Prologue
He just . . . he just vanished.
Susanna sat on the damp grass on the side of the hill and contemplated the tunnel mouth where the ferryman who called himself Tristan had disappeared. She had no right to be there, she knew, lingering, holding off her next soul—but she’d seen him going the wrong way.
Toward the world of the living—him and his soul. And vanishing.
There was only one possible explanation, but that was the thing: it was impossible. She’d sat here for a long time—though time was all relative in the wasteland—and hadn’t been able to come up with any other answer except the one that sent equal bolts of fear and excitement coursing through her veins.
Somehow, Tristan had found a door to the world of the living.
Somehow, he’d gone through it.
He was a ferryman just like her, and he’d left his post. The pull of Susanna’s next soul, her next job, scraped painfully against her every nerve ending, but she couldn’t make herself move from the spot. She couldn’t stop seeing Tristan’s broad shoulders, his mop of sandy hair, being swallowed up by the darkness as he walked right out of the wasteland.
One
FLAT on her back, thick cushioning underneath her and soft covers tucked up almost to her chin. She was comfortable, she was cozy, and she wanted to stay that way.
Unfortunately, there were several voices nearby intruding on her peace, and one of them, at least, wasn’t going to be ignored for long.
“Who, exactly, are you, young man?” Joan’s words were frosted with ice. Dylan knew that tone, knew it intimately. She’d been on the receiving end of it more times than she could count. What she’d never noticed before, though, was the undertone of anxiety and fear that sharpened its edge.
“I’m with Dylan.”
At the second voice, Dylan’s eyes snapped open. She couldn’t help it. She’d crossed the wasteland for that rich timbre, faced beings more deadly and terrifying than anything she could have imagined in the world of the living. There was nothing she wouldn’t do . . .
Although there was one thing she couldn’t do. With her neck trapped by an unyielding plastic collar, she wasn’t able to twist and
see Tristan, check with her own eyes that he was really there. She tried, though, letting the hard material dig into her collarbone and rolling her eyes so far upward that her temples throbbed. But he remained frustratingly just out of sight.
“Are you, indeed?” A pause heavy with suspicion that made Dylan wince. “Funny how I’ve never heard of you. Doctor, why have you allowed this young man access to my daughter?” Rising volume, rising anger. “She’s lying unconscious. He could have done anything!”
Dylan had heard enough. Mortified, she tried to yell, but all that came out was a croaky “Mum!”
Unable to see anything except an ugly white strip light above her head and the circular curtain rail that typically surrounded a hospital bed, she had to wait a couple of seconds for Joan’s face to rush into her field of vision.
“Dylan! Are you all right?”
Joan looked like she’d aged a hundred years. Her eyes were bloodshot, and the bags beneath them were streaked with mascara. The tight bun she always kept her hair in was bedraggled, wisps hanging limply round her face. She was wearing her nurse’s uniform under a baggy cardigan, and it struck Dylan suddenly that she’d been wearing that when they’d said goodbye—no, when they’d fought instead of saying goodbye—just that morning.
And yet it had been days ago for Dylan. Days of struggling through the wasteland. Without warning, Dylan’s eyes filled with tears that spilled hot and fast across her cheeks, disappearing into her hair.
“Mum!” she repeated. Her face scrunched up against the stinging in her eyes, her nose, and her throat.
“It’s all right, sweetheart. I’m here.” Fingers curled around her right hand, and even though Joan’s grip was icy, Dylan felt comforted.
Dylan sniffed and tried to lift her left hand to wipe her cheeks dry, but a tug followed by a sharp pain brought her up short. She
flinched, drew in a startled breath, and tried to raise her head, but along with the neck brace, someone had run a strap across her shoulders. She couldn’t lift herself more than an inch—and even that hurt.
“Just hold still, baby,” Joan crooned. “You’re in the hospital. You’ve had a bad accident and you need to stay very still.” She squeezed Dylan’s right hand very gently. “You’ve got an IV drip in your other hand. It’s best if you just”—a choked breath—“if you just stay as still as you can, all right?”
No, it isn’t all right, Dylan thought. She felt helpless lying there flat on her back. And she couldn’t see Tristan.
“That’s right, Dylan, just stay flat for now,” another voice cut in smoothly. A doctor, stethoscope dangling around his neck, leaned into Dylan’s vision on the opposite side of the bed from Joan. He looked as tired as she did, but he smiled. “We need to examine the extent of your injuries before we start letting you move around. You may have a spinal injury, so we have to be very careful.”
Sudden panic as a memory from the train flooded Dylan’s mind.
“My legs?” she whispered.
She remembered the agony of lying buried under the debris from the crash, the feeling of fire that had ripped through her legs with every breath, every shift of her weight. Now there was . . . nothing. A sea of numbness. She tried to wiggle her toes, but it was impossible to tell if they were moving.
“They’re still there.” The doctor held up both hands in a calming gesture, that same smile fixed on his face. Dylan wondered if he looked like that even when he was giving really bad news. Suddenly it wasn’t comforting anymore.
He dropped one hand down, resting it on the covers. Dylan couldn’t tell if he was touching her or not; if he was, she couldn’t feel it.
“I don’t . . . I can’t . . .”
“Relax, Dylan.” An impossible order to follow. “There’s no reason for alarm. You’re on a high dose of painkillers, and we had to heavily bandage you because you have some deep lacerations. That’s why you don’t have much feeling, all right?”
Dylan stared at the doctor for a moment, weighing the truth of his words, then allowed herself to breathe.
