by Libba Bray
“We have to do it,” Sam said. “We have to take ’em out.”
“No. No, we can’t,” Ling insisted.
“Ling, we don’t have a choice,” Theta said.
You did this. This is your fault. The choice is yours.
Six ghosts advanced on a yard where four men stood emptying their guns into the dead, to no avail.
“Go!” Sam said. The Diviners stiffened as they connected and blasted the ghosts apart. For just a moment, there was the familiar euphoria of victory. And then, something new.
“Oh, no…” Evie said.
In horror, they felt themselves connected to every ghost rampaging through the streets of Gideon. The pain of their attack rippled through them, knocking them back. What you do shall return threefold.
“I tried to tell you,” Ling said through her pain. “We’ve joined our power to theirs. All those ghosts we’ve been destroying? It’s only made them stronger!”
“Yes. Yes,” a voice hissed. “I’ve come for you, my love.” Elijah shuffled toward Theta. She screamed and searched for a safe place to run. The streets were overrun with the ravenous dead.
“I am not your love. And neither is Adelaide. I worked the spell. I bound you from doing harm.” Theta fell against the side of a truck.
Elijah took a step closer. He was the same gray as his moldering uniform. “You bound me to yourself. She will die soon. You will be my new love.”
“The hell I will.” Theta’s fear ignited her rage. There had been so many who’d tried to lay claim to her, promising her safety only to prove they were the monsters all along. “Stop!” Theta said. “Stop it!”
She pushed him away. Her hand went through his chest as if he were made of mud. He was far more solid than any ghost she’d encountered before. Theta screamed as his chest caught fire. Elijah looked down, furious. Theta backed away. The flames engulfed him, and she cried out. Deep inside she could feel the pain as if she, too, were burning.
“Theta! Theta!” Memphis had her, had his hands on her, cooling the burn. Together, they ran from the screeching Elijah.
“Do not harm the Diviners,” the King of Crows growled in warning to his dead. “Every piece of history needs its witnesses.”
The dead sniffed anyway.
“Obey me!” the King of Crows commanded, and reluctantly, the dead slunk away to attack the townspeople.
“What do we do?” Isaiah asked. “Memphis, what do we do?”
“I don’t know, Little Man.”
If they tried to destroy the ghosts, it would destroy them as well. If they did nothing, Gideon and its people would be lost.
“Did you hear that?” Evie asked suddenly.
“Hear what?” Ling asked. She was leaning on one crutch and using the other to protect two little girls cowering behind her.
“Someone’s calling me.…” There it was again—her name being called in the sweetest voice. Evie felt as if all her molecules were being drawn to something across the street. She took a step back from the melee to see what it was. There. Over the heads of running townspeople and hungry spirits. Over the abandoned toys, the lost shoe in the road, the screaming, the smoke. There, shimmering in front of the church. There, in the yellow dress. There.
“Mabesie?” Evie had feared that if Mabel ever did appear to her, it would be as a ghost mangled by death. But this Mabel was whole, with an unearthly presence her best friend had never known in life. It was the same red-gold hair curved into a soft, wavy bob. The same pale skin, made paler. Just as in the dreams, she wore the dress she’d been buried in, the yellow-sun confection Evie had bought for Mabel at Gimbels with her very first big radio check. Evie couldn’t look away.
Through the din and the screams, Mabel’s voice reached out to her: “Evie. There you are.”
“Mabel, oh Mabel!” Evie cried. Mabel was like a dream that Evie was afraid would evaporate before she could reach the friend she so ached to see once more. Like James, Mabel had become Evie’s obsession: If only she could change the past. If only she could right the wrongs. If only she could bring back what had been lost. If only. This tangle of love and remorse, hope and need drew Evie forward, toward the phantom that shimmered so promisingly in the road.
“Evie! Stop!” Ling yelled, but Evie no longer heard her. Behind Evie, her friends were locked in battle. The townspeople screamed in terror. She was vaguely aware of Theta shouting her name, as if Evie herself were a precious thing in danger of being lost.
Mabel. Dear Mabel. Evie had to see her. Had to touch her.
