Silence (28 page)

As long as she lived—and she wondered how long that would be—she would remember the sound, the feel of it; it passed right through her, leaving some of itself behind.

She didn’t fight to stay on the floor after that; she couldn’t.

She got to her feet, and she ran to the bed, and to the child who stood there, his eyes wide with the horror that came from a growing realization that he’d been utterly and completely betrayed—and abandoned. He had, she realized, his mother’s dark hair, and part of it was plastered to his face; the bangs were wet with either sweat or tears, and gathered in clumps near his eyes and across his forehead. Emma reached out for him.

He was cold. He was so damn cold to the touch she puled back as if she’d been burned. He didn’t seem to notice that she’d touched him; he didn’t seem to notice that she was there at al.

She heard footsteps behind her, and shouted. “Chase, shut the damn door! Keep the smoke out!”

The door did close. She heard his muttered apology.

“Emma?” She also heard Maria’s voice. It was hard to listen, though; Andrew had not falen silent, and Emma thought, short of exhaustion, he wouldn’t. No, not short of exhaustion. Short of death. This was how he had died.

She felt it like a blow, and she almost turned to throw up. But turning, she caught sight of his mother’s face, and that was just as bad.

bad.

She looked at Chase instead. Chase, whose face was shuttered, whose expression was grim and closed. She wanted to ask him to help, but she couldn’t force the words out. Or not al of them.

“Chase…”

He grimaced, which cracked his expression. “What is it?”

“He’s so damn cold. I can’t—” She lifted shaking hands.

Numb hands. “It’s not like—”

“Emma,” Chase said, cursing. He walked to her, caught her hands in his. Crushed them, briefly. “He’s powerful. You knew that.”

“I didn’t know what it meant.” She swalowed. Chase was angry. And, she realized, he probably should be. Andrew was here—and he was in worse than the hel she’d imagined. She’d tried to touch him once, and she was almost in tears. How pathetic was that?

“Sorry, Chase,” she told him. She squeezed back, feeling her fingers.

And then she squared her shoulders, took as deep a breath as she could, regretted it briefly, and approached Andrew again.

This time, she held out her hands slowly, waving them in front of his open, sightless eyes. Nothing. If he was aware of her at al, he made no sign.

“Maria,” Emma whispered, aware that the smoke was thickening in the room, aware that—for herself and Andrew— there was a growing lack of time, “brace yourself.”

there was a growing lack of time, “brace yourself.”

She didn’t know how Maria responded, wasn’t realy certain she’d been heard at al. Emma reached out with both of her hands and grabbed both of Andrew’s.

The cold was so intense it defined pain; she forgot about fire, about heat, about the smoke of things consumed by either. She tasted blood and realized that she’d bitten her lip. Knees locked, she stood, rigid, in front of him.

But even with his hands in hers, the screaming didn’t stop.

Emma realized she’d bitten her lip to stop from joining him. She dropped to her knees by the bedside, coughing; she’d dropped the cloth during her first rush to reach him, and she couldn’t hold it anyway; both of her hands were in his.

“Drew!”

Emma.

Maria could suddenly see her son. And Emma could see her father.

“Drew!” Maria darted forward, closing the gap between them. She blinked, coughing, as the truth of fire rushed in, along with the lack of sunlight that spoke of night. If her son was trapped here, so, now was Maria Copis—but Emma understood, from the look on her face, that she had been trapped here ever since the night her son had died. She reached for Drew, and her hands passed through him. Emma shuddered; she couldn’t help it.

Maria reached for Drew again. A third time. A fourth. There was no fifth, but there were now tears, leaving a trail across her cheeks. “Emma—he doesn’t see me.”

cheeks. “Emma—he doesn’t see me.”

It was true.

“I don’t know why,” Emma forced herself to say. The words were shaky and uneven, but she managed to get them out clearly. “This has never happened before.” She turned and looked up at her father.

Emma.

“He can’t see her. He can’t see his mother. I—I don’t even think he can see me, and he’s so cold.”

