Rose looked away, staring into the fire. “It’s been rough.”
Getting up, Penny moved over beside her friend and offered to share the blanket. “You’re on a beach wearing half a dress and I’m in the other half. I know you shortened the story. You must have been through some terrible things.”
Rose simply nodded, not trusting herself to reply.
“Thank you,” said Penny, genuinely grateful. “Being dead isn’t so bad, not as long as I know you’re still here to look after them.”
That did it. Overwhelmed, Rose felt her eyes begin to brim with tears. “You shouldn’t thank me. I don’t deserve it.”
Putting one arm over her friend’s shoulder, Penny hugged her. “Don’t be so hard on yourself. Your standards were always impossibly high. Sometimes it made me feel like I would never be good enough to be worthy of a friend like you.”
Helpless to stop herself, Rose began to cry uncontrollably while Penny tried to comfort her. Penny seemed genuinely confused and worried, which only made things worse. “What’s wrong?” she asked.
Rose was only able to choke out a few words, “You don’t understand.”
But then she did. Penny’s eyes widened slightly and she withdrew her arm. “Is it Mordecai?”
Rose couldn’t answer, or even look into her friend’s eyes.
Taking a deep breath, Penny seemed to steel herself, then said, “I know you love him. You always have.”
Rose looked at her then, but her vision was so blurry that she could barely make out Penny’s features.
Penny continued, “And I know he feels deeply for you too. That’s part of what’s kept us all together over the years. It’s only natural, with me gone.” Her voice was calm, but she couldn’t completely hide her own pain as she made the pronouncement. “How far have things—progressed?”
“Not much,” said Rose, her voice numb. “But we’ve talked about it. He’s not ready to move on yet.”
“I would think not,” said Penny. “It’s only been four months. I waited a year.”
That didn’t help Rose’s guilt at all. “But he came back for you. And you’re not really dead, Penny. This changes everything.”
“Not really,” said Penny sadly.
“It does,” insisted Rose. “And I feel terrible now.”
Penny squinted at her. “You said all you’ve done is talk.”
“There have been some harrowing moments,” said Rose. “And when he was in that awful cell, we got closer than is proper.”
“Have you kissed him?”
“No,” said Rose truthfully. “And I won’t, now. I feel like the worst friend possible.”
Penny chewed her lip for a moment, torn between conflicting emotions. “That won’t do, Rose. I don’t want him to wind up like you.”
Confused again, Rose glanced up. “What does that mean?”
“You spent ages suffering after Dorian died. I don’t want that for him,” said Penny.
“But you aren’t dead!” responded Rose.
Penny shook her head. “I am. I’m just sort of borrowing his body for the moment.”
“You really need to explain that,” replied Rose. “You make it sound as though you’re possessing him.”
Penny nodded. “That’s a fair description of it. When I was dying, he tried to save me. To do so, he used that strange power of his to become me, so he could heal my body. But there was something he couldn’t fix, and that was my aystrylin. That’s what the wizards call the wellspring of life. Where their magic comes from, and what keeps people alive.”
“I remember,” said Rose.
“Anyway, mine was almost gone, and while he was me, or I was him…” Penny stopped. “It’s really confusing. I don’t even know what pronouns to use.” She took a breath. “While I was in control of whatever we were, I took what was left of my aystrylin and wrapped it around his. My body died, but that little piece of me is still there, around his heart, so to speak.”
“Did it hurt?” asked Rose. “Why did you do it?”
“It hurt like nothing I can remember when I did it,” admitted Penny. “Worse than childbirth. I had a reason, but if I’m being honest, I think I had selfish reasons as well.”
“You didn’t want to leave him.”
Penny nodded, her eyes glistening. “But the reason I told myself was because he was broken inside. There were cracks in his aystrylin. He never truly recovered from his time as a shiggreth. There’s something left, a sort of evil that is clinging to his soul. In some ways it’s made him stronger. His aystrylin is huge. According to his memories, it’s much larger now than it was before, when he was younger. I think the lives he stole have caused it to grow. If he keeps doing it, he might live forever.”
Rose sensed a qualifier. “But?”
“But it’s also killing him. Maybe not in the sense that he could die, but it’s killing his true self. I think if he draws on that dark power, it gets stronger too. If it goes far enough, all that will be left is a shell, something evil wearing his skin and bearing his memories and knowledge, but it won’t be him.”
“And what you did fixed it?” asked Rose, horrified.
Penny shook her head. “I think I made it better, but the seed of corruption is still lodged within him. I’m not sure it’s possible to get rid of it completely. Essentially, I turned what was left of me into a bandage, but if he uses it again, it will eventually tear him apart, and me with him.” As if to punctuate her remark, Penny winced, putting her hand over her chest as though she felt a sudden pain.
“What’s wrong?” asked Rose.
“I’m running out of time,” said Penny. “This has happened a couple of times before. Each time, it starts to hurt after a while. Eventually I get too tired and fall asleep. I guess he wakes up afterward, wondering what happened.”
Rose caught her hand. “Tell me what to do.”
