Silence: Book One of The Queen of the Dead

by Michelle Sagara

  Skip let the ladder go and turned to his younger sister. For the first time, Eric saw the similarities between the siblings, not the very obvious differences. Amy was obviously angry; on her, it looked good. “Amy.”

  She turned so her back was squarely facing his voice.

  “Amy, we’re leaving.”

  “I’m not leaving Emma—”

  “Eric’s staying.”

  “Eric’s barely known her for a month. I’m not—”

  Skip grabbed one of the arms that was attached, by her hand, to her hip. “You’re leaving. You can carry a ladder, or we can leave the ladders behind—but I’ll be carrying you.”

  Her eyes rounded in an almost operatic way; Eric thought she was going to slap her brother. “The kid’s dead.” Skip spaced the words evenly and slowly, as if English were not Amy’s native tongue. “If what you said about last night is even halfway true, you’re going to join him if we can’t get away before Longland shows. I personally don’t give a shit if you die here,” he added. “But it’ll kill Mom and Dad.”

  “Amy—” Eric began.

  She lifted the arm that wasn’t gripped by Skip. “Fine,” she told her brother. Skip pulled the ladders down as Eric turned to Allison.

  “Allison, take the baby. You and Michael get as far away from this house as you possibly can.” He glanced at Michael, who was in Cathy’s world and had failed to hear anything, and he decided that Michael and his compliance were going to have to be Allison’s problem.

  “I’ll take Amy and Skip,” Allison told him, after a small pause.

  “Michael’s not—”

  “Michael is the only person who seemed to be unaffected by whatever it was Longland did at Amy’s.”

  Which was interesting. “Probably because his brain’s wired differently. It’d be worth some study—at another time. This is not that time. If Longland is aware that Michael somehow resisted the very, very expensive compulsion that affected everyone else in that house, he won’t bother with subtlety. He’ll kill him, probably quickly.

  “Once he’s committed to that, he’ll kill all of you,” Eric added.

  “But Emma—”

  “Emma has Chase.”

  “Why is Longland here?”

  “If I had to guess? Andrew Copis has a lot of raw power, and Longland has, at the moment, a need for raw power.”

  “He—”

  “If he’s adept, he can sense it. He can’t sense the rest of us; we’re probably not his target here. That’ll change when he arrives, and I’d rather not risk any of you.” He slid his hands into his pockets. Nestled against his thigh were iron rings, warmed by constant contact with his leg. He pulled them out and slid them on. “If he’s done any research at all, he’ll have some idea of what he’s facing.”

  “Could he go into a burning building and drag Andrew out?”

  The fact that Emma, Maria, and Chase had failed to emerge passed without comment, but the worry was there on her face.

  “Hard to say. It wouldn’t be his first choice, if our own records of Necromancers are anything to go by. If we’re away from the building, and he sees the same fire that Emma sees, he might try to find a different power source. He probably hasn’t had the time to gather any.”

  “But you’re not coming with us. You don’t think he’s going to leave.”

  “If he decides to risk it—” He shook his head. “If he decides to risk it, he’ll have safer passage than Emma did; he knows how to use the dead, and he only has to reach Andrew. No, I’m not coming with you. Emma isn’t close to his match yet, but she has all the others. Even if he gives up on Andrew, Emma’s got what he needs—he can just take that. I’ll hunker down out of sight, and I’ll see what he does. But the rest of you have to leave now.

  “Ally,” he added, when she failed to move, “I’ll have enough to worry about. If you all stay here, you’ll slow me down when I can’t afford to be slowed.”

  She hesitated again, and Eric looked, very pointedly, at the baby she held in her arms. He could see that she wanted to argue. She didn’t. But she shifted her grip on the baby, and she bent to grab the diaper bag before she retreated as far as Michael. She tapped Michael on the shoulder, and he looked up instantly; Eric couldn’t hear what she said. But he saw Michael’s expression darken in utterly open concern.

