Silence (13 page)

“Got it. Can he just show up whenever he wants?”

“You mean can he visit you?”

She nodded.

“I’m not entirely sure it’s that easy. He’s not without power,”

Eric added as the lights changed and they crossed the street, “but what he has is nothing like what Andrew has.”

“Andrew’s age doesn’t matter?”

“No. And before you ask? I have no idea why some of the dead have more power than others. There used to be theories that said the manner of death defined the amount of power the dead would have, but that’s been debunked.” He looked moodily into the distance, and his eyes narrowed.

By whom? Emma wondered. But Eric was talking, and she didn’t know how long that would last; she didn’t want to interrupt him, and judging by his expression, she wasn’t certain she wanted the answer.

He shook himself. “But there are some ghosts who are powerful. Powerful enough to affect the living world.”

“Andrew’s not.”

“No. He’s a step down. The ones that are, though? Those are your ghost stories, your poltergeists. They’re dangerous,” he added softly. “But Andrew is powerful enough. He is, however, stil four years old. What he creates out of what he remembers is something you’l have to walk through to get to him—at al. To get him to listen to you, or anything you have to say, is going to be very, very difficult.”

“Probably impossible,” Emma said quietly. “I think our best chance is his mother. If she could go in there—with me—and I could touch her son, she’d be able to see him and hear him. I think he would folow her out.”

“Which brings us back to the original question: How are you going to contact her?”

“Cold cals,” Emma said. “We’l think of something because we have to think of something. I know he’s already dead,” she added softly, “but it seems so wrong to leave him there for god knows how long, just burning.”

“Emma,” he said gently, “even if you do manage to get him out of the house, he’s stil dead.”

“So?”

“What do you think you’re going to do with him once he’s outside?”

outside?”

She stopped walking. “Do with him?”

“He’s dead, and he’s lost,” Eric replied, looking at Petal’s back. It seemed deliberate to Emma. “If you can talk him out of the house, he’l stil be both dead—and lost.” He looked at her then; she was standing stil, although Petal was causing a bit of a tilt.

“What do you mean, lost?”

“I mean lost. There’s nowhere for him to go.”

“But—that can’t be right.”

“Ask your father sometime. No, not now.”

“Wait.”

“Petal is going to pul your arm off.”

“He’l try. Can the dead see the other dead?”

“Not always, not clearly, and not at first.”

“So he couldn’t see my dad?”

Eric looked at her oddly. “Not in his current state, from everything you’ve said. Why?”

She lowered her eyes because they suddenly stung her. “My dad,” she said softly, “is good with lost kids.”

He roled his eyes, but he also smiled.

“I realy don’t understand you,” Emma said, dredging up a smile from somewhere and surprising herself because it was genuine.

“Lucky you.”

She didn’t realize where Petal was headed because she was engrossed in conversation and thought. But when he led her to engrossed in conversation and thought. But when he led her to the fence that bordered the cemetery, she knew. She stopped walking for a moment, compressing her lips in a thin line.

“Not here,” she told Petal. Petal came back to her, his tongue hanging out of his mouth. He cocked his head to one side, and after a moment she fished a Milk-Bone out of her pocket and offered it to him.

“I wasn’t lying,” Eric said quietly. “Graveyards realy are one of the quietest places on earth.”

She shook her head. “I can’t,” she told him.

“Why?”

“I don’t want to—” She grimaced. “They’re not quiet enough.” Squaring her shoulders, she looked straight at Eric.

“What did you see the night you met me here?”

“Not what you saw,” he replied. It was evasive, but he didn’t look away. “I saw the ghost,” he continued, when she didn’t speak. “She spoke to you.”

“She did way worse than speak to me.”

“What did she do?”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

He laughed. The laughter grew louder as she glared at him. It was hard to glare at Eric when he was laughing.

“I didn’t bring it up,” he said, when he could finaly stop. “But I didn’t see anything other than that. She talked to you, you backed up, tripped, and banged your head.”

“She handed me something,” Emma said quietly. This much, she wasn’t too embarrassed to say.

