Never (26 page)

Emma looked up from her spot beside Eddie's bed.

“Emma!” Wendy cried, rushing across the room and dropping to her knees beside the doctor. Emma's face was drawn, the circles under her eyes heavily shadowed and purple, but she was firm in the Never. Wendy flung herself at the slim doctor and hugged her tightly.

“Emma, I thought you were dead!” Wendy exclaimed, shaking with suppressed emotion as she drew back. Her mouth was dry, her palms sweaty. “They hauled your body out and the Lady Walker said…they said that she'd dragged some Reaper's soul into the forest…I thought it was you!”

“I'm not dead,” Emma said, hands clenching her skirt taut between her knees. She forced herself to relax, visibly straightening and taking deep, even breaths. “Close, but not there yet.”

“What happened?”

Emma raised an eyebrow. “Wendy, please. You're certainly smarter than that. By now you have to have the lay of the land. What do you think happened?”

“You were going to help me,” Wendy sighed. “Undo all of Jane's sneaky work. Jane and Elise couldn't have that.”

Emma touched a finger to her nose. “Bingo. Grandmother was…most displeased to learn that I intended to aid you in unbinding yourself. She had Jane…waylay me. One splitting headache and a high fever later, I find myself here.”

Wendy cocked an eyebrow. “Speaking of…how are you here like this? Is your Light sealed away like mine?”

“My Light is safe. Jane merely administered a poison we normally use to wake Reapers to the Light. It's called drinking from the Good Cup. It brings you quite close to death if dosed properly. Jane was less than careful. I have faith, however. I'll be feverish for several days, but I've beaten this before, when I was initiated into the Reapers. I will beat it again.”

“Oh. I thought maybe that you were like Eddie, like they wrapped your cord up the same way they did his.”

“They wrapped your cord? That's it?” Emma gaped at Eddie; she grabbed him by the shoulder and shook in frustration. “I can fix that! That is simple to undo! Why didn't you say anything, Eddie?! Do you like risking your life?”

“I didn't think about it,” Eddie said, flushing. “I was just so glad to see you still…well, sort of alive. It didn't even cross my mind to tell you that we figured out what the problem with my body was.” He held up a nearly translucent hand. “Though I guess I should've, huh?”

Emma, laughing, shook her head. “I'm impressed, Wendy, I really am. Now that I look at him closely, I'm amazed that I didn't see the wrapping of his soul before. Come here, Eddie.” She held out her hands.

Eddie hesitated. “What are you going to do?”

“I'm going to do what should have been done days ago, Eddie. I'm going to fix you.” Emma cracked her knuckles and shook her hands to loosen them. “Come here.”

He hesitated. “But what if Wendy needs—”

“Eddie,” Wendy said sharply. “Do it. I can't…it kills me to say this, but I can't help you. Not like this. Not with everything going on. Please, Eddie. Please.”

Eddie remained unconvinced. “Will it hurt?”

“No, Eddie, it won't,” Emma said kindly. “It's a matter of finding the edge of your cord and spinning. Unraveling. Cords are
stretchy and flexible; they hold an immense amount of personal power in them—which is why a Walker's cord, their connection to the Light, rots away as they take in the essence of others.”

Wendy frowned. That explained why Elle's body had virtually exploded when her cord was severed.

Emma, noting Wendy's angry expression, interpreted her concern incorrectly.

“I assure you, Eddie will be fine—nice and solid and waking up in no time at all. If I'd only known this before…so much misery could have been avoided!”

Frowning, Wendy sat back and held up a hand as Emma had held up Eddie's, wiggling her fingers in the pre-dawn light filtering in through the window. Her fingers were thinner along the edges, her hand losing substance. She wrapped one hand around the other wrist and squeezed, feeling the strange sensation of her not-flesh giving beneath her grip.

“Speaking of the spirit getting thin,” Emma said, grimacing and examining her own hands. They were growing paler. “I'm running out of time. I must be waking up. Come here, Eddie.”

