Chapter 16

This darkness, this emptiness, this nothingness—I've come to know it, intimately.

It is Death.

We"ve all heard the various metaphors: Life is a journey; Time is a river; Death is a gateway to Whatever Comes Next (Heaven, Hell, Purgatory, Nothing, depending on what you believe in).

Those are all wrong.

I don"t know any good metaphors for Life, or Time.

Death? I know Death.

Death is a spectrum. Death is a pool, with a shallow end graduating into a deep end…except no one can swim. Near-Death experiences are when a person enters the realm of Death, but only up to their ankles. Those who die and return? They went in over their heads but managed to kick back to where their feet could touch. Those who die and stay dead wade out to the deep end and do not return.

I"m a weirdo, apparently. I can swim in the waters of Death, where others cannot.

This endless black is Death, but I am a vampire, and already Dead, or Undead, and thus can navigate this place where others cannot—aided by the magic of Life which thrives and thrums within me, the gift bestowed upon me by my fae heritage.

Somehow, my dual nature as a vaer means I can Live inside of Death.

Here I am. Swimming with the eldritch, shadowy things that lurk in these depths, nameless creatures, formless monsters, things of the Endless Dark.

I feel them. They brush up against my bodiless self, like curious serpents.

A thought occurs to me: is the Dreamscape nearby? Does The Dreaming connect to Death"s deepening waters? When we dream, do we descend into Death? Just a toe touching the gentle ripples at the water"s edge?

Can I find my way there?

There is no sense of direction, in this place.

Perhaps, when I…communed, I suppose…with my mother, I was doing so in Death, rather than in The Dreaming.

There is no up, no lightening of the shadows here or there, only featureless darkness.

But yet…

I reach, with a tenth sense, for something in the long cold black which is, perhaps, less densely dead. Less cold. I reach for a shallowing of Death"s waters.

There is a thinning, here. A lessening of Death"s viscosity. I sense fewer of the undead things. I keep going. Keep reaching for the lessening, the shallowing.

I do not—cannot—possess an imagination in a place like Death, and so it cannot be my imagination when I begin to sense a lightening of the shadows. Vague impressions of shapes move around me: forms, bodies, impressions of bodies, shifting, leaping, swooping, creeping, scuttling. Human and animal—we all dream, and we all come here to do so.

I know what science says about animals and sentience and self-awareness and the ability to dream, but there is much that mortal science cannot comprehend, much less explain. Dreaming is one of those things. To dream is to perform magic—you enter Death each night and return unharmed.

Or do you?

Do you, perhaps, leave a fragment of a fragment of yourself here each time you visit?

Perhaps those fragments and particulates, those dust motes of Self which you unwittingly deposit here in the shallows of Death, the place called Dreaming, collect. Adhere. Shift and twist and shape, and Become.

You do not remain here upon waking, but something of you does, and that something is touched by the magic of dreaming and by the metamorphosis of Death.

I can see you. The you which remains here—a ghost of you, lost in The Dreaming.

When you have recurring dreams or nightmares, you are encountering those ghosts of yourself, those motes of your previous transitions through The Dreaming.

I see it all, from here. Whether I will retain this understanding of Death and Dreaming when I awake I do not know.

Perhaps it doesn"t matter.

I understand it now, and I know who I have to find.

He"s here—I sense him.

He smells like her. Blood calls to blood, especially for a vampire.

His magic smells like hers—and I only recognize the scent of her magic by smelling his, here. Her magic was all around me, my whole life, but I couldn"t see it, just as we cannot see the atmosphere while we are in it. We can see it when we exit, when we burn through it up into outer space, go past it, and look back down upon it.

Her magic was in the way she braided my hair, singing a lullaby—a fae lullaby, woven with glamours to shuttle me into sleep, and to protect me from the creatures which swim just beneath the shallows of The Dreaming, where it becomes Death.

Her magic was in the love she poured into me with each kiss, each hug, each packed lunch—common, everyday acts performed by mortals and immortals alike. Yet Mom…she wove each act with magic. Delicate, subtle, intricate acts of glamour so advanced, so sophisticated even the magisters and officials of the Tribunal failed to recognize them for what they were.

Those infinitely subtle glamours soaked into me. Suffused my bones and my blood, my organs, my subconscious. I couldn"t recognize them, and my immortal nature was locked away within a glass globe, condensed, distilled into a concentrate.

