The Accidental Afterlife of Thomas Marsden (11 page)

“Well done, Marigold. Your turn, Thomas. You must think of what you want to happen. Wish for it with your entire being and purpose.”
Whatever manner of being you are.

He tried. With each attempt, Deadnettle felt frustration and hopelessness rise within him, wave upon wave. What
had
he been thinking, fetching the boy, going to such effort to lure him? Why not simply leave him where he was, in his filthy hovel, thieving from the dead? This was never going to work. The wind stubbornly refused to shift, and the pebbles stayed plain gray, and he could not turn a mushroom into a rose or silence a bird in a nearby tree. For that last, hope had lit one brief second as if the feeling were sunlight, but then the thing had begun twittering again, smug and taunting.

The boy had no faery magic. None at all, and this was the more damning to believe because it meant that Wintercress, darling, beloved Wintercress, had done exactly what she'd set out to do. She had not made a single mistake, left the faintest scrap of magic in the changeling when she had performed the spell.

So right, in that. So perfect. And yet, about Thistle, so wrong. Oh, he had been strong, yes. That was true. Had shifted the winds while still a newborn hatchling, younger than anyone Deadnettle had ever known. By the time he had neared the age of twelve, when all faeries reached their fullest powers, he was very nearly terrifying. All the more so because he'd been a gentle, happy boy when the weight of his duty wasn't burdening him.

He had covered the sun with the moon. Now the moon was fading, fading with each passing night. Deadnettle felt as the moon must, shrinking away bit by bit. He would
never see the final day of April again. He would never be closer to his home than he was this very moment unless Thomas somehow succeeded.

Thistle had not been strong enough. That Thomas would be was a ludicrous wish, a desperate one, and Deadnettle clung to that desperation as he would a cloak to keep him warm.

•   •   •

There was no light in the cellar save a single candle, and Deadnettle could sense Marigold watching him by its light. Outside, dawn had long since broken, and sound from upstairs indicated that soon Mordecai would summon one of them for his first gathering of the day. By now the society ladies would have taken their tea and had their hair properly coiffed to venture out for a meeting with this dead aunt or that one.

Marigold maintained her gaze. Deadnettle shrugged. Well, let her. As with Thomas, he was not about to pester her, nor explain himself before he was asked to. It was mildly more forgivable in Thomas's case; he had an excuse for ceaseless questions, whether or not he voiced them. Marigold, however, should know better.

Deadnettle rose and checked, one by one, on the others. All the ones left. Mordecai had dragged more than two hundred faeries from their home, and despite his orders,
new hatchlings had not been born at the rate older faeries had . . . left them.

It simply wasn't that easy.

At eight o'clock, when Mordecai was safely ensconced in his study with brandy and a pipe to celebrate another successful day, Deadnettle lifted the latch on the door, a silent Marigold at his heels.

“You're late,” said Thomas. He seemed in good spirits. Excellent. Perhaps that would help. Indeed, perhaps that was a reason for Deadnettle's own lessening powers.

Church bells rang out through the night.

And those were another.

“Apologies,” said Deadnettle, forcing a smile, finding that it came easier than some other forms of magic. “We cannot
quite
come and go as we please. Close, I grant you, but we must be careful.”

“Did you have a pleasant day?” Marigold asked. It had certainly
been
a pleasant day, from what Deadnettle had gathered from overheard conversations as Mordecai greeted his guests in the Society's entrance hall. Warm, with a shining sun. But with each new degree of warmth, the approaching summer . . .

He shook himself. Good spirits. It was worth attempting.

“Well,” Thomas answered, “I've been wondering, see. If my mum—this Wintercress woman—knew about this
stuff and made Thistle 'n' me, why hasn't it worked? More, why can't we ask her? Do one of 'em séance things and get her to tell us what to do next. Been trying that business with the wind all day and I still can't do it.”

It took quite some care for Deadnettle to keep his smile in place.
This Wintercress woman.
She had been a queen! But Thomas had never known her as such, never known her at all. He knew her only as a name and a face on a silver coin. “Because we can't,” he said. “We cannot speak to those of our kind who have left us.”

