But dogs can be particularly dense when it comes to understanding English. He padded out of the room and appeared again two minutes later, dragging his leash across the carpet and wagging his stub. “I have to take Petal for a walk,” Emma said, surrendering.
“Call me when you get back?”
“I will. Maybe I’ll have thought of something useful by then. Maybe we could pretend to work for the insurance company or something. I mean, we only have to get her there.”
“Single mother of two.”
“Ugh. Later,” she added, hanging up. She picked up the leash that was attached to her dog in the wrong way—mostly by his mouth—and changed that.
Eric’s car was still in the street, and he was still behind the wheel, when Emma left the house and locked up behind herself. Most of her anger had evaporated, but a small core of it remained, and she hesitated while Petal tried to drag her down the walk.
Then, squaring her shoulders, she dragged her dog down to the street and rapped on the front passenger window. Eric turned his head to look at her, and then he nodded and got out of the car. “You’re walking your dog?”
“I’m about to be walked by my dog. Subtle difference.”
He smiled at that, and it was the comfortable and genuine smile that she liked on his face. She surrendered the rest of her anger, then.
“You want company?” Eric asked.
She shrugged. “If you’re going to just sit here in the car, you might as well join us.”
She didn’t realize where she was walking. Petal was doing his usual intense inspection of anything that might be a garbage can. Given that it wasn’t a collection day and he wasn’t always the brightest dog, that took him a little too close to the actual houses.
Eric laughed, and Petal was thankfully old enough not to find this flattering. He did find it slightly encouraging, but that was probably a Hall fault; if people were laughing, they were a lot less likely to order you to heel.
“No ladders?” he asked, as Petal decided that forward was better than sideways and actually let them gain half a block of sidewalk before he started barking at a squirrel.
“No…”
“No?” When she looked at him, he shoved his hands in his pockets and continued the slow, meandering stroll that was walking her nine-year-old dog.
“We’ll need them later,” Emma told him.
“I didn’t think you’d given up, if that’s any consolation.”
“Not really.”
He shrugged. “Later?”
“Allison doesn’t think that Andrew will leave the house if his mother’s not there.”
“You told Allison?”
“She’s my best friend. There’s not a lot about my life that she doesn’t know.”
“And she didn’t think you were insane.” It wasn’t really a question, but the last few words did tail off in a slight rise.
“She’s my best friend,” Emma said again. “Look, Eric, she sees the world in a way I don’t. She picks up things I might miss. I do the same for her when she asks.” And even when she didn’t, sometimes, but Emma had gotten better since junior high. “And she wasn’t saying anything I hadn’t thought, she was just more certain.”
Eric shook his head again. “Emma,” he said, raising his face to the bower of old maples that lined the street. “I give up. I just…give up.”
Petal tugged at the lead, and they picked up their pace a little, coming to rest at the side of a busy street. Petal turned left, and Emma turned with him. “Is that a good thing?”
“What?”
“Giving up.”
“Depends on you who you ask, but I can guarantee that some people aren’t going to like it.” He looked at her. “How are you going to contact the child’s mother?”
“His name is Andrew. Drew for short.”
“You didn’t get that from him.”
“Google is your friend,” she said. “But the nickname? His mother is screaming it. Or was. He can hear her, and I’m almost positive that’s what I’m hearing.”
“He’s strong,” Eric said quietly.
“He’s dead. What difference does strength make to the dead?”
“Well,” he said, sliding his hands out of his pockets as Petal ran back. “There are always ghost stories. You’ve heard them. I’ve heard them.”
“Yes, but when I heard them, I didn’t think they were true.”
His smile was both faint and genuine. “The sightings are often false,” he told her, “if that makes any difference.”
“Not much at this particular moment. And besides, I don’t want to hear about the false ones.”
“All right. The real ones, then. Ghosts don’t tend to haunt things. Your father doesn’t, for instance, but he’s here.”
She spun on her heel. There was no sign of her father.
“Sorry. By ‘here’ I mean he’s dead, and of the dead, but he’s not throwing furniture at people’s heads in a fury.”
“Got it. Can he just show up whenever he wants?”
“You mean can he visit you?”
She nodded.
“I’m not entirely sure it’s that easy. He’s not without power,” Eric added as the lights changed and they crossed the street, “but what he has is nothing like what Andrew has.”
“Andrew’s age doesn’t matter?”
“No. And before you ask? I have no idea why some of the dead have more power than others. There used to be theories that said the manner of death defined the amount of power the dead would have, but that’s been debunked.” He looked moodily into the distance, and his eyes narrowed.
By whom? Emma wondered. But Eric was talking, and she didn’t know how long that would last; she didn’t want to interrupt him, and judging by his expression, she wasn’t certain she wanted the answer.
He shook himself. “But there are some ghosts who are powerful. Powerful enough to affect the living world.”
“Andrew’s not.”
“No. He’s a step down. The ones that are, though? Those are your ghost stories, your poltergeists. They’re dangerous,” he added softly. “But Andrew is powerful enough. He is, however, still four years old. What he creates out of what he remembers is something you’ll have to walk through to get to him—at all. To get him to listen to you, or anything you have to say, is going to be very, very difficult.”
