The Neon Graveyard by Vicki Pettersson Page B

talking about that nose thing again, aren’t you?”
    They all stifled chuckles at that.
    “Anyway, it’s not like messing with him will make him hate me more, ” I said, with a shrug. “That whole speech about the mishandling of kinship, and loyalty being a personal betrayal? It revealed his thoughts . . . and a fear. He knows that though mortal, I’m still a part of him.”
    “And that’s what makes you dangerous.”
    Because while the Tulpa could change physical form like he did underwear, enter dreams like the sandman, steal breath like a cat from a baby, throw mortals in black holes so they disappeared forever, and cause acute pain without ever lifting a finger . . . his own powers could also be used against him. And he’d die as certainly as a snake from its own venom.
    Now, I thought, watching the mortals jump and dance and flail in the night, if we could only figure out how .
    With that thought, the day’s events began flashing in my mind like a macabre slide show, and I shifted on my feet, antsy. Despite telling my allies that shifting the nose from my father’s face was so they would believe it possible, the reality was that I’d also done it for me. I needed to believe. I should be able to blow up coyotes made of dust with a thought, not a trigger finger. And I should think of the Tulpa as a sort of ghost, a haunting—not my father, a leader, or a threat.
    Yet when the mental picture got stuck on an image of Neal hanging in the air, pierced by the Tulpa’s talons, I whirled from the frenetic dancers, still sweating and singing into the long night, and searched for distraction. After a moment of thought, I went in search of one of the men who’d been charged with burying our fallen gray.
    Though that wasn’t why I wanted to talk to Kai.
    A rogue from San Diego, Kai was one of our newer members. I wished I could say he was one of our rave success stories, and while it was true we’d found him literally dancing in the dark, I’d since learned he’d just been there for the party. Having recently been driven from his troop for “indiscretions” he wouldn’t name, he was traveling cross-country when he stumbled upon us, and decided a bed in a blown-out bunker was as good a place to hang his hat as any.
    Carlos had been dubious at first. There was no drive in the kid, he said, and indeed, Kai didn’t use any more energy than necessary to get through the day. He certainly had no great desire to fight for freedom in the Las Vegas valley, yet when Kai declared his matriarchal lineage was that of a Seer—something our ragtag troop sorely lacked—Carlos relented. It had since turned out that he was the second son of a woman who was related to a Seer by marriage, and he had never been properly trained in the mysteries of the sky.
    He’d never been trained for anything, I mused, spotting the man-child curled up on a blanket on the outskirts of camp. Everything about Kai—from his bleached, dreaded hair to his deep tan to his preference for flip-flops and cutoffs—said that life was just one big excellent adventure, and a vague head nod accompanied every conversation, like his neck was part metronome. In his defense, he did have an obvious passion for the stars, but he often went off on tangents about how much gnarlier they were when seen from the surf of the Pacific.
    I’d quickly discovered in my few dealings with him that you had to have an enticement to get him to do anything, and right now I did.
    I kicked at the lumpiest part of the blanket meant to shield him from the firelight. “Wake up.”
    “Man, I was chillin’ in dreamland, dude,” he said, but the immediacy with which he answered told me he’d heard me coming. “Gotta get my Z’s in.”
    “How ’bout when you’re dead?” I suggested, raising a brow as he sat up and scratched at his spiked dreads.
    “Might not be long, hanging with you,” he shot back, stretching noisily. Glancing up, he scratched at his chest and regarded