Dead Set

“Yes, you will. You’ll leave him just like you’re going to leave me, because it’s what Father and I want and it’s the right thing to do,” shouted Valentine. “You keep trying to change things you can’t change. Some things are just too big. They are what they are and there’s nothing you can do about it.” He came over to her and bent down, pushed Zoe’s hands out of the way, and retied the cloth around her ankle until it was snug and comfortable. “If you love Father, do what he told you when you first came here. Go home. Be safe. Have a life.”

“How can I just run off and leave you?”

Valentine got up, went to a pile of dishes, and put two cups on the table. “Just put one foot in front of the other and keep doing that until you’re far away from this shithole.”

“I don’t even know how to leave.”

“Yeah, that’s a problem,” he said. “I’ve learned to sneak around the edges of things. Get far enough out of town to sneak into your dreams, but that’s because I’m dead. You need some other way back.”

“Emmett. . um, Ammut, he’s alive, isn’t he? I could go out from the place where he goes.”

Valentine turned away from her, rummaging for the sugar. “If we knew where that was.”

“I might know someone who does,” said Zoe.

Valentine turned and looked at her intently. He reached over and turned off the stove. “Let’s go.”

Traveling with Valentine made Zoe feel safe and they didn’t see any dogs along the way, so it wasn’t more than half an hour before they were standing in front of Mr. Prosper’s building.

Valentine looked up and down the bright, clean street and gave an exaggerated whistle. “Damn. I’ve seen these buildings, but I’ve never had the nerve to go inside. I always figured they had some kind of alarm that could smell street scum.”

“You’re not street scum.”

“I’m sure not one of them,” he said, looking up at the top of the building.

They went through the lobby and took the elevator up to the top floor. Zoe led the way to Mr. Prosper’s apartment. She turned the knob slowly, and when she could feel that the door wasn’t locked, she pushed it all the way open. Mr. Prosper was still asleep on the bed where she’d left him. She went over and sat down on the edge of the bed, facing the sleeping man. Valentine remained in the doorway, his gaze taking in the room and its opulence.

Zoe gestured for him to come in and close the door. Valentine nodded and did as he was told. Inside, he spotted Mr. Prosper’s knife on the floor and picked it up. Zoe watched him weigh the blade in his hand. He shrugged off his greatcoat and let it fall to the floor. Zoe hadn’t seen his arms in the light before. They really were pipes. His hands were a crazy combination of metal scraps all fitted together like a rusted jigsaw puzzle. It didn’t make sense that they could work, but they did, by whatever magic ruled Iphigene. Plus, they looked formidable.

Valentine smiled at her. Zoe reached over and shook Mr. Prosper’s shoulder. “Wake up! Hey, wake up!”

Mr. Prosper jerked violently away from her and raised his head. “What?” he said hoarsely. He opened his eyes and looked at Zoe, but didn’t seem to recognize her. His gaze moved past her to land at the foot of the bed, where Valentine was standing, the knife held tightly in his metal hand. “Gah!” shouted Mr. Prosper, scrambling back farther on the bed. “Go away!”

Zoe gently put a hand on Mr. Prosper’s leg, and that seemed to get his attention. He jerked away from her, his eyes wild with fear. “You!” he said in wonder.

“Me,” said Zoe. She glanced up at Valentine. “I told my brother how you kidnapped me and how you said you were going to slit my throat. Know what he wants to do to you?” She leaned in closer and spoke in hushed tones. “With that bad leg of yours, he wants to drag you down to one of those dark streets and leave you for the dying dead. How does that sound?”

Mr. Prosper put his hands over his face. For a second she felt bad for the man, blubbering and terrified, stripped of his dignity and everything he valued by Hecate and now by her. But he did threaten to kill me and steal my body and we really won’t give him to the dying. Maybe scaring him a little is payback.

“No! Go away, please! I’m sorry,” Mr. Prosper said.

“If you’re really sorry, tell me how Emmett gets back to the world. What’s the way out for someone who’s alive?”

He looked at her in horror. “No. I can’t.”

“Tell me how to get out of Iphigene,” Zoe insisted.

“She’ll know it was me. She’ll feed me to her dogs.”

“She will if I go and tell her what you did.”

“What?”

As Zoe and Mr. Prosper talked, Valentine went around the man’s room taking small things and stuffing them in his pockets. He slipped the empty flask off the bed, took a silver bottle opener off a table and a faceted glass paperweight off the top of Mr. Prosper’s dresser.

“I’ve been thinking about it,” Zoe said to Mr. Prosper. “I bet I can make a deal with Queen Hecate. My brother and father would like living in this building. Would you like this room, Valentine?”

Valentine looked over at her and Mr. Prosper as he was slipping a cigarette lighter into his pocket. “Very much.”

“I can do more,” said Zoe to Mr. Prosper. “If you worked for Hecate, I bet Emmett has one of those records with your soul on it. I’ll get her to tell Emmett to break it. What will happen to you if your record breaks?”

The man’s wide, wet eyes swiveled in their sockets, looking first at Valentine and then at Zoe. “Please. You can’t.”

“What will happen to you?”

“I’ll fall apart,” he said in a tone that was more of a plea than a statement. “It’s horrible. I’ll burn up from the inside out and disappear. Forever.”

“It doesn’t have to happen. Just tell me how to go home. But first tell me this. If Emmett can get to the real world, why doesn’t Hecate take his body?”

Mr. Prosper seemed horrified by the question. “He’s her child. She’d never hurt him.”

“Why can he go back and forth to the real world when no one else can?”

“For the same reason that he holds the records. He’s Ammut, the eater of the dead. The keeper and destroyer of lost souls. Some spirits are ushered into this world and others-”

Zoe nodded. She didn’t want to hear the rest of the sentence.

“I understand. Now, how do I get out?”

Mr. Prosper held up a hand in Valentine’s direction, palm out, defensively.

“I’ll tell you what I know,” he said miserably. He pulled one of the pillows from the bed and clutched it to his chest. His face contorted. “Please, my leg,” he whispered.

Zoe took one of the laudanum bottles from his bedside table and handed it to him. Mr. Prosper tore out the cork with trembling hands and downed half the bottle before coming up for air. “Thank you,” he said, gasping. He pointed out the window. “On the beach, near the far end of the boardwalk, is a rocky outcropping. At low tide there’s a drainage pipe. You can’t miss it. It’s big enough for a man to stand up in. Follow the pipe for perhaps a quarter of a mile and take the left fork.” He took another drink from the bottle. A smaller one this time. “Soon you’ll come to an underground entrance to the palace. Only Emmett ever uses it, so no one will bother you. When you see the door, you’ll know you’re on the right path. Keep going until you see light. When you reach the end, you’ll be back in the world of the living.”

Valentine came over and leaned on the wall at the top of the bed. “Are there any tricks or traps along the way?” He weighed Mr. Prosper’s knife in his hand.

“Why would there be?” Mr. Prosper clutched the pillow tighter as Valentine loomed over him. “No one knows about the tunnel but Hecate’s most trusted advisers.”

“I hope you’re not lying,” Valentine said. “If anything happens to my sister. . well, those unlit streets are already calling your name.”

“Thank you, Mr. Prosper,” said Zoe. She started to turn away, but stopped. “I’m sorry about what Hecate did to you.”