The thick metal instrument scraped across his teeth. The sound echoed deafeningly in his head, like the rasp of a file across steel. He couldn’t close his mouth or move his head; something held his mouth open so wide it felt like his jaw would pop and break if pushed another centimeter. Helpless. Trapped. His eyes rolled back, the tension in his head spreading to the rest of his prone body. Then there came a tugging, hard and insistent, and he felt the first tooth tear away and the fast gush of pain and blood that followed, flooding his mouth with copper.
A speed bump knocked him out of the dream. How had he fallen asleep over such a short car ride? He must have been more exhausted than he realized. The pain lingered, and he grabbed his jaw, running his tongue anxiously around his teeth. All there. Still, it filled him with a second’s hesitation.
Then he realized the cabbie was staring at him.
“Uh, hello? You gonna tell me where to go next or just hope that I’m a mind reader?”
Dan shook the phone out of his pocket, opening the GPS again to zero in on their location.
“Right. Sorry. You want a left here, then three more blocks down Rampart. It should be on the right.”
He had waited until Jordan and Abby were both passed out cold in Steve’s hospital room. They were curled up like puppies on the shallow chairs in there, and Dan had slinked away while he could, watching early morning shock the city awake with an orange and purple sky.
Now the cab rolled down the sleepy city block, slowing and slowing until the tires squeaked. Dan leaned into the window, another spasm of fear tightening his stomach, making him reconsider his present course.
Oliver hadn’t responded to his text from the night before, but there was no telling what had happened after the police arrived. He and Sabrina were probably busy trying to clean up the mess at the store. Either way, Dan had made his decision. There was something hidden in that old funeral home, and he wanted to know what it was.
“Thanks,” he said, shoving a fistful of cash at the driver. “You don’t have to wait.”
Outside on the curb, a final instinctive urge told him to tell someone, anyone, where he had gone.
“Hey,” he texted Oliver. He was the one with the gun, after all, and he was one of the few people who wouldn’t be mad at Dan upon receipt of this message. Dan sent his present address and a word that he was pretty sure he knew who was responsible for trashing the store, and he was at their base now.
He checked up and down the street, half for masked lunatics waiting to ambush him and half for any random excuse not to go inside.
The coast was clear.
He didn’t exactly have Jordan’s skills with breaking and entering, but hanging out with him had given him a few tricks. The door at the bottom of the steps was locked, but there was a window a little ways down that looked flimsy, and it appeared to connect to the same room. Dan went over to a pile of fruit crates that had been left out with a heap of garbage in the alley, and he tore off a wooden slat, returning to jam the thin piece of wood under the window frame. At first the window wouldn’t budge, but after a few sharp jabs, the board dug into the gap, and just as he hoped, the crossbar on the inside was rotted and soft. With a few more punches down on the slat, the window jumped free and he was able to push it open the rest of the way.
He checked one more time up and down the alley. A single cat watched him from a fence separating the back of the building from the others behind it. But even the cat didn’t seem much interested in what he was doing. Dan swiveled, knocking the window screen into the room with one hard kick. But in so doing, he lost his balance, toppling inside and swallowing a panicky shriek as he fell into what felt like a bin full of old bath towels.
He popped up, gracelessly rolling out of the bin and onto the floor. Frantic, he beat at his arms, dust flying off his sleeves in choking clouds. The giant box he’d fallen into spilled over with old velvet cloths that looked like table runners, most likely decorations for the caskets or altars. Nothing strange about that. In fact, nothing at all about the large, open room he had fallen into seemed strange. It was only slightly lower than street level, with cobwebbed chandeliers and the kind of classic, sophisticated paneling and trim that recalled the old world. He could just imagine the hundreds, maybe thousands, of families that had come and gone through here over the years, grieving and saying final words. Dark stripes on the floor indicated where the rows of benches had been for mourners, and the carpet walkway that had led to the casket was still there, though now badly in need of vacuuming and slightly askew.
