Touch (6 page)

Petal’s growling grew deeper.

Allison stopped walking. In the street ahead, in the middle of a road that cars traveled
on shortcuts, stood two men.

* * *

Had they just been walking, she wouldn’t have noticed them. They wore normal winter
coats, hats, faded jeans; one wore boots, the other, running shoes. One of them seemed
to be about their age; the other was older.

They weren’t walking, though. They were waiting. Their hands hung by their sides,
and in the shadowed evening light, Allison saw that they wore no gloves. Emma slid
her gloved hand out of her pocket and held it out to Allison who understood what she
intended; she pulled Emma’s glove off and shoved it into her own pocket for safekeeping.

“The dead are here,” Nathan told them.

Emma knelt to let Petal off his leash and rose quickly. The rottweiler was growling
now as if growling were breath.

“Emma Hall?” One of the two men said, after a long pause.

Emma nodded.

He lifted his hands, palm out, as if in surrender. Or as if he was trying to prove
that he meant her no harm. As if. “We’ve come a long way, looking for you,” he said.
He took a step forward.

So did Petal.

“You’re in danger, here,” the younger man added. “We’ve come to bring you to safety.”

“Why am I in danger?” Emma asked, as if meeting two strange men who knew her by name
in the middle of the night near the cemetery was a daily occurrence. Allison heard
the tremor in her voice, because she knew Emma so well.

Her own throat was dry.

“You’re special, Emma.
We’re
special, and you’re like us. You’re gifted. People won’t understand what you can
do. They’ll fear it. If they can, they’ll kill you. We’re here to make sure that doesn’t
happen.”

Allison was stiff and silent. The two men said something to each other; it was quiet
enough that the feel of syllables traveled without the actual words. Emma swore. She
let go of Nathan’s hand, lifting hers as if to surrender. Nathan seemed to disappear.
But Allison knew Nathan. He wouldn’t leave Emma. Not now.

Neither would she.

“They have the dead with them,” Emma whispered to Allison, although she faced straight
ahead. Her voice dropped. “Four.”

Allison wasn’t Emma. She couldn’t see the dead. But she didn’t need to see them to
understand what Emma meant. Necromancers derived their power from captive ghosts.
Four was bad.

E
MMA’S HANDS WERE SHAKING; one was numb.

Allison had been right about one thing: Touching Nathan was no different from touching
any other dead person. It leeched heat out of her hands, numbing them.

There were four ghosts chained to the two men who now approached. Two of them were
women, one only slightly older than Emma or Allison and the other older than Emma’s
mother. The two boys, however, were exactly that: boys. One looked as if he could
pass for six on a good day. The other she guessed had been nine or ten at the time
of his death.

The dead, to Emma’s eyes, looked very much as if they were still alive. There was
one significant difference, though. She could never tell, looking at the dead, what
color their eyes were. It didn’t matter if she knew what the color had been before
their death, either. Her father’s eyes—and, more significant, Nathan’s—were the same
as the rest. They seemed slightly luminescent in the dark of night, but that luminescence
shed no color; it was like an echo of the essence of light. Maybe it was pure reflection.
Her father had told her that there was a place to which the dead were drawn and that,
for roughly two years, that place was all they could see.

All they wanted to see.

Eye color wasn’t the only thing the four dead people were missing. They lacked any
expression at all as they stood silent, still, unmoving. In that, they looked like
corpses. Emma knew she could scream at—or to—them, and they would hear as much as
an actual corpse, and respond the same way. She thanked whatever god existed that
Allison couldn’t see them.

Nathan, however, could.

“Stay back,” she told him, voice low. “Stay with me.”

With the dead as escorts, the two men began to move; they walked slowly. Nathan started
whistling the theme song to an old Western his dad used to watch. Emma wanted to laugh.
She also wanted to run.

One of the two men gestured; white fire rose on either side of the road. It stretched
from a point just behind the men to a point well behind where Emma, Allison, and Petal
were. They now stood in a tunnel.

Allison’s sharp intake of breath made it clear that the fire, unlike the ghosts, was
visible.

“So,” Emma said, backing up. “This is supposed to make me trust you?”

“No,” the taller of the two men replied. “It’s supposed to keep us safe.” His eyes
were now the color of a dead man’s eyes, he’d absorbed so much power.

Emma stopped moving.

Eyes narrowed, she could see the delicate strands of golden light around the Necromancers’
hands and wrists. If she were closer—and close was
so
not where she wanted to be—she would see those strands as chains, like the chains
of a necklace or a delicate bracelet. Unlike jewelry, the chains ended in the figurative
heart of a person—a dead person. If she could grab those chains, she could break them,
depriving the Necromancers of the source of their power.

Petal was growling nonstop. Emma felt the hair on the back of her neck rise; she felt
the howl of a sudden, arctic wind and turned, leaving her dog to keep watch.

