Banger stood, wincing as he unfolded his long limbs. Zoe followed him to the door. The candy in his pockets creaked and crunched with every step.
Outside, the wind was blowing the snow around. After the warm, humid air inside Piping Hot Springs, it came as a shock to the skin. There was a lamp above the door. Banger stood in the small cone of light, as if it would warm him. He rubbed his bare arms, and squinted into the distance.
“You can’t go running around Montana without a coat,” said Zoe.
“What’s it gonna do—kill me?” said Banger.
Zoe groaned at the joke. She went inside and retrieved X’s overcoat. She held it open for Banger.
“You serious?” he said, slipping his arms into the sleeves before she could change her mind. “You are the bomb diggity.”
Zoe rolled her eyes—but fondly. There was no way this guy had ever kept up with slang.
“Will you tell X I love him?” she said. “And will you give him some of the candy?”
“I’ll tell him you love him,” said Banger, “but no way can he have my candy.”
He stepped out of the light, and onto the snow.
“No matter what happens with you and X,” he said, “I’m glad he ran into you. He’s a good dude—and you’ve given him a little bit of a life.”
“Do you think the lords will really set him free?” said Zoe. “Be honest, I can handle it. No, wait—don’t be honest. I can’t handle it.” She released a long, tired breath. “The odds aren’t very good, huh?” she said.
Banger was just a voice in the darkness now.
“Who cares about odds?” he said. “What were the odds that he’d ever meet somebody like you?”
part four
A Divided Heart
fifteen
One more soul.
The words shouted in X’s brain.
He turned on his side in his cell. Despite Ripper’s nursing, his wounds weren’t entirely healed, and they cried out as they scraped the ground. He didn’t care. He lived in his mind now. His body existed only to prop it up.
One. More. Soul.
He could only see Zoe again if he brought the lords a final bounty. He thought of the Overworld—of the hunters with their necklaces of geese, of the cannibals who wore skulls on a rope. How many could you wear before the weight of the dead pulled you to the ground?
He would snatch their soul for them. Of course he would. All that troubled him was how simple it sounded. He turned the phrase “one more soul” over and over in his head. He searched for the trapdoor hidden between the words. What if they required an innocent man? What if they demanded a child? He was consumed with seeing Zoe. Thinking of her, thinking of Jonah—even thinking of their mother who had grown cold toward him—sent a bolt of anguish through him. Still, there were things he would not do, even if the lords commanded him. It was not that he was too noble. He wasn’t. It was that he didn’t want to disappoint Zoe. She would not want horrors committed in her name.
X decided that he himself was the only true danger. When Regent—it was too perilous to even think of him as Tariq—sent him to the Overworld to hunt the last soul, would he run to Zoe instead? Would he enrage the lords and obliterate his single hope for happiness? Could he stop himself? Even now, he could feel Zoe’s fingers on three very particular places: his lips, his hips, his shoulders. He shivered, as if she were in the cell with him, wrapped around him like a vine and breathing onto his neck. How could it be that the thing that made him strong also brought him to his knees?
A sudden noise interrupted X’s thoughts. The Russian guard was escorting someone down the corridor. X heard a voice say, “Chillax. It’s not like I forgot where my friggin’ cell is, dude.”
It was Banger.
X leaped to his feet. He had to know if his friend had seen Zoe, as he had asked him to—had begged him to, really. It was all he could do not to scream the question in front of the Russian. He held his tongue. He waited for the men to come into view. The guard strode in front. Rather than his usual powder-blue tracksuit, he wore a shining cherry-red one. He was so towering and wide—and strutted so proudly in his new finery—that X could barely see Banger behind him. But there he was. And he too was dressed in some new garment. It was so deeply blue it was nearly black.
X did not recognize it for a moment.
Then it struck him.
It was his own overcoat—Banger had seen Zoe.
The guard thrust his key into the cell next door. He waited for Banger to catch up, idly snorting up phlegm and then swallowing it.
Banger shuffled into his cell. X craned his neck, desperate to catch his eye, but the Russian blocked his view. X cursed silently. He was about to withdraw into his own cell when Banger leaned back out and looked directly at X. He flipped up the collar of the coat—and winked.
The Russian loitered for ages. Mostly, he paraded manfully back and forth in front of Ripper, who took a perverse pleasure in flirting with him.
“You have noticed new suit, yes?” said the guard.
“Oh, I have indeed,” said Ripper. “You cut a dashing figure. You will be the talk of the Lowlands!”
“You may touch suit,” said the guard. “Do not tell others. They may not touch suit.”
The guard reached his arm into Ripper’s cell. X shook his head as he watched. He was not in the least surprised when Ripper bit the man.
“You are monster!” cried the Russian, pulling his arm back and inspecting his cherry-red sleeve for rips. “You have teeth of animal!”