Touch by Michelle Sagara

hang loose by his sides. There’s
     nothing Eric can do to harm him. Not directly.
    Eric gets straight to the point. “Why are you here?”
    “I could ask the same question.” Nathan shrugs. “Did you come here to kill Emma?”
    Eric’s a tough audience. He doesn’t even blink. “Yes.”
    “She’s not dead.”
    “I changed my mind.”
    “Why?”
    Eric’s gaze never leaves Nathan’s face. “Your girlfriend isn’t a Necromancer.”
    “That’s not what Chase thinks.”
    “And I’m not Chase. I’ve been doing this a lot longer than he has. Long enough to
     know you shouldn’t be here.”
    “Allison knows I shouldn’t be here?”
    “She knows you’re here?” He exhales, loosens his arm, and runs a hand through his
     hair. “Never mind. Of course she knows. She’s Emma’s best friend.”
    Nathan chuckles. He can’t help it. He’s not much of a sharer; it took him a while
     to get used to the fact that there were no secrets between Emma and Allison. Something
     about the chuckle loosens the rest of Eric’s expression.
    “Why are you here?” He asks again, in an entirely different tone.
    Because he does, Nathan can answer. “I don’t know.”
    Eric glances at the closed door. “Walk with me,” he says. He moves—rapidly—away from
     the front porch, and Nathan follows.
    * * *
    “It usually takes the dead time to recover,” Eric says, as they walk. The chill in
     the air is lessened by the start of snowfall, but it’s a gentle fall. Flakes cling
     to Eric’s jacket and begin to dust sidewalk and road. “Two years, give or take a month.
     Sometimes it’s longer.”
    “But never four months.”
    “No. You want to tell me why?”
    “Not really. I will, though. I—” he glances at Eric. “I don’t know how much you know.”
    “About the door?”
    “Is that what you call it?”
    “It’s what Emma called it, when she saw it.”
    Nathan stops walking, frozen for a moment at the idea of Emma lost there.
    “Emma hasn’t told you this?”
    “I haven’t asked.” But the answer is no, and they both know it. He stumbles over words;
     it’s not like he can stumble over anything else here. “I was there. I don’t think
     of it as a door. It’s a window—a solid, bulletproof window. You can see through it.
     You know what’s waiting. But you can’t ever reach it.”
    Eric nods.
    “She came to find me there.”
    He stiffens. “Who?” he asks, but it’s clear he already knows the answer.
    Nathan gives it anyway. “The Queen of the Dead.”
    * * *
    Eric says a lot of nothing for a few blocks. “Why did she send you here?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “What did she tell you?”
    “She told me to go home.”
    “That’s it?”
    Nathan hesitates. Eric catches it instantly. “No,” he finally says. “She also told
     me I’d be safe from her knights.”
    “Her . . . knights?”
    “That’s what she calls the Necromancers.”
    “
Knights
?”
    “Sorry. Now that you mention it, it’s kind of stupid. She summoned her Necromancers
     to her throne room.”
    Eric is quiet. It’s a controlled quiet, a veneer of stillness over something so large
     it might burst at any moment. “Does she spend all her time in her throne room?”
    Nathan says, more or less truthfully, “I don’t know.”
    “How much time did you spend there?”
    “I don’t know.” He exhales out of habit, Nathan’s version of a sigh. “You know where
     I was when she found me.”
    Eric nods. It’s a tight, leashed motion.
    “She was the only other thing I could see. She’s like a bonfire. I’m like a moth.
     She’s terrifying—but she’s
there
.” He hesitates, then doubles down. “I see Emma the same way, except for the terror.
     She’s luminous. When I’m near Emma, I don’t think about what I can’t have or where
     I can’t go. I don’t think about an exit. I just think about Emma. And that’s natural,
     for me.”
    “How do you see the others?”
    “The others?” For a moment,