Touch (20 page)

Emma did not want to feel sympathy—or even pity—for Merrick Longland. He was the type
of person who justified the concept of Hell. He thought about his own pain but never
considered the pain he left in the lives of others.

But if she had been without a father for over half her life now, the father she’d
had had loved her. She’d never doubted it. Who would she be if her father were a different
man? What would she be like if she’d had Mark’s mother?

Dead, probably.

“Necromantic power requires the dead. It doesn’t necessarily require binding them.”

He frowned. “That’s not how it works—”

“It’s not how you’ve been taught,” she replied. “But it
is
how it works, or can work. My father is free to come and go as he pleases. I don’t
know where he is when he’s not with me. I don’t
own
him. He chooses to stay. But he can give me power if he chooses to.

“The dead have a choice. That’s the thing you don’t understand—and you’re dead. The
dead are people. They’re people trapped inside a giant, icy waiting room, but they’re
still people. When I opened the door, I did it for Andrew Copis. And for his mother.
She would never have known a moment’s peace if he’d remained trapped here. But it
took—it took so
many
of the dead, and they gave me everything they had.” She exhaled. “The Queen of the
Dead has closed the way. I don’t know how. I just know that the power it takes to
open the door requires hundreds or thousands of the dead. Maybe more. I stopped counting.”

He closed his eyes. His lashes were dark and long as they rested against pale skin.
He
looked
alive, to Emma. But then again, so did her father. She felt a peculiar tightness
in her throat as she watched him, because she knew that she could touch him and her
hands wouldn’t freeze or go numb.

“If the dead knew,” he whispered, “they would come. You had thousands, but Emma—every
person who’s died in the last several centuries would come if you called them.”

“I don’t know how. How did you find the dead? Did you find them in the hundreds?”

He shook his head.

“The Necromancers who are in Toronto—”

“Two are already dead.”

“There’s a third?”

“And a fourth.”

“Are they also at Emery?”

“No.” He lifted his chin, straightening his shoulders. “I can teach you.”

Her father stiffened. Neither he nor Emma misunderstood Longland’s offer. “To bind
the dead?” she asked softly.

“You don’t understand what you can do with that power.”

“I understand what’s been done with it in the past,” she countered.

“If you had enough power, you wouldn’t age. You could be immortal. You’re young, now.
But in ten years, twenty, you’ll be older. You’ll understand why the gift is valuable,
then.”

She shook her head.

“I can teach you how to gather,” he said, bending forward, his hands cupped before
him as if he were waiting for them to be filled. “You said you need power to free
us. I can show you how to gain it.”

It hadn’t done Longland a lot of good. Emma didn’t point this out. Instead, she said,
“If I don’t get back to dinner, my mother’s going to be suspicious. Or worried.”

“Promise me you’ll try,” he said, catching her by the hand as she turned. She was
right. His hand was warm. It felt like a living hand.

“I promise I’ll try. I want something in return.”

He stiffened.

“I want the other two Necromancers.”

“What will you do with them?”

Emma looked down at the floor. “You already know,” she said. “I’m not going to the
City of the Dead. I’m not going to the Queen’s Court.”

“She says you have power,” Longland whispered. “If you trained hard, you could become
the Queen of the Dead.”

“I’m going back to dinner.” She turned, then turned back. “Will she summon you home?”

“She can order me home,” Longland replied. “But without a Necromancer to create a
path, it won’t be instant; I have to travel the way the rest of you do.” He rose.
His expression shuttered, becoming smooth and almost lifeless. “Even at the height
of my power, I couldn’t have budged that door an inch. Untrained, you did what I couldn’t.”
He headed out of the living room and into the hall, where he retrieved his boots and
his winter gear.

“Does the cold affect you?”

His smile was strange. “I’m always cold. If you mean the weather, the winter, no.
I imagine this body feels pain; that the flesh can freeze or burn.” He spoke of it
as if it were entirely separate from him.

