Reaper (9 page)

“I'm here now,” she said stiffly. “I'll help keep him active and awake and happy until—”

“This ain't about the will to keep going on,” Nana Moses continued. “That's different from soul to soul, and nothing keeps a body willful like seeing your own perfectly good flesh going to waste. This is more complicated than all that, and this boy ain't even dead yet.” Her voice, steadily rising, was almost a shout. “His damn cord's gone, girl! Or hadn't you noticed with all your runnin’ around?”

Emma shot Wendy a dark look and grabbed her great-grandmother's hands. “Shh! You'll wake the house!”

“Let ’em wake, buncha layabeds,” grumbled Nana Moses, but her voice dropped down to a manageable level. She sighed deeply and glanced shrewdly between Wendy and Eddie.

“Girl, why didn't you follow procedure?” Nana Moses asked abruptly, rubbing the handkerchief across her mouth. “All this mess with your mother being sick, her soul being torn apart, could have been handled by now. The boy here could have been handled by now too, if you'd just contacted us as soon as he fell sick, instead of letting Emma find him wandering around the hospital like a lost puppy. We take care of our own, you know that.”

Not wanting to make her mother look bad, Wendy hesitated in
replying. Mary had done the best job she could training Wendy, but there had only been the two of them and, as the White Lady had pointed out time and time again when Wendy encountered her during her dreamwalks, Wendy never thought to ask the right questions.

“I didn't know you guys existed before tonight,” Wendy finally whispered, licking her lips nervously. “I thought that, with my mom dead, it was just me.”

Emma and Nana Moses exchanged a troubled look. “How could you think you're alone?” Emma asked coolly. “I sent that letter along for you, explaining the current situation, and your studies alone should have—”

“First of all, everyone keeps going on about this stupid letter you supposedly sent, but I have no clue what it said, okay? I think it's safe to say that it got misplaced. And secondly, studies?” Wendy barked, suddenly aggravated. At the hospital, after being overwhelmed and nearly drained by the Walkers, Jane had looked at her with pity and a kind of sisterly exasperation. Emma, on the other hand, seemed to be implying that any problems Wendy was having were entirely her own fault.

“
What
studies? You think I had an opportunity to study up on sending ghosts into the Light? So far as I knew, Mom and I were the only ones. I see them, and if they want to be sent on, I reap them. What's there to study?”

“I…you…” After a moment of fumbling for a reply, Emma rubbed her forehead, clearly confused. “Wait a moment. You're telling me that Mary administered the Good Cup without making you go through a dreamwalk or teach you our history or…anything at all?” Though she did her best to hide it, Emma was obviously outraged at the prospect.

“No,” Wendy said, jutting her chin out and crossing her own arms across her chest, mimicking the haughty woman's stance as best she could out of simple mulishness. Her tactic worked. Emma's lips tightened, her eyes narrowed, and she took a step forward,
balling her fists. Wendy braced for a potential punch. “Got a problem with my mom, doctor?”

“Girls. GIRLS!” Nana Moses slapped the armrest. “Enough of that. Wendy, you stop provoking Emma. Emma, you stop jumping to conclusions and let the girl explain herself.” Nana Moses honked into the handkerchief again and flapped the faded rag in Wendy's direction. “Go ahead, now. You tell us how you became a Reaper. Leave nothing out.”

“I saw his dad die in a car wreck,” Wendy said simply, gesturing to Eddie ruefully. “It was several years ago. After that, I could see ghosts and send them into the Light. I didn't drink anything or eat anything or fall down some mystic rabbit hole. Mom said I was just born this way. That's all.”

Stepping back, Emma sagged and sat on the edge of the closest armchair. One hand crept up and pressed against her mouth, fingers trembling. Dimly, against the deep silence, Wendy could hear a grandfather clock ticking away the seconds, the sound of water rushing through pipes in the distant recesses of the upper floors, and the creaking groan of the house settling around them.

“Looks like we've got ourselves a natural, Emmaline,” Nana Moses said baldly, and coughed into her handkerchief. She dragged it across her lips, the raspy sound of it louder than the words that followed. “May the Good Ones preserve us all.”