The dirty windows allowed in just enough light for him to safely navigate the halls to the other rooms. He went right, following a thin corridor toward the back of the building. The only other way would be to go down to the front foyer, which seemed to be the path to the main door. He stepped lightly, wary of the creaking floorboards. The building had been abandoned for years, judging by the thick clumps of dust that flew up in his wake and shivered down from the walls just from the light breeze of his passing.
At the end of the corridor, an open door waited.
Dan paused in the frame, taking in the floor-to-ceiling wooden cabinets of an office. An imposing wooden desk stretched across most of the floor, long-abandoned cushioned chairs left in their original positions. This could have been where the owners arranged the services and sold the caskets. It was strange that the furniture remained. The desk was heavy, sure, but probably worth moving if it could be sold to an antique dealership.
That thought, however, quickly fled as he felt an eerie chill coalesce behind him. It wasn’t just a random air duct coming to life, but a concentration of cold energy. He turned, feeling his heart convulse and freeze and then pump again. His mouth hung open a little as he came face-to-face one more time with his father.
But Marcus didn’t notice him. He passed through Dan like a sigh, striding quickly into the office. Dan turned and watched, transfixed, as the shape of his father attacked drawer after drawer. The drawers in the present didn’t react, but clearly Marcus had been searching for something.
“You’re sure it’s here, Evie?” he said, the dark baritone of his voice tinged on the edges with odd reverberation. The words echoed within themselves, somehow, as if straining to travel through time to Dan. “Just help me look, Goddamn it! We don’t have time.”
Then he paused, standing from where he had been kneeling to inspect a cabinet, and turned toward something or someone. Marcus hugged what should have been another body, but was simply air. “I didn’t mean to shout at you. That was . . . This whole mess just has me on edge. Promise me we can leave. Promise me we can get out of town once you’re satisfied.”
His father leaned in to kiss someone, smiling sadly, and then went back to searching the cabinet drawers. Dan inched closer, wanting to see his father up close, wanting to confirm he was really seeing this. No quick blip of the mind could do this. It was so clear, clearer and crisper than any vision he had stumbled into before. Maybe because it was more recent than the moment in the Arlington School, or because the connection was that much stronger here. He didn’t understand it, but he watched, his chest tight with loss.
“You found it? Oh, thank God. Show me. . . .” Marcus whirled around, crossing to the other side of the office. Dan watched his father reach for a specific row of cabinets and yank at the handle. “The label’s worn off, but this has to be right. Wait. What was that? Did you hear that? Evie, we have to go. Just . . . Damn it, Evie! Leave it! We don’t have time!”
And he could swear his father—no more corporeal than blue smoke, but still his father—turned and looked him directly in the eye. “We have to leave. There’s no time!”
Just like before, he vanished as abruptly as he had appeared. Dan shivered, frightened by the thought that he could conjure those memories just by walking in the right place at the right time. But last time his father had shown him something—maybe this time it would work, too.
His hand trembled as he pulled open the l
ast cabinet Marcus had touched. Alphabetized folder tabs sprung up, aged but legible. They fluttered softly as he ran his hand over them. He flipped through the tabs, stopping at ARMAINE—ASPEN.
One folder stuck up at a funny angle, never quite pushed all the way back down after his mother had tried to take it. Just like his father had said, the label was missing, leaving it anonymous but for the doodle someone had drawn in pen on the outside. It looked like a squished smiley face.
Dan glanced through the open doorway that led back to the corridor. Still alone. He quickly grabbed the folder, trying to decide whether to take it and go or read it right there. His curiosity got the better of him, and he pulled out the top sheets. They were funeral arrangements, all for various people named Ash. The first few were all people who’d been born in the sixties, which could easily have made them members of his mother’s immediate family. Maybe sisters, a cousin . . . God. All of them dead, most within a few years of one another, between 1990 and 1995. The funeral director had scribbled notes about the deceased—automobile accident, automobile accident, accidental drowning, drug overdose. . . .
