Infinity Bell: A House Immortal Novel

  “From what?”

  “Turned out to be an old message from Mom. She sent it hoping someone in House Gray would come to her rescue. Rescue Dad and us too, before they got killed.”

  He stepped a bit toward me and pressed his hand on my shoulder. I placed my fingers over his, our shared grief resting between us. “Are you going to try to get some sleep?” he asked. “It’s still a while until dawn.”

  “No. I think I’ll sit here for a little longer in case he wakes up. I don’t want him to be alone. I owe him that.”

  “Even though he was the one who got you into all this trouble?”

  I shrugged. “All this trouble was bound to happen someday. I’m glad he was the one to go through it with me.”

  “So, your care for him is more than an obligation?”

  I nodded.

  “Do you love him?” he asked more quietly.

  I still hadn’t taken my eyes off Abraham’s too-still form. Did I love him? Yes, I did. But things had happened so quickly. Maybe I was assuming things that weren’t there. Hope for a love made more needful by the ending of my world.

  “There hasn’t been time for that,” I said. “Not really. I think . . . yes. I do. But I don’t think we’ll have time to really find out. You know?” I offered a smile, but couldn’t hold it for very long.

  He squeezed my shoulder once, then let go. “Whatever time you have, take it, Tilly. Love doesn’t last. Not for people like us.”

  He meant House Brown, I supposed. Unclaimed, off radar, and on the run. Or maybe he meant just us Cases—people who broke rules, defied authority, and messed with time itself.

  “People like you and Gloria?” I asked.

  He was quiet, his gaze caught on the ragged edge of a painful memory.

  “Yes,” he finally said in a whisper. “People like Gloria and me.”

  His eyes ticked down to me and made me regret bringing up the subject.

  “Isn’t there a way you can apologize to her?” I asked. “Make it up to her? Tell her how you feel?” I didn’t even know what had happened between them, but I hated seeing my brother like this.

  “I have done what I can. We’ve said what can be said. Now I’m going to catch what little time there is left. For sleep,” he said.

  He turned and started across the room toward the hall.

  “Don’t leave her,” I said.

  He stopped but didn’t look back at me, didn’t turn.

  “If you love her, then take whatever time you have. Good times, bad times. Live it with her. You’ve left her behind before. For years, Quinten, but I see how she looks at you. I’ve seen what she feels for you in her eyes. And if I don’t make it”—his shoulders tensed at that, but I powered on—“if I die, I don’t want you to go through your life without happiness, without love.”

  He still wasn’t moving. I thought for sure he’d say something. When he didn’t, I said, “Time won’t ever be on your side, Quinten. Don’t let it slip away.”

  “It isn’t on anyone’s side, Matilda. What I had with her . . . what I could have had . . .” He inhaled and held it like he was sorting through the possibilities of unattainable tomorrows. “That’s gone.” Then he walked out of the room.

  I’d never seen my brother give up fighting for something he wanted before. He was so determined to save my life that he was willing to go through with a half-cooked plan to travel back in time for me.

  But for himself, for Gloria and whatever they had once been and might still be, he was just letting it all go.

  I rubbed at my face with both hands. “I will never understand people,” I said into my palms. “If you love someone, if you want to be with them, if they make your life better, and you want to make their lives better, then you stand up and do what must be done to get on with it.”

  I pulled my hands away and studied Abraham in the low light. Still asleep, or what appeared to be sleep. Pale and bruised. I didn’t know the details of how he had gotten shot, but from the short time I’d known him, I figured he’d done something stupid and loyal and noble.

  “That’s a surefire way to get a target on your head,” I said, leaning one arm on the side of the bed, careful to keep it outside the blanket and out of danger of touching him. “Did you stand up for your friend Robert Twelfth? Or did you just get in the way of some stupid revenge between Houses?”

  Abraham, being unconscious, didn’t say anything.

  “Who shot you?”

