Of all the things that happened to me in my life there are only two that nearly crippled me: losing Shazam and losing Dancer.
I thought about that in my gray place. And eventually realized it was because I’d chosen to love them, to give them my whole heart. And losing someone that you’d willingly given all of yourself to hurts far more than the many indignities and cruelties of the world. It’s pure. It’s a gift that gives back tenfold. And once you’ve lost it, you can never have it again.
In the end, it was both of them that brought me back.
In my gray place, I dreamed that Dancer was yelling at me through a pane of glass and he was saying Shazam’s name over and over. And he told me that just because we didn’t get to hang together anymore didn’t mean I could be a complete jackass or that Shazam didn’t need me, so I needed to pull my shit together and take on the world again. Like superheroes do.
He loves you like pi, too, he said. Eternally. Wake up. Seize the day. He needs you now. There will always be someone who needs you. And you’ll always answer the call. That’s your place in the Great Slipstream, Dani. And you’ve always known it.
“It was a lovely service,” Mac said as we walked through the cemetery.
We’d had a big memorial mass at the abbey and buried Dancer and Alina next to Jo, in the private graveyard behind the fortress. I still couldn’t believe Jo was gone. It seemed like just yesterday I’d seen her at Chester’s, but thanks to some Unseelie prick, I never would again. I nodded. I still wasn’t big on talking. It seemed like too much effort.
But I was getting stronger every day. And finally gaining some weight back.
“I like the inscription on Dancer’s headstone,” Mac said when we stooped to place flowers on the stones of three side-by-side graves.
ALINA MACKENNA LANE
JOANNA MACLAUGHLIN
DANCER ELIAS GARRICK
I’d chosen it myself: NEVER THE SIDEKICK, ALWAYS THE HERO. I’LL SEE YOU IN THE SLIPSTREAM.
I swallowed hard. He knew I loved him. I’d said it before he died and showed him in a thousand ways. I didn’t see much point in getting maudlin with his epitaph. If he was hanging around somewhere, I highly doubted he was checking out his headstone and reading the inscription. He’d be hanging out in the bathroom when I was naked in the shower.
“I miss him.” I had two holes where my heart used to be. The temptation to become Jada again was intense. But I lacked the energy to pull it off. It took effort to stay ice cold all the time when you’d pretty much been slapped together at birth from passion, fire, and a teaspoon of stardust.
Mac put her arms around me and pulled me into a hug. “I know, honey,” she said. “We all do. He was one of a kind.” After a time, she said, “Are you ready to do this?”
I didn’t move. I wasn’t sure I was up to it.
While I’d grieved, Ryodan and Barrons had gone through to Planet X and stacked Silvers so I could go get Shazam and bring him home.
The problem was, Shazam was nowhere to be found. There’d been nothing on the small island but the enormous mirror. No force-field cage. No half-naked tribesmen wearing feathered headdresses. Not there and not anywhere else on the small world.
It was deserted, void of both humanoid and Shazamoid life forms.
Yes, they’d called for him. Mac told me Ryodan had stood on the island, calling for Shazam for the better part of a day.
With no response.
I suspected they still weren’t completely convinced Shazam wasn’t a figment of my imagination. And if I didn’t find him, they might never be convinced. Might think me even more of a nut job than I currently was.
It was possible, after decades, Shazam was still waiting for me, somewhere up in the air, refusing to come down for anyone but me.
But it was just as possible that he’d died or left that world long ago.
Either way, I needed to know.
Facing the truth is always better than living in limbo. And as I’d recently learned, there were a lot of people far more nosily concerned about my well-being than I’d ever realized. People willing to take time out of their own lives to make sure I was okay. I couldn’t say I was comfortable with all the fuss. But it wasn’t the worst thing either. “Yes, let’s do this, Mac.”
I took her hand and, as we walked from the cemetery, I didn’t glance back at his grave.
Dancer wasn’t there.
I know a funny thing about eyes. Where you let them look is where they take you.
Look back and you stay stuck in a lost, forever unattainable past.
Look forward and you live.
DANI
When I arrived at Kilmainham Gaol people were having another party or something. There were a few hundred people milling around the portal to Planet X. I glanced around, trying to fathom what was going on. Surely they hadn’t all come out to see me off?