Eric loves her. She loves Eric. Love is meant to last a lifetime.
But the dead don’t linger unless they are frightened or trapped. They don’t stay. They don’t want to stay. Once they know they’re dead, they leave. It’s just a second stage of abandonment. She believes Eric loves her. She believes he will want to stay. But he doesn’t know that she can see him. He doesn’t know that she can talk to him.
And he won’t know if he sees the exit. He won’t have any reason to stay.
Reyna knows.
She turns, walks into the home that will never be home again, and finds chalk. In a darkened room, she draws her circle, thinking that one day—one day—she will have one of stone, a place where she might sit and search as if it were both her duty and her right.
She does not cry as she works. Tears will smudge the circle. Tears will destroy the chalk. Her mother’s harsh and angry voice reverberates in memory, and this time, Reyna listens. She will take what she needs, now. She is the last of her family. She is magar.
But she does not have the lantern. She does not have the light. Her mother would not pass it on to the daughter who was—and is—far more powerful than she. Reyna doesn’t need it, to be magar. The lantern would make things easier, but in the end, it is up to Reyna. All she needs now, she has.
A circle. Chalk. Knowledge.
She has walked the path to the shining, brilliant warmth that is the promise at the end of life and death, and she will walk it now. She will walk it, she will reach it, and she will close it so that the dead cannot leave. Because otherwise, Eric might leave. He doesn’t know. Eric might leave before she can find him.
They’ll understand, surely. The dead will understand. And she will let them go when she has finally found Eric. But she needs the time because she does not have the lantern. And the dead are forever. A year or two won’t harm them at all.
“YOU KNEW HE WAS DEAD, RIGHT? You’re a Necromancer.”
Emma said nothing. She didn’t want everyone else to hear. But Helmi prodded and prodded until she spoke. “No. I didn’t know until I spoke with Longland.”
“You’re not very bright.”
Broken, iced snow cracked beneath Emma’s boots; it sounded like glass. She froze, aware that no steps could be silent, here. “No, Helmi. I’m not very bright. This is still new to me. Margaret won’t teach me anything—don’t make that face, it’s rude. I thought your mother might, but we’ve had no time.”
“My mother gave you what she could,” Helmi replied. Her tone was grudging. “I’d teach you if I knew anything. I only know how to draw circles.”
This sounded like a non sequitur.
“Circles are for containment,” Helmi continued, correctly interpreting Emma’s silence. “When you go to find the dead, you sit in a circle. You have to draw the circle, unless you have a stone one. The Queen has one,” she added. “I can show you how to draw a circle.” Her expression grew remote and thoughtful. “Or I could show you where the Queen’s is.”
Emma’s eyes widened.
“I don’t mean right now,” Helmi said. “I mean later.”
“We’re supposed to avoid the Queen.”
“Not forever.” The subject was clearly distasteful, and she dropped it. “Circles are supposed to keep you safe.”
“How?”
The child’s lips compressed. “I don’t know. I died when I was eight. I can tell you how to draw a circle. I can’t tell you why it works. But the circle is the way you root yourself in the world when you go looking for the dead.”
The younger man in the distance waited until Longland disappeared. He then turned to the older one.
“Be right back,” Helmi said, and she vanished.
• • •
Chase didn’t return.
Instead, Eric’s car did. They could see headlights in the distance, moving up and down as if the driver were drunk. But no: It was the road. The roads were thick with flattened snow, thick and uneven.
They hid behind trees, keeping trunks between the road and their bodies. It was almost impossible to believe that no one would see them, that no one would look. Helmi, watching, told Emma that there were four people in the car. Two Necromancers, two passengers. Eric was driving.
Longland was behind him, gun pointed at the back of his head.
Beside him, in the front passenger seat, a man—the Necromancer Helmi feared. To one side of Longland, a younger man.
“He’s afraid,” Helmi said, with obvious derision.
“He should be. Eric’s probably killed a lot of Necromancers, in his time.”
“Not enough of them,” Helmi replied.
On the other side of the road, less hidden, was the woman. Chase would kill her. Emma’s hands shook; she turned to Margaret, who shadowed Ernest. “Why did you stop?”
“Stop serving the Queen?”
Emma nodded.
“I met Ernest.”
“Ernest talked you out of it?” Emma’s words carried her disbelief. Ernest had certainly been keen to see Eric shoot Emma on an autumn lawn months ago.
“Not exactly, dear.” A ghost of a smile—literal and figurative—moved Margaret’s lips. “He tried to kill me.”
“He failed?”
“He was using the wrong bullets at the time, if I recall correctly. Yes, he failed. The Queen was responsible for my death.” She grimaced, recalling that death; she didn’t offer details, and Emma would never ask. “I did not go willingly with the Queen’s knights when they came to ‘save’ me. I didn’t have your mother or your father; I didn’t have your friends. And perhaps,” she added, lifting her chin, “that was my choice. The friends, at least. I had no reason to trust people—but they had no reason to trust me, if I’m honest.