Lifting her chin, Penny tried to look earnest. “Take care of him. Don’t hate yourself because of me. He needs you. My children need you. I need you, Rose.”
“You can’t honestly feel that way,” said Rose, surprised. “It isn’t fair. You must hate this, or hate me, at least.”
“No!” protested Penny, but then she sighed. “I’ll be honest. I do hate it. The first time I came back unexpectedly, it seemed like a blessing. I thought to myself, maybe I’ll have the chance to see my children finish growing up, even if it’s just a glimpse now and then. But now I wonder if it’s just a way to torment myself.”
“It could be a good thing,” said Rose, hopeful. “I won’t interfere. Now that I know what’s happening—”
“Rose!” snapped Penny. “Don’t make me order you. It’s hard enough handing him over. Don’t make me tell you to do it. Be happy if you can.”
“But…”
“Listen. After Dorian died, I watched you. We tried to help, Mort and I both, but I know it was hard on you. Raising your two children with no father was a terrible strain on you,” said Penny.
“I couldn’t have done it without your help, Penny, and Mordecai was almost like a father to Gram.”
Penny nodded. “Exactly. My children, Conall, and especially Irene, they still need a mother, and if any woman is going to step into my shoes and take on that job, I want it to be you. Do you understand?”
“I would do that anyway, Penny,” insisted Rose. “I don’t have to marry your husband to take care of them.”
“Don’t argue with me,” said Penny stubbornly. “There aren’t many women who could handle my stray dog of a husband, and I doubt I would like any of the others if I met them. Don’t do what you’ve been doing since Dorian died. If someone else snuck in and stole him out from under you, I wouldn’t forgive you.”
“This is insane,” replied Rose.
“Think of it this way,” said Penny. “I don’t know how
long it will be before he messes up and summons me out of my bottle again, but I really don’t want to wake up in his bed one night and find a stranger there.”
Rose frowned. “That’s terrible. I’d die of shame.”
“No, you won’t,” insisted Penny. “We’ll have a slumber party and you can tell me what’s happening with our children.”
“What’s it like?” asked Rose. “Can you feel things, or hear?”
“No,” said Penny. “It’s like falling asleep. I close my eyes and everything disappears. I don’t think I even dream. That’s why I had to ask you what’s been going on.”
“Does he know?”
Penny seemed surprised. “He hasn’t said anything? No, I guess not, since you were so shocked. I left him a note.”
Rose remembered then the moment when she had seen Mordecai suspiciously tucking a letter into his jacket. “What did it say?”
Penny’s face took on a look of chagrin. “I don’t remember the exact wording, but it was something along the lines of, ‘mess up again and you’ll regret it.’ I shouldn’t have written it.”
“You could have told him how you feel,” suggested Rose.
“I did that before I died,” said Penny. “And he already knows how I feel. What would it do to him if I started leaving love letters lying around? It would destroy him.”
“But he already knows, since you left one letter,” Rose reminded her.
“Let him pretend to ignorance,” replied Penny. “And if he gives you trouble, tell me and next time I’ll leave him a note telling him he’d better straighten up.”
Rose began shaking her head again. “I don’t think I can do this.”
“You have to,” said Penny insistently, then her eyes lit up. “I know. We’ll make some rules. As long as you follow them you won’t have to feel guilty about it.”
“What sort of rules?”
“Number one, you can’t marry him until a full year has passed,” started Penny.
Rose glared. “I wouldn’t have done that, regardless!”
“Says the hussy who started getting friendly with my husband less than four months after I died,” Penny shot back.
Mortified, Rose put her hands over her face.
“It was a joke!” said Penny quickly. “Mostly. Alright, rule two, no kissing him.”
Rose peeked between her fingers. “Ever?”
“Ever,” agreed Penny, giving a firm nod of her head.
“That’s not fair either,” said Rose.
Penny smiled. “That’s better. Show some spine.”
“How about until the year is up?” suggested Rose.
“That won’t do,” said Penny. “You’ve already started something. He’ll think you hate him if you wait that long. We don’t want him wandering off. Let’s say six months, so two months from now.”
Rose nodded. “What else?”
“You have to take care of our children.”
“I was going to do that no matter what,” said Rose.
“And I don’t want to know anything about the romantic end of things. If we get to talk again, just pretend you’re friends who live together,” said Penny. Her eyes were watering again.
“You can’t be alright with this, Penny,” said Rose. “It’s too much.”
“I’m not!” said Penny, choking out the words. “But we don’t have a choice, do we? So you do this for me, and leave out the details I don’t want to hear. Even if you break our rules, don’t tell me. I don’t think I could bear it.”
“I’m not Dorian,” said Rose jokingly.
“Oh, that wasn’t fair,” said Penny. “That was a long time ago, and you forgave him. Also, you shouldn’t speak ill of the dead.”
“Says the dead woman who wants me to marry her husband,” returned Rose.
“Keep it up,” warned Penny, “and I’ll go find him in the afterlife just to get revenge for all of this.”
They both laughed at that, until their laughter turned to tears. They hugged and cried, and for a moment it was almost like the old days. Eventually, Penny pulled away. “I’m getting tired. I need to sleep.”
