“Come on, Bobby Jack,” Dad said, jingling the keys to the truck. “It’s just us men today.”
“Where are you going?” Mom asked. Dad took the mason jar out of the highest kitchen cabinet and pulled out most of the money Mom squirreled away whenever she could.
“Groceries,” he said. “And we’ll look for work.”
Mom’s eyes crinkled in that way they did when she wanted to cry. Bobby looked back and forth between his parents. An adventure, a day away from Adam and the three acres he knew every inch of, though time alone with his dad meant walking a branch where a breeze could blow him toward safety or disaster.
He couldn’t have said no anyway. Bobby knew better than that.
The truck, a rusted, pitted Ford with powder-blue paint, rattled its way over the dirt roads. Bobby sat on the passenger side, his seat belt fastened to keep him from bouncing out of the seat. The day was dry and they kicked up a dust cloud until they passed the big barn that marked the turn onto pavement.
They drove for a while, past the bowling alley. He’d gone to a birthday party there once. Bobby’s school was closer to the center of town.
“Let’s gets some fuel,” Dad announced.
Bobby suppressed a frown. He knew what that meant.
Dad pulled into the parking lot of the Last Cow Bar. Bobby straightened his shirt. He was a little sweaty inside the flannel. He snapped the bottom button open and closed. The last time they’d done this, he’d gotten so bored. Dad had given him a few quarters for the old arcade machine, but a few quick rounds of shooting zombies in the head didn’t outlast the time it took Dad to down three beers and “chat” with Candy. The weathered waitress smelled of cigarettes and hairspray. Bobby had pocketed the quarters and pretended to play. He had a little box tucked into the floor vent in the room he shared with Adam, where he had squirreled away twenty-seven dollars and eleven cents, once he’d added the quarters. It wasn’t near enough, but someday it would be.
His dad handled him two quarters as soon as he’d found a seat at the bar.
“Get me a paper.” Dad nodded to the machine by the bathrooms.
Bobby obeyed, putting the fifty cents into the machine and pulling out a fresher copy of the News Leader than the one Mom had spread out on the table back home.
“Gotta look for work,” Dad said with a wink, opening to the classifieds as Candy delivered a second beer.
Bobby stared at the bottle. Dad had drunk the first one so fast. That meant they’d be here for hours, maybe the whole day.
“Want some?” Dad asked, misreading Bobby’s stare as interest.
When he didn’t answer, Dad slid the bottle over the bar. It left a trail of condensation, like a slug’s path, on the table.
“It’s all right,” Dad said. “Just a sip.”
They’d done this before. The taste was always sweeter than he expected, not like cigarettes. The sip tasted bready and cold.
“Hey,” Candy said, coming around the corner. “What are you doing?”
“Relax,” Dad said.
“He’s just a kid,” Candy said.
“He’s twelve.”
Bobby had turned thirteen the month before, but he knew not to correct his father, especially not in public.
“We could lose our license,” Candy said. She made a gesture, waving for them to leave.
Dad gulped down the rest of the beer. He left most of the paper, taking the time to tear out a page.
“Hey!” Candy said as he stood. “You haven’t paid!”
“Put it on my tab,” Dad said, laughing as he led Bobby out of the bar.
“Deadbeat!” Candy called before the door closed behind them.
“Dumb bitch,” his father muttered.
The comment slid something cold and oily into Bobby’s guts.
They drove for a while. Dad circled through Guthrie, looking at roads. At one point he got out and used a pay phone, looking at the ad he’d torn from the paper to get the number.
Bobby stared out the open truck window. The day was sunny. He liked getting out of the trailer, away.
Dad was smiling, happy, but Bobby didn’t trust it. He knew how fast that wind could shift.
The truck rumbled along through more turns. They left the city and drove some more. Bobby wondered if Dad was trying to buy firecrackers. He had a few years ago, and they’d launched bottle rockets. Dad had stood holding a Roman candle, firing blasts from it like he held a wizard’s wand. Mom had watched, wide-eyed, at a distance, biting down a warning about blowing off his hand.
