Adam shot him a questioning look.
“You’re shivering,” Vic said.
Adam hadn’t noticed.
“I’m going to look around,” Vic said. “Might as well make sure nobody’s broken in or anything.”
“You’re leaving me alone?” Adam asked, unhappy to hear his voice pitch higher.
“Won’t that be scarier?” Vic asked. He raised the flashlight to illuminate his parting grin and stepped into one of the darker hallways. The echoes of his footsteps faded.
Adam lifted his Sight. Normally he’d hesitate, knowing too well what things lurked in a sanitarium, but he had to See.
The doorways tilted. The sheets of plastic came to life, fluttering and rippling like water. Old brickwork and crumbling mortar replaced the thick plaster walls, but nothing skittered. No spirits haunted. They should have infested the place. Death, trauma, and mental illness made the perfect recipe for ghosts. Adam wasn’t the first practitioner who’d gotten a diagnosis and a trip to an institution.
A flash of memory, other inmates, other teens, too lost in their delusions or a haze of sedatives to talk to him, rose like bile in his throat.
Some of them had been practitioners. He’d felt their presence like a stain in the air. It hadn’t faded, not even when they’d left Liberty.
Mercy should have been the same, echoing with those who’d been hospitalized here, but the void just kept running deeper. Adam sensed no bottom to it. The spirit realm teemed with life. It was nothing but life. Mercy was the opposite: cold, sterile, dead. It chilled Adam to the core. He shut down his Sight.
10
Adam
“Magic is life,” Sue had told him in her thick Oklahoma drawl. “Spirit is life. So all living things have magic. That’s why the immortals have more magic than any of us.”
She’d told Adam this so many times that it became background noise, an easily forgotten part of his landscape.
Magic was life. Spirit was life. So what did that make a place where all spirit was absent?
Adam was shaking off the cold creeping up his spine when Bobby appeared.
“How did it go?” he asked, leaning in, like they were part of a conspiracy.
Adam shook his head. He didn’t have an answer. The more he learned about the situation, the more he felt the gaps in his knowledge. He’d slid into a canyon, couldn’t see the bottom, and wasn’t certain there weren’t rattlesnakes waiting below.
Around him, beneath him, things connected. One thing led to ten thousand things. Adam could sense something coming, the action he most wanted to avoid. To help Annie, he’d have to appeal to a higher power. There would be a price. There always was, usually in servitude. If he was not careful, he’d end up some spirit’s errand boy or worse—their slave.
Adam chewed his lip, unhappy with what he knew was inevitable.
It had been a lesson Perak had drilled into Adam over and over, telling him stories of singers or actors forever lost to the Other Side, all their family and friends long dead while they performed forever, singing the same songs, playing the same roles, never allowed to change or age.
“Ready for some lunch?” Bobby asked.
Adam gave his brother a questioning look.
“I’m buying,” Bobby said, looking hopeful, the preening doctor again.
“Sure,” Adam said, unable to deny the rumbling in his stomach.
He’d been trying to shake off his memories, his anger at Bobby for locking him up and then ignoring him, never looking for him, never asking if he was okay. It had been years, but the way Bobby looked at him, so disappointed, brought it all to the surface, like a clump of dead leaves atop a lake. The sharp edges of his memories kept him away from the mushy, rotting center, the part where he might miss Bobby and where he’d been hurt that Bobby hadn’t come for him. Adam doubted they’d ever be able to talk about it.
If Bobby could sense the spirit, then perhaps he also sensed the hospital’s void, the dead zone. It might even make him happy, afraid of magic as he was. Hell, it might even explain why he loved working here so much. He might find it peaceful, like how polluted lakes had clearer water. If so, then Bobby was more sensitive than Adam had suspected. He might even border on practitioner, and that might put him in danger.
“What?” his brother asked.
“Just thinking,” Adam muttered. It was too easy to slip into that, too, hiding his thoughts from his family lest they judge, lest they take steps.
He didn’t say anything else as he followed Bobby to the cafeteria. Adam expected it to be calm, quiet, like the rest of the hospital, but it surprised him with its liveliness. Sure, there were gloomy and impatient people, but tables of nurses chatted together. The coffee bar whizzed and hissed. Children dashed back and forth to a frozen yogurt machine. It felt like a buffet restaurant after church on a Sunday. The people’s feelings rubbed against Adam’s defenses without much friction.
“How many people work here?” Adam asked Bobby as they lined up with trays to choose food.
“A few thousand,” Bobby said, pulling his badge out on its string to pay for the meal. “There’s security, waste disposal, volunteers. That’s not even getting into the medical staff.”
Adam nodded, not really listening. He considered the list of names on his phone. He needed more information. The spirit was a heart, maybe—an organ, at least. It had connected itself to Annie, to other people. There had to be a reason. A ghost might possess someone as a means of trying to finish what it hadn’t settled in life. But such a massive thing couldn’t do so with a human body. And he couldn’t puzzle out why it would connect to several of them.
