The world around Mide folded in on itself, like all the space between the infested parking garage basement and the road outside was simply squeezed into nothing for a split-second. During that second, the metal-masked Keeper took a single stride, forward and up, tugging Mide along with her by the arm. The girl released her as they touched down on the empty street outside the garage, and Mide stumbled forward, catching herself just short of toppling to the ground.

“Miss the evacuation or something?” the Keeper said. “Well, whatever, you’re safe now. Get outta here. Roads are clear, far as I could see.” Mide recognized her now, in the light, though they’d never actually met – Mary Hyland, Carves the Night. Fine. She’d take any help she could get.

“No! My partner’s in there! We need to help her!” Mide held her breathing steady, trying not to think about the way she last saw Shona. Trying and failing not to think of her as what’s left of Shona.

“Don’t be a fucking idiot,” Mary snorted. “Only thing you’re gonna do chasing someone in there is make a bigger mess. There’s Keepers on the way. They’ll save her. You just get clear of this.”

“I’m a Keeper! My partner’s Screaming Hymn Shona! We aren’t some bystanders!”

“Oh. Huh.” Mary’s featureless steel mask scanned her up and down. “Where’s your stuff?” she asked.

“I don’t know! Something happened in there, that thing did something to us, and, and…” Mide reaches again for her magic and finds nothing. It’s as gone as if it had never been there. “Fine. You’re right. I… can’t do anything right now,” she admits. It hurts to say, but all her pain is doing is delaying the reinforcements. “Just go help her, okay? Don’t worry about me. And, and be careful. This one’s really bad! I was sure I took its heart while we were in there, but it didn’t matter… It was some kind of trap…!”

What does that mean for her? Mide did absorb that trapped heart, even if the thing didn’t end up taking her. Doesn’t matter. Not now.

“…Sure. If you aren’t gonna leave, just, uh, keep watch, I guess? Tell anyone else who comes in what you told me.” With that, Mary rolled her shoulders, brandished her box cutter, and sliced a thin hole in the air, opening a dark portal back into the basement.

Smothering all of the panic crackling beneath her nerves, Mide opened Lighthouse and did the only thing she still could – add everything she’d seen in the Wound to the initial alert. There had to be something there the others could use.

She hadn’t even finished typing when Mary reappeared through a fresh tear in the world.

“What’s going on? How bad is it? Are you waiting for the others? They’re, um…” Mide tabbed away from her half-finished battle report to check on the responders. Still en route. Irida was closest now.

“Uhhhhh,” Mary muttered, pointing a thumb over her shoulder at the portal behind her. “There’s nothing there.”

“What?” Mide snapped. “What do you mean? You just saw it! It was just leaving the Wound!” She slipped past Mary to peer into the tear. It opened into an overhead view of the garage basement, where there was… no shimmering roots in the hole. No moldy starfish crawling out of it. no sign that there’d ever been anything there but a giant gaping pit. Even the remains of the one Mary struck down were gone.

“Yup. I jumped in just to see what would happen and I just, uh, fell through that big fuck-off hole in the world until I jumped back out,” Mary said. “Didn’t feel like anything weird at all.”

“That can’t be,” Mide growled. “I mean, ugh, no, it is, but where’d it go, then? Can’t you follow it?”

“Uh.” Mary shrugged. “I can’t. Maybe someone else’ll sniff it out, but I’ve got nothing.”

“No.” Mide balled her fists, thumping one weakly against her hip. “It can’t do that. That’s not how it works. It can’t just leave. She can’t just… she can’t…” Her voice died out with a choking sob. The last bit of strength that hadn’t left her with Shona fled her body. Everything was spinning. It felt like she was going to puke. She slumped to the ground, sucking in deep, gasping breaths.

“Damn,” Mary said.

There was a long, heavy pause.

“That sucks, huh?”

Mide lifted her head to glare at the blank gunmetal face staring down at her, astonishment mingling with the raw, hollow pain she felt gaping in her chest, stealing all her air. Mary stiffened, holding her position a moment longer, then turned, sliced open a gash in the air, and disappeared through it.

