“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.
Joe fluttered to the ground and shrugged. “Depends on how good you are at fighting and running. They ignore you only if you have the blessing of Anwwn to be here.”
Meryl and I looked at each other again. “I missed the queue for a blessing, did you?” she asked.
The frayed edge of the crowd had become a wedge pointed right at us. “We’ve been spotted.”
“What do you… Oh!” Joe said, jumping back into the air. He finally got it.
Meryl unpinned the serpent brooch from her jacket. “Let’s dump the silver branches, Grey. We’ll fade back.”
I gestured with the spear. “I don’t think leaving this lying around is the smartest idea.”
Joe peered at the spear. “I’ll take it back if it will let me.”
“That only solves one problem.” I held my arm up. The silver filigree from the spear wound around it in a branching vine pattern. I pushed at it with my body shield. It became colder but didn’t move. “It’s bonded to me.”
Meryl blanched. “Your entire arm is a silver branch?”
Smiling weakly, I held my arm up. “Technically, I think just the forearm, but it’s all kind of connected.”
Meryl whirled toward the open plain. The crowd was within a half mile. I came up behind her and hugged her close against my chest. “Go, Meryl. I’ll avoid them as long as I can and make my way to the henge.”
Joe flew toward us, his face upset. “You won’t have much time if you don’t go back direct-like. Samhain is almost over. I can feel the portals closing.”
Meryl broke my embrace and reattached the serpent brooch to her jacket. “Come on. I’ll shield you, and we’ll run for it.”
I shook my head. “It’s got to be five miles to the henge, Meryl. I know you’re strong, but even you can’t maintain a shield for both of us that long. Besides, the moment we set foot in it, that mob is going to turn into a mosh pit with us in the center. I came to get you out, and you’re getting out. Go. Please. I’ll be fine.”
She had that look in her eyes, the one that says she won’t take no for an answer. “I’ll believe that when I hear a better plan.”
“I’ve never seen such a storm here. It’s almost like Anwwn itself is angry,” said Joe. The forest behind us had gone dark. The clouds deepened from dark gray to black, streaks of rain rippling like curtains in the distance. A strange darkness was behind it, a negation of space that felt devoid of essence. I shivered at the familiarity of it. It felt like nothing. Joe was right. It felt like the thing in my head. Lightning flickered, followed by a long roll of thunder.
I pursed my lips. “Great. Now I’ve managed to piss off an entire otherworld dimension.”
“Teleport!” Meryl exclaimed.
“What?”
She grabbed me by the arms and shook me. “You said you teleported. Teleport us back to Boston.”
Joe shook his head so vigorously, his hair splayed out. “You can’t. You have to use a portal.”
“You lost me,” I said.
“Teleporting is one of the Ways. It’s a place, not a portal.”
“Then teleport us to the henge. We can skip over the plain,” said Meryl.
Joe grinned. “Now you get it.”
I looked inside myself, testing my inner vision, letting the spear feel my desire. It vibrated in my hand, and the misty tunnel opened in my mind. Far off, a gray light smoldered, vague and indistinct. “I think I can do it.”