“But—isn’t it better than being dead?” She hated the hope in her voice, because she
knew it was foolish. It was
wrong
. But it hovered there anyway. If Nathan were like Longland, she could touch him.
Nathan could touch her. There wouldn’t be pain and numbness.

“Emma, I
am
dead. Clothed in flesh or no, there’s nothing that can change that.” He turned and
left the living room; Emma followed after taking one deep breath. She thanked him
for coming, apologized in advance for Amy, and otherwise spoke as if he were the teacher
he’d claimed to be.

She wasn’t certain her mother was listening. But she wasn’t certain she wasn’t, either;
the dining room had fallen momentarily silent.

* * *

After she’d shut the door, she leaned against the wall, her head tilted toward the
ceiling.

“Em.”

For a long moment, she couldn’t speak. Her throat was too tight. “I’m fine,” she told
him softly. It was a Hall variant on fine. To stop her father from worrying about
her, she said, “Do you think we can trust him?”

“He strikes me as a boy who’s always focused on what he wants, to the exclusion of
everything else.”

“And he wants to escape?”

Her father shook his head. “It’s not escape. He is standing outside his home in a
snowstorm. He doesn’t have the key, and the door is locked. He can peer in through
the window; he can knock at the door. He can scream. He can’t enter. But he has the
right to be there. I think it’s the only thing he wants, now. I think, as long as
you’re working toward that, he will do everything he can to help you.”

“But he was sent here by the Queen of the Dead.”

“Yes, Em. Do you understand why?”

She swallowed. Shook her head.

Halls did not accuse each other of lying. They respected each other’s privacy. Her
father was concerned enough to ask; he wasn’t concerned enough to break Hall family
rules. Not when he’d worked so hard in the early years to establish them.

“I have to get back to dinner.”

“Jon is worried.”

“Jon? I was thinking about Mom.”

Her father’s smile was brief. “She’s not naturally as suspicious as Jon appears to
be.”

Emma turned, and then turned again. “Dad, you’re really okay with this?”

“I am far less worried about your mother and Jon than I am about you,” he replied.
It was a very Hall answer.

* * *

She thought a lot about death at dinner, where the dead weren’t. And she thought a
lot about life, as well, watching her mother, watching Jon tease her mother. He never
excluded Emma; she chose to step back, and he acknowledged it. It was subtle. Emma
wasn’t used to subtle adults. Most of the adults in her daily life were teachers,
and subtlety was generally a lost cause on the student body.

But she thought her father was right: Jon was suspicious of Longland. He was suspicious,
but he mostly kept it to himself because in the end, it wasn’t his house, and she
wasn’t his daughter. He was willing to follow her mother’s lead. Emma was polite,
because she could be and still be preoccupied. If her mother noticed, she left it
alone, and when dinner was done and cleanup started, Jon actually helped. He was better
at washing dishes than her mom, which was a disloyal thought, but also true.

But even helping, he didn’t seem particularly eager to please; the dishes were dirty,
he’d eaten, and he therefore helped clean up. It seemed natural, although her mother
tried to shoo him out of the kitchen three times on the grounds that he was a guest.
He pointed out that a decent guest helped out.

Given that Emma had been told exactly this for most of her life, she found the disagreement
amusing. She held on to that because there were now two things she had to face that
she desperately wanted to avoid.

One of them was waiting in her bedroom when the dishes were done and she could retreat
to give her mother some privacy.

Mark was sitting at her desk in front of her computer. “How is it,” she asked, as
her father also materialized to one side of that desk, “that he can use the computer?”

Her father shrugged. “I don’t know. Before you ask, I don’t know how I can, either.”

“That’s not like you.”

“Not knowing?”

“Not caring enough
to
know.”

“When I was alive, knowledge made a difference. Knowing how things work now doesn’t
give me the ability to fix any of them.”

“Dad—”

Mark turned in the chair. The chair didn’t turn with him. “Are you finished dinner,
now?”

