“I’ve mostly been bumming around,” said Assu. He sipped beer from his brown-glass bottle, and when he set it back down on the coaster he carefully positioned it precisely on top of the moisture ring where it had sat before. “Shoveling coal,” he said, “back when that was a thing. Smelting ore, off and on, but I never liked doing that much. Just because you can do something doesn’t mean you enjoy it, right?”
“You know me,” I said, trying to say what Nobody would say. “I never enjoy anything.”
“Not for long, anyway.” He took another sip. “Sure you don’t want one?”
“This body doesn’t drink.”
Assu raised an eyebrow. “And you care what your body does and doesn’t do? How long are you even going to keep this one?”
Nobody had committed suicide so many times she’d lost track. Thousands and thousands. I wondered, then, if Brooke had been Nobody longer than anybody else had ever been. Unless that homeless girl from the viewing had been Nobody? I still didn’t know, and I didn’t even know how to find her. Assu was the only lead I had, so I had to keep him talking. “I guess I’ll keep this one as long as I can.”
“Well, good luck to you,” he said. “How about a burger?”
“Vegetarian.”
Assu laughed. “What is this, method acting?”
I was acting too much like myself, and he was getting suspicious. I thought of a defense that could maybe explain it. “Do you switch bodies?” I asked.
“Nope,” he said. “This is the only one I’ve got.”
“Then you wouldn’t understand,” I said, as if that explained the issue. More important, though, was his admission: if Assu didn’t body-swap, then I could kill this one and he’d die forever … once I’d figured out how, of course. And once I’d gotten what I needed from him. I turned the conversation back to the information I was trying to learn. “Have you been to see Rain yet?”
“Not yet,” he said. “I figure she knows I’m here, after that body I left her a few days ago. Luke Minaker.” He took another sip. “Let her stew for a while; I don’t need her drama.”
“It’s the end of the world,” I said. “Or our world, at least. Some drama seems justified.”
“I guess it is,” he said. “Probably time, though, don’t you think?”
“For drama?” This was more introspective than most of the Withered I’d met had ever gotten.
He shook his head. “For endings.”
I thought about this for a moment, trying to think of a response. Once again, I had to think like Nobody to come up with a good one. “Endings aren’t as great as you think they are,” I said. “I’ve done it plenty of times.”
“That’s the problem, though, isn’t it? Your endings don’t count because your endings never stick. You keep ending them, and never yourself. To hear Rain tell it now, the whole human race is all coming out of the woodwork trying to end us. Which is the exact opposite of your regular situation, so you don’t have much of a leg to stand on.” He took another pull on his beer and flagged down the waitress to order a ham sandwich with onion rings. “So you can have some veggies,” he told me, watching the girl’s butt as she walked away. “You ever … You ever been a waitress?”
“Yeah.”
“You ever hear any pickup lines that totally worked on you?”
I raised my eyebrow. “Ten thousand years old and you need help picking up a small-town waitress?”
“Bah,” he said, and drained his beer. He clunked it down solidly on the tabletop. “I know being hypercritical is your whole thing, but can you keep it to yourself? I don’t need it right now.”
“Fine,” I said, and looked around the bar. “You think they have a jukebox here?”
“Every crappy bar has a jukebox,” he said. “And they all have crappy songs.”
“Probably,” I said. “I didn’t want to listen to one anyway. Just making small talk.”
“You suck at it.”
“So I’ve been told.”
Assu leaned back in his chair, resting his arm on the back of the chair next to him. “What were you the god of? Goddess, whatever.”
“I’ve been both,” I said. “I assume.”
“You don’t remember?”
“You’ve lived ten thousand years,” I said. All the Withered had. “I’ve lived ten thousand lives, at least. Maybe a hundred thousand. And every one of them comes with its own memories. There’s so much backstory bouncing around in this head it’s a wonder I can even tie my own shoes in the morning.”
“Makes sense,” he said, and then chuckled. “You remember that? When they invented shoes?”
“Shoes are one of the oldest inventions of human civilization,” I said.
“I know, I know” he said. “But I’m talking about modern shoes—like, when they started making them comfortable, instead of just leather sandals and junk like that. The first time you ever put on sneakers and felt that cushy sole, tied those nylon laces, and it all just fits perfectly, for the first time in your whole long life.”
What a weird thing to remember. I shook my head. “Everybody I’ve taken either never had good shoes or always had them. I guess I missed that particular experience.”
“It’s never really been your feet anyway,” he said. “Has it?”
“Not really.”
“Does that bother you?”
I saw him looking at me, just out of the corner of his eye, trying to look like he wasn’t paying attention but still somehow concerned about the answer. I took the cue and considered my answer carefully.
What would Nobody have said? Did it bother her not to have her own body? Probably; sooner or later everything bothered Nobody, which is why she’d kept killing herself and moving on. But the bodies she’d killed, like he said, had never really been hers. They’d been clothing that she picked up and discarded, without ever really thinking about the realities of their lives.
