Give the Dark My Love(92)

When I didn’t respond, she reached toward the dead woman with her residual arm. Nedra’s eyes softened, but her focus intensified. Behind me, the man’s babbling stopped. He stared in horror at the revenants. Whatever they were looking at, it was the same thing Nedra’s attention was focused on.

“Can you bring her back to me? I love her,” the man said. “She’s my wife.”

“She’s not.” Nedra’s voice was tight, and I could tell she was angry. “And she doesn’t want to come back to you.”

She stood.

The man’s face purpled. “You will bring me back my wife, you—” he started.

Nedra held a hand up. “I only bring back people who want to come back,” she said. “And besides, I don’t see why you want to bring someone back after you murdered her.”

The man sputtered, rage overwhelming him. “I would never murder her!” he snarled. “I love her.”

Nedra cocked her head. “The dead don’t lie,” she said simply. “You killed her. I’m not bringing her back against her will just so you can pretend to apologize.”

“I’ll make you—” he started, lunging for her.

I jumped to protect Nedra, but I needn’t have. Her revenants circled the man, and he couldn’t break through them. “Come along, Grey,” Nedra told me, heading back up the stairs.

“What are . . . what are they going to do to him?” I asked. The revenants were so tightly packed around the shouting man that I could barely see him.

“Whatever they want,” Nedra said, shrugging, not slowing her pace back up to the hospital. “They all saw the poor woman’s soul, too. They all heard what she had to say about him.”

The man’s voice went from angry shouting to terrified screams, but all I could hear was what Nedra had told him before: The dead don’t lie.

I glanced behind me once before I stepped inside the hospital after Nedra. I could not see what the revenants were doing, but the man’s screams had stopped.

Nedra didn’t pause as she made her way sedately to the spiral staircase leading to the clock tower. I followed, my mind a riotous mess, caught somewhere between panic and fear. Those monsters outside—they had worn the faces of humans. There had been children. My dread grew with every step. I could not tell if I feared the monsters inside more than the one I followed.

Nedra is no monster, I told myself firmly, but I could not calm my heart.

Someone waited for us at the top of the stairs. I gasped and stumbled down a step, my eyes unable to comprehend the exact mirror copy of Nedra standing beside her. The real Nedra had an edge to her I’d almost forgotten, something rough like splintering wood. This other girl didn’t have that. Behind her eyes, it was as smooth as glass. My Nedra was missing her left arm; the other one’s right arm had been amputated above the elbow. But other than that, they were identical.

Identical . . .

My gaze dropped to Nedra’s hand, wrapped up in the hand of the creature that seemed to be a mirror copy of her. The monster’s fingers were loose, resting in Nedra’s grip, but Nedra had white knuckles, she was holding on so hard.

All of Nedra’s stories about her family came flooding back to me.

“Nedra,” I said slowly. I looked at the empty shell of a person who stood placidly beside her. “You didn’t tell me your sister was your twin.”

She sniffled. For the first time, I realized Nedra was crying. Nedra, the feared necromancer who raised revenants and clutched their souls in her hand, was silently crying, fat tears slowly leaking from her eyes, one after another.

I acted without thinking. I reached for her, cradling her face with one hand, my skin immediately wet and warm from her tears. “Nedra,” I whispered, “why didn’t you tell me?”

“Why didn’t you ever ask?” she growled, jerking her face away. Her hand slipped out of the monster’s.

She reached for me with what remained of her left arm, the residual limb twitching. Nedra looked down at her shoulder as if angry at its betrayal, but she didn’t try to touch me again.

Instead, she looked at her sister, who, I realized, was not a monster at all.

“I’m sorry,” I said. It wasn’t enough, it would never, ever be enough, but I had to say it.

“Go,” she whispered. I hesitated, but then the reanimated corpse of her sister walked placidly down the stairs. Nedra had sent her away, not me. Nedra sank to the floor, her head resting against the clock, the minute hand ticking by. I sat down beside her, and she didn’t object.

For a long while, there was nothing between us but silence.

“I thought you wouldn’t follow me into the darkness.” She threw my words back at me, but her voice sounded tired and defeated.

“This is wrong, Nedra,” I said. “You shouldn’t be playing with life and death.”

“You know nothing of death.”

“But why?” I asked. “You can’t give them life. Not really.” Even if the other revenants hadn’t been as hollow as Nedra’s sister, it was still obvious they weren’t truly alive.

It took her a long moment to answer. “They didn’t ask for life. They asked for more time.” She paused. “‘If love will not stop for death, time should.’”