Mabel extended an arm toward Evie. “You came. I knew you would.”
“Yes. Yes, of course,” Evie said, walking toward her. It was really Mabel. “Of course I would.”
“I said you would understand. And do you understand?”
Evie wanted to be closer to Mabel. She was still afraid Mabel would disappear.
“I don’t think you do,” Mabel said. Her voice took on a harder edge. “I told you to let me rest. I was having the most beautiful dream. I was… happy.”
Evie slowed her steps. Mabel’s eyes. Those eyes that had shown sympathy. Irritation. Wariness. Joy. Those eyes were as blank and black as a pair of dull coat buttons.
“Mabesie?” Evie came to a sudden stop. Her skin prickled.
Mabel lifted her chin. Her lips twitched, revealing pointed teeth. And then, like the others, she sniffed. She was breathing in Evie’s scent, tracking her. Evie tried to speak Mabel’s name again, but fear reached up from her gut and strangled the sound. Mabel closed her black eyes for a few seconds, inhaling deeply, her body spasming, desperate. Hungry. Whip-quick, she opened her eyes and faced Evie. She lurched forward like a foal testing its legs, suddenly realizing their strength and speed. “I told you. I told you. But you never did listen to me, did you?”
Instinctually, Evie took a step back. Her mind struggled to make sense of the moment: Mabel was the kindest person Evie had ever known. Her best friend. Mabel would never try to hurt her. Would she? Mabel’s gait was uneven, but she was closing the distance. It was only now that the spell was broken that Evie realized the terrible danger she was in. She had allowed herself to be separated from her friends when they needed her and she needed them. Together, they were stronger. Evie knew this.
“Evie! Watch out!”
Theta never called Evie by her actual name, and that was what made her turn her head to the right. She sucked in a terrified breath. The ghoul was right there. Grave dirt matted its hair; its face was skeletal. It let out a long hiss of desire. Death had not dulled its burning need to take. Even in death, it still wanted.
“No—” Evie started. She put a hand to the thing’s decaying dress, stiff with rot. Maggots pushed out from the holes in the fabric and crawled across the back of her hand and Evie screamed and screamed. Theta was coming. She was shouting to Henry, whose blue eyes widened in alarm. Theta and Henry were too far away. They were trapped on the other side of Main Street with a wall of hungry spirits between them.
“Mabel…” Evie whispered.
Mabel, her best friend, who had also been the best of them. Mabel, in her yellow dress, bright as sun. Mabel watched and did nothing to stop this. In that moment, Evie didn’t care to live. Who would want to live in a world where you could find no good?
The ghoul was face-to-face with Evie. She could smell its stench, like the water in a vase of rotting flowers. It grabbed her around the neck. Evie clawed at the thing. It tightened its grip and her head went buzzy-light. Mabel was still watching.
The thing’s voice slithered into her ear. “I would have all the life you possess.…”
Razor-like fingernails pierced her right side and reached inside her. The pain was enormous. Evie wanted to scream but had no breath for it. That cold hand was digging under her skin. The ghoul positioned its mouth above hers.
Evie could feel her life force being sucked from her body. Her bones felt close to snapping. This would not be a peaceful death. She struggled against
the ghoul’s hold, and even in this terrible death grip, she could still get a sense of the life it had lived before: A house in town. Ruffled dresses and elegant, candlelit balls. Piano lessons. A husband. Four children, two of them dead—measles, a fall from a horse. All of that humanness that should have joined them.
The pain was unbearable. It hurt too much to cry.
“Give up, Evie.” Mabel’s dry voice. “Why don’t you ever give up?”
“I… I…” Evie coughed out. She was losing her strength. Let go, she thought. Just let go. If she did, the pain would stop. She would see James. And Will. It would be someone else’s trouble to stop this terrible plague on the world. It would no longer be Evie’s responsibility but Theta’s and Henry’s. Ling’s and Jericho’s. Memphis’s and Isaiah’s and Sam’s. Her friends.
“I… can’t,” Evie said, barely a whisper.
