Silence: Book One of The Queen of the Dead

by Michelle Sagara

  She swallowed.

  “Your friends will die, if you don’t, dear.”

  She hesitated, because she knew these lines and their life force, if it could even be called that given they were dead, were the dividing line. If she did what she must do, she was a Necromancer. What she’d done for Andrew, what she’d done to Maria—it was different, and she knew it.

  This? This was using the exact same power that the Necromancers did. It didn’t matter, in the end, why. All of the Necromancers must have believed they had their reasons, and all of them must have believed those reasons were good reasons, because people were just like that. They could justify anything they did themselves. Things only looked wrong or evil when seen from the outside.

  She turned to look out the window in desperation. She saw green fire lapping at Eric and Chase and saw it distorting the green-brown of the lawns on the boulevard; she saw Longland, both hands on Allison, and she saw the other two Necromancers, both hands splayed out in the air, as though the fire that surrounded Chase and Eric was coming directly from their hands.

  Eric. Chase. Allison.

  She didn’t know what had happened to her other friends.

  She took a deep breath to steady herself, and then she opened her hand.

  “Emma—”

  The chains lay against her palms. “I can’t,” she said starkly. “Not this. But I can break the power they’re using, the way I did with Emily.”

  “If you try, he’ll kill Allison.”

  “If he kills Allison, he’ll die.” Emma said nothing else, because there was nothing at all she could say. And as she started to find a handhold on the windowsill, to lever herself up onto it, she felt her hands began to pulse. With warmth. With heat that was both intense and intoxicating.

  “You’ll do, dear,” Margaret said, her voice a bit deeper. “You’ll do.”

  “Margaret!”

  “Oh, hush. You’ve said what you had to say, and you even believed it. That’s all we could ask for. Suzanne?”

  “I agree.”

  “We would have let you take the power,” she said. “But we can also—like your father—give. Go, dear. Do what you have to do. We’ll be with you.”

  Because they didn’t have any choice.

  The warmth stretched up from her hands, traveling through her arms, her shoulders, and from there into the whole of her body. She closed her eyes for just a minute because the sensation itself was so powerful it was almost embarrassing.

  And when she opened her eyes again, the whole world looked different.

  The street was dark, although it was the middle of the day. The sky was an angry red—not the red of sunset or sunrise; it was too deep for that, and there was no other color in the sky. It took a moment to understand why, in that light, the street was so dim.

  The grass was gray. The trees were gray. The cars—which were translucent and ghostly—were also gray. Even the clothing they wore—the pants, the shirts, the jackets—were different shades of the same damn color.

  Emma pushed herself up into the window’s frame and balanced there a second.

  Only the people—Eric, Chase, Allison, Longland and his two companions—looked normal. Even the baby was a dull shade of puce, because he’d woken, and he was not happy about it.

  She balanced a moment in the window, looking down at the small roof that covered the porch. It wasn’t much of a roof; it covered the door and a few linear feet of concrete, no more. The ladders had been placed beside it, and one had run up to the first window, with only a little difficulty. The second window had been clear. There were no ladders now, however.

  She slid out of the window and landed on the roof of the porch so hard that her knees buckled. The small roof, however, held her weight. She took a deep breath and looked at the street again, now somewhat closer to it. Chase was in pain, and he was breathing hard. Eric’s face was a mask. If it had ever had any expression at all—and it must have, because she remembered his gentle smile so clearly—he’d shed it completely. Emma couldn’t tell if the fire, which still surrounded him, caused him any pain at all.

  He watched Longland as if Longland were the only thing in the street.

  “Emma,” Margaret said. Her voice drifted down, carried by a breeze that smelled faintly of cinnamon and clover.

  Emma nodded.

  “Look at the soul-fire. Look at it carefully. Longland doesn’t see you yet—but the minute you act, the minute you use power, he will. Eric has the whole of his attention,” she added.

  “Does Eric know I’m here?”

  There was a brief hesitation. “Almost certainly,” Margaret finally admitted.

