Page 150 of Dead Vengeance

“That seemed to go well,” comes Simon’s voice in my ear.

I try not to look too much like I’m talking to him, because I know no one else can see him. “That was fantastic. You did so great.”

“But when can we do it again?” asks Helena, popping into my reality by his side.

I can’t help laughing out loud. “Hopefully never. We shouldn’t need to. The guy was scared shitless.”

Helena tsks her tongue. “Oh, I wish I’d seen it.”

“It was brilliant,” Simon laughs out. “I think he actually pissed himself, just at the end there.”

All three of us cackle at that, but I have to cut the celebration short. My car’s just around the corner, and Liam is probably incredibly anxious waiting there for me. “You both helped me so much today. I can’t thank you enough. But I have one more request.”

Helena throws an excited glance at Simon, who cocks his head at me and says, “You know I’m supposed to be with Ferdinand right now?”

“I do. So you can fly back there in a second. Just, when you get home, could you please send Edgar this way? Tell him I need him at East London Cemetery, in about…” I check my watch. “Three hours. Should be dark enough by then.”

The two of them fall silent. I’d say they go ghostly pale, but, well…

“What are you going to do?” Helena asks.

“He’s going to dig that body up,” Simon answers for me, his tone perfectly accusatory. “He’s going to dig Jem up and try to revive him.”

“I’m…” I am, but this really doesn’t need dissecting in the street right now. “I’m… just going to see.”

It’s not a good enough excuse for Simon. He drops his verdict bluntly. “It’s going to kill you.”

Helena’s eyes sharpen on me in agreement. “He’s right. Archer, this is not a good idea.”

I gaze down the street, wind whipping leaves over the bonnet of the car, the softest outline of Liam in the front. “This is what I do. I help people with dead loved ones.”

“Not if I tell Liam, it’s not.” Simon’s voice is a kind of icy that I’m not accustomed to from him, even in his worst moods. “Do you think he wants you to do that?”

“Don’t tell him.” I say it softly, pleadingly. “I’m not sure what’s going to happen. I-I just want to see how bad it is. See if there’s anything I can do.”

“He’s been dead for five years,” Simon shouts at me, and it’s a wonder the living wandering by can’t hear it. “What do you mean, how bad? Pretty fucking bad, actually.”

As if I don’t know that. As if I’m not aware I’ve nothing but dust to work with, at best. And we both know I’m already wrecked from the last few days.

“I have to try,” I say aloud, forcefully quiet. “He’s… I can’t stand to see him hurt like this. I know that sounds… I don’t know. Strange, or desperate, maybe. But what happened is wrong. And I have this gift, I have a chance to use it, to do some real good in this world, so why wouldn’t I do that? What is my purpose in having this if I can’t help?”

“And where does it stop?” Simon asks. “Are you going to revive every person in London? In all the world? That’s just not possible, and you know it.”

“I’m not sure even this is possible,” I concede. For one, how on earth is Edgar supposed to find me enough city rats and squirrels and god knows what else to work with? “Which is why I’m not telling him a thing about it. I can’t disappoint him. I won’t let him down like that.”

Simon’s nose wrinkles in about as disdainful a manner as I’ve ever experienced, which is disdainful in the extreme. “I should think finding your dead body laid out on his brother’s recently disinterred remains would be quite the disappointment, wouldn’t you?”

I glare at him because what can I say? He’s right. He’s absolutely correct. All I can attempt is a fresh deflection. “Liam’s known me less than a week. Meanwhile, he’s mourned his brother so hard it’s a core piece of who he is. I can take that away. I can give him back the piece of himself he should have had all along. If I’m the cost of that… In the grand scheme of things—life and death and reincarnation and the afterlife—what can that really matter compared to what I could give him and his family?”

Simon shakes his head, drops a disgusted eye roll. Helena shimmers by his side, flickering in and out of my reality. She must be growing exhausted by now. “I think you’re very kind, Archer,” she says. “And very noble. And I think you’ll do what’s right.”

“Thank you, Helena,” I reply with a pointed look at Simon.

“And if you die, the afterlife is pretty great to be honest,” she adds.

“Thank you.” A little more clipped this time.

“It’s really not that big a deal if you’re dead,” she carries on.