Read Online City Of Souls by Vicki Pettersson - Free Book Online

to find Skamar so she can tell me how to ‘walk the line.’”
    I muttered this last bit, rolling Warren’s words over in my mind, still having no idea exactly what they meant.
    “What did you say?” Zane asked sharply.
    “I said I need to find Skamar. If I leave a message with you, can I be sure she’ll get it?”
    “Skamar’s in hiding. She needs safe zones to recover from her battles with the Tulpa, and you’ve done away with those.” I opened my mouth to object, but he was already waving that subject away. “But go back to the part after that. About walking the line. Who told you that?”
    I tilted my head, caught by his sudden interest, and his seriousness. “My troop leader.”
    He lifted a brow. “Warren Clarke?”
    “No. Jabba the Hutt. He also said to tell you he needs an octogenarian to help round out his criminal empire. You may have a future yet.”
    Zane scowled. I was about to write off his question, but then I remembered how anything that happened in Las Vegas’s underworld ended up in a manual within two weeks. I continued staring at him until the silence elongated uncomfortably between us. From the expression blanketing his face, I knew what he’d say even before the question was out of my mouth. “You know about Midheaven too, don’t you?”
    “Of course. I know everything relevant to our world.”
    I’d asked him once before if he thought Midheaven was a myth. At the time, though, I hadn’t had Warren’s permission to do so.
    “Let me guess. You can’t tell me anything about that world, right? Some sort of cosmic checks-and-balances, right?” That would be right in keeping with the same powerful law that prevented the changelings from telling their favored troop members about the opposing side’s actions. The same reason the little sickos who favored the Shadows knew, but couldn’t tell, of my Olivia Archer cover identity.
    “I can’t tell you,” he confirmed, with a shrug, “but not because it’s forbidden. Midheaven’s energy doesn’t register over here. That’s why it’s not in any manual. It’s another world entirely.”
    “But one Warren now wants me to enter.” Because he knew, or at least thought, that Jaden Jacks was over there? Or that Jacks could tell me how to fix Jasmine? It would make sense. Zane clearly didn’t know what had happened to the kid, and as he’d said, he knew everything that happened in
this
world. But how was I going to get to Midheaven if I couldn’t find Skamar in order to learn how to walk this “line”?
    “It has to be because of the safe zones,” Zane was muttering, shaking his head like he was perplexed. “He’d never reveal its physical existence otherwise…”
    Yeah, what about that?
I fisted my hands on my hips. “Why?”
    “Because it’d be better if it didn’t even exist,” he said in that eerily serious way that made me want to giggle and shiver at the same time. “Midheaven is a pocket of distended reality. It’s distorted, and a place for people—usually rogue agents—to hide. It serves as a way to escape detection as they made their way into the valley.”
    “Ahh…” Now it was making sense. Rogues were agents, either Light or Shadow, who’d been cast out of their home troops either due to personal infractions or political unrest. In other words, if their troop was disbanded or destroyed. If that happened, they were free to leave the city they’d formerly served and become independent agents. They officially became rogues when they entered another largely populated city, where another troop already resided. There could only be one star sign for each position on the Zodiac, so even entering a city with a full Zodiac was seen as a challenge. We had orders to slay them on sight. That’s why Regan was no longer a threat. No one on either side of the Zodiac would stand up for her now. “So Warren didn’t tell us about Midheaven because of the rogue agents.”
    “He didn’t tell you about it,” Zane