“Ivan…” How did I explain that dead meant not coming back? Had he never lost anyone close before? I stared at the determined set of Ivan’s jaw, at the bizarre, purring creature beside him, and at the printer that had just delivered a message from a maybe-ghost. “Can you put a pin in this and let me do some researching? I know a few people who might understand this kind of thing.”
Ivan’s expression hardened. The glow in his eyes intensified. It wasn’t a reflection from the printer’s buttons. This was something rising from within, a deep, deep-sea blue, shot through with shifting currents, like dark waves moving beneath the surface.
Power. Not tears. He dropped the papers and pressed his palm flat against my chest, right over the silent, hollow scar of our bond. “He’s right here. Can’t you feel it?”
His touch burned like a live wire. Not heat, but pure, wild energy that surged through the place where our bond had been severed, and instead of a dead, numb stump, it resonated. A thread, gossamer-thin and trailing into an impossible distance, faint but intact. Not cut. Stretched thin to become a shield of impossible breadth, anchored and woven into every thread of mine.
I gasped, leaning back and breaking the contact. The shockwave of sensation faded to the ghost of a pulse, a phantom rhythm in the hollow space.
The glow in Ivan’s eyes dimmed to dying embers. He swayed, his face pale with exhaustion, as if that single act had drained every reserve. “Fated mate bonds,” he whispered, his voice thin but certain, “are unbreakable. You can’t sever a tether that’s woven into the fabric of your souls.”
52
JUDE
I gavemeditation and rage exactly three minutes before the need to do something overrode it. Pacing the small room, my attention was snagged by an artifact that seemed utterly alien among the ancient tomes: a functional, if dusty, fax machine. I drifted toward it. The green light on the power switch was on. A single, curled piece of thermal paper sat in the output tray, blank.
I reached out, my spectral finger hovering over the dusty keypad, wondering if the machine did anything. I hit the send button. Nothing. Then punched a few more random keys. Nothing.
How many digits did phone numbers in the afterlife have? Maybe it wasn’t phone numbers. Did the threads have numbers? I typed out a random number.
The machine whirred to life with a sound like grinding gears. The screen flickered:Dialing…
Then, with a startlingly loudscree-chunk-wriii, the paper in the tray began to feed through. Words emerged, not printed neatly, but burned into the paper in jagged, frantic type:
Who is this? Identify or be terminally disconnected.
Ouch. I punched the power button. The machine let out a low, protesting groan before the grinding gears fell silent. The glowing green power light on the side flickered and died.
I slumped back into the leather chair, waiting for my nonexistent heart to stop pounding. For a long minute, I just stared at the beige box, half-expecting it to shudder back to life or for the door to burst open, revealing some cosmic security guard ready to give me a celestial beat down for trespassing. Could you get arrested when you were dead? Worse—could you get re-dead?
The silence stretched, the room thick with stillness and sterility. The studio felt more like a tomb than ever. But under the worry, a stubborn itch took root. The machine worked. It connected to somewhere. It was a line to somewhere.
I leaned forward, elbows on my knees. I didn’t know any official codes. But this wasn’t about official channels. This was about resonance. About a pattern so personal it might slip past the ‘terminal disconnection’ protocols. What did every person have in common? Death and taxes, sure, but we couldn’t have either without the original start date.
I didn’t know Angel’s birthday. The realization was a small, sharp ache. We’d been too busy surviving cosmic horror to have a normal calendar moment. I made a silent vow to fix that, if I ever got the chance.
But I knew Ivan’s.
Holding a breath I didn’t need, I reached out and pressed the power button. The green light winked back on with an accusatory glow. The machine whirred softly, waiting. When nothing spit out with more warnings, I breathed a sigh of relief.
My hand hovered over the number pad. This was probably a spectacularly bad idea, but I did it anyway. I typed Ivan’s birthdate into the fax machine, year and all, then hit send.
The machine screeched to life. The screen flickered through a dizzying array of codes and symbols. Then, with a sound like a sigh, the feed mechanism engaged. A fresh piece of thermal paper, stark white, slid slowly from the tray. Words formed, one painful, burned-in letter at a time.
Ivan:
Are you there?
A second sheet followed.
Ivan:
Please. Just tell me you’re okay. Nox said you can talk to me this way.
How did I write back on this thing? Handwrite a message? Was it really Ivan? I tapped at the screen, finding I could use the number pad like an old-school BlackBerry and type out words, though it wouldn’t let me add my name like Ivan had.
I’m here.
