The Mirrored Shard (15 page)

“After those things attacked us, the least you can do is let me talk to him,” I pleaded. I held his eyes, black and glowing as the rest of him.
“Please.”

“Dammit,” he sighed. “All right, all right. I’m a sucker for a girl with a sad story.”

He went to the door and rapped hard. “Doc, it’s Chang. Your stupid ass almost let these nice people get devoured, so we’re coming in.”

“I’m in a bad way!” the doctor shouted. “Leave me alone!”

“And whose fault is that?” Chang snapped, pulling out a ring of keys and unlocking the door. “Go in,” he said to me. “But he won’t be able to help you. He can’t even help himself.”

The three of us filed in, and I almost choked. The cloying smoke was worse in here, and I could feel it land on my skin and hair, sticking to every bit of me.

At one point the room had been a warren of back offices, half walls of polished wood dividing it into four sections. Postboxes took up one wall, and green glass lamp globes hung from the ceiling like delicate sea creatures.

Two of the cubes were piled with the sort of junk that my father kept in his workshop, which was reassuring. The doctor and my father dabbled in the same sort of worlds after all, and dealt with the same sort of creatures.

One cube held an office awash in papers, crumpled, crushed, ink-stained and scattered everywhere.

The last held a lamp, a table, a cot and a man in a suit several sizes too large for him. He lay on the cot, his arm over his eyes. Empty brown bottles crowded the bedside table, and a long, carved pipe lay at his side like a loyal pet.

The smell got worse the closer I came to him, and I crouched because there was nowhere for me to sit.

“Doctor?”

“Well, I’m not President McCarthy,” he grumbled. He looked me over, and his bloodshot eyes and sunken cheeks reminded me of some of the patients at my mother’s last madhouse. Worn down, hopeless, just trying to escape into their own minds. It was a look I’d hoped never to see again.

“I need your help,” I said.

“Oh no,” said the doctor. “I’ve never heard that before. Not once, in all the time I’ve been conducting séances.”

He picked up a bottle and I caught the same bitter tang that had infused the tea Madame served us. The doctor took a swig of straight laudanum and didn’t even flinch before flopping back on the bed.

“Well, I can’t do it anymore. My Spiritualist hoodoo battery’s dead. Find someone else to commune with Great-Aunt Martha.”

He started to roll over, but I stopped him. “That’s not what I want,” I said desperately. “I know what you practice isn’t hoodoo. I need your science. I need to get to the Deadlands and bring my friend back. He’s not supposed to be dead. It wasn’t his time.”

The doctor looked at my hand, and then at me. Then he laughed, his bitter, acidic breath stinging my eyes. “The Deadlands?” he barked. “You think you’re going to just pick up your skirts and waltz in there?”

I bristled. How dare he make light of this, of what I’d lost? “Something like that,” I ground out.

“Then, girlie, you’re even dumber than you look,” he told me. “Now go away and let me sleep.” He jerked his jacket out of my grasp and rolled over. A moment later, a deep snore emanated from him.

I stood, my hands shaking. I fought the urge to grab one of the bottles and smash it across his skull. That wouldn’t help anyone, especially me.

Instead, I just left, kicking over a stack of papers as I went. They slid and slithered into the darkness that swallowed up the rest of the room.

Conrad and Cal waited for me, Conrad impatient and Cal worried. “Did he—” Cal started, but I shoved past him, through the junk and the dust, and out the door.

I collapsed on the stoop, letting the rain disguise my tears.

This was it. This was my only chance to save Dean, and it was a dead end. I should have known, given that it was information that came from my mother. Nobody else, not even my father, who I usually regarded as the smartest person I knew, could help me now.

I stayed there until I was thoroughly cold and soaked, and probably would have sat there even longer, watching the bums pick through the trash and the evening women call to one another from balconies, but the door opened and Chang came out.

He spread out an oilskin coat carefully before sitting next to me. “Told your friends you probably needed space,” he said. When I didn’t respond, he cleared his throat. “I’m sorry,” he continued. “But I did tell you.”

“You did,” I agreed. I swiped at my cheeks and sniffed hard. No need to let complete strangers know I was a blubbering mess. “So is he always this friendly or did he really take a liking to me?”

