Cheat the Grave by Vicki Pettersson Page A

when I wasn’t being bombarded by balance sheets and cash flow statements, I started drawing the emerging symbol again, trying to remember where else I’d seen it. And what did it mean?
    â€œExcuse me, Ms. Archer?”
    Blinking, I startled into awareness. “What?”
    â€œYou said something?”
    Shit. I’d spoken aloud. “Um, I said…what does that mean?”
    â€œWhich part?”
    â€œUm. The last part.”
    John lifted a brow.
    I waved my hand. “Just the bit before I interrupted.”
    He sighed, and started over.
    I tapped my pen. Maybe the symbol was benign. Or meaningless alone. Stripping it of context might also have removed its significance. But I’d had Cher take a picture ofthe chest. I could study that and try to make out the surrounding carvings. A quick Internet search might yield the information I needed.
    Yeah, but will it keep you alive?
    I sighed heavily, and the attention of the room shifted my way. I ignored it. Let them think I was shallow, hung-over, and ineffectual. A death-dealer on a mission took precedence over stock options any day.
    Then the door to the conference room opened . Or maybe not .
    Dropping my pen, I crumpled the paper with the strange symbol between my palms, and slid my hands—with their printless fingertips—into my pocket. Then, touching the phone Warren had given me, I watched the leader of the paranormal underworld, my birth father, enter the room. His flinty gaze roamed the length of the suddenly silent conference table before landing on me, at its head. My mouth went dry. He sensed it…and smiled.
    Â 
    Here’s the thing about the Tulpa. You never knew when or where he was going to turn up. The agents of Light had long known he’d been Xavier Archer’s benefactor, and the one who actually ran Archer Enterprises, but his appearances were as random as tornadoes. As far as I could tell, even his own troop didn’t know when he’d drop in. Grasping the phone tighter, I slid lower, like I was again nodding off.
    You could never be sure what physical form he was going to take either, and clothing was the least of it. While agents could be given new identities or take over others—like the way I’d been transformed so convincingly into Olivia—his body literally shifted and morphed depending on what he needed to present, and to whom. I’d seen him as a mafia don, a mild-appearing professor, and a monster pulled directly from Stephen King’s dreams. As you can imagine, it made him rather hard to track.
    It also freaked me out. This man was my father. Amutant being that had somehow taken on enough cells and atoms to impress a genetic code upon me. It made me wonder how I’d have turned out if he’d been wearing his horns at the time of my conception.
    I’d seen him in this current guise once before, at Xavier’s wake, so it was clearly the personage he wore when taking care of any Archer-related business. His skin was unmarred by freckle or line, his limbs deceivingly slim and long. Yet he was still seated as he made his way into the room, the benign exterior framed in an electric wheelchair. That was the difference since we’d last met. Were I still able to sense the power swirling around him, I’d have realized it sooner. Yet even in the absence of that ability, one thing was achingly clear.
    The Tulpa was exhausted.
    The thin skin beneath his eyes was powdered in gray, and though smooth as clay, his mouth turned down at the corners. His lids were heavy, and his right hand trembled slightly at the control panel. Despite the careful attention paid to what had to be a three-thousand-dollar suit, one side of his hair was mussed, like he’d just come in from the wind.
    Or he’d just come out on the losing side of a battle.
    The men at the table recognized him, and the way John stiffened told me they didn’t care for him either. I remained prettily