But no, that wasn’t true. Nobody, like Elijah, was filled with human memory; she’d seen us differently than the other Withered because she’d lived as us instead of simply among us. She knew our dreams because they’d been hers, and she knew our realities because she’d never been able to face them. A girl always looked beautiful from a distance, like a doll or a marble statue: a thing we admire without ever getting to know. Until you get to know her. Get up close and she’s as real as anyone else. Girls have flaws and hang-ups and odors and every other problem that everyone has ever had. That was what had bothered Nobody, I think: truth. The world’s stubborn refusal to be a fairy tale, or a girl to be a fairy princess.
“I had feet once,” I said.
“You sound like a backwards Little Mermaid,” said Assu.
A fairy tale. Because of course.
“Maybe I was,” I said. Nobody had only ever wanted the things she couldn’t have, and she’d made a devil’s bargain to get them. “I had feet, and a body, and everything.” I pointed at the other patrons in the bar. “Anything any of them ever had. But then we gave it all up and I lost them, and I think…” I paused. What would Nobody say? What did she think about the body she’d given up? “I think the body I had was the only one I could have ever been happy in.”
“But you hated it.”
“I did,” I said. “And now here I am.”
Assu looked around the bar, his eyes solemn. “Not exactly the life we’d imagined, is it?”
“No, it’s not,” I said, and it was as true for me as for Nobody.
The waitress came back, setting down the sandwich and rings and a fresh beer. The cap sat on the top, half on and bent in the middle; the mouth of the bottle smoked gently as the cold moisture condensed in the hot belly of the bar.
“Here you go, boys,” she said, and Assu smiled.
“Thank you,” he said. “Hey, um, what was your name?”
“Lara, honey. You need something?”
“Lara,” said Assu, “do you have a…? I mean, what time do you get off work?”
“I’m sorry, hon,” she said. “We’re not allowed to date the customers. Can I get you anything else?”
Assu looked defeated, and his voice was hollow. “Just some ice.”
“Sure thing.” She walked away, and he stared at his sandwich.
I didn’t know what to say, so I simply sat and watched him.
“Do you remember wonder?” he asked.
“Wonder?”
“Awe,” he said. “Joy. Surprise.” He poked at his sandwich but didn’t pick it up. “Do you remember the last time you saw something for the first time? The first time you saw the ocean, or ate a spicy pepper, or kissed someone? The first time you heard a wolf pack howling in the dark, the whole group of them just howling and howling, calling and answering, and the sound going up and out and disappearing? Maybe an echo, maybe not. Ten thousand years—and maybe two, three hundred years of it had wonder, and then eventually you’d seen it all, or felt it all, or done it all. And then you had fun for a few thousand more just doing it all again—finding that one delicious food that you couldn’t get enough of, and eating it and eating it in all its different forms. And then, eventually, you’ve done everything. And you’ve done it a thousand times. And what’s the point of doing it again? I know what this ham sandwich is going to taste like because I’ve eaten more ham sandwiches than one man can ever possibly appreciate. It’s just fuel, now, stoking the fire and keeping me alive. And why?”
I watched him as he stared into the past; watched the beer bottle as the smoky condensation rose up from the crooked cap. “You’ve had ham,” I said, “but you’ve never had this ham.”
“What’s the difference?” he asked. “This ham, this bar, this waitress. Are they really going to be new in any meaningful way?”
“Not the ham,” I admitted. “The people, though. I mean, that’s what they say, right? That we’re all little snowflakes, perfectly individual and unique.”
“And yet every snowstorm looks the same,” he said. “Every single time.”
The waitress came back with a glass full of ice, set it on the table with a wink, and walked away. Assu picked up the glass, and the ice cubes started melting at his touch, slowly trickling down into the bottom of the glass. He dumped them into his other hand, and they disappeared in midair, dissolving into liquid and mist bare millimeters before touching his skin. Water ran on the floor, and steam rose up from his hand, and he stared at it with ancient eyes.
There was only one thing to say. “You gave up cold.”
His voice was a whisper: “It’s the only thing in the world I can’t feel.”
He watched the steam rise from his hand, until it was completely dry. Then he spoke again in a voice so soft I had to lean in close to hear him. “When I was a boy,” he said, “out on the foothills out where we lived, by the old village—do you remember it?”
“I don’t.”
“It was beautiful,” he said. “But it was harsh. I think that’s why we did so well, or why our parents did so well. And their parents and their parents and all the way back: they couldn’t just coast, in a place like that, so they built and they created and they did. They herded sheep—for all I know they invented herding sheep—and one day, when I was a boy, the winter came early, and I was caught in a storm on the slopes of the mountain in the high grazing ranges. I was dressed for the cold—it wasn’t that sudden—but not for a storm like that, and I tried to bring the sheep home, but the snow blocked the passes and hid the trails, and I was trapped. I built a hut, and I built a fire, but it just kept snowing and snowing and snowing, and the food ran out and the water froze solid, and my blankets froze with it, and I huddled in the middle of the sheep for warmth. I guess it was enough because I didn’t die, but only barely. And I swore that I would never be cold again, and I lived in the desert, and I cursed the night sky and the winds that came down off the mountain. And then when Rain came to us, and Rack told us of his plan, I gave up all cold, and all cold feelings. In return I gained more heat and flame than any other body could hold: the power to scorch the sands and wither the plants and to shine like the sun itself.” He put his hand on the empty glass, which began to glow yellow in his grip. “I lived as a god—of the sun and the forge, and of bronze, and iron, and steel.” The yellow glow turned red, and the glass began to droop, and he squeezed it in his hand like a film of shining clay, squeezing it into a tight, dense rope the width of his fist, and it grew hotter and brighter until it poured down across his hand, and dripped on the table, singeing the wood. It all ran down, and the table smoked and burned, and he opened his hand for the last few drops to fall away. The pool of glass glowed red, cooling slowly. A couple of the other bar patrons were staring at us, wondering where that bitter scent of scorched wood had come from.
