As for the other bodies, the phantasms and humans who had been so cruelly brought down in the middle of their celebration, it was heartbreaking that there were any. I wished we could have saved them all. But there weren’t as many as I expected. And there were nowhere near as many as there could have been.
I still didn’t see Amias, but at least we’d clipped that fucker’s wings. We’d clipped them good.
I’d been staring at all of this, still weak and a little dazed from the ritual. But I was snapped out of it by the screams and cries of people coming back out of the tower.
One voice in particular struck me among the rest. A voice I recognized despite having heard it for the first time only an hour ago.
Gwen.
I ran when I could, stumbled and scrambled when I couldn’t, until I found Phineas and his mother. They were kneeling over the body of his father.
Eric’s skin was waxy, his eyes wide open and staring.
Eric wasn’t dead. His pulse was almost too weak to feel, his breathing slow and shallow, but neither had stopped completely. So our best guess was that he had come back to his body, just not fast enough.
Unfortunately, we had no idea how to fix that. All of Rebecca’s worst guesses as to what would happen in this situation flew through my mind: brain damage, coma. I didn’t mention any of them out loud.
The scene in the clearing was chaos. People were crying, screaming. Some of those attacked by the shadow eaters had only been wounded, and several people were trying to attend to them. At some point more police, or security, or whatever the guys in the brown clothes were, had come on the scene. They were doing their best to sort things out.
There was no sign of Amias, and no concrete account of anybody seeing him, although there were a few rumors spreading. He’d been riding a giant shadow eater; he had wings of his own, like a demon; he’d come up from the ground, and then been swallowed up by it again.
A tall, curly-haired phantasm with an air of authority approached us while Phineas was still trying to assess his father’s condition.
“Phineas.” His voice was deep and clipped.
Phineas gave him an impatient glance. “Justin, my father is hurt. You’ll have to get along without me for now.”
Justin squatted down and touched Eric’s neck. After a few seconds he nodded and stood again. “Take him home and do what you can for him. I’ll get your report when I can.”
“Thank you.” Without another word to me or his mother, Phineas put one hand on his father’s chest and another behind his head. They folded into the air in that way I was pretty sure I’d never get used to seeing, and were gone.
Justin looked at Gwen, then at me. “Ah, there’s the reason for the English. You’re the human who’s been assisting in his investigation, I gather? Lisbeth, was it?”
“Lydia,” I corrected. “And you are…?”
“His boss,” Justin said. “Or that’s how you’d define it in your world. Are—”
“Justin,” Gwen interrupted. “You’ll have to get her report later, too. I’m taking her back to the tower with me. She’s the only one who’s done the ritual that hurt Eric. She might know something that can help.”
I very much doubted that, but I nodded and stood, then reached out to help Gwen up.
“Justin!” Flynn was jogging toward us.
“I’ll find you later,” Justin said to us as he turned away. Then added, over his shoulder, “Best of luck with Eric.”
Gwen was doing a great job of looking composed, but I was standing close enough to her to feel her trembling. She glanced around the clearing and said, “The veil has fallen back down. It will be dangerous for you if we try to travel to the tower our way. We’ll have to walk.
“You’re sure you wouldn’t rather I stay here, so you can go right away?” I asked.
But Gwen shook her head. “Phineas is the best healer I know of. I’d only be in his way.” She gestured for me to follow her. “It’s very close.”
There was no road, and barely a path. We walked in silence until we crossed into a neatly ordered orchard that smelled, oddly, like bread. The trees had lemon-yellow leaves, and clusters of round fruit in the same color. I did a double take as we passed something leaning against one of the trunks: what looked like a delicate silver conveyor belt, its underside a mass of gears and pulleys.
I was momentarily taken aback. It seemed out of place. I couldn’t have said why, but I’d always imagined Phineas’s world as something like a fairy tale: quasi-medieval, free of machines, populated by people wearing robes and pointy hats.
Gwen must have noticed me staring. “It picks the fruit,” she said in a dull voice. “There are moving parts tucked away that you can’t see when it’s idle. It’s really quite—” She stopped, her voice nearly breaking.
I put my arm around her shoulder and squeezed her into my side. Gwen didn’t resist. “I won’t tell you not to worry, because of course you’re going to worry,” I said. “But it’ll be okay. Phineas has saved my life more than once.”
“Has he?”
I nodded. “You said it yourself, there’s no better healer.”
Gwen didn’t look convinced. “It’s not that I don’t trust my son,” she said. “It’s just… those damn shadow eaters were all around Eric. He got them into the fire, but how do we know they didn’t get him, too? The few that got away? How do we know they didn’t lead him straight to—” She bit her lip, too late, and a sob escaped around it.
“That’s not what happened,” I said. “Honest, it’s not. Believe me, I’ve been dealing with souls for a long time. I know what a body looks like when it hasn’t got one. Eric is in there. He’s just stuck somehow, that’s all. Phineas will unstick him.”
She squeezed my hand and didn’t say more until the trees opened up and we approached a tower of blue-gray stone that sparkled here and there in the sun.
