Touch

by Michelle Sagara

  Chase kept glancing at Ernest, as though he was either suspicious or expected a tongue-lashing at any minute; he wasn’t entirely comfortable.

  Eric, on the other hand, was doing something practical; he was lighting a fire in the fireplace. Allison was surprised; many homes had fake fireplaces or none at all. She preferred none; she couldn’t see the point in a fireplace that didn’t actually burn things.

  “I suppose smoking is out of the question,” Ernest said.

  Michael’s brows rose; Allison grimaced. Emma, however, said, “We’d really prefer if you didn’t, but it’s your house.”

  “Technically, it’s Eric’s house.”

  “He doesn’t let me smoke here,” Chase pointed out.

  “You don’t have to deal with the two of you,” was Ernest’s more acid reply.

  Chase muttered something under his breath.

  “We need to talk about self-defense.” Eric, satisfied with the stability of the small fire burning between the new logs, rose. “The reason we wear these jackets,” he said, lifting one of the uglier ones that lay over the arm of a chair, “are the studs.” He hefted the black leather blob in both hands and tossed it to Allison.

  Allison’s eyes widened. “This is heavy.”

  “There’s a chain of iron sewed into the hem in the lining. It’s a bitch on the fabric; we replace a lot of linings. If you look at the collar—”

  She was already turning it up.

  “That would have effectively stopped the problem you had last night. You might have felt uncomfortable; there might have been a tightness about your throat, but the iron works to prevent the grip of Necromantic magic. Silver cuts it better, but in the case of silver, the contact has to be direct.

  “It’s not much in the way of armor,” Eric continued. “It’s not meant to be bulletproof—and bullets can be a problem. It’ll slow down a small knife; it won’t stop a sword.”

  “No one carries swords,” Michael pointed out.

  “Necromancers don’t, no. They don’t carry many knives, either. If you see a Necromancer pull a knife, you know he—or she—hasn’t reached the height of their power yet. But the knives are still a danger if you don’t know how to fight.”

  Chase snorted and said something rude under his breath, which caused Allison’s hands to turn into white-knuckled fists. She didn’t respond in any other way because she was practical: She didn’t know how to fight, and knew it.

  “So a getup like this,” Eric continued, as if Chase didn’t exist, “is meant for the heavy duty Necromancers who usually hunt us. They don’t send out the scrubs when they’re looking for us.”

  “We can’t wear these in school,” Allison said. She handed the jacket to Michael, who’d been staring at it with some fascination. He touched the interior fabric and relaxed. Michael was sensitive to weaves and cloth; he couldn’t, for instance, stand real wool and never wore it.

  “No. We’re hoping we never face a Necromancer in the school.”

  Emma turned widening eyes on Allison, who looked grim. Just grim.

  “They don’t want to be discovered,” Eric told her. “And we don’t want them to be discovered either. If they know their cover is blown, they generally feel they only have one recourse.”

  “Kill all the witnesses?” Michael asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Can they?”

  “Yes. I don’t think they could take out the entire city of Toronto. They can—and will—take out dozens of people if necessary.”

  “One school’s worth of students?” Emma asked, voice tight.

  Eric said nothing.

  Chase opened his mouth, and Allison glared at him; he snapped it shut. It was audible.

  “The Queen of the Dead isn’t one of the dead,” Eric finally said. “She’s alive. Anything living can be killed. If she destroyed a city or a large town, a lot of people would suddenly be looking for her.”

  “So the City of the Dead is a physical place?”

  Eric nodded.

  “Where is it located?”

  Eric and Chase exchanged a glance. “It doesn’t have a fixed location.”

  This answer confused Michael, which was fair; it confused Emma and Allison as well. On the other hand, Michael was the only one to press the issue. “How can it be a physical city without a fixed location?”

  “Look, Michael—” Eric caught Emma’s pointed stare, and ran his hands through his hair. “All of you already know too much. If she thought you knew this, she would nuke your city just to make sure you couldn’t share the information. I understand you need to know things. Understand that there are some things no one living should know. If you ever have the misfortune to visit the City of the Dead, you’ll have all the answers you need.”

  “I doubt that,” Allison said quietly.

  Eric grimaced. “I didn’t say you’d be able to do anything useful with them. Necromancers can travel to the City of the Dead. In very rare cases, they can travel elsewhere, but someone at the other end has to have a lot of power prepared as a terminus. The Queen could anchor that kind of transport, but I don’t think many of the others could. They can open gates to the city—but even that requires a lot of power, and some preparation on the part of the Necromancers. It’s also harder to do in the presence of iron; it’s hard to do in a building with, say, steel-beam construction. If the gate is aligned properly, it will work, but modern construction makes it more challenging. Again, it’s not trivial.”

  “Then the two men—”

  “Yes. They didn’t intend to fly home; they intended to grab you and run. The portal wouldn’t have to be open for long. If they had to leave a functional door between here and their City, they’d have to find a lot of the dead on very short notice.”

  “They can see the dead.”

  “Yes—but the dead who have the most potential often don’t want to be seen.” He hesitated again, then looked at Emma. “The Queen of the Dead can find the dead if she needs them; she’s extraordinarily sensitive.”

