Afterlife (Second Eden #1) (3 page)

Ms. Watanabe vanished into the back of her shop. Amber turned at the counter and inspected the long lines of blossoms flowing toward the front door. A few swayed slowly beneath the languid turn of the ceiling fans above them.

She scanned the rows, lips pressed into a line. Only she and the flowers stood in the store at that moment, yet the air was stiff, uncomfortable, like she shared it with more than just a few pretty petals.
 

“Amber?”

She started at Ms. Watanabe’s voice and whipped around. The woman shuffled behind the counter with a bouquet cradled in her arms. Black calla lilies weren’t truly black, more like the dark, fleshy purple of a dog’s tongue rimmed by scarlet that smoldered against a bright light, but they were enchanting and strong and different, and for that she loved them better than the more common rose or chrysanthemum.

Amber still remembered the first day she and Toby wandered into Ms. Watanabe’s store and stole a black calla for their makeshift fort. Ms. Watanabe chased them half a mile down the highway before they finally lost her in the woods. Toby felt guilty and wanted her to pay for it. She was too scared at the time and refused. Amber didn’t find out until after the accident, but he had snuck away anyway and paid for it himself.

Ms. Watanabe gingerly wrapped the blooms in white paper. Amber leaned over and sniffed the petals.
 

“You won’t smell anything, honey. These lilies don’t have a scent,” she said as she flipped her reading glasses on and punched a few keys on the register.

“I know. I like to try and see if I can smell them anyway.”

The woman smirked and totaled out the order. Amber dug into her bag and paid with some of the money her mom left Ms. Flannery. She tucked the flowers beneath her arm and headed for the door.

“Oh, Amber?”
 

Amber leaned against the door. It groaned open, and the little bell sang a clanging tune. “Yes, Ms. Watanabe?”

“Say hi to Toby for me.”

“I will. Thanks, Ms. Watanabe.”

The door clunked shut behind her, leaving Amber alone in the autumn save for the occasional whooshing car as it zipped down the road. It didn’t take long to reach the graveyard from the florist’s. Its gate hung open during the day for visitors, so she slipped into the grounds easily enough.
 

Manicured lawns studded with marble gravestones gridded rolling hills sloping toward a small lake. Angels stood on some of the headstones while others wrapped their arms around obelisks. Still other seraphs were barely more than rubble, covered in lichen and forgotten by the world and the families who put them there.

Portsmouth was an old town with a long history and a lot of people buried there for a very long while. She passed some angled, sad tombstones marred with the blackening of age and cordoned by rusty chains. Those old stones gradually gave way to straighter ones. Some even had fresh flowers placed before them.
 

At the very end of the cemetery, where the crowded plots gave way to empty ones waiting for their caskets, she came to a small headstone nearly flush with the grass.
 

With all the care in the world, Amber placed the lilies on the marble and smiled. She had no idea how much time passed while she stood over that grave, but while she did, she didn’t speak a word. Every so often a goose would honk as it swam in circles on the nearby lake. But other than that, it was just the two of them.
 

Amber sighed and rolled onto the grass, her hand resting on the tombstone’s cool face. One of the lilies tickled her knuckles as the breeze pushed it across her skin. She smiled and passed her fingertips over the letters etched into the stone. “Happy birthday, Toby. I miss you.”

Six crows squawked in a lazy circle beneath the soot-stained clouds drifting through the night. The birds were invisible wraiths against the backdrop of the sky, their long, dark wings hidden to all but one pair of steely blue, unblinking eyes. Bone Man watched the crows glide, noted each feather tremble in the breeze and wet, crimson eye twitch as it drank in the world far below.

Breath slipped from his nose and flowed down his lips. He grimaced at the prickling on his skin, how the heat from his body lingered behind his mask and dampened his nose and cheeks. Every mote of movement, every twitch and tremble brought with it a lance of agony driving through his heart. Such was the price of power he paid in service to his master, and while the torture of his curse tormented him at first, he grew to accept his pain, even relish in it until finally one day he woke and it was what sustained him.
 

