If only my mind wasn’t wandering. And if only I wasn’t regretting the tart cider I’d bought mistakenly thinking that it would be less alcoholic than beer.
I got up, went to the bar to order a water. Eyes followed me.
My random visits with Barnes had been glorified successes in the gambling department, and my reputation was high. Dismissing the drink-wielding attendants, I took my water and returned to the back room.
The table was now occupied.
I found Barnes folding a letter. As I sat across from him, he huffed a word around his handlebar mustache and watched me as the letter caught fire and evaporated into smoke.
I must have looked a little envious about his fire.
“Still a challenge?” he asked. He was in his usual Victorian-era blue uniform, and I couldn’t think of a time I’d seen him without it.
“Still a challenge.”
Barnes nodded and downed a whiskey.
“Thought you were a brandy freak,” I said.
“Thought I’d try something different, now that they have my stuff on the shelves.”
He and Leif must have finally perfected the recipe. Barnes had been working on it forever.
“Anyways,” Barnes’s burly hand snatched a glass from a server, “have some.”
It wasn’t a full measure, but I took it and discussed flavor profiles while he dug in his coat pocket.
A bronze lighter engraved on one side with a woman and dragon on the other hit the table. I opened it and struck it. Green flames with golden sparks came from it.
“Here,” Barnes passed me a napkin. “Burn it to me.”
Feeling silly for sending a blank napkin, I first scribbled a few swirls on it, then focused on Barnes and lit the corner.
It caught, disappearing the way it ought to, then re-appearing new Barnes, burning in reverse on the last corner appearing first. It smelled lightly of smoke, but this time it did not continue to burn the way my old lighter had.
He tapped the napkin. “You drew me a daisy?”
I nodded and turned the lighter over in my hands. “Thanks,” I said. “The lighter must have cost a lot.”
“Compliments of Railey’s parents.”
“Oh. That was nice of them.”
Barnes shrugged, then tapped my book with one of his thick fingers. “What is this?”
“One of the Unwrittens Cole finished. The colonial-era one. I can’t get over the feeling that I’ve seen something like it before.”
“You have.”
“I know, but I mean in the book. As a legitimate spell.”
“Might have. They share common originations.”
“I know.”
“Cole knows what he was doing.”
“I know.”
“You’ve gone and made him outraged. You shouldn’t even show your face here.”
I sighed, feeling all at once the strain of Cole, the strain of Caledon, of Death, and just everything. I buried my face in between my hands. “I know.”
“Hmm.”
We didn’t speak for a few minutes. Barnes must have realized that I was at the edge of my self-control. There was the small bang as the starting gun was fired, a cheer as the snails started their race around the bar top. It was a jovial moment, one that reminded me that what I did really didn’t matter so much in the grand scheme of things.
I was just a single star in the sky, and not one of the brightest ones. It was surprisingly refreshing to feel unimportant. I sat up again, feeling a bit better for my moment of pouting.
Barnes swigged his drink, slapped it against the table so my book jumped under the force. “Drink up. We need to get back to work.”
“Where?”
“Can’t tell you, feyling. If I say where I got the tip from, there won’t be no more tips.”
I let out a long breath through my nose. “Fine. Let me put my books away.”
“I’ll do that. You don’t be wasting the cider.”
I finished the drink in time to dart after Barnes as he cut through the crowd.
Barnes’s portal was a multi-destination door, one of the few reportedly in existence. Portals tended to be tunnels of sorts connecting two distinct places together, but some clever person had unearthed the secret into making one portal go various directions.
They were a trick to get correct, to say the very least about the skill involved in their making, since a single mistake in one direction would damage the entire system. Debate was still ongoing about what happened if one of the destinations were destroyed; they’d tested it, of course, but not thoroughly enough to agree if it was stable or not. From the mixture of winds I felt sneaking through the cracks, it would not be a stable venture in my opinion.
Barnes picked his destination by rapping a short ditty on the door knob.
The other airways died down immediately to a faint trickle, but did not completely go away. Gasoline wafted through the portal, far stronger than all of the other scents, and on a furnace-like rush into the calmer, cooler pub. Stepping into it was like the time I’d walked into the boiler room of an ancient elementary school, all black and oppressive, with the oily feel of a machining shop.
The portal Barnes took us through ended up dropping us off in a hot, humid climate which smelled of burning rubber and molten asphalt. Sun stung my eyes. We started off our walk in an abandoned dog park whose grass had been fried by the late spring sun. What houses there had been were now homes for pigeons and pack rats. My spine tickled as Barnes led us through streets with boarded up windows and lots of spray paint tags. Then the neighborhood changed.
It was a quiet, sunny mid-afternoon in an industrial district. The smart thing would be to leave Cole alone. To hunker down someplace nice and quiet.
And then what? Hope the whole thing blows over and that it will all be hunky-dory again?
Wishful thinking.
No, the smart thing would be to find out what Cole wants and see where to go from there.
