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Cold hands on his wrists. A knee in his belly. Someone’s breath, harsh and hot and sweet on his face. Black hair, loose and tangled, brushing his cheek.
“Lacie,” Jack said, smiling. “What are you doing?”
The hands tightened on his wrists. The skin was leathery, hardened, cold. Jack thought it might be on the verge of splitting open. Lacie’s hands had always been soft, before. She had always been warm. She had never been this silent.
“Lacie?”
Behind them, Glen Baskerville coughed and choked on his own blood. His Chains had yet to return. Glen wouldn’t have called them back even at the last moment, because Glen was cruel and hard-hearted; Glen would never fulfill Lacie’s wish and kill the land of the living to flood the land of the dead with all the things that Lacie had loved. But Lacie was here, somehow. She’d come to see Jack, to praise him for working so hard to fulfill her wish. If this was Lacie—it had to be Lacie—but the Lacie Jack had known had had eyes. This Lacie, cold and rough and so, so dead, had none. She just had raw dark hollows above her cheekbones, and a blindfold made of gorgeous black lace hanging off of one ear.
“You are Lacie, aren’t you?” Jack said. “Or are you just something using her body? This is her body. I can tell.”
Lacie’s neck leaned down as though her mouth was about to kiss Jack’s. She ran her nose along his cheek until her lips touched his ear.
“After Nii-sama’s failure, not even I know what I am,” she said softly.
Some kind of wonderful pain stabbed Jack’s heart. He pressed his cheek into her rough, matted hair.
“Lacie!” he said. “It’s you. It really is! I knew you’d be proud of—”
Lacie’s teeth sunk into his ear, cold against the sudden hot pain and rush of blood.
“—me… Lacie? What are you doing?”
Lacie’s teeth sunk deeper until Jack could feel them meet each other in his ear-flesh. A growl escaped from her throat, and she twisted her head back and forth like a dog with a bone. Jack bit his tongue, tried not to move. If Lacie wanted his ear, she could have it. An ear was a small price to pay for being able to live again. And anyway, Lacie was missing her eyes—if she took both of Jack’s ears, then they would match.
Lacie’s head yanked away from Jack’s and Jack’s ear went with it. He lay still, reveling in the hot pain where his ear once was, in the cold hands on his wrists and the sharp knee on his stomach.
Behind them, someone gagged. “Oh Core,” said Lottie’s voice, “oh Core, that’s— urrgkh —Lady Lacie, get that out of your mouth right now!”
“Let—her…” said Glen. It sounded like even speaking was hard for him. Good. He didn’t deserve to share in Jack’s unbearable ecstasy. “Let her do…as she pleases…”
“As you say, Master Glen.” Lottie gagged, possibly for the second time, possibly for the first. “Oh, Core, she’s eating it…”
Lacie’s body shifted on Jack’s. Jack stared at her torso and her hair. She was dead, clearly very dead, but her dress was new. It clung to her back like spiderweb; through the gossamer fabric, Jack could see her ribs jutting out of her leathery skin, could have counted them if he so chose. He didn’t. For some reason, his thoughts were fuzzy, and he could barely get to the fourth rib before his attention was pulled back to the dull throbbing where his ear had once been.
The throb turned to a sharp pain; after a moment, Jack realized that Lacie was licking up the blood that had spilled from his ear. Her tongue was rough and dry at first; then it was wet and a little warm. The blood, probably. Jack closed his eyes and smiled. He was so lucky. Despite Glen’s interference, Lacie was here, now, with him, intrinsically connected to him. She had eaten his ear. He would be part of her forever, now. This was good. He was happy.
“I should have cut off that ear the day we met,” Lacie said, “if I knew that you would behave like this.”
She licked his flesh and swallowed his blood.
“Was it you who made Nii-sama fail so utterly to kill me?”
“…What?”
“Lacie.” Glen’s voice hid his body’s pain behind a steel wall. There was a sound from his direction—he was struggling to his feet.
“Master Glen,” said Lacie, and her voice was cold, and Jack was glad that she hated him too. “Stay back. You’re injured.”
“You are hardly one to talk in that regard.”
Lacie ignored this. “Charlotte, dear, return to my room and get the pomegranate seeds,” she ordered. “Take the fruit from the land of the dead and administer it to Master Glen as soon as possible.”
“What?!” said Lottie. “The fruit from the land of the dead?! Master Glen ordered us to protect it—”
“He ordered you to obey me, ” said Lacie. “Bring it now.”
There was a moment of silence; Glen tried to say something, but it caught on the blood in his lungs and he choked. Lottie gasped, and then her footsteps sprinted out of the room; Lacie lifted her head from where Jack’s ear had once been and turned away from him. Her mouth and chin were all smeared with blood, and she was beautiful.
“Nii-sama, sit down,” she ordered. “You are straining your wounds unnecessarily. I don’t want you to become—like me.”
“Lacie, you…”
“Now, Glen.”
