by Libba Bray
“My gentleman told me something else. He said if you made me mad, I could make your power mine.” Sarah Beth picked up a rock and threw it at Isaiah.
He ducked, nearly losing his balance. The rock sailed over his shoulder and crashed into the current and was borne quickly downstream. Isaiah’s heart pounded. Sarah Beth grabbed another rock. This one clipped Isaiah in the arm. He grabbed at the place where it stung, slipped on the rock, and fell. A precarious tangle of roots stopped his slide into the surging water.
“I want what you got. Give it to me.”
She wasn’t content with sharing moon glow anymore. She wanted it all to herself, would do anything to get it. Isaiah could see it in her steely eyes, in the set of her teeth peeking out from underneath her curled lip.
The swollen river pushed at Isaiah’s legs, throwing him off-balance. Gasping, he managed to right himself by pushing off from a rock. No helpful tree limbs extended out over the river at this point. The water was up to his thighs, but when it surged, it hit his chest like an icy fist.
“I want it. I want all of it. Give it to me, and I’ll help you out of the river.”
Isaiah slipped, and in his panic, he grabbed at Sarah Beth’s hand. The vision came on, bucking like the river. He saw dust kicking up on the road, the flickers of white behind it. Ghosts on the road. Bill. He had to warn Bill.
He counted: Memphis, Theta, Evie, Sam, Jericho, Henry, Ling, Bill.
Memphis. Theta. Evie. Sam. Jericho. Henry. Ling. Bill.
Isaiah searched for his face among them.
The rock came down on his head. The vision vanished. Isaiah looked up through dripping blood to see Sarah Beth’s face. Her mouth was set in a grim, determined line. She gripped the rock tightly in her good hand.
“Wh-why?” was all Isaiah could ask.
She hit him again, and he slipped into the water up to his chest. Sarah Beth put her other hand on him. She was trying to pull what power he had right out of his body anyway, trying to make it hers. Isaiah fought back, but the blows had left him dizzy. Sarah Beth was only grabbing straws of magic from Isaiah, and it was making her very angry; he could feel her inside him, all that anger coiling around him like a snake waiting to strike.
Sarah Beth broke away, panting, and for a second, Isaiah thought it was over. He was awfully woozy from the pain in his head. Nevertheless, he’d crawl over the bank and run as hard as he could to Memphis and the others. He’d do whatever it took to get away from this girl and warn the people he loved.
Sarah Beth was looking down at him through narrowed eyes. “This world will be ours.”
All she had to do then was push. With a scream, Isaiah was pulled into the churning water.
“Hurry, oh hurry,” Evie said. She couldn’t say why she was so panicked. There was no reason to think that Sarah Beth would hurt Isaiah—that she could hurt Isaiah. But reading the girl’s dolls had filled her with terror. She had seen Sarah Beth writing her name inside the King of Crows’s coat. She had felt the girl’s adoration of him, her willingness to follow him blindly into chaos if that’s where he was leading. Her deep need to feel important—not just important, but superior. Evie realized that they had let a fox into their henhouse.
She could hear the river before she saw it. There on the bank was Sarah Beth, sitting in the grass.
“Where’s Isaiah?” Evie demanded.
“He’s not here,” Sarah Beth said.
The others were just coming up now.
“Isaiah!” Memphis called.
“Isaiah! Little Man!” Bill joined in.
“You’ve been in league with the King of Crows this whole time, haven’t you?” Evie said.
Sarah Beth looked up at Evie coolly. “He’s going to make me his queen.”
“He’s not going to do any such thing. He’s a liar and a trickster. His promises are empty. And you are a very foolish girl,” Evie said.
“You’re jealous that he chose me and not you,” Sarah Beth said.
Sam looked down and saw the bloodstained rock in the grass. “Evie,” he said under his breath.
“I can’t find him,” Memphis said, panicked.
Evie could feel the world slipping off its axis and spinning toward the cold, dark unknown. With a trembling hand, she reached down and touched the rock.
“No, no, no!”
She ran along the riverbank. Memphis chased after, calling, “Evie? What is it? Evie, tell me!”
