“There is still some time,” older Dad said. “Still a chance—”
“No,” younger Dad said. “It was a grand gamble, Daniel. But it is over now. Our part has been played.”
“You are wrong,” older Dad said softly.
It was a little strange seeing the two of them, or the one of him, arguing with himself. You’d think the same person would hold the same opinion. Obviously not.
Also, I wasn’t quite sure what they were talking about.
“What are you talking about?” I asked.
“You, Angel,” younger Dad said. “We tried to give you as much as we could. So you could live a long life. But even our careful plans are subject to things beyond our control.”
“There is still a chance…” older Dad said.
“I disagree,” younger Dad said. “It is done. And you are welcome here now, my daughter. Welcome and loved.” He held his hand out for me.
Dad, beside me, did not move.
I reached for younger Dad in the light. Just a step or two, maybe three, and I would be with him. In that light. In that love. Where I belonged.
A dark figure appeared in front of the younger Dad. Wrapped in black from head to foot, darkness clung to him. He tipped his pale, pale face up, revealing eyes that burned green. Shadows slid away and I knew who he was.
Shamus Flynn.
“There,” Older Dad said smugly. “Our second chance.”
“Sorry, love,” Shame said. “But I can’t let you leave.”
He punched both hands out in front of him.
Even though his hands didn’t touch me, darkness slammed into my chest.
I screamed as pain broke over me. Too much pain.
I tried to get away from the pain, from anything that wasn’t the soft light. I took a swing at Shame, but my fist passed through him as if he were not solid.
Or as if I weren’t.
“Time to go home,” Shame said gently. He opened his arms and wrapped them around me, holding me tight.
It was cold in his arms, bitingly so. And then that cold sank in so deep, I was numb and didn’t feel anything at all.
“Allie?” he said. “I need you to open your eyes.”
I couldn’t seem to resist. I did as he said.
Something was glowing, but the glow wasn’t coming from Shame. We were standing in complete darkness. I glanced down, still in Shame’s arms, trying to find where the soft glowing light was coming from.
The beautiful, fragile light glowed where my heart should be.
Zayvion.
It was the promise he had planted inside of me, the memory of us together that I could never lose. I didn’t want to walk into any other light. I just wanted that. Wanted Zayvion. Wanted to be anywhere he was.
Shame placed his cold, cold fingertips under my chin and tipped my face up so he could gaze directly into my eyes.
We were so close, we could kiss. Not that I’d ever thought of him that way before. But right here, in this…wherever I was…I wondered if a kiss would make this all go away. Make everything peaceful again. Let me rest. Forever.
The moment that thought crossed my mind, Shame’s concerned expression was broken by a smile. “We won’t tell Jones you were just thinking about that, will we?”
Instead of kissing me, he turned me around so that my back was against him. His hands gripped both my arms, and he whispered in my ear.
“Do you see where that light inside you is shining out to?”
I nodded. The light was reaching toward another light. This one was harder edged and held a different promise of peace. It held love. It held Zayvion. I wanted to go to that light. I wanted to run there.
“All you have to do is take one step,” Shame said. “He’s there to catch you.”
Shame let go of my arms. And shoved me.
I stumbled forward.
But I did not fall.
“Allie?” Terric stood in front of me, his hands gripping the exact same place on my arms that were still cold from Shame’s palms. Terric’s palms were warm. So very warm.
“Terric?” I had expected Zayvion. Why was Terric catching me?
“It’s time to wake up. He’s waiting for you.”
Terric leaned forward and planted a very brotherly kiss in the middle of my forehead.
And then there was life. And there was noise.
“…give a rat’s ass,” Zayvion said.
“…fucking trust me,” Shame said.
“Got her.” That was Terric, panting. “She’s back. She’s breathing, Zay. Come here and give me the knife.”
Wait. What? Knife? I tried to open my eyes. Didn’t do it on the first go. Or the second or third. But when fingers gently brushed my hair back from my face, warm fingers, Zayvion’s fingers, I gave it all I had.
