Touch (29 page)

“And when I did see the light—and I realize how melodramatic that sounds—I walked
toward it. I knew it was where I belonged. I wanted to go there, I wanted to be there.
But I never tried.”

“Why?”

“Because when I got close enough, I could hear the screaming. The wailing. The sobs.
I knew—I knew if I tried, I’d join them, and I could probably howl there like a lost
toddler for too damn long.”

“How did you get back?”

“She found me.”

“She?” But Emma already knew the answer. The Queen. The Queen of the Dead. She frowned,
then, and approached Nathan. He stood his ground, but stiffened—and that surprised
her. It also hurt a little.

“Why do you think she sent me back?”

“The same reason,” Emma replied, looking at his hands, at his face, and then, eyes
narrowing, at the center of his chest, “that she sent Longland.”

“Em?”

And she closed her eyes. Closed them, because even closed, she could see Nathan. She
had always been able to see him with her eyes closed, because while he was himself,
he was also some huge part of her hopes and her dreams. Her daydreams. Only his death
had plunged him into nightmares—and even in nightmares, it was his sudden, inexplicable
absence that caused her to wake, crying.

She could no longer see the narrow halls of an older Toronto home. She couldn’t see
the white doorframes that had clearly been painted half a dozen times. She couldn’t
see the carpet, which was so neutral a beige she might not have noticed it at any
other time. She could see Nathan.

And at the center of his chest, glowing faintly, the links of a slender chain. She
lifted her hand, and she knew as she did, that Nathan was bound and that she did not
hold him. Her hands closed in fists.

She opened her eyes. Nathan was standing before her, but the world reasserted itself
around him, as much as it could.

“She sent you because she knew.”

“About you?”

“About me. About—” She exhaled. “She knows how I feel about you.”

“And Longland?”

“He’s an offer.”

Nathan’s smile shifted. He looked tired, to Emma. She didn’t know whether or not the
dead usually experienced the exhaustion that comes from too much fear, too much stress—but
Nathan clearly did. “People always underestimate you. I had no idea why she sent me.
She didn’t ask me to do anything. She didn’t ask me to say anything or learn anything.
She didn’t tell me to watch you. She just told me—to come home.”

“She knew—she had to know—that I would want to see you,” Emma continued. “But it’s
not that—it’s Longland. He was meant to be proof that I could—” she couldn’t say it.

“You could bring me back.”

Emma nodded. “But I don’t know
how.
I don’t understand the power I have. I don’t know how to use it. I see the dead—but
it’s not a struggle. I don’t
try
. It happens. It’s like weather. Or breathing.” Her voice dropped. She looked up at
him.

When they’d first met, she hadn’t really noticed him. He was one of a dozen people
who drifted in and out of class. He played computer games. He read. He tinkered in
the science labs.

But he was friendly—and entirely without condescension—to Michael. That had caught
her attention. Held it a little bit too long. He wasn’t classically gorgeous. He wasn’t
daydream material. But her daydreams were wild and incoherent; you couldn’t build
a life on most of them, because they couldn’t bear weight.

Nathan could. While he was alive, he could. He could listen. That was a gift. But
better, he could accept her. Not just the good bits. Not the parts other people might
find attractive. She wasn’t a trophy girlfriend, although she could have been. He
was a quiet space. A quiet, accepting space. He saw her as she was, good and bad.

There weren’t many people who saw her. Not as she saw herself; if he’d done that,
he would have walked away as quickly as he could, especially on the bad days. But
as she actually was. He surprised her with the small things he noticed. He surprised
her by noticing things about her she hardly noticed herself.

She had never lied to him, not deliberately. If she didn’t want to talk about something,
she said exactly that: I can’t talk about this right now.

“I don’t think she thought Longland would actually speak to me. I don’t know if she
understands what it does—and doesn’t—mean to him, to be half alive. And, Nathan—it
would have worked if he hadn’t.”

“Em, don’t—”

She lifted a hand, a signal between the two of them that he needed to let her finish,
because she wouldn’t be able to if he interrupted her.

“It would have worked. I know myself. Even now—if you asked me, if you said it was
what you wanted, I’m not sure I could say no. Because even knowing what I know, it’s
what
I
want.” She saw his expression, then, and before he could speak—and he wanted to—she
closed the distance between them, put her hands on either side of his face, and kissed
him.

It was not a short kiss. The shock of cold numbed her lips and the palms of her hands.
Everything about the gesture caused pain. She let him go and saw that his eyes were
closed.

Eyes closed, he said, “I would never have asked.” And he smiled as he opened them.
They were bright. Shining. She was sure hers were as well, but for entirely different
reasons. “I know you mean it. I know you think you couldn’t say no. I know what my
dying meant to you—I left. I did worse than leave.

