At his crestfallen look, Vera added, “Although… there was a Trevelyan woman years ago who was rumored to have cracked the mystery.”
“Vera.” Alya’s voice was sharp with warning.
Vera ignored her. “She traveled here to find the epilogue and never came home. Disappeared from the world without so much as a whisper.”
“Who was she?”
There was a tense silence as a look passed between the two women. Alya lifted her chin in what seemed like steely defiance at the grief in her eyes. “She was my sister.”
Baz looked to Vera. “Your mother?”
“Aunt,” she corrected. “Adriana, the youngest of the four Kazan sisters.” She tilted her head at him. “I told your sister the same story. She thought she might be able to find Adriana in dreams.”
“And did she?”
“She couldn’t have.” Alya had a faraway, haunted look. “My sister’s dead.”
“You don’t know that,” Vera muttered.
Baz eyed the New Moon sigil on Alya’s hand, reminded that she was a Shadowguide, able to commune with the dead. The vehement look she shot Vera told him they’d likely had this conversation before.
“I can’t feel her spirit beyond the veil. That means she’s either still alive, in which case my magic is useless and we’ll likely never find her, or she’s dead and her spirit has left this plane, moving too far beyond the veil for me to reach.”
Left this plane. Something tingled on the back of Baz’s neck. “What does that mean?”
“Spirits who aren’t tethered to this plane sometimes seek horizons even us Shadowguides can’t reach. The dead move on, and so must we.” Alya caught his gaze on her hand and added, “If your sister sought the epilogue, she wouldn’t be the first to perish in search of it.”
His throat worked for air. “Could you… look for her? Beyond the veil?”
He thought she would say no, that he’d already asked too much of them. Alya only regarded him with a strange sort of softness.
“Jae used to talk about you and your sister all the time,” she murmured. “They showed me a picture of the three of you together once, from when you were kids and that printing press was still standing. They love you a great deal. I can only imagine how crushed they were at your sister’s passing.”
Emotion churned in Baz. Jae had always been part of their family, more than just his dad’s business partner but his oldest friend, too. Jae had stayed with them for months after Theodore’s Collapsing, helping them through that tragedy. They’d even stayed to take care of Anise once Baz and Romie returned to school. Only once everything was in order and the destroyed printing press was taken care of did Jae leave. They had another business opportunity lined up in the Outerlands, they explained to Baz and Romie, a research gig they couldn’t pass up. But they would come back. All of them would always be a family.
A small part of Baz had resented them for leaving then, even as he saw how broken up about it Jae had been. But Jae had made good on their promise: they’d come back for important holidays and events, as often as they could. And they kept in touch regularly with Baz, asking him about his studies and how he was doing with his Eclipse magic. Reminding him that if it ever got to be too much, if he ever felt he needed help, Jae would come to him in a flash.
Alya stood and went over to a large cabinet. From it she took out elaborately carved silver bloodletting instruments and set them on the table. She poured water into the shallow bowl and sliced the knife across her palm. Baz watched with growing anticipation as she submerged the wound, calling on the magic slumbering in her veins now that the moon was no longer new but waxing.
A suffocating silence settled over them as Alya closed her eyes. They flew wildly behind their lids. Baz sat very still, finding it hard to breathe. Slow, careful breaths, just like his father had taught him. In, hold, out, and repeat. Like the rhythm of the sea.
At last, Alya’s eyes shot open. She blinked rapidly, appearing disoriented, as if she were slow to reacclimatize to this plane of existence. When she finally looked at Baz, the sad lines of her mouth told him everything he needed to know.
“It’s the same as with Adriana. There’s nothing there for me to find, I’m afraid. If your sister drowned in Dovermere, her spirit must have moved on.”
The words settled like lead in Baz’s stomach. He wasn’t sure why it came as a surprise, didn’t know what he’d expected. Of course Romie was dead. She was dead a week ago, a month ago. She died last spring, and she was still dead now. Nothing had changed. It was just like Emory said: there was nothing they could do about it.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t offer you more,” Alya lamented.
Baz was sorry too, because even though he knew, deep down, that Romie must be dead, all signs pointing to this one great, terrible truth, a minuscule part of him had started to wonder—to hope, against all sense and logic, that she might simply be gone. That she’d followed the song not to her death, but to someplace else.
Seeing Alya’s haunted expression, however, he understood now why Professor Selandyn and Jae and even Emory were so adamant he let this go.
The dead move on and so must we.
So why couldn’t he?
* * *
Baz lingered outside the Veiled Atlas, feeling utterly dejected. He threw his head back against the stone wall and let the cool night air wrap around him. In the distance, the Aldersea was a dark, impenetrable mass, its faint whispering drowned out by sounds of laughter and music coming from busy taprooms and restaurants.
He’d never felt so alone.
Vera emerged from a side door. She wore a tweed coat that was two sizes too big and had a cigarette hanging from her mouth. Baz watched her take a drag and tilt her head up to the sky, mesmerized by the cloud of smoke that blew past her lips. He didn’t think she’d seen him, but then she cracked an eye open, looking straight at him.
“The other Eclipse-born who came by,” she said casually. “He a friend of yours?”
“Why?”
Vera shrugged, flicking her cigarette. “Figured you must be classmates, at least.” She took another drag. “He seemed to have a pretty vested interest in your sister’s plan.”
“What do you mean?”
“The dream thing. When I told him what Romie said about trying to find Adriana, he got this wild look in his eye. He stood up so fast Alya spilled her martini and cursed up a storm after him.” She crushed her cigarette under a booted foot. “He hurried out of here like a man possessed.”
If Kai had known Romie was trying to find Adriana and the epilogue in dreams, he might have attempted the same. Might have found something in the sleepscape that would explain everything.
Baz suddenly recalled a moment between Kai and Romie he’d never been able to explain. He and Kai had bumped into Romie outside Obscura Hall, and she’d frozen up at the sight of Kai.
“Dreamling,” he’d said in that chilling voice of his, blocking her path. A single, innocent word, yet nothing had ever sounded quite so loaded.
Romie had narrowed her eyes at him. “Out of my way, nightmare boy.”
Baz remembered Kai’s dangerous smile, Romie’s defiant glare. Kai had finally stepped aside so she could stomp away from them without another glance, and that was the end of that—but there had been something so odd about the exchange, Baz had never dared to ask Kai about it.
Always too afraid to speak his mind, to ask questions whose answers might upset the delicate balance he strove for.
He was so Tides-damned tired of it all.
Baz pushed off the wall. “I need to see him.”