  Eric understood why Emma valued them both so highly. Why, in fact, she loved them, even if that word was out of vogue among the young. He had thought, watching Emma, Allison, Amy, and the rest of Amy’s mafia, that Michael was simply a burden they’d chosen to adopt.

  But he watched Michael pick up Cathy, as if Cathy were his baby sister, and he watched as Michael’s mouth moved over words that distance silenced, and he understood that the burden of care, if that’s what it was, was not by any means shouldered on just one side.

  He could see only Allison’s profile, but she was, at this distance, measured and calm for someone who was also, clearly, in a hurry.

  Michael lifted Catherine, and they headed down Rowan Avenue. Skip and Amy joined them, and Amy’s denunciation was the clearest sound in the street. Skip was ignoring her, rather than engaging. Arguing was, admittedly, hard to do when they were both lugging ladders.

  He hoped they weren’t heading in the wrong direction. He couldn’t be certain. He didn’t have time to check; Longland would come to number twelve. Now if only number twelve weren’t lacking anything remotely useful behind which he could hide. If, he thought grimly, hiding would do any good at all. Longland wasn’t alone. He wouldn’t feel the need to be that cautious.

  There were no bushes here; no obvious cover, no neighbor’s yards, and no roof that he was certain would bear his weight, if he could climb that far up. Eric glanced at the boards nailed in a large X across what remained of the doorframe. He grimaced and started to pull them off.

  They splintered from the inside as he worked, and he jumped back, pulling daggers. He got both a face and an ear full of pissed off Chase for his troubles.

  “Chase, what the hell are you doing here?”

  “Same old, same old,” Chase replied, looking past Eric’s shoulder. “Someone moved the fucking ladders. Where were you going?”

  “In.” Eric bit back every other angry comment he wanted to make, because, in the end, he was happier to have Chase than to stand alone. “They’re not here yet, and outside is a total bust.”

  The hair on his neck started to rise, and he swore. “Scratch that,” he said, pushing Chase back into the house, and flattening himself against the wall with its shattered windows. “They’re here.”

  Andrew’s hand wasn’t solid. But even insubstantial as it was, Emma could reach out and touch it. She did, and he allowed it.

  The house is on fire, he told her, the last syllable stretching out as if it were about to birth a scream.

  “Yes, I know.” She kept the words simple and forced them to be gentle. Here, she missed Michael, because Michael could have distracted—or better, calmed—Andrew.

  I want my mom.

  “I know. She’s here, somewhere. But it’s smoky and she’s lost. Let’s go find her.”

  He reached up for her, then, and she tried to pick him up. He stiffened, and the scream that she’d managed to subvert started in earnest. She didn’t so much hear it as feel it. As gently as she could manage, she put him down again.

  Only Mommy.

  She nodded. “Let’s find your mother. She’s been very worried.”

  I waited for her.

  Emma’s eyes were already closed, or she would have closed them. She held out her hand again, and when he placed his palm in hers, she closed hers over it gently.

  This time, she reached for Andrew, while she held this small part of him. She reached for him, and then, she reached through him. All she felt was a little boy who was close to hysteria—on the wrong side. Four years old.

  Since the day her father had died, so many years ago, she had accepted that life wasn’t fair. When Nath
an died in the summer, she had hated it. Life. The grayness. The ache. The loss of future. All of it.

  Watching other people’s happiness, other people’s dreams, had been so damn hard, she’d withdrawn from most of her life. Only Allison and Michael had remained a central part of that life because they wouldn’t let her go. Everyone else had made space for her grief; they’d given her the room in which to mourn.

  They could give her years, and it would never end.

  Are you crying? Andrew asked, in that curious but detached way of children everywhere.

  “A little.”

  Why?

  “Because it’s dark, and it’s scary, and I’m lonely.”

  Oh. The pause was not long, but it was there. Me too. Are you a grown-up?

  Two years ago she would have answered yes without hesitation. Now? “Not quite. Almost.”

  Can you get out of the fire?

  “I think so.”

