CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Have You Seen This Woman?
Amber peered through the peephole and saw Dino’s face distorted through the lens. “I don’t need housekeeping today, thanks,” she said.
“Very funny,” he replied.
“How do I know you aren’t one of those doppelgangers?”
“You’re a big pain in my ass. And I wouldn’t say that if I was trying to get in,” he said.
Amber rolled her eyes and opened the door. “Good enough.”
He waltzed inside like he owned the place and leaned against the wall. “Well, I’m getting word the archduke knows about you now. Congratulations, Amber Blackwood, you’re the most wanted woman in Afterlife. Lucky for you you’ve got me on your side. Still, we’ll need to be careful. You haven’t been going out without me, right?”
“I’d never think of it.”
“Right. Seriously though, don’t go out without me. Things are about to heat up in the city, and you’ll be in danger if you do. My informants tell me there’ll be a crackdown on the Errand. You bat one of those pretty eyelashes the wrong way, and you’ll be surrounded by blackjackets faster than you can roll your eyes. And from what I’ve seen, that’s damned fast.”
“I’ve always wanted to be a criminal,” she quipped, batting her lashes. “Tell me, Dino, what’s it like?”
“I’m not a criminal, I’m a freedom fighter. There’s a huge difference.”
“That’s totally something a criminal would say.”
“Maybe,” he said, throwing up his hands. “At least I’ve got such a pleasurable partner in crime! Don’t I, Ms. Blackwood?”
She slipped into her trench coat and followed him outside. Dust flew in trails around her like a gentle flurry as they meandered down the lobby. “There’s so much dust. Even inside.”
“Too much,” Dino sighed, opening one of the lobby’s doors for her.
Amber smiled and took another door. He grumbled something under his breath and darted outside behind her. They filtered through the crowd, slipping between an endless mesh of strangers. She pivoted around a potbellied man in a bowler hat who fixated on his silver pocket watch, mouthing words only he could hear.
“Who is this friend we’re meeting?” she asked as she eyed the odd man.
“He’s not so much a friend as an acquaintance, but if you want to find someone in Afterlife, there’s no better person to ask than him. He’ll know.”
“Then he’ll know Toby for sure?”
“If Toby Blackwood came to Afterlife, then he’d know the name. But remember that your brother’s not the only reason we’re seeing the Census Master. We need to find this Marina Arshakuni before Bone Man does.”
They reached an expansive plaza bordered by spindly birches. A large brick building around ten-stories tall sat in the middle of the courtyard. Elegant domes capped the four towers rising from its corners. A single central tower soared above the rest, capped with a dome that held a massive clock face.
Long lines snaked from the tall doors leading inside. The lines curved and coiled their way through the courtyard, often intersecting at places and knotting together at others.
“There’re no hands on the clock,” Amber said, squinting at the clock.
“Welcome to Census Hall and Record Repository Ninety-Six. Nobody here’s in much of a rush to keep time, and it was determined decades ago that having a working clock incited riots or drove new souls insane from all the ticking and tocking, so they took the hands off and made life a little safer for the poor bastards who have to work here and the even sorrier ones who have to wait in line.”
“Gee, sounds lovely.”
“This is one of the many Census Hall and Record Repositories where all new souls come to be recorded. Once they’re in the census, they’re free to make their fortunes or whatever it is they want to do in Afterlife. That is if they make it through the line. It can sometimes take months to get inside, and a clock without hands doesn’t keep all of them sane. Neither do the rations the archduke hands out so souls don’t starve. Census riots, now those are something to behold. Wild. Feral. Terrifying. And all to get your name written down.”
“Months? I don’t have months! Toby needs me now, and what about Bone—”
Dino clapped a hand over her mouth and leaned to her ear. “Don’t say his name. It invites trouble. And while the prospect of waiting in a line with you for months is just so enticing, I think I’d rather peel my own fingernails off with a wooden spoon. I’ve got a bit of a shortcut we can use to see my friend.”
