To her surprise, she started to smile, and it was a genuine smile, even though her hands ached, and her arms were now tingling. “You say that. A lot.”
“Without their power, they still exist. You might even see them, although it’s not a given. They can’t use the power they have, not on purpose. Andrew Copis is using power, but not consciously. They can’t use it to defend themselves. They can’t use it to free themselves. They can’t use it to manifest and play with Michael on their own.
“To do any of that, they need you.”
“They need a Necromancer, you mean.”
“No. A Necromancer would never, ever do what you’re doing now. Any of it. I meant you.” He smiled, and it was the smile that she liked best. It was warm, if slightly weary, and it changed the lines of his face. Made him look more open. “Chase.”
“Is she crazy?” Chase asked.
“Oh, probably.”
“And the rest of you,” Chase continued, looking at Amy, Allison, and Michael, although Michael was not paying attention. “Are you all crazy, too?”
“Dude, you see the dead and you talk about Necromantic magic and the City of the Dead, and we’re crazy?” Amy shot back.
Eric walked over to Emma. “Emma, you are letting go of the children. Now.”
“But they—”
“You can always let them out to play with Michael later. But you need to let go now.”
“Why?”
“Because your teeth are starting to chatter, and you’re turning blue.” He reached out and caught her hands, and he forced them out of their numb, frozen curl. “We can come back and visit Michael again tomorrow,” she told Georges and a crestfallen Catherine. “I promise.”
His hands? Weren’t cold. They were so very, very warm. And he cupped them around both of hers and held them.
“Is the house safe?” Amy asked Eric.
He nodded. “We can search the rest of the rooms if it makes you feel better.”
“Not really. If it’s safe, I have a party to attend.” She stood, scraping concrete with the legs of her chair. “Emma?”
Emma nodded.
“I’m going to check on Skip. I don’t see any reason to kick people out. So far, no one’s called the police to close us down.”
Chase’s eyes almost fell out of his head, which made Emma laugh.
“What?”
“You’re going to keep the party going?”
Amy shrugged. “Why not? Longland won’t be back tonight.”
“How the hell can you say that?”
“He’s not an idiot. Allison and Emma make a habit of trying to see—and say—only good things. I don’t.”
“No kidding.”
She rolled her eyes. “He didn’t like the odds or he wouldn’t have run in the first place. You’re still here. You know who he is now, or what you think he is, at any rate. Eric said he can’t gather his power base at all quickly. He’s not going to come back to face the same odds. Because I think you’ll kill him, if he does. Or try. You can correct me when I’m wrong,” she added. “Not that it happens often. Emma, did he wear those boots upstairs?”
“Sorry.”
“Never mind. I’ll kill him myself if I find dirt. Speaking of which, you should take Chase upstairs and do something about his hair.” Amy grimaced. “Which, at this point, would probably involve shaving his head. We can talk in the morning, maybe go to this burned-out house you saw earlier.”
Emma nodded again. Amy, in her perfect mock-harlequin getup, slid the doors to one side, letting noise out and herself in. Only when she was gone did Emma turn to Chase and Eric. “You’re sure the house is safe?”
“Where did you find her?” Chase asked.
Eric, on the other hand, nodded.
“Good. We might as well go inside and see if there’s any food left.”
He shook his head. Emma caught it out of the corner of her eye as she turned to face Michael, who was standing, head bent, hands at his sides. He wasn’t moving around too much, which was either a good sign or a very bad one.
“Michael?”
Michael nodded. “I want to go with you,” he told her quietly.
She could have pretended to misunderstand him, but if she had, he would have asked again, with more words. “We won’t go without you.”
He nodded again, and this nod went on in a little bobble of head and hair. Allison touched his shoulder, and he stilled.
“I want to help them,” Michael told her. “They shouldn’t be here.”
“No,” she agreed softly. “They shouldn’t. But I don’t think Eric or Chase know where they should be. And I don’t know how to get them there.”
“But there’s someplace they should go?”
“I think so, Michael.”
He paused, but she knew him well enough to know he wasn’t quite finished. “Will they be happy there?”
Remembering her father’s words, Emma nodded. “Happy and safe.”
“Then we should help them go there. Can you see it?”
“No. I think only the dead can.”
“I don’t want you to die, Emma.”
She nodded again.
“But I guess sometimes what we want doesn’t matter. You can’t make them alive again, can you?”
She felt Eric’s hands stiffen as they covered hers, as if he’d been stabbed or struck, hard. Her own tightened, catching his fingers.
“No,” she told him softly. “I can’t. If I could—” She closed her eyes. “I can’t. I don’t think anyone can.”
“Would you?”
“Yes.”
He nodded again, but this time, she thought he was done. He surprised her, but he often did. “What should I do?” He asked her quietly, in a voice she hadn’t heard since he was twelve.
“Go find Oliver and Connell. And your books. We’re going to stay here until one, and then we’ll head home. But we’ll call your house in the morning. Try—try hard—to finish your homework in the morning.”
“But I watch—” he stopped, swallowed, and nodded. “I’ll do homework in the morning.”
