Afterlife (Second Eden #1) (29 page)

A woman lounged in an overstuffed chair, puffing on a cigarette dangling from a long, slender holder. Her skin was so pale it almost glowed, and her hair so black it drank what light washed over her milky skin. She nursed on her cigarette, heedless of the ashes drifting to the floor. Seeing her new guest, the woman placed her smoke on an ashtray and batted her long lashes. “I wasn’t expecting any customers today.”

“Aren’t you a fortuneteller? You should’ve been expecting me.”
 

“I left the door unlocked, didn’t I?” She arched a slender brow and smiled, motioning at the empty chair across from her. “Why don’t you have a seat?”

Amber nodded and sat across the table. She glanced behind her at the door, wringing her hands in her lap. “I’m sorry, but I don’t have much time.”

“We have enough,” she cooed, her voice thick and slow. “Just enough.”

“Are you Marina Arshakuni?”

“That I am. The strongest spirit in the Crystal District, medium to the landed, psychic to the gentry. My mind’s eye sees all, knows—”

“Your necklace got me in this mess. Why? What does it have to do with my brother? Where is he? Do you know?”

Marina gazed at Amber. She took a puff from her cigarette and let the smoke drift from her nostrils, down her chin, over her chest. “You wore a necklace and sought a loved one, and now you find yourself in Afterlife, a mortal girl with many curses, wanted by the archduke and trapped in a fool’s errand, wriggling in a spider’s sticky web.”

“So you know!” Amber lurched forward, slapping her hands on the table. “I’ve been waiting for so long for answers you have no idea. You’ve got to help me find my brother. Where do I go next? Is Toby hiding somewhere? Why did he bring the curse to me? What am I supposed to do with it?”

 
Marina smiled and fell back into her seat, arm flopping over the armrest. “You look different than I thought you would. I expected something more, I don’t know,
prophetic
. Not some uptown girl in a pretty dress.”

“What?” Amber blinked. “What’s my dress got to do with anything. I bought your necklace, and—”

“Enough.” Marina cut her hand through the air. “The necklace picked you, for whatever reason. If you used it, then you’re the one. They won’t like it when they find out, I suspect. They were hoping for someone more like us, not like those city souls. They’ll give you hell.” She smiled lazily and winked. “If you make it that far.”

 
“Who are they?” Amber asked.

Marina interlaced her fingers and leaned onto her elbows. “We are the dust. We serve the Deep, and the Deep has finally brought you home.”

Her dark eyes widened into pools of slick black. Smoke from her cigarette curled up her jaw and vanished inside the waves of her hair. Her spirit rippled through the room, toying with the flames dancing on the candelabra. “You came here for answers, and I can give you some, though I cannot promise they will be the ones you want to hear.”

“Tell me what I need to know to find my brother. I’m strong. I can do this.”

“No. I don’t think you are. Not yet. But Deep willing, you will be.”

Marina’s hands lashed out like vipers and clasped Amber’s wrists in chill grips. Her thumbs buried against Amber’s skin so hard she winced at the pain blossoming in the flesh.
 

The fortuneteller’s spirit flowed into Amber’s mind, and a world beyond Afterlife flashed before her. She saw rolling dunes of ashen dust beneath the dome of a brilliant, starry sky. She saw a people dancing beneath that dome, linked together before blazing fires, throwing their chins to the sky as the dust whirled around them.
 

In the distance, she saw the twinkling lights of Afterlife glimmer on the horizon, and she knew the dust dancers both hated and feared it. The figures turned to a woman approaching the flames. Firelight washed across her features, revealing Marina Arshakuni. She wore a dress of colorful weaves that billowed in the wind, and around her neck, she wore the agate necklace.

Marina stepped toward the fire, and the dancers began to chant. The song filled the sky and sent the flames roaring. They raised their hands and cried out. Marina folded her arms over her chest.

“I die to live again!” she roared. Marina’s jaw tightened, and she stepped into the inferno.
 

Ash exploded from the flames, cinders simmering brilliant orange and red in a plume that reached for the sky. The fire and its blistering heat faded. A swell of pure dust rose behind the tribe and crashed over it, drowning the scene in shifting grey.

