“Jack Solomon,” I replied. “Now tell me what to do.”
CHAPTER THREE
Precedent Law Rule Two states: Violence against thanatists is strictly forbidden. Captivity, however, is allowed, so long as respect is paid.
—Sir Alexander Brown,The Exploitation of Precedent
In the lightof the alley streetlamp, Cassius raised a trembling arm. “There, on my wrists.” He pointed his shaking fingers at his throat. “And around my neck.” He wore a necklace and bracelets woven of gilded thread. “Ankles, too,” he said, his body spasming as his blue double pulled almost free of his flesh. “Touch them.” “The gold twine?”
He nodded. “A thanatist’s touch restores the binding that seals spirit to flesh.”
No idea what a thanatist was. Guy had to be delirious. But there was definitely some kind of blue ghost pulling out of him. He convulsed again, banging his head against the cobblestone. His face tightened in pain. “You see it, do you not? My semblance pulling away from me?”
“Yeah.”
“Then seal my bindings . . . please.”
I prayed this was some insanely vivid dream and reached for the golden threads. Small symbols were woven into them—a key, an invertedY, a theater mask, and a few others. As I touched the bindings, the image of my brother Dan letting me crawl into his bunk bed during one of Mom and Dad’s fights filled my mind. The thread and symbols brightened, except for theY, which rewove itself into an upside-down half circle with a dot at the center—the musical symbol fermata, which meant to stay on the note—same as the tattoo on the back of my wrist.
As soon as I’d touched all five threads, the memory of Dan faded to nothing. I knew I’d just been remembering a warm recollection from the past, but it was gone, and I felt . . . lesser somehow.
Cassius’s bluish double settled back inside him. He took a heaving breath and closed his eyes, seeming to relax. Then he rolled over, got to one knee, and bowed his head. “I am at your command.”
I raised my hands. “Relax, man. Glad to help. You were just having a seizure or something. It’s passed now, that’s all.”
“No, that isnotall. I would have slipped back to the Strata and forgotten myself if you had not re-bound me. Death has changed you, Jack Solomon. That is why you saw my semblance leaving my body. And that is how you kept it from doing so.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“Thanaturgy,” he said. “What your world calls necromancy. After death, most souls either move on or linger. Some that linger are called back into bodies to serve. They can continue to do so as long as their bindings are kept strong by a thanatist.”
“You think I’m a necromancer?”
“Be cautious how you use that word,” he said. “To some it is a slur.” “Either way, buddy, I think you must have hit your head pretty damn hard.”
“Some few souls neither move onnorlinger.” He said it like a fact. “Instead, they prove their power over death by escaping the winds and fires of the Asphodel Meadows and taking up their body again. The way you have tonight.”
“Again, man, how do you know that?” I pointed toward Henry’s place. “And how did you know where to find me?”
“I am a vestige,” he said, “a semblance of my former self bound to
a corpse, then required to serve my binder. Only thanatists can seal bindings. And only thanatists return from the Meadows. As for finding you, I was actually looking for Mr. Wilkinson, who has a reputation for helping?—”
“Did you see us get shot?”
Cassius nodded. “Then I ran to avoid the same fate, since, unlike you, if I die, I cannot take up my body again.”
I’d spent my third-grade summer helping Auntie Gloria with her Glendale Funerary Services.If you fix ’em up right, folks think they’re just sleepin’, she’d said once, tufting up a cadaver’s grey hair. Auntie had made me work on that dead woman for hours . . . until I’d thought I saw her breathing. So, dream or not, the idea of the dead coming back didn’t seem so far out to me. I had Auntie Gloria to thank for that, rest her soul. Still, this was beyond crazy.
I glanced over Cassius’s remarkable physique. “You look pretty good for a dead man.”
He frowned and pointed at the ground. “Tell me what you see in our shadows?”
His shadow had looked odd from a distance. Closer now, it seemed soft, as though light were passing through it, softer at the edges, too. But his gold bindings, even in his shadow,gleamed. Then I looked at mine and almost pissed myself. A thin gold rim surrounded my whole shadow, which was also darker than Cassius’s, with harder edges, more permanent somehow.
Maybe I’d slammed my head on the street when I fell, too. I shut my eyes for a few seconds. Opened them. The strange shadows hadn’t changed and the dude in the centurion costume was still there.
“My bindings are yours,” Cassius said. “I serve you now.”
