Grave Read online

  They hadn’t asked.

  They had assumed. No—that was the wrong word. They had trusted her. She had needed that silent trust. She still needed it. It didn’t make her happy the way Nathan’s presence—and silence, and speech, and actions—had. It merely reminded her, constantly, that she was still Emma Hall, even without Nathan. That even when she felt, when she utterly believed, that she would face the rest of the future alone, she was not, in fact, alone.

  Emma Hall had been raised to ask for nothing; to be independent, to take care of her own needs without expecting anyone else to leap in and do it for her. She inhaled.

  “Problem?” Amy asked.

  Exhaled. This was not a discussion she wanted to have with Amy in the car. But Amy was in the car, regardless; if it weren’t for Amy, they might still be huddling in Eric’s house, numb with terror or grief. Silence was cowardice.

  “I’m grateful,” she forced herself to say. “I’m grateful that I have friends like you.”

  Amy had that “water is wet” expression. Allison, however, opened her eyes and lifted her head, meeting Emma’s gaze in the mirror.

  “Don’t start apologizing,” Ally said. “I won’t be able to deal with it tonight.”

  “Emma always apologizes,” Michael pointed out. His eyes were still closed, his cheek still pressed against the cold glass window.

  “I didn’t apologize to Nick after I dropped a book on his head.”

  “I would cut you from all my social circles if you did,” Amy said. Michael did not respond. “But Allison is right—it takes a lot of patience to listen to you apologize for everything, and my patience is nonexistent right now. You were saying?”

  Allison grimaced in the mirror, although it was brief.

  “Even when things are crazy—or disastrous—you’ve always reminded me that I—I have something to give. Something of value.” She hesitated.

  Allison didn’t. “You always did.”

  Emma shook her head, lifting one hand, a gesture that meant she had to continue now, or she would lose the thin thread of courage that kept the words coming. “When Nathan died, I thought the world had ended. Or that it should.”

  Michael opened his eyes; he was watchful now, although he could enter a conversation with his eyes closed.

  “The world didn’t end, of course. What I feel—what I felt—didn’t change the rest of the world. Only me. I forgot. I forgot what it was like to be Emma Hall, on her own. And I didn’t really want to remember. If I couldn’t feel Nathan’s loss, I felt as if I’d be saying he never mattered.

  “But you needed me to be what I’d been. You knew me before Nathan. You knew me during. And you knew me after.” She exhaled again. “I’m not sure I can do this without you. I know it’s selfish. I know—”

  “No apologies, remember?” Amy cut in.

  Emma swallowed. “I don’t know what’s going to happen. But I’m grateful that you’re here to face it with me. I don’t think I could do it without you.”

  “Do what?” Michael asked.

  “Find the Queen of the Dead,” she replied, after a long pause.

  “How are we going to find her?”

  Allison said nothing, but she met Emma’s steady gaze in the mirror. She even smiled, although as smiles went, it was terrible.

  “That’s the question,” Amy said. “I’m personally less concerned with the question of finding her and more concerned with the question of how we handle her once we do. I don’t suppose any of your invisible dead people have wandered into my car?”

  “Without your permission?”

  That dragged a brief laugh out of Amy. “We need to ask them what the odds of being discovered are. There are five or six places we can run to, if we have to—but that’s not going to last if they’re smart.”

  More silence. It was Allison who said, “We can ask Merrick Longland.”

  “I wouldn’t trust a word that fell out of his mouth,” was Amy’s heated reply. She had not forgotten Longland’s actions at her party. She had not forgotten what he’d done to her brother, Skip. “Even if we could, I’d just as soon not owe him anything.”

  “I don’t have that luxury,” Allison said, her voice thin and slightly shaky. “He saved my life.”

  “I haven’t noticed that fact softening Chase’s attitude toward him.”

  “Allison isn’t Chase,” Michael said.

  “Thank god.”

