Darcy tried to stand, to stop her girlfriend from leaving. But gravity held her to the floor with an avaricious force. The air was thick, and it was impossible to speak a word.
Imogen went past without saying good-bye, leaving Darcy sitting there, trying to breathe. For her whole life, her good luck had been a trick, a bait-and-switch, a setup. The fact was, Darcy’s luck was shit.
She had met the love of her life too young, and because of that she would lose it all.
CHAPTER 38
YAMA WAS BACK SOON, HIS heat spilling before him, setting the chandeliers flickering over our heads.
“Lizzie,” he said, and for a moment it felt good to hear my name.
But then I had to tell him, “It was me. I led him here.”
A look passed between Yama and his sister. His was of sadness, hers a cold expression of triumph.
“I’m so sorry,” I said.
He shook his head, but he didn’t cross the floor, didn’t reach out to me, just stared at his sister. For a moment I saw how similar their faces were. Despite his added years, they really did look like twins, except that her skin was gray, and his warm and brown.
Finally he turned to me. “I should’ve taught you more.”
“It was obvious.” My words tasted of the rusty air. “You kept telling me that names are important.”
“It was my fault.”
“Enough!” Yami clapped her hands, and black oil scattered across the floor. “There’s time for penance when our people are safe.”
I nodded and held out my hand. The droplets of oil were skittering beneath our feet like black mercury, seeking one another. They joined into a single pool, as smooth and shiny as a disk of onyx.
“How do I find him?”
Yama took my hand. “Don’t say his name. It’ll only give him warning. Just think about when you kissed him.”
A shiver went through me, but I remembered the bitter electricity of Mr. Hamlyn’s hand against my lips, the cool dryness of his skin. I let myself hate him for tricking me, for fitting so perfectly into my murder of the bad man. For being exactly what I’d needed that night. I felt my hatred became a connection between us.
I pulled Yama into the dark pool and let the current take us.
* * *
We stepped out of the river into hell.
The sky was on fire here, too blinding to look at, crowded with a hundred suns. The air slid into my lungs as thick as syrup, the rust and blood a taste in my mouth now, not just a smell. A roaring filled my ears and shook my bones, and I knew that we were someplace even deeper than Yama’s underworld city.
Beneath our feet was broken pavement, cratered and pitted. In all directions lay the remains of a modern-looking city, the buildings half-destroyed, the skyline as jagged as broken teeth.
I couldn’t see Mr. Hamlyn anywhere. It was too bright, too loud.
Yama stared at the broken cityscape, shading his eyes from the searing sky. “These are his memories. But of what?”
My eyes were tearing up in the heat. “He kept talking about a war, how whole cities died at once—adults, children, everyone. This is what made him a psychopomp.”
Yama was looking up in awe. “Death falling from the sky.”
I understood it then—the thunderous drone that made the air shiver and melt, it was the sound of a thousand propellers, the whistle of bombs falling through the air. It came from overhead, but also from the shattered ground beneath our feet, leaking from every stone.
I realized that it had to be the Second World War, and a strange thought struck me. “He’s a lot younger than you, isn’t he?”
“Some are old when they cross over.” Yama turned to me. “Can you find him?”
I shut my eyes against the burning sky and felt it, the pull of my hatred leading me to Mr. Hamlyn. He was inside the shell of a building right in front of us. It had been six stories tall once, but only the outer walls stood, the windows looming empty.
The hot, smoky air made it hurt to talk, so I pointed. We made our way across a hundred yards of crumbled asphalt and in through a gaping hole where a doorway had been. The interior was full of rubble, and the roar of airplanes and bombs echoed from the jagged walls.
Yama drew me to a halt. “We should be careful. The wolf is a lion in his own den.”
I looked up. There was no roof, just more blazing sky. “You mean, he’s comfortable here?”
“These are his memories of where he was made.”
I shook my head. By that logic, I’d be happy in an airport, the air full of screams and the floor slick with blood. I didn’t want to imagine that place ever again.
But the old man’s recollections were vivid, I had to admit.
“He’s up there.” I pointed at a ragged set of stairs that clung to one of the remaining walls. They led to a corner of the building that was more or less intact. As we climbed, I could feel the roar of bombs and airplanes, as if the stairs were about to crumble beneath our feet.
At the top was a landing, where a section of roof was still attached, blocking out the fiery sky. We stumbled into its shade, half-blind for a moment.
Mr. Hamlyn was waiting there for us. He sat on a broken block of stone, a needle and thread in his hands. Scraps of cloth lay in a pile at his feet, the beginnings of a new patchwork coat. A shudder went through me as I realized: his clothes were patched together from the pickings of a bombed-out city.
“Ah, you’re here.” He didn’t look up from his work. “Not just young Lizzie but the impressive Mr. Yamaraj.”
Neither of us answered. The floor trembled beneath our feet.
“I suppose you’re upset about your missing children.”
“Are they here?” Yama asked.
Mr. Hamlyn looked up and smiled. “Only in spirit. But I’m sure you have more for me to taste.”
Yama made two fists, and sparks began to drift from his skin. The air grew even hotter around us.
