Zoe shook her head. “I went to convince him to give you a name.”

The Tulpa froze and silence settled heavily over the table. Because even though Wyatt had visualized the Tulpa to construct a fully developed consciousness, he’d refused to give the Tulpa a name. There was power in a name. It was why Adam named all the earth’s creatures in the bible, giving himself power over all of them. Why in Jewish tradition a child’s intended name wasn’t revealed until after they were born. It was why cultures all over the world were superstitious about sharing names, and why all parents chose their offspring’s names so very carefully.

And it was why the Tulpa desired one so very badly.

Zoe reminded him of that now. “You’d refused to see him for months, and that had taken its toll on his psyche. He was unkempt, mumbling like a crazy man about abandonment, and having nothing to show for his life’s work. When I told him what I wanted, that we even had a name picked out—” Here the others looked back and forth between them, curiosity stark on their faces, but Zoe continued on blithely. “Well, he only laughed, then spat at my feet. It angered me.”

She bit her lip and the tears welled. “I snapped. I told him
I
was the most important person in your life now, not him. That he may have created you but I was also supernatural, and that we were creating something new between us. That’s when he lunged.” She swallowed hard, drawing a shaky hand across her brow before letting it drop. Her voice fell to a whisper. “I don’t know … I guess I’d begun to think of him as one of us, as having powers, being able to detect intent. Plus I was furious with him for his crazed rebuff. I swear it was only meant to be a slap … but it was enough to kill him … and to reveal that I’d once been Light. I knew once you found my psychic imprint on the kill spot you’d be so enraged you’d never hear me through. So I fled.”

Zoe stared at her hands like she couldn’t believe she’d done it, and the others studied her—and the Tulpa—from behind their safe, shining lenses. The Tulpa continued watching his own reflection, and waited for Zoe to finally look up.

“So it was all an accident?”

She nodded, eyes trained on his too-calm face, like he wasn’t listening, though Zoe knew he heard every word. All syllables. Every breath drawn in between. “And all these years I’ve been wracking my brain, trying to think of a way to return to you and prove it’d been unintentional. I needed an excuse that the agents of Light would fall for, or a mission that would bring me back into your arms. Then I realized you’d never believe me. Not if I showed up here as before, with power, ability. Light.”

“We don’t believe you now,” said one of the others.

Zoe’s frustration showed even from behind the dark glasses. “Why would I lie? Why would I walk right up and ring the doorbell if I didn’t want this more than anything in the world?”

“It is a conundrum,” the Tulpa finally said, voice still too gentle.

Which meant he was indulging her out of curiosity. She took a bite of turkey and felt it catch in her throat. But curiosity was a good start, she told herself, swallowing. Curiosity could be turned into concern. Concern into desire.

Zoe shrugged one shoulder, and hugged herself. “I finally decided the only way to convince you of my sincerity was to come to you on this, your favorite holy day, when mortal observance and emotions could be tapped and channeled for your benefit and strength. If you use that power you’ll see I’m telling the truth. I’ve returned to you out of love. I miss you. I just … want to come home.”

She held up her hand when two of the Shadows opened their mouths to speak. “But I also knew that wasn’t enough. I had to prove myself, lose something irreplaceable, as I caused you to lose the creator. It took me a year to get up the nerve to actually do it. But I’ve shed it all for you—my past, my
chi
, my near immortality. I come to you with a basket of fruit to commemorate this holy day of bounty, thanks, and forgiveness. And I come to you only as a woman.”

It was all she had, and it was the truth. The Tulpa leaned back, lifting his cup, and finally smiled. Lindy’s head swiveled back and forth between them, her confusion and growing anger magnified on every mirrored surface. “Bullshit!”

Zoe’s eyes never left the Tulpa’s face, longing and hope naked on her own. “Just a little clue, Lindy … if you’ve had fifteen years to seduce this man and still haven’t made it into his bed, chances are it’s not going to happen.”

Lindy was fast, but the Tulpa was faster. A flick of the wrist and another mirror sprang up in front of Zoe, halting Lindy’s lunge with a resounding crack. She grunted and fell back into her seat, and the mirror—all the warning she’d get—disappeared.

“Returned with a woman’s weapons too, I see.” the Tulpa murmured.

