Afterlife (Second Eden #1) (12 page)

“Wonderful,” Amber murmured through clenched teeth and wide smile.

Jason opened the door for her and motioned inside the worn Mercedes. “Luckily it’s just a study hall first period. I reserved one of the art studios we could work on our projects for Mr. Engel. Nobody will notice rolling up to school a little late.”

Amber slid onto the cold leather and dropped her bag between her knees. The car rocked as Jason hopped into the driver’s seat. The engine hummed to life, and they rolled down the drive.

“What was Ms. Flannery talking to you about?” she asked.

Jason shrugged and slipped his sunglasses on. “Nothing much. She’s totally proud about this Rotary Club thing, which I had no idea existed until this morning and now I feel like I know so much about it I could be her vice president.”

“And that’s all?”

Jason squeezed the steering wheel. “Yup.”

“You’re lying. What did she say?”

“You’ll be mad.”

Amber slapped his shoulder. “Just tell me!”

“She’s worried you might be on drugs.”

“That’s so ridiculous. You know me,” Amber said as she snorted a laugh.

Jason joined her, and for a minute, the air was light. Once the laughing settled, he glanced her way. “You’re not, though, right? You do know what day it is?”

“It’s Monday, and no, I’m not on drugs. I overslept is all.”
 

Technically that wasn’t a lie, but it wasn’t the entire truth, either. For now, Jason seemed to accept it, and they arrived at St. Luke’s a few minutes later, Jason rambling on about his date from Boston and how it might be just as good a place to live as New York.

Amber flirted with telling him about her missing day and the awful nightmare that accompanied it. But for some reason, she just couldn’t. Not now, not with him and Ms. Flannery thinking she was doing drugs. Telling him about her brother’s ghost and the snake and the woman’s voice would certainly convince them she was doing something illegal.
 

She smirked. At least then that would get Chris and her mom back home.

Warmth greeted her as they walked into an empty hall. They made their way through the school, passing long rows of dull lockers and tall, closed doors. St. Luke’s had a few dedicated art studios for upperclassmen just past Mr. Engel’s classroom shoved in the oldest wing of the building. The studios were practically closets—in fact, Amber suspected at one time they actually had been closets—but even a closet was a welcome respite from dealing with the rest of the world.

Amber and Jason turned the corner. They both froze.

“Oh snap,” Jason said.

Amber stared down the hallway. Unlike most other corridors in St. Luke’s, lockers didn’t line these walls. Instead, Mr. Engel used the corridor to display various works of art from his students. And there, framed for the world to see, was Amber’s painting. The face glared at her from the swirling blues, its mouth wide in a silent, mournful scream.

“Am I really seeing this?” she asked.

“Now, Amber, don’t get too mad. It’s honestly really good. I actually really like it.”

Amber waved him off and stormed down the hall. She ripped the painting from its perch and stared at the pattern and the face within it. “Why’re you doing this to me, Toby?”

The face didn’t reply. Instead, Jason’s hand fell on her shoulder. “Mr. Engel liked the painting. He’s proud of your work. That’s all it is.”

“He should’ve asked before he hung it up. He couldn’t be bothered to ask me if that’s okay?”

“It’s just the way he is. You know that,” Jason said.

Amber wrested from his grip and tore toward Mr. Engel’s door. She flung it open and rushed inside. A bunch of freshmen straightened over their slick clay mounds and turned with wide eyes toward the door.

Mr. Engel stood at the head of the class, gaze hidden behind his murky spectacles. He caught sight of Amber and smiled. “To what do I owe this unexpected—”

“You had no right to hang this!” Amber shouted, marching through the rows. “This was my work and you just put it out there without even asking me?”

“Art is vulnerability, Amber. If you ever want to succeed in the artistic world, you’ll have to learn to loosen the constricting binds that polite society lays upon you. The business of bearing souls isn’t for the shy.”

Amber jabbed the painting at the infuriating man. “You should’ve asked me first. You could’ve just asked and I would’ve been okay with it.”

“But I thought you would be fine with it.” He blinked, rearing back like she was being ridiculous for absolutely no reason. “You’re so talented, and talent should never hide. It should shine.” The man clapped his hands and beamed a smile. “I am truly so proud of you.”