“But to do what was done to Longland, you’d have to become like the Queen of the Dead.
Like Longland himself, before he died. You’d have to learn to see the dead—all of
them—as sources of convenient power. You’d understand that power is necessary, because
without it, you couldn’t maintain what you’d built for me.

“You can’t learn all that without changing something fundamental. The Emma who still
walks Michael to school is not the Emma who could build me a body for her own convenience.
Or even for mine. You’d do it because you love me.

“Because I love you. And it would change the nature of what love means to both of
us. I didn’t plan to die. I didn’t want to die. I never wanted to be a source of loss
and pain to the people I loved—the people who loved me.” He looked past her shoulder
for just a second, and then his gaze returned to her face, as if anchored there. “But
I was. I was. I would change it in a heartbeat if I could—but not that way.”

Emma placed a hand on his chest, her fingers splayed wide. It was solid. It was even
warm.

He hadn’t finished. “When I’m with you now, I don’t see the exit. I don’t long for
it. I’m not drawn to it. I see you. I could spend the rest of your life seeing you,
and I’d be happy. Believe that.

“I have to go soon. She’s calling.”

“You’re bound to her.”

His smile was slow and sweet. “Yes.”

She reached into his chest, then. She reached for the slender links she could only
barely perceive, curling her palm around them. Warmth became sudden heat; she could
have flattened her palm against a live stove element with the same effect. She cried
out, her hand jerking open.

“Don’t worry,” he told her. He lifted a hand and then let it drop. “I’m already dead.
Nothing worse can happen to me.” He was fading as she watched. She tried to grab the
chains at his heart’s center again. She didn’t care if they burned. She had held onto
fire before.

But her palm passed through them. She tried to grab his hand; it was no longer solid.
“Nathan!”

“I’m sorry.”

She tried to throw her arms around him. To keep him. She knew—she knew this was an
echo of dying for Nathan. He didn’t want to go; he didn’t choose to leave. But choice
or no, he vanished.

She was left—as she had been left the first time—holding nothing. But this time she
knew, for certain, that Nathan was out there somewhere. She knew who or what had taken
him. She had told herself for months now that death was impersonal, because it was.

But the Queen of the Dead? There was
nothing
impersonal about her. Emma clenched her hands, and she turned to head down the hall.

Her father was waiting.

“How do I get him back?” she demanded. She had no doubt that he’d seen everything.

He didn’t answer the question. Instead, he said, “Amy’s packed the car. She’s waiting.
Allison and Michael are with her.”

Emma swallowed. She didn’t want to go downstairs yet; she knew what her face looked
like. She had to work to bring rage—and the pain at its core—under control; she had
to stop her hands from shaking so much.

And that would take time, and it was time they didn’t have. “Dad?”

“I’m sorry, Em.”

“She won’t send him back,” Emma whispered. “I didn’t do whatever it was she wanted
me to do. She won’t send him back.”

“I don’t think so, no.”

She made it halfway down the stairs, stopped, and turned again. “Allison’s brother?”

“He’s alive. No—don’t. He’s alive, but he wouldn’t be if it weren’t for machines.
They’re not certain he’s going to pull through; he hasn’t regained consciousness.”

Emma closed her eyes. She balanced a moment between guilt and anger, and to her surprise,
anger won. “Amy’s right,” she said, as she continued down the stairs.

“She frequently is.”

“The Queen of the Dead has to go.”

T
HE QUEEN IS NOT IN HER THRONE ROOM. The Court is not in session. The dead line the
halls like rough statues; without the Queen’s command, there’s almost nothing for
them to do—and nothing they dare to do. They don’t speak. Not like Emma’s dead.

Not like Brendan Hall.

Not like Mark.

Certainly not like Margaret.

These people have forgotten the life they lived; life might not have happened, for
them, at all.

Nathan walks among them, avoiding them as if they were physical presences. As if he
is. He knows he could walk the straight line through them, and through the walls themselves;
nothing prevents it.

But the Queen doesn’t care for it.

He walks the long way. She’s not dead; she uses the halls. Many of the people who
live in this great, fanciful edifice aren’t dead either; they use the halls too. Her
knights. Her Necromancers.

Some of the dead gathered here belong to them, but they don’t wander the halls like
handless puppets; they are hidden, invisible even to Nathan’s eyes, until the moment
the Necromancers choose to show their power. In the throne room, they take out their
dead, displaying them like trophies or status symbols. No Necromancer of note or worth
in the Queen’s Court is ever without them.

