Dead Of Winter (The Beautiful Dead Book 2) (7 page)

“I am Deathless.”

“Okay.” I bite my lip, thinking what else I can possibly say. Helena was cruel, really, to put this responsibility on me, as I don’t know the first thing to do to fix this. “Do you remember … Do you remember our time in the Whispers? When we first met? Listen, I made a terrible mistake and I—well, it’s a simple mistake, actually—but I didn’t name you right away. Then you escaped from me and you ran into the Deathless—are you following this?—and so now you’re
confused
and you think you belong to them. But you don’t. You belong here. You are
Helen
.”

“I am Deathless.”

“No. You are Helen.” I still can’t look at her. Really, when you’re talking to someone, you shouldn’t be able to see their brain through their forehead; it’s just rude. “You probably had a sweet, lovely life, and I’d like you to stop being Deathless because, well, the Deathless are not kind people. They’re just like any other Undead, of course, except they’re horrible and they eat Humans and they’re all vulnerable to steel. You don’t want to be vulnerable to steel, do you? It’s mighty inconvenient, especially if you’d ever like to wear … say … steel jewelry, for example.”

“I am—”

“Yeah, yeah, I know.” I close my eyes, exasperated. “Please.
Brains.
You’re the last remaining Deathless in the whole horrible world. Please, please, just make it a little less horrible by—
not
—being Deathless. If you just try …”

“I am not the last.”

I’m about to say something else, but her words catch me. I open my eyes, then shriek and back away, realizing she’d come right up to the window and her face was an inch from mine.

Did I hear her right? “What do you mean by that, Brains?” Until now, I didn’t realize she was capable of saying anything other than, well, what she’s been saying over and over. “You’re what?”

“I am Deathless.”

“No, no, I mean—You just said you’re not the—”

“I am Deathless.”

“You’re not the last? What do you mean? The Deathless Queen is gone. The whole army was destroyed. There is no—”

“I sense him. I feel him. I am Deathless.”

I stare into her horrible, gooey eyes. I stare and I stare and I stare. I’m holding imaginary breath. I’m clutching my neck and staring at Brains, and staring at brains.

Does she mean …
him?
Does she mean …
Grim?

“I feel him,” she repeats, her tinny little voice ringing in my ears, filling the hall. “I feel him, I feel him, I—”

“Who?” I finally say, half a breath, half a sound.

“Him. I am Deathless. I am Deathless.”

I’ve backed away so far from the window, I’m leaning on the cell door opposite hers. She keeps repeating those three horrible words. Grimsky, until now, has just been some strange, distant imagining. I’ve regarded him like a bad dream I’ve long ago woken up from … a dark story told to me once in the quiet of a wretched night … a tale I’ve since cast to the likes of fantasy and fable.

Who else could she possibly be talking about? My Raise senses him. My Raise senses Grimsky.

“Where is he?” I ask, clinging to the terrible, gut-wrenching assumption. “Him? He? Where …?”

“That way,” she sings, pointing.

I squint. Huh? I look where she’s pointing, somewhere at the north wall of her cell. I realize she’s turned her head completely around, 180 degrees, while keeping the rest of her body facing front. Showing off now, are we?

“He’s … there?” I suppose she means he’s far, far in that direction, wherever he is, wherever he ran off to so many months ago when I freed him. “He’s still …”

“I am Deathless,” she croaks, still facing away, still pointing
that way
. “I am Deathless.”

“Your name is Helen,” I say before I leave, unable to stand another second in her horrifying presence.

On the way out, I hear her tinny voice echoing in an endless monotone,
I am Deathless, I am Deathless, that way, that way, I am Deathless
, until finally the heavy door at the top of the stair shuts her up. But then I’m haunted still, knowing she could be, no doubt, repeating that phrase without end for hours and hours, days even.

I am Deathless, I am Deathless.
I still hear it.

I’m not sure when I decided to stop, but suddenly I’m sitting on the concrete edge that outlines a little flower garden in the courtyard outside a Human bakery. I’m peering at the flowers, of course minding not to touch any of them. We all know what happens when an Undead touches anything precious or pretty or full of promise.

A young couple walks by, arm-in-arm. I can’t tell whether they’re Living or not until one of them remarks about how lovely the bakery smells, and even then I have to question if it’s just an Undead couple pretending. Even this far in my Second Life, I’m so tired of all the pretending. I’d always taken Jasmine to be one of the kind who don’t succumb to all the pretending and fakeness, but maybe she needs it now more than ever—especially after losing her death-daughter in the Battle. So let Jasmine throw a party for her so-called birthday; seeing as we have no concept of what day of the year it actually is, we all know it’s not real. And we know
she
knows it’s fake, yet we still play along. It could be all our birthdays for all anyone would care or be able to verify. Even the attempts at remaking some form of a calendar turned into a joke, as everyone kept arguing over which months of the year have thirty-one days. At least everyone agreed that February has twenty-eight, whenever February is.

My birthday was the first day of December. I wonder when that is, or if it’s already gone.

I could have turned twenty. Maybe I’m twenty, now.

“Winter!”

I lift my eyebrows and am strangely comforted by the sight of little Megan racing out of the bakery to meet me. Before I know it, she’s crashed into my arms.

“Careful. We
can
break apart,” I warn her.

“Don’t worry, I’m staying clear of your left hand,” she teases. “Hey, guess what? I found this totally enormous spider leg in the woods the other day. It was, like,
huge!”

“Yes, Megan. They can be quite big.” I can’t pay much attention because all I hear in my head is
I am Deathless, I am Deathless
… that weak, tinny voice.

“Megan, dear?”