Leaving her alone on the silent, empty street outside the monster’s abandoned nest. It feels like she’s the last person left in the ruins of a dead city.

~~~

Shona is dead. Aisling’s words hang in the air, pressing down and down like a stone on my chest.

I don’t think it’s shock, exactly – it feels too blunt for that. It’s not like this is some sudden, unheard-of tragedy. Shona’s a Keeper. Keepers die sometimes. It’s awful, the same way it is when anyone dies, but everyone knows that’s a real risk. I don’t even think this death feels different because I’m part of the group that dies in battle all the time now. I was already as doomed as anyone could be. No, the difference now is that I knew Shona. And I dragged her into one of my nightmares right before it happened.

“How?” I ask, breaking the long silence.

“Something stormed in on the edge of the city. Probably came from the forest, sounded like a Cluster B from reports I’ve read. It was some sort of fungus monster that parasitized people and Harbingers both. Shona and Mide were the first on the scene. They killed something else it had eaten and kept in its Wound, thought it was over, and…” Her voice cracks on the last word, cutting off her blunt, clinical overview of the events. “It wasn’t,” she finishes simply. “Only Mide escaped. By the time anyone else showed up, it was gone. No one’s found where it went yet. That’s most of what I know so far.”

A fungus monster from the forest. Every breath makes the weight on my chest heavier. “Was there a big swarm of moldy worms and oozy starfish and things like that?”

“How’d you know? Have you seen it?” Aisling barks, the exhaustion almost gone from her voice. “If there’s another unreported sighting… fuck, we really need to get you on Lighthouse, you wouldn’t have to interact with anyone, just–”

“No! Nothing’s happening here! I went to the forest once and saw it, that’s all. Or at least this sounds like the thing I saw. I don’t know.”

Aisling sighs, abruptly deflating again. “Right. Of course you did. A solo walk in the woods is very you.”

“It was a bad idea. I know. Just…” I try to swallow, but the muscles in my throat won’t work right. Just like the trembling hand struggling to hold my phone. Just like all the rest of me. “It wouldn’t have happened if I’d been there. I don’t mean I would’ve killed it, but I don’t think she could feel when something was too much for her like I can. I could’ve pulled them out. She, she didn’t have to–”

“Don’t,” Aisling orders. “Seriously. There’s so much Keepers can do, but we don’t get more time in the day to actually do it than anyone else. You are not responsible for everything you didn’t accomplish or prevent because you weren’t there. Start thinking that way and you’ll destroy yourself.”

“Okay.” I don’t think she’s right, and not just because of some nitpick about how I could be in two places at once if I wanted. I wasn’t doing anything but being sick and worrying about myself when I knew Seryana’d hurt Shona too. But I don’t see the point in arguing with someone for thinking better of me than she should.

“What are we going to do, then? Are you tracking it like you did with Isobel?”

“Why would I? If the thing comes after us again – I expect it will, after how its first incursion went – and we can’t figure out how to handle it, I’ll burn questions then. But otherwise, Shona is already gone. Killing it won’t bring her back.”

“I guess it won’t,” is all I say. I can’t stop thinking about how it must feel to die in a Wound, dragged body and soul into the depths of a Harbinger’s mind, but why torture Aisling or myself with every horrible idea I have of how things might work?

Not that I have a choice, in my own case. The thoughts aren’t going anywhere.

“The funeral’s on Thursday,” Aisling says after another silent stretch. “If you’re feeling up to it, I think she’d have liked–”

“That feels like a bad idea,” I try to interrupt. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to speak over someone again, but Aisling does cut herself off.

“Don’t get in your own way again,” she says. “You aren’t wanted, and Roland is obsessed with his image. He wouldn’t dream of starting anything at a Keeper’s funeral.”

“And after it’s over?”

Aisling lets out a groan. “Fine. It’s not that important. Just something to think about, okay? It helps having… other things to focus on.”

“I’ll see how I’m feeling. My health isn’t doing so well.” Another long pause. “Have you… been through this before?”

“I don’t know. Probably. But I don’t much want to talk about her.” Aisling’s voice is tight, but quieter than before.

“Sorry.” Fair enough. I wouldn’t either. “I’ll go, then. Thanks. Um, for letting me know.”