“Probably impossible,” Emma said quietly. “I think our best chance is his mother. If she could go in there—with me—and I could touch her son, she’d be able to see him and hear him. I think he would follow her out.”
“Which brings us back to the original question: How are you going to contact her?”
“Cold calls,” Emma said. “We’ll think of something because we have to think of something. I know he’s already dead,” she added softly, “but it seems so wrong to leave him there for god knows how long, just burning.”
“Emma,” he said gently, “even if you do manage to get him out of the house, he’s still dead.”
“So?”
“What do you think you’re going to do with him once he’s outside?”
She stopped walking. “Do with him?”
“He’s dead, and he’s lost,” Eric replied, looking at Petal’s back. It seemed deliberate to Emma. “If you can talk him out of the house, he’ll still be both dead—and lost.” He looked at her then; she was standing still, although Petal was causing a bit of a tilt.
“What do you mean, lost?”
“I mean lost. There’s nowhere for him to go.”
“But—that can’t be right.”
“Ask your father sometime. No, not now.”
“Wait.”
“Petal is going to pull your arm off.”
“He’ll try. Can the dead see the other dead?”
“Not always, not clearly, and not at first.”
“So he couldn’t see my dad?”
Eric looked at her oddly. “Not in his current state, from everything you’ve said. Wh
y?”
She lowered her eyes because they suddenly stung her. “My dad,” she said softly, “is good with lost kids.”
He rolled his eyes, but he also smiled.
“I really don’t understand you,” Emma said, dredging up a smile from somewhere and surprising herself because it was genuine.
“Lucky you.”
She didn’t realize where Petal was headed because she was engrossed in conversation and thought. But when he led her to the fence that bordered the cemetery, she knew. She stopped walking for a moment, compressing her lips in a thin line.
“Not here,” she told Petal. Petal came back to her, his tongue hanging out of his mouth. He cocked his head to one side, and after a moment she fished a Milk-Bone out of her pocket and offered it to him.
“I wasn’t lying,” Eric said quietly. “Graveyards really are one of the quietest places on earth.”
She shook her head. “I can’t,” she told him.
“Why?”
“I don’t want to—” She grimaced. “They’re not quiet enough.” Squaring her shoulders, she looked straight at Eric. “What did you see the night you met me here?”
“Not what you saw,” he replied. It was evasive, but he didn’t look away. “I saw the ghost,” he continued, when she didn’t speak. “She spoke to you.”
“She did way worse than speak to me.”
“What did she do?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
He laughed. The laughter grew louder as she glared at him. It was hard to glare at Eric when he was laughing.
“I didn’t bring it up,” he said, when he could finally stop. “But I didn’t see anything other than that. She talked to you, you backed up, tripped, and banged your head.”
“She handed me something,” Emma said quietly. This much, she wasn’t too embarrassed to say.
Eric could get so still when he was already mostly standing there. “What did she hand you?”
“A lantern. I think it was made of…ice.”
Eric looked at her for a long moment, and then he shook his head. “Emma,” he said softly, “if you ever meet any of my friends, fail to mention that.”
“I haven’t mentioned it to anyone but you.” She paused, “And Allison.”
They walked down the path into the cemetery. At this time of day, the gates weren’t shut, and cars could drive in as well. Petal loved it.
“She was so old, Eric. So old.”
He said nothing for a long moment.
“Is that how you saw her?”
“No,” he said quietly.
“She looked like a bag lady out of nightmare. Why did you see her differently?”
“Some of the dead can choose their form.”
“You mean they don’t look the way they did when they died?”
“I mean they don’t have to. Andrew, in a few decades, will probably be able to appear older, if he thinks about it.”
“Why would he bother? Why would any of them bother?”
Eric shrugged. “I’m not dead,” he told her. “Remember?”
“That could be arranged.”
Eric laughed. Petal decided that this was his cue to get lots of attention, where attention at his age meant another Milk-Bone.
“Who was she?” Emma asked, when Petal once again decided to test the tensile strength of his leash.
He looked at her, and then looked away. “The mother of a friend,” he said, in the wrong tone of voice.
She thought of the ring on his finger and said nothing. And this nothing? It was comfortable. She knew how to give him this space because in some ways, it was the space she herself needed.
Still, she hesitated as Petal began to crawl, sniff, and occasionally piss his way across the cemetery. She had never come to visit Nathan with any company but Petal before. Nathan, she thought. For just a moment, she wanted to see him, and she wanted it so badly she forgot to breathe.
But she remembered to breathe after a few seconds, and she remembered to keep her mouth shut. It didn’t happen often, but it did happen. She covered her eyes with her hand for a few seconds, and then, when she dropped that hand, she was fine.
Eric was watching her.
“Don’t,” she said softly.
“Nathan?”
“I said don’t.”
He lifted both hands and took a step back. “I surrender. And I’m unarmed.”