“No one asks. No one cares.” Hot tears filled her vision. The face in the painting stared at her from the deep blue. From the water. From the pond. “But you didn’t. You didn’t care enough to ask me first.”
 

She didn’t save Toby in time, even though she could have saved him. It was her fault. It would always be her fault. And the world would never let her forget it. A wick of anger sparked inside her, and the tears burned away beneath a scarlet veil and the pounding of her heart.

“You should’ve come to me. You should’ve asked. You. Should. Have.
Asked!
”

The lights buzzed. The air electrified. The freshmen squealed. Mr. Engel yelped. None of them mattered. She hated them, hated all of them.

A sharp crack ripped the air. Hot sparks spit over her shoulders while glass shards rained around them.
 

A hand latched onto her wrist and whirled her around. “Amber, calm down!” Jason shouted. “What’s wrong with you?”

His voice sounded distant, like he yelled down a well and she listened from the bottom beneath ten feet of water. Lights popped on and off. Behind him, students rushed for the door. His mouth opened, repeating her name in that same, distant voice.

Amber blinked, and reality hit her like a tsunami crashing onto the coast. “Jason?”

“Amber,” he rasped, his words regaining clarity.

For an awful, horrible moment, she hadn’t recognized him. Her best friend, the only one in Portsmouth who would do anything for her, was a stranger in her eyes.

She looked down at the painting and dropped it. It fell on its face, and her tension disappeared like a mouse scurrying for the shadows. “What happened?”

Jason pulled back and ran his finger through his hair while he picked a shard of glass out of hers. “I think a fuse blew or something. The light above you just exploded while you were going all apeshit on Mr. Engel. I’m pretty sure half these freshmen just wet themselves.”

Amber rubbed her temples and turned to their art teacher. “Mr. Engel—Ben—I’m … I’m sorry. I….”

Mr. Engel waved his trembling hand and somehow managed an awkward laugh. Most of the color had drained from his face, and he stood with his back pressed against the whiteboard. “No, no, no, Ms. Blackwood. The fault was mine. I should’ve asked. You, ah, obviously have every right to be angry.”

Amber bent to the debris. “Let me at least help clean this up.”

“
No
.” Mr. Engel peeled from the board and charged around his desk. “Please, take some time to rest. I’ll handle this mess.”

“But—”

“Ms. Blackwood, please leave. I have a class and need to tend to them. We’re fine. Everything is fine.”

Amber knew enough to know when people said everything was fine, it meant nothing was. Amber swallowed. She picked up the painting and backed out of the class. The freshmen kept a wide berth between them and her. As soon as Amber and Jason stepped into the hall, Mr. Engel grabbed the door. He flashed a quivering smile and swung it shut.

“I just got so mad,” she said.

“We all do sometimes. Mr. Engel will get over it. He’s always been a drama queen.”

Amber followed Jason to their studio. He joked around in a vain attempt to lift her spirits, and she played along as best she could. But Amber knew something was wrong. She felt it now, deep inside her, and she feared it had two red, serpentine eyes.

On the Trail

“Dino, get your ass out of bed. This is not a drill!”
 

Faye’s voice tore through his clouded mind like a knife through wax paper. He lurched to the side, swinging his arm. His knuckles smacked into the whiskey bottle on his dingy nightstand. Glass crashed to the floor, shattering into glittering, razor shards.
 

His head throbbed like a thousand hammers beating nails into his temples. His throat cried out for water, and his stomach threatened to spill its contents if he moved too quickly.

The springs in his shoddy mattress groaned as he reached for the nightstand and clicked the lamp on. The light bulb popped and lit the room in painful gold. Dino squinted and slapped a hand over the unshaded lamp. “What is it?”

“I said get up,” Faye snapped through the scratchy intercom speaker. “I’m calling a meeting. Something’s gone down at the palace.”

“Right. Be there in a second. I’m almost ready.”

“Brush your teeth and clean your face. I’m sure you look like the wrong end of a pig right now.”

He grumbled and waited. The intercom buzzed off, its tiny light going dark. With a deep sigh he sat up and blinked at the glistening debris of his half-empty whiskey bottle staining the bunker’s concrete floor. He hopped over the accident and brushed his teeth in the tiny, rusted sink and stared at the face staring back in the mirror.
 

