The Kat Dubois Chronicles: The Complete Series (Echo World Book 2)

by Lindsey Fairleigh

  I stared at him, lips parted and eyes unblinking. He’d never told me about any of that. In fact he’d never told me much of anything about his incorporeal experience. He still owed me a detailed description of everything there was on his side of the mirrors.

  Dom’s eyebrows quirked higher, and he nodded to Garth. “Perhaps you can share what I told you with him. It might be of minor comfort, considering you just told him that his whole family will cease to be once they pass on from the physical plane . . .”

  “Oh, right.” I cleared my throat and shifted my attention to Garth.

  He was slumped on the foot of the bed, his face an avalanche of sorrow.

  I relayed Dom’s experience, adding, “So, maybe we’re wrong about what happens to humans after they die. Dom’s really the first Nejeret to be able to communicate with us after death, and everything else we know is just what’s been passed down from Re over the millennia.”

  Again, a stray thought brought a frown to my lips. Maybe Nik had some residual knowledge about what happens to humans after they die—he had shared his body with Re for five millennia, after all. I’d have to ask him sometime . . . not that asking him ensured any kind of an answer. He was the king of avoidance. But it was worth a shot.

  Garth perked up a bit, seeming a little less broken-spirited, but his face was still ashen, and he looked a little bit like he might be sick.

  I glanced at the wastebasket tucked next to the nightstand, wondering if I should move it closer to him, just in case. “But, um, like I said before, a Nejeret soul is different,” I told him, hoping to distract him with the fact that his fate wasn’t quite so bleak. “It’s called a ba—”

  “That’s the thing they put inside me, right?”

  I nodded. “The way Mari explains it, in the hours after the initial implantation, your human soul slowly transformed into the immortal ba of a Nejeret. You just had to have a little jump start with a fragment of someone else’s ba.”

  “Heru’s,” Garth said.

  “Right, and—”

  “But doesn‘t that mean that the thing—the ba—inside me is actually Heru’s soul? Isn’t a soul what makes a person who they are?” Garth blanched to an even paler shade, though I hadn’t thought it possible. He already looked like he was on the verge of passing out. “Am I going to turn into some kind of a clone of him?” Garth stood; he was trembling visibly, and I wasn’t sure his legs would hold him for very long. “Is his soul or ba or whatever killing mine?”

  Standing, I shook my head and held out my hands, palms out. “No, Garth, that’s not the way it works.” I crossed the room to sit on the foot of the bed and pulled him down with my hand hooked into the crook of his elbow.

  He sank back onto the bed without resistance.

  “There’s a thing that all Nejerets know—a universal truth. You know, like one of those unbreakable laws of physics. A ba can never overlap in the timeline. Meaning, a ba can’t be in two different places at the same time, so there’s absolutely no way that your ba can be a copy of Heru’s. Your ba is yours, and since your transformation is complete and you’re clearly still you, I think it’s safe to say that your new ba didn’t kill or displace your old human soul. Your soul became your ba.” I searched his eyes for some sense of understanding and thought I spotted it. Maybe. “Does that make sense?”

  “I—” Garth licked his washed-out lips. There was still a slightly wild cast to his eyes, but his panic seemed to be receding, and his heartbeat was slowing. “I think so.”

  “Good,” I said, reaching out to take his left hand in both of mine. “Is this okay?” I asked, glancing from his eyes to our joined hands and back.

  He nodded.

  “Good,” I said again. “Now, fair warning—this is where shit gets weird . . . -er.” I took a deep breath. “Our bas are what give us our relative immortality and our heightened senses and—” I hesitated. “And what make female Nejerets infertile,” I added slowly.

  Garth’s eyebrows rose.

  “It’s a tricky little blip,” I said. “A side effect of our immortality. The same hyper-regenerative ability that makes us heal super-fast and keeps us forever young also makes a female Nejeret’s body reject any—” I got caught up on the word baby. “—reject a fetus. We miscarry before we even know we’re pregnant.”

