She turned back to him. “And what does that mean? You say ‘my death’ like it’s a place. Is death another dimension or something?”
Aldo Novalli laughed. “I have no idea. Theoretical magic was your area of expertise,carina. This old man only knows what he’s seen.”
That answer was so like her dad, Marci couldn’t help laughing with him, though hers was more the nervous, “we’re screwed” sort. “If I’m the expert, we’re in trouble, because I can’t see a thing.”
“That’s only because you haven’t opened your eyes yet,” Aldo said encouragingly. “Try again.”
That didn’t make any sense. If her eyes were closed, how was she seeing her father? But waking up inside your death was the sort of experience that demanded an open mind, so Marci swallowed all her reasons why this couldn’t possibly be and just gave it a shot, blinking her eyes rapidly in an attempt to open what should already be open.
The effect was immediate.
“Wow,” she whispered, stumbling backward.
Marci wasn’t sure what had happened, but at some point during all her blinking, the formless void had rolled back like a curtain to reveal a weirdly familiar scene. She was standing on the gravel driveway leading up to the three-story house hidden beneath the Skyway on-ramps where she and Julius had lived in the DFZ. Even as she stared in wonder, Marci knew this couldn’t be theirrealhouse. For one thing, the porch and front door were still intact, not chopped in two by Conrad’s sword, and second, she wasdead. But that didn’t stop the house from feeling real. More than real, like a picture that had been digitally enhanced to look even more beautiful than real life, and as she stared at it, Marci realized why.
This wasn’t their house. It was her memory of it. The rosy recollection of their home as she’d loved it best, right down to her dad’s freshly repaired car parked in its usual spot out front. Likewise, the spiral of cement on-ramps overhead was empty and quiet, something that hadneverhappened in the actual DFZ, where cars were always racing from the Underground to the Skyways at all hours. Here, though, everything was still. No sirens or headlights flashing through cracks or flickering orange street lamps humming in the dark. No sound or movement at all. Just the house standing quietly in the cement shelter of the tangled overpasses, its windows lit up cheerily to welcome her home.
“Okay,” Marci said at last, turning back to her dad. “Did I make all of this up just now, or was it always here?”
Her father frowned, giving her question serious consideration, as he always did. “I think it’s a bit of both,” he said at last. “This is your death, Marci. Everything that remains of your twenty-five years—your knowledge, your memories, the people whose lives you impacted—is collected here. Even I am only here as part of your memory.”
“But what does that mean specifically?” Marci asked. “Like, are youyou, or am I talking to a figment of my imagination?”
“I think I’m me,” Aldo Novalli said with a shrug. “I remember your mother and my childhood and the day you were born. But I also remember things I couldn’t have known. Things you experienced after my death, including how you were living in sin with that dragon boy.”
“I wasnotliving in sin!” Marci cried. She wasn’t sure what was more embarrassing: that her father apparently had her memories, or that she was telling him the truth. She really hadn’t had a relationship like that with Julius, which was a freaking tragedy. She would have lived in a lot more sin if she’d known she was going todie.
That thought made her want to cry all over again, so Marci shoved it aside. She’d wasted enough time on that already, and she couldn’t let herself forget she was here on a mission: to find Ghost and figure out how to do whatever it was she needed to do to become a Merlin. That was why she’d taken her spirit’s hand and let him pull her into death in the first place. Not so she could hang around weeping over lost opportunities like anactualghost. But as she was telling herself to get it together, Marci noticed something was off.
Okay, alotof things were off, but this one struck her as particularly odd. So far in her experience with the afterlife—or whatever this was—things had looked mostly the same as they had when she was alive. The black void had been new, but once she’d managed to open her eyes, everything else she’d seen—the house, her car, the gravel on the ground, her dad—had all looked as good or better than she’d remembered. She was even wearing the same white T-shirt she’d had on when she’d died, though thankfully without the hole Emily Jackson had shot through it. But happy as Marci was that her chest was no longer a terrifying, bloody mess, itwasglowing faintly, which struck her as important.
“Do you see this?”
Aldo frowned. “See what?”
“I’ll take that as a no,” Marci said, pressing her palm over the light. The faint glow was no brighter than a candle, nothing like the roar of power she remembered, but itwasin the right place…
Fighting hard not to get her hopes up, Marci gave her chest a push, bearing down not just with her palm, but with her magic, the mental hand she used to grab power for her spells. Sure enough, the faint light flickered when she poked it, so Marci closed her eyes and relaxed, but not with her muscles. The tension she was trying to undo was inside of her: the knot of internal magic she’d wound together on the balcony when Svena had forced the supernova that was Amelia’s magic into her own.
At the time, the frantic origami folding had been an act of self-defense to keep Amelia’s fire from consuming her. Now, picking it apart again felt like trying to unravel a limp, knotted thread. It was such slow going, the folded magic so cold and lifeless, Marci worried she was wasting her time. Then, just when she was certain she was unraveling an empty cage, the tangle gave way, and something beautiful and burning slipped out of her chest to land in Marci’s palm.
When Svena had first divided Amelia’s fire into her, it had felt like swallowing the sun. By contrast, the magic flickering in her hand now looked like a dying match, but itwasn’tMarci’s. The magic changed as she watched, the tiny flames dancing and shifting in her palm until she was no longer holding a fire. She was holding a dragon. A miniature feathered serpent no longer than her hand with scarlet feathers that glowed like banked coals.
“Nowdo you see it?” she asked, holding the dragon out to her father.
Aldo Novalli nodded, eyes wide. “Whatisit?”
Before Marci could state the obvious, the little dragon stirred, shaking itself like a dog before looking up with beautiful, amber-colored eyes.
“Did we make it?”
The question made Marci jump. For all that it had come out of her chest, the tiny creature in her hand was so unlike the powerful, rollicking dragoness she’d known, she hadn’t actually made the connection in her head. Now, though, the familiar brash, confident voice snapped everything into place. “Amelia?”
“In the flesh,” the little fire serpent said proudly, looking down at herself. “Or not, as the case may be. But either way, it’s me! And from the looks of things, I’ve successfully hitched a ride into the mortal afterlife.” She grinned, revealing a wall of sharp, white, tiny teeth. “Let’s see Svena dothat.”
If Marci had had any doubts left that this was, in fact, Amelia, that line would have cleared them. But while her identity was no longer in question, Marci had plenty of others. “What are you doing here?” she cried. “I’m dead!”
“Actually, we’re both dead,” Amelia said authoritatively. “That was the plan. I put my fire in you, and when you die, I stow away inside your soul to the place that lies beyond death.”
