Ezekiel Starlight slammed down the receiver, staggering the man wearing it on his back. No response. Jordan and Shadrach, silent. Was it Black?

  “Sir,” said Lucy behind him, her voice shaken. “The, er, we’ve lost contact with Jackson’s squad.” To punctuate her words, the floor vibrated with some distant impact. Jackson’s squad—wiped out by some monster they had encountered in the art gallery. Not Black, but apparently just as dangerous.

  Ezekiel hummed tunelessly to himself as he surveyed the staircase. Carpeted in luxurious red, it stretched up, down, and away to either side until lost in the dimness of distance in all directions. The sight induced vertigo, as though the world were a flat red plane tilted forty-five degrees.

  “We’ll go check it out, I guess,” he said to the five other agents of October Industries. He had to make sure of what had become of Jordan and Shadrach. That’s what friends did, after all. More importantly, he had to find out whether Black had made it in to the Museum. Abraham Black had a key, one that would let him open any door in this world. His presence here would therefore be problematic.

  “Sir,” whispered Lucy, alarmed.

  Ezekiel turned to her, then followed her wide-eyed gaze up the stairs. He fully expected to see Abraham Black there, and for a moment, he thought it was true. But a moment’s inspection told the difference. This was a different person who liked to wear black, somewhat more enigmatic than old Abraham.

  “It’s getting noisy in here,” said the Dark Man. “I suggest you go about your business with haste.”

  “I guess I’m trying,” Ezekiel replied, trying to keep his voice proud and confident. “You a slave to stories, too?” He hadn’t had much opportunity to converse with the Dark Man. This did not prevent Ezekiel from hating him.

  “We all are, Ezekiel Starlight. I can show you your book, if you’d like.”

  “Already seen it. See?” Ezekiel raised his fingers to the burn scars around his eyes.

  “A very foolish decision.”

  “Wouldn’t mind seeing it again, I guess. Can I burn it?”

  A small smile. “That’s against the rules.”

  Ezekiel laughed bitterly. “I guess.”

  *

  Eric awoke in his bed, in the dim basement of his home base. Lights flickered from the monitors across the room. Frisby Wiser was curled up next to him.

  He sat up, stretched, yawned, hopped out of bed. He flicked on the lights, went to the bathroom, checked the security systems as always, changed into his regular clothes—jeans, shirt, jacket, cape, etc. The cape seemed a bit heavier than usual, but he couldn’t remember why.

  He went upstairs for some food. He saw Jacob there, as well as a few of Heidi’s monstrous guards from her crazy moon, including the huge scaly three-armed blue gorilla who was in charge of them. They stared at him. He waved vaguely as he headed for the kitchen to make some coffee.

  It wasn’t until he was in the kitchen, the smell of brewing coffee waking him up, that something began nagging at the back of his mind. Something important, it seemed like, that had happened recently. Like he was forgetting something.

  It wasn’t until a pure white butterfly flitted through the room that Eric remembered.

  He had died. Fuck.

  Kate. Fuck .

  He burst back out through the kitchen doors and almost ran into her. They stared at each other for a second before Kate went in for the hug. Eric saw it coming, but he didn’t try to stop her. How the hell had she got away from Eranex?

  “Eric!” said Kate from over his shoulder. She sounded really upset. She was shaking, sobbing. “It’s J-j-jim!”

  *

  Two cats were watching Elizabeth when she awoke. Two visible ones, at any rate: an eyeless white lynx and an ancient gray feline with bleary eyes.

  Elizabeth jolted upright in her bed at first, disoriented, but then she fell back onto her pillow and stared at the cracked plaster ceiling above her. She didn’t know this room. It smelled of wet wood. Pine, and old smoke. And wet cat.

  Callie put her front paws on the bed and nuzzled Elizabeth’s arm. Elizabeth absently scratched behind Callie’s ears.

  “Welcome back, Hero,” wheezed Deuteronomy.

  Elizabeth closed her eyes. She breathed deeply a few times. She asked, because it suddenly seemed to be of desperate importance, “What kind of story is this?” The ancient cat did not respond.

  “Perhaps…” He paused to cough a hoarse, rattling cough, though Elizabeth couldn’t guess who he thought he was fooling. “…reality?”

  Elizabeth shook her head slowly. “No,” she said. “It’s not that. Anything but that.”

  There was movement behind the old cat, shuffling and murmuring. Oh. Other people. She heard Kyko among them.

  They came, one by one, Kyko and Laska and the rest, making sure she was okay. Then Sister Thorn ushered them out.

  Elizabeth shut her eyes for a long time. She could only think about how broken AJ had seemed. And not just AJ. Everyone over there, on the other side, in the Museum. AJ and Rebecca Carter, Riley McFinn and even poor Elmer. Because not only Michael had died back there. Amelia too, and Nicholas Carter, and Dwayne Hartman, and even Jimothy.

