Chapter 26
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Out of the Endless Dark came a host of wraiths and other vile creatures. Mad Jack called together a semblance army with the light and sound of his glorious pipes. Then, broadsword in hand, he led them in and put down the threat.
—Account of Chancellor Jack Churchill’s Defense of the Modern Stratum (collected by Convocation officials
as evidence of wraith collusion)
Cassius and I found my books strewn across the floor and a couple of chairs knocked over. My bronze boot lamp was toppled, the shade all torn to hell. Sofa mattresses had been pulled and tossed. And the orange-crate coffee table, eucalyptus plant, all of it was smashed.
I snapped my head toward the corner and sighed with relief. My guitar was still there, untouched, where I’d left it by the window. As Cassius closed the door, Lakshmi stood up from behind the sofa bed. I jumped and swung my knife toward her.
“Easy, Mr. Solomon.”
Cassius stepped closer. “What has happened?”
“I tracked a wraith to your flat, but Jack . . . I got here too late.” “What are you talking about?” I asked.
“Prepare yourself,” she said, pointing toward the kitchen.
A pair of bloody legs wearing Doc Martens lay on the floor in the kitchen doorway. Jimmy.
“I’m sorry I wasn’t here in time to prevent it,” she said. “Jimmy, no . . .”
My throat suddenly ached and I clenched my teeth so hard they hurt, as I bit back a scream.
The ache of losing someone throbbed again through my head; sharp pains stabbed at my temples like hot nails.
I thought I might be sick. I shut my eyes and imagined Slayer’s “Raining Blood,” but couldn’t hear it.
I shook my head and finally screamed a few notes.
Cassius came up beside me and put his giant hand on my shoulder again. The way Henry used to.
Henry, and now Jimmy. I leaned into Cassius to steady myself.
When I opened my eyes, Lakshmi was staring at me but had the decency to hold the questions I could see in her face.
All I could think about was Jimmy’s song from the day before—the soap box derby memory, the smile in his eyes as he’d sung it.
“What happened?” I asked.
“Mr. Bates fought well, considering that he was fighting a wraith.”
Maybe the hellhound had come for me again. “How do you know it was a wraith?”
“Wraiths leave a trace where they do mortal business. Their shadows form a print—a ghost shadow. But ghost shadows fade. So, we try to inspect the crime scene as quickly as possible. This scene, however, had been tampered with before I got here. Someone brushed the whole place clean with lantern light. There won’t be much left. ”
“Why would someone do that?” I asked.
“To keep me from finding the wraith, since if I do, I’ll stop it from killing you.” She leveled a hard stare at me. “I told you there’d been wraith activity near here. This isn’t your first brush with a wraith, is it, Mr. Solomon.”
I had to come clean. “Something’s come at me three times, some kind of great hound.”
“Three times?”
I gave her the times and places. “But I wasn’t even here this time.
Why kill Jimmy?”
“I don’t know. Opportunity, maybe. I assume he was an acquaintance of yours?”
“A friend.”
To her credit, she didn’t say that maybe if I’d been honest before that, Jimmy might still be alive.
She hunkered back down, looking over Jimmy’s bloody body again.
His arm had been torn off, his head was attached only by a piece of esophagus, and his blood was smeared all over the linoleum floor.
She checked a note on her phone. “There was an attack last night that looked a lot like this in Kingston upon Thames. Happened not long before this hound came past your apartment.”
I nodded. “Angela DuFresne. I knew her, too.”
“I’ve known wraiths to cover distance quickly,” she said, “but never that fast.”
“It’s probably wounded now.” I told her about the fight at Westminster. Lakshmi looked up and gaped. “You fought this wraith?”
“Cassius and I did, yeah, but we weren’t able to kill it.” “But you survived.”
I couldn’t tell whether she thought me brave or foolish, so I just nodded. “From what I understand, my rebirth is likely what brought it topside, and it’s going to keep after me until we put it down.”
Cassius shot a look at the door. “I should guard the alley in case it returns.” I thanked him and he slipped outside.
Then I finally knelt next to Jimmy. His body was broken at angles it shouldn’t be able to make. Blood had dried around his mouth and nose and eyes. I got out my Zippo, lit it, and held it behind his body. I didn’t know what I thought I might see, but it was becoming something that felt right to do.
