Afterlife (Second Eden #1) (34 page)

“Of course they are,” Wilhelmina sighed. “The relics come from the Deep. What is the Deep but a desert of dust? What is dust, but a soul who’s died? I think it’s fairly obvious the archduke wants to create relics of his own. That requires studying the ones that exist and a steady supply of fresh dust to try and make new ones. Those souls he took vanished in the Black Palace and never returned. I’m sure they were all dusted in one failed experiment after another to make a relic for the archduke. And now you know exactly what happened to your brother,” she said, the gleeful poison in her voice bouncing sharply off the glass walls.

“What?” Amber’s stomach turned cold and hard, and her hands began to shake. “It’s not true. He didn’t dust all those souls. Not all of them! Toby’s still alive. He … He came to me! He needs me!”

Wilhelmina clucked her tongue, her lips slowly spreading in a smile. “You wanted answers, Amber Blackwood, and now you have them. You know the story of the necklace, the story of your curse, and the story of your poor forgotten brother. Don’t despair, child, for dust we are, and to dust we all return.”

“You’re lying.” Amber vaulted to her feet, her entire body trembling. “Toby is
alive
. I know he is.”

“Believe what you want. I honestly don’t care. The only way you’ll ever find out is by visiting the Black Palace and asking the archduke yourself.”

“If that’s what it takes, I will.”

Dino lurched from his seat, grabbing her shoulder and spinning her to him. “That’s suicide! Don’t you see what she’s doing? She got Zoe’s ring from me so I’d do her dirty work for her, and now she’s said the one thing in all of Afterlife that could get you to waltz right into the archduke’s hands. She’s delivering you to him!”

“I don’t care. If the palace is where I need to be, I’m going there. You said you’d help me. Are you in or not?”

“Dammit, Amber!” His jaw tightened, then relaxed. “
Dammit
.” He groaned, throwing his chin to the ceiling. “Yes, of course I’m going to help you. But we need to talk somewhere private. Somewhere safe from
her
.”
 

Wilhelmina chuckled. Her body shifted to smoke, and she reformed on her feet. The Spider handed a piece of folded parchment to Dino. “Here’s everything you need to know to carry out your mission. You kill General West, and you get your ring back. There’s a secret exit Campbell can show you; we’re docked across the lake so you should be safe to get back to whatever rat’s nest you came from. It was such a pleasure speaking to you both. I’m sure we’ll be seeing one another again, though I can’t promise the circumstances will be as friendly. I am the archduke’s spider, after all.”

Dino snatched the paper and pulled Amber from the room. Outside Wilhelmina’s office, Campbell led them to the trap door and shoved them through a passage that led onto the docks. The ship was pulling away before Amber could get to her feet.

Knees weak, thoughts racing through her head, the world began to spin violently. She ran to the docks and bent over, retching the contents of her stomach into the lake’s calm, glassy waters.

When her stomach finally settled, she looked into the lake at the slobbery, bleary-eyed reflection staring back. “You can’t be dust, Toby. You
can’t
be.”

She hadn’t told Dino, but during their entire talk with Wilhelmina, Amber had used her spirit curse. And while the Spider spoke, she prodded the woman’s mind for lies. Not once during the course of their meeting did Wilhelmina Hofmeister speak anything but the truth.

Dino watched Amber’s balcony window. His body twisted in smoky trails, dancing in invisible tendrils in the light breeze filtering through the street. Strangers passed by, heedless of the ghost in their midst. He watched Amber’s silhouette lingering in the window, a dark form staring out into a vast city she had come too far too early.
 

Her room light clicked off, her form vanishing into the darkness. It took a long while before he felt comfortable enough to leave his post outside her window. After what Wilhelmina had told her, he feared she would take off for the palace the first chance she could get, giving the archduke and the Spider exactly what each of them wanted.

It took some time, but Dino eventually convinced Amber to wait until he finished his own part in the Spider’s plan. But even then, he knew she wouldn’t wait for long. One way or the other, this would all end for them at the Black Palace, and if he didn’t play smart about it, he’d be dust and Amber would be dead.

