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CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

PERCY AWAKES—IN THE WORST POSSIBLE WAY

O f all the ways Percy had ever imagined dying, this was by far the worst. After all, there’s hardly a person alive who hasn’t thought, at least once, about what they might do if they ever found themselves in the same predicament. For all of human history, the slim possibility of that fate has hung over almost every member of the species, and Percy had come up with no better solution to the problem than all the rest of us, even if circumstances had given him greater reason to dwell on the idea than most.

As such, when Percy opened his eyes to the dark, when he reached out his hands and felt the smooth satin overhead, when he ventured his arms out to his sides and met more satin, when he breathed in the musty, dusty, dank air, he didn’t shift. He didn’t panic. He stayed still, and let his heart sink, because he knew he had time. Plenty of time. Too much time. Because when you’re buried in a coffin deep beneath a tonne of earth, there is nothing but time. Nothing you can do but wait and try not to go mad.

Percy’s heart smashed so hard in his chest, he felt the shake of it in his shoulders. He was hot. Burning hot, and cold somehow at the same time. His ears were drowned in a rush of blood and horror, and he tried to listen for some sound outside the coffin, but he couldn’t hear a thing above the emergency signals his body was sending out.

Fight or flight… Neither. Neither. For the first time since he was a child, there was nothing to be done but lie here and die.

He wanted to smash his fist into the lid—tear the satin to shreds, then try to force his way out. But having meditated for bored hours on this very eventuality, he had long since concluded that the slow march to death would be better spent without broken fingers and nails hanging bloody and loose. At least until he lost control. He wondered, would he feel the pain then? Or would it all be a miserable blur, like walking home drunk after missing the last bus?

Joe, he knew, would be cutting his way across the city to him. But where was he and what signs could possibly lead Joe to his… grave?

And if he didn’t come in time, was this it? His final resting place? Where his body would always remain?

He quite liked the idea of ending up in Montmartre Cemetery—which is where he guessed he was, considering Molly’s request for Joe to meet her there—but not like this. Not in someone else’s grave, which it had to have been, because the place was full to the brim, overflowing. Bodies upon bodies and no space for new ones.

So what had Molly done? Was this coffin resting on someone else’s? Had she had the hole prepared before she came to see them? How long had he been interred? How deep? How much oxygen was left?

Percy shifted, aware now of something digging into his back. Something sharp and hard just beneath his shoulder blade. It shifted away with the movement of his body, but he gave it only the spectre of a thought as the idea of his being in someone else’s grave closed in on him. Closed in tight like the walls of his coffin.

It was pitch black. Black and cold. He could have eased his lighter out of his pocket if it was still there. But if the satin caught fire… He shuddered at the thought.

He reached out once more and yes, satin, definitely. But it wasn’t flush with the lid. It sagged, and it came too close to his face and he didn’t like it. Nothing unusual there, for who would like to feel the sagging satin of their own death box on their cheek? But something about the idea struck Percy as disrespectful. Disrespectful beyond the fact of being put to a grisly death via premature burial. It was a sort of… final kick in the teeth. A way of saying, you’re not even worth a new box. Not even the most basic model. Just dig up one of the old ones, damp and mouldering, and throw the bones in a ditch somewhere.

He deserved better.

He deserved his own nice new?—

A sort of crick about the back of his thigh shifted his leg down a notch. That brought a jab into his left hip. He shifted by instinct and a crunch and crumble under his left arm brought his head across, and his cheek brushed something hard. Cold. Rough.

A shudder shot through every inch of Percy. A deep rejection of fact and a revulsion of reality.

No.

She had not emptied out an old coffin.

She had simply closed Percy inside with the owner.

It was a thought too harrowing to admit so readily, and he closed his eyes against it, though it made no difference there in that dark box. He saw nothing, eyes open or closed, but now he felt it. Maybe it lay clothed in a suit or a dress that had cushioned him somewhat, all mildew and tatters. Perhaps there was some leathery skin left. But he felt the bones now. He felt the arch of the ribs as his mind mapped out the body. His hips were settled down on top of the pelvis, and with another involuntary shift, the leg bones of the corpse popped over to lie flush with his own.

“Fuuuuuuuck!” Percy whispered.

And just then, he felt a soul-shattering breath of putrid air on his face.