The two of us look up. A man and woman approach, having come from the bakery themselves. The man is a stocky short thing while the lady is tall and gaunt. Megan comes to the woman’s side and clings to her dress, and I realize belatedly that they’re her parents. The way Megan clings to her reminds me of how she clung to me at the Necropolis long ago … The memory stings, bittersweet.

“Hi!” I say. Surprisingly, even in all these months, I’ve only met her parents twice; once when Trenton’s order was reestablished after the Deathless Battle, and then once a few months later for some reason I can’t recall. They aren’t the warmest. “How’s your morning?”

“It’s late evening,” says the mother, and I’m sure she didn’t mean to sound like she was rudely correcting me.

“Yes, late evening, of course.” I make myself giggle. I can’t help it; I’m determined for them to like me. “How’s your late evening, Bonnie and … and …?”

“Ken,” mutters the dad, and it’s not that he’s rude; he’s just reserved. That’s a polite way to put it. Reserved and guarded. Guarded in the good way, I think.

Miss mommy Bon-Bon’s grip on Megan tightens. “Something you need?” she asks, her voice like a shivery sort of sigh, and I’m absolutely positive she isn’t meaning to come off like a bitch.

I’d never dare say that of Megan’s mother. Out loud.

“Oh, no,” I  say, smiling in this horrible please-like-me way. “I was just … taking a little rest and admiring the—” When I peer at the flowers, I find the closest ones have
pulled away from me, recoiling, their petals discolored and wilted at the edges.

The sight breaks my confidence in half like an icicle.

“This is the Human part of town,” says Ken the dad in such an artfully polite way, I’d almost think it were just a friendly reminder.

“I hadn’t thought we’d designated such parts of town,” I jest, the stupid smile still stretching across my ghost-white face. “I guess I was lured by the … by the smell of the bakery.” I hum longingly, taking a big whiff.

“Your kind can’t smell,” he points out, another kind reminder.

My smile breaks.

“Mommy, daddy, let’s go home please?” The plea comes from the little mouth of Megan, half-muffled by Miss Bonnie’s gag of a dress. “I’m getting sleepy.” Her eyes drift over to me, and I realize with a saddened feeling that she’s trying to spare me from her parents’ kindness.

Mister Kenny, the dad, isn’t finished. “Go ahead, Bon. Take Megan home. Temperature’s dropping anyway, and I have something I want to talk to …
Winter
… about.”

The wife is all too eager to leave, taking her daughter by the hand. Megan’s eyes never leave me as she rounds the corner and is gone.

“Something you wanted to discuss?” I ask, keeping my tone the sweetest.

He faces me now, though his eyes are elsewhere. “I understand you … took my girl to the Haunted Waste.”

Oh. That. “We call it the Whispers, actually.”

“I also know my daughter has developed a certain …
attachment
… to you.” He shuffles a bit, itches his chin, then looks me in the eye. “She’s young. She is headstrong. She is beginning to make …
decisions
. After losing our son, I hope you can understand that I can’t allow my girl’s safety to be regarded with such irresponsibility
.
”

This, coming from the parents that Megan said don’t care whether she lives or dies. Well … maybe it was something she just said out of anger. I can’t be sure now.

“I regard Megan’s safety
very
much,” I assure him. “Ever since we met—despite being under horrifying circumstances—I have cared very, very much for her. I even told her not to come with me. I insisted—”

“And she went with you anyway, of course. That’s just like her. Please don’t misunderstand me.” I’d almost say his voice is kind. “We are grateful that our daughter returned to us alive, and we’re not at all forgetting the fact that it is wholly because of
you
that she lives.” He clears his throat. “But you are not the kind of person with which she should be keeping company. There are other children. There are other girls. There are other, well …” Living, breathing, heart-beating Humans, I get it. “Anyway, I think you can understand the problem with our daughter spending so much time with a dead person,” he finishes, the most polite reminder he’s given me yet.

The smile has broken off my face completely. It’s in pieces at my feet, and so’s my politeness, and so’s my everything-pretty. I don’t feel anger because, well, he’s explained it plain enough: I’m dead. I feel and know nothing. I’m reckless and irresponsible and whatever.

“Message received,” I murmur.

“Good.” The dad flinches, making a strange move. I think he was about to offer a handshake, then suddenly changed his mind. Yes, better not to do that. You might catch my death, Mister Dad. I’m so contagious. Cough.

“Have a good evening, Ken,” I force myself to say, because I’m going to prove to him what a nice and mature person I am. I turn away to leave.

My foot catches and I trip myself. I plummet hands-first into the little flowerbed. Pushing myself up quickly, soil stuck to my palms and under my nails, I’m back on my feet in less than a second. But that’s all it takes for the damage to be done. The flowers I fell onto twist and writhe, turning brown and grey and wormy before our eyes. Even the soil seems to die where I touched it.

I spin my face to meet the dad’s, white hair flipping, but he’s already walking away. Whether he saw me fall or not, I can’t say. Maybe his very hasty departure is yet another polite gesture of his; he’s simply sparing me the embarrassment, that’s all.

“I kill everything I touch,” I murmur to no one, my own polite reminder to the world.

C H A P T E R – F O U R

B U R N

By the time I get back home, the party’s already starting at Jasmine’s, that much is clear. She’s hired the resident band of Trenton from the sound of it, as there’s drumming and guitar-playing and what I take to be “singing” coming from within the house. A number of Undead are spread across the porch and on the gravel in front, chatting and screaming and acting like drunken fools.

The ridiculous frivolity is not my destination, not yet. Forgive me for not being in the mood to
party
.

I scratch on the door of my house. A sudden memory hits me, and with a wistful smile I sing, “It’s a good day to be dead.” There’s no response, but really, I’d figured John may still be asleep.