Distant Star (24 page)

My head was killing me. “Jade?”
It couldn’t be. He looked so old, so worn. Jade had only been in his fifties
five years ago. He had been an enemy on both sides in the Tome Wars, after
forsaking a position at the Infernal Academy. If I remembered correctly, his
wife had been murdered, and Jade had turned cold. A homicidal maniac, a
mercenary for hire to the highest bidder. “Aloysius Jade…?”

Jade inclined his head. “At your
service.”

“What happened to you?”

“Well, I didn’t die, as you did,
but I came close. Five years in Starhold can nearly kill a man.”

I shook my head, disbelieving.
“We were this close to one another on the street. I ate one of your damned
frozen bananas, and I didn’t recognize you.”

“My own mother, bless her cruel
heart, wouldn’t recognize me now. I’m an old man, in body if not mind.” He
shrugged. “Aren’t you curious?”

“Curious?”

“About why you’re alive.”

I shrugged, then sat up, holding
my belly. The devastating stab wound in my stomach, from Renegade’s sword, was
a mess of tangled scar tissue. It looked nasty but old. I felt my face. Tal’s
cut was a thin, soft line running down my nose.

I was healed.

Alive and healed.

“No, I’m pretty sure I know what
happened.” I held my head in my hands for a long moment. Memories returned to
me about being on the plateau of the Infernal Clock. As Emily, the Immortal
Queen, had kicked me from the summit I’d snatched wildly at her foot… and
missed. But I’d managed to clutch a single petal before I fell.

“It was the Infernal Clock that
brought me back. Had to be. What I don’t understand is why you’re here, why
you’re…
caring
for me.” I thought
about it. “No, I’m sorry. I just don’t get it.”

“A petal of the Infernal Clock…
Legend says such a thing can grant immortality.”

“Do I look immortal?”

He snorted. “You look like death
warmed up.”

I pressed a hand to my forehead
and sniffed. “That’s funny. I think I need a drink.”

Jade produced a bottle of red
wine and two glasses. “From your own selection, of course. To your good health,
hmm.”

We drank in silence. I could only
sip at the rose-red liquid.

“The petal was glowing and embedded
in your palm, when I found you—your body, I mean—in what’s left of
the Reach.” Jade paused. “I invoked a dash of Will into it, then a touch more.
I used all the Will I had, and I haven’t been able to so much as channel a drop
since, but the petal began to
sing
. I
felt… I felt very small.”

“You saw me dispose of my body a
week ago, didn’t you?”

“I’ve been watching you for
weeks, Hale. Renegade broke me out of Starhold and sent me to either drag you
back to Forget or kill you trying, and bring back a vial of your blood.” He
shrugged. “I guess he got tired of waiting, and sent that kid to break your
exile and force you to act. Morpheus is not the patient type.”

“
Was
not the patient type. He’s dead. I killed him.” Jade, for the
first time, looked surprised. “But you avoided my question. The night I… I
died?”

“Yes, I saw you. I felt the cords
of Will you used to send the body—I didn’t know it was your own, at this
point—across to Nightmare’s Reach. Honestly? I was curious. You have
racked up a more than significant death toll, Hale, so why so much trouble to
hide one more? I went searching in the Reach, followed the thread of your Will
through the dust to that house.”

“And brought me back.”

“And brought you back.”

“I suppose I should thank you…”

Jade shook his head slowly. “We
owe each other no thanks.”

*~*~*~*

My shop door was unlocked and the
books undisturbed. Jade had collected his meager possessions just after noon
and left me to rise or fall of my own accord. His—Mathias’s—old
banana cart leaned forlornly and abandoned in the heart of Riverwood Plaza.

Entering my shop did not feel
like coming home as returning to Ascension City had seemed. As time flew, I had
died ten days ago on this shop floor and just two days ago in Atlantis. I had
difficulty wrapping my head around all that had happened, but then the very
idea of time travel was absurd.