Finally did it.
And then there was Zayvion.
His face took up my world and his smile gave it light and blue skies. “Allie? You’re okay. Everything’s fine. Just stay awake. Just stay with me, love.”
“Not…” Wow, my tongue felt like it weighed a million pounds. “Going.”
“It’s okay,” he said again. “I’ve got you. Try to rest.”
And then there was movement. A lot of it. The whole—I don’t know…room?—rushing away, and darkness and light making shadows and bright spots. I thought maybe closing my eyes would help with the vertigo, so I tried it.
I was wrong. Open eyes was better. Much better.
We were still in the crypt. Walking toward the door. There were a lot of bright colors beyond it.
Wait. Wasn’t it night still? Where were the colors coming from?
“Shamus,” Zayvion commanded. “Take care of that. Now.”
“No.”
Zay was silent for a moment. Not a good sign. Then he turned enough, he was facing Shame.
“You are a Death magic user. Fucking act like one. If Allie is harmed by the Veiled out there because of something you’re too afraid to deal with, I will beat you until Terric begs me for mercy, and then I’ll start in on him.”
“Whoa,” I said, only it came out all soft and whispery. Since I wasn’t getting words out, I tried for that emotional connection, basically trying to tell Zay to calm down and not threaten his best friends, who, I thought, might have just brought me back to life somehow.
Shame considered Zayvion as if weighing just what exactly he was going to do to him. He nodded and walked up to Zay, so close I could feel the crackling Death magic that licked around him.
“I will do this. For Allie,” Shame said. “But if you ever threaten to drag Terric into something between you and me again? You can kiss our friendship good-bye.”
Shame shoved past Zay. A flash of deathly cold lashed through Zay, strong enough even I could feel it. Then Shame took that storm and cold with him outside.
We did not need to be fighting among ourselves. They knew better than that. They knew we had real problems to deal with. Hell, I didn’t even know if we’d closed the well.
“Don’t let him,” I started. “Zay, don’t let him get hurt.”
Zay was not listening.
Fab.
I took a couple of breaths, gauging my strength. A lot of me was sore—my chest particularly so, as if someone had been pounding on it. Still, I might be able to stand. I didn’t think I’d be walking yet. God, I wanted coffee.
“Terric?” I asked.
Terric put his hand on Zayvion’s arm where Shame had hit him when he shoved past. Warmth replaced the icy pain Shame had planted there. “Be patient with him, Zay. No matter what happens, I don’t want to live in a world where you and he are at odds.” Terric gave Zayvion one more pat, and then stepped outside.
“I’m fine,” I finally managed. “Zay. I’m really fine.” To prove my point, I lifted my hand and brushed my fingers across the back of his neck, then down his back. “I think I can walk.”
“Let me get you to the van,” he said. “To a doctor.”
O
kay. Hero-man was not listening. I could fight him, but frankly, it wasn’t worth it. Besides, if his arms and hands were full of carrying me around, then he wouldn’t be able to cast spells, or get in a fistfight with Shame. So that was a win.
“The well?” I asked.
“Closed. Tangle, Refresh, and Rebound.”
More good news.
“Stone?”
A rocky rumble-hum answered me from somewhere ahead of us—maybe just outside the door.
“Davy and Collins?”
Zay took in a deep breath and let it out in what sounded suspiciously like a sigh. “Allie, you don’t need to worry about that right now.”
“I worry. It’s what I do. Did they?”
“They did. As far as we know they opened the gate and are fine. They haven’t checked in.”
He walked out of the crypt and into the night. The colors and light I’d seen wasn’t an early sunrise. It was the Veiled. In watercolor reds, oranges, greens, and gold. Still angry, still hungry though they were not moving. Someone had cast a Hold spell on them that was still strong, though fading at the edges.
Casting a spell that big, to stop that many people—well, creatures—must have taken a hell of a lot of magic and skill.
