No other cars lined the road. Even the neighbors kept indoors. Amber pulled her hair back and tied it in a ponytail. “Doesn’t look like anybody’s here.”
“Or maybe all the good stuff’s been picked over already,” Jason wondered.
“We can go then?”
He kicked his door open and spilled out. “Where’s your sense of adventure? Get your ass out of the car!”
They moseyed up the drive and strode toward the porch. The bottom stair croaked as she stepped on the board. A shadow passed across the window. She and Jason froze, sharing a nervous look.
“Maybe we should go. This place gives me the creeps,” she whispered.
Jason motioned for the car. He turned on his heel, and so did she. Behind them, the door creaked open. Amber and Jason turned to the sound.
A man stood in the frame wearing a closed-lip smile. Two dark eyes set beneath thick, caterpillar brows gazed down at his guests. A fan of deep wrinkles spread from the corners of his eyes across his temples, while deep laugh lines shadowed his round cheeks and gave them depth.
He opened the door wider and motioned inside. “Welcome, welcome. Are you here for the sale?”
His words poured out in a measured beat. Each syllable was carefully pronounced, but not without effort. His blue plaid shirt and grey slacks contrasted to the colorful home.
Jason shrugged and danced inside. “We certainly are.”
Amber followed at a slower pace. She nodded sheepishly as she passed their host and entered a house that smelled like cheap cinnamon candles and fresh laundry, not the old stench of an unkempt property that she half-expected from looking at the dusty windows.
“My name is Gregory Arshakuni,” he said, closing the door behind him. “Everything you see is for sale for the right price.”
“I’m sorry for your loss.” Amber recoiled at her own words, pressing a hand against her lips.
He made a sound of acknowledgement and took a seat in an overstuffed armchair. “Thank you, but condolences aren’t necessary. My mother passed over twenty years ago. She lived a long, happy life.”
Amber and Jason traded confused glances. Mr. Arshakuni chuckled, swatting the air. “I know, I know. I had always expected to retire here, but I think New Hampshire is too cold. My friend, he knows a man in Tampa building condominiums. I think I should like to spend the rest of my days beneath palms and not beneath the snow, and so, I say goodbye to this place. Too many memories. Too many.”
Jason flitted upstairs and vanished. Amber passed a buffet littered with antique frames and faded photos. Most were of a woman, some of the man—though obviously much younger than now. The woman had long, curling hair and those ridiculously oversized glasses popular a few decades ago. She held a cigarette in a few of the pictures, and while she didn’t smile in a single one of them, Amber saw mischief in her eyes.
“Your mother was a very pretty woman,” she said.
“Oh, she was, and she knew it. She fled Romania at the end of the War when she was barely able to walk, and she says she did it alone, though I’m not sure I believe her. She loved the US. Spent much of her time in New York reading fortunes and palms and taking money from gullible travelers and businessmen.”
“That sounds very exciting. I bet she had stories to tell.”
“Too many, if you ask me,” he said with a hoarse laugh. He coughed for a moment, then took a deep breath. “Apologies. I tried to cover up the smoke smell as best I could. It kills my sinuses.”
“You can’t even tell she smoked. Honestly.”
“At least wine doesn’t make the wallpaper reek. Every floorboard would smell like an old grape if it did. I tried to get her to quit both, but Marina Arshakuni was not one to follow the words of another, especially her son. She was always on some wild adventure, that woman.”
Amber ran her hand over one of Marina’s portraits. She turned from the pictures and looked at the home. Plastic covered most of the furniture. Yellowed floral wallpaper coated every wall. Cobwebs hung from the chandelier in the breakfast nook beyond the living room.
Sunlight poured in thick angles from the bay windows surrounding the chandelier. A round table beneath it held an array of glittering objects. Amber crossed the living room and inspected the knickknacks sprawled over the tabletop.
“What’s all this?” she asked.
The armchair’s springs protested as Gregory stood and strolled to the table. Using a finger, he poked through the pile of rubble. “Mostly cheap jewelry. It’s costume stuff from her psychic days. I won’t try and cheat you by telling you its real. I’m an honest man, even if my mother wasn’t so.”