  It’ll kill you, you know. If you don’t.

  “I know.”

  Where’s my mom?

  “She’s here.” Emma took a breath and looked down at her non-hand. This time, when she reached out, she reached out for Maria Copis.

  She felt the skin of the older woman’s hand in her palms, and knew that that was a real sensation; it was distinct, almost overwhelming in its sudden clarity. Andrew cried out, and she flexed her hands; felt Maria’s response.

  Don’t go!

  “No, Andrew. I’m not leaving.” She took another breath. It hurt.

  “Emma?”

  “Margaret?” She blinked. Margaret stood in the shadows, Suzanne by her side.

  “Yes, dear.”

  Emma hated being called “dear” by anyone under the age of seventy. She grimaced but said nothing.

  “You’re almost there, dear, but I wanted to warn you—you don’t have much time. You’ve reached the boy, and the fire has slowed; you’ve got his attention. But…”

  Coughing, Emma nodded. She reached for Maria Copis again, but this time, eyes closed, she reached out with her other self. With the self that had left her body in a chair in a hospital emergency triage room.

  “Hold on, dear. Hold on for as long as you can.”

  She would have asked Margaret what she meant, but she didn’t have time. Fire engulfed her hands, searing away skin, sinew, tendon. She bit her lip, tasted blood, stopped herself from screaming—but only barely, and only because she was also holding Andrew, and Andrew was terrified.

  Andrew had never stopped being terrified.

  The soul-fire came to sickly green life in the frame of the door, lapping around the sharp edges of newly broken boards.

  They were out of its range, but only barely, and the floors here looked suspiciously unstable.

  “Where did the fire start?” Chase hissed.

  “Basement. Back of the house one over.” Eric rolled along the floor against the wall. The wall would have provided more than enough cover had it not been for the large gap a windowpane had once occupied. Here, everything was blackened; paint had peeled and curled, and just beyond the windows, the carpets were the consistency of melted plastic.

  But the soul-fire didn’t burn in that particular way. Something to be grateful for. “Chase?”

  “I’m clear.”

  Eric felt the soul-fire bloom just above his head. These damn homes with their huge windows. Even the cheap homes had them all over the place.

  “I’d say they know where we are,” Chase added.

  “No kidding.” Eric drew daggers.

  Chase pulled a mirror out of his shirt pocket. “You’ve got yours?”

  “No.”

  “Fuck, Eric, what were you thinking?”

  “Never mind. It’ll only piss you off.”

  Chase angled the mirror so that it caught light through the ragged hole that was now the door in these parts. “Three.”

  “Longland.”

  “Yeah. Two others.”

  “Dressed?”

  “Street clothes. No robes.”

  “They were already in Toronto, then.”

  “Either that or the old lady’s getting lax.”

  Eric winced. “Don’t call her that, Chase. You know it pisses her off.”

  Chase shrugged and pulled the mirror back. “We’ve got trouble,” he told Eric grimly.

  “How much trouble?”

  “Longland has Allison.”

  Emma had never been terrified of fire. It had always fascinated her. Candlelight. Fireplaces. Bunsen burners. Even the blue flames of the gas stove. But all of those other times, she’d been far enough away to feel only warmth.

  Here, there was no warmth. Warmth was too gentle.

  She’d broken her arm once, and that snap of bone had been quick and comfortable compared to this. She almost let go, but she realized that the fire burned only her hands.

  No. Not even her hands, not her real hands. The fire had not yet reached this room. She dimly remembered that Andrew had died of smoke inhalation; it was possible that this type of fire would never reach these rooms.

  Remembering Margaret’s words, she held on. It was like holding on to a stove element when it was orange. It was almost impossible, and she would have screamed and pulled back in defeat, opening her eyes and falling back into her body and the grimness of reality, if it had not been for Andrew Copis, who waited by her side in the darkness, where the pain was strongest. For his sake, she held on.

  But it wasn’t enough just to hold on.

