by Devon Monk
Leaving without an answer. Not okay.
“I’m going to check on Davy,” I said.
“Wait,” Zay said.
“I could help,” Collins offered.
“I’m just going to make sure he’s settled,” I said to both of them. I put my hand on Zay’s hand and added, “I’ll be right back.”
Collins shrugged, but Shame gave me a hard look. “Not getting into trouble without us, are you, love?”
“No.” And just in case he didn’t believe me: “I promise. Eat. Make sure Zay eats or drinks something, okay?”
“Want me to feed you with a spoon airplane, Zay?” Shame asked.
“Shut up, Shame,” Zay said.
I headed up the stairs. Terric passed me, caught my gaze, then made his way to the table I’d been sitting at. He started talking quietly with Shame and Zayvion, who, I was relieved to hear, was answering Terric’s questions in a voice that was a little steadier.
We were all recovering fairly quickly, considering everything we’d just done. St. Johns always had a way of making me feel better, making me feel good, safe, when magic was making me pay the price. I didn’t know why—maybe because there was no magic in St. Johns. Or maybe because, even broken-down and neglected by the rest of the city, it had always been one of my favorite neighborhoods.
I just liked it here.
The hall at the top of the stairs was well lit. It wasn’t hard to find the room I’d stayed in before, even though I’d lost most of that memory channeling the wild magic storm. Luckily Zay and Nola had filled me in on what they knew. I paused outside the door, which was half open.
I pressed my fingertips against the old wood that had been darkened by years of hands pressing against it. The old door swung inward silently.
The room didn’t seem familiar to me. Not even the smells. And seeing Davy there, solid in the bed, with Cody sitting beside him, one hand on his upper arm, really wasn’t familiar. A soft pink light spread out in a glow around Cody’s hand. The light whisked across Davy’s arm, and curled up toward his heart.
It was like the light that Cody—the alive Cody—had used on Davy back at the den when he’d first been bitten by Anthony. Back before Collins had carved the halfway-to-death spells into him. The pink light also looked a hell of a lot like the crystal in Shame’s chest. I knew my dad had found that crystal in St. Johns. I wondered if the pink glow had anything to do with St. Johns or with the crystal.
“He’s in between,” Cody said. “Like me, but not like me.”
I walked into the room, stopped next to the bed. “Yes. Collins scarred those spells into him to try to save him from the poison the magic carries.”
“The magic is bad,” Cody noted.
“Is there anything you can do for him? To help him?”
Cody stared at Davy for a moment or two. “No.” Then he looked up at me. “You’re right. Magic is poisoned. Even though that shouldn’t happen. Magic can’t go bad.”
“But it has. And the poison is spreading and making people sick.”
“Not here,” Cody said. “Here at Mama’s. Magic doesn’t make anyone sick here.”
“There is no magic in St. Johns, Cody.”
“But I thought—” He frowned. “Maybe you’re right.”
I didn’t know what it was like to exist as a ghost, but Pike had told me the living world was confusing through the eyes of the undead. He said magic pushed and pulled at you, and twisted and turned in rivers of darkness and light that made the living world difficult to navigate. Cody seemed to navigate it pretty well, but I figured that was mostly owing to the lack of magic in St. Johns.
“Outside of this part of town, all the magic is like that.” I pointed at Davy. “Poisoned. People are dying. The Veiled are rising, just like you said they were. Magic is poisoning them too, and they are biting people, possessing people, and that’s how the poison is spreading.”
“It kills them,” he finished for me. “The people?”
“Yes.”
He looked out the narrow window. Out at the night and the street. No magic here in St. Johns meant nothing but electric lights burning in the darkness. No spells, no neon glyphs, no crayon Illusions. Just a broken-down neighborhood in a broken-down part of town.
“I’ll help you,” he said. “I’ll try to help you. But I can’t do it without all of me.”
“You mean you want the living you here too?” I asked.