  “That’s awful,” Garth said, his voice a little hoarse. “I’m so sorry.”

  “Totally don’t worry about it.” I snorted a derisive laugh. “I’ll be the first one to admit that I’m far from mother material.”

  “Oh, I—” Garth looked away. He seemed to be struggling with what to say. “That’s—”

  He was taking this little infertility tidbit way harder than I’d have expected him to, considering he was a guy and was more than able to father a thousand kids, if he felt the urge. I didn’t get what was upsetting him.

  “Hey,” I said, knocking his arm with my knuckles. “It’s a totally different story for you, though. Male Nejerets can have all the kids they want.”

  “I see,” Garth said, his voice distant and disconnected.

  I leaned to the side to get a better angle to see his eyes, but he seemed to be avoiding looking at me. A niggling suspicion told me why, but I was avoiding acknowledging it. See, Nik wasn’t the only one with finely tuned avoidance skills.

  “He’s falling in love with you,” Dom said, his voice buzzing through my mind, his words waylaying my skillful avoidance efforts. “And he is only now learning that whatever future the two of you might have, it won’t include children.”

  Well that sucked all the air out of my lungs. And the room.

  Garth couldn’t love me. He was too good for me. Too good, period. And I was, well, not. If you looked up “good” in a thesaurus, I’d be listed as an antonym.

  Besides, I didn’t do love. Hell, I didn’t even do relationships, and despite my rather intense fondness for Garth—despite the fact that I’d dragged him here to be cured via an extremely experimental procedure that would “theoretically” transform him into a Nejeret—he was not my damn boyfriend. Regardless of Mari’s endless teasing. Committing to save all of humanity was no biggie, but committing to be with someone—to let someone in, to let that person know me . . . know all the things I’d done—that kind of intimacy terrified me beyond words. Beyond thoughts.

  I was in desperate need of a new subject. I racked my brain for something. Anything. Clearing my throat, I said, “A, um, ba isn’t what gives a Nejeret like me my ‘magical’ superpowers, though.” I couldn’t quite bring myself to look at Garth’s face, so I focused on his shoulder instead. “Some of us—and when I say some, I’m talking about the extreme minority—have an additional part of our soul that’s sort of tacked onto our ba. It’s called a sheut, and it’s the thing that makes it so we can do different things like teleporting or telling the future or—”

  “Turning humans into Nejerets,” Garth said, his voice monotone. He actually sounded kind of bummed, and I wondered if he’d been looking forward to discovering his nonexistent “superpower,” whatever he’d said earlier about not being able to handle it. Or was he still hung up on the kids thing?

  “Sort of, but not really,” I said, forcing myself to stay on topic even as my thoughts wandered. Why did the fact that I couldn’t have children matter so much to him? He barely knew me, and he knew nothing about my past, about the things I’d done. Out loud, I finished my response to Garth with, “That was a combination of good ol’ technology and Nik’s sheut powers.”

  “Oh.”

  When it was clear that “Oh” was all Garth was going to say, I forced myself to make eye contact with him. Windows to the soul and all that.

  Silence had all but overtaken him, but the heartbreak filling his eyes was foghorn loud.

  “Hey,” I said, bumping his arm with my shoulder, “like I said, most Nejerets don’t have a sheut, so you’re not missing out, really. Nik and me and a few dozen others . . . we’re just weirdos.”

>   “I believe it’s still the infertility revelation that is disturbing him,” Dom said, insightful as always. Or maybe I was just dense from the hope that the “infertility revelation” wasn’t as big of a deal as it seemed. If it mattered so much to Garth, then he deserved to be with someone who could give him what he wanted. I would never be that person.

  And at the moment, I wasn’t ready, willing, or able to discuss that particular subject any further. Maybe I’d never be ready for that.

  I stood and took a few steps away from the bed. Away from Garth. “I have some stuff I have to do . . . for the shop,” I said, my back to him. “Kimi’s waiting on my call.” But he had no idea who I was talking about, so I added, “She’s my assistant manager.” The moment I realized I was wringing my hands, I separated them and purposely moved them down to dangle uselessly at my sides, feeling obscenely awkward. Why was it so much harder to confront things I couldn’t take care of with a swift kick or a punch?

