Page 63 of King Among the Dead

“I don’t know.” He rolled toward the nightstand, lit a cigarette, and rolled back, mouth curled down sourly as he took a drag. “There’stoo manythings I don’t know. How have conduits remained here after the Rift closed? How many are there? Are some abandoned? Do the angels choose other conduits? Or are they finding their way to earth even without the Rift being open?”

Rose shifted so she lay on her side, facing him, propped on a raised fist. “What do you think they’re trying to accomplish? The conduits, I mean.”

“I don’t know.” He made a helpless gesture with the hand holding the cigarette, smoke swirling like a ribbon. “That’s the problem: I justdon’t know.” He rarely sounded so frustrated; it was unsettling, but comforting, too, in a way: Despite appearances to the contrary, Beck was only human after all. He wasn’t all-knowing, all-seeing, all-problem-solving. “When the Rift happened, the being who claimed to be Gabriel said that he was heralding a ‘purging of the evils of the earth.’”

“Killing humans,” she said, back of her neck prickling.

“And not just thugs and murderers,” he said. “Women, children. Innocents lost their lives. It made no matter to the conduits – to the beings inhabiting them.

“But this. Now. This isn’t a purging.”

“What could it be?”

He took another drag, and didn’t answer. He didn’t know.

NINETEEN

Christmas arrived quietly, and without fanfare. It hadn’t been a day worth celebrating in the Bends: maybe a bit of tinsel in a window, a snatched bit of an old song, crackly through the speakers of a cheap radio. Trees, and lights, and colorful cookies were for those with disposable incomes to burn on such frivolities.

People like Beck, she realized, when, twelve days before Christmas a massive fir with all the trimmings appeared in the comfy parlor. It was fake, of course, same as the smaller tree in the corner of the kitchen, but they were quality, and Kay produced a bevy of fir-scented candles that she kept lit all during the day.

“Come help me with this,” Kay ordered, scowling fiercely as she attempted to unknot yards and yards of convincingly-real-looking garland. “Pain in the ass.” But when they’d swagged it all down the bannister, threaded it with lights, and studded it with glimmering ornaments, she nodded in satisfaction. And, later, when Rose asked Beck if the garland had been his idea, he’d offered a bemused smile and a headshake.

“Don’t let her fool you: she loves Christmas.”

Packages appeared under the tree, more each morning, wrapped in shiny, seasonal paper that was such an extravagant indulgence in times such as these that Rose felt immensely guilty – too much so to even shake the boxes.

Beck didn’t want to go hunting, seemingly content to spend their evenings in front of the library fire, slowly sipping wine rather than whiskey. She would read aloud, and he would wind up on the floor, his head resting on her knee while she petted through his hair; until his eyelids grew heavy, his breath even and steady.

They made gingerbread men with cinnamon candy buttons, and listened to Bing Crosby, and Kay produced three musty, inexplicable stockings that she hung from the parlor mantel. Rose looked up from the royal icing she was mixing one evening, and saw Kay’s face creased with laughter, her head thrown back, Beck smiling to himself as he candied orange peel, and realized that, odd as they were, they were a family. Her heart was full, and she wanted it to be like this always.

She woke Christmas morning to a glowing white light coming through the drapes. A brief flash of fear gripped her – she’d spent months now paging through old books, clicking through webpages, dreaming of the Rift: a blinding white light that pulsed and swelled…and killed. But then she blinked away the last haze of sleep – felt Beck at her back, his arm around her waist – and saw that it was a soft, natural sort of glow. When she exhaled, her breath plumed as white vapor.

She slid carefully from beneath his arm, and the covers; the cold of the floorboards bit at her feet, and she hurried to don the robe Beck had slung over the trunk at the foot of the bed. She wrapped it tight around her, and crept to the window to look out.

Sometime during the night, the rain had turned to snow: fat flakes that clung to the window mullions, and the sill, and the street below. It dusted the iron railings of the fence, and blanketed the cars on the curb. A woman in a huge coat with a tiny dog made their careful way down the sidewalk, leaving distinct prints. By the end of the day, the snow would be slushy, and dirty, but for now it was pristine, beautiful, and Rose stared at it, smiling to herself, until her breath had fogged the window and she could barely see.

Beck could be silent when he wanted to be, but he let her hear his approach now – he let out a little breath as he shivered in the chill air – and it wasn’t a surprise when his arms went around her waist and he pressed up against her back. Dropped his chin to the top of her head. “A white Christmas,” he murmured. “It’s been a long time since we’ve had one of those.”

“Mmhm.”

They stood a long moment, watching fresh flakes sift down past the window. The heat of his bare chest seeped through the robe; they warmed each other, she thought.

He ducked his head to kiss her cheek. “I got you something. Come here.”

She turned when he pulled back, pulling the robe more firmly closed around her, admiring the gentle flexing of his back as he strode back to the bed. “You shouldn’t have. Really.”

“You need spoiling,” he said, lightly, and crouched down to retrieve something from beneath the bed.

“No, I don’t.” But excitement quickened in her belly, regardless. The last gift he’d given her had been her knives, and her thoughts now turned to the glint of metal, and sharp edges, and wicked usefulness.

The box he held, when he stood, though, was small. No bigger than a loaf of bread.

He wore a faint blush high on his cheeks, and he chewed at his lip a moment before he offered it to her, oddly hesitant. “Merry Christmas, darling.”

She took it with the same reverence with which he’d offered it. It was a jewelry box, with a hinged lid. When she opened it, she couldn’t withhold a little gasp. A dazzle of color met her gaze. Red, and blue, and green – rubies, sapphires, and emeralds. And diamonds. Glinting, smooth gold. She held a box of necklaces, earrings, bracelets, and rings, from delicate gold chains strung with tiny diamonds like stars, to an elaborate set of dangling earrings in fanning sapphires and emeralds that looked like peacock feathers.

“Oh,” she breathed. She had no words.

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