The road behind her back was gone. In its place, rising up past the boughs of the
old trees that lined the street on the wrong side of the fence, was a standing arch
composed almost entirely of the same fire that blocked escape on two sides.

“We don’t have time to explain things here,” the tall man continued. “So we’ve arranged
a little trip.” He frowned, said something to the man beside him. Emma reached out
and caught Allison’s hand, pulling her close. As she did, strands of white flame shot
out from the right side of the road and wrapped themselves around Allison. The fire
was
cold
.

“Stop it!” Emma shouted. “Let her go!”

The taller man shook his head. “I’m sorry,” he said, in a calm and reasonable voice.
“But she’s seen us, and she’s not one of us. In future, you’ll understand why it’s
important to leave no witnesses behind.”

Emma grabbed the white strand that was tightening its grip on Ally’s throat. It was
bloody cold; ice would have been warmer. Contact with it numbed her fingers instantly.

This is why I wanted you to run!
she thought, struggling—and failing—to get a grip on the tendril of fire. Ally was
turning purple; her knees buckled. Petal leaped at the man who’d been doing most of
the talking, and Emma couldn’t even watch; she was trying—and failing—to force the
fire to let go of her best friend’s throat.

“Em,” Nathan said. He caught her hand in his; his hands, like the hands of all the
dead, were cold. She didn’t try to pull away; she knew that Allison’s only hope lay
in Nathan. In his hands and in hers. Nathan was dead. Emma was a Necromancer. If she
could use his power, she could save Ally.

“I’ll go with you,” she told the Necromancers. “I won’t fight—but you’ve got to let
her go.”

“You’ll go with us anyway,” the younger of the two said.

The pressure of the strand didn’t let up. Emma swallowed and began to pull the only
power she had access to: Nathan’s. He offered it; he offered it willingly. As she
took it in, her hands began to tingle. No white glow gloved them; it wasn’t that kind
of binding. But it didn’t matter. Emma could now see how the strand was connected
to Allison, and she could—and did—melt it off. Allison was gasping for breath as Emma
turned. The men were closer now; the younger of the two looked both annoyed and surprised.

The older just looked weary.

“It was the least painful way for her to die,” he told Emma, in a gentle voice. “But
there are others, and they are more certain.” He gestured again, and this time—this
time she recognized the fire that lay in his palm, like a roiling ball. It was green.
Chase had called it soul-fire.

It had almost killed him—and it would kill Allison if it hit her.

Emma didn’t know what to do with the power she had. She didn’t know how to use it,
how to defend herself—or anyone else—with it.

“Please,” she said, voice low and shaking. “Just let her go. I’ll go with you. I won’t
fight. Just—let her go.”

The taller of the two shook his head, although there was a weight to his expression
that hadn’t been there before. “I can’t,” he replied. “It’s against the law.”

“Everything you’re doing now is against the law!”

“Mortal law doesn’t concern Necromancers, Emma Hall. It doesn’t concern you anymore,
although you don’t understand that yet. You have a gift—”

“It’s the same as yours,” she said quickly, her hands now warm in Nathan’s because
she was drawing power from him. “It’s the same as yours—and this is
not
how I want to use it!”

“You’ll learn. All your friend loses is a few years. A few years, in the existence
of the dead, is nothing.”

“She’s not dead—”

“She will spend far, far more of her existence dead than she will alive, even if she
lives to see old age. Come, Emma. If you feel you must, in the decades to come, you
can return here and find her; if you grow in power and stature within the City, you
can command her, and she will come to where you wait.”

He threw the fire.

He threw it, and Emma reached out and caught it with her arm; it splashed, as if it
were liquid, and spread instantly across the whole of her coat. Real fire wouldn’t
have done that.

The Necromancer’s eyes widened in either shock or horror. He was still too far away
to tell.

Allison was nearer, and she started to reach out, but Nathan barked at her, and she
stopped. She could see Nathan now. Emma was holding onto him.

Emma was doing more than that. The fire wasn’t hot, but it wasn’t cold. It burned,
but it didn’t burn hair or skin; it burned something beneath it.

“You fool!” the Necromancer shouted. Power spread out from him in a fan; it was distorted
by the rising waves of green.

She reached for Nathan almost blindly, and she set what he gave to her, his very presence,
against the spread of the fire itself. She didn’t tell Allison to run—there was nowhere
to run to. She didn’t look to see if her dog lay dead in the streets, because there
was nothing at all she could do about him now.

Where Nathan’s power surged through her, the fire stopped its painful spread. But
it didn’t bank; it ate away at what he’d given her. She could take everything he offered—everything—and
she might extend the fight with the flame for long enough to put it out. And then?
He’d be here, unable to talk or interact or do
anything
.

But she couldn’t stop herself; she couldn’t disentangle their hands; she took what
he offered, fighting every step of the way.