  • • •

  The snow let up forty-five minutes from Amy’s destination, but by that point, it was irrelevant. Plows had come through what passed for main roads; they had also carved ditches out of the smaller side roads. The sides of those ditches were taller than Amy’s SUV in places.

  The moon was out, the sky was clear, and the snow reflected enough light that the sparsely placed street lights were enough to see by. Amy’s winterized cottage was not so much a cottage as a very large, modernized house; they had their own generator somewhere on the property. They clearly had someone who maintained at least the drives. Driving to the garage was almost easier here than it was after a snow dump in the city.

  “What?” Amy said, as they exited the car. “I phoned ahead and asked Bronte to take the snow blower for a spin.”

  That wasn’t all she’d asked the unknown person to do; there was food in the fridge, and the wood stove was both full and burning. Also, coffee, which Amy decided she needed. One glance at Michael, and she added hot chocolate to the impromptu menu while they waited for the second car to arrive.

  Amy wanted to place bets on how many people would be in it when it did.

  Eric, Chase, Ernest, and Longland were in the other car. Although he’d been cleaned up, Chase looked as though he’d been at the bottom of a game-deciding Hollywood tackle, where all the other players had also been given knives. He had not killed Longland. Longland had not killed him. Both of these statements hung in the air like unfinished sentences.

  Longland, however, had saved Allison’s life. For his own reasons, of course, which were almost entirely selfish—but they didn’t matter. In the end, without his intervention, Ally would be dead. The thought made Emma forget to breathe for one long minute; when she exhaled, she exhaled white mist. Allison, shivering, was on the steps waiting for Amy to fish a key out of her purse.

  Michael was tromping in circles in snow, one of which was rottweiler shaped, when the second car pulled up. Eric was behind the wheel. Ernest was beside him. Chase and Longland occupied the back seat, and both still appeared to be in one piece; neither looked best-pleased with the company, and they exited the car, putting anyone still standing outside between them.

  Longland stayed close to Emma. Amy opened the door and ushered everyone inside; Longland, as he entered, was pale. He stared at Emma in a way that made her distinctly uncomfortable. He knew it and attempted to look elsewhere, but his gaze kept returning to her, and it stayed anchored there until she glanced in his direction.

  Chase, for his part, went to Allison as if to ascertain that she was still breathing. He kept himself between Allison and pretty much everyone else, the exception being Michael and Petal. He didn’t particularly care if Longland attached himself to Emma, because he didn’t particularly care if Emma survived.

  Emma, the Necromancer.

  Amy immediately continued her stage directions once coats, boots, and other outerwear had been removed. She had already chosen the rooms in which her guests would stay and led them there, catching Michael’s arm when he failed to follow immediately. She deposited Longland in the room between Ernest’s and Eric’s; Chase was, she told Eric, his problem. She commandeered the room her parents occupied when they were here and let Allison and Emma share a room across the hall; Michael was one door to their right. Petal, like Chase, was not Amy’s problem.

  Chase sourly noted the parallels between the designations.

&nbs
p; “I should probably apologize,” Amy told him, no hint of regret in her voice. “Petal actually listens. I am going to make coffee. I will also make hot chocolate for those who don’t drink coffee.” She then turned and marched down the hall to the stairs.

  • • •

  Chase, Eric, and Ernest did not join them in the kitchen. They risked the wrath of Amy by poking around the rooms in the house, and Emma privately thought Amy was right: there was no possible way Necromancers had come here first. Chase, between clenched teeth, pointed out that they were not attempting to destroy Necromantic foci, but Ernest cleared his throat. Loudly.

  “With your permission,” he said, “we would like to be more proactive in rudimentary defenses on the perimeter of your property. Or,” he added, as Amy opened her mouth, “your house and the road that leads to it.”

  Amy nodded.

  Chase said nothing, loudly. He could be sarcastic without saying a word.

  “How likely is it we’ll be followed?” She didn’t ask Ernest. She asked Longland.