Emma surrendered. “Yes. And the cleanup. You’ll have to give me a few minutes to get
my dog ready for a walk.” She fished her phone out of a pocket and hit the speed dial.
“Eric?”

“Emma?”

“I’m about to go take my dog for a walk.”

“Where?”

She glanced at her father. “Where does Mark live? Can I walk there?”

“We can walk,” Mark began.

“Dead people don’t take as long to walk between places as living ones,” her father
told him. To his daughter, he added, “But it’s not that far.”

It couldn’t be. Not and be close to the ravine. Mark had said his mother had taken
him for a walk, not a drive. “My dad says it’s within easy walking distance.”

“You’re taking Mark home.”

“I’m going home with him, yes.”

“To do what, Emma?”

“I honestly don’t know.” She hesitated and then added, “Merrick Longland paid me a
visit during dinner.”

There was a long, silent beat. “Tonight?”

“Yes. He left about an hour ago.”

“What did he want?”

She exhaled. “He wanted me to force the door open again, the way I did for Andrew
Copis.”

Silence. “That’s it?”

“He was sent here to talk to me. He wasn’t told what he should talk about. He wasn’t
sent to aid the Necromancers, but said he arrived with four. Two of them are dead.”

“The other two?”

“Not dead but not at the school.”

“Do you trust him?”

Did she? “It would be stupid to trust him,” she replied, hedging.

“But you do.”

“I trust what he said tonight. If you know of a way to bring the dead back to life,
tell me now—because if there is, and that’s what he’s angling for, he’ll lie.”

“There isn’t.”

She swallowed. It took her a little longer to dredge up a reply. “He looks alive to
me.”

“He looks alive to anyone living. The dead know the difference. Did he try to tell
you—”

“No. He told me, flat out, that he’s dead. He’s wrapped in a—a construct. It’s like
a cage of flesh.”

Eric exhaled. “He was at least that honest. What did you tell him?”

“The truth. If I could open that door for him, I’d do it tomorrow. I’d do it now.”

“You can’t.”

“I don’t think I can, no. Every person gathered at the door—every dead person,” she
amended, “was willing to give me everything they had on blind faith, and I still only
barely managed to pry it open a crack. I’m not sure I could gather that many of the
dead together again. And if I did, I think she’d know.”

“She?”

“The Queen of the Dead.”

“Did you tell him how you gathered the dead?”

“The lantern? No.”

“Good. Don’t mention it if he doesn’t. Don’t talk about it even if he brings it up.”
He exhaled. “Tell me the route you’ll be taking with your dog. I’ll meet you on the
way.”

“I don’t—I’m not sure that’s a good idea.”

“Fine. If you’re not sure, I am. Do the other Necromancers know where you, Allison,
or Michael live?”

Emma hadn’t asked. She’d been so surprised by Longland—and by the rest of the evening—that
what should have been the first question out of her mouth had never left it. “I don’t
know. I’m sorry—”

“It’s fine. We’re spread a little thin at the moment, but the old man is out making
the rounds, and Margaret’s with him.” He hesitated, then added, “I’ve spoken with
Allison. Chase has her back.”

“Is she okay with that?”

“She’s not happy about it, no. But she understands what’s at stake. Give me five,
and I’ll meet you.”

I
T WAS COLD, even for November. Petal was heavy enough to break the thin layer of ice
that had formed on the snow on the boulevard. Emma, wearing gloves and holding a scuffed
lead, could barely feel her hands; her cheeks were numb. Mark walked to her left,
her father, on the street side. Her father made a show of taking steps. Mark trailed
in the air, his legs unmoving. The appearance of walking wasn’t necessary in order
to move, and he’d discarded it. He was dressed for winter, on the other hand; her
father wasn’t.

Petal’s breath was a constant white mist. It was a wonder his tongue wasn’t frozen.
He didn’t look up from his hopeful inspection of the frozen ground until Eric joined
them. Eric patted Petal while he nodded to her father and Mark.