  “But he’s not looking—”

  “No, dear, please try to pay attention. If Eric looks here, so will Longland. Eric is a bright boy, and he—and Chase—are buying you time at some cost.”

  “But—”

  “He’s willing to trust you. I don’t know why. He’s sensitive enough that he knows there’s a lot of power behind and above him, and if he knows where, he’s almost certainly guessed whose power it is.”

  Emma nodded, only partly because it made sense. The other part wanted Margaret to stop with the lecture. She didn’t ask, because the lecture had followed useful information. Instead, she acted on that information, and she looked with new eyes at green fire.

  It was no longer, strictly speaking, green. It wasn’t exactly gray, either; it looked at base like gray, but as she watched it, she realized that it was almost opaline. The colors grew brighter as she watched them, and she realized they were responding, in part, to the movements of the Necromancers, who were concentrating from some distance away on maintaining them.

  And when she looked at the Necromancers again, she could see the chains, not as chains but…as the attenuated bodies of the dead. Long, thin, their forms stretched out around the Necromancers, as if they were on a rack; they were pale, as if they’d never seen sunlight—which wasn’t surprising in a ghost, or wouldn’t have been had Emma not seen any.

  But as she watched, she saw that the color was being leeched out of them for the sake of that fire.

  She saw, as well, that the fire was clinging to Chase in a way that it had not yet managed to cling to Eric; that the colors of that fire were attempting to match his skin, his hair, the flush of his cheek. She didn’t know what would happen if they finally did reach the same hue, but she could guess.

  “Ready?” she asked Margaret softly.

  Margaret didn’t answer.

  Emma grabbed the lip of the porch roof in her hands, held it tight, and lowered herself as far down as she could go. It was awkward; her legs dangled above the concrete steps before she forced her hands to let go. They came, with the addition of a bunch of small splinters, as she fell the last yard.

  When her feet hit the ground, she saw the grass ripple as if it were water and she had just broken its surface. Waves of green traveled out from her feet in fading concentric circles, and when they stilled, the green remained, an odd splotch of color against the gray background.

  Longland frowned. She saw that much because she had to look to see if Allison—and the baby—were okay. More than that, she didn’t take time for, because she could see the dead, stretched out now between Necromancers and fire, and she could see which of them powered the fire that was, even now, destroying Chase.

  “Emma—what are you—”

  Emma reached out. She reached out while standing still, as she had done with Maria Copis. As she had done the first time, with her father. This time, she felt herself leave her body. It was not a comfortable feeling; it was work. But the last time, she hadn’t had the power of five of the dead behind her. She wasn’t sure why it made a difference, and didn’t have time to ask.

  Instead, she ran—across grass that still turned green beneath her nonfeet—toward the Necromancers. Toward Longland, who held Allison. She touched Ally’s arm, briefly, brushing it with her fingertips. She whispered two words, I’m sorry, an
d then she let go and turned to face the Necromancer. The woman. Her hair was a pale gold, and it was wrapped in so many fine braids it looked fake.

  But she herself looked young, and strong, and utterly wrong. Her eyes were not the luminescence of the dead—but they weren’t living eyes, either; they looked as if shadow had pooled permanently where there should have been whites. Emma reached out, not for the Necromancer but for the long, pale form of her dead.

  The face of the ghost twisted at an odd angle to look at Emma as she touched him. Him, yes. Beard.

  “What’s your name?” she whispered.

  His eyes widened, and he looked straight at her, as if she were somehow something entirely unlike the Emma Hall she had been in the process of becoming for all of her life.

  “Please,” she added.

  “Morgan.” The two syllables were stretched and slow.

  “Morgan, come to me.” She closed her hand around his arm, and she pulled with all her insubstantial might. She felt the snap of chain, although she couldn’t see one, and then he was standing, hand in hers. His hand was cold. She smiled briefly. “Margaret?”

  “Here, dear.”

  “This is Morgan; keep an eye on him?”

