"Get out," I said through clenched teeth. "Get out of my apartment."

She offered up a small, bitter smile, as if I'd just confirmed all she'd said. "That's just fine, Livvy-girl. I'll give you the s.p.a.ce you think you want, but at least I won't regret not speakin' my mind. And there's one more thing..."

I heaved an impatient sigh.

"No, don't turn away. I want this to be like crystal between you and I. Your sister did not like me, she did not respect me, and she did not treat me well. I want to help you, Liv, but I'm not..." She pursed her lips, fighting for control. "I mean, I refuse to be your punching bag too."

I thought she might break there, even hoped for it a little, but she didn't. She took a deep breath and finished what she had to say.

"If you keep comparing me to Joanna, you're not going to like what you see. I'm just me, same as always. And I'm not going to change. Not even for you."

"And what would you know about change?" I said, my voice gravelly and low. "What could you change if you really had to, Cher? Your nail polish? Your hair color? Your wardrobe?"

She whitened at that. "Well, congratulations." She swallowed hard. "Looks like one of us has Joanna down to a T."

And she whirled away, heading for the door in a blur of color and scent and indignation.

I closed my eyes and clenched my teeth together so hard my jaw ached. "I don't understand what you want from me!" What anyone wanted from me. "I watched my sister die, Cher! I almost died!"

"Well, we're all gonna die, darlin'. Until then-" Cher flung the door open and threw me a hard look over her shoulder. "-you'd better learn to f.u.c.kin' live." And the door slammed behind her.

The b.i.t.c.h.

Though no sooner had Cher left than I wanted to call her back. Isolation crowded in around me, silently shaping itself to my body, Olivia's frame. I turned one way and then the other, sniffing, before I relaxed. There was nothing and no one there. I was quite simply alone. Just as I wanted to be. Right?

"Paranoid," I muttered, zeroing in on the bedroom. It was the one room Cher and I hadn't gotten to yet. I kicked the wall as I headed toward it. "Let's get this over with."

The room was shadowed, but pleasantly so, and there were flowers, as well as one of those spider plants even I couldn't kill. Now that I thought of it, Olivia had given me mine, and I wondered if this was its sister plant, if they'd both taken root at the same time, and if the other still lived among those things that used to be mine.

The carpeting was new. b.u.t.ter cream and berber, it gave stiffly beneath my feet as I crossed to the bed and looked beneath it. Not a dust bunny to be found, never mind a scimitar or severed hand. The sheets were new too, I could smell that, and the glue that held the full-length windows in their oblong frames had only just lost that overtly pungent smell. I suppose I should have been uneasy in a room where I'd witnessed so much violence and carnage. A room, I thought, where I'd committed even more. But it was too tidy, too pink, and too benign.

I was just about to leave when I saw the closet door slightly ajar. Nothing strange in that...except that the rest of the house was obsessively ordered. I frowned, took a step toward it, another, and realized my heart was outpacing my feet five to one. I found myself wishing for my weapons, any weapon, before shoving the thought impatiently aside. Silly, I thought, reaching for the handle. It's just an empty closet.

She leapt the moment I opened the door. There was a growl-hers, mine?-then a blur of white fur streaked through the open door and out into the living room. Cursing, I put a hand to my chest. Luna, my new feline roommate.

"Luna-tic, is more like it." I sighed, sagging against the doorjamb. "I need a drink."

In the kitchen, I grabbed the vodka I knew lived in the deep freeze and poured it straight over ice. Leaning against the counter, I closed my eyes and sipped, but my mind kept seeing the still-wrapped present sitting on the coffee tray. I leaned against the granite counter, fighting the urge to go to it. I both wanted to open the gift and I didn't. To know what Olivia had gotten me, yet keep not knowing. Opening it would not only reveal the object inside, but it would cement it too. No more silly surprises in my future, I thought, sipping again. No more present tense. Only Olivia, dead in the past.

I poured another gla.s.s to the rim. One thing was certain: whatever I was going to do, I wasn't doing it sober.

Back in the living room, I kicked off my shoes, the first marring of my sister's s.p.a.ce, and wondered briefly if she'd have done that. I had no earthly way of knowing.

Letting the vodka fill my mouth, holding it there to numb my tongue, gums, and soul, I stared at the package. From the corner of my eye I saw Luna slinking behind the couch, crouched low as if that somehow encouraged stealth. The ice in my gla.s.s rattled as I sat it on a gla.s.s-top table and reached for the gift.

Thin, expensive wrapping, a girly bow, a card nestled securely beneath. I didn't rip it open as I normally might, but tugged at the ribbon until it loosened, then lifted the paper until it fell away. I put the card aside for later. Inside was a pristine white box. Why, I asked myself as I took another swig, was I suddenly noting the most mundane things? Luna sat directly across from me, gold eyes unblinking, apparently wondering the same thing. I lifted the lid and sorted through the tissue paper until I recovered the first item, and lifted it free.

