“Sal, will you please listen to me?” he said. “I am not your enemy. I swear it. I am here to help Elysium. I’m here to try and make things better!”
“Fine job you did of that,” I said. “And why should I listen to you? You’re the whole reason I’m out here. Besides, what can you even say without spewing smoke all over the place?”
“I… I don’t know,” he said. “I can’t write it, either, or my hands stops working. I just wish I had a way to show you what was in my head; then you’d understand.”
Something clicked in my mind.
“Give me your hand,” I said.
“What?”
“Just do it. Give me your hand.”
“All right, all right.” Asa extended his hand as though he were giving a handshake. I took it.
I thought of Trixie and Mother Morevna and squirmed. I had only ever done this by accident before. But maybe, just maybe, I could do it on purpose this time. I shut my eyes and concentrated on the power, the magic, the question What is the truth?
And to my surprise, the magic channeled itself, responded. Darkness and nausea rose up. Across from me, Asa’s eyes turned daemon again and rolled back, and then the both of us were gone, gone into the vastness of Asa’s mind.…
At first, there was nothing but darkness, boundless, huge. My nostrils filled with the smell of mercury and blood one moment, and water and green grass the next. All around was the sensation of others with me—not people, not animals, but other things—moving in the darkness. And somehow I knew that I—that Asa—was one of them.
My ears suddenly boomed with the sound of radio static, amplified a thousand times. Then I saw what looked like a young man—Asa—switching appearances as quickly as an electric light turns on and off and on again. Different suits. Different hats. Glasses. No glasses. Blond hair. Black hair. Dark skin. Fair skin. Gradually he became the Asa that I knew, the Harold Lloyd–looking one.
His shoes began to glow—there were symbols on them, moving and twisting as though they were alive. I could feel the joy, the excitement welling in his heart. Then something golden appeared out of the darkness, a tiny, quarter-sized speck of gold: the cricket in amber he had had at the Witches’ Duel. Importance seemed to bleed from it like ink in water. He reached out his hand for it and put it in his pocket, promised to do his duty as a Wildcard, and suddenly I knew. I KNEW everything. Then there was a door that seemed to be made of light. He moved to step through it, but just as he did, a female voice boomed out, loud as a thunderclap.
This is not meant for you! Begone!
My head was suddenly racked with pain. It threatened to explode like a watermelon with a firecracker inside. Wake up! Wake up! Wake up! I commanded myself. But the pain worsened. Still I fought it, and just as the pain grew almost unbearable, I felt myself slipping away, out of my trance, back into myself.
I felt my hand come unstuck from his. I gasped for breath, then coughed and choked, curls of white smoke leaving my mouth and disappearing into the air.
So it was true, all of it.
“That was crazy!” Asa said. “It’s like I was living it all over again! Like—Sal! Your nose is bleeding!”
I wiped my nose and a long, dark line of blood came off on my forearm. “I—I’m fine,” I said. I wiped it off on my dress, leaving a thin rusty stain on my skin. “Was it the truth, Asa?” I asked. “Was what I saw real?”
“Yes!” Asa said. “Completely and utterly real! And that magic! I’ve never felt magic so strong!”
“That voice…” I said, putting a hand to my aching temple. “Was that…?”
“That was Life,” said Asa. “And She didn’t seem too pleased with you seeing that.… I’m surprised She didn’t do more.”
“And you—” I coughed. “You’re a Wildcard.… She built you to… save us?”
“To try to win the Game for Her side,” said Asa. “Death has a Card too, somewhere out here.”
My head throbbed again. I saw the cricket in my mind again, so golden and important in the darkness.
“And that cricket thing… you were supposed to return it to its owner, and that’s what was supposed to help us. That’s why you were so eager to find the owner at the duel.”
“But I failed,” he groaned. “Completely and utterly.