She had no family of her own, none that she could acknowledge, anyway. But her dreams, like the Professor’s, held memories of people. In one particularly strange dream, she saw a man made of stone, lying very still. He was important, but she did not know why. She would never tell the Professor or anyone else, but she also had memories of a man, an ordinary-looking man, but with the sort of face one might fall in love with given time. He was quiet and hung along the edges of things. He had a bravery, a depth that surpassed mere valor and a courageous heart. He was, in short, a good man.
This man knew her secrets. That was the most terrifying thing about him. But it was also the most comforting. Because he knew the things her uncle had done to her in the dark, the things that would ruin her for a marriage to any respectable man. She was a soiled woman, but this man had not thought in those terms. He thought differently and used different language than she was used to, though he was no foreigner. And he saw the ruined places within her as places to pour kindness instead of as damaged parts. He had loved her.
It hurt to think of him. The idea of such a person was too much. People like that didn’t exist, not in the real world. One got by on strength and cleverness, playing the hand of cards one was dealt as best as one could. Kind men who loved you didn’t exist, not for her. Men wanted the comfort of a woman, her gentle touch, or perhaps a more passionate one. They wanted her heart as food, her kindness as a balm for their own hurts, her body as a soft place to enjoy, if only for a time. They did not concern themselves with the interior of a woman, her true thoughts and deepest heart. And they certainly didn’t look unflinchingly upon the darkest and most shameful parts with kindness.
The air was cold now, and her thin shawl was not enough to keep her warm. She turned back, went to her cabin and changed into her nightclothes. She glanced at the trunks full of the Professor’s equipment as well as her own smaller trunk. Only one more day at sea and she’d be in Ireland. She had only ever traveled to the towns on the outskirts of New Orleans before, and the strange wide world was both intriguing and frightening. But with money and a bit of boldness, she would make her way. She had too many questions not to, and the Professor was depending on her.
“All aboard were lost,” said the man at the police station. “The ship sank. No survivors.”
Hazel stared at him. “Are you sure?”
“Of course we’re sure. They searched the area extensively. No survivors.”
“I see,” she said. “Thank you.” She turned away, walking out into the street, into the cold, bright light.
The town of Clonakilty was tiny compared to New Orleans, and unlike her city, with its mix of races and languages, everyone here was white and spoke the same language, although with a different accent from her own. Even the air had a different quality.
When she had first stepped off the boat, she had enjoyed the novelty of it. She had come to the police station full of hope, and now the Professor was at the bottom of the sea. So was McCullen, though she was less concerned with him.
She checked into her hotel room where her bags were already waiting. Money could purchase so much, including comfort and ease, but it brought her no satisfaction. Closing the door, she cried. Her friend was gone, she did not know where the cloister was where McCullen had come through, and she had no way of learning why she and the Professor had the same dreams. The people in her dreams, the people who felt like family, were permanently out of reach.
All she had was the address of the Professor’s family. In that moment, she made a decision. She would go to them, give them the Professor’s solicitor’s address, his patent numbers and bank information. She would tell them of his death, his second death, for they had mourned him twenty years ago. She ought to be the one to tell them the terrible news of his real death. If she caught the first train in the morning, she might get to their farm by evening.
She would go to them, and she would tell them about the inventor, the mad Irishman, the clockwork creator, the scholar and the good man he had been. And though they weren’t family, they would mourn together.
Chapter 29
“There are really only three rules to being a psychopomp,” Jeff said to Astrid and held up a finger. “One, get the sticky souls through the Doors. Two, no one but the dead can use our Doors. No free travel for anyone. And three, don’t use our ability to pull threads in people’s minds on living people, only on the dead.”
She stirred a sugar packet into her coffee and glanced at Gopan. He was still eight years old, at least in appearance, but his eyes looked so much older. The back room of Jeff’s bookshop seemed emptier now without Graciela and Robin, and all three of them felt their absence. Neither Gopan nor Jeff had heard from either of them, and they were hesitant to just make a Door and pop in at their houses uninvited.
“Well, I’ve broken all three already,” said Astrid. “Besides, I wasn’t asking permission. I was informing you.”
“I get that,” said Jeff. “But understand that you won’t come back. This is death, Astrid. We’re its servants, not its masters.”
“Something is wrong with the world. Something is happening, and we’re uniquely suited to finding out what. It’s my fault to begin with. I made a Door to the Library to get my cousin out, and you said at the time that using the Professor’s machine to amplify my own abilities could lead to bad things happening. So long had passed that I thought we were safe. But the more holes the Time Corps ripped, the worse things got. I think this is the result.”
Jeff’s mouth tightened at the edges, a sure sign he was furious.
“I know you don’t remember the world as it was before,” said Astrid. “But I do, and our world was a hub world and it wasn’t always sealed off from the others worlds like it is now.”
Gopan and Jeff exchanged a look. “You’re talking about being a living person and going into death. And all to retrieve the soul of some drake.”
“His body too. He went through with both.”
