Touch (27 page)

Her grandfather was gone, but his voice came back to her as she stood, frozen, by
the hedge wall.

We all want to be good people
, her grandfather said.
But no one starts out that way. When we’re infants, we’re greedy little creatures.
The only things that exist are our wants and our needs. We’re not much better as toddlers.
Becoming the person you want to be isn’t an accident. It’s not something that just
happens.

We choose. We live with our choices. We make better choices. We learn to judge others
less harshly when we understand the costs of our own mistakes. So here’s my advice
for the day.

Do your best to make the choices that will lead to you becoming the person you
want
to be. Accept the fact that you’re human. Accept the fact that you’ll fail when the
days are long and harsh. And never knowingly make a choice that will make you think
less of yourself. Make choices that will make others think less of you if you have
to—but don’t make choices that lead to self-hate.

There’s enough hatred in the world. Don’t add to it.

A
LLISON LOWERED HER HANDS. For just a moment she could see everything so clearly it
might have been noon. She could see Chase. She could see his scorched hair. She could
see blood on his hands and steam rising from the snow beneath his feet. The woman
was almost within his reach, but she no longer had a gun; the man was ten yards away
from him, his hands spread in a fan at the level of his chest. He was the source of
the fire; she was certain of it.

She had no illusions. She didn’t need them, now. She wasn’t going to run away while
Chase fought. She wished—how she wished—she had taken her ph
one with her when she left the house through her bedroom window; it was on her desk.
She had no way of calling for help; screaming probably wouldn’t cut it.

But she wasn’t helpless. There was no one holding her back except herself. Herself,
her lack of experience, her fear. And if she gave in, Chase would die. Allison sometimes
hated what Emma’s sense of guilt did to Emma—but really, was her own so different?

She pulled back into the tree cover. She used what little of it there was. She crouched,
which made movement agonizingly slow. Slower than Chase’s. And she headed around him,
as if her life depended on it. She didn’t give much for her chances if she caught
the attention of both Necromancers now.

Chase had it.

Chase had it, and she needed him to keep it while she edged her way around them to
the man who was standing out of his range, controlling the fire.

And when she reached him—if she did—what was she going to do? She didn’t look at the
knife in her hand; it was the only weapon she carried. The “if” was big enough she
was willing to concentrate on one problem at a time.

She heard the woman curse and demand more power from, presumably, the man; he didn’t
reply. But his focus was on Chase; Allison rounded a tree, forgetting to breathe into
her sleeve, and she was ten yards from his back.

His exposed back. He wore a wool coat that fell past the back of his knees; it was
either dark gray or black. She couldn’t see his hands; she could see fabric stretched
across taut shoulder blades. His boots were invisible, his legs ending in snow.

But he wore no hat. She doubted very much that he wore a necklace similar to her own.
She ducked behind the tree again. She would have to run if she couldn’t move silently.
She wasn’t certain how much attention the Necromancer’s partner was actually paying
to him—and wasn’t certain if they had taken the time to trap the ground, as Chase
had done. She was pretty certain they hadn’t.

But what did she know?

Chase was in trouble. She needed to do something. She had a knife. She could stab
the Necromancer with it—but probably only once; twice if she was lucky. She needed
to make it count. And she needed to make it count in a way that still left a knife
in her hands.

It was hard to breathe. If she messed this up, she was dead. They were both dead.
But if she didn’t try at all, Chase was.

The worst thing that ever happened to me? Not dying
.

She hadn’t understood it, when he’d said it. But the gunshot—at her house—made it
real in a way she’d never really considered. She could imagine Chase as a younger
boy. She could imagine how powerless he’d felt; she felt powerless now, but she wasn’t.
She had a knife. She had silence. She had a Necromancer who was concentrating on the
only person he thought might be a threat.

She had
something
. She had hope, a bitter chance. She intended to use it, because she didn’t
want
to become Chase.

Allison Simner had never stabbed a man. She’d only hit one once, if you didn’t count
her brother. She hated causing pain. Even angry, she tried to avoid it. But she moved
toward the back of a stranger she now hated, and she held on to hate, sharpening her
fear rather than surrendering to it.

The Necromancer was taller than she was. His hair was dark, but snow-dusted where
he’d come too close to branches. More than that, she couldn’t tell. She practically
crawled across the snow toward his exposed back. She couldn’t see Chase at all.