  “The Necromancers with whom I arrived are dead.” He hesitated. “It is possible—probable—that they were not the only knights sent. Emma is powerful.”

  “You didn’t consider her a power the first time you met her.”

  “I did not see her then as I see her now.”

  “Neither will the Queen.”

  Longland nodded. “But the Queen’s knights are not her only servants. She can, on occasion, send the dead to do her bidding; they are not capable of interacting with the mortal world—but they can observe and report directly to her almost instantly. None of the dead could fail to see the power Emma has.”

  “She could always use a phone.” Amy folded her arms.

  “She is not conversant with modern amenities, by her own choice. It is the only advantage the hunters have. Change, when it has come to the court, comes slowly through the knights. Had you joined us, your knowledge of things modern would inform both you and the service you offered; had your service—in pursuit of the Queen’s goals, of course—been successful, she would review the mechanisms behind that success.”

  “Emma would not have survived to join the court,” a new voice said. Emma turned toward Margaret Henney, who entered the conversation in a way that made the air cold. She was dead. She had been dead the first time Emma had laid eyes on her. She could make herself visible to the living, with Emma’s help.

  With Emma’s unconscious help.

  “Oh?” Amy said.

  “She is too powerful. Had she been willing to learn what the Queen could teach, the Queen would have discovered this. Merrick is right: The dead see her just as clearly as they see the Queen; to our eyes, she looks almost the same. The Queen would have come to understand this within a handful of years—perhaps less. She would not have suffered Emma to live.”

  “How, exactly, do you know all of this?”

  Margaret frowned and turned to Emma. Emma said nothing, but she clasped cold hands behind her back.

  “I was a Necromancer, of course.”

  “Not a terribly impressive one,” Longland added, with cool derision.

  “Not terribly impressive to the Queen, no. It was only very briefly my life’s ambition to be so. What I know of the Queen’s court is not current, but the Queen was conservative, in her fashion. She did not value change for its own sake. Between my death and yours, how much did the composition of her inner court change?” The question was clearly rhetorical.

  Merrick did not appreciate it. He glanced once at Emma.

  Emma, however, nodded.

  “I am no longer her servant.”

  “No. Are you mine?”

  Everyone but Petal fell silent.

  Watching his expression, Emma wondered if Longland had truly served anyone but himself. She had seen similar expressions in Grade Seven and Grade Eight. Fear, humiliation, desperation, the need to be seen as belonging. She’d often envied adults like her parents who didn’t seem to have any of the same emotions.

  “. . . Yes,” he finally replied.

  “Then please answer Margaret’s questions.”

  “Is Margaret yours?”

  Emma started to say no.

  Margaret, however, said, “Yes. Until the door opens and I can leave this place, I serve Emma.”

  “Just in case there’s any doubt,” Chase said, “no one else here is bending a knee. We don’t serve Necromancers.”

  Longland ignored Chase. Margaret apparently ignored him as well; she turned a severe glare on Ernest, who was leaning against the nearest wall looking even older than he usually did.

  “Chase,” he said, “we’re doing a perimeter sweep.” When Chase opened his mouth, he added, “Now.”

  Longland, however, continued to speak to Margaret—as if the rest of the living were of no concern. “Two of the Queen’s knights—from your era—have died. Three, if you count me.”

  “And the citadel?” the older woman asked.

  “There is one new wing, a small one.”

  “The city?”

  “It has not changed.”

  Emma cleared her throat. “What is the city of the dead like?”

  “It is not a city as you would understand it. None of the living occupy its buildings, although there are completed buildings. At some point, we believe the Queen intended her city to be occupied. The logistics were difficult. Food, in particular. She did not complete the city she had planned. Half of the streets are bare outlines formed of cobbles and forgotten intent. The dead wander there in numbers.”

  At the tightening of Emma’s expression, Longland shrugged and looked away. “They have no power. Those that remain are not worth harvesting; the novices practice binding on them. You would not enjoy the city of the dead.”