Zoe looked at Lindy, who was straightening her glasses.
Her
hands were shaking now. “They’re all I have. I’ll be damned if I die without them.”

“You may be damned yet.”

“Shut up, Ajax.” The Tulpa finally took a bite from his own plate, continuing while he chewed. “You weren’t here before so you don’t know, but Zoe and I have always had a strong bond.”

“Opposites attract,” she agreed, before sadness again overtook her face. “Though it seems that too has changed. Like you.”

Again he checked his reflection in the mirror, studying what Zoe had created there. “I look exactly like before.”

“I mean on the inside. I don’t need extrasensory power to see you’re holding back.”

“And do you blame me?”

“I understand it,” she said, shaking her head. “But I regret it all the same.”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake …” Lindy half-rose from her chair, but the Tulpa held up a hand. Her mouth snapped shut, the words scuttling off into a growl. Zoe held back the smile that wanted to visit her face. Still, she knew they all could sense her satisfaction. It didn’t bother her, and it didn’t seem to bother the Tulpa, either. He pushed back his chair and stood.

“Walk with me,” he said, holding out his hand. The others stood. “Only Zoe.”

They floundered, looking around at one another. “Sir, please …”

“Shut up, Lindy.”

Triumph thrilled through Zoe, warming her so thoroughly she didn’t even feel the chill of the Tulpa’s palm in her own. She smiled up at him, let him gaze into her glasses to see himself as she saw him—handsome, healthy,
hers
—and they exited the mirror room alone.

Zoe took it as a very good sign.

I
t was three in the afternoon when the Tulpa escorted Zoe from his mirrored room, and a part of her was aware, and surprised, that she’d lived that long. Trapped in a house with supernatural enemies who could snap her neck as easily as she had Wyatt Neelson’s, she’d expected the high drama of her return—in whatever way it played out—to have climaxed by now. Instead she’d gotten to explain herself, have dinner, and was now taking a promenade around the grounds. She was
so
in. She linked her arm in the Tulpa’s, squeezing lightly, thinking this might just be her best Thanksgiving yet.

Then she saw the boy.

He couldn’t have been more than seven, and he rounded the corner struggling with all his might against the hold of two women in long dark robes, their eyes as large as silver dollars and completely overtaken by blackened pupils. Their appearance, however, wasn’t what made Zoe’s heart stutter. They were ward mothers of the Shadow children, charged with raising and schooling the Shadow initiates until they metamorphosed into full-fledged agents, and Zoe’d seen them before. But this was no initiate. It was a mortal child with fat tears rolling down his cheeks, and fear etched on his face. He caught sight of Zoe, probably the only normal person he’d seen in this gloomy mausoleum, and lunged for her. “Help me, please! I want to go home! I want my mommy!”

Zoe had to force herself not to run to him as one of the ward mothers knelt in front of him, her blackened eyes drawing a scream from deep within his tiny chest. “Now, now. Let’s behave. You don’t want to scare the other children, do you?”

“Others?” Zoe said, before she could stop herself. The Tulpa only put one finger to his mouth, shushing her.

“Put this on, and you won’t be afraid anymore,” the ward mother said, pulling a wooden mask from behind her back, and slipping it over his eyes. Zoe had seen masks like this before. Countless Himalayan artifacts such as these adorned the Tulpa’s living areas, creations of that region’s animist tribes. It made sense that the Tulpa cherished objects created by people who believed souls inhabited ordinary objects as well as animate beings. But why put a middle hills tribal mask on a living, mortal child?

Well, the boy immediately calmed, Zoe saw, and why not? He could no longer see the woman looming over him with no eyelids, no tear ducts, no reason or inclination to blink. If he had, he’d see her looking up as she knelt before him, nodding once. Her partner nodded back, then in one swift motion slammed her palms on the sides of the child’s head, like a school marm boxing the ears of a naughty pupil. Zoe jolted, but the boy didn’t cry out. Instead he immediately stiffened and fell unnaturally silent. Then the mask appeared to begin melting, thinning out like the finest leather until it molded itself to the child’s face, encasing it fully from forehead to chin. The ward mother rose and, for the first time, acknowledged the Tulpa.