The Neon Graveyard by Vicki Pettersson Read Free Book Online Page A

was mine. Not in the possessive, I didn’t believe people belonged to each other that way, but in the part of me that had shifted to make room for him, much like my body was shifting to make room for the child we’d created together. I needed to get to him. I didn’t care how much stronger than me he was . . . strong people needed soft places too.
    So that’s what had shifted. I could now be someone else’s soft spot.
    I sighed again, letting my fingertips trail over the embedded stones, glass shards, jewelry, and bits of clothing—talismans placed there by grays in homage to their respective pasts. There were parts of everyone’s life, it seemed, that were better left behind. So when my hand passed over my talisman, I didn’t give it any more weight or thought than the others. The photo I’d cemented there—the people in it too—belonged to another time and place.
    The electricity didn’t run as far back as my room, so the candle wax coating the walls spilled over onto the floor, making it necessary for Buttersnap and me to stagger our steps. My room was similarly utilitarian. All it contained were five squat candles waiting to be lit, and a bed still stamped with my imprint from the previous night. The walls appeared to have been carved with dull spoons, and the floor had been given even less consideration than that. I waited for Buttersnap to lie down, and after lighting the candles, settled against her.
    “Good girl,” I said, patting her hubcap-sized head, and dodging her responding lick as I leaned forward to open a stainless steel toolbox. Forget solitude and rest. This was what I needed to calm me. My mother had given me this box only weeks earlier, before fleeing the Las Vegas valley for good. At that point, her long-held cover identity had finally been blown, and having done all she could to protect me, she had a new charge to care for: my birth daughter, Ashlyn. A future agent of the Zodiac.
    I’d gotten no further than settling the box in front of me before a knock sounded at the door. “Come in,” I called, unsurprised, because I already knew who it would be.
    “I brought you another plate,” Carlos said without preamble, giving me a smile too sweet for a leader of an underground band of brigands. I took the food with a murmur of thanks, rolling a tortilla before giving a sheepish shrug.
    “Guess I did leave rather abruptly.”
    “I don’t think anyone could blame you,” he said lightly, closing the door, though he remained standing. As his eyes darted to the toolbox, I realized I wanted to talk to someone about my mother. Carlos knew of her, had even met her once, and respected her as well. He’d certainly be a captive audience. More than that, though, the conversation with the grays had shaken me. There were so many people trying to kill me. Carlos, at least, wasn’t one of them.
    Sure, he had his own reasons for wanting me on his side, but unlike Warren—who’d manipulated me into joining the Light—Carlos had been completely upfront about them. In return, I’d been honest about helping him as long as that got me to Hunter. So far we’d both kept our word . . . though neither of us had met our goal.
    “It’s okay, you can look,” I said, when his gaze lingered on the box. I motioned for him to look through it. “I decided that if the Tulpa is after my soul, I need to arm myself as thoroughly as possible.”
    He dropped cross-legged across from me and eagerly opened the box, though he frowned up at me almost immediately. “And this will help you do that?”
    I didn’t fault his uncertainty. Inside was the most unassuming and unlikely cache of weapons ever seen. Glittery and girly, there wasn’t a honed blade in the bunch, though that made sense. Men were generally direct in dealing out treachery, but a woman’s bag of tricks was an endless supply of smoke and mirrors; strengths disguised as weaknesses, agendas hidden three layers down. Infinite flexibility that, if