Jack watches the path of one of Thegn’s crows as it arcs across the sky toward one of the far buildings in Bule. There’s just one problem with this whole plan of his. Him. Jack. He’s got no idea how he’s going to blink himself over to the spiritual plane. The last time he was there—the last time? That was just an hour or so ago. It’s hard to believe how much has happened in such a short stretch of time.

He traces the path of another crow. This one is a little bit closer. Regardless of how recently any of this happened, the last time he was on the spiritual plane, he was nearly dead himself after a combination of abuse at the hands of Thegn and pure exhaustion from using the Touch. How did the mages in the Shadowfold manage to go through a full mercy of a town without collapsing after the first couple of people they used the Touch on?

He hears Corva’s foot crunch on the rough gravel of the rooftop as she takes a step closer to him. He turns his attention to her. She’s got a weak, knowing smile.

“You don’t know how to get there, do you?”

Jack shakes his head. “I’ve got ideas, but none of ’em sound too pleasant.”

“Need me to kick your ass a bit?” Corva’s smile has broadened. It’s kind, not the cruel, half-crazed show of teeth that she usually wears while fighting. She’s trying to lighten the mood. Trying to help.

He snorts out a short laugh. “I’ll let you know if it comes to that.” He lets his head follow yet another crow. There doesn’t seem to be any clear pattern that shows where they’re going. Nothing that could help him predict their movement. He needs a change of topic. “How it coming on getting control of more grunts?”

“Easier than I thought. I’m up in the twenties now. Got most of the ones that are surrounding this building. Nearly ready to start trying to get in Thegn’s way. I’m going to need his help with that, though.” Corva tilts her head toward Zeke, still sitting on Jack’s shoulder.

Jack nods and lifts his arm toward Corva, forming a bridge for the monkey to travel across. As Zeke clambers over to his roost on her should, Corva raises her chin like an idea has just struck her. “You told me you could see the dead when you closed your eyes. Can you still? If that’s the case, aren’t you able to see the spiritual plane like Zeke can? Maybe that’s your route in.”

Is it that simple? Why hadn’t I thought of that? He closes his eyes. The not-faces are still there. And that stench of souls. He’d gotten used to it. Gotten used to them. He’d taken them for granted, an ever-present annoyance, like specks on a dirty window when trying to see through it. Jack opens his eyes, astonished. There’s Corva and Zeke.

He closes his eyes. Not-faces.

Open eyes. Corva and Zeke.

Jack changes his focus and finds one of the flying crows before closing his eyes. There! A white dot creating a rip of light in the distance. Actually, there are a lot of those dots moving in all manner of directions. Jack has to concentrate to see them through the wall of not-faces feverishly trying to fill his view. It’s like they know he’s recognized them again. “I can see the crows on the spiritual plane. But it’s damn hard.”

He opens and closes his eyes quickly, trying to burn in the afterimage of their surroundings. “I can’t quite get a bead on where they’re going without opening my eyes, though. And I can’t really see ol’ Wrinkles there; too much noise.”

He tries covering one eye while opening the other. That kind of works. “It’s tough as shit to focus on what you can’t see. How does Zeke do it?”

“Zeke says he’s had a lot more practice than you … and that his eyes are better for this kind of thing.” Corva puts herself directly in front of Jack so he can’t see around her. “Zeke also says you’re getting distracted. His job is to track Thegn by watching the crows. Your job is to see how to get on the spiritual plane, preferably without dying.”

Jack stops his experiments at trying to see the spiritual plane and the regular world. He puts attention back on Corva and Zeke. He wants to argue, wants to be indignant. But they’re right. He lets his shoulders sag. “I don’t know what I’m doing! I barely know how to use the Touch here. How am I supposed to know how to do anything on a totally different plane of existence?”

Zeke’s eyes suddenly widen and he slaps Corva on her shoulder excitedly.

“Ow! Why’d you—” Corva’s voice trails off as she looks at Zeke, listening. This must’ve been what it was like to watch Jack have his conversation on comms with Lyia and Slim.

It only takes a few seconds for impatience to get the better of Jack. “What? What’s he saying?”

“Zeke says he can see you on the spiritual plane. A kind of shadow of you, at least. He’s asking if you can see yourself.”

Curious, Jack closes his eyes. He wasn’t able to sense any of himself when he was on the spiritual plane before; he hadn’t even considered trying here. He raises his hands in front of his face to check if he can see them. “Holy shit.”

They’re right there. His hands. Well, sort of his hands. It’s more like a void in front of the not-faces, but a void that’s in the shape of his hands.

“You can see them, can’t you?” Excitement raises Corva’s voice.

“Yeah. I can. But what does that mean? How does that help?”

“Can you touch any of the spirits?”

Jack opens his eyes. “You want me to use the Touch on them?”

Corva’s face wrinkles in a combination of horror and confusion. “What? No! That’s not what I meant. Zeke was asking if you could grab them, move them around. That kind of thing. Not ‘the Touch’ touching. Right?” She looks over at Zeke, whose face is strangely impassive.

