The Game of Love and Death(23)

She avoided looking at Henry until a thought struck: That was just another way of giving him — and whatever was between them — power. She remembered when she’d first started flying and feared contact with the earth and the danger it represented. The way to conquer that, Captain Girard had taught her, was to remember she was the one in control. The plane would do what she told it to. She would not be harmed. It was that simple.

She turned her face to his and sang to it, wishing she hadn’t noticed him in the first place, but a mistake like that, she could recover from. Her blood was just a bit of fuel she had to burn off. Burn it, she would.

By the time she finished the tune, sweat coated her back. The last note out of her mouth soared overhead and then dropped, ringing against the hard surfaces of the room, burrowing into the soft ones. The crowd erupted. Her heart felt lighter. She’d done it. She was safe. She looked away from Henry and let herself smile as she disappeared backstage, ignoring Grady’s hurt and perplexed look.

She’d faced Henry and stayed in control. This thing that was happening — whatever it was — she would survive.





THE Game haunted Love as he walked the streets of Seattle in the guise of James Booth, past hollow-eyed men holding cardboard signs begging for work. Days had passed. A week, and April turned into May, bringing longer days and soft earth, warm with growth, along with a visit from Death. She materialized without warning at the shanty in Hooverville, where he lay looking at the sky through the cracks in the ceiling.

“I don’t see how you expect to create any sort of love from this vantage.” She sat on an overturned peach crate, her face lit by a candle on the floor. The shadows underscored a haunted expression, even as her voice radiated arrogance. “Honestly. You’re making it too easy.”

“You might be surprised.” Love found a bottle of wine and two glasses. It was a good wine, one he’d picked up on a quick trip to France.

“Red?” she said.

“I’m not going to be superstitious about things anymore. I won’t give you that power.”

She sipped from her glass. Love put his to his lips, but he could not drink. “What you did in Spain.” His voice cracked.

“Stop.” She held up a hand. “You don’t know what I go through.”

“Sometimes …” He paused, weighing his words before he tossed them across the table at her. “Sometimes I feel as though you haven’t any heart.”

“You know nothing of my heart.”

“Why are you here?”

Death sipped her wine. She was hiding her thoughts, as ever. Love tried to read her face, but couldn’t.

“To tell you that it’s not too late,” she said.

“Too late for what? It’s certainly too late for all of those people in Spain.”


“Let me have her now,” Death said, “and I won’t take any others from either player.”

“Call off the Game? Is that what you’re saying?” She’d never done this before. Then again, she’d never looked so awful. He was almost concerned enough to ask after her, to ask if there was anything he might do. But then he chided himself for the foolishness. She was worried, worried that he might win.

He laughed and finished his wine. Death reduced herself to the form of a cat and slipped out into the night. The candle flickered out. Love refilled his glass and let the darkness surround him as he drank. He’d made a mistake, laughing at her. He’d have to be more careful.





NO one likes to be laughed at, Death least of all. This time she did not venture as far as Spain, but rather to the East Coast, where she had two errands. If he didn’t want to call off the Game, she’d make it worse. Far worse.

Her first stop was Lakehurst, New Jersey, where she waited at the edge of a naval airstrip, watching the sky. She looked clean and modern in her smart black suit and red cloche, even if she felt as though she’d been stuffed with the ashes of an apocalypse.

The afternoon was stormy. A charge hung on the air, reeking of dirt and ozone. Clouds gathered; humans did the same. At seven in the evening, a silver airship glided into view, its shadow a swath of black below. The craft looked like a blind whale and was the biggest thing that had ever flown. Humans had already conquered land and sea. With the Hindenburg, they’d rule the sky.

Death adjusted her hat and allowed a smile to stretch her lips. The ground crew waved the ship off, so the captain turned it sharply toward the sinking sun. The man’s emotions spilled down on her just as surely as the shadow of his ship. He was on edge. Her smile now had teeth.

Four minutes later, he renewed his approach. Death dropped her gloves into her handbag. She gestured, bare fingered, and the wind shifted. None of the humans standing near her noticed the way her hands trembled, or the slight sheen that developed below the brim of her hat.

The captain, fighting the wind, turned the dirigible away from the swiftly fading daylight. Death held out her hands, palms facing upward. The crew dropped massive quantities of water, first six hundred pounds, then another six hundred, and finally more than a thousand, to right the listing beast. Liquid crashed down, sounding like a falling sky. No one on the ground spoke as the mist settled against shoulders and faces and hands, mixing with sweat and dust.

For a moment, the strategy appeared to have worked. The airship held steady, limned by the last filtered light of the sun. Two mooring lines dropped, tumbling nearly three hundred feet to the ground. Workers would attach these to a winch that would bring the Hindenburg down.