Chang chuckled and stared out at the rain. “He had an
accident about a year ago. Bad one. It knocked something loose in his mind and he’s been getting worse ever since. I try to care for him when I can. I used to be his lab assistant. Hired me right out of the university. I thought he was crazy, but there aren’t many laboratories willing to hire, you know”—he made quotes with his fingers—“ ‘one of those Chinamen.’ ”

“Is he a fraud, then?” I asked.

“No,” Chang said. “And that might be the craziest part of all. He talks to the dead. He’s not a medium, and he’s not a fake. He uses his machines to open a window to the Deadlands. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

That heartened me a bit. “I hope you know,” I told Chang, “that I wouldn’t be here if I wasn’t desperate.”

“People never come here until they are,” he told me. “Mediums and Spiritualism are one thing, but really touching the dead? You’d have to be half mad with grief, but I guess death can make fools of us all.”

He stood and opened the door back into the shop. “Come on,” he said. “You can’t stay out here, and you can’t get out of Chinatown until morning. It’s not safe for anyone in this place.”

“There’s no point in my coming inside unless you’ll help me,” I said, folding my hands into the damp creases of my coat, which did little to warm them. “If you won’t, I have to be on to the next thing.” I pointed at the sky, obscured by fog. I could still sense the echo of the Old Ones’ Gate, ringing against my Weird like an ever-struck bell. “I’m running out of time. You work with shadowy practices—you must know that.”

Chang considered, also looking at the sky. “I’ll make you a deal,” he said at last. “You tell me how you know about
that
”—he pointed at the sky—“and I’ll listen to what you have to say about this friend of yours.”

Hope sprouted in my chest, just a small shoot. The sensation was one I’d almost forgotten. “Thank you,” I rushed. “I’ll try my best, but I don’t know how much I can—”

“Oh, I think you can tell me plenty, Aoife Grayson,” said Chang. He gestured me inside.

My heart jumped. He knew who I was—which wasn’t hard, I reminded myself. Before Draven had been taken to the Thorn Land, he’d plastered my picture as a wanted fugitive across every spot he could find.

But Chang’s serene smile bespoke some deeper interest. I hoped it wasn’t in harming me, but I didn’t have a choice right now. I needed him, and he had his price.

I hoped it wasn’t something I couldn’t pay.

We went back inside, and Chang showed us a small sleeping area on the second floor, which Cal and Conrad seemed grateful for. I was far too jittery to sleep after all that had happened.

Chang sat me on one end of a ratty sofa and made tea from a steam hob, offering me a cup. I sniffed it suspiciously.

“I’m not Lei Xiang,” he said. “I don’t drug people and rob them. Clearly, or I wouldn’t be living here.”

I drank then. The tea was bitter but good, and it did warm me up. Chang offered me a blanket. “This might help.”

I shivered against my will, feeling as if my skin were colder than the air. “I thought California was supposed to be warm.”

“Not here,” Chang said. “The fog makes sure of that.” He sipped his tea and smiled at me. “You don’t seem like the usual sort of person who comes to our doorstep, Aoife. Even knowing who you are.” He sipped his tea again. “You said you lost someone.”

“His name was Dean,” I said quietly. Steam drifted from our cups, turning Chang’s face into something even more beautiful and unearthly. He really was incredibly good-looking. If it wasn’t for his friendly demeanor and the silence of my shoggoth scar, I’d say he could be Fae or some other creature that used its beauty as predatory camouflage.

“This Dean must be very special if you’re willing to risk direct contact with the Deadlands,” said Chang. “It’s a strange place that does things to your mind. Reality has no role there.”

“It’s my fault he’s dead,” I said. Saying it out loud hadn’t gotten any easier, and I felt the weight of the moment all over again. Cradling Dean in the snow. Feeling his blood turn cold against my hands and cheek. I took a long swallow of too-hot tea and let the pain burn out the memory. “It wasn’t his time.”

“Time doesn’t have much sway in the Deadlands either,” Chang said. “It really is eternal.”

“Someone told me that everyone has a thread, a measure of time,” I said softly. “That if yours is cut short, it’s possible to get that time back.” Too bad Crow, the creature
who oversaw people’s dreams, hadn’t told me exactly how you were supposed to do that.