Bone Man cracked his knuckles. The pale gloves covering his long fingers almost glowed in Afterlife’s dusk. Dust swirled in little trails through the Black Palace’s sweeping courtyard. Dying light toyed with the grains, gave them a glimmer and a sparkle, made them seem more grandiose than the fine detritus that spread across their world.
 

The plaza’s basalt sidewalks braided one another like a bed of vipers. Bridges of dark marble arched over quiet streams of crystalline water. Trees carved from obsidian spread their razor leaves over grounds composed entirely of inky grains of mica and quartz. This inner sanctum often stole the breath of those lucky enough to view it, and if they were truly lucky, they would survive their stay in the palace long enough to speak the tale of the archduke’s black garden.

He stood at attention, more a feature of this place than its guest. A speck landed on his dark suit. He sneered, passing his slick tongue across polished teeth. He flicked the dust from his lapel and watched it twirl into obscurity.

One of his crows landed on a black elm and cawed, beating its wings against the greying feathers of its chest. Bone Man casually clenched his cane. He screwed it into the pile of loose stones ringing his polished oxfords and listened to the crunch of the rocks against polished wood.

Heavy boots clunked on marble. His gaze slid to the arches walling the massive plaza. A man pierced the veil of shadows beneath a nearby archway and entered the garden. His boots were high and polished to perfection. Dark pants bore a ruby stripe down the hem, the only color in an otherwise black on black uniform. Like all men of high status, he wore a tailcoat trimmed with shimmering black, fastened from the collar to the waist. Four metal studs on his epaulets signaled his rank in the archduke’s army. The metal ring pinned to his breast indicated that he sat on the Iron Council, and through him the archduke ruled.

The general licked his lips. His nose twitched, the thick, waxed mustache beneath it wriggling like a nervous caterpillar. Beads of sweat so tiny they wouldn’t have weighed an eyelash glistened on his pale temples.
 

Bone Man’s lips curled in a smile hidden by his mask. No matter how high they climbed, no matter how still they stood, no matter how arrogantly they viewed themselves, their fear always betrayed them.
Always
.

Bone Man made no move to acknowledge General Oscar Kelly, although he knew him well. The general waited. He stiffened, his thin lips slowly coming together into a flat, white line.

“It is proper to salute a general of the Iron Council when he greets you, Hound,” Oscar growled.

Bone Man’s unblinking gaze slowly slid to the general. “But this hound has only fangs to greet you with, Oscar.”

The general inched back. He sneered, clearing his throat. “This disrespect from you won’t be forgotten.”

“What do you want,
General
?”

The man pinched his shoulders back, hands fastened tight to the small of his back. General Oscar Kelly, one of the first souls to turn on the Soul Assembly and swear loyalty to the archduke. Oscar was a hard man. Softer once, but when he discovered his lover with another and exiled the woman to the Deep, what emotions he had vanished with her into the dark horizon. It was then he turned bitter, and then he came to the archduke agreeing to the glory of the Ardent Revolution and the new world it would birth.

Oscar Kelly eyed a crow as it drifted into the plaza. “You’re aware of our expansion into the south. As the mortal world grows, more die, and Afterlife’s avenues swell with the burden of souls. The city’s continued, stable development is imperative to maintaining control of the populous and marginalizing the Fool’s Errand. We will never end the rebellion if the city is not content with our master’s rule, and the city will not be content while new souls wallow in squalor!”

Bone Man pivoted, his heel grinding in the grains as he finally, fully faced Oscar. Another crow landed near the man and watched quietly. The four birds remaining airborne lazily descended.
 

Each slight movement brought with it excruciating pain, but Bone Man relished the agony. Afterlife was vibrant when he suffered, something more than a throbbing hive of filth and endless noise.

General Kelly held his breath and stared intently as Bone Men took one measured step after another toward the man. Each stride sent a lance of pain tearing through Bone Man’s legs. Each slight movement of the wind against his neck burnt like boiling water thrown against his skin. He reached the two short stairs leading to the arch where Oscar waited.
 

The general took another step back, his body nearly swallowed in the arch’s shadow. Between the darkness behind him and the black he wore, he was little more than a pale, floating head glistening with nervous sweat.