“So you don’t think she was a real psychic?”
He laughed and knocked over a tiny gold figurine. “One thing I did learn from my mother is that this stuff is all fake. All of it. Fortunetelling is unlicensed grief counseling half the time and the other half terribly unsound investment advice. But what can I say? She got people to pay. That’s all that matters.”
“I imagine she also made more than a few people happy.”
“And more than a few mad,” he snorted. “When you buy stocks based on a beautiful woman with a mysterious Armenian accent and lose your life savings, you tend to hold a grudge. Sometimes I think my birth was more an excuse to run than desire to raise a son outside the city.”
Amber prodded the pile of discarded jewelry. Something hit the sunlight and glittered, catching her eye. She reached into the mound and pulled out a necklace. A gold chain held five polished scarlet stones framed by gold petals.
It was a gaudy thing, something Amber might find in a mall at some kiosk or costume store, although it weighed more than it looked and had a very solid feel to it.
“Ah, that’s agate,” he said, cupping the center stone in his palm. “Good for speaking to spirits, Mother always told me. I’m actually not sure if this was hers or not. It’s so different from the rest I think she might have stolen it or perhaps one of her clients fell on hard times and traded it for advice. It’s not worth much, but it’s more antique than costume like the other things you see.”
“It even feels old,” she whispered, transfixed by the glittering gold.
“Maybe a pretty girl like you could wear this to a dance. Or maybe you have a need to commune with the dead? My mother would tell me stories from Armenia, of how our family would speak with the beyond. She told me agate attracts spirits like flies to honey.” He laughed and shook his head. “It’s too bad it’s all silly fairy tales. Still, the necklace is pretty. You should buy it. God knows I’ll never wear it.”
If Amber could speak to spirits, she had ten thousand questions to ask them, to ask him. But nobody could speak to spirits, no matter how much she wished otherwise. Chris would roll his eyes at the mere suggestion. Her mom would have her committed.
“No thanks.” Amber dropped the jewelry on the table and turned just in time to see Jason bounce downstairs with a few random things in his hands.
“Find anything?” he asked.
“No,” she sighed.
Gregory pulled the necklace from the table. “Are you sure you don’t want it? Twenty dollars and it’s yours. We didn’t have too many decent pieces, but this is real agate. Might look pretty around your neck at school.”
“Maybe if she started doing drag,” Jason quipped. “Or I did.”
Amber chuckled and pushed the necklace away. “No thanks, Mr. Arshakuni. Jason, I think I’m good. You pay and I’ll wait in the car.”
“Okay, I’ll be out in a second,” he said.
Jason and Gregory were politely haggling over prices when the front door clicked shut behind her. She headed down the steps and leaned against the old Benz, rubbing her arms despite the relatively warm weather.
She glanced into the backseat at the box of junk purchased from the other garage sales. Already an idea began taking shape for her final project. She saw it, hidden there amongst the pile, waiting to be teased out and formed into something meanin
gful.
A hand clasped her shoulder and squeezed. She jumped back, slapping wildly behind her. Jason wheeled out of reach and laughed. “It’s so easy to scare you.”
“I hate when you do that,” she growled as she yanked the door open and plopped inside.
Jason followed suit, still wearing a boyish grin. “Okay, want to grab some pizza?”
She nodded as the car lurched forward. They drove in silence, watching the houses and the trees roll by on the winding roads back to her home. It took a few minutes for her to notice the smirk sticking stubbornly on his face.
“Jason. What did you do?”
His smirk spread into a full-blown toothy smile. He took a hand off the wheel and angled back, sifting through his box until he finally found what he wanted. He wrenched his hand out, bringing the agate necklace with it. It dangled in the wind, refracting sunlight in its gold chain as it swung around.
Amber snatched the necklace from him. “You actually bought it? Why, Jason?”
“Oh please, I saw the way you looked at it. I don’t know why you’d want something so ridiculous looking, but you wanted it, so I got it.”
“You didn’t have to drop twenty on it.”