When the dust parted, a little girl appeared on a long dock overlooking a city of brick skyscrapers. Cranes and the cries of construction riddled the air, punctuated by the squawk of gulls. A policeman wearing a broad smile approached the girl. He bent over and brushed a lock of hair behind her ear. “Well hello, little miss, Manhattan’s no place for a little girl to be runnin’ around unsupervised. What’s your name, then? We’ll get you to your parents.”

He extended a hand, and the little girl took it. “Marina,” she whispered. “Marina Arshakuni.”

The vision faded then, swirling into dust that fell into a sea of black. Amber pulled her wrists from Marina’s grip and forced the lump down her throat. “They sent you to the mortal world. It was more than just walking through a mirror like I did with Dino. You were alive again.”

“Only a soul of flesh and bone could have survived long enough among the living to see the necklace in your hands. The archduke hunted us. He would have taken the necklace, and then he would have taken you. This was the only way to keep you safe, to let you grow until you were strong enough to come to us.”

“But your son gave it to me. You’d died years ago!”

“We trusted the relic would do its job when the time came.”

“And what job was that?”

“Find the one strong enough to contain her.”

“Contain who?” Amber asked.

“You know her. You have heard her voice.”

A moment of silence passed. Amber blew a puff of air from her lips and laughed. “Are you serious?”

 
“Do I look like I’m joking?”

“You sure as hell sound like you are!” Amber hit the table and turned to the side, biting on her nail. “The only reason I’m staying in this stupid city is to find my brother, you know. He brought this to me. He needed me here for some reason.”

“To save us, I suppose.”

Amber rolled her eyes. “Please, Toby doesn’t care about that stuff.”
 

“If he didn’t, the necklace would not have worked. It linked his soul to you, calling him from one world to the next. He knew you were strong enough to fight the archduke. He knew your soul and yours alone could contain the great evil within you.”

“I’m not here to fight the archduke.” Amber refused to believe her brother purposefully dragged her into this war, deliberately planted her so deep in danger.
 

“Whether or not you want to be a champion matters not. You will become one. You will face him. It is prophesied,
Mother of Curses
. You are the one who carries five, the vessel of the origin, the bride of darkness. She is within you, consuming the soul to become the queen, and if you do not become the master of your curse, then she will become the master of you, and you will sit at the foot of the archduke’s throne while both the living and the dead burn.”

“You’re insane. Completely insane.” Amber started to stand, but the woman shot across the table, cold hands latching tight around Amber’s wrists.

She tried wrestling her hands from Marina’s frigid grasp, but the woman’s long, dark nails dug deep into the skin. No, they flowed into the skin, like inky serpents slithering toward a mouse, carrying a power that was unlike anything she ever felt.

“I feel her inside you, coiled in your heart,” Marina wailed. Blood began to ooze from her nose. “Master her, or she will master you. You must find the strength! Look to the Deep and find your strength! Oh God, what is this? I feel … I feel her. I
see
her.”

“Stop it! Marina, please!”

The shop’s door exploded inward, crashing over the table. Smoke poured into the room, coalescing into a red-faced and sweaty Dino. He lurched forward, the anger in his face twisting to fright as his eyes met hers. “Amber? What the hell’s going on?”

“Just help get her off me!” Amber screamed. “I don’t know what’s happening!”

Marina’s eyes shimmered to a deep, bloody scarlet. She smiled, passing her tongue slowly over her lips and savoring the drop of blood it swiped along the way. “I told you we will do wondrous things, you and I. We will make this world
remember
.”

Dino’s strong hands grabbed Marina’s and ripped them from Amber’s wrists. The crystal ball cracked, and thunder boomed. Amber flew onto her back. Air burst from her lungs, and the world spun.
 

She rolled onto her hands and feet and blinked away smoke lingering in her eyes. What light filtered into the shop was dim and flecked with dust. Smoke trailed from the now dead candles on the candelabra. One of the room dividers fell and smacked onto the floor.

As her heartbeat calmed and vision cleared, she straightened and struggled to her feet. With the table as support, Amber grabbed her stomach and squeezed her eyes shut. She could feel the power inside her, writhing like a ball of burning snakes. “What’s happening to me?”