  “And powerful,” Michael added.

  “Yes.” Eric lifted another jacket and tossed it to Allison; she’d passed the first jacket to Michael, who had let it pool in his lap as he focused on the conversation. “Try it on.”

  Before Allison could answer, he picked up a third jacket and tossed it to Emma. “You too. How does it feel?” Eric asked Emma.

  “Heavy. Kinda ugly.”

  Chase snorted and corrected her. “It’s hideously ugly, but we don’t ask Eric for fashion advice unless we want to look like Goth clowns. That’s not what he’s asking.”

  Emma frowned. The frown deepened.

  “Can you still see Nathan?” Eric asked, correctly divining the source of her surprise.

  She nodded. “He’s—he looks less solid.”

  Eric said, “There’s almost nothing you could do that would make the dead invisible to you.”

  Emma recovered quickly, for Emma. “Could we get a less ugly jacket?”

  “Sure,” Chase said. “But by the time we finished with it—or you finished with it, because you’re going to be doing some of the damn work—it’d be almost as ugly. I never buy decent jackets anymore—hurts too much to ruin them.”

  “Allison?”

  She was less amused by his rationale than Emma, but she did try the jacket on. It was heavy. It was heavy and about two sizes too large. But she slid her arms into loose sleeves, and the very ugly jacket let gravity pull it more or less straight.

  “Well?” she asked Emma.

  “I think it looks better on you than it does on Chase.”

  Chase opened his mouth, looked at Allison, and frowned. After a pause of several seconds, he said, “Damn it, she’s right.”

  Emma’s brows rose. “You agreed with s
omething I said?”

  “You’ve got a better eye than Eric. For fashion.”

  “And friends. Don’t forget the friends.”

  “I’ve never criticized your taste in friends—except for Eric.”

  Allison cleared her throat, loudly, before he could continue. “Better on me than on Chase isn’t really saying much. How bad does it look?”

  Emma winced. “We can try a better jacket once we can figure out—”

  “You need some kind of leather,” Chase said, voice flat. “Thicker is better. No kid glove leather, no Napa—you’ll rip the coat to shreds trying to put it all together. You might be able to get away with trench coats. We don’t use ’em.”

  “Why?”

  “Too cumbersome. When we need to move, we need to move; we can’t afford the hems getting caught on any protrusions. I think they’d work for you.”

  Allison removed the jacket. “Is this all?”

  “Hell no. We’re just getting started.”

  * * *

  An hour later, they were wearing necklaces of silver, with weighted pendants that were some combination of silver and iron. The pendants themselves were simple but heavy, and hard to hide under anything other than a loose knit or blouse. Emma asked if they could use a longer chain; Eric shook his head. Chase snorted and pointed out that it was the pendant that was important, and if silver could be made into a comfortable choker, that was best.

  “So that stupid dog collar you were wearing wasn’t ancient, bad Goth?”

  “No. Don’t look at me like that; I make sacrifices like this all the time. We’ve got rings; the rings are easy. Wear ’em. They’re not there to protect your hands; they’re there in case something like last night happens again.”

  “If I’d been wearing these rings, I could have pulled the—the tentacle away?”

  “It’s not guaranteed but you’d have had a much better chance.”

  “Why do silver and iron work against Necromancy?” Michael asked. He accepted the weight of the jacket, accepted the necklace, but cast a dubious glance at the rings. Michael didn’t like having things on his hands. Even gloves in the winter, although he’d wear them if it was cold enough.

  Chase shrugged. “Does it matter? They work.”

  “It matters to Michael,” Allison said quietly.

  Chase opened his mouth and closed it before more words could fall out. “Eric,” he said, “it’s all yours.”

  Eric grimaced. “We don’t know, Michael. We weren’t given a lot of explanations. We were told that it disrupts Necromantic magic—but not why. It made no sense to me the first time, but it worked. It wasn’t complete negation; I’m not sure that exists unless you’re a Necromancer yourself.

  “I’d explain it if I had the answer. I don’t. Old Man?”

  Ernest, who’d been silent throughout, shrugged. “It’s something to do with earth, with the bones of the earth.”

  Which made about as much sense to Michael as it did to Allison. Emma turned to Michael. “They can’t explain it themselves. But I think we need to trust them.”

  Michael did trust them. He didn’t understand them, and lack of understanding always made following instructions vastly more difficult. If you could explain something to Michael, he had no trouble following orders. It’s what made people so difficult for him. A smile did not mean the same thing to two different people; laughter didn’t either.

  He looked at the rings again. Emma looked at them as well; they were not subtle. They were large, thick, and on the ugly side.

  “If these are mostly silver, is there any reason we can’t find silver rings of our own to wear?”

  Chase rolled his eyes. “Something is better than nothing,” he conceded. “These have the advantage of being both free and heavy.”

  “Probably their only advantages. Did you make these?”

  “The old man did.”

  Emma grimaced and offered Ernest an apology. Ernest was looking wintery and less than amused. “It hasn’t escaped my attention,” he said, although he was looking at Chase, “that some people find my work less than aesthetically pleasant.”