  “Right.”

  “And you should rest,” I added. “You’ve been through a lot.” I turned around.

  Garth’s shoulders were still slumped. Hell, his whole damn self was slumped.

  “I’m sure Mari and Neffe and Aset are all itching to get their hands on you, too. You’ll be busy all afternoon with tests and stuff.”

  I shoved my way through the emotional bramble, ignoring the thorns, desperately searching for safer territory. If Garth hung out in my room much longer, he’d bring the kid thing back up. Or even worse, he’d realize the danger his human family was in and start freaking out about that. Or figure out what I already knew—so much of the tangled mess he was in was my people’s fault. My fault. Guilt and disgust already plagued me; I wasn’t eager to face accusation, too. Especially not from him.

  “Why don’t we plan to do dinner tonight—say, six? Or seven?” I proposed, falling back on good ol’ avoidance. “I’ll bring the food up to your room.”

  “Sure,” Garth said, rough voice barely a whisper.

  I lowered my chin, giving him a look that was meant to be sultry. Meant to be. Probably wasn’t. “We could do dinner in bed . . .”

  His chest and shoulders convulsed with a single, weak laugh. “Sounds good.”

  “Kat,” Dom said. “Perhaps you should spend some more time with—”

  “Good,” I said. “Can’t wait.” But anxiety twisted my stomach into knots, calling me a liar. I couldn’t keep pretending like this thing between Garth and me could work. I’d been lying to myself when we first got together—our species difference hadn’t been the biggest roadblock in our relationship, or whatever it was—and it didn’t matter that that barrier was now gone. The problem was my past. The problem was me.

  I would not be the dog shit on the bottom of anyone’s shoe. Garth had no clue about the things I’d done, about the people I’d killed, and I refused to soil his purity—his genuine goodness.

  Resolve settled into my bones as I shut the door and once again was alone in my room. I had to cut Garth loose, once and for all.

  Tonight.

  Chapter Four

  I sat in the armchair in the corner of my room, legs curled up and knees hugged to my chest.

  I’d lied to Garth when I told him I had work to do. The shop was doing just fine without me around, and there was no doubt in my mind that it would continue on that way. Kimi was more than capable of running the place all by herself. Hell, with her business school background, she’d probably come up with a hundred ways to make the place run more efficiently.

  Now, with Garth gone, Nik off wasting time doing who the hell knows what, and Dom having retreated to the far recesses of his mirror kingdom, all I had was solitude and bitterness to help me pass the time. And trust me, solitude and bitterness aren’t a pretty combination.

  When I couldn’t stand my own company any longer, I pulled my new phone out of the back pocket of my jeans and tapped the PNS app. The Public News System—affectionately called “penis” by the younger generation . . . and by me—was a required component of every personal computing device, as mandated by the same amendment to the US Constitution that required all citizens above the age of fifteen have access to a smart device, either a watch, a phone, or a tablet. It’s supposedly to promote equal access to information for all. But that would require a free press, which died a decade or so ago.

  The result: PNS, providers of the only local and national news stations broadcasted across the United States as of the past decade. Keeps the media from spreading corporate biases or other divisive agendas. Or so “they” claim. Nowadays, it’s the bland, colorless government agenda Americans get shoved down their throats. We get the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth . . . as determined by an offshoot of the executive branch. Nifty, right? Yeah, not so much.

  And at the moment, all the newscaster on the local PNS video feed could talk about was the Cascade Virus and how overrun the hospitals in Washington, Oregon, Northern California, and Idaho were and what people should do to treat themselves and their sick family members at home. Because nothing the hospitals tried seemed to be helping, and the only time a hospital bed opened up was when its previous occupant had been dispatched to the hereafter. Dispatched, as in euthanized.