Eddie stepped forward. “Okay,” he whispered. “Do it. I'll hold down the fort. But you…don't you go getting yourself taken over, okay? No creature feature for you. Please?”

“Scout's honor,” Wendy promised, tears in her eyes. “I love you, you know that, right? You big lug.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Eddie said. He wasn't crying but his voice was thick and tight. He pressed a sweet kiss to Wendy's temple and she inhaled the scent of him, trying to imprint his essence on her very soul. “I bet you say that to all your dead sexy best friends.”

“Just you,” Wendy said, playfully chucking him under the chin, attempting to shake off the overwhelming feeling that she would never see Eddie again. She stepped back to put distance between them, to give herself a moment to be separate before she lost yet another friend in the Never. “Just you, I promise.”

“Hey, Wendy?” Eddie asked. When Wendy looked him in the eye Eddie winked and blew her a kiss. “All that stuff I said before, in my letter? I still mean it. I love you.”

“I know, Eds.” Then she moved aside as Emma knelt down and began to unravel the mess the Reapers had made of Eddie's cord.

“About Pete. If he treats you badly—”

“You'll be the first person I'll call,” Wendy assured him. “Scout's honor.”

“Amateurs,” Emma muttered under her breath, her fingers darting in and out of Eddie's gut with remarkable speed. Beneath her hands the silver unwound from his center, whole but thin.

“What now?” Eddie asked. He cleared his throat nervously. Wendy crossed her arms over her chest. Part of her ached and wanted to run to him, to hold him one last time just in case…in case…

She held off.

“Sit in your body, Eddie,” Emma instructed. “Lay back and try to line yourself up right. If anything feels like it's hanging out, it probably is.”

Eddie chuckled as he edged onto the hospital bed. “No peeking at my insides, ladies, or under the sheet. A guy needs some privacy, you know.”

“Be good, Eds,” Wendy said.

“Always,” he replied and laid back. Emma's hands flew over his midsection and, just like that, the loop of silver cord in her hands was gone.

“That's it?” Wendy said, amazed.

“That's it,” Emma said and sighed. She sagged a little and Wendy rushed forward, catching her.

“You're a dumbass,” Wendy said baldly. “You used some of yourself to link him back to his body, didn't you?”

“Had to,” Emma said, wiping the back of her wrist against her forehead. “Whoever tied him up blocked him very well…on purpose.”

“Elise,” Wendy said.

“Most likely. Or Jane.” Emma coughed roughly and held up a pale hand. “I'm cold. My body is, rather. They must be trying something new with me to keep my temperature down. How do you feel?”

“Thin,” Wendy admitted. With Eddie gone and Piotr out of the room, she felt free to just be herself for once. “I don't know how much longer I can keep going, to be honest.”

“I'm surprised you've held on this long,” Emma agreed and winced. “You truly are very strong, Wendy.”

“Just don't give up, okay? I'll try and sort this all out as fast as I can.”

“You too,” Emma said. She was so pale and thin now that the dawn light streaming through her glossy red hair shone rainbows briefly against the floor before clouding…and vanishing.

Heavy-hearted, Wendy left her best friend's stirring body behind and caught up with Piotr at the stairs. Behind her the machines in Eddie's room began beeping wildly as Wendy slid through the door.

“Where is Eddie? Did you say goodbye?” Piotr asked, glancing over her shoulder at the doctors rushing toward Eddie's room.

“Yeah,” Wendy whispered, scrubbing a hand across her face. “I did. Come on.”

“Russian Hill?” Wendy held up the key that Clyde had given her. An address had been finely etched into the bow of the key. Wendy scowled. It was almost too easy, it felt like a trap.

“Russian Hill,” Piotr agreed. He surreptitiously pressed a hand against his side, but Wendy noticed. It pained her, but she said nothing, asked nothing. After their long and turbulent day, Wendy had learned the value of silence.

