by Ann Aguirre
“To steal a soul pledged to me … that’s quite a crime.” The casual tone didn’t fool anyone into thinking the trickster was harmless. Rage crackled from his every pore.
“She still owes me a debt,” Fell began.
“And you owe me an enormous one. You cannot harm the girl our young sacrifice placed under my protection.”
Before I could take any destructive action, Death simply … vanished, leaving me with Kian’s body and the Harbinger’s unlikely tenderness. “Why did you step in? You said you’d break my heart the next time we met.”
“Look at your face,” he said softly. “It seems more likely that you’ll break mine. And yes … I underestimated how much he loved you. Try to smile over that, dearling, if nothing else. He worked out what he had to do to secure your freedom … and did it.”
I fought when he tried to pull me away. My arms wouldn’t release from their lock around Kian’s shoulders, and I buried my face in his hair. Impossible to believe that yesterday, he held me. Kissed me. I’ll never hear his voice again. Never touch him. Never—anything. While the Harbinger watched, I wept for my lost love. He wet a handkerchief in the melting snow and washed my face, but it didn’t help. I had to be a tear-streaked mess and I did not care.
“I was supposed to figure it out,” I whispered.
“There was no loophole. Even if you searched for two human lifetimes, there was no escape clause. But he found his own way out.”
“That doesn’t help.”
The Harbinger chuckled faintly. “Me either. You’ve no idea how hungry I am.”
Eventually, the real world snapped back into focus. There were people all around us, talking in frightened tones. Someone called an ambulance, and at some point, the Harbinger had donned his handsome teacher skin. This time I appreciated the calm, respectable façade. I had no answers for their questions, only a black hole and endless grief.
“She looks like she’s in shock,” an older woman said.
“Probably,” someone else agreed. “He’s so young, you just don’t expect it…”
“An aneurysm, you think?”
I ignored all of them. When the city came to take his body, I cried until I threw up. The Harbinger shielded me from curious looks, strangely protective, even now that he had no reward coming for helping me. Lacking the energy to protest, I let him put us in a cab to follow the vehicle to the morgue. They needed me to fill out forms, and though it nearly killed me, I did everything required of me. Afterward, the morgue tech wanted us to get out, I could tell, but the idea of leaving Kian in this place made me burst into tears again.
“He’s gone, dearling. It’s awful for you, but he’s not here.”
“How do you know?” With a glare I produced my compact. “This proves there’s life after death. How do you know he’s not standing right there, watching us?”
A flicker of a smile curved his mouth but didn’t reach his eyes. “For one thing, I’d see him. But apart from that, only souls with regret and unfinished business hang around.”
Kian finally got what he wanted; he’s the big hero. Now I have to live with how awful it feels? This sucks.
“Then, what, it’s all over, so I just go home?”
For some reason, my rage amused him. “If you wish. I could make you forget, just as Aaron did. You’d remember nothing about Kian or the game.”
“Without a temporal parasite?”
“That was a side effect. Since you’re firmly rooted in this time, no fresh nightmares will be drawn to you.”
The possibility spun out before me, endlessly tempting. My mom would still be dead, along with all of my classmates, but I wouldn’t remember that so much of it was my fault. For that alone, I couldn’t take the easy route. So I shook my head. “I can’t run from this. It would be chicken shit to forget him and everything he did for me.”
“A brave choice.”
“Maybe. I may wish I’d taken you up on it when I tell his mother.”
“Did you want to go now?” Without waiting for my answer, the Harbinger led the way out of the hospital.
On the street, it was well past dark. My dad would be wondering where I was, and I couldn’t face the thought of telling him Kian was dead. It still didn’t seem real, as if this were a nightmare from which I couldn’t awaken. Pinching myself hard, I hoped, but nothing changed. Instead of Kian beside me, I had a mad trickster god with eyes like the abyss.
Finally I replied, “I probably should.”
The job wouldn’t get easier or more pleasant from putting it off. But I’d forgotten about her release from the program and moving into a halfway house. Kian had told me, but I couldn’t remember the name of the new place, and the nurse at the front desk wouldn’t give me any information since I wasn’t a relative. I didn’t like the idea of asking them to pass along such an awful message, either.
She’s finally on the road to recovery. This will break her.
“That’s enough for today,” the Harbinger said as I stumbled out of Sherbrook House.
“Okay.”
Listless, I collapsed on the first bench I saw. My jeans were wet front and back, and I had nothing more to give. Freedom was just a word; it didn’t love me, couldn’t hold me, laugh at my stupid jokes, or forgive me when I was an idiot. I’d never in my life done anything to deserve how much he loved me, but that was the magic of it. We don’t have to be worthy of it … sometimes beautiful things just happen.
“Passersby think I’ve broken your heart,” the Harbinger said.
I hadn’t even noticed, but I had been crying for like ten minutes, not loud sobs, but more of a quiet trickle that I couldn’t stop. He rested his hand on my head, and I saw now that people were staring at us. A grown man, a teenage girl, late at night, and she’s weeping on a bench? Yeah, it definitely looked shady. The last thing I needed was some meddler deciding the Harbinger was a creeper.
