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air…daughter.”
    I have mentioned this depraved, wrathful thought-form was my birth father, right? And he just loved to rub it in.
    I tensed as the gases cleared around us, and peered from behind the pallet to find his outline materializing across from me, a breeze rushing in to surround his body, slowly expanding to leave a clearing on the unstable platform. From below it must have looked like a light had been turned on across the entire floor, though we were still standing in the pitch of night.
    The first time my father had appeared to me, he’d been in the guise of an old-school casino boss; the Tulpa as Godfather—bada-boom, bada-bing. The last time, however, he’d been featureless as he threatened me in the backseat of his personal stretch limo. Knowing that he took the physical form of a person’s expectations, this unnerved me most. It might mean I hadn’t made up my mind about someone who believed manslaughter was a good tactic in getting your own way. Of course, he could have also been fucking with me. People loved to do that when you were new to the paranormal playing field.
    So it was with relief that I realized he was the one doing all the projecting here. There was no disguise to soften the demonic visage looming across from me, though he stopped short of letting me smell the rot of his soul, and the organs stewing inside. Even the monsters, it seemed, were vain.
    But he didn’t try to hide the arching bones angling his ears into high horns, or the ashen skin stretching from the hooknose and over his hairless skull, all the way to his spear-tipped crown. I’d had a glimpse of the long talons curving his hands into deadly points before, so they weren’t as shocking as they otherwise would’ve been, but the ropy, veined spikes impaling his shoulders and spine made me shudder. I swallowed hard and said the only thing I could think of. “Please tell me I didn’t get your overbite.”
    His twisted lips curved even further. “It’s a mask, daughter. Rather like the one you’re wearing, though with a dual purpose.”
    “You mean you’re actually uglier than that?” Note to self: work harder on controlling Shadow side.
    “This veneer enables me to breathe normally when the cosmic dust from the black hole crowds back in around us.”
    So it was a black hole…of sorts. That explained why the others had been unable to locate even a molecule of oxygen to suck on. However, it didn’t explain why the Tulpa could control it at will. Or how. “What happens if you take your mask off?”
    His responding smile pulled his cheeks into sharp triangles, and my pulse began to hammer as he lifted his hand. But even before he ripped his own face away—the mucus and straining muscles tearing like the innards of a pumpkin—my vision narrowed to a pinprick, tingling darkness closing in fast. The air departed so quickly, blackness rushed in like the first tide of a monsoon, burying me beneath its pressurized weight. It held me upright as it closed in on all sides, and I suddenly realized I was going to die that way. It pissed me off. And I never did get to see his face.
    My only consolation was that he was dying as well. Maybe he’d pushed too hard and the weight of the world was preventing him from returning the mask to his face, but a shudder like a sonic boom ricocheted through the unfinished structure as he fell to his knees. Ah well, I thought sluggishly. Taking out the leader of the Shadow side wasn’t a bad legacy to leave behind. Too bad the breath had been crushed out of me, trapping that taunt in my thoughts.
    That’s what you get
, I thought, fading.
Show-off.
    Then sound flooded over me like my head had been plunged under water. The weight lifted, I fell to my knees, and the Tulpa’s greedy gasps for breath sounded like the wind over mountain steppes and plateaus, whistling and harsh, and with a whipping force.
    He hadn’t been lying, I thought in wonder, as my vision cleared so I could watch him