Sprout. Brendan Hal stood in the wafting smoke. He watched Maria and her son, and after a moment, he closed his eyes. I was spared this, he told his daughter softly.

“You were never in a fire.”

No. That’s not what I meant. I was spared your death. I got to die first. This— he shook his head. This is our worst nightmare, Em. As parents, there is no fear that’s stronger.

It’s still my worst fear. If it were up to me, you wouldn’t— But he opened his eyes again, and he looked at Maria Copis’

face. He didn’t bother to say the rest.

“Help me, Dad. I don’t know what to do. I can’t leave him here—”

Her father glanced at Chase.

“I honestly do not give a damn what Chase thinks or what he’s afraid of right now. We’l al die here if I can’t get him out.

His mother’s not going to leave him a second time.”

It was true. It hadn’t occurred to her until this moment, but it was true. She could tel Maria that she had two living children who needed her, now more than ever, and she knew that Maria, who needed her, now more than ever, and she knew that Maria, like Andrew, would be deaf.

Her father reached up with both of his hands, and he cupped her cheeks. His hands were not cold. Emma remembered what he’d done—what she’d taken from him—and she tried to pul her face away. “No, Dad—”

He couldn’t touch her unless she touched him first. She remembered that. He couldn’t touch her unless she wanted him to touch her. But he did, and maybe that said things about her that she’d never wanted to admit. She said no, but she let him do it anyway.

Chase started forward, hand outstretched. But he stopped, and he dropped the hand, where it curled in a fist at his side.

“Emma—”

“Shut up, Chase. Just—shut up.”

“Is he trying to give you power?”

She said nothing, because what she wanted to say would have irritated the hel out of her father. At least it would have when he was alive.

Sprout, he said quietly, let me help you.

“I don’t want—”

Sprout.

“I don’t want you to leave.”

He smiled, the indulgent smile that had always been given only to her. And sometimes Petal. I won’t leave. I’ve nowhere else to go.

“But I—”

He bent down and kissed her forehead gently. Where his lips touched her skin, warmth traveled, carrying with its slow spread something that felt like the essence of life, which was strange, because he was dead. She tried to hold on to the cold, but she couldn’t. Maybe she was that selfish. Maybe, in the end, al children were. But this warmth reminded her of what love, being loved, felt like, and she leaned into it.

The cold drained out of her hands, although she stil held onto Andrew Copis. Andrew, who stil wailed, unseeing and terrified.

Chase was watching her in silence. Watching, she realized, her father as he stood, bent over her. When her father unfolded, he vanished slowly; for Chase, Emma realized, he had vanished the instant his lips had left her forehead.

She met Chase’s gaze and said, “That was my father.” Her voice was thick. She swalowed, then turned back to Andrew.

“Your father.”

“He came to help me. He—it does help me. Even if he didn’t —even if I didn’t—” She couldn’t force herself to say the words. “It helps me to know he’s there. And that he’s always been there, watching me.” But she flinched as he continued to stare. “I think I know why you hate Necromancers,” she whispered. “Because I’m afraid. What he gives me, Chase—I take it. I’m afraid I’l take it all. I’l use him up, somehow.

There’l be nothing left.”

Chase was utterly stil. After a moment, he slid his hands into his pockets and swore. Neither Maria nor Andrew noticed; Emma couldn’t make out the actual words herself. She could Emma couldn’t make out the actual words herself. She could make out the smoke and the heat of the floor. Time was passing in Andrew’s world, and time here was not kind.

Finaly, Chase said, in a flat, cool voice, “You need more power.”

She shook her head.

“You do. And it’s standing there screaming on the bed.”

This was a test. Emma thought it, and wanted to slap him. But she couldn’t withdraw her hands. Even if they were no longer so cold she couldn’t feel them. Perhaps especialy then.

Instead, she turned her attention to Andrew Copis, who was choking. He might have been choking because he’d screamed himself raw. He might have been choking because of the cost of that screaming in a house that was filing with smoke. It didn’t matter.

“Andrew,” she said, raising her voice as his sputtered, momentarily, out.