“You could work in a hospital like this someday,” Bobby said, choosing a seat.
Adam took his own chair across from his brother.
“That’s not what I’m here for, remember?” Adam asked, pausing his fork before it reached his mouth.
“I know,” Bobby said, looking like a kicked puppy. “I’m just saying that you seem invested in helping people. And working in a hospital is a great way to do that.”
Adam silenced his retort with a scoop of his fork and a quick bite. He didn’t want to fight. He swallowed and fought down a sigh. Being around Bobby made him feel like a kid again, dumb and weak. It took him back to all the things he’d hated about being a teenager and about Bobby.
“You seem to like the food at least,” Bobby said.
“What’s not to like?” Adam said, his mouth half full. Between his mother’s cooking and this lunch, he felt fuller than he had in months.
“But you wouldn’t work here,” Bobby said.
“I don’t like hospitals,” Adam said. Giving up eating, he leaned back in his chair. “That’s you. Why is it so important to you that I be like you?”
Every meal was going to be like this, a trap, a minefield. He’d have to go hungry.
Bobby gripped his fork. “I just want you to be happy, Adam, to be—”
“Normal. I know,” Adam said, trying to keep calm. “But I’m not normal, Bobby. And I don’t want to be. Stop trying to fix me.”
Bobby scowled, but he finished eating without further argument. His appetite lost, Adam threw the rest of his food away.
“I’ve got rounds,” Bobby said when they’d returned to his floor.
They both darted for the elevator door, ready to be free of each other’s proximity. Adam bumped into Bobby as they exited.
Adam sat in the same chair Bobby had parked him in before.
“I’ll just catch up on Highlights for Children,” he said, waving to the magazines as Bobby walked away.
Adam waited a few moments before he opened his palm and examined the ID badge he’d swiped. Bobby was easy to distract when he was angry. That at least hadn’t changed. Adam slipped out into the hall and turned his accent up a notch.
�
�Excuse me, ma’am. Where is HR?” he asked the nurse at the desk. Tall, over six feet, she had a pretty, oval face and straight, silvery-blond hair. “My brother said I should ask them about jobs.”
She smiled and pointed at the elevator. “Fourth floor.”
“Thank you,” Adam said.
A fire map outside the elevator listed the location of the records room. Adam went carefully.
If he’d had more magic, like an elf or some other immortal, Adam could step across to the spirit realm, become intangible, and step back inside the records room. As he was, he cast his senses out, trying to feel his way around the halls to avoid other people until he got to the right part of the floor.
Adam turned a corner and nearly collided with a janitor, a squat black man in coveralls with more than a little gray in his curly hair.
“Sorry,” Adam said, grimacing. His senses had failed him. He had too little power.
The janitor grunted but said nothing as he mopped his way along the hall and Adam reached the records room.
Adam slid Bobby’s key card from his pocket. When this was done he’d drop it somewhere where it would be found and returned without any drama. The door unbolted with a beep and a click of the bolt. Adam slipped inside.
He’d hoped for rows of filing cabinets but found himself staring at a computer desk.
“Well, shit,” Adam grumbled.
He moved the mouse but knew what he’d see before the monitor finished lighting up.
The screen, a black and green interface, wanted a password he didn’t have. Adam looked for a place to swipe the badge. Not finding one, he tried Guest and Admin, but the hospital IT proved smarter than that.
The door behind Adam opened with a click. He spun the office chair around to see two cops enter.
Adam raised his hands with a sigh.
“Hi, Vic,” Adam said.
“It’s Officer Martinez now,” Vic said, his posture stiff. He wasn’t smiling.
“What are you doing in here?” the other cop demanded. An older, shorter man, he had a thick mustache and caterpillar eyebrows but a bald pate.
“Just looking around,” Adam said, meeting Vic’s eyes. “I didn’t mean any trouble.”
The older cop sneered.
Adam flinched at Vic’s scowl.
“This for your book?” Vic asked, his gaze narrowed.
“Yeah,” Adam said.
“You can’t get in here without one of those,” Vic said, nodding to the ID. “Your brother reported his missing and then the system logged the door.”
“Of course it did,” Adam said. “And of course he did.”
It would be nice if Bobby could be less of a moron. He was probably so pissed at Adam for stealing the thing that he hadn’t thought through why Adam had taken it. Bobby was so caught up in his reputation, in being Doctor Binder that he hadn’t stopped to think that Adam was trying to help Annie.
“This is a misunderstanding,” Adam said, trying to look sheepish.
“You’re going to have to come with us.” Vic reached for the ID.
He’s kind of scary when he’s all serious.
