I wanted to cry. I could feel the prickling of tears under my eyelids and the corners of my mouth had turned down so emphatically that it was hard to speak. “Why?”
“It’s part of the casting that will bind you together.”
I bit my lip and studied the rat. It looked back at me with filmed eyes, the fur along its back grizzled with white. It was an old rat and its lethargy was a natural result, not a magical effect. I supposed that had made it a more attractive lunch than a younger rat that might have injured the snake while fighting for its life. This one looked ready to heave a sigh and give up. “I don’t like it,” I said.
“I didn’t imagine you would. Make up your mind—time is passing and we have very little left.”
Unhappy and not at all convinced I was doing the right thing, I took the bottle from Carlos and did my best to swallow the contents around the lump in my throat. He muttered to the rat and fed it from the other bottle as I forced the bitter, burning liquid down my own throat. As I swallowed the last of it, I began to see a narrow strand of green energy that lifted off the rat as if it were a thread in a breeze. Carlos touched one finger to my chest, making me shudder with the cold that came from him, and drew up a similar filament from me, muttering all the while in words that sparked the silvery mist of the Grey in actinic flashes.
He twisted the strands together in his left hand and picked up the rat in his right, still speaking glittering, barbed words that twisted and dug into me and the now-wriggling creature.
He dropped it into my lap. I jerked and the rat bit my leg, its long yellow teeth cutting right through my blue jeans and into my skin. I shouted at the sudden pain and snatched the rat off my lap. A small spot of blood swelled into the fabric of my jeans and a drop of the same hung on the rat’s protruding teeth. It licked the blood off with a busy swipe of its tongue and I knew what one of the harsh flavors was in Carlos’s brew.
“Oh, you sneaky bastard,” I said.
Ignoring my words, Carlos plucked the rat from my grip, rolling and knotting it in the twined coil of our combined lives. Then he put the rat on the table beside me, where it lay without moving, though I could see its sides heaving as it breathed. He held both his hands over it, as if smothering it, and though he didn’t touch it, the rat’s breathing slowed and the gleam of its life dimmed until it was nearly extinguished.
He wrapped the entangled threads around me now, his lips moving, but the sound so low, I couldn’t hear him. I felt dizzy and swayed. Carlos caught me by the shoulders and I could barely feel the piercing cold of his touch as he laid me down on the table beside the dying rat, which he picked up and placed on my chest.
“Poor rat,” I murmured, folding my hands over it. I could feel a distant warmth in its still body. “I’m sorry. . . .”
“Breathe,” Carlos whispered. “Breathe out. Let your breath go.”
Perversely, I sucked in a breath that felt as cold as Arctic snow and had to cough the sharp knife of air out again at once.
The rat squirmed in my hands. My vision dimmed and the last of my breath slid away. I felt the rat push out of my loose grip and trot a step or two down my body before it was lifted off me, squeaking as loudly as a hungry baby.
Darkness and cold that had no real temperature settled on me. My ears rang until the blood slowed down too much to whisper. Something touched my face, brushing my forehead, eyelids, lips, and slid away just as I teetered into the black.
“I’ll see you in Lisbon, Blaine.”
TWO
I thought I wasn’t supposed to wake up yet—surely we hadn’t reached Lisbon? My broken sense of time and my helplessness were frustrating and there seemed to be nothing I could do about being awake. I was supposed to be playing dead until after we arrived in Portugal, and I doubted that I was going to pass muster at customs if I was breathing. I slid my hands up, unable to push the box open, feeling an unfamiliar cloth and strapping holding me down as I brushed against my clothes. Or rather, not my clothes. I couldn’t see in the dark, but I could tell by the feel that I wasn’t wearing the jeans and sweater I’d had on when I lay down on the embalming table.
I shuddered, thinking that someone had changed my clothes and strapped me to the base of the coffin. If that someone was Carlos, I was going to slap him numb, necromancer or not. I chided myself not to get hysterical over such a small point. It was probably Tovah who’d managed it, making me look more corpse-like and appropriately dressed for my funeral, as well as safely tied down. She’d cleaned up the rat bite on my leg as well, for which I was grateful, but not put any more at ease. I plucked at the straps that kept me from rolling and sliding in my casket. No matter how much my clothes made me look like a stiff, I was now breathing and sweating as the silent panic started. I wasn’t sure I could be a convincing corpse without Carlos’s help and I had no way to get it. It didn’t matter if he, too, was wide awake, since neither of us could slither out of our portable graves and have a cozy chat about the problem. Given the state of the world—with terrorism, epidemics, floods, and fires everywhere, and civil war in Syria and Turkey, as well as dozens of other problems leading to unrest and paranoia at home and internationally—if I made one ill-timed sound or rolled in the box as it was being moved, no one was going to simply pass the coffin on without taking a look inside first. That would be a disaster. I schooled myself to be still, still, still, and quiet as my own corpse. I tried sinking down toward the Grey. . . .
My box lurched and I heard the engine downshift and groan. I couldn’t concentrate in the jostling box and had to give up my dive for the Grey. But at least it seemed I wasn’t in a plane after all. A truck? I hoped it was a truck in Portugal and not a truck crossing the tarmac at whatever transshipment point we’d passed through. I hated the idea of being lost luggage somewhere in Europe.
Wherever I was, something was keeping me from gaining access to—or even a view of—the Grey or its writhing energy grid. It could have been a side effect of the zinc lining in the box, but I wasn’t certain. I knew steel and silver both had unusual properties in the Grey, but I wasn’t sure if magical interactions were universal to all metals. I would have bet that the problem had something to do with my being inside a metal box inside a metal truck, but there was no way to test the hypothesis at that moment. I wasn’t all that interested in trying, anyway. It was always possible I’d sink too far, displace myself, and fall out of the truck at whatever speed we were going in traffic.
After what felt like a couple of hours in my stuffy little coffin as the truck wound up and down some steep hills and swayed around hairpin turns, the vehicle stopped and I was unloaded. I was pretty sure the people moving my box were being careful, but I still got jarred around and collected a couple of bruises from thumping into the side when someone lost their grip. Even through the zinc and wood, I could hear swearing. It wasn’t English swearing, but the tone was the same even if I didn’t understand the words. I held my breath and didn’t swear back, just in case. . . .
Then came the trundling sound of a cart underneath me before another spate of lifting, tilting, jostling, swearing, and finally a ringing thump as the coffin was set down on some hard surface. Eventually, sounds of the box-handlers faded away and the lid was opened.
The dimly lit room I’d been brought to was almost soundless, and the air, while cooler, was only a small relief from the close and overused atmosphere in my box.
A dark-haired woman peered into my container, her expression wary. “Senhora Blaine?” The energy around her head was streaked with black and orange like Halloween bunting. She appeared anxious and a little bit dead, but not undead.