“I’m not going to kill you,” he said. “But I can burn you.”
Mr. Hamlyn’s eyes were bright. “You mean, we’ll be connected?”
“You’ll bear my mark. And if you trouble my people again, I’ll find you, anywhere you run.”
The old man spread his hands, the needle still held daintily between forefinger and thumb. “But I like it here just fine, and young Lizzie is welcome anytime. You, on the other hand, are starting to annoy me.”
Yama didn’t answer, walking toward him, sparks cascading from his clenched hands. Mr. Hamlyn only smiled up at him.
That’s when I started to worry. The old man had fled in an instant when Yama had confronted him before, and had even seemed scared of me. But here in his own private hell, Mr. Hamlyn was unmoved by threats.
He placed the needle carefully beside him, and reached for a tangled ball of thread at his feet.
At last I saw the pattern of shimmering lines crisscrossing the floor. They were threads of memory stretching from wall to wall. Each glistening strand led to the tangle at Mr. Hamlyn’s feet.
“Yama!” I cried, just as the old man’s hand clutched the ball of thread and pulled hard. The crisscrossed lines on the floor sprang into the air, suddenly taut, a shimmering spiderweb leaping into form around us.
One of the strands bit into my thigh, cutting deep. I staggered away, but two more went taut across my path, and I barely stopped myself in time.
I didn’t dare move. The threads were all around me, vibrating with the sound of the airplanes overhead. Yama was trapped in the center of the web. His hand was bleeding, his black silk shirt sliced open in half a dozen places.
“Don’t move!” I cried. These were the same cutting memories I’d used on the bad man’s spirit. The souls of people who’d watched their entire city burn in one night, countless yards of them wrapped around us.
“You should listen to our young friend,” Mr. Hamlyn said. Blood dripped from his hand that held the ball of thread, but he didn’t seem to notice. “Funny that you haven
’t seen this little trick before. I suppose they didn’t have incendiary bombs in your day.”
Yama just stared down at the glittering lines that trapped him, astonished.
“Meet the population of my hometown.” When Mr. Hamlyn spoke, the threads shimmered around us like plucked strings. “Funny what watching everyone you know die can do to a ghost, and what the threads of that ghost can do to us.”
The old man pulled the ball of thread tighter. The glowing lines closed around Yama.
He could barely move now, but his voice was steady. “What do you want?”
The old man laughed. “Everything! I want all those ghosts you’ve been collecting for me. Thousands of them! Especially the ones who died young and loved.”
“Stop!” I cried. “Please, don’t hurt him.”
Mr. Hamlyn turned his colorless eyes on me. “You I would never hurt, my little valkyrie. But you heard your friend. He’s very angry with me, and very dangerous.”
“I’ll never bring him near you again, I promise!”
“But I need his people, Lizzie. All those memories tended through the centuries, just waiting for me.” The old man shook his head slowly. “Think of what I could weave from them.”
Yama growled, and a spray of sparks shot from his clenched fist. The old man pulled the threads tighter, and new cuts opened on Yama’s flesh.
“Stop it!” I cried, and they both looked at me. A glowing strand shuddered inches from my face.
“Get out of here, girl!” Mr. Hamlyn said. “I don’t want to hurt you. I want to teach you things.”
“To hell with you!”
“Lizzie. You should leave.” Trickles of blood were pooling beneath Yama’s feet. He stood in an awkward position, trying to keep the glowing lines from cutting deeper.
“Yes, go,” Mr. Hamlyn said. “Before I get bored.”
I hesitated. Here at the periphery of the glowing spiderweb, there just was enough space to make my way out. But if I did, the old man would slice Yama to pieces.
“Okay,” I said softly. “Just a second.”
I visualized my way through the web before I moved, cataloging every deadly thread. Then all at once I took three steps—each awkward and dangerous—closer to the center.
The old man sighed. “You think you know more tricks than me, girl?”
“I don’t know any tricks.” I reached out a hand and placed it on Yama’s shoulder. “But if you want to kill him, you’ll have to kill me too.”
“Lizzie,” Yama whispered. “Don’t.”
A growl came from Mr. Hamlyn. “What makes you think I won’t?”
I locked my eyes with his. “Because I want to learn from you.”
The words came out as if I meant them, because some part of me did. I wanted to know how he made the sky burn, and how the razing of a city decades ago could be woven into a deadly web of light.
The old man stared back at me, and he saw that I wanted everything.
“You tempt me, girl.”
“I won’t bring him here again. And even if I did, I’m sure you’ve got more tricks.”
“Flatterer.” He smiled at me. “You’ll keep him under control?”
I nodded. At that moment, I didn’t care about the ghosts the old man had taken. I just wanted Yama to live.
“For you, then,” the old man said. “And because I need him alive to keep his ghosts from fading. Be careful with him. Cuts are tricky, down here in the afterworld.”
I ignored him and snapped my fingers—a drop of oil slipped from them. It fell through the shimmering lines and splashed into Yama’s blood. Slowly it expanded, turning the dusty stone beneath us black.
