Afterlife (Second Eden #1) (8 page)

“Maybe if she started doing drag,” Jason quipped. “Or I did.”

Amber chuckled and pushed the necklace away. “No thanks, Mr. Arshakuni. Jason, I think I’m good. You pay and I’ll wait in the car.”

“Okay, I’ll be out in a second,” he said.

Jason and Gregory were politely haggling over prices when the front door clicked shut behind her. She headed down the steps and leaned against the old Benz, rubbing her arms despite the relatively warm weather.
 

She glanced into the backseat at the box of junk purchased from the other garage sales. Already an idea began taking shape for her final project. She saw it, hidden there amongst the pile, waiting to be teased out and formed into something meaningful.
 

A hand clasped her shoulder and squeezed. She jumped back, slapping wildly behind her. Jason wheeled out of reach and laughed. “It’s so easy to scare you.”

“I
hate
when you do that,” she growled as she yanked the door open and plopped inside.
 

Jason followed suit, still wearing a boyish grin. “Okay, want to grab some pizza?”

She nodded as the car lurched forward. They drove in silence, watching the houses and the trees roll by on the winding roads back to her home. It took a few minutes for her to notice the smirk sticking stubbornly on his face.

“Jason. What did you do?”

His smirk spread into a full-blown toothy smile. He took a hand off the wheel and angled back, sifting through his box until he finally found what he wanted. He wrenched his hand out, bringing the agate necklace with it. It dangled in the wind, refracting sunlight in its gold chain as it swung around.
 

Amber snatched the necklace from him. “You actually bought it? Why, Jason?”

“Oh please, I saw the way you looked at it. I don’t know why you’d want something so ridiculous looking, but you wanted it, so I got it.”

“You didn’t have to drop twenty on it.”

“Well, you’re getting the pizza so it’s kind of even, right?”

Amber rolled her eyes. “What a gentleman.”

A song came on and Jason flipped, blasting the volume and singing loud enough to wake neighboring Vermont. Amber dropped the necklace in her lap and traced her finger around one of the stones. Maybe it was just a stupid prop necklace. Maybe it was only hideous enough for drag.
 

While Jason sang and drove, Amber pulled out her phone and checked her newsfeed. She scrolled and scrolled, thumbing that she liked this post or that picture. Then, she came to one, and her smile slipped.
 

Chris had uploaded a picture album from his dorm. Wild nights. Booze flowing. Grins wide and full of teeth. A red solo cup hung from his lips in one of the pictures, beer dribbling down his chin and dripping on his jeans. She looked at the date, and her knuckles whitened on the phone.
 

Amber couldn’t care less if her brother partied. It was what people did when they went to college, finally free of the shadow of their parents. But when she saw the date, her heart hardened.
 

“You got smashed on Toby’s birthday?” Amber dropped the phone into her bag and looked to the side. “Thanks, asshole.”

Bone Man woke from his sleep, his body wracked with torturous pain, his mind a thick swamp of the terrors his imagination saved for sleep when he was most vulnerable. He did his best to calm the smashing of his heart against his ribs. His breaths washed over the mask, and he listened to the rhythm of his pulse. As with every night he woke, the dreams faded quickly, leaving only an echo of torture in his soul.

The archduke would have given him a room fit for a prince had he asked, but Bone Man was no prince and he had no need for the soft luxuries of lazy souls. Instead, he slept in a simple wooden chair in a bare room. Before him, a fireplace filled with crackling, flaming logs poured heat onto his knees and warmed his knuckles. A single window hinted at the bright night beyond the palace walls.
 

Bone Man stared at the flames through the slits of his mask. The fire’s warmth burned his knuckles and seared his shins. His throat ached with each breath. Each blink was sandpaper dragging over his eyes.

One of his crows perched on the windowsill. It flapped its wings, clacking its long, dark beak. While he slept, his birds scoured the city for clues, gliding from shadow to shadow, gathering what information they could from hidden perches and dark corners. He took a deep breath and closed his eyes. The bird’s memories gathered during his slumber flowed into his thoughts in brilliant, vivid color.
 