I had no words. Assu pulled a money clip from his back pocket, peeled off a couple of bills, and dropped them on the table.
“Let’s go,” he said, and stood up.
I stood with him, trying to force myself to speak. What had just happened? I knew the what—but why had it just happened? What had Assu felt, or decided, that had put him into this dark mood? “Where are we going?” I asked.
“Somewhere cold,” he said, and turned to go. “A restaurant, maybe, or a butcher. Somewhere with one of those big, walk-in freezers.”
I hurried after him. “But you can’t feel it.”
“That doesn’t mean I have to stop trying.” He walked outside, into the hot night air and spat angrily on the ground. “Damn woman. Brought me here to this hell. She can fight her own damn war.”
“So let’s go tell her,” I said. I needed him to focus—to tell me where Rain was so I could find this Withered army and stop them once and for all. “Let’s go find her right now, and tell her off, and see what she’s planning. Then you can go straight back to Alaska or Siberia or wherever you were before, and be done with her forever. But let’s at least find her.”
“No.”
“Come on,” I said.
“Do you work for her?” He spun on me suddenly, pressing me against the wall of the bar with his hands. I could feel the heat from his palms and his fingers. I shook my head.
“No.”
“Then help me,” he said. “Cold first, and then Rain.”
“Okay,” I said. “Cold first.” I hesitated. “I think I know the perfect place.”
* * *
The mortuary was empty at night; Harold had an apartment next door, but my little room was the only one that accessed the building directly. Assu parked his car, and I used my key to let him in—through my room and into the heart of the building. I kept the lights off, guiding him by feel and memory into the embalming room at the back. This room had no external windows, so I closed the door, and clicked on the light, and gestured to the giant metal fridge against the wall.
“A freezer?” he asked.
“Sometimes,” I said. “We can set the controls. There’s nobody in there right now—the burn victim hasn’t come in yet, so we don’t have any bodies. We can set the temperature as low as you want.”
“As low as it’ll go,” he said.
A mortuary fridge has multiple little doors, each with a metal plate that rolls out like a bed, like you see in the morgues on TV. This fridge had six. Assu opened the top door and we pulled out the plate, and he laid himself down on it, headfirst. “As cold as it will go,” he said, and I slid him in until all I could see were the soles of his shoes.
The fridge in my parents’ mortuary had had a little dial, but this one had a keypad. It only went down to one degree Celsius; I hoped that would be enough for him.
“Close the door,” he said.
“You’ll suffocate.”
“That’s not how it works,” he said. “Close the door.”
I closed it and waited. What was he doing? Just lying there? What did he think was going to happen?
“Assu,” I shouted. “Can you hear me?”
His voice was faint, but I could make it out: “Yes.”
“Is it cold?”
“How the hell would I know?”
I shrugged and leaned against the wall. How long was he going to be in there?
How many times had he tried this exact thing, in a thousand other refrigerators and freezers, only to get frustrated when he couldn’t feel cold?
I waited. It wasn’t the weirdest thing I’d ever done in a mortuary. As long as he eventually led me to Rain, he could lay in the fridge as long as he wanted.
Five minutes later, the rubber insulation around the door started melting.
I saw it first as a sag—the rubber seal was drooping down from the bottom of the fridge door, though it hadn’t yet separated from the metal. A moment later it sagged enough that the seal broke, and smoke from inside poured out in massive billows. I barely had time to think and reacted on pure instinct: there was a fire inside, and it had just gotten a burst of new oxygen, and it was about to explode. I threw myself to the side, racing out of the way, and in that moment the door of the refrigeration chamber blew off and a giant gout of flame roared out. The bulletin board against the far wall charred almost instantly, the papers curling into black coal tendrils. The wall scorched, the paint bubbling and peeling away. I felt a moment of perfect joy—a fire was free!—and then the sprinklers in the ceiling burst into life, and the room was soaked, and reality came crashing back down again. The flames on the wall traveled upward, and the heat in the room was still shockingly fierce, but the flames in the fridge disappeared. I crept back around to the front of the refrigeration unit, wondering what I would see, but I already knew. I peered inside, and there it was: a puddle of thick, greasy ash, black and flaky, and bubbling and hissing. Soulstuff.
Assu was dead, and the mortuary was burning.