Sparks (30 page)

I
T FELT AS IF THE
ghost train had taken hold of her again, that queasy sense of weightlessness washing over her.

Anya opened her eyes in the familiar setting of the Devil's Bathtub, and she sighed in relief. The old tin ceilings, the scarred wood floors, the jewel-toned bottles perched behind the bar, even the layer of dust on the stained-glass lamps over the bar--all of it familiar. She was home.

But then she realized that the perspective was all wrong.

She was floating at the ceiling, the stamped tin tiles close enough to touch. Below her, she could see her physical self sprawled in the bathtub fixture on the floor, the center of a flurry of activity.

Her body had sunk into the change-filled bathtub. Brian was straddling her, pumping her chest with interlaced hands. Each thrust rattled change from the bathtub onto the floor. A fire extinguisher rolled on the floor, bits of chemical foam smeared on the floor and in the coins. She smelled something burning, and wondered what it was.

"You came back."
Renee floated beside Anya.

Anya chewed on her lip. "I don't understand. Why am I not down there, with them?"

Renee tenderly touched Anya's cheek.
"Honey, you're slipping away.
"

Jules was shouting into the telephone at a 911 operator, and Katie was running out the door to flag down paramedics. Max stood behind Ciro's wheelchair, the old man's hands clutching his chest. Tears were streaming down the old man's cheeks.

"... five, six, seven, eight..." Brian counted out the chest compressions.

"... five minutes," Jules was saying. "She hasn't breathed in five minutes... how the fuck should I know?"

Anya looked down. The silver cord connecting her astral double to her physical self was severed. She fingered the frayed edges of it in her hand, blinked.

Brian lifted her limp body's head to straighten her airway. "You. Don't go," he whispered as he pressed his mouth over hers and forced a breath into her throat.

It wasn't the cold breath of a spirit. Anya could taste it. It felt warm. Alive.

Anya coughed, sputtering up against arms that held her.

"Brian," she whispered, fingers wound in his shirt.

"Wrong place,"
a voice told her.
"Drink.
"

Lukewarm water slid past her lips down her throat. It tasted like slime, and she hacked it out.

She blinked, her vision fuzzy. She wasn't in Brian's arms, but in Charon's. She lay across his knees in the crook of one elbow. He held a filthy bottle of water in his free hand. His coat smelled like gunpowder, and she realized her fingers were twined in the bullet holes. Sparky licked Anya's face.

"What is--" she was overtaken by another fit of coughing.

Charon's eyes crinkled in relief. He capped the bottle and stuck it in his pocket.
"Water from the Styx.
"

Her eyes widened. "You said it was poison."

"Just a sip."
Charon's eyes darkened.
"Don't worry. You're not invincible... and you'll pay for that later.
"

"The newts..." She struggled to sit up.

Charon gestured with his chin.
"They're tough little bastards.
"

The newts scuttled through the tunnels, feasting on shreds of fading ghost-flesh. Their amber light flashed from one corner of the tunnel to the other, like fireflies.

She reached around her neck for the newt that had tucked himself into her armor. The body felt cold and stiff. With a lump in her throat, she laid it on the ground. Sparky nosed over it, whined, as it began to fade.

"How many survived?" Anya asked, self-consciously disengaging her fingers from Charon's coat.

"More than half,"
Charon said.
"Even in the physical world, that's a pretty good survival rate for salamanders in the wild.
"

Her vision blurred, and she wiped her nose. "I guess."

Charon hauled her to her feet as easily as if she were a doll.
"C'mon. Let's go kick Hope's ass.
"

Anya nodded. With her arm wrapped around the ferryman's waist and Sparky at her heels, she followed him into the dark tunnel.

The newts had made vicious work of the ghosts. Smears of glowing iridescence smeared the walls. Anya could make out handprints and spatters of what would have been blood in the physical world covering the walls in what looked like glow-in-the-dark paint. The marks gleamed eerily in the dark. In a corner, three newts fought over the remains of Marie Antoinette's head, the curls of her wig strewn on the floor of the tunnel like seaweed.