She wasn’t prepared for the way the green fire suddenly guttered, and she stumbled,
still holding Nathan’s hand. She was surprised that his weight supported hers, but
she didn’t have time to think about it: Looking up at the Necromancers, she saw that
the one who had thrown the fire had fallen to his knees. His eyes were wide; she could
see their whites from here.

Behind him, she could see Chase.

* * *

Eric swore. Chase heard the words at a distance because he left them behind at a sprint.
Two men stood side by side in the street. Beyond them, Emma and Allison were backing
up. Emma appeared to be talking; she’d lifted both of her hands, as if in surrender.

Allison was silent.

Chase saw the white-fire corridor spring up to either side of the two girls. He saw
the hazy swirl of visible light behind them, and he swore himself; he knew what it
meant. The Necromancers didn’t intend to head back to their apartment for passports
and plane tickets; they intended to walk home, with Emma between them.

Allison would be a footnote. Allison, who stumbled. Emma stopped immediately, huddling
at her side; she lifted her face. He was close enough to hear her words. Close enough
to see the white filament around Allison’s neck as it melted. He sucked in air, picked
up speed, lightened his step as much as he could; he wouldn’t have much time before
the Necromancers became aware of him.

But he wouldn’t need it.

He gave up on stealth the minute he saw the green-fire globe form in the Necromancer’s
hand. He wasn’t going to make it in time. He wasn’t going to be able to drop the Necromancer
before he threw the fire.

“Allison!”

Necromancers didn’t spend years learning how to throw; aim, when it came to soul-fire,
didn’t matter. Blindfolded, they could still hit their targets. There was only one
certain way to douse soul-fire: Kill the Necromancer. There were less certain ways—but
Chase knew whom the soul-fire was meant to kill. And he knew that Allison had no protection
against it.

No protection but Emma and Chase. He knew which of the two counted.

He threw one of his two knives; it struck the man cleanly between the upper shoulder
blades. He made it count, leaping to grab the handle of the knife as the Necromancer’s
arms windmilled. Chase twisted the knife.

He yanked the blade out as the man fell forward, blood spreading across the new gap
in the back of his jacket. Chase looked up, then, to see that Allison was not on fire.
Emma was—but the fire, like the Necromancer, was dying. He grudgingly revised his
estimate of Emma’s usefulness.

The second Necromancer turned. The white walls on either side of the street faded
as he pulled his power back. He made no attempt to help his partner; he had no hope
of saving him, and they both knew it.

Instead, he ran. If he could make it past Allison and Emma, if he could make it to
the portal, he’d survive. He thought he had a chance. As Eric leaped past Chase in
the night streets, Chase grinned.

* * *

Allison’s skin was red where the white filament had twined round her throat. Her fingers,
on the other hand, were blue, and her hands were shaking. She’d managed to half-knock
her glasses off her face.

“Ally?”

“I can breathe.” Not without coughing, though; her voice sounded hoarse.

“Allison!” Chase had saved Allison’s life. On television, rescue usually came in the
form of someone a lot less blood spattered. Chase was, once again, wearing a variant
on the world’s ugliest jacket.

Allison lifted one hand; it was shaking. “I’m alive,” she said. “We’re both alive.
Where’s Petal?”

“Here,” Eric’s voice came from somewhere behind Chase; Chase was close enough it was
hard to see around him. Petal was whining, which meant he wasn’t dead.

“We need to get out of here,” Eric told them. He was staring down the road, and Emma
turned to look that way as well. The arch was slowly fading, its cold light giving
way to the night of streetlamp and road.

“Where did it lead?” Emma asked.

“To the City of the Dead,” he replied, without looking at her. Petal’s tail started
to move, and he set the dog down. The Necromancers hadn’t killed him. He glanced at
the two dead bodies that lay in the middle of the street. “Chase, give the old man
the heads up.”

Chase, however, was kneeling beside Allison. Allison felt dizzy and nauseated, but
she knew, looking at his expression, that this wasn’t the time for either. She smiled.
She forced herself to smile at him.

He grimaced and rolled his eyes. “Don’t even try,” he told her. He practically shouldered
Emma out of the way. Allison caught only a glimpse of Emma’s expression before Chase’s
shoulder covered her face.

“It wasn’t Emma’s fault,” she said, between clenched teeth.

He slid an arm beneath hers and lifted her to her feet. “I didn’t say it was.”

“Chase—”

“Not here,” he told her. “Not now.”

She would have argued—she almost did—but she realized that part of the trembling she
felt wasn’t her own. The fact that Chase, spattered in blood, was shaking, silenced
her.

* * *

“Emma?”

Emma smiled wanly. “I’m fine.”

Eric’s brows rose. “I haven’t known you long,” he finally said. “But ‘fine’ in Hall
parlance doesn’t mean much.”