She yanked Dino’s hand from her lips and trailed after him as they spun and ducked through the maze of bored and frustrated souls waiting for their official ticket into Afterlife. They avoided the stair steps leading to the main doors, instead making their way to a dark corner where one of the corner towers met the building’s wall.
“It’ll be a quick slip through the cracks in the window I made a few years back just in case I needed to get back in one day. Get ready.”
“I hate doing this. It makes my stomach turn.”
Dino spun, grabbed her by the waist, and brushed his fingers down her face. “It’s so easy to fluster you. Kind of cute.”
Amber latched onto his wrist and squeezed, flashing a wide smile. “How cute was I again?”
Dino wrenched his hand away and scowled. “You’re all thorns, little rose. It’s annoying.”
“Thorns for you, maybe. I won’t forget that stunt you pulled with Bentley. I’m coming for you after I get him. Promise.”
Dino grinned as their bodies dispersed into mist and snaked through a tiny gap in one of the building’s windows. Amber’s stomach fluttered and soared into her throat like that first intense hill on a rollercoaster. Her ethereal form contorted and zipped through the opening, and the plaza with its long lines of misery vanished.
Dino pulled Amber inside, reforming in a musty office with a single desk. Scrolls and rolls and dust-laden books carpeted the floor. Amber pushed away from the man and brushed her dress. “Just like that?”
“Not many phantoms are as good as me. Most of them couldn’t squeeze through an open door if their lives depended on it. Besides, who’d want to break inside a boring place like this?”
Dino rolled his shoulders and headed for the door. “Keep cool in the hall and let me do my thing. You keep those curses of yours to yourself.”
“I’m not completely useless, you know.” She followed him into the hall and tied her jacket around her waist.
“Well, if you’re as good with your other curses as you were with the wraith curse, it’s pretty safe to assume you are, Ms. Blackwood.”
Amber folded her arms over her chest and glared at his back. He was so smug, so full of himself, and it was obvious he took a sick pleasure in bossing her around. She could sense it in the way he looked at her, the way he spoke to her like a child.
They strolled past clerks and bookkeepers with ears weighed by stubby pencils. Most of the rooms she peeked into looked much like the first—simple desks, many, many papers, and a thin layer of dust on everything. The dust is everywhere, she thought. No matter where you are, there it is.
She followed Dino around a corner and came to an elevator. Two soldiers in Archduke black stood at attention at either side of the oak doors, thin swords sheathed at their hips and rifles in their hands. They spotted two strangers approaching their station and stiffened, hands reaching for their hilts.
“Halt!” one said, raising a flat palm.
Dino groaned and threw his chin to the ceiling. “Seriously?”
“What are you two doing here? This is for authorized personnel only. Identifications. Now.”
“We’re lost, sorry,” Amber said.
The two guards scowled at her, then glanced at one another. “Think it’s her?” one asked.
“Raise the alarm!” the other shouted.
“Shit, that happened faster than I thought it would,” Dino muttered, looking her way
. “Don’t get in the way.”
His body burst into smoky mist and whipped between the soldiers as they fumbled for their swords. His ghostly form spun around and turned to flesh as he dropkicked the first guard, then smashed the heel of his palm against the man’s jaw.
The second soldier yanked his sword from the sheath and thrust it at Dino. His body evaporated around the blade, then slipped to the side and reformed. Amber barely caught the glint of steel flashing from Dino’s jacket. His dagger passed across the soldier’s face, and the man dropped his weapon. He clutched at the wound, falling to his knees while dust sprayed from between his fingers.
“It’s not blood,” Amber said. She pressed a hand over her mouth. “It’s dust. It’s … It’s what’s everywhere! That’s what the dust is? Blood? People?”
“Thank the archduke for that. Still seem like he’s not so bad?” Dino asked.
Amber had no words. Dino pinched his collar and calmly kicked the soldier between his shoulders, sending the man toppling to the floor. He clucked his tongue and turned to the elevator, punching the up arrow by the door. It dinged, and the doors opened. “You coming? I suggest we hurry. Other blackjackets will be along soon enough.”