“Sounds like magic to me.” Chang shrugged. “But I wouldn’t know about that. I just know how the machine works. And I know that a lot of people die before their time, especially around here.” He sipped his tea. “I’m sorry for you. That’s never an easy fact to live with.” He refilled my teacup. “How did Dean die?”

“He was shot,” I said.

Chang lifted one eyebrow. “Not by you, I hope. Trying to contact a murder victim, even one that was an accident, is dangerous. And if you were the murderer …”

“No!” I cried. The very idea that I would hurt Dean horrified me, but then I realized that I hurt everyone I tried to keep safe. No matter how hard I tried to protect them, they all fell prey to the dangers of being my friend. Not to mention the thousands of people in Lovecraft who’d been hurt when I blew up the engine.

“Okay, okay. Calm down,” Chang said. “I just had to ask.” He took our empty cups and put them in a washbasin already overflowing with plates and silverware.

“Ask me anything but that,” I muttered, pulling my legs under me and curling into the smallest ball possible.

“All right,” Chang said. He sat back down and offered me a thick wool blanket that smelled like dry rot and mothballs. I wrapped up in it, trying to ward off the chill that had nothing to do with my wet clothes. I knew what was coming.

“Tell me about the hole in the sky,” Chang said. “And about everything that’s crawled up out of the ground to look at it.”

He regarded me with that penetrating black gaze, and I sighed and examined the pattern in the blanket. “The Great Old Ones have returned,” I said. I didn’t elaborate, and thankfully Chang didn’t ask me to.

“Makes sense,” he said. “The doctor did a lot of research on other places, other than the Deadlands. He talked about the Old Ones, in a space so far away the brain couldn’t even wrap around the idea of it.”

“And now they’re coming,” I said. “And everything that appeared from their last visit—the shoggoths and the leviathans and the other monsters—are paving the way.”

Chang grimaced. “Even the ghosts are acting up. Boneyard’s never been so busy.”

I kept quiet at that. I didn’t know how I’d ever explain to Chang how it had been me who released the Old Ones. But I did know if he found out, he’d never help me.

“I’ve heard they’re not bad,” I said. “Not evil, I mean. That even though they birthed things like the shoggoths, they also gave people technology and art and the knowledge of the Gates—that there are other worlds besides Iron out there among the stars.”

“Maybe that was well and good when humans were still living in mud huts,” Chang said. “But now it’ll sow chaos, no matter what their intentions.” He tapped his fingers against the arms of the chair. “They need to be stopped, or I fear the whole world will suffer.”

“I …” I chewed on my lip, thinking of how to phrase my enticement. “If you help me get to the Deadlands, I might be able to do something about them.”

Chang cocked his head, but he didn’t regard me as if I were insane, so I pressed on. “I can … I can visit other
lands, travel between them, but I can’t go to the Deadlands. Maybe there, there’s some answer to keep the living world safe.”

I agreed with Chang. The world wasn’t the same as when the Old Ones had come before. They could do real damage, and beyond damage, they could finally destroy life as we knew it. What I’d done in Lovecraft would pale in comparison. I wanted to prove Crow wrong—I wanted to prove that I could help the Iron Land, not just tear it down.

If I wanted to help Dean, I wanted to find a way to undo my bargain with the Old Ones nearly as much. If there was a choice, I knew what I
should
do—but maybe I wouldn’t have to choose after all.

“The question is, can you help me cross over?” I said. “And after I cross, come back again?”

“I know how to work the séance machines,” Chang said, “and I can do this, but you have to realize the cost. Even if we do contact this Dean, he might not have anything to say. Depending on how rough a soul has it when it crosses over … sometimes they’re going to be nothing but shreds. They won’t even remember what it was to be alive.”

“I don’t want to just contact Dean,” I said. That caused Chang to go still, and his perfect face to fold into a frown.

“Then … why are you here?”

“Because I know the machine can do more,” I told him. “I don’t want to contact the Deadlands. I want to go there. I want to find Dean, and I want to undo this mistake. He was never supposed to die. It should be possible to bring him back. And if you want to stop the Old Ones, I
have
to actually cross over. Either way, I can’t just commune
with Dean’s spirit.” I fixed Chang with the stare I’d learned from my father, hard and unyielding. “Or am I wrong?”

He stared back at me, worrying the buttons on his suit vest and the chain on his watch, and narrowed his eyes. “How do you know so much about the doctor’s work?”