The Dire King Page 24

  It was like drinking boiling water. The earthly trees slipped behind the curtain, and the rolling fields of the Annwyn stood alone once more. The heat rose in me until it felt as though my blood had been replaced with fire. The ruined walls of Grafton’s church faded away, and soon Hafgan’s Hold was Hafgan’s Hold once more. I willed the last frail ends of the veil to come together, pulling the rend together from a gap of one hundred feet across to fifty. I didn’t know how much longer I could stand it. Thirty. I closed my eyes, but the visions still hung in front of me—there was no respite for the Seer. Twenty. The world swam. My whole body burned. Darkness closed in.

  And then the pain was suddenly—not gone, exactly, but someone else’s. I felt it as though from far away. I opened my eyes. A stranger clad in purest black stood over me. A memory. A shadow I had seen only once before in the depths of the underworld.

  “Hello, Abigail Rook.”

  I could not find words to speak. My mind turned to Charlie and Jackaby, both dead on the battlefield. Had I joined them?

  “You have not gone to the other side,” said the stranger. “Not yet. But you may, if you choose to. I wonder. Will you? It’s a very human thing to do, after all. They’re always writing about it. Pyramus and Thisbe. Romeo and Juliet. You and I both know that you have nothing to fear from the other side, little mortal. Only old friends. Will you join him? You love him. I can see it.”

  My body felt both weightless and very heavy all at once.

  “Very well,” said the stranger.

  I opened my eyes. Jackaby’s face hung in a halo of light above me. I caught my breath. I hadn’t chosen this. More faces appeared beside his. Jenny. Hudson. Lydia. All of them were swimming in their own glow, lit by brilliant auras. They radiated love and pride. The one face I wanted most to see was not among them.

  My head throbbed. “I’m not dead?” I said.

  “We didn’t know for sure for a while,” said Jackaby. “Very odd thing, not knowing.”

  “But you, sir!” I said. “You were dead. I saw you! You’re . . . alive?”

  “That’s Jenny’s doing,” said Jackaby. “And it was physical science, no less. No magic involved.”

  “Well, I did reach inside your chest when the compressions weren’t working,” Jenny admitted. “But otherwise, good old-fashioned medical care, yes.”

  “She saved my life,” said Jackaby. “No—I guess that isn’t right. She brought me back. Which, I suppose, makes me undead as well, now, doesn’t it?” He sounded a little too tickled at the notion. “I was definitely briefly dead, after all—as evidenced by the sight leaving my body.” His expression sobered. He looked into my eyes. “I had no right to do it, Miss Rook,” he said. “I am so sorry. It was the only thing I could think to do, the only way to give you a chance at mending the veil after I had gone. It should never have been your burden to bear. I just couldn’t imagine it falling to anyone else. I couldn’t imagine anyone else understanding.”

  “I expect that’s how Eleanor felt when she willed it to you,” I said. “It’s fine. It’s done.” I looked him in the face. He looked positively destroyed. Except his eyes. His eyes looked, somehow, younger.

  “They’re blue,” I said. “Your eyes have turned blue.”

  “They always were,” he said. He allowed himself a soft chuckle. “Yours went red for a while there. They’ve turned gray now. They’re like storm clouds.”

  I pushed myself up. We were still high atop the machine. Down below, there was a circle in the center of the courtyard twenty feet wide. Through it, human and inhuman soldiers were staggering toward the keep, gazing up at us on the tower for answers. “The rend isn’t fully closed,” I said. “I still need to finish this.”

  “No. Wait.” I turned at the sound of another voice. Alina was hunched over in the corner. She stood. “This should never have happened. I was wrong. I was stupid. This war was never the answer—but a wall is not the answer, either. We don’t need battles or barriers; we need bridges. My brother was right. We do not need hate; we need hope. We need to leave it open.”

  “We need nothing of the sort,” said Jackaby.