Amber gawked at the dying soldier. He reached for her, words on his lips but no sound coming from them. His hand fell. Amber swallowed. “You just killed him like it was nothing.”
“It’s Afterlife. Get used to it. Now get in the elevator. We don’t have much time!”
She darted around the two soldiers and tried calming her heart as the doors slid closed and they lurched higher. Her neck was hot, her jacket constricting.
“There never should’ve been guards posted there,” Dino said. “The generals are acting fast. The archduke must be afraid.”
“Afraid of what?” she wondered.
“Afraid of you. Maybe we should let him see you fight. That should get you off the hook.”
“You are such an asshole. How can you joke after killing somebody?”
“Practice?”
The elevator dinged, and the doors slid apart. Amber stepped onto plush crimson scarlet detailed with ivy. Dark oak stained the walls. A woman sat at a desk beside two enormous doors, looking thoroughly flustered.
“Excuse me?” She stiffened in her seat and lifted her chin. “The Census Master is busy. Hey … Hey!”
Dino marched right past the desk and kicked open the double doors, blowing a kiss to the assistant as he passed. Amber scurried by the woman and watched as she mashed a button and dove beneath her heavy workstation.
“Please don’t kill me,” the woman said.
Amber paused in the doorway. “It’s okay. He won’t. I think. I’m sorry. We’re not really friends. It’s more like a forced partnership. I wouldn’t let him turn you to dust, though, if that helps.”
The woman pulled her knees to her chest and pressed herself as far beneath her desk as best she could. Amber pulled the doors closed behind her, bolting them in place as they clicked shut.
“Now for some answers,” she said, slapping the doors and spinning around.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
The Census Master
The Census Master sat behind a desk at the back of the room. The tufted burgundy chair contrasted against his milky skin. He kept a neat mustache, thin and curled at the ends, and his thick hair was swept back like a large wave. He wore thin gold spectacles without so much a single smudge marring the lenses. He wore a gold vest trimmed with black and fastened with tiny buttons and gripped a gold pen over a neat stack of papers.
When he saw them, he set the pen down. His mustache wriggled, his jaw tightening. “Dino Cardona, you brazen half-wit. I told you never to come here again. And now of all times you choose to break into my office and….” His steely gaze drifted to Amber. “Who is she? Don’t tell me it’s the girl they’re talking about. Is it the girl? Dino, this cannot be the girl. God, please God, it cannot be that girl.”
“Good to see you too, Abel. I, ah, didn’t quite think word would get around this fast about her. What’d the blackjackets tell you?”
“God Almighty, what have you done?” The Census Master clenched his fists and swallowed. “I’m as good as dust. You’ve finally done it. You’ve finally killed me.”
“He said you were friends!” Amber marched toward the desk, slapping his shoulder as she came beside him. “Did he lie? Again?”
The Census Master’s face paled, and he leaned hard onto the back of his seat. “It is the girl, isn’t it?”
Dino shrugged. “I suppose it depends on what they told you about her. Do your old buddy a favor and fill me in?”
“The Iron Council is making moves in every district. They mean to punish anyone with the slightest loyalty to the Errand. They want you rats smoked out, and it’s all because they want that girl.”
Dino’s eyes widened with genuine surprise. “Every district?”
“Yes, man! They’ve doubled the wraith patrols on every major thoroughfare. They say General Padilla herself walks the streets, looking for a girl that neatly fits this one’s description, accompanied by the infamous Dino Cardona. How you managed to keep that ugly mug of yours a secret is beyond me.”
“I’m crafty,” Dino said with a smile.
“Well, it was the only thing keeping me safe, that’s for sure. Not now. Now I’m dust!”
“Oh, don’t be so melodramatic, Abel. You’re too handsome for worry wrinkles.”