  The man looked confused, but Emma had no more time. She glanced at Chase and saw, even at this distance, that the fire was going out. She moved, then, to the other Necromancer; the woman was frowning.

  “Longland,” she said. “I—the power—I think it’s gone.”

  “On that?”

  Emma moved around Longland’s back and reached, again, for the long, thin stretch of a person that was anchoring the fire that lapped against Eric. When they were this elongated, this distorted, it was hard to say much about the dead; she couldn’t quite tell if this one was male or female. But it didn’t really matter.

  She reached out and touched the ghost’s arm. “I’m Emma,” she said, striving now to be as unthreatening as possible. “And I’m here to free you.”

  She saw eyes that were six inches long, and very, very narrow, swivel to focus on her. She couldn’t really tell if they widened. “What’s your name?” she whispered, trying not to flinch.

  “Alexander.”

  “Alexander,” she repeated. Her grip tightened, and she pulled. Again, she felt something snap. It was a clean, quick sensation. Alexander appeared by her side, his hand in hers. His hand was also cold, and again, she smiled.

  Alexander was younger than Morgan; he was older than Georges or Catherine, but younger, she thought, than Emily; his face hadn’t yet hardened into the jaw, nose, and forehead of an older boy. “Emma?”

  She nodded. “Emma Hall.”

  “You’re in danger,” he told her, shivering. “You shouldn’t be here.”

  “My friends are here,” she told him quietly. She looked at Eric. He staggered as the fire guttered, as if he’d been playing tug-of-war with it and it had suddenly let go. He turned and he looked straight at Emma, something neither Longland nor Chase had done.

  She saw him nod; it was slight and almost imperceptible.

  “Alex,” she told the ghost, “you’re going to have to wait here for a minute.”

  She turned to look at herself. At Emma Hall, who was standing, motionless, just before the front steps of a burning house. In the window, she caught a glimpse of Maria Copis’ face through the smoke; she didn’t, however, appear to be either burning or choking, and her young son, with his wide, luminescent eyes, was staring down at the street.

  Emma started to approach herself, which was simultaneously comforting and really, really creepy, when she heard Longland speak.

  “I have your friend,” he said. “And I advise you both to keep your distance if you want her to remain alive. Leila, take the baby.”

  She ran the rest of the way to her body, and leaped into it. It enclosed her like a womb. For just a moment, she felt it: heavy, solid, inertial, so unpleasantly confining she wanted to leap out again, and be free. But she didn’t, because she knew that without a body, she was just another one of the dead.

  No, Margaret told her. Not the dead. But she felt both surprise and approval radiating from this internal voice.

  She opened her eyes—her real eyes—and the world was the right color again. The grass was green-brown, the cars were solid, the houses were brick and stone and aluminum siding in various shades. The people wore clothing that didn’t suggest that gray was the new black.

  The Necromancers were powerless. That’s what Emma thought, and that was her first mistake.

  The woman drew a gun. She held it to the side of the baby’s head, and she told Allison, coldly, to let go.

  And Allison, who might well have held on had the gun been pressed against her own temple, shuddered and slowly unlocked her arms. Eric and Chase froze, and the other Necromancer—a man whose name was unknown—pulled a second gun, while the woman Longland had called Leila grabbed the baby. Her ability to point a gun while juggling a crying child was poor; she was clearly not a parent. Or not Michael, who, if he could ever bring himself to touch a real gun, could have done both.

  Longland was still in control, because he had Allison.

  From the window above the street, the window from which Maria Copis watched, Emma heard a scream.

  It was not, however, Maria’s scream. Emma started to turn and something hit her, hard. It wasn’t painful, but it was so large, it drove her to her knees fast enough that concrete abraded her skin. Her hands tingled, and her hair rose as if caught in an electrical storm. She felt something leave her, something that she was not entirely in control of—and for better or worse, she let it go.

  Leila screamed.

  Fire erupted around her, and it was not green fire but red and orange, the heart and heat of the flames that had destroyed Rowan Avenue and, with it, so much of Maria’s life.

