Page 169 of Dead Vengeance

“Early days yet,” he mumbles, but the heat doesn’t fade from his cheeks in the least.

“All right,” I breathe, trying to get my thoughts straight and not at all dwell on whether my own brother died, then slept with a god who then, in a roundabout way, brought him back to life. That’s even weirder than me falling for a necromancer. I think… What the fuck is going on with my family? “So… you just happened to make friends with a god, ‘good’ friends, and so he… orchestrated all this?”

“Pretty much.” Jem shrugs so casually it’s warping my brain. “We were chatting one day, and I said I wished I could get in touch with you. That whole time, I had no idea it was possible. Then Tez just made it happen. You went to the shop that day, so he dropped that ExorSquad flyer right in front of you. I never thought it would work, but…” He sends Tez another smile, which is greeted by an even wider one. “You went for that job, just like he said you would. He made sure your boss was looking at Archer’s file right before you walked in. Had it fall straight out of the drawer in front of him, just like the flyer, so it was fresh in his mind when he hired you.”

“You’re joking,” Archer whispers. We both kind of knew it, but hearing it stated out loud, especially sounding like someone’s ticking off a shopping list, throws us both for a loop. “And then…” Archer’s gaze meets mine, the worry plain to see even behind the tenderness. “He made us… feel this way?”

“Pfft, no,” Jem scoffs. “How powerful do you think he is?”

I scan the actual god standing here in the graveyard, bloody arm-skins flapping around his torso. “Pretty powerful?”

“Nah. I mean, he is, but that was all you two. He can’t change emotions. We just needed Archer’s connection to the underworld for me to be able to appear before you; I could only come through, visibly, when he was near you. I still couldn’t talk to you. Purgatory’s a bitch that way.”

My stomach clenches—the nightmare I’d imagined on some of my darkest days having come to life. “You were in Purgatory?”

“Kind of, yeah. But Tez can move through all the layers and whatnot. It’s all a bit technical. Long story short, we met, he liked me, he wanted to help me, so he set up a connection for me to show you what really happened to me. He’s great with illusions.”

“Yeah, I noticed that,” I mutter, trying really hard not to hold a grudge about the scary-as-fuck way he went about doing all this. “And he couldn’t just tell me?”

“He’s more of a shadows and sorcery kind of guy,” Jem replies. “Seeing is believing, and all that.”

“Yeah, I’ve heard that somewhere before,” I grumble.

Jem carries on with, “Anyway, it’s just lucky for me he was able to spring me out of Purgatory tonight. He could only do it because of the… What was it, Tez?”

“Fat ley lines,” Tez provides.

“Yeah. Fat ley lines. Bloated or something. I don’t know. That’s how he found Archer too. Tez was exploring the ley lines, then he followed some new high-energy pathway. That led straight to Archer. When he discovered a necromancer, someone who could get me in front of you, all it took from there was a few little movements of papers to get you to him. Oh, and sending wave after wave of possibly evil spirits to haunt Archer until he called the ExorSquad.”

“Wow. Thanks for that,” Archer grumbles. “So it was me, after all? My necromancy led Tez here?”

“Absolutely,” Jem says. “I could never have gotten in touch with him without you.”

I don’t think I could hide my adoration for Archer even if I wanted to. I scoop his hand up to ask, “And Tez just… he knew Archer would resurrect you? Because he’s so lovely?”

Archer drops a little kiss on my cheek.

But, “God, no,” says Jem. “No, we didn’t see that coming until, well, pretty much when he turned up here and started digging. I only wanted to talk to you. To let you know…” He comes over and drops down by my side, and I can’t imagine I will ever get used to this. Actually seeing him alive again. After so long. “I wanted you to know what happened. I wanted you and Mum to be able to move on. And for you to… not see me like that. The way Marsden told you I was.”

“I never did.” I grab his hand and squeeze it. “I always knew it didn’t add up. I always knew you wouldn’t do that.”

“He tried to make me,” he says, glaring at Marsden’s corpse. “I wasn’t scared of him. I went over his head, told a colleague of his all about it. But that bastard was just as crooked as he was. That’s when they set me up. Told me I had it all wrong—that they weren’t recruiting me to sell drugs, that they wanted me undercover. And I believed them. Five years on, and finally both of them, and the guys they tricked into killing me, are all dead, but I’m still so mad at myself for trusting him.”

Tezcatlipoca wanders over, dripping blood on approach. “Would it make you feel better to hear his eternal screams?”

Jem climbs to his feet with a smile, scrunching a hand into Tezcatlipoca’s biceps. “Nah. But it makes me feel better to know you can.”

“Wait a minute.” Archer also climbs to standing, holding out a hand to pull me up. “So you don’t need the mirror? After all that? We… We thought that’s what you were after.”

Tezcatlipoca reaches down and cracks his mirror off his leg again, holding it up for us. “I’ve got another.”

“I… I can see that,” Archer replies.

“You should probably get it away from Gerald, though,” Jem cuts back in. “What you said was right. It’s causing ghost problems anywhere the ley lines run. Widening them. Making them more accessible to wanderers. Making it easier for hot gods to drag guys they like out of Purgatory.” Tez shoves a shoulder into Jem, and Jem drops his head there. Cute, but honestly, still weird as fuck. “It could be very bad for you, is all, doing what you do now.”

“What I do now?” I wonder aloud. Then realise. He means being a necromancer. Being like Archer. Being surrounded by ghosts in a world of fat ley lines.

The reality of the new situation sends a fast tremor down my spine, and as if Archer can sense it, he says to Tezcatlipoca, “You should take the ability back from him. Please don’t think that I don’t appreciate what you’ve done for me. For us. But this life I lead… It’s not an easy one. And Liam doesn’t deserve that fate.”