“W
hat a complete pill,” Elle griped as they set out for the Pier and her old turf; she'd asked to pick up a few things before they left for Mountain View. The Riders were well used to roaming the city but they'd done a great deal of traveling over the past few days and Lily wished to take the MUNI rather than hoof it. Snorting at Lily's weakness, Elle led them down California Street, raving about Frank the whole time.

“Can you believe the nerve of that piker? After that earful, and he still don't know from nothing. Threatening you, trying to bribe the Lightbringer. Guards. Like we would've even bothered with a snooty little man like him.” She blew out an aggravated breath, ruffling her fringed bangs. “I oughta've cleaned his clock for him.”

“He was simply doing as he thought was best for the spirits who follow the Council's lead,” Lily said reasonably, “though I agree that he overstepped his bounds overmuch.” Piotr watched as, in the living lands, the shadow of her spirit stepped through a bush and paused, frowning, on the other side, plucking the remnants of crumbling leaves from the edge of her skirt. The Never was strange here, so close to the Top of the Mark, the deadlands and living world sliced in paper-thin layers that hurt when he looked at them too closely.

“Says you. That's the understatement of the year,” Elle grumbled. She glanced at Piotr. “Why so glum, chum? Did the wet blanket actually rattle your cage?”

“Somewhat,” Piotr murmured, rubbing his eyes and wishing that he knew what to do, how to sort this all out before they reached Wendy. She had so much going on in her life right now, the last
thing he wanted was to become an unwelcome complication. “Before, when the Lightbringer and I parted, my decision was
ochyen kharasho
, it was good. Wendy is strong; I had no worries, no qualms about leaving. But now my concerns, they nip at my heels with sharp teeth. I wonder if she is safe. I wonder if she is happy.” He gave Elle a troubled smile. “I wonder many things.”

“So her family's maybe not quite on the level, maybe they're poking their noses in a little bit,” Elle breezed, waving a hand and stopping to kneel beside the road, examining a discarded and forgotten leather clutch. She rose, rolling the leather, and pocketed the clutch, continuing on, “You and I both know the Lightbringer isn't a pushover. I've never seen a tomato like her in all my years—living or dead—and I ab-so-lute-ly guarantee that your bearcat will give anyone who tries to pull a fast one on her the bum's rush.”

“Even her
sem ya
?” Piotr asked. “I have concerns about this family of hers; I am not so sure.”

“Yeah, we're going to warn her, yippy-skippy, but Wendy's one smart cookie. If her family's contacted her—which Frank doesn't even know if they have yet, remember—I bet the Lightbringer's already on to that busload of fake fakersons.”

Lily, who'd been walking in silence as Elle and Piotr conversed, stopped suddenly. “Look,” she said, and pointed up Montgomery Street. “Do you see it?”

“What in the holy hell is that?” Elle shaded her eyes with her hands. “No. It can't be.”

The night sky was blotted out less than a block down, long trailing tendrils of grayish-white Light dangling from the tops of the buildings all the way to street level. Up high the Light was woven into a thin, fine mesh, the interlocked wires glittering high above the Financial District. The webs filled the sky still, effervescent and bright, their long waving fronds wrapped spiderweb-like around over two or three dozen souls. Most seemed to be Shades. All were mummified by the webs, slung high and hung by ankle and
wrist, more than half twisted into pretzel-shapes and mummified lumps, stripped down to their very bones and dangling above the street like grisly, awful egg sacs. Closer, where the bulk of the webs weren't so dense, small bushes of spirit webs clung to ceilings and the tops of cars, wound around lampposts and stoplights in far-flung films just barely reaching one another to wind thin tendrils, rounded like the roots of a tree, together in dripping braids and waving strands.

“They are dense up high,” Lily whispered, “but see how they send roots down? This is new.”

“I've never seen so many spirit webs in one location,” Piotr agreed, stunned. “It's like a
taiga
…a forest!” He turned to Elle. “Surely our eyes are playing tricks on us? This must be some sort of optical illusion,
da
? It is gigantic!”

“Best illusion these peepers have ever settled on, then,” Elle said. “I'm gonna get a closer look.”

