Afterworlds (54 page)

Imogen drew the phone from her pocket, tapped at the screen with slow deliberation. Darcy sat there, aware of her own heartbeat in the corners of her vision, the room warping with every angry pulse. When she blinked, a single tear trickled from her eye.

After an endless silence, Imogen raised an eyebrow. “Huh. I never noticed that.”

“Never noticed?” Darcy shook her head. “How could you not
notice
? You typed it!”

“Not really.” Imogen’s voice was still infuriatingly flat. “That wasn’t about you, Darcy. It was about my opening. The version my agent didn’t like.”

“That makes no sense. Why would you say that about a scene?”

Imogen stood slowly. She was all in slow motion now, a statue come to life.

“
B
is next to
H
,” she said quietly, and walked away across the big room.

Darcy knew that she should follow, should keep arguing until everything was out in the open. This wasn’t about her spying on some precious diary, it was about the two of them knowing what they really thought of each other. It was about honesty, not secrets.

It was about whether Imogen/Audrey was writing another savage screed in her head, or in her diary, this time about Darcy Patel.

But somehow she couldn’t make herself move. She was too angry, too astonished that Imogen was responding in nonsense phrases.

B is next to H.
What the fuck did that mean? In what
universe could that diary entry have referred to the opening of
Phobomancer
?

B is next to H . . .

Darcy’s fingers twitched, and then, quite suddenly and completely, she understood. Not with her mind, but in the marrow of her hands, the muscles informed by the millions of words she’d typed in her life, all the emails and school papers and fan fiction, all the discarded drafts of
Afterworlds
. Her fingers twitched again, spelling out the words, telling her what Imogen had meant.

Darcy stared at the open laptop in front of her. On its keyboard the
B
was, in fact, just below the
H
. She closed her eyes, and saw the words again . . .

After all that hard work, another hitch.

Imogen’s finger had slipped and hit the
B
. Or one of the other letters in that little cluster—
G
,
N
, or
V
—and software had brought the error home.

“Fucking autocorrect,” Darcy hissed.

She stood up and made her way to the bedroom door. Imogen had changed out of her pajamas into street clothes. She was stuffing T-shirts into a plastic bag.

“Please don’t, Gen. I get it now. It was just an accident.”

Imogen turned. “Just a hitch, I think you mean.”

Darcy tried to smile, but it felt wrong on her face. “I’m sorry.”

“Me too,” Imogen said, and cleared her throat. “I could deal when you snooped in my old yearbook, Darcy. It made sense. You just wanted to learn more about me. And you had every right to know my real name. You were going to find that essay sooner or later, after all.”

“Imogen . . .”

“And in the end, it wasn’t that big a problem that you stole my scene. You didn’t mean to. Shit like that happens when writers live together, I guess. It was all okay, really, as long as I could have one thing that was my own. My fucking diary.”

“I know. But it was an accident.”

“How long ago? When did you read it?”

Darcy stared at the floor. “Six days before my deadline. The night Nan called. I was just looking for my phone.”

“Sure. But you didn’t forget it. And you didn’t tell me you’d read it for six weeks! That’s why you’ve been so depressed, right? Because you keep thinking about that essay.”

“Yes,” Darcy said. She had to be honest from here on out.

“Because those words from my diary became the most important thing for you, because they were supposed to be my secret. Because they were
mine.
” Imogen turned away, stuffing a handful of underwear into the garbage bag. “Nothing else I’ve said to you in the last six weeks really mattered, did it? It was the words in that diary that you believed. The fucking
typo
that you trusted! Not me.”

“I trust you, Gen.”

“No you don’t! Whatever I hide will always be more important to you than what I say and do. Whatever I give you will matter less than what I keep to myself. You’ll always want more than what’s in front of you. You’ll always want my innermost thoughts, my writing ideas, my real name.”

“Imogen Gray is your real name.”

“Not really. I’m Audrey, who wrote that pathetic,
spiteful
essay. That’s how you see me.”

“I see you as Imogen.”

“That’s just my pen name, and it might not even be that for very long.”