It bothered me to see him pretending to be human when so clearly he was not. Colin Love might’ve been a real person, someone he’d broken, but I didn’t want to be alone, either. At this moment, it seemed like only the Harbinger could understand how I felt, the ache in my sternum until there was only blood and rage, covering an endless tide of loss.
“What happened to Mr. Love?” I asked.
“This is not a happy story, dearling. Now isn’t the time.”
Probably not.
So I made another request, disregarding all prudence and normalcy. “I can’t stand it, I can’t. So please. Take me away from this, just for a little while.”
In a whisper of black feathers, he did.
A STATE OF IMAGINARY GRACE
In the morning, I had to locate Kian’s mother and tell her the truth. Then, most likely, I’d help her make arrangements. I’d done the same for my dad. It was all kinds of wrong for someone my age to know so much about the business of death—about booking a funeral parlor and picking out a casket, choosing music and flowers—so many damn questions that dead people probably didn’t care about anyway.
Kian’s gone, he’s really gone.
For now, I couldn’t deal with any of it. I needed a place to hide. And who’d ever guess that the Harbinger would offer me shelter?
He took me to the crumbling manor where we’d attended the Feast of Fools, what seemed like forever ago. There were no monsters today, apart from him and me. Devoid of illusion, the house looked different, mostly abandoned and gone to ruin. We ended up in a well-preserved study at the center of the residence, protected from the wind and rain that had damaged other parts of the house. Here, the stained-glass windows were intact, and the room was crammed to the walls with interesting objects, though they didn’t raise the hair on my neck like the ones at Forgotten Treasures. The floor was covered with an old purple-and-red tapestry while the furniture was an odd mix of old and new, antiques mingled with Ikea. Books were piled everywhere, first-edition leather hardcovers alongside pulp paperbacks from the thirties with yellow, dog-eared pages.
> I had the sense he was showing me his heart.
Collapsing on the nearest chair, I ran my fingers over the red velvet pile, opulent as a throne. The legs were gilt and the back was carved in intricate, baroque style. The Harbinger gestured and a fire flared in the dead hearth. At first I thought it was just a light show, but then the room warmed slowly, by degrees. This wasn’t for his benefit, so he must care that I was soaked and freezing, plus too sad to care.
“Here,” he said, draping me with a knitted shawl that looked like he might’ve stolen it from an old gypsy woman.
“Why are you looking after me?” I asked.
“I could give any number of answers and they’d all be true.”
“Pick one.”
“You were given to me to protect, and it’s been a very long time since I played that role. I’m also extremely unwilling to let the others gobble you up. Nobody breaks my toys but me.”
“I’m already there,” I whispered.
He offered a puckish smile. “That’s part of the problem. There’s no pleasure in smashing what the world has already damaged so grievously.”
That didn’t explain his intervention. “But Kian’s gone, he didn’t keep his part of the bargain. Doesn’t that absolve you of responsibility toward me?”
He crouched beside me, all awkward angles and ungainly grace. Somehow he was paradox incarnate, beauty and anguish entwined. “Now, that is disingenuous, dearling. Do you truly reckon that there’s nothing between us but your boy’s sacrifice?”
“I don’t know what you’re getting at.” But that wasn’t completely true.
While it wasn’t a connection like I had with Kian, there was something here, pain calling to pain, possibly. He spoke so easily of destruction, but each time he repeated the cycle, like Kian’s mom, the one the Harbinger hurt the most was himself. Because it wasn’t like he truly enjoyed the pain he caused, more that he was addicted to it. And each time, he deepened the self-loathing because he couldn’t resist the compulsion we’d given him. I didn’t fool myself that I was safe with him. There would come a point when his kindness lost to the desire to wound.
I didn’t care if it was today.
“Liar,” he chided.
I couldn’t meet his gaze, burrowing deeper into the black shawl. It was still incredibly cold in here, though that might be my wet clothes talking. The shivers surprised me and I couldn’t stop my teeth from chattering. The Harbinger folded to his feet and went over to a chest to rummage. I didn’t like to contemplate what grisly mementos he might have stored away.
But he only pulled out an old-fashioned nightgown sewn in thick muslin with a high neck and a ruffle around the bottom. There were no bloodstains, either. I took it when he handed it to me, and from the way he didn’t meet my gaze, I could see he wouldn’t be answering any questions about why he had it so carefully preserved. I sensed that the owner of the gown had been important to him.
“Thanks.”
“You can change over there.” He indicated a fancy lacquered screen.
There was a small space behind it, also piled high with books and boxes. I managed to squirm around enough to get the job done, and when I came out, he’d taken my clothes from the top of the screen and hung them up by the fire to dry. Reclaiming my spot on the red throne, I wrapped myself up in the gypsy shawl. I thought I would feel better once I was dry but it didn’t impact the misery in my head. Right now I was ten seconds away from a complete breakdown. After the way I cried in the park, I didn’t think I had any tears left. As it turned out, I had underestimated myself.
“Would you like me to leave you alone?” he asked then.
It was a tactful question, and I thought hard before shaking my head. “This place might freak me out if you weren’t here.”