Mark said, “You can see me.”

Eric nodded again.

“Are you dead?”

“Do I look dead to you?”

“How am I supposed to tell?” Mark asked. “The dead don’t look dead to me.
I
don’t look dead. To me. But you can see me.”

“Emma’s not dead,” Eric said quietly. “And she can see you.” Months of talking to
Michael had given him some of the tools necessary to talk to Mark, but he wasn’t comfortable.
Then again, at the moment neither was Emma. She would have been in other circumstances,
even given two dead companions and a half-deaf rottweiler. But with the dead came
the living: the Necromancers and their Queen.

“Are you like Emma?”

Eric didn’t hesitate. “No. No one’s like Emma.”

“Emma is a Necromancer.”

Eric winced. “Emma has the latent ability of the Necromancers—but she’s not one of
them.”

“Why not?”

“Fair question,” Eric replied. “But I can’t answer it.”

Emma glared as Eric grinned. “Chase would love this conversation.”

“He’d only get half of it.”

“My half, which means he probably wouldn’t be listening to any of it.” She turned
to Mark. “Having power is like—like having a knife. You can’t cook without one, but
not everyone who owns one uses it to stab someone else. I have the equivalent of a
knife. But I want to use it in the kitchen; I don’t want to use it to hurt people.”

“People hurt people,” he said.

“Yes. But mostly by accident.” Mark fell silent, and she mentally kicked herself.
She glanced at Eric, who was watching Petal as if the dog were fascinating. Things
could have been more awkward, but only with the inclusion of, say, her mother’s new
boyfriend.

She followed her father’s subtle lead, but asked Mark if he knew the way home. He
frowned and thought about this. “I know,” he finally said, “that I can go there.”

“But not how?”

“The streets look different when you’re dead. They change a bit. They didn’t do that
when I was alive. I can’t tell you how to get there because you’re not dead.”

“Could you tell my father?” It didn’t matter, but she found herself asking questions
that had nothing to do with the mother waiting at the end of this walk. Partly for
his sake and partly for her own.

“He already knows.”

“Can he get there the same way you can?”

Mark considered this. Turning to her father, he asked, “Can you?”

“Yes,” her father replied. “But Emma and Eric can’t. Neither can Petal.”

“Petal is a strange name for a dog.”

“I thought so, but I didn’t choose it.”

Emma, remembering the reason she’d chosen the name, shrugged. It wasn’t the name she
would choose now, but he’d grown into the name, or she’d grown attached to it. “I
was eight,” she told Mark. “My dad always called me Sprout. I thought Petal was a
good name.”

“For a dog?”

“Well, for this one. He doesn’t seem to mind it.” He did perk up, the way he often
did when people were talking about him. Mostly because he assumed his name was synonymous
with food.

“Is Michael like me?”

“Michael is Michael,” she replied. “You’re Mark. You have some things in common, but
you’re not the same person.”

“Michael isn’t happy.”

She closed her eyes briefly. “Michael doesn’t understand what happened to you. I mean,
he knows what happened but not why.”

“Me either.”

“When things upset him, he needs to understand why they happened—usually in a lot
of detail—or he stays upset. Sometimes we can explain things, but sometimes we can’t.
I can’t explain this.” She stopped walking, and remembered: she had promised to take
Michael with her when she took Mark home.

But it was late. It was late, and she did not want an upset Michael at the door of
the woman who had killed Mark. She hesitated, torn. Eric marked it.

“I told Michael he could come with me.” She considered appearing on Michael’s doorstep
at almost ten in the evening, dog in hand. His mother would be worried—and with cause,
even if they couldn’t explain it all.

Sometimes, dealing with Michael was hard. If she’d promised Allison and she reneged,
Allison would understand why. She might not be
happy
with the explanation, but she’d understand it. Michael tended to see things as black
or white. But he was generally forgiving if there was a reasonable explanation. Or
rather, an explanation that seemed reasonable to him.