  Michael took two rings. Allison took two. Emma sighed and took two as well; there were dozens, after all.

  “Is there anything else we can learn in an evening?”

  “No. Not in a single evening. These are the most useful things we can give you at the moment. If you’re amenable, we can begin to train you in basic self-defense. But as Eric has pointed out, the Necromancers don’t generally resort to brawls and physical beatings to kill people. They will—and they have in the past—but it is not their preferred method.” Ernest rose. “In other circumstances, we wouldn’t remain here. Part of the ability to survive Necromancers who come hunting is not being present when they arrive. We move.”

  “A lot,” Chase added.

  Allison started to shrug the jacket off her shoulders, but Chase caught it before it could fall. “Promise to wear it home,” he said, pulling it back into place by the collar. “Wear it to school. Wear it shopping. I know it’s not what you’d normally wear—but wear it.”

  She met his gaze and let her arms fall to her sides.

  “Give me your phone,” he said.

  She frowned. After a moment, she handed Chase her phone.

  Chase turned it on and fiddled with it for a bit. “It’s a speed dial,” he said. He called his own phone from hers. “If something or someone looks suspicious, call. I don’t care if nothing comes of it—call. Eric and I patrol most nights.” He hesitated, exhaled, and finally said, “You’re not a Necromancer-in-waiting; they won’t have an easy way to find you if they don’t know what they’re looking for. But we killed two, and there was either one or two more on that plane with them.”

  * * *

  Ernest surprised everyone by ordering pizza. It was really strange to be in a living room with paper plates, cups, and pizza, discussing the ways in which total strangers would try to kill them, but their lives had been strange since October.

  * * *

  They agreed to meet up at Eric’s in three nights, provided no immediate emergencies prevented it. Emma and Allison walked Michael home; he was silent, although he was fidgeting with the rings on his fingers. Emma was almost surprised he’d chosen to wear them.

  But Michael had seen the Necromancers in action. Michael knew they’d tried to kill Allison. He hadn’t been there when Allison had almost died, but that didn’t change the facts. Being utterly defenseless against a known danger was a greater threat than having things encircling his fingers.

  Emma was tense; she was nervous. She couldn’t help it. But they looked so ridiculous in these jackets, she had to laugh. Ally, seeing the direction of her gaze, started to chuckle as well. Michael didn’t. He knew them well enough to know they weren’t laughing at him, but he honestly didn’t see anything worth laughing about.

  “Does this make me look like Chase?” he asked, pointing at his own jacket.

  Allison, by dint of will, didn’t laugh louder. “No. Maybe a little more like Eric. No one else looks like Chase.”

  “It’s his hair,” Emma added. She glanced at Nathan, who was smiling in Michael’s direction.

  Nathan had hardly spoken a word for most of the evening. He’d stayed, as he’d promised, but he’d looked distinctly uncomfortable—and that wasn’t Nathan. She wanted to talk to him, but it was cold enough tonight that she didn’t want to hold his hand so Michael and Allison could also participate.

  She waited, instead, walking Michael home and dropping Allison off next. Ally wasn’t happy about the order.

  “Eric and Chase are close,” Michael told her before he entered his house.

  Allison immediately swiveled to look over her shoulder; Emma, squinting into the darkness, couldn’t see them. “They ar
e?”

  Michael nodded. “I think Chase is worried about you.”

  “Chase isn’t worried about me,” Allison said, with more than her usual heat.

  Michael frowned. “He isn’t?”

  “He is,” Emma said. “Allison doesn’t like the way he’s worried, that’s all.”

  “Why?”

  She bit back a sigh. It was Michael. “Chase doesn’t think Allison should spend time with me anymore, because of what happened. He doesn’t think it’s safe.”

  “He doesn’t want you to be friends?”

  “No, he really doesn’t. He thinks if I were a good friend, I would stop seeing Allison until this was all over.”

  “But . . . but when is it going to be over?”

  That, of course, was the million-dollar question. Emma squared her shoulders. “Chase isn’t completely wrong.” Before Allison could interrupt, she continued. “It would be safest for Allison if she wasn’t with me. The Necromancers don’t want to kill me yet. My life’s not in danger. But Ally—”

  “Wants to help you.”

  “Yes, Michael. Yes, she does.” Emma smiled at Allison.

  “Then it’s her choice.”

  “Exactly,” Allison said. “If it makes you feel any better, he’s not all that thrilled that you’re involved, either.”

  “He doesn’t want Emma to have any friends.”

  “No,” Allison agreed uncharitably.

  CHAPTER

  SIX

  EMERY’S CAFETERIA SOUNDED LIKE a human hive. Stray syllables and the sound of sharp laughter permeated the buzz of too many conversations, but as most of those conversations weren’t directed Emma’s way, they could be safely ignored. Connell and Cody bracketed an animated Michael. Allison, beside Emma, was absorbed with Chase, and given the color of her cheeks, their conversation wasn’t one Emma wanted to join. Eric was eating—slowly and meticulously as he usually did.