My magical nature couldn"t get out…but her magic could get in, it seems, and added to the ocean, drop by drop, every day, every little glamour she cast.

She was a fae, an unparalleled glamourist. A creature of magic, and the magic will out, one way or another.

Here, I scent a familiar tang. Not the same, but similar.

I hunt for it. Move past shapes wriggling and writhing in the darkness, and I cannot help catching snatches of dreams.

Emily! Emily! Come back! I"m sorry! I didn"t mean it, she didn"t mean anything!

Not him.

A dog sprints through a rolling hillside meadow, prancing gaily through acres of wildflowers, chasing butterflies and sniffing all the sniffs, heady scents of other dogs and deer and squirrels and rabbits—and there"s a rabbit! Get it! Chase it! And the dog nearly catches it, again and again…

The little mortal girl who always wanted a dog yearns to stay and watch him play, watch him almost catch the bunny—it"s the chase that"s fun.

No! No, no, no. Please no. Please don"t. Brad, no. Please. I"m sorry. I didn"t mean to burn your eggs. I"m sorry, I'msorry, i"msorryimsorryimsorry—

Hurry past that one.

An eagle soars, swoops, dips, and dives. Follows the quicksilver ribbon of a river, sharp vision piercing the water…the river teems with salmon, hundreds and thousands and millions of them spawning and surging and churning the waters into froth, so many fish a hungry raptor could dive down and catch them, never once missing…

Fascinating, and worth another visit, when there"s not an army quite literally hunting my blood.

Keep going.

Mommy? Where are you, Mommy? I"m cold. Why is it so cold? I don"t like it here, Mommy. The voice is small and soft and nearly inaudible. I can"t wake up, Mommy. I can"t wake up. I can"t wake up. Help me wake up, Mommy.

This little voice is lost, here in The Dreaming. I catch glimpses—a small boy with towheaded curls, perfect huge deep blue eyes, and the sweetest smile you"ve ever seen. Lost, here in the cold black dreaming dark.

I pause. I don"t know the rules. Perhaps I"m toying with fate, with forces I cannot comprehend, meddling in affairs beyond my ken. But…I can"t move past him, this lost little mortal boy. I gather him in my armless arms, feel his neglibile warmth, fading, cooling, weakening.

Coma…

The word percolates just beyond my hearing.

I push him upward. Away from deeper blackness, away from the gathering gray of the Dreamscape, up, up.

Is that you, Mommy? Thank you, thank you…

I turn, flip, twist, and descend back into the edgewaters where Death and Dreaming collide, the Twilight, the Terminator.

Find the scent again, the tang of Sparrow magic, but deeper and older. Darker.

Scurry past shapes, try to block out the scraps of dreams, the sorrow and the confusion and the joy and the eroticism and the dreary repetition of a task never quite completed.

There.

A thin, tall form. Impossibly so. Ten feet tall, yet so thin he almost vanishes when he turns edge-on. Gaunt and gray, here. Heavy—weighted down with dense sorrow, burdened with regret.

He is not dreaming, for he is fae, and he knows this place.

He is waiting.

HELLO, GRANDFATHER.

GRANDDAUGHTER. I THOUGHT I MIGHT MEET YOU HERE.

YOU DO NOT KNOW ME.

YET HERE WE BOTH ARE.

There is no sense of the man, only the reek of his magic and the ichor of his ancient presence.

WHAT DO YOU WANT WITH ME?

YOU SOUGHT ME OUT, CHILD. __

YOU CREATED ME.

RATHER AN OVERSTATEMENT, I"D SAY.

I WOULDN"T.

[ITALICS CAPS] PERHAPS. DO YOU HATE ME?

SHOULD I NOT? AFTER WHAT YOU DID TO YOUR OWN DAUGHTER?

THERE WERE NO GOOD CHOICES, CHILD. YOU ARE AN INFANT, TO ME. YOU UNDERSTAND NOTHING.

I UNDERSTAND THAT YOU SUBJECTED YOUR DAUGHTER TO SOMETHING NO BEING, MORTAL OR IMMORTAL, SHOULD EVER EXPERIENCE. I BELIEVE YOU WHEN YOU SAY THERE WERE NO GOOD CHOICES. I BELIEVE YOU WHEN YOU SAY I CANNOT POSSIBLY UNDERSTAND YOUR LIFE OR YOUR CHOICES. I JUST KNOW THAT OF ALL THE BAD OPTIONS, YOU CHOSE THE WORST. AND MOM PAID FOR IT. I"M PAYING FOR IT. MY BLOODMATE IS PAYING FOR IT. MY COVEN IS PAYING FOR IT. MY FATHER IS PAYING FOR IT.