  “We need to learn how to coexist,” Alina insisted. “The Dire King did not invent hate and fear; he only used them. They were here all along. The wall just preserved them. Isolation preserved them. You think he’s going to be the last to cut through that barrier? It will happen again. We need—”

  “I do believe you’ve lost the right to tell us what we need,” Jackaby said.

  “No,” I said. “No, she’s right. And she has earned the right.” I picked up the crown from beside me. “It was Alina who stopped Arawn. The king is dead.” I reached the crown across toward Alina. “Long live the queen.”

  Alina stared at the crown. She didn’t take it.

  “Not me,” she said. “I’m not a leader like Charlie.”

  “That’s the first thing you’ve said I fully agree with,” Jackaby replied. I raised an eyebrow at him and he sighed. “Miss Rook may have a point,” he went on. “The Seelie and Unseelie alike have lost their king. There will be a void in Arawn’s absence. That can get very messy if it goes too long without anyone presenting a legitimate claim.”

  Alina still looked hesitant. She took the crown tentatively, staring at it in her hands. “Things will not be as they once were,” she said.

  “Maybe they’re not supposed to be,” Jackaby said heavily. “There are times from which history does not bounce back. This feels like an end, but maybe also a beginning.”

  “If there are to be bridges, there will need to be guardians, as well. Sentinels to safeguard the peace,” I said. “Someone with one foot in the world of magic, and one in the world of men. Keeper of the Veil is quite a role for someone looking for her purpose in life.”

  Alina looked from the crown to me. “I can’t. I don’t deserve it.”

  “Of course you don’t,” I said. I took a deep breath. “That’s not how responsibility works. It is a gift and a burden in one. You don’t deserve it, but I think you’ll rise to it. Charlie would have thought so, too.”

  “If you’re looking for a contractor to fix up this old castle,” added Jackaby, “I know a few people who are very good with creative use of space. Might be nice to have a place to call home again.”

  “Suverana of the Om Caini. Keeper of the Veil.” Alina seemed to be trying out the idea. She lifted the crown to her head. “You’re sure?” she said.

  “Never.” Jackaby gave her a weak smile. “Good luck, your majesty.”

  Alina sent the surviving warriors away. There would be no reparations. There would be no prisoners nor punishments. They all obliged.

  I don’t know what I expected, exactly. No one questioned her right to rule. They did not put up a fight. The Unseelie were more than eager to scatter into the forests and back to their homes. Those who cared to tend to their fallen kinfolk were free to carry them away. The goblins tended to their dead, as well as anyone else’s leftover dead, especially ones with expensive-looking weapons or full pockets.

  Bit by bit the battleground cleared. Charlie’s body remained. We had brought him down to ground level, to be among the ranks of loyal police officers who had gone down with him. I found Alina standing over him.

  “The city will honor him,” I told her. “This time, the people will know. Marlowe will see to it. I will see to it.” My throat was dry.

  “He never cared about being honored,” said Alina.

  “I suppose not. But New Fiddleham was his city—and he was their peacekeeper. I think they should know.” I stared at Charlie’s body. His expression was sad. It didn’t feel real. “Will you come to the funeral?”

  “We have our own rituals,” she said.

  “Abigail.” Jenny’s soft voice was behind me. “Are you ready?”

  “Wait,” said Alina. “Before you go.” Sh
e held out a hand and I reached for it. She pressed something into my palm. “This was our mother’s,” she said. “Kazimir wanted you to have it. He wanted—” She broke off.

  I took the ring. Its aura shone in my hand, and the glow was full of Charlie. He had held this ring, fidgeted with it, kept it close to his heart. My chest ached.

  “You were already family in Kazimir’s eyes,” she said. “I have been so blind. I don’t expect you to fully trust me, but know that you are kin to the Om Caini now. If you ever have need of our help, you need only call on us.”

  I nodded. “Thank you,” I said. “For what it’s worth—I think he would be very proud of you.”

  “He always was.” She sniffed. “For once in my life, I think it is time I begin giving him a reason to be.”