“Cursed.” Marina coughed while she struggled to right herself. “You carry a curse from the Deep, a curse that bears all curses, and with it you will be our champion, or you will be his bride. You may not want this fight, but it is yours now, Amber Blackwood. Those are all the answers I can give you.”

Dino wrapped Amber’s arm over his shoulder and propped her up. He glanced toward the door, his jaw tightening. “We can talk about this later. We’re about thirty seconds from ten blackjackets barreling into the shop.”

“You can’t leave me with nothing, Marina!” Amber wrenched from Dino’s grasp and faced the woman. “You’re the only one I know who might know about Toby.
Please
. Give me something I can use to find him.”
 

“We’ve got to go!” Dino roared.

Marina picked up her cigarette and stuck it in her lips. “There’s a door hidden behind the back divider. Use it to escape.” She struck a match and lit the tip. “I’ll hold the blackjackets off long enough for you to flee. Amber, I am sorry, but I cannot help you find your brother.”

Amber clenched her fists so hard the nails bit skin. Tears of frustration swirled in her eyes. “No, not after all this….”

“But there is one who might,” Marina added.

Amber’s gaze shot up. “Who?”

“If the necklace truly summoned your brother to you, then you should know more about it. There is one in Afterlife who knows the relic better than I. They call her the Scarlet Spider.”

“Oh hell no,” Dino said. “Are you kidding me?”

“Seek her out.” Marina turned to the front door, flexing her fingertips. “Though I must warn you, she may not give the information freely. She has a long memory.”

“A very long one,” Dino sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose.

“Especially for those who steal her most precious relics.”

Dino dropped his hand. “You
stole
from the
Spider
?”

Marina grinned, ash from her cigarette drifting on her shoulder. She shrugged and turned her back, the open door to the shop framing her silhouette. “No one can own the treasures of the Deep.”

“Spoken like a true dust devil,” he said. “But I doubt the Spider agrees.”

Amber turned to Dino. “We have to talk to her, Dino.”
 

“First, we need to get the hell out of here.”

He kicked the back wall, and the trap door parted. He shoved Amber into the cramped passage and swung the door shut behind him. Hidden in shadows, Dino wrapped his arm around her, and their bodies sighed into rolling smoke.

The blackjackets dragged the fortuneteller kicking and screaming from her shop. The woman’s spirit flooded into the alley, a weighty, hot force that slowed the blackjackets, dulled their senses, made them confused and disoriented. As it was, it took five minutes to just get her out of the shop. Bone Man tired of the display. Why didn’t this woman simply accept her inevitable dusting with some grace?

Bruises splotched her milky skin now stained with sweat and dust. The soldiers threw her to the street, the two poltergeists among them forcing her body down.
 

Bone Man’s crows wheeled from the sky. Their shadows slipped over the scene unfolding as they watched from their perches on the rooftops. He squeezed his cane, gently pulling the blade from its sheath. Steel glittered, reflecting the sputtering neon sign along its razor edge.

“There’s a trap door, sir,” one of the blackjackets said. “We’ve sent phantoms through it, but it opens back in Angel Park. Someone used the door recently, but there’s no sign of who on the other side. Whoever it was—”

“Phantom,” Dino whispered.

The soldier swallowed and nodded. “Yes sir, a phantom.”

“Cardona,” Bone Man sighed.

“We believe so, sir.”
 

The neon sign buzzed and popped. Bone Man pointed at the soldiers, then motioned toward the alley’s exit.

They traded glances. He squeezed his fist. They scattered, flooding past him like insects frightened by the light. He and Marina Arshakuni were the only two souls left in this wretched, dank stretch of the Crystal District.

He screwed the tip of his blade against the cobblestones. Marina wiped her cheek and struggled to her hands and knees, her dark hair a swirl of knotted shadows framing her pale jaw. “Bone Man. Come to have your fortune read?”

The necklace floated from his blazer pocket. Agate reflected in her wide eyes. A flash of recognition. Bone Man edged closer.
 

A crow landed before the woman. Another swooped down beside her. And then, yet another and another descended until six crows surrounded the panting soul. Her arms trembled. She sucked snot up her nose and wobbled to her feet, smiling all the while.