Silence: Book One of The Queen of the Dead

by Michelle Sagara

Amy’s lips thinned, but to Emma’s surprise, she answered the question. “Since just after the fire.”

  “Did he say anything before he collapsed?”

  “He asked me what I was doing here.”

  Eric glanced at Chase, whose hands were still in his pockets. Chase nodded.

  “Why?” Amy asked sharply.

  “Did he say where he thought he was?”

  “No.” The pause between that word and the next few couldn’t quite be called hesitation, but only because it was Amy. “But I don’t think he thought he was home. He might have thought he was at school,” she added, her brows furrowing slightly.

  “How far away is his school?”

  “On the east coast.”

  “How long would it take him to get here, assuming he had the plane tickets booked?”

  “Hours. I’m not sure. It would depend on where he was, what the traffic was like, how long it took to get his baggage.”

  “Hours is good enough.” Eric walked over to Skip and knelt. He pushed one eyelid up and then lifted a limp arm. “He should come out of this in the morning. He won’t expect to be home, though. He’ll probably be a bit disoriented, and he’ll think he had a very unpleasant dream.”

  “And his so-called friend?”

  “He isn’t likely to see Merrick Longland again.”

  “But you’re sure he’ll be okay?”

  “I don’t know what level of compulsion was placed on him. They don’t normally do this,” he added. “It’s costly.”

  “What would they normally do?” The sharp edge was back in her voice.

  “Normally? They’d suggest that he wanted to go home to visit his friends or his family. They’d make it his idea, and they’d just happen to be prepared to go with him. He’d feel like an idiot, after, but he’d remember almost everything.”

  “Almost?”

  “He wouldn’t remember the friend in question. He’d just remember the stupid idea—of going home on no notice—and wonder what the hell he’d been thinking.”

  Amy looked at Emma, who had been watching the conversation in silence. “Is Eric sane?” she asked.

  “More or less. I won’t vouch for Chase.”

  “And you knew about this?”

  “Me?” Emma lifted her hands, palms out, in front of her. “No. Not this. Not the fire, either. But…I’d trust him.”

  Amy nodded and turned back to Eric. “What you’ve left out is why.”

  “Why?”

  “Why would someone compel my useless brother to come home? Why didn’t Longland just come here on his own?”

  “Good question,” Eric replied, frowning. “I’ve been wondering that as well. Longland clearly wanted to be in on this party.” The frown deepened. “Chase?”

  “Amplifiers,” Chase said. If Emma hadn’t been standing closer to him than to Amy, she might have missed it. She might also have missed the two words that followed, but they were just swearing. “I’ll check.”

  “Check now,” Eric told him roughly.

  “Excuse me?” Amy said, and Chase paused in the half-open door.

  Eric cursed under his breath. “Amy, it’s important.”

  “How important?”

  “He might have needed your brother here to have easier access to your house.”

  “Which would help him how? We’re here alone,” she added. “If he could force Skip to leave law school on zero notice—and forget all about it later—he could probably get anyone to do anything he wanted.”

  “Some people are easier to compel than others,” Eric told her, giving her a very pointed look.

  She chose to take it as a compliment, but that was Amy all over. “Emma, go with Chase and help him find whatever he’s looking for. Don’t,” she added, “let him find anything he shouldn’t be looking for.”

  “Chase,” Eric said, before he could make it out the door, “remember what you said.”

  Chase rolled his eyes toward the ceiling.

  “Where do you want to start?” Emma asked him, when they were finally on the other side of the kitchen door.

  Chase glanced at her for a moment and then shrugged. “Any place there aren’t four hundred people.”

  “So you want to start next door.”

  “Ha-ha.”

  “We can start upstairs. No one’s supposed to be there, and if we happen to interrupt someone making out, Amy will thank us.”

  “Great. They won’t.”

  “Probably not,” she agreed cheerfully. “Besides, you need to get to a mirror and look at your hair.”

  “My hair?”