YOU DO NOT KNOW YOUR FATHER.

I DO NOT KNOW MY PROGENITOR. MY SPERM DONOR. I KNOW MY FATHER, AND HIS NAME IS ANDREAS BURKE.

AH. HIM. THE REBEL. His voice is…complicated. There is respect as well as distaste. ELIZA LOVED HIM VERY MUCH. I REMEMBER HIM BEING A WARRIOR OF NO LITTLE RENOWN AND RATHER OUTSPOKEN REGARDING CERTAIN TRIBUNAL DECISIONS AND PRACTICES. I KEPT TABS ON HIM FOR DECADES, BUT OF LATE, I HAVE NOT HAD TIME TO CHECK IN ON HIM. HOW IS HE?

YOUR TRIBUNAL ENFORCERS CAPTURED HIM, BEAT HIM, AND INTERROGATED HIM. SO, NOT WELL. THANKS TO YOU AND ALL YOUR ILK.

NOT MINE. AND NOT ON MY ORDERS.He sighs, frustrated and angry and sad. I AM NOT YOUR ENEMY, GRANDDAUGHTER. I LOVED ELIZA. I HAVE NOT SLEPT THROUGH THE NIGHT SINCE I…ACQUIESCED TO TRIBUNAL DEMANDS.

FORGIVE ME IF I HAVE ZERO SYMPATHY. BESIDES, YOU"RE FAE. YOU DON"T REQUIRE SLEEP.

HOW LITTLE YOU UNDERSTAND YOUR OWN RACE, CHILD. YOU SAID THAT I DO NOT KNOW YOU. THIS IS TRUE. BUT IT IS ALSO TRUE THAT YOU DO NOT KNOW ME.

IT IS EASY TO HATE YOU THOUGH I DO NOT KNOW YOU BECAUSE I ONLY KNOW YOU BY THAT ONE DECISION.

There is a long pause, then.

If we were face to face in the living world, he would be turned away from me, hands clasped behind his back, a stance of old men from the Old World. Now, he would turn to face me as he speaks his next words. His hands would go into his trouser"s hip pockets, his chin would lift, and his deep, ancient eyes would be cold and distant and unknowable.

WHAT DO WANT FROM ME, GRANDDAUGHTER?

It galls my soul to the core, yet here, One can only speak the truth. You cannot lie to Death, and you cannot lie in The Dreaming.

I NEED HELP, GRANDFATHER. I HAVE BEEN GIVEN A TASK TOO BIG FOR ME, AND I NEED YOUR HELP.

TELL ME YOUR NAME. PLEASE.

MAEVE.

MAEVE SPARROW. MY GRANDDAUGHTER. MY ONLY LIVING KIN. YOU ARE THE LAST SPARROW, YOU KNOW. THE LAST OF THE GRINDLAYS, TOO, FOR THAT MATTER—THAT"S YOUR GRANDMOTHER"S FAMILY. OTHERS CLAIM THE NAME, BUT THEY ARE MORTALS, OF DILUTED BLOOD.

I DON"T HAVE PHILISTIA"S BLOOD IN MY VEINS, GRANDFATHER.

BUT YOU DO. YOUR PROVENANCE IS MORE COMPLEX THAN YOU OR ANYONE CAN KNOW.He sighs. WE ARE TOO LONG IN THIS PLACE. I, FOR ONE, CANNOT LINGER HERE ANY LONGER. YOU, PERHAPS, ARE DIFFERENT. YOU HAVE REQUESTED MY HELP. HATE ME THOUGH YOU MAY, YOU ARE MY GRANDDAUGHTER, AND ALL I HAVE LEFT OF MY PRECIOUS DAUGHTER. I LOVED HER, YOU KNOW. I DO NOT ASK YOU TO BELIEVE ME, BUT I DID. YOU SHALL HAVE MY ASSISTANCE.

For a moment, I see him—the real, living man. Tall and lean, sharp-featured, with steel gray eyes heavy and hard with age. Wavy, thick gray hair the exact color of thunderheads—the same color as his eyes. Fair skin stained dark by the sun. Lined and weathered skin. Scarred.

