“Yeah.” Shane’s ghost was still in the front ranks of the dead, but Mom was nowhere to be found. “How did you know?”
“It’s how these things go.” Sally regarded Shane’s ghost for a long moment. “Necromancy isn’t like other powers. It takes more than control or practice for a Crow to tap their potential. It takes death.”
“Death?”
Sally’s eyes, mud-brown and torn, met mine, and she cupped her hands together in front of her to form a bowl. “This is the power you were born with. Each death fills the vessel a little more, turning potential into ability. Sometimes, that progression is small, almost unnoticeable. Other times,” she nodded at the ghosts surrounding us, “it is less small.”
I thought of Shane and the men Her Majesty had killed on the road to Los Angeles. I thought of the suicide at Mama Rawlins’. Most of all, I thought of Mom.
“How many deaths?”
“As many as it takes. Your strength is fixed. Only the ability to wield it changes.”
“I’m just a Low-Three.”
“Lucky you.” Her smile twisted.
•—•—•
“Is that why Shane is angry? Because I used his death as some sort of power boost?”
The moon was still fixed in the sky and refusing to move, but it felt like I’d been on that hill for days already, like I’d been born there and would be there until the day I died.
“Is he angry?”
I followed her gaze to the motionless ginger. “Not right now… not with you here, but yeah. I thought it was because of how he died, or that I wasn’t able to convince Ishmae to stay, but—”
Sally was already shaking her head.
“The dead have life within them, but they are not living. They are here only because you called them.”
“I don’t understand.”
“If the boy is angry, it’s because you think he should be. If he will not leave you alone, it is because you don’t want him to go.”
“That’s impossible.” I gripped the edge of the bench so tightly the stone bit into my palms. “I don’t even know how to use my power.”
“And yet here we are.”
It was my turn to shake my head. “You don’t understand. I’ve tried to use it. I tried to send them all away, but it didn’t fucking work!”
Sally’s smile was cold and quiet and sharp as razor. “Show me.”
•—•—•
I’d drawn so heavily on my anger back in the dorm room that at first it failed to come at all. I sat there in silence, struggling to grasp the tattered shreds of the rage I carried with me. I could feel Sally’s eyes on me; her gaze both weight and whirlpool, pinning me to the stone bench even as it threatened to pull me under.
I wasn’t sure if she had come to help me or to kill me, but disappointing her seemed unwise.
I turned to the memories I usually kept locked away, to limbs splayed wide across the tiles, to carnage that smelled like blood and apple pie, and the way Mom’s eyes went flat as I fumbled uselessly at one of her many gaping wounds. People say there’s a light that leaves the eyes with death, but I’d seen only darkness, spilling out in waterfalls and streams, staining whatever it touched.
I thought of Mom and her murder and felt my anger reignite. I fed that flickering spark the last memory I had of the man who killed her, hands chained behind him, his own grey eyes red-rimmed as if he’d dared to shed tears for the woman he’d stabbed eleven times. I added in everything that had happened since that day; the Jacobsens and Mama Rawlins, the first-years and the Academy. And when I could feel the anger roaring again inside me, like a fire scorching my organs, I took hold of it, I gathered my will, and—
“No.”
One word, delivered by the quiet voice of Sally Cemetery, and all my gathered rage fell away, slipping through my grasp like water, to leave me shuddering and spent on the bench.
It took a minute, or maybe ten, but eventually, I cracked one eye open, and looked at the Crow who shared my bench.
“No?” Even my voice was cracked and hoarse, as if I’d spent the past hour screaming, and not focused inward, stoking the anger I needed to call my power.
The power she had just blown away with a single word.
“Anger is a crutch. It will not help you.”
I sighed, too tired to even ponder that statement. “Why not?”
“Passion is for the living.” For the first time, Sally looked almost sad. “The dead do not feel it. Nor do they answer to it.”
“Then what do they answer to?”
“They answer to you.”
Which was no answer at all.
It was her turn to sigh. She held out her skinny arms in front of her, lace-covered palms facing the sky. “The world sees life and death as two separate things.” She nodded to the left hand. “You are alive—” She nodded to the right. “—or you are dead.”
I frowned, annoyed by the tangent, but afraid to show it. “Are you saying that’s not true?”
“I’m saying it’s not so simple. Life isn’t the beginning any more than death is the end. More importantly, neither stands in opposition to the other.”
I gave that a few moments thought, but it still didn’t make any sense. “I don’t understand.”
“I know.” Sally shook her head, empty eyes distant. “I’ve never had to explain this before. Usually, I come for other reasons.”
Another shudder swept through the assembled dead.
“There is no such thing as a person who is wholly alive,” she finally said. “From the moment of birth, we are dying, from our skin to our hair to the building blocks of our bodies. Nor is there such a thing as a person who is wholly dead. Each spirit carries within it a fragment of their former life. By the time that fragment has faded, their discarded body has given rise to life in new forms, from the creatures that feed upon it to the plants that take root in its soil.”
“You’re talking about the conservation of energy?” Science wasn’t my strong suit, but I wasn’t completely ignorant either.