If time flew as straight as an
arrow, then I had been dead a little less than forty-eight hours.

I stood in the half-light which
seeped through the cracks in the boarded up windows. Dust particles danced
across the leather-bound tomes. I stroked the scar tissue on my palm where the
petal of immortality had pierced me and brought me back to life.

“Roper? Detective? Are you here?”

Silence.

Could I go back to this? To my exile
and this shop, to drink away the days writing an endless story? Did I have a
say in the matter? Did Forget know I was dead? What had happened to Atlantis
and my friends upon the Plains of Perdition?

Too many questions. Perhaps I
should have just been thankful to be alive when so many weren’t. I had failed
Clare, as I had failed Tal. Marcus had been right all along, and on some level,
I’d known that for the truth.

Only the guilty understand the cost of true power
, Aaron had said. He’d got that right.

I headed upstairs for a shower
and a change of clothes. The shirt and waistcoat I wore felt as though they
belonged to a dead man. I spent a good hour under the scalding hot water,
trying very hard not to beat my head against the tiled wall.

In my closet was a row of fresh
shirts and trousers. I selected a black waistcoat and, given the torn and
bloodied state of my grey one, bestowed the coat with the dubious honor of
“favorite”. I shrugged into it carefully, being careful to not pull too much at
the taut, hard skin across my stomach.

Now what?

Being alive… it didn’t feel real,
somehow. I felt as though I was waiting for the other shoe to drop. Yawning, I
sat down on the edge of my bed and thought of Clare. I remembered her, just a
week ago, getting dressed here in a shaft of sunlight. She had been beautiful.

Distantly, I heard the bell above
my door downstairs chime as someone let themselves in. I hadn’t locked it
behind me, and the wards weren’t up. Was it someone come to hurt me, or just a
customer?

I grabbed a copy of Figley’s
Assassin,
the very same Jeffrey Brade
had tried to use against me, and headed downstairs.

The shop was quiet. I couldn’t
see anyone.

Barefooted, I stepped lightly
along the floorboards. “Who’s here?” I asked, my voice a harsh whisper. “Show
your—”

Sophie barreled into me at top
speed when I rounded the edge of the shelves. Her tiny weight almost sent me
tumbling over a stack of fiction, but I caught myself against the wall. “Well,
hello there, ‘Phie.”

“I thought you were dead, you idiot!”

“I… was.”

Sophie swatted me on the chest.
“Where’ve you been? What happened? I’m sorry we couldn’t help you—Marcus,
he pulled us back across to Ascension City and then here. He burned
Tales of Atlantis
, Declan. Without it
we—”

 
“It’s okay. I know. He did what he thought was right and
probably saved your lives.” Selling me out to Renegade and plunging Forget back
into war as well, but that was revenge for another time. “Are you okay? Is
Ethan?”

“Ethan? Yes, he’s fine. He’s at
university.” Sophie looked at me.
Really
looked at me. “God, you look so unwell. Come and sit down.”

I didn’t argue. She led me over
to my comfortable window alcove and sat me down in front of the typewriter. A
half-written page hung in its teeth. Writing was the farthest thing from my
mind.

“Declan, please, what happened?”

I looked into Sophie’s face and
shrugged. She deserved to know that I saw Tal again, if nothing else. I told
her everything. She sat and listened, with her legs tucked underneath her on
the leather sofa. She listened quietly, scared, and I could see a thousand
questions blazing behind her eyes. I finished and reached for a bottle of
scotch.

“You were dead,” she said.

“Yes.”

“You saw Tal.”

“Oh yes.”

Sophie looked down and bit her
lip.

“Were you expecting something
else? Something more?” I chuckled, but it hurt. “For all of us to live happily
ever after?”

“Is that silly?”

“No. A touch naïve, perhaps, but
in the best way.” I stood, joined Sophie on the sofa, and slipped an arm around
her shoulders to pull her close. “Perfect endings… they don’t exist, ‘Phie.
Only in stories, where nothing ever really changes. Here, right now, isn’t a
story. There is no happy ending, because it’s not the end. Do you understand?”

