Distant Star (3 page)

And whoever it belonged to was
laughing into the floorboards.

After all things said and done, I
thought, for no reason, and could I smell... something that reminded me of Tal,
of cherry blossoms in the winter.

“Declan!” Laughter again, but
also a grimace. “Declan Hale, help me out here…”

The voice was eerily familiar. I
stepped down and the strange arrival rolled over onto his back, perhaps sensing
the same thing I did—that something was wrong. Terribly, terribly wrong.

“Don’t keep me waiting, pretty
boy.”

He was ugly as sin, and I reacted
with a harsh, startled breath. The man who had fallen out of the light, out of
nowhere, lay in a widening pool of his own blood. Silver flames licked at his
clothing, but they didn’t burn. His eyes were wild. There was no other word for
it. Wild.

He was also my twin. I was
looking down at myself.

“Stop staring, sweetheart,”
Declan Hale said, and grinned one helluva bloody grin.

Drawn by the figure, I dropped to
my knees. There was something clutched in his… in my hand. I reached for the
object.

“Don’t touch me—you’ll
create a paradox that’ll destroy the universe.”

I pulled back my arm. “Really?”

“No. Not really. But you touch
yourself enough as it is.” The man who looked just like me, save for an ugly,
red-raw scar crossing his face, laughed. “I just wanted… wanted to tell you
something.” He frowned and motioned me close, using the hand that had been
covering the hole in his belly. Blood flowed thick and fast from the wound.

I licked my lips. The world had
slowed to a crawl. Sap hardened into amber, water into ice. “You’re me?”

“And you will be me.”

I stared at myself for a long
moment, and then exhaled slowly. “How long before this happens?”

“You got just over a week. Grim
forests in the dark, Dec.”

I couldn’t process that. “I can’t
save you from that wound. All the Will in the world couldn’t… are you wearing
my favorite grey waistcoat?”

“It looks better on me,” Declan
said. “And we both know I don’t deserve saving. We’re dead, Dec.” His eyes were
a little less wild. A little less… anything. He was not staring at me but
through me. “Now listen. I am you. This is real. Call it time travel if it
helps you sleep at night. It won’t, trust me, but it’ll keep you alive for…
heh… for now.”

“What are you—?”

“Shut up and listen.” He was so
pale. The pool of blood had spread under my knees. Broken quill! I was kneeling
in my own blood without a scratch on me. “Train Ethan, love Clare, hug Sophie.
Forgive the Historian. And trust Marcus, until he gives you a reason not to.
And he will, oh my yes, he will.”

“Marcus? He’s earned my trust a
thousand ti—”

“He’s turned Renegade, but of the
good sort…” His voice trailed away and his gaze grew beyond distant, beyond
nothing. His breathing fell shallow. The rush of vital fluid had slowed to a
trickle.

“No such thing, chief,” I told
him.

Declan lunged forward and snapped
his hand around my neck, pulled himself up to shove his forehead against mine,
and squished our noses together. A fierce, unholy heat was radiating from his
ugly mug. I tried to look away and at anything but the living mirror. His grip
was unbreakable.

“Don’t be such an arrogant fuck,”
he growled. “And get a haircut. This ain’t no painted desert serenade.” He was
mumbling, caught in that thousand-yard stare, a look I knew well. “Something
else… something… Ah, yeah. Declan, remember, Tal always aimed for the heart.”

He laughed again and fell away. The
back of his head hit the floor with a sickening thud which made no difference.
I was dead.

CHAPTER THREE

From Grace

Emily brought me a turkey
sandwich around noon the next day.

I was sitting in my alcove,
working on the novel and retyping the unsalvageable pages ruined by last
night’s accidents. I’d needed all of the early hours of the morning to dispose
of and clean up after myself.

My body, I’d sent across the Void
to the remains of Reach City, known these days as Nightmare’s Reach, after the
penultimate battle of the Tome Wars had seen the metropolis destroyed. I’d
stayed tethered to this world and buried my corpse as I’d buried young Jeff
Brade—along the ragged edge of the page.

