The Everlasting (20 page)

Next door he could hear Nina snoring. It was an incredibly human sound, unconscious and unbidden. It altered his perception of her. He wondered how long
it would take before he began to take her strangeness for granted.

Papa had taught him that being different was no bad thing. He'd spoken at length about the way some people were wired differently, built by nature to make them wonder and quest, rather than think and live themselves into a rut that held false comfort and little hope. He told Scott that these people often found life difficult, because society forbore existences that went against the norm.
There was a man who liked to speak to bees,
Papa once said.
He practiced it over the years, asking them how they could fly with such small wings, how they could steer a hive to pollen-rich areas just by performing a dance, and after thirty years of speaking to them, he said they were starting to talk back. He claimed they told him secrets, though he never revealed what those secrets were. People asked him, of course. Secrets are intriguing, even for those who aren't wired that way. But the man said he could never betray the bees. He was considered mad by then, and when he died, he lay amongst his hives for six weeks before anyone found him. He'd decomposed, but they found the bodies of sixteen rats, a dozen birds, and a fox nearby, all stung to death. His bees had granted him natural rest, not consumption by carrion creatures. And even in death he's still thought of as mad
.

Over the years, Scott had met many people who wanted to know his secret. They'd talk about Papa and what he had done, and the majority were there simply because they were prying, craved scandal, or
held some grim fascination of murder. Only a small minority asked because they perceived a story behind the story. They saw strangeness and were drawn to it, because beyond strangeness lay knowledge. These were the few he even bothered speaking to.

Wait till they ask me about this
, he thought, sitting there in that wide window seat.
Wait until they ask where Helen went and how I got her back
. He watched a cat slink across the pub's back garden, dew speckling its fur. And he knew that whoever asked, he would never tell.

Nina's snoring had ceased. He heard no movement next door, and he was about to stand when there was a soft knock at his door.

Nina stood in the hallway, dressed and washed and looking as though she had never been tired before. “Shall we?” she said.

“Can you give me a few minutes?” Scott rubbed his eyes and realized how tired he still was. “Didn't sleep too well. You?”

“The sleep of the innocent,” she said.

“Right.”

“Can I come in while you get ready?”

Scott held the door wide and Nina breezed past him. He'd never seen her carrying a bag or purse, yet she smelled of freshly washed skin and exotic perfume. Perhaps that was her natural smell.

She went straight to the window seat and sat down, looking out the window. “Nice view,” she said. “Beautiful sunrise. See anything worth seeing?”

“The view. The sunrise.”

Nina looked around the garden and beyond and, seemingly satisfied, turned back to Scott. “We've got a few minutes,” she said.

“Until what?”

“Until we need to go.”

“Why?”

“Nothing.” She shook her head but would not meet his gaze.

“Nina?”

“Get ready, Scott. We'll grab breakfast on the hoof.” She nodded at the bathroom door, then turned back to the garden.

“What are you watching for?”

“Nothing.” Her voice echoed from the cool glass and sounded strangely flat.

Scott wanted to say more; he felt a tension in the room now, something sharp that could hurt if he struck it the wrong way. But he went into the bathroom, ran a sink of hot water, and started to wash.

When he stood up and wiped his face, there was writing in the condensation on the mirror:
She will slay you
. It was written in large, spidery letters. Water ran from the letters' lowest points, dribbling down and pooling on the mirror's rim. They had just been written.

Scott dropped the towel and spun around. He scanned the bathroom. It was small, but he looked into all its corners, high and low. There was nothing behind the shower curtain, no shape cowering in the bath, no slip of something that should not be there, hiding beside the closed door.

He picked up the towel and wiped the mirror, then ran more scalding water.

“Almost done?” Nina called from beyond the door.

“Two minutes.” Scott glanced at the door handle, half expecting to see it moving as Nina tried to enter. It remained still. He put his head to the door, closed his eyes and concentrated, but he could not hear her moving about. When he looked at the mirror again there were more words drawn there:
Lose her
.

