He stared at her and then folded his arms across his chest. If hands-on-the-hips when angry came from her mother, this folding of arms—and raising of one brow—was definitely learned from Brendan Hall.
“You need to let them go, Em.”
She could have pretended to misunderstand him, but that had never gone down well. “I don’t know how.”
“How did you bind them?”
“I didn’t! They were already bound.”
“They’re bound to you.”
“How do you know?”
“You’re my daughter,” he replied.
His words made her yearn for the days when she was four years old, parents lived forever, and her father knew everything. The yearning was so strong that she was out of bed and almost across the room before she caught herself and froze. He’d opened his arms as well, and at the last moment, stepped back, failing to catch her.
“It’s hard, being dead,” he told her, his lips curved in an unfamiliar and bitter smile.
“Is it worse than being alive when the people you love go and die on you?” She stopped speaking and looked away. After a moment, when she could trust her words again, she added, “Sorry, Dad.”
“Nathan?” he asked her softly, and she startled.
“You know about Nathan?”
“Daughter, remember?”
She tried really, really hard to believe that he hadn’t seen anything that would embarrass her. Or him.
If he had, he was kind enough not to mention it. But he’d mentioned Nathan. She went back to her bed, pulled enough of the duvet free of Petal, who’d begun his midnight sprawl, and wrapped it tightly around herself. “I miss him.
“I keep hoping—I keep wanting—to see him.” She looked at her father, then. Waited until her voice was steady. That took a while. “Just to talk to him. Just to hear him again.” And to touch him again, even if her hands numbed at the shock.
“But…what if he’s like the others? What if he’s on some golden leash, and he’s being drained of any power he might have that could—that could bring him back to me?”
“Emma.” Her father started to say more, and stopped.
She was cold, cold, cold. She couldn’t, at this moment, remember what being warm felt like.
“You need to let go of them. At least a couple of them. Chase and Eric didn’t say enough. Maybe because they don’t understand it. I can see it in you, now. It takes power, to hold the dead. If you can’t pull power from them to do it, the bindings take power from you.”
“How do I let go?”
“Unwind the chains, Emma.”
“I broke them.”
“Yes. And no. You couldn’t break them; you grabbed them. You’re holding them.”
“Oh.” She looked at her hands, at her empty palms. “Dad?”
“Yes?”
“What else can you tell me about being a Necromancer?”
He said nothing.
“What can you tell me about the City of the Dead?”
His arms, which had fallen to the sides in his abortive hug, now folded themselves across his chest again; his hand curled, for just a moment, around the bowl of a pipe that he couldn’t smoke. When she had been young, he had called it his thinking pipe. “Not very much,” he finally said. “But it’s there.”
“Where?”
He lifted an arm, his sleeves creasing slightly, and pointed.
“Give me something I can Google.”
That smile again. She hated it.
“Can the dead at least talk to each other?”
“Some can. It depends.”
“On what?”
“Power, Emma.”
“But Eric and Chase said—”
“They’re not dead.”
She was shivering, and the duvet didn’t help. His arms fell to his sides, and then he walked across the room to the side of her bed and knelt there, as if she were four years old again, and sick, and awake in the middle of a long night.
He touched her forehead with his hand, and his hand passed through her. Or it started to. She reached up and grabbed that hand. And yes, it was cold. But she felt something at the heart of that ice, something that shed warmth the way the sun sheds light. She brought her free hand around, caught his, held it, and felt her hands, without the painful tingle, for the first time since she had introduced the dead to her friends.
And then she cried out, and pulled both of her hands back, as if the warmth had scorched her. “Dad, no!”
“Emma, you won’t survive a week otherwise. I’m dead,” he added softly. “And in this world, that means only one thing: sooner or later. Someone is going to harvest whatever power I have. I would rather give it to you now, because when I give it to you, I’m saving the life of my very stubborn, very precious daughter.
“I can’t do anything else for you. Let me do this.”
“You can. You can talk to me. You can come to me more often. You can tell me I’m not insane.”
“Talk is cheap.”
“Fine. It’s cheap. It’s better than nothing.”
He flinched.
But she wouldn’t touch his hands again, and she realized that she had to be the one who initiated the touch. He could touch hers, but there was no actual contact. She knew this because he tried. “I’m not cold now,” she whispered, and it was true. But she felt like a—a vampire. Or worse. The cold had to be better than this.
Eric and Chase came by at 8:30 in the morning.
Had it not been for Emma’s father, her first clue would have been Petal jumping off the bed, running down the stairs, and barking in an endless loop. But even in her sleep, she was aware of Brendan Hall, and he returned at 8:00. Which was good, because on a good weekend, her mother didn’t lever herself out of bed until 9:30 or 10:00. Given the shock of seeing her dead husband, Emma expected that this would be a bad weekend. For her mother.
Which would be useful, but made Emma feel guilty.
Swinging around the bottom of the banister she headed to the kitchen, checked milk, eggs, and bread with a slightly anxious frown. All there. She also checked sugar, brown sugar, maple syrup, cinnamon, coffee, and tea. That done, she fed Petal, who was as usual slightly anxious because she’d done things in the wrong order. If he could talk, he would say feed me pretty much all day long.
