Empire's End

Eight / Lily

“How come you get to drive a truck?” the girl asked.

Jack Calvert looked away from the road and said, “It belongs to the company. Sometimes I have to haul materials out to the job site.”

Sitting in Molly Calvert’s lap, Lily twisted to make the seat belt fit more comfortably. “Are you allowed to take us into the city?”

“Of course,” Jack replied. He was a man of thirty with bright eyes and a lopsided smile that meant he knew a lot of jokes. He was good at making Lily laugh, even if some of his jokes were too silly. But she was only thirteen — or fourteen, she wasn’t sure — and it was excusable.

“Anyway, I’ll drop you two off downtown, then I’m gone until four in the morning,” Jack was saying to Molly. “You’ll make it home okay?”

“So long as it doesn’t rain,” Molly sighed. She was pretty, with long dark hair just like Lily’s. She really could have been the girl’s mother, except Lily knew her parents were dead.

“Did you have a nightmare last night?” Molly asked Lily. “I heard you saying something in your sleep.”

Lily couldn’t explain to her new guardians that they weren’t nightmares — that Death was her friend, that he’d saved her life more than once. He had a kind, gentle face. His doll-like eyes made her think of a baby, innocent and unformed. In a lot of ways, he was like a child; he didn’t seem to understand a lot of things, like feelings.

But he and Lily had still gotten along. He’d held her while she wept for her parents, and he’d saved her from the house in the swamp where her brothers and sisters were undead. She longed to see him again, and somehow knew that she would — that he was searching for her right now, at this very moment.

“What are you building today?” she asked Jack. Sometimes he was reluctant to talk about his job, but other times he had funny stories. This time he only shrugged. “I can’t say, exactly. I can tell you we’re laying a sort of asphalt right now. We hope it doesn’t rain either.”

He couldn’t tell her about the airfield project — hell, he wasn’t even supposed to tell Molly, but he had. It was a secret that only the Senators knew about.

The firm he worked for had restored most of downtown over the past five years. It was a huge company, but only a select handful were chosen for the airfield. He had no idea what they intended to use it for — did they even have planes? — but he was starting to form a theory.

If he was right, then he would have to do something. It might mean a real future for him and Molly. And, well, Lily…

Thunder rumbled overhead. Molly cursed, and Jack tightened his grip on the steering wheel, his knuckles already bone-white.