The dead don’t dream.
Left to idle for too long and memory would sweep them under, dragging them aimlessly through the foggy past.
But Mona ached to return to that hazy place each night after her shift in the club—to the man with features lost in sunlight, but whose hand fit hers like a key in a lock.
He meets me at the bottom of the porch stairs, a woven basket strung over his arm. His beauty knocks the breath out of me. He catches me staring and grins. Speaking through his smile, he gestures me onward. We’re going to be late.
That single, faded memory was the last safe place Mona had in this world since today’s snooping left her restless. She was savoring the not-dream of her forgotten life, staring at the ceiling, when the basement lights flipped on and ripped her away from the Sunlight Man’s warmth. Cold terror rushed in to take its place.
The reanimation magic powering Mona and the other Corpse Girls required time to recharge, or body parts would start falling off and garnishing patron’s drinks. It meant that any interruption between shifts had to be worth the risk. Callum Sinister would have to be furious, in fact.
“Get up,” the master’s lapdog, Lex, barked, his heavy boots ringing with each step down the metal stairs. “Mr. Sin wants to talk to you.” In that half-dead way of hers, Mona rose slowly, drawing the tattered blanket up to cover her thin nightwear. To her left, Misty peered out from her bedbox, eyes darting around. Furthest down the row, Jazz rocketed to a seat, her heatless curlers shaking loose and falling. “Up!” Lex ordered. All three girls scurried out of their boxes. When they stood at attention like petrified cadets next to their bunks, Mr. Sin appeared at the top of the landing.
A dizzying, necromantic aura flowed in with his presence, igniting the instinct to fear and obey him in his three servants. He descended purposely and alone. No entourage of guards meant he wanted fewer witnesses. The overhead basement lights were unflattering but highlighted his tailored white suit and oiled hair. He was handsome, but oozed a malice that made living creatures want to flee. As he neared, Mona dropped her eyes to the polished toes of his shoes, hands knotted in her dress to keep from shaking.
Thank the grave Mona didn’t have a heartbeat to hammer as seconds of silence passed.
“Kneel,” Mr. Sin said. The Corpse Girls fell hard and instantly to their knees, patellas cracking against the cement. The weight of his anger pressed down on Mona’s spine. Her eyes stayed low. “Last night, someone went to great lengths to break into my office and steal something precious to me.” The girls didn’t react. They’d speak when Mr. Sin permitted it. “Let’s just say the nature of the theft means only a handful of individuals would have committed the crime, and I’m looking at three likely accomplices.” Panic pricked at Mona’s flesh and dread sluiced through her empty veins.
Sin’s voice deepened. “Tell me what you know, or I’ll start shredding your souls one at a time.”
Shredding. It meant obliteration with no hope of reaching peace on the Otherside.
Misty tried to object, “You can’t—!” She coughed, the death magic choking off her words. She clawed at her throat, gasping, and Sin watched her hungrily. Knowing he reveled in their total and complete powerlessness, Mona fixed her gaze on the floor, swallowing her reaction to beg for forgiveness.
“It wasn’t us,” Mona said, speaking for the others. When Misty stopped writhing, Mona finally tilted her face up to her master, “We–we’d never harm you, Mr. Sin.”
“Liar,” he shook his head. “Dead girls who can carry drinks and shake their ass are as common as dirt. I won’t bother interrogating you long when I could just start fresh,” He stretched down to stroke Mona’s cheek. She reached immediately for the memory of the Sunlight Man’s touch to keep from recoiling. Sin scowled and pushed her chin away. “Even so, raising shades is a mind boggling investment—what with the licenses, taxes, and inspections required—and I’d hate to see my years of effort wasted. Time to start talking.” Sin glanced over at Lex and nodded, cueing him. “We’ll start with the pretty one.”
Lex stormed towards Jazz kneeling at the end of the line. Mona sagged.
“Please!” Jazz fell backwards and crawled away from the silver-haired enforcer. Lex unsheathed a salt-blessed hunting knife from his belt and advanced. Sin tutted.
“Now, Lex,” Sin frowned, “You know I prefer it slower than that.”
Lex considered for a moment, then traded his knife for metal knuckles from his pocket, a tool that his fingers strung through and fit perfectly in his tight fist. With his other hand, he caught Jazz by the curlers. She wailed, and Mona and Misty fell into each other’s arms, helpless and weeping.
“Who would want to break into my office?” Sin took up position behind Lex.
“No one! I don’t know! I was never near your office!” Jazz wriggled, her scalp separating and tearing away in chunks.
“No lies, Jasmine. I thought we had something?” Sin gave Lex a signal.
In life, the girls thought Jazz had been a singer or movie star—someone who loved glam and thrived in the spotlight. In death, she arrived knowing how to apply makeup meant for living people. She lined her eyes with wild colors, always gluing on lashes or gemstones to draw attention away from her sunken eyes and gaunt features. Why a dead girl wanted to worry about her hair and complexion was a mystery to Mona and Misty. Their exotic deadness was the appeal, they thought. “Death is no excuse to be ugly,” Jazz would say.
