Page 6 of Mortal Things

Please. I’ll do anything.

The man’s words echo in my mind. Anything.

Except there is nothing he could have done.

3

The streets in Fulham are relatively empty, relieved of the onslaught of travelers and tourists. I exhale gratefully as I step out from the Underground and turn down a quiet road. After the chaos at Paddington, I could use a moment of peace.

I walk past the bakery and step through an old gate, where I find myself inside Margravine Gardens, a serene cemetery filled with nineteenth-century gravestones and gnarled trees, their snow-dusted branches mimicking death, the phytochrome in their bodies telling them to rest for the winter.

As I go, I notice a wispy shadow of a fox trotting between the gravestones. At first glance, it seems like a normal animal—but its eyes are white instead of dark brown, and its mouth is a large, lolling smile that runs all the way around its head, full of needlelike teeth. A second fox, strange in the same way, lopes several yards behind it.

The first creature casts a glance back at me, its neck twisted at an unnatural angle, before it skitters away and disappears into the bushes. The second follows in its wake.

I shake off my unease at the sight of them. Wraiths, fragments of souls that splintered away during a particularly wrongful or bad death. Pieces that failed to be claimed. These fragments always try to take on the shape of a living thing or echo what a living creature would say or do, perpetually yearning to find their way back into the world. But they never look quite right. Although they always hunger for living souls, they are usually harmless ghosts, and I always feel a little sorry for them. Sometimes, if one crosses my path, I use my power to take pity on it—touch it and claim its splintered soul, giving it passage to rest in the immortal realm.

But my skin still prickles whenever I see one—at the wrongness of their appearance—and I find myself walking more quickly past the gravestones.

As always, I wonder if Raven had been the one who’d claimed each of the souls in this cemetery, whether he was already the god of Death during their lifetimes or if the one before him had done it. If he had been a Regent sent to do their bidding instead.

I pull my sleeve back enough to see my marking again. Unlike other Harbingers, I did not agree to work for my patron god in order to save my own life, but someone else’s.

As if summoned, Laine appears beside me in my imagination, her hands shoved into her pockets. She shrugs at me, then nods at the gravestones. Look at this one, Doc, she says with a grin. In memory of Joseph Grimaldi, a legendary Victorian clown. Must’ve been a real character.

I smile a little. I bet he was hot.

The imaginary Laine laughs. Wouldn’t hurt.

A familiar pang of loneliness hits me. As always, I wish Laine were here instead of back in New York. I wish she remembered me. I wish she were able to.

But life had other plans.

I exit the back entrance of the cemetery garden and emerge onto a serene street, where a pub called The Starling and Dormouse comes into view. To the average person, it looks like an abandoned business, boarded up and overgrown with weeds. But to me, its exterior is blanketed almost entirely by lavender-hued wisteria and hanging baskets of fuchsia, all blooming profusely as if in sheer defiance of the snow.

I duck under a curtain of flowers and end up in a dark interior warmed by candlelight and magically overgrown with ivy. From the ceiling hangs a web of wooden looms, old bicycles, twentieth-century typewriters, and butter churners, while on the walls are old paintings of seascapes and ancient cities, bygone eras and humans long departed.

I smile a little, lulled by the cozy space. One of the few nice things about being a Harbinger of Death is that I am particularly sensitive to the soul in everything—to paintings and music and films and books, tools and sculptures and curiosities, where I can always feel a sliver of the creator in the object. As if art, too, is a kind of Wraith, fragments of a mortal life left behind.

This particular place belongs to Aurora, the goddess of Knowledge, and unsurprisingly, she is a collector of human things. She had created this pub as a fond memory of the tavern she’d once owned when she was a mortal. As far as I know, it’s set up almost exactly like the original.

I head upstairs and emerge into a candlelit space, where a smattering of Harbingers are lounging at the round tables against the wall. Far in one corner, I catch a glimpse of Aurora herself sitting across from Magnolia, the god of Purity, who is arguing quietly while holding a glass of wine in his hand.

My gaze goes to the bar. There, I see Étienne, sitting at the end and chatting with a young woman.

I turn away and close my eyes in exasperation. Of all places, he just had to be here right after our confrontation at the station. My gaze settles back on the stairs. Maybe I can sneak out before he spots me.

The woman—a Harbinger of Joy, I notice from her marking—is leaning against the bar and giggling at something he just said, while he hands a folded paper to her that likely has his phone number on it.

But then she’s waving goodbye at him and moving toward the stairs. Étienne’s gaze catches on me as she passes me by, and I swear to myself.

Now that he’s spotted me, it would be too embarrassing to leave or move to somewhere else in the room. It’d signal to him that he’d gotten under my skin. And like hell if I’m going to give him that satisfaction. For an awkward moment, I wonder if I should just throw myself down the stairs and save myself the trouble.

At last, I straighten my back and force myself to head over.

As I reach him, I spot Charlotte, a Harbinger of Earth, sitting cross-legged on a nearby barstool with a root beer before her. Of the thousands of Harbingers in the world, she is currently the youngest—a thirteen-year-old girl with dark skin, long braids, and a pair of large round glasses balanced on her nose. Her head is down on the counter right now as she sketches in her notebook, but at the sight of me, she perks up and grins.

“Hey, Rosie,” she greets as I take one of the empty seats between her and Étienne, sending motes of golden dust billowing up around me.