  “Well, what’s left of it.” She waved at Nan and Phil, who were closest to the stairs, said hello to a couple of people she vaguely recognized but didn’t know by name, and made her way to the main stairs. “Amy didn’t even notice your boots.”

  “Don’t sound so disappointed.”

  They cleared the top of the stairs and headed down the hall. It wasn’t a short hall. The rooms that crowded around it weren’t small rooms. “Bathroom’s over there,” Emma said, pointing to the farthest door in the wall to the right. She could feel the bass of the sound system pounding beneath the parts of her feet that were actually against the ground; given that these were dress shoes, that wasn’t much. But she walked farther down the hall and then turned to face Chase.

  “What, exactly, are we looking for?” It was a reasonable question.

  Chase was not in a reasonable mood. “I’ll let you know if I see it.”

  “I’d rather have some warning.”

  “You probably won’t—”

  “See it?”

  He frowned. “No,” he finally said. “You probably will see it. But it probably isn’t anything that you would recognize as dangerous.”

  “Do you see the dead as well?”

  His brows rose slightly, and then he grimaced. “Can I just say I don’t know what you’re talking about?”

  “If you like lying to my face, sure.”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about.” He headed toward the bathroom, and she followed him in. The room was almost painfully brightly lit, but the skylight was dim and dark, although one edge of slanted glass reflected the light. “Yes,” he said, as he pushed the door open. “I can see the dead. But not the same way Eric does. Eric’s naturally talented; I have to work my ass off for even a glimpse. I’m lazy,” he added, just in case this wasn’t obvious. “God this room is huge.”

  Since that had been her own first reaction, Emma didn’t laugh. Barely.

  “What you’re looking for,” she asked quietly, “could it be planted quickly?”

  “If by quickly you mean in less than one day, yes. If by quickly you mean five minutes, no. Not unless the—never mind. No.” He stopped to look in the mirror, and froze. The mirror was most of the wall. The parts of the wall that weren’t mirror were occupied by a sink with a lot of smoky marble countertop.

  “I told you,” Emma said. And then she realized that he was not, in fact, looking at his reflection—or more precisely, his hair—at all. “Chase?”

  “Get Eric.”

  She looked, instead, at his reflection. It mirrored him; his eyes were slightly wider, and his expression was frozen in place. His hair was a frayed mass of singed ends, and his previously pale skin was the red that usually requires way too much exposure to sun.

  “Chase?”

  “Get Eric, Emma.”

  She hesitated in the doorway and then said, “Not without you.”

  “Emma, I am not joking. Get Eric.”

  “I’m not laughing, you’ll notice. I’m not going to get Eric without you.” She couldn’t say later why she wouldn’t budge. Chase had clearly shown that he was not afraid of much, and that he could handle himself. She forced her face to relax into a smile, and added, “Amy will kill me.”

  His expression did change, then, to one of frustration and, surprisingly, resignation. On the other hand, he swore a lot as he turned away from the m
irror.

  Chase and Eric went up the stairs, and Emma followed them as if she were an afterthought. They didn’t talk at all. Chase didn’t tell Eric what he’d seen, and since Emma had seen nothing, she couldn’t fill him in either. But what was most disturbing was that Eric didn’t ask. He just pushed himself up off the kitchen floor—where Skip was still unconscious—and followed.

  But he stiffened as he touched the bathroom door.

  “Eric?” Emma asked softly. Eric spun, and what she saw in his face made her take a step back. He reined it in, but she could see that he had to work at it, and it made her nervous.

  He had spoken about having to kill her before, and they had been just words to Emma. For the first time since he’d said it, they weren’t. He saw that, in her face, as well, and his mouth tightened as he gripped the doorknob and turned away.

  Without looking at her, he said, “It’s too much to hope you’ll go back downstairs and stay with your friends.”

  It almost wasn’t, but she didn’t say this.

  “But stay in the doorway, Em. Keep your feet on the carpet, and keep your hands on the walls if you have to grab anything. Whatever you do—or see—stay out.”