We arrived at a warehouse the size of an aircraft hanger. Two weathered blue bay doors faced the road, a smallish white door buy its side. Barnes withdrew a key ring from his belt and fitted a key into the lock. Nobody yelled when it opened, no alarms went off.
Inside, what struck me was how barren the entire place was. So devoid that the floors themselves did not even store dust bunnies. In fact, there was a mere one item in the entire warehouse: a large box which may have been an upright freezer.
“It seems too obvious. Any spells or wards kicking around?” I asked, sniffing the dust and disinfectant in the air.
Death appeared in the entrance behind us. “This is no trick. He placed this so that no one can find it. He has reason to be confident. It's been left alone for years.”
Death strode straight to words on the box, his boots tapping against concrete. Barnes grumbled his annoyance. Death spoke as he finished his trek.
“Then how did you find it?” I asked.
“I have practice finding people who run from me.” Death smiled a slow, creeping grin which left my insides cold.
I froze, my mind catching up with what he meant.
Death turned back to the box-like thing, opened it, and stared. Humming grew in the room.
A boy was inside. I guessed him to be late teens, but he was so emaciated that it was impossible to know. Pale skin showed circles under the eyes, every vein plainly clear. Wires, tubes, and medical equipment worked all around him in a capsulized intensive care unit.
“I thought Cole despised modern technology,” I said. “Here he has a mini-hospital.”
Death said, “When something matters enough, people will bend their own rules.”
Barnes examined the equipment without touching it. Death focused solely on the young man in the box.
We all stood back after a few minutes.
“His head looks so huge. How long do you think he's been like this?”
“Years,” Barnes said.
How many? To my mind, he had the app
earance of someone in a coma for over five years, but I was hardly qualified to know. “Why? Who is he?”
Barnes's mustache twitched in response. “There are no forms of identification on the equipment, nor any arm bands.”
I double-checked the area. “There's no mail, either. Any ideas, Death? You seem to know everyone.”
He crossed his arms as if thoroughly frustrated, reluctant to answer. “No. What we see here is a body. Nothing else. It's kept alive by all these machines, but who he is—that part of him is gone.”
Hearing this crushed me in a way I found surprising. Perhaps because I saw how dearly someone wanted to keep him alive. I said, “Surely this isn't the case for everyone in his position?”
“Correct. Some souls live on. Others depart.”
“Is there a way for a normal person to tell?”
“At present, no. It is anyone's guess. Except for me.”
I sighed impatiently. “If you've already ferried him away, what's wrong? Can't remember his name?”
Death paced restlessly from one end of the room to the other. “I remember every name, even the common ones. The problem is, I do not know this person. I have never known him.”
“So, if you've never met him before and his soul is gone, that means what?”
“That he's wandering. Without a way to measure decay, I don't know how long he's been a haunting. What we do know is that he is kept alive by Cole. He's important enough for extreme measures.”
Hands on hips, I said, “Hey, I've always wondered. Instead of letting Cole run around killing people, why don't you ferry him somewhere and let the rest of us move on in peace?”
Death smiled again. “Is that how you believe it works? One person kills the other? Your actions save someone else's life? We're tools. All of us. There comes a time for everything that life must leave the body. If this is threatened prematurely, some person or miracle rescues them. If this exodus happens and I am not present for it, you get what you see before you. A shell of a body and a family who is kept between perpetual hope and grief. A clean break is what I prefer, but at times I am late. Too late, rarely. These eyes. I see them every time I check my watch.”
I was left unsettled by his comment.
Barnes turned out the light, plunging us into darkness
I jumped, the gasped at the traces of spell-making all around us. The floor, walls, even ceiling glowed with layers of spells.
“These are Unwrittens,” I said.
Death said, “The dimmest one is the same which created the Immortal. It is called Stonish Vitality. I should say, it was called. Stonish was a sorcerer, one of the original horsemen tasked with spreading life. Another is Morgan’s Lure. It would have brought all sorts of wandering ghosts. And here is Shepherd's Folly. It is folly indeed to believe you can exchange one soul for another.” Death paused. “We should be going.”
“Wait. We can't leave him here.”
“We can and we should. You can offer the boy no help. Should we disrupt him in any way, his body will die, and Cole will hate you all the more.”
I lingered between the daylight and the boy. “But we don't even know who he is.”
Death stopped suddenly. “You don't? Who does he have a familial resemblance to? Whose wife and son went missing so conveniently? The boy is Gregor Cole's son. I was too busy arguing with a certain pig-tailed girl to realize I was already late for a dying boy.”
The air went out of me. “You mean, Railey—the spell that killed her—”
“It was the spell keeping Cole's son strong. It would not have lasted, not in the end. He had been slipping from his body for a long time. I thought he would hold on a few minutes longer.”
Death looked at his pocket watch.
“We must be going.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Barnes watched Death pour nettle-mint tea out of a brown teapot of the 1950's era. For a lack of real chairs, I sat on an upside-down plastic bucket and stacked my aching feet up on one another. After today’s events, I just felt exhausted as if I'd been running everywhere and met defeat at every turn.
It was one thing to choose and adversary, to fight, and lose. It was another thing entirely to meet an adversary which could not be battled at all.