“I was trapped by life. I was doomed to serve the Queen; I was doomed to bind the dead and drain them of life and somehow keep myself alive. The schooling is both rigorous and treacherous; the peers—if you have them—are just as angry and just as untrusting. They understand survival of the fittest; they don’t believe there is any strength in numbers. I could not leave the citadel; failure to comply or learn what was necessary would only harm me. I had always felt trapped by life. Ernest’s intent—to kill me—was something I welcomed. It would have been a fast, relatively painless, death.
“I was perhaps five years older than you are now. I had burn scars up the inside of my left arm.”
“The Queen?”
“No. Another student. He died. I do not believe I had ever been happy—it’s hard to be objective. I meant to let Ernest kill me. Because I did, he didn’t. I think he was confused—he was younger then, as well. He had lost much to Necromancers; he is like your Chase.”
“So not mine.”
“A figure of speech, dear. He thought it was a trick, of course. But I think he also knew it wasn’t. We had no reason to trust each other. I was angry at the time. I didn’t have the strength of will to end my own life, but it shouldn’t have been necessary. Hunters kill us when we’re weak. It’s what they do. He was my only viable form of suicide.” Her smile deepened. “I was so angry at him when he hesitated. It takes a very peculiar type of strength to hold still and wait for death; I was shaking. My partner, such as he was, was already dead.
“I believe I may have lost my temper, then. I may have shouted at him; I am not certain I remember the exact words, and even if I did, I would not repeat them. He was even more confused. I was already wounded,” she added. “I fought until my partner died. Even then, I did not want to die and come face to face with the Queen. I knew what would happen after death.”
“It happened anyway.”
“Yes, dear, but later. By then I had truly earned her anger. I know very little of what occurred between my death and my meeting with you. Look at the road, Emma. It’s starting.” She turned to Ernest; he nodded.
Eric’s car met road and stopped as it turned onto it. Four people got out; Eric was first, not last. He paused, gaze downcast. Longland looked, briefly, toward the trees. Emma held her breath, praying that Petal would remain quiet. No one spoke.
The air above the road, yards from where Eric now stood, began to shimmer.
Emma glanced at Allison and Amy; their eyes widened. What she saw, they could also see. Green light shot up from the snow-covered asphalt in two pillars; the pillars then bent toward each other, reaching and grasping at air until they met. When they did, they flared, in a green, twisting light that paled as it grew in brilliance until it was almost white.
The white light fell in a sheet from the height of what was now a very tall arch. At this distance, Emma could see only the shape of the portal; she couldn’t see the dead who must be anchoring it. Her hands nonetheless became fists. She did not forget—could not forget—that people were its fuel.
She caught sight of the diminutive form of Helmi as Helmi joined the four. Longland stiffened; so did the older man. The younger did not, apparently, fear her, which made sense. Emma knew who she was but couldn’t see beyond her apparent age; Helmi could irritate or annoy but not terrify. Not yet.
Helmi then vanished.
She reappeared by Emma’s side. “Now,” she said. “You won’t have much time. Therese is holding the gate, but she’s got no power. She’s meant to come through it before she lets it go.”
“If Chase kills her—”
“There’s a bit of danger, yes. But the portals don’t collapse instantly. If you have to, you can hold its shape long enough to get everyone else through—just listen to Margaret and do what she tells you to do. Are you really going to bring your dog?”
“I can’t leave him here.”
“We don’t have a lot of dog food,” Helmi said.
“I know.” She swallowed. “Michael, can you hold on to Petal?”
Michael nodded and bent, hooking Petal to his leash. Petal was excited until he realized that Michael’s hands were empty of everything but leash. No treats.
“Remember: When you get through, do exactly what I tell you to do.”
“What happens to us if we’re caught?”
“The Queen, in the end. You’ll all die. Eric’s job is to keep her distracted.” This last was said sourly.
“Can he do it?”
“I don’t know. She’s been waiting for him for a long time. She’ll probably be happy at first.”
“And after?”
“She’s pretty angry. It might get ugly.” Helmi exhaled. “Why are you worried about Eric?”
“I don’t want him to—”
“To what? Die? He can’t. He’s already dead.”
Emma didn’t ask what a bullet could to do the body the Queen had created. She knew that the bodies bled. She knew that they could be injured. She had no idea what the person who inhabited the body would feel at the moment the body was destroyed. Nathan now had a body that was very much like Eric’s. Or Longland’s.
• • •
Emma watched as what she assumed was a woman joined the two men; it was hard, at this distance, to tell. None of them wore distinguishing clothing, and the woman was not short. Chase was not visible at this distance; she looked for him, holding her breath.
She saw Helmi instead. Helmi was seated, midair, ten feet from where the three Necromancers gathered, in full view of the portal. Her arms were by her sides, her palms pressed down into a nonexistent bench. She should not have been so remarkably clear, given the distance—but she was. She was the only person who was.
As Emma watched, forgetting, again, to breathe, Helmi lost substance. She didn’t lose clarity, although at first that was Emma’s assumption; she lost shape. The blurred outline of her body—with her ridiculous clothing and her ringlet hair—remained, but it lengthened, gaining height and width. Without thought, Emma took a step forward.
