I had no words. Assu pulled a money clip from his back pocket, peeled off a couple of bills, and dropped them on the table.
“Let’s go,” he said, and stood up.
I stood with him, trying to force myself to speak. What had just happened? I knew the what—but why had it just happened? What had Assu felt, or decided, that had put him into this dark mood? “Where are we going?” I asked.
“Somewhere cold,” he said, and turned to go. “A restaurant, maybe, or a butcher. Somewhere with one of those big, walk-in freezers.”
I hurried after him. “But you can’t feel it.”
“That doesn’t mean I have to stop trying.” He walked outside, into the hot night air and spat angrily on the ground. “Damn woman. Brought me here to this hell. She can fight her own damn war.”
“So let’s go tell her,” I said. I needed him to focus—to tell me where Rain was so I could find this Withered army and stop them once and for all. “Let’s go find her right now, and tell her off, and see what she’s planning. Then you can go straight back to Alaska or Siberia or wherever you were before, and be done with her forever. But let’s at least find her.”
“No.”
“Come on,” I said.
“Do you work for her?” He spun on me suddenly, pressing me against the wall of the bar with his hands. I could feel the heat from his palms and his fingers. I shook my head.
“No.”
“Then help me,” he said. “Cold first, and then Rain.”
“Okay,” I said. “Cold first.” I hesitated. “I think I know the perfect place.”
* * *
The mortuary was empty at night; Harold had an apartment next door, but my little room was the only one that accessed the building directly. Assu parked his car, and I used my key to let him in—through my room and into the heart of the building. I kept the lights off, guiding him by feel and memory into the embalming room at the back. This room had no external windows, so I closed the door, and clicked on the light, and gestured to the giant metal fridge against the wall.
“A freezer?” he asked.
“Sometimes,” I said. “We can set the controls. There’s nobody in there right now—the burn victim hasn’t come in yet, so we don’t have any bodies. We can set the temperature as low as you want.”
“As low as it’ll go,” he said.
A mortuary fridge has multiple little doors, each with a metal plate that rolls out like a bed, like you see in the morgues on TV. This fridge had six. Assu opened the top door and we pulled out the plate, and he laid himself down on it, headfirst. “As cold as it will go,” he said, and I slid him in until all I could see were the soles of his shoes.
The fridge in my parents’ mortuary had had a little dial, but this one had a keypad. It only went down to one degree Celsius; I hoped that would be enough for him.
“Close the door,” he said.
“You’ll suffocate.”
“That’s not how it works,” he said. “Close the door.”
I closed it and waited. What was he doing? Just lying there? What did he think was going to happen?
“Assu,” I shouted. “Can you hear me?”
His voice was faint, but I could make it out: “Yes.”
“Is it cold?”
“How the hell would I know?”
I shrugged and leaned against the wall. How long was he going to be in there?
How many times had he tried this exact thing, in a thousand other refrigerators and freezers, only to get frustrated when he couldn’t feel cold?
I waited. It wasn’t the weirdest thing I’d ever done in a mortuary. As long as he eventually led me to Rain, he could lay in the fridge as long as he wanted.
Five minutes later, the rubber insulation around the door started melting.
I saw it first as a sag—the rubber seal was drooping down from the bottom of the fridge door, though it hadn’t yet separated from the metal. A moment later it sagged enough that the seal broke, and smoke from inside poured out in massive billows. I barely had time to think and reacted on pure instinct: there was a fire inside, and it had just gotten a burst of new oxygen, and it was about to explode. I threw myself to the side, racing out of the way, and in that moment the door of the refrigeration chamber blew off and a giant gout of flame roared out. The bulletin board against the far wall charred almost instantly, the papers curling into black coal tendrils. The wall scorched, the paint bubbling and peeling away. I felt a moment of perfect joy—a fire was free!—and then the sprinklers in the ceiling burst into life, and the room was soaked, and reality came crashing back down again. The flames on the wall traveled upward, and the heat in the room was still shockingly fierce, but the flames in the fridge disappeared. I crept back around to the front of the refrigeration unit, wondering what I would see, but I already knew. I peered inside, and there it was: a puddle of thick, greasy ash, black and flaky, and bubbling and hissing. Soulstuff.
Assu was dead, and the mortuary was burning.
CHAPTER 6
Fire licked at the walls and the ceiling, defying the sprinklers and spreading hungrily through the mortuary, inches from my back and eventually, inevitably, blocking all the exits, trapping me inside. In hindsight, I should have been afraid for my life, or exulting in the flames, or maybe even both, but instead my thoughts were laser-focused on one simple, horrible fact:
The firefighters would come, and the police, and they’d report on the blaze, and that report would include the soulstuff. “Unidentifiable black sludge.” Intelligence analysts for the FBI would see it, and they’d recognize it for what it was, and they’d come. And they’d find me.