The tunnel turned back on itself several times and opened up into a large, echoing chamber. The chamber reminded Anya of when she'd gone to Shenandoah Caverns as a child: a rocky room with a vaulted ceiling, studded with stalactites and stalagmites. Deep in crevasses, water and quartz gleamed. Water dripped from somewhere distant.

"Hope,"
Charon called.
"It's over.
"

Something moved in the pitch. "You can't hold me."

Sparky's amber light cast shifting shadows, before finally illuminating a figure perched on a four-foot jar. Pandora's Jar appeared much the same as it did in the physical world, except the paint was fresher. At the foot of the jar, Bernie's artifacts were strewn. Anya recognized some of the bottles and bits of jewelry glinting in the light.

But Hope was not the same on this level. The creature perched on top of the jar reminded Anya of the gargoyles she'd seen on gothic churches: warped head, leathery wings, and hands curled into claws. It was Hope, in this world. Anya thought it a more realistic depiction.

"Ah. Death and the Lantern have come to take my treasures," the creature using Hope's voice hissed. Her mouth was filled with needle-like teeth; Anya figured that they were hell to floss.

"Your army's been chewed to pieces, Hope." Anya narrowed her eyes. "Give us the jar."

Hope slithered from the top of the jar. "Be my guests. Forever."

She shoved it over, and the mouth of the jar rolled to face Anya, Sparky, and Charon. The interior of the jar shimmered with crystalline blue light, a glow that bent and warped the air. It sucked at them, and Anya dug her armored heels into the dirt. But the vortex at the lip of the jar widened. Charon stumbled. Sparky wrapped his tail around a stalagmite, his claws churning in the air for Anya. Through the howl of air, Anya felt herself slipping toward the mouth of the jar. Her arm popped out of its socket, and she watched as her fingers warped and stretched, like light before a black hole.

This must be what it feels like to be a ghost when I devour them,
she thought. Her hair lashed past her face, stretched out beyond her hip by the jar's terrible gravity.

"Nothing can escape that," Hope cackled from the shadows behind it. "Nothing. Not an elemental. Not a Lantern. Not even Death himself."

Charon growled at her.
"You know better than that.
"

"The Underworld will be mine. Without you to protect it, I'll begin my collection of spirits over again."

The soft, sandstone stalagmite Sparky clung to splintered. He clawed in the dirt, tail stretched into an infinite spiral, pulled toward the jar. Pebbles rattled past him, sucked into its gaping mouth.

Anya snarled. There was no way she'd let that bitch take Sparky. She turned her full attention to the shadow behind the jar, and let go.

She skidded past Charon and Sparky, twisting and turning in the maelstrom vacuum of dirt and light. She let herself be sucked into the rim of the jar. She clutched the rim with all her strength in twisted fingers. She looked over the rim at Hope's dark shape and glowing eyes...

... and breathed in.

Hope shrieked. Anya felt the metallic taste of Hope in her throat, curling into her lungs like smoke. If she was going to spend the rest of eternity stuck in a jar with Charon and Sparky, she was damn well going to take Hope with her.

Charon's chain flashed past, slamming into the edge of the jar. The jar fractured, splintering quartz fragments in Anya's face.

The vortex spun out and collapsed like a dust devil, leaving Anya with two feet in the cracked jar and a chain around her wrist. Hope was nowhere to be seen, but Anya could feel the disgusting taste of expensive perfume in the back of her throat.

"Ow," she muttered, spitting sand out of her mouth.

Sparky scuttled up and licked her face, wrinkled his nose. Apparently, he could smell it, too.

Charon gave Anya a hand up, nudged the edge of the jar with his foot. The fracture extended from the lip of the jar halfway through the picture painted on the side. Pandora's peplos was cleaved neatly in half. He righted the jar, fingering the scar.

"The magick's gone from it,"
he said.
"Any ghosts put in it would leak right out.
"

Anya sighed. "Charon?"

"Yeah?
"

"At the risk of sounding like a petulant Dorothy, I want to go home."

He smiled, and this time the light seemed to touch his eyes.
"I'll take you to your train.
"

Sunlight streamed through the high windows of the train station, passing through the ghosts milling in the crowd. Charon and Anya walked slowly though the crowd, trailed by Sparky and the newts. The newts darted around feet, clambered up briefcases, and harassed the ghosts at the ticket counter.

