Chapter 17
He was dreaming.
Definitely dreaming.
Had to be . . .
Had to . . .
No, that didn’t quite work anymore.
Dreams had a fogginess to them, an ethereal quality that even if his brain told him they were real, the rest of his body claimed the contrary.
This didn’t. It was crisp. Vivid.
But unlike the last time he thought he was dreaming—lying in an alley, soaking the concrete, staring at a discarded piece of lettuce that stubbornly clung to the side of the dumpster by his head—where he existed now lacked the visceral weight of life.
Maxim looked around. He stood on a vast expanse of shining black marble.
Above and around him, sparks burned like rapidly growing trees and shone so brightly that they reflected off the stone.
In the bright flashes, he caught the silhouettes of ruined houses and ancient castles.
Shapes of people formed around him and wisped into smoke like blown-out candles.
Stars exploded in endless fractals that grew into insectoid legs and then dissolved.
Who knew the afterlife was metal.
Maxim caught sight of a particularly alluring tower whose wobbly walls and crenellated roof seemed likely to contain whimsical secrets. He began to walk in its direction, but paused with one foot lifted.
There was something he was forgetting. That probably wasn’t the correct word. Forgetting was accidentally leaving a memory behind. It was getting up with his gloves still on a bench, or letting the face of a childhood playmate soften and fade with time.
This was harsher. There was a fracture deep in his chest where he’d once felt whole, but now it was as if something had been forcibly ripped from him.
He put a hand to his sternum and pressed hard. It was strange to expect the familiar sensation of bone and flesh and a thrumming heartbeat and instead touch only a muddy warmth.
When he glanced down, he frowned. He was blurry. Faded. If he bent forward, he could see the sharp edges and arched vaults of architecture through his stomach.
There was an eerie calmness to death. An unexpected emptiness, too.
He’d expected to at least see a distant ancestor or the class hamster from fourth grade, but the landscape seemed barren and even the humanoid silhouettes floated away and out of reach as if they were hesitant to come too close.
A few reached out with spectral fingers before darting backward like scared cats.
Was it him? Was he the problem?
“I could feel you.”
Maxim choked and spun around. “Pardon?” He hadn’t heard anyone come up behind him, although in this place, would a footfall even register the same?
It was reassuring at least that he wasn’t here by himself.
This was what he expected: an afterlife with actual life in it, not just hints and teasing outlines.
The man who’d spoken was shorter and slighter than Maxim.
He too looked faded, as if his skin and his hair and his plaid flannel shirt had been diluted.
He stared at Maxim harder, seemingly unaware that his abrupt statement could have come across as awkward and inappropriate.
Unless that was just the way of things in death; who had time to care about tact in a place like this?
They could have met before though, and Maxim had just forgotten.
Maybe that was it. The man did seem oddly familiar.
“Her magic,” he continued. “It’s in you.” His dark eyes ticked down and he stared at Maxim’s stomach and the scar hidden behind his clothing.
Unease prickled up the back of Maxim’s neck. The non-air around him suddenly felt colder, the non-sky a little darker. A swirling figure drifted past where the man stood and reached out only to snatch its arm back as if it had spotted a venomous snake.
“What do you mean?” Maxim said slowly.
“It’s easy to recognize.” The man flashed a short, wistful smile. “A parent never forgets.”
For all the lack of sensation in this space, Maxim’s body must still have contained blood. It turned to ice as it raced up his spine.
Fuck. This was him. The murderer himself.
And of course, that was why the man looked familiar.
He had Pippa’s overbite and her molasses-colored hair that crested in a wave over his high forehead.
His eyes, though large like hers, were closer to black and lacked the warmth Maxim had come to love.
There was an unnerving edge to him too, as if he wanted to be moving but had been forced to stand still.
Maxim fought an overwhelming urge to put more distance between them.
“I was so proud of her when she first showed her potential,” the Devil in Plaid said. “Even as a child, she was powerful.” He spoke of his daughter as if she were a collectable trading card. The pride in his voice jarred with the lack of any emotional weight.
“When you ‘left’?” Maxim raised an eyebrow. “Funny way to describe what happened.” He expected an argument on that at least, but the absence of a reaction felt far more jarring than any anger or frustration.
“What’s she like now?” Those dark, empty eyes bored into Maxim’s.
“Happy,” Maxim found himself answering. “She’s clever and capable. And she’s happy.”
Her father made a face. “Her magic,” he pressed. “Is she strong? Can she use my magic?”
What the fuck is it to you? Maxim wanted to ask. Before he could open his mouth, the space around them shifted and Pippa’s father appeared next to Maxim. As Maxim took an involuntary step backward, a strong hand wrapped around his wrist. The grip was stronger than expected. Colder, too.
“Magic leaves traces,” her father said. “Every type. It’s like a fingerprint.
” He was looking at Maxim with a fresh excitement that was somehow worse than the apathy.
His gaze tripped around Maxim’s torso and settled around the middle of his chest. His smile widened.
Behind his even teeth, the inside of his mouth was black.
“And she’s used it on you. She has it.” He let out a long sigh and tipped his head back to grin at the inky sky.
Maxim wrenched his wrist free. Pippa’s father didn’t seem to notice or care.
“Why does it fucking matter?” Maxim finally snapped. “You won’t see her again. We’re both dead. It’s not like death has visiting hours.”