And everything I had would be taken away.
I looked at the sludge in the fridge unit, still smoldering on the metal slab. It would be way too hot to touch. I looked around for something to absorb the heat, like a blanket or a sheet—embalming rooms usually had plenty of those—but nothing in this room would help because all of it was wet, and heat moved too freely through wet fabric. I looked around for something else I could use, but most things in a mortuary are designed to protect from chemicals and cold, not heat.
Except one thing. I ran to the door and threw it open, flipping on all the lights as I passed them—the fire alarm had already gone off, and the firefighters would be here soon, so there was no point in hiding my presence anymore. I raced to the cremation room, grabbed the thermal apron and hand mitts, and ran back. How much time did I have? I pulled on the clothes as I ran, and gritted my teeth as I ran past a spot in the hall where the flames were licking through the wall, and suddenly all the sprinklers in the hall came on and I was caught in another downpour. I plunged back into the embalming room, grabbed a mop bucket, and ran to the open fridge. I pulled out the metal slab carefully, trying not to spill the sludge; it was thick, and didn’t run much, so I pulled out about a foot of it and scraped the gunk off the slab and into the bucket, where it hissed and popped like frying oil. I could feel the heat of it even through the cremation mitts. I cleared the first bit of sludge and pulled out the slab another foot. Some of it fell on the floor, narrowly missing my foot, and I told myself to come back for it later, concentrating everything I could on the sludge on the table. I pulled the slab out farther and farther, sweeping the sludge into the bucket; I could feel the bucket heating up and wondered how long I had before the soulstuff melted a hole in it.
I could hear the sirens in the distance and raced to finish. I scraped all the last bits of gunk into the bucket, rubbing at the metal frantically with the mitts, trying to get every last drop. It was obvious the fire had started in the fridge, so maybe if there were only a few bits left they’d think it was an accelerant for an arson attack?
Dammit. Who would they blame for arson? Maybe the homeless drifter kid they knew nothing about? I couldn’t think about that yet—hide the sludge first, then worry about everything else.
The refrigeration chamber held a handful of metal bits that hadn’t
burned with Assu’s body and clothes, and I tried to grab those as well: some buttons and rivets from his jeans, and a ring with some keys, and a scattering of blackened coins. I dumped them all in the bucket and ran for the door—but stopped, ran back, and scraped wildly at the floor. Could I get it all up in time? I smeared the sticky sludge across the mitts, dropped them in the bucket, and ran again for the door. The sirens were closer, but I couldn’t tell how close. I heard the lock on the back door jiggle, probably Harold trying to get in, and sprinted to the front door, kicking my way out and then running around to the parking lot. I needed to get rid of Assu’s car, too—if the cops saw it here at the scene of the fire, they’d start asking questions, which would lead to the bar, and the bartender, and me. Always back to me. I used the edge of the cremation apron to fish Assu’s car key out of the bucket, and I tried it gingerly with my hand; it was scalding hot, but I had no other choice, so I shoved it into the door to unlock it. The fire truck had already arrived at the front of the building, but no one was back here yet. I opened the car door and threw the bucket into the passenger’s seat. The sludge on the key made it stick in the lock, but I managed to wrench it out and climbed into the car, slamming the key into the ignition and turning it wildly. The engine roared to life, and I peeled out of the parking lot without turning on the lights.
I drove in the dark for a few blocks, then turned the lights on and drove farther into town, looking for some place to dump the car and the stuff in it. I passed a grocery store, closed at this hour, pulled into the lot behind it and parked next to their big metal Dumpster. Being careful not to spill any soulstuff on the car or my clothes, I pulled out the bucket and the cremation clothes and placed them carefully in the Dumpster, using some of the garbage to cover it. With the sludge hidden, I got back in the car and drove away again, looking for somewhere to stash the vehicle itself. I settled on a motel parking lot, hoping that it might be able to sit there for a few days without drawing any special attention. I used my shirt to wipe down everything I’d touched: the steering wheel, the shifter, the door handles. I got out, closed the door, and then thought better of it, opening the door again—Assu was a drinker, and if he had any alcohol in the car I’d need it later. I opened the glove compartment and found a bottle of cheap grain alcohol—and a wad of twenty-dollar bills. I stared at them, trying to decide if it would be safe to take them. Would they be traceable? Probably not. Could I risk it? I stared a moment longer, then shoved the money into one pocket of my pants and the bottle into another. I wiped everything down again, closed the door and locked it, then wiped down the outside handles as well. Two blocks later I dropped the keys into a sewer grate.