  She nodded. She would have asked him why, but in emergencies, why was the first thing to go, and everything about Eric at this point screamed emergency. “Wait—what about Chase?”

  The tension left his shoulders, and he shook his head. “Chase,” he told her softly, “can take care of himself. You’ve known him for what? Minutes?”

  “People I’ve never met die all the time.”

  “And you worry about them?”

  “They’re not standing in front of me. There’s nothing at all I can do to help them.”

  “Believe that there is nothing at all you can do to help Chase. Or me.” Eric shook his head. “I give up,” he said, to no one in particular.

  “You already said that.”

  “I’m continually optimistic by nature. Shut up, Chase.” Taking a deep breath, he entered the bathroom. Chase was standing to one side of the mirror, his arms folded across his chest. The lack of leather jacket didn’t detract from the attitude of his posture, which said a lot about his attitude and only a little about the jacket.

  Eric stepped up to the counter, looked into the mirror, and froze.

  Emma, her feet pressed against the carpet, her hands pressed against the wall, froze as well. She could see Eric’s reflection in the mirror; she could see the welt across his cheek, the dark slash of dried blood, but those had been pretty clear in the fluorescent kitchen lighting as well.

  What she hadn’t seen until this moment were the reflections that had no physical counterparts: the pale, almost translucent profiles of a middle-aged man and a young girl. They stood to either side of Eric, their arms raised above their heads, their eyes open in the glassy stare of people who no longer take in the world that’s passing around them.

  “Chase?” Eric said, voice both soft and sharp.

  “Two. If there’s a third, I can’t sense him.”

  “Did you touch the mirror?”

  “Do I look like a moron?”

  “Usually. Ready?”

  Chase nodded, his arms folding slightly more firmly around his upper body.

  Eric reached out with his palm and laid it flat against the mirror’s surface. The mirror—and Eric’s reflection—rippled. Emma felt it; it was as if, in rippling, the mirror had disturbed not only its own surface but the surfaces of every other solid thing in the room as well. Chase grimaced at the same time as she flinched; even Eric clenched his jaws.

  Only the two silent people who extended their arms in the mirror seemed entirely unmoved, and Emma knew, then, that they were dead.

  But if Eric saw them, he gave no sign; the whole of his attention was focused on the mirror. As the rippling stilled, he withdrew his hand; it fell to his side as if he no longer cared whether or not it was part of him. His reflection was gone. So, too, was the background to it: the tiled walls, the large, in-ground bath, the standing shower stall.

  In their place were the walls of an entirely different room, with red rugs, dark-stained wood-plank floors peering out at their edges, globes of light on standing sconces, and one central figure.

  Sitting in a tall-backed chair directly opposite Eric, wearing a dress that not even Amy at her most ostentatious could have carried off—too many beads, too much fabric, too many frills, and too much damn gold—was a woman Emma had never seen.

  Not even in a nightmare.

  NIGHTMARE WAS AN ODD WORD to apply to the woman seated on what was, Emma thought, a throne. Nothing about her suggested the monsters that dwelled across the boundary of sleep. She was not beautiful in the way that Amy was beautiful, but she was striking in a way that Amy was not, at least not yet. She wore a dress that reminded Emma of pictures of Queen Elizabeth I. Her hair was pale, not gold and not platinum, but closer to the latter, and bound in such a way that nothing escaped—no tendrils, no curls.

  She wore a thin diadem just above the line of her hair, which contained a single sapphire; this set off eyes that were a remarkable blue. Her lips were, in Emma’s opinion, unnaturally red; it was the only thing about her that made her look old.

  Or rather, it was the only thing Emma could point at, because no one who wasn’t old wore that color. But something about this woman radiated age. Nothing about her seemed remotely friendly. Not even when she smiled. Especially not then.

  And she smiled, the left corner of her lips twitching upward, as she looked at Eric. Emma could see only his back, but his whole body had tensed.

  “Well met, Eric. Am I to assume, from the unexpected pleasure of your company, that Merrick is dead?”

  Chase said nothing. He said it very loudly. Eric’s nothing was quieter.