Sophie sniffed and placed her
hand on my knee. “I miss Tal.”

Me too.

*~*~*~*

A day later, the bell above my
door chimed and heavy, somber boots clipped a steady beat on the floorboards.
Someone slowly but surely was navigating my maze of books, and he or she was
not a customer, unless I’d lost my wits entirely somewhere between Atlantis and
the land of the dead. I didn’t bother to lift my head from the unedited pages
of my novel on the counter.

Honestly, I didn’t care.

“So this is the afterlife?” asked
a deep baritone voice.

“Haven’t you heard?” I reached
below the counter, fetched another glass. “I’m immortal these days, Your
Majesty.”

I poured Jon Faraday two fingers’
worth of Glenlivet 12. He didn’t get the spicy 15. Not after his piss poor
performance on the Plains of Perdition and the whole exile under pain of death
affair. He took the glass with a nod of thanks.

“Yes. That’s a rumor spreading
faster than wildfire through Forget. Declan Hale, the Immortal King of
Atlantis.” Faraday chuckled and took a sip. “Certainly not a part of the plan,
to feed your legend, but even the very wise cannot see all ends, hmm.”

“You let this happen, Gandalf.”
With a few sad days to think on it, such a miserable conclusion was the only
thing that made sense. “What do you want now?”

“You know what I want, Hale.”
Faraday stroked the rough stubble coating his chin. “The Renegades destroyed,
Forget united, and your head on a pike paraded through the streets of Ascension
City, amidst the sounds of imperial trumpet calls and wild, mindless ovation.”

“Well…” I had to choose my words
carefully. “Click your heels three times, Dorothy, and wish real hard.”

“I suppose I owe you thanks, in a
way. If not for you and your penchant for sticking your nose in where it
doesn’t belong, Renegade may well have seized the Infernal Clock and used it to
destroy us all.”

“You let me escape the Fae
Palace, didn’t you? You let Clare and Ethan think they’d been so clever in
their rescue and let me seek Atlantis and undo the Degradation… You played me.”

“Let us be honest, Declan. Can we
be that, just this once? You wanted to be played.” He looked around at my dusty
old shop with a sneer of distaste. “Sitting on the bench was insulting for you,
wasn’t it? After the Tome Wars? You were chewing at the bit to be tagged back
in.”

“People were hurt. Clare
Valentine
suffered
, Jon. She died
afraid.” Goddamn it, she died without knowing how much I cared. I pressed my
thumb and forefinger against my eyelids. “True love never saves the damn day,
does it?”

“Her death was a regrettable
loss, but look at the outcome—the Degradation undone, Morpheus Renegade,
our greatest adversary, dead. His legions are in disarray and treasures lost
ten millennia ago are being retrieved from the ruins of Atlantis as we speak.
Small regions of Renegade-controlled Forget are rebelling, as word of his death
spreads, but that is manageable. This was a win for the home team.”

“Emily, his queen, is still out
there. She has at least a half-dozen petals from the Infernal Clock as well as
the Roseblade.”

“And all the reason in the world
to want
you
dead.” Faraday chuckled.
“I fear she will be your problem before mine. But then who can blame her?
You’ve always made better enemies than friends.”

“What if I’d failed? What if the
Everlasting had barred my path? If Morpheus had killed me before I reached the
Infernal Clock and undid the Degradation? If what’s left of Tal stopped my
heart?” I threw my hands up. “Or a thousand other things that could have gone
wrong.”

Faraday nodded. “All taken into
consideration. If you’d been killed, then that was one less treasonous madman
to deal with. Your death would have solidified my powerbase beyond question. It
still will, one day—and soon, no doubt. I don’t believe your immortality
for a moment.”

“I’m alive. I
was
dead. That should give you pause.”