She pushed open a door to a gilded ballroom.
Golden mermaids held up a mirrored ceiling. A stage curtained in red took up one long wall. The floor shone, freshly waxed. It reminded Adam of the elven court. He wondered if the leprechauns meant it as an insult, that the place was a gaudy reflection of Silver’s vintage ballroom. He checked again, but no, they still hadn’t crossed over.
“And sidhe are snobs,” said a voice with an Irish accent.
Argent lifted her hand with a sigh. The door behind them closed and clicked. They did not shift to spirit, but a short man appeared.
Dressed in a red suit, he sat alone at the center table. A matching red baseball cap rested on the table.
“Hail, Guardian,” he said to Argent.
“Hail,” she replied coolly.
“Our choice of anchor is not to your liking?” he asked. “I thought you appreciated history.”
“We appreciate preservation,” she said.
“This place has been here for half a century,” the leprechaun said, waving a hand to the gaudy ballroom. “Is that not long enough to be worthy of preservation in your eyes?”
Argent sighed and took the offered seat. “Shall we get down to business?”
“If we must,” he said. “These are your mortals?”
Vic opened his mouth to say something but Adam held up an arm barring it across Vic’s chest. Vic looked at him, but Adam shook his head and said, “We are not her vassals.”
“They are,” Argent said, not commenting on their exchange.
“Argent said you have a package for me,” Adam said.
The man extended a hand toward Adam. “Seamus.”
“Adam Binder.” He took the offered hand. Usually immortals went in for titles and lengthy pleas. He liked that the leprechaun didn’t, even as he distrusted it, remembering Argent’s warning about unsavory elements.
“Let’s get to it then,” Seamus said. “I have a package. It’s been waiting for you.”
“What’s your price?” Adam asked.
It wouldn’t be good. It might even be deadly, but he’d come this far. He’d pay it, he realized, refusing to glance at Vic, though he had so much more to lose now.
35
Adam
“I appreciate your directness,” Seamus said. “But this delivery was paid for in advance.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You did someone a favor, a kindness,” Seamus said. “And they paid the price for you.”
Adam blinked.
“He said his name was Bill.”
“The Saurians?” Adam asked.
Seamus nodded.
“I was hoping to steer you into a bargain,” Seamus said.
“Why?” Vic asked.
He’d tensed, going into what Adam thought of as his cop mode.
“Adam is stirring up a lot of mischief,” Seamus said. He grinned. His teeth were thick and yellow, like a horse who’d chain-smoked his entire life. “I could use somebody like that.” Adam counted to three.
I might have a new contender for which immortals are the biggest pricks, he thought.
Whatever Seamus would ask for, it would be too much.
Adam shook his head.
Seamus snapped his fingers and the curtains on the little stage parted. “But that’s all that was paid for.”
A long box stood on the stage.
Biting down on a seething breath, Adam climbed onto the stage and stared down at it. A note, addressed in plain letter to Adam Lee Binder, was taped to the top.
“Go on,” Seamus said. “It won’t explode.”
Adam kicked the box so it slid to the edge of the stage. He knelt over it as Vic joined him.
He read aloud.
Dear Adam:
If you’ve followed the trail I’ve left, and the trees speak true, then you’ve found this in time.
There is still time to save her.
You will know what to do.
Adam read it a second time, trying to absorb the words. He didn’t recognize the handwriting, couldn’t remember his father’s scrawl. It wasn’t signed.
Adam took a long breath, let it out. Something he’d held onto for years went with it. The warlock was his father. The proof lay in the yellowed pages attached to the letter. They weren’t magic themselves, but he recognized their contents right away.
A recipe for bone, glass, and bog iron.
It was the binding charm, hand-written in a rushed, shaky script. Adam read the note again, read the recipe again. On the page it seemed almost innocuous, but it was black. This magic would taint his, rot it. He would never use it, so why would the warlock insist he have the recipe?
“What’s in the box?” Vic asked, stirring him from a stupor.
Adam parted the cardboard flaps, expecting to find more horrors, bones or something foul, but the package contained a compound bow, slightly used by the look of it, and several arrows. Adam lifted one into the light.
“No heads,” he said, running a finger over the open slot in the arrow’s shaft.
“Can you even use that thing?” Vic asked.
“Yeah. We grew up with them,” Adam said.
It wasn’t like guns. The memories were pleasant. Bobby had taught him to shoot a bow, and they’d shot arrow after arrow into a stack of old hay bales or, when he got better, at the slender scrub oaks. Adam had enjoyed it, and Bobby never made him shoot at anything alive. He wished his feelings for his brother weren’t so complicated, so mixed up. Because there was good in there, along with all the anger and hurt. If it swung strongly enough either way, he could walk away or be at peace with having Bobby in his life.
But neither the bow nor the note answered all of his questions.
Annie was still possessed.
They were still missing something. Someone had bound Mercy, the spirit. Someone had broken the seal. Adam looked at the box’s flaps. No return address, not that he’d expected one.
“I know who sent it, and I know who paid for it,” Adam asked, eyes flicking to Seamus. “How long have you had it?”
“Wrong question,” Seamus said, eyes gleeful.