Emma hesitated again and then said, “We need to take a slight detour.”

* * *

Michael’s mother answered the door, which was about what Emma expected; Michael often
failed to register the doorbell when it rang. “I’m really sorry, Mrs. Howe,” Emma
said. “But I promised Michael I’d show him something the next time I went, and I’m
going now.”

Michael’s mother nodded. She was a mostly practical woman, rounded with years but
pragmatic about it; her hair was shot through with gray. Mercy Hall dyed her hair.
Emma was certain that when she reached that age, she’d dye her hair as well, but Mrs.
Howe’s hair was dark enough that the gray seemed to add shine to it.

“I wouldn’t be here,” Emma continued, “but Michael’s been a little stressed lately,
and I didn’t think a broken promise would help him much.”

Michael’s mother knew her son. “Let me get him. Are you—are you going to be long?”

“I hope not. In part, it’ll depend on Michael.”

“And the other part?”

“How long it takes for my hands to freeze off.”

“Well, come in and wait. With luck, he’ll decide to stay in.”

Emma thought it would take more than luck, but agreed. The important part at the moment
was that she was in his front hall, having remembered her promise. What he then chose
to do with it was out of her hands; if he decided not to accompany her, no guilt accrued
on her part.

Michael came thundering down the stairs. He’d never learned the art of walking quietly,
and he generally took stairs two at a time in either direction. He wasn’t carrying
his computer, but headed for the closet to unearth his coat, his mittens—he disliked
gloves—and his scarf. His mother found his misplaced hat and murmured something about
stapling it to his forehead.

During this, he spoke very little; he kept peering out the door, as if he might catch
a glimpse of Mark, although he knew that without Emma’s intervention—Emma, who was
standing alone in his hall—that was impossible.

And Emma knew, from one glance at Michael’s mother, that she was worried. “Eric’s
with us,” she said, “and he has a car. If we’re going to be late—I mean, later—I’ll
call you.”

“I don’t think I’ve met Eric,” his mother said.

“He’s keeping the car running. He just started Emery this year, but he eats lunch
at Michael’s table.”

“And the gaming discussions haven’t driven him off?”

“Not yet.”

“Emma—” She inhaled. “Never mind. Keep an eye on him tonight?”

“Always.”

* * *

Mark was quiet; his silence was not comfortable. Emma was generally comfortable with
silence—it was one of the reasons she’d so liked Nathan. He didn’t
need
her to fill silence in order to be at ease. But this silence was different, and she
knew it. It was a veneer over things that couldn’t be said, even if words were roiling
beneath it.

She hated Mark’s mother. Hated her, despised her, wanted to see her hauled off to
jail to answer for what she’d done. Not just the death, but everything that had led
up to it. No one had forced her to become a mother.

But saying this out loud wouldn’t help Mark. It wouldn’t change anything. Hating his
mother had zero effect; it didn’t offer him either comfort or support. She almost
reached out to take his hand but remembered that he found touch uncomfortable—at least
while he was alive. He was dead, but that didn’t mean what it meant to her father.
Or to Nathan.

She inhaled. Exhaled. What did she want from this evening? Why was she quietly following
her father’s reluctant lead to take a severely unwanted child home to the mother who
had murdered him?

Because the child wanted to go there. This wasn’t about Mark’s mother, in the end;
not to Emma. It was about Mark. It was about the dead child. Any mistakes he made
here couldn’t harm him further; he’d suffered the worst already.

But his mother had gotten away with murder. When she should have been caring for and
about her son, she had abandoned him to die, instead—and no one knew. Everyone thought
she was the grieving, bereaved parent. If Emma did nothing, said nothing—where was
the justice in that? How was that fair to Mark?

“Emma,” her father said.

She looked up, as apparently her feet had gotten really interesting.

“That’s the house.”