“Of course. Take care.” She’s barely finished the last word when I end the call.

Leaning heavily on my cane, I struggle to my feet and make my way to my bed. Pearl sits swaddled in a cluster of unmade blankets. I sit on the foot of the bed, pluck her from her nest, and squeeze her tight, staring aimlessly out at the night sky.

I don’t think I’ve ever gone to a funeral. If I was at Mom’s, I was too small to remember it. I’ve never been that close to any of the people I knew were dying – no one I like on the seventh floor has died yet, at least – and I don’t think I’d have wanted to go even if I was. I didn’t need any more reminders of mortality. I still don’t. As near as I’ve always been to death, this is the first loss close enough to me to matter as anything more than an abstract reminder of the horrifying, implacable forces that eventually steal everyone from everyone else.

I don’t know what I’m supposed to do at a time like this. I don’t know how I’m supposed to feel, except I can’t help but feel like it should be so much worse. I should be weeping and screaming and paralyzed with grief. But there’s only a vague, aching hollowness in my chest, not quite like the numb pain of my blood wracking my body, and the pangs of guilt that come with every thought about how I might as well have killed Shona myself. It feels less like losing a friend in a sudden freak accident and more like learning that I let Aulunla drown some nameless woman.

Why? Yes, I could have kept her away from that thing if I’d been there, but I wasn’t. I was in no condition to hunt. Aisling’s right, there’s no sense in blaming myself for that. Maybe Seryana’s attack left Shona in a bad way and she did something reckless, but that’s Seryana’s fault, not mine. Maybe this had absolutely nothing to do with me. Maybe it’s just a horrible thing that would’ve happened whether or not Shona ever got tangled up in my messes.

What? It could be. I hardly know anything about the circumstances of whatever happened. So why does that feel like the most pathetic excuse I’ve ever heard?

This isn’t working. I don’t know if anything will. But eventually, after who knows how long of watching the stars twist and dance, the spiral of nonsense whirling through my head leads me back to the one thing I’ve always done to make sense of my thoughts. It’s been a bit since I’ve had the time and focus for a proper reading, and while I don’t know how focused I’ll be on anything right now, I can’t think of what else to do. I head back to the desk, set Pearl next to me, and start shuffling my personal tarot deck.

Until my shivering hands lose their grip on it and half the cards scatter to the floor. Of course I’m too sick to manage even this much. Stupid. Should’ve just kept to the pile shuffle, but even that would feel exhausting right now..

Although… I can still do a reading. I don’t need to move at all.

In a flash of emerald light, I summon my implement – my Keeper cards, now arranged into a deck stacked on the desk rather than an orbit floating around me. I haven’t tried to read with them since I made the Promise, for a few reasons. At first I couldn’t read them at all, either to process the swirling sigils they’re labeled with or make sense of the abstract scenes on their faces. But I do understand that glyphic language now, spoken or written, and I have a lot more practice in looking at manifestations of magic and puzzling out what they mean.

The other reason, the more important one, is that… somehow, trying at all felt a little intimidating. Ominous, even. I know there are depths to what my power is and what it’s expressing that I don’t completely understand. I’ve known from the start that there must be more to it than gathering up my misery and hurling it at others. Cruel and capricious fate. Afflicted arcana. But nothing I’ve done or consumed has left me with a sense of what those mean or what I’m supposed to do with them. I don’t even think fate is real, and everything I know agrees with the idea that it’s impossible to predict the future with magic.

If reading with magic cards did anything special, then, I imagined it would be an enhanced version of what I actually use tarot for: understanding myself and my own thoughts. And I don’t like myself very much. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to know what my cards had to say about just how awful I was.

I’m still not. But right now, I don’t know what else to do, and maybe I owe it to Shona to try.

So, cards, tonight’s question: what is wrong with me? What is going on that’s left me too broken to feel more than this dull ache for my dead friend? What, exactly, am I blaming myself for? Do your worst.