“Michael?”
“Yes?”
“You did good. Georges and Catherine were happy, and I don’t think they’ve had much to be happy about for a long time.”
He smiled, then. Michael’s smiles were always some mix of heartbreaking and beautiful, partly because they had their roots in a childhood he could still reach back and touch. It wasn’t the same as Emma’s or Allison’s, because he saw it more clearly.
Only after he had shuffled inside did Allison speak.
“So, Eric. You and Chase hunt Necromancers.”
They glanced at each other, and Eric winced slightly. This was probably because Emma had just crushed one of his hands in hers, in warning. Even Chase, who didn’t seem, to Emma, to be the sharpest knife in the drawer, hesitated before he nodded.
“And you kill them, if you can.”
“Ally, it doesn’t matter,” Emma said urgently.
“Yes, it does. Because if I’m not mistaken, Chase thinks you’re a Necromancer.”
The silence was notably chilier. Allison let it go on for a bit before she started again. “Longland was looking for Emma. But so was Eric, the ‘new student.’ ”
“Ally.”
“Were you looking for her to kill her?”
“Ally, please.”
“Is that a yes or a no?” When Eric didn’t answer, she looked at Chase. “Well?”
“Yes,” Chase replied. “She’s a Necromancer.”
“She’s a Necromancer who hasn’t done anything wrong. You were just going to kill her because in the future she might?”
Chase’s eyes had narrowed. “We were planning to kill her before she figures out how to use the power she has and starts killing hundreds of other people, none of whom have our training.”
“Because you could just assume that she’s going to turn into a mass murderer?” Allison’s face had gone from the h
ealthy side of pink to the unhealthy side of crimson. “And how many other times have you saved the world by killing someone who is entirely innocent of any crime?”
“Have you ever met a fucking Necromancer?”
“Apparently yes—I have one for a best friend!”
“So maybe she’s a freak!” Chase was also red now. The color didn’t suit him.
“So maybe other budding Necromancers were freaks too—and you’ll never know it because they’re dead!”
“Allison,” Eric said, shaking his hands free from Emma’s and turning toward her, “don’t judge him. You don’t know what he’s been through.”
“I don’t know what he’s been through?” Allison took a deep breath. It was not a cessation of hostility, however. She needed it. “You’re right. I don’t. And you know what? I’m not going to kill him. He has no idea what Emma’s been through, and he intended to kill her.”
“When he speaks of hundreds dead, he speaks from experience. He’s seen what Necromancers can do.”
“Fine! Then kill the Necromancers that do. Killing Emma means there’s one less decent person in the world! Or does he only try to kill Necromancers who can’t do anything to defend themselves first?”
“Ally, he did go after Longland.”
Allison looked at Emma, and then shook both her head and her hands to prevent a familiar half-shriek of frustration from escaping. “Em, this is serious.”
“I know. Believe that I know. But Eric? He’s not going to kill me.”
“Chase?”
Chase had shoved his hands into his pockets, and his shoulders were at about the same level as his ears.
“Well?” Allison’s hands were in tight fists at her sides.
“No,” he said, as if the word had been dragged from him, and judging by his expression, had broken his front teeth on the way out. “No, I am not going to kill Emma. Satisfied?”
“Not really.”
“What would satisfy you?”
“Help us.”
“Help you do what?”
“Free the dead. You can start with the little boy on Rowan Avenue.”
Chase gave the little shriek that Allison had managed to swallow. “What’s the point? He’s dead!”
Allison just stared at him. After a moment, she said, “I would rather spend eternity wandering up and down an empty street than burning to death without actually dying. I’m assuming that the same is probably true of a four-year-old.”
Chase stared at her for a moment and then turned to Emma.
“Don’t look at me for support. I’m so much in Allison’s camp we might as well be sharing a brain.”
“Eric?”
“You can go back if you want; I know enough to know this is going to be hard on you. But I’m staying until this is resolved, one way or the other.”
Chase opened his mouth. Closed it, shoved his hands into his pockets. Opened his mouth again. Emma liked that Chase was always so expressive, except when she didn’t.
Before he could say anything—or before he could figure out which of the many things he was going to say first—a phone rang.
Emma recognized the ring.
“Fuck.” So, apparently, did Eric.
“Are you going to answer that?” Allison asked him.
Emma almost laughed.
“No.”
“At this time of night? It could be an emergency.”
“If I answer it, it will be. Come on, let’s get something to eat.”
Chase shrugged as the phone stopped ringing. They made it to the door before it started ringing again. “You know he’s just going to keep trying.”
“Let him. It’s loud enough inside I won’t hear it.”
“Answer it, Eric.”
“No.”
“If you don’t answer it, he’ll just call me.”
“You don’t have a working phone.”
Chase laughed. “You think of everything.”
“Someone,” Eric said, sliding the door to one side, “has to.”
They dropped Michael off first, swung around to Allison’s house, and then dropped Emma off by her front door. The time was just a little past one-thirty, which in the Hall household was still within the bounds of “on time.”
