“Only a soul of flesh and bone could have survived long enough among the living to see the necklace in your hands. The archduke hunted us. He would have taken the necklace, and then he would have taken you. This was the only way to keep you safe, to let you grow until you were strong enough to come to us.”
“But your son gave it to me. You’d died years ago!”
“We trusted the relic would do its job when the time came.”
“And what job was that?”
“Find the one strong enough to contain her.”
“Contain who?” Amber asked.
“You know her. You have heard her voice.”
A moment of silence passed. Amber blew a puff of air from her lips and laughed. “Are you serious?”
“Do I look like I’m joking?”
“You sure as hell sound like you are!” Amber hit the table and turned to the side, biting on her nail. “The only reason I’m staying in this stupid city is to find my brother, you know. He brought this to me. He needed me here for some reason.”
“To save us, I suppose.”
Amber rolled her eyes. “Please, Toby doesn’t care about that stuff.”
“If he didn’t, the necklace would not have worked. It linked his soul to you, calling him from one world to the next. He knew you were strong enough to fight the archduke. He knew your soul and yours alone could contain the great evil within you.”
“I’m not here to fight the archduke.” Amber refused to believe her brother purposefully dragged her into this war, deliberately planted her so deep in danger.
“Whether or not you want to be a champion matters not. You will become one. You will face him. It is prophesied, Mother of Curses. You are the one who carries five, the vessel of the origin, the bride of darkness. She is within you, consuming the soul to become the queen, and if you do not become the master of your curse, then she will become the master of you, and you will sit at the foot of the archduke’s throne while both the living and the dead burn.”
“You’re insane. Completely insane.” Amber started to stand, but the woman shot across the table, cold hands latching tight around Amber’s wrists.
She tried wrestling her hands from Marina’s frigid grasp, but the woman’s long, dark nails dug deep into the skin. No, they flowed into the skin, like inky serpents slithering toward a mouse, carrying a power that was unlike anything she ever felt.
“I feel her inside you, coiled in your heart,” Marina wailed. Blood began to ooze from her nose. “Master her, or she will master you. You must find the strength! Look to the Deep and find your strength! Oh God, what is this? I feel … I feel her. I see her.”
“Stop it! Marina, please!”
The shop’s door exploded inward, crashing over the table. Smoke poured into the room, coalescing into a red-faced and sweaty Dino. He lurched forward, the anger in his face twisting to fright as his eyes met hers. “Amber? What the hell’s going on?”
“Just help get her off me!” Amber screamed. “I don’t know what’s happening!”
Marina’s eyes shimmered to a deep, bloody scarlet. She smiled, passing her tongue slowly over her lips and savoring the drop of blood it swiped along the way. “I told you we will do wondrous things, you and I. We will make this world remember.”
Dino’s strong hands grabbed Marina’s and ripped them from Amber’s wrists. The crystal ball cracked, and thunder boomed. Amber flew onto her back. Air burst from her lungs, and the world spun.
She rolled onto her hands and feet and blinked away smoke lingering in her eyes. What light filtered into the shop was dim and flecked with dust. Smoke trailed from the now dead candles on the candelabra. One of the room dividers fell and smacked onto the floor.
As her heartbeat calmed and vision cleared, she straightened and struggled to her feet. With the table as support, Amber grabbed her stomach and squeezed her eyes shut. She could feel the power inside her, writhing like a ball of burning snakes. “What’s happening to me?”
“Cursed.” Marina coughed while she struggled to right herself. “You carry a curse from the Deep, a curse that bears all curses, and with it you will be our champion, or you will be his bride. You may not want this fight, but it is yours now, Amber Blackwood. Those are all the answers I can give you.”
Dino wrapped Amber’s arm over his shoulder and propped her up. He glanced toward the door, his jaw tightening. “We can talk about this later. We’re about thirty seconds from ten blackjackets barreling into the shop.”
