Reaper (26 page)

“Uh huh,” Wendy said, remembering Jane's ribbons of Light and how they'd wrapped around her, pinching and pinning her down, twisting her all up. She closed her eyes and followed Emma's instructions. It was still difficult to push past what felt like layers of cotton pressing down beneath her skin, layered on her bones and ligaments in soft, twisted tangles, but she managed. “What else?”

“Once you can see your Light as well as feel it, look at it closely. Feel the cool spots, the black parts of the Light, woven through the holes in the brighter parts of your Light. Like…like one of those silly potholders you'd make in school, with a handloom? Feel the holes? Those are the spots where you can force open the binding.”

Far away on the other line, Emma could have no idea how hard it was for Wendy to even see the Light, much less force anything.

“I…I can't…”

But then, just as Wendy was about to give up, she felt it. It was nothing at first, just the slightest twinge against the underside of her too-sensitive skin, nails rasping faintly across her nerves. Wendy paused and returned to that spot, her hands hovering on the outside of her body while inwardly every coherent thought was concentrated on that narrow slice of skin and sinew and bone.

Emma was right; it was Light, but Light like no other she'd ever felt before. It was Dark Light, cool to the touch, the texture silky but strong, the feel of it almost like brushing her fingers through Piotr's hair.

“You see?” Emma asked from forever away. “Can you feel it? Now rip it if you can. Tear. Pull.”

Brushing her inner senses along the deftly woven strands of power, Wendy pried her fingers into the weave. It hurt and she dimly realized that she had to be causing some sort of damage to herself by trying to pull free on her own. Emma had made this dark stuff out of Wendy's own spirit, carving into her soul and weaving it back together again—yanking on her soul could only rip her apart piece by piece.

Then Jane had twisted the weave so tightly that there were hardly any holes left.

“Harder,” Wendy whispered, digging her mental fingers in. “Ignore…it.”

“You can do it,” Emma was saying. “Keep trying!”

Wendy knew she was crying freely now, but she didn't care. This agony was like nothing she'd ever felt before; worse than the time she'd shattered her wrist, worse than when she'd been attacked by Specs and had her soul stripped whole from her body, worse than the vaguely remembered pain of the car accident that ushered her into this bizarre give-and-take existence with the dead in the first place.

“Hurts,” she whispered, finally giving up. The binding hadn't budged, not really, and she felt the failure sticking in the back of her throat in a lump of disappointed tears and frustrated anger.

“Wendy? Wendy?” Emma's voice was growing smaller and smaller as the lights in Wendy's room stuttered and dimmed.

“Wendy?”

She coughed; it was the best reply she had.

Emma's voice was rapidly fading.

“Wendy…

I'm…

on…

my…

way…”

“T
here are birds everywhere still. We don't dare go to my place,” Eddie said, laboriously straightening and scowling at the overcast sky. They'd taken sanctuary under the bridge of the Tot Lot playground, but raucous calls in the distance made it clear to all three of them that it was only a temporary shelter. “And we know heading back to Wendy's house is right out. So what do we do?”

Edgily looking around, Eddie patiently watched as Lily knelt beside Piotr. She brushed a hand across Piotr's knuckles and winced; her fingers passed through his flesh as if she were living and Piotr were only the faintest of Shades.

“What's up?” Eddie asked.

Lily held up her palm. “It is completely numb. I can feel nothing…Eddie, I am at a loss,” she said, drawing back and shaking her wrist sharply to wake the deadened hand. “Perhaps we should have listened to Ada and traveled directly to Alcatraz. Stopped by and grabbed a couple of webs on the way.”

“No use. Without her. No antidote without her. It was a trap,” Piotr roused enough to say. “If it looks like a trap and tastes like a trap then it is a duck. In a trap.” He chuckled weakly and shook his head, trying to hook fingers in the dappled diamonds of the swaying bridge. His fingers passed through. “Where is Wendy? I came here for Wendy.”

“She's not here, man,” Eddie said uneasily. “We don't want her here right now anyway, remember? The Reapers are coming. If they spotted us…”

“We could go to one of the Riders’ haunts.” Lily suggested. Frowning, she glanced at the road, hands restlessly sifting through the sand at her feet. “If we could catch a ride going north, Piotr's Treehouse isn't far. We will be safe there for a time, until we can regroup and plan our next step.”

Eddie stuck his hands on his hips, grimacing. “Treehouse? Right. Like, what, an actual treehouse? He lived up in a tree?” Eddie shook his head. “Good one.”

“No.” Lily smiled and shook her head. “It is just a nickname. No treetops. A warehouse and a steel mill. They are both abandoned. Near the canal.”

“Okay, no trees. But how are we gonna get him to this mystical land of tetanus and safety? You can hardly touch him and I'm not entirely sure that if he
could
walk, he'd stay stable enough to ride the whole way in a car.”

“A travois, perhaps?” Lily asked, glancing around the playground. “It may take some time to scavenge the material.”

