I find her in the cemetery crying
beside her gravestone: there are few things that can complicate a
life more than resurrection does. She looks normal enough, even to a
magician if they look too closely. Perhaps a little pale, but it’s
not as if she’s going to be eating the living. Few things work like
they do in stories: I sometimes think it would be kinder if it did.
“Nora Baker.”
She spins. Not a ghost, but dead enough
to see deeper than humans do. “Are you an angel?”
But perhaps not as deep as she should.
“I am the wandering magician of this era. Someone brought you
back?”
Nora nods. She is young, perhaps
fifteen all told, and I feel no hunger inside her.
That is bad, though I try to hide it.
“Do you know who would want to bring you back?”
“No. No, it’s not – it’s not
possible,” she says.
“I imagine you can see ghosts now:
they tend to be imprints left behind, like your shadow taking on a
life all its own. Someone like you is like a wrecking ball, imprinted
so hard into the world that your body is restored. There is nothing
in that grave anymore.”
“I’m haunting myself?”
“No. You were recalled to life. It is
not a thing magicians do, for many reasons. The cost is far higher
than even love is willing to pay, but madness is something else
entirely. It is the main reason few magicians dare fall in love, for
fear of the madness that might follow. Or at least will not give
themselves up wholly to love even when they do,” I say, threading
power into my voice, letting the words wash over her in a soothing.
“You must know who cared for you enough to do this?”
“No. My parents love me, but this
transgresses – they would not do this, not sell their souls for
me.”
“Someone did, and I doubt it was you.
May I?”
She nods, not sure what she is agreeing
to, but I reach out with the magic and feel the edges of her,
touching what lies within. A face appears. A boy her own age. Not
warded, because he doesn’t know enough to do that. I pull light and
air together until an image form the light of the moon and stars. The
boy is taller than Nora, with long hair trying to cover up an
acne-scarred face, shoulders hunched against the world. The image
fades, as if his desire to not be seen even extends to this moment.
“That – that’s ac- Tony tee –
Tony Brown,” Nora says, looking shocked. “I don’t think he’s
ever talked to me once.”
“But you know him?”
She hesitates, then nods. “This is
magic, making him appear?”
“An image only, but it will help to
find him. I imagine you desire answers?”
“But you know what he did?” she
says, and it is only just a question.
“I have suspicions. I imagine you
wish to know the truth, and that he should as well.”
“I couldn’t go home. I wanted to,
but everyone knows I died. The had the funeral three days ago, and
this town is not that large in ways that matter. I have spent the
last six hours hiding, wandering, not understanding. I can enter
churches, I don’t have demonic urges. I haven’t eaten a single
brain.”
“I know. The conversation would be
far different if you had.”
Nora pulls back at something in my
voice. “I should be?”
“Not brains, no, but there are many
reasons the dead aren’t brought back. Tell me about you and Tony.”
“There’s nothing to tell. I knew
him, everyone knows of him, but that’s not like being his friend. I
wasn’t a cheerleader, nothing like that. I don’t even get good
grades, I haven’t even had a proper boyfriend yet!”
I decline to point out that she’s
only fifteen, if only because such things probably don’t apply to
the undead.
“Tell me about Tony himself, then?”
I ask when Nora adds nothing else about her. Almost no one sees
themselves properly from the outside, even after they’d died.
“I don’t think I’ve ever talked
to him. He’s Acne Anthony, Tony Teeth: those are what everyone
calls him. You saw the acne. He has the kind of buck teeth everyone
makes jokes about, that he’ll never see a beaver because he is one.
People said things like that,” Nora says.
“Did you?” I ask; I don’t need to
thread power into it. Lying comes less easily to the dead than it
does to the living, at least for a time.
“I – no. I have an uncle who was a
volunteer firefighter until he was badly burned. People made so many
jokes, so I guess I learned not to say such things about people?”
“You were never mean to him.”
“But that – that’s not reason
enough to bring me back from the dead!”
“How does your uncle react when
people do him the kindness of treating him like he’s everyone
else?”
Nora is silent at that. “I didn’t
even think,” she says finally. “I didn’t even think that all. I
was texting on my phone, crossing a road, not thinking then either.
And now I am – what I am, magician?”
“Only Tony can answer that,” I say
and she just nods and walks. Starting to see her life from the
outside, learning that she is probably not the monster she always
thought she was. I almost envy her that luxury, since it is one
magicians almost never have.
