24

Vic

The world changed when they left the parking lot. The sky flashed to a bright green, lit by the ever-present crescent moon.

“Why is it always night here?” Vic mused.

“It’s not,” Mel said from the back seat. “It’s twilight, and twilight is between.”

“Aren’t you well informed,” Argent said in a clipped tone.

Vic had never seen her this serious, never seen her lips pressed into a too-tight line.

He did not know if he should tell Argent who Mel was. Knowledge was power among the immortals and there had to be any number of them who would take an interest in Death’s daughter. Vic winced that he could not trust Argent. He wanted to. He considered her a friend, but things among the elves were dicey now.

Vic wanted to ask Mel what she knew, especially if Sara was dying, but she crossed her arms and dipped her head to hide her face with her hat, making it clear she wouldn’t say anything in front of Argent.

The road ahead was lined in purple feathers. They fluttered and peeled away as the tires touched them.

Vic swallowed hard and asked what he’d been dreading since Argent had appeared.

“What did you mean when you said Death might be dying?”

“The Reapers have stopped reaping,” she said.

“So nothing’s dying?” Vic asked.

“Oh, they’re dying,” Argent said. “But their souls, their energy, isn’t going anywhere.”

“Is that bad?”

“The energy isn’t going anywhere,” Argent repeated. “Negative, positive. It’s lingering, building up. Think of it like a pressure cooker. Your world isn’t meant to hold so much magic. Even in Alfheimr there is death.” Argent did not frown, but Vic thought he read a little sadness in her ivory expression, a bit of a crinkle around her perfect gunmetal eyes.

“So someone needs to take the garbage out,” Vic mused.

Adam had saved Vic from a Reaper posing as a janitor. He saw now that the cover was more appropriate than he’d realized.

“What do you mean?” Argent asked.

“The underworld breaks down the spirits into energy. It, uh, launders them. Good or bad it strips them down to energy and lets them dissolve.”

It was funny how the immortals, who knew so much and lived so long, had such a blind spot when it came to Death and how she worked. Then again, Death had probably made certain of it, keeping them in the dark to protect the very processes that were now breaking down.

Outside the car the usual wonders of the spirit realm, giant birds and dinosaurs, things long extinct or mythological in Vic’s world, flew by, but for once he wasn’t fascinated by them.

All of reality might be at stake, and none of it mattered to him in that moment.

Adam was missing. Adam might be dead.

Argent came to a stop at an amusement park. It was Western themed, with wooden palisades and cowboy versus Indian statues that probably wouldn’t be around today.

But this was the Other Side, where history tended to linger. There was something to that, Vic knew, to knowing how things had once been so you could avoid making the same mistakes. He hadn’t grown up the son of Maria Martinez and not learned a thing or two about America’s past.

Vic agreed. Don’t venerate it, but don’t bury it. Fix it, but don’t hide it. Hiding it would let it happen again.

“Everybody out,” Argent said, braking hard and throwing the car into park.

There was no arguing with that tone even if Vic had been interested.

The ticket booth was manned by a yellowed skeleton strung up like a puppet. Vic could not tell if it was real or plastic, and decided he did not want to know. Several rats scurried around the top of the booth, working the strings.

“Three, please,” Argent said.

The skeleton uncurled an open hand.

Argent opened her purse and produced six coins. They were a mix of gold and silver, with the silver being the rough-edged uneven pieces, common in pirate wrecks. The gold coins looked ancient, Roman, he’d have guessed.

“You just carry those around?” Vic asked, wondering if he could score one for his mother.

The queen shrugged.

The roller coaster whipped by. Its passengers emitted screams of happy fright and Vic winced, remembering the carnival by the sea.

“Enter,” the rats said in a squeaky chorus, working the skeleton’s jaw as the arm withdrew.

They were terrible ventriloquists, but they were talking rats, which was pretty fantastic in and of itself.

Vic decided he was still in shock and followed Argent as she led them toward an artificial mountain, a kid’s ride with mine cars set on a narrow track.

Another skeleton puppet manned by rats operated the ride. There was no line.

