Free Afterlife (Second Eden #1) by Aaron Burdett Page A

power, districts like these he kept in place. Bone Man suspected one of the Iron Council had convinced him to keep the rats’ nest intact, for what reason, he could only guess. Each general had their own ambitions, their own hidden motions and machinations to gain favor with his master. They all sought desperately to be as adored as the reviled Bone Man, even if it was a futile dream.
    He melted past a woman curling her hair around her finger while she giggled with a man bearing her lipstick on his cheek and collar. A bottle of gin hung loose in his grip while he swayed left and right and whispered about all the wonderful things he had in store for them.  
    It took all Bone Man’s strength not to rip his sword from the sheath and rake it across the man’s soft, grizzled neck. What sweet release that would be, to watch dust sputter from the wound as the man’s drunk eyes widened and the woman’s scream ripped through the night.
    Her starry stare flicked toward Bone Man, and her dark brows knitted together. The soft pink oval of her smile flattened.  
    “What’s wrong?” the man asked.
    She shook her head and pulled him closer. “I thought I saw something.”
    Bone Man turned the corner, squeezing his cane. The woman giggled loud enough for him to hear. “It was nothing I guess,” she said, and their excruciatingly bubbly conversation continued.
    The alley came to a dead end. Moisture ran in long lines down the tall, grey walls. Above, a strip of stars appeared between the rooftops. Ahead, a neon sign fashioned like a pink crystal ball blinked intermittently, punctuated by the pop and crack of failing circuits.  
    As he strolled closer to the shop, he reached toward the door, and it silently glided apart just far enough for him to slip inside. With the tip of his cane he shifted a heavy curtain blocking the entrance, and in the space of a heartbeat vanished inside.  
    Soft gold light illuminated a room shaped into a pentagon by some cleverly-placed velvet dividers. Not a murmur of crushed carpet or creak of wooden floorboard disturbed the air as Bone Man stole from one hidden space to another. He peered through a divider’s oriental design as he circled the room, his blade swishing into the open as he pulled it from the cane sheath.  
    Bottled charms hung from the ceiling alongside crow skulls and dark feathers. A round table occupied the room’s center, loosely draped by a cloth of deep, shimmering violet. The distorted tears of half-melted candles hung from the looping silver arms of a candelabra beside an obnoxious crystal ball. On the table, tarot cards formed a neat fan before an oversized wingback chair, its back facing Bone Man.  
    Three other chairs circled the table, the one opposite the massive wingback occupied by a man with pale, clammy skin that was almost as smooth as the melted wax of the candles between him and the supposed fortuneteller.  
    The man dabbed his beaded temples with a crimson handkerchief before stuffing it into the pocket of his pinstripe blazer. He flashed the thick gold watch on his wrist as he did, then glanced toward the exit.
    “Please, do you know where she is? Can you find her for me?” he asked, angling over the table with wide, teary eyes.  
    “The mortal world is big. You must have patience if I am to pierce the veil and find your wife,” a woman replied, her voice low and soft, barely more than a sly whisper.
    “So you don’t think she’s passed on to us yet?”
    Bone Man’s head rolled slowly side to side. His neck sheared and burned like fire with each movement, but he savored the pain. Pain was life. Pain was real. He padded to the next divider, and the fortuneteller melted into view.
    Her silken hands lay upon the table, her long nails like curved claws strumming on the velvet cloth. Her skin could have been poured from fresh milk, framed as it was by hair black as the reflection of water in a deep well beneath a starless sky. She looked upon her client