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tried.”
    Hunter hadn’t tried.
    I frowned, but stopped following the thought when I realized Tripp was watching me closely.
    â€œSo how’d you find me?” I asked, clearing my throat.
    Tripp’s shrug allowed it hadn’t been easy. Only true identities were revealed in Midheaven. I was Joanna Archer over there, my appearance reflecting the old me—muscular limbs on a slim frame, black bob and dark, un-amused eyes—rather than this bubble gum, Barbie Doll packaging.
    â€œI didn’t,” he finally admitted, lighting a strange little cigarette. He blew out the smoke, and though yards away, it choked my pores. I shook against my bindings, which seemed to amuse Tripp. “Mackie tracked you and I tracked him. After eighteen years, I could pinpoint that mean fucker anywhere. His power tastes black.”
    I couldn’t help it. The opening was too great and inviting, and though I was all trussed up, Tripp had forgotten the gag. “And what did the power you stole from me taste like?”
    I was referring to the chips I’d lost to him over a game of soul poker in Midheaven—two odd triangular symbols, their meaning still unknown to me. Not that it mattered much now.
    Spitting a stray bit of tar from his tongue, he scoffed. “I won it from you.”
    â€œThen traded it away.” For some alone time with a woman.
    â€œTell me you blame me.” And he said it so defiantly I really wanted to. But I couldn’t. Ruthless barter was the way of that world. Come to think of it, it was the way of this one. “That’s what I thought. And now that that’s settled…you’re going to help me.”
    â€œWhy, Harlan Tripp,” I said, in my sweetest southern drawl, “why on earth would I deign to assist the likes of you?”
    No amusement this time. He leaned forward, still seated, but far closer than I ever wanted him. In a voice rumbling like a far-off streetcar, he whispered, “Because I know who you are. Your father killed my entire family, outlawed me, and sent me on the lam. The only thing that kept me going in that seventh level of hell was the thought of killing him, his sycophants, and everyone else who done me wrong.”
    I lay silent for a long moment, trying to scent the heat of his bitter fury, and feeling only the warmth of that strange cigarette’s smoke. If I could move I would have waved it away, though I had a feeling it would cling to my hands with its deceptive warmth.
    â€œTripp,” I finally said, licking dry lips. “You and I are not on the same side, got it? Never have been, never will be.”
    I could appreciate the idea of a world unpopulated by the Tulpa and his Shadows—after all, my birth father had triedrepeatedly to kill me, too—but even were I still an agent with powers beyond a mortal’s, still in possession of a lineage marking me as special, I would never work alongside a man like Harlan Tripp.
    A ghostly smile flashed on his ruddy stubbled face. “I will tear off long, precise strips of your flesh with these pliers,” he whispered in a lover’s voice, and holding up the sharp tool, “until you are.”
    I swallowed hard, but said nothing. Letting a Shadow know I was mortal was a direct invitation to the grave.
    â€œI’ll start with your eyelids.”
    I didn’t need to smell my fear spiking, I could feel my heartbeat screaming. But Tripp’s responding grin was short-lived. Inhaling sharply, head swiveling toward the glass door, he dove for me and began roughly working away my ties. They were belted around the entire case. Apparently he’d been serious about the pliers.
    â€œDone it now, haven’t you?” I said, as he cursed, my relief making me punchy…though I wasn’t out of this yet. “What are they? Two blocks away? Three?”
    I tried to remember how far off I could scent another agent. Three was my best effort. The