The earthquakes were playing havoc with the highways so traveling to Russian Hill took longer than Wendy expected. She breathed a sigh of relief when they finally stepped off the bus. It had that wound its way drunkenly through the massive spirit web forest up Hyde Street and left them near the Norwegian Seamans Church, only a block away from the Francisco Street town home address listed on the key. Wendy was sore from head to toe from dodging the dangling webs and her essence felt weak, drained from just the proximity of the rent in the sky. She was definitely growing thinner.

The house was tan and set on the hill, the garage huddled below. During the ride over had Wendy thought that they would just pass through the garage but on reaching the house was surprised to find that it was solid in the Never.

Very, very solid.

“There's nothing important here,” Wendy said to Piotr, both of them gazing up at the town home. “This isn't like Alcatraz or the Winchester house, it can't be a node of power or whatever, it's not special. It's just a home, right? So why is it so solid? It's like the Palace Hotel. I could kick that wall down before I'd go through it.”

Piotr shrugged. “This is a mystery. Is it important?”

“Who knows? I'm just trying to figure out the right questions to ask these days.” Wendy turned and began mounting the stairs. “Well, here's hoping someone left the door open, otherwise we're not getting in.”

The owners of the home had locked the door behind them but luck was smiling on Wendy for once. She and Piotr stood on the
stoop debating how to find a way inside when a white van pulled into the driveway below. A skinny white girl with dreads and an intricate cross scarred into her collarbone mounted the stairs to the front door; she was carrying a bucket jammed with cleaning supplies and a mop and humming a jaunty tune under her breath.

On the front stoop, she pulled out a ring of keys and, pausing to yawn, picked one.

“Hello?” the maid called, sliding the key into the lock and tapping the door as she slowly entered. “Laurie? Kara? It's Seri! I know you two are probably sleeping off New Years so I'll just…oh my…oh shit…shitshitshit!”

Seri dropped her cleaning supplies and fled, leaving the door open just enough for Wendy and Piotr to squeeze inside. Once in the house, Wendy realized exactly why Seri had run. In addition to several long, brown hand-shaped splotches on the walls, there were large muddy footprints in the foyer, and several puddles of dried blood on the floor. The entire foyer stank of death and decay; exactly like the hospital room they'd just left.

Wincing and holding her breath, Wendy followed the filthy trail deeper into the house. It led past several mirrors, all busted into a spider web of cracks. Shards littered the floor. “Piotr,” Wendy whispered, “I've got a really bad feeling about this.”

The door to the basement was open.

“I believe that woman—Kara was her name?—lived here,” Piotr said. “I think that she and the bunny-slipper woman lived here together.”

“Yeah, I'm starting to get that vibe as well,” Wendy said. “Should we…should we go down there?”

“We have come this far,” Piotr said. “I have lost Elle and Lily and Dora and Tubs and Specs and James. All this…no, Wendy, we cannot hesitate.”

“Right,” Wendy said. She took a deep breath. “Okay. Let's…let's go.”

Together, holding hands, they followed the horrible splotches down two levels to the basement. The lights were still on, dim and flickering and still in the clammy chill. The hearth across the room was in pieces; there were shattered remains of a mirror jumbled against the far wall.

“Piotr,” Wendy said. “Is that my imagination or is there a door back there?”

“I see it, too,” he said and drifted forward as if entranced. Wendy felt the chilly tug of the air moving around them as she squeezed Piotr's hand.

“It's a door only in the Never,” Piotr said, bending down and examining the destroyed ruins of the fireplace. They were a frame for the heavy, solid wooden door set in the middle of the stone in the Never alone.

Dazed, Piotr reached for the handle. The door didn't budge. Wendy's hand dipped into her pocket; she pulled out the key Clyde had given her. The one Tracey had given him.

Wendy swallowed, turning the key over in her hand. Was she ready for whatever was behind that door? She had no clue but sensed that the answers were there, waiting.

“I think this is what we need,” she suggested at last and handed the key to Piotr. He slid the key into the lock and turned.

Click. Click. Click.