  She realized it, tried to cling to the thought, until pain washed it away, again and again, as if she were the shore and pain was the ocean that reached for her. It wasn’t enough to hold on. Hold on. No, it’s not enough.

  It was like breath, like heartbeat, this pain and this realization, but it wore grooves in her thoughts, until the pain couldn’t dislodge it anymore. And when that happened, she reached into, and through the fire, as she had reached into, and through the cold.

  On the other side of the fire, she finally found the warmth she hadn’t even realized she was seeking.

  “Maria.”

  The urge to throw herself into that warmth, and away from the fire itself, was so strong it was like the gravity that takes you—quickly—to the bottom of a cliff from its height. But she’d stood on the edge of a lot of cliffs, and she’d never once thrown herself off. She heard, in the distance, the sudden gasp of shock or pain in Maria’s voice, and she knew what the warmth was.

  Emma had never tried anything like this before, but she had a pretty good idea that throwing yourself entirely into another person’s life—any other person, no matter how you felt about them—was not a good thing. But it was hard. She’d tried it once before, and then? It had been joy, until it was loss, and pain. Finding boundaries, with Nathan, had been so difficult; accepting the boundaries he sketched for himself, more so.

  She didn’t love Maria Copis. She didn’t even know her.

  But not loving, not knowing, she was still drawn into parts of her life. The parts were good, because she had asked Maria to think about happy things—as if she were the Disney channel—and Maria had done her best to oblige. Emma could feel love, fear, and frustration for her children, and all of these were mixed and intertwined. She couldn’t, in her own mind, see what the joy of changing a dirty diaper was, but apparently, Maria could.

  She could hear Andrew’s first words, although she couldn’t understand them at all. Maria could. Or thought she could. Parents with small children were often stupid like that. She could see Andrew take his first steps. See him run—and fall, which he didn’t much like—and see him insist on feeding himself.

  Cathy came next, but Andrew was entwined with Cathy, and a brief glimpse of someone Emma had never met and yet now both loved and hated intruded. He was taller than Maria, and he was young, even handsome, his hair dark, his eyes dark, and his smile that electric form of slow and lazy that can take your breath away. The children loved him. Maria loved him.

&n
bsp; And him? He loved them, maybe. He loved himself more. Emma watched the expressions on his face when he thought no one was looking. Saw the phone calls that he took, the false joviality of casual conversation no blind at all to Maria. The easy way he lied.

  The hard way the truth came out.

  Shadows, there. Anger. Loss. The slow acceptance of the death of need. Or love. It was complicated, and Emma tried very hard not to look at it, and not only because she was afraid of walking unannounced and uninvited into the Copis bedroom.

  But she could see the man leave—and that still hurt—and she could see the struggle to be a reasonable, sane parent with almost no money and two children with a third on its way. The struggle to find the joy in the townhouse, with its narrow walls and its crowded, cluttered rooms, was both hard and somehow rewarding. Emma felt it, but she didn’t understand it.

  But she saw the turn happen, and she knew that she couldn’t withdraw; she followed Maria, holding on as lightly as possible and riding her back like an insect. Andrew was walking. Talking. Arguing. Saying a lot of unreasonable No. Andrew was trying to stick six slices of bread, side by side, in the toaster. Andrew was grabbing Cathy’s toys, and Cathy was pulling his hair, a trade that didn’t seem fair to his outraged, little self.

  Andrew was trying so hard to be a Big Brother, even if he didn’t quite understand what that meant when it came to toys.

  Andrew was standing in the line-up to junior kindergarten, glancing anxiously back at his mother before the doors opened to swallow him and the other twenty-six children. Andrew was—

  Andrew was—

  Dead.

  Just like that, the warmth twisted; Emma held it, but it was hard. Because to hold it, she had to hold on to the fire, and the smoke, and the screams of her daughter and her son; the baby was sleeping, thank god, the baby was hardly awake. She had to pass through the smoke, the thickening of it, the heat of the floors, the sudden, horrible realization that she had slept through death, and death was calling.