  I sat there in the silence while my thoughts chased questions with no answers, then finally crossed my arms and closed my eyes. It would be dawn soon, and we’d have to be moving on before the Houses tracked us down.

  But I had decided if it was the last thing I did, Quinten was going to survive this. He was going to live a life, a long life, without worrying about his little sister anymore.

  I just wasn’t sure how I was going to make that happen yet.

  8

  Do you remember me? I still remember you. You changed my life. You gave me life.

  —from the diary of E. N. D.

  Abraham grunted, the deep, painful sound of waking up hurting.

  I opened my eyes and sat forward, reaching out to touch him, then snatching my hand away.

  Maybe an hour had passed since I’d closed my eyes. I could hear the faint sound of heavier traffic moving past the building.

  “You’re all right, Abraham,” I said. “You’re with friends. But you’ve been injured. It would be best if you didn’t move much.”

  He exhaled and stilled. His chest wasn’t rising, and I am not ashamed to say I had myself a little moment of panic. Then he curled his fingers into a loose fist and very carefully inhaled.

  At the top of the inhale, he opened his eyes.

  It was done so purposefully, by rote, as if he had been flat on his back, hurting and dying many¸ many times before.

  From the experiments done over the years on the galvanized, I knew he probably had done this many, many times.

  He blinked once and exhaled slowly, sweat beading across his forehead and running a line down his temple to the scruff of his jaw.

  “Can I get you something?” I asked. “Water?”

  “Let me see you,” he rasped.

  He hadn’t turned his head. It occurred to me maybe he couldn’t.

  I braced one hand on the side of the table and leaned in until he could see my face.

  “Hi.”

  He blinked a couple times and swallowed. Then his eyes seemed to settle on me.

  “Beautiful,” he whispered.

  “Oh, now. Don’t go wasting your air on that. You were terribly injured, and me and my brother, Quinten, dragged you out of the gathering before things got worse.”

  I was ducking the big stuff: Oscar’s death, Robert accusing Abraham of killing Slater Orange. But I always thought it nicer to sort of ease into telling someone they had a price on their head and were likely to die before the fruit in their kitchen went bad.

  “Where are we?” he said.

  “San Diego. At a doctor’s who’s good at staying quiet. Quinten patched you up, but you lost a lot of blood. How are you feeling?”

  “Swell.” One corner of his mouth slipped up into a lopsided smile, but turned into a grimace again.

  “Are you hurting?” I asked.

  He widened his eyes.

  “Right, dumb question. But you know, galvanized can’t usually feel pain, or much pain, so I just thought . . . it’s not like you to be hurting, and yet . . .” I was rambling, nervous, and worried about him. This was no time to get fluttery about being around him. I didn’t know why he could feel this pain when normally he shouldn’t be able to.

  Was it a result of the Shelley dust or the thread and jelly Quinten had used to string him back together?

  Whatever it was, I’d handled plenty of wounded and hurt people and beasts before. I’d handled a wounded Abraham just a couple days ago.

  I didn’t know why now it seemed so crazy and out
of my control for him to be lying beneath me on a doctor’s table, in pain.

  Apparently love did weird things to a girl’s practical decision-making skills.

  “I’m going to get you a little water,” I said, because he needed it, and I needed a second to clear my head. “I’m sure your mouth feels like something fell over dead in it.”

  “Don’t.” He swallowed and lifted his hand, reaching toward me.

  There was no way I was going to touch him and cause more pain.

  “Stay,” he said.

  “Don’t stay?”

  “Stay,” he said.

  I gathered up a corner of the blanket and, with it covering my hand, I took his hand.

  He closed his eyes for a moment, his fingers curving around mine. I thought he’d gone back to sleep, but a couple minutes later he said. “What day?”

  “We’ve been on the run for just over twenty-four hours.”

  “Oscar?” he asked after another long pause.

  I squeezed his hand a little and didn’t say anything.

  He opened his eyes, and they skipped sideways before focusing on me again. His eyes were glassy, fevered, the hazel of them gone red, the whites of them bloodshot. “What happened?”