  The trip back to Augur Lane was quiet. I don’t remember getting into the carriage, or who was driving it. I remember Jackaby watching me with pursed lips and saying nothing for several long minutes. I was glad he said nothing. I did not want to talk. I did not want to be comforted. The war was done, and now I wanted to mourn.

  Mourning, however, did not come easily. The sight was relentless. All around me, the air was filled with lights and colors and smells and tastes more intense than I could handle. It was as though I had wandered into the middle of a mad parade and could not get out again. The world as I had always known it was there, but it lay perpetually underneath a wild nightmare. When I closed my eyes it was worse; only the mundane blinked away, leaving nothing but the fantastical. The whole experience was overwhelming and exhausting.

  We arrived at Jackaby’s house, and I had to stop at the front walk to take it all in.

  “Miss Rook?” Jackaby said, a hand at my elbow.

  “I-it’s just too much,” I said.

  “Oh, yes,” he said. “The salt and sage, the knots and carvings. This house must be aglow for you with all the protective charms. I’ll miss that.”

  I nodded. “It’s all that and more. It’s like the color of a worried father’s hug mixed with a mother cat’s bite. It’s other things, too. Flowing all through the house and down the walk is a river of lighter auras. It’s a kaleidoscope of feelings and intentions and potentials.”

  “Our recent guests,” Jackaby confirmed. “Their presence will take time to fade. You will grow accustomed to it over time.”

  All of this had been easier when we had been on the battlefield. There, at the end of the war, on the threshold between realms, the visions had seemed almost normal. Now that we were at home, they felt like an assault. I tried to breathe evenly as we walked up the step. At the front door, the magic of the transom window swirled.

  “Huh,” said Jackaby.

  “Oh my,” said Jenny.

  I glanced up.

  abigail rook:

  private detective

  “What?” I said. “I’m not—”

  “Makes sense,” Jackaby said in a tone I found offensively rational and even. “I hadn’t even thought about that. I’ll stay on, of course, if you like.”

  “What? ” I said. “You’ll stay on? I’m not the investigator here! I’m your assistant. I don’t know what I’m doing. I don’t even know what I’m seeing.”

  “You’ll be marvelous,” Jackaby said earnestly. “You’re already more keen than I ever was about putting together clues and looking in dustbins and questioning people and all that. Besides, you have something I never had when I was first starting out.”

  “Oh? What’s that?”

  “Me!” His smile was incorrigible.

  “It would be really wonderful if all this could be a dream,” I said.

  “Come now, you’ll get there. Focus on one aura at a time; that helps. What do you see when you look at me?”

  I took a breath. “A kind of idiosyncratic bluish with a happy patch of crimson right around your middle. You’re a bit dark—but also very light in funny little ways.” I blinked. “There are also notes of a sort of rosy color hanging all around both you and Jenny. No, not rosy, exactly. How would you describe it—a buoyant sort of flush?”

  “Buoyant is not a color,” said Jackaby. “You sound ridiculous. But an excellent start! The sight will take time to understand. I’m here to help.”

  “I’m here for you, too, Abigail,” Jenny assured me, putting a hand on Jackaby’s shoulder as she glided forward to join us. “We can practice together and take it slow. It’s the least I could do after everything you’ve done to help me figure out my own abilities.”

  I nodded. “It’s nice to see that you’re not having any more trouble in that area,” I said. Jenny’s hand was still on Jackaby’s shoulder. The flush around their auras increased when I mentioned it.

  “I’m not even sure how it happened,” Jenny said. “I just needed it to happen, and it did.”

  “Not surprised about it at all,” said Jackaby.

  “Not surprised?” Jenny said. “Yesterday I couldn’t so much as brush a hair out of your eyes, but today I reached inside your chest and held your heart in my hands—and you’re not surprised?”

  “Not at all. My heart was always yours,” said Jackaby.

  Jenny leaned back and looked at him, startled. “That is about the sweetest thing I think you’ve ever said.”