“You can’t leave me with nothing, Marina!” Amber wrenched from Dino’s grasp and faced the woman. “You’re the only one I know who might know about Toby. Please. Give me something I can use to find him.”
“We’ve got to go!” Dino roared.
Marina picked up her cigarette and stuck it in her lips. “There’s a door hidden behind the back divider. Use it to escape.” She struck a match and lit the tip. “I’ll hold the blackjackets off long enough for you to flee. Amber, I am sorry, but I cannot help you find your brother.”
Amber clenched her fists so hard the nails bit skin. Tears of frustration swirled in her eyes. “No, not after all this….”
“But there is one who might,” Marina added.
Amber’s gaze shot up. “Who?”
“If the necklace truly summoned your brother to you, then you should know more about it. There is one in Afterlife who knows the relic better than I. They call her the Scarlet Spider.”
“Oh hell no,” Dino said. “Are you kidding me?”
“Seek her out.” Marina turned to the front door, flexing her fingertips. “Though I must warn you, she may not give the information freely. She has a long memory.”
“A very long one,” Dino sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose.
“Especially for those who steal her most precious relics.”
Dino dropped his hand. “You stole from the Spider?”
Marina grinned, ash from her cigarette drifting on her shoulder. She shrugged and turned her back, the open door to the shop framing her silhouette. “No one can own the treasures of the Deep.”
“Spoken like a true dust devil,” he said. “But I doubt the Spider agrees.”
Amber turned to Dino. “We have to talk to her, Dino.”
“First, we need to get the hell out of here.”
He kicked the back wall, and the trap door parted. He shoved Amber into the cramped passage and swung the door shut behind him. Hidden in shadows, Dino wrapped his arm around her, and their bodies sighed into rolling smoke.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Closing Time
The blackjackets dragged the fortuneteller kicking and screaming from her shop. The woman’s spirit flooded into the alley, a weighty, hot force that slowed the blackjackets, dulled their senses, made them confused and disoriented. As it was, it took five minutes to just get her out of the shop. Bone Man tired of the display. Why didn’t this woman simply accept her inevitable dusting with some grace?
Bruises splotched her milky skin now stained with sweat and dust. The soldiers threw her to the street, the two poltergeists among them forcing her body down.
Bone Man’s crows wheeled from the sky. Their shadows slipped over the scene unfolding as they watched from their perches on the rooftops. He squeezed his cane, gently pulling the blade from its sheath. Steel glittered, reflecting the sputtering neon sign along its razor edge.
“There’s a trap door, sir,” one of the blackjackets said. “We’ve sent phantoms through it, but it opens back in Angel Park. Someone used the door recently, but there’s no sign of who on the other side. Whoever it was—”
“Phantom,” Dino whispered.
The soldier swallowed and nodded. “Yes sir, a phantom.”
“Cardona,” Bone Man sighed.
“We believe so, sir.”
The neon sign buzzed and popped. Bone Man pointed at the soldiers, then motioned toward the alley’s exit.
They traded glances. He squeezed his fist.
They scattered, flooding past him like insects frightened by the light. He and Marina Arshakuni were the only two souls left in this wretched, dank stretch of the Crystal District.
He screwed the tip of his blade against the cobblestones. Marina wiped her cheek and struggled to her hands and knees, her dark hair a swirl of knotted shadows framing her pale jaw. “Bone Man. Come to have your fortune read?”
The necklace floated from his blazer pocket. Agate reflected in her wide eyes. A flash of recognition. Bone Man edged closer.
A crow landed before the woman. Another swooped down beside her. And then, yet another and another descended until six crows surrounded the panting soul. Her arms trembled. She sucked snot up her nose and wobbled to her feet, smiling all the while.
“I was wondering how long it would take you to arrive. Never send a blackjacket to do Bone Man’s job, isn’t that right? Thanks to their stupidity, she’s safe. Again.”
