“Yes.” I smoothed my hair. No one had found my hat or gloves. I had started knitting new ones but hadn’t made much progress. Which meant I was going to have to use my umbrella to keep my head dry.
My umbrella was bright yellow and had little duckies on the edge.
I totally knew how to blend in.
The cab stopped and I paid, took a deep breath, and then got out into the cold air.
Half the people were watching me. People who I had never met-men, women, lots of shapes and sizes and ages. A tingle ran down my back as vague memories of each of them came to me. Tall, temperamental Victor, who always thought his opinion was correct; mousy Liddy, who could tear a man apart with the flick of a finger; big, friendly Jingo, who had a thing for little children and their bones.
I blinked, trying to stop the flow of memories. Memories that were not mine.
I popped open my umbrella so I had an excuse to look away from the crowd for a minute. Yellow duckies filled my vision, and the memories were gone.
But the remaining thoughts that filled my head were mechanical as the workings of a gun.
These important people were magic users. The Authority. People my dad had spent a lifetime hiding from me. All here. Now. Gathered to watch my father’s corpse get lowered into the ground, to be covered in dirt, once and for all.
Holy shit.
I scanned the crowd for Violet, saw her there by the top of the stairs, her guard, Kevin, behind her. She was talking to another woman with red and gray hair pulled up in a loose bun. Maeve.
She and Maeve knew each other?
I was so out of my depth here.
So I did what I did in any social situation that throws me. I faked the hell out of it.
I walked up like I had expected this. Like my dad had told me all about each of them and I knew their secrets. I held my ducky umbrella over my shoulder and practically sauntered, selling all-the-fashionablegrievers-are-wearing-ducks-this-season attitude for all I was worth.
And I took great pains to keep my mind, my thoughts, and the magic that flowed through me very quiet.
The crowd hushed. Not that they’d been talking loudly. But as soon as I was a few steps away, they stopped talking completely.
The other half of the crowd who hadn’t been looking my way turned so they could.
I put on a disinterested expression and scanned the faces. I spotted Zayvion. He stood near Violet and Maeve and a thin, pale kid done up in Goth couture. My heart raced.
The crowd shifted to make room for me, to allow me to walk up through the middle of them if I chose. Everyone waited. Everyone watched me. Like whatever I did next was important.
It is no fun playing a game when you don’t know what the rules are, much less what is at stake.
From the tension in the air, I didn’t think these people were all on the same side exactly. No, this felt more like a strained truce that would remain long enough to see their mutual enemy, or friend, buried.
It probably mattered a lot who I decided to stand by. But it wasn’t a hard choice. I strode up the open pathway through the crowd and climbed the stairs to stand next to two people, Violet Beckstrom and Zayvion Jones. Just to make sure they got my point, I turned to look out at the crowd. We stood, Zayvion on one side and Violet on the other, shoulder to shoulder.
I liked that feeling. Liked the guarded looks of respect, and anger, and curiosity it brought from the crowd.
And no matter how much my logical mind doubted I was making a good choice, since I didn’t even know what the hells I was choosing, my gut, my heart, knew I was right where I should be.
“Is this all of us, then?” I asked in a calm voice.
Violet, next to me, nodded. “We may begin.”
The big double doors behind us opened, and a group of six men brought out a casket. Instead of carrying it on their shoulders, they carried it low, at hip height. And instead of the lid being closed, it was open, from head to toe.
We stepped to one side, and the pallbearers brought the casket forward and paused in front of us, letting us take a long look.
That was my dad. No doubt in my mind. That was my dad’s overpreserved, leathery, gray, rotting corpse. He was naked except for a black blanket across his hips. Zayvion squeezed my hand gently in silent sympathy. Violet, on the other side, placed a lavender handkerchief on my dad’s chest, over his heart.
The pallbearers moved on. They walked slowly down the stairs, pausing every five steps so those in the crowd could look into the casket and agree that the body in that coffin was my dad. Once everyone got a chance to see him, the lid was placed upon the casket, and the pallbearers began the slow, long walk to my father’s grave.
We followed along behind, and no one spoke a word. Only the sound of our shoes on the grass and the rain on our umbrellas stirred the silence. Zay was beside me, his hand still in mine, no mint, but the scent of pine and a familiar warmth that was solid and real in this surreal moment.
We walked out to the thin gathering of trees, barren of leaves, stone angels grieving at their roots, black limbs spread against a stormy sky. A draped lowering device surrounded the newly re-dug grave.
The pallbearers placed the casket on the lowering device and lifted the lid on the casket one more time. All of us could see it was still his corpse. Wetter now, but still the same. A few people leaned in closer to get one last look. I did not feel the need to do so.
The pallbearers closed and locked the coffin lid and then worked the controls so the coffin could be lowered.
No one moved forward after that. Everyone watched as the coffin sank to the bottom of the grave, the equipment was removed, and the cemetery grave diggers-three of them wearing black raincoats and carrying shovels-cut shovelfuls of dirt and threw it into the hole.
No one sang. No one cried. No one gave words or comfort or remembrance. There was no sound at all except silence, raindrops, and the heavy thud of dirt upon pine.
After an unspecified time, the crowd began to break up. Each person walked past me and Zayvion and Violet. Some stopped and spoke to Violet in a low tone. No one spoke to me. Some made eye contact, looking for something or maybe trying to tell me something, and then looking away. Some turned so I never got a good look at them.
I tried to commit as many of their faces to memory as I could, inhaled to get the scents of them. Then they were gone, black coats beneath black umbrellas, beneath a dark sky.
The grave diggers were still filling the grave. Violet stood at the edge, watching each shovelful of dirt cascade down. Kevin, hands folded behind his back, stood by her side. I thought they looked good together, him painfully reserved but radiating strength and loyalty, her small, pale, and, I knew, fierce.
Violet’s shoulders shook and she put her hands over her face.
Kevin lifted his hand, hesitated with it just above her shoulder, as if weighing the consequences. Then the moment was gone. He quietly drew his hand away and stood, once again as only her guard-near her, but not touching her, his hands folded behind his back.
My heart hurt. For her. For him. For what they almost had.
“Allie?” Zayvion’s voice was quiet.
I looked over at him.
“Would you like to get out of the rain?”
What I would like was some kind of an explanation. Of where he had been the last five days.
But suddenly I realized I was really cold. My feet were numb from standing in the same place for so long. “Fine,” I said.
I walked over to Violet. Caught Kevin’s gaze. He sized me up.
Unreadable, that man. He tipped his chin down, just enough, I knew he was giving his okay.