  Amy glanced at the door. “We don’t have our hunters. I think we should try to get some sleep; we can make plans over breakfast.” No one in the hall mistook the suggestion as anything other than it was: a command. Amy was the closest thing they had to a queen, here.

  • • •

  “I want to know why you kissed me.” Allison Simner squared her shoulders, lifted her chin, and spoke as forcefully as she could, given the subject matter. If the statement—which had started life as a shaky, confused question—sounded well-practiced, it’s because it was.

  “That was better,” Emma told her best friend. “But you dropped the last two syllables.”

  Allison’s shoulders were already bunched up so tightly they were practically at the level of her ears.

  “Are you sure you have to ask? I mean—the answer seems pretty obvious.”

  Allison turned from the mirror, in which she’d been practicing the “right” expression. It was a small mirror, given that it belonged in Amy’s family’s cottage. “Why do you think Chase kissed me?”

  Emma shook her head. “Because he wanted to?” When Allison failed to reply, she added, “He’s Chase. He pretty much does what he wants. There is no way he would kiss Amy.”

  “But kissing Amy at least makes sense.”

  “If you’re Chase?”

  That pulled a smile out of Allison. “I guess it would be suicidal.”

  “Good point. Now it makes me wonder why he hasn’t. It’s Chase, after all.”

  Allison’s smile became a laugh—the first of the day. The first, Emma thought, of two days.

  Petal chose that moment to push the bedroom door open. It wasn’t completely closed. He headed straight to where Emma sat, cross-legged, on the bed, jumped up, and made himself at home. But the blankets were wrong, the bedsprings were wrong, the bed was the wrong shape; the only thing that was right about this particular room, in dog terms, was that Emma was somehow in it.

  For a rottweiler, he could make himself appear smaller and vastly more pathetic without apparent effort. He did
have his leash attached by the mouth—at least until he dropped it in Emma’s lap.

  “Not now, Petal,” she told him, setting the leash to one side before he dropped his head on it. “Sorry,” she added, to her best friend.

  Allison had been in Emma’s life since before Petal came to join it. She shrugged off the interruption. “He wants to go for a walk.”

  “And I want to avoid a lecture.” Emma scratched behind Petal’s ears. “Eric’s so tense the air is practically bouncing off him. I can pretty much imagine what he’d say if I told him I wanted to take the dog for a walk.”

  “The dog has to pee sometime.” Allison glanced at Petal, and added, in a more dire tone, “Or somewhere.”

  This was absolutely true.

  “I’ll come with you.”

  Emma’s face remained expressionless. If her first impulse was to avoid a lecture—and, sadly, it was—it was only because she’d refused to think about Chase and his possible reaction to Petal’s needs. Chase wasn’t tense the way Eric was—but he had a much shorter fuse and a much blacker temper. He had kissed her best friend. He clearly—to anyone whose first name wasn’t Allison and whose last name wasn’t Simner—loved her. And his love came with a stack of resentment for Emma, whose existence endangered her.

  It had endangered them all.

  Chase confused Allison. Emma had spent an hour listening to that confusion and the worry it caused; she offered advice only when Ally specifically requested it. Allison never talked romantically about boys; romantic boys were exotic creatures that other people had to deal with. They existed between the covers of books and on various screens. If she daydreamed about them, she kept it secret from even her best friend. Boys seldom gave Allison a second glance.

  Confused or not, there were certain things that Allison was never going to willingly accept.

  Emma knew that on any other day, in any other place, Allison would have kept her confusion to herself. But sharing it was better than the only other alternatives. She could talk about what had happened when she and Chase had faced off against two Necromancers without immediate backup. She could talk about the fact that she had escaped Toronto without talking to her parents, and her parents were probably frozen with terror. Or she could talk about her younger brother, Toby. Toby, who’d been shot, and now lay hooked up to hospital machinery of various types, in a city they had fled. They had no idea whether or not Toby would survive.