I will the deck to shuffle itself. It scatters across the desk, just like I would do it, then sorts itself back into a wide fan-shaped display.

I wonder if it’s saying anything by presenting itself like this. It’s a technique I’ve seen before for encouraging people to pick cards from anywhere in the deck rather than just drawing the ones on the top, but not one I normally use. It shouldn’t make a difference if they’re shuffled properly, after all. But there is something to the feeling that you have a direct hand in what the deck shows you, and I suppose I do have more control over my fate, whatever that means in the real world, than most people ever will. I glance across the fan, then pick a card near the left end, float it out, and turn it over.

The design on the card is familiar, closer than I’ve ever seen to one I recognize from my actual decks. It’s an upside-down image of a decaying crow’s skeleton, but wreathed in enough inky black feathers to nearly reconstruct what it might have looked like while it lived, save for the bare skull. Death inverted. The card I’ve come to think of as my card since I made the Promise, the one whose meaning my power turns on its head.

Here, though, this doesn’t feel like it’s saying something about my magic or my bizarre relationship with this specific card. These cards could show me anything at all, but right now, it’s just like the one in my favorite deck. And this card in the past position, while I’m thinking about my messy relationship with a dead friend… it’s easy enough to imagine what it’s saying.

It doesn’t matter that I could’ve saved Shona if I’d happened to join her on a hunt there was no reason for me to go on. That’s not what this is about. She might not be dead because of me, but honestly, it would be going easy on myself to think of my failure as something so simple. I never helped her, never even tried, because I treated her as just another annoying person trying to throw a dying girl a scrap of acknowledgement so she could feel nice about herself.

But that just wasn’t the life I was living anymore, and things were different with her. Or they would’ve been, if I’d let them. Shona was only ever nice to me, in her own weird way. She kept reaching out and trying to be my friend well past the point where it would’ve been reasonable for anyone to hate me. I’d only just reached a place where I didn’t feel strange about saying we were friends. I never told her that. I never stopped treating her like a nuisance I barely tolerated. And now she’s gone.

My first tears of the night start falling. Only a few silent droplets, but… I guess I’m getting somewhere.

That was only the past, though. Only our short, stupid history together. What’s wrong with me now, cards? Turning my attention back to the fanned deck, I focus on a card in the right corner, pull it out with my will, and drift it to the right of Death, setting it down before I turn it over.

This card is more difficult, to say the least. Its art is a jagged mess of three or four different scenes, alternately flowing into each other or simply overlapping, like one piece of paper housing several drawings, each laid over the last – sometimes in ways that make it look like the past artists came back and tried to fix their defaced work.

I bring it closer to my eyes and squint at it, searching for any clear element to latch onto and work from there. There’s… a person falling through the sky, I think, but it’s hard to be sure because they’re censored into a fuzzy, pixelated mess. The foot of an ornate throne. A child’s sketch of a girl weeping while everything around her burns. The torn, filthy remains of a white ribbon.

My throat goes dry. I can’t tell what any of the full images would look like, or how they’re meant to connect in the places when they do, but the implications? The memories they force to the front of my mind? Those are all too clear. I try to read the sigils above the mess, themselves fused and knotted into an illegible mass, but I don’t need to read them clearly to feel them.

<DeathDEATHathDeath,> the glyphs say. Inverted, by the text’s placement.

“Huh?” I murmur.

There are no duplicates in tarot decks. So how?

A voice echoes through my memories. We constantly cheat at tarot, it says. It’s my voice, the voice of the other me I met when I made the Promise, only it sounds the way I sound now. The Seraph must have choked the sound out of her, too.

Fine. Then why? What do they have to do with Shona? What about them is important enough to stack the deck with this card?

And one of those intrusive thoughts I shoved away earlier comes screaming back.

Death inverted is an ending not being allowed to come to fruition. Something lingering. Trapped.