Elias Sparrow, my grandfather.

The image is gone as quickly as it appeared. At that moment, however, I knew he saw me, as well—his eyes pierced me. Searched me. Knew me. Probed my soul, and saw my secrets.

CARRY OUT YOUR PLAN. ITT WILL SUCCEED, IF NOT IN THE WAY YOU ASSUME. YOUR PATH IS A HARD ONE, CHILD. I CANNOT CHANGE THAT, ANY MORE THAN I CAUSED IT. WE ARE CAUGHT IN THE WEB OF FATE, YOU AND I.

HOW CAN YOU KNOW THAT?

YOU HAVE IMMENSE POWER, CHILD. MORE, PERHAPS, THAN ANY IMMORTAL WHO HAS EVER LIVED. I DO NOT EXXAGERATE. THE PROBLEM IS THAT YOU ARE WHOLLY UNTRAINED, WITH THE FINESSE AND CONTROL OF A NEWBORN WHO CANNOT HOLD UP HER OWN HEAD. YOU ARE A HAZARD TO EVERYONE AROUND YOU. I SAY THIS ONLY TO EXPLAIN THAT WHILE I MAY NOT HAVE EVEN A FRACTION OF YOUR RAW POWER, I POSSESS OVER A THOUSAND YEARS" WORTH OF PRACTICE, TRAINING, AND EXPERIENCE. YOU DO A LITTLE WITH A LOT, WHILE I DO A LOT WITH A LITTLE.Another brief pause. AND EVEN I DARE NOT TARRY IN THIS PLACE ANY LONGER. WHEN MY HELP COMES, GRANDDAUGHTER, YOU WILL KNOW IT IT. YOU MUST NOT HESITATE. FOR NOW, THIS IS FAREWELL. THE IMMORTAL WORLD, AND THE MORTAL ONE WITH IT, WILL BE MUCH CHANGED WHEN WE SEE EACH OTHER FACE TO FACE.

He dissolves, like smoke blown away in a strong wind.

Yet, I feel his touch long after he is gone. A push, a nudge in the right direction. Away from the Dreaming. Away from Death"s dark waters. Upward, where Twilight"s cold gloaming becomes a warming dim suffusion of grayscale, an ombre transition from black to gray to white—darkness to light.

I wake, suddenly and fully. I"m bathed in sunlight, achy and sore but otherwise unharmed.

Caspian is on one side of me, Andreas on the other, both looking worried.

"We have to find my grandfather. I spoke to him." My voice is scratchy and hoarse.

Andreas frowns. "You…spoke…to him?"

Memory is fuzzy and vague. I remember talking to Grandfather, but…

I shake my head. "It"s like when you first wake up, the dream is so vivid, but it fades fast. I remember…darkness. Not the Dreamscape, but…deeper. Darker." I squeeze my eyes shut. Attempt to force recollection. "Travelling…upward, sort of. I remember…a dog. An eagle…a child. Other…stuff. I don"t know. I remember finding him. We talked. He said he"d help me. He said…I"d know his help when it comes. He said to carry out our plan, that it would succeed, but not like we"re thinking." I feel desperate to remember before it vanishes. I could cry with frustration—it"s like trying to suck liquid concrete through a drinking straw. "He said I have Philistia"s blood. I"m the last—the last Sparrow, and the last Grindlay."

Andreas"s frown deepens. "Your mother was carried and borne by a mortal female. Philistia is only your grandmother by fae tradition."

"I know," I say. "That"s what I said. He just told me that…fuck. Fuck! What did he say?" I pull at my hair near the scalp, gritting my teeth and groaning in frustration. "It"s complex. My…fuck. My…provenance? Yes, he said my provenance is more complex than I know." I go limp with exhaustion as if I had to physically haul the weight of the memory back up through the depths by main force.

"I don"t know what that means, Maeve." Andreas rubs his jaw. "It goes against everything I know about immortal conception for him to claim you have two lines of fae blood."

I shake my head. "I don"t know. He didn"t explain. There was something else. God, it"s there on the tip of my damn tongue. What did he say? What did he say?"

Caspian"s hand rests on my forehead, cool, marbling. "Breathe, Maeve. It"s okay."

"IT"S NOT OKAY!" I shout. "I HAVE TO REMEMBER! I have to remember, and I can"t. I fucking can"t. He said something else and I can"t fucking remember!"