Vic wondered how Argent would have handled being told to wait.

Neither Vic nor Mel commented as they climbed into the car. Vic lowered the safety bar, uncertain how the rats would have managed it.

Argent rode alone in the back seat.

The little car grumbled along through a papier-mâché mine with glow-in-the-dark bats and skulls painted here or there.

Vic had no idea if the place still existed or if it were a piece of the past only the spirit realm remembered. Between, Mel had called it. Adam had told him that the Other Side was a lot like dreams, that bits of reality got stuck here, including things the world partially remembered or had long forgotten. Maybe it was like the underworld, but instead of spirits, it broke down dreams or history.

A massive glow-in-the-dark bat dove for the car. It was too cartoonish to be scary, but they ducked to avoid it. They were somewhere else when they rose again.

The car had stopped. It stood off its tracks. The Hanging Tree loomed behind them, dark and blasted. The same dark steam as the demon tree’s wafted from it.

Dozens of crows lined the branches. Their black eyes reminded Vic of Vran as they stared the trio down. The birds didn’t caw, but the breeze carried whispers, distressed and worried voices.

Adam had brought Vic here once, and they’d found the Reapers working their field of sunflowers, bending and scything, harvesting souls.

Now there were fewer of them, and those who remained no longer worked. Some had fallen to their knees. Some lay sprawled on the ground. All were frozen, unmoving.

“You came to check on her?” Vic asked Argent.

“We did, but the Reapers barred our way. We might have fought through but did not want to worsen the situation,” Argent said. She frowned at the idle fields. “It’s gotten worse.”

Mel stepped forward before Vic could react.

She crouched over the nearest Reaper, an old woman who lay slumped on the ground.

Mel touched her, but the woman did not respond.

“This is my fault,” Mel said. “All my fault.”

Vic moved to her side.

“Let’s go see her,” he said.

Mel’s eyes followed his to the beaten Airstream trailer.

Argent took a step toward them and the crows cawed a warning.

“Fine,” she said to the birds. “I’ll wait here.”

“What are they?” Vic asked Mel.

“Other Reapers,” she said. “The untethered ones.”

“There weren’t any last time I was here,” Vic said.

“There’s usually only one or two, and only for a little while,” Mel said. “They don’t wait long.”

“I thought Reapers were chosen special, under unique circumstances,” Vic said.

“A lot of people die every day,” Mel said. “There’s nothing special about that.”

She sounded bitter, and he wondered if she were remembering, thinking of the man she’d chased into hell.

The last time Vic had come here he’d felt the pull of the work, the souls that needed harvesting, the need to help. Now he felt nothing. That call had gone silent.

“It’s broken,” he said. The system, the universe. It shouldn’t be so easy to bring it down.

“Life should not be allowed to infect Death,” Mel said. “My presence was bad enough, but the rest of you tipped the scales.”

Sara had done it for Mel. She’d risked the balance of the universe to get her daughter back.

Mel led him down the dirt path between the sunflowers, heading for the trailer. The crows kept silent watch. Argent stood still, as fixed as a marble statue in her elegant dress and coat.

The remaining Reapers didn’t stir.

Vic might be one of them, but he was just a visitor here. He could feel Argent’s eyes boring into him, but didn’t look back. Wasn’t that what the myths all said, to never look back?

He had to wonder why he wasn’t on the ground with the others.

His connection to Adam was gone. That had been the only thing that set him apart. Well, that and Death had told him who she was, revealed herself to him. She’d protected him in Alfheimr, when she’d reaped the King of the Elves. Maybe a little of that lingered or maybe it was because he’d been in the underworld when things had ground to a halt. Vic liked to think it was some bit of Adam’s magic, some trace of their connection, but Vic couldn’t feel it.

I’m coming, he thought. I promise. Wherever you are, hold on.

Mel paused at the trailer door, waiting for him. She tossed him a nervous smile, her pretty face crinkled with worry.

Mel knocked.

A voice croaked for them to enter.

The last time Vic had been here the trailer door had opened to somewhere else, another place. Today it was just a trailer.