The photo was recent, the last one taken of us together. The occasion was the opening of a new restaurant in Valhalla, and I remember being annoyed with my father for making us attend, and with Olivia for insisting we pose with a group of helmeted and horned Vikings. I'd felt silly already, dressed in expensive black silk. I didn't want some model with a long sword pressed up against me.

"Please, Jo," she had begged, her pout in place, lashes fluttering. "You look so beautiful...for once." She knew to soften any compliment for me with a mild insult, otherwise I might not believe the whole of it. No, not might not believe. Would not believe. I took another drink.

Funny thing, though, she was right. I did look pretty. Or perhaps I just missed my old face. My hair was a sleek and shining dark bob, tucked behind my ears, and a reluctant smile played at my lips, glossy and somehow knowing. That had me dropping the photo to my lap with a wry laugh.

I had known nothing.

The second gift was both smaller and larger than that final captured moment. A simple disk, something she'd probably spent hours fiddling with on her beloved computer, but not, I knew, something downloaded and burned and offered up for my listening pleasure. Olivia would never give me something that common. "How the h.e.l.l am I supposed to watch this?" I murmured, closing my eyes.

But I did watch it. After retrieving the vodka bottle.

Luna had been sitting beside her. The television went from blank to bright, and she was suddenly there, absently stroking the cat, rubbing perfectly manicured fingers along its temples and ears and brow as she waited for the recorder to engage. Only belatedly did she realize it already had. I laughed aloud at her expression-surprise, pleasure, and chagrin all at once-but instead of rewinding and starting again, she simply shrugged it all away, as was her way.

"Hiya, sis! Now get that sour look off your face, this is a great idea, and just wait until you see how smoothly I've edited it. I'm an absolute star!" She giggled, sipped from a wide-bowled martini, a movement I echoed with my own drink. "So, I figure we can do this every year from now on, commemorate the year just past, and, you know, look forward to the next year and stuff. I've been doing it for myself for a few years now, kind of a video diary, and it's a great way to keep track of where you are, and who you are, you know?"

She tilted her head as if waiting for an answer. Then, shaking a finger at the camera, she said, "And no, that doesn't mean you have to make a disk for me, I already know you won't. I'll just do it for the both of us, and then fifty years from now we can have a slumber party and watch them all at once! How does that sound?"

"Like as much fun as a root ca.n.a.l," I said, not meaning it. It sounded f.u.c.king fabulous.

"Oh, shut up." Olivia smiled, a knowing glint in her eyes. I smiled back, and for a second I could actually believe there was a connection there; that she saw me seeing her, and was responding in real time. I opened my mouth to say something, anything to draw the moment out, but it had already pa.s.sed.

"So now, without further ado, here is..." She did a poor impression of a drumroll, earning what I took to be a feline scowl from Luna. "...the first quarter century of your life!"

It was, indeed, a video diary of my life. Actually, they were just photos, a slide show running to music-beginning from my infancy to chronologically span the twenty-five years since-but they appeared to be moving because of Olivia's editing, and I felt myself caught up in the story. The story of my life. A collage of images meant as celebration.

And I saw what Cher had been talking about. One moment there was a photo of me, grinning madly as Ben and I leaned against an old oak in Lorenzi Park, shade dappling our young faces in playful patterns, and his arms wrapped firmly around my waist. The next moment the clock she'd spoken of had stopped. Me, alone. An empty sh.e.l.l, smiling because it was expected, but looking straight through the camera. I didn't even remember it being taken. "Jesus," I said on a sigh.

Then Olivia was back. The light in the room was different, revealing the pa.s.sage of time, and Luna had left her side. She was leaning forward, gaze intent. This time she'd caught the red light flicking on and the exact moment the tape switched back to her. She caught my eye.

"I know you hate all this mushy stuff, but bear with me for a moment because, I don't know"-she looked to the side, like she was looking out the window, then back again-"I just feel like I need to tell you this now. Like tomorrow will be too late somehow, and I don't want to have any regrets."

My breath caught. G.o.d, I thought, and she was supposed to be the ditzy one?

"Please know that I love you deeply, and I admire you, and I wish...or I used to wish I could be more like you, but..." She laughed, a small and fragile sound, while motioning down her body with one fragile, manicured hand. "Well, look at me."

"Don't," I said to her, too late, dropping to my knees in front of the television. I traced her face on the screen. "Don't say that. You're perfect the way you are."

"Still," she continued, oblivious to me and my tears. "We all have our talents, right? And mine is keeping us together. You and I. I know you don't trust a lot of things or people in this life, but you can trust that. Happy Birthday, sis." And, on a teary self-conscious giggle, she blew me a kiss good-bye.