Eric could get so stil when he was already mostly standing Eric could get so stil when he was already mostly standing there. “What did she hand you?”

“A lantern. I think it was made of…ice.”

Eric looked at her for a long moment, and then he shook his head. “Emma,” he said softly, “if you ever meet any of my friends, fail to mention that.”

“I haven’t mentioned it to anyone but you.” She paused, “And Alison.”

They walked down the path into the cemetery. At this time of day, the gates weren’t shut, and cars could drive in as wel. Petal loved it.

“She was so old, Eric. So old.”

He said nothing for a long moment.

“Is that how you saw her?”

“No,” he said quietly.

“She looked like a bag lady out of nightmare. Why did you see her differently?”

“Some of the dead can choose their form.”

“You mean they don’t look the way they did when they died?”

“I mean they don’t have to. Andrew, in a few decades, wil probably be able to appear older, if he thinks about it.”

“Why would he bother? Why would any of them bother?”

Eric shrugged. “I’m not dead,” he told her. “Remember?”

“That could be arranged.”

Eric laughed. Petal decided that this was his cue to get lots of attention, where attention at his age meant another Milk-Bone.

“Who was she?” Emma asked, when Petal once again decided to test the tensile strength of his leash.

He looked at her, and then looked away. “The mother of a friend,” he said, in the wrong tone of voice.

She thought of the ring on his finger and said nothing. And this nothing? It was comfortable. She knew how to give him this space because in some ways, it was the space she herself needed.

Stil, she hesitated as Petal began to crawl, sniff, and occasionaly piss his way across the cemetery. She had never come to visit Nathan with any company but Petal before.

Nathan, she thought. For just a moment, she wanted to see him, and she wanted it so badly she forgot to breathe.

But she remembered to breathe after a few seconds, and she remembered to keep her mouth shut. It didn’t happen often, but it did happen. She covered her eyes with her hand for a few seconds, and then, when she dropped that hand, she was fine.

Eric was watching her.

“Don’t,” she said softly.

“Nathan?”

“I said don’t.”

He lifted both hands and took a step back. “I surrender. And I’m unarmed.”

“And that,” an unfamiliar voice said, “is realy strange. On both counts.”

Emma frowned and looked past Eric’s shoulder. A boy was Emma frowned and looked past Eric’s shoulder. A boy was leaning, with one hand, against the hem of an angel’s long, flowing robes. Admittedly the angel was on a pedestal on top of a tombstone that would have been at home over a dozen graves.

The stranger was taler than Eric, and his hair was an orange-red that would have been at home on Anne of Green Gables. He had green eyes, and his skin was the same pale that redheads often have, but it was dusted with freckles and rather puckish dimples.

He wore a jacket, the type of navy blue that said School, but in a cut that said Money; it had no crest. Beneath that? Colared shirt and a thin wool pulover. He also wore gray pants, with perfect pleats.

Eric grimaced and turned, slowly, to face the stranger.

“Chase,” he said.

“Eric.” Chase grinned broadly. “I came to lend a hand; the old man said you wanted some help. Who’s your friend?”

“A classmate,” Eric replied tersely. “And the old man was wrong. Why don’t you go play in traffic?”

“Not much traffic to play in around here, frankly. And I am bored out of my mind.”

“You’re always bored. Did no one ever tel you that bored people are generaly also boring?”

“You have. About a thousand times.” He straightened up, his hand leaving the angel’s hem and faling into his pocket. His jacket pocket. “But I’m rarely bored when you’re around,” he added, with a grin. “So, come on, introduce us.”

“I’d rather not.”

“I’d rather not.”

Chase clucked. “Wel, then, unless you’re going to kil me here and now—”

“Seriously considering it, Chase.”

“—I’l just introduce myself, shal I?”

Eric said, to Emma, “You don’t have to be friendly. I try to offend him frequently, but he’s so dense none of it sticks.”

She laughed. “Are you brothers?”

They both snorted with obvious derision and then glanced at each other.

“I’l take that as a yes.”

