White Trash Warlock

by David R. Slayton

  To see Annie, really see her, he’d have to use his Sight, risk drawing the spirit’s attention, but Adam was subtle. He hoped, if he did not focus too hard, he could avoid its gaze.

  He blinked, let the Sight come.

  Magic pulsed through Annie, but it wasn’t her own. The sallow sparks running through her were coming from the spirit. It had her. Lost, exhausted from trying to find her way back, she had no magic of her own, no way to fight. The spirit’s grip held fast.

  Stomach roiling, Adam straightened his back, and looked to the ceiling. The veiny cord ran through it, right into Annie’s heart like a bloody, rotting stalk. He could try to cut it or force it out, but he wasn’t sure what effect that would have on Annie, not with bits of the thing running through her like copper wires through a chandelier. He needed to know what they conducted. He needed to know fast.

  Careful, avoiding the thing’s attention, he took Annie’s hand.

  There she was, beneath the drugs, beneath the oppressive weight of the thing inside her.

  A wave of confused despair, black and deep, washed over him.

  Lost.

  Unable to take more, Adam stepped back. He double checked that the thing hadn’t reacted, hadn’t spotted his intrusion.

  “You see it, don’t you?” his mother asked. “There is something there?”

  “It’s a spirit, Ma.”

  She grimaced. He knew she wouldn’t say she was sorry. She’d never been able to do that. When it had come down to it, she’d wanted him to apologize for what he was. He puffed out his frustration. He was here for Annie. This was about her.

  “I’ll do what I can,” he said meaning it. “But yes, something has her. I have to look into it.”

  He led her back into the hall before he continued, “I can’t solve it without a little digging.”

  His mother raised her hands to indicate she didn’t want to know more, as if knowing what afflicted Annie would infect her with it. She felt about the magic the same way she did about his sex life. His mother and brother did not ask, so Adam did not tell.

  Bobby had admitted to having a little Sight, which had been enough to shock Adam into coming here. Once, his brother would have put his hand in a garbage disposal before he admitted magic might be real. His mother had moments, insights that told Adam he got some of his magic from her side of the family. If he asked her about it, she retreated into her bible and told him to pray. What Adam had never understood, what they could never tell him, was why it was so scary to them.

  “Got it,” he said, answering her silence. “I’ll just fix it and disappear again.”

  Adam shouldn’t have expected more from this reunion. His mother didn’t answer him. She stared past him without focusing on him, like she was trying to decide if that would be best.

  Following her back down to the main floor, he wondered if he’d ever stop hoping for them to see him, to really know him.

  “We’ll put you in the basement,” she said as she led him through a door and down another flight of stairs, going underground.

  The space was finished, nice even. Compared to the rest of the house it was toned down, a little less garish.

  Adam would have a little bathroom and shower all to himself. The guestroom had a window, a light well with an escape ladder in case of fires. It was nicer than any place Adam had ever slept in, but he could already feel the acid rising in his throat. He’d have to deal with Bobby soon. Adam clenched and unclenched his fists. The sooner he got to work, the sooner he could leave.

  Enjoying a longer shower than he’d ever had at Sue’s, Adam scrubbed off the funk of road sweat, grease, and red dirt. He scratched with his uneven nails, removing as much dead skin as grime. His body, lean and pale, flushed beneath water hotter than he’d felt in months. The red from his scrubbing would fade. It felt good to be so clean, to know the bill went on Bobby’s tab. Adam put most of his clothes in the washer, dressed in his clean jeans, and pulled on a faded T-shirt advertising a band that had broken up before he’d been born.

  Adam took to the bed, head at the footboard, and bent his leg at the knee. Palms up, he laid his hands flat. Folded into the position of the Hanged Man, he listened to the washing machine. He let its chugging rhythm carry him down inside himself, to where his magic lay. It felt like opening a door, like stepping into an elevator. Then he was elsewhere.

  7

  Adam

  Adam opened his eyes, and nothing looked the same.