I lowered my head into my hands and shook as the screen went blank. The sound that came from my throat was that of a small animal. It shattered the room in a keening wail, like cracked gla.s.s jarred from inside me. I jerked at the brush of fur against my leg, and looked down to find Luna staring up at me, her tail straight and quivering as she pressed her lithe, white body against me.

"Miss her too, huh?" I scratched her as I'd seen Olivia do, and she fell for it. Literally. She dropped in a pool of fur at my feet, antic.i.p.ation rumbling through her body. What a picture we must make, I thought. A drunken woman and her cat.

Then another voice, his voice, filled the room. Luna and I both whipped to attention and one of us hissed. I wasn't so certain it was the cat. I whirled around, but it wasn't until my eyes landed back on the screen that I saw him. "f.u.c.king b.a.s.t.a.r.d."

Ajax's long face stared at me from the television. "Is this thing on?" he said with mock exaggeration. He leaned forward, tapping on the camera so his knuckles. .h.i.t the screen, and laughed.

"Well, no matter. I don't really expect you to see this, Joanna, because I know they'll fix it-fix you-so you never see your sister again, but just in case...just in case you're stupid enough to stay nearby, in my city, alive, I thought I'd send my own birthday wishes. Give you a little something to remember me by too."

He blew a kiss, as Olivia had, and as I sat there, I smelled rotted cactus juice, cold ashes, and another odor in the apartment that wrapped around my neck like crimson pearls, a drop of blood for every person he'd ever killed, and there were many. I gagged. Luna raced from the room, ears flattened, and I had to cover my mouth and nose with my palms so that my voice came out m.u.f.fled. "f.u.c.k you, f.u.c.k you, f.u.c.k you."

"Just so you know, I can smell you too," he continued, and lifted a hand to his neckline where he withdrew a silver chain and began toying with it. I wanted to plow my clenched fist through the television screen. I wanted to rip that chain from his fingers and put it back around my neck where it belonged. "You're everywhere even though you appear to be nowhere. But then, we both know looks can be deceiving."

He inhaled deeply, a connoisseur musing over a gla.s.s of wine. "Yes, you're here in your sister's apartment, just as you can be scented in your own secluded, sorry excuse of a house. I've even been to the dojo where you trained for what must have been years. Your sweat and blood and fury absolutely stain that place, like the pit of a rotted apricot, all that golden juice gone to mold."

He shuddered delicately, before lifting my necklace and running it between his lips, sc.r.a.ping it along his front teeth, licking it with his tongue. I lowered my hands as the room cleared of his scent.

"Do you know," he continued conversationally, "that I could even smell you at your funeral? Not in the coffin. No," he shook his head, "that wasn't you they lowered into the ground, was it? But your imprint was on that poor sap who actually believes you're dead. You know," he paused again, tilting his head, "the cop?"

I rose to my knees to grip the sides of the television screen, my face inches from Ajax's. He smiled indulgently and crossed his legs. It would have been effeminate if it hadn't been so d.a.m.ned calculated.

"I know you're new to all this, dear, so let me give you a little lesson. Love has a distinctly pungent smell, and when it attaches itself to another emotion, such as sorrow, it acts as a bonding agent, as an enzyme does to a molecule. Processing it. Altering it. Making it other than what it was alone. I find the results particularly...heady." He sniffed delicately. "You can imagine how surprised I was to find that Joanna Archer had allowed herself to be loved. It's rather nice to know, actually. Restores my faith in womankind."

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 sonofab.i.t.c.h 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 gla.s.s 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 gla.s.s, 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 pa.s.sed 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 sh.e.l.l of flesh reflected in the gla.s.s. 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 f.u.c.king 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 sh.e.l.l.

"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, n.o.body 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 anime were shelved alphabetically, and the most valuable editions were secured behind gla.s.s 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 la.s.so 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. "h.e.l.lo, 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 p.o.r.n. 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?"

"Why do you want to know?" he finally said.

"Well," I said, taken aback by the coldness in his voice, "it's just that you weren't answering me."

A voice popped up on my other side. "He means why do you want to know about superheroes?"

I turned to find a bald-headed youth staring at me with an equally closed expression. He had a twin-identifiable as such by a T-shirt that said i'm his twin with an arrow pointed in the first boy's direction-who duplicated his expression and his stance, right down to the spindly arms crossed over his chest. As twins are wont to do, I supposed.

Keeping my eyes on the twins, I spoke to the man. "Correct me if I'm wrong, but is this, or is this not, a retail establishment? I buy, you sell. I ask, you reply. The customer is always right...any of this sound familiar?"

Dead silence.

Clearly the mantle of "reasonable adult figure" was being thrown solely across my shoulders. I took on a commanding stance-as one did when facing a prep.u.b.escent Inquisition-and crossed my own arms over my chest. When all eyes had finally returned to my face, I cleared my throat. "If you really must know, I'm doing a paper for school. You've heard of college, right, boys? It's where you go if you haven't ditched too many high school cla.s.ses to hang out with Wolf-boy over here-"