Touch (19 page)

She caught her dog by the collar and pulled him away from the front door, but she
resented having to do it; at this time of night, random strangers who interrupted
people at dinner deserved to have a face full of loud, suspicious rottweiler.

“Petal, sit.
Sit
.”

One hand on dog and the other on doorknob, she opened the door and froze in its frame
as she met the eyes of Merrick Longland.

H
IS SMILE WAS FULL-ON TEACHER. “Just the young woman I wanted to see.”

“Emma? Who is it?” Her mother’s voice approached from the dining room. Emma swallowed
and met Merrick Longland’s eyes; under the light at the side of the door, they were
faintly luminescent, but she couldn’t describe their color. They were, in every way,
the eyes of the dead.

But he wasn’t dead. She knew. Her mother came out of the dining room and headed straight
toward him, wearing her best, distancing business smile.

“Mrs. Hall?” he said, extending his right hand. “Have I caught you at a bad time?”

“We’re in the middle of a late dinner,” her mother replied, thawing slightly. “What
can I do for you?”

“I’m actually here to speak with Emma. My name is Merrick Longland, and I have the
privilege of being her supervisor on the yearbook committee.” He held out a hand.

For one immobile moment, Emma wanted to slam the door in his face. But it was too
late for that; her mother’s expression had relaxed, and she was already shaking the
hand Merrick Longland had offered.

If being dead made any difference to the physical body, it was too subtle for her
mother. “I’m Emma’s mother, Mercy Hall. We don’t usually get teachers visiting at
this time of night.”

“It’s eight o’clock,” he said.

Her mother lifted a brow. “It’s past nine.”

He looked surprised, checked his watch and then looked sheepish. As acts went, it
was beyond excellent.

“Mr. Longland is replacing Mr. Taylor for the rest of the year.”

Her mother’s expression became instantly more drawn. “That was a terrible accident.
Mr. Taylor was quite popular at the school,” she added.

“So I’ve discovered,” he replied, still with the sheepish. “Look, I’m sorry. I lost
track of time. I didn’t mean to come here this late.” He paused and then added, “You
said I was interrupting dinner?”

“Dinner was a touch on the late side.” She turned toward the dining room as Jon came
into the hall. “Sorry,” she said. “This is Mr. Longland; he’s a new teacher at Emery.”

“And he makes house calls at this time of night?”

“Not deliberately,” Longland said. “I lost track of time. I’d hoped to have a word
with Emma before the yearbook committee meeting next week.”

“So you hunted her down at home?” Jon’s smile matched Longland’s, and in spite of
herself, Emma was impressed.

“I live not far from here.”

Impressed and terrified. She put on her best Hall smile. “Why don’t the two of you
go back to dinner? I’m sure this won’t take long, and I’ll join you when we’re done.”
She did
not
want Merrick Longland in her house.

But she didn’t want to leave her house with him, either. She accepted the obvious:
Ernest had been right. Longland now knew where she lived. He probably knew where they
all lived. And if she behaved in a way that worried her mother, he probably had ways
of dealing with that.

Jon held out a hand. “I’m Jon Madding,” he said. “I’m what passes for a dinner guest
in these parts.”

“Not her father, then?”

“No, as you well know,” her father said.

* * *

“Mom, Jon—please go eat before the food gets cold.” Emma nudged her mother back into
the dining room, which was easy. Jon seemed reluctant.

“Not your daughter, remember?”

“Right. Not.” He glanced at Mercy and then followed her as she left Emma, her teacher,
and the ghost of the man whose seat he now occupied, in the hall.

Emma then turned to Merrick Longland. “Living room,” she said, her voice even, her
expression neutral.

Longland kept his game face on until there was no possibility of line of sight from
the dining room. He then walked over to the couch and made himself more or less at
home. His expression chilled instantly, which perversely made Emma far more comfortable.

“Yes, I do know,” Longland then said—to Emma’s father. “But she didn’t strike me as
the type of person who would use her own father as a focus.”

“Meaning she’s not you.”

Longland darkened. “No. She’s still alive.” As he said it, he turned to face her,
his eyes very like her father’s but with more anger in them. “I came here the first
time to
rescue
you. I came because I knew the hunters would kill you. I never threatened you.