  “Things got pretty bad. We can go over it when you’re feeling better.”

  “Tell me. All of it,” he said. Then: “Please.”

  I so didn’t want to do this.

  I did it anyway.

  “You were summoned by Slater, Head of House Orange, so you dropped me off and went to attend him. You didn’t come back. Not in time to go with us to the gathering. I was so worried.” I paused, pulled my shoulders back just a bit. I hadn’t expected to be so relieved I could talk to him again. But that relief was mixed up in the sorrow and fear of losing him.

  Memories, images flashed behind my eyes.

  He had been falling apart. Legs, arms, organs, as if his body refused to carry his spirit, his soul anymore. He had been dying.

  “Tilly?” he asked.

  I cleared my throat and used the back of my other hand to whisk away the hair that slipped across my face.

  “We went to the gathering in Hong Kong without you. But I had made a deal . . .” I’d promised never to speak of it. Under threat that if I did, people I loved would die. Well, Reeves Silver would have to be pretty quick to kill us before time wiped us out first.

  “. . . I made a deal with Reeves Silver. In exchange for him getting my brother out of his captivity with House Orange, I’d stand aside at the gathering and let things play out. I didn’t know.” I shook my head. “I didn’t know his plan was for Helen Eleventh to shoot Oscar. I truly didn’t know.”

  “Is he dead?” His voice broke over the last word.

  “Yes,” I whispered.

  He closed his eyes, lines of pain spreading from the corners and hooking on either side of his mouth. He wasn’t breathing again, and I didn’t know if it was from the pain in his pulverized body or the pain in his heart.

  He’d been like a father to Oscar, and a son. He’d known him for all of Oscar’s life, and had stood by the Head of House Gray’s side as Oscar stepped into ruling and made decisions that were far better for the people he ruled than the previous House Gray leaders.

  It was a lot to lose. A friend. A lifetime.

  When Abraham took his next breath, it caught in his throat and he coughed to clear it, a sound too close to a sob.

  “I’m sorry, Abraham,” I said. “I am so, so sorry.”

  One more breath, on a soft groan, and then he bent his elbows, getting them beneath him so he could lever up into a half-sitting position,

  “No, no. Not a good idea,” I said. “You should rest. Wait for the doctor to check on you. You should hold still.”

  “I should turn myself in,” he ground out as he pushed all the way up to sitting. “I have failed my house. I have failed my people. I have failed Oscar.”

  “You had nothing to do with him being murdered. You were dying when he fell.”

  “It is my job.” Here he stopped and glared at me, anger fueling his words. “Keeping him safe, keeping him alive is my job. I failed. There are consequences I must accept. Punishment.”

  “Really?” I pulled my hand away from him, not because I was worried I’d make him hurt. I knew grief wasn’t easy for any of us. It made us do strange things. But we had no time for a martyr.

  “You want to tell me how putting your head on a chopping block is going to bring Oscar back to life?” I asked. “How causing yourself pain will take away the pain of him dying? It won’t work. That never works. Death is death, Abraham.”

  “Not for me,” he growled.

  “Death is death for us all. Oscar, me, you. All of us.”

  “Galvanized don’t die.”

  “Galvanized do die,” I said. “It just takes us a lot longer to dig our graves.”

  He was breathing hard. Frankly, I was impressed with his ability to remain sitting. Maybe it was the mix of pain, grief, and anger that was giving him the strength to fight his wounds.

  “No,” he said, “galvanized don’t die. What we do is pay our debts. Head of my House falls, I am there to carry the burden, to take the blame. If necessary, to ensure peace among the Houses with my life.”

  “This isn’t like when you drew up the treaty between House Brown and the other Houses,” I said. “You can’t throw yourself on this landmine and end this war. Sacrifice isn’t going to work.”

  “You don’t understand. If I don’t stand and accept this blame, all the Houses could be in danger. Even House Brown.”