While suggestive, it didn’t explain anything for sure. It didn’t prove anything. There had to be something he wasn’t seeing. Dan kept looking further back through the Ash family records, trying to spot anomalies, and when that turned up nothing, trying to spot similarities.
And then he saw it.
In the most recent deaths, the funeral director had arranged for the remains to be picked up and transferred to the building. The driver dispatched to the locations was the same every time.
Stanton Finnoway.
A brother? A cousin? It didn’t matter.
“I knew it,” Dan whispered, taking the papers and folding them messily. “That bastard.”
A single footfall creaked down the hall.
“Name-calling? Really?”
Why had Dan thought he had more time? Hadn’t his father warned him to leave? The footstep he’d heard belonged to Tamsin. Finnoway was already there, just behind him. Dan was cornered and outnumbered, and reasonably confident that the councilman could outmatch him in a fight.
He backed into the cabinet, closing it as he went.
“Is there a reason you’re trespassing on my property?” the councilman asked, his eyes going at once to the papers folded up in Dan’s hand. “Or just out for a stroll?”
“There’s no way to make this look better, is there?” Dan tried to gauge his chances of making a dash for the door. Tamsin wasn’t exactly brawny, but she also seemed like the type to carry a weapon.
“No, there really isn’t.” Finnoway nodded toward Dan’s hand and the old records tucked away in it. “I assume you think you’ve found something important. That’s actually touching. I’m touched in this moment. Do you know why?”
“I couldn’t care less,” Dan muttered. He could try to inch his way around the room and circle, but that would take forever. Maybe Oliver would come looking for him, but that seemed like a distant possibility. He couldn’t count on anyone but himself in this godforsaken town.
“I’m touched because you were on the cusp of something,” Finnoway explained, gesturing Tamsin forward. He was wearing a long, light coat, one that looked like it could conceal any number of small weapons. Smiling, he snapped his fingers. Gloved fingers, Dan noticed—gloves made of sleek, black leather. “So close. Am I right? You had the most peculiar look on your face when you turned around just now. Wonderment and then—like that—terror. That’s where the real discoveries lie.”
The heat and color drained from Dan’s face.
“Tamsin, if you would please.”
She was faster than Dan could have predicted, striking like a coiled snake, lunging over Finnoway’s shoulder with a tiny, flashing needle. Before Dan could respond, he felt a light pricking sensation in his neck.
He had enough time to spin and see the assistant’s bloodred lips curl into a smile. Then the floor was right at his back, his chin, hitting him like a full-bodied punch. He couldn’t stop staring at the assistant’s shoes. They were so, so pointy. . . .
“Not a bad find,” he heard Finnoway rumble, the darkness suddenly acute and nauseating, tar thick and drowning him. “But not enough to wipe away the boy’s debt.”
He dipped into consciousness twice. The first time was when the first commotion started, a door banging open, startling him enough that he could open his eyes and see, briefly, blurred images of a stark white wall and a faceless face, lit from behind by a strong, white light. The air smelled strongly of antiseptic and underneath that, mint, stirring memories of childhood fears.
“I can’t believe I missed this. Another Ash. This should’ve been taken care of years ago. But it’s never too late to tie up loose ends.”
Then another face appeared, this one shinier and larger than the others. Looking at it was like staring into a void—no, a black, glittering orb like a starry sky—and then the face turned into a person and the person was breathing hard, carrying him. . . . Deep-sea noises surrounded him and then a dark, masculine voice made him shrivel up inside his skin.
“What the hell is this? Who are you? Stop him!”
The overwhelming nausea forced him back to sleep.
The second time he woke up, two familiar faces swam in front of his eyes. It took a frighteningly long time to discern any more than that, his head swaying back and forth as he tried to concentrate.
“I think he’s waking up.” It was Oliver’s voice, and the familiarity of it made Dan want to burst into tears. He was safe. Thank God he was safe. His hand ached like crazy, but at least he was no longer in Finnoway’s clutches.