“Please stop saying that. And please stop
packing
.” Darcy leaned back against the wall, sliding down until she was on the floor. “Talk to me.”

“Okay. Do you want to know what I really think? What my diary really says about you?”

“Yes . . .” Darcy heard her own voice trail off. “I mean, except if you don’t want to tell me. Keep any secrets you need to, Gen.”

“I never thought you were a bitch, Darcy. Never once. You’re the opposite of that—a really sweet kid. Maybe a little lucky, a little sheltered, but smart enough that you didn’t really need the world to beat you up.” Imogen had stopped packing, but she had gone still again, her voice flat, her face expressionless. “Smart, but maybe not as lucky as you seem. I think you got published too young.”

“Oh,” Darcy said softly. Her heart had just broken.

“Not because your writing isn’t ready, but because
you
aren’t. You don’t trust me, and you won’t trust your own novel when it gets out there and people start to write about it. Thousands of people, some brilliant, some stupid, or vile and hurtful. I’m so scared for you, Darcy. There are pages and pages in my diary about how scared I am for you.”

“I had no idea,” Darcy said.

“That’s because I didn’t want my fears to become yours. Because they’re
mine
. And I was right about keeping them a secret too, because you’ve spent the last six weeks freaking out over one fucking typo! What’ll you be like when a thousand people start picking apart your novel?”

“It’ll be okay,” Darcy said. “Because you’ll be there.”

“Maybe.”

Darcy didn’t understand the words. She couldn’t. She shook her head.

“I think you also met me too young,” Imogen said. “That’s in my diary too. You want something more epic than this relationship, something fantastical and heavenly. You want us to read each other’s minds.”

“No, I don’t. I just wanted you to
read my fucking ending
.”

“Yeah. I’m sorry about that.” Imogen’s stone facade had cracked. She looked defeated now, her hair in disarray, her face flushed, like someone who’d lost a fistfight. “But right now my opening still sucks, and I haven’t gotten any work done in the last month. And I really need to get my head clear, so I have to go home. I have a book to write.”

Imogen turned away, stuffing a last few things of hers into the plastic garbage bag—her phone charger, a handful of rings, a signed copy of Standerson’s latest from the tour, and the box of matchbooks that she’d brought over for writing purposes, full of random jobs and settings and potential fires.

Darcy tried to stand, to stop her girlfriend from leaving. But gravity held her to the floor with an avaricious force. The air was thick, and it was impossible to speak a word.

Imogen went past without saying good-bye, leaving Darcy sitting there, trying to breathe. For her whole life, her good luck had been a trick, a bait-and-switch, a setup. The fact was, Darcy’s luck was shit.

She had met the love of her life too young, and because of that she would lose it all.

 CHAPTER 38 

YAMA WAS BACK SOON, HIS
heat spilling before him, setting the chandeliers flickering over our heads.

“Lizzie,” he said, and for a moment it felt good to hear my name.

But then I had to tell him, “It was me. I led him here.”

A look passed between Yama and his sister. His was of sadness, hers a cold expression of triumph.

“I’m so sorry,” I said.

He shook his head, but he didn’t cross the floor, didn’t reach out to me, just stared at his sister. For a moment I saw how similar their faces were. Despite his added years, they really did look like twins, except that her skin was gray, and his warm and brown.

Finally he turned to me. “I should’ve taught you more.”

“It was obvious.” My words tasted of the rusty air. “You kept telling me that names are important.”

“It was my fault.”

“Enough!” Yami clapped her hands, and black oil scattered across the floor. “There’s time for penance when our people are safe.”

I nodded and held out my hand. The droplets of oil were skittering beneath our feet like black mercury, seeking one another. They joined into a single pool, as smooth and shiny as a disk of onyx.

“How do I find him?”

Yama took my hand. “Don’t say his name. It’ll only give him warning. Just think about when you kissed him.”

A shiver went through me, but I remembered the bitter electricity of Mr. Hamlyn’s hand against my lips, the cool dryness of his skin. I let myself hate him for tricking me, for fitting so perfectly into my murder of the bad man. For being exactly what I’d needed that night. I felt my hatred became a connection between us.