THUD.

The door opened when he pulled the handle this time.

“Oh,” Wendy sighed. The light that lit this tiny room was nothing more than reflected sunlight. There was a hole in the ceiling, cunningly cut and covered with thin mesh and thinner panes of glass, that allowed the natural dawn light to filter down, illuminating the great mounds of dust that had accumulated over everything. Shelves lined the narrow room and the items on them were neatly stacked and sorted: books, piles of linen, rolls of parchment, and small statues, totems, and intricate, delicate woodcarvings.

Wendy, holding her elbow over her nose to protect her face, blew on the closest pile of filthy items. The dust rose up in a huge puff and Wendy coughed despite herself, inhaling great quantities of the filthy air.

“I know these things,” Piotr murmured as the dust settled and Wendy's mighty blow had cleared the first tangled bundle. They were base tan tunics, embroidered with fine black and golden red thread. Piotr ran a hand over the fabric and smiled.

“I cannot believe these are here,” he said quietly. “I cannot believe they have traveled so far. I'd forgotten…so much. I didn't know that they brought these, too. I would have thought that they'd have mildewed to dust by now. I suppose in the living lands that they must have.” He squinted around in that strange way Wendy recognized as Piotr looking into the living world. “I cannot tell,” he said at last. “The Never is simultaneously too thin and too strong here.”

“Piotr?” Wendy asked, recalling something from the last memory he'd shown her, the girls playing by the river. “This stuff. This is the stuff made by your mother?”

He nodded absently. “Yes. I think…I think these are the treasures of the Reapers. I think…” he reached into the next pile and then froze.

“Oh, Wendy,” Piotr whispered.

“What is it?” she asked. “What did you find?”

Slowly Piotr took the length of fabric in both hands and pulled it from the shelf. It flapped out, longer than he was, and puddled on the ground.

“My mother's cloak,” he whispered, aghast.

“Shut up!” Wendy gasped, startled. “How'd that get here? Why doesn't your mom have it?”

“You don't know? No, no, of course not. We've been so, so very busy, running like rabbits through the night. Now it is dawn and we are here, together. Come close, Wendy,” Piotr said, setting aside the cloak and taking her hand, “and I will show you.”

Wendy licked her lips. “You mean like another memory? Like before?”

“
Da
,” he said. “The last one, I think. We have had no time for me to finish the tale, but now…” His hand surreptitiously grazed his side. “Now I think I must.”

That decided it. “I'm in,” Wendy said. “Shove me down the rabbit hole, Alice.”

Piotr smiled and drew her close amid the filth and dust, wrapping his arms around her waist and leaning Wendy backward. Wendy wrapped her arms around his neck and let him support the bulk of her weight as Piotr pulled her closer.

He kissed her.

The memory fell around them like gentle rain, a halo of muffled mist pouring along the ground as Piotr's recollections rose from the mist.

“My mother,” Piotr said, pulling back from their kiss and frowning at the web now entirely encasing his chest, “knew that the Reapers would never give up. She'd offended them. They would return.”

“How long did the Reapers leave her alone before they came again?” Wendy asked. It killed her to know that this was what Piotr had been carrying for centuries, locked in the back of his skull but unable to access the knowledge. Piotr had sworn he'd protect the cloak and the necklace—and she knew Piotr was not one to give his word lightly—to him, knowing that he'd sworn to uphold some duty but had shirked it…it must be so maddening.

“To Sanngriðr, it was as if she'd stepped out of the room a moment, as if she'd given my mother just enough time to think things over and come to the most obvious solution. For the rest of us, the Reapers…the three Riders on shining horses…came once more as the year died.”

“That's enough time…you all could have bailed. Why were you still there?”

“Death cannot be outrun, Wendy. Sanngriðr had my mother's scent—she could have found her anywhere in the world. Furthermore, where were we to go? This was our home. Though, granted, the villagers would no longer do business with us. My mother's wares went unsold for the first time ever. We spent the entire autumn putting away my father's extra harvest, for no one would dare trade with the tainted children of the red-witch.”

