The Taste of Night by Vicki Pettersson Read Free Book Online Page A

glass housing sea turtles. Mortal fingers would thrum dully on the great water-filled tank, but hers clinked like glass on glass. She glanced back at me from the corner of her eye with a look that could almost be described as shy. “In fact, if you take a closer look, Olivia , I bet you’d find we have a lot in common.”
    I felt my own hands fist in my lap at the way she sang my not-name—it’d been sly, not shy—and the place where there should have been prints on my fingers pressed hard into my palms. “Did the Tulpa send you?”
    “You mean your father?”
    “Don’t,” I said, jerking reflexively. “Don’t call him that.”
    “Well he is, isn’t he?” She walked toward me, eyes hungry on my face, fingers trailing over the glass like nails over a chalkboard. I imagined the turtles cringing in their shells. “You have his eyes, you know.”
    I gritted my teeth, and a flash of light sparked through the room, along with my anger. It was like a light switch had been flicked on, only for the bulb to burn out. I saw my reflection flash in the tank opposite me, and wished I hadn’t. My face was drawn, skeletal, with a humorless grin, and those eyes she had mentioned were opaque black marbles sunk deep in their sockets. The scent of singed hair rose up around us, and I knew if I opened my mouth, smoke would pour out.
    “Oh look…his cheekbones too.” She took a step back, but it wasn’t fearfully. It was to regard me. She was young, yes, but dauntless. “Anyway, no, he didn’t send me. He’d kill me if he knew I was here.”
    When I thought I had control enough, when my reflection off the glass was mine once again, and red didn’t tinge everything around me, I asked, “Why?”
    “Because I came to warn you.” And even though we were alone, her voice dropped to a whisper. “My name is Regan DuPree. My mother was the Cancerian Shadow until she was killed by your Cancerian Light nine years ago. We’ve had an interim agent acting as the Shadows’ Cancer since then, but I’m to take up the sign on my birthday.”
    “So you’re twenty-four.” Would be twenty-five, and undergo metamorphosis into a full-fledged Zodiac member by the end of the summer. I filed that information away as she nodded, and crossed my arms. A young initiate, helping out one of the agents whose troop was responsible for her mother’s death nine years earlier. That didn’t compute…though I suppose it depended on what kind of relationship she’d had with her mother. But she was also defying the Tulpa, who was still very much alive. There had to be a good reason for that.
    “So what did you have against Liam? He was a Shadow”—I jerked my head at him, then her—“you’re aShadow initiate. You’re all still on the same side, aren’t you?”
    “As far as I know there are still only two sides. Black or white. Bright or dark. Light or Shadow.” Her voice had gone cold, and I could tell she didn’t like being talked down to. Maybe that had caused some friction between her and Mommy Dearest. “Do I look like Light to you?”
    She didn’t. As blond and pretty as she was, there was a merciless stoicism about her, the same as in a sociopath’s mugshot. But all her sociopathic outbursts lay latent in her future.
    I shook my head. “I don’t get it.”
    She sighed, like the story bored her but she’d indulge me anyway. “Look, I figured out who you were, and a few weeks later Liam followed me following you. The only way to keep him quiet was to tell him about your Olivia Archer identity. He said he’d let me kill you if he could take the credit.” She screwed up her face. “Liam was a sturdy agent, but he had absolutely no imagination whatsoever.”
    She sounded like she was defending herself, and for a moment I couldn’t tell if she was talking to me or herself. Then the coy look returned, but this time it had an edge. “I understand his reasoning, of course. You’re slumming with the agents of Light right now, and