Holidays are Hell

So everything Zoe had done—both accomplishments and defeats—was recorded in either the Shadow manuals or the Light, depending on the sensitivity of the information there. Any knowledge that could give one side dominance over the other, thus unbalancing the zodiac, was omitted. That's why Zoe's pregnancies hadn't been recorded on either side, and why neither the Tulpa nor Warren knew where she'd gone when she disappeared.

Thus, every agent had secrets they knew lay solely in their own minds, and even the most senior troop members couldn't help but wonder about their allies' lives as well as their enemies: what wasn't being revealed?

So what exactly were the manuals omitting about Zoe and her relationship with the angry, stubborn man on the other side of that door?

Well, it wasn't the part about the bond they'd forged growing up as teens in the paranormal safehouse known as the sanctuary. The bloom of their subsequent love affair, around the time she was nineteen and he twenty-four, was also well-documented—much to their embarrassment at the time—as was the bloody coup that'd led to Warren's meteoric rise in rank to become the youngest troop leader ever. Zoe had been pictured firmly by his side.

No, the omissions began after all that, when Zoe herself had taken up her star sign and began to hunt the Tulpa, a task that would make her famous for her bravery, single-mindedness, and willingness to give up personal happiness in return for their enemy's blood. Maybe what angered Warren most wasn't that she turned her back on him in order to fulfill these duties, but that the original assignment had been his idea. He'd ordered her into the Tulpa's lair and life—and bed—with his blessing. And in time it became his curse.

Because the manuals did record how good she was at her job. They showed in exacting detail how clearly the Tulpa, and later Xavier, fell for her ruse. Soon, every small, helpful, important detail she brought back about the Shadows' plans and machinations were met by her troop leader's knowing and bitter sneer. Eventually Zoe stopped coming back at all.

So the wedge between the two former lovers grew with time, expanding with secrets until the girth that lay between them was too wide for either of them to attempt crossing. And when Zoe disappeared this final time—after the daughter Warren knew nothing about had been brutalized by the Shadow Aquarian—she hadn't even considered telling him why she was leaving, where she was going, or what she intended to do. She didn't want to argue, and besides, she barely knew the answers herself.

All that mattered now was that Joanna and Olivia were safe. She'd given up her chi and her place in the troop to ensure it. And now she would hunker in close by, watchful, as she'd failed to be the first time, and wait for the moment when Joanna would rise up and stake her claim in the Zodiac. Because Zoe's greatest secret wasn't merely omitted from the manuals, it was the one the Seer had told her never to utter, not to Warren, not even aloud to herself.

Her eldest daughter was both Shadow and Light, and when she was ready and had overcome the tragedy that would shape her future, she would be mightier than all of them put together.

So Warren and Zoe didn't have a love story that began with "Once upon a time." And, inevitably, it wouldn't end with "happily ever after" either. But Zoe had a job to do, and she was still enough of a heroine to see it through to the end.

"Are you ready to listen?" Zoe began, moving across Warren's dim motel room. He'd stiffened as he sensed her presence, but hadn't looked up from the paper he was pretending to read.

"I'm ready to hear you."

Touché, thought Zoe, with a wry smile. She crossed the dingy room to stand in front of his chair. Hearing was a start.

"You need to let me do this."

"Why?"

"Because I can. Because I'm the only one who can. The holiday doesn't just give me an excuse, it's a powerful time. The holy days join the old world beliefs with the new. The possibilities that opens up are endless."

He lifted one shoulder, unwilling to admit she was right. "Christmas is coming up. The troop can figure something out by then."

But Zoe had to get Ashlyn out of there now. "Let me do this. I'm already on the outside. Why risk the life of an active star sign when you have me ready to go in willingly?"

"Why do you care so much about this one mortal child?"

"Because I'm mortal!" She pounded her chest then clenched her fist at her side. "It's all I have, don't you see? This life, this skin, the breath in my lungs, it's all that separates me from death."

"And yet you're so willing to give it up." Warren said, watching her now. "Because that's what you're asking to do. One foot on the Tulpa's doorstep, and he'll slay you where you stand."

"Because I betrayed his love?" she asked.

"Yes."

"You haven't killed me," she pointed out.

Because her betrayal of him—their betrayal of each other—had been greater and deeper than any ruse concocted to topple their enemies.