“Okay. Where did this package come from?”
Seamus smiled, and Adam knew he’d asked the right question.
“That’s a bit of information,” Seamus said. “I’m not the sort to deal and tell.”
“What do you want for it?” Adam asked.
Vic and Argent exchanged a glance.
“Adam . . .” Argent cautioned.
“We’ve come this far,” he said, and he was getting tired of playing nice. “Seamus has his reasons, don’t you? You wouldn’t tease it out if you didn’t want something. So what is it? What is it you want from me?”
“A bounty,” Seamus said. “A head.”
“The warlock,” Adam guessed, spine straightening.
“He can’t be allowed to continue,” Seamus said, the lilt in his voice clipped.
“Never piss off your dealer,” Vic muttered.
Adam’s father, missing all these years, responsible for so much pain. He remembered the pool cue, the Saurians, the other charms he’d hunted down. Each had held a bit of pain, a bit of ache inflicted on a magical being.
“Deal,” he said.
He felt the bargain seal, the magic locking in place. If he failed to deliver, there would be consequences.
Argent looked away, her expression sad or angry, maybe both.
“Payment came through the Hanged Tree,” Seamus said. “It smelled like sunflowers and sweet tea.”
Ice crept into Adam’s veins, but he felt for the thread of the watching power, the presence he’d felt from time to time. And there it was. Now that he knew what to look for, the flavor of the magic, it was familiar, so damn familiar. Adam had
known it since Sue had introduced them all those years ago.
“Sara.”
“Who’s Sara?” Vic asked.
“Not who I thought she was,” Adam said.
He remembered that first visit with Sue. She’d traded a peach cobbler recipe for the secret to Sara’s pie crust. Looking back now, Adam thought maybe he had detected a bit of wariness in his aunt, a bit of fear that he’d mistaken for caution or shyness at the time. Adam wondered how much his great aunt knew, if that was why she hadn’t called him back.
“Or what,” Argent added.
“We need to go,” Adam said, lifting the box. Though long, it weighed very little. “Now.”
Argent nodded to Seamus and said, “Guardian.”
“Guardian,” he answered, somehow making it sound sarcastic.
Adam almost flipped the leprechaun off as they left the ballroom. He ignored the restaurant’s carnival atmosphere, the games and face-painting booth, and followed Argent to the exit.
“Someone please tell me what’s going on,” Vic said.
“We’ve been played,” Adam said. “By someone I thought I knew.”
They piled into the car. Adam put the box in the back seat with Vic.
Argent gripped the steering wheel so hard Adam thought she might crush it.
“I cannot go with you,” she said.
“Why not?” Adam asked.
“There are accords between us, more rules,” Argent said, her sharp features bent with anger—no, concern, or even worry.
Force poured off of her.
Adam had never seen her upset. He risked laying a hand to her shoulder. It was that or have her go full-on queen and kill him and Vic.
“It’s okay,” Adam said. “I don’t think she’ll hurt us. She needs us. She wants us there.”
“So I’m coming?” Vic asked. From his expression in the rearview mirror, Adam didn’t think it was really a question.
“I think you have to,” Adam said.
*****
Argent dropped them a short walk from the Hanging Tree. Vic gaped at the scene around them, the ever-present emerald moon, the twilight sky, and the unreachable hills on the horizon.
“You can see it?” Adam asked.
“Yeah, it’s wild,” Vic said, reaching for Adam’s hand.
But still Adam had no sense of magic around Vic. He shouldn’t have Sight. Unless the power was so subtle that even Adam couldn’t detect it. Another kind of void.
Adam’s heart, despite all the weights on it, leapt to see Vic here.
The slow light played over his skin, deepening its golden color. He glowed, just a bit more beautiful than in the mortal world.
“How do you feel?” Adam asked.
“My chest doesn’t hurt,” Vic said.
Adam wished he had time to show it all to Vic. Maybe he could, when it was done.
“Just remember it’s real,” Adam said. “We can die here.”
“Is it dangerous?” Vic asked, eyeing the landscape with narrowed eyes. The grass here was red, like fresh brush strokes on canvas. Adam felt no breeze, but the stalks waved, alive and possibly listening.
“A little,” Adam said, shrugging. “It depends on where we go. There’s a lot to explain.”
It occurred to Adam that he could teach Vic, explain the spirit realm like Silver had explained it to him. It could even be fun. If they got the time.
They reached the tree with its grim nooses and bark blackened from evil acts. The Reapers, working their field of bright sunflowers, came into view. They paused, ceased their work and straightened. As one, their skull masks turned to stare.
“What are they?” Vic asked. “And what are they looking at?”
“Reapers,” Adam said. “And I think they’re looking at you.”
Knowing it, admitting it, filled Adam with cold. He squeezed Vic’s hand, more for his own sake than Vic’s.
Vic took in the hooded shapes. Adam felt him tense. His palm sweated a little against Adam’s.
“They’re familiar,” he whispered.
“One came for you, that day in the hospital,” Adam said. “They’ve been watching you, waiting outside your house.”
Vic took a step forward, like he might let Adam go. Adam pulled him back with a gentle jerk of his arm and asked, “What is it?”