The river had carried Isaiah to an inlet. His shirt collar had caught on a branch near a barn swallow nest. It held him there, letting him float out a ways, then tugging him back in. He looked as if he were simply taking a nap, but the bloody wound on his head told another story.
“Isaiah! Isaiah!” Memphis cried and waded into the river after him. Sam stripped off his shirt and jumped in after Memphis.
“Not the boy,” Bill prayed. “Please, Lord, not the boy.”
Jericho waded in to lend a hand. “Sam,” he said and shook his head.
“Isaiah,” Memphis said, hollowed out. “Isaiah?” he said again, as if he couldn’t quite trust what the world was showing him. The water was not water. The grass just a cruel imitation of grass.
Sam unhooked Isaiah’s shirt from where it had caught on the branch. Jericho lifted Isaiah from the river and carried his lifeless body back to the farm. The Diviners and Sarah Beth followed in a procession. Theta spread a blanket on the ground, and Jericho laid Isaiah down gently. Memphis fell to his knees beside his brother, weeping. He looked up at Sarah Beth with murder in his eyes.
“You killed my brother! All this time, I tried to keep him safe. All this time, it was you he should’ve been afraid of!”
“Stay with him,” Bill advised the others, and they surrounded Memphis like a shield.
Bill lifted his face, but the sun had gone sour. Everything seemed to tilt sideways. The wind was southerly. It brought the smell of the rotting corn. This land was cursed and nobody knew how to make it right. There were ghosts on the road and ghosts in his heart and he could scarcely breathe.
There were moments in a man’s life, Bill believed, when he could see the shape of his future as if he’d carved it himself from a piece of wood. Ghosts on the road, ghosts on the road. Isaiah had warned him all those months ago. Isaiah. Isaiah was dead.
Memphis was on his knees in the dust, broken, eyes red, seeing nothing. He was hot pain trapped inside skin clawing to get out, and when it did, god help him and everyone else. Theta and Sam were trying to help him up, holding him back. It was too much, too much. No. It was enough. Bill had had enough.
Under the sheltering oak, Sarah Beth swayed back and forth on the tire swing. She rubbed her fingers down the sides of her pink cheeks as if they were brand-new to her. A half smile played at her lips. All that power. She was punch-drunk on it. Bill watched the girl for as long as he could stand.
He motioned Jericho over to his side. He spoke calmly, firmly. “You need to get them all in the truck, you hear? Start it up. Throw Memphis into the back if you gotta. But get him in.”
“Then what?”
“Then you drive, and you keep driving. Go west. All the way to Death Valley. You got to stop this thing. Understand?”
Jericho nodded. By the fledgling willow tree, Memphis had crumpled next to his brother’s lifeless body. From the corner of his eye, Bill saw the girl still swinging, not a care in the world.
“You’ll meet us at the truck?” Jericho asked.
“Ain’t goin’ with you.”
“We’ll see you in Death Valley, then?”
Yes, sometimes a man just knew the shape of his future.
“Go on,” he said, shooing Jericho toward his friends. “Git.”
He watched as Jericho hurried back to the others. When Theta tried to coax Memphis toward the truck, he cried out and refused to leave Isaiah’s body there, so Jericho carried the boy in his arms and placed him in the back of the covered truck. Ling looked dazed and lost. Evie, Theta, Sam, and He
nry supported Memphis, half dragging him to the truck. Bill watched all of this. He watched as Jericho hopped behind the wheel and put the truck into gear. He watched as the truck drove across the dry field, wheels kicking up dust. He watched the ashen, expressionless faces of the Diviners peering out at where they’d been, what they’d seen by the river. They were ghosts on the road.
Bill watched and waited until they were safely down that road, a spot vanishing to a speck making a left past the railroad tracks. Coming up the other end of the road was the Olsons’ truck. It would be at the farm soon enough. When Bill could no longer see the Diviners, he walked toward the old oak, rolling up his sleeves as he went. The wind had shifted. It no longer blew from the south but from the east. That was the wind for you, constantly changing course. His shadow fell over Sarah Beth as she swung disinterestedly on the old tire.
“Where’d they go?” she asked.
“Never you mind.”
“Doesn’t matter. I can see everything if I have a mind to.”