His short shadow was lifeless grey, the gleaming waltz pattern gone.
But there was a scar there that I hadn’t seen before, ragged and raw. “What’s this?” I asked Lakshmi, pointing at the scar.
“It’s just what it looks like,” she said. “The wraith not only harvested some of your friend’s flesh, it took his spirit as well.”
“But why Jimmy?” I asked again.
“You said he was a friend.” Lakshmi thought a moment. “It’s possible that whatever you share in common with the wraith, you likewise shared in common with your friend.”
“We wrote a song together yesterday . . .”
Then I remembered Angela DuFresne, and our moment in the Iron Horse greenroom, as well as the wraith attack on the classical musicians in the Modern Stratum. “Maybe it’s not just hunting me,” I said. “Maybe it’s after anyone who loves to write music.”
“Maybe,” Lakshmi said.
I closed the Zippo and stared down at Jimmy like I’d stared down at Henry an hour ago.
Important people in my life whom I’d never again get to talk to, sing with, or just hang around during after hours at the Horse.
The silence of suffering closed me in, and it felt as if the pressure in my head might crack my skull.
I snapped my hairbands really damn hard. Not much help.
“Henry’s dead, too. I just ID’d his body at the morgue.” I paused. “But at least his killer’s dead, as well.”
Neither revelation seemed like news to Lakshmi.
“I am sorry about Mr. Wilkinson. He was a decent man.” She took a breath.
“He died in a safe at the bottom of the Thames. Whoever put him there knew that, even if he returned from the Meadows, he’d immediately drown.
And no matter how many times he drowned and came back, eventually .
. . he wouldn’t. Because, eventually, he’d stop trying, or the winds would carry him to the fire. ”
“Are you looking for whoever’s behind it all?”
“As time permits,” she said. “The raptorials have scarce resources to devote across all thanaturgic crime as it is, to say nothing of the dramatic increase in incidents these past few years.”
“What if I told you that I think I know who ordered the hit on me and Henry?”
“I’d ask if you have evidence.”
“A Shiguan recovery team may have just destroyed it.”
Lakshmi stood and put her phone away. “Regardless, whoever killed you and Mr. Wilkinson will never see to the dismissal of this wraith, even though its summoning is ultimately their fault.”
“Because it would out them as our killer, wouldn’t it?”
She nodded. “So, my time is best spent hunting this thing myself, since until it’s caught more innocents will die.”
“That’s fair.” I knelt there for another minute, trying, to no avail, to rub the pain from my temples. People were dead and gone because of me. I finally stood. “I’ll help you.”
“You understand that if you do, the same logic applies. The Convocation could view your effort to hunt down the wraith as an attempt to mop up after a crime.” Her eyes narrowed. “True or not, it won’t look good for you.”
I’d already crossed more thresholds than I could count. I damn sure wasn’t hesitating on this one. “I said I’ll help.”
Lakshmi almost smiled. “Couldn’t hurt.”
I looked down at Jimmy again. “Would the wraith that did this be considered mature?”
She eyed me. “Why do you ask?”
I shared what I knew about the Iron Horse ward and my hope to renew it.
“Putting aside the number of difficulties in dealing with a wraith,” she said, “it’s hard to tell how mature it is from a compromised ghost shadow. You might be able to see it with thanaturgic light, which I don’t wield, and you don’t yet possess.”
She meant light produced by burning ghost stone in a thanatist lantern, like Brach had shown me when we met. “But it’s possible?”
“Perhaps,” she said.
“Maybe we can use this wraith then, to renew the ward.”
“Maybe.” She told me she’d send a team to take care of Jimmy’s body and would look in on me herself at the Iron Horse later. Then she left me in the silent company of my dead friend. The old anxiety and pain crept back in so hard my ears started to ring.
Jimmy’s guitar—his beautiful Martin—lay on the floor beyond him, next to my mini oven. I walked over to it, opened the case, and found Jimmy’s ax unbroken—same as mine. I took it out, shuffled back over to his side, brushed a D minor chord, and let it ring out.
Then, I tore into his third verse as clean as I could. The derby race. Somewhere I really hoped Jimmy could hear it.