“I promise.”
“Promise on the loss of all our favors. We’ll take them back, if you betray us. The rules that separate us from the living have their loopholes.”
“I promise you on the loss of all your favors. On the rose and the root and the rot and the thorn, I swear.”
The Selkie nodded, apparently satisfied. “It is done,” he said, and snapped his fingers. The night-haunts rose in a whispering cloud, leaving the pale, motionless body of January O’Leary on the cafeteria floor.
I blinked through space and was instantly beside her, dropping to my knees as I stared at the sharp points of her ears and the red-streaked brown of her hair. It felt like my code was freezing, like the disk that held my heart was glitching uncontrollably, making it impossible for me to move.
The fire alarms went off. The sprinklers came on. I grabbed her body off the floor like a discarded doll, bundling her tightly in my arms, and I was gone, and so was she.
When we had been testing the limits of what I could carry through the code—Mother laughing and throwing me things, Elliot wary and taking notes—we had determined that I could carry something twice my size a short distance, if the need was great enough. For living things, the journey would seem to take no more than an instant. They were blind to the code. For inanimate things, the length of the journey was irrelevant. For me, though . . . I felt every second.
Five seconds, to pull my mother’s lifeless body from the cafeteria and into the electrical currents running through the knowe. Five seconds to travel from the cafeteria to the basement, where Li Qin and the others waited.
I was dry when I reappeared, having shed the water somewhere between the seconds, but January was still wet and limp and dead in my arms. Li Qin screamed, a short, sharp sound, clapping her hand over her mouth and staring at us in abject shock. October and Quentin exchanged a nod, moving toward me, helping to lift January onto the nearest open cot.
“What did you do?” asked October.
“I contacted the night-haunts, and bargained with them for the construction of a new body.” It sounded so simple, put in those terms. It sounded almost reasonable.
“Why?”
“Because Gordan lied to you, or rather, Gordan did not tell the full truth.” I looked past her to Li Qin, who was shaking and silent, tears rising in her dark, beloved eyes. “Gordan said my mother could not be resurrected, because she had not been uploaded to the server. This was correct. But the data upload device possesses local storage. It had never been purged. As long as the battery remained functional, the data was retained.”
“Where is it now?”
“In my room.” I offered October a smile. She did not return it. “I have it connected to a charging port, to restore and extend battery life. If a resurrection is to be performed, it will include my mother. I could not permit anything less.”
“Wait,” said Quentin. “Why not let the others be brought back and then deal with the night-haunts?”
“I required something I could bargain with,” I said simply. “I bargained with their lives, or rather, with their deaths.”
“Everything that lives can potentially die,” said October. “If you didn’t let me bring them back, the night-haunts would never have them.”
“Exactly.”
“April.” Li Qin finally lowered her hands. “April, are we going to have to kill someone?” She would do it, if I told her “yes”: I could hear in in her voice.
I have never been so glad to assert the negative. “No,” I said. “Time will do that. Please. I am here, and my mother is here, and I have sent a message to Elliot, instructing him to collect the device. He did not wish to be here. I find I do not care. Please, can you begin the ritual?”
October nodded, and the world was different.
TEN
Li Qin showed them where to connect the wires and where to draw the ritual signs, and Elliot and Quentin followed her lead, assistant coders in a project too grand to be written in anything less than flesh and bone. October followed behind them, painting her own blood on the lips and hearts of the deceased, constantly reopening the cuts in her fingers as she raced against her own rapidly-healing flesh. She grimaced every time, as if the pain was never lessened, only reconfigured. It must be a terrible thing, in its way, to be so close to indestructible.
The server where most of the dead were stored was large enough to seem imposing, like it belonged here, in this mortuary turned mad scientist’s laboratory. The device where my mother and Terrie waited for their own resurrections was much smaller, much more easily overlooked. I did not dare transfer them between the servers, even though it would have simplified the wiring immensely. The chance of corruption of the files if I moved them more than once was too great. We could deal with a little inconvenience, for the chance of bringing my mother home.
When the bodies were marked and wired, Elliot and Quentin helped to move the cots, positioning them like the spokes of a wheel. Li Qin stepped up next to October, looking nervous for the first time since this had all started.
“The accountings we have are all for solo resurrections, but those seem to be draining enough that I’m not sure it would be a good idea to take them one at a time,” she said. “If we do it all at once—”
“It’s unlikely to kill me, but you’re worried about putting me to sleep for a couple of years,” said October dryly. She snorted at Li Qin’s startled expression. “What, you think ‘hero’ means ‘sucker’? I called the Luidaeg as soon as you told me what you’ve been dancing around since I met you. I’m happy to help fix this. I’m ecstatic that we might get Jan back. But I did my homework.”
“You came anyway,” I said.
October nodded. “I did. I’m stronger than the people in those stories. I’ve got more experience with bleeding than anybody has any business having. I may need to drink a gallon of blood and Tylenol after this—”
“And people wonder why I hate blood magic,” muttered Quentin.
“—but I’ll be fine. So let’s go. What do you want me to do?”
Li Qin picked up the braided ropes of thorny vines and electrical cable that had been inserted just under the skin above their hearts. It was a shallow incision, the rope anchored no more than an inch or so beneath it; with the proper treatment, it might not even scar. It would, hopefully, be enough.
“Hold these,” she said. “Bleed along them, and call the magic according to the guidelines I’ve given you. We’ll turn on the equipment that houses their . . . vitality.”
“I’m not sure whether this is more or less creepy because you keep avoiding the word ‘soul,’” said October.