“You’re responsible for my death.”

Emma stiffened. Words crumbled. Merrick Longland had defined monstrous to Emma—but
it was true. He’d come to save her life.

“What, then, do you owe
me
, Emma Hall? Your life? The lives of your family?”

* * *

“Emma,” her father said. “You are not responsible for this man’s death. If he came
to save your life, he didn’t intend to give you a choice about where the rest of that
life was to take place. He’s responsible for the choices he made and the consequences
of those choices.”

“Thank you for the parental moralizing,” Longland replied. “I don’t believe this conversation
is relevant to you. If you are truly free to go as you please, don’t let us keep you.”

“I’m also free to remain. This is more my home than yours.” Her father folded his
arms across his chest and looked down on Longland in, oh, so many ways.

Longland stared at her father, frowning. “Are you truly not hers?”

“I’m her father, but if you’re asking if I’m bound to her, the answer is pretty obvious.”

“If you’re not bound to her, why are you still here?”

“It’s his house,” Emma said, more sharply than she’d intended. “He has every right
to be here.”

“That’s not what I meant,” Longland said, voice low. “And he knows it, even if you’re
too ignorant to understand.”

She turned to her father because something in Longland’s voice sounded like the truth.
“Dad?”

“You’re still here,” Longland repeated. “There’s no way you would be here if you weren’t
bound.”

Her father was silent for a long moment, and then, of all things, he smiled. It was
a sad smile, and it added lines to his face. “There are many, many bindings, Longland.
I don’t expect you to understand them all. Emma is my daughter, and I love her. No
parent willingly turns his back—and walks away—from his child. Not when that child
is in danger.”

“My parents did,” was the bitter—and unexpected—reply.

“And I’m not your father,” Brendan Hall replied. “Nor is Emma you. The choices you’ve
made might have been the only choices you saw, but there were always others.”

“I would have died.”

Emma had no desire to offer support to Longland in any way, but she remembered, in
the silence that followed, the reason Eric had come to Toronto and the reason Chase
had followed him.

Her father nodded. “Yes, in all likelihood.” He knew what Emma knew. “But there’s
a world between dying and killing. A handful of people willing to end your life doesn’t
justify killing everyone else.”

Longland closed his eyes. Emma wondered if closed eyes had the same effect for the
dead that they would for the living. “You don’t understand,” he finally said, his
shoulders sagging. “Death is forever. Life is so brief.”

“Yet you valued yours enough to make the choices you did.”

“There
are no choices
.” His voice was low, intent. “One way or the other, we serve the Queen for eternity.
We can do it while we live, or we can do it afterward. But if we serve her
well
, we don’t have to die. We don’t have to age. The only people who are spared an eternity
of
this
,” he added, with loathing, “are the Necromancers.”

“You don’t look particularly dead,” Emma pointed out.

“Not even to you?”

“The dead don’t generally teach classes and supervise yearbook committees. Trust me
on this. How are you alive?”

His answering laughter was quiet and bitter. “I’m not alive. I’m as dead as your father.”

“But you’ve got—”

“A body? Yes. I thought it was a privilege when I was alive. I thought it was something
the dead might—just might—aspire to.” He shook his head. “It’s the same as being dead
except that the living can see it. Food has no taste. The cold is stronger; nothing
is warm. Every minute I’m here, I can see the way to the other side.” He lifted his
hands to his face. “The only difference is this: I can’t be bound tightly to the Queen’s
side. If I’m to play at being alive, I have to travel. I can hear her,” he added,
his voice dropping, “but she can’t command me to return; I’m willing to obey, but
the constructs can’t travel the way the disembodied can.”

It took Emma a minute to realize that the construct he spoke of was his physical form.

“You can’t be a—a power source for a Necromancer.”

“No. I’m spared that. But that’s all I’m spared.” He rose. “People have always judged
me. People have always misunderstood.” It didn’t sound like whining, but Emma had
to bite back words. How did one misjudge the willingness to murder an infant? “But
what I wanted, in the end, wasn’t so different from what you want.”

Emma was speechless.

Her father was not. “You wanted a place to belong.”

