“You’re weird today,” Jason said. “Something’s up. First you text me not to pick you up at like midnight, then a few minutes later you’re begging for a ride. I woke up this morning wondering if you’d gotten totally wasted somewhere or took a pill or something crazy.”
She glanced at him from the corner of her eye. “Right because that sounds totally like me.” She hooked her thumb around the seatbelt and fidgeted in the cool leather seat. “I was just watching a movie last night and it hit a nerve. I’m fine now.”
“Bzzt. Wrong. Don’t believe you. Tell me the truth or you can be totally basic and take the bus today.”
“You wouldn’t.”
His lips puckered, his eye shifting to meet hers. “I would. You know I would. Now spill it!”
Amber’s knees squeezed the backpack resting between them. She frowned, then faced the window and glared through her reflection at the houses while she rolled the fallen leaf in her fingers. “Mom went to Borneo yesterday. Didn’t tell me or Chris. She just up and basically snuck out of the house while I was sleeping and took a redeye flight.”
“Jesus, Amber.” He ran his hands through his hair. “Borneo? Is that even a thing?”
“It is a thing. A very far away thing.”
Jason leaned back, straightening his arms against the steering wheel. A silent moment passed between them, the only sound the engine and the wind.
He glanced over, then faced ahead. He looked at her again, wrestling with words that wouldn’t come.
“Just say it, spaz,” she sighed.
“It’s today, isn’t it?”
Amber tore apart the leaf and tossed the pieces to the wind. “I wish everyone would just leave me alone about it. I’m fine. I’ve been fine.”
“Oh please, like you can lie to your best friend and he won’t know.” The Mercedes lumbered to a stop at a dead intersection. “You want to go to see him? We can skip school. It’s our senior year anyway, nobody will care.”
“Jason, just go to school.” She squeezed the seat belt and stared through the windshield, jaw clenched. “Thank you. I really will be okay. The only thing that makes it worse is bothering me about it after I’ve said I don’t want to talk about it anymore.”
Jason nodded and turned the radio on, something he often did when he didn’t like where the conversation was headed. They listened to some music accompanied by the howling rush of wind until St. Luke’s College Preparatory School finally appeared around the bend.
Girls in perfectly-pressed uniforms walked in perfectly-pressed groups toward massive arched doors. Boys flashed their letter jackets at each other or thumbed their noses at infractions by untucking part of their shirts from their khaki pants. They, too, filed inside the cavernous, ivy-draped school in tight, laughing bunches.
Jason’s car whined as it pulled into a spot near the back of the lot. Some of the other seniors eyed his car with a nod of approval. Others saw the driver and smirked, turning away with a whisper on their lips.
A lump travelled down Jason’s throat. He fixed his collar and checked his hair. Amber smiled and squeezed her friend’s shoulder. “You’re completely adorable when you’re worried about what other people think.”
“What?” Jason slapped his hands into his lap. “Me, worried about them? Screw them. I’m more worried about what they think of the car.”
“Good,” she said as they spilled out. Amber adjusted her backpack on a shoulder and took a good look at the school she’d known since first grade when their family first moved to from Indianapolis to Portsmouth.
Those were good times, exciting times. Chris still liked to play and wasn’t so casually hurtful. Her mom was thrilled about starting her career as a wildlife photographer. Her dad just got a job as a critical care nurse at Portsmouth Regional Hospital. Toby was there, all smiles and laughter.
Amber blinked the memories away and squinted at the rising sun behind her school. Bricks the tired red of old blood propped up a tiled roof that shadowed the school’s many narrow windows. St. Luke’s was an old, prestigious Catholic school with a highly-publishable acceptance rate to Ivy Leagues. If a family had money in Portsmouth, they wanted their kids attending this school. If a family didn’t have money, they crossed their fingers and hoped their children would receive one of the few rare scholarships St. Luke’s awarded to particularly gifted students.