“Emma.” Margaret’s voice, while quiet, was harsh. Angry-teacher harsh. Emma stopped moving automatically. “Your father told you about the ancient dead, did he not? Helmi is among the oldest of those that remain trapped here. She is not being bound; she is asserting herself in a different way.”
Assertion, as Margaret called it, was transformation, in Emma’s vision. Amy cleared her throat; she was annoyed. The fact that Emma couldn’t gift her with vision didn’t appear to lighten Amy’s mood. She did not like—had never liked—being left out.
As if viewed through a ground-glass lens, Helmi’s new form sharpened and hardened, coming at last into a different focus. Her face was no longer the face of an eight-year-old child; it was a woman’s face—she was ten or fifteen years older than Emma Hall or any of her friends. She wore a dress that would have been at home in an old James Bond movie and gloves that ended at her elbow.
Emma couldn’t discern the neckline of the dress and didn’t try.
“Would she have looked like that if she’d lived?”
“I highly doubt it.” Margaret’s voice was dry. “The Queen prefers her sister to look familiar. Her sister chooses to honor the Queen’s preferences. Her normal appearance is generally advantageous—it makes her look harmless, and people tend to ignore her. But Alraed won’t; she could regress to the form of an infant, and he would still understand the danger she poses.
“This is merely an act of petty malice on her part. She does not—and has never—cared for Necromancers.”
“Why would she? She’s dead.”
“Once, she would have,” Margaret replied, voice neutral. “Her own kin—” She stopped.
Emma turned toward the road again. Ernest moved forward, waving everyone else back, although no one but Emma had moved.
The three Necromancers turned their backs to the roadside that Emma and her friends were so timidly occupying. Chase was on the other side.
“Ernest, don’t.”
The old man—as Eric called him—now carried a gun in his right hand.
“He knows there are—or were—hunters here. He is not a fool. You won’t be able to take him with the first shot. You are unlikely to get a second.”
Ernest didn’t appear to hear Margaret.
“The children will die.”
That, on the other hand, caught his attention. Emma didn’t even mind being referred to as a child, but it wasn’t making Amy any happier. “What is she telling them?”
“I can’t hear her. Nor can I approach in safety. Alraed might not recognize me, but Therese almost certainly will. If I’m seen, they’ll know that something is afoot. They almost certainly know about you.”
“Longland.”
• • •
Ernest lengthened the distance between himself and the group. Margaret looked at his back. “He is fond of Chase,” she told Emma quietly. “He was fond of every hunter he managed to save and train. His life—since before me—has been about killing and death. If the citadel falls, I don’t know what he’ll become.”
“And you?”
“Free,” Margaret replied. “You’ve seen it. You’ve seen what is waiting for us.”
Emma swallowed and nodded.
One voice rose in the distance. “I said find him.”
“That would be Alraed.”
No voice rose in answer but Helmi’s. “Shall I ask my sister?”
“The Queen will not care; this is beneath her now. She has what she desires.” The words were carefully chosen, carefully spoken.
“She doesn’t. Eric has agreed to return to her side—but he has not been seen and has not been recognized by her court. Will you deny him that legitimacy now? If he means, finally, to join her, killing the hunters will be trivial in the future. Will you risk two of her knights when she is almost at the pinnacle of her success?”
“She’s good,” Emma murmured. She had bee
n afraid that Helmi would tell them where Chase was, and she felt guilty.
“She was always capable of engendering hatred and rage,” Margaret replied.
“What else did she have? From everything you’ve said, the Necromancers weren’t exactly friendly or kind.”
“No. But perhaps they might have been, in different circumstances. We will not know; they are, now, what they are.”
Lightning struck the road. The sky remained clear.
Helmi was unmoved, but the Necromancers who had been wavering were not; they fell to either side of the great crack that appeared beneath snow and asphalt. The ghost of the Queen’s sister then unfolded her legs; she appeared to be stepping down from an invisible chair. She approached the fallen man; the woman was already rising, unsteadily, to her feet. She knelt; her hair covered her face as she bent her head.
“The two of you, go,” Alraed said, his voice thunder to the brief flash of lightning. “I will find the hunter. Play witness to your Queen.”
• • •
“Their Queen?” a new voice said. Emma recognized it instantly. The winter chill became absolute. Ernest froze. Margaret froze; silence robbed every element of the night of warmth. “Their Queen?”
The voice emanated from the portal. The Queen failed to follow it. But Alraed turned to face her, and it was clear, as he fell to one knee, that he could see what Emma couldn’t.
“My Queen,” he said, his voice soft enough that it barely carried. That wouldn’t have been enough for Amy—the only person Emma knew who could carry off this type of fury and make it look natural—and it wasn’t, apparently, good enough for the Queen.
He knew it, too.
Helmi lost her adult look, becoming again the child the Queen recognized and preferred. She then vanished, to reappear seconds later by Emma’s side. She looked worried, now.
Alraed lifted his face—only his face, he didn’t rise—and said, “You have known for centuries how I feel about you, my Queen. I have—for centuries—endeavored to prove both my loyalty and my love. I have obeyed your commands. I have returned to your side, time and again. And I will return to your side now if that is your desire.”
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