A Trace of Moonlight (5 page)

I
’d like to say that dying was the greatest adventure I’ve ever had, but honestly? It sucked.

Forget the white clouds and the tunnel with light at the end of it or whatever concept you like, because for me it seemed to involve a shitstack of pain.

And memories. A flood of them, crashing into my mind with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer to the head. They flickered past me as though I was watching a faded movie screen, complete with dramatic slow-motion after school special moments and hyperspeed bursts until I was nearly screaming. And still they poured in, each piece captured and observed like I was catching mental butterflies.

Some I released.

Some I pinned.

Some grew teeth and devoured me.

 . . . I pirouetted upon the stage and everything was shadows and light, my limbs moving with the liquid grace of water . . .

 . . . Mother, her life shattered in my lap, pain flooding limbs grown cold and broken . . .

 . . . me, trapped in a crippled body, trapped in a painting, trapped in my own stagnation . . .

 . . . I was signing a TouchStone Contract, the pen scratching into the parchment as I traded seven years of my life to Moira, the Faery Protectorate . . .

 . . . I was a KeyStone, the echo of TouchStone bonds vibrating as they snapped into place. I could see each connection like a nick upon my soul, the OtherFolk hooking their essence into mine. I was the anchor, their lives blown over the CrossRoads like falling leaves . . .

 . . . Dark skin sliding over my shoulder, clawed and possessive, hot breath in my ear and the promise of an otherworldly pleasure like no other . . .

And then nothing at all.

I jerked into consciousness, a detached calm settling over me. Whatever those memories contained no longer concerned me. My time was done. A thin mist rose up in the darkness that reminded me of the CrossRoads, though there wasn’t a road to be found here. Or much of anything, for that matter. I glanced down to see if I could see my body below me, but there was a big fat nothing anywhere as far as I could tell.

Overall, death was rather boring.

Something jingled in my pocket. I patted down my dress, frowning when I found the bells from my dream. “And here I thought they said you couldn’t take it with you,” I muttered.

“Sometimes they’re wrong,” a voice whispered behind me. A frown twisted my mouth as I tried to place it. There was something clinical in the way I accessed the memories, sorting through them until I found what I was looking for.

 . . . Painter . . .

 . . . Cancer . . .

 . . . Betrayer . . .

 . . . he was taping my eyes shut, thrusting me into a vat of . . . succubus blood? Painting my essence onto canvas, trapping me a world of nightmares . . .

“Topher?”

“In the flesh, so to speak.”

Shuddering, I stepped away from the sound, though I couldn’t see him anywhere. “You’re hardly one of the five people I thought I’d meet.”

“You’re not in heaven,” he countered. “Yet.”

“Neither are you. In fact, you sound pretty good for someone I thought had been turned to dust ages ago.”

A ripple in the mist shaped itself into a humanoid form, the shadows darkening into a semblance of . . . something. Topher’s voice may have remained the same in the afterlife, but what was left of his body looked like it had been dragged behind a taxi during rush hour. I struggled not to flinch. I’d seen worse, after all. Maybe.

“My punishment,” he murmured, motioning at the whole of himself with a severely broken arm. “Sonja has a rather interesting sense of justice. Not that it was undeserved,” he admitted with a sad sort of resignation.

The name rolled over my tongue.

Sonja. Succubus. TouchStone.

He had been her TouchStone, bound by Contract, allowing her to feed from him in return for . . . inspiration.

I swallowed hard. The succubus had always been friendly enough to me . . . but then again, I’d helped save her . . . from this asshole, in fact. Who’d murdered at least three of her sisters and helped . . . helped . . . I shook my head as the memories rose up like furious bees.

“
Maurice
 . . .” I breathed, suddenly filled with a brilliant fury. “I guess I’m really dead, then?”

“Yes. Maurice broke your neck.”

“Seems like a dumb thing to have let him do.” I mulled this over for a minute or two, rolling around the scenario in my head. My fingers traced my collarbone and I realized my amulet was gone. I’d waltzed right into the dragon’s mouth, oblivious—and he’d killed me for it . . . Apparently my lethe-muddled self was . . .

“Too stupid to live,” I sighed. “Obviously. What was I thinking?” Probably an unfair assessment, but in hindsight, it
had
been pretty dumb. “So what now?”

“That’s up to you. If you want, I can take you the rest of the way.”

“Erm. Last time I trusted you, you, trapped me in one of those paintings.” I shook my head. “And what happens if I stay here?”

“You’ll fade away, trapped between worlds, but unable to take part in either.” He paused. “Like me.”

Eww. Not that I trusted his ass to do right by me, but the idea of staying here like some sort of zombie from
An American Werewolf in London
didn’t exactly appeal either. Besides, the only person I’d have to talk to was Topher. No thanks.

He stared at me politely as I attempted to make my decision. Not that there was much of one to be made. Ghost or afterlife. “Guess I’ll be moving on, then,” I said abruptly, though a pang of sadness hung over me. I was leaving people behind, and some things that weren’t quite right, but I suspected that would be true no matter when I left. No one ever said that death was convenient.

“Turn that way and follow the road, Abby.” He pointed behind me.

Blinking, I gazed down and realized an arching bridge of gold had appeared beneath my feet. It spanned the nothingness with a soft glow, suspended by glittering strings that hung from the mist.