“And that,” an unfamiliar voice said, “is really strange. On both counts.”
Emma frowned and looked past Eric’s shoulder. A boy was leaning, with one hand, against the hem of an angel’s long, flowing robes. Admittedly the angel was on a pedestal on top of a tombstone that would have been at home over a dozen graves.
The stranger was taller than Eric, and his hair was an orange-red that would have been at home on Anne of Green Gables. He had green eyes, and his skin was the same pale that redheads often have, but it was dusted with freckles and rather puckish dimples.
He wore a jacket, the type of navy blue that said School, but in a cut that said Money; it had no crest. Beneath that? Collared shirt and a thin wool pullover. He also wore gray pants, with perfect pleats.
Eric grimaced and turned, slowly, to face the stranger. “Chase,” he said.
“Eric.” Chase grinned broadly. “I came to lend a hand; the old man said you wanted some help. Who’s your friend?”
“A classmate,” Eric replied tersely. “And the old man was wrong. Why don’t you go play in traffic?”
“Not much traffic to play in around here, frankly. And I am bored out of my mind.”
“You’re always bored. Did no one ever tell you that bored people are generally also boring?”
“You have. About a thousand times.” He straightened up, his hand leaving the angel’s hem and falling into his pocket. His jacket pocket. “But I’m rarely bored when you’re around,” he added, with a grin. “So, come on, introduce us.”
“I’d rather not.”
Chase clucked. “Well, then, unless you’re going to kill me here and now—”
“Seriously considering it, Chase.”
“—I’ll just introduce myself, shall I?”
Eric said, to Emma, “You don’t have to be friendly. I try to offend him frequently, but he’s so dense none of it sticks.”
She laughed. “Are you brothers?”
They both snorted with obvious derision and then glanced at each other.
“I’ll take that as a yes.”
“It’s a definite no,” Chase said. “If he were related to me, I wouldn’t let him out in public dressed that way. He’s often rude, frequently sullen, and generally unfriendly.”
“And Chase,” Eric added, “is often rude, frequently whiny, and never shuts up. Emma, this is Chase Loern. Chase, this is Emma Hall.”
“Pleased to meet you,” Emma said. “I think.”
Chase laughed. “You have been hanging around our Eric, haven’t you?”
She shrugged. “He’s never been rude, he’s never been sullen, and he is unfailingly helpful and friendly.”
“Which is another way of saying boring.”
“Only to teenage boys with too much time on their hands.”
Chase’s red brows arched up into his hairline. “On the other hand,” he said, “maybe you’re meant for each other.”
The silence that followed these words was both awkward and telling.
“If you’ll excuse me for a moment,” Eric said to Emma, recovering first. He grabbed Chase by the arm and began to drag him away, “I’m going to kill someone.”
It was almost true. Eric pulled Chase around the trunk of a messy weeping willow. Chase allowed this with apparent good humor until his back was against the tree. Chase and humor were funny things, if you liked black humor liberally laced with violence. Eric often referred to him as Loki.
“What the hell are you doing?” Eric pushed him, and when Chase brought both of his hands up, let go and stepped back, finding his
feet.
“You need backup,” Chase replied. “I’m here.”
“I don’t need backup. And I don’t need to babysit.”
Chase’s pale skin darkened. “You found the Necromancer. The Necromancer is not dead. Ergo, backup.”
“I found the Necromancer; the Necromancer is not dead. I’m not dead either, and as you can see, not close. Backup doesn’t equal cleanup. I don’t want to have to clean up after you again.”
“Is it Emma?” Chase asked. He waited for a half-beat and then said, “Don’t be stupid, Eric.”
Eric said nothing.
“You’ve historically had a weakness for the girls.” A brief grin animated Chase’s mouth.
Eric didn’t try to break his jaw, but that took effort.
“Well?”
“Don’t make me kill you.”
Chase laughed. He would. But he could laugh just before he killed, and he could laugh a good deal after, as well. “I think that’s a yes.” His amused expression vanished, as if it had just run for its life. “What’s your game, here?”
Eric really did not want to kill Chase. “She’s not what—or who—I expected.”
Red eyebrows disappeared into hairline. Chase was genuinely shocked. Eric could tell, because Chase didn’t have anything to say for almost two minutes.
“You need to take a vacation,” was all he could manage.
“After this.”
“Now. Are you out of your mind? She’s not what you expected?”
“Keep it down,” Eric said quietly, nodding in the direction of Emma, which also happened to be in the direction of the willow.
“Pardon me for being outraged. If they find her—and you know damn well they will—you know what she’ll become. What she is now doesn’t make a goddamn difference. She’s a fucking Necromancer, Eric!”
“The rest of her life is about what she is,” Eric replied quietly. This usually didn’t work with Chase; Chase generally spoke as if conversational volume had to be a constant.
Chase was still shocked. He reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone. Eric pivoted and kicked it out of his hand; it flew, like an ungainly silver bird, in an arc past the tree.
“How many times have I saved your life?”
“About as many,” Chase said, still staring in the direction of the phone, “as I’ve saved yours.”