Chapter 11

The great crossroads are accessed best by the dead along the most oft-traveled ways. Arcane energies are strengthened by regular use, and therefore, a mirror that sees little attention is less useful to a trans-dimensional traveler.

-Hecate's Guide to Arcane Philosophy

Rorick

M y partner shuffled side to side in an old pair of boots that fit her loosely. We'd lost our original set flying in from Eckert Castle, and the shops were closed at this late hour. Thankfully, I kept extra clothing at her place. My spare boots fit me well.

"Why are you making that face?" Quiet asked me.

We stood shoulder to shoulder on the historical district's small platform, waiting for the Night Train to arrive. I could hear it in the distance, thundering its way toward us.

"There will be hunters aboard," I explained, frowning. "Poorly behaved ones."

Quiet's dark brows furrowed. "You aren't honestly afraid I can't handle myself on the Night Train, are you? Why, I'm insulted! I've made use of the rails without any trouble multiples times in my long life."

Her angry breaths misted before her. The platform was simple and open to the elements, unlike the larger, enclosed stations in the finer parts of the city.

I laid a hand on her gloved wrist to pacify her. "It's not that at all. I'm the first vampire who's ever walked our world, and I wouldn't dare pick a fight with you." I gave her my best consolatory smile and felt it go crooked. "You'd curse me into a fly, and I don't want to live out the rest of my immortality as an insect."

"Flies are so underappreciated for all the good work they do," she grumbled at me, but the heat in her glower had noticeably cooled.

"It's not your safety on the train I'm worried about." My nose wrinkled. "It's the other vampires who will board tonight. I don't know why, but intelligence seems to have a direct impact on how pleasant someone smells, and you just happen to be the cleverest witch around."

Her lips twitched. "Perhaps that's only your preferences. A different vampire might prefer their meal to have less going on between their ears. Besides, if I can handle the Duke of the Damned, surely I can handle a few of his simpler spawn."

"Of course you could. Anyone paying even a modicum of attention would sense you weren't worth trifling with, but . . ." I felt my lip curl up into a grimace. "They'd think about it."

Quiet's laughter surprised me. It was one of her rarer, full-bodied laughs. "Fate forbid anyone think about biting me. Oh dear, if a vampire so much as sniffs at me, I hope you won't attempt to throw them about like you did with that poor werewolf."

"They'd survive a good tossing just fine," I rumbled. "I'd have to do worse than that to end them."

The corners of her gray eyes crinkled. "Rorick, if you intend to murder hunters out in the open and in front of witnesses simply for smelling me, we'll have to face potential charges on top of everything else we're juggling. I'm afraid you're just going to have to control yourself. I don't think I can handle anything more at the moment."

"Everything will be fine," I said calmly, though my jaw remained tense. The train whistle sounded, and the front of the locomotive came into sight, rumbling along the bend in the rails, lugging several sleek passenger cars behind it. "Or it will be, so long as everyone keeps their sniffer to themselves . . ."

The train slowed as it approached the platform, but the force of its movement was enough to douse us with an icy blast of winter wind that nearly knocked our hats from our heads. Metal scraped against metal, piercing my keen senses. I held my bowler in place and covered my ears as the Night Train came to a screeching halt.

The porter, a gargoyle with deep gray skin and bat-like wings, disembarked first. We waited impatiently as the new arrivals crowded the platform. Soon my worst fears were realized. A vampire in a fringed cravat and tall top hat went out of his way to cross our path, weaving between the crowd, slowing as he neared my partner.

My hands balled into fighting fists just as Quiet pulled a glass bottle with a spray nozzle from her skirts. A sickly yellow liquid glistened inside. The vampire drew in closer, and his nostrils flared. Quiet sprayed him right in his pale face. His contorted grimace immediately calmed my ire. The stink of the bog spray stung my nose, but I grinned in spite of the unpleasantness.

The vampire aristocrat hissed through his fangs at Quiet. Though he carried my mark, I didn't know this man. Too many vampires had been turned by my stolen blood, without my direct involvement.

"That was for your own good," Quiet told him flatly.

He considered me with a hard glance through watering eyes. Images of my person turned up in enough papers that recognition showed in his blood-colored gaze. He was no one to me, but the vanity title Duke of the Damned came with its perks. Wiping at his face with his neckcloth, he kept his retort to himself.