Before the accident, everyone always said how fortunate the Blackwoods were. Chris gained entry on a disadvantaged student scholarship. Amber and Toby performed so high on the aptitude tests they received gifted student scholarships, and so a family of middling means had the great fortune of sending all three of their children to such a prestigious school. A few of the neighborhood kids were even jealous in that cruel sort of way small children can be to one another. But after the accident, the teasing stopped, and no one said the Blackwoods were lucky anymore.
The bell dinged twice. The slowly-drifting students picked up their pace, carrying Amber and Jason through the wide doors in a stream of backpacks, sweater vests, and pleated khakis. Warmth greeted them in a chattering hall. Jason leaned over and pecked her on the cheek. “See you at lunch. Text me later.”
“See you.”
They parted ways, Jason to the right and Amber left. The crowds thinned. The bell chimed again, this time once. What students remained piled into their classrooms. Oak doors clunked shut. St. Luke’s halls quieted.
An icy breath caressed her ear, and the hairs on the back of her neck stood on end. Goose bumps rippled up her arms as a shiver worked its way down her spine. The weight of eyes pressed into her back. Someone stood behind her. Right behind her.
Terror latched around her heart as it lurched into her throat. She whipped around, swinging the backpack like a club. “Get away from me!”
Her bag whirred through an empty hall. One of the fluorescent lights near the door sputtered. It clicked on and off a few more times, then steadied at a low buzz.
She frowned, looking around. Her eye caught a dusty vent above the lockers. Dark slits smiled at her like twenty impish, toothless grins. Amber bit her lip and exhaled through her nose. Her shoes tapped lightly on the floor as she headed for class, glad no one saw her freak out in the middle of the hall.
At the classroom door, she paused. Her hand gripped the strap on her back, her knuckles whitening as she twisted the fabric. “No. Not today.”
Her chin shot up as she pivoted and darted through the hallway, the rapid clickety-click of her footsteps on speckled linoleum ricocheting off the hard surfaces surrounding her. She twisted around a corner and came to the looming outside doors. They parted as she slapped her palms onto the oak, and the fall once again embraced her.
Her mother hid in Borneo. Her brother hid at college. Her father? Nobody knew where he hid these days. Her entire family made sure they hid because of what happened on this day. Not Amber.
It took a few minutes to slip into the line of trees hiding St. Luke’s from the rest of the world. Her footfalls crunched under the brilliant patchwork quilt of fallen autumn leaves. Sunlight streamed in threadbare spears through the thinning canopy, warming the chill air.
Portsmouth appeared beyond the next cluster of old hemlocks. There were a few shops in desperate need of fresh paint clustered near the elementary school off Highway 1. She spotted the store she wanted and jogged for it—a quaint boutique with a green roof, white siding and two large bay windows cleared of the ivy jacketing the rest of the walls.
Amber climbed the three cracked steps to the door and swung it wide. A dingy brass bell rang as a wild weave of aromas collapsed around her like an overbearing aunt. The sickly, honeyed scents of blooming flowers rushed up her nose with each deep breath she took. A sneeze threatened, but she swallowed it down.
Blossoms of every color filled three-tiered shelves. Petals curled away from verdant stems like tongues lapping at the sunlight. Amber smiled and caressed a pink orchid as she passed, feeling the silky kiss against her finge
r.
A woman stepped into the aisle beaming a broad smile and smelling of earth. Soil made little black crescents beneath her short nails. One of the straps from her overalls hung loose over her polka-dotted shirt and sweat stained her frayed and wrinkled collar.
The woman’s toothy smile slipped when she saw Amber, morphing into a deep frown. “It’s a little early for you to be here, Ms. Blackwood. You usually bounce in after school, not during.”
“Hi, Ms. Watanabe, do you have black calla lilies in stock?”
The florist’s frown fell deeper, the intense, dark pools of her eyes full of concern. The flash of recognition bounced her brows high, and the frown curled into a weak smile that hid her teeth. “Oh. I see.”
“Please?” Amber asked.
For a moment, Ms. Watanabe looked like she might shoo Amber out the door and back toward school. But that hard edge faded, and Ms. Watanabe unfolded her arms, motioning for the shop’s counter. “I’m just going to assume your mother’s fine with you missing classes today. You’re almost graduated now. I wouldn’t want to contribute to lower grades here at the end.”