Bone Man extended his right arm, and his cane floated obediently into his waiting palm. He stood and edged toward the window. The crow cawed and took flight, wheeling into the starry night. A warm breeze whistled through the window as he stepped onto the sill. He smoothed his jacket and vaulted into the sky.
 

His leap carried him far over the Black Palace’s walls. He tucked his knees to his chest and flipped, crashing onto the avenue bordering the grand estate. His knees and legs shattered from the impact, but healed just as quickly.
 

Bone Man straightened. Not a single soul occupied the dark lane. No soul with half their wits would, for fear he waited in the shadows. He licked his lips and tasted the air, rolling his shoulders and cracking his neck.

Cane twirling at his side, he wandered deeper into Afterlife. Beyond the dark confines of the palace’s shadow, city lights sparkled in the swirling dust. Stone buildings squeezed next to one another lorded over bustling avenues. Street merchants peddled their wares with shrill voices. Restaurants tried their best to lure patrons with flowery descriptions of the chef’s evening specials. Newsies shouted that day’s state-sanctioned headlines. The city thrummed with the din of an ever-growing population of souls trying to make their way through the endlessly-spinning wheel of eternity.

A passerby here and there might catch a glimpse of his thin visage from the corner of their eye, but they would never see Bone Man directly. He existed on the edges, just out of sight but never out of mind. He was the bump in the night, the scratching on the glass, the chill breath on a bare neck. They might see him if they really wanted, but no one really wanted that. Afterlife was safer if they kept him to the shadows and hid their fear behind their smiles.

He made his way through the lanes, striking deeper and deeper into the oldest, dustiest parts of the city, the parts that first sprouted in those days when Afterlife was as young as the souls who built it. The neon lights dulled behind him. The comforting cacophony of a city brimming with life quieted, and the shadows lengthened.

The Crystal District appeared before him, an old, dark tangle of dilapidated homes, tawdry gaming houses, deserted bars, and fortuneteller shops that gave the district its seedy reputation. It was an odd place, unaligned to any of the major factions fighting for control of the city and home to more souls gifted with the spirit curse than any other neighborhood in Afterlife’s boundaries.
 

This district he despised almost as much as the Old City. While the archduke had smashed that decadent quarter when he took power, districts like these he kept in place. Bone Man suspected one of the Iron Council had convinced him to keep the rats’ nest intact, for what reason, he could only guess. Each general had their own ambitions, their own hidden motions and machinations to gain favor with his master. They all sought desperately to be as adored as the reviled Bone Man, even if it was a futile dream.

He melted past a woman curling her hair around her finger while she giggled with a man bearing her lipstick on his cheek and collar. A bottle of gin hung loose in his grip while he swayed left and right and whispered about all the wonderful things he had in store for them.
 

It took all Bone Man’s strength not to rip his sword from the sheath and rake it across the man’s soft, grizzled neck. What sweet release that would be, to watch dust sputter from the wound as the man’s drunk eyes widened and the woman’s scream ripped through the night.

Her starry stare flicked toward Bone Man, and her dark brows knitted together. The soft pink oval of her smile flattened.
 

“What’s wrong?” the man asked.

She shook her head and pulled him closer. “I thought I saw something.”

Bone Man turned the corner, squeezing his cane. The woman giggled loud enough for him to hear. “It was nothing I guess,” she said, and their excruciatingly bubbly conversation continued.

The alley came to a dead end. Moisture ran in long lines down the tall, grey walls. Above, a strip of stars appeared between the rooftops. Ahead, a neon sign fashioned like a pink crystal ball blinked intermittently, punctuated by the pop and crack of failing circuits.
 

As he strolled closer to the shop, he reached toward the door, and it silently glided apart just far enough for him to slip inside. With the tip of his cane he shifted a heavy curtain blocking the entrance, and in the space of a heartbeat vanished inside.
 

Soft gold light illuminated a room shaped into a pentagon by some cleverly-placed velvet dividers. Not a murmur of crushed carpet or creak of wooden floorboard disturbed the air as Bone Man stole from one hidden space to another. He peered through a divider’s oriental design as he circled the room, his blade swishing into the open as he pulled it from the cane sheath.
 