“Well, you’re getting the pizza so it’s kind of even, right?”
Amber rolled her eyes. “What a gentleman.”
A song came on and Jason flipped, blasting the volume and singing loud enough to wake neighboring Vermont. Amber dropped the necklace in her lap and traced her finger around one of the stones. Maybe it was just a stupid prop necklace. Maybe it was only hideous enough for drag.
While Jason sang and drove, Amber pulled out her phone and checked her newsfeed. She scrolled and scrolled, thumbing that she liked this post or that picture. Then, she came to one, and her smile slipped.
Chris had uploaded a picture album from his dorm. Wild nights. Booze flowing. Grins wide and full of teeth. A red solo cup hung from his lips in one of the pictures, beer dribbling down his chin and dripping on his jeans. She looked at the date, and her knuckles whitened on the phone.
Amber couldn’t care less if her brother partied. It was what people did when they went to college, finally free of the shadow of their parents. But when she saw the date, her heart hardened.
“You got smashed on Toby’s birthday?” Amber dropped the phone into her bag and looked to the side. “Thanks, asshole.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
Lost, Not Forgotten
Bone Man woke from his sleep, his body wracked with torturous pain, his mind a thick swamp of the terrors his imagination saved for sleep when he was most vulnerable. He did his best to calm the smashing of his heart against his ribs. His breaths washed over the mask, and he listened to the rhythm of his pulse. As with every night he woke, the dreams faded quickly, leaving only an echo of torture in his soul.
The archduke would have given him a room fit for a prince had he asked, but Bone Man was no prince and he had no need for the soft luxuries of lazy souls. Instead, he slept in a simple wooden chair in a bare room. Before him, a fireplace filled with crackling, flaming logs poured heat onto his knees and warmed his knuckles. A single window hinted at the bright night beyond the palace walls.
Bone Man stared at the flames through the slits of his mask. The fire’s warmth burned his knuckles and seared his shins. His throat ached with each breath. Each blink was sandpaper dragging over his eyes.
One of his crows perched on the windowsill. It flapped its wings, clacking its long, dark beak. While he slept, his birds scoured the city for clues, gliding from shadow to shadow, gathering what information they could from hidden perches and dark corners. He took a deep breath and closed his eyes. The bird’s memories gathered during his slumber flowed into his thoughts in brilliant, vivid color.
Bone Man extended his right arm, and his cane floated obediently into his waiting palm. He stood and edged toward the window. The crow cawed and took flight, wheeling into the starry night. A warm breeze whistled through the window as he stepped onto the sill. He smoothed his jacket and vaulted into the sky.
His leap carried him far over the Black Palace’s walls. He tucked his knees to his chest and flipped, crashing onto the avenue bordering the grand estate. His knees and legs shattered from the impact, but healed just as quickly.
Bone Man straightened. Not a single soul occupied the dark lane. No soul with half their wits would, for fear he waited in the shadows. He licked his lips and tasted the air, rolling his shoulders and cracking his neck.
Cane twirling at his side, he wandered deeper into Afterlife. Beyond the dark confines of the palace’s shadow, city lights sparkled in the swirling dust. Stone buildings squeezed next to one another lorded over bustling avenues. Street merchants peddled their wares with shrill voices. Restaurants tried their best to lure patrons with flowery descriptions of the chef’s evening specials. Newsies shouted that day’s state-sanctioned headlines. The city thrummed with the din of an ever-growing population of souls trying to make their way through the endlessly-spinning wheel of eternity.
A passerby here and there might catch a glimpse of his thin visage from the corner of their eye, but they would never see Bone Man directly. He existed on the edges, just out of sight but never out of mind. He was the bump in the night, the scratching on the glass, the chill breath on a bare neck. They might see him if they really wanted, but no one really wanted that. Afterlife was safer if they kept him to the shadows and hid their fear behind their smiles.
He made his way through the lanes, striking deeper and deeper into the oldest, dustiest parts of the city, the parts that first sprouted in those days when Afterlife was as young as the souls who built it. The neon lights dulled behind him. The comforting cacophony of a city brimming with life quieted, and the shadows lengthened.
