45. Chapter 45
forty-five
Archer
“Kraa!”
“I’m digging as fast as I can!”
“Kraa!”
“Just you concentrate on finding some energy for me.”
Edgar flaps off in the raven equivalent of a huff while I force the shovel deeper into the earth.
This is harder than it looks on television.
I suppose those people are usually digging up fresh graves.
This dirt has been settling for five solid years, grown through with thick roots that I have to stab the shovel into several times over to break them.
It’s as dark here as it ever gets in London, lights blazing beneath a reflective cloudy sky. Too bright for grave robbing. Again, not like in the movies.
Also, this place is riddled with ghosts.
Unsurprisingly. I’m doing my absolute best to pretend I can’t see them.
A few have shouted at me, one of which was quite scary.
Good thing they don’t seem to have poltergeist powers.
A sizeable group has formed all around me, watching, wondering, a few of them having a great time poking fun at the progress I’m barely making.
It took me forever to find the grave. It’s marked only by a metal stake with that UID number on it. An otherwise plain patch of grass in a sea of others. If I were capable, I think I’d dig them all up. Ask these people what happened to them. Let them get their own revenge, depending how they died.
But it’s not practical, and truly, who even knows who these people are? They could be villains, the lot of them. It’s not something I should be messing with. But then this isn’t something I should be messing with either.
I’ve had time to get a little philosophical about the situation, working up a sweat here in the middle of a cold London night. Am I personally changing ‘fate’? Or is this fate? Was this always supposed to happen?
All of that brings me, over and over, back to Tezcatlipoca. This whole night, everything I’m doing… Am I just a thoughtless pawn in some greater plan? Was this always going to happen to me?
And does any of it matter anyway?
I’m a few feet down when I catch the flash of a new ghost out of the corner of my eye. Blue. Then the scent of cigarette smoke hits me, and I chance a look up.
Disdainful as ever, Simon taps his phantom ashes onto the pile of dirt I’ve been busy amassing for hours now.
I concentrate on the shovel digging into the ground and, under my breath, mutter, “You’re not supposed to be here.”
“Liam’s fine,” he breathes out on a puff of smoke.
Then he just stands there, watching me struggle, judgemental eyes digging into me like daggers until I spit, “You could help, you know?”
“Who’s ’e talkin’ to then?” shouts one of the onlookers.
“Talkin’ to ’imself most probly,” another responds.
“Looks mad as a hatter to me,” adds another.
Simon, like me, ignores them, stating, “I’m actually not inclined to rush you to your death, believe it or not. It’s very boring on this side as it goes. Most days.”
As quietly as I can, over grunts of effort, “I’m going to do it whether you help me or not. If your concern is conserving my energy so I don’t die when I try to resurrect him, you’re not doing a very good job of it.”
“I think you’ll pass out before you reach him,” he muses. “Sleep it off, get thrown in prison in the morning for grave robbing, then be out by noon.”
What a simple idea he has of the situation. I don’t think he can have any real understanding of the repercussions of me ending up behind bars and in Marsden’s hands, even after everything he witnessed in Marsden’s office.
I wonder if Simon could break me out of prison. He’s incredibly powerful. Powerful enough to do that?
But I won’t pass out. I’m going to push on, push through this. Do this for Liam.
The thought of him at home in bed propels me. Imagining him still blissfully asleep there. Daydreaming that he’ll sleep right through, wake up in the morning, and before he’s even properly opened his eyes, I’ll be knocking on his door, bringing his brother home after five long years.
Hmm. Wonder if I should not just spring this on them. Could be quite a shock. Jem won’t have aged a day if I can do this right. It’s probably, really, quite a lot of trauma…
Better than dead.
So long as he comes back right.
What if he doesn’t come back right? What if I do something wrong rebuilding all his neural pathways? What if I can’t get his soul back? What if I raise a zombie, and Tezcatlipoca won’t give him up?
I did bring ropes. Ropes to tie him should he be in such a state.
To take him back to my place, a new nightmare for my attic, until we can get that mirror in exchange for his soul.
That’s another thing I can’t tell Liam, of course.
Imagine the horror of him finding his brother’s soulless, revived corpse in my attic…
I fear I genuinely am the worst possible boyfriend sometimes…
And even if we do get the mirror from Gerald, all we can do is hope for the best. Hope Tezcatlipoca isn’t using Liam with no plan to keep up his end of the deal. Or that he won’t use that mirror for something monumentally evil and destructive.