Bottled charms hung from the ceiling alongside crow skulls and dark feathers. A round table occupied the room’s center, loosely draped by a cloth of deep, shimmering violet. The distorted tears of half-melted candles hung from the looping silver arms of a candelabra beside an obnoxious crystal ball. On the table, tarot cards formed a neat fan before an oversized wingback chair, its back facing Bone Man.
 

Three other chairs circled the table, the one opposite the massive wingback occupied by a man with pale, clammy skin that was almost as smooth as the melted wax of the candles between him and the supposed fortuneteller.
 

The man dabbed his beaded temples with a crimson handkerchief before stuffing it into the pocket of his pinstripe blazer. He flashed the thick gold watch on his wrist as he did, then glanced toward the exit.

“Please, do you know where she is? Can you find her for me?” he asked, angling over the table with wide, teary eyes.
 

“The mortal world is big. You must have patience if I am to pierce the veil and find your wife,” a woman replied, her voice low and soft, barely more than a sly whisper.

“So you don’t think she’s passed on to us yet?”

Bone Man’s head rolled slowly side to side. His neck sheared and burned like fire with each movement, but he savored the pain. Pain was life. Pain was real. He padded to the next divider, and the fortuneteller melted into view.

Her silken hands lay upon the table, her long nails like curved claws strumming on the velvet cloth. Her skin could have been poured from fresh milk, framed as it was by hair black as the reflection of water in a deep well beneath a starless sky. She looked upon her client with eyes half-closed, though there was nothing tired about her. She watched him with casual disdain mixed with just a hint of sensuality, each bat of her heavy lids teasing something more if only he played his cards right.

The woman pursed her lips and looked to the ceiling. “Ah, I have found her! No, William, she has not passed through the gates of Afterlife. Samantha’s heart still beats among the living.”

William slapped his hands on the table. “Please, you must tell me. Does she love another? Is she happy with him?”

The fortuneteller lifted her hand, running a long nail beneath her chin. “It is … unclear.”

“Unclear? What do you mean
unclear
?”

She arched a serpentine brow. “I mean, there is a fog. Unclear. Not. Clear. The barrier between the living and the dead is called a veil for a reason. It
veils
things. It’s not like I have a mirror bonded to the mortal world and can just look right through and see. There’s some interpretation involved.”

“Then what’re you good for!” He pounded the table, veins bulging on his neck. “Show her to me! I want to see her.”

“That costs extra, William. You know this. I have no mirror, remember?”

William yanked off his gold watch and tossed it on the table. “Then take this as payment and let me see my wife.”

Her tongue passed over her glistening lips. Bone Man continued listening, gliding around the room until her client’s back faced him and he could see the fortuneteller directly. One quick jab through the divider and his sword would skewer the fool getting played by this woman. He shivered in delight at the thought, but held his sword.

Her cheeks tugged her lips in the slightest of grins as she hooked a nail on the watch and pulled it to her. “Very well. But I must warn you of something first.”

“What?” William asked, his voice warbling, his chest pressing hard on the table’s edge.
 

“All souls come to Afterlife in their prime. We do not age, we do not decay. You have been here many years, and like all others, you bring only your name and a single, powerful memory you hold dear. Unlike most others, that memory also gifted you your wife’s name and gave you a way to keep an eye on her mortal life. You are a lucky man in this regard. Most of us will never know the families we had when we lived, because we simply do not remember.”

“Yes, yes, everyone knows this. They explained as much to me when they recorded my name for the census. So?”

“So, I am saying the young Samantha you remember will not be the Samantha who appears. The ravages of a hard world will have weighed upon her. It might be too much for your heart to bear. I would hate for your heart to break and the Deep to take you on account of a meager fortuneteller such as I.” She pushed the watch toward him but paused halfway across the table. “It would be so much easier for you to remember who she was and not who she is. If she loved you with all her heart, perhaps she will remember you when she comes to us.”