Loss (26 page)

There was a sense of movement behind him, and then Death was standing by his side, slouching comfortably, his hands resting in the front pockets of his faded jeans. The Pale Rider smiled warmly at Billy, belying the chill of his voice. “Good job saving the world. That’s the sort of thing that wows them on résumés.”

“Thanks.” Billy stared at the pile of ashes that had been the Conqueror, and a lump formed in his throat, one that had nothing to do with sickness. “I killed him.”

“Only technically.”

Death the lawyer.
So Billy was only technically a murderer. Yeah, that made him feel worlds better.

“The man who had been King Mita died long and long ago,” Death said. “And the man who became the Conqueror was insane, more often than not, and his bite was poisonous. Would you call it murder to put down a rabid dog?”

The Crown felt heavy on Billy’s head. “If I were the dog, yeah.”

“You did what needed to be done. You saved the world and healed the Black Rider. Be content with that, William Ballard.”

He looked into Death’s bottomless eyes, those empty eyes, and he asked, “Is he happy now? Can you tell me that much?”

Death smiled whimsically. “Do
you
think he’s happy now?”

He thought of the father who’d mourned his daughter, of the king who’d sacrificed everything for his kingdom. He thought of the man who learned that because he’d run away to save the world, the woman he loved died of heartbreak. Billy didn’t know if there were such things as happy endings, but Mita of Phrygia deserved one. “Yes,” he decided. “Yes, he’s happy now.”

“And so you have your answer.”

No, he didn’t. But he understood that was all he was going to get. Death kept his secrets well.

“Death is in all things,” the Conqueror said. “He is the alpha and the omega, and we exist only on his whim. And he is done with whimsy! I’ve seen the end of the world, and it begins with a sheet of white!”

“That was the Atlantic pack ice, about eight hundred years ago,” said Death. “He’d seen the first pieces forming in the ocean and moving south.”

Billy frowned. “So that’s the end of the world? Icebergs?”

“It is for certain passenger ships.”

“The world echoes his mood,” the Conqueror hissed. “When it warms, he is content with his lot. But when it grows colder, then despair, little boy Pestilence! Despair!”

“He thought that when the world grew colder, that was because of you,” Billy said. “He thought that the world is here only because of you.”

“Did he now?” Death smiled ruefully as he walked over to the pile of ashes. Squatting, he scooped them into his hand and cupped them gently, almost reverently.

There was a pause in which the world held its breath, and words filled the wind in a whisper of frost:
Fare thee well, Mita, White Rider, colleague, king.

The ashes glinted in Death’s palm and then shot out of his hand and spirited off into the arctic sky. In Death’s hand, two pennies winked.

Awed, Billy whispered, “Was he right?”

Still squatting, Death closed his fist over the pennies and turned his head to face Billy. The human guise slipped, only for a breath, and Billy glimpsed something beyond his comprehension; then he blinked and the Pale Rider was once again a thin blond man with hands meant for strumming a guitar and a voice meant for song. He smiled a smile filled with the mysteries of the universe, and he said, “What do
you
think?”

Billy had no idea. And that was all right, he decided. If Death really was the start and end of everything, he really didn’t want to know.

“So,” said Death as he rose to his full height and put the pennies into his jeans pocket, “we come now to a crossroads. When you were five, you agreed to wear the Conqueror’s Crown at the right time. The one with whom you made your compact is dead. All previous agreements are forgiven. And,” he added, eyes sparkling with mischief, “some might argue that you fulfilled the terms of that agreement. Either way, you’ve done your job.”

“Um,” said Billy, suddenly sheepish. “I sort of broke the Bow. It was an accident. But, um. Yeah. I broke it.”

“That Bow?” Death pointed to Billy’s left—and there it was, lying on the snow in one complete piece: the unstrung bow, its black wood gleaming, inviting. “It takes more than that to break it permanently. But it wants you to know that it doesn’t appreciate being treated like a baseball bat.”

Billy’s mouth opened and closed, and then it opened again and he said, “Um. Thanks. And, ah, I’m sorry. About the baseball bat thing.”

Death winked. “No worries. The Bow has been through worse. And now, William Ballard, you have a choice.”

Billy held his breath.