She was almost in touching distance of the Necromancer when he turned, his hands dropping
as she raised the knife to press it against his throat. “Stop the fire,” she told
him, her voice steady.

His eyes were gray light. Emma had told her that meant he was using power; she tightened
her grip on the knife and drew it across his exposed skin. The blood that welled there
was more of a shock to her than it was to him, judging from his reaction.

“Or what, little girl?”

“Allison!”

“Or I’ll kill you.” It was cold. It was
so
cold.

He smiled. That was the worst of it. He smiled. He was bleeding. She’d cut him. But
not enough. If he was afraid at all, it didn’t show. And she knew that she had to
do more, do it quickly; that she had to make him bleed in earnest. She knew where
the dagger had to cut.

But she froze.

The woman screamed; the Necromancer who faced Allison stiffened. She saw his eyes
begin to glow as her hand shook, and she knew that her moment was passing. Maybe it
had passed. But she also knew that Chase was free. Chase who wouldn’t have bothered
with threats. Chase, who wouldn’t have wasted the one chance he was given, if he was
given one at all.

She moved her arm before the Necromancer could grab her wrist; she held the knife.
She wasn’t surprised when his hands became gloved in the white brilliance of fire;
this close, the fire wasn’t so much tendrils of flame as the pointed, solid light
of acetylene torch. And it was aimed at her.

She cut it with the knife—it was so much easier to use the knife that way. Fire didn’t
bleed. It separated, as if it were an extension of his hands; it fell away, as if
it were solid. But it didn’t bleed. It didn’t kill. She backed away.
Cut and run.

But she couldn’t run now. She couldn’t turn her back on the man. The air was dry;
the walls of her throat clung together, making breathing hard.

And then she was hit across the face and her knife hand by something warm, and she
looked at the underside of the Necromancer’s chin—and the sudden, gaping wound where
his neck had been. She froze, but her knife was nowhere near the open wound; it was
nowhere near slick enough, or red enough.

“You really are a stupid girl,” a horribly familiar voice said. The Necromancer toppled
to one side, reaching for his neck as if to close what had been so brutally opened.
Her hands shook and she forced the knife up, to point it at Merrick Longland.

* * *

He showed no more fear than the Necromancer had. “You’ve already made clear that you’ve
no intention of using what you wield.” He stepped toward her; she stepped back. “Your
hunter had better be less squeamish than you are.” He turned his back on her.

“Why?” she asked. Back exposed, she could have stabbed him. But she knew, now, that
that was a wish, a dream. Whatever it took to knife a man in the back, she didn’t
have it. Not yet. Maybe not ever.

He didn’t pretend to misunderstand, although he didn’t turn to look back at her. Instead,
he folded his arms across his chest; she could see small mounds of snow moving just
above his feet, and realized he was tapping his left foot, as if impatient.

“Your Emma has something I need. She values you enough that saving your life might
put her in my debt.” He cursed and added, “I’d hoped my former colleagues would be
competent enough to do away with the hunter by now. If you’d stayed where you were,
I wouldn’t be saving his life as well.”

Chase.

Chase had killed Longland.

“I recognize him,” Longland said, as if she’d spoken out loud. Maybe she had. She
began to shake. It was cold. It was just so cold. “It’s his fault that I’m here now.
It’s his fault that I’m powerless.” He turned on her then, and she saw the knife he
carried, saw the blood that darkened every crease in his exposed hand. “I don’t intend
to kill you, but I’ll need you to stand between us for a few minutes.”

When she blinked, he grabbed her arm and dragged her around—as he’d done once before.
This time she wasn’t carrying a baby. She was carrying a knife. And the knife was
just as helpful in the end as the baby had been.

Chase was sprinting across the snow. He was bleeding; there was a cut across his forehead
and his left cheek. His hair, which had barely recovered from the last bout of green
fire he’d been forced to endure, was singed and blackened. He carried two knives,
and the woman he’d been fighting lay facedown in the snow. The fire that burned around
the hedges dimmed; the hedges themselves began to wither.

Longland lifted his knife to Allison’s throat, and she let him. He didn’t explicitly
threaten her; the gesture was enough to stop Chase dead.

“I resent having anything to do with the preservation of your life,” Longland said,
in his chilly, even voice.

Chase looked above her head at Longland’s face. With the guttering of the fires—both
white and green—Longland stood in shadow, Allison his shield.

“Not half as much as I do,” Chase replied. “Let her go.”

“Put down your weapons.”