Evie heard the lurching mechanical heartbeat of the Eye. The screams of the soldiers. Her brother. Screaming into eternity. She was screaming inside, too. They were being ripped apart with a machinelike violence, all their screams lost under its constant clanging. Evie felt herself slipping under, one more Diviner fed to the Eye to keep open the tear between the worlds. She saw the future under the King of Crows. He and his dead would eat through this world until all that was left were bones and ash, lies and corruption. She knew that they would never stop coming unless somebody stopped them. And who would be left to do that?
“I. Won’t. Give. Up,” Evie whispered.
She cried out in fresh pain as something bright and hot exploded near her. The ghoul feasting on her shrieked and let go. Evie crumpled, but from the ground she saw Theta, bright as a phoenix. The ghoul had been lit up like a bonfire. Theta, her face twisted with pain and rage, took out two more. And then Theta turned toward Mabel.
“Th… Theta. D-don’t,” Evie croaked. “It’s M-Mabel.”
“No, it’s not.” Theta raised her fiery hand to strike.
But the King of Crows was calling all his dead to him. “Enough! I would have your tribute now,” he commanded. The spirits moved toward him in blind obedience, Mabel included. The King of Crows opened his mouth and the life the ghouls had taken flowed into him, leaving them with that slight ache in the belly that told them to feed and keep feeding. That nothing would ever be enough to sate their endless need. The King of Crows shone like a terrible beacon against the dark dust settling over every inch of Gideon. He had been recharged by the carnage. He and his dead would move on. Take another town. And another. And another. A death cult on the move until there was nothing left to take.
“Thank you for bearing witness, Diviners,” the newly restored King of Crows trumpeted. “Not that anyone will believe you.”
With that, he turned toward the widening hole in the dust, back toward the land of the dead, with his army, with Mabel, following.
“Theta?” Evie croaked. Because something wasn’t right. She’d never been so cold before. What was happening? Where her dress had been torn open, Evie saw that the wound in her side was turning sour and spreading. Tiny branches of gray rot inched across her stomach and up toward her heart.
“Th-Theta?” Evie struggled for breath.
Theta’s fire left her all at once. She looked panicked. Now Evie was truly scared. Theta. Calling for Memphis. Screaming for him: Now, now! Memphis racing to her side. His worried face. Talking: Too much. Fall back. Storm cellar. Sam. Poor Sam. Lifting her up so all she could see was smoke and sky.
And she could feel what the ghoul had left behind in her. Could feel the pain and anguish of Marlowe’s careless machine, the Eye, tearing apart whatever it wanted. She could feel the dead, too. Was joined to them, to the mindless horde. The dark sky was shot through with cold blue flashes of light that announced themselves but illuminated nothing. She was dying, she knew. She might become one of those hungry things. Just like the one that had bitten her. Just like Mabel.
That is where we will meet. That is where you will understand.
GRAVE ROT
Jericho helped lower Ling into the storm cellar, then slammed the doors shut and threaded a shovel through the handles just to be sure. Henry and Theta cleared off a worktable, and Memphis and Sam laid Evie down on top. Bill pulled the chain on the bulb. In its weak light, Evie was a pale fish thrown from the sea, gasping for breath.
Sam was frantic. “Memphis. Tell me you can heal her, pal. Please, please, tell me you can.”
“Poet? Can you?” Theta wiped away a tear.
“That’s a wound from the dead. Doesn’t work the same. It’s… it’s beyond me.” What he didn’t say: I’m afraid. Afraid of what might meet me on the other side of that healing.
Ling marched over and took Evie’s wrist. “Her pulse is weak.”
Sam fell to his knees. There were tears in his eyes. “Memphis, I’m begging you.”
“I’m trying to tell you—that’s not just any wound. It’s grave rot,” Memphis said as gently as he could.
“What are you talking about? Grave rot, what is that?” Ling asked.
“They’re getting powerful, like us. They’re teaming up, like us. You just saw what they can do,” Memphis said.
“Whatever’s happening with the Eye that’s making the connection unstable between our worlds is also doing something to the ghosts,” Henry said.
“I don’t think it’s just that,” Memphis said solemnly.
“We did this,” Ling said.
Memphis nodded. “Yeah.”