I wrap wards about us to make us unseen
as we walk. Nora moves quickly after some gasps as staring into
people’s homes. Starting to see more about people she knew than the
living ever wish to, and remains human enough to both want to know
more and to fear what might come of that.
The home of Tony Brown is dark. No
lights on, no TV, no cars in the driveway. No wards, no ghosts, no
power. I walk up to the front door, which opens without my touching
it. Nora makes a startled sound at that small magic, and I close my
eyes a moment. It would be funny if the sadness underneath wasn’t
rising up. There is no power here, the house almost devoid of
furniture, and we find Tony Brown upstairs in a largely empty
bedroom. There are tacks on the walls where posters used to be, a
power bar where a computer once was and shelves empty of books.
“Nora?” he whispers, sensing her
without knowing how.
“What have you done to me?” she
asks, the words coming out close to a scream.
I step in beside after her as the boy’s
face crumples, wrapping bindings about her so we won’t attack him.
“Tony Brown. Tell her,” I say, and there is nothing in him to
stand against the command of a magician.
He jerks his head up. For a moment, he
tries to resist as if he can hide from the truth even now. “I love
you,” he says to Nora. “I kept wanting to ask, but I knew you’d
say no. That kindness only went so far, and then you died and I
couldn’t help – I couldn’t help but wonder what if, what if,
and what if? It burned in me like an obsession, like how much I
wanted to see the new Star Wars movies, only bigger even than that.
“I looked online. In places where I
shouldn’t, and I did what I had to,” he says, his voice raw.
Nora steps forward, gently pushing long
hair out of Tony’s face. His acne is bad, even worse than the
imagie suggested, bucktoothed yellowed teeth trying to hide behind
thin lips. He gulps loudly, his face naked terror and yearning both.
“She needs to know what you did to
bring her back,” I say, cutting through the moment before it can be
more.
Emotions spasm across the boy’s face,
but he does speak: “Sacrifice. Everything I owned, my friends –
online only, but without a computer they are lost,” he says.
“You didn’t use magic on yourself?”
she asks.
“I know that doesn’t end well in
any story,” he says simply.
“Tell her the rest of the sacrifice,”
I say softly.
“I had to sacrifice everything that
meant anything, for it to work.”
Nora goes still, drawing back from him.
“Where are your parents and sister, Tony?”
“They – they were – it costs, to
bring the dead back,” he says. “I love you. Love is worth …
isn’t it?”
She says nothing at all, then turns to
me. Her anger is cold and ugly. “You knew? You brought me here and
you knew!”
“To bring the dead back has a cost; I
didn’t know what it was in his case, Nora. Nor what you would
consider acceptable.”
“You thought –.”
“The dead are not the living,” I
say flatly.
“What do you know,” she demands,
and power begins to rise as a coldness from places the living aren’t
meant to tread. Light burns about her in an unnatural calling.
Tony whimpers; I’m not sure Nora
notices.
“I am a magician.” I smile, and her
power shatters against me. No power, just the force of memory in the
smile. “And I know more of death than you, and more of the sleep
that does not end than you can grasp.”
“I –.” She draws back. “I don’t
want that. Not this, and not that. Please?”
“I don’t know how to undo it,”
Tony whispers.
“We do terrible things for love that
we would do for no other cause,” I offer quietly. “And there is
more that you can do.”
Tony closes his eyes, then straightens
and looks at Nora. “I release you from love, from the bonds I made
and the crime I did. My life holds you, my – my life releases you.”
And he closes his eyes again, and falls
back onto his bed in silence.
Nora doesn’t move, even as power
shimmers about her. He murdered his family for her, and that’s
shaken her deeper than she can easily understand. The body dissolves,
the spell unmade by Tony’s death and two ghosts face each other in
what comes afterward.
“You may meet in the Grey Lands,” I
say, “But not until after prices are paid.”
Tony nods to that, and vanishes as
hands and fingers swirl around him.
“His family,” I say to Nora, who
hovers in the air.
“What happens now?” she whispers.
“That is up to you,” and I turn and
walk away.
“Magician? Why did you do this?”
she demands, meaning so many things.
“Because sometimes the only way
forward is through the fire and out the other side,” I say, and I’m
not talking to the ghost at all as I leave the home. It begins to
burn behind me, and I am almost certain that’s not my doing.
But I don’t think almost is enough.