Chase knelt and placed the daggers in the snow, where they became less visible with
passing seconds. He rose. “Let her go.”

“When we’ve finished our negotiations. I don’t intend to harm her unless you attempt
to harm me. If I’d wanted her dead, I wouldn’t have intervened.” She couldn’t see
Longland’s face and didn’t try; she watched Chase. “I wanted you dead.”

“The feeling’s mutual.”

“You’re not dead, I note; given the nature of your injuries, you’re unlikely to die
immediately. And given the risk the girl took, I doubt I could kill you without harming
her first, which would defeat the purpose. I won’t harm her if you—”

“If I what? Give you my word I won’t try to kill you?” Chase laughed.

Longland didn’t. “Yes.”

“You know what that’s going to be worth.” Chase spit. “As much as yours would have
been in similar circumstances.”

“I’m already dead,” Longland replied. “Which you understand, even if the girl doesn’t.
If you destroy my body, there’s nothing keeping me here; I’ll return to the City of
the Dead at the command of my Queen, and I’ll reach her side instantly. Nothing I
know—
nothing
—will be hidden from her.”

“You’re hers—”

“I’m hers, but I’m not bound the way the dead are; I can’t be and be reanimated in
this fashion. You know this,” he added again, his voice sharpening. “I don’t wish
to inform the Queen that I took a personal interest in preserving the lives of the
people she ordered killed. I have a measure of freedom if you don’t damage me so badly
I have no physical anchor. And I assume you have an interest in keeping the knowledge
of tonight’s events contained for as long as they can be.”

Chase hesitated.

Merrick glanced at the corpse to one side of his feet. “He didn’t see who killed him.”
He nodded in the direction of the woman. “She didn’t see anything but you. They can
tell the Queen only what they witnessed—and only when she summons them.”

“She summoned you.”

“Not exactly. She found me. But I could be more easily found when I was not reanimated.
I’m not alive; I exist in a half-world between the living and the dead. If she calls
me, and I am compelled to return, I must resort to pedestrian means: planes, cars,
trains. If you attempt to destroy me—and you succeed—I will be at her side instantly.”

“Why did you interfere?” Chase asked. Some of the rage and the fear drained from his
face, although he didn’t exactly relax.

“Emma values this girl. I preserved her for that reason.”

“And if—”

“What Emma did once, she can do again. I want her to open the gate. I want to escape
this place. Without Emma, we don’t stand a chance.”

“We?”

Longland laughed bitterly. “The dead. You don’t understand what it’s like. The Necromancers
who died tonight didn’t. They will now,” he added, with a strange mixture of both
malice and pity. “To do what she did the first time, your Emma—”

“She is
so
not my Emma.”

“Emma, then—she gathered more power than the Queen of the Dead has ever held. And
what did she do with it? If rumor is to be believed, she used it all to pry open a
door for a few precious minutes. Not to make herself immortal. Not to consolidate
her own power in the face of her rivals; not to better her position in Court.

“I don’t understand her. I try—but I don’t. And it doesn’t matter. What she did once,
she might do again, and if she does, I want to be there. I’ll give her everything
I have—everything I’ve managed to retain—in order to be the smallest part of the lever
she uses to open that door again.

“I’ll kill if I have to. I’ll save lives—even yours—if that’s what it takes to convince
her that I’m worthy of that privilege. I’ll return her friend to her. I’ll tell her
everything I know, teach her anything I’ve learned—”

“She doesn’t need to learn anything you learned,” Allison said, breaking into their
discussion for the first time.

Longland stiffened; Allison thought he would argue. But in the end, he didn’t. “Maybe
you’re right. I wouldn’t have survived my first week at Court if I hadn’t learned
some of it. But this isn’t that Court, is it? And it
can’t
be that Court, or I’ll never be free. I have nothing else to offer,” he continued,
speaking once again to Chase.

“What were they planning to do to the rest of them?” Chase countered.

“The Necromancers came to this girl’s house because they knew she knew.”

Chase cursed.

“The others are in less danger.”

Allison was frozen for one long moment. “What do you mean, less danger?”

“There are no Necromancers with them.”

“But people were sent—”

“Yes, they were sent. You do not want our existence made public; you will force the
Queen’s hand. If pressed, she can usher in a new dark age. It’s not without risk,”
he added, as Chase opened his mouth. “And it’s possible she’ll fail—but hundreds of
thousands will perish before she does, with no guarantee that she’ll be stopped.”