Finally, they came to a place not unlike their own, a trailer behind a wire fence. There were fewer fields, more sandy soil and grass than their three acres of red mud and rattlesnakes.
“There it is,” Dad said.
He pulled to a stop at a cattle gate. Bobby didn’t see any cows.
A man came down the steps from the trailer, waving for them to drive in.
“Get the gate, Son,” Dad said.
Bobby jumped out, unwound the wire holding it shut, and followed the truck as Dad drove in.
The property had a gravel driveway, though the rock was fresher, less beaten down into the mud than the Binders’. Bobby caught up to the truck, where his Dad talked to an old man in a droopy, but crisp, wife-beater. The smell of dry clay and sunburned switchgrass was the same as on their property.
Dad extracted Mom’s bills from his wallet and traded them for a set of keys.
“She’s behind the house,” the man said.
“Be right back,” Dad told Bobby with a wink. He disappeared behind the trailer.
An engine sounded, too low and loud to be a car, too rumbly for a motorbike. Bobby tensed, uncertain what he’d see until Dad rode up on an ATV. It was muddy, a little rusted out, but it was an ATV—a real four-wheeler.
Dad revved the engine a few times, each putting a warm bubble in Bobby’s chest. Dad climbed off.
“Go on,” he said, gesturing for Bobby to take the seat.
“Really?” Bobby asked, unable to suppress a grin.
“Yep.”
Laughing, he bounced over the ground, bits of grit and insects sticking to his face. Dad waved him back and they loaded it onto the truck, driving it up a makeshift ramp of boards. That feeling of lighter-than-airiness stayed with him as they drove home. It faded like warm sunlight behind a cloud when they parked and Mom came down the steps,
Adam clung to the back of her leg, pale and quiet. Bobby closed the passenger door and leaned against it as Dad opened the tailgate and waved to his purchase like a horse he intended to set free.
Mom said nothing, but her eyes shone.
“Bobby Jack, come help me with the boards,” Dad said.
Dad drove the ATV down and watched as Mom squeezed her eyes shut. Opening them again, she scooped Adam into her arms and walked inside.
Bobby knew she’d stare at the cabinet, at the close-to-empty mason jar. She wouldn’t say anything, wouldn’t risk blowing the wind in the wrong direction. Bobby swayed a little as Dad gestured to the ATV and said, “Go on, take her for a spin.”
“Can Adam ride her?” Bobby asked.
He felt the branch creak when Dad narrowed his eyes at the trailer and said, “He’s too little. Too weak.”
13
Adam
Adam’s eyes cracked open, and he groaned. He felt sunburned, exhausted, and kind of surprised he wasn’t handcuffed to the hospital bed.
Whatever he’d done to save Vic had left everything hurting. Vic was short for Vicente, not Victor. He did not like being called Vince.
Wait. Adam blinked. How did I know that?
Other thoughts, things he shouldn’t know, drifted in.
Vic was named for his great uncle on his father’s side, Vicente. Vic had never met him. He’d died in Mexico, in Guadala
jara.
Adam forced a stop to the stream of unbidden knowledge and opened his eyes to find Bobby standing over him.
“Goddamn it, Adam,” Bobby said, anger thickening his accent.
“I didn’t do anything,” he said, wincing.
“You stole my badge,” Bobby said. “You broke into a private room.”
“Yes, I did.” Adam lifted his hands in supplication. Everything felt heavy. “But I didn’t—”
“Shoot that cop?” Bobby leaned closer. He opened his fists like he might actually choke Adam. Then he clenched them, sat back into his chair. After a long exhale he said, “They know that. The other one told them what he could, that you didn’t do it, that you hate guns. How does he know that?”
“Shit,” Adam said, drawing out the curse. The connection went both ways. He was getting things from Vic, and Vic was getting things from him. Not good. Really not good.
“He was the cop who gave me the tour this morning,” Adam said. He did not want to explain about the magic, the Reaper, or what he’d done to save Vic.