  The spirit realm echoed the mortal world, but the angles were distorted. Walls leaned. Trees stretched. Spirits great and small flitted through the air. In this place, Bobby’s house had no roof. Even the basement opened to a star-scattered twilight sky. The moon shone bigger and closer than it ever could on the mortal plane. Life glowed.

  But Adam could feel the spirit, greasy and rotten. Its presence coated everything.

  Adam called up his protections, barriers made of willpower and magic, armor to ward his mind. Sensitive as he was in the mortal world, in his body, he was both more vulnerable and stronger here. Something with enough power could still get through, blow through him like he was made of salt, but it had to spot him first.

  He crept upstairs, the hallways twisting around him. Thick shadows gathered, filtering the starlight that pierced the walls. A swarm of green beetles coated the wall, their shells iridescent in the moonlight.

  Annie lay in her bed. The spirit was more solid, more tangible than her. Its barbed tendrils ran through her body. He could see the blood moving inside her, her bones. Even if Adam could sever the connection, he wouldn’t be able to get the threads out without hurting her, maybe even killing her. Those bits of spirit would remain inside her like jellyfish barbs. This was beyond him. Adam’s blood chilled.

  He needed information, to talk to someone who could tell him more. Then he could try to find a way to break the spirit’s grip. The problem was choosing the safest someone. He would not indebt himself to a power.

  But someone who made such deals would have the knowledge he needed and might tip him off as to why the Guardians hadn’t acted. A spirit of that size, possessing normal people—it was exactly what they were there for.

  Outside the house, Adam approached the nearest tree. It opened a pair of emerald eyes and glared at him.

  “Pardon me,” he said, kneeling to touch its roots.

  With a little push of his will, he flowed through the green, tossed and turned through phylum and vein until he stood in a field of sunflowers. He muttered a thank-you to the blackened tree he’d arrived at and hurried away from its crow- and noose-strewn branches.

  The move had tired him, stretched him. The further he stepped from his body, the more his spirit frayed around the edges. He had never proved how far he could go, how far would be safe. There were limits. He’d tested them with Perak, but never past the point of safety.

  An old Airstream trailer stood behind a split rail fence, resting on cinder blocks, the grass tickling its wheels. Time and hail had hammered its steel exterior.

  He’d never seen what vehicle or beast had towed it here. It could have been a pick-up truck. It could have been a T. rex. Adam smiled to see it.

  A black woman sat in front. Adam almost couldn’t see her through the light she radiated. A double-barreled shotgun lay ready across her lap. Sara had never used it in his presence, but Adam felt certain she loaded it with shells and magic enough to kill him with a glancing shot.

  Adam hated guns. He remembered his father forcing him to shoot a squirrel with BBs, over and over until he stopped crying at the little thing’s jerking, final movements. He’d felt it die, and had never touched a gun since, no matter how un-Oklahoma of him that was.

  Adam walked the path cutting through the field, mindful of the workers reaping among the sunflowers.

  Dressed in overalls and straw hats, they looked like farmer
s, but they weren’t human, not entirely. The blades of their scythes, rusty steel set in hoary wood, should have swished through the stalks, but their reaping made no sound. Each wore a skull mask, pale atop their human faces.

  Adam hurried past the bit of fence dividing Sara’s trailer from the fields. It marked the boundary of her wards. Inside them, he felt a little safer, but not much.

  Intent on their task, the Reapers didn’t acknowledge his approach. He did not know how they’d take someone interrupting their work, and he really didn’t want to find out.

  “Adam Binder,” Sara said. Pausing, she took a long sip from a tall glass—iced tea with a thick slice of lemon. “As I live and breathe.”

  She had a deep southern accent. It whispered of swamps and hidden alligators. She’d always been kind to him.

  “Can you turn down the light show?” he asked, shielding his eyes with a hand. He wanted to sound confident, but couldn’t afford to offend her. “I’m not a tourist.”

