Chapter 44
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
The wounds received from a wraith are felt keenest in one’s deepest places, where one’s own wounds live.
That’s always the way with madness.
—John Locke, Concerning Spiritual Understanding (posthumously authored)
I lay on the wet grass of Highgate Cemetery, staring up into the starry sky. My friends huddled around me as I began to thrash from the burning in my flesh and the tear inside my shadow. Cassius and Chuey grabbed my arms and legs to hold me down. Lady pulled a long, hooked needle from her satchel.
“I can’t suture this with material thread,” she said. “I need Essiene thread.” “Which is what?” asked Cassius.
“It’s drawn from a spirit at the time of need,” she explained, “because it can’t be stored. One of you must volunteer. And whoever does will be diminished.”
Their voices echoed toward me as if down a long well. I could see them above me, but the pain was carrying my mind away toward the open wound in my shadow, toward whatever lay beneath it.
“Use me,” Cassius said.
Lady had Church fetch my lantern and hold it over me. Then she pulled Cassius around so that our shadows partially overlapped.
In my mind, other shadows were being drawn back from an aching memory—the beginning of an occlusion.
“Church,” Lady said, her voice trembling, “you and Chuey hold Jack down. This is going to hurt like hell. Cassius, you’re going to feel it, too.
” Lady gently hooked her needle into Cassius’s shadow.
The tip disappeared inside the shade of him.
The centurion grimaced but did not move, as Lady worked the needle through and drew out a shimmering gossamer thread the color of quicksilver.
I step through the open wound in my shadow. It’s a sunny day in West Los Angeles. Chuey is next to me. We’re thirteen. We’re riding bikes down South Western Avenue . . .
Lady pulled the thread from Cassius and hooked her needle into the bottom of the tear in my shadow. The needle burned like a branding iron . . .
We stow our bikes outside Sam Ash Music on Sunset Boulevard. I am going to buy my first guitar. I’ve been saving for months. I can’t wait . . .
“His pulse is weak,” said Church, clutching my wrist. “Hold on, my boy.” “It’s deeper than I thought,” Lady said, pulling more Essiene thread from Cassius’s shadow. He grimaced and grit his teeth.
Chuey opens the door. But before we go in, I see Mama’s old Dodge in front of Ardells Pastries next door. Mama used to bring me here every Saturday for a malt . . .
Lady pulled the thread again through my shadow. The pain sizzled down my spine, and my body started to convulse.
I turn toward Ardells’ window and put my hand against the glass to see through the glare. Mama is sitting at a table with a man and a little girl. She has a wedding ring. She looks so happy . . .
“We’re losing him,” Lady said. She sounded miles away. She jabbed me faster, whipping the needle through my shadow. Cassius slumped against her. I felt the Meadow winds calling me.
Mama looks up from her malt and sees me. Her smile fades. The little girl turns to see what she’s looking at. She has the same wine-splash birthmark on her neck that Mama and I have . . .
“It’s refusing to close,” Lady said. “His soul won’t take the last suture . . . I think he’s letting go.”
“Jack!” yelled Church. “Damn it, boy, hang on.” “Ese!” shouted Chuey.
Maybe that’s what Mama wanted all along. A daughter. Mama doesn’t smile or wave or anything. She just sits, watching me, like she’s waiting for me to go away . . .
“Jack.” It was Cassius, whispering in my ear. “Can you hear me, Jack?” Mama waves over the waitress and gestures toward me. My heart starts pounding. I smile and wave at Mama. The waitress walks over to the window and drops the blinds . . .
A world away I heard Cassius. “For our third option, Jack. Fight for our third option.”
Chuey grabs my shirt and yanks me away from the window. He muscles me to the door of Sam Ash and shoves me inside. The music of beating drums and electric guitars washes over me . . .
“Ah . . . got it!” said Lady. “It’s sealed.”
I drew a harsh breath and coughed. I couldn’t speak, and a haunting, painful silence settled around us. The stitches in my shadow shimmered silver-grey around the long, ragged, lake-shaped scar I’d come to recognize.