“Or would she?” he wondered, cradling his chin. The archduke wanted Amber for the thing inside her. Could it really be Eve? Was Eve even real? He never took much stock in religion. No one in Afterlife did. For all they knew, this was their Heaven—or Hell—and neither God nor The Devil announced themselves to the souls who lived there.

He sighed and reached into his jacket, pulling out the folded parchment tucked into his inner pocket. He floated away from the street and unfolded the paper, studying the detailed map of General West’s estate. Patrols were marked, their routes drawn through the halls with accompanying times. West’s blackjackets were mostly poltergeists, but there would be an odd smattering of the other curses in their ranks.

Dino committed the map to memory. Satisfied he could quickly recall each twist and turn of the estate and the guards who patrolled it, he tore the parchment to shreds and tossed it into a gutter where the sewer would swallow it. With a kick off the ground, he took to the sky, soaring above the city streets, rising into a night awash with the bright and beautiful stars dazzling against the deep black.

The wind whooshed and whistled around him, toying with his ethereal form. He scanned the inner districts glowing beneath him, a maze of neon jewels and delicate structures crowded with a never-ending stream of people.
 

In the distance, he spotted a dark square squatting like a cancer among the lights. It unnerved him. Despite being invisible in his phantom form, he felt as if the archduke’s eyes weighed on him, burrowed in his heart, pried inside his mind.

 
Dino shook off the feeling. He turned his back to the Black Palace and raced through the sky until he came to the familiar curling streets of the Grand Braid where General West’s palace sat.
 

West’s estate filled a full city block. Massive arches formed its first floor, the second a cluster of elegant domes capped by ornate gold and silver weathervanes. Statues lined the plaza surrounding his estate, each one a figure of antiquity from those earliest days of Afterlife.
 

Dino passed by the statue of a woman looking to the sky, her mouth parted as if she had a prayer to say but couldn’t find the words for it. He rose and gazed into her face, running his smoky fingers down the line of her jaw.
 

He turned from her and spotted the patrol marching along the second-story balcony running the length of the building. Dino zipped through the air and took up residence behind the blackjackets, floating in lockstep with the two quiet men. They turned the corner and came to a door guarded by a spirit.
 

She glanced at both men and frowned. Dino pulled closer to them, so close his mist curled around their shoulders. Too close, and they would feel the chill of his phantom form. Too far, and the spirit would sense the third mind among them.
 

The spirit pressed her lips into a thin line. She frowned, and Dino tensed.
 

Then, she nodded and stepped aside. The two men passed through, Dino exhaling as he glided indoors behind them. He played this game over and over again, leapfrogging from one patrol to another, glomming himself in their shadows to slip by the spirits posted to catch phantoms like him.
 

Deeper into the palace he snuck, until he came to West’s doors, two guards posted on either side of the entrance. He waited in the shadows, the mists of his form swirling and curling around him as the clock ticked.

Outside, a bell tower began to chime, and right on queue, a door opened at the far end of the hall. A servant melted from the doorway’s shadow, carrying a silver tray topped with a bottle of red wine and a single crystal glass.

Dino smiled and drifted behind her, bobbing in lockstep with her as she arrived at the doors. The blackjackets nodded, the one on the left grabbing the curling bronze handle. The door groaned open.
 

The second guard frowned, marching toward the servant. “Wait.”

The door shut. Dino froze. The soldier’s brows knitted together as he approached the servant. She cleared her throat and pinched her shoulders back. “William, this is heavy. What is it?”

William planted his feet before her, his frown deepening. He looked over her left shoulder and then over the right. “Something’s off, Ms. Ennis,” he grumbled.

Dino slipped a hand into his jacket and found the sturdy hilt of his dagger. While no one could see a phantom in their ethereal form unless the phantom wanted it, a competent poltergeist could use their will to force a phantom from hiding if they knew he lurked around.

William reached for the servant. Dino reached for his weapon. The blackjacket’s hand passed over her shoulder and lingered by her ear. Dino slid the dagger from his coat.