  The multicolored glow around her dimmed until he could see her clearly. A diminutive woman with curly hair that haloed her smooth face, Sara looked at him through round, purple-tinted spectacles.

  Her magic’s scent was still strong, but pleasant, like sweet tea and sunflowers in summer.

  Aunt Sue had introduced Adam to Sara not long after Liberty House. Sara sold information, trading secrets when Sue had them. But Adam and Sue were small time customers. Sara brokered deals with entities far more powerful than the Binders. She had to have heard something about Denver.

  That didn’t mean Adam liked visiting her. Her chosen location, the field of Reapers, put him on edge. They were a force of nature, following laws and taking only those souls Death told them to. They didn’t come for everyone. He didn’t understand them. And though he told himself he had no real reason to fear them, he never failed to notice the swishing motion in the corner of his eye.

  “I haven’t seen you in a while, Adam Lee,” Sara said, rocking back into her folding lawn chair. Aunt Sue had introduced him with first and middle names, so Sara always used them both. “You’ve grown up, filled out a little.”

  Time had marked her, but it was subtle. The lines weren’t deep. Years slipped off Sara, a gift from those she bargained with. But nature would win out eventually. Death and its Reapers were inevitable. Even the ancient powers bowed to that.

  “You stopped dyeing your hair black,” she said, leaning toward him.

  “Grew out of it,” he said. In truth he couldn’t afford it and let his hair grow back to its muddy blond. It riled him a little that she remembered him looking that way. He wasn’t a teenager anymore, but maybe he could use that. Adam lifted a hand to scratch the back of his head and tried to sound respectful as he said, “I wanted to ask you about something.”

  He tried, and failed, to keep his eyes off the trailer door.

  “You can come closer,” Sara said, looking at him over the tops of her glasses. She had large, deep brown eyes. “They won’t bite.”

  “Guess I need to work on my poker face.”

  “A little.” She gave a little snort of laughter. “How’s your aunt Sue?”

  “She’s good,” Adam said.

  Sue had spirit walked with him, bringing him to Sara to introduce him. The two of them traded gossip and pleasantries while Adam eyed the Reapers. The women were of a type, older, sunny. Sue hadn’t seemed afraid of Sara’s trailer.

  He stepped nearer. The air around the trailer whispered. In the fields, the Reapers kept up their scything, their clockwork, synchronized motions. They were men and women, old and young, every race and height. Adam did not know how Death chose its servants. He’d rather not know. It was enough that they wouldn’t harm him until his time came. They’d only attack if their work was interrupted.

  “Well?” Sara asked, waving him to come closer. “Ask me.”

  “Denver.”

  Sara bowed her head, telling him she already knew.

  “What is it?” he asked. “The thing in the sky?”

  “A spirit,” she said. “But not one we know. Not one anyone knows.”

  The whispers stilled. Sara’s goddesses had cocked their ears. Adam had their attention, the last thing he wanted. He looked to his feet as his heart raced.

  They didn’t know. Sara didn’t know.

  “So it’s something new,” he said.

  “Or something extremely old.”

  Neither was a good thing.

  “What’s it to you?” Sara asked.

  There it was, the this for that. Adam didn’t like giving up information, but he’d taken, so he had to give.

  “It has my sister-in-law. I think it has lots of people,” he said, considering the other tendrils. “I need to know how to break its hold.”

  Sara shook her head. “We don’t know what it is or where it came from. Only that it defies Death and nature herself. It just appeared one day.”

  Adam took a step back. “That’s not possible. Someone had to summon it.”

  Sara shrugged and sipped her tea. “If they did, they ain’t advertising it.”

  “And the Guardians?” Adam asked. “Have they said anything? Done anything?”

  “Not as yet,” Sara said. “Someone must go to them in supplication, make a case before they will intervene.”

  “Surely one of the local witches has gone to the towers. One of the local practitioners. I can’t be the first one to notice this thing.”