“Why not?”

“It is difficult to explain, particularly since we did not make the rules; we can only live by them. Did humans invent the sun or the turning of the seasons? No. But”—and Deadnettle found that, once again, his smile was very nearly real—“I choose to think that we live so long, when we finally die we don't wish to be awoken again.”

“So, only humans, then.”

Marigold giggled. Deadnettle stifled a groan, and Thomas stared at them both. “What's so funny?”

“Deadnettle had to bark like a dog for a whole half hour once.” Marigold laughed again.

Yes, yes, it had been very amusing. Before she could get too carried away with the story, Deadnettle drew Thomas over to a soft-looking patch of grass and seated them. He
explained, as best he could, that the faeries could only act as bridges between the lands of the living and the dead, but a bridge does not know the hopes and dreams and thoughts of those whose footsteps pass across it. A human soul would only venture over the bridge when called by another human and, yes, a dog by another dog. The horrible yips and yaps between the living one and Deadnettle had echoed through the whole Society. The snapping thing had kept trying to get under the table.

“Beasts don't like me, neither,” said Thomas. Deadnettle blinked.

That was curious.

“So you see, Mordecai needs us, but, loath as I am to admit it, his presence is also necessary for what he forces us to do. Or at least, that of a human to do the summoning. Humans gather together in cities”—filthy, stinking cities rife with iron—“and dogs roam the streets in howling packs. All creatures wish to be with their own. And now we must get to work.”

The air seemed to Deadnettle a touch less heavy, the stars brighter, and the moon also. And, oh, how he longed to say that it made a difference, the budding leaves on the trees bending to Thomas's will, a crop of mushrooms transforming to an entire bouquet of roses red as blood.

He longed to say that.

Once more, they parted when the moon was high overhead, another sliver shaved from its side as neatly as if someone had sliced it with a razor, its handle inlaid with opal or mother-of-pearl. Deadnettle often saw such things, shining in the windows of gentlemen's shops, and felt for the precious stones in their own metal prisons.

They were halfway back to Shoreditch when Marigold finally spoke. “You believe it will kill him. Trying to open the gateways. As it did Thistle.”

There was no question in her voice, but there was anger, simmering, ready to bubble over.

“I think it's a possibility. A likelihood. You know the gateways can only be opened by someone of royal, magical faery blood.”

“Yes.”

“Thomas's is too diluted. This was the effect of the spell Wintercress cast. Picture, if you will, a glass of seawater. It is water, and it is salt. Imagine, if you will, pouring half the water into another, empty glass, but keeping all the salt in the first. Indeed, you do not have to imagine such a thing. You could do it, if you wished.”

“The salt is the magic?”

“It is, and I am attempting to discover whether a few small grains remain within Thomas, without spilling a drop of his blood. I fear, however, that when we actually
need
his blood, we will have to pour out every last drop of . . . of water to find them. Even then, there may be none.”

“Deadnettle!” She turned on him quickly enough to stumble on the slick cobbles underfoot, and he caught her by a thin arm. Glaring, she wrested it from his grasp. “Why start this, then, if we're going to fail?”

“For you—you and the others,” he said calmly. Pain struck through him, sudden as lightning, and his knees shook with weakness. “And for me.” Ah. That was better. Deadnettle breathed deeply. “I am the last of us born in the old country who both remembers it and is strong enough—just—to lead you, Marigold. Without me to guide you back, it is likely you will never find the way. And I . . . I should like to die knowing I did everything I could. I will live another two moons, three at the most. If, beyond hope and reason, we are able to return to our home in that time, it will heal me. Even a lessening of pain, I would be grateful for. But more than that, I
must
know we tried everything. Do you understand?”

Slowly, she nodded. “It doesn't seem fair.”

“It isn't,” he agreed. “If it comforts you, I believe he knows what is being asked of him. I will make certain of it, before the attempt is made. But we have not hidden what happened to Thistle, and despite being raised by humans, he is no fool.”

Their footsteps slowed as they walked the long, wide street that would lead them almost to the Society. In heavy silence, they turned the corner into a narrow road and Deadnettle yanked Marigold into the shadows.