What is it like to be killed by a Harbinger? To have your soul sucked out of its shell and drowned in the depths of a living nightmare’s heart, just like we do to them? Is there some half-digested fragment of Shona lingering inside that thing from the forest, screaming her pain into its soul and never knowing if it even understands?

Magic and death are both complex things. Vyuji said that about witches with dead Harbingers. At the time, I didn’t understand what she could possibly mean. I didn’t see what could be so complicated about dying, the end of everything a person is. Maybe I was just looking away from the obvious.

Because I already know what it’s like for Harbingers when I absorb them. I have three sets of memories of being eaten by myself to pull from, clear as any of my own. And I don’t eat Harbingers for sustenance and burn them up as fuel for my growth, do I? They become part of me. They shape what I am and what I can do.

Wilt and… fill this world… wilt. Drink it all. Become true. Together.

Together.

Together.

I turn my gaze inward, to where my power roils in a storm of my pain. “You’re still in there, aren’t you?” I ask the empty room.

In a chorus of wordless voices I recognize all too well, more pulses of emotion and sensation than clear statements, my soul responds. Dizzying confusion. Longing for someone who never existed. Despair for a beautiful dream and hatred for the girl who crushed it in her fragile fingers.

And in the oldest song, the one soaring above them all, bolstered by my constant pain… joy. Gratitude. Pride.

I bury my face in my hands and try to scream. Only an eerie echo of a wail comes out.

A gentle breeze blows through my room, like the ghost of a hand across my cheek. <these stories all end the same way,> whispers another familiar voice, one I’m certain I’ve never heard before. <they never end. not ever.>

“Who’s there? Which of you…?” I croak.

Only silence answers. Fine, then I’m losing it. That’s nothing new at all.

Maybe I’m some freakish exception. Maybe my desperate rush toward immortality has shaped my own soul into an eternal hell for everyone I claim.

No, I already know I’m not. My cards won’t let me lie to myself. Why else would Harbingers shape Emergence for everyone? Why should it be any different when they eat us? And how am I supposed to grieve for someone who’s still there? Still suffering?

It’s perfect for you, though. Isn’t it? My voice again. You will never die. Never ever.

“I want to be me forever,” I hiss back, trembling, brushing silent tears off my sleeve. “A chunked-up piece of my soul lingering in something else’s gut isn’t living.”

Why not? As long as you exist, in any form at all, there’s still a chance to change your fate. You’ve already chosen suffering over oblivion, and that was when you didn’t understand that there was only ever one choice. So don’t lie to me. I know you. I am you.

A hand reaches over my shoulder. The pallid, emaciated arm of one of my echoes, black veins pulsing with blood-that-is-not-blood, points back to my cards, indicating the empty spot to the right of the first two.

Finish the reading.

“…What’s the point? They’re all the same card, aren’t they?”

Yes, my voice giggles. But you’re always getting lost in the now. Staring helplessly at what is and forgetting where the choices you’ve made lead. Looking back when you should be forging ahead.

The entire deck flips itself over, exposing seventy-six variants on the same scene. Shadowed, spectral outlines of me seated on dark thrones, attended by swarms of gaunt, unliving centipedes and the endless reach of my own withered limbs. Each bears the same small glyph:

<Death Inverted>

Half-formed dream-scenes fill my world. The faint wisps of life always pricking at my senses floating in the void, bits of power entirely detached from the people they belong to. Fields of them, cities of them, all just waiting for me to breathe in and claim them. My soul ripping my body open like a cocoon and crawling out, shrouded in damp feathers and dripping black blood like afterbirth. Hunting through many sets of eyes, many mes, each her own world-twisting curse pulled up from the black sea inside me and sent forth to take whatever we need. Death is only a distant nightmare, a threshold I will never cross. Death is a curse on us all, the end of every ill fate.

And curses, too, belong to me.

All you have to do to get there is take what you need. If there’s not enough, take more. And if it’s not enough to make it there alone, take enough to share. Take the thing that ate her, pluck her from its rotten entrails, and pull the death from her until you can put her back together.

Just stop flinching away from everything you could be.