  Eric shouted, Allison turned. From her place on the steps, Emma could feel the fire’s heat, and Allison was standing right beside it. She shouted and grabbed the baby just before he toppled out of Leila’s grip. Longland almost lost her, then, but he managed to hold on.

  But the baby wasn’t burning.

  The other man shouted something, loudly, and then he turned and pointed the gun—not at Eric or at Chase, but at Emma.

  Even at this distance, she could see the barrel so clearly it might as well have been a few inches from her forehead.

  Longland turned in the direction the gun was pointing, and his eyes widened enough that she could see the whites. “Emma!” he shouted, “you fool! What have you done?”

  She had time to cover her face or to duck, but she did neither. Instead, almost horrified, she watched Leila burn. Burning was horrible, and although she’d known that, watching it was worse. Any other death, she thought, almost numb. “Andrew!” she shouted. “Andrew, enough! Enough!”

  But he didn’t hear her, and even if he did, she understood that it wasn’t entirely his doing. It couldn’t be; he was dead. She understood that what she’d felt was some part of Andrew’s power, pushed through her—but it shouldn’t have worked that way. And she had no idea how to stop what she’d let go, either.

  Paralyzed, she knelt, staring at the barrel of a distant gun.

  Wasn’t terribly surprised when she heard it fire.

  THE BULLET FAILED TO REACH HER.

  Confused, she stared as the gun wavered, dipped, and fell. This was because the man who was aiming it staggered and then toppled, part of his face a sudden red blossom.

  “Emma, dear,” Margaret said urgently, “Call me now. Call me out.”

  The words made no sense. Emma watched the man topple and watched Longland suddenly curse, spinning, Allison almost forgotten.

  Ally kicked him, hard, in the knee, still grabbing the baby tightly. He reached for her with his free hand, and then let go, because he had a knife in his upper arm.

  Allison ran. She ran, in a straight line, toward Emma, holding Maria Copis’ youngest child as if both their lives depended on it.
Emma, still on her knees, looked up as Allison reached her, and then she pushed herself off the ground.

  Another gunshot.

  Merrick Longland cursed, turned, and light flared in the street.

  Emma rose and opened her arms and hugged Allison fiercely; they were both shaking. “Ally—”

  “Michael’s okay. Amy and Skip are okay. Longland left them—” Allison swallowed. “They were okay when we left them.”

  Emma nodded. “Thank you.”

  “Emma,” Margaret said. “Call me. Now.”

  “Margaret—”

  “Do it, dear. I can’t emphasize this enough at the moment.”

  Another gunshot. Emma looked; Longland was staggering. Without Allison to stand behind, he had to face Chase and Eric, and she knew they would kill him. But death was supposed to happen quickly and, at best, painlessly. Years of watching television had taught her that.

  The truth was visceral and ugly, and although she hated everything Longland had done in the brief time she’d been aware of him, she couldn’t watch. But she also couldn’t look away.

  “He would have killed you all without blinking,” Margaret said quietly. “And Emma, call me out now.”

  Emma lifted a hand. She whispered Margaret’s name into the noise of fighting: the sullen sound of flesh against flesh, the grunts, the swearing. She knew Margaret had arrived when Allison’s eyes widened slightly.

  “Thank you, dear. I’m sorry to be so pushy. It’s always been a failing of mine.”

  No kidding. Emma, however, was too weary to be unkind. “Could he have—could he have defended himself against them if I hadn’t—”

  “If you hadn’t taken Emily, yes. And more.”

  Emma was silent for a long moment. “How are Alexander and Morgan?”

  “A bit dazed, dear, and a bit confused. They’ll be fine, I think.”

  Emma nodded without looking at Margaret. It seemed important to her to watch, to bear witness, to truly understand the scope of the events she had put into motion. She didn’t regret them. She wouldn’t change much. Or maybe she would change everything, if she knew how.

  Andrew Copis would still be alive. Her father would still be alive. Nathan would still be alive. People like Chase and Eric would be out of work.