The Crystal District appeared before him, an old, dark tangle of dilapidated homes, tawdry gaming houses, deserted bars, and fortuneteller shops that gave the district its seedy reputation. It was an odd place, unaligned to any of the major factions fighting for control of the city and home to more souls gifted with the spirit curse than any other neighborhood in Afterlife’s boundaries.
This district he despised almost as much as the Old City. While the archduke had smashed that decadent quarter when he took power, districts like these he kept in place. Bone Man suspected one of the Iron Council had convinced him to keep the rats’ nest intact, for what reason, he could only guess. Each general had their own ambitions, their own hidden motions and machinations to gain favor with his master. They all sought desperately to be as adored as the reviled Bone Man, even if it was a futile dream.
He melted past a woman curling her hair around her finger while she giggled with a man bearing her lipstick on his cheek and collar. A bottle of gin hung loose in his grip while he swayed left and right and whispered about all the wonderful things he had in store for them.
It took all Bone Man’s strength not to rip his sword from the sheath and rake it across the man’s soft, grizzled neck. What sweet release that would be, to watch dust sputter from the wound as the man’s drunk eyes widened and the woman’s scream ripped through the night.
Her starry stare flicked toward Bone Man, and her dark brows knitted together. The soft pink oval of her smile flattened.
“What’s wrong?” the man asked.
She shook her head and pulled him closer. “I thought I saw something.”
Bone Man turned the corner, squeezing his cane. The woman giggled loud enough for him to hear. “It was nothing I guess,” she said, and their excruciatingly bubbly conversation continued.
The alley came to a dead end. Moisture ran in long lines down the tall, grey walls. Above, a strip of stars appeared between the rooftops. Ahead, a neon sign fashioned like a pink crystal ball blinked intermittently, punctuated by the pop and crack of failing circuits.
As he strolled closer to the shop, he reached toward the door, and it silently glided apart just far enough for him to slip inside. With th
e tip of his cane he shifted a heavy curtain blocking the entrance, and in the space of a heartbeat vanished inside.
Soft gold light illuminated a room shaped into a pentagon by some cleverly-placed velvet dividers. Not a murmur of crushed carpet or creak of wooden floorboard disturbed the air as Bone Man stole from one hidden space to another. He peered through a divider’s oriental design as he circled the room, his blade swishing into the open as he pulled it from the cane sheath.
Bottled charms hung from the ceiling alongside crow skulls and dark feathers. A round table occupied the room’s center, loosely draped by a cloth of deep, shimmering violet. The distorted tears of half-melted candles hung from the looping silver arms of a candelabra beside an obnoxious crystal ball. On the table, tarot cards formed a neat fan before an oversized wingback chair, its back facing Bone Man.
Three other chairs circled the table, the one opposite the massive wingback occupied by a man with pale, clammy skin that was almost as smooth as the melted wax of the candles between him and the supposed fortuneteller.
The man dabbed his beaded temples with a crimson handkerchief before stuffing it into the pocket of his pinstripe blazer. He flashed the thick gold watch on his wrist as he did, then glanced toward the exit.
“Please, do you know where she is? Can you find her for me?” he asked, angling over the table with wide, teary eyes.
“The mortal world is big. You must have patience if I am to pierce the veil and find your wife,” a woman replied, her voice low and soft, barely more than a sly whisper.
“So you don’t think she’s passed on to us yet?”
Bone Man’s head rolled slowly side to side. His neck sheared and burned like fire with each movement, but he savored the pain. Pain was life. Pain was real. He padded to the next divider, and the fortuneteller melted into view.
Her silken hands lay upon the table, her long nails like curved claws strumming on the velvet cloth. Her skin could have been poured from fresh milk, framed as it was by hair black as the reflection of water in a deep well beneath a starless sky. She looked upon her client with eyes half-closed, though there was nothing tired about her. She watched him with casual disdain mixed with just a hint of sensuality, each bat of her heavy lids teasing something more if only he played his cards right.
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