The Interminables (11 page)

“What a shame that you think that way,” it said, its voice deepening with each word until it settled at a low tenor, bordering on baritone. Glowing moments seeped from its glassy flesh: an outmatched tug-of-war with the family dog, a furtive embrace in the trees by the park pond in winter, a sword flashing at his face
.
The sharp pain of the gashes; the pride in bearing them
.

And then... the memory of a young man, slim and delicate, with a well-groomed mustache, grinning like a proud father as he stood with his head inside the scissored maw of an enormous reconstructed fossil fish.

Istvan froze.

How–

The creature chuckled.

German. Perfect Viennese German.

It blew apart. Darkness rushed in to fill its place.

Istvan stumbled away. Fell back to what was merely real. Tore himself free of aching temples, of a heart that pounded like thunder, of ribs crushed by living weight, and backed up against the dead solidity of the coffee counter, breathing hard with lungs that didn't exist. “What in God's name was that?”

The woman in scarlet jerked away from Lucy's unconscious form. “I told you not to touch!”

Edmund appeared behind her, bits of egg and lobster shell speckling his suit jacket. “What the hell do you think you're–”

She spun around, hefted him by his collar with one hand, and slammed him into the wall. “Sorry, Eddie,” she said. “I had to be sure you were the mark, or I'd have showed up earlier.”

Istvan choked.

Eddie?
Eddie
? Only one person in recent memory had called the man that, and she was dead.

She was supposed to be dead.

“Grace?” whispered Edmund.

“Yeah.” Static sparked across her harness. “We'll talk when you wake up.”

She punched him.

I
t was her
. That speed, that lightning, that freakish strength… it all fit. No one but a Conduit could do that. Istvan had only ever met one.

Grace Wu.

She was sharp and raw and roiling, and her guilt held none of Edmund's mellowed nobility.

“You!” Istvan finally managed. He was still backed up against the bookshelf. He didn't want to get any closer and couldn't retreat. No. No, no. This wasn't… He couldn't…

She heaved Edmund's limp form over her shoulder. “Hello to you, too, Mengele.”

Mad doctor – cruel doctor – is that a ghost, Eddie – why did you release something like that, Eddie – how can you be you friends with that thing, that horror, that monster –

He was airborne. “Don't you ever call me that!” he roared, razored and skeletal. He slashed a bloody hand through the air. “I am nothing like that!”

Again, Beldam fled.

“Yeah,” replied Grace, “keep telling yourself that.”

No widening of her eyes. No tremble in her voice. She was good at hiding it – she was very good, she always had been – but Istvan knew she feared him. She knew he knew, knew he couldn't be fooled, and yet she never let up on that bloody bravado of hers!

She adjusted her grip on Edmund, balancing him so his feet no longer dragged on the floor.

Istvan blocked her path, muddy feathers rustled over and across one another, barbed wire tangling and tearing their vanes. The pain of the Twelfth Hour's bindings dug into his chest, burned at his wrists: a warning which, for the first time in years, he wasn't certain he didn't need. “Where do you think you're taking him?” he hissed.

She sighed. “You have a problem with the couch?”

He glanced back at the living room. Bits of scorched food spattered the doors of the liquor cabinet. The front window was broken.

“I'll clear off any glass,” said Grace. “Now, remember, don't touch our femme fatale, all right?” She jerked her head at Lucy. “Remember what happened when you touched her, Doc?”

He cringed. He glanced down at the strange woman, sprawled on the floor in her dress, abandoned where she had fallen. Even now, it was like she wasn't there. Empty. And to force a possession – to… to draw his very substance, like wire, like…

He brushed at his left cheek and jaw, where his dueling scars had been before their near-obliteration by burning, and almost expected his fingers to come away bloody.

“It gets worse,” Grace said. “That was just a fragment. A shard. Trust me, it gets worse.”

Istvan shuddered. “How is it that you can touch her, then?”

Grace tapped the copper band around her head. Then she brushed past him, still holding Edmund, and laid the man out on his own couch.

“You haven't said why,” Istvan said.

No response. She propped Edmund's legs up on a pillow.

Something twisted in Istvan's chest. “Miss Wu, you're back from the bloody dead, and you haven't said why!”

Grace looked up. “Hey, can you make sure no one's come to investigate? I'm good, but I really don't want to deal with an army of smilers right now.”

“Army of what?”

She waved at the window. “Torches. Pitchforks. Just go have a look, OK?”

Istvan stared at her. Stared at Grace bloody Wu, standing over Edmund in his own house with a broken window that she'd probably thrown him through.