Oh, that hurt more than he’d expected. It was shocking enough to die, it was something else entirely to realize he would never see Pippa again.
He’d never watch her laugh or bask in the way her face glowed when she said she loved him.
Every thought he had of their possible future together and every idle fantasy of how it might look paraded through him: nights on the couch after dinner and slow, sleepy makeouts; waking up together and playing chicken with who would make coffee first; coming home to a place that the two of them had made together.
None of it would happen. Ever. Where once such thoughts had felt like nourishment, now they struck him like they’d been barbed.
The emptiness in his chest grew and erupted out of him in a shuddering gasp he tried valiantly to contain because like hell was he going to become emotional in front of Pippa’s evil dad.
Her father remained oblivious to any of these brutal realizations. He gave Maxim that appraising look again, as if he was deciding whether or not a pig was fat enough to sell.
“If she’s used magic on you,” he said, “enough to leave a trace as strong as there is, she must care about you.” He spoke slowly and deliberately, like speaking to a child. “And if she has my magic, then . . . Well. She’ll find you.”
The absolute arrogance of this man made bile (just the memory of it, surely) rise in Maxim’s throat.
This single person was responsible for everything in Pippa’s life she regretted, and every part of herself that had caused her misery.
He’d caused such pain and here he was, speaking about her as if he knew her.
Pippa’s father smiled again. He stayed smiling until Maxim reared back and punched him full in the face.
It was a hard hit. Darkness puffed out around her father like black pollen. He staggered backward, and when he straightened, his face was misaligned slightly, his nose crunched inward.
Maxim felt slightly guilty. Not that he’d caused this, but that it was him doing it in the first place. This was Pippa’s father; she should be the one punching the shit out of him.
Her father let loose a scream of rage and swiped at Maxim. Maxim dodged the fist easily, yet power shot out from that outstretched arm and clung to him like an ooze. He felt his guts squeeze and cramp, his muscles seized, and every bone in his body begged him to curl into a ball.
The intrusion was similar—as when Pippa had done this, he had the same sensation of someone else’s presence under his skin. Even though she’d been angry and desperate, her touch was still soft. She was catching a bird but holding it gently enough to keep it still without damaging a delicate body.
Her father’s magic was nothing of the sort. Maxim felt the sickly creep of rot, the burn of coal, the taste of rusted iron. He was a bird to be crushed and squeezed until it bled.
The smile was gone. Cracked lips pulled into a snarl.
Maxim fought past the agony in his guts, striking out again anyway. His knuckles impacted jawbone and the memory of pain radiated up his arm.
Pippa’s father was becoming blurrier. Angrier, too. His face contorted with fury, his jaw hanging crooked and his eyes as dark and empty as glossy stones. The blackness within his mouth trickled out over his chin.
The grip on guts and bone and muscle tightened. That awful rot filled Maxim’s nostrils as his body was yanked upright and held still with his arms at his sides.
“She told you, didn’t she?” Pippa’s father said. He dragged his plaid shirt sleeve over his nose and mouth, spreading the greasy black ooze across his cheek. “She must have. How I came to be here.”
Magic wrenched Maxim’s hand up to his neck so his own fingers reached clawlike for his throat.
Yeah, Maxim knew. Under this sickly power, people had been forced into violence they didn’t understand. They’d been used like puppets until their puppeteer was . . . well, he didn’t much know that part. Killed, decidedly, but the details had been vague.
Maxim closed his eyes. Maybe he should have asked Pippa for more information; something in the way her father was looking at him made him think the same was about to happen now.
What would happen if he died while already dead? Would his soul be destroyed completely? Would he shatter into the ether? If Pippa came looking for him—not that she would, not that she should—would there be anything to find?
His hand closed on his throat. The pressure of his fingernails dug into the spot where his pulse would have once thrummed.
This sucked.
This really, really sucked.
He imagined that he heard Pippa calling his name. It sounded far away and muffled, and he wondered if it was just some sick trick of the universe that now, seconds before his permanent dissolution, he’d hear her calling to him from the world of the living.
He’d take it.
His hand tightened and he braced himself for whatever horrible wrenching agony would . . .
She called his name again. It was louder, closer.
Right as he wondered if this was not, in fact, his imagination, Pippa’s father sucked in a sharp breath and released the hold on Maxim.
Maxim fell to his knees and watched as the man before him looked around wildly, prodding at his jaw and his smashed nose.
“She can’t . . . She can’t see me like this,” he gasped. The air around them both wavered, and then he was gone.
The smallest hope flickered in Maxim’s chest. If he could hear her— If her father could sense— Maybe she was—
A silhouette moved out in the starry blackness. Where the others had been meandering and aimless, this one moved with purpose. It had a familiar shape, too.
“Pippa?” he said, almost afraid to say her name out loud in case it would cause that growing hope to be blown out.
The silhouette was running to him.
Then she was there, stumbling to a halt in front of him, beautiful and exhausted and happy and holy shit she was here and the moment he wrapped her in his arms he felt that missing chunk of himself slot into place.
If he was to dissolve, perhaps it would be like this: infused with so much joy he would explode.
She hugged him back, strong arms around his waist, the pressure solidifying her existence here. It sounded like she was crying, but it could also have been him.
“Hey,” he said to her. “So I think I met your dad?”