Gwen led me inside, into a single room that had a few cupboards and the kind of narrow tables you’d put in an entryway to set your stuff down on. Six bows, by my count—two of the smaller stonebows, four that looked like regular crossbows—hung on pegs between the windows.
She started for the stairs. “Phineas?”
Phineas’s voice came from somewhere above, too distant for me to catch the words. Gwen and I hurried up.
The stairs wound around the outer wall, just like the tower in the clearing, but the ceilings were lower and the circumference of the rooms smaller, which made for a less tiring climb.
We stopped at the sixth floor, which seemed to be a sort of combination bedroom and sitting room. Phineas sat by the wide bed, leaning over his father.
He glanced up when we came in. “I’ve tried a few things, but he hasn’t stirred yet.” He gestured to his mother. “Come and talk to him. He might know your voice.” Then he looked at me. “Any chance you brought the candle and dagger with you?”
It took me a second to even realize that he meant the skullcap candle and bone dagger I’d used for the ritual—and left in the clearing. I shook my head. “I forgot all about them.”
Phineas nodded. “If I go and get them, would you be willing to go out of body again?”
“Sure, if it’ll help. What do you want me to do?”
“Just see if you can communicate with him in that form.” He shrugged. “I don’t know, if you’re both disembodied, you might be able to see him, hear him. Sense him. Something.”
Shit. If that was the best he could come up with, he’d run out of ideas fast. “Worth a try,” I said.
“Good. Do me a favor while I’m gone and brew some tea?”
I followed him back down to the second level of the tower, which was the kitchen.
“Most of the stuff in here is self-explanatory,” Phineas said. “It’ll be pretty familiar to you.”
I looked around and nodded. There were lots of gears everywhere, and levers and pulleys, all powered by I couldn’t tell what. There weren’t any wires that I could see. But other
than that, it was pretty much a regular kitchen. There was an oven with burners on top, much like the ones we had on earth, and a tea kettle sitting on one of these.
There was also a sink, and running water, which seemed odd to me in the same way the conveyor belt in the orchard had seemed odd. I’m not sure what I expected of a race of beings so much more advanced than us that they could light fires with their minds, heal the sick with magic, and travel to other planes of existence. It shouldn’t have surprised me that they’d also been able to crack the secrets of indoor plumbing.
Phineas rattled off a list of herbs he wanted me to steep. “Everything is labeled,” he added, then disappeared down the stairs.
I filled the kettle and put it back on the stove. There was a small switch beside each burner. I pushed the one I wanted, and there was a tinkling, soft grinding kind of noise, almost like an old-fashioned jukebox putting on a record. The burner lit.
That accomplished, I turned to a tall cabinet full of small, square drawers. They were indeed all labeled. Unfortunately, that didn’t help me a bit, seeing as the alphabet was completely different from any letters I knew.
“Shit.”
I didn’t recognize any of the contents, either, although one of them smelled close enough to rosemary to warrant grabbing a big handful of it. I was about to just start steeping anything that looked leafy, when I heard the door below, and Phineas came back up the stairs.
“That was fast.”
“It actually would have been faster, but the table you’d set these on was overturned, and it took me a minute to find them.”
I gestured at the cabinet. “I can’t read any of this.”
“Right. Sorry.” He handed me the dagger and candle. “I’ll do the tea, you go up and set up the ritual.”
I nodded, checked my pocket for matches, then stopped. “Do you guys have salt here? I spilled most of what I brought.”
Phineas scooped salt from one of the little drawers into a ramekin. I squeezed his fingers as I took it from him.
“We’ll get him back,” I said.
He nodded, but didn’t answer.
Gwen was still sitting beside Eric, chatting to him in a hollow attempt to sound cheerful and upbeat. I touched her shoulder on my way by, then set the candle on a small table.
I didn’t see much point in waiting for Phineas. He seemed to have only a vague idea of what he wanted me to do. My neck was still bleeding a little from when I’d cut it in the clearing. I dipped the dagger into the wound for some fresh blood, wincing at the pain, and started the incantation.
By the time Phineas came up with the tea, I was just leaving my body. His tight face was the last thing I saw with my physical eyes as my soul rose upward. Once again I basked in that feeling of peace, and it took me a second to get reoriented, and remember what my job was.
Right. Eric.
My main concern, when Phineas had asked me to do this, was that with only a few seconds of safety outside my body, I’d never be able to see what was wrong with Eric.
But I needn’t have worried about that. It was immediately obvious: I could see Eric’s soul—like a ghost—literally sticking out of his body. Like he’d tried to go back in at a weird angle or something. It was like looking at two images that had been superimposed on top of one another, but crookedly.
Eric?
Who’s there?
It was faint, like hearing someone speaking behind a wall, but I could understand him.
It’s Lydia. What happened?
Shadow eaters. Few that didn’t burn. Yanked. Last second.
Maybe that was good. If he’d gotten back in time, but just hadn’t reattached properly, maybe that was fixable. At least he wasn’t trying to flee to the afterlife. I wondered what his anchor was, that was strong enough to hold him so well.
Speaking of anchors…
I’d been doing a good job of resisting the call to move on—it was easier, indoors—but I was running out of time. I thought quickly.
Okay Eric, I think you’ll have to come back out, then try to go back in again.