Finally, my shovel hits something solid, the dull thud of old and wet and cheap wood.
It gives a little. That’s harrowing enough.
I’m not prepared for this. I see dead people all the time—horrible wounds on some of them.
I suppose it probably does make it easier for me than it would be for someone unaccustomed to such sights.
But I don’t think anyone likes to see a corpse.
Especially not of someone who was so young, snuffed out in what should have been the prime of his life.
While I dig the dirt away from the rest of the surface and around the edges, I try to prepare myself. How bad will the smell be? How moist? How much body matter and how rotten? And how is it going to feel forcing my hand into that?
Mind over matter.
I work a clear space around the latches of the coffin, then throw the shovel up onto the side of the grave, only to have Simon hover a little closer, along with about fifteen other faces, come to witness the grand reveal.
“Where’s their ghost, then?” someone asks.
“Was wonderin’ the same thing,” another answers. “Shoulda been ’ere by now, ’avin’ ’is grave dug up like that.”
Annoying as the commentary is, it spurs me on. Jem should be here. He should be somewhere, yelling at me with all the rest of these people. Not locked behind whatever impenetrable door Tezcatlipoca holds between us.
I whip my phone out of my pocket to light the clasps, praying they’re a simple design, because if they need a special tool to open them, I’m going to have to smash my way through the top.
Thankfully, the unidentified dead of London are given the most basic of paupers’ coffins. The screws are old and rusted, but by slipping my hand into my sleeve, I’m able to get enough of a grip to turn them.
“Maybe just pause a moment and think before you do that,” Simon suggests above the rest of the commentary.
But the time on my phone says it’s past two o’clock and I simply cannot. It’s a decent while until dawn, but how long until a caretaker comes by? Or someone who can’t sleep comes to grieve?
The final screw slips loose. I take a deep breath, shut my eyes tight, then reach down and fling the casket open.
The momentum forces my back against the wet dirt, and leaning there, I take a moment, eyes still shut, to prepare myself, while all the “oohs” and “ahhs” of the crowd above fill the air.
“Archer,” comes Simon’s voice, low but clear beneath the noise. “Take a look.”
His tone does not bode well, yet I have no choice, so I force myself to face it.
It is, in some ways, worse than I could have imagined.
No, it’s not a pile of sodden gore. It’s bones.
Bones clad in an old suit that he probably never once wore when he was alive.
But there is no other remnant of him here beyond some dark and dry debris at the bottom of the casket and hair fallen around his skull. Hair the colour of Liam’s.
I have to block out the idea that this is Liam.
That this is what he might look like dead and fallen in his grave.
That he could have been the one to tread the path his brother trod before him.
That had his brother not worked so hard to keep him away from that life, they two might be side by side in this field.
All the more reason to fix this.
I’m exhausted, I’m covered in sweat, my hands are shaking, and I have never tried this with a body so badly damaged. This long gone. But there’s a first time for everything.
“Edgar?” I call.
With a flap of wings, a squirrel lands on the ribcage. The poor creature. It struggles to find footing, then slinks down over the skeleton shoulder, taking shelter where it can.
A moment later, a rat drops onto the corpse.
Then more small animals, then more again.
My guilt redoubles with each drop, a new, innocent creature ready to be killed. And who am I to make this choice? It feels wrong. It feels every kind of wrong.
But they fall, mice, a vole, any small life Edgar’s been able to locate and keep an eye on over the last few hours, until finally Edgar comes to rest at the head of the grave, surveying his finds with the eyes of a killer.
It’s what he does. Just like this is what I do.
“Simon!” a new voice calls.
A voice I recognise.
“Simon, where are you?”
I poke my head up over the side of the grave. The vague shimmer of Simon’s usual ghost form solidifies. “Ferdi!”
“There you are!” And there he is. Fabian/Ferdinand stumbles over to Simon. Stumbles because he’s… oddly unsteady. Limping almost.
Simon firms up enough to reach a supporting arm out for him, which Fabian leans on heavily, pressing a kiss to his lips.
A long one. One that’s got all the ghosts in the graveyard exclaiming their disbelief, wondering why they can’t do that, and within about thirty seconds, discussing the mechanics of such a relationship, to my great irritation and embarrassment.