Wise of him.

Quiet dropped the spray back into her pocket as the fanged toff lumbered away from us, pushing through the queue to exit the platform in a hurry. A sizable opening cleared around us as the spray dissipated, passengers avoiding coming into contact with the cloud of unpleasantness.

The crowd thinned further. Those departing left the station, and new travelers filtered into their cars quickly to get out of the cold.

I guided Quiet toward the gargoyle porter I recognized.

"Your Grace." The gargoyle greeted us in a baritone, lowering his marble gray head politely. The cap of his uniform fit crookedly between his tall horns. His cat-like eyes fixed on Quiet and narrowed. He seemed not to know what to say to her.

People often didn't know how to respond to a witch. They weren't hunters, but no one could say they were harmless either. Especially not any of Quiet's lot.

"We're looking for the conductor," I told him.

The porter glanced behind him to where a clock hung over the ticket booth. "Right on time," the gargoyle said. "Rickard warned me he'd have two visitors just now."

I blinked at him, surprised. Quiet linked her arm through my elbow. I felt her concern in the gesture.

"I apologize for the informality, Your Grace, but I'm to warn you, Rickard only has five minutes to spare. He recommends that you limit your pleasantries accordingly." The gargoyle gestured at the last car. "The door is open."

This car was stouter than the others, with fewer windows. It served as a storage compartment for larger luggage and goods. Not at all the usual place one would find the conductor.

We climbed the steps to enter the cabin. Rickard stood in the middle of the aisle, surrounded by heavy boxes covered in oil cloth, flanked by stacks of luggage. We dodged assorted furniture draped in a protective canvas to reach him.

He was a tall man, lanky in the limbs and dressed in a blue uniform fitted with brass buttons that matched the plating across his cap. His overcoat draped long in the back.

"Your Grace," Rickard said, bowing his head politely.

"I prefer ‘Detective,'" I told him as I came to stand in front of him, close enough I could smell the scent of sulfur coming off his clothes. "It's a title I actually earned."

"Fair enough, Detective." A gilded chain tethered a large pocket watch to his double-breasted coat. It looked exactly like Hecate's. This one had four hands that ticked away in opposing directions. "Forgive my frankness, but I've more important individuals than a detective duke to answer to just now, so I can only give you five minutes of my valuable time."

"How'd you know we'd be here?" Quiet asked uneasily, dragging her eyes around the cabin, looking for monsters amongst the clutter. She paused briefly to scrutinize an ornate standing mirror, partially covered by canvas, situated just behind Rickard.

"Hecate warned me, of course," the conductor said, shrugging his thin shoulders. "I owe her a favor or two. You're not going to waste all of my valuable time on silly questions like that, are you? Bloody hell, I hope not."

I squinted at him. "Who are you exactly?"

"The conductor ," he blustered, and a rustling sound, like large birds trapped in a cage came from behind him.

I peeked over his shoulder, but there was nothing there.

"Perhaps you should let me start," Rickard said. "We've lost half a minute already. Hecate said you'd have a map for me to look at."

Quiet fetched the rolled parchment from her pocket and handed it to me. I unfolded it, opening it wide.

Quiet leaned in to observe, holding back the top corner that wanted to roll shut. "It's an old and out-of-date map. What good is it to you?"

The map was of a corner of Purgatory City and was at least sixty years old. The area now called the historic district was centered on the grid. A road connected it to the heart of the city through a large thoroughfare labeled Castleway .

The conductor placed a finger on the old road. "That's where I used to oversee travels between here and the Nothing," he explained, "but a plague hit the city not long after this map was drawn up. They shut down the thoroughfare to stop the spread. The illness nearly wiped out what we now call the historic district. Some good came of it, though. They laid these lovely rails after that, and the train gets far more attention from the geds. Attention I need in order to man the crossroads."

Quiet tapped the pages. "What are these markings here around the graveyard?"

"Now you're asking better questions," the conductor said, and he sent her a wink that made me want to hurl him out a window. I ground my teeth together so hard they made a small noise.

"Those markings there," Rickard said, "are the first plans to turn that area of closed road into a special graveyard for children."