There was the sound of movement, a few sharp breaths that eventually eased off into shaky but regular breathing.
“Good,” said Lacie. “Stay there, Nii-sama.”
“Very well.”
Lacie turned her face back to Jack’s. Jack smiled at her, even though she couldn’t see it. It was the principle of the thing. Besides, she had come here for him. She had sensed it when he tore open the boundary to the land of the dead, and she had rewarded him for it by dragging her corpse out of the Abyss to greet him. He had to repay her kindness.
“Jack,” said Lacie, “you are my friend. My dear, dear, only and favorite friend.”
“Thank you, Lacie,” said Jack. His voice didn’t sound quite how he wanted it to. How strange. Maybe it was because of the pain where his ear used to be. Maybe he was actually really upset that Lacie was a corpse now and just hadn’t noticed it yet.
“No no no,” she said. “Don’t do that, Jack. That’s too nice of you. Don’t be nice. Jack. My good friend. I really did love you, you know.”
“I’m honored,” Jack said.
“Are you?” said Lacie. “Then why did you try to kill my brother?”
“I want to fulfill your wish,” said Jack. “Glen got in the way.”
“Really?” said Lacie. “What is my wish, Jack?”
“You want to have the world that you love,” said Jack. “You want to have it with you in the land of the dead where you now live. —Kind of live.”
“All play and no work makes Jack a dull boy,” said Lacie. “That isn’t my wish.”
“Isn’t it?” said Jack.
“No,” said Lacie. “Glen knows my wish. Don’t you, Glen?”
“…No,” Glen said slowly. “I had assumed that you told Jack—”
“Wrong Glen. You know nothing, Nii-sama.”
“Oh,” Glen said softly. “Do you mean…Master Levi?”
“Hm. I believe so,” she said. “Tell him to answer me.”
“If he takes control of my body too much, his soul will be expelled.”
“Yes,” said Lacie. “That will be fun for us. Have him answer me.”
“Very well.”
There was a moment of silence broken only by Glen’s heavy breathing. Lacie’s hands were still clenched on Jack’s wrist, her face turned towards Jack’s face, but she wasn’t paying attention to him at all. All of her focus was on Glen. It hurt, or at least it should have. Jack decided it did. —Should it hurt more or less than his missing ear? More. The missing ear was a sign of Lacie’s regard for him. It didn’t hurt at all.
“Lacie! Long time no see—is what I would say, if I haven’t been keeping an eye on you from inside Oswald from the moment he reanimated your corpse,” said Glen’s voice with Levi’s intonation. “Jack didn’t actually have anything to do with that one. Sadly. It would have been a lot more productive than what he actually decided to do after I told him all our plans!”
“I see,” said Lacie. “So Nii-sama was an idiot all on his own…and luckily for him, Jack decided to be stupider for once. Hm. How interesting. Well, Glen. Why don’t you tell Jack my wish for me? I’m already dead, it would be inappropriate for me to give it myself.”
“Really? Since when did you care about that?”
“Isn’t it so much more fun to discover the wishes of the dead based off of what they left behind?” said Lacie. “I’m telling you that I gave you enough information to know what wish I died for. So what are you going to do about it?”
“You always hated that question,” said Levi. “You much preferred to ask why.”
“But I’m not the one asking the question,” said Lacie. “I’ve died. I’ll never ask a question again. It’s time for you to ask the questions and find the answer yourself. Can you figure it out, Glen? What’s my wish?”
“You just asked two questions,” said Levi through Glen’s mouth. Lacie ignored him, and he hummed a little. “Alright, alright, I’ll guess. You wished…not to die.”
“Who doesn’t?” said Lacie. “But I didn’t think about that overmuch. And that wasn’t the wish I carried with me to my timely death. Guess again.”
“Pipebomb in the Abyss?” said Glen. “The dissolution of the Baskervilles?”
“I wasn’t you, Glen,” Lacie said derisively. “Wrong and wrong. Use that clever brain of yours and think. It’s the only thing you ever had on Nii-sama. At this point he might figure it out before you do.”
“Really?” said Levi. “Then why not ask him? He’s the current Glen, and this body is wildly uncomfortable! I thought I was done with pain after getting rotted out of my own body.”
“It’s a mortally wounded body, and the wounds are growing at exactly the speed of Nii-sama’s regeneration,” said Lacie. “You should know why. You’ve heard of Chain-killers. You can take that pain for Nii-sama, please and thank you. If you really were the one who incited our cute little Jack here, then you deserve it. Answer me. Tell him my wish.”
Levi sighed. “What does it matter, you’re dead!” he said. “Your dying wish is whatever helps us all mourning you keep going. It doesn’t belong to you anymore.”
“You all lost the right of interpretation when Jack tried killing Nii-sama,” said Lacie. “You don’t get to choose my wish anymore. You have to live with the truth. So figure it out, Glen.”
