The Edge of Everything (The Edge of Everything #1)(87)

“Struck dumb, are you?” she said. “You must do what you were sent to do. You have dallied too long with your lover. The thing that needs stiffening is your spine! Do you not know how the lords watch you? Do you not know how your insolence makes them seethe? I am ignorant of their plan, but they will surely unleash hell if you betray them again.”

She fell silent, finally. She wore only black boots and her golden dress, which looked like a Christmas ornament against the snow. Her old bounty hunter tattoos peeked out from beneath her lacy sleeves.

“How did you come to be here?” said X.

“That is what you would ask me?” said Ripper angrily. “You have a friend in Regent, and I have a friend in that repulsive Russian. If you must know, I had to promise him a kiss, which I may never forgive you for. I have not kissed anyone for a hundred and eighty-four years, and I had hoped for a grander prize.”

She took X’s arm.

She turned him back toward Zoe’s father.

“Come,” she said. “Let us find that soul that needs taking. I will crush the man’s throat myself if you cannot.”

“I will do what is required,” he said. “But you must return to the Lowlands before your absence is discovered.”

“I will not,” she said. “Not until this thing is done.”

“I insist, Ripper,” he said. “You have endangered yourself enough on my behalf.”

“And I have done it gladly, foolish boy,” she said. “I am to rot for eternity, in any case. I should be glad to think back on the one or two occasions I tried to be kind.”

X accepted this, gratefully. Though the Trembling still pulsed through him, he felt stronger with Ripper by his side.

They walked through the dwindling trees, Ripper’s eyes darting around with fascination. She took in the enormous pines, the streaks of sky, the snowflakes that drifted down like motes of dust. She had collected her last soul many years ago. She hadn’t been in the Overworld for decades.

They stopped at the top of the hill and peered down at the tense figures below. Zoe was just now reaching the lake.

“Is that your blurting girl?” said Ripper.

“And her father,” said X.

Once more the thought of taking the man’s soul filled him with dread.

“This calling of ours,” he said. “Did it never bring you shame? What we call ‘bounties’ are human beings, after all.”

Ripper seemed surprised by the question.

“Surely you do not still think of them as human,” she said. “Was I human when I cracked the skull of that serving girl—or when I left her corpse to grow cold in the street? Was I human when I rendered my babies motherless? No, these souls we take have given up all claims on humanity. They are garbage—and we are dustmen.”





twenty


Zoe’s father stared at her as if she couldn’t be real. His fishing pole fell from his hand and clattered against the ice.

Zoe stomped the last few feet to the lake. Her body was shaking uncontrollably. Vibrating, almost. She hated it—it made her seem weak. She wanted her father to feel nothing from her but disgust. She wanted him to know, even before she spoke, that she loathed him, that she saw him for what he was, that he had gotten away with nothing.

But the sight of him stirred up tenderness, too. She hadn’t expected that. Part of her wanted to run to him. He was her father. He used to cut her sandwiches into ridiculous shapes—once he used a cookie cutter to cut a star out of the middle. He used to tell her bedtime stories and insert her into famous moments in history—she’d cured smallpox, begged Decca Records not to reject the Beatles, and refused to board the Titanic when she heard there were only 20 lifeboats. You couldn’t count on him, but when he hugged you, you really felt hugged.

No. He was vile. He was poison. She didn’t have to know what he’d done with Stan when he was young, she didn’t have to know exactly why X was taking him—because she knew what he’d done to her family. He had deserted them. He was the domino that pushed all the others down.

The lake was fringed with dead reeds poking up through the snow. Zoe picked her way through them, still holding her father’s eyes. The thoughts in her head were dizzying: love, hate, forgiveness, revenge.

Her boot struck a rock in the reeds. She stumbled forward.

She landed on her knees on the ice, furious with herself for being so clumsy. When she looked up again, her father had broken out of his daze and was scrambling to help her.

“Zoe!” he called.

The sight of his teary face rushing toward her was too much. It softened her and repulsed her all in the same moment.

“Don’t touch me,” she screamed. “Are you kidding?”

She had never spoken to him like that before—not once in her life.

Her father backed away, palms in the air, indicating that he meant no harm. He seemed startled by the rage radiating from her.

He hung his head.

He can’t even look at me, thought Zoe. The coward.

She got to her feet. She brushed the ice from her clothes.

“How did you find me—and who are they?” her father said, gesturing to the hill behind her.

Zoe was stunned to see X standing with a woman she’d never seen before. She knew from her golden dress—and her coolly ferocious air—that it was Ripper.