He'd heard . . .

Something . . .

“Deadnettle?” Marigold whispered, and he clasped a hand over her mouth, his ears pricking.

That was not Mordecai skirting the redbrick building; Deadnettle knew the sorcerer's footsteps too well. Nor was it another faery, who would be lighter, near soundless.

Marigold's eyes widened as she heard a locked window rattle in its frame.

“What are you doing in there, Mordecai?” asked the man to himself, to the night, which gave no reply. “What is your secret?”

Deadnettle knew that voice. He had heard it before, in a theater hung with mustard-colored drapes.

It was a voice whose owner could not be allowed to discover them. He would not free them. He would use them, or kill them as revenge on Mordecai. It was the voice of a human, and humans could not be trusted.

It was the voice of the spiritualist Jensen.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Dreams, Again

N
o! None of this is
necessary, these foolish tests Deadnettle is having you perform. You do not need any of this, Thomas. You are different, and it is that difference that will save us. Wake up and hear me! You must go home, Thomas. The truth is there.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Blood and Bark

T
HOMAS AWOKE IN COMPLETE DARKNESS.
He pushed the door of the tomb open a crack and a blade of daylight fell across the floor.

He'd made it rather plush in here, if he did say so himself, with a blanket thicker'n all the ones he'd slept on his whole life put together, and two thick pillows besides. Food, he could find anywhere, apples and pies from barrow-men and market stalls. His fingers searched the little pile in the corner and came up with a lump of cheese, which made a nicer breakfast than Lucy's watery gruel any day of the week.

Whoever rested—eternally—in the tomb didn't seem to mind Thomas being there. It felt, well,
friendly
was the
word for it. He'd enough coins in his pocket to spend every night of the rest of his life in that posh hotel, but it felt wrong, what with the faeries in their cellar, and so he'd returned to where he'd slept before meeting Deadnettle that first time.

Besides, some nosy parker at the hotel might've wondered where Thomas was getting his shillings, called the coppers on him, and Thomas was very good at slipping in and out of graveyards unnoticed.

He peered out through the crack. A branch, studded with new leaves, cut across the sliver of sky. Thomas gritted his teeth and concentrated, keeping his eyes open, hard as it was, so he'd know if he'd done it.

No such luck.

But it wasn't luck, was it? It was skill, a faery skill, and Thomas wasn't a faery. Not a faery and not a human. Something strangely in between, entirely alone.

“I'll come back later,” he said to the coffin, as he did each time he left. It felt the polite and proper thing to do.
As you like
, he imagined it whispering back to him. If he was a proper faery, maybe it really would.

Steering well clear of Shoreditch—however amusing it was to think of what the mad sorcerer would do if he saw Thomas walking about in daylight, looking for all the world like a dead faery—Thomas walked through
London, a London quite unlike the one he'd always known. It was an odd thought, that there could be lots of different cities layered one over another to make one whole one, like a cake in a bakery window. There was Thomas's London, of nighttime and graveyards and filth, and this pretty one, with spiky roofs and houses white as sugar and ladies in taffeta.

There was the faeries' London too, a prison whose iron spires were as burning needles to their skin and whose bells rang out like rifle shots.

The river ran under his feet. Thomas leaned against the railing in the middle of the bridge, peering down. Thistle was down there, Marigold'd told him. That's what they did with the ones who
left
. Graves got dug up, as Thomas well knew, and hidden things got found, but no one was going to rake about on the bottom of the great black Thames.

“Hullo, Charley,” said Thomas, nearing that selfsame pond where Charley liked to sail his little boat. But there was no boat today. Charley was sat on a rock at the edge, halfway through an enormous mutton pie.

“Thomas!” Gravy sprayed onto his shoes. “Hullo, mate. How're the faeries? That Marigold's a corker. Funny thing, ain't it, them being your family, and that whole business about the other one. 'S'like you're dead, but not. Not many people as get to walk around eating sausages during the afterlife. Least, I don't think so.”