We began to sink into the floor, and for a moment Mr. Hamlyn looked as though he was about to pull his web tight and cut us into pieces. But in the end he didn’t, and a few long moments later we were in the river.
* * *
When we reached his palace again, Yama collapsed into my arms. His shirt was in pieces, and he bled from countless cuts.
I set him gently on the cushions, looking around. No servants in sight, and his sister was gone.
“Yami!” I called, then turned back to her brother. Blood pooled beneath him, soaking into the gray pattern of the rug. It was bright red, and there seemed to be too much of it. Had the old man’s web sliced open an artery?
Then I felt the trickles on my own body, and looked at my arm. The blood was flowing too fast, like water from my veins. A wave of light-headedness swept over me.
“Yami!” I cried again.
“We have to go,” Yama murmured. “Home.”
“We’re there. But something’s wrong!”
“Not my home. Yours. Quickly.”
A blur of gray servants flickered in the corners of my vision, and I heard Yami’s voice. “What happened? Yama!”
“The old man was setting a trap.” I stared at my arm, from which the blood still flowed. “He cut us. Something’s wrong.”
“Take my brother to the overworld,” Yami cried. “Now!”
I looked up. “What? Why?”
“You can’t heal here, you idiot girl!” She clapped, and black droplets fell like rain from her hands. “Your body is halted!”
I stared at her—and it slowly started to make sense. We didn’t grow old, or tired, or hungry in the underworld, nor could we heal. Our blood wasn’t coagulating.
Yama’s skin was growing pale. We were both bleeding to death.
“But this isn’t even my real body,” I murmured. “I thought this was some sort of astral projection.”
“My brother has been able to travel in his own body for three thousand years,” Yami said. “And you’re much stronger than you know. Now go!”
* * *
A moment later we were in the river again, its current spinning out of control and purposeless, a reflection of my panic. I couldn’t think of any hospital I was connected to—all my memories of childhood accidents were too fuzzy, and my head was light from blood loss.
But I remembered what Yama had asked earlier, for me to take him home. I thought of my bedroom, willing us there. Maybe I could stop the worst of his bleeding on my own, and then drive him to a hospital.
At first the current obeyed me, taking us steadily up toward the overworld. My arms stayed wrapped around Yama, protecting him from the river’s needy wisps of memory.
But then, all at once, a new force shook the current, something stronger than my will, and yanked us in another direction.
“Yama,” I hissed in his ear. “What’s happening?”
“The river’s calling you.” As he spoke, tendrils of his blood carried into the raging current. “It’s sooner than I thought.”
I screamed into the river. Whatever disaster was happening in the overworld, it couldn’t happen now.
Yama’s head rolled back, and his muscles went slack against me. I held him tighter, as if that would keep his blood inside.
It was long minutes later that the river finally set us down . . .
. . . into chaos.
Gunfire and blinding lights came from every direction, and smoke filled the air. We were deep in a forest, surrounded by pine trees that climbed into the sky, their branches laden with snow. It was nighttime, but searchlights lanced through the smoke and mist. Among the trees sat squat little cabins. Black-clad figures ran among them, stopping to fire rifles into the trees.
Why had the river brought us here? This didn’t look like anyplace I’d ever seen before, or anywhere I’d ever imagined.
But Yama was still bleeding. He had to cross over into the real world now, or I’d lose him. There was only one scrap of safety that I could see—a corner where two of the cabins had been built beside each other. I dragged him across the snow and into the shadows there.
“You have to cross over,” I whispered in his ear.
He didn’t answer. His face was as pale as the snow on the dark ground.
“Yama!” I cried. Still no response.
Maybe I could do this. . . .
I wrapped my arms around Yama and shut my eyes, focusing on the crack of rifles around us, the panicked shouts.
“Security is responding,” I muttered to myself.
A moment later I felt it happen, both of us breaking through the bubble of the flipside. The fresh air of the overworld surged into my lungs, along with the half-remembered smell of tear gas and gun smoke. It was suddenly freezing cold, my breath coiling in front of my face. The sound of gunfire turned sharp and deadly. But I had done it, traveled on the river in my real body. . . .
Straight into a battle.
I didn’t have time to worry about bullets. I pulled at the places where my shirt was already sliced, tearing off strips of cloth to bind Yama’s wounds. The gashes looked deep and brutal, but at last the red was thickening, flowing like blood instead of water.
By the time I had tied his cuts as best I could, I was half-naked. I pressed myself shivering against him, trying to keep us both warm. The gunfire had tapered off, but shouts and the roar of vehicle engines came from all around.
Then I saw the body in the shadows beside us.
It was a young man, probably in his twenties. He lay faceup, both his hands wrapped around his own throat. Blood trailed away from between the motionless fingers, red and thick in the snow. He’d been shot in the neck. His eyes stared straight at me, as if he’d been trying to speak, to get my attention in his last moments.
As I stared back at him in horror, his spirit stirred.
I’d seen this before, when the bad man had died. But I’d been ready for that, and this caught me by surprise. A second version of the young man, pale and stone-faced, pulled itself up from the body on the ground.
He turned and looked at me, strangely calm.
“You’re dead,” I said to him, because that was the only thing I knew for sure.
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