“I don’t know,” Vic said. He looked lost. “I feel like I should help them. They need help. My help.”
“You mean, like they’re in trouble?” Adam asked. He scanned the horizon for danger.
“No,” Vic said, meeting Adam’s gaze. He looked afraid. “Like there’s work to do.”
Cold pressed itself into the center of Adam’s back. He’d saved Vic, hadn’t he?
What had he really done?
“Come with me,” Adam said. “Stay close.”
They moved along the path to Sara’s trailer. The Reapers kept their eyes fixed on Vic as he and Adam passed.
You can’t have him, Adam thought. I fought one of you before. I’ll fight all of you now if I have to. You. Can’t. Have. Him.
Adam thought it over and over, as if the thought alone could make it true. He pulled Vic past the fields of scythe-wielding spirits.
This time, Adam didn’t hesitate to move past the split rail fence and approach the trailer. Sara watched them. She sat back in her chair, rocked a little, and smiled.
“What have you brought me, Adam Binder?” she asked. “One of mine?”
“Yours?” Adam asked.
She smiled, stood, and never seemed to stop standing. Sara stretched. Blackness unfurled around her, cloaking her, cloaking everything. The light, always so liquid in the spirit realm, fled from her.
Adam staggered back, tugging Vic with him, but the Reapers had drifted closer. They formed a wall of black robes and bone masks. He whirled from side to side, but came back to Sara as a long robe of shadows coalesced around her.
The door to the trailer opened. The blackness beyond was deeper, more perfect, than anything Adam had ever seen.
“Won’t you come in?” Death asked, her voice unchanged, still pleasant, still laced with southern kindness. Sara’s spectacles still perched on her face, though no nose held them up.
Vic gripped Adam’s hand. He looked like he might bolt. Behind them, the Reapers had not moved, but Adam did not doubt they could. Sara hadn’t been keeping them back with wards or spells. She was Death. She commanded them.
Forward, through the darkness, was the only path, regardless of who had led them to it. Adam held tight to Vic. Whatever lay beyond, he wouldn’t go alone. Wouldn’t send Vic alone.
“It’s going to be all right,” he whispered. I think.
Hands held tight, they stepped through the door.
36
Adam
Adam had thought Sara’s trailer would contain the goddesses he’d always sensed around her. But he knew now that was camouflage, a way to disguise her true nature.
So he wasn’t surprised when they stepped out of a crypt and into a cemetery. It looked old. The trees, crooked, were nearly dead. A grove of Egyptian-style obelisks overlooked grave markers carved to look like tree trunks. There was even a log cabin. It smelled terrible. A power plant rose in the distance and an auto salvage yard across the street.
“Is that an oil refinery?” he muttered.
They weren’t in the mortal world, and they weren’t in spirit. This was somewhere between, another layer in the sandwich, but just beneath the mortal plane. Sights, sounds, and smells, especially smells, leaked through. Adam suspected this was where Death did her work, where she’d been watching him from. No wonder her magic, her real magic, was so hard to spot.
“What is that?” Adam asked, gagging. “It smells like sewage and dog food.”
“It is actually,” Sara sa
id. “The sewage treatment plant and the pet food factory are both nearby. Not having a nose, I tend to forget.”
“Where are we?” Vic asked.
“Riverside Cemetery. Fascinating history,” Sara said. “We should go for burritos when our business is concluded. There’s a great place a little upwind. Your mother would approve, Vicente.”
“You know my mother?” he asked.
“I know everyone,” she said, her voice still sunny and southern. “And everyone’s mother.”
Adam had known Sara for years. And yet, he’d never bought anything from her. The price was too high. Had Aunt Sue? Had anyone? Or was it all just a ruse?
Sara resumed her human form, though she still wore the black robe and her steps left no press in the short, dead grass beneath their feet. She exuded no power at all, appearing even more normal than Adam. In some ways, she felt like power’s opposite. A black hole. Like the spirit, but not starved or mad, just naturally consuming, the terminus. The end.
Adam inched closer to Vic.
“You’re Death,” Vic said.
Sara shrugged. “Yes.”
“And all of this is your doing,” Adam said. “The spirit, the broken seal?”
“Yes,” she said. “I paid the warlock to break the seal.”
She’d known him. She knew who he was. He wanted to ask so many questions, but what came out was, “What does Vic have to do with any of it?”
“Oh, he’s just a bonus,” Sara said. She produced a glass of iced tea from the air. That little fold in space didn’t cause as much as a ripple to Adam’s perceptions.
She looked at Vic. “You’re a Reaper, Vicente. You work for me now.”
“That’s not—” Adam said. “No.”
Sara narrowed her gaze on him. “It’s your own doing. When you interfered and saved him, he joined my team. That’s how it works. You broke a rule and there are consequences for that. Consequences for both of you.”
Adam had known of course. Even with their connection, the days in the hospital, he’d known the price had to be higher. Adam put his hand behind him, tried not to exhale or show his relief when Vic tightened his hold on Adam’s hand, but Adam felt him tremble.
“What does this mean, exactly?” Vic asked.
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