“Yes.” He looked away from the window. “The… spells I carved into Stone will unlock only if I’m whole. The living me won’t remember it all. They’re hard spells to break, to… untangle. And I’ll need to be in his mind—I mean my mind—and use my hands to make it work.”
“Why did you put those spells on Stone? Is he important in some way?”
“Has Daniel told you anything about Stone?” he asked.
“Only that he is an Animate and might be able to help us isolate and filter the poison from magic. Is there something more he should have told me?”
“Maybe not,” Cody said with what might have been a sigh if he could breathe. “When I was alive…” He shook his head. “Everything made more sense. I made Stone to hold magic. No one else had made an Animate for… years.” He smiled. “And he can hold magic. That was the experiment. I didn’t want… anyone to use him for something bad.”
Shame had told me the art and skill for casting the kind of spells it took to make an inanimate object alive, or at least lifelike, was thought to have been long lost. But Cody had managed to do it.
Shame had also told me Cody was a real hell-raiser when he was younger and had gotten in with the wrong crowd, and then fallen into the wrong kind of debt with them. Maybe this spell, this walking, burbling, almost-alive gargoyle had been his proprietary intellectual property, and the chip he was going to use to bargain his way out of trouble.
Whatever the reason, I was beginning to believe fixing Stone was going to take more than just putting Cody the ghost and Cody the living in the same room with the gargoyle.
“When you said you couldn’t help us without all of you, what, exactly, do you need?” I asked.
“I need to be fixed.”
“Fixed?”
“Zayvion has to Unclose me so I can be whole again.”
He didn’t say it like he was sad, or worried, or particularly unhappy about being Closed. Still, it was something that had always bothered me.
“Zay told me he didn’t mean to break your mind when he Closed you.”
That got a small smile out of him. “He didn’t. I mean, he Closed me. Twice.” Here the smile slipped up to a grin. “I had that coming. Both times, really. This might be a shock, but I haven’t always played on the right side of the law.”
“The Authority’s law, or the law of the land?”
“Both.”
“But Closing you twice broke your mind and your spirit,” I said. “Didn’t it?”
He shook his head. “Zayvion didn’t break me.”
“Who did?”
“Jingo Jingo.”
Well, now I had another reason to hate the man. “Do you know why?”
“He didn’t tell me. And I was in too much pain. I think he was under orders. He wanted me to… stay with him. To hold on to him like I’m holding on to this place, to Mama, but I wouldn’t do it. I held on to myself instead.”
“You haunted yourself?”
He shrugged. “That sounds silly, doesn’t it?”
“No, I think that was a good choice. Will Cody be able to hear you if you talk to him?”
“If he’s here, it will be easier, I think. I could try to talk to him now, but it wouldn’t be easy.”
“I’ll call Nola and ask her to bring him. You’re going to have to help us talk him into this. Talk him into being Unclosed.”
“He doesn’t always listen to me, even when he can hear me.” He stood up—well, kind of floated up. “We’ve been apart for so long, we are almost different people now.”
An image, a memory, flashed through my mind. Of my dad, but not the father I had known, the father who was still in my head. No, it was the image of a younger him, a kinder him, the ghost and soul part of him that had been in death all these years, the part of him I had seen when I crossed into death. He had seemed kinder than the father who shared my head. He had seemed capable of love. Of loving me.
I wondered again why Dad had a broken soul and now, looking at Cody, I wondered if someone had broken Dad’s mind, like Cody was broken.
But before I could ask, Dad said, No. Then he turned away, far enough I could not feel him in my mind.
Cody tipped his head to the side. “Does your father talk to you a lot?”
“Sometimes,” I said. “You can hear him?”
He nodded. “Does he bother you?”
“Endlessly.” I walked over to the door. “I’ll call Nola. Will I see you again?”
He glanced back at Davy, then nodded. “I’ll come downstairs. Mama’s there. I like her.”
I stepped out into the hall, and stopped short. There was a man standing there, near enough I could make out his military-cropped hair and pale eyes. No, not a man, or at least not anymore. A ghost.