Even so, the floorboards were stained
with the blood of my… future good self? Of other me? The darkened spot would
pass for a red wine spill.

“Good afternoon, Declan.”

I looked up. “Emily, you make
that dress look good.” She wore a white summer dress with red straps that
hugged her porcelain form. For the last few years, Emily had been my best and
most loyal customer. More than that, at some stupid point we had become
friends.

“Charmer. I thought you could try
something a little different today. Turkey on toasted rye, with brie and
cranberry sauce.” She handed me the sandwich bag, her fingertips brushing mine.
“What have you got for me?”

I ran my finger around a stain on
the coffee table, a half-moon of dried port, unless I missed my guess. “The one
you’ve been waiting for. Van Booy’s latest.”

Emily gasped and spun on the spot
to face the mountainous stacks of books leaning against the loaded shelves,
curving towers just waiting for a slight breeze. The gleam in her eye said
beware
. “Where?”

“Caught between Romance and
Thriller. All wrapped up in a pretty red bow.”

“Save me a bite of that
sandwich.” She disappeared into the endless maze of words.

The crumpled white pages before
me were awash with red ink and even redder wine. I removed a comma from the
third paragraph on page five hundred and twelve, then thought about it, and put
it back in. Was there a difference between “lifted” and “raised”? An important
one. Tal would have understood.

“She’s a cute one, Declan,” Roper
Hartley, the magical protagonist from John Richardson’s
Emerald City
series, said. “I’ve seen the way you look at each
other. Don’t you think it’s time you got out of this dusty old shop and took a
pretty girl on a date?”

I glanced up and then back down,
shaking my head. Roper lounged on the leather sofa opposite me as if he had
every right to be there, real and alive, and not some construct of Will or my
own insanity pulled out of Richardson’s works. “Pacing’s a bit off in the
middle here. Action, dialogue, action, and then exposition. Too wordy.”

“I mean, when we fought Astaroth
in the Vanished Empire you didn’t balk at the idea of actual human
companionship. What changed, Arbiter?”

I retrieved a fresh bottle of red
from beneath the table. Add a splash of Jamaican rum and I was halfway to
Sangria. Was it too early? It was wine o’clock somewhere. The alcohol would add
some spice to the turkey and rye.

“The Emerald City needs you,
Declan. Rumors of war in the Western Kingdoms have the goblin armies moving to
claim Wildmen’s territory. Evelyn is lost. If we can’t find the Twilit Spear—”

“I’m a merchant now, Roper.” I’d
managed to ignore him for all of thirty seconds. He wasn’t real. None of them
were. They couldn’t be, not in this world—the
real
world. “I sell books. I will not live them anymore. You’ll
have to fight the good fight on your own.”

“Not everything lost is lost
forever, my friend. You are too defiant for this.”

There were a hundred books within
two feet of me. A thousand more at arm’s reach. In the store alone, I had over
three hundred thousand unique stories. All those words and all those infernal
worlds
. Forever wasn’t long enough.

“Please
leave me be,” I said.

“Hah! Found it!” Emily called
across the shop from the region due south of Sci-Fi.

Roper disappeared sideways into a
beam of sunlight with a carefree shrug.

“I heard you mumbling to
yourself,” she said, emerging from the stacks with her book in hand. “Stuck on
a line?”

“Always. What’s another word for
‘affable’?”

“Friendly? Kind? Hmm… gracious?”

“I like gracious.” A quick
scribble corrected the offending word. “You’re leaving again.”

Emily nodded. “Hong Kong for a
night and a day. How did you know?”

“You always wear the navy blue
heels before you fly away and leave me.”

“Do I?”

“Travel safe, Emily Grace.”

*~*~*~*

Later that day I was paid a visit
from my unofficial apprentice and her boy toy. They found me, as was standard,
in the alcove sipping scotch and searching for poetic inspiration.

“Don’t you two have class today?”