A plastic pitcher of tea stood on the counter. The ice had long melted. The slices of lemon floated at the top like dead fish in a dirty aquarium.

“Sara?” Vic asked, using her human name.

She lay on the trailer’s narrow bed, looking weak, kind of gray.

“Took you long enough,” she said, sounding hoarse, staring past Vic to where Mel had entered.

“Momma,” Mel said.

Despite the sorrow in her voice, she held back, standing straight, her hat nearly brushing the trailer’s roof.

“I told you not to go, not to chase him,” Sara said.

“You left me down there a hundred years,” Mel said.

“It took that long to find a Reaper and a warlock, a bonded pair who could open the way and get you back.”

“I’m sorry,” Mel said. “I had to try.”

“I know,” Sara answered. “But you’re not the only one paying the price, Melody.”

“What do we do?” Vic asked. “How do we fix it?”

“Always so practical, Vicente,” Sara said.

She squeezed her eyes shut, pressed herself back against the pillow.

“Oh no,” he said. “You don’t get to pull a Yoda and up and die on me instead of answering my questions.”

Mel blinked at him.

“It’s from a movie,” he said. “You guys had movies in the thirties, right?”

Mel nodded.

“It’s already better,” Sara croaked. “You removed the infection.”

“So that’s it?” Vic asked. “We’re done here?”

Sara shook her head.

“The demons have to return to their purpose.”

“Does that mean killing them?” Vic asked. “I mean they’re thinking now, feeling things. They’re alive, boss.”

“Which is why you shouldn’t have gone,” Sara said to Mel.

“I had to try,” Mel repeated. “I had to see Levi one last time.”

“And did you?” Sara asked.

Mel’s eyes fell to the trailer floor.

“No. He’d already gone into the sea when I reached it. And then I couldn’t get back. I’m not even sure I wanted to, not without him.”

Sara fixed her eyes on Vic.

“See? All of this mess is because she didn’t follow the rules, and in the end it came to nothing.

“Was it worth it, girl?”

Mel did not answer.

“Tell me, Melody. Was it worth it?”

“I don’t know,” Mel said.

She’d gone to the Ebon Sea for her love. Six months ago Vic would have called that crazy. Then Adam had gone to hell for him.

Vic balled his fists. If Sara told him to forget about Adam, to leave him wherever he’d fallen, then Vic would see about breaking some rules himself.

“As much as I want to watch you two live out an argument you clearly had a hundred years ago, we have a world to fix.”

“It can’t be made right until the living demons are removed,” Sara said.

“Well, Adam killed two of them,” Vic said. “And John. And himself. So now what, we kill the rest? That will put things back like they were?”

The idea of playing executioner made Vic’s stomach roil.

“No,” Sara said. “You couldn’t anyway. It takes a warlock. We need to find Adam Lee.”

Vic stopped breathing. He was pretty certain his heart stopped, just for a beat. That or maybe it really hadn’t been beating since Adam had vanished. Because now it thundered in his chest.

“He’s not dead?” Vic asked.

“He has not passed through me,” Sara said. “So no, he’s not dead.”

“Do you know where he is? How we get him back?”

“I cannot see everywhere,” Sara said.

“Yeah, Vran said that,” Vic said. “He also said that Adam is in the beyond.”

“Yes. That would do it,” Sara croaked. “He’s in the Nothing, the place outside.”

“Where do I start?” Vic asked.

“With the elves,” Sara said. “With their king. But hurry, Vicente. I don’t know what waits for him there.”

“I’ll stay with her,” Mel said.

“Quick as I can,” Vic promised.

Outside, some of the Reapers had stirred. Some were even scything.

Argent remained at the tree.

“You heard all that?” he asked.

She brushed her long hair back from the point of her ear.

“Universe saved but a bit more to do,” she said. “We’ll return to the watchtower and try to find Adam. Are you all right?”

“No,” Vic said. “But thank you for asking.”

Adam was alive. That meant everything, but Vic had heard that laugh, the madness when he’d killed the demon. If Vic got him back would he still be Adam? And what would it do to him if he had to kill the rest of the demons to set things right?