“And here I thought it would be a stairway.” I didn’t really expect a reply and I didn’t get one, but as I shifted to move forward, the bells in my pocket rang out again.

“Something left to do,” Topher said, a note of curiosity in his voice. “But you don’t have to heed it if you don’t want.”

“What choice do I have? I’m
dead
. My neck was broken. You think I’ll be able to do anything, assuming I could even manage some sort of divine intervention?”

“Always a possibility,” he agreed. “But that’s a risk no matter what. It won’t be like it was before, though. It never is.”

“Easy enough for you to say.” The fact I was actually arguing the point with a zombie left a bad taste in my mouth. Besides, he’d lost most of his head. Some things you just can’t come back from.

The bells jingled again, insistent.

“Time’s up,” Topher said. “The bridge forward, or the stairs down.”

I took out the bells to look at them again, shivering as I saw the red thread.

“Ion,” I breathed.

The dream I’d had with him suddenly made a terrible amount of sense and dread pooled in my gut. “Is he dead too?”

The weight of them suddenly seemed to drag my
hand downward. Topher didn’t answer and I knew this was my call. I sighed, looping one leg over the rail. “I never was one for stairs.”

Topher cocked a rictus of a grin at me, his rotting lips curling in that old familiar way. “Tell Sonja I left something for her in our old place. She’ll know what it means.” At my frown, he shrugged. “A parting gift.”

I squeezed the bells tight. “Seems to be a lot of that going around,” I muttered. “Second floor, ladies’ lingerie.”

I tipped myself forward and plunged into the darkness below.

“Oh, gods above and below, she’s breathing!” Fire filled my lungs as I sucked in one gasping breath and another, firmly convinced I had a mountain sitting on my chest. A buzzing of voices surrounded me as I was lifted up. I tried to say something, but the words came out as a muffled grunt, my throat burning with the effort.

“Hush, love,” Talivar murmured in my ear. “Your throat was damaged during the attack. I don’t want you hurting yourself more.” I blinked against the sudden rush of light, my eyes tearing as I tried to open them, but the swirling cacophony around us blinded me. In the haze I caught a mix of courtiers and warriors, silver armor and the distinctive green robes of elvish healers.

Talivar shifted me in his arms before placing me on some sort of litter. I saw a large pillow being carried by one of the healers, something small and white curled on it.

“Phin,” I whispered hoarsely, trying to sit up. Pain lanced down my spine and I whimpered.

“He’ll be all right, Abby. He gave a lot to save you.” The rest of Talivar’s words were lost to me when the litter was raised and I spiraled into the darkness.

Unicorn horns are proof against death itself, but not against the hangover that death leaves behind. My head throbbed worse than the time I’d spent an evening drowning my sorrows in a bottle of absinthe with my BFF, Melanie, after a disastrous one-night stand with a vampire.

But I was alive and that was something. I also had my memories back—everything before I’d sipped the lethe and everything after, although some of the later memories were blurry. At least they were there. Apparently Styx water didn’t cover the possibility of resurrection. As loopholes went it was a shitty road to take, but I’m not one for looking a gift horse . . . unicorn . . . in the mouth.

What I didn’t have was my voice. Oh, the healers had been quick enough to say it would come back. Eventually. For now, though, I’d been left with a set of angry red welts where the chains had strangled me and a throaty whisper that would make a chain-smoking whore blush. For an old fuck, Maurice had a hell of a lot of strength.

With his theft of the Key to the CrossRoads, the entire Fae kingdom was in an uproar. Although I hadn’t seen the Queen, I could guess at her mindset. For both her prisoner and the Key to have escaped in one day was sure to stick in her throat.

At least she still had her Tithe, I thought sourly. Traditionally, every seven years a mortal was sacrificed to Hell by the Fae. Hell got a human soul, and in return they’d leave Faerie alone. As situations went, it was win-win for everyone.

Everyone except the mortal, of course.

According to Talivar, Faerie had given up the practice once True Thomas had come along and chosen to align himself with the Fae. He became the first TouchStone and tipped the power balance among the OtherFolk, so the Tithes were no longer necessary.

Until I agreed to sacrifice myself by making a bargain with a daemon, offering my own soul as Tithe for a chance to save my friends.

Not one of my wiser moves.

“Guess the road to hell really is paved with good intentions,” I rasped, wincing at the way my voice sounded.

My fingers looped through the length of Phin’s mane as I stroked the little unicorn’s head. Not that he looked like much of a unicorn these days. He had assured me the horn would grow back in time, but given how long unicorns lived there was a pretty good chance I’d never see it restored to its former glory.

For now, the smallest of nubs remained. The rest of it had been used up in the effort to save me. I sighed, but didn’t touch it. It looked a bit raw around the edges and I had no wish to cause him more distress than I already had. For now he continued to sleep most of the days away, but this was apparently also normal.

“Battle scars,” I murmured, a half smile touching my lips when he nuzzled my hand, his eyes still closed. Inwardly, I worried at the lack of his usual sarcastic response, but maybe we both needed time to recover our sense of humor.

I’d been resting for several days now, and with the worst of the injuries out of the way and the knowledge that I was alive came a certain restlessness. My comfy little nook in the tree palace now felt more like a prison,
its golden walls seeming to close in a little more each morning.

And then there was Ion.