Lex pulled back his fist and fired it at Jazz’s still beautiful face.
Mona looked away before the hit landed and Jasmine shrieked. Misty trembled against Mona as blows started to rain.
“I don’t know anything! Please!” Thump.
Sin just said, “One of you has been trying to get away and ruin everything we’ve built together. Who is it?” Mona shivered. Shades were dead things. Their pain was different—memorized by their bodies through whatever traumas they’d survived in life and relived. But knowing that did little to block out Jazz’s agony as Mona retreated inside herself.
The hay is flowering with the late Summer’s descent into Fall. The road we liked to walk bordered a plain of wild flowers that had turned crispy brown in the heat. He holds my hand as we stroll, resigned to our lateness. I brace my sunhat against a sharp breeze that gusts over us, laughing. He pulls me to his side, shielding me from the wind…
For years, Mona had been secretly contacting psychics to uncover her past, but they needed her phylactery to do it. For someone to read her essence and tell her who the Sunlight Man was, Mona needed the totem that Sin used to enslave her. She had just wanted an idea of where it was last night when she’d poked around. Mona knew she might be punished if Sin found out—a shade seeking release wasn’t an original story—but shredded? She’d been naive.
Any necromancer cruel enough to raise and torment shades for decades at a time wouldn’t be satisfied with something so simple as dismissal. It’d be a mercy. And worse, her recon of the office hallway hadn’t even succeeded. The old light fixtures had flickered and sent her running, afraid they were boundary spells about to incinerate her.
Jazz stopped screaming suddenly, and when Mona opened her eyes, Jazz’s head was on the floor, her eyes as gray and lifeless as the day she’d died.
“Idiot,” Sin cursed, “You killed her before she could be shredded.” He sighed. “You’ll be digging up and paying for the next one.” He motioned for Lex to move on. Mona’s chest heaved. Lex had destroyed the vessel that was Jazz, not the spirit. He’d freed her by mistake.
“What about you, little flower?” Sin fixed his attention on Misty, who sobbed harder. “Anything you’d like to say?”
Lex tore her from Mona’s grasp. Quiet, delicate Misty—who filled every spare minute with reading, painting, and harming no one—howled in fear. Mona collapsed to all fours in shame. Could she end this? Her soul would be shredded either way. But the thought of not finding the Sunlight Man on the Otherside, of never knowing who he was, or if he waited for her…
The road climbs for a while and sweat rolls down my back. But the view from the top is worth it, and the sea air that cools us even more so.
“What’s this?” There’s a blanket and glassware set up in the spot we love overlooking the ocean and village. The procession of ships returning home already stretched to the horizon. I turn and see him beaming, a small box in his hands.
A sharp snap pulled Mona from her trance.
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” Sin snarled.
Misty’s neck was bent in the middle, her expression slack. Lex had broken it on purpose.
“Necromancer’s are remarkably vulnerable without shades to guard them,” Lex said, voice flat, “Remarkably stupid, too, thinking a command of death can save them from it.”
Sin took a step back and eyed Mona as his last remaining weapon. As his shade, Mona would defend him slavishly to any threat. So why didn’t he use her?
“I’m sorry,” Lex said, “I tried to be quick.” It took Mona a moment to realize Lex was explaining himself to her. Apologizing for the deaths of her friends.
…Only a handful of individuals would have committed the crime…
Would. Not could.
Sin didn’t command Mona to protect him because he couldn’t. Not without her phylactery, which Lex now had. But why? Too many questions and too much grief roiled in Mona’s head. But she knew instinctively to hide behind her bedbox.
Lex advanced on Sin, who retreated further, seething with rage.
“Ten years I’ve waited for this,” Lex prowled towards his former master. He spat the words like a promise. “I hunted every rumor, every whisper, every sighting. All for this.” Lex reached into his pocket and pulled something free that Mona couldn’t make out. But the moment he touched the item, she knew it was her.
Not just hers, as in belonging to her, but her. Her essence, her soul. The thing that chained her to this plane and kept her from resting. Mona hadn’t seen Lex in the hall last night because, with it, he commanded her not to. And with his touch came the smell of the ocean and fresh hay.
The glimmer of the ring in sunlight didn’t compare to the glow wrapping around us. I’d never felt safer in all my life.
“I can pay you!” Sin bargained, his back against the basement wall, “You can have her and then some! Let’s make a deal!”
“Killing you won’t give back the years of our lives that you stole. But you were ready to shred her. To shred those other poor girls. No. No more.” Lex pivoted to Mona, his face truly softening for the first time. He held out the phylactery to her—a vial sealed in black wax containing a lock of hair and a flawless set of bridal wedding rings. Mona found calm in Lex’s eyes. Found love. Realization clicked like tumblers keyed into place.
Hand shaking, she rose and took the vial, power rushing through her. “I’ll find you on the Otherside, my love.” Lex said, and behind the lines of his aged face, something glorious and safe shined, “As soon as I’m finished here.”
Mona studied Sin, still shrinking away, and understood.
Then the vial shattered in her fist.