“Elle, no!” Lily cried, grabbing Elle by the wrist and tugging her back. “Why must you always thrust yourself without thought into danger?” she scolded, shaking a finger under Elle's nose. “If it is indeed a forest of webs, then who is cultivating them and why? We would be approaching their territory—this is something you simply mustn't do without caution and stealth.”

“Yeah, well, James ain't exactly among the dead anymore,” Elle said sharply, yanking her wrist free. “So I figure I'm the best we've got for stealth right now.”

“Elle,” Piotr rebuked her softly. “That was cruel.” He didn't need to look at Lily to see how stiff she'd become. Though Elle couldn't know it, referring to James was highly unfair, as Piotr had used him to try and distract Lily earlier in the evening. That, too, had been mean.

“Cruel or not, it's the truth.” Elle's chin jutted out as she glared at Lily. “And I don't take kindly to little Pocahontas here orderin’ me about.”

“As you wish,” Lily said, stepping back and crossing her arms over her chest. She looked stricken and tired, bone-weary and ready to walk away from the entire mess. “But don't say that I did not give adequate warning. You simply did not heed it.”

“Ladies,
puzhalsta
,” Piotr begged. “Please do not disagree like this.”

“Pipe down, flyboy, I'm not mad at her,” Elle said, rolling her eyes and starting off down Montgomery in the direction of Pine at a good pace. “And if you stopped to look a minute, you'd see she's only a little ticked at me. We'll have words later maybe, but it's none of yours.”

Confused, Piotr followed at some distance, with Lily—daggers drawn—stalking behind.

“Heaven above,” Elle breathed, stopping at the stoplight at Montgomery and Pine. She sagged against the pole and tilted her head up, gazing at the jellyfish-thin tendrils floating high above. Piotr, his sight painfully flicking between the living lands and the Never, saw that the Dress Barn door beside them was completely hidden behind the thick webs and the title company across the street was a morass of thin sections of deadspace and living lands, layered with tangled spirit webs that grasped and sucked at the few living passersby, mostly homeless, but also a few late partygoers, slurring drunkenly as they staggered down the street.

“I thought it was too dotty to be true,” Elle whispered. “Those really are spirit webs.”

“These must be the remnants of the White Lady's spirit snares,” Lily murmured, coming up behind them. “Though I cannot see how such a thing came to be. I was under the impression that they needed living energy to survive, yet these appear to have burrowed into the buildings themselves. Yes, they are feasting on passersby and the Shades, but look where they are the brightest…their roots have sunk into the bricks.”

“It is impossible,” Piotr agreed, “but yet, there it is.”

“Hey, you don't figure the White Lady fussed with those webs somehow, do you?” Elle asked suddenly, pushing off from the pole and pacing the sidewalk nervously. She passed through several of the living homeless; they flinched away from her cold but Elle, so entranced with the mystery before her, hardly winced at the living heat. “I mean, we know she could change the Walkers, twist their skin, make ’em whole or strip ’em down; maybe she could do the same for the webs?”

“It would not be unlike her,” Lily agreed slowly, “but to what ends? What could cultivating an entire forest of planted spirit webs gain one such as she? This is so far beyond the Palace it is unreal. But look…these webs fall in orderly rows, like trees. They were set here. This is not natural growth.”

“Who knows. The White Lady was off her rocker. She started off by breeding the stupid things in Walkers, who knows what else she did to ’em?” Jittery now, Elle scrubbed the back of her hand against her chin. “I'm gonna go in.”

“What?” Piotr cried. “Madness, Elle. Why would you do such a thing?”

“Well, for one, it's a straight shot to Market Street if we go this way, and I don't know about you, but I'm not exactly thrilled with the idea of ‘tralalala'ing my way around this mess. Secondly, aren't you at least a
little
bit curious? This is the sort of thing no one's ever seen before, Pete! Look at it! It's huge!”

“It is the size that concerns me,” Piotr replied dryly. “Imagine it to be a real forest. We have no living modern conveniences, no GPS or cell phones to guide us north or south. We are alone, the three of us, amid essence-plundering creatures that would strip us to our bones if they could but get close enough. What if we were to get lost, Elle? Or stray off the safe path? Of course, that is assuming that the
bezumnym
White Lady thought to make one when she planted these abominations, or that they haven't overgrown the safe way since her passing.”