But Jack isn’t paying attention. His mind is already on a roll. It’s like something clicked and now everything makes sense. He closes his eyes to confirm. The not-faces are moving faster than ever before, almost vibrating. This is why they’ve wanted his attention. He reopens his eyes. “I think I know how it works.”

Corva returns her attention to Jack. “What do you mean?”

“The Touch. I know how it works. Like, for-real how it works. The Touch doesn’t kill people, not really. It—It pushes souls out of their bodies; kinda detaches them. Yeah, their body does eventually die, but their spirit isn’t dead. Death never collected them. That’s the difference between Death’s Mark and the Touch. Death’s Mark is a full cleaning. The Touch is like soaping up the dishes and never rinsing them off.”

“Jack, you’re not making sense.”

Corva’s words are enough to give Jack a moment of pause, but not enough to stop him. “Lyia would get it.” He pauses a beat to see if Lyia is listening. Nothing. She’s either focusing on her own task, or she’s just got nothing to add to this. Hopefully it’s the former. “The point is that those not-faces—the souls of folks hit with the Touch—are just wandering about. Their bodies are dead, but the spirits have nowhere to go.”

Corva’s face is uneasy. “I don’t think that’s what Zeke—”

“It totally is! I need to do the Touch, just in reverse, kind of.”

“Do what?”

“Look, I don’t know all the details, but I know this is the way in.”

“But how do you get back out once you’re there?” It’s clear from Corva’s expression that she’s not at all a fan of how the conversation has turned.

“I’ll just hafta figure that out on the fly, too. But I know this is going to work. I can’t explain how, but it will. Maybe Zeke can explain later. In the meantime, I’m doing this. You just focus on your part of the plan. Track where Wrinkles is going. Put a bunch of grunts in his way. And I’ll slow him down from my side, too. This can still work.”

“I thought you said there was too much noise to see Thegn.”

“Too much noise when trying to see all this stuff at the same time.” Jack waves an arm, indicating everything around them. “Without that, it should be much easier.”

“Should be?”

“You said you were on board, whatever the plan. You’re just going to have to trust me. I trust you.” Jack closes his eyes and reaches out to the closest not-face. He sees the dark void shaped like his hand move into position. The not-face doesn’t move away. He extends two fingers. There’s a tingling sensation at the tips, right where they contact the side of the not-face. Unlike all the other not-faces, it’s not moving. It’s just holding position right in front of him. Waiting.

Jack snaps his eyes open. “Shit! I almost forgot.”

He squats down to his go-bag and withdraws a long fixed-blade knife with a forward curve.

“What do you need that for?” Corva’s voice is tense, filled with impatience.

Jack stands back up, but he doesn’t take his eyes off the knife. “Last time I was there, I had a tough time getting back. The only thing that helped me find my body was when Old Man V told me to follow my pain.” He vaguely indicates a couple different places on his body. “I’ve got some scrapes and it’s not like I’m feelin’ great, but I think I need something more specific.”

“I could just punch you in the mouth.”

Jack smiles at Corva. “Yeah. No. Probably best if it’s something I can control. Thing is”—he looks down at himself—“where to cut so it hurts, but won’t get in the way of moving?”

Lyia’s voice sounds over the comms. “Outside of your thigh. Outer part of your forearm. If you’d been practicing your healing, I’d suggest the webbing between your fingers, but it’s too easy to accidentally cut all the way through. That’s hard to fix quickly. Hell, if you’d been practicing, you’d know how to create pain without cutting yourself at all.”

She answered that a bit too quickly for comfort. She was listening. Jack shakes the additional questions—along with Lyia’s chiding for not practicing—from his head and focuses on the task at hand. And, looking at his hand, she’s right. He doesn’t have enough practice with healing to fix things if he does that wrong. His thigh would work, but his pants are in the way. Forearm it is.

He takes the knife and runs it across the top of his forearm, fast and smooth. At first, he doesn’t feel anything, the benefit of a sharp blade. But as the blood starts flowing, he starts to feel the pain set in, sharp and stinging. Almost automatically, he swaps the knife between hands so he can put pressure on his new cut. That makes it hurt more. This will work.

“Okay. Now I’m ready.” Jack closes his eyes. That same not-face is still there, like it’s been waiting. He reaches out again and extends his two fingers. Again, his fingertips tingle. This is it. He concentrates on performing the Touch, like Vardin had taught him, like he’d done on Thegn.

For a moment, nothing seems to happen.

Then suddenly, Jack feels a harsh, twisting feeling deep inside him, a tornado spinning deeper than he could describe by pointing to any part of his body. Likewise, the not-face that he’s touching appears to spin in an opposite direction, but focused around the tips of his fingers. Almost involuntarily, he feels his other arm come up and his hand flatten on his chest. It’s like a path abruptly opened up. One tornado travels along it one way while the other comes the other. As they pass each other, there’s a small whisper. At least, Jack thinks it’s a whisper. It sounds like one. He doesn’t recognize the voice at first, but the words are unmistakable.

“You did alright, kiddo.”

An instant later, the feeling of spinning tornadoes is gone and Jack is in a familiar place. Bright. Surrounded by not-faces. And he has no eyes to open back up.