Mark Del Franco - Unfallen Dead

I snorted. “Complicated? More complicated than ‘oh, by the way, hang on to my soul for me, I might need it?’ That’s crazy, Dylan. I could have thrown that thing out.”

He tilted his head down. “But you didn’t. I had faith you wouldn’t, or I would have come back for it.”

I shook my head in disbelief. “You’re lucky I called Briallen instead of using it for a night-light.”

He spun the orb and held it straight out so I could read an ogham script: Life is a series of trust moments.

“Danu’s blood, as you like to say, Dyl. That’s some freakin’ trust.”

“And not misplaced, obviously,” he said.

“You have a very angry Auntie Bree, by the way.”

He nodded, working the stiffness out of his jaw. “She’ll understand. She never stays mad at me for long.”

“Lucky you.”

He stretched and yawned. “Wow. Being dead really knots up the muscles.”

“You should get as much rest as you can. The Guild is in an uproar. They’re going to be all over you about what happened.”

He grimaced. “Actually, Con, I don’t want anyone to know I’m alive.”

That took me off guard. “Why not?”

He gave me a sly look. “Believe it or not, I was planning on dying in a couple of weeks. This whole scenario saves me the trouble.”

Realization dawned. “The Black Ops job.”

“Yep. Dead’s always the perfect cover.”

“Please tell me I don’t have to keep that a secret from Briallen,” I said.

“Oh, no. She knew my plans. She’ll agree this is perfect. I mean, after she stops being mad at me for dying for real. Sort of,” he said.

I shook my head, laughing softly. “Gods, Dyl, we lead crazy-ass lives, you know that?”

He nodded, amused, too. “Yeah, we do. You should go before anyone else comes in. I don’t have much time to slip out of here.”

I held my hand out. “Good luck.” We shook. On impulse, I pulled him up and gave him a hug. “Don’t do that again.”

“I’ll try not to,” he said in my ear.

I left him sitting on his funeral bier, head tilted back to catch the warmth of the sun. Outside the room, Meryl waited on a bench in the corridor, empty except for two Danann agents standing honor guard. She looked curious as she hugged me. “You’re oddly happy for someone visiting a deceased friend.”

I wrapped her under my arm as we walked to the elevator. “I can’t believe what a jerk I used to be.”

“You could have just asked me,” she said.

“But I’ve gotten better, right?”

She rocked her head from side to side. “Well, let’s say things look promising.”

“But I’m much better, right?”

She looked at me from under a head of ice blue hair. “Buy me the lobster you owe me, and we’ll talk.”

I huddled in my jacket against the late-night cold. Winter was coming on strong. I burped lobster as I crossed the Old Northern Avenue bridge into the Weird. The lone police car at the checkpoint had turned into three. After what happened on the Common, the city dropped all pretense of calling it a safety measure for everyone. The entire neighborhood was closed off. Jersey barriers were thrown down everywhere to control traffic in and out, not just on the bridges. It wasn’t martial law, but it was only a matter of time before they figured out the legal niceties.

I turned onto Sleeper Street. The thing I liked about my street was that it wasn’t filled with late-night partiers unless something was going on in my own building. The thing I didn’t like was that it wasn’t filled with late-night partiers and was creepy and desolate late at night.

A flutter of essence washed over me, and my fragmented body shield kicked on. Someone casting a sensing spell. It wasn’t nasty or threatening. I stopped. If whoever had cast it didn’t know exactly where I lived, I didn’t need them to see me enter my building. I scanned the street. The warehouse across from my building had garage doors that spent a lot of time closed. At the far end of the block, someone lingered in the darkness of a recessed loading bay. I opened my sensing ability again to do my own scouting and got the surprise of the day. The essence wasn’t normal, as if anything in the Weird was normal. Between the seething anger of the people who lived down here and the damned Taint, the last thing we needed was the Dead of TirNaNog roaming around.

A tall, cloaked woman stepped into view under a street-light. Neither of us moved, but stared at each other for a long moment. She beckoned me closer. I joined her under the pool of light, her essence resonating with the feel of TirNaNog.

“You aren’t surprised to see me,” she said.

I shrugged. “You have no idea how much nothing surprises me anymore, Ceridwen.”

She laughed, low and comfortable. “I’m Dead.”

I nodded. “I can feel that. Why are you here?”

“The Way was closed,” she said.

“Ah. At least you said closed and not gone. I’m not sure if TirNaNog was destroyed.”

She nodded. “A fair concern. I choose not to believe it is gone. I think I would feel it. As I did not believe Faerie was gone when I lived, I do not believe TirNaNog is gone now that I’m Dead.”

“You Dead people are so optimistic.”

She laughed, an oddly pleasant sound under the circumstances. “Under different circumstances, I think I might have liked you, Druid macGrey.”

I nodded in courtesy. “I think we would have found something to talk about.”

She worried her hands together and removed a ring. “I want you to have this.”

I tilted it toward the light. It was an ornate gold band set with a large carnelian. “This isn’t necessary.”

She smiled, turned slowly on her heel, and walked away. “It will be. Tell no one I gave it to you. Remember we have a deal.”

She disappeared into the darkness. I tossed the ring in the air and caught it overhand. As I slipped it in my pocket, I hoped I didn’t regret words said in anger.

I backtracked to my apartment. The Dead who had made it into Boston through the veil found themselves in the same dilemma as Ceridwen. They couldn’t get back and had no place to go. Naturally, they were gravitating to the Weird.

A darkness was gathering around me. I felt it as palpably as I felt Ceridwen’s ring in my pocket. The dark mass in my head had an awareness or at least something very close to it. I didn’t know anymore if I was responding to it or it was responding to me. Like the spear. For one brief moment, it became a fierce white thing in my head, but it felt like something more, something important, yet mutable. I could believe it was a sliver of the Wheel, or at least Its instrument. And I, in turn, had been the spear’s instrument before it vanished in the collapse of the veil.

And so was Bergin Vize. Like I was bonded, so he had been for a brief time. All this time, I’d thought he had done something to destroy my abilities, but now it seemed that whatever happened had destroyed his, too. Whether he’d caused it or not was still a question, but the fact remained that our paths kept crossing. Whether that was his doing or the Wheel’s didn’t matter. It just was. And would be again. Especially now that he was loose in Boston.

I wake up every day thinking about the past, the things I remember and the things I don’t. Everything is there, just on the edge of my thoughts, things I’ve said or done. People I’ve loved or killed. Actions and events reach out to the present and change the future. All there, waiting their turn on the Wheel. Memories lurk in dark recesses. Old friends become new again. Dead things are reborn, marching forward out of the past into the future, standing tall and sure, refusing to lie down and rest, unfallen dead things that claim a piece of the Wheel for themselves, claim a piece of me. Where they lead, only the Wheel knows, and It reveals Itself with grudging hints, confusing metaphors, and inevitability.