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said direly, “because it’s a twisted place, and it twists you in return. You go in one person, you come out another.”
    “Experience shapes people,” I countered.
    “Midheaven strips them.”
    Shaking my head, I decided this was already turning into an infinite circle. Find Skamar to find Jacks to fix Jas and restore our safe zones. Yet I needed a safe zone in order to find Skamar and Jacks, to fix Jasmine and restore those safe spaces. “What a clusterfuck.”
    I hopped to the ledge, already considering my next step—beyond the one that would have me leaping thirty feet to the alley floor—when Zane, still in zealot-geek mode, stopped me.
    “Don’t you want to hear the song?”
    I looked up at the bright, wide sky, wondering when the minutia of this world was going to stop bitch-slapping me. I stepped off the ledge and turned.
    “I love songs,” said Kade. Dylan hit him. Anxious to get on with the business of saving the world, I’d like to have done the same, but Zane was already clearing his throat, straightening formally, and widening his stance. Then he began crooning like he was headlining at the Sands with a half-full martini in one hand.

Beneath the neon glowing bright here
    Lies a land of starry skies
    Look below dear, not in the middle
    But kill the rushlight in two tries.
    “Wow,” I said, and he shot me a rare smile. “Put on a button-down shirt and a few gold chains and you’d have yourself a career.”
    His face fell. “Shut up.”
    “No, seriously. You’re not half bad.”
    “It’s not funny!” He began pacing, fat face clouded and red. “You’ll memorize that if you know what’s good for you. That shit can save your life!”
    I thought of all the other shit that was supposed to be helping me too. “Let me see if I’ve got this right. I’ve got to find a tulpa, walk the ‘line,’ enter Midheaven, and find a Shadow agent…and the only clue is a badly written murder ballad?”
    He pursed his lips, then shrugged. “Pretty much.”
    I hit the ledge again. “Good-bye, Zane.”
    “Don’t come back here, Archer. Not unless you’ve fixed this.”
    Twisting, I cocked a fist on my hip, but my brows drew together when I saw what he was holding aloft. It was a beat-up photo of a freckle-faced boy, sandy-haired and lanky with youth. I’d never seen the kid before, but I knew who he was. Zane would only carry a worn photo of one kid with him at all times. “Jacks’ changeling.”
    “His name was Ricky,” he said, voice edged in granite. “And I don’t want to lose any more.”
    He meant changelings. Jaw clenched, I swallowed hard. “You haven’t lost this one yet.”
    And I was going to do everything in my power to make sure we didn’t. Even if it meant entering a fabled world armed with nothing but a song.

6

    Though finding a way to bring the fourth sign of the Zodiac to life was currently my greatest worry, it wasn’t my only one. Despite my rebirth last November as Olivia, and as a twenty-first century superheroine, what was really surprising were the things that hadn’t changed. For example, the Tulpa still sported a hard-on for my mother’s death, my mother continued to elude him, and I was still forced to interact with the enigmatic, powerful—and recently reclusive—Xavier Archer.
    An anonymous note this time last year—one I now knew had been sent by the Shadows—had relieved us both of the notion that Xavier was my real father. Of course, the note failed to mention that my real father was the Tulpa, but that was because the Tulpa hadn’t known of my existence either.
    Was there anything, I thought wryly, that my mother couldn’t make disappear?
    So I wheeled down Las Vegas’s most famous sun-baked street and returned to the site of Suzanne’s opulent bridal shower the night before. Valhalla was Xavier’s premiere hotel, and though ironic, I had to put in an appearance here just so I could safely disappear later. I needed the Olivia identity, and I