“Pike?” I said, sorrow catching in my chest at seeing my friend and Hound mentor again.
“Thought I’d check on Davy,” he said. “Took me a while to find him. How goes the war?”
“Not great,” I said. “We—I lost Anthony. I’m so sorry, Pike. I tried.”
“I know,” he said. “I’ve seen him. He doesn’t blame you, if that’s any help.”
I nodded. It did help, but it didn’t make me regret his death any less. “Davy’s hurt and changed. We had to use magic on him to keep him alive. Mostly alive. I’m looking for a way to reverse what happened to him. I’ll find a way to fix it.”
Pike walked toward me. “Some things can’t be fixed, Allie,” he said. “I’d tell you to stop worrying, but you never listen.”
“I listen,” I said as he paused, then pushed his hand through the closed door. “I’ve always listened to you.”
He looked over his shoulder, most of him already halfway through the door, and gave me a smile. “Then stop worrying. And eat something. You’ll be no use to anyone exhausted.”
He walked the rest of the way through the door. In a second or two, Cody stepped out of the room. “Pike’s a nice man,” he said.
“You know him?”
Cody shrugged. “I’ve seen him. Not while I was alive. He tries to look after Davy. I’m glad he’s here.”
“Me too,” I said. And I meant that. Davy had always looked up to Pike. It meant a lot to me, and I think to Davy, to know Pike still had his back.
I headed down the stairs, half a dead guy in my head, and half a ghost following on my heels.
“What were you doing to Davy?” I asked as my shoes made a soft shuffle against the old wooden stairs.
“Just sitting with him,” Cody said. “He’s… lost.”
“What do you mean?”
“Not dead. Not all the way alive. It can be scary. I thought he might like some company.”
“And the pink light?”
We had made it to the bottom of the stairs. I turned and looked at him.
“What pink light?” He really looked confused.
“In your hands?”
Still the blank look.
“When you were touching him. There was pink light around your hands.”
“Really?” He looked down at his hands. “Are you sure?”
I shook my head. “No. I’ve been seeing a lot of things I don’t usually see.”
“Oh, don’t feel bad,” Shame said as he walked over to me. “Seeing things isn’t nearly as crazy as talking to things no one else can see.” He handed me a cup of coffee and glanced over my shoulder, his gaze resting eerily close to where Cody was standing. “How’s it going, Cody?”
“Tell him he still owes me money,” Cody said.
“He said you owe him money.”
Shame blinked, and the smile faded. “How much?” he asked me, his eyes bright and sharp. He was obviously feeling better.
“Tell him he knows how much,” Cody said. “I wrote it on the wall so he’d never forget.”
“He said he wrote it on the wall so you wouldn’t forget.”
Shame drew his head back a bit and searched the empty space over my shoulder again. A smile slowly crept over his face.
“And that,” I said, taking a sip of coffee, savoring the warmth and deep, rich flavor, “is the end of me being your private ghost whisperer.”
“Hold on, now,” Shame said. “I think you’re on to something, Beckstrom. We could make money with that little talent of yours.”
I groaned and walked toward Zayvion, who nudged a chair with his foot away from the table he and Terric were sitting at.
“I will not charge money to talk to dead people,” I said, taking the chair.
“Not just talk to dead people. It could be so much more.”
“No.”
“You haven’t thought this through.” Shame followed me to the table. “Besides, I’d be the one doing all the work. I’d set up the jobs, maybe send the ghost to look in on something, maybe a friendly hand of cards, or the combination to a safe, or maybe who’s sleeping with who—some such thing—and all you’d have to do is tell me what he saw. Then”—he snapped his fingers—“easy money.”
“Shame, I will not blackmail people with the dead.” I sat and took another drink of coffee.
“It’s not like the ghosts would be losing any money. Come on, now,” Shame coaxed. “For the good of others? We could investigate criminal activity—like private detectives. Bet we could find out who’s embezzling from your company.”
