“She tried it on herself,” he said.
“Who?”
“Doris Gables. She tried breaking her Soul Complement connection with her husband and coscientist.”
“And?”
“Turns out the only way you can break a soul connection is if one of the Soul Complements dies.”
“Mmm.” I dragged another piece of pie out of the box. “I take it Mr. Gables didn’t make it?”
“No, he did. But it killed Doris.”
He sat back and looked at the window over the kitchen sink where the nice normal world rustled and sunshined and otherwise went about its business regardless of Death and Life sharing a pizza.
“I was looking into ways we could deal with our connection,” he said. “With our need to use magic together. Things other Soul Complements might have done.”
“Besides go insane or get killed?” I asked.
He nodded. “I think we deserve a plan C, at least. Or if not us, Allie and Zay deserve some options.”
“They seemed pretty happy to me.”
“They are now,” he said quietly. Yeah, I knew what he was worried about.
There were no happy endings for Soul Complements. And even though Allie and Zay were setting a record for Soul Complement ever-after bliss, there were dangers. Danger of losing who they were to the need of being joined as one.
And they were dragging a kid into the middle of that, of them slipping up one of these days and becoming something that wasn’t quite human.
“How about the microdrive with Soul Complement information on it?” I said. “Might be something there.”
“I’ll look.” He grabbed another piece. “Shame, today, in the car . . . I want to say—”
“Don’t.”
“—I appreciate what you did. For me. Death magic for the Life magic to consume. It helped.”
Sure. That had been all about him. Only it hadn’t. I’d wanted it as much as he did.
But I didn’t tell him that.
“How’s your head?” At his look, I added, “Where you cracked it on the window.”
“It’s good. Healed.” He glanced away, guilty about it.
Man had issues.
“I was the one who hit you, Ter. I was the one who got aggressive about the whole let’s-do-magic thing.”
“Speaking of. Burn, Shame? Were you really going to cast Burn in my car?”
“Got your attention, didn’t it?”
“Yes. Which means you owe me. I own the speakers tonight.”
I groaned. The house was wired so that there were speakers in every room. If you wanted to play music, just hook up the tunes and the whole house was rocking.
Terric had crap taste in music. Jeff Buckley and Counting Crows, for God’s sake.
“No,” I said. “Ask for something else. Anything.”
“Anything?” He held my gaze as he finished off his beer. I had an idea of what was going through his head. Not because I could read his mind but because he’d threatened me with the same thing for the last three months.
A schedule.
Laundry days, shopping days, cooking days, and yes, bathroom-cleaning days. Please. I’d rather die.
“Forget it,” I said. “You can have the speakers.”
“You sure?” he said, already knowing what I’d say. “I’m feeling the urge to go full-on Portishead.”
Gag.
“Better than getting domestic with you, mate. I refuse to check off a list that involves sorting my socks.”
“Keep telling yourself that. You know you’ll be sorry when I’m gone.”
“Hey,” I said. “Here’s a thing. How about you tell me what you’re smoking so I can hop on the all-delusion-all-the-time thing you’ve got going there?”
He set his beer down. “Suddenly I’ve changed my mind.” He pushed up out of the chair. “How does six hours of Hootie and the Blowfish sound?”
“Bite me.”
“Now, now, Flynn. I thought you didn’t want to play for the other team.” He took a step, grinning.
And then the air behind him sizzled with a ribbon of vertical fire.
“Terric,” I yelled.
I knew what that ribbon was. I’d seen it the last time Eli Collins had popped into my room and given me an ultimatum at gunpoint. It was a gate, it was tech and magic, and Eli was on the other side controlling it.
A hole in space yawned open.
Terric turned.
Eli Collins, the psychopath we’d been looking for, stepped through that hole.
Terric and I raised our hands, drew on magic.
Eli already had the gun aimed, bullets tearing through the air.
Magic is fast. Bullets are faster.
Terric took one in the chest. A second hit me in the throat.
Eli had a knife in his other hand. He slashed Terric’s neck. Blood poured free as Terric fell to the floor, gasping.
Terric’s pain and my pain hit me like a damn truck. I couldn’t breathe. I fell to my knees.
And then Eli was standing over me, the gun trained on my head.
“Hello, Shame,” he snarled. “I’ve been waiting a long, long time for this.”
I pulled on Death magic.
He squeezed the trigger.
Magic is fast. Bullets are faster.
One shot in my head. Then heart, stomach, chest, lungs. One in each leg.
Everything was shock white, hot, burning. I couldn’t think, couldn’t reach the magic inside me.
I think I hit the floor. Watched with fading sight as Eli dragged Terric back through the hole in space. Maybe Terric was still alive. Maybe Terric was still breathing. I felt one more hot push of his agony.
And then I felt nothing. No heat, no pain. Because I wasn’t breathing. I wasn’t living.
Eleanor, next to me, screamed.
Eli Collins emptied the rest of the clip into my body.
I didn’t feel a thing.
I heard Eleanor again, for a brief moment: Shame! No! Don’t go!
I tried to answer but had no voice. The room filled with light. At the edge of that light I saw the tunnel, the road that led to death. The real, through-the-veil, no-coming-back death.
Like hell I was walking that road.
But my feet were not my own.
I got one last glimpse of my body, bloody and riddled with holes, staining the linoleum. Had one last thought that Terric would be pissed at the mess we’d made of the kitchen.
Eli yelled obscenities at my corpse from the other side of that hole. Then he closed the gate before I could even take a step.
And then I was dead.
Chapter 7
TERRIC
“Terric!”
The last thing Shame said—my name.
I spun as an explosion of pain tore through me.
Bullet. I staggered, but it wasn’t a hand that caught me. It was a knife. I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t swallow around the pain.
Blood pumped from my throat, hot and slick, down my chest.
He’d slit my throat. Someone had slit my throat. The shock of that couldn’t penetrate the horror I was already grappling with.
Shame was dying, right there on our kitchen floor.
For a slow, terrifying moment, I sifted the possibilities. Who could break into our home without us noticing? Who would know we would both be here together?
Then I heard his voice and knew who was behind me: Eli Collins.
We’d spent so much time looking for him, but he’d always known right where we would be. In Portland. Together. I don’t know why he’d waited so long to attack. But Eli never did anything randomly.
I tried to raise my hands to push Eli away, to fight. Nothing about me was working. Blood loss, possibly poison, the bullet wound, and the pain of Shame dying. I felt cut in half from head to soul.
I was dying too.
Life magic caught fire inside me like lighter fluid under a match and devoured me whole.