“For today, she made an exception. And my grades are fine, Ms. Watanabe.”
“I hadn’t realized today was, you know, the day. I knew it was soon, but I’m so bad at remembering details the older and greyer I get. Did you know I left the stove on last Tuesday? Practically burned the house down. Maury still thinks it was only half an accident.” She chuckled and paused at a door leading to the back. “I’ve got a few fresh black callas for you in the fridge. Hold on a minute.”
Ms. Watanabe vanished into the back of her shop. Amber turned at the counter and inspected the long lines of blossoms flowing toward the front door. A few swayed slowly beneath the languid turn of the ceiling fans above them.
She scanned the rows, lips pressed into a line. Only she and the flowers stood in the store at that moment, yet the air was stiff, uncomfortable, like she shared it with more than just a few pretty petals.
“Amber?”
She started at Ms. Watanabe’s voice and whipped around. The woman shuffled behind the counter with a bouquet cradled in her arms. Black calla lilies weren’t truly black, more like the dark, fleshy purple of a dog’s tongue rimmed by scarlet that smoldered against a bright light, but they were enchanting and strong and different, and for that she loved them better than the more common rose or chrysanthemum.
Amber still remembered the first day she and Toby wandered into Ms. Watanabe’s store and stole a black calla for their makeshift fort. Ms. Watanabe chased them half a mile down the highway before they finally lost her in the woods. Toby felt guilty and wanted her to pay for it. She was too scared at the time and refused. Amber didn’t find out until after the accident, but he had snuck away anyway and paid for it himself.
Ms. Watanabe gingerly wrapped the blooms in white paper. Amber leaned over and sniffed the petals.
“You won’t smell anything, honey. These lilies don’t have a scent,” she said as she flipped her reading glasses on and punched a few keys on the register.
“I know. I like to try and see if I can smell them anyway.”
The woman smirked and totaled out the order. Amber dug into her bag and paid with some of the money her mom left Ms. Flannery. She tucked the flowers beneath her arm and headed for the door.
“Oh, Amber?”
Amber leaned against the door. It groaned open, and the little bell sang a clanging tune. “Yes, Ms. Watanabe?”
“Say hi to Toby for me.”
“I will. Thanks, Ms. Watanabe.”
The door clunked shut behind her, leaving Amber alone in the autumn save for the occasional whooshing car as it zipped down the road. It didn’t take long to reach the graveyard from the florist’s. Its gate hung open during the day for visitors, so she slipped into the grounds easily enough.
Manicured lawns studded with marble gravestones gridded rolling hills sloping toward a small lake. Angels stood on some of the headstones while others wrapped their arms around obelisks. Still other seraphs were barely more than rubble, covered in lichen and forgotten by the world and the families who put them there.
Portsmouth was an old town with a long history and a lot of people buried there for a very long while. She passed some angled, sad tombstones marred with the blackening of age and cordoned by rusty chains. Those old stones gradually gave way to straighter ones. Some even had fresh flowers placed before them.
At the very end of the cemetery, where the crowded plots gave way to empty ones waiting for their caskets, she came to a small headstone nearly flush with the grass.
With all the care in the world, Amber placed the lilies on the marble and smiled. She had no idea how much time passed while she stood over that grave, but while she did, she didn’t speak a word. Every so often a goose would honk as it swam in circles on the nearby lake. But other than that, it was just the two of them.
Amber sighed and rolled onto the grass, her hand resting on the tombstone’s cool face. One of the lilies tickled her knuckles as the breeze pushed it across her skin. She smiled and passed her fingertips over the letters etched into the stone. “Happy birthday, Toby. I miss you.”
CHAPTER THREE
Bone Man's Charge
Six crows squawked in a lazy circle beneath the soot-stained clouds drifting through the night. The birds were invisible wraiths against the backdrop of the sky, their long, dark wings hidden to all but one pair of steely blue, unblinking eyes. Bone Man watched the crows glide, noted each feather tremble in the breeze and wet, crimson eye twitch as it drank in the world far below.