Then he went to the front door and opened it.

A pair of children ran away, screaming, as children do. The curtains at the next house over whisked shut.

Istvan stepped out. He closed the door.

Pista
, the creature had called him. A nickname. A reminder of happier days, cut short long ago. Oh, Pietro had been so proud to see that monster of a fish reassembled and put on display. A magnificent beast, in life. He'd drawn so many pictures of it.

Which do you think, Pista, the blue or the green?

The front steps were clear, and Istvan sat on them, propping his head in his hands and trying to catch the breath he no longer drew. No one had called him that in over a hundred and twenty years.

E
dmund came to
. Then he wished he hadn't. The wind was too cold, his back ached, and he was half-certain someone had sawed his head open and filled it with confetti. He touched nervous fingers to what felt like the seam. Metal. A thin band of it, all the way around his skull.

He stared up at the ceiling, wondering why there was wind if there was a ceiling there. Was that rain? It had been starting to rain when he'd left. Or arrived. Or... something. He couldn't remember. He and Lucy had been having fun, right? Time flew. Was she ever pretty. What had they…

A railroad spike hammered through one temple.

“Edmund?” someone was saying, over and over. “Edmund?”

Cold bit into his shoulder, a bone-deep numbness that he recognized. The pain receded. He groaned, sitting partway up. Couch. He was on the couch.

Lucy, nothing: this was one of those days, wasn't it? The bad days. Figments and dreams. He didn't feel hungover, exactly, but it was awfully close.

He massaged his face, regretting everything he'd never done. “How much?”

“None at all,” said Istvan. There had always been a faint, indefinably distant quality to the specter's voice, but the effect was even more pronounced now. A pat on his shoulder. “None at all.”

Edmund finally got his eyes to focus. They were in the living room, which correlated with vague memories of showing Lucy through the front door, and there was a pillow knocked onto the floor near his feet. His kitchen table lay flipped on its side. Burned things spattered across the ceiling and walls. A cold wind gusted in through the shattered panes of his front window. “The hell,” he said.

Istvan crouched to his left, as he usually did – from that side, the ghost's scarring wasn't as visible. Before him, the limp form of Lucy in her yellow dress slumped against the upright radio, and before her...

He stared.

Grace.

He wasn't dead. Edmund knew that. There wasn't enough unimaginable torment for that, and anyway Istvan was right next to him and translucent as ever.

That left his list of possible explanations a solid blank.

Grace Wu. Sitting, arms propped on crossed legs, and watching him blink. She wore a new costume now: a real costume, armored, reinforced to keep her from accidentally shattering her own bones. Bright red. Bright yellow. She'd always liked bright colors. Her cowl was off. Her hair, black as her undersuit, was cut to just above her shoulders. Its strands crackled where the wind struck. Age and worry lines were just beginning to show around her eyes. She was still painfully beautiful.

“Grace?” he said.

“In the flesh, Eddie.”

Edmund tried to concentrate. Deep breaths. His right hand crept down and held tight to his pocket watch. He was more calm than he ought to have been, he thought. Istvan's presence likely had something to do with that. Good old Istvan.

Grace. Hello, Grace. Long time. Looking good. How are you? Where have you been?

Why didn't you call?

His jaw ached, he realized. “Grace?”

“Yes?”

“Did you punch me?”

“A little.”

He rubbed at it. That would bruise, then. That would bruise badly. “Oh.”

Grace shrugged. “Had to hit hard reset to make sure you'd clean up right. Sorry.”

Edmund touched the metal circlet around his head again. This didn't feel real. It was like he was one step distant, watching himself talk. “Don't worry about it.”

She stood. She held out a hand to him.

“I'm fine,” he said. “I can get up myself.”

“No, Eddie, I need the tiara back.”

“Oh.” He took the circlet off and handed it to her.

She set it back on her own head. “Thanks.”

He got to his feet, waving off Istvan's attempted assistance. It was automatic, he knew, and appreciated, but leaning on a ghost was ill-advised at the best of times. Luckily, his own legs held him. “Can I... get you anything? Water? Tea?”

She shook her head. “Don't bother making a trip to the well for me. I can't believe you people seriously don't have running water yet.”

“It's on the shortlist,” he replied.

“I bet.”

“There were some issues with flooding. Contamination. We're working on it. Even wizards know practical things, you know,” he added, hoping he didn't sound too defensive. “Some of the oldest spells are actually instructions on how to preserve food and the like.”

She raised an eyebrow at him. “Don't tell me you have a copy of
Ye Olde Magickal Art of Digging Privies
.”

