Chapter 6 Baz #2
Jae had always been a secretive type, full of mysterious connections from all around the world, and Baz now understood why.
They communicated with other Eclipse-born through secret channels, by telegraph and letters and other ways Baz wasn’t privy to.
Jae had sent out the call to find other Collapsed Eclipse-born in need of help, and magically the news had spread without raising any alarm with the Regulators.
Theodore was squinting his eyes at his former business partner. “What are you not telling us, Jae?”
Jae sighed. “Do you remember Freyia Lündt, a woman who Collapsed in Trevel a few years back?”
Theodore’s eyes bulged. “The Reanimator?”
“Yes, the Reanimator.” Jae thrummed their fingers on the table. “She asked to meet me in Threnody.”
A deathly quiet settled over the lighthouse.
Baz remembered reading about the Reanimator in the papers a few months after his father had been taken away to the Institute.
She had magic as rare as his own Timespinner abilities, but far more sinister.
She could bring things back to life, so to speak—though from what Baz understood, the corpses she brought back from the dead weren’t exactly alive.
They were empty vessels that only imitated life.
Her Collapsing had been brought on after she’d killed a dozen people for the sole purpose of testing the boundaries of her magic on them.
Freyia Lündt had escaped the Regulators’ clutches, narrowly avoiding the Unhallowed Seal, only to spark more terror wherever she went.
Death followed in her wake—as did the undead.
There were rumors of gruesome murders and corpses brought back all wrong, their bones bent at odd angles and their magic acting up, as if being brought back from the dead rotted their powers from the inside out.
When people told each other horror stories of Eclipse-born who’d succumbed to the dark curse of their Collapsing, it was the Reanimator who haunted their thoughts.
And Jae wanted to meet with her?
“You can’t be serious,” Kai said with a gruff, nervous laugh. And if Kai of all people thought this idea was absurd, then it surely must be.
“All those people she killed…” Anise whispered, eyes wide with horror.
“Supposedly killed,” Jae specified. “Freyia deserves the benefit of the doubt just as any of us do.”
Baz shifted uncomfortably at that. He had killed people too.
His Collapsing had brought down his father’s printing press, killing three victims in the blast. He knew it wasn’t the same thing as the kind of murders Freyia was said to have committed, but it still weighed on his conscience.
In his mind he saw Keiran dying a slow, agonizing death on the cave floor.
The blame in his eyes as Baz told him the truth, that he was the one who had killed Keiran’s parents.
It was an image that haunted him often, and Baz told himself it was punishment enough for his crimes.
That, and the knowledge that he was to blame for ripping his own family apart—sending his dad to the Institute, his mother into depression, and his sister on a reckless pursuit of mythical doors.
“Maybe it would be best to let the Regulators have her,” Anise pressed. “Instead of putting your own life on the line.”
“No one deserves to suffer at the hands of the Regulators, my darling,” Theodore countered, his face blanching at the memory of the Institute. “No one.”
Though Baz sympathized with his father’s sentiment, the idea of reanimation magic sat uneasily in his stomach.
Death, he thought, should not be tampered with.
It was final. Just as he didn’t dare use his magic to turn back time and save those who had died because of him, the Reanimator shouldn’t be allowed to use her gift to bring corpses back from the dead.
At least not without owning up to the consequences.
“If I can help her control her magic,” Jae said, “we’ll all be better for it.”
Baz hoped Jae’s definition of control meant learning not to use magic at all. But that was Jae’s problem now, not his. He had the Quadri to focus on, and only a few days left to enjoy the solstice holiday with the people who mattered most to him before he’d have to play his part.
Before he had to say goodbye again.
They spent the rest of the week training with Jae, who had Baz and Kai pushing the limits of their Collapsed abilities until the holiday didn’t feel like one at all.
But in the bits between training and discussing strategy for the Quadri and playing those boring card games every night that were really not boring at all—even Kai seemed to enjoy himself—Baz found solace in his sketchbook.
It was odd how much he’d missed drawing; odder still how his mother had seemed to anticipate this longing inside him when he himself hadn’t seen it.