“It’s a definite no,” Chase said. “If he were related to me, I wouldn’t let him out in public dressed that way. He’s often rude, frequently sulen, and generaly unfriendly.”

“And Chase,” Eric added, “is often rude, frequently whiny, and never shuts up. Emma, this is Chase Loern. Chase, this is Emma Hal.”

“Pleased to meet you,” Emma said. “I think.”

Chase laughed. “You have been hanging around our Eric, haven’t you?”

She shrugged. “He’s never been rude, he’s never been sulen, and he is unfailingly helpful and friendly.”

“Which is another way of saying boring.”

“Only to teenage boys with too much time on their hands.”

Chase’s red brows arched up into his hairline. “On the other hand,” he said, “maybe you’re meant for each other.”

The silence that folowed these words was both awkward and teling.

teling.

“If you’l excuse me for a moment,” Eric said to Emma, recovering first. He grabbed Chase by the arm and began to drag him away, “I’m going to kil someone.”

It was almost true. Eric puled Chase around the trunk of a messy weeping wilow. Chase alowed this with apparent good humor until his back was against the tree. Chase and humor were funny things, if you liked black humor liberaly laced with violence. Eric often referred to him as Loki.

“What the hel are you doing?” Eric pushed him, and when Chase brought both of his hands up, let go and stepped back, finding his feet.

“You need backup,” Chase replied. “I’m here.”

“I don’t need backup. And I don’t need to babysit.”

Chase’s pale skin darkened. “You found the Necromancer.

The Necromancer is not dead. Ergo, backup.”

“I found the Necromancer; the Necromancer is not dead. I’m not dead either, and as you can see, not close. Backup doesn’t equal cleanup. I don’t want to have to clean up after you again.”

“Is it Emma?” Chase asked. He waited for a half-beat and then said, “Don’t be stupid, Eric.”

Eric said nothing.

“You’ve historicaly had a weakness for the girls.” A brief grin animated Chase’s mouth.

Eric didn’t try to break his jaw, but that took effort.

“Wel?”

“Don’t make me kil you.”

“Don’t make me kil you.”

Chase laughed. He would. But he could laugh just before he kiled, and he could laugh a good deal after, as wel. “I think that’s a yes.” His amused expression vanished, as if it had just run for its life. “What’s your game, here?”

Eric realy did not want to kil Chase. “She’s not what—or who—I expected.”

Red eyebrows disappeared into hairline. Chase was genuinely shocked. Eric could tel, because Chase didn’t have anything to say for almost two minutes.

“You need to take a vacation,” was al he could manage.

“After this.”

“Now. Are you out of your mind? She’s not what you expected?”

“Keep it down,” Eric said quietly, nodding in the direction of Emma, which also happened to be in the direction of the wilow.

“Pardon me for being outraged. If they find her—and you know damn wel they wil—you know what she’l become. What she is now doesn’t make a goddamn difference. She’s a fucking Necromancer, Eric!”

“The rest of her life is about what she is,” Eric replied quietly.

This usualy didn’t work with Chase; Chase generaly spoke as if conversational volume had to be a constant.

Chase was stil shocked. He reached into his pocket and puled out his phone. Eric pivoted and kicked it out of his hand; it flew, like an ungainly silver bird, in an arc past the tree.

“How many times have I saved your life?”

“How many times have I saved your life?”

“About as many,” Chase said, stil staring in the direction of the phone, “as I’ve saved yours.”

Eric snorted. “Good to see you’re stil incapable of counting.”

He lowered his hands. “Give me a week.”

“A week to do what? She’s not going to get less dangerous in a week!”

“Give me a week, Chase.”

“Fuck that.” Chase started to move, and Eric blocked him.

“Give me a goddamn week, or we can finish what we started the first time we met.”

The silence was profound. They had so much history, these two. They argued like the brothers they technicaly weren’t, but beneath those arguments they had always shared a single, common goal.

“I’m not going back to the old man,” Chase finaly said.

“No. You’re not.”

“Eric, he’l know. We’re the two best agents he’s got. If we don’t cal in, if we don’t tel him the Necromancer is dead, he’l come himself.”