“You mean like a stretcher? Yeah, I guess so. But how would he…” Eddie drifted off. “Oh, wait a second! Hang on just one minute.” Glancing furtively over his shoulder at the treetops, Eddie hopped to his feet and darted through the fence toward the closest house, returning a minute later with a multi-patterned quilt bundled in his hands. It was nearly solid in the Never, brighter than most of the surrounding wildlife. He beamed broadly.

“How did you—” Lily began.

“Wendy said the more emotion you pour into an object, the likelier it's gonna make a dupe in the Never, right? Well, that house right there belongs to the Perkins family,” Eddie said, flopping the quilt into Lily's lap.

“You know them well?”

“Oh yeah. I babysat for them every Saturday night for almost a year. This, my dear lady Lily, is their wedding quilt. Or, rather, Mrs. Perkins
first
wedding quilt.”

Lily rubbed the luxurious, rich quilt between her fingers. “What is the significance of this first wedding that the quilt would be so thick, so real?”

“She and my mom were great friends for a while there until her first husband, Mr. Horowitz, passed. He was a cop, you know? But his beat was up in Oakland and he ran afoul of some dealers. She lost it when they brought the news. I mean, seriously. Lost. It.”

“She loved him a great deal.”

He tapped the quilt with a sad, knowing smile. “Yep, you don't spend that kind of time with a family without knowing their treasured possessions. When Mrs. Horowitz became Mrs. Perkins, she packed the blanket away for her kids…but it was still hanging on the wall in the Never.”

He pointed across the street. “Speaking of treasured possessions and knowing your neighbors far better than is entirely healthy, that family over there is a flock—a gaggle?—a bunch of hippie Rennies. I bet they've got a staff or two in their back shed.”

“Rennie?”

“Renaissance Faire nuts. They do the circuit every year. Wanna go check?”

“Stay here,” Lily said, eying the sky. “It is my turn to risk my skin.”

Quickly darting across the street, she vanished through the fence into the backyard. She was gone far longer than Eddie thought was prudent. He was about to try and tuck Piotr beneath the low slide and go after her when Lily scrambled back through the fence hauling a large canvas-wrapped bundle in her arms.

“What did I tell you, huh? You found the staves?” Eddie asked.

“Better,” Lily said, a twinkle in her eye, as she unrolled the canvas, exposing a network of deftly braided cables and what looked like thin, flexible sticks. She picked up two and began screwing the ends together. “Camping gear.”

An hour later, Eddie was still marveling at Lily's ingenuity. The crude travois he'd been envisioning had become a lightweight circle of durable flex-frame lashed with the thin twine. Piotr rested easily on the quilt; he was faint to look at, but the quilt was so dense that it held his weight easily and even seemed to lend him a little bit of substance. They waited until sunset to move and then scurried quickly toward Castro Street, hauling Piotr behind. Eddie had thought briefly of swinging by Wendy's to change the note and let her know where they'd be, but figured that it was too risky. They'd have to figure out a way to meet up later.

“I don't understand what you're trying to do,” Eddie said, panting as Lily stopped only momentarily at a streetlight to allow him to rest.

“We head north,” she replied simply. “Here. Hurry. The Caltrain comes.” She grabbed her edge of the stretcher and began speeding toward the tracks, Eddie grabbing up the foot of the travois and hurrying after. They barely made it.

Eddie was glad to see that the Caltrain was nearly empty of passengers, but Lily had them squatting with Piotr amid the bicycles for safety anyway. They stayed there all the way to the airport, where Lily made them dismount and hitch a ride on the back of a catering van puttering up the 101.

“You're disturbingly good at this,” Eddie said as they hopped off near the San Bruno canal. “Do all Riders ride around like this?”

“It used to be easier,” she said absently, eying the moon rising above the treetops. It was winter, the sun had set early, and it couldn't be any sooner than seven, Eddie realized, amazed that so much had happened in a day. It seemed like years ago that Wendy had fetched him from Nana Moses and Emma, not a hair more than half a day.

“What?” Eddie joked. “Did you all used to ride horses or something?”

“Yes, actually,” she said. “It is how we got our name. This way.”

Guiding them in the rising moonlight, Lily skirted the edge of the canal, leading Eddie unerringly through the least debris-strewn path of rubble. Still, despite her caution, Piotr was jostled fiercely along the way. Moaning, his head rocked from side to side, and he muttered in his delirium, alternately crying out for Wendy and cursing extensively in what Eddie could only assume was Russian, though it sounded different from his normal tone, more guttural and strange.

“Is this place close?” Eddie asked when they paused to rest, his voice pitched low and worried. “Because I don't think he's gonna make it much further. Look at him. Even hugging that quilt like it's his last friend, he's barely a shadow.” He frowned and examined his hand. Eddie was pale nearly to his shoulder now. “Though, to be honest, I'm not much better off.”