“Why did the other cop shoot him?” Bobby demanded. “Why did he shoot himself?”
“Do you want the real answer?” Adam asked, facing his brother, eye to eye, though he wanted to sink back into the uncomfortable bed. “Are you ready to believe me?”
Bobby nodded.
“Okay,” he said.
“The spirit took control of him,” Adam said. “Faster than I’ve ever seen.”
Bobby gripped the arm of his chair, steadying himself. Quietly, he asked, “Can it do that to Annie?”
“I don’t know,” Adam said, pushing himself back into his pillow. He felt even heavier, telling Bobby this. “I don’t know what let it take control of the cop.”
“But could it?” Bobby asked. “Make her walk into traffic or hurt herself?”
Adam bit his lip and gave a little nod. Bobby paled, all the fight and disappointment draining away at the same time.
“How is he?” Adam asked. “The cop.”
“Dead, Adam,” Bobby growled. “He shot himself in the head.”
Adam remembered Carl, struggling against the spirit’s control, fighting it long enough to put a bullet in himself before he’d let it force him to kill Adam.
“Not him,” Adam said. “The other one.”
“We don’t know. He won’t wake up, a lot like you wouldn’t wake up. They found him bleeding, babbling about what happened. Then he slipped into a coma. He shouldn’t have been conscious. He should be dead.” Bobby shook his head. “Why isn’t he?”
“I tried to save him,” Adam said. “I wasn’t sure it would work.”
“It must have,” Bobby said, shaking his head, shaking all over. “He’s stable.”
Adam had mixed a strand of his life with Vic’s, a stranger’s, on a whim. He’d saved the guy’s life, and from the sound of it, his own ass, but he didn’t know the cost, what would happen.
The connection between them hummed like a guitar string. Adam might be able to sever it, but he did not know what that would do to either of them. Their link might be the only thing keeping Vic alive. It was the right thing to do. He still felt that, but it added one more damn item on his to-do list of impossible things.
“If you can—” Bobby started. He leaned close, voice almost pleading to ask, “Can you help Annie? Can you keep her from hurting herself?”
“I’m trying,” Adam said. “That’s why I needed those records, why I was in there. But I underestimated it. It’s not stupid. It’s watching me.”
“Did you find anything?” Bobby nibbled his lip, likely wanted to chastise Adam but managed to hold back.
“No,” Adam said. “I didn’t get into the records. So far the only thing I know is that the victims all worked at the hospital. But Annie didn’t, right? So why is it attacking her?”
“Adam,” Bobby said, his face pinching. “I met Annie here. She was a nurse.”
“What?”
“She was a nurse here when I was an intern. She quit when we got married.”
Adam put air through gritted teeth. He should have asked earlier. This crap between them was going to get someone killed. Adam sank. It already had.
“So can you help her or not?” Bobby asked.
Adam chewed his lip. No, he could not. He did not know what he was up against. Ignorance had almost cost him his life. The spirit had killed Carl. It had tried to kill Adam and ended up almost killing Vic. He had to stop messing around.
“Yeah,” Adam said, throwing himself back against his pillow. The spirit had possessed hospital employees. The hospital had a dead zone. He squirmed. “But I have to talk to somebody.”
“You look scared,” Bobby said. “And you don’t scare easy, Adam Lee. Who is this somebody?”
“Do you really want to know?” Adam asked.
His brother sighed and shook his head. “I do not.”
Adam smiled, but he had to admit it hurt. He could always count on his family to withdraw when Adam pressed too hard or tried to show too much of his self to them.
“Whatever it is you did,” Bobby said, “you’ve landed in it this time. A man is dead, Adam. A cop. That’s serious.”
No shit. So is a spirit the size of a house.
“Am I going to be arrested or anything?” Adam asked. He could spirit walk from a jail cell but didn’t relish the thought and his body wouldn’t be safe there.
“I don’t know,” Bobby said. “I’ve called my lawyer, but nobody has said anything to me yet.”