Water from the running faucet pooled in his hands. Dino splashed his cheeks and relished the chill. Cool lines ran down his neck and wet his collar. He cupped a hand beneath the running water and took a few deep gulps before slipping on his boots and bounding into the hall of their labyrinthine complex running in shoddy tunnels beneath the finer streets of Afterlife.
 

Sewers were the Errand’s best friends. The archduke needed them. The city depended on them, and they formed a kind of city of filth beneath the glittering one above. Faye could move vast sums of her soldiers through the maze quickly and at the slightest hint of trouble, though thanks to her Deep relics and the archduke’s troubles with the city’s expansion, it had been a long while since they had to flee a black jacket raid.

Faye even went so far as to keep souls in hotels and townhomes in the luxurious inner districts. The Errand was everywhere because it was nowhere, and so the archduke could never completely crush it, but it could never completely crush him.
 

Dino flicked drops from his brow and smoothed his collar. The air in the halls was electric. Excitement thrummed in the low conversations buzzing as he passed, the familiar faces of the men and women in the Fool’s Errand lighting up as he bounded to the sub-basement where Faye’s quarters waited.
 

“What’d I miss?” he wondered, toying with the ring around his neck.

Two guards saluted him at Faye’s office door, then flung it wide. He stepped through and found her hunched over her desk, pouring through communications layered over maps tiled with scribbled notes.

When she saw him, she motioned to the pile. “Took you long enough.”

“I was entertaining a friend.”

“Oh? Her name whiskey by any chance?”

 
“What’s all the commotion about?” he asked, ignoring her jab. A lance of excitement shot through him. “Is it Bone Man? Are you letting me dust him?”

“You wish.” She sighed and threw herself back in her seat. “Unfortunately, he’s going to remain very much alive—or whatever you might call it—for now.”

Dino glowered at the pile of papers and clenched his fists. “Then why’d you wake me up, Faye? I feel like I’ve been run through a meat grinder and twisted into a pretzel. I need some sleep.”
 

“Shut up and sit down. The alarms around the palace went off, Dino. My spies say something of extreme value’s been stolen from the archduke, and he’d do anything, dust anyone, to get it back.”

“And we have no idea what it is?” Dino asked, plopping in the chair.

“Rumor has it that it’s something Bone Man brought back from the Deep.”

“So there’s a new relic.” Dino squeezed the armrests. “There’re a lot of new relics popping up in the black market. So what?”

“This might be one of the big ones, the one from the days before the city.”
 

Dino’s throat tightened. He gripped the chair tighter. “What do you know about it?”

“Nobody seems to know much about it, and that has me more unsettled than you could imagine. We didn’t need this. Not now. Not ever.”

All the muffled grogginess evaporated from Dino’s head. Things from the days before Afterlife’s founding rarely made it inside the city limits without leaving a lasting scar on everything and everyone they touched. Everyone knew—Dino more than any other soul—what kind of horrors a Deep relic could cause.
 

“If that relic is somewhere in the city….” Dino’s words trailed off as he focused on the maps.
 

“It could seriously screw us,” Faye finished. “But what the relic is doesn’t matter nearly as much as who stole it. Nobody in the archduke’s service has a clue, and my contacts in the Sinners don’t even know who could’ve done it. Whoever this third player is has upset the careful balance of my plans. It’s bad enough that the thief’s actions will probably double security in the palace complex, making our job at least twice as hard, but now the archduke will fear an attack. He knows his safe place is compromised.”

Dino crossed his arms and nodded. “And Bone Man won’t let this crime go unpunished. He’s going to slaughter souls everywhere he goes, Faye. He’ll fill the streets with dust. He’ll make sure everyone knows the archduke’s displeasure. We have to stop him. Kill Bone Man, and we cripple the archduke’s grip on the city. This is the time to strike, before they can recover!”

“Bone Man will make souls suffer. Many of them. Many already have.”

“All the more reason to end his existence and lift the shadow from our city. You fight the archduke to give the people their voices back, to grant them the power to rule themselves instead of being ruled. Give the word and I’ll gather a force to kill the archduke’s greatest weapon.”