It was too early to phone anyone, and she had no idea exactly when Eric and Chase would show up, so she sat in the living room, legs curled beneath her on the couch, Petal’s head in her lap. Thinking about Necromancy. About Necromancers. And about the dead, her absent, longed-for dead. It wasn’t a cheerful way to spend the time, but it was also the way she frequently spent a lot of the weekend. Except for the Necromancy part.
When Petal bounced off the couch and headed to the door, she rose and went with him. She didn’t bother to tell him to be quiet, because it never worked; instead she inserted her legs between as much of his body and the door as she could, while opening it.
Chase and Eric were almost at the front step.
“Can you guys hurry?” she said. “I don’t want Petal to wake up my mom.”
“She can sleep through that?” Clearly skeptical, Chase looked at Petal, who could be heard barking through two closed doors and a stretch of walk.
“Not for more than ten minutes.”
They hurried into the house as Emma slid a Milk-Bone into the palm of her hand. The rottweiler stopped barking and started chewing instead. Eric crouched down and patted his head. Because Petal was a very sweet-tempered dog, he didn’t assume that Eric was trying to steal his food, and Eric got to keep his hand.
She busied herself in the kitchen and was surprised when Eric and Chase ambled in.
“Can we do anything to help?” Eric asked.
“The answer to that is no, trust me,” Chase told Emma. “Because I see the table is already set.”
Emma, breaking eggs, spared Chase a glance. “Oh?”
“He can set the table and dry the dishes. An
d take out the garbage, if you nag him. He can’t, on the other hand, be trusted with food.”
“Because he eats it?”
“Because he ruins it. I’ve had eggs he’s forgotten were in boiling water; you could bounce them off walls.”
“That happened once,” Eric told Emma.
“Because we never let him try it again.”
“Chase likes cooking because it gets him out of cleaning up.”
Chase grinned. “Also true.”
Emma looked at the two of them and laughed. Felt a pang of only-child sneak up on her, even though they weren’t actually brothers. It was hard not to like them, even knowing what they did. On the other hand, if she needed a reality check, Allison would be coming sometime soon. She glanced at the clock. Not time to call Michael yet.
Chase picked up an apron.
“No, honestly, I don’t need help.”
“Don’t get all kitchen territorial on me,” he told her cheerfully.
“Why not? It’s my kitchen.”
He turned enormous, puppy dog eyes on her. Petal would have been jealous, if he’d noticed. Chase’s hair was a good deal shorter—and a good deal less frizzled and sooty—than it had been the previous evening, although a tiny, red braid trailed down the side of his neck.
She laughed in spite of herself. “That’s not an answer.”
Eric leaned against the counter and stretched.
“Well,” Chase told her, “We hardly ever get the chance to cook like this. Mostly, we fight, drill, buy ugly jackets we can modify, fight some more, bleed a lot, and narrowly avoid dying.”
“And kill people?”
“That, too.”
“Chase,” Eric said, “Don’t be an asshole.”
“What? I’m asking Emma for a chance to pretend—for, like, half an hour—that I’m a normal person.”
Eric grimaced as Emma glanced his way. “Half an hour is the most he can manage.”
“You’re better at it?”
“Mostly. Sometimes I forget my manners.”
“Your manners are good.”
“Yes. Often too good.”
She thought about that for a minute, and nodded. “Fine. Make the pancakes.” She regretted this about two minutes later, because apparently Chase had strong religious issues about using an instant pancake mix. He also had some issues with the lack of bacon, and when Emma said “Nitrates,” he snorted and sent Eric to the store.
Emma called Michael after breakfast and asked him to wait for Allison. She called Allison next and asked her to pick Michael up on the way. Eric, who was standing beside the phone, handed her a folded piece of paper. She opened it. It was an address.
“What’s this?”
“Maria Copis’ address. Her phone number’s unlisted.”
“How did you get this?”
“Don’t ask.”
She set the phone down almost hesitantly.
“What’s wrong?”
“I’m afraid.”
“Of what, exactly?”
She waved the address in the air. “We don’t know what we’re doing,” she told him, as if this needed saying. “And if we go and get Andrew’s mother, and drag her to Rowan Avenue, and we can’t even reach her son, we’ll have hurt her for no reason.”
“And if you can reach him, somehow, and she’s not there, there’s no point?”
“Something like that.”
“I think you’re taking too much of a long view.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re going to need to get her there first. Work on that,” he added.
“I think we can only get her there once.”
Chase appeared from around the kitchen. “Eric, dishes?”
“Don’t worry about the dishes.” Emma told them both.
“What? I cook, he cleans. Those are the rules.”
“You didn’t have to cook, and he doesn’t have to clean.”
“If I don’t want to listen to Chase bitch about this for the rest of the week, I do.” He headed back into the kitchen. Emma started to follow him, but Chase positioned himself in the arch.
“Chase, I helped you cook. I can help him clean.”
But Chase’s expression had shifted, the smile that accompanied his banter deserting his face so cleanly it was hard to imagine that it had been there at all.
