Meryl’s jaw dropped. “Wow. Was that the most romantic and sick thing you’ve ever seen or what?”
CHAPTER 33
Viten rocked Powell’s body. I leaned down and ripped the silver-branch brooch from her coat. The colors leached out of her skin and clothes as she lost her physical substance, then she faded out into the air. Stricken, Viten clutched at her disappearing form until his empty hands groped at nothing. Somewhere in Boston, her dead body would turn up. He lifted red-rimmed eyes toward me. “You could have given me a few more moments.”
I slipped the brooch into my back pocket. “You’ve got eternity, right? Get out of my sight before I shove this spear through your chest.”
He rose with an imperious look and stooped for his sword. I stepped on it. “You won’t be needing that.”
Viten tried to stare me down. Like I said, that doesn’t work much with me. “Someday, sir, you will find yourself here. I will be waiting.”
“Thanks. Be sure to tell your funeral director I like Guinness,” I said.
Viten sauntered down the trail.
I picked up the sword and made a few swipes with it. It had a fine edge, the grip a little small, but a decent balance. I held the pommel toward Meryl. “For those times when an essence shock to the head is not enough.”
She tested its balance, then batted her eyes at me. “How thoughtful of you. Too bad you didn’t take his sword belt, too.”
I slid my belt off. “You’re just trying to get my pants off again.”
She snorted. “Trying? You’re a guy. A simple ‘take your pants off’ works.” She coiled the belt around her hips, looping it around the steel buckle to form a frog to slide the sword through. She tested the draw a couple of times, then rested her hand on the pommel. “I’m good.”
I don’t know what it is, but a woman with a sword works for me. Always. Granted, the pumpkin orange hair is unusual, but with Meryl, it completes the package. And the boots. The boots work, too. Meryl walked to the opposite side of the clearing, where the path took up again.
“This is the way to the henge?” I asked.
“You didn’t come in this way?”
I shook my head. “I sort of teleported.”
She chuckled. “ ‘Sort of’? Okay.”
Pink essence burst in my face. I was so on edge, I fell back with the spear up and my sword ready. Joe hovered away in outright panic. “What the hell is going on?”
I’d been trying to get Murdock not to overreact when Joe shows up, and here I was startling like a newbie in the Weird. I relaxed like nothing happened. “Hey, buddy. Fancy meeting you here.”
“Me? You’re in Anwwn, then I felt you teleport, and you’re surprised?” I couldn’t even begin to pronounce the Cornish word he used for teleport.
We made our way up the path. “Long story, Joe. How the hell did you get here?”
He flew a random pattern beside us that he used when he was on guard. His hand clutched the empty air at his side, which meant he was ready to pull his glamoured sword. “Flits always get into Anwwn on Samhain. Well, not always, but before, when the world made sense, and we could visit our dead friends proper every year. Except the Way finally opens and everybody’s running this way and that trying to get out and people not where they’re supposed to be. I almost wish I stayed home tonight and went to a bar. Hi, Meryl.”
“Hey, Joe.” She grinned, like they had some mild secret they weren’t sharing. I haven’t figured out what she thinks of Joe. He doesn’t come around much when she’s with me, but they each seemed amused at the other’s existence.
He twirled in front of us. “Are you guys Dead?”
“No, dead tired, though. You never mentioned teleporting is tiring,” I said.
Joe shook his finger. “And that’s another thing. What the hell is that? All of sudden, I felt you in this horrible rush of nothing, then I go and look and here you are.” He narrowed his eyes at me. “You’re really not Dead, right?”
I shook my head. I held the spear out to look at it. “I have it on good authority that this buppy is called a sliver of the Wheel.”
Joe’s eyes bulged. “Where did you get that?”
I shrugged. “A fairy queen. It’s the traditional method if I remember correctly.”
Joe pounded his fists against his forehead. “I’m either too drunk or not drunk enough.”
“Story of my life lately,” Meryl said.
The sunlight dimmed as we hurried down the trail. A bank of clouds moved in, charcoal and thick, materializing in the sky with an unnatural speed. “I thought it didn’t rain here,” I said.
Joe checked the sky. “Sure it does. Usually at night, though, and it always smells like fresh.”
“Fresh what?” asked Meryl.
He dropped his eyebrows at her. “Fresh like fresh. It’s not a difficult concept.”
“Well, it wasn’t night a minute ago, and those clouds don’t look happy,” I said.
Joe fluttered up to get a closer look through the break in the tree canopy. “Something’s not right.” He flew higher until we couldn’t see him above the trees. When he popped back in our faces, his face was troubled. “I don’t like it. I can’t see behind us. There’s a nothing like nothing. It’s just… nothing.” He looked over at me, his eyebrows shooting up. “Oh! It’s like the nothing in…”
“I got it, Joe. Let’s just get out of here,” I interrupted. I knew what he was going to say. Joe had talked about nothing like that once before with me. It was what he called the darkness in my head.
We moved faster, concentrating on the path. After several tense minutes in the unchanging forest, the trail ended at the broad expanse of the grassy plain. Joe stopped so abruptly, I bumped him into an aerial stumble.
In the gray twilight of the overcast sky, clouds of blue and mauve did a slow churn, heavy with the threat of rain. Miles distant, a smudge of gray essence marked the position of the stone circle. A mass of people pressed toward it from every direction, hundreds, maybe thousands, of the Dead. The air vibrated with a riot of species signatures. The Dead moved in a vast ring that contracted as they advanced on the stone circle. In the gap between their front line and the end of the portal entrance, a company of riders burned with a brighter essence. They weren’t locals. I recognized the essences of living people. “That’s got to be Bergin Vize down there.”
Meryl shaded her eyes to see what I was talking about. “What the hell is he doing here?”
“He’s going after Tara,” I said.
Joe snickered. “Not if they get caught.”
At a glance, the massive crowd looked like it was making for the stone circle. Joe had pointed out what wasn’t immediately obvious. The crowd was closing in on Vize, not the henge. “The Dead are chasing them.”
Joe flew slow arcs in front of us. “Yep. Lots of people like it here, but lots don’t. If a Dead person kills a live person in Anwwn, they get to change places.”
Meryl looked intently across the plain. “Yeah. I was supposed to be Viten’s Get Out of Jail Free card.”
A mile off, the edge of the crowd nearest us shifted and broke from the rest. It was pretty clear where they were heading. I stopped. “How do they know if someone’s alive, Joe?”
He laughed and looped in the air. “Living essence lights up like a Beltane fire here. The chase is fun.”
Meryl stopped, too, realization sweeping over her face. “Everyone’s essence?”
Joe hovered between us with a puzzled look. “Of course. They never catch flits, though. Well, almost never.”
“But you can get away, right?” I asked.