  Someone else should have already dealt with the spirit. A problem this big should have already been solved.

  “Adam . . .” Sara trailed off. “I thought you knew the situation.”

  “I do,” he said. “There’s a spirit over Denver, like a cloud. It’s connected to people everywhere.”

  “It’s far more than that.” Sara took a long sip. She didn’t offer him any and he knew not to take it if she had. There were rules about food in the spirit realm.

  “Will you tell me?” he asked.

  “Are you ready to bargain?”

  And there was the bee sting in the honey. She’d help him—for a price. He could get all the power he needed to free Annie, to protect himself, and banish the spirit. All it would cost him was everything.

  “I don’t want power,” Adam said, crossing his arms over his chest. “Just information.”

  “Well you know what they say about knowledge,” she drawled.

  “Sara, please. This is serious. Tell me what you know.”

  “What I can tell you, for free—” She leaned forward. Fear slid a little more southern into her tone. “Is that all of the magicians in Denver are dead.”

  8

  Adam

  Adam woke shuddering. If Sara, with her gods and alliances, feared the thing in the sky over Denver, then he had a mosquito’s chance against an elephant. The most he could hope for was to find someone else, a greater power, to deal with it and try not to get caught in the blast. He squeezed his eyes shut at the thought of Annie lying in her bed.

  Dammit.

  He wanted to run back home to Sue and Spider, but he couldn’t leave Annie like this. So much of how the spirit had trapped her reminded him of Liberty House, of how he’d felt, weighed down to his bed by drugs and, once or twice, restraints.

  He had to find a way to free her, and he had to know what had killed the witches and magicians in Denver.

  “I know you must be tired after the drive, but napping, Adam?” a voice asked. “You just got here.”

  Adam opened his eyes to find his brother glaring at him.

  “Bobby,” Adam said.

  “Well?” Bobby asked.

  Adam swallowed a remark about Bobby getting on Adam’s case when he was the one who was still going to work when his wife was possessed.

  “I wasn’t napping,” Adam said. The hangdog look on
Bobby’s face kept Adam from snapping harder. He stretched, working to settle himself back into his body. Spirit walks were deadening, and he always woke more tired than when he lay down.

  “Meditating. Whatever,” Bobby said.

  “I was trying to find out what’s going on,” Adam said. No one had ever wound him up like Bobby.

  “And did you?” Bobby asked.

  Adam didn’t think Bobby would believe him about spirit walking, even if he went into it.

  “Some,” he said, uncertain if he should explain that Annie was possessed.

  “Can you fix it or not?” Bobby demanded. “Or are you just going to lie around?”

  “You like it when your patients talk to you that way, Doctor Binder?” Adam asked.

  “You’re not a doctor.”

  “You called me, remember? I’m the closest thing you’ve got to an expert.”

  Bobby had practically begged, and Adam barely kept himself from throwing it in his brother’s face. He choked the desire down.

  He’d always hated Bobby’s “dad mode.” Maybe that’s just who Bobby had grown up to be. Maybe that’s who “Robert” was. Adam almost spat with disgust. His only real memories of their father might be rages and temper storms, but they were enough. Adam had no desire to imitate the man.

  Ten years older, Bobby had always looked more like a grown man than Adam had ever felt. Deep purple ringed his eyes. Gray mixed with his muddy hair. He was even starting to look like their dad.

  It fit. Bobby had never gotten it through his head that wanting Adam to be normal wasn’t the same as wanting what was best for Adam.

  “I just don’t want you screwing around,” Bobby said. “Making up crap.”

  “Or what, you’ll have me locked up again?” Adam asked. “Maybe you can get a two-for-one special.”

  Bobby’s face flushed red. He looked away.

  “Right. Annie’s different,” Adam said. He sounded cruel, but he wanted this settled now. They weren’t kids anymore, and he wouldn’t be bullied, let alone parented. Not by this asshole. “You wouldn’t do that to her, just me.”