“People never come here until they are,” he told me. “Mediums and Spiritualism are one thing, but really touching the dead? You’d have to be half mad with grief, but I guess death can make fools of us all.”
He stood and opened the door back into the shop. “Come on,” he said. “You can’t stay out here, and you can’t get out of Chinatown until morning. It’s not safe for anyone in this place.”
“There’s no point in my coming inside unless you’ll help me,” I said, folding my hands into the damp creases of my coat, which did little to warm them. “If you won’t, I have to be on to the next thing.” I pointed at the sky, obscured by fog. I could still sense the echo of the Old Ones’ Gate, ringing against my Weird like an ever-struck bell. “I’m running out of time. You work with shadowy practices—you must know that.”
Chang considered, also looking at the sky. “I’ll make you a deal,” he said at last. “You tell me how you know about that”—he pointed at the sky—“and I’ll listen to what you have to say about this friend of yours.”
Hope sprouted in my chest, just a small shoot. The sensation was one I’d almost forgotten. “Thank you,” I rushed. “I’ll try my best, but I don’t know how much I can—”
“Oh, I think you can tell me plenty, Aoife Grayson,” said Chang. He gestured me inside.
My heart jumped. He knew who I was—which wasn’t hard, I reminded myself. Before Draven had been taken to the Thorn Land, he’d plastered my picture as a wanted fugitive across every spot he could find.
But Chang’s serene smile bespoke some deeper interest. I hoped it wasn’t in harming me, but I didn’t have a choice right now. I needed him, and he had his price.
I hoped it wasn’t something I couldn’t pay.
We went back inside, and Chang showed us a small sleeping area on the second floor, which Cal and Conrad seemed grateful for. I was far too jittery to sleep after all that had happened.
Chang sat me on one end of a ratty sofa and made tea from a steam hob, offering me a cup. I sniffed it suspiciously.
“I’m not Lei Xiang,” he said. “I don’t drug people and rob them. Clearly, or I wouldn’t be living here.”
I drank then. The tea was bitter but good, and it did warm me up. Chang offered me a blanket. “This might help.”
I shivered against my will, feeling as if my skin were colder than the air. “I thought California was supposed to be warm.”
“Not here,” Chang said. “The fog makes sure of that.” He sipped his tea and smiled at me. “You don’t seem like the usual sort of person who comes to our doorstep, Aoife. Even knowing who you are.” He sipped his tea again. “You said you lost someone.”
“His name was Dean,” I said quietly. Steam drifted from our cups, turning Chang’s face into something even more beautiful and unearthly. He really was incredibly good-looking. If it wasn’t for his friendly demeanor and the silence of my shoggoth scar, I’d say he could be Fae or some other creature that used its beauty as predatory camouflage.
“This Dean must be very special if you’re willing to risk direct contact with the Deadlands,” said Chang. “It’s a strange place that does things to your mind. Reality has no role there.”
“It’s my fault he’s dead,” I said. Saying it out loud hadn’t gotten any easier, and I felt the weight of the moment all over again. Cradling Dean in the snow. Feeling his blood turn cold against my hands and cheek. I took a long swallow of too-hot tea and let the pain burn out the memory. “It wasn’t his time.”
“Time doesn’t have much sway in the Deadlands either,” Chang said. “It really is eternal.”
“Someone told me that everyone has a thread, a measure of time,” I said softly. “That if yours is cut short, it’s possible to get that time back.” Too bad Crow, the creature who oversaw people’s dreams, hadn’t told me exactly how you were supposed to do that.
“Sounds like magic to me.” Chang shrugged. “But I wouldn’t know about that. I just know how the machine works. And I know that a lot of people die before their time, especially around here.” He sipped his tea. “I’m sorry for you. That’s never an easy fact to live with.” He refilled my teacup. “How did Dean die?”
“He was shot,” I said.
Chang lifted one eyebrow. “Not by you, I hope. Trying to contact a murder victim, even one that was an accident, is dangerous. And if you were the murderer …”
“No!” I cried. The very idea that I would hurt Dean horrified me, but then I realized that I hurt everyone I tried to keep safe. No matter how hard I tried to protect them, they all fell prey to the dangers of being my friend. Not to mention the thousands of people in Lovecraft who’d been hurt when I blew up the engine.
“Okay, okay. Calm down,” Chang said. “I just had to ask.” He took our empty cups and put them in a washbasin already overflowing with plates and silverware.
“Ask me anything but that,” I muttered, pulling my legs under me and curling into the smallest ball possible.
“All right,” Chang said. He sat back down and offered me a thick wool blanket that smelled like dry rot and mothballs. I wrapped up in it, trying to ward off the chill that had nothing to do with my wet clothes. I knew what was coming.
“Tell me about the hole in the sky,” Chang said. “And about everything that’s crawled up out of the ground to look at it.”
He regarded me with that penetrating black gaze, and I sighed and examined the pattern in the blanket. “The Great Old Ones have returned,” I said. I didn’t elaborate, and thankfully Chang didn’t ask me to.
“Makes sense,” he said. “The doctor did a lot of research on other places, other than the Deadlands. He talked about the Old Ones, in a space so far away the brain couldn’t even wrap around the idea of it.”
“And now they’re coming,” I said. “And everything that appeared from their last visit—the shoggoths and the leviathans and the other monsters—are paving the way.”
Chang grimaced. “Even the ghosts are acting up. Boneyard’s never been so busy.”
I kept quiet at that. I didn’t know how I’d ever explain to Chang how it had been me who released the Old Ones. But I did know if he found out, he’d never help me.
“I’ve heard they’re not bad,” I said. “Not evil, I mean. That even though they birthed things like the shoggoths, they also gave people technology and art and the knowledge of the Gates—that there are other worlds besides Iron out there among the stars.”
“Maybe that was well and good when humans were still living in mud huts,” Chang said. “But now it’ll sow chaos, no matter what their intentions.” He tapped his fingers against the arms of the chair. “They need to be stopped, or I fear the whole world will suffer.”
“I …” I chewed on my lip, thinking of how to phrase my enticement. “If you help me get to the Deadlands, I might be able to do something about them.”
Chang cocked his head, but he didn’t regard me as if I were insane, so I pressed on. “I can … I can visit other lands, travel between them, but I can’t go to the Deadlands. Maybe there, there’s some answer to keep the living world safe.”
I agreed with Chang. The world wasn’t the same as when the Old Ones had come before. They could do real damage, and beyond damage, they could finally destroy life as we knew it. What I’d done in Lovecraft would pale in comparison. I wanted to prove Crow wrong—I wanted to prove that I could help the Iron Land, not just tear it down.
If I wanted to help Dean, I wanted to find a way to undo my bargain with the Old Ones nearly as much. If there was a choice, I knew what I should do—but maybe I wouldn’t have to choose after all.