Assu, I was pretty sure, had killed himself on purpose. I should have seen it coming, after all the nihilistic talk about loss and endings at the bar. But I’d been so focused on what I wanted, and the things I needed to know, that I hadn’t thought about what he wanted. Sociopathy will get you every time. He’d given up on life, right in front of my eyes, and I hadn’t even seen it.
He couldn’t feel cold, but he generated heat. The Withered worked in trade-offs, so that’s probably how this worked as well: anytime he got cold, his body would heat up higher and higher, until he had to let that heat out somehow. Sometimes he did it by burning people, like he had with Luke Minaker, and sometimes he burned other things, or even melted them, like that glass in the bar. And then he’d locked himself in a fridge, and his body had built up so much heat trying to protect him from it, and he hadn’t let it out at all, until it consumed him completely. He was done with the world, after too many years, so he left it.
Maybe it was Nobody, or someone he’d thought was Nobody. Talking to another Withered, maybe for the first time in decades—maybe centuries—had put him into a dark mood and pushed him over the edge.
It was about a mile walk back to the mortuary, and I managed to do it without any random farmers trying to drown me. I stopped about a block away, took a sip of the alcohol, and swished it around in my mouth before spitting it out; it burned my mouth, and almost made me gag, but I stayed in control and recapped the bottle. It was eleven o’clock at night, and it would be easy for Margo and the others to believe that the random stranger they’d just met yesterday had spent the whole evening out drinking somewhere. Better a drunk than a wanted arsonist.
A crowd of neighbors had gathered to watch the firefighters, though the fire was already out and didn’t appear to have damaged much of the exterior. I found Margo and walked up to her, somewhat shakily, being sure to exhale near her face and let my breath be my excuse.
“Robert,” she said, “thank goodness. When Harold couldn’t find you in your room, we thought the worst.”
“What happened?” I asked. I didn’t slur my speech; that seemed a little much.
“Fire inside,” said Margo. “Embalming room.”
“Looks like arson,” said Harold, “but they don’t know who it was. One of the neighbors saw a red car speeding away.”
Assu’s car was green. Sometimes bad night vision was a criminal’s best friend.
“That sucks,” I said. I was too exhausted to sound intelligent, but that only helped sell my drunk excuse.
Margo took the bottle from my hand. “You’re too young for this.”
“You don’t know how old I am.”
“I know you’re too young for this.” She gave the bottle to Harold, who took it without a word and walked off through the crowd.
Had I cleaned up all the sludge? Even if I had, would that be enough? Agent Mills, the FBI agent who’d found me in Oklahoma, had said he’d been following me through arson cases. I’d been so careful since then, barely lighting any fires at all, and only when I could contain them, but I couldn’t contain this. I’d hidden the soulstuff, and I’d hidden my own connection to it, but that still might not be enough.
I was always running, and always hiding.
I couldn’t leave Lewisville, not with Rain and all her Withered right here just waiting to be found. But I had to leave the mortuary, no matter how much I loved it. I needed a new place to stay, and a new job, and I needed to do it without totally cutting my ties to Margo and the others, in case I ever needed to come back and ask them questions. It was the place I was most likely to be found, but it was still the best way to examine any future Withered victims. I needed to quit, but in a nice way, so they still liked me—
“Fire chief says it’s just the one room,” said Margo. “Bit of hallway, bit of crawl space in the attic. We can go back to work tomorrow.”
“I need to—”
“We’re getting Luke Minaker in two days,” said Margo. “Fridge is shot, but we’ve still got the old one, and I need your help hauling it out of storage to see if it works. And then I need everything you’ve got on the makeup, because he was burned pretty bad.”
“Okay,” I said. The FBI wouldn’t show up that fast. I could embalm one body. It had been so long.
I hadn’t counted the money in my pocket yet, but it couldn’t be too much. Not enough for an apartment, or even an extended-stay hotel. What I did have was a local junior college, and that meant apartments full of junior college students. Many of them would be upstanding citizens, but some would be directionless and unmotivated, living on their own for the first time without any of the skills to do it right. Exactly the kind of people who might let a random stranger—even a drunk—crash on their couch for a few weeks. I just had to meet them. Which meant I needed an aimless, screw-up college-age friend to introduce me.
Margo’s last charity case.
Jasmyn.
CHAPTER 7
“Okay,” I said, staring at the old refrigeration unit. “Are you ready for this?”
Jasmyn scoffed. “I realize that I am a strong and liberated woman, but yes, I can still wash something.”
“It’s not the washing,” I said, picking up a face mask. “It’s the smelling. You ever cleaned out an old fridge?”
“Not cleaned,” she said
. “But I’ve opened one that had been turned off for a couple of months. It was like every leftover the fridge had ever held was coming back to life and punching me in the face.”
“Exactly,” I said. “And this fridge’s leftovers were all dead bodies.”