“Your mother?”

“
Da
. And no one cursed more loudly than Uncle Kirill, who now knew that my father had lied to him all those years before. Kirill wanted nothing to do with my mother after that—he'd spent two decades believing that it was not his failing that allowed his brothers to die, but simple bad luck. Now he was faced with the truth—he had not been good enough a swordsman to save them and the only reason he was alive was due to a
woman
.”

Piotr spat. “It infuriated him;
she
infuriated him. Kirill was wrongheaded in many ways. His wife had died birthing his son Yuri, and Kirill never remarried. When he found out what she was, he blamed her loss on Mother. Kirill thought Mother ought to have stepped in and saved her despite the fact that Mother never even learned of my aunt's bleeding before my aunt was a day dead.”

“Ouch. That's…that's just rough,” Wendy said. She couldn't imagine the grief Kirill must have carried around with him every day, the anger that must have blazed into being on learning that one of Death's handmaidens had been so close at hand all along. “I kinda get that. So was Kirill around when Sanngriðr and the others showed up again?”

“In the dead of winter, as the dawn broke the horizon, I sat with my father and Uncle Kirill in the trees of the forest as, far below us, a large boar foraged. It had found good pickings over the autumn, the swine was still fat and jolly, snuffling beneath the snow for lunch.”

Piotr grimaced as, around them, the memory unfolded, growing
brighter and firmer as he relived it. Past-Piotr was on the highest branch, arrow notched as Kirill, on an opposing branch, silently lifted one hand. Wendy spied Borys in the bushes, a large spear at hand, a notched sword by his feet.

Kirill dropped his arm and the arrows flew, one after another, embedding themselves in the boar's neck.

Jerk or not, Wendy thought, the man was talented with a bow; Kirill's first arrow speared through the boar's eye, the second impaled the other, and the third embedded itself in the neck so that a large spurt of blood gushed across the thick snow.

Grinning, Borys jumped from the bushes, spear and hand, and approached the boar. “Tonight, my family, we feast well! Kirill, I give you my thanks. We have not had meat in weeks. My girls are getting scrawny!”

“You needn't thank me but be careful,” Kirill ordered Borys, unstringing his bow. “She is not yet dead. Let her bleed a bit before you get within biting range.”

“Which is why I lead with the spear,” Borys replied cheerfully, stepping past the bushes. He had hardly gotten a foot closer when, from the trail, they heard a sharp, furious squeal. A second boar charged forward, her head up, mouth open, and bit Borys sharply on the leg.

“Papa!” Piotr cried from his vantage point in the tree as his father toppled to the snow. The second boar, scenting his blood, bit again and again, her sharp tusks and teeth rending the flesh of his leg apart in seconds.

“Piotr!” his uncle ordered, rapidly restringing his bow. “I'll stay with your father. Run and get Yuri! Be quick! Watch for boars!”

Past-Piotr scrambled down the tree.

“Piotr!” His father cried. “Forget Yuri! Get your mother!”

“No!” demanded Kirill. “Borys, be still you stubborn fool and let me help you for just once! Eir cannot help here—you are only wounded, not dying. Get Yuri, Piotr. Hurry!”

Past-Piotr sprinted off, leaving his uncle and father behind.

“I took the fastest route to find him, but my cousin was not in the fields or the village,” Piotr said as the world pulsed around them, short snippets of Piotr stopping to check each location flashing around them and fading rapidly. “He was not even at the cabin at the edge of the woods. So I headed for home. If I could not find Yuri, then my mother would have to do.”

Wendy shook her head. She knew how this had to go. “The Valkyrie were there, waiting.”

“Correct. My mother had taught my sisters all she knew about the Reapers—how to fight them long enough to escape, how to run to earth and hide in flowing water to disperse their scent—but Eir didn't expect Sanngriðr to return so quickly. She thought that Sanngriðr's Riders would wait at least until the spring to come again.”