“No.”
“Zayvion, tell her this is the opportunity of a lifetime,” Shame said. “If I were a ghost, I’d be proud to be serving on the side of the alive-and-wells.”
“Shame,” Zayvion said, low but even, “we’re not even sure if you’re on the side of the alive-and-wells now. I don’t think your death would do a lot to realign your moral compass.”
“Hey,” Shame said. “We all have a bit of darkness in our souls, don’t we? It’s what makes us family.”
“It’s what makes us able to tolerate you,” Terric said.
“So funny.” Shame punched Terric in the arm.
“Ow!” Terric rubbed his arm. “Maybe you ought to try dying so we can find out.”
“You’d miss me if I were dead,” Shame said. “Wouldn’t you, Ter?” He plunked down in the empty chair, staring straight into Terric’s glare.
They sat there for a second. I wondered if they could tell what the other was thinking. I knew they felt what the other felt, so that punch in the arm must have also hurt Shame. Not that it looked like it bothered him.
“With every damn beat of my heart,” Terric ground out. I noted he had his right hand closed, and out of the way of Shame’s sight.
Shame blinked. He hadn’t expected that answer. “Liar,” he said.
Terric just stared at him. “Think so?”
Shame frowned. Terric didn’t look away.
Finally, Shame scowled. “You used to be fun to be around, Terric,” he said, breaking eye contact, and scowling down at his coffee instead. “What happened to you?”
“You, Flynn,” Terric said. “You happened to me.” He looked away, and sat back, taking a drink out of his coffee cup at the exact same time, with the exact same motion, as Shame.
Neither of them seemed to notice that they were practically mirror images of each other. And I wasn’t going to be the person who pointed that out.
“Does anyone have a phone I can use?” I asked loud enough everyone in the room could hear me.
“I think we left Collins’ phone with Victor,” Maeve said.
“Who are you calling?” Zay asked.
“Nola. We need her to bring Cody here so he can help us with Stone. Ma
ma,” I said. “Is there a pay phone in the neighborhood?”
Mama had been standing at the counter, wiping down water glasses that didn’t need any wiping. She obviously just needed something to keep her hands busy while she, and three of her Boys—who all had guns—kept an eye on us.
“My phone,” she said.
“What?” She didn’t like anyone using her phone. Certainly didn’t like me using her phone.
“You use it, Allie girl.” She nodded toward the phone. “No one follows that line. No one hears it.”
Well, maybe that explained the crappy buzzy landline. I’d always thought it had something to do with St. Johns being the only place in Portland without magic. Mama had once been involved with Perry Hoskil—my father’s business partner before my dad had forced him out of the company and into bankruptcy. It was whispered that Perry had more than just a small part in inventing the Beckstrom storm rods and many of the initial magical technologies. Technologies that had made my father rich. It was possible he would have known how to set up an untraceable landline.
Or maybe I was reaching. Maybe one of her Boys was handy with espionage and had jimmied an easy line blocker.
“Thank you.” I walked over to the phone hung on the wall by the doors to the kitchen, picked up the receiver, and hesitated with my fingers above the keys.
I was pretty sure Nola was still staying with Detective Stotts. I was pretty sure that if he had been found, if he was awake, if he’d gotten over Zay Unclosing him, he’d be with her. He wasn’t a stupid man. He’d expect me to call her and he’d monitor those calls. He might even talk her into doing something “for my own good.”
Which meant I was very likely about to bring Detective Stotts, his crew, and, hells, the rest of the police force down on us.
There had to be a better way.
I dialed a different number.
It rang once. Then, “This is Sid.”
One of my Hounds.
“It’s me,” I said.
“Bad line,” he said.
“I know. Can you tell Nola I need to see her and Cody in St. Johns? You know Mama’s place?”
“Want them there now?”
“Back door. Faster the better. Police are looking for me. And she’s been staying with—”
“I know where she is. Give me twenty minutes.” He hung up.