  “Did you shoot him? Did you shoot Slater Orange?”

  “No.”

  “Then you’re not the one who brought blame on the galvanized. And it is already too late to fix that. Helen Eleventh shot Oscar. Helen is a galvanized. She killed a head of a House. She broke the treaty, not you. She should bear the burden, the blame. Not you. But that water’s so far under the bridge it’s nothing but ocean all the way down.”

  “Helen?” he asked, apparently just now paying attention to what I’d told him a few minutes ago. “No. Oh, dear God, no.”

  I didn’t say anything. I didn’t want to rub salt in his various wounds. I just wanted him to understand the situation. He was a smart man. It didn’t take him long to work out the consequences of a galvanized—not him, but Helen—killing a head of House.

  It was the end of peace between the Houses.

  It was the end of galvanized being considered free.

  It was the end of House Brown being . . . well, anything at all.

  I’d be surprised if we got through another day before all the Houses joined to declare martial law. Then House Brown people would be dragged and tagged, thrown into service for whichever House got their hands on them.

  Their land and their children would be taken away, their lives and freedom destroyed.

  “So, do you understand what I’m telling you? The situation that we are in?” I asked.

  “Yes,” he said. “Yes. I understand.” He planted both hands firmly on each side of his thighs, elbows locked. I think they were the only thing keeping him upright. He swayed just a bit each time he inhaled and exhaled.

  “You are injured,” I said. “That’s something else you need to understand. You were falling apart into pieces. I don’t think sitting is a good idea.”

  “I’ll be fine.”

  “You were shot. With Shelley dust.”

  He tipped his head up and peered at me through the wave of his bangs. “I know. I was there.”

  I couldn’t help it. A little swell of delight hit my heart. There was my sharp-witted man.

  “Who did it?” I asked. “Who shot you, and why? Was it Slater Orange? You told me only heads of Houses carry that dust.”

  “Was Robert Twelfth at the gathering?” he asked, avoiding all my questions.

  “Yes. You were there too. Don’t you remember him being there?”

  “I was . . . i
njured. Out of my mind . . . hallucinating. I have only vague impressions of what happened.”

  “What happened was your best friend, Robert Twelfth, accused you of murdering Slater Orange, and all hell broke loose.”

  “How . . . convenient,” he grunted. “He’s not Robert.”

  “I know. Robert’s body, but the mind of Slater Orange.”

  He scowled at that. “You know?”

  “My brother was a part of it. He was forced to transfer Slater’s thoughts and personality into Robert’s galvanized body.”

  Abraham’s face went stone still, and even through all that pain I could see the dark anger coiling within him. “He killed my friend?”

  Ah, hell. I had not thought that through.

  “I suppose that’s the way of it, yes.” I could apologize, I could explain that it was Slater who forced Quinten to do what he did, but I knew it wouldn’t change the reality we were boot-deep in the middle of: my brother had, effectively, killed Abraham’s best friend.

  He pushed off the table, grunting as his feet hit the floor, then lost one knee so that he had to catch himself on the side of the table.

  I didn’t rush up to help him, although every instinct in me wanted to. He was hurting, grieving, pissed as hell, and the best thing I could do was let him work through all that to get his feet under him. Both literally and figuratively.

  “Where is he?” he asked.

  The blankets fell away, and I had a feeling he didn’t know he was standing there in nothing but his undershorts. The bruising on his body was immense, spread out like the hand of some giant had slapped and punched him until he was black and blue and red all over.

  Most of his old stitches were dissolved, and new thin silver thread whipped through the bloody gashes across his thighs, ankles, stomach. Bullet lines crossed from each shoulder down to his hips, across that swollen gash in his stomach. More stitches tracked around his biceps, wrists, neck, and face.

  I’d seen him mostly naked when he’d been wounded at my house, but he’d also been basically healthy then. Now his body raged against the poison pouring through his veins.

  “Where is who?” I asked.

  “Your brother?”

  “Upstairs. Good luck climbing on those legs.”