A few yards away lay the dead wraith. Without it, we couldn’t renew the ward. The Iron Horse barrier would collapse, and Brach would use the Abyssal Steps to find the song he needed for his revolution. We were running out of ways to try and stop him.
“You should have let it have me,” Cassius said, his voice softly breaking the silence. “Used the time to bind it. You keep choosing the wrong thing, Jack.”
I swallowed and struggled to speak. “I’ve made my share of mistakes, Cassius, but helping you isn’t one of them.”
The centurion took hold of my arm with his firm grip. “I am happier to know you today than I was yesterday, Jack Solomon.” Always made me feel good to shake his hand like that.
Thinking of Jimmy and Angela, I said, “At least it won’t kill any more musicians, huh?”
I rested a few moments, then called Lakshmi to brief her.
She didn’t answer, so I left a voicemail telling her everything that had gone down and where to find the wraith’s body.
I also texted Emaline: Henry’s place. 9:00 am.
When I could stand, I first gathered the Orcus thread from the cedar tree—it didn’t thrum as violently as it had before and felt a bit more comfortable in my hands.
Then my friends and I hobbled through Highgate Cemetery back to Old Lada.
No one spoke all the way home to the Horse.
As we neared the venue, I spotted five Shiguan thanatists and at least a dozen vestiges prowling the ward’s perimeter.
It had receded several more yards. They eyed us as we ducked inside.
In the greenroom, I collapsed onto the couch. Lady made me drink something that tasted of allspice, and I crashed to the sound of Queen playing “Tie Your Mother Down” on the house PA—Lady’s comfort music. When I woke, Lady was still there.
“How long was I out? What time is it?”
She checked her watch. “About seven hours, Jack. It’s just past eight.” “I’ve got to go,” I said, and tried to stand. I got halfway up and sat back down.
“Easy, Jack. How do you feel?”
“Like I just spent ten hours in a mosh pit.” “In here, I mean.” She tapped her chest.
A rush of images spun into my head. “Raw,” I said. “But not weak, if that makes any sense.”
“You and Cassius now share a unique bond. If the sutures remain, that is.”
I remembered the scar I’d seen in her shadow days ago and found it again now. “You’ve had your own shadow surgery, haven’t you?”
“Some other time, Jack. Right now, much as I love you for trying . . . well, you nearly died last night.”
She was right. The task was bigger than me. Bigger than all of us, maybe. And the hole I seemed to be digging was getting awfully damned big.
I could probably figure out how to get me and my friends out of here.
But that didn’t help Henry, or the city, or the Strata.
Dad always said if the prize mattered, you doubled down.
More mean-street wisdom I’d maybe get a chance to thank him for someday.
Of course, his mean-street wisdom had gotten a lot of young men killed.
“Brach’s going to answer for Henry,” I finally said, and stood up slowly this time. “So I can’t be lying around here all day.”
“Well, you can get out of bed,” she said, “but the sutures I’ve given you are temporary.
A wound of the heart—which is what I believe you suffer—only truly heals when you make peace with whatever caused the wound in the first place.
When you do, the tear will begin to heal on its own.
Until then, any undue strain could rip it open again.
If that happens”—she paused—“I don’t think you’ll survive it.
You’re just not versed enough yet to deal with such a wound. ”
I gave her a hug and spared five minutes to take a red-hot shower in the greenroom bathroom (always perked me up), then grabbed some cold chicken tenders from the kitchen fridge—best way to eat them, if you ask me.
Church and Chuey were at the classic-metal table, trading concert stories—that was a favorite pastime at the Horse. I couldn’t take them with me to see Emaline, so I told them I was just ducking back to my flat for a fresh shirt and maybe to search Henry’s place for anything that could help us.
Then I gathered Cassius, who’d been standing guard at the Horse door, and together we headed over to my appointment with Emaline, hoping she would have better news than I did.