“Ethan wants to learn how to hide
his Will from you.” Sophie Levy bit her lip and glared at
her
unofficial apprentice, who was about to become mine, no doubt.
“I can’t sense his Will anymore, but I’m not as strong as you.”

Truth be told, I’d sensed Ethan
coming from three streets over. Masking the burning power was more art than
science, more finesse than strength. Sophie’s Will, her aura of supernatural
strength, was hidden from me, even though my raw power outclassed hers by
several orders of magnitude. Only a certain mindset could hide Will wholly and
always.

“I don’t want to attract anything
nasty, boss,” Ethan said. “Will you teach me?”

“Of course. We start as soon as
you head across the plaza and fetch me a chicken kebab. Lettuce, onion, no
tomato. Dash of hot sauce.”

Sophie rolled her eyes as Ethan
laughed. When he realized I wasn’t joking, he saw himself out.

“He can be trusted, you know,”
Sophie said into the silence. We weren’t often alone together. During our
lessons, or whenever she had reason to visit, she usually made sure Marcus was
about. “When I met him, he had no idea why he sometimes set things on fire with
a stray thought. Forgotten and Unfound, as true as they come.”

“We’ve been burned before, ‘Phie.
And by more than a stray thought.”

Sophie nodded and said without
any hint of malice, “Yes. And whose fault was that?”

After Ethan returned and I spent
a good five minutes berating him for getting barbeque instead of hot sauce on
my kebab, we got down to serious business. I closed up shop early and cleared
some space at the front counter, knocking aside a few dozen sturdy books.

Messing with the dark, infernal
powers of creation demanded pomp and circumstance, so I dropped a tea light
candle on the counter.

“Light it, sunshine,” I said to
Ethan. Sophie looked on in mild amusement from the window alcove.

Ethan shrugged, whipped out his
cigarette lighter, and ignited the candle’s wick.

I grinned. Kid had a sense of
humor. “Smartass. Do it with your Will.”

“I’ve already got this down, Mr.
Hale. Sophie taught me this basic stuff.”

“I want to see you do it from the
start so I can gauge how far to push you today. Can you light this candle? How
about peel this apple with a thought? We always start simple. Now, light the
apple and peel the candle.” I closed my eyes and pressed my fingers against my
lids. “And please, please don’t call it magic. This isn’t Hogwarts, and you’re
not a boy wizard.”

“Okey dokey.” He waved his hand,
and the candle flickered to life while an invisible lashing of sharp force
gouged narrow furrows in the apple’s peel.

“How did you do that?” I asked.

“You know how. With magic-like
powers.”

“Don’t be dense. Talk me through
your process. How did you
make
it
happen? Your Will is the tool, a doorway in your mind that opens on the fuel
powering the heart of the damn universe. How do you, Ethan Reilly, step through
that door?”

Ethan was shaking his head before
I’d finished speaking. “No, it’s not a door. Well, maybe it is for you.” He ran
a hand through his unruly hair. “I see… Well, I see…”

“What?”

“Promise you won’t laugh?”

“No,” Sophie and I said together.

Ethan raised his palms toward the
ceiling. “You ever play
Super Mario
Brothers
? The video game? When I do magic—sorry, not
magic—whenever I use my Will, I see myself bouncing up and punching one
of those question mark boxes full of coins.” He snapped his fingers, and the candle
flame turned a bright electric blue. “And it just works.”

“Wow. Okay.”

“Is that strange?”

I thought so, but then most
everything was strange. “For no real formal education, you’re doing just fine.
At the Academy in Ascension City, we’re taught from a very young age to think
of stepping through a door into an ocean of raw Will. But whatever floats your
boat.”

“Water, usually.”

“Ha. Ha.” I summoned the blue
flame from the candle and made it dance around my palm. The fire expanded,
feeding on the air, until I held a sphere of coursing energy about the size of
a tennis ball. The heat was impressive, but under my Will, the skin on my hands
remained cool and unscathed.