Picking up a pencil felt like the most natural of things, and though Baz fumbled his way through pages of terrible sketches, he slowly found his stride again.
He’d never considered himself an artist with any real sort of talent, but he could admit he wasn’t a bad one either.
Despite the peace that drawing brought him, it did nothing to erase his anxiety as they inched toward the end of the week and the start of the Quadri. But there was something else bothering him that he couldn’t quite put his finger on until the last day of the holiday.
Baz found his father sitting on a stretch of coastline behind the lighthouse, staring out at the sea. His heart ached at how peaceful Theodore looked. Eyes closed, a small smile playing on his lips, face tilted up to the sea breeze. He looked content. Free of worries.
And as guilt surged inside him, Baz understood that this was what had been slowly eating away at him this week.
Not his anxiety over the Quadri, but this unending guilt.
Despite the bliss of being with his parents again—of seeing them happy—a shadow loomed over them.
Nothing was right. This peace was fleeting.
A mere illusion. Their family was broken in more ways than one, with a crucial part of it missing behind a mythical door, and Baz was to blame for all of it.
Baz had robbed his father of all those years where he could have been free instead of rotting away at the Institute for a crime he hadn’t committed.
Baz was the reason his mother spent years as a ghost of herself, withering away under the burden of grief as she desperately tried to keep it together for her children.
Baz was to blame for Romie distancing herself from their family, from everything Eclipse-related, because she didn’t want to live with the shame of what their father had supposedly done.
What Baz had done. He was the reason her fate now remained unknown.
And if she died or never came back, what was left of their broken family might never recover, and he would be to blame for that, too.
His father must have sensed his presence. He turned toward him, but Baz headed back inside before he could see him.
With too much nervous energy to do much else, Baz started packing. He didn’t realize he was crying until a voice jolted him out of his spiraling thoughts.
“You okay?”
Baz quickly wiped at his cheeks. Kai stood in the doorframe, his expression unreadable.
“Yeah.” Baz cleared his throat, busying himself with his folded clothes. “Just getting ready for the inevitable return to Aldryn.”
“You’re anxious about the Quadri.”
“Of course I am.” If only it were just that.
“Don’t be.”
Baz snorted. “Easy for you to say.”
Kai came to hover at Baz’s side. He reached for the sketchbook laid open on the bed, but Baz snatched it back, tucking it away safely into his bag. Kai’s piercing gaze caught his. “I could come with you. You know, for moral support.”
Baz sighed. “This again? You know you can’t.”
Kai rolled his eyes as he plopped down on the bed. “I thought you’d changed, Brysden. Where’s the rule-breaker who got me out of the Institute? I liked him. He was fun.”
The comment was like a knife wedging itself in an open wound. “That was never me.”
Was that what Kai thought of him? That he was interesting only when he acted the part of the rebellious hero, when he wasn’t being his careful, disciplined self?
Fighting back tears, Baz pulled on a sweater lodged beneath Kai. “Do you mind? This boring rule-follower needs to pack.”
For a moment, Kai didn’t budge. He searched Baz’s gaze, the slightest frown creasing his brow. Baz thought he would press him, but at last he got up and snapped a sarcastic, “Sorry to keep you,” before heading out the door.
Baz’s soured mood could not be remedied.
Henry and Anise prepared a feast for their last night together, but despite the laughter and chatter and comforting food, all Baz could think was how he didn’t deserve any of this.
He could feel Kai trying to catch his eye, had no doubt that the Nightmare Weaver saw right through his forced smile.
Baz couldn’t bring himself to look at him for fear of breaking.
“Come get some air with me, Basil,” Theodore said after they’d finished eating and everyone was busy clearing the table.
Baz donned his coat and followed his father outside, if only to escape Kai’s insistent glances.
They stood in silence at the water’s edge for a time before Theodore said, “I’m proud of you, son. Everything you’ve done, everything you’re doing… I know we’re asking a lot of you.”
Baz swallowed past the lump in his throat. “I don’t know if I can do it.”
“Of course you can.”