  It made Elizabeth angry, but it was a cold, tired anger. It made her want to just…sleep more.

  She eventually checked her phone. She had a stack of unread messages. One caught her eye.

  FI: i am sorry

  FI: i am so so so so so sorry

  FI: i am!

  FI: i was trying to help him

  FI: i thought i could help

  FI: i am such an idiot

  FI: i am sorry Elizabeth Eddison

  FI: it is just that he was dying already

  FI: i thought i could help him

  FI: please forgive me

  A sort of icy dread crept over Elizabeth. Slowly, numbly, she replied,

  EE: What?

  *

  Heidi dozed uneasily, uncomfortable and cold and hurt on the hard metal. Something slithered up against her, and she partially woke up with a start before realizing who it was. She hugged Bahamut, gently because she could tell that he was hurt even worse than her. If he was here, that was all that mattered for the moment. It didn’t help with the cold, or the pain of her wounds, or the miserable half-sleep that did nothing to rest her anxious mind. But if Bahamut was with her, all of that seemed more bearable.

  “Best friend,” she whispered, arm wrapped around Bahamut’s cold, scaly body. “Love you, Bahamut.”

  Something chirped nearby, a sound a bird might make if it weighed a ton. Cazzie?

  Heidi groaned. She didn’t want to deal with anything. She only wanted to sleep, to rest. She was so tired. But with the pain she was desperately trying to ignore, sleep would not come.

  “Oh, it will eventually,” said Vyrix nearby. “Doethn’t matter how mutth pain, eventually thleep taketh priority. Trutht me.”

  Speaking of priority, Vyrix was pretty high up on the list of things Heidi didn’t want to deal with.

  “Aww, that’th too bad.” A pause. “Black, you thuck at binding woundth.” Another pause, in which Heidi heard nothing. “Tho? Yeth, I know. I can read your godth-damned thoughtth, remember?”

  Heidi at last opened her eyes and looked to see who was there. The first thing she saw was a floating eyeball watching her as it bobbed gently in the air, tugged to and fro by slight gravitational tides. This eye was big and greenish, the pupil slit two ways into an X shape. Heidi couldn’t remember having seen it before.

  Beyond the eyeball sat Vyrix and Abraham Black. A pale wing directly overhead sheltered Heidi and Bahamut.

  “I think tho,” said Vyrix, although neither Heidi nor Black had spoken. “She mutht be. The queen ith thtill a rue, after all.”

  “Her call was familiar,” said Abraham Black. Vyrix shrugged.

  Black turned to Heidi. “Your guards are coming,” he said. “Those that remain.”

  At least that meant some guards had survived. She hoped one was Ruth.

  “Vyrix?” said Heidi. “Explain…yourself.”

  Vyrix chuckled, an awful noise. “Well, I got what I came for,” she said. She turned to look at Heidi, though her face remained mercifully concealed within her hood. “I know how to dethtroy the Bleak Mathine.”

  Heidi had so many questions. What had been the importance of that Monument? What was the deal with the Dark Ruler? And those Logoi? Just remembering the encounter gave Heidi a headache. And what had become of the Dark Ruler and Lord Fierce? And Glaurung? Who had won—Lady Chains or Lady Fires?

  “Gueth we’ll find out,” said Vyrix. “You’re lucky to be alive. The heroeth mutht have a knack for getting their atheth thaved at the latht thecond.”

  *

  Ferrigo didn’t mind the paperwork. He found it, in fact, by far the easiest aspect of being interim leader of Xeon. Leocanto would soon be well enough to resume his place, but Ferrigo harbored hopes of convincing him to let his second-in-command handle some of the bookkeeping.

  Perhaps there had been some truth in Charlotte’s accusation that he had become a mere ‘pencil pusher.’ But he had spoken the truth as well. He preferred this life to the pirate days. There had been more action then, it was true, and there had been other benefits to being Bellafide’s first mate. But life here seemed more meaningful. Or perhaps he was just getting old.

  He returned to his quarters thinking about the battle onboard the We’re Here! . There had been one chance, one sliver of a moment, when he could have put a knife through Charlotte’s throat. He didn’t, of course. Professional courtesy? Respect for the past? He couldn’t be sure. And he could not, for the life of him, decide whether she had actually been trying to kill him either. They had both been enjoying it too much.

  He shrugged off the jacket of his pink pinstripe suit, shook out the wrinkles, and hung it next to its four identical twins in the cedar cabinet. He removed eleven hidden knives from his person, for he preferred sleeping with only five.

  He went to the granite sink, opened the cabinet, and removed the shell-polish. Care of one’s carapace was essential. He had taken up a stiff-bristled brush and had just begun cleaning his brachyuran head when a blinding light filled the room.