"Try to relax, Maeve," Andreas says. "Caspian is right. You can"t force it."

I feel fury flare. "Yes—I can! I have to!" I strain, raging against the dissolution of memory.

Something snaps inside me, and I feel magic flare, and then the conversation returns to me whole-cloth. Nothing else but the words, the impression of his speech, his tone. I feel something slip out of me—flowing into two branches.

I open my eyes, and Caspian and Andreas both look shocked.

"More power than any immortal who has ever lived?" Caspian questions.

"But less control than an infant," Andreas adds.

I wipe my face with both hands. "He"s not wrong. I have zero control, Andreas. Shit just…happens. I end up doing this weird, advanced, impossible shit, but…not on purpose. I can"t do any of the simple, easy, basic shit I bet most fae children can do."

"Well, fae children cannot work glamours, generally speaking. I think I told you that magic isn"t awakened until puberty."

"So, who teaches them, once it wakes up?" I ask.

He grins. "Ever see Harry Potter?" He laughs. "It"s nothing like that. But, the basic premise is real—most fae parents educate their children in the usual basics in the normal way—schools. Regular, nonmagical schools local to wherever they are. But once a fae child reaches puberty and first displays evidence of glamourworking, they are sent to boarding schools where they continue their mortal education—math, science, literature, et cetera—as well as glamourworking in all its forms. Typically, magical education ends with graduation at eighteen or twenty, and the individual goes about his or her life using magic to varying degrees. Others…well, there are higher education facilities for those with magical aptitude."

I blink at him. "Wait, wait, wait. So…there really are magical schools where kids sit in classrooms and learn how to cast spells?"

He laughs. "Yes. But it"s much less exciting than mortal entertainment media would have you believe. It"s very boring, very rote. You don"t get into anything very interesting until you"re in fifth and sixth forms—junior and senior year, here. Mostly, it"s summoning flames on your hand and reviving dead plants…over and over and over and over, and being graded on the most minor of distinctions in form and result. It works, but those with real power or aptitude often find it stifling."

"Is there a difference between power and aptitude?" I ask.

"Oh, certainly. One can have a lot of aptitude—meaning, you understand the process somewhat instinctually—or you can have a lot of power, meaning the raw capacity to work magic. Usually, one possesses either aptitude or power, but rarely both in equal measure."

I frown. "I think I have a lot of power but very little aptitude."

Andreas bobs his head to one side. "I don"t know about that. When I taught you that little glamour with the rose, in the kitchen back in Elk Rivers, you did it perfectly the first time. That was an incredible display of aptitude. But you also very clearly have power on a scale I personally have never encountered—and this is backed up by your talk with Elias. Make no mistake—he is a truly incredible glamourworker. Your mother took after him in that regard and even surpassed him in sophistication. But what Elias lacks in raw capacity and sophistication, he more than makes up for with experience and training. He is a master of his craft, without peer. And for him to say you are the most powerful to ever live, well…that"s a stunning statement from a male I"ve never known to exaggerate. If anything, he"s the most British man I've ever met—he relishes understatement."

Caspian takes my hand. "This is all well and good, but can we talk about what happened?"

"Which part?" I ask, grinning at him. "A lot has happened."

"Um, you healed Andreas all at once, plus you repaired cracks in the ceiling that have been there for a hundred years. A dumpster out in the alley has been missing a lid for twenty years, and you replaced it out of nothing. you healed everything, organic and not, in a two-block radius, Maeve. Everything." He stares at me, unblinking, and visibly concerned—as well as unblooded. "And you took Andreas"s wounds into your own body and then passed out. You"ve been out for three days. And you healed yourself totally in that time."

"Wait. Three days?" I stare back at him. "I"ve been asleep for three days?"

"Not just asleep, Maeve—dead. Not unblooded, vampiric undeath. You were dead." Caspian is shaken to the core.

And that"s when it comes smashing back into me:

I went into Death…and returned.

"What the fuck am I?" I breathe.

"I think the only one who can even hope to begin to answer that is Elias Sparrow," Andreas says. "And there aren"t many people, mortal or immortal, more difficult to find than him."

"Why?" I ask.

"Because after your birth, it proved his experiment a success, and he was elevated to the Immortal Tribunal council."

"And we have to find him." I think of his warning that it won"t go how we expect.

"I have a bad feeling about this," I say.