The necklace drifted closer to the woman. She smiled at it, and there was sadness in her eyes. “It doesn’t look like much, does it?” she asked. “Agate’s a poor woman’s jewel in a place like this. Strange how something so simple as a necklace could cause so much trouble. So many of us died stealing it from the Spider.”
What sadness lingered in her eyes chilled. “It was worth every soul it cost. You will fail, Bone Man, and so will your master. He can try to extend his shadow over the Deep, expand this horrid city into the dust, but he will fail. She is home now. She will stop the archduke.”
Her raging spirit billowed against him. Bone Man watched silently as the rolling force crashed against his mind’s defenses and shattered like thin glass thrown at an iron wall.
The wind whistled into the alley. He rolled his shoulders. “Where is she?”
“You think I’ll tell you?” Marina laughed. “I know I’m dust in the wind. I knew that the day I brought the necklace to the mortal world. I sacrificed everything to set these wheels in motion, everything. I no longer fear you. Do your worst.”
Bone Man’s crows screeched and flapped, half taking flight in a fit of anger. Whispers tore through the alley, flinging through Marina’s hair.
She scowled at him, jabbing her finger at his face. “Your master will not succeed. He will not raise Second Eden, and he will never have her as his bride!”
Bone Man squeezed his sword and stepped toward her. “He will have her.”
“You complete fool,” Marina spat. “Not her. She is strong enough. She will master the Mother of Curses. She will break the bride, and then she will break you and the archduke.”
He shook his head. What a pitiful creature.
She wiped the snot from her nose and scowled at him. “I will not turn to ash begging like a coward, and I will not help you, monster, because I know the only way I leave this alley is on the breeze. I may die tonight, but I die knowing your trail ends here. You will fail the archduke, and his punishment for you will be a torture you cannot imagine. I’ve seen it! You will fail. You. Will. Fail.”
He clenched his teeth into a wall. Bone Man strode toward her, swiping his blade through the misty air.
She pinched her shoulders back and lifted her chin. “Do you hear it? It is the Deep, calling. It calls to me. It calls to you. Oh, what a sweet sound, this torment of my heart. I give my life, and with this kiss I do depart.”
Marina blew a kiss to the sky, bearing a row of perfect white teeth. Bone Man’s breaths came heavy and wet against his mask. He raised the sword behind him, and with one vicious swing, the fortuneteller collapsed, her body bursting into dust as it hit the ground.
Bone Man sheathed his sword and stared at the pile. His crows took flight and flapped into the sky, cawing in ecstasy at the dust. His fists clenched into quivering knots of rage. His will exploded, a blast of power rocketing from his body and smashing through the alley. Brick cracked. Walls shuddered. Sparks flew, and steel groaned.
The neon sign shaped like a crystal ball toppled from its perch and crashed onto the street in a sparking spray of glass and metal.
Bone Man’s fists stilled, and he flexed his fingers. He might have come too late to capture the girl, but at least he knew these dust devils had more a part to play than he first realized.
Sending blackjackets after the dust devils would do nothing but divert forces from the inner districts when the archduke needed them here the most. If Bone Man wanted to learn what the dust devils knew, he would need to go to the only sane soul who regularly dealt with them.
Bone Man slipped the sword into its sheath and pivoted on his foot. He strolled from the alley, each step a lance of pain and beauty all rolled in to one awful moment after another.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
The Lost Soul
Dino didn’t say a word to Amber. Not once did he speak when they slipped past the blackjackets guarding the Crystal District’s gates. Not once did he speak when they reformed in Angel Park, his hand latched onto hers as they strode the winding lanes to La Couronne.
The lobby attendant smiled and asked how their day had gone. Dino ignored the question and kept right on, marching Amber upstairs and into her room.
Only then did he speak.
“What the hell, Amber? Every time I feel like I get anywhere at all with you, you go off and prove that you’re only here to make my life miserable! Do you realize how completely stupid it was to do what you just did? If Marina hadn’t had that hidden exit, we both would’ve been at the Black Palace right now, chained, beaten, and facing down Bone Man, the Iron Council, and the fucking archduke himself!”