  “I thought you might make an appearance,” the woman added, when it became clear that no one else would speak. “And here you are. And you’ve brought your pet with you.” Her smile deepened. “If there are two of you, the situation must be dire, indeed. It is seldom that you go hunting these days.” The smile slid from her face. “But you will play your games, won’t you? Experience teaches you nothing. You should stop, Eric. You should end this game. What can you do, after all, that does not, in the end, add to my power?”

  He said nothing.

  “What can you do at all?” She lifted an arm; it glittered in the globes of light at her back. “Come back to me. Come back. Everything else is dust and illusion.” Her expression had changed as she spoke, her eyes rounding slightly as she leaned forward in her chair. Her voice had softened, losing the brittle edge that made it seem too cold.

  Eric stood there for a long, silent moment, and then he turned away. Emma saw the expression on his face, and her eyes widened, her mouth opened. But words wouldn’t come; she was as mute, in her way, as he was. She would have walked over to him, she would have pulled him away, but he had told her very clearly to stay put, and that much she would do.

  But it was hard.

  “Eric,” the woman called.

  He didn’t turn back.

  “Eric!”

  Those beautiful eyes narrowed; those red, full lips closed. The arm that had been lifted in what was almost a plea fell once again to the arm of the chair, and even at this distance, Emma could see the way the knuckles of both hands suddenly stood out in relief.

  “Chase,” Eric said quietly, his back to the mirror, “come on.”

  Chase, however, was staring at the woman. His back was not turned to Emma, and if Emma had ever needed any proof that Eric and Chase were two entirely different people, she had it here. His expression was as white as the woman’s. White with rage.

  He took one step forward, just one, and Eric spun and caught the fist he’d lifted before Chase could slam it into the mirror. “Chase.”

  Chase’s arm was shaking, and Eric’s hand was shaking as well, and they stood there while the woman watched, her fury not lessened by the malice of her
smile. But feeding that malicious smile was more than Emma could bear to watch Eric and Chase do.

  Keeping her feet on the carpet and anchoring herself with the doorframe, she pivoted into the room and reached for the lights, her hand slapping the wall until she felt the familiar switches beneath her fingers. She turned them off, and night descended through the skylight.

  After a few moments of silence, Emma said, “Is it safe to turn the lights back on?”

  “More or less.”

  “I’d prefer the more, if it’s all the same to you.” She waited for another minute, and then she flipped the switch back on. Chase and Eric were no longer locked in a struggle to prevent Chase from punching the mirror. Better, the mirror now reflected them. She waited, watching them look at each other.

  Who was she? Emma wanted to ask, but given the tension of their expressions at the moment, she couldn’t. Had they been Allison—or Michael—those would have been the first words out of her mouth, and they would have been angry, protective words. But Eric and Chase were not friends of a decade; she wasn’t sure how they would take it—but she could guess. Badly.

  “Guys.”

  They both turned to look at her.

  “Is she what you were looking for?”

  “She is so not what I was looking for,” Chase replied.

  “So that means the house search is still on?”

  Eric nodded. “I don’t think we’ll find anything else,” he added. “But we might as well be thorough.”

  He was wrong. He wasn’t happy to be wrong, but he was wrong.

  And it happened that the person who proved him wrong in this case wasn’t Chase. It was Emma. Emma knew the house pretty well; it was hard not to know a house that you’d played extended games of hide-and-seek in from elementary school on. Amy’s house, it was agreed, was the best house for hide-and-seek because there were so many places to hide, and you could hide on the move if necessary. It changed the whole feel of the game.

  So Emma knew the house as well as anyone but Skip or Amy, and once she’d decided to take charge, she led, and Eric and Chase were forced to follow.

  She hesitated on the threshold of Amy’s bedroom, but that was the only dangerously sensitive area upstairs, and it was, in Chase’s opinion, clean. Mindful of Amy’s ability to notice when a hairpin had been moved half an inch, Emma supervised Chase like an angry principal conducting a locker search.