“I understand what Eric sees in you. In all of you.”
“And that’s a bad thing.”
“For us? Yeah, it is. It reminds us of the life we don’t have.” His face tightened, jaw clenching a moment as he closed his eyes. “My sister,” he said, eyes still closed, “would have liked you.” Something went out of him, then. “Allison reminds me of my sister. Same unexpected temper. My sister would have said the same damn thing she said last night. But,” he added, slowly opening his eyes, “she would have smacked me.”
She swallowed. “Chase—” Reached out to touch him, and then pulled back. “Your sister’s…not alive.”
He shrugged, shirt creasing and draping again in a way that suggested silk. “No.” He turned, and then turned back. “You’re right. You don’t know what you’re doing.”
“I know.”
“What you don’t know? It can kill you.”
Remembering the heat of the fire, she nodded.
“It can also kill anyone you take with you. Your friends. Michael. Allison.”
“Amy?”
“I don’t think anything can kill Amy.” He grimaced. “Look, you’re what you are. I can’t talk you out of it—and I’m not Eric. I’m not going to try, because unlike Eric, I have no hope. But Michael and Allison are not what you are. You drag them into this, they have no protection. You might think on that,” he added, “because you seem to care about your friends.”
“They—they want to help.” Her mouth was dry.
“A toddler wants to play in the middle of the road, too. I’m not telling you what to do, Emma. I’m pointing out that it has costs.”
“But you and Eric aren’t Necromancers, and you do this all the time.”
“Emma, what you’re going to try? We’ve never done that. We’ve never tried it. And what we are? This is our life. If Michael and Allison had led our lives, they wouldn’t be your friends.” He swore. “And it wouldn’t make it safe for them anyway.”
“So…you’re saying both you and Eric are at risk.”
“Anyone there is at risk.” He looked as if he would say more, but he didn’t, and this time when he turned and headed into the kitchen, he didn’t turn back.
Michael and Allison arrived less than half an hour later. Petal was all over Michael two seconds after the screen door opened—Emma knew this because she counted. She had to nudge them both out of the doorway so that Allison could actually get into the house without having to step over the huddle of rottweiler and Michael, but Emma took a minute to watch them. Michael would probably have a small fit if someone walked up to him and licked his face, but he barely grimaced when Petal did it. And she knew what her dog’s breath smelled like.
Still, watching Michael with Petal was normal. She needed a bit of normal.
She handed Allison the piece of paper that Eric had handed her; Allison knew what it was immediately. She also had the same concerns that Emma had. But she had more faith in Emma than Emma did at this particular moment.
“Are you worried about getting her there?”
“No. I can do that.”
Allison didn’t ask how. “It’s not just Andrew, is it?”
“Mostly.”
“Em.”
Emma grimaced. She had learned, over the years, that she could lie to Allison about little things—probably because Allison didn’t care enough to pick at them—but never about anything big. Why she still bothered to try, she didn’t know. “Chase thinks you’re all in danger if we do this.”
“We probably are. So?”
“Life-threatening danger.”
“Emma Hall, do not even think of leavin
g us behind. You promised Michael you wouldn’t,” she added.
“I know. I just—I shouldn’t have promised him that. I wasn’t thinking.”
“Yes, you were. You were thinking that you go through enough alone as it is. You don’t need to prove anything. You don’t know what you’re doing, and neither do the rest of us—but we’ve always managed to come up with something when we work at it together. Besides, you’re going to phone Amy and tell her you don’t need her help?”
“Chase says that nothing can kill Amy.”
Allison laughed. “Probably not.”
Amy called at 10:00. She dropped by the house with a loaded SUV at 10:30 and honked, loudly. Emma, flipping the drapes back, saw the big gray vehicle they affectionately called the Tank, and motioned for everyone to head out.
Amy was not, however, alone. In the passenger seat, elbow hanging out the open window, was Skip. He looked better than he had the last time they’d seen him—he was at least conscious—but not by much.
“This is not a fucking barbecue,” Chase muttered under his breath.
“Hi, Skip!” Michael said. He was cheerful in part because Chase’s comment and Skip’s presence seemed entirely unrelated to him. “Emma, are we bringing Petal?”
“No.” Emma headed over to the driver’s side of the car and glanced pointedly at Skip. Amy shrugged. “He wouldn’t give me the car keys unless I brought him.”
“If we were the secret service,” Emma said, “the country would be doomed. How much does he know?”
“Enough,” Skip replied, before Amy could—and given it was Amy, that was impressive, “not to have to be talked about in the third person.”
Since ignoring Skip was a bit of a specialty, Emma said, “We always talk about Skip in the third person.” She didn’t, however, stick out her tongue.
“I’m coming along to keep you guys out of trouble.”
“Oh, like that ever worked.”
He grimaced. “Fine. I’m coming along because I’d like proof that my sister has lost her tiny little mind. I have a camera. I’ll take pictures.” When Emma hesitated, he added, “I’m going, or the car and the ladders aren’t. You can take Amy.”
Amy rolled her eyes at him in the mirror. “If you’re finished? He can help with the ladders,” she added. “Where are we going first?”