 
Bone Man’s grin widened behind the mask. A breeze sighed into the plaza. It curled around them, whispering, teasing.

“Stop that!” General Kelly’s calm demeanor shattered as he shook his head and stomped to the upper step. “You’ll not haunt me with that tainted power! The archduke has given you explicit orders to respect my authority, and I’ll have you heel or face the consequences. You should be careful, Bone Man, a master loves his dog but holds his friends’ opinions higher than the mongrel’s bark.”
 

The whispering winds silenced. Bone Man stepped onto the lower stair. He pressed a finger to his mask’s brow and motioned for the general to continue.

“Excellent.” Oscar regained his composure and scowled down his nose at Bone Man. “As I was saying, I dispatched a platoon of blackjackets to eliminate the dust devils harassing our expansion. Most of the savages fled into the Deep or dusted themselves before we could capture them, but we did manage to take one prisoner.”

“Dust devils are never captured,” Bone Man said. “They wanted you to have him.”

“My initial thoughts as well, but the fool is so far gone to the Deep I wonder if they didn’t just abandon him. He’s raving mad. Practically feral.”

Bone Man ground his teeth. His knuckles cracked on the cane. “They still would not have left one of their own behind. Could he be with Faye?”

“No, no, he isn’t with the Fool’s Errand. Doubt he even remembers Afterlife after being exposed to the Deep’s call so long, and she’s never been one to mix and mingle with them anyway. She’s an old soul, part of the old city. You know how they despised the dust devils in those days.”

Bone Man loosened his grip. He stepped back onto the grains coating the plaza. “Then I have no interest in helping you.”

The general’s cheeks reddened, and he marched down the stairs, jabbing a finger at Bone Man’s mask. “Every word that I am telling you is important and you will listen to it. I am the general here, not you. You are the archduke’s hound, and you take orders. You do
not
give them!”

Bone Man’s cane stilled. His gaze locked on the man.
 

General Kelly smiled like he’d just won a boxing match against a reigning champion. “Now then. My spirits can’t get through this man’s addled mind. Normally, I would simply dust a dust devil without a second thought about it, but this one is, I don’t know,
different
. He’s cursed with the spirit, but his touch on our minds isn’t like anything we’ve ever felt, even among our most talented spirits. There’s knowledge in there, locked away as it is in a madman’s skull.”

Bone Man cocked his head.
 

“And he carried a relic with him,” Oscar whispered, his mustache wriggling.

Bone Man stiffened. “What kind of relic?” He edged toward the general, his voice rippling with excitement. “Let me see it.”

General Kelly snapped his fingers, and a whirling vortex exploded behind him. Silky smoke condensed into a soldier sweating more than he should in the cool evening air. The man carried a small box in his trembling hands. The container was constructed of a dark wood and bore not a single unique marking, etch, symbol, or otherwise extraordinary feature save the simple black pearl capping its lid. It was worn. Old. Tired.

Something like this was barely more than trash in a city like Afterlife. But if it came from the Deep? A pleasurable tingle raced down Bone Man’s spine.
 

 
“Do you know what this is?” the general asked, taking the box from his soldier, who promptly burst into a cloud of smoke and vanished.
 

 
Like a striking serpent, Bone Man’s power latched onto the box and ripped it from Oscar’s grip. The container hung suspended between them, slowly rotating. Bone Man’s crows surrounded them. They cawed and squawked as they beat their wings excitedly.
 

No matter how carefully Bone Man’s power prodded the container, he couldn’t identify where or how the box opened. Not so much as a single seal announced itself to him.

“You won’t be able to open it using the poltergeist curse,” the general said. “I had some try already. If they could have, I wouldn’t be here interacting with you, now would I?” He frowned at the box and shook his head. “I’ll not approach the archduke until I know for sure what this artifact contains. We don’t want a repeat of the Jelani incident.”

No one in the archduke’s tight circle would ever make that mistake again, not after General Jelani’s supposed relic from the Deep turned out to be a lockbox full of dynamite and nails from the Fool’s Errand. Jelani’s screams could still be heard coming from the palace basement on quiet nights.