* * *
“Immortals don’t know how to die, do they?”
It was Roger, back in the cottage, talking to me while Jonas waited outside. The place was so pretty, a doll’s house of a home. And cozy. Made even more so by the faint rain falling past the windows. It was a strange counterpoint to his words.
I looked back at him. “Don’t they?”
“No, I don’t think so. Just as most humans would not do very well as immortals, the gods do not handle it well when confronted by death. They don’t have our peace with it.”
“I don’t have any peace with it,” I said bitterly.
“Compared to them? Yes, you do. We humans have an instinctive knowledge of death. We are born, knowing that, one day, we will die. It gives us certain advantages.”
“I don’t see any.”
“Don’t you? Each day is more precious when you know you don’t have an infinite number of them. Each experience more savored, each friend more valued. We may live shorter lives, but in a way, we live fuller ones.”
“Is that what Mother wanted? To live fuller?”
He paused and pushed the ridiculous glasses up his long nose. They reflected the light of the weakened spells, making them run with rainbows, like some novelty item out of a souvenir store. They should have made him look ridiculous.
They didn’t.
“She told me recently that she felt like she’d only really begun to understand life as she reached the end of it. I’ve thought about it a lot, and I think, at the root of it all, that was the problem with the gods. Always fighting, always striving to outdo each other, to leave a mark, because, ultimately, nothing they did seemed to matter. They knew the centuries would wash it all away. And they were right, weren’t they?”
“The same is true for us,” I pointed out. “Someday no one will remember us, either.”
“Ah, but that’s not really the point for us, is it?” The rainbow lenses tilted, the changed position allowing me to see the thoughtful eyes behind them. “Whether someone remembers us or not? We’re not gods, waiting in their temples to be worshipped. We’re part of a dynamic, ongoing world, and we have our own immortality through what we achieve, or through the children we leave behind. She will continue through you, as I will.
“Never forget that, Cassie. You’re my child, too.”
* * *
His child, I thought, fuzzily.
A necromancer’s child.
A necromancer.
Slowly, as if in a dream, I reached out. And grabbed one of the swarming pulses of light. And squeezed.
And watched my hand slowly brighten. It looked like I was wearing a brilliantly colored glove for a moment, next to the dimness of the rest of me. Until another small spirit darted in and began to feed, leeching the light . . .
No, I thought dizzily.
Not the light.
The power.
I closed my hand on it, too, crushing the gnawing thing inside my fist. Like the other, it felt tangible, real. And soft and spongy, like it was oozing up through my fingers for a second.
Before suddenly sinking inside.
My hand brightened again, and I stared at it, mesmerized even with the continued attack. Because it wasn’t only brighter. It was stronger.
I grabbed a small ghost leeching off my breast, and crushed it like the last one. And yes, I felt it, and yes, it was good, and potent, and . . . more. Quickly, before I became too weak to fight back.
Already, it wasn’t easy. The smaller ones were mindless, little more than freed energy, the kind that would turn into sparkles in the air when they degraded a bit more. They hurt in small ways, and gave back in small ways, when I grabbed fistfuls, ripping them off me.