He stared straight ahead. He stared through her. Through his mother, whose hands were shaking. She’d not made fists of them; she stil held them out, palms up, as if to show how empty they were.

Emma turned to Chase, stil holding the boy’s hands, and said, “Chase, I don’t care if you think you’l have to kil me. I need you to tel me what I need to do here.”

“If you keep this up, I won’t. Have to kil you,” he added. He looked around the room. “It’l just be a matter of time.”

“I notice that you’re standing here anyway.”

“I notice that you’re standing here anyway.”

“It was me or Alison.”

“Alison wouldn’t—” she bit her lip.

“Or Michael. Emma, I’m not what you are. You need to pul some of his power.”

“I’m doing that now, according to Eric—if I weren’t, his mother couldn’t see him at al.”

“If what I’m seeing is any indication—and remember, not an expert—you’re not doing it at all. You’re giving him whatever you have. Emma, he has power for a reason.” He grimaced.

“He’s stuck here. It’s that power that wil unstick him, and the only person who can use it is you.”

“He’s not exactly giving it.”

“No. But you can—exactly—take it.”

“And what the hel am I supposed to do with it?”

“Fuck, Emma! You came here without even thinking?”

“I came here because I was thinking—about him! It’s not like there are a lot of experts I can just ask to show me what to do!”

Maria Copis cleared her throat. Loudly.

Emma and Chase both startled, and both had expressions of similar guilt as they looked at her.

“I need to be able to touch him,” she said quietly.

“Lady,” Chase said, “he’s dead. There’s no way—”

“I can’t bring him back to life,” Emma told Maria. “And I am not letting you die. I’m not even sure the dead can touch each other.”

“I need to be able to touch him,” Maria said, in the same reasonable, flat voice.

reasonable, flat voice.

Emma took a shalow breath and counted to ten. She got to eight, which is about as high as she ever reached in her own home. But it wasn’t words or temper that kiled the count; it was sensation.

The hands that were holding Andrew began to tingle, and as Emma looked down at them, they began to glow. The glow was golden, but it wasn’t even; her hands looked as if she’d slid them into delicate, lace gloves. She could see her fingers beneath the winding strands of light; could see, beneath the forming lattice, the veins on the back of her hands and the slight whitening of her knuckles where her hands were clenched that little bit too hard.

She glanced at Maria Copis, but if Maria noticed at al, she gave no indication. Chase, on the other hand, was watching her hands with narrowed eyes.

“What do you see, Chase?”

He shook his head.

“Andrew,” she whispered. But Andrew, like his mother, was in a different world, a different time.

“It’s not Andrew,” Chase told her.

She frowned. Then she looked at her hands again. The strands of light were strands of gold; they were the chains that she had broken and wound around her palms. She could folow them, now, tracing filigree from skin to the air around her.

Georges materialized first, puling himself slowly into the world. He reached out to touch Emma, and Emma let him.

Maria Copis flinched. That was al. Whatever pity or kindness she had to spare for the dead was being entirely absorbed by her son. Georges was not her problem because he wasn’t hers.

Folowing Georges came Catherine, and she appeared in the same slow, almost hesitant, way. But she also touched Emma gently.

“Margaret and Suzanne can’t come unless you cal them,”

Georges told her. “And neither can Emily. She’s almost here,” he added, “but she’s kind of stuck.”

Chase stared at the two children. “You came here for Emma on your own?”

Georges nodded solemnly. “Margaret didn’t think Emma would cal us,” he added. “I told her we could come. And,” he said, with the serious pride of a six-year-old boy, “we did it.

The fire can’t hurt us,” he told Chase. “We’re already dead. But it can hurt Emma. We like Emma.”

“But she’s a Necromancer.”

Georges shook his head forcefuly. “No, she’s not.”

Chase lifted both hands in surrender. “This is fucking insane,”

he told Emma, out of the side of his mouth.

“We can stil hear you,” Catherine told him, with al the vast and vulnerable disapproval a six-year-old girl has in her arsenal.

Having been one, Emma was familiar with the tactic.

“I thought…you couldn’t talk to each other.”