"Children," she repeated, meeting my eyes with a look full of meaning. "This spot here was once a graveyard for only children?"

"Most of the adults who caught the plague were able to recover. The littles weren't so lucky. They built it to honor those lost."

"Why isn't the graveyard there now?" I asked.

The conductor took back his map, folding it along the creases. "Preternatural sorts did a better job of concealing themselves before then, but centering a graveyard in a busy part of the city like that attracted too many corpse-eaters and coffin-dwellers. The geds learned the hard way they weren't alone in this world, that it was wise to dig their graves out in the wilds, far from civilization. You're asking the wrong questions again. Hurry now."

"Then tell us the right question," I interjected hotly.

The conductor smiled. "I am a servant of Death, working off a debt. I see to it that those who have passed on make it through the crossroads to their final rest." Lifting the map, he shook the parchment gently at me. "But not a single soul from that graveyard made it to me. Something or someone blocked their way—and continues to keep them from boarding here or getting to the Nothing any other way as far as I can see. That circus is worked by another servant of Death. A jealous one. A reaper with a talent for shapeshifting."

"The ringleader." Quiet whispered aloud what I was thinking. "What's he jealous for?"

"Rorick has blessed god-blood in his veins, and he doesn't," Rickard said. "Blood that makes him strong and fast. There isn't any creature in this world that could overpower Rorick now. The ringleader wants it for himself, of course."

Another rustling sound behind him had me peering over his shoulder. Still, there was nothing there.

The conductor considered me, one brow raised up toward his cap. "If I gave you an extra minute of my time, would you answer a question for me?"

"All right," I said.

"Why'd he pick you?"

I frowned at him. "I have no idea what you mean."

"I mean, why the devil did Death pick you ? Of all the hapless souls crowding the Nothing, he plucks up you? And he doesn't even make you work off the debt of his blessings for a millennium or two. He just hands over his blood like it's Fate Feast Day and you're his best mate or something."

I rubbed at the back of my neck, thinking of my dream-vision of the Nothing and the Lonely God. "I . . . I don't have an answer for you. I don't truly know why I was granted such a blessing."

"That's not very helpful, then, is it?" Rickard inspected his pocket watch again. "Either way, you're down to your last minute."

"Do you know who murdered me?" I asked.

The conductor's eyes snapped to mine, and his brow wrinkled. "Murder? I mean, I realize you're undead, but I had no idea anyone else had helped you along to getting there, if you know what I mean. Forgive my curiosity, but weren't you present for the murder, Detective? Shouldn't you know who killed you?"

I shook my head once sharply. "I can't remember."

"Ah, well, if it's memories you want retrieved, that is something I can help you with. You'll need to seek out the historian," he said. "He's an alchemist who runs a bakery in Castleway, goes by the name Grant Hooper. He owes me a favor. If it's memories you need finding, he's your man. Be sure to tell him I sent you—but don't mention Hecate. They don't get on." He opened his watch again. It ticked loudly. "Time's almost up."

"What can you tell me about the psychopomp called Dominion?" Quiet said hurriedly.

Rickard's face blanched of color. Even the stubble along his jaw seemed to go white. "Why would you say that name here of all the bloody places?" he whispered hoarsely. "I'm trying to help you and you go and do a thing like that. Rude is what that is! That psychopomp's dereliction puts us all at risk here!"

Agitated, the conductor's overcoat lifted off his back, and now I understood what that rustling sound had been. Two large, feathered wings spread out behind him, knocking against the canvas-covered furniture.

"You're a traveler," I said, taking in the ethereal wings.

Death gave me wings. A memory haunted me just out of my reach. I felt a tug at my back, and a new weight nestled against my shoulder blades. I reached behind me but felt nothing there, just a phantom pull.

"Call me whatever you want, I'm a servant of Death. I can be a bit strict when it comes to attending to my orders, but Fate's sake . . . Stay away from that psychopomp!" The conductor shook his head. His eyes darted nervously around the cabin. "You're on your own now. My five minutes of assistance is up."

Rickard yanked the canvas off the standing mirror, casting up a cloud of dust.

"No, wait!" Quiet shouted as the canvas landed heavily on the carpeted floor.

The glass swirled like it had gone liquid. Wings tucked in around him tight, the conductor leapt through the mirror, vanishing from sight.