  “Was it good?” He gave her a goofy grin. “I was trying to work out how to phrase it the whole ride over.”

  “Not good at all, no,” she said, trying unsuccessfully to keep a smile off her face. “It was sappy and maudlin and positively terrible. Sweet, though. Excellent effort.”

  “You’re just jealous because we’re both technically undead now, and I’m clearly so much better at it.”

  “Jealous? I’m not jealous. For the first time since I’ve known you, I have the power to shut you up.” She leaned in and kissed him right on the lips.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Jackaby slept. It was the first time I had ever seen him do so. He nodded off in the library’s comfortable armchair while we were talking. He looked peaceful, so I let him rest as I gazed around the room.

  Sleep would not come so easily to me. I tried to settle my nerves. I slipped out and made myself a cup of chamomile, only I couldn’t tell if I had used the wrong tin, or if now that I was the Seer, chamomile really did taste like riding a hot air balloon in the mist on a nondescript Saturday afternoon. I was plagued by visions and sensations and emotions I could not put into words, and worse, looming right behind all of this was a cold, swelling ache.

  I took the ring out of my pocket. I turned it over and over, watching the glow that was Charlie leave little trails of light in my third eye. I focused, as Jackaby had suggested, until there was nothing in my world except that aura. And nothing changed. And Charlie was still dead.

  Jackaby’s head bobbed back up a few minutes later.

  “I—wha? Who did? Was I sleeping?”

  “You were, sir.” I put the ring back in my pocket.

  “Mmm. Delightful. I’m looking forward to a lot more of that. What were we saying?”

  “Not important,” I said. “I was just looking at all the books. I could never see it before, but they really are meticulously shelved. It’s an elegant gradient of auras.”

  “Thank you,” said Jackaby. “Nice to be appreciated.”

  “Yes. I can see the magic in them now. All of them. Even the ones out here with the beige auras. Your whole library is magic, isn’t it?”

  “Of course it is.”

  “Would a book without magic have any aura at all?”

  He considered the question. “I have never found a book that did not have at least a little magic in it,” said Jackaby. “They can’t help it. They’re made out of words and sometimes even pictures.”

  “The ones toward the back are beautiful,” I said. “They’re so intense.”

  “You should g
o look in the Dangerous Documents section sometime, now that you can really see them. I’ve got a few on thaumaturgy that glow like hot embers, a tome on invocations that pulses like a heartbeat, journals by an artificer that vent magic like hissing steam.”

  “Have you any about the afterlife?” I asked before I realized I was thinking it.

  There was silence for several seconds. “He’s gone,” Jackaby said.

  “I wasn’t—”

  “I don’t need to be the Seer to see some things.”

  I swallowed the lump forming in my throat. “It isn’t fair,” I said.

  “No, it is not.”

  “You can’t tell me it isn’t possible for a person to come back,” I said. “We met the boatman—the underworld is a real place. There are souls there—”

  “Not his,” said Jackaby. “Charon told us last time. Half humans can’t enter his underworld. They go—well, someplace else. Mag Mell, perhaps? That might just be fairies, though.”

  I let that sink in.

  Jackaby and I sat in silence for a long while. “Well, I think I’d best be off to get some rest now,” Jackaby said, pushing himself up.

  I nodded. “Of course, sir. You have spent twenty years earning it.”

  He nodded and patted my shoulder as he left. “Just remember—you’re stronger than you think, Miss Rook. And you’re not alone.”

  “Good night, Mr. Jackaby.”

  When his footsteps faded up the stairs, I took the ring out again, holding it between my finger and thumb.

  He was right. Charlie was gone. Not only was Charlie gone, but when the time came for me to go, Charlie wouldn’t be there waiting for me. He would be—somewhere else. The swelling ache in my chest finally burst, and the lights and auras in front of me blurred with hot tears. A door in my chest quietly closed and locked itself forever.

  I don’t know how long I remained in the library—nor whether I had slept at all—but the sky through the window was full of stars when I heard a voice above me.

  “Why did you say no?”