“But we weren’t captured, were we? We got out safe, isn’t that all that matters?”
“We got out safe this time. What about the next time?”
“If only I had a teacher who could use the phantom curse, then I’d know just what to do! Or maybe doppelganger? Then I could just be someone else. But wait! I forgot. I’m not ready to use those curses. Or is it that you don’t want to teach me then because then I wouldn’t need you anymore? You have a lot of nerve getting mad at me.”
“The phantom curse is dangerous, Amber. You could ghost and never come back, or—”
“Oh, cut the bullshit. You think I’m that stupid? You go out of your way so I can learn how to fight or control a crowd, but the two curses that I could use to sneak out of here are conveniently left out of things. You want me to be a weapon, Dino, but you want to make sure you can control it. Don’t deny it. I can tell if you’re lying, remember?”
He clenched and unclenched his fists. “God you’re infuriating.” Dino stormed to the window, arms slapped over his chest, and glared into the city.
Amber watched him fume. He deserved to fume, to twist in his frustration. Until he actually did something trustworthy, frustration was all he would get from her. She looked at her hand, at the place where the snake bit what seemed like an eternity ago.
“Things are complicated,” he sighed. “But I’m not your enemy.”
“You’re not my friend, either. I never asked you to be. I just—look, I’m sorry. I couldn’t risk losing Toby’s trail.”
“You’re too obsessed with him. It’s not healthy.”
“He’s my brother and I love him. You have no idea what it feels like, knowing he’s out there needing me and I can’t get to him.”
“Please, you’re not the only one who’s lost loved ones in this.”
“That’s just it!” Amber sat on her bed, folding her hands in her lap. “Your stupid war didn’t take him from me. I lost Toby ten years ago, Dino, and that entire time I blamed myself for it. Imagine how you would feel if one day something happened and you had the chance to make things right with someone you lost.” She pressed her hand beneath her nose and squeezed her eyes shut. “I couldn’t help him then. I have a chance to do something now. I might not be able to make things right, but I can make things better. And here I am, stuck in a hotel, forced to be humiliated in boxing rings or expected to smile while my supposed friends lie straig
ht to my face.”
Amber wiped her eyes. Dino exhaled, pinching the bridge of his nose as he stared out the windows. “I never thought about it that way,” he finally said.
“And it’s all I ever think about.
“You must’ve been close to your brother.”
“People sometimes thought me and Toby were twins. We did everything together.” Amber laughed at the memories rising to the surface. “Play forts. Hide and seek. I used to put makeup on him and make him pretend he was my fairy godmother. He’d do it, but only if I agreed to be his lieutenant when he wanted to play war. We never played war. I’d always find another game for us to play. He knew what I was doing. He just never said anything. I shouldn’t have done it. If I could do it over, I’d play his game every day.”
“It’s the regret that really kills you.” Dino took a seat on the mattress beside her and leaned back on his palms. “You always think about the things you had time to do but didn’t, the things you could’ve said but never did.”
“There’s so much I regret. This was supposed to be a way for me to make it right again. To do and say the things I never got the chance to. But he’s hiding from me, and now I’ve got this curse, and it’s getting stronger, and I don’t know if that’s good or bad, but I’m afraid. Why would he do this to me? Why?”
Dino didn’t say a word. Instead, he squeezed her shoulder, releasing some of the tension knotted in it. Amber closed her eyes and listened to his breathing. The room was comfortable. It was warm, but not overly so. She could lie down there in the blankets and listen to him breathe all night.
“Sometimes people do things we’ll never understand,” he said. “No matter how crazy or wrong or stupid it seems, everything they do, they do for you.”
Amber turned to Dino, her gaze dropping from his to settle on his chest. “I should’ve saved him. I could have if I’d been a little faster, swam a little harder. But I couldn’t, and he drowned. I wanted to play. It was me who wanted it, and he died because of it.”
Afterlife (Second Eden #1) Page 23