“I’ll come back in a few minutes when you’re taken for X-rays,” the doctor added. He smiled and backed out of their curtained section.
“Mum.” Dylan swallowed and then coughed a bit. Her throat felt like sandpaper.
“Here.” Joan thrust a plastic cup in her direction, the straw just an inch from her lips. Greedily Dylan sucked down the water, although Joan took it away before she was anywhere near satisfied. “That’s enough for now.”
“Mum,” she repeated, a little more strongly. She tried once more, unsuccessfully, to raise her head. “Where’s Tristan?”
Joan’s lips thinned. She turned her head away slightly, as if she were turning her nose up at some unpleasant smell, and panic coiled heavy and cold in Dylan’s chest.
“I thought I heard—” Dylan struggled against the confines of the bed, did her best to wrestle with the restraints holding her down. “Where—”
“I’m here.” Better than just his voice, Tristan’s face slid into view on the other side of the bed, as far as possible from Joan—which was a good choice because she was glowering at him with unconcealed suspicion and anger.
Tristan. Relief and joy flowed through Dylan like a river. He was here. He’d made it.
They both had.
Tristan went to reach for Dylan’s hand, the one with the IV needle thrust uncomfortably into her vein, but a sharp noise from Joan stopped him short. Needing his touch, Dylan ignored the discomfort that tugged repulsively every time she shifted her hand and covered the remaining distance, wrapping her fingers around his.
He squeezed tight and it hurt, but Dylan smiled at him.
“You’re here,” she whispered.
Then it slammed into her—the memory of saying those exact same words, lying flat on a gurney as two paramedics carried her
from the wreckage of the train. The feeling of seeing him there, in the world, alive and solid and real, after thinking that she’d lost him. After thinking that she’d let go of his hand and left him behind. Fresh tears fell down her face.
“You see! You see!” Joan reached across and tried to slap Tristan’s hand away, but the waist-high railings and the width of the bed prevented her. “You’re upsetting her! Let her go!”
“No! Mum.” Dylan tightened her grip on Tristan and used her free hand to bat Joan’s arm away. “Stop it.”
“Clearly you’ve bewitched her,” Joan spat. “And now here you are, confusing her when she’s vulnerable and doesn’t know which way is up!”
“Mum!”
Joan totally ignored Dylan, her focus fixed on Tristan.
“I want you to leave,” she said firmly. Then she shifted her gaze to beyond the curtain. “Doctor? I want him out. He isn’t family, he has no right to be here.”
“Nurse McKenzie,” the doctor began, leaning in through the curtain, but Joan ranted right over the top of him.
“No. I know the rules. I’ve worked here for eight years. I don’t know who let that young man in, but—”
“Don’t go.” Dylan was only concentrating on Tristan. He, too, was ignoring her mum, his hand still folded tightly around hers, his piercing blue gaze fixed on her face like he was trying to memorize her features. “Don’t leave me.”
He squeezed a hair’s breadth tighter, causing a jolt of pain to streak across the top of Dylan’s hand, and shook his head imperceptibly.
“I’m not going anywhere,” he promised.
Joan was still raving at the doctor, but with Tristan gazing down at her, Dylan tuned her mum out completely.
“I still can’t believe you’re here,” she told him.
“Where else would I be?” He gave her a crooked smile, a puzzled line forming between his eyes.
“You know what I mean.” Each time Dylan blinked, she expected Tristan to disappear. To be pulled back into the wasteland, called back to his never-ending duty. It didn’t seem real that he could’ve broken his bond of servitude so easily.
“We’re meant to be together,” Tristan told her, sliding even closer. “Wherever you are, that’s where I’ll be.”
“Good.” Dylan smiled at him, hoping against hope that it would somehow be as easy as he said. She looked over to where Joan stood, hands on hips, face screwed up in anger.
“Mum.”
No response from Joan.
“Mum!”
Still no reaction.
“Joan!”
That did it.
Joan turned on her, ready for battle as usual. “Dylan—”
“I want Tristan to stay.” Dylan wasn’t as stupid as the doctor—she had no intention of letting Joan get started on her. “If he can’t be here, then I don’t want you to be, either.”
Joan reared back as if she’d slapped her. “I am your mother, Dylan.”
“I don’t care.” Not the truth: Joan’s hurt expression brought a hard lump to Dylan’s throat, but she pushed on regardless. “I want Tristan.”
“Well.” For once Joan seemed to be at a loss for words. She blinked furiously, and Dylan was horrified to realize she was near tears. She’d never seen her mum cry, not ever. Seeing it now made snakes writhe in her belly. She fought hard not to back down.
At that moment two orderlies trundled in, oblivious to the tense scene.
“One for the X-ray Department?”
There was a moment’s pause before the doctor seemed to come back to himself.
“That’s right,” he said, now looking thankful for the timely reprieve. “Dylan here.” He waved unnecessarily in Dylan’s direction.
The orderlies shuffled around, unlocked her hospital bed’s brakes, and wheeled her out, IV pole and all.
It was both a worry and a relief leaving Tristan and Joan behind. What would Joan say without Dylan there to act as a buffer? Would she have Tristan thrown out of the hospital? Arrested? One of the orderlies noticed her worried glance and attempted to reassure her.
“Not going far, love, the X-ray Department is just round the corner here.”
It wasn’t enough to calm her. The farther she went from him, the more sick and sore she felt. What if he wasn’t there when she got back?
No. He wouldn’t leave her. He’d promised.
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