“A safe place,” Merrick Longland agreed. “Where love, not pain, is waiting around
every corner. A place where I don’t have to watch my back at all times and where power
isn’t the only hope of safety I have.” He closed his eyes. “Someplace that wants
me
.” When he opened his eyes again, they were almost blue in the living room light,
but they retained their subtle shimmering transparency. “I see it every day. I
know
I don’t deserve it—but whatever is waiting on the other side doesn’t
care
.”

Longland glanced at her father. “You
saw
the place we were meant to be. Your daughter opened the door the Queen has kept locked
and barred.”

“I didn’t see her open the door,” her father replied. “But, yes, I suspected she would.
I wasn’t certain that I would be as strong as I wanted to be; I left before she tried.”

“But you know what waits—you could be there now!”

“Yes. But, Longland, if my home wasn’t perfect, if my family wasn’t flawless, it
was
a family. I’m human. Sometimes I was frustrated. Sometimes I was lonely. Sometimes
I felt like a failure. All of these things are true.”

“Dad, you weren’t—”

He give a slight shake of head that meant he wanted to be uninterrupted.

“But I also felt loved, by my wife and my child. Even when I was failure. Maybe especially
then.” He smiled at his daughter, in almost embarrassing gratitude. “I can’t—and won’t—judge
you. What I had, you didn’t have. And, yes, I know what you see.”

“Is it—is it the same? Isn’t it better than what you had?”

“It’s different.”

Longland swallowed. In a voice that was painful and at odds with everything she knew
about his life, he asked, “Will I be allowed to go anyway?”

“Yes,” her father said. There was no doubt in his voice.

Longland turned to Emma. “Could you do it again?”

For the first time, Emma accepted the fact that Merrick Longland was dead. She’d been
told, but the knowledge had been entirely intellectual. Now, it wasn’t. Like her father,
like Nathan, he was trapped here. What he wanted was out of reach.

And it shouldn’t be.

“I don’t know,” she said, after a long pause.

When he flinched—which surprised her—she added, “I don’t hate you enough to keep you
here.” But she had. She knew she had. If she tried, she could still see the gun pointed
at the baby. And at Allison, in whose arms the baby was held.

“It wasn’t personal,” he told her. “I came here the first time to save your life.”

She believed him. “Why have you come here a second time?”

“I don’t know.” When he saw the change in Emma’s expression, he added, “It’s the truth.
I was sent here in the company of the Queen’s Knights. I was given no orders beyond
that. I was to accompany the Necromancers, and I was to find a way to meet you that
wouldn’t be suspicious.”

“What orders were the Necromancers given?”

“They’re not to kill you, except at need. They’re here to make certain you arrive
in the City of the Dead. The Queen is waiting.”

“And you—you’re just supposed to
talk
to me? This isn’t about revenge for what happened to you?”

“There are whole hours when I forget whose fault my current condition is. I can’t
hold on to it when I look toward the light. Revenge doesn’t matter—there’s no way
for me to come back.” He hesitated and then said, “And if I could leave this place,
I wouldn’t want to come back. Your father’s right. What he had—what he built—I didn’t
have. I couldn’t build it. I couldn’t even
see
it. Maybe that’s why he’s still here.

“When I first saw you, I saw a pretty, popular girl who had it easy. You had friends.
You had potential. You even had a hunter on your side. Until I was found, I had no
one. I was nothing. Being dead hasn’t changed that. I was invisible until the Queen’s
Knights found me, and I’m invisible now.

“There’s nothing for me here. Even if the Queen of the Dead were gone and I were free,
there’s nothing. You can speak with your father. Short of interrogation, there’s no
one who would spend the time—or the power—talking to me.

“You have everything,” he added. It wasn’t an accusation, but she knew that had he
been alive, it would have been. Death changed things. “Everything I wanted was just
handed to you.” His voice dropped to a whisper.

And he could never have it, Emma though dispassionately. For a moment, Merrick Longland
was painfully young in her eyes. She knew what he’d been willing to do, while alive.
She hated it. At the moment, all she could see was pain. Pain, isolation, and a terrible
loneliness. She glanced at her father, who nodded but said nothing.

“If I could—if I was certain I could—I would open that door again. But the last time—”
she shook her head.

“What? What about the last time?”