“You may choose to remain Pestilence, Conqueror of Health, Bringer of Disease, White Rider of the Apocalypse. Or you may reject the Crown and simply be William Ballard and live your life.”

Billy’s head spun, showing him images too fast for him to follow, leaving him with impressions of people and memories—Marianne and Gramps and his mom and his dad, his Cookie Monster doll and Eddie Glass, Kurt and Joe and the others from school. And now he saw Famine, or Famines—the exotic woman in black who’d held the Conqueror’s heart, and the prim woman in black who’d reminded him of his duty, and the painfully thin woman in black who’d nearly died and had a horse that tried to feed her sugar cubes. And he saw War, both the female knight with her terrifying laughter and the girl in red with her wicked grin.

Do you know yourself yet?

Did he?

“Tell me,” said Death. “Are you William Ballard? Or are you Pestilence?”

No matter what he chose, he wasn’t the same Billy Ballard as before. He’d felt the light of the world flowing through him, connecting him to all living things. He’d seen the impossible and had traveled through time. He’d stood tall and fought back the plague. He’d saved the world.

Marianne’s voice, full of wonder:
Billy Ballard, you were a hero today. You hear me? You were a hero.

He felt the weight of the Crown upon his head, felt the mad beating of his heart as he thought of his favorite girl in black.

And then, locking his gaze on to Death’s empty blue eyes, Billy Ballard made his choice.

Chapter 24

And Then . . .

. . . it was the next morning and Billy was getting ready for school. He’d been away for a week and now had fully recuperated, bounced back, turned the corner, got better, healed up, and, all in all, was feeling pretty good. A hot shower to scrub away the last dregs of sleep, a quick tooth brushing to kill off bad breath, a comb through the hair in an attempt to tame it—these were the tools of the mundane, the everyday, the ordinary.

Billy Ballard couldn’t be happier.

He smiled as he looked at his reflection in the bathroom mirror. The white patch in his hair, noticeably bigger, looked brighter today. Whiter. Maybe with a glint of silver beneath it. He decided that he liked it.

Dressed for the day, and never mind whether he had PE or not—he’d change in the locker room, like the other guys. He grabbed his phone and wallet, threw them into his backpack, and then shut and locked his bedroom door. Keys in his pocket, he walked down the hallway, waving to the ghosts of photographs on the walls. As he went by, the impressions of the past echoed; it wasn’t an unpleasant sensation, but a restless one. Over there had been a portrait of his grandparents on their wedding day, and here used to hang a framed shot of Billy and his dad, the Ballard boys, grinning like scoundrels ready to make mischief. He touched his fingers over the spot where his dad’s face used to be, and he felt a pang in his chest—a small sadness, a tiny piece of loss. Billy acknowledged the feeling and then let it go. It was time, he decided, to put those ghosts to rest. After school, he’d talk to his mom about painting the walls, either a new coat of what was there already or, better, something new, lively. Paint was cheap, and he could do it himself—and maybe even Gramps could help. He didn’t have to be a wild conversationalist to hold a roller, and Billy thought the old man would enjoy the activity.

In the kitchen, he gave his mom a quick kiss on the cheek and smiled a hello to his grandfather. Gramps looked more
there
today, like there was someone home behind his eyes.

“Sleep well?” Billy asked, and shock of shocks, his grandfather smiled and nodded and smacked his toast with his toothless gums, one part mastication and two parts saliva.

“It’s the new meds,” chirped his mother as she offered Billy a bowl of cereal. “They’re not underperforming.”

“Yeah,” Billy agreed, grinning as he poured milk. The meds absolutely were not underperforming, not any more. He had a good feeling that this time, his grandfather’s lucid period would hang around for a while.

Billy had a good feeling about a lot of things.

***

Before PE, Billy would have to experience the joys of trigonometry, biology, and American history, all of which redefined tedium. If Billy weren’t feeling so awake, he’d have had plenty of time to catch up on his sleep.