He smiled, despite himself. “Actually, the division between magic and mundane was much less strict in those days, and a few of the records do cite more humble sources. Not much on privies, but–”

“Awesome. Anything on hot showers?”

“The Romans had plumbing,” he said, and then the situation caught up to him again. He looked at Lucy. She was breathing, shallowly. He wondered if he was actually going to throw up or if it just felt that way. “What did you do to her?”

“There's a creature,” said Istvan, quietly. “Something possessing her.”

“She's a smiler,” said Grace.

Edmund frowned. “A what?”

“Smiler. She was controlled, Eddie. A puppet. Given a whole new personality. Lucy probably isn't even her name. She was speaking for something else, seeing for something else, this whole time, and never knew it.” Grace brushed at her hair, her expression strange and distant. “Had you falling for it, too.”

Edmund held up a hand, feeling dizzy. Too much at once. His window was broken and there was rain getting in. “Wait. Wait, say that again?”

“No,” said Grace. “You don't know what you're dealing with. Neither one of you knows. You've been kept in the dark, Eddie, and if you want real answers, you'll have to come with me.” She bent down, hefting the unconscious Lucy over one shoulder, and jutted her chin at Istvan. “The spook's optional.”

Edmund rubbed at where the band had been, one corner of his brain marveling at how effortlessly she moved under the weight. Almost like she wasn't carrying anyone at all. Superpowers, she'd said, are kind of great. Not that I need them to be awesome.

He could agree with that. Though certain aspects of her Conduit abilities had made certain things... interesting.

They hadn't killed her, then. Not yet.

“Where?” he asked.

She turned. “Barrio Libertad.”

He took a step backwards. “Barrio Libertad?”

“Yeah.”

“The fortress-state? The one sitting in the ruins of Providence?
That
Barrio Libertad?”

“That's the one. Look, I know our reputation isn't great, but trust me on this one.”Edmund wavered, suddenly unsure if his legs were working after all. Grace never had adjusted to magic. Not his, not anyone's… but especially not his. Why not take up with a place utterly isolated from the rest of Big East? A place from which no one never returned? A place that the Magister had blacklisted the instant she'd been elected?

Providence. Ground zero. The place where Shokat Anoushak died in a storm of fire.

Was it something he'd done? Something he'd said? She jabbed a thumb at her chest. Lights flickered behind her goggles. “I'm Resistor Alpha, Eddie. State hero of
that
Barrio Libertad. I'm here for a reason, I promise. Come with me and I'll waive your wizard-ness for the authorities. Nothing to worry about.”

Istvan drew closer to him, voice low. “There
was
a creature,” he said. “I saw it. I fought it. It… it knows things it shouldn't. Your address, Edmund. The Bernault devices. If you're going with Miss Wu, I'm coming with you.”

Edmund swallowed. “Istvan, you can't cross the border.”

“I'm coming, irregardless.”

“‘Regardless,'” Edmund corrected him automatically. “And what do you mean? How?”Istvan looked away. Barbed wire looped around his boots in tangled circles, wound tight. “Providence isn't that large,” he muttered. “I don't believe Barrio Libertad is far enough out of bounds to hurt too badly.”

Edmund raised an eyebrow, wishing he felt more relieved at the other man's determination. If Istvan was willing to endure that kind of punishment to find out what was going on, well... that left Edmund little choice but to match it. Barrio Libertad. Providence. Last battlefield of the Wizard War. No place he'd ever wanted to see again, awash in rumors of horror and paradise.

Grace Wu, alive.

She was tugging the front door open already. “You coming or not?”

Edmund glanced to Istvan. “Is she…?”

The specter sighed, crossing his arms as he regarded her. If Edmund hadn't known him better – known how badly the scarring twisted his expressions – he would have sworn that was a scornful grimace. “It's her.”

Edmund took a breath.

Seven years. Not a word. Not a sign.

He stood. “Hold up, Grace. Let me at least get something to put in the window.”

N
o teleporting
. No magic at all. Grace made that very clear: Barrio Libertad, and indeed all of Providence, was under interdiction. Given Shokat Anoushak's example during the Wizard War, it was a sensible precaution… but that didn't answer how it was done, or how means Grace insisted were non-magical could counter the impossible.

She didn't know, either.

“I'm not that kind of genius,” she said. “You'll want to ring up the architect for that.”

“Are you sure this will work?”

“I told you, only teleportation is permanently blocked and for the rest we've already made an exception just for you. You won't turn into a pile of dust, I promise.”