I pulled Yama into the dark pool and let the current take us.

*  *  *

We stepped out of the river into hell.

The sky was on fire here, too blinding to look at, crowded with a hundred suns. The air slid into my lungs as thick as syrup, the rust and blood a taste in my mouth now, not just a smell. A roaring filled my ears and shook my bones, and I knew that we were someplace even deeper than Yama’s underworld city.

Beneath our feet was broken pavement, cratered and pitted. In all directions lay the remains of a modern-looking city, the buildings half-destroyed, the skyline as jagged as broken teeth.

I couldn’t see Mr. Hamlyn anywhere. It was too bright, too loud.

Yama stared at the broken cityscape, shading his eyes from the searing sky. “These are his memories. But of
what
?”

My eyes were tearing up in the heat. “He kept talking about a war, how whole cities died at once—adults, children, everyone. This is what made him a psychopomp.”

Yama was looking up in awe. “Death falling from the sky.”

I understood it then—the thunderous drone that made the air shiver and melt, it was the sound of a thousand propellers, the whistle of bombs falling through the air. It came from overhead, but also from the shattered ground beneath our feet, leaking from every stone.

I realized that it had to be the Second World War, and a strange thought struck me. “He’s a lot younger than you, isn’t he?”

“Some are old when they cross over.” Yama turned to me. “Can you find him?”

I shut my eyes against the burning sky and felt it, the pull of my hatred leading me to Mr. Hamlyn. He was inside the shell of a building right in front of us. It had been six stories tall once, but only the outer walls stood, the windows looming empty.

The hot, smoky air made it hurt to talk, so I pointed. We made our way across a hundred yards of crumbled asphalt and in through a gaping hole where a doorway had been. The interior was full of rubble, and the roar of airplanes and bombs echoed from the jagged walls.

Yama drew me to a halt. “We should be careful. The wolf is a lion in his own den.”

I looked up. There was no roof, just more blazing sky. “You mean, he’s
comfortable
here?”

“These are his memories of where he was made.”

I shook my head. By that logic, I’d be happy in an airport, the
air full of screams and the floor slick with blood. I didn’t want to imagine that place ever again.

But the old man’s recollections were vivid, I had to admit.

“He’s up there.” I pointed at a ragged set of stairs that clung to one of the remaining walls. They led to a corner of the building that was more or less intact. As we climbed, I could feel the roar of bombs and airplanes, as if the stairs were about to crumble beneath our feet.

At the top was a landing, where a section of roof was still attached, blocking out the fiery sky. We stumbled into its shade, half-blind for a moment.

Mr. Hamlyn was waiting there for us. He sat on a broken block of stone, a needle and thread in his hands. Scraps of cloth lay in a pile at his feet, the beginnings of a new patchwork coat. A shudder went through me as I realized: his clothes were patched together from the pickings of a bombed-out city.

“Ah, you’re here.” He didn’t look up from his work. “Not just young Lizzie but the impressive Mr. Yamaraj.”

Neither of us answered. The floor trembled beneath our feet.

“I suppose you’re upset about your missing children.”

“Are they here?” Yama asked.

Mr. Hamlyn looked up and smiled. “Only in spirit. But I’m sure you have more for me to taste.”

Yama made two fists, and sparks began to drift from his skin. The air grew even hotter around us.

“I’m not going to kill you,” he said. “But I can burn you.”

Mr. Hamlyn’s eyes were bright. “You mean, we’ll be connected?”

“You’ll bear my mark. And if you trouble my people again, I’ll find you, anywhere you run.”

The old man spread his hands, the needle still held daintily between forefinger and thumb. “But I like it here just fine, and young Lizzie is welcome anytime. You, on the other hand, are starting to annoy me.”

Yama didn’t answer, walking toward him, sparks cascading from his clenched hands. Mr. Hamlyn only smiled up at him.

That’s when I started to worry. The old man had fled in an instant when Yama had confronted him before, and had even seemed scared of me. But here in his own private hell, Mr. Hamlyn was unmoved by threats.

He placed the needle carefully beside him, and reached for a tangled ball of thread at his feet.