Walking to his locker to get his books for his morning classes, he noticed that some of the other students in the hallway were casting him odd looks, like they didn’t know how to react. Maybe it was because he was in a great mood, and so he was walking taller, prouder, as if there were an invisible crown on his head. Or maybe it was just because he’d been stricken with potentially deadly bacterial meningitis and therefore had helped launch the school into its brief televised career. Celebrity by proxy. He grinned at everyone, just because, and—second shock of shocks—some of them even smiled back. Sure, they were all from the misfits’ table in the cafeteria. But for the first time in a long time, Billy didn’t feel like a pariah.

A shove from behind, making him stumble.

“Watch it, loser,” said Kurt.

Well. It was sort of comforting to know some things hadn’t changed.

Billy regained his footing and turned to face Kurt, who had Joe by his side. Kurt looked particularly stupid this morning; maybe he’d had an extra helping of dumb for breakfast. Joe just looked mean, but Billy had to admit, Joe rocked that look.

“What’re you looking at, Birdy?” Kurt sneered.

This was the part where Billy was supposed to cringe and try to turn invisible as the verbal abuse hit home. The other students were supposed to point and laugh and get in on the taunting, maybe spice it up with a fly-by noogie. And a part of Billy was ready to jump back into character and play the victim role the way he’d been playing it for years. That part of Billy still had nightmares about the Ice Cream Man, was still desperate to Keep His Head Down and hope that soon, real soon, the monsters would move on to other prey.

But the rest of Billy remembered that he had saved the world.

I even saved you,
he thought, looking at Kurt and Joe and not flinching.
It’s like the Apocalypse—their words are just words.

And the thing about words? He didn’t have to listen to them.

Billy smiled, because really, he was having a terrific day and not even Kurt and Joe could ruin that, and he kept walking toward his locker.

This time, a hand on his shoulder stopped him and spun him around. He looked up into the piggy eyes of Eddie Glass.

“You just walk away like that?” Eddie said. “My boy Kurt talks to you, and you just ignore him?” The large boy leaned in close, and Billy smelled something foul on his breath. “Bad manners, Birdy.”

Part of him wanted to cower.

Part of him wanted to run.

And part of him wished he could draw the Bow and riddle Eddie with disease after disease, slam his hatred and fury into him arrow by arrow until there was nothing left of Eddie Glass but a smear on the ground.

He thought he heard a small, still voice telling him to focus.

Billy looked at the bully who had plagued him for years, really looked at him, and he didn’t see a raging giant but just a large boy with anger in his eyes and something to prove to the world, something that had nothing to do with Billy. In that crystalline moment, he understood that Eddie had his own Ice Cream Man haunting him.

“I get it,” Billy said, and he did. He’d spent so many years being afraid of Eddie Glass, and then, after he’d used the Bow in anger, he’d been afraid of becoming Eddie Glass. But now he knew that he’d surpassed Eddie Glass, had left him far behind. Billy had confronted his demon, while Eddie was still pretending that he wasn’t scared.

Billy had never thought he’d see the day when he pitied Eddie.

Maybe that showed on his face, because something lit behind Eddie’s eyes, something ugly and small. “You’re
going
to get it,” he breathed, getting in Billy’s face.

Billy met his gaze and didn’t look away.

The two faced off, the bully and the bullied, until someone called Eddie’s name. The bigger boy’s eyes narrowed, and he growled, “This isn’t done.” He shoved past Billy to join his friends, walking big and talking bigger.

No, it wasn’t done for good. But it was done for now.

Smiling to himself, Billy finally got to his locker. His favorite girl in black was waiting for him, waving as he arrived.

“So glad you’re back,” Marianne said, grinning. “You wouldn’t
believe
the stupid assignment we’ve got for history. Get this, we have to compare the Vietnam War to spaghetti, to
spaghetti
, can you believe that? I’m thinking of saying, Yeah, it’s like pasta because it’s pointless carbs . . .” Her voice trailed off as she searched his face, and an odd smile played on her lips.

“You’re brilliant,” he said, enamored. Because she was—brilliant and gorgeous and amazing and the best friend he could ever ask for.

“And you’re looking at me in a goofy way.” A faint blush touched her cheeks, and her smile bloomed into something magical.

“I’m feeling goofy,” he said, grinning at her as he dropped his backpack to the floor and wrapped his arms around her. “I’ve been thinking about you.”

And then Billy Ballard finally kissed the girl.