“Please don’t go, Penny,” said Rose, sad all over again. “Stay with me a while longer.”
Penny shook her head, then wiped her face. “Every dream has to end sometime.” Leaning over, she put her head in Rose’s lap. “Just let me lie here. When he wakes up, he’ll be happy to see you.” She closed her eyes, squeezing still more tears from her eyes.
And then she was gone. Rose felt the change, sudden and surprising, as the head in her lap became heavier. Looking down, she saw Mordecai’s face there, asleep.
Rose wept silently, fighting to keep from shaking him awake, but in that she failed. When Mordecai’s eyes opened, they were met with a soft rainfall of sorrow. He wondered what was wrong, but Rose refused to say.
Chapter 43
Waking up to a woman crying over me wasn’t exactly a new experience for me, but usually it happened as a result of an extreme event, such as being tortured by a god, almost being murdered during a hunting trip, or being blown to pieces. And those weren’t simply examples, they were all things that had happened to me over the course of my life. Making a sandcastle house had never struck me as a particularly traumatic event, but women are strange.
I asked Rose what was wrong, but she wouldn’t answer. I tried to console her, but she seemed averse to my presence. When I put my arm around her, she cried harder, then got up and created some distance between us.
All of this left me confused, but that was nothing new. I considered myself an expert at being confused. Call it a life skill. Being married for a long time had given me quite a bit of experience to hone my skills. It had also taught me to leave women alone when they don’t want to talk. Nothing good comes of it. In Penny’s case, that could mean broken limbs, but with Rose I worried more about her tongue. Women in general often have a knack for using words as weapons, but for a woman of Rose’s intelligence, I feared she might be capable of rendering me unfit to live in civil society.
Of course, Rose almost never used her wit to browbeat her fellow man, not without cause anyway, but I didn’t want to become her first murder by verbal assault. So, I did us both the courtesy of letting her have her space.
The storm that had been on the horizon made good on its promise of rain, as well as delivering a spectacular light show. The wind, already strong, picked up until it was whipping spray from the wavetops all the way to our new camp at the upper end of the beach. When the rain started to fall, it was a downpour. Despite the perfection of our roof and the thick nature of the walls I had created, the sandcastle house might have fallen apart, but I reinforced it with spells to keep the sand from washing away.
On the plus side, the mosquitos didn’t have rain gear, so they stayed home. Rose and I retreated to our new shelter and, after an hour or two of silently watching the storm, we lay down to get some sleep.
She still didn’t want me close, though, and there was only one blanket. I tried to be chivalrous and let her have the blanket, but Rose was in a self-sacrificing mood. Every time I offered her the blanket, she pushed it back at me.
It was an odd argument, since we didn’t talk during it. We just kept pushing the blanket back and forth. But I knew how to win this sort of war. Wizards have their advantages. “Shibal,” I said, putting her to sleep. Then I carefully wrapped her up in the blanket and retreated to the other side of the room to stretch out.
Sleeping on even a slightly chilly beach in a storm is no easy feat, especially when you’re wearing half a dress. Since we hadn’t encountered anything dangerous yet, I decided to risk using some magic to make myself more comfortable. I created a screen to keep out mosquitos if the storm left, then encapsulated myself in a bubble of warm air.
The spell to do that wouldn’t last the whol
e night, but it was good enough for a few hours. I had used it before. When I woke up cold later on, I’d just reapply it and go back to sleep. I closed my eyes and tried to drift off, but then I started to worry about all the magic I had used. If the aythar-sensing predators we had encountered near Lancaster were present here, they might show up during the night.
So, with a sigh, I got up and went outside. I drew a wide circle in the sand around our sand house, then charged it with a spell to alert me if something crossed it. The circle wasn’t strictly necessary, but it would help the spell last long enough so that I wouldn’t have to redo it during the night. Then I went back in and fell asleep much faster than I thought possible.
I woke later, not from cold, but because Rose had woken up and moved closer. She draped one end of the blanket over me before settling in against my side. Thinking she had forgiven me for whatever my transgression had been, I tried to offer up my arm as a sacrificial pillow, but as soon as I moved and tried to slide it under her head, she flinched away.
“Don’t,” she warned.
“What did I do?” I asked, no longer content to wait for my punishment.
“Nothing,” she replied.
Shit. I knew then that it must be something serious. Was it the fish? No, that was stupid. Maybe she saw me watching her swim? That made no sense either; she had been practically flirting with me at the time. ‘Nothing’ implied something really bad, like being discovered murdering puppies.
I tossed and turned, but only metaphorically, because with Rose close by I didn’t want to keep her awake. Eventually an idea came to me. Maybe it’s because I didn’t do anything. Despite our growing intimacy over the past weeks, I had been unable to even admit to my feelings. Rose had told me she understood, that she’d wait until I was ready, but maybe she had really hoped I would do or at least say something.
Trouble was, I still wasn’t ready. Every time I considered something, a kiss, or just telling her that I cared, I was overwhelmed by guilt, or grief. The two things were inextricably linked within me these days.
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