His brain screamed to run. To claw his way from the crater and leave the ghost huddling alone. But Loren wasn’t in the business of listening to his head over his heart. He stepped forward, sandals sliding. Sweat rolled down his neck into his already-drenched tunic. Stepped again. Knelt. Tiny rocks nipped his skin.
Waited.
Ghost-Felix froze at the nearness, and moments dragged by, but slowly he peeled his face from where he hid. His eyes, barely visible over his forearms, shone quicksilver. Distrustful mercury. Mist coalesced on either side of his head, fanning in the splay of bird wings. White as doves.
Gingerly, unsure of even his own intention, Loren stretched a hand, then paused until Ghost-Felix relaxed his arms further. Lifted his gaze higher.
Permission.
He cupped the ghost’s cheek.
The ghost’s lips parted in a soft, surprised choke, and the misty wings fluttered and flexed. For all the cold marble he projected, his skin was soft. Flushed. Blood roared in Loren’s ears, pulse thrumming unsteady. Pressure against his palm increased, the ghost leaning in. Shivering, asking for more.
A twinge in Loren’s heart sent an aching reminder that Ghost-Felix had been alone all these years.Since we were eleven, he’d said. No one had touched him in as long.
‘What happened to you?’ Loren whispered, so low his voice cracked. ‘What will Felix remember if he puts the helmet on?’
Silver slipped from the corner of Ghost-Felix’s eye, a damp trail.
‘I will not speak of it. Not on my own.’
‘Tell me how to help. Tell me what to do.’
‘Give me back to him,’ he begged. His warm breath fanned the inside of Loren’s wrist. ‘Give me back.’
Icy dread replaced the flutter in Loren’s stomach. He chanced a glance at where the helmet had landed on its side, an arm’s length away. The pull of its power hummed magnetic, a lodestone drawn to iron. A knife demanding to break skin. Its silver wings mirrored those framing the ghost’s face, symbols of Mercury and all he represented, the carrying of souls down, down, where light couldn’t touch. The helmet wanted to belong to Felix, Loren sensed it. It wanted to make Felix its own, release his memories, let them burst like a busted dam or split artery, and unleash a power he had long been divorced from.
Felix had confessed, not an hour before, that what lay behind his memory block terrified him.
Part of Loren wanted to do anything, give anything, to piece these halves back together, if only to mend the fractures marring the boy whose face he cradled, whose pulse tapped weak against his fingers. But doing so would wreck Felix – the Felix whose realness Loren never needed to question.
He couldn’t take that risk.
Loren swallowed sharp, hot gravel wedged in his lungs. ‘I can’t do that to him. I can’t watch him break.’
Against his palm, Ghost-Felix stiffened. Hope drained from his eyes, the last dregs of it.
Searing steam blasted Loren back. He landed hard, pain ricocheting up his spine, arms flying to shield his face from the burning spray. Stones singed and tore his flesh. The ground trembled again. Holding back a sob, he squinted through the hazy uproar.
The ghost had risen, hovering a foot off the ground. Another pair of wings flurried at his ankles. Mist convulsed and took the form of many disembodied hands, grasping at his legs, his flesh, the hem of his tunic. His lips drew back in a snarl, the rawest he’d been, the least human. If the ghost’s skin split now, Loren wondered dizzily which would flow, blood or ichor.
Dream-walker. Plane-crosser. Power waiting to be used, and Loren finally grasped what that entailed. A drumbeat pulsed deep in the earth. Dire. Steady. He scrambled to stand, but a gust knocked him down. Misty hands crawled towards him, searching, reaching, and Loren kicked at them to no avail.
‘You never heard my voice,’ Ghost-Felix hissed, sound whirling around the crater in a shivering death rattle, ‘until I showed you turning the knife on yourself. That is what it took to make you listen. Do not pretend this has ever been about Felix.’
Stinging overtook Loren’s vision, tears spilling free, eclipsing all else in a hot sweep. ‘As if you’re better. You lured me here to taunt me, not to help him. Say something useful or vanish.’
‘Always an ultimatum. This or that. But this is far bigger than just you. A haze of death hovers low over the city, and only he can shoulder it. When it breaks and no one can bear the fallout, the guilt will be yours.’ Spectral feet backed away, light as the padding of a fox over empty air. The helmet hummed, chattering against rubble, then shot into his grip. ‘You stand at a crossroads. Everything you do from here is a choice. Learn to live with the consequences.’
Understanding hit a beat too late. ‘Wait!’
The ghost ducked into the helmet, polished silver against swirling mercury. The instant it settled on his brow, he vanished.
With a hollow clang, the helmet fell to earth.
When Loren came to, he was back where he’d started. Sliding into the pit. Reaching for the helmet. Recoiling his stinging hand. Then he was caught beneath his arms, momentum halting.
‘Loren? Are you with me?’ Panic. Worry, muttered in his ear.