“So I’m the nightmare that keeps worse monsters at bay?” His tone was all tender amusement, laced with wonder.
“Something like that.”
“You asked why I’m looking after you…”
“Yeah.”
“My answer was not as complete as it might’ve been. Quite simply, it has been time out of mind since anyone chose my company of her own free will.”
“Without being your pet, your prisoner, or wildly deluded about your nature?” Like Nicole, when she was pretending to be our teacher.
“Precisely. There is a certain savor in being … known.”
“Yeah, I suppose so.”
The warmer I got, the harder it became to hold my tears; it was like an emotional thaw accompanying the physical one. Burying my face in my arms, I let them come. I didn’t expect the hand on my hair. A few seconds later, I realized he was petting my head as I had his. It wasn’t enough to make me feel better, but for those moments, I felt less alone. He didn’t speak or try to comfort me. There were no words to make it better anyway. Because in this moment, I realized that Kian always planned to die for me, one way or another. In his mind, there was only one way to set me free.
I remembered how he’d written a poem just for me. Would I find more of them in his journal when I went to his apartment? The tears became the noisy, choking sobs I’d withheld in the park, until I couldn’t see or breathe. Eventually the storm passed because I couldn’t go on like that forever, much as I wanted to. It didn’t expiate the feelings, either, but crying left me momentarily hollow. When I finally raised my face, I found the Harbinger quiet and still beside me, eyes closed. His hand was still gentle atop my head, then he pulled away and retreated to another chair across the room.
“I usually take pleasure in that sound,” he said.
“Then I hope it was good for you.”
When he opened his eyes, I was surprised at how sad they looked. “Not today. Your tears are not nectar to me, dearling. I think … I’m afraid of you.”
Though I still had Aegis, I’d already refused to end him, and now I had even less reason since he’d helped me so often, and he no longer posed any threat to Kian. In fact, if it wasn’t so strange to contemplate, I might even call him a friend. So I shook my head.
“Don’t be.”
“Some things,” he said, “are immutable.”
“Do you really believe that? I want to believe what I do matters—that my choices can change things. Otherwise what’s the point of anything?”
“Remember, my course was set by your stories, so I’ve never had free will.”
“Sorry. I forgot.”
He laughed quietly. “It means you think of me as a person. I won’t take offense.”
“Am I safe?”
“With me?”
I was actually referring to the other immortals, but now that he’d brought it up … I waited to see what he would say. Before, he was all veiled threats and Dread Pirate Roberts’s I’ll-most-likely-kill-you-in-the-morning attitude. The Harbinger paused to consider. In response to a careless gesture, two headless dolls that had been discarded on a table began to dance.
Then he said, “For now. I’m sure that’s not what you wish to hear, and there is a corner of me that would like to be your knight. But I am not selfless, nor am I kind. There will come a point when I must ask for something back, and you will not want to give it.”
Those words chilled me a little, for I’d put myself completely in his power. Yet I wasn’t without the ability to defend myself. “Thanks for telling me the truth. But actually, I didn’t mean you. I was talking about the others.”
“Fell and Wedderburn?”
I nodded.
“You’re out of the game, but you know a great deal about us. And you have the means to do us harm. Though I can’t say for certain, I imagine you will be hunted.”
That was pretty much what I expected. “Okay. I’ll watch my back.”
“I could watch it. You know my price.”
“I’m never becoming your pet. I like personal agency too much to live in your cage, however gilded.”
“It wouldn’t be,” he said, making me shiver.
“So tonight is
basically it for us, then. You’re not getting paid for protecting me after all, so there’s no reason for you to intervene again.”
The Harbinger looked away, as if he didn’t enjoy hearing it stated. “Indeed, dearling. This is a farewell party, however melancholy that may seem. I shall take pride in the fact that I did you no harm.”
“I wouldn’t let you,” I reminded him.
“I appreciate that too. Occasionally it is a welcome change to be saved from yourself.”
One thing had become crystal clear to me, however. I would never have a normal life. Most likely I wouldn’t last long with various immortals gunning for me. There was always the Black Watch, but despite my respect for Raoul, his mentor worried me. Plus, I didn’t want to spend my life fighting, though it didn’t look like I had much choice.
My dad will never be safe, as long as I’m nearby.
Wedderburn probably wouldn’t strike at him, even now, because he might still hope to control whatever tech my father eventually invented. But without my mom and me, it would take longer, if it came to fruition at all. Which left my dad’s primary value as collateral. They would target him repeatedly, until I gave in and handed Aegis over, but I had no illusions that we’d be set free to live in peace. At that point, we’d be executed and probably not quickly or painlessly.
I have to go.
Making up my mind, I asked, “Could you do something for me?”
“The answer to could is probably yes, depending on your request.” The dolls stopped dancing and toppled over, telling me I had his complete attention. “Will I? That’s an entirely different matter. However fond I may be, I’m still a mercenary at heart.”
“I want you to make another me. To keep my dad company.”
“A doppelgänger, you mean?”
“I thought those were always evil, though.”
“Only sometimes. They’re also known as changelings. Tricking your father, this is certainly my wheelhouse. Will you tell me why?”