“That's the truth,” said Thomas, for they were his family. Marigold and Deadnettle, and Wintercress even though she was dead, and Thistle, in an odd sort of way, and all the others he had only glimpsed, but whose names he knew. And whom he wanted to save.

“You should come home, y'know. You could still help the faeries, but Silas and Lucy'd be right pleased. I told 'em you could look after yourself and you'd come back soon, just like you asked, but they's worried.”

Lucy, Thomas could believe. “Silas tired of doing all the digging 'imself?”

Charley laughed. “Not going to say that ain't a part of it, now that you ask. I helped him out last night, two pairs of hands being better than one, you know. Gave me something to do, seeing as I can't sail my boats in the dark, but he kept going on about ‘finding my bones.' Says I'm not near as good at it as you.”

Much as he'd disliked the grave robbing, Thomas allowed himself a smug smile. He had been good at it. Many an evening there was food on the table because he'd picked a good one after Silas'd turned up nothing but dirt and worms.

“Listen,” Thomas began slowly, unsure of quite how much to tell Charley of the story. “If you had to do something proper dangerous, but it was the right thing to do, would you?”

“Gracious, Thomas, what're they asking you to do? S'pose that'd depend on what it was, y'know. Ain't been a tight spot yet I couldn't wriggle out of, and there've been plenty! But coppers haven't nicked me so far.” He lifted his pie as if raising a mug of beer, then took a large bite. “Long may it continue.”

Thomas shook his head. It wasn't that sort of danger. Deadnettle hadn't said as much, but Thomas was no fool, even if he couldn't do their poxy faery magic. Trying to open the doorway had killed Thistle, hadn't it?

“You all right, Thomas?”

“Tell Silas you've got some other business tonight. Come back to see the faeries with me. This magic business isn't working, and you just said yourself, ain't never been a spot of bother you couldn't escape. It's like hands, ain't it? Two brains is better than one.”

•   •   •

It felt to Thomas as if there were two halves of him walking back across the bridge, shrunken by the hugeness of the river and the buildings ahead. Like the city itself, split in two by a thick line. He could go tell the faeries to eat an onion; they'd chucked him out, so why help them when it could be the end of him? But if he
could
do it, he'd save the faeries
and
show 'em he was better than the special one, the one they'd kept. He just needed a bit more practice, is all, to
get the hang of the magic business. There'd never been a thing so far he couldn't learn. Lucy'd said he'd taken to his numbers and letters faster than anyone she'd known.

And that Mordecai chap, he was human, not even half a faery, and he'd managed to learn some kind of magic, powerful enough to open the gateway and trap the faeries in London.

Well, if Thomas had time, p'raps not much of it, and more coin in his pocket than he needed, he was going to spend both. He whiled away the afternoon in a theater of amusements, candlelight catching on the gilt and paste as tumblers flipped about on the stage and a man made a wooden doll talk with his own voice.

Thomas paid very, very close attention to the magicians and illusionists, leaning forward in his seat, eyes on their hands. Right, so it was a different sort of magic than what the faeries had, but it
was
magic. Things did not always have to be what they seemed. Stories did not always have to be believed. Rules could always be broken.

After that, he had himself seated at a table laid with proper linens and silver, promising the waiter that his mum would be there to join him any moment. Curiously, however, she hadn't appeared by the time he'd cleared his plate of sizzling steak and fried potatoes, or scooped the last of the ice from a china bowl. The man went so far as
to offer to help Thomas find her, but Thomas silenced him with a shiny half crown and dashed when his back was turned.

The moon and the sun were both in the sky, one rising, one falling. He counted the time by the church bells once more. Thomas made his way to the park, picking his way through the elegant city folk enjoying the spring. He was early, but they'd turn up soon enough. Alone, he practiced bits of faery magic, or tried to. Over and over, he tried all the things they'd showed him. This was why he hadn't asked Charley to come to the theater, just so's he could have this bit of time to himself.

“What
are
you doing, Tom?”

Thomas jumped. A stone dropped from his hand. “Er. Um.”