“I see you’re as bossy as ever,” Levi said. “Your dying wish, huh? The thing you held onto in the moment of your death. I guess that since you are an undead, it’s the most important thing to you right now. Okay, I’ll bite. You wanted—hmm. You wanted your brother to become Glen without embarrassing us?”
“It was a given that he would. Hardly worth wasting a wish on. Glen, please, this is an embarrassment. At least Jack got it interestingly wrong. Think it over again. Think about what I actually did when I died. Do you remember? —No, not Nii-sama’s memories, that was just for him. Yours. What do you remember about how I died, Glen? What was special about it?”
“Nothing,” Levi snapped. “It was a ceremony like any other ceremony—except that I’d knocked you up a day or two beforehand. I’m sorry if I missed a huge glaring sign reading LACIE’S WISH—”
“And why did I let you knock me up?”
“For my experiment.”
“Why did I agree to it, Glen?”
“For fun,” said Levi. “Who wants to die a virgin?”
Lacie scoffed. “As if sex was worth dying for,” she said. “As if you were good enough at sex for me to die! Don’t flatter yourself, Glen. Do you remember what I said to you when you first suggested that little experiment of yours?”
“Obviously,” said Levi. “You asked if that meant the Core of the Abyss wouldn’t be alone anymore.”
“Yes,” said Lacie, drawing out the word as if Levi were an idiot child who had finally gotten an intensely easy question correct. “So…?”
“Your dying wish was that the Core of the Abyss not be alone?”
“You’re so close, Glen,” said Lacie. “If that were my only wish, then I could have easily escaped the Baskervilles and lived with her forever at the bottom of the Abyss. But Charlotte is almost back with the pomegranate seeds, so you can go.” She bent her head closer to Jack’s. “Jack,” she said, and something thrilled up his spine. “Do you have another guess?”
“Hi, Lacie,” Jack said. “I don’t need one.”
“Oh? Why not?”
“Because you’re right here,” he said. “Why would I need to fulfill your wish for you when you aren’t gone?”
Lacie huffed, frustrated; clearly, this wasn’t the answer she had been looking for. But who cared? Lacie was here. Not alive, no, but still here. Still Lacie. What else could ever matter?
“If I may,” said Glen—because it was Glen again, not Levi, Levi could never achieve that dull and melancholy tone of voice— “I—have an idea—Lacie—of what you wanted…Master Levi—to say.”
“I know,” said Lacie. “I’m sure you’re right, too.”
“You didn’t want us—to be alone,” he said. “You wished—that we wouldn’t be lonely—without you.”
“…Yes, Nii-sama,” said Lacie, her voice suddenly as lonely and as empty as Glen’s. “You are right as always.”
Footsteps entered; someone was panting like a dog.
“I have the seeds,” said Lottie’s voice. “Master Glen—here, take it…”
Glen’s breath rasped, and then evened out. Jack thought that he could feel his own Chain’s agitation lessening. Glen would survive, then—a pity, but maybe it would make Lacie happy. Maybe she could rehabilitate him. It would be interesting to see.
“Is it done?” said Lacie.
“Yes, Lady Lacie,” said Lottie. “Master Glen is recoveri—”
The ground titled sharply. Lacie was thrown off of Jack, rolled over herself, hit a wall. Her neck was twisted at an odd angle. Lottie screamed; Glen shoved himself up and rushed for his dead sister. Jack sat up slowly, feeling the mixture of his blood and Lacie’s saliva trail down his neck. He looked over at where Lacie’s corpse lay.
“Lacie…?” he said. “Are you still there?”
Lacie said nothing. Lottie kept screaming, but her screams were sharper now, fragmented. Glen reached his sister’s corpse and took it up in his arms; as he did so, the room resumed its prior position. Lottie went silent. Glen’s body collapsed, rolling in five different directions as his limbs severed from his torso severed from his head. Lacie’s body was gone; looking around the room, Jack could see that Lottie was gone, too.
He touched the side of his head. His ear was still missing.
“Lacie…?” he said. “Glen. Lacie? Are either of you there? What happened?”
Still nothing. The world itself was silent; it seemed that Jack was completely and utterly alone. He touched his wrists and found them still cold from Lacie’s hands. He pulled off his coat and unbuttoned his blouse: his stomach was beginning to bruise where her knee had been. And his ear was still bleeding.
“Lacie really can be found, Oz!” Jack said, and he stood up. There was no need to worry about where to go from here; he wouldn’t even have to trouble himself to figure out what happened. Everyone else would care about that and do that work for him. He knew that Lacie still existed, could still be accessed: all he had to do now was find her. “We’ll get her yet.”
His Chain didn’t respond, or if it did, Jack couldn’t hear it. He didn’t mind; Oz giving him the silent treatment was much nicer than Oz begging not to be used as a weapon of mass destruction. Jack reached down and scooped up Glen’s severed head; it was just the right size to be carried, and it would make nice company for whatever came of this. Then he stepped out the door and onwards into his newest search for Lacie.