The Queen alone doesn’t choose to do this—but her power is absolute and unquestioned.
She is never without it. If she died, this city would crumble—probably instantly.
But he can see her in the distance. The stone walls do nothing to bank the brilliance
of her light. He cannot imagine that she will ever die.

He didn’t lie to Emma. He didn’t tell her all of the truth.

But he didn’t tell the Queen all of the truth either.

“Nathan.” She is sitting in her outer chamber, on a chair as unlike the tall-backed
official throne from which she rules as chairs can get. She is dressed in long, flowing
robes, but they are looser and far less confining; her hair is unbound and falls in
one long, glistening sheet down her back and over her shoulders. She wears no crown
in this room.

She wears one ring.

He kneels before her, because she demands respect, no matter where she might be found.
She doesn’t stop him, but she tells him to rise almost immediately, and when he looks
up, he meets her steady gaze. Her eyes are clear and shining; they are so much like
Emma’s eyes, it is hard to meet them. But once he has, it’s impossible to look away.

“She saw you,” the Queen says.

Nathan nods.

“She saw you and she attempted to take you from me.”

He nods again.

“Do you wish to go to her?”

He does, and says, nothing.

The Queen rises. “I did not expect her to attempt to break my binding.”

He knows that Emma almost succeeded. The Queen walks from the room, indicating that
he is to follow; he does. She opens tall, wide doors and leaves the confines of the
palace for a grand balcony that is longer than Nathan’s former home. And wider. Above
her, the sky is gray; beneath her, the sky is gray.

“Merrick Longland has not returned to me.” She stands, back to Nathan, and gazes up,
and up again, and Nathan knows what she is looking at: the only light that is bright
enough, at this distance, to rival her own. He looks as well, but he schools his expression;
all of the dead do. What they long for, what they yearn for, is beyond them; acknowledging
it only annoys her.

“Is he dead?”

“No,” Nathan replies.

“Ah.” She seems amused; he can’t see her expression. Amusement is no safety when it’s
in her voice. “Has she seen him?”

“Yes.”

She turns, then, her expression haunted. “Did she speak to you, Nathan? Did she offer
to resurrect you?”

He says nothing for as long as he safely can; he doesn’t want to answer this question.
And what he wants, in the end, doesn’t matter. “No.” Before she can speak, he adds,
“She doesn’t know how.”

“Not yet. Not yet.” The Queen smiles. It is cold. “You are certain, in the end, that
she did love you?”

He says nothing.

She walks toward him, stopping six inches from his chest. She touches it with the
flat of her palm; her hand is warm. It is the only warmth in the Castle. The only
warmth he’s experienced that is not Emma’s. It is bloody hard to be cold all the time.

“Yes.”

“And did she tell you that she loves you?”

He closes his eyes. It doesn’t make a difference; he can still see her clearly. Eyes
closed, she is the only thing he can see. “Yes.”

“And you believed her.”

“Yes.”

“Then she will come, Nathan. She will come to me. I have not yet decided what I will
do with her when she does.” She looks at his face again. “You wanted to see her.”
She caresses his cheek. He meets her gaze without flinching because her touch doesn’t
make him flinch. It is warmth. It is life.

“Do you want to be able to hold her? To touch her?”

“Yes.” Even more than he wants to crawl out of this conversation into painful oblivion.
Love is not something to be pulled apart and dissected, not like this. Not by outsiders.
There is no joy in it; there is a rough, painful voyeurism.

Her hand falls, and her eyes narrow. “Why?”

It is not the question he expects. And he knows he will have to answer it because
the compulsion is almost painful. He doesn’t have the words for it. He starts to say,
because I love her
, but he understands that this is not the answer she’s seeking. And he understands
that he doesn’t have that answer, because in the end, the question has nothing to
do with Nathan.

He has become so used to fear that he is almost too numb to feel it. “Because,” he
says, “she’s alone.” He can’t look away. “She once made me promise that I would let
her die first, when we were old. So she wouldn’t have to face losing me.”

“And you promised?”

“It was a stupid promise. I didn’t want to make a promise I couldn’t keep. But I know—I
know what my death did to her. I know what it did, and I’d take it back in a second
if I could. I want to be able to hold her when she cries—because she does cry, but
only when she’s alone. Only when no one living can see her.”

It is all true. And he knows, looking at the Queen’s face, that the Queen has also
cried, and that she never cries where anyone living can see her. It is not safe for
even the dead to bear witness to her weakness.

“Come,” she says. “What your Emma is too unschooled to do, I will do.”

His eyes widen, then.

“Yes, Nathan. I will resurrect you. I will bring you back to Emma alive and in the
flesh.”