After having left for all of six minutes, Death returned in time to get cups onto the table. The heat of the day's sun radiated through the loft of the barn, making the concrete floor a cool haven. Though the sweltering humidity coming in the windows off the hayfield made hot tea less appetizing, just breathing in familiar scents eased some of my weariness.
From the way Death cradled his cup and saucer, he was taking comfort in the ritual, too. The duration of his absence hardly seemed long enough to act as ferryman, but I didn't have the heart to ask. It was not as if anything could be done about it now, no matter if he had made it in time or not.
“Caledon said once that he was working for you.” I gripped my dainty teacup tightly. I didn't know why that popped out of my mouth.
Death did not seem surprised to hear it, though he simply lifted one shoulder in a lazy shrug. “Caledon is an agent, yes.”
“He doesn't seem …” I was about to say 'like your usual type', but I realized I didn't know what that even was. “… responsible enough for the work you have me do.”
“He isn't.”
“Okay?”
“Caledon is expendable. Once he meets me again, that is it for him.”
“I thought that was the same deal for me, too.”
Death bared his teeth in a big grin. “I do not send you into blood mage lairs, bone mines, and experimental potion laboratories. When Caledon Meadows dies, I will have to wait perhaps two days for a suitable replacement. Daredevils frequently knock at my door.”
He took a sip from his cup, relishing the mint mixture with ill concealed delight.
I couldn't help but to ask, “And when I die, how long will it take you to replace me?”
“I do not. An agent of your specialty must recruit your own successor. That is why Gertrude found you here not that long ago.”
“Gertrude?”
“The so-called witch doctor you hired to cure your magical affliction. You refused my first invitation, so I had to wait until Cole could send you the second. It is annoying when I must hunt my souls instead of catching them as they fall. You led me on a merry little chase. I believe you were Gertrude's way of repaying me for all her inconveniences.”
“I see.” The implications behind this was very intriguing. “So my life span is as long as I want it?”
“I did not say that.”
“No, but if you won't ferry me away until I do get a successor—hmm, you didn't say that I couldn't die, did you?”
“A long life holds its own challenges, feyling,” Barnes said in all seriousness.
“I'm sure,” I said and fell quiet.
Barnes crossed his arms and made it clear that he’d finished his part of the conversation. Death got to his feet, went to the crock pot, checked on its contents. The scent of roast beef, carrots, and potatoes made my mouth water. I fought to remind myself that I wanted answers.
“The thing with Cole's son,” I said. “What was it all about?”
For a minute Death seemed to be unwilling to answer, but changed his mind. “The boy was dying. He'd been born dying, though it took years for anyone to know. I don't recall the cause. They are needed from time to time, these short lives with their brilliant bursts of color. They are the stunning sparkle, an illumination so pure you can't even see it properly before it is gone.” His voice grew soft. He was silent a few seconds. Then awareness made him sit straight. “The boy was here and gone so very quickly. I do know that Cole's experimental attempts to recreate Unwrittens meant that he attracted a lot of wandering souls. Most of them I was able to catch, but enough got snared into his spells to create that Immortal.”
I leaned forward, eager to get answers. “What is his intention? All these things he is doing. Making I
mmortals, catching souls, bringing you into the flesh and blood. What is his game?”
Death rolled his cup between his palms. “He does seem dedicated to his son.”
“Yes, but starting almost-wars with Creatures? Creating Immortals, slaying Death? It sounds like a power grab to me. The son is a tragedy, but it doesn't make sense with the rest.”
Death shook his head and made no reply.
We were missing something.
How nice it would be if we knew what.
Death checked his pocket watch, accompanied by the chirrup-chirrup of a cricket who didn’t seem to care that it was daytime.
“I really must go now. I'm afraid I have a party to plan. I will check in with you later, but I doubt that we will see each other again before the big event.” He paused. “You can attend the First Order representing yourself, if you so choose. Perhaps that may grant you a certain level of authority.”
I nodded, feeling very drained with everything that had happened recently. I felt like the herbs in the rafters, hung up to dry and forgotten about until all the color had seeped from their leaves. The brood-ring sensed my mood, began to dig tiny claws rhythmically into my finger as if she were a purring cat.
“Go sleep. I have this shelter well concealed, and the Constable will be here for some hours longer,” Death said, startling me out of a hazy partial-dream. Barnes drifted off to sleep in his chair.
I readied myself for bed.
My last thing to do before I fell over from exhaustion was to uncork the message bottle. With so little success lately, I held the bottle listlessly in my palm and examined the line down its side from its mold. Mordon’s question buzzed unbidden through my mind.
Why did Lilly burn you a letter?
I rubbed the bridge of my nose, seeking comfort in the gesture.
Did he know the truth? Was he angry I had lied yet again?
Was that the real reason he hadn’t reached out to me since I’d left the colony?
I told myself that no, it was because Druidan told him of our plan. Mordon was smart. More than that, he was consistent. If he wanted to break things off with me, he would say so in no uncertain terms.
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