No! Connection is so fragile. Can’t let go. Will lose it.
You’re more likely to lose it if you don’t do something, and I mean like right now. Your body is getting weaker by the second.
I can’t—
I know it’s a gamble Eric, but you have to try!
My time was winding down fast. I’d be in worse shape than he was, in a few seconds. I didn’t have the luxury of arguing. Or of kindness, for that matter.
I floated above his body and tried to grab hold of his hands, not the physical ones, but the ghostly hands. I found I could touch them.
I yanked with all my might.
With a heart-rending scream—I hoped the others couldn’t hear it—Eric broke free of his body. I could feel a surge of strength from his spirit, like he was coming out of a daze, at the same time I saw his physical chest stop moving.
Without hesitation I pulled him up a bit, then slammed him back down into his body. I know I couldn’t have been doing these things with actual physical force, but it sure felt like I was. I was certain I’d wrenched my shoulder for real.
“Lydia!” Phineas’s voice, bubbly and distant, like it was coming through water.
I turned to see that my own body had fallen to the floor. Phineas was leaning over me, shouting.
Fuck.
I’d been gone too long. I might already be too late. Eric would have to manage the rest for himself.
I actually saw Phineas’s hair move with the rush of air as I sped back to reclaim my body.
When I regained my physical senses, everything was chaos. Gwen was crying and shaking Eric. Phineas was doing the same to me, minus the tears.
“Mokey.” I’m sure I would have been much more reassuring if I had been even halfway intelligible.
“Monkey? What?” Phineas sounded panicked.
“Mokay.” And I was, sort of. Nothing hurt. But my head was tingling. Like it was attached to a wire and plugged into the wall. “Gin seebow yerferther.”
Phineas said something I didn’t catch, but I understood the tone well enough: those tears were close. I squeezed his hand and tried to wave him away.
He left me on the floor as he rushed to his father’s bedside. A few seconds later he was back, picking me up and hurrying down the stairs.
“Whirr takeme?”
“Fifth level is mine. You need to lie down.”
A second later I felt a soft bed beneath me. I closed my eyes, but it wasn’t long before Phineas was pressing a cup to my lips.
I swallowed the tea and tried to sit up, but he pushed me back down. “You need to rest. I thought…” I heard him swallow. “You were so cold. You weren’t breathing.”
“Mbreathingnow. L bkay. Jusleave tea th’table. Goteric.”
Poor Phineas was clearly torn. He forced the rest of the tea down my throat, then rushed out of the room again.
I can’t say I slept, exactly. It might have been more like a trance. But when I came around—I have no idea how much later—my head felt normal again. “Can I talk? I can. Cool.”
Phineas was in a chair a few feet away. “How are you feeling?” he asked.
“Fine,” I said as I sat up. “No tea necessary.”
“Nice try.” He handed me a cup.
“What’s going on with your father?”
“Drink.” He waited until I did, then went on, “I have a feeling he may owe you his life. He still hasn’t come to, but it seems to be a much more natural sleep this time. I won’t know more until he wakes up, so I gave my mother some time alone with him.” He ran a hand through his hair. “There’s nothing I can do here until then. Not if you’re okay.”
“I’m fine.”
“You should rest more.”
I shook my head and swung my feet over the side of the bed. “Seriously, I’m not being a hero. I’m fine. I don’t even have a headache. Maybe I was out of body a second or two too long, b
ut there’s obviously no lasting damage. Your tea was probably its usual magical cure.”
“Let’s hope so. I gave my father the same.” He looked fidgety. “If you really are okay, we should think about getting you back.”
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“You mean besides the obvious?”
“Yes.”
“Nothing. I think the obvious is just catching up with me. I need to go back to the clearing. They’re probably still investigating, and Amias might have left some clues behind. And then I should go around to some of the towers in the area. Other people were wounded, and I’m good with these kinds of injuries.”
“Perfect. Take your tea with you.”
“We should get you back,” he said again. “You’ve already stayed long enough to worry people back home.”
I shook my head, struck by a sudden pang of loneliness. The last time I’d left my own world, I’d been desperate to get back to Warren and Charlie. I’d been needed. Now Charlie wasn’t speaking to me. Wulf was being well cared for by one of the few friends I had. When I thought about it, it really didn’t make any difference how long I was gone. Or whether I came back at all.
But the last thing Phineas needed under the circumstances was to listen to me wallowing in self-pity, so I made light of it instead. “Most likely I’ll lose a few clients, but I’m sure you can make it up to me with some of that unlimited supply of phantasm cash.”
I suspected his smile was rewarding the effort more than the joke itself. “There’s nothing else you can do here.”
“Of course there is.” I stood up to demonstrate that I was fit for duty. I really did feel fine. “I can brew tea. I can help your mother. You guys never got the chance to eat at the feast. I can make something while you’re gone. You need to keep your strength up. And your father will need to eat too, when he wakes up.”
Phineas looked like he was going to argue, so I crossed my arms and put on my scolding face. “Did you leave when I was crying over Bella Traven for days?”
“No, but—”
Crook of the Dead (The Adventures of Lydia Trinket Book 3) Page 14
