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Achilles wasn’t smart enough for this kind of thing.He wasn’t a master chess player and, unlike Abe, had no real experience in moving the pieces around.Hell, he had no extraordinary talents at all, unless you counted stubbornness.He couldn’t fly or grant wishes or talk to dead people.
Wait.
“Dead people,” Achilles whispered.
“Pardon?”
“There are a lot of dead Bureau agents.”
“I’m aware,” Abe said softly, his sorrow clear.He hadn’t only lost a husband, Achilles realized.Abe, over the course of his long life, must have had lots of his Bureau friends die, whether in the line of duty or otherwise.
“What if they could help us?”
There was a long silence.Although Achilles couldn’t see Abe, he imagined that his expression showed bewilderment.“They’redead,” Abe finally said.Slowly and firmly.
“Right.But you told me yourself that Townsend became powerful after he was possessed by the spirit of a righteous man.So that dead guy did a lot, right?”
“Poor Birdie,” Abe whispered.And then, more loudly, “How do you propose we do this?In this place especially?”
“I don’t know.”Achilles’ mind was whirring like a food processor blade.He hoped the slicing and dicing would prove productive.“But we’ve got you, right?You can communicate with spirits.And, gods, I have to think that Townsend got himself killed for a reason.What if it was so he could rally the troops on the other side?”
“This….”Abe gave a lengthy pause.“Feels less impossible than it should.You’re a persuasive man.But even if we weren’t in this place, and even with my abilities, there’s a wide gulf between the living and the dead.”
Gulf.Abyss.Chasm.
A memory surfaced in Achilles’ spinning mind, an assignment he’d been given during his early years in the Bureau.This one had taken him to a tiny community in Alaska, where most of the town clustered near the harbor.But there were a handful of houses halfway up a steep mountain, accessible by a single road.A few of the locals had gone missing, and there were reports of an unearthly woman in a white dress lurking nearby.
It had turned out that the woman was in fact an osenya, a creature from Eastern Europe who was known to seduce men and lead them to their deaths.She had probably arrived in Alaska along with Russian immigrants at some point.Achilles and his partner had trapped her and sent her to the Bureau’s prison in Nevada—and Achilles didn’t want to think right now about what had happened to all the inmates there, now that the Bureau was dissolved.
At first, he didn’t understand why he was thinking of her at all, since she had nothing to do with the urgent current problem.But then it struck him.There was a deep gorge between the harbor village and the mountainside homes, and that was where the osenya lured her prey: she would stand on the bridge over the gorge and wait for someone to drive up to her.
“A bridge,” Achilles said to Abe.Confidently, because he was once again relying on hope.“We need a bridge between you and Townsend.And I know someone who can build it.”
CHAPTER36
“Awar,” Dee said to Irina.Again.He’d already said it several times, and each time she’d simply shrugged.Which is what she did this time, without even looking up from the magazine she was reading.
After Spurling had dropped the bomb about what his test would involve, he’d announced that he had a meeting and left the room.Now Irina was arranged comfortably in the armchair, and Dee paced.
“He wants me to start a goddamnwar,” he growled, as if she somehow hadn’t understood that point.
“What difference does it make?There are always wars happening somewhere.That’s what humans are like.Anyway, all of that will end once we’ve achieved our goals.”
“Ourgoals.Is this what you want?”
She raised her eyes from the page.They were as cold and hard as metal.“I told you what I want.As it happens, my interests—yourinterests, my son—align with theirs right now.Garrick would probably put this in business terms, so I’ll try that.It’s like… I used to use ride-sharing services often.No need for that now, of course.”She waved a hand at the room in general, maybe to remind Dee that Spurling was impossibly wealthy.“But back then, I noticed that the rideshare company had partnered with a streaming music service, so that when you got in a car your playlist would start up.”
It was weird to think of her using Uber, and he couldn’t begin to guess what music she listened to.“Your point?”
“Two companies with different products, differing goals.But by partnering, they could each increase their customer base and revenue.”
He shook his head impatiently.“This isn’t a lift home from a bar or a dank groove, Irina.This is?—”
“This issurvival,” she snapped.“Our people are extinct, Damnation, all but me and you, and the humans did that.I’m going to do everything I need to do in order to ensure that we are not the end of our line.”
A horrifying realization hit him and he sat down hard in the uncomfortable chair.“Are you planning some sort of… breeding program?”He shuddered.
She rolled her eyes and pushed her hair over a shoulder.“Don’t make it sound so sordid.I’m too old to have more children.But if Garrick wished to have a baby with me—babies, plural—I think you could make that happen.And you can certainly father children of your own.We’ll need to choose the mothers carefully, of course.”