"What am I going to do with them?" Anya asked. She'd counted thirty-two newt survivors. She was relieved that they'd made it, but dreaded the chaos they'd bring to her daily life.

Charon shrugged, hands in his pockets.
"They're big and strong enough to make their own way in the world.
"

"Charon, they're just babies...."

"Look."
He gently turned her around and pointed. The newts were hopping away through the crowd to the train platform. They leaped off one by one, whisked away by the ghost train.

Anya's eyes filled with tears. She felt like she'd been punched in the gut. "Where are they going?"

"To new homes. I imagine many of them will attach themselves to artifacts, like the ones in Bernie's collection. There are probably a few idiot witches out there trying to summon salamanders. Some of them will probably hang out around ironworks and firehouses--that's just what they do.
"

Anya rubbed her eyes. "Bye, guys."

The last newt paused on the platform. It turned to Anya and chirped before it flung itself into darkness.

Charon awkwardly patted her shoulder.
"I'll look in on them once in a while. I swear.
"

Anya nodded, unable to speak. She looked away, into the crowd of ghosts.

Something snagged her attention. While most of the ghosts were bent on their destinations, oblivious to their surroundings, one ghost watched her. He stood in a closed phone booth beside the ticket counter, his hands folded over his hat.

She recognized him from his morgue photograph.

He was Calvin Dresser, the computer scientist who was the model for Brian's neural network, ALANN.

Anya walked briskly to the phone booth, reached for the handle. It was locked. Calvin looked at her sadly, trapped behind the door.

"He's in limbo,"
Charon said.
"I've never seen anything like it. He can't move backward or forward, though he's fully aware. Very curious case.
"

"How do I get him out of here?" Anya's breath fogged the glass.

Charon tipped his head, hands clasped behind his back.
"You could break him out.
"

Anya doubled her armored fist and broke the glass near the handle. The glass spidered and shattered, trickling down the door frame. The man inside didn't flinch. He stepped hesitantly outside of his glass prison.

"Hello, Anya,"
he said.

"Hello, Calvin."

He tipped his hat.
"Thank you for freeing me. I knew you would somehow.
"

Calvin smiled and walked away into the crowd toward the platform, whistling. Her heart swelled to see him free and on his way.

"You did well."
Charon watched him walk away.
"You could have my job someday.
"

Anya's skin prickled. "Hope called you 'Death.'" She couldn't help but feel as if Charon wasn't telling her the full truth... about himself, or about the Styx.

Charon waved his hand dismissively.
"Hope's full of shit. She doesn't know Hades from Hestia.
"

"Mmmm..." Anya was dubious. "I have questions."

"Save 'em for later. Sleep on it."
His blue eyes darkened.
"Don't ask any questions you don't really want answers to.
"

"You'll be at the morgue?" she asked.

"I'm always around. You can use the coin I gave you to come back."
He leaned forward and kissed her cheek. His lips were cold, and he smelled like gunpowder and winter.

Anya smiled at him. She would have questions. She clucked for Sparky, walked to the edge of the train platform. Ghosts stood on the edge, hopped off into the roar of wind like grasshoppers for a lawn mower.

Anya steeled herself for the journey, taking Sparky into her arms. She waited her turn, got ready to step off...

... when she glimpsed a familiar face a few yards down, and her heart plummeted to her stomach.

Ciro.

He wasn't in his wheelchair, and she nearly missed him. Instead, he was walking, dressed in a sharply creased suit, with a starched shirt and red bow tie. A beautiful young woman dressed as a flapper was on his arm: Renee. Renee stood on her tiptoes to kiss Ciro, and her face shone like the moon.

Together, Renee and Ciro stepped off into space. The ghost train sucked them up an instant before it took Anya.

Anya woke, not to the rushing darkness of the train but to a blinding white light.

"Ow," she muttered, tried to turn over. But she was tethered by a stinging sensation in her arm. Her fingers closed around plastic IV tubes, and her vision cleared to reveal harsh fluorescent light. She smelled disinfectant and heard the beeping of machines.