“We will be there soon,” Lily assured him, rising fluidly and doubling their pace. “Do not concern yourself overmuch on Piotr's behalf; he is strong, he will abide.”

Much to Eddie's chagrin, Lily had been telling the truth. Piotr's “treehouse” turned out to be an abandoned steel mill in the nexus of crumbling office parks.

Keeping an eye out for Walkers, Lily led Eddie inside. Eddie realized that Piotr and his Lost had squatted amid the squalor on the cleanest level available, the thirteenth floor. He wasn't a particularly superstitious person, but the idea of a bunch of dead guys picking the thirteenth floor to hang out on amused him. It was like Piotr had no sense of irony whatsoever. What did Wendy
see
in this guy anyway?

Still, thirteenth floor or not, Piotr in his prime must be tough as nails; huge sections of the stairs were broken away and had to be traversed carefully. Eddie struggled to do his part in carrying Piotr over the holes. He couldn't imagine having to carry kids over the gaps by himself as Piotr must have done time and time again. Undaunted, Lily urged them on, though she was the one to carefully gauge the distance and crab-crawl over the smaller gaps or leap the larger ones. Once across, Lily waited for Eddie to pass the handles of the stretcher across the divide as, together, they hefted Piotr further up and up again until every muscle in Eddie's body blazed.

“I'm practically dead,” he panted as they rested on a creaky, rotting landing. “This shouldn't hurt this much. Man, I am out of shape!”

“This task would be arduous even for a brave; carrying the kill back to the huts was often aided by horses or other hunters, rarely a hunter alone or in pairs, ” Lily said. “Do not fret; I have run you harder than I would have at any other time. You have done well, Eddie. You should hold your head with pride.”

“Really?” Eddie flushed. “Geeze, Lily, uh, thanks.”

Lily paused and then, suddenly, held out her hand. “Give me your palm.”

Eddie blinked in surprise. “What?”

“I…I wish to help you. You have been a great boon to me, to Piotr. It is the least I can do. Give me your hand.”

“I don't understand. Help me? Like how?”

Lily scowled and, leaning forward, snatched up Eddie's hand, cradling it between her palms. “Like this.”

When Lily poured her essence into Eddie it was the purest form of giving—something like what she'd done for Piotr but…different. Piotr had begun gulping her essence at the end, taking what Lily had been willing to give in great yanking, starving jerks. Whereas Eddie, either too young a soul to know what to do or too confused to take advantage of the situation, simply held very still as Lily pressed his palm between hers and poured herself into him. Through their connection Lily could feel him—thin and rapidly weakening and tired and scared—and Lily marveled at what a generous, sweet soul Eddie was deep down inside.

He hid, she realized, behind his sarcasm, behind his flippancy, because words were a wall and Eddie was a master at turning words to his advantage. Lily inhaled deeply, opened her hands wider, and felt him tense beneath her grip, straining against her and caught in the waves of her essence, lifted up and gently twisting beneath her hands, yearning in her touch. Moved, Lily leaned forward and tugged Eddie closer. Moving under her guidance, Eddie drifted closer, until they were nose to nose, palms clasped close, and Lily could breathe in the spicy scent of him, feel the hidden, wiry wrestler strength beneath his jacket, could taste the heart of who he was as she poured her soul into his.

“I…I…” Eddie whispered and Lily opened her eyes staring directly into his. His pupils were huge; Eddie's lashes swept down when he recognized Lily's regard. He swallowed deeply. “I…I don't know what to…”

“You love her,” Lily replied serenely. “More than anyone else. I know. I can taste it.”

“I do,” he admitted as if it were a shameful thing. And then, as if gasping for air, like a shadow yearning toward the light that would destroy it, “She's…she's
Wendy
.”

Lily nodded. “She is.”

Lily kissed him.

Eddie tasted of strawberries and honey and clover—simple, sweet, uncomplex. He smelled of cinnamon and smoke, of leather, and his hair beneath her fingers was crisp but soft. Lily poured herself through her palms, cupping the back of Eddie's neck and enjoying the sensation of him trembling beneath her fingertips. He was young, not terribly inexperienced, but his kiss was all sweetness and light, tenderness and gentle, delicate touch. He sent a sliver of a shiver down Lily's spine; Eddie wasn't her wonderful, passionately fierce James, but he wasn't new to the press of a lady's lips either.

In the end, when Lily felt that she'd reached a good stopping point either moments or millennia later, they both shuddered and Lily drew back, her hair falling across her cheeks, her eyes downcast as she assessed her rapidly thrumming heart, the tingle in her palms, and the pleasant ghost of pressure against her lips. “How do you feel?”

“Better,” Eddie sighed and held up a nearly solid hand. “Much, much better.”

“Good,” Lily said, smoothing her hair and straightening. “This is right.” She turned to gather up her side of the travois.

“Wait,” Eddie whispered desperately, “aren't we…aren't we going to talk about…what just happened there?”

He was such a sweet boy, Lily thought. James would have approved of him immensely.