His whole body thrashed in the tub, the golden water sloshing over the sides. He was seizing. I tried to hold him steady, but he was shaking too hard. The others reached in around me, and together we stabilized him as best we could.
Tears streamed down Gabrielle’s face. “Baby, talk to me, what’s wrong?”
“It … stopped…” he said, his voice hoarse. His body thumped against the porcelain as another seizure rocked him. His contracting muscles felt as hard as rock under my hands. When the seizure passed, I let go of him, albeit hesitantly.
Gabrielle grabbed his head and turned his face to her. “Baby, look at me!”
He grimaced in pain. “I’m sorry, Gabrielle … I tried … I tried to stay…”
“Baby, don’t talk like that!”
He touched her face with his hand. She held it to her cheek, her fingers wrapped around the leather bracelet she’d given him. “But at least,” he said, “at least … I got to touch you again … and feel it.…”
He cried out suddenly. A shaft of blinding light burst out of the amulet. It shot from Thornton’s chest up to the ceiling, where it turned to billowing white smoke, swirling like a maelstrom between the chandeliers. The light kept pouring from the amulet, the blazing column disappearing into the center of the smoky vortex. There was a loud, sharp crack, as if the world itself had snapped in two, and then, as suddenly as it started, the light stopped. The smoke curled in on itself and vanished, leaving only the sharp smell of ozone in the air.
Thornton fell back limply, his head lolling against the side of the tub. His eyes were open, staring at me, but there was nothing in them anymore.
“No, baby, come on,” Gabrielle said. She took Thornton’s head in her hands and tipped it toward her. “Come on, stay with me.”
The room went quiet. We were too stunned, all of us, too shocked and grief-stricken to say anything. It looked wrong, how still Thornton was.
“Stay with me,” Gabrielle said again.
A quiet mechanical clicking sound answered her. A moment later, the amulet dislodged itself, rising up out of Thornton’s chest on its central spike. The four small red gems on its face, once so brightly pulsing with the amulet’s energy, had turned smoky and dark.
Gabrielle shook her head defiantly. “No!” She put both hands on the amulet and pushed it back down, sinking the spike into the hole in Thornton’s chest again. The amulet clicked and lifted itself out again. She pushed it back into his chest over and over like some horrible version of CPR compressions, but each time it refused to stay down. “Not like this,” she insisted as she pushed it down one final time, tears streaming down her cheeks. “It doesn’t end like this. Not until we’re both old, not until we’ve done so much more.”
Bethany put a hand on Gabrielle’s arm, stopping her. In a hushed tone, she said, “The amulet only works once.”
Gabrielle finally let go of it. She collapsed beside the tub, sobbing.
“I’m so sorry, Gabrielle,” Bethany said. “The Methusal spring may have regenerated his skin and muscle, even his nerve endings, but Thornton was still dead. There was nothing you could do to change that. Nobody could.”
Gabrielle clung to Thornton’s hand. Even when Bethany tried to get her to let go of it, she wouldn’t.
I looked down at him, my breath coming in short, startled bursts. I drew my hand gently down his face, closing his eyes.
The full weight of it hit me then. Until this moment, Thornton’s death had seemed like a technicality—he was dead but still with us, still cracking jokes and fighting alongside us. The possibility that Gabrielle’s spell could reverse his condition had seemed so feasible. But Bethany was right. From the start, she’d said there was nothing we could do to save Thornton. I hadn’t listened, but I should have. Bethany was always right. It wasn’t fair, but she was always goddamn right.
Now, long overdue, it struck me with the force of a sucker punch I should have seen coming.
Thornton was dead.
Twenty-six
I helped them move Thornton’s body to the antique Queen Anne couch on the far side of the room. Philip went upstairs and brought down a white sheet. He covered Thornton with it. I felt like a hole had been torn inside me, a bitter, angry emptiness. Beneath that white sheet, Thornton’s body was good as new from the Methusal spring. Fully healed, yet still dead. It was a cold and merciless irony, courtesy of a world that didn’t give a damn.
Gabrielle sat on the edge of the couch, her head bowed in grief. The others gave her time alone with Thornton as they took the tub away and drained it someplace. I stood in the empty spot in the middle of the room where the tub had been. There were divots in the carpet from the tub’s clawed feet, the only reminder of where Thornton had died. Soon they would fade away, as if they’d never been there at all, and that only made me angrier.
I watched Gabrielle and thought of the goblin Binding Oath she’d taken with Thornton. It’d been the happiest day of her life. I could only imagine what she was feeling now. Gabrielle peeled back the white sheet to reveal Thornton’s face. With his eyes closed, he should have looked asleep, but instead he just looked … empty. She stroked his cheek.
The others came back. Bethany sat beside her, putting her arm around Gabrielle’s shoulders. Isaac whispered words of comfort. I stood apart from them, still an outsider. The four of them had a connection that bound them tight, a shared history and a trust that had developed over time. Those were things I’d never had with anyone, things Underwood had taught me were weaknesses to be exploited, but now, seeing the way they cared for each other, I understood it was what I’d been missing all along. A sense of belonging, of family. I wanted it more than anything.
Isaac came over to me. His face was long, and even paler than before. He sighed and said, “We still need to find out everything we can about Underwood. I could use your help.”
“Why bother?” I asked. “Stryge’s head is safe now.”
“Because I want to know why your boss wanted it,” Isaac said. “How did he even know about it? It’s not common knowledge.”
I shrugged. “He has buyers, people who commission him to find valuable items. One of them must have been familiar with the story.”
He nodded, but he didn’t look convinced. “Come with me, there’s something I’d like you to look at.”
We returned to the long table beneath the stained-glass windows. Isaac pulled up a chair and opened a sleek, expensive-looking laptop on the table. He tapped a few keys. The six video monitors on the wall flickered to life.
Faces began appearing on the screens, a different one on each monitor, and a few seconds later they were replaced with new ones. Some were photographs, others were paintings and drawings. The faces were male and female, old and young, every color and ethnicity; some were human and others, such as the tentacle-faced monstrosity that appeared briefly on one of the screens, were definitely not.
“What is this?”
“I’ve been putting together a database of the Infected,” Isaac said. “It’s far from complete, but it’s a good start. What I’d like you to do is watch the faces and keep an eye out for Underwood, or anyone you’ve seen him having dealings with.”
“Underwood isn’t infected,” I said.
“How do you know that?” he asked. “If he knows about Stryge’s head, odds are he knows about magic.”
He had a point, though I found it hard to believe. If Underwood were infected it would mean he had magic —which meant he wouldn’t need enforcers like Tomo and Big Joe. He wouldn’t need me, either. But I dutifully watched the parade of faces for a while, studying each one closely before moving on to the next. One resembled a woman who’d been genetically crossbred with a bat. Another looked for all the world like the pickled remains of a