And from the look of the spell, it was something Shame had cast. Shame and Terric together.
“What happened?” I asked.
Zay stopped walking. Waiting for Shame to do something, I supposed.
Shame was doing something. He was smoking a cigarette as he walked out into the middle of the mob of frozen Veiled. It was strange. The fir trees, bushes, and grass outside the crypt were brown. Dead. I didn’t remember there being so many dead trees when we’d arrived.
Terric followed Shame, talking to him quietly. They weren’t quite arguing. They were discussing spells, discussing probable outcomes. It sounded like they had decided Shame would pull the magic out of the Hold spell and use that magic to cast a second spell.
I’d never seen anyone reuse magic like that before.
But then, Shame and Terric were Soul Complements. They could make magic break its own rules.
Eleanor hovered next to Shame, the silver tie around her wrist holding her to him. She was offering suggestions too. Shame nodded, listening to her.
“I opened the well while Shame and Terric kept the Veiled busy,” Zay said. “You and your father unlocked the magic in Stone and purified the well. Then…then you died.”
I heard him. Really, I did. But it still took several seconds for those words to actually make sense. “What?”
“You died. Stopped breathing. I did CPR. Shame…I don’t know what Shame did. Something with Blood magic and Death magic.”
“He found me,” I said, remembering the soft light and love that had welcomed me. Remembering my dad in that light and Shame pushing me away from it.
“And then you called me back,” I said. “The promise you gave me made me remember. Remember you. Remember us. Shame wouldn’t let me go to the light. Terric caught me, you pulled me back.”
Zay frowned. Looked down at me. Knew I was not lying. Then looked out at the two of them standing hip-deep in the dead. “Jesus. They did that with magic?”
“I think so. I don’t know. I was walking to the light. Dad was there waiting for me. Then Shame was there. And he pushed me toward Terric. It’s a little fuzzy.”
“Can you see what spell they’re casting now?” Zay asked.
Oh, right. He couldn’t see magic with his bare eyes like I could. I studied what they were doing.
Shame was taking off the Void stone cuffs, amulets, and rings, with the same kind of brisk let’s-get-this-done motions of a man about to get in a fist fight. Terric was doing the same.
Without those stones on, they’d be using magic without a safety net. But with those stones on, I wasn’t sure they’d be able to access the magic in the Hold spell at all.
“They talked about using the magic in the Hold spell to cast another spell. I don’t know which one they decided on. The Hold spell on the Veiled is crumbling. I think Terric’s going to pull on the magic, and Shame’s going to cast it into a second spell.”
Shame dropped the last Void stone off his wrist and onto the pile of other stones. He tossed his cigarette to the dewy ground, then he walked several yards away.
Terric toed the stones a little closer together, then strolled over to Shame and stood, shoulder to shoulder with him, facing the opposite way so their backs were toward the other. That’s how they’d been standing when we first came into the graveyard and they’d taken on the Veiled.
Yin-yang. Darkness and light. Terric began the spell. Shame rocked up on the balls of his feet and shook out his hands. Then he waited, a stillness, a calm in that darkness he carried as he turned his hands out to the side, palms up.
Terric didn’t just cast a spell. He yanked the magic out of the Hold spell like pulling a rip cord on a parachute.
Magic sped to his fingers, then arced to Shame’s waiting hands, like lightning seeking the earth.
In Shame’s hands, the bright flash of magic turned painfully dark, a blackness that hurt the eyes.
I looked away from the spell to the Veiled. They didn’t seem to be having any problem looking at the magic. As a matter of fact, they were drawn toward it.
“The Veiled are closing in on them,” I said. “They broke the Hold spell and Terric is feeding the magic in a thin stream to Shame.”
“What’s Shame doing with it?”
“Nothing. Nothing I can see.”
And then Shame turned his palms over, letting all that black crackling far-too-bright magic pour into the ground at his feet. The Veiled moaned as if he’d just poured away the last drop of water in a desert.
