Free The Touch Of Twilight by Vicki Pettersson Page B

to distinguish textures and patterns in the delicate dance of air molecules, and I was developing a better language and vocabulary to describe sensory nuance.
    My encounter with the woman was still fresh, so I easily picked apart the medley forming her essential scent. Despite the frightening encounter, it was a pleasure, for once, to dissect something not reeking of rot and decay. “The top note was herbal, like fresh-cut chives or sweet green onion, but lightly so, as if dug up too early. She was empty inside, so maybe that’s why it’s not more potent, like the scent could disappear with a puff of breath…” I trailed off, thinking of dandelion spores drifting in the wind, but didn’t say it. She wasn’t human, and so her genetic makeup would be different, but I had a hard time thinking of it as insubstantial. She’d clawed at me with sickle-sharp nails. She had substance…but what was it?
    “And the heart note?” Warren pressed.
    The most important and telling scent, that of her soul.
    I frowned, trying to pinpoint it, but shook my head after a minute. It just wasn’t there. “It’s like a big white space in my mind. I can’t even locate the aromatic clues.”
    Warren remained silent for so long, both looking at me and not, that I started to think he didn’t believe me.
    “What was she, Warren?” Jewell asked, twirling around a strand of soft brown hair in one delicate hand. She was so silent I often forgot she was there, and I knew she felt out of her element, like she’d come so late to her star sign that she’d never catch up. But what she lacked in natural talent, she made up for in perseverance. The confidence needed to back it up would come with experience.
    “Isn’t it clear?” Riddick, also new to his sign but lacking Jewell’s reticence, tapped his fingers on the polished tabletops. Light from the red votive candles made his smooth fingertips shine. “It’s the double-walker the Tulpa was talking about. The one he wanted Olivia to destroy.”
    Nice to know he—and the Tulpa—had such faith in me, I thought as I gingerly fingered the claw marks still scoring my chest. It was both itchy and sensitive to the touch, and my palm felt wonderfully cool against the wounded flesh. I stilled my fingers when I realized Hunter was watching, but every other head was turned toward Warren.
    “So what’s a double-walker?” Vanessa asked, reading my mind. “Someone who can walk freely on both sides of reality?”
    “A logical conclusion,” Warren answered, absently swirling his glass. “But no. Its more common name is doppelgänger. Do any of you know what that is?”
    “It sounds German.”
    Vanessa arched a brow at Felix. “Got something against the Germans?”
    “Well, the umlaut thing is kind of annoying.”
    “Can we please focus here?” Warren muttered, stirring his whiskey.
    “Don’t be shallow,” Riddick told Felix. “I love the Germans.”
    “You’re an American who’s never even left this city, much less the country,” Felix countered. “What do you even know about the Germans?”
    “I know they’re not French.”
    “Focus!” Warren’s yell silenced the whole lounge. Even the DJ’s beat seemed to momentarily pause. Riddick had the sense to look abashed, and the rest of us averted our eyes, but Felix—no stranger to his leader’s admonitions—only sipped at his rummed-up Coke.
    “Okay, geez. Double-walker, doppelgänger…no clue. Enlighten me.”
    “A doppelgänger,” Micah informed us, “is a living person’s ghostly twin. Usually evil.”
    They all looked at me.
    I choked on my drink. “Who, me? A double of me? No way—that thing didn’t look anything like…either one of mes.”
    Though not everyone knew I was Joanna Archer beneath Olivia’s glossy exterior, they did know I wasn’t the ditzy socialite I presented to the rest of the world. With them I was the Kairos, purported savior of the paranormal realm, steadfast troop member, with a sharp