All That Lives Must Die

“Mr. Welmann?” she whispered.

“Miss Post? It’s Fiona, right? And Eliot?” He smiled, but it faded fast. “You’re not dead, are you?”

“No,” Fiona told him, at first thinking this a stupid question, and then remembering where they where.

Mr. Welmann exhaled.

“We just got here,” Eliot said. Her brother had recovered from whatever happened to him back there, because he pushed her arm away and set Lady Dawn back in its violin case.

“I saw that damned Cadillac race past,” Mr. Welmann said, “and figured there’d be trouble. Come on. The way out of these Borderlands is back here.”

As they started walking, Fiona remembered one thing about Mr. Welmann.

He was dead.

Uncle Henry had told them Audrey killed him to keep the League from finding them. She’d done it with the knife they’d used to cut their birthday cake. It was so creepy.

Eliot asked him, “You called this place the ‘Borderlands’?”[13]

“Kind of a demilitarized zone,” Mr. Welmann said. He broke through the woods and onto a footpath. He looked around as if he expected someone to come along.

“I don’t mean to be rude, sir,” Fiona said, “but you are dead, aren’t you?”

“Sure, kid.” He shrugged. “It’s not a big deal. We all go sooner or later.”

“Our mother-?” she started to ask. . but couldn’t quite articulate the entire question: Did our mother really kill you?

Mr. Welmann started up the path and answered, “Yep.”

They followed his long strides until patches of sunlight broke through the branches and they heard birdsong.

“I’m so sorry,” Fiona said, knowing this could never make up for what had happened. “That’s horrible.”

“I’m not holding a grudge,” Mr. Welmann replied. “I got the impression I’d stumbled into a mother-bear- protecting-her-cubs situation. If I had kids, I might have done the same thing. I hope it turned out all right for you two.”

“We’re in the League now,” Eliot told him.

“And Paxington,” Fiona added, pointing to the symbol on her uniform.

Mr. Welmann looked them over, nodding. “Yeah. . I see it in you now. A spark.”

Fiona sensed Mr. Welmann’s friendly nature cool toward them.

He led them across a grassy field. Dew soaked Fiona’s loafers, but she didn’t mind. It was clean, and washed away the volcanic ash.

Mr. Welmann waved at a group tossing Frisbees. He caught one of the flying disks and flung it back. “You must have had some adventures accomplishing all that,” he said.

She and Eliot told him everything that had happened that summer: the three heroic trials, the box of chocolates, the return of their estranged father, and the final confrontation with Beelzebub.

Mr. Welmann took it all in without question.

He halted at the top of the hill. Fiona saw the fields stretch out, fading into a distant purple horizon. A river wider than the Mississippi meandered across the plain, seeming from this angle part doodle and part quicksilver reflecting the sky.

“So this is what happens when you die?” Eliot asked. “You come here? And some people go to Hell?”

“I couldn’t tell you, kid. I see a few hundred people show up from time to time. The people who go to Hell? I’m happy to say I haven’t a clue.”

“But that doesn’t make sense.” Eliot’s brows bunched together. “There should be billions of people here, then.”

“That is the question,” Welmann said. “Where do they all go?” He knelt, picked a long blade of wheatgrass, and stuck into his mouth. “No one knows. Not me. Not the Infernals.” He chuckled. “And certainly not the ‘gods.’ ”

“Someone has to know something,” Fiona protested.

“Do they?” Mr. Welmann asked. “Well, the closest thing I have to an answer is that from time to time, the dead move on. Some make rafts and float down the river. Others just start walking.” He pointed to the distant horizon. “No one sees them again.”

Fiona remembered what Kino had said: “The dead are restless. No one living, not even I, understands what moves them.”

Welmann sighed. “I feel it sometimes. Don’t get me wrong. . all these barbecues”-he cleared his throat-“the company of fine ladies, and all the leisure time is great. But it feels like there has to be something more.”

He paused and stared miles away. “I’m not sure what ‘more’ means. . Heaven, Hell, or oblivion, but I know there’s a final destiny waiting for me.”

Fiona sensed the weight and the truth of what he said.

They sat quiet for a moment.

Mr. Welmann laughed and got up. “Geez, that’s about enough of that. We better get you two back. If half of what I’ve heard about Paxington is true, you’ll have a ton of books to read your first week.”

Fiona nodded.

He led them down the other side of the hill. There were mausoleums and obelisks ahead, and the beginning of the graveyards.

“You know your troubles are just beginning, right?” Mr. Welmann said. “The League is dangerous, and three heroic trials or not, it’s never done testing you. The other side of your family won’t give up, either. It’s not in their nature.”

Fiona didn’t like the way he talked about the League. They were part of the League now. But out of respect for Mr. Welmann, she thought about his warning before she answered.

“The League has our best interests at heart,” she told him. “And I think our father has gone away. The other Infernals? No one is going to bother us after what we did to Beelzebub.”

“Best interests?” Eliot said. “What about what Kino just did to us? In case you didn’t notice-we could have died back there.”

They came to a stand of headstones so dense, they had to pick a crooked path through them, single file.

Fiona frowned at her brother’s assertion. She wanted to say that Kino just meant to show them what the other side of their family stood for. But what about those people on the other side of the fence who had tried to tear them apart? And those birds? Kino had to know about them. He had to know that leaving them there would be dangerous.

Mr. Welmann lifted a foot onto a headstone to tie his shoelace. “Look,” he said, “I’m not trying to scare you. Just decide who you trust and who you don’t. . and watch each other’s backs.”

Of course that’s what they’d do. The question was, whom to trust?

Well, each other, of course.

Her mother? As much as Fiona wanted to trust her, Audrey had lied to Fiona and Eliot for the last fifteen years. Maybe for a good reason, but she had still lied. There was no reason to think she wouldn’t continue to do so.

“Just over there,” Mr. Welmann said. “We’re almost to Little Chicken Gate.” [14]

He slowed. “You two wouldn’t know a kid named Robert Farmington? We used to work together. Haven’t seen him here yet. I wondered if he was okay.”

“Sure, we know Robert,” Eliot said. “He’s a friend.”

“We know him,” Fiona echoed, unsure what Robert and she were to each other anymore. He had acted so strange today.

Mr. Welmann, however, did not look happy at this. “He’s still driving for Mr. Mimes?”

“Not exactly,” Fiona replied. “Uncle Henry fired him. But it’s not what it sounds like. He helped us. . just got into a little trouble with the League.”

“He’s going to Paxington now,” Eliot added.

Mr. Welmann halted and his eyes narrowed. “That can’t be right,” he said. “No one gets fired from the