Which was, in a way, exactly what he had done. We closed the wells. All of them. The Veiled were always hungry for magic. And now, the only magic left was in Terric’s hands, in Shame’s hands, fading and unusable into the ground.
Still, the Veiled were fascinated by Shame, crowding closer and closer to him but not touching him. Not yet.
Shame looked up. Looked back at Zay and me. He was angry, but beneath that thin veneer, I saw terror in his eyes.
Terric took a step to the side, so that his back was braced against Shame’s. He still held a tangle of magic in his fingers, though I couldn’t tell what glyph he had twisted it into.
Shame licked his lips, dug his feet in, and then he said one word: “Come.”
The Veiled hit him like a freight train.
Shame shuddered under the barrage of impact after impact, his arms spread wide as Veiled after Veiled poured into him. They hit him again and again.
Shame drank them down, growing stronger, more and more healthy and darkly beautiful as the Veiled fed him.
I didn’t want to watch. This is what Jingo Jingo had done. Drinking down the souls of people, the lives of people, so that he could live.
“Shame,” I said softly. “No.”
But he couldn’t hear me. And I knew, from the hunger in his eyes, from the rapture on his face, that he wouldn’t stop even if he could.
And then Shame reached one trembling hand back for Terric. At the same time, Terric reached for Shame. They gripped hands, back to back.
Terric said one word.
“Leave.”
A Veiled that was hovering in the darkness around Shame shot through Terric. And when that spirit, that reflection of a dead magic user, passed through Shame and through Terric, it…no, he…walked away a few steps, then turned to look at them.
Now he seemed to be a middle-aged man with a wide, pleasant face, eyes where the black holes had been, a very normal mouth where before had been a hungry maw. He frowned, as if trying to get his bearings.
Eleanor said something, waving the man toward her. He drifted over to her, spoke for a moment, then glanced around, chose a direction, and walked off through the trees until he faded from sight. He wasn’t the only one. For every Veiled that Shame
drank down, a person, a ghost, exited through the magic in Terric’s hands.
And were guided on their way by Eleanor.
“Allie?” Zay said. “What do you see?”
“It’s…I guess it’s Death magic. Transference, right? Somehow Shame’s drinking down the Veiled, and they’re passing through him to Terric and turning out to be ghosts. Regular ghosts. Like Eleanor.”
“Eleanor?”
“Eleanor Roth. She’s a ghost now. Haunting Shame.”
“Now?”
“Ever since he killed her.”
“Are you sure?”
“Totally.”
“My God. Only her?”
I nodded. Zay was walking down the slight hill from the crypt and up the road away from Shame and Terric. Toward the van.
“The others he killed and um…consumed…didn’t do the ghost thing,” I said.
Zay didn’t answer, saving his breath for the walk. We were about halfway across the graveyard, heading slightly uphill.
“I think I can walk.”
“No.”
“Zayvion?” That was Maeve’s voice.
“Over here,” he called.
An ambulance rolled down the street toward us. Zay moved out of the middle of the road as the vehicle came to a stop.
Two EMTs rushed out of the ambulance and Zayvion carried me around to the back, where they opened the doors.
“I can stand,” I said. “I can sit.”
“Let’s see if she can,” one of the EMTs, a woman, said.
Zay eased me down so my feet were on the ground.
I stood for a couple of seconds, then decided that was as macho as I could manage. With the help of Zay and the woman, I sat in the back of the ambulance.
Maeve, and a man and a woman I hadn’t met, got out of the SUV that was idling behind the ambulance and headed toward Zay. There was another person, a woman, still sitting behind the wheel.
“We’re all fine,” Zay said as Maeve came up to us. “Shame and Terric are back at the crypt, dealing with the Veiled. Using a lot of magic. Bending it. They might need to be Grounded.”
“Brant,” she said. “Come with me. Irene, please stay here.” Then to Zayvion. “Are you sure you’re okay? Both of you?”