A glimmer sparkled between the man’s fingers, and his toothy smile spread wide. “You had something in your ear, Ms. Ennis!”

He popped his hand back where she could see it and showed her the coin he held. She snorted and waved at the doors. “You have too much time on your hands, playing silly magic tricks while the rest of us earn our keep. Now get out of the way before I get disciplined!”

William pouted, pocketing the coin as he backed away. His partner chuckled and opened the door wide, and both Ms. Ennis and Dino strolled into the room.
 

Ms. Ennis scurried over to a massive desk and slid the tray onto it. Without so much as a word whispered, she backed out of the room and closed the doors behind her. Enormous arched windows towered behind the desk, a glass door in the center window open to a balcony overlooking the Grand Braid.
 

Potted ferns and blossoming rosebushes dotted the balcony, swaying in the gentle breeze. There, standing among them as he leaned upon the iron railing, was General Ian West.
 

His broad, sloping shoulders rose and fell with his heavy breaths. The thick brick of his interlocked hands pressed against the small of his back while he quietly surveyed the city. The general rocked on his heels with a sigh and turned from the balcony, his barrel of a belly stuffed inside a uniform that could barely hold him.
 

General West plodded to his desk and took a seat, pulling the glass to him. He poured a drink of rich, burgundy wine and swished it slowly.

The general took a sip and leaned onto his desk with a long sigh as Dino glided behind him. “It took you long enough,” he said.
 

Dino shot back. Curtains fluttered from the force of his leap. His dagger kissed the air.
 

Movement swirled in a dark corner, and from a cloud of smoke General Kelly appeared. The general nodded to Ian and took a seat across the desk while Dino gawked, dumbfounded.

All the adrenaline rushing through Dino dissipated. So this was how the Spider set up the assassination. She had her ally on the Council meet General West in secret, an ally who so happened to also be a phantom. General West ensured Oscar could slip into the palace. Unbeknownst to him, another phantom came with him.

“I’d offer you a glass, but I only have one,” General West said.

“I don’t drink, but thank you for the offer,” General Kelly responded.

Tension hung thick in the air. Oscar’s tight features, his stiff posture, the way he glared at the General all pointed to an uncomfortably strained relationship between the two men.

It wasn’t exactly a secret that the Council didn’t act as one. The generals often played political games for the archduke’s favor, usually at the expense of one another. Curious, Dino glided away from them both and took up residence in a corner as the conversation unfolded.

“We’re close to finding the girl,” Oscar said. “I believe she’s somewhere in Angel Park.”

General West’s eyes widened. “Angel Park? Bold move, to put her in such an inner district. A smart one, though. We’ve been wasting our time dusting fools in sewers while she’s been sipping coffee in a café in the palace’s shadow.”

Dino grinned.

Oscar sighed and placed his hands on his knees. “It seems so. I’ve captured a few of the Errand’s fools, and they say they’ve seen her. Not only that, but they say the rumors are true, that this girl can use many curses. I’ve doubled my phantoms in Angel Park. They’re posted on every street corner with orders to capture her, but she seems quite good at moving unseen.
 
We’ll never find her without Chakma’s spirits, and you know how I feel about her. She’ll take the girl and find a way to use her against us. I’m sure of it!”

“She’ll run straight to the archduke. I have a spy in her ranks, and he has informed me she believes the girl is also in the inner districts. Kamlai already believes we are hiding the girl. If she finds her, the general will take her straight to the archduke and say we did everything to stop her. She wants to obliterate the Council and become the only general in the archduke’s service. Desperately.”

“Kamlai is an idiot who doesn’t know what we know,” Oscar said. He fidgeted, leaning back and interlocked his fingers. “Say what you want about the Spider, but she’s a useful source of information. What were you able to discover about the Mother of Curses? This buried bride or whatnot?”

General West reached into his desk and pulled out an old, leather-bound book. He untied the string fastened around it, spreading the yellowed pages to the light. “I found some information, but I’m not sure how trustworthy the source is. Vera’s writings had a certain … flair common to those Deep-touched.”