  He was in the corner in an instant, knives at the ready, in a defensive stance. But he could not perceive the threat. He could see nothing but light, hear nothing but a strange susurrus of voices like distant echoes. Small objects in his room fell—knives from the dresser onto the floor, a lamp toppled, a deck of cards scattered.

  If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement.

  And then it was gone—the light, the noise, the presence. It had gone out the window, though the window was only a small gap with a tight grid of steel obstructing the way, still intact.

  No damage appeared to have been done, but Ferrigo soon discovered that something had been taken: the medallion of the Hero of Light, which he had not surrendered to Arcadelt or the Lords of Skywater.

  He strode swiftly out of his room to find the Lockbreaker, and did not pause even for long enough to put his suit jacket back on.

  *

  Childhood is the kingdom where nobody dies. Nobody that matters, that is…

  To be grown up is to sit at the table with people who have died,

  who neither listen nor speak;

  Who do not drink their tea, though they always said

  Tea was such a comfort.

  - Edna St. Vincent Millay

  Suddenly, Isaac was among them. None of them had seen him since it all happened. They still didn’t; he wore that helmet. It reflected the fire like a dark mirror, and it reflected the glinting of colored lightning in the distant clouds.

  They looked at him, Elizabeth and Kate and Eric and Heidi, and then turned back to the flames. Elizabeth and Kate huddled together, sharing a blanket against the wet night wind of the Cloud Moon. Eric leaned back against a rock, enjoying the cool damp breeze, allowing it to calm him. Heidi leaned forward, elbows on knees, her helmet on one side and Bahamut on the other, staring at the crackling flames.

  And now Isaac stood just at the edge of the firelight, a white hawk on one shoulder. “He’s not dead,” said Isaac. The speakers distorted his voice ever so slightly.

  No one replied at once. They’d heard this before.

  But after a minute, Eric spoke. “You seen his body?” Most of them had; it was there in Skywater Citadel, preserved in an elderstone box. “Plus, no heartbeat,” Eric added. Jimothy’s metronome on the Hollow Moon had gone still and had remained still for the past day.

  Isaac, in reply, raised one black-gloved hand as though in greeting. Suddenly his medallion was there, a white ceramic hexagon with six glowing symbols. He pointed at it. “Still lit, right?” he asked. His tone was odd, as though it wasn’t quite a hypothetical question.

  Silence, again. Nobody wanted to argue with him. Jimothy had died twice—on Earth to Abraham Black, and in the Narrative to Lady Shadows. So what if the paintbrush was still glowing green?

  “Anyway,” said Isaac as though desperate to press the point, “He can’t be dead. Think about it. In a story like this, he’s the—”

  “Isaac,” interrupted Elizabeth, her voice tight. “Shut up.”

  Isaac did shut up. For a while.

  “You gonna take the helmet off?” asked Eric.

  “Uh…no.” Isaac shifted uneasily. “I’ll just…I’ll go. But you’ll see, guys. It…” He didn’t finish. He slumped. Then, with a faint popping sound and a glimmering visual impression of dark violet lines and angles tracing the night, he and his angel vanished.

  “I just remembered,” said Elizabeth, some time later. “He painted this.”

  “Th-this?” asked Kate.

  “Us. Right here. Right now. He gave it to me…for my birthday.”

  Heidi added another slightly damp log onto the fire.

  “Best I can figure,” said Eric, “it’d be about Jim’s birthday right now. Like, from our perspective.”

  “April t-t-twenty-second?” said Kate.

  Eric shrugged. “Something like that.”

  “I was going to get him something,” said Heidi, surprising the rest of them because she hadn’t spoken much. “But I didn’t know what.” Her voice was dull and neutral. She had been through a lot, they knew. She also didn’t hear them if they spoke quietly.

  Each of them had been through a lot. Even Isaac, they guessed, though nobody knew what exactly had happened to him except that he had gone to the Bright World. And especially Jim. His lighthouse was broken, all the light he’d collected scattered and disappeared. They had learned, from the Lords and from the Lockbreaker’s people, and even from Fiora the Bleeding God, more or less what had happened. Elizabeth told them about the tumor and the Bleeding God’s attempt to fix it. And how it might have worked, if not for the interference of another daimon, the Changing God, Jeronimy.

  Over the windswept rocky hills, the damp night breeze blew and distant thunder rumbled. Rainbow sparks of lightning crawled in the far-off clouds.

  All at once, a brilliant light filled the sky from end to end. The storm worms thundered in protest, but a chaotic crashing sound overrode them. The light flickered and vanished as quickly as it had come.

  Something small and pale dropped down among them from above. It clicked against the stones and came to rest beside the fire in front of Elizabeth and Kate. It was a white hexagon.

  *

  Appendix: Isaac’s Daimon/Gods Chart