I kept walking. “I’m aware of that. And I’m not leaving until I get what I came for.”
Ian had to run to keep up with me. “What’s that, then? What could possibly be here for a living soul?”
“His name is Dean,” I said. Even saying his name brought a prickle of tears, but I fought them.
Ian’s brow drew down. “You can’t bring the dead back, Aoife. They’re here to stay.”
“He was never supposed to die,” I said. “It’s my fault. I have to bring him back.”
“I hate to tell you this,” said Ian, “but whether he was meant to die or not, dead is dead. There’s no help for it once a soul crosses the barrier from life to the Deadlands. It’s not physical, like space and time, but it’s a barrier all the same. I tend to think it’s still physics, just laws we don’t understand.”
Any other time, I would have been thrilled to meet someone who could tell me more about the Gates, confirm or deny speculation, and just generally discuss science, but I waved him off. “No. My mother said that if someone dies before it’s their time, they can be brought back. And she’d know.”
Ian raised one eyebrow. “Your mother sounds like a smart lady, but it’s still bunk. There’s no way you can free a soul from this place. Dead is dead, Aoife. Once you cross, unless you’re using a trick like whatever brought you here, then you’re here for good. I’m sorry.”
“Bargained, then,” I snapped. “Everyone has their price.”
A clouded look passed across Ian’s face, and his eyes grew dark, gauging the road we’d been walking. “You don’t want to go that way,” he said, pointing ahead to the smog-shrouded city.
I stopped walking and folded my arms over my chest. “And why is that?”
He shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot. “It’s dangerous there. In the city.”
I softened. If he was anything like my father, he wouldn’t respond well to being pushed around. “Look, Ian. You seem to know your way around this place, and I could really use your help.”
He started to cut in and I held up a finger. “Let me finish. I’m going to find Dean with or without you, and do everything in my power to bring him back to the world of the living. So you can help me, or you can get out of my way.” I dropped my hand and started walking again. After a few steps I stopped and turned back. “But I’d really prefer that you help me.”
My uncle hesitated for so long that I thought he was going to refuse, and I was going to be on my own. The thought didn’t scare me overmuch, but it would make what I had to do that much harder.
At last, though, he sighed and followed me as I started walking again, reluctant to waste any more time. “I suppose I won’t change your mind? Not even when I tell you what’s in that city?”
“Doubtful,” I said. “What is it?”
“This place”—Ian gestured at the sands and the road—“the Ossuary Trail, it’s a neutral zone, where nobody except the most desperate go because it’s so dangerous.” He grimaced. “Like me, for instance. But in the city—the city is safe, because it’s controlled. Controlled by things that have
“No, I understand,” I said. I’d seen the same effect in Lovecraft—people staying put in their comfortable lives and risking a Proctor burning rather than chance what lay beyond the walls. “So most of the souls stay in the Catacombs?” I said, thinking back to my conversation with Nerissa.
“The prison of the dead,” Ian agreed. “If Dean is here, chances are he ended up there, on his own or by force. Those who run the Catacombs aren’t picky about what you did in life, just what your soul is worth to them, and in return they offer a little protection. Not really worth it, but the souls they trap just want to exist. You stray from the city, you run the risk of … well … disintegrating. Forgetting who you are.”
“I understand that part, too,” I whispered. That couldn’t have happened to Dean. He had to be safe, to remember me.
I had to be in time.
“It’s hell,” Ian said softly. “This existence of mine isn’t much, but I escaped the Catacombs and I swore I’d never go back.”
“I’m sorry to make you do it for me,” I said, and I was being honest. “But if Dean is there, I’ve got to find him, and I think we’ve proved I don’t stand much of a chance without someone who knows his way around.”
Ian sighed. “Why not?” he said. “We Graysons have to stick together.”
The air grew thicker as we approached the city, and though my chest didn’t rise and fall as it did when I was alive, I could smell it. It was a toxic smell, one of acrid smoke and charred meat but also of rot, the kind of rot that takes centuries to build, the cloying odor of a forest floor, the musk of turned earth, and the rotten tang of flesh regurgitated by insects.
The closer we got to the city, the worse the stench became. Ian slowed to a plod, and I looked over my shoulder. I could tell by the set of his shoulders and his rigid expression that he was afraid.
I had to keep him talking, get his mind off where we were going. And my mind, while I was at it. I wanted to wake up, to snap my soul back to the living world, open my eyes and see the cobwebbed ceiling of Chang’s shop, but if I did, I knew I’d never forgive myself for failing Dean when he needed me the most. My soul-self could exist here a little longer. It was a small price to pay.
“How did you escape that place to begin with?” I asked Ian, pointing to the city. He flinched and shoved his hands into his pockets.
“In the Catacombs, there are guards—watchers who were never human, never part of anything living. They can be bribed, and I knew things that they wanted to know, things about the other prisoners. I was an informant,” he said, as if dragging out the word physically hurt. “I got them to trust me, to think of me as amusing and harmless. Now I can’t stay in the same place for more than an instant. The Deadlands are infinite. Physics here doesn’t work the same as in a living Land. You could wander forever, compelled to drift, or cross your footsteps a hundred times in one day, but you better never slow down, because everything in this place is hungry for the energy your soul can provide.”
I felt a strong stab of pity for Ian straight through my chest. Whatever he’d done in life, he didn’t deserve this.
“I’m sorry I’m making you go back,” I said softly.
Ian shrugged. “Don’t feel bad on my account. Most Walkers forget their own names over time. They forget everything about who they were. I don’t want that to happen. At least now I feel useful.”
“Thank you,” I said, but he said nothing in reply, so we walked silently as the sun went down and rose again, the sky changing every hour or so from rose to ink and back again.
I must have watched the sun rise a dozen times while Ian and I walked. He was right—physics didn’t have the hold here it did in the living world. Finally Ian and I started talking again.
“You said someone in the city would know where Dean was,” I began. “What are they going to want in return?”
Ian gave a thin smile. “You really are Archie’s daughter, aren’t you? Always looking for the angles.”
“I didn’t learn that from my father,” I told him. “I learned that because he wasn’t around.”
“Ouch,” Ian muttered. “Sorry.”
“Just tell me how bad this is going to be,” I said. I wanted to know what price would be culled from me, either in blood or in promises or in sanity. All of those were negotiable with the sort of creatures I’d met lurking in the shadows between worlds.
“There’s a soul in there, one of the oldest I’ve met who still has her faculties,” said Ian. “A Spiritualist when she was alive. She can find things, people. As for what she wants”—he scratched his temple—“it depends. Sometimes she does it because she thinks it’ll be funny, other times she’ll slice out part of your memories and take them. It’s how she’s stayed sane for so long.”
I looked toward the city, listening to the endless wail of the sirens, the screaming of a place full of mindless pain. “Well, it’s not like I expected this to be easy.”
Ian didn’t say anything, and I had run out of questions, so we walked on in silence, until we reached the city