Abel’s cheeks reddened, and he squeezed his fists. “I had two spirits in here this very morning. They carried Class A orders from General Chakma. I had to submit to a mind assault, Dino. They burrowed in my head, looking for her. I’m only sitting here now because they didn’t have time to search far enough in my past to those god-awful years I knew you.”
Amber cleared her throat and glanced back at the door. “That woman out there was ramming her finger on a button. I don’t think we’ve got much time to chat. Those blackjackets might be coming.”
“She’s got a point,” Dino said. “Better help an old friend out. I’d hate to be caught in your office and taken captive. Those spirits would definitely pry out the good times we had then.”
Abel removed his spectacles and placed them on the papers. He slipped a handkerchief from his pocket and patted his brow. He looked to Amber and shook his head. “If you were smart, you’d turn yourself in to the blackjackets. This is the archduke’s city now. Has been for a good long time. There’s a reason they call Dino and his friends the Fool’s Errand.”
Dino swatted the air. “Oh now come on, Abel. Don’t be such a bitter Betty.”
“Go to Hell. I hate you,” Abel snapped.
“I like this guy,” Amber told Dino.
“Didn’t ask you,” Dino said. “I’d almost prefer the blackjackets over her company, believe it or not. We’re looking for two souls who would’ve passed through the census some time back. Once you give us the information, we’ll be out of your hair for good.”
Abel looked past them to the door. He strummed his fingers on the desk, then rolled his hand. “Go on. I’m a poltergeist, not a spirit. I need names.”
“Marina Arshakuni. Probably died ten, twenty years ago?”
“That’s right,” Amber said. “She was from Armenia, if that helps.”
Abel put his glasses on and sighed. He motioned at the wall, and shelves hidden in the wood burst out. Papers flew into the air, rolling, spinning, and spiraling around one another as Abel’s brow furrowed in concentration.
“Every soul is arranged in alphabetical order. There tend to be duplicates, but luckily for you, Arshakuni isn’t what I would call a common name. Give me a moment, please.”
Amber glanced at the doors. She tugged at her jacket and bit her lip.
“Ah, there we are.” Abel snapped his fingers. One paper darted from the flock and fluttered between his hands. “Marina Arshakuni. Walked through Census Hall and Record Repository Number Thirty-Two in the Gleaming Triangle distr
ict twenty-three years ago.”
“Love that place. Great strip clubs,” Dino said.
Amber and Abel both rolled their eyes. Amber waved at the paper. “Anything else?”
“Says she tested positive for the spirit curse. Actually had a somewhat rare talent with it, if the notes are correct, but seemed quite odd, almost Deep-touched. The Deputy Assistant Census Master of Thirty-Two scheduled a follow up visit ten years later, as regulation requires of course, and they found her in the Crystal District. Owns some shop there, doing what good spirits or smart con artists do: tell fortunes and claim to speak with the living.”
Amber snatched the paper from his hands and read the notes to confirm the man’s story. “The Crystal District doesn’t sound so bad at least.”
“Names can be deceiving,” Abel said. “The Crystal District is home to a bunch of unaligned spirits. They don’t pay the Scarlet Sinners for protection. They don’t much care for the blackjackets, and they sure as hell don’t like the Errand. Frankly, nobody else much likes them, either. Whole place gives good souls the creeps. Only reason it’s still around is so General Chakma can replenish her ranks if she’s running low on spirit users, and it’s an easy travel route between better districts.”
“Also makes for a dramatic atmosphere,” Dino added. “Everybody wants to believe in the psychic in the dark and dusty shadows. It gives them an air of power.”
The first muffled shouts sounded from behind the office doors. Abel jumped at the noise and swatted at the window. “Go! Get out of here. They’re coming and I can’t have you caught in here with me. God knows what they’ll do. If Bone Man’s with them—”
“Hey. I wouldn’t let him hurt you, Abel,” Dino said.
Abel snorted. “Let’s not go there.”
Dino’s cheeks reddened, and he turned his back to the desk. “We’ve gotta go, Amber.”
Afterlife (Second Eden #1) Page 18