“Can you now? Can you see everything?” Bill asked. He was very calm. He could hear the Olsons’ truck getting closer.
“I can see into the land of the dead. I can talk to him. He’ll want me more now, I’m so powerful.” She pushed off with sudden force, kicking dirt onto the tips of Bill’s shoes. He did not take a step back.
Bill grabbed hold of the rope. The swing stopped midair.
A tiny bit of fear flickered in Sarah Beth’s steely eyes, but only for a second. “I’ll scream for my pa. I’ll tell him you tried to rape me.”
“No, you won’t, neither.” Quick as the old days, Bill took Sarah Beth by the neck with both hands as if she were a goose ready for a Thanksgiving feast. “You cain’t have his power or yours no more. I won’t let you.”
“What are you doing?” she asked in a strained whisper. Her eyes were wild, but mean, too.
“And here I thought you could see everything.”
After Memphis had healed his eyesight, Bill had made a promise to whatever god he still believed in that he would do right. He wouldn’t take Diviner energy anymore. He was a man redeemed. But now Isaiah was going cold, with his skull bashed in, and the sun was dead, dead, dead in the sky, and who could say what was right in such a world? He wouldn’t kill the girl. But Bill Johnson would take justice for Isaiah Campbell. And he would make sure Sarah Beth Olson no longer had the means to hurt anybody else.
“No,” Sarah Beth whispered once she realized what Bill was about.
As Bill drained the Diviner energy from Sarah Beth’s veins, he could feel Isaiah in there, what she had stolen from him, and he could feel Sarah Beth’s gift for prophecy as well. It was all leaving her, flowing into Bill. His hair was graying at the temples and his pulse galloped under the strain of the sudden aging. That was the price. So be it. Sarah Beth pounded her fists against Bill’s strong hands, but his hold was firm. Almost there.
“You let her go or I’ll kill you where you stand.”
From just behind him, Bill heard the click of Mr. Olson’s rifle. Bill loosened his grip just a little, stopping the flow of magic. How close was the man’s gun? Was it aimed at his head? His legs? His stomach? A stomach wound was a nasty way to go.
Bill tightened his clutch on Sarah Beth once more. “You ain’t never gonna take what ain’t yours ever again.” With that, he sucked up the last of the magic.
When her father’s shot rang out two seconds later, clean and clear, tearing a straight path through Bill’s heart, he thought of Samson, the gentle horse he had loved and cared for, the horse he had needed to put down with a merciful touch of these same hands. His damaged heart slowed to a blues tempo. Six-eight time at the end of the night with a bad drummer. Blood drowned the breath in Bill’s lungs. His vision was going hazy. He tried to draw another breath and could not. His eyelids fluttered. His knees softened. This was the shape, then: He was going down hard onto the barren dirt of Bountiful, another ghost on the road. As Bill lost control of his limbs and the air died to a last wheeze in his throat, it was Samson he thought he saw. Samson running fast and free, showing Bill the way home.
BARGAIN
Jericho kept his foot on the gas as they bumped over dirt roads. They’d been driving for hours. An orange sun wounded the clouds into a bruising dusk. The flat farmland of Nebraska had given way to the stark, red-rocked beauty and rolling hills of Wyoming, and if this weren’t the end of the world, Jericho might have loved the chance to stand by the side of the road and enjoy the wonder of it all.
“Where are we going?” Ling asked.
“I don’t know,” Jericho said in a monotone. Then: “West. To Death Valley. We’re going to stop them.”
“Bill’s not meeting us, is he?” Ling didn’t really want the answer.
“No,” Jericho said, and neither of them spoke again.
“You’re gonna have to do something, kid.” Jericho slid his eyes sideways. He did not see Ling sitting there, but the ghost of Sergeant Leonard. “How are you feeling these days?”
I’m fine, Jericho thought.
“You know that ain’t true, kid. The Daedalus program. You had a good run, but it comes for all of us in the end.”
“I’m fine,” Jericho said firmly.
“Jericho?” Ling was looking at him strangely. “Are you all right? You look kind of funny.”
“I’m… it’s nothing,” Jericho said and gripped the wheel with trembling hands.