“What are you talking about? She’s dying!” Sam shouted.
“Every time we blasted apart one of those ghosts, we sent our power into that other world. To him. To his dead. Energy is neither created nor destroyed. Everything is connected,” Ling explained.
“I tried to heal a man in Greenville who got attacked by these new dead. When I put my hands on him, I could feel my power being sucked out of me. Grave rot turns its victims directly into that,” Memphis said, pointing to what lay beyond the cellar doors. “And it nearly killed me. I don’t have any protection against it.”
Theta looked from Memphis to Evie. If Memphis did nothing, Evie would surely die and become one of the King’s dead, or dust. But if he did heal her, he could meet the same fate. “What are we gonna do?”
“We can’t go on without Evie. We need all of us,” Jericho said.
“She’s not looking too good,” Henry said.
Evie’s breathing was a wet, labored wheeze. When Memphis looked down, he saw Remy lying on the boat. He remembered the horrors he’d faced while under. He didn’t want to go back there. He’d do anything not to go back there.
“Evie pulled me outta that mess in Times Square. One night, my stomach hurt and she brought me some soup on a tray,” Isaiah said. “She helped take care of me, Memphis.”
“All right,” Memphis said. He couldn’t let his friend die. “All right, but it’s gonna take all of us to fight this. Theta! Gonna need you to cauterize that wound when I’m through, burn out the rot.”
“Whatever we’re doing, we need to do it fast.” Henry nodded at Evie. The rot was spreading across her belly, an inky stain.
“Henry and I can try to create a dreamscape to protect us, a bubble of safe passage for us to occupy,” Ling offered.
“What can I do?” Sam asked.
“Try to keep the dead from seeing us. For as long as you can,” Memphis said.
“What about me, Memphis?” Isaiah asked.
“Just… stay by my side,” Memphis said. “Stay close.”
“I wanna help.”
“That is how you can help.”
“’S all right, Little Man. You ain’t less for it,” Bill said.
But it felt like it. Hadn’t Isaiah made it all the way here from New York? That he’d gone under before the fight in Gideon wasn’t his fault. Once again, Isaiah had been pushed aside, and he was mad about it.
“All right. Let’s go. Everybody put your hands on Evie,” Memphis said. He took off his
shoes and socks and squished the earth of the storm cellar between his toes. He poured the dirt from Seraphina’s gris gris bag into his palms and wiped them with it. He couldn’t say why, only that he needed something to ground him, something from home. He looked into Evie’s fluttering eyes. “Listen here: Don’t let go till I say. Then get the hell out.”
With that, Memphis placed his hands above Evie’s slowing heart. He could feel the land of the dead pulling at him. Voices calling, He is here with us. The Healer. Get him. Take his power. He could feel the sickness slithering inside Evie, trying to take her under. He was frightened. It was too much for him.
“Memphis?” Henry’s voice. “Why don’t you think just about healing.”
Instantly, Memphis began to relax. With his friends beside him, giving him their strength, he concentrated only on healing Evie. But the infection was insidious. No sooner would he cure it in one place than it would try to take root in another. He knew he had to keep it from her heart.
The voices were back. Memphis saw terrifying things from the corners of his eyes. And then he heard Sam: “Don’t see us.” The voices receded. Sam’s voice: “Go on, Memphis.” Memphis worked as fast as he could. He could feel the sickness trying to invade him. His lungs hurt. His breathing was labored. He had to get out. Whatever he’d done would have to be enough.
“Get out,” Memphis said, straining, and the trance was broken. “Theta. Now.”
Theta’s hand glowed red. She pressed it against Evie’s side, wincing as Evie moaned, forcing herself to keep it there for a count of ten to sterilize the wound as best she could. The skin along Evie’s right side above her hip was red and weepy. Ling found a tin of bandages among the storm cellar’s supplies. Together, she and Sam wrapped the bandage around Evie’s middle to cover the injury.
“Now what?” Ling asked.
“We’ve stopped it from spreading,” Memphis said, brushing an arm across his sweating brow.
“Will she be okay?” Isaiah asked.
“I don’t know, Ice Man.”