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.
Warren swallowed hard. "I've wished you dead."
"And I, you," she said matter-of-factly, stepping closer. Warren opened his mouth, but she put a finger to his lips and held it there. "It's not the same thing, and I'm willing to bet my life that the Tulpa feels the same."
His face crumpled in on itself and he shook off her touch. "You would compare me to him?"
"I didn't mean that—"
"You said it. Which means you were thinking it. And we both know it's the thought that counts, don't we?"
That's what they'd told one another when she had returned to his arms, his bed. It was the thought that counted most. It was the most powerful thing in the universe.
"Warren…" she began to protest, but stopped.
"What?" he said shortly.
"You're right," Zoe said, and the surprise that flashed across his face must have mirrored her own. She laughed mirthlessly. "Maybe I am toxic. But I had to stop feeling anything for anyone in the time I was with the Tulpa. I couldn't just turn it back on when I returned to the sanctuary. I had to close down because I needed to save a small place inside of me that was mine alone." She'd been a possession, she remembered with a shudder, she'd belonged entirely to the Tulpa. "Sometimes I even forgot why I was there—that I was even, or ever had been, super."
She backed up and sank to the edge of the bed, realizing for the first time that it was true. She'd disappeared into her role as the Tulpa's woman and instead of remembering that she had chosen to be there—that she could choose to leave—she'd begun to feel small and weak, like a shell with only the pretty memory of something vital living inside. As for her idea of love, well, the Tulpa had twisted that as well. She'd had to stop feeling real love at all just to survive it.