Emma stopped by the driver’s window, and Eric opened it.
“Do you have my number?” she asked him.
“No.”
“Do you want it, or do you just want to come by in the morning?”
Chase said something about morning, which Emma pretended not to hear.
“If you come, I’ll feed you. I might even feed Chase. I don’t know when Amy will call, so you might be cooling your heels for a while.”
“Any chance she won’t call?”
“None.”
“We’ll drop by. When’s good?”
“Any time after eight-thirty.” She turned toward the house, stopped, and turned back. “Thanks.”
“For what?”
“For tonight. You can thank Chase, too.”
“You could thank me yourself!”
“Too much trouble,” she said, but she smiled. She was tired, and even the hot and stuffy house hadn’t taken the edge off the chill in her hands. “We need to find Maria Copis, and we need to get her to Rowan Avenue. I don’t think all the ladders in the world are going to help us get that child out if she’s not there.”
“Let us figure out where she went after her house burned down. You get some sleep.”
She nodded, and headed to the front door. The walking, black alarm system was already gearing up on the other side of it.
When the house door had closed on the glimpse of a frantically barking rottweiler, Chase turned to Eric. “Do you have any idea what you’re doing?”
Eric shrugged. After a moment, he said, “Do you really want to kill her?”
“I think we should. You didn’t tell her that she’s now carting around more power than most Necromancers could.”
“No.” Eric was restless enough to open the car door; the lights went on. “They’re not power, to her. There’s no way she’s going to use them.”
“She didn’t even have to try to get the dead to show. She just did it.”
“I know, Chase. I was there, remember?”
“You didn’t warn her about Longland, either.”
“If I had warned her about Longland’s power, she’d’ve figured it out. She’s crazy but she’s not stupid. And warning her wouldn’t give her any useful information.” He looked at Chase, got out of the car.
Chase sighed—audibly—and slid out the other door.
“Do you want to kill her?” Eric asked again.
“Does it matter? I’m not going to try.”
“Yeah, it matters.”
“I think we should.”
“Not an answer, Chase.”
“Asshole.” Chase slammed the car door shut, turned his back, and after a minute, walked around the back of the car and slammed the other door shut as well. He leaned against the driver’s door, his back to Eric. “I understand why you didn’t. Kill her, I mean. She seems so normal.”
“Yeah. Normal. Happy. Has friends she actually cares about who are actually still alive. So.”
Chase pushed himself off the car. “You want me to take the first shift, or do you want to take it?”
“Up to you.”
Chase detached himself from the car. “I need a new coat.” He glanced at the house and added, “Any chance that dog won’t go insane if I park myself inside?”
“He’s a rottweiler.”
“Figures.”
“You sure you want the first shift?”
“Yeah. I don’t want to go back and hit the radioactive button on the answering machine.”
Eric grimaced. “Fine. I’ll be back in four hours.”
“It’ll probably take at least that long to wade through the messages.”
“Thanks. Don’t,” he added, “do anything stupid. If Longland does s
how up here, he’s not going to kill her. He will, however, kill you without blinking.”
“He’ll try.” Chase smiled. Even in the scant light, it wasn’t pleasant. But it was, Eric had to admit, all Chase.
EMMA’S MOTHER HADN’T WAITED UP, which was probably for the best. The lights were off in the house; the only light in the hall was the light that shone in through the little decorative windows in the front door. Emma doused that when she shut off the front door’s light. She stood in the hall, absently patting Petal’s head until her eyes had acclimated to the darkness; the only place it was ever truly dark was the basement.
When everything had become a dark gray, she slid out of her shoes, picked them up by the back straps, and headed up the stairs. The stairs were carpeted, but the house wasn’t exactly new; they creaked as she walked. They creaked as Petal walked, but he jingled anyway. No one in the Hall house could be easily woken up by either sound. Not if they actually wanted to get sleep, ever.
She made her way to her room, dropped the shoes in front of her closet, and began to fiddle with the straps of her dress. Her hands were cold; she rubbed them together, but it didn’t help. Bed—and the large, down duvet—might. Petal jumped up on the bed, somewhere near the foot, and waited, his head resting on his forepaws.
“Sorry, Petal. I know it’s late.” She slid out of her dress, grabbed pajamas, slid into them, and sat on the side of the bed, scratching behind his ears.
Something made her look up. It wasn’t sound, exactly, and it wasn’t light—but it caught her as if it were both, and loud and bright.
Her father stood in the center of the room. “Sprout.”
She wanted to get up and run into his arms. She didn’t. She was cold enough, and she knew that there was no warmth waiting. Love, yes, and affection—but also cold. She pulled the duvet up and around her shoulders, resting her hands in her lap.
“Dad.” Petal tried to get under the covers as well, but as he was sitting on the outside of one end, he had no luck.
“Sleep, Em.”
“Why are you here?”
He shook his head and looked out the curtained window. What he saw, given that the curtains were drawn, she couldn’t tell.
“To see you, Emma. To see that you’re okay.”
She smiled, shivering. “I’m fine,” she told him.