* * *

It was about the same size as the Hall house, and if Emma remembered correctly, it
also lacked a father. It didn’t lack siblings, but it lacked anything as fundamental
as a mother, in Emma’s opinion. She inhaled, held her breath, and then turned to Mark,
who was staring at the front door.

Eric said, quietly, “Are you certain this is wise?”

“I’m certain it’s not,” she replied. “Mark, is my father right? Is that the house?”

Mark nodded, never taking his eyes off the front door. Emma tried to imagine what
it would be like to stand in front of her home in the same context. How would she
feel if her mother had killed her?

She failed, because she couldn’t imagine it. In her worst nightmares—the ones that
involved her mother—her mother had either died or disappeared. She had never tried
to kill her.

“You don’t have to do this,” Emma said, aware that she was partly speaking to herself.
But the alternative—breaking her word to Mark—had seemed worse. It didn’t seem worse
now.

Mark frowned. “I don’t have to do this,” he repeated, as if trying to make sense of
the words.

Michael, who couldn’t see Mark, said, “He wants to do this.”

Mark looked at Michael. To Emma he said, “Michael is your friend.” It was a question
without the intonation.

“Michael is my friend,” she agreed.

“Why?”

“If you mean why do I like him, there are a bunch of reasons.”

“He’s not normal.”

She hated that word more than she’d ever hated it before. “I’m not normal, either.”

He frowned.

“I’m a Necromancer. I can see—and talk—to the dead. Michael doesn’t hate me just because
I can do these things. Michael finds it hard to deal with strangers. He finds it hard
to talk to people he doesn’t know. He finds it hard to talk to people he
does
know if they’re speaking about something he doesn’t really understand. But he’s direct,
he’s honest, and if he says he’ll help you, he will. Michael’s easy to trust.”

“Is trust important?”

“Very. At least to me.” Petal shoved his nose into her gloves. She dropped a hand
to his head; he was warm enough that she could feel the heat rising off his fur. She
should have left him at home. But she’d needed a reasonable excuse to give her mother,
and walking the dog was an all-weather, all-season necessity. Mark’s home wasn’t the
place for him.

It wasn’t the place for Mark, either.

“Can we talk to my mother now?”

Emma nodded. “It’s late,” she added.

“She’s awake.”

“You’re certain?”

“That’s her window.”

“Awake doesn’t always mean someone will answer the door.”

“She’ll answer the door,” he replied. “Because it might be an emergency. She always
answers the phone, too—even when it’s late.”

“Michael, can you stand on my right? Mark will be standing on my left, and I’ll be
holding his hand.” She handed Michael Petal’s leash.

Michael nodded, his expression as neutral as Mark’s.

“And I’m chopped liver?” Eric asked, with just the barest trace of humor.

“No. Chopped liver is disgusting.” Emma walked up to Mark’s front door and stood beneath
the fake lamp that encased the porch light. She carefully removed her gloves; her
fingers were already cold, and her breath came out as mist. “Ready?” she asked, as
she held out her left hand.

He smiled. It changed the entire cast of his face.

She reached out with her free hand and pressed the doorbell.

* * *

Mark’s mother was, as Mark predicted, awake. She didn’t answer the door immediately,
but the door was thin enough that the thump-thump-thump of feet hitting stairs that
little bit too fast could be heard. If she rushed to reach the door, she didn’t rush
to open it; it opened slowly, revealing just a thin strip of her face and body. She
was wearing rumpled, dark clothing and no makeup; she had probably been ready for
sleep.

And it looked like she needed it; the lower half of her eyes were shadowed by dark
semicircles, and she was pale. “Can I help you?” she asked, in obvious confusion.

“Yes,” Emma replied. “We found your son.” She lifted his hand, and his mother’s gaze
drifted down to his upturned face.

Her hand fell away from the door, which swung inward to reveal a woman who was just
a shade taller than Mercy Hall but much, much skinnier. To Emma’s eye, she looked
almost anorexic. Her eyes sported such dark circles she looked like she’d been hit
in the face.