Oliver’s familiar dark eyes came into focus; the other boy was kneeling next to the mattress on which Dan lay. Oliver put one hand on Dan’s shoulder, shaking gingerly. His eyes were huge, searching back and forth across Dan’s face. “I know you’re still weak, but I need you to try and remember.”
“Remember what?” Dan growled. Ugh. His throat felt like it had been rubbed with rocks. “Where am I?”
“You’re at my apartment and safe. Everything’s going to be okay, I just need you to think back. He must have said something. He had to say the words. Was our debt repaid? Was my debt repaid?”
Dan’s head swam as he tried to make sense of the question. His memories had fractured, and for the moment he could do nothing but blink back at the other boy. “I don’t understand. . . . Oliver, you saved me. You . . . I don’t know what that evil asshole would’ve done to me. He drugged me and then . . . I don’t remember much. I don’t remember anything.”
“You don’t?” Oliver sat back on his heels, then leapt to his feet and began pacing back and forth. “No, that’s not right. He had to say the words. This should’ve been enough. You should have been enough.”
Enough? Dan blinked up at him through foggy eyes. His shirt smelled strangely minty, like he had just been to the dentist’s office. Just following Oliver’s path back and forth across the room made Dan dizzy again. “Oliver . . . What are you talking about?”
Stopping dead in his tracks, Oliver spun to face him, wringing his hands out and then approaching again to fall to his knees. “Dan. I messed up.”
Flashes of the morning returned to him. Images in reverse. He felt the heat of the needle pricking his neck, then the cold shiver of his father’s ghost walking through him. A Finnoway’s name on those funeral documents. Documents, he was now certain, that were gone.
Not a bad find. But not enough to wipe away the debt.
“I don’t understand. You saved me,” Dan murmured, curling up on himself in the bed.
“I wish that was true.” But it clearly wasn’t. Dan recoiled, no longer trusting the safety that Oliver had mentioned. Had he tumbled from one fire and into another? “But I didn’t realize how stupid I’d been until you turned up unconscious on my stoop. I was grateful that you were alive. No, that’s a lie. I was afraid. But now I’m grateful.”
It was
still like Oliver was speaking in another language altogether, and Dan’s head was too stuffed with cotton to make sense of the words. “Wait—I ‘turned up’?”
“Yeah, some good Samaritan was kind enough to dump your ass on my doorstep, out cold and bandaged. Not exactly a delivery I was expecting.” Oliver smoothed both hands over his face, scrubbing at his forehead.
“Who, though?” Dan murmured. “Who would come for me and then just leave?”
“I don’t know who did it, but you owe them a debt of gratitude for damn sure,” Oliver said. “Most people, they tangle with Finnoway and they don’t make it out alive.”
“How do you know that?” Dan replied gruffly. He was still trying to wrap his head around the phrase “out cold and bandaged,” but he was getting the clear impression that his friends had been right about Oliver after all. “Bandaged,” he whispered, unsteady against the pillows.
“Yeah,” Oliver said softly, carefully picking up Dan’s hand and lifting it so Dan could see it. His hand was wrapped tightly in a bulky bandage, clean and white, secured over the palm with a tiny metal clip. His bright pink fingers poked out of the bandage, except for one.
Where his little finger should have been was just a blank. He gaped at the empty spot, feeling that throb from before return and spread, searing down toward his elbow.
They have my bones.
“He took it.”
Oliver didn’t respond, and if Dan had been any stronger in that moment, he would’ve lurched out of bed to shake him.
The room above the shop in which Oliver apparently lived was cramped and low ceilinged, with only one grimy window that faced out into the alley. The walls in here were crammed with bookcases, each shelf overflowing more than the last. Outside, it had begun to rain, the droplets pattering on the window in a soothing crescendo as the wind picked up and carried them harder against the building. A few naked lightbulbs swung from the ceiling, and black-and-white pictures of people Dan didn’t recognize hung on the walls. Oliver’s family, maybe. Some of the shots looked old enough to be from the start of the store.
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