“It’ll kill you,” said Gopan. “No one comes back.”
“Not necessarily,” she said. “You’ve seen the increase in sticky geists just like I have. And you know as well as I do that they might be coming through from death to here. Maybe I could do the same.”
“It’s unnatural,” said Jeff. “Emulating something unnatural isn’t right.”
“I just think the answer is where the geists are. If I can see why the geists are coming through, we might understand why the world changed.”
“Do you know how you sound?” said Jeff.
“Yeah, I suppose I do. But at this point, I don’t care. I know what I know. I’m not crazy. You know the drakes exist, the Seelie exist, the Twelve exist. Graciela and Robin are gone with little explanation. You’ve seen the recent geists.” She shoved back her chair. “But if you won’t help me, then I’ll do it on my own.”
“Wait,” said Gopan. “What do you want us to do?”
She was glad he had offered. She knew she could count on Gopan. “First, give this package to my cousin.” She set a box full of her drawings on the table and tossed her phone in with them. “And then I want Jeff to talk to this November person. He’s a psychopomp and one of the Twelve. He’s a Door. He knows things we don’t.”
“He won’t talk to me. He won’t answer my calls,” said Jeff. “Now that he’s working with Robin and Graciela, he doesn’t seem to need us anymore.”
Astrid saw the slump of his posture, the weariness that all of them shared. Jeff, out of all the psychopomps, saw his function as a part of the natural world, as a piece of a necessary whole. If November said he was no longer needed, then he had cut a vital piece out of the man. Without a wife or children, the bookshop and his job as psychopomp had been the center of his life.
“Without November helping us, there’s nothing for us to do,” said Gopan.
�
�We keep clearing souls,” said Jeff. “We don’t just leave them. We keep on.”
“You two will have to do it without me,” said Astrid. “I’m sorry.”
“You have a duty to them. You know that,” said Jeff.
“I have a duty to the whole world too. The ideas aren’t unconnected.”
“I can’t stop you, can I?”
She put her hand on his shoulder. He might have only known her for a few weeks, but to her, Jeff was an old friend.
“I’ll come back if I can,” she said. “And if I can’t, make sure Elliot and Sister are looked after. Elliot has parents, and I suppose they might help. And in this world, Sister has my name and identity.”
How alone they were, she thought. Without the Time Corps, Elliot was just a man teetering on the edge of sanity, and Sister was a shadow girl with no purpose. She owed it to both of them to set things right. Their lives, in a sense, depended upon it.
“I want to go now, while the boundary is soft,” she said.
“It won’t matter,” said Jeff. “Your Doors always work. Hallow’s Eve doesn’t matter.”
“I think the geists are going to be coming through more often as the boundary gets softer. I’ll see what I can do from the other side.”
She made a Door, watching the mirrored surface become still, like liquid mercury, and reflect her own image back to her. She was plain, if she was honest with herself, and had never been able to quite get her short fair hair to obey her. Her figure was unremarkable, though she had gotten a little curvier as she aged. Still, she had trouble imagining why Sevilen liked her. Loved her. Or had he only said that to manipulate her into retrieving him from death?
No, if there was one thing she knew about him, it was his devotion to the things to which he was attached. And he was without question attached to her. At first, it was only because she was an Unseelie-born Door, a very rare thing. But with time, it had grown into more. She knew that her feelings for him exceeded friendship. She wanted more from him, his heart.
Maybe Elliot was right. Maybe her feelings for Sevilen were just like Stockholm syndrome. Like Beauty and the Beast, though she was certainly no beauty. But sometimes, the captor fell in love with the captive. And didn’t maidens ever fall in love with their dragons? Perhaps she and Sevilen were two broken creatures, two things that didn’t fit into the world, clinging together through a storm.
Well, storm or no, she had a job to do.
“Luck!” said Gopan just before Astrid stepped through.
For an instant, she saw nothing, and then her vision returned, and the world became blue, then indigo, then colors came into focus and finally shapes. The sky overhead was mostly overcast, but there were gaps in the dark clouds through which she saw the sky. It was a deep, rich purple, mottled blue and black, like a bruise. The land, stretching out around her on all sides, was gray, from the distant mountains to the wide, hilly expanse of land stretching out before her, all rocks and plants and even the earth was drab and ashen.
She turned slowly. She was alone. No birds sang, no insects buzzed, only a gentle wind blew from somewhere in the distance. The air had a heavy scent to it, like ocean air, and she wondered if the breeze was coming from the sea. Why death would have a sea, she could not guess. But if it could have mountains and hills, then perhaps the landscape would contain other familiar things.
She needed to get the lay of the land and couldn’t do so from the ground. She changed into her owl aspect, then flew upwards, circling, studying the land near and far with eyes that were so much sharper than they were when she was a human.
The hilly land stretched on for miles in all directions, and she couldn’t spot any sea. The only thing breaking up the monotony were the mountains. She studied them, and noted a thin, winding path up one of them. It would take her at least a day if she went on foot, but by air, she could fly there in a few hours, stopping to rest if need be.