Nina tapped on the door. “Scott, we need to go.”

“Just a minute!” he called.

“Scott . . .” She knocked again.

He flushed the chain and looked around; there was one window, painted shut and too small for him. No other way out than through the door.

Who's talking to me
? he thought; then he whispered the same question, so low that his words were hidden by the sound of water filling the tank. He watched the mirror, waiting for the response—a name, perhaps, an explanation. But there was nothing new. Only those words,
Lose her
, fading.

How was he supposed to trust them?

“Papa?” he whispered, but nothing proved him right.

Why would Nina slay him? He did not know. He knew virtually nothing other than what she chose to tell him, and that could have been skewed for her own reasons. But there was Old Man. He existed, and fantastic though the other things Nina spoke of sounded—immortals playing games with the world's armies and fighting lovers, another who tried to kill
himself through murder—there was no reason to suspect that she lied.

“Scott!” Nina said. “I'm coming in.”

“Hang on, I'm—”

The door burst open. Nina came in and looked everywhere before seeing Scott.

“You ready?” She glanced at his bare chest; what did she think of the gray hairs there? How did the evidence of aging really sit with her?

Scott nodded as he slipped on his shirt. If he was going to tell her about the writing, now was the time. And he should. Perhaps she would understand. But something held him back. Not a suspicion that the writer was right—not yet, at least—but doubt.

As they left the building and got in the hired car, Scott was more aware than ever of the rubbings in his back pocket.

“Why are we leaving so quickly?” he asked. Nina was sitting in the passenger seat, tense and twitchy. She had adjusted the wing mirror on her side so that she could watch behind them as they drove. “What are you looking for?”

“Just a feeling.”

“What sort?”

“That we're being followed.”

Oh, yes, not far wrong there
, he thought.

“Who'd be following us?”

“If I knew I might not be so worried. Just drive. I'll watch.”

Scott drove. He was heading south, and quite soon he would have to get the map out and start planning
the end of their journey. That would be when their destination became clearer to Nina, and whoever else might be following them. The farther they went—the more time that passed—the closer they drew to the Chord of Souls.

She will slay you
, the words had said. Why? Nina could not touch the book herself—none of them could, so she said—so surely she needed him?

“When this is over,” he said, “and you've got what you want from the book and seen it destroyed . . . what about me?”

“You'll be back with your wife.”

“If we can get her from Lewis.”

“We will. I'll help you.”

“Yes, but . . . I'll know. I'll have seen the book. Read some of its pages. I know about you, and I know about Old Man in his hole in Edinburgh.”

“What are you hinting at?”

“What happens to me?”

“I've told you, you go home. Your wife goes with you, and you do your best to carry on. Forget this happened. Consign it to your dreams.”

“That's too much of a happy ending. Things like that don't happen. There's always pain to carry forward, and trouble tends to tag along too. I can never see Helen and me sitting in our living room, watching a movie on DVD and sharing takeout. There'll always be something else beyond our window. I'll
always
remember those faces at the glass. And I see them now.” They had just passed a cluster of ghosts beside the road, victims of some long-ago accident. Two parents,
two children, just standing there as though waiting for a bus to the afterlife they had always been promised.

“I'll make sure that fades with time,” Nina said. “I know words that will shield that part of things for you.”

“Consign me back to normalcy?”

“But that's what you want, isn't it?”

Lose her
, the words had said. And much as that made no real sense right now, still the adventure of it excited him. “I'm not sure, Nina. I'm not sure I'll be able to do that. It's not the way Papa made me.”

“I know.” Nina suddenly sounded terribly sad. “But I'm doing my best to make sure things turn out well for all of us.”

Scott nodded and drove on, his mind in turmoil.

Nina sat back and seemed to relax. She raised her knees against the dashboard and crossed her hands over them, still glancing at the mirror every few seconds. He didn't trust her, but he did like her. Though they had been together for only three days, she had told him much more than a few words scrawled in steam.