“Thanks,” Adam said. And he meant it.
He didn’t like any of this. It wasn’t hard to see that something had put him on this road, drawing a clear path to Denver and his confrontation with the spirit. Adam shook his head, but the sense of something, some things, watching, lingered like the memory of spider legs on bare flesh. He almost called up his Sight, checked the room for spies, but Bobby was right. He was afraid.
14
Robert
“Let’s get right to it,” Ms. Geen said. She leaned back into one of those modern office chairs with chrome arms and mesh instead of cushions. Behind her, the window framed the Denver skyline, mountains and office buildings.
“To say the least,” Geen said, “this situation is highly unusual.”
“It is,” Robert agreed.
He hadn’t interacted with HR since Mercy had hired him. This new director was very polished, with light lavender nails and a fitted gray suit. She had a symmetrical haircut. Sitting across from her, Adam beside him, Robert felt pretty certain he wouldn’t like what was coming.
After three days in the hospital, Adam had recovered from the complete exhaustion that had knocked him down. Dressed in a blue polo, dark khakis, and a blazer, he looked almost respectable, like he could work at a bank. Robert had sent their mom to buy him clothes. He couldn’t risk Adam screwing this up. Robert had worked so hard. Mercy was his dream job.
“We could fire you, Doctor Binder,” Geen said. “Your brother used your badge to access the records room.”
“He stole it from me,” Robert said.
“I did,” Adam admitted without any sign of guilt.
“There’s no proof you didn’t help him,” Geen said.
“He didn’t get into any records,” Bobby said, holding up a finger for emphasis. “No law was broken.”
“True,” she said.
“And he had nothing to do with it,” Adam said, cutting his eyes sideways at his brother. “It was all me. Really.”
Geen’s head dipped. “I believe you. But there is the matter of the policemen. One dead. One shot.”
“I—I didn’t kill him.” Adam stuttered.
Robert was glad to see Adam’s cockiness waver. He’d approached all of this like nothing could touch him. Maybe magic and spirits w
ere real, but that didn’t mean Adam could do as he wanted.
“We know, Mr. Binder,” Ms. Geen said. “We have the security footage. Did you know that all records access is tracked by federal law?” Pausing, she sighed. “The hospital looks very bad in light of the officer’s actions. Legal asked me to speak with you.”
“So you need to cover your ass,” Adam said.
“Adam.” Robert almost kicked his brother.
“Exactly,” she said. “So I am going to do you two a favor.”
Adam bristled. “What sort of favor?”
“You told the duty station you were looking for HR, for work. It just so happens we’re hiring,” she said. She slid a clipboard with some papers across the desk toward Adam. A job application lay on top.
“What?” Adam and Robert asked together.
“Come work for us and your brother’s job will be safe,” she said, clicking a ballpoint pen and rolling it across the desk. “It gives us some deniability as to why you were there.”
“That’s pretty flimsy,” Robert said. He didn’t know why he was protesting. He’d been trying to talk Adam into working at the hospital the day of the shooting, but something about this didn’t sit right.
“It’s the best we’ve got,” Geen said, her lips pressed tight together. “In addition, you’ll agree not to sue the hospital and we’ll have you under a nondisclosure agreement.”
“What kind of job?” Adam asked, eyes narrow.
But he wasn’t arguing.
Robert swallowed his own doubts. He didn’t want to lose this job.
“Maintenance,” she said.
Adam didn’t speak as they left the office. He seethed, quietly until reach the parking lot. Robert unlocked the Audi with two clicks of the fob. The doors had barely closed when Adam said, “You knew about this, didn’t you? It’s what you wanted all along.”
Robert seethed and started the car. “You seemed okay with it back there.”
“It’s a way into the hospital,” Adam said. “That’s all.”
Robert couldn’t argue with that. It would allow Adam to do whatever kind of investigation he was about, maybe save Annie, but he couldn’t help but gently add: “It could be real. You could stay with us for a while, get your own place.”
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