Graves' end

remembered it well. He also remembered the gratitude he’d felt for this kind woman who’d come to love his girl as much as he did, back when she first appeared in their lives.

“The Goddess of Madness, right?” Hannah prodded, easing nearer to the Archon and crouching down before her. “I think we’ve looked into each other’s eyes before.”

Winston Fucking Watt wormed his way out of his bead-bracelet bonds before Tom knew what was happening and then the sweatshirt-clad skeleton was up and on his feet so fast, rushing at Riley’s back. Tom condensed into visibility as fast as he could, hoping to warn Lia’s oblivious friend, but he was much too late. Watt’s filthy bones collided with the thin young man in the narrow-cut suit, propelling him forward through the doorway even as he turned his head in surprise at Tom’s unheralded appearance.

Riley’s flesh vanished when he fell across the threshold, in the manner Tom had come to expect. He shouted when he hit the second chamber’s cold floor on bony hands and knees. He jumped back up and tried to cross back over… but no. It was too late. Riley was a part of Mictlan already, just like that, and the empty doorway might as well have been a solid wall, as far as he was concerned.

Women seemed to have much better luck when it came to that sort of thing, Tom couldn’t help but notice. He wondered sickly if his long lost Dulce might not’ve fared as well as Ingrid, Lia, and even Hannah, if his own stern warnings (based on the experience of watching Ramon go over) hadn’t kept her from ever trying.

Watt dashed away, out of the King’s office and back into the world, and Tom almost chased after him, but he didn’t really know what to do about him.

And besides, he wasn’t yet prepared to leave his Lia.

He turned back to face the inner sanctum, where Hannah had never quit trying to communicate with Lyssa, Lady Madness. Tom realized that Han was so intent on the Archon and her captive that she hadn’t even noticed poor Riley’s unceremonious demise.

Tom’s instinct was to rush across the barrier and wrestle Lia out of the Archon’s grip, but he knew he wouldn’t be able to do it. He’d be subject to el Rey’s will as soon as he crossed, and unable to intercede. Lacking words, he wouldn’t even be able to negotiate.

Hannah at least could do that.

“You’re mad,” he heard her say, addressing the insane otherworlder face-to-face, crouching to look into her static-filled approximation of eyes. “You’re angry. But it’s because you’re broken, and in pain. I know that. I know you. There was a time when I might’ve lost myself in you. You almost walked the world with me.”

She seemed to have Lyssa’s full attention. Tom thought maybe the Archon’s grip on Lia’s throat had even loosened, a tiny little bit.

“But then I helped to heal this girl,” Hannah continued, reaching out to touch Lia’s cheek with such tenderness that Tom could hardly bear to watch them. “And that wound up healing me.”

She looked up, into the ancient entity’s silver eyes.

“You can let her go, now, Lyssa,” Hannah whispered. “You can come to me. I have room enough inside to hold you now. Come, and let me show you peace.”

Lyssa let go of Lia, allowing her slack body to slump against the wall, and tentatively stood to accept the embrace that Hannah offered. Tom wilted with relief to see his girl released, even if she remained as limp as a ragdoll.

Hannah enfolded Lyssa and they merged together. Then Lyssa vanished, absorbed.

Black Tom looked away, preferring not to witness what happened next to Hannah Potter.

Instead he watched Lia’s blank expression clear. She blinked, coming back to herself by slow degrees. She sat up from where she’d been lying crumpled in the corner, but then she remembered where she was, as well as what was happening, and she looked around for her friends in sudden alarm.

Her eyes grew wide and welled with tears at what she saw.

“Oh, Hannah, no,” she whispered, and Tom forced himself to look up again, too.

Hannah now looked as skeletal and Catrina-esque as Ingrid, her human life having been used up in accepting Lyssa’s office. Her flesh had already dusted away. She looked down at her rescued friend, her daughter in every way that counted, and was obviously relieved to see her restored, although she also seemed anguished by Lia’s evident pain.

When Riley’s bones stepped up next to Hannah, Lia broke down completely. The young skeleton squatted and drew her into his skinny arms.

While Lia wept, grieving for her lost friends and family (even though they were, in some sense, still right there in front of her), Hannah looked over and spotted Black Tom standing alone in the outer office, wringing his insubstantial hands.

She came over to the doorway and tested the invisible barrier with her bony palm, just to confirm that she really could go no further.

“You’re Black Tom?” she asked straightaway. “Lia’s Tom?”

He nodded. Hannah’s empty sockets now saw everything her living eyes never had-including him.

“Nice to meet you,” she said. “You heard of a retired operator called Big Juan?”

Hannah Catrina was obviously grasping at straws, but it seemed she couldn’t let herself stand by without doing something. Not when people who didn’t need to be were dead. Tom liked that about her.

“Juan San Martin?” she continued. “He knows an old friend of Dexter’s, Charlie someone or other, in Sherman Oaks? You think you could find him?”

Black Tom nodded again. Yes to both. Oscar’s boy Juan, Ramon’s grandson, was the one she meant. Tom would always be able to find him, if he tried.

“Then I need you to deliver a message for me,” Hannah said. “The thing that killed Riley and Ingrid is loose in the world. It’s dangerous. You have to tell Mr. San Martin to, oh, I don’t know… to warn somebody, at least! He used to know about these things, maybe he knows people who can help.”

Black Tom nodded a third time, agreeing that Juan San Martin might indeed still have connections. Winston Watt had also killed Juan’s father, Oscar, more than a century before, and Tom would be able to communicate his memory of that event directly, mind to mind. He imagined Juan was going to be quite interested in finding the King’s rogue manservant, even after all these years.

Hannah Catrina returned his nod before turning away from the door between worlds. She went over to join Riley’s remains in trying to soothe an inconsolable Lia, leaving Tom to vanish in pursuit of his final errand.

Chapter Fifty-Four

Ingrid reached the bottom of the pyramid’s staircase at long last. She knew how she must’ve looked by now, stripped bare of her flesh but still draped in her long satin gown: like a redheaded version of LaCalaveraCatrina, a famous old piece of Mexican folk art.

The King and his heir were exchanging futile blows down near the structure’s base, neither of them doing or incurring any damage that didn’t right itself within seconds.

“Dexter! Mickey!” Ingrid’s breathless skeleton scolded. “This is pointless, you can’t hurt each other over here, so stopit.”

“Sorry, mom,” Dexter said, infuriatingly. “But you don’t get to show up at this late date and start bossin’ me around.”

“You have to push him out that door between the rooms at the top of the pyramid without you,” Ingrid told him, her ribs heaving for air even though she had no lungs to fill anymore. “You can’t beat him over here.”

Mickey snarled at her, but he couldn’t silence her. Her voice was still her own, thanks to Lia. She would hold on to that much of her life’s free will until the lighter in her hand grew as cold as the corpse she’d left behind, back out in the realworld. Her King wouldn’t control her fully until then.