It meant leaving her clothing behind, which meant she’d be nude if she changed back into human form. But her jeans, shirt, underclothes and shoes were simply too heavy to carry and make good time. She left her little pile of clothing behind and headed toward the mountains.
After a long while, she caught lightning from the corner of her eye. It flickered behind the clouds now and then, but she didn’t fear being hit. She wasn’t touching the ground, and thus electricity would not seek her like a lightning rod.
The clouds grew thicker, and the lightning more frequent behind them. None of it struck downward, but illuminated the sky, sometimes blinding her for a moment. A few clouds drifted apart and she caught sight of what was beyond them. Far off, high in the mottled bruise-colored sky, there were people. She knew what they were on sight. Geists.
The sky was cracked in various places. Jagged rips tore the sky and geists gathered, like leeches on a wound. They passed through one another, grasping and clinging, pressing themselves against the cracks, trying to squeeze through. Lightning flashed from the cracks and illuminated the geists, young and old, male and female. Some were unidentifiable, some undulating and shapeless.
So the dead truly were returning through rips from the afterlife. She and the Professor, between the two of them, had damaged the walls between the worlds beyond repair, and now the dead and the living were paying the price.
She flew higher, catching a wind current that propelled her onward with less effort, and from this height, she got a different perspective on the little mountain trail.
At the top stood a closed iron gate, the sort with two sides held together by a heavy latch and an enormous padlock. She could easily fly over it, but so could the geists. In fact, judging by the ones trying to escape, they could fly higher into the sky than she could manage as an owl. The gate had to mean something. It was a boundary, a doorway.
And if she was good at one thing, it was opening doors.
Chapter 30
“Wait here,” said Felicia to the cab driver. “I’ll be five minutes.”
The driver must have wondered about the woman who wanted to drive from the hospital directly to the adult novelty store, but Felicia didn’t care. She selected a pair of handcuffs, the sturdiest metal ones they had, even though they were lined with bright green fuzzy material. They would do.
The man at the counter accepted her money, which was a relief. It must be close enough to the currency in this world to suffice. She got back in the cab and gave the driver instructions as they drove, holding her dream journal open in her lap. She knew most of the streets from her dreams, but was unsure on others. They went through two neighborhoods before turning down one last street. She knew the house on sight.
“Pull over here,” she said and paid the driver.
She slipped the key to the handcuffs under a rock near the pepper tree out front, then headed for the door. Without bothering to knock, she shoved open the front door. The house was quiet and the living room empty. She found Julius and Santiago, the Coyote, in the kitchen, and while Julius looked like he was seeing a ghost, Santiago merely looked her over, sizing her up.
“Where is Janeiro?” she said. “Call him now.”
“I’m sorry, I—” said Julius.
“Stop. I know who he is and I know who you are. Call him now.”
Santiago got a look of amusement, no doubt entertained by the madwoman confronting Julius in his own kitchen.
“How are you even in this world?” Julius asked.
“Because of Janeiro. He was keeping me and my baby safe from the void wyrms, but he took my son. And he’s going to give him back.”
“Took your son?” asked Santiago. He turned to Julius. “Can you guys do that?”
“Only if absolutely necessary,” said the older man.
“That’s terrible.” Santiago studied Felicia again. “You just gave birth to him, right?”
“Yeah. A few hours ago.”
His eyes narrowed in a canine smile. “And here you are, ready to tear out Julius’s throat.”
“Only if absolutely necessary,” she said, smiling without a shred of humor.
Santiago laughed. “A tenacious woman. A fine bitch.”
A fierce female might be one of the few things Santiago respected, but she had no time for him.
“Your brother,” she said to Julius. “He said you all had discussed this. All the good ones of the Twelve. Or formerly good ones.”
“A necessary evil,” said Julius.
“Aren’t they all?”
She moved toward him slowly, reaching her hand into her bag to grip the handcuffs. Santiago pulled out his phone.
“I’m getting my son back,” she said. “Your brother is going to bring him back.”
“Impossible.”
“No. It’s not. He can make Doors anywhere. Don’t pretend that he can’t. I know all about you.”
“He’s coming,” said Santiago. “So please don’t kill Julius. He’s one of the few friends I have.”
She took her hand from her bag. If they thought she had a gun, she wouldn’t correct them. Julius didn’t seem frightened, but as far as she understood, death was not permanent for their kind. It could, however, slow them down.
Santiago, hearing something, raised his head a moment before the front doorbell rang.
Chapter 31
Seamus counted himself lucky. Not every man could sell a stolen gun and then triple the money at the card tables within an evening. After more than a day at sea, he had rowed ashore near Rosscarbery, southwest of Clonakilty. It was a small town, one where a stranger stood out, but once he had the money from the ship’s guard’s old revolver and had paid for a meal, it was only a matter of finding a few willing card players. A man with money to spend was welcome in any town, small or large.
The Time Corps Chronicles (Complete Series) Page 132