“I’m talking about the cycle.” She wove bony fingers together. “Life and death woven together to form the fabric of existence.”
“What does any of that have to do with me? Or them?”
“For most living creatures, the death they carry with them is inaccessible. Only a Crow can find the void and draw upon it.”
I started to protest, yet again, that I didn’t have a fucking clue what she was talking about, but the words died unspoken, as I realized that I kind of did.
“You’re talking about the emptiness. That space at the heart of everything.”
“Yes.”
“But… I thought you said death filled the cup?”
Her eyes were torn, her smile absent. “What would death fill you with, if not emptiness?”
After a moment’s pause, I nodded.
“Then I say again, Damian Banach, Low-Three Crow,” said Sally Cemetery, dropping each word onto the stone bench between us like it was a threat, “show me your power.”
I dove back into my sub-conscious, down past the noise of my still-shaky breathing, past the staccato drumbeat of my heart, past the anger I’d wrapped around myself for protection and the five-year-old boy who was beyond all hopes of protection. Down past everything that was me, to the bone-gnawing emptiness I’d carried with me since that day, the void I’d never been able to banish from my soul.
I couldn’t touch it, because it had no form. Couldn’t channel it, because it wasn’t there. Instead, I peeled away everything that life had wrapped around it. I set it free.
I opened my eyes and felt nothing. No fear. No pain. I looked to the ghosts gathered about me, and said, in a voice so empty of inflection that the words vanished as I spoke them, “Go away.”
They scattered like dry leaves before the wind, rank after rank after rank of ghosts streaking into the darkness, their glow fading as they departed. Within moments, the clearing was empty.
Almost
empty.
I frowned at Shane’s ghost and turned to Sally. “Why is he still here?”
Sally’s face was pinched and tight, but when she spoke, her voice was as quiet as ever. “Perhaps some part of you doesn’t want him gone. Is he still angry?”
“I don’t think so.” I frowned. “Is that because I’m not angry?”
“Every Crow is different, Damian. Who we are and what we do. But one truth is unavoidable; the dead do not feel. They merely respond to the will of the Crow who calls them.”
I puzzled through that, as emotions started to seep back into me, as all the pieces that combined to be Damian Banach re-assembled around the pool of emptiness at my core.
“So this isn’t really Shane.”
“It’s a piece of who he was, a remnant of the life he possessed, now wrapped in the trappings of death.”
I nodded slowly. I’d spent almost a month thinking that Shane was haunting me for something I’d done or failed to do. Instead, I’d been the one holding on, projecting my own emotions onto a shell that only resembled my friend.
If it wasn’t so sad, it would almost have been funny.
“Then I guess I should let him go.”
CHAPTER 46
We’d been talking so long that my voice had gone hoarse again, though I couldn’t remember even a fraction of what we’d said, Sally and I on the bench, each far enough away to prevent even accidental contact. One thing I do remember was asking her about my fight with Paladin and if that had been me using my power. Her empty eyes were turned away towards the sea, but she shrugged, narrow shoulders jerking up and down in an almost violent twitch.
“As I said, every Crow is different. Only the source of our power remains consistent.”
“And the madness?”
She smiled, still looking toward the ocean. “Ah. The madness.”
“Can it be avoided?”
Finally, she turned back toward me. “Because this is a night for sharing, I will let you in on a little secret.”
I leaned in to catch her next words.
“This world is more insane than you or I will ever be.”
“So Crows don’t go crazy?”
“Of course we do. The question is why you’d wish to be sane in a world that isn’t.”
I frowned. “I don’t want to hurt anyone.”
Her smile sharpened. “That ship sailed long ago.”
I wasn’t sure how she knew that. “I mean I want to be in control of when and if I hurt someone.”
She waved a lace-covered hand. “So be in control.”
“But if I go crazy—”
“You are a Crow with dreams of becoming a Cape, speaking to Sally Cemetery on a night that will not end.” Vacant eyes met mine. “What makes you think you’re not already crazy?”
“I’d know.”
“Perhaps.” She folded her hands into her lap and turned back to the ocean. The pale moon lit her profile, casting her eyes in bottomless shadow. “And perhaps sanity and madness are no different than life and death; eternally intertwined until it’s impossible to know where one starts and the other stops.”
“Are you saying you’re not crazy?”
It was the only time in that too-long night that I heard Sally Cemetery laugh, a hollow, aching sound that restlessly roamed the clearing as if searching for an exit. “I am as mad as the proverbial hatter, yet the actions I’ve taken were by my choice and mine alone.”
I thought of all the stories she played a brutal part in and swallowed. “Every action?”
“Every grisly and terrible feat. Or did you think I was some sort of lost sheep in need of saving?”
“No. I just—”
Sally’s voice dropped to a whisper, so low that I could barely hear the words that every child knows by heart.
“Sally Jenkins, pale and wary
seems to be so ordinary
yet all the bodies she could bury
would fill the whole world’s cemetery.”
As she spoke, the moon came unmoored, sinking like a stone towards the horizon, leaving her unlined face in darkness, leaving her figure a dark and narrow silhouette on the far end of the bench.
