Holidays are Hell

She had a daughter, a destiny… and at the end of it all? Maybe she still had this man to come home to.

So she wouldn't fail. She promised him that, then pressed her lips to his, trying to kiss away the worry that had returned to furrow his brow.

"And if you do?"

It was too practical a question for her liking. She rose, straddled him, and he immediately fell silent, while she shrugged the question away. It didn't matter either way. Death was preferable to a life without meaning, and for the first time since leaving the troop she had a purpose again. That alone was worth giving thanks for.

So she held back the words he wanted to hear—I won't go—once again putting away any chance at personal happiness, and merely smiled as dawn rose on a beautiful Thanksgiving morning.

"We'll see," she told him, flipping her hair back, dropping her palms to his chest. "We'll see who's giving thanks by the day's end."

Chapter 5

White was the symbol of holiness and purity in Tibetan Buddhism. It represented prosperity, too, so it was no accident that the Tulpa's home was achromatic from rooftop to doorstep, a blank slate against the sea of pastels and dusty stuccoes that otherwise dotted the valley floor.

It wasn't, however, an ivory tower. The Tulpa was reluctant to remove himself from the source of all his energy and strength. Human emotion, particularly negative, fueled him, though most mortals steered clear of the soaring pale home without even knowing they were doing so. Even Shadow agents didn't darken the doorway without invitation. Zoe had been the only agent of Light to even get close enough to peer in a window, and since her infiltration sixteen years earlier, paranormal sensors and precautions had been added to further secure the place.

But, as Warren drove her to the drop point a block away, she didn't worry about those. She was mortal, and the only monitor that would pick her up was attached to the security camera tucked high above the entrance's alcove.

On the surface of it, Warren was right. She hadn't seen the Tulpa in sixteen years, plenty of time for bitterness to crust over any soft feelings he'd once held for her, and she had no doubt his hatred had further cemented the emotion. But no sense in worrying about that now. Instead, her lips moved in an almost rhythmic chant as her fingers nimbly played over the cornucopia she'd woven.

An observer might have thought she was praying, but Zoe Archer knew too much of other worlds to put stock in any one deity, and let her whispers spiral out into the universe as affirmation instead. She had, at one time, been a fervent student of Tibetan culture and lore, studying the transitional realities called bardos, learning the self-control and discipline needed to succeed with tantric work, including hours of meditative practices, prostration, and mantra recitation. Because that's what a man named Wyatt Neelson had done, devoting fifteen years of his life to visualization in order to create a being so vivid, real, and evil that the thought form eventually morphed into reality and became the Tulpa.

It was this being's arrival on the paranormal scene that upset the valley's metaphysical balance. The Tulpa sought influence over the mortal realm—to control their thoughts and actions and dreams—and absolute dominance over the paranormal one. The agents of Light fought, of course, but they'd never faced a created adversary before, and suddenly balance became a secondary concern. Survival was all-consuming.

The Tulpa didn't age. He couldn't be killed—not even by the conduits that were so deadly to the agents on both sides of the Zodiac—and he assumed the physical form of whatever the person looking at him expected to see. It was this that most worried Zoe. God forbid he look in a mirror while standing next to her and see the demonic monstrosity that still came for her in her dreams. Then he'd know she was misleading him again and he'd skin and flay and bury her with her bones outside her body, heart still beating atop a living pile of flesh. He knew how. She'd seen him do it before.

So while weaving her cornucopia, Zoe had focused her thoughts on the way he'd once allowed himself to be vulnerable with her, turning those tender moments into a new story for herself and a new past for them both. She wove and thought, and invented and wove, until she had the minutest detail engraved upon her gray matter. She memorized this new past and then began to believe it. She believed the Tulpa was as before, that he loved her and would readily welcome her back. She believed, as before, that she loved him as well, and that she wanted nothing so much as to be in his arms once more. She created this story as she created her gift—with focus and a studied and purposeful intent—and by the time she'd finished she knew she could walk into the Tulpa's house with complete confidence.

Because there'd been one chink in the Tulpa's impenetrable paranormal armor. And Zoe Archer was it.