“Well, that explains everything, that does.” Charley grinned. “Or not. You're trying that trick with the silver, ain't you? Can you do it? Because if you can, I'll run off and spend it quick, as Marigold said.”

Thomas shook his head. There must be a trick Deadnettle and Marigold weren't telling him, something they'd forgotten because it was, as Deadnettle had said, as ordinary to them as breathing.

But their breaths, when they arrived, were not coming easy. Darkness had covered the grass only a few
moments before; they must've run the whole distance from Shoreditch.

“Oh, Thomas,” said Marigold. Her pretty face and clever eyes were fever-bright.

“All right?” asked Thomas, though she clearly wasn't, and Deadnettle neither. He'd not yet seen the faery look so weakened. “I've been thinking. I just need some more time. I know I can learn to do this.”

“That is just it,” said Deadnettle through dry, cracked lips, ignoring Charley. One of his pointed teeth had made a cut; a spot of dark blood crusted the corner of his mouth. “There is no time.”

“Where's the big hurry all of a sudden?” Thomas asked, taking in, again, their tiredness and labored breathing. Why had they run here? “You've told me 'bout this nearing of the worlds business, but I can't see as another night or two makes a difference. What's the rush?”

“I fear we will no longer be safe even at the Society,” said Deadnettle. “If one may call that
safe
. Another spiritualist is endeavoring to discover Mordecai's secrets, a man named Jensen.”

“I've met him,” said Thomas. “Just the other day, at that theater you sent me to. He helped Lucy when I took ill.”

“Did he? Yes, I wondered if that had been you he spoke of. Regardless, if he does learn what Mordecai is doing,
there is no telling what manner of hands we might fall into. It is difficult to imagine one crueler than Mordecai himself, but I have had many long nights to do so. No human has ever given me reason to trust one, and I shall not begin now.”

“You left
me
with humans.”

“On Wintercress's orders, not by my own choice. Please, Thomas. I ask this of you. Try. Any one of us can do the things we've been trying to teach you. It is unimportant, small magic. But you are of the royal line, and only you may open the gateways now. We must try tonight.”

•   •   •

“Tell me what to do,” he said to Deadnettle. A large tear dripped down Marigold's cheek.

Thomas had always been very good at doing what he was told. Be rather nice, he thought, if he hadn't had quite so much practice at
that
. It'd be a funny thing if Silas and Lucy'd prepared him more for this than Deadnettle and Marigold had managed thus far.

But Deadnettle spoke first to Marigold. “Be ready,” he said. “If it works, be ready to fetch the others and take them to the nearest. You know where it is.”

“Yes, but—”

“Enough.”

“Steady on,” said Thomas. The full weight of what he
was about to attempt descended upon him, heavy as if it were made of iron. “I want to know something first.” This might well be his last chance to find out. “Tell me about the night I was born.”

Deadnettle twitched with impatience. “There is no longer time.”

“I say there is,” Thomas said, standing tall.

“He's right, Deadnettle.”

The scowl turned the faery's face ugly. “Oh, if I must. Wintercress told me she was going outside, to see the moon. You were born on the last night of April, a year after the Summoning. A year to the day, and she wanted to see the moon that night, she said, because it meant we were closest to the faery realm once more. There is a night, at the end of October, when the human world is closest to the land of the dead. In April, it is closest to the land of the faeries. I knew she was weary; we all were, for that was the night of Mordecai's grand performance, his first grand performance, and we had only just returned to the cellar. I followed her and watched as a hatchling was born. She said words in our faery tongue, words no one had used in living memory, and one hatchling became two.”

“Blimey,” said Charley. Thomas agreed this summed it up.

The strange tree loomed over them. Through the gap, Thomas saw a distant lamp sputter out.

“I must have said something, exclaimed my surprise. She beckoned me over, and I could see how weak she was. She could not lift you, either of you. She told me what to do, where to take you, and to keep Thistle. She said he would be ready to open the gateway when he covered the sun with the moon. And those were the last words she ever spoke to me.”

“Thank you,” said Thomas. “Tell me about Thistle, too.”

The merest hint of a smile twitched Deadnettle's bloodied lips. “For that, I defer to Marigold.”