Strange and Ever After (Something Strange and Deadly #3)(92)

I stumbled to Marcus’s blackened, ashy bones. Elijah’s bones. I brushed them gingerly aside. I would save them; bury them somewhere here in this ancient, timeless necropolis.

But first . . .

I found the ivory clappers. Clean and white, both hands were now open. No souls left inside.

I swooped them up and turned to the frozen battle behind us. “Go home,” I whispered.

It was the only phrase I could rasp out, and in a great lurch of movement, the imperial guards left. They radiated in all directions, bounding for their tombs all across Egypt.

The queens’ guards followed.

“Here.” Oliver’s voice was a broken, rattling thing. “Take these too.” He offered me the queens’ clappers . . . and my gaze slid up his dusty, ripped sleeve to settle on his face.

To stare into his hazel eyes. Hazel. Not gold.

“Oh no,” I breathed, gripping for his arm. Then his chin. “Oh my demon, what did you do?”

“I did what needed doing.” He tried to look away—but my left hand cupped his jaw. Tears pooled in his gold-flecked eyes.

“Oliver, Oliver.” I pulled him to me. My arms clutched his shoulders, and I held him as tightly as I could. “Oh my demon.”

“I am your demon no longer, El. I am just . . .” His voice broke. He sank his face into my neck. “I am just a man now. A man with no magic. A man with a . . . a man’s soul.”

And as he began to weep, I wept too.

He had given up his demon soul to save us all. The electricity from the crystal clamp had blasted it away, just as it had in Paris—but a thousandfold worse. Oliver’s immortality was gone, his soul shrunk and shredded to a human size. My demon would never, ever go home. He would never touch magic again or cross the curtain or be anything but Oliver.

No matter how many times I uttered the words—Thank you, thank you, thank you—it wasn’t enough. It would never be enough.

“Eleanor.” Joseph’s croaking voice cut into my brain. His hand lay weakly on my shoulder. His second hand moved to Oliver’s. “The Black Pullet . . . returns.” His head swiveled toward the pyramid.

I had forgotten the creature entirely. Again.

Eyes swollen, I strained to see. . . . Black scales—as thick as velvet in the graying dawn light—slunk over the sand. Several bone ibises continued to peck at it, but it barely seemed to notice. It simply moved toward us.

Toward me—for with the clappers, I was its master now.

“Stop,” I whispered.

It froze, yellow eyes shuttering. Then its breath huffed out. It spiraled in on itself and laid down.

The ibises continued their meek attacks.

“Sleep,” I ordered them. Then I turned my eyes to Joseph. Tears streaked through dirt and blood, and there was a hollowness in his gaze.

The pain of the living. The guilt of the survived.

We would carry it with us forever.

“Come,” he murmured, shuffling toward the pyramid. Toward Jie. Toward Daniel.

Oliver and I followed, Allison’s cries for mercy howling after us. As we trekked on unsteady feet over the dunes, I paused only once. Beside the Black Pullet.

Its head was as long as I was tall. Yet it did not seem dangerous now. Its eyes brimmed with a sadness I understood.

I rested my left hand on its serpentine snout. “You were just a pawn,” I whispered, my words carried off with the wind. “I am sorry you were never given a choice.”

Then I resumed my stumbling journey to Daniel’s side. His head was still in Jie’s lap, and she still hunched beneath the obelisk.

But she was silent now. Stiff as stone. Empty as the rest of us.

Joseph fell to the earth beside her. I fell beside him . . . and Oliver beside me.

And together we wept on. For all we had fought.

For all we had given up.

And for all we were never meant to lose.

At the first rosy light of the wicked dawn, we burned my inventor’s body.

I looked into his face for the last time as he lay atop pine crates—a makeshift funeral pyre. The wind dusted sand over him, and as I brushed a final kiss over his waxy lips, flies buzzed on his chest.

Death was so coarse. So unforgiving.

I wanted to brand his face in my memory. I wanted to remember the shape of his hands, the lines of his jaw, and the sunny color of his hair.

But there was nothing left of Daniel in this corpse.

After Jie doused the crates in alcohol and Oliver found an ancient urn among the dunes, Joseph spoke.

He spoke of how he had met Daniel—in New Orleans. How he’d never seen a mind so sharp or a moral compass so true.

“All he ever wanted was a second chance,” Joseph whispered over the wind. “A chance at redemption. I pray he knows he had it. He redeemed himself a thousand times over.” Joseph scratched at his bandages, inhaling before he went on . . . but then his brow furrowed; his hand dropped; and he stared into Daniel’s face. “You gave too much in the end, Daniel. Too much.”

“Too much,” Jie repeated. Then she set fire to the wood and moved to Joseph’s side. As the flames licked up, they held each other. Just seeing the two of them without Daniel at their side was almost too much. . . .

I looked at Oliver. He stared at Daniel’s body with a horrified interest. It was as if he was seeing the future ahead of him—the future of all mortal souls. And he did not like what he saw of death.