“Damn you, flyboy, always with the logic,” Elle grumbled. “I don't even have to ask Pocahontas what she thinks. It's written all over that stick she's got shoved up her—”

“Elle,” Piotr said sternly. “Enough.
Umolyayu
. Please.”

Elle threw up her hands. “Fine, fine. I'm done trying to convince you to come with me. But you two wet blankets can't stop me from taking a peek inside.”

“You are being foolish, Elle,” Lily warned as Elle stepped toward the thinnest section of spirit webs, her unstrung bow upraised in preparation to shift aside the first wave of tendrils.

“Please, Mrs. Grundy. Nothing's going to happen,” she sneered.

Just then, from the depths of the forest, echoed a long, wailing howl, like a tortured coyote's cry. A flock of seagulls burst from the top of the webs, most dripping essence and flying erratically toward Alcatraz.

“Well, ain't irony one hell of a pill? That answers that question,” Elle said, yanking backward and glaring into the wavering forest, paler than Piotr had ever seen her before. “Not going in there, no way, no how.”

“Our sweet savage sees reason,” Lily said, bemused, sheathing her knives. “
Yanauluha
be thanked.”

“Rub it in, sister,” Elle said. “I'm just not up to tangling with hell-dogs today.”

“As you say,” Lily said gravely. “Then by all means, as you are skilled in stealth and know the shortcuts this area has to offer, I beg of you, please lead the way.”

Mollified by Lily's request, Elle tossed her head and turned southwest, moving to skirt the mass. They'd made it no more than a tenth of the way around the edge, just past St. Mary's Square, when Sutter opened up onto Grant and they stepped into a thin place in the Never while coming face to face with a trio of Walkers.

Startled, Elle fell back a few steps. Her bow was unstrung, her knives sheathed. Lily's knives were out but they looked pale and dull
here, in this strange, uneasy place. Piotr sensed that if he drew his own knife his blade would have suffered the same fate—the living world was leaching from them, weakening them all.

“What have we here?” hissed the nearest Walker, shorter than the others by several inches, and slimmer, swaying left-right, left-right in a way that emphasized how much smaller it was. There were long vertical rips in its grey cloak and Piotr could see surprisingly intact legs beneath, muscles whole and flexing, flashing its pale, mold-riddled skin. Other than the mold the legs looked strong, good for chasing down prey. Piotr shuddered, trying not to imagine this particular Walker not walking, but running, after him; hunting him to ground like a beast.

“Three Riders out past their bedtime? So late at night. What are you doing awake?” It chuckled roughly, and the menace of it raised the hairs on Piotr's arms. This Walker wasn't nearly as mindless as it ought to be, he realized, and it didn't seem as affected as they were by the thin spot of Never.

“It's one of the White Lady's, too,” Elle said softly. “Look, its hands are all scarred up.”

“How many of you escaped?” Piotr demanded suddenly, exasperated. “It seems we cannot turn around before bumping into another one of you!”

“Perhaps Piotr walks in the wrong parts of town then?” suggested the lead Walker, drawing its hood partially off its face. Piotr winced when he saw that half the Walker's face was gone, the left eyelid drooping deeply and the flesh spongy and soapified on the left side.

The lips drawn back were bloodless and chapped and the eyes were unnaturally wide, but something about the Walker's features struck a chord deep inside. It took Piotr a moment before he realized why this Walker wasn't quite as tall as the others, why it was so slim, why it looked so different than the others—he was a she.

Recoiling back a step, Piotr grimaced. He knew that, in theory, some female spirits became Walkers, but it wasn't usual. He'd
always gotten the impression that they just didn't last as long as the men, and they hardly ever lasted long enough to reach a position of dubious power among the Walkers. It wasn't that women were incapable of being just as cruel and cold as a Walker had to be, it was simply that even dead, prejudices persisted. Most of the Walkers had been living men in a time when most women were subservient and cowed—any woman who became a Walker had to be twice as cold and cruel just to survive. The fact that these other Walkers were following her was almost unheard of. Of course, since the White Lady, many previously unheard of things had been occurring at a disquieting rate.