  Just this morning, the President issued an executive order not only legalizing the hastening of critical CV patients’ passing but requiring their lives to be ended before they reached the final, rabid stage. The Center for Disease Control released a statement declaring that persons who reached that stage were already legally dead, anyway, like a chicken with its head cut off that didn’t know it was supposed to stop running around. It wasn’t true, but I could understand the government’s reasoning for the deception—this way the already strained law enforcement forces could focus on combatting the increasing number of uncontained rabid cases rather than arresting the civilians who were helping them do their job by dispatching the rabids themselves. Justified murder. Necessary murder.

  The world was going to shit. Because of us. Because some asshole Nejerets believed they were better than humans. I shook my head, disgusted with my own kind.

  The story on the local feed changed to a fluff piece: TARSI TIFF’S CRUSADE CONTINUES. I laughed, silent and humorless. Tarsi Tiff, superstar and world’s sweetheart. She was young, plucky, wholesome, whipcrack smart, and insanely talented. She was also a Nejeret. More specifically, she was another of Heru’s daughters, originally named Tarset when she’d been born back, oh, say, four or five thousand years ago.

  Since the outbreak became public knowledge, Tarsi had been fundraising online. She’d been at it for more than thirty hours straight, having gathered a mega lineup of today’s latest and greatest bands and musicians. According to the newscaster, she’d already raised a half billion in charitable donations to go towards CV research. It was a shitload of money, but I feared it wouldn’t do any good.

  The story changed again, this time to the Ouroboros Corporation’s supposed efforts to find a cure. They’d issued a press release the previous afternoon claiming that any and all people turned away from hospitals were welcome to come to them for help. I was sure their intentions were nothing but pure and selfless. For the good of mankind. Right . . .

  With a sniff and a tap of my finger, I switched to the national feed. The subject was the same—the Cascade Virus, of course—but the approach was totally different than it had been on the local feed. Here, they focused less on the people who were already sick and more on how to prevent the spread in the less affected areas. It was all about how to stay safe—to stay uninfected. People were advised to stay home, and not only had the country’s borders been closed off, but every single state was operating under a hard quarantine as well.

  A ticker ran across the bottom of the screen—the kind that usually showed sports scores or election results. This one, however, gave infection rates and death tolls by state. The infection rates included both percentages and raw numbers. How helpful.

  I felt si
ck to my stomach watching the numbers increase in jumps of ten or more people. Ten or more sick or dead. Because of the Nejeret Senate. Because of my people. And Heru wanted me to sit here and do nothing?

  Rage boiled within me, and I stood and chucked the brand-new smartphone across the room, howling in anger. The phone smashed against the wall, exploding into a handful of larger chunks and a smattering of tiny pieces that landed on and around my dresser.

  I had to do something. It didn’t matter how much it would piss off Heru or how he would punish me, I couldn’t just sit back while the humans out there were dropping like flies. Humans—people—who lived in my country. In my city. If Nik and I could save just a few of them. If we could save just one of them, any punishment would be well worth it. Was that what the universe had been trying to tell me?

  I stood and moved to the bed, sitting on the edge with one leg pulled up. I freed the deck of tarot cards from their drawstring bag once more and murmured, “Alright . . . it’s decision time. Do I do it?” Not should I or can I, but do I—an absolute. I was done pussyfooting around.

  Without bothering with shuffling, I flipped the top card. I was looking for a simple yes or no answer, an upright card meaning “yes” and a reversed card meaning “no.”

  The Empress. Upright. Yes.

  I flipped another card.

  The Five of Cups. Upright. Yes.

  Another card.

  The Ace of Wands. Upright. Yes.

  Again—upright. Yes.

  Again—the same. Again and again and again, against all the statistical odds, the card was always upright, always a “yes.” I went through the entire deck, wanting to make absolutely sure, turning over the cards one after another until just one remained in my hand. I’d seen all the cards as I flipped them, my subconscious taking mental note of each. I knew which card was supposed to be left—the Knight of Pentacles, a card associated with prosperity.