In the back of the truck, Memphis cradled Isaiah’s body and wouldn’t let anyone else near. “Gonna be okay, Ice Man. Gonna be okay,” he murmured until Theta thought her heart might break. They were all numb with horror.
“Hey. Hey, Memphis…” Sam tried at one point.
Memphis shrugged off his touch and cupped himself over his dead brother like a shield that was too late in arriving.
“Theta?” Sam pleaded.
She shook her head and tried not to cry.
“We’re going to stop them,” Evie said through her teeth. “If it’s the last thing we ever do.”
Jericho pulled over by the side of the road. The Diviners piled out of the truck, except for Memphis, who wouldn’t leave Isaiah’s body. Their collective gaze was drawn to the sight of a magnificent natural formation that jutted up from the soft green and scrub. It reminded Ling of a New York skyscraper made completely of rugged rock. It quite took her breath away. “What is that?” she asked.
“Devils Tower,” Jericho said. “It’s a national monument. I’ve seen pictures in a book, but…”
Ling stared at it. It made her feel small and vast at the same time. There was so much in the country she hadn’t seen. She hoped she’d still have that chance. Ling allowed herself to imagine coming west with her parents and Uncle Eddie, posing for a photograph against all that sky. Her mind was trying desperately to distract her from the sorrow in the back of the truck, the danger ahead.
Sam came around the side of the truck. “Why’d you stop driving, Freddy? We need to get to California.”
Jericho turned away from the breathtaking view. “We have to help Memphis.”
“Help him how?” Henry asked. “His brother’s been murdered.”
“I don’t know how to say this. But Isaiah’s…” Jericho paused, fumbling for words. “Corpse… could attract more dead. He’s a Diviner. They… might want him. He could become one of them.”
“No,” Theta said, steely-eyed. “He would never.”
“Mabel did,” Evie said quietly.
“Not Isaiah.”
“We need to bury him,” Sam said, nodding at Jericho. “We need to give him a proper grave.”
“You mean here?” Theta said, incredulous.
“It’s gotta be done, Theta,” Sam said.
Theta felt a pull toward this starkly beautiful land, but it was far from New York and all Memphis knew. How would Memphis ever visit his brother’s grave out here?
“Theta, you have Miss Addie’s spell book. Surely there’s somethin
g in there for making sure the dead don’t come back,” Evie said gently.
“You’ll never get Memphis to leave Isaiah here. I know him,” Theta said.
They fell into arguing. The light was fading, the last of the sun bleeding out over Devils Tower.
“Wait! Wait!” Jericho held up a hand and everyone stopped. “Where’d Memphis go?”
Memphis staggered up the rocky incline leading to Devils Tower carrying his fallen brother in his arms. “Just hold on, Ice Man. I’ll fix this.”
Behind him, his friends were shouting his name. Coming after him. Memphis kept going. Just a little farther. He stumbled and fell to his knees, barely registering the pain of it. Isaiah lay in the sweet grass of Wyoming. Memphis had hoped they’d see the West someday. Maybe ride the palominos, or watch the elk come down from the Tetons. All things he’d read about in books back at the 135th Street Library in Harlem. “I’m gonna fix this,” he said again. He screamed at the sky. “You’re not taking him! You hear me, you greedy son-of-a-bitch? You take and you take and you take! Well, you can’t have him—I won’t let you!”
“Memphis! Memphis!” Theta jogged after Memphis and got down on her knees beside him. She tried to take his hand, but he wouldn’t let her. “Don’t do this, Memphis. You can’t. It’s unnatural.”
“Nothing about this is natural,” Memphis murmured. “It’s an unnatural world.”
“You remember what your mother told you? You can’t bring back something once it’s gone. Think about Miss Addie and Elijah.”
“You all want to bury him. Well, you can’t.”
Theta looked down at Isaiah. His lips were as pale as the night’s last hour of moonlight. When she spoke, her voice was thick with tears she was doing her best to hold back. “Hey. Hey. You remember that day you and Isaiah snuck in to see Babe Ruth hit a home run? Or when we helped paint the barn on the farm? We’ll always have that. We’ll always have Isaiah that way, and we’ll carry him around with us forever.”