Breath slipped from his nose and flowed down his lips. He grimaced at the prickling on his skin, how the heat from his body lingered behind his mask and dampened his nose and cheeks. Every mote of movement, every twitch and tremble brought with it a lance of agony driving through his heart. Such was the price of power he paid in service to his master, and while the torture of his curse tormented him at first, he grew to accept his pain, even relish in it until finally one day he woke and it was what sustained him.
Bone Man cracked his knuckles. The pale gloves covering his long fingers almost glowed in Afterlife’s dusk. Dust swirled in little trails through the Black Palace’s sweeping courtyard. Dying light toyed with the grains, gave them a glimmer and a sparkle, made them seem more grandiose than the fine detritus that spread across their world.
The plaza’s basalt sidewalks braided one another like a bed of vipers. Bridges of dark marble arched over quiet streams of crystalline water. Trees carved from obsidian spread their razor leaves over grounds composed entirely of inky grains of mica and quartz. This inner sanctum often stole the breath of those lucky enough to view it, and if they were truly lucky, they would survive their stay in the palace long enough to speak the tale of the archduke’s black garden.
He stood at attention, more a feature of this place than its guest. A speck landed on his dark suit. He sneered, passing his slick tongue across polished teeth. He flicked the dust from his lapel and watched it twirl into obscurity.
One of his crows landed on a black elm and cawed, beating its wings against the greying feathers of its chest. Bone Man casually clenched his cane. He screwed it into the pile of loose stones ringing his polished oxfords and listened to the crunch of the rocks against polished wood.
Heavy boots clunked on marble. His gaze slid to the arches walling the massive plaza. A man pierced the veil of shadows beneath a nearby archway and entered the garden. His boots were high and polished to perfection. Dark pants bore a ruby stripe down the hem, the only color in an otherwise black on black uniform. Like all men of high status, he wore a tailcoat trimmed with shimmering black, fastened from the collar to the waist. Four metal studs on his epaulets signaled his rank in the archduke’s army. The metal ring pinned to his breast indicated that he sat on the Iron Council, and through him the archduke ruled.
The general licked his lips. His nose twitched, the thick, waxed
mustache beneath it wriggling like a nervous caterpillar. Beads of sweat so tiny they wouldn’t have weighed an eyelash glistened on his pale temples.
Bone Man’s lips curled in a smile hidden by his mask. No matter how high they climbed, no matter how still they stood, no matter how arrogantly they viewed themselves, their fear always betrayed them. Always.
Bone Man made no move to acknowledge General Oscar Kelly, although he knew him well. The general waited. He stiffened, his thin lips slowly coming together into a flat, white line.
“It is proper to salute a general of the Iron Council when he greets you, Hound,” Oscar growled.
Bone Man’s unblinking gaze slowly slid to the general. “But this hound has only fangs to greet you with, Oscar.”
The general inched back. He sneered, clearing his throat. “This disrespect from you won’t be forgotten.”
“What do you want, General?”
The man pinched his shoulders back, hands fastened tight to the small of his back. General Oscar Kelly, one of the first souls to turn on the Soul Assembly and swear loyalty to the archduke. Oscar was a hard man. Softer once, but when he discovered his lover with another and exiled the woman to the Deep, what emotions he had vanished with her into the dark horizon. It was then he turned bitter, and then he came to the archduke agreeing to the glory of the Ardent Revolution and the new world it would birth.
Oscar Kelly eyed a crow as it drifted into the plaza. “You’re aware of our expansion into the south. As the mortal world grows, more die, and Afterlife’s avenues swell with the burden of souls. The city’s continued, stable development is imperative to maintaining control of the populous and marginalizing the Fool’s Errand. We will never end the rebellion if the city is not content with our master’s rule, and the city will not be content while new souls wallow in squalor!”
Bone Man pivoted, his heel grinding in the grains as he finally, fully faced Oscar. Another crow landed near the man and watched quietly. The four birds remaining airborne lazily descended.
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