But the doubt was there. Planted, it would require little to urge it to sprout and grow.
She will slay you. Lose her
. Those words, simple and chilling, replayed themselves over and over in his mind as he drove. As time went on, the voice whispering them sounded more and more earnest.

“I'm so tired,” Nina said. Neither of them had spoken for a while, and the sound of the road was becoming soporific.

Scott glanced across and saw that she was crying. He had never seen that before—had not thought it possible—and it shocked him. He'd come to believe that she was immune to such displays.

“We could be close to the end,” Scott said.

Nina nodded. “We could be. Or maybe not.”

“Which number am I?”

“What?” Nina sat up straighter, but she did not look across at him.

“How many other people have you used to help you? Mortals, helping an immortal seeking death. How many?”

“Three,” she said.

“In all that time?”

“Yes. Three whom I got to know, and who claimed to know where the Chord of Souls was kept.”

“What happened to them?”

“They died.”

Silence for a while, and then Nina sniffed. Wiped her eyes. Sobbed.

Scott slowed and drifted over toward the hard shoulder.

“Don't stop,” Nina said. “Keep going. I'm fine.” She wiped her eyes again and sat up straighter, and when he looked over Scott could see that her tears had already ceased.

“What are you sad about?” he asked.

“I'm beyond sad. Like I said, I'm so tired. I'm craving death more and more, and the closer we get to the book, the more I'm eager to end things. I had to learn
patience quickly, to begin with. Took on tasks that would take a long time, just to
pass
the time. I once walked from Constantinople to Paris, and at every town I stopped to collect a wound. Sometimes I did it myself in whatever room or hovel I slept in for the night. Other times I invited someone to give me a scar, entertaining them with my willingness to take the knife or sword, the whip or spike. And on occasion I picked a fight. Lost on purpose. Welcomed the agony of what should have been death. It was my journey of scars.”

“So where are they?”

“Faded, with time. I used to renew them to begin with, but then I left them to disappear.”

“Is it because this is your last journey?” he said softly. He was remembering the morning's beautiful sunrise, and wondering what Nina must have thought of it.

“
Fuck
, no. I don't give a shit. If you did tell me where this place was, I'd try to get us there through the Wide. I've no desire to say good-bye to the world, Scott. I've been in it far too long to miss it.” She laughed bitterly, then rested her head back and closed her eyes.

“If I told you . . .” he said, but he could not finish.

The ghosts saw to that.

“Scott, drive on.”

“No!”

“They're ghosts.”

“But
look
at them!”

Tires screeched, the car slewed to the right, horns sounded behind and around them as startled drivers braked and fought to maintain control of their own vehicles. As far as everyone else was concerned, Scott had slammed on his brakes for no reason. The drivers would be cursing him, hating him already, and perhaps some were even now imagining how they would make it from their crashed cars, find him, and punch him down.
You risked my family, you lunatic.
. . .
You fucking idiot!
. . .
What the hell do you think you're playing at
? . . .

“Look at them,” he said again, because he could not tear his eyes from the forest of ghosts spanning the motorway. There were hundreds of them, all staring directly at him, and as some of their mouths fell open, the cry of burning brakes gave them voice.

“Scott!” Nina shouted, but it was already far too late.

“As long as you're in control of your own destiny, you're responsible,” Papa says.

Scott is climbing a tree. It's the sort of thing his father would frown upon—he'd tell him to come down before he hurt himself—but Papa allows him to carry on. There's little that Papa won't let Scott try, and once or twice the thirteen-year-old has been slightly perturbed by this. They once sat in the woods drinking cider, and when Papa carried Scott home later that afternoon, Scott remembered only flashes of the argument that erupted between his parents and grandparent. Mostly he recalled only shouting, but
somewhere in there was Papa's soft, enthralling voice, trying to explain, trying to give reasons.