Despite myself, despite everything I knew, I reached toward that darkness. Toward Sally.
•—•—•
The morning light was too strong to bear, the August sun reflecting off the Pacific far below to drive bright spikes through my closed eyelids. I shaded my face with one hand and blinked tears from my eyes. I squinted against the mirrored glare and looked to the far end of the bench, hoping for a glimpse of black skirts and too-white skin.
There was nothing to see but pock-marked stone.
Sally Cemetery was gone.
INTERLUDE
The first indication that Jonathan Bard was not alone in his office was when the woman on the couch noisily cleared her throat. To his credit, Bard didn’t spill the mug of coffee in his hands. Instead, he placed it down on a coaster, if a bit more heavily than necessary, and raised an eyebrow.
“Somehow, I missed hearing Agnes announce you, Alexa.”
Midnight smiled. “You said you wanted to see me. You didn’t say I should make an event of it.”
“I’ll never hear the end of it if she finds out.”
“You do remember that she’s your assistant, and not your mother?”
“There are times I think she’s a little bit of both.” He grinned. “Can I get you anything?”
“Chai, if you have any leaves left.” As Bard went to a table at the back of his office, her voice softened. “You look tired, Jonathan.”
“It’s been a difficult semester.”
“And Marissa? Any change?”
“None.” He sprinkled tea leaves into a small china cup, added in a spoonful of spices, and then poured the hot water. “As far as the doctors are concerned, she’s the picture of health, but…”
“But she still hasn’t woken up.”
“Not in over a year.”
“And the Stevenson boy—?”
“Was years away from attempting a healing.”
Alexa sighed. “I’m sorry.”
He crossed the office and handed her the tea. “I’m not giving up.”
“Nor would I expect you to. It’s one of the reasons Mari loves you so much.”
The smile Bard sent her was grateful, as much for her usage of the present tense as for the reminder of his wife’s devotion. “She’s lucky to have a friend like you.”
“When she wakes up, I suspect she’ll disagree vehemently. As usual.” Alexa’s lips quirked in her usual half-smile. “But you didn’t invite me here to talk about Marissa.”
“No, although I always appreciate the opportunity.” Bard sighed. “With a semester behind us, I wanted to check in with you on your patient.”
“Which one?”
“Let’s start with Mr. Jackson.”
“Meaning that this impromptu interrogation is really about Damian.” Alexa smirked. “As for Alan Jackson, I believe he’s adjusting as well as could be expected.”
“To life in the Free States?”
“To being around people. For years, it was just he and his father, traipsing through what’s left of the Dakotas. The dorms, the classes… even the limited socialization… every facet of life at the Academy requires an adjustment. But he’s making progress.”
“It’s nice to have some good news for a change. Nikolai is raving about his combat potential. The last time I saw the old warhorse this excited was when the Scarlet Dynamo was a first-year.” Bard stared into his coffee for a long moment. “And Mr. Banach?”
“He’s hurting over Shane’s death… like a lot of first-years, I imagine.”
“Hurting I can accept. It’s the other rumors I’m worried about. Is he still sane?”
“I suppose that depends on your definition of sanity.”
“Alexa…”
She shook her head. “I’m not being difficult, Jonathan. You’ve known hu
ndreds of Capes in your time. How many of them would you consider entirely sane?”
“Well, there was one woman, if you could ignore her propensity for all-black clothing… but I’m told she quit the business for other pursuits.” Bard’s smile was gentle, almost teasing. “Let me rephrase; is he a danger to those around him?”
“I don’t believe so.”
He gave a short nod. “Then he stays… for now, at least. I’ll keep running interference with the other parents.”
“How is that going?”
“It’s going. I just remind them that this is my school, not theirs, and that Damian’s enrollment was my decision to make. So far, they’ve either swallowed that lie or are too polite to call me on it.”
“Have you had any luck on finding out why the government was so focused on his admission?”
“No. I lost most of my contacts when President Weatherly took office. The few who remain have only been able to confirm that the order came from his cabinet.” He eyed Midnight. “Do you think someone in your agency might know?”
“I can check, but it’s unlikely. Very few people in the present administration even know we exist, and our handlers would prefer to keep it that way.” She paused. “What about the Finder?”
“The mysterious Mr. Grey?”
“Yes. Given that he located Damian, despite the lack of records on the boy’s existence as a Crow, someone must have told him something. I’d be curious to know exactly what.”
“You’re not the only one. Unfortunately, Mr. Grey is in the wind. You know how Finders are. In all likelihood, we won’t hear from him until the next student shows up on our doorstep… or until someone stumbles across his corpse.”
“If you need him located sooner than that…” Her lips twisted into that half-smile. “I know a woman.”
“I appreciate the offer, but I need you here, keeping tabs on our young Crow. For as long as he remains a student at least.”
“There’s every chance he makes it to graduation.”
“Really? You think he could become a Cape?”
“It’s a possibility. Some of the basics are there. He has a well-developed protective instinct, and a selfless streak I’m not sure he even recognizes. But…”
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