Cheat the Grave

existing underground, ingesting the old and birthing the new in the gritty darkness. Was Shen right? Had I called all of this to me? I waited for the drugs to wear off, and-as I continued to fall-prayed for a soft landing.

Sliding to a surprisingly easy stop, as if flowing off a large silk veil, I spit grit from my mouth, wiped it from my eyes, and tried to regain my bearings.

“Here.” An unsurprised voice-one that didn’t echo-sounded next to me, before a cool, damp cloth was pressed against my cheek. I wiped the sand from my face, noting the sound of running water as my dirtied rag was replaced. As I wrung water into my eyes, another voice, farther away, piped, “If you hadn’t fought it you would have arrived as you were meant to, clean and on your feet.”

I sighed, because I knew that voice. It was both chipped and singsong, with a light tone and dark smoky texture. I’d left its owner, Diana, in Midheaven too. “Ah, but this makes such an impression,” I muttered, then squinted, gazing about. “Where am I?”

The metallic taste was worse down here, weighed down and compressed like a silver bar in my mouth.

“The water room, of course.” Her voice didn’t echo either.

So it was one of the elemental rooms. Squinting, I looked about. At least more of one than the dust bowl upstairs. It had glass sides and a sandy rooftop, yet it tinkled and flowed, its perimeter completely awash in clear water that fell over the walls in a steady rush. Slate shelves caught the musical liquid, spilling it to the ground in beautiful, almost balletic, designs.

The room’s center was dotted with basins: black marble, clear crystal, hammered copper, and rose glass. Each bubbled in competing heights, and where there wasn’t water, there were mirrors, including underfoot. Strawthin streams backlit with firefly lights filled in the blank spaces, and behind all the watery reflection was the constant movement of white sand shifting against crystal walls. It added to the eerie movement of the room, so that I felt caught in the middle of an hourglass.

There was no music, but the various pools sang as though charmed. The thought kept me alert as I turned my attention to the room’s occupants, three in total. The one with a waist comprised of dangerous S-curves still loomed above me, but two others lounged in webbed hammocks winking with gold fringe. None looked particularly surprised to see me, and the voluptuous one even offered me a hand up.

“It’s a water vein,” she said, pulling me to my feet. “Both the water and the electromagnetic current from our bodies allow the dowsers to measure our depth and location.”

“And time,” Diana added, swinging in her hammock like a bright, overgrown black widow. She wore voluminous skirts in layers of taffeta, and black fishnets studded with crystals that flashed when she kicked her heels. The venomous spider analogy, I thought as she smiled, was something to keep in mind. “They can also douse for a specific place in time.”

And time didn’t pass the same way in Midheaven as it did in the real world. Here it bent and twisted upon itself, eating large chunks of a lifetime even in a blink. I hoped that wasn’t also true when visiting in your dreams.

“How would you prefer to die?” The woman next to me tilted her head prettily. “Fire or ice?”

“You giving me an option?” I said, returning the dirty cloth to her. My echoing voice made the question sound more forceful than I intended, but she took the cloth without moving to harm me. I remained wary. The women in Midheaven, powerful to the last, were never exactly what they seemed.

This one seemed to be a forgotten flower child, with dried blooms woven through her hair and light brown curls streaked with gold and red. Round cheeks dimpled beneath a cheerful spotting of freckles, but the sweet visage changed drastically below the neck. Cleavage bloomed over a black bone corset, covering the sinuous slide of those hips to end in a skintight pencil skirt. The outfit, and the body it encased, was totally out of place beneath a face of such abject innocence.

She took the cloth, smiling, and folded it in the crevasse between her milky breasts. “It’s only a question.”

But in case it was a trick one…“Old age. In bed.”

She shifted, causing gold flecks to spark from her limbs. Musk, like a tobacco rose, wafted to strike me in the gut. I hadn’t scented anything so heady and delicious since losing all my amplified senses. Though fully clothed, the sight and scent and sound of her were a promise of pure sex. The men in the Rest House, like Shen, and Tripp when he’d still been here, probably fell to their knees in front of her, begging for a taste of all that softness.

“In seven and a half billion years,” she said, breathy voice filled with wonder, “the earth will be dragged from its orbit by the sun, and spiral to a vaporous death.”

I blinked.

“Fucking cheery, Trish.” Diana rolled her eyes at me, then turned to address her companion on the hammocks.

“Does she know how to bring down a party or what?”

That woman said nothing, her silence a rebuke after Trish’s bubbling friendliness. She could have been either white or Asian, porcelain skin almost translucent atop chiseled cheekbones and piano-black lips. I thought about checking my reflection in them. Her hair was a severe bowl cut in the same glossy ebony as her mouth, but the thick bangs cutting straight across her face obscured her eyes, rendering her expressionless.

Covered from neck to ankle in form fitting black, she reminded me of a severe Audrey Hepburn without any other adornment beyond long dark nails. Yet every bit of her skinny body was revealed in a way even Trish hadn’t dared. Her ribs could be counted, her elbows jutted sharply, her nipples looked set in concrete.

She reminded me a bit of Mackie, I thought, shifting uncomfortably. Alert even without the use of her eyes. I glanced at Diana, who was lazily swinging a leg just above the ground, and when I looked back, the woman’s long, elegant fingers were tucked beneath her chin. A mannequin striking a different enticing pose, not moving into the position, but simply there, rigid and aloof. I frowned.

“I’m stating fact, right, Nicola?” Trish said, breaking me of my study as she whirled to join Diana, curls flying to emit another whiff of sweet muskiness. “Just because you don’t talk about it doesn’t mean we’re not all going to incinerate as the globe is engulfed by fire. Though we won’t even make it that long,” she turned, saying to me, “the sun will be ten percent brighter in just a billion years, causing all the oceans to boil away. No water, no life. Want a drink?”

“No.” Taking a drink was how I’d gotten into this mess.

Or was it? Shen claimed I’d called him to me, and these women were acting as if I’d stepped in from another room, rather than another world. I blinked again. “I am dreaming, right?”

“Of course,” Nicola said. Amazing, because her chrome mouth never moved. “But that doesn’t mean you aren’t really here. You’re a part of this world now, or didn’t you know?”

Maybe giving up two-thirds of the essence de vie gave me free admittance for the rest of my natural lifetime. If only Disney had the same policy, I thought wryly. “So I need a drug to induce some sort of deeper level of sleep-”

“The theta level,” Trish said helpfully.

“And then I call the world to me just as I go under.”

“So telling someone to go to hell at that moment isn’t probably the wisest course of action.” This from Diana, hers a more mocking helpfulness. I scowled, and she smiled prettily. “Hope you have someone to pull you back out, though.”

“What?”

The smile widened. “You know. In case she finds out you’re here.”

But then the arching sound was back, bursting through the room like a low-flying phoenix. Ducking, I studied the cascading water walls, but the sound was already gone, lost in the rush. I held still, eyes darting, waiting for it again.

“So that’s why you’re here.” A slow smirk finally curled at the corners of Nicola’s black lacquered mouth.

“Should have figured.”

“Solange was right,” Trish singsonged.

The name alone sent shivers along my limbs, and apparently Diana felt the same way because she shushed Trish with a harsh glare. Maybe she’d done something to anger the woman too. Too bad for her…for us both. Solange’s was the sort of anger that blotted out entire planets. Basically, the difference between her and God was that God didn’t require the breath from your body, the bone from your marrow, the white from your eyes. Solange did.