Hands still raised, Adam stood. Vic had several inches on him. Normally Adam would like that, but he had the feeling that their flirty goodwill was long gone.
The old cop let out a growl. Vic turned at the sound. The older man’s eyes rolled back into his head. Froth spittle ringed his open mouth. Adam’s Sight came over him as if by instinct.
A tendril from the spirit ran through the ceiling. It wormed into the cop’s mouth like a bloody tree branch. The vessels in his eyes popped, filling with blood that ran from the corners like tears.
“Carl?” Vic asked, his face twisted with a mix of fear and worry.
Adam stepped back, banged his ass against the desk.
Carl stopped convulsing as the spirit seized him. He raised his gun.
“Get down!” Vic shouted.
He threw himself in front of Adam as the pistol roared, so loud Adam felt it rattle his teeth. His ears rang. The glass window shook so hard he thought it might crack.
Knocked back, Vic fell against Adam. They tumbled to the floor.
Carl’s bloody eyes fixed on Adam. He raised the pistol again, aimed for Adam’s face.
“Nuh,” Carl growled. “No.”
“Fight it,” Adam ordered him. “You have to fight it.”
Vic heaved in Adam’s arms, blood pumping through the hole in his chest. He gasped like a fish on land.
Choking on the tendril in his mouth, Carl lifted the pistol to his temple.
The gun thundered again.
Vic shuddered, his brown eyes wide as they fixed on Adam.
“You’re gonna be okay—” Adam’s voice sounded high and panicked in his ringing ears. He thought he might pass out. No, he couldn’t. Vic. He needed help. Adam reached, put his palm to the bullet hole, trying to apply pressure. The taste of gunpowder and blood filled the back of his mouth.
“That’s what you do, right?” he said to no one. Apply pressure.
Vic didn’t answer.
Then Death walked through the door.
11
Adam
The janitor straightened as he entered the room. He grew, stretching until he loomed over Adam and Vic. Shadows scurried to him, forming an inky, shifting robe. The mop in his hand lengthened. Its bristles twitched and writhed, reforming into steel.
“Reaper,” Adam said. Its approach pulled him into the spirit realm and time slowed.
“Witch,” the thing said. Reapers were strange. They were also a type of possession, a sleeping power that woke when their host came near a soul to be claimed. Adam did not know much about them. Aunt Sue did not know much about them. Their origins and nature were a secret.
The Reaper extended a hand, naked bone lay over mortal flesh like a cheap Halloween costume. It pointed a single finger.
“My duty,” the Reaper said, gesturing to Vic with an extended finger.
“No,” Adam said. He pressed his palms harder to the wound in Vic’s chest.
Vic was innocent in this. He shouldn’t die for Adam’s mistake, for his cockiness in underestimating the spirit.
Time had stopped on the mortal side, long enough for this conversation, buying Vic moments even as Death came for him. His blood gloved Adam’s hands, sticky and warm, cooling far too quickly, even in this space between the flesh and bone.
“It is his time. I have my duty,” the Reaper said, its voice deep. “Step aside.”
“No,” Adam insisted. Vic slipped into unconsciousness.
The Reaper lifted its scythe and floated forward. The hem of its robe brushed the floor, crawling, skittering, like living smoke. Adam could smell his own terror. Thinking he might piss himself, he scrambled to remember what little he knew of Reapers.
“You can’t take me,” he said, his accent thick. “If it’s not my time. Not unless my life is over.”
“I shall not take you,” the Reaper agreed. Its skull bobbed once.
All magical beings had to follow laws. A Reaper could not take a life before its time. Adam thought of Sara, of her camper in the sunflower field. They waited for her, for her goddesses to remove their protection—no, not their protection. Their magic.
Adam looked to Vic. There was only a second to decide. Before Adam could think too hard about the consequences, he reached within, to the place where his own faint power lived.
Magic was life. Adam did not have much, but he could share what he had. He plucked a strand from inside himself, a silver thread. It hurt, like peeling off part of his heart, like skinning himself. He willed it through his hand and into Vic.
The Reaper paused. The tendrils of its robe stilled their creeping march.
“Why?” it asked, the skull managing to express confusion a
nd maybe a little anger. “What means he to you?”
“Maybe it’s the uniform,” Adam said, his heart racing, uneven, like he’d drunk too much coffee. “Maybe I think he’s hot.”
It felt too much like Adam’s own blood pumped out Vic’s chest. He’d mixed their lives together, shared his power, but maybe he didn’t have enough to keep both their hearts beating.
Vic’s pain became Adam’s. He gasped, though his mouth worked and his lungs billowed, he couldn’t find air. Maybe all he’d done was kill them both.
The Reaper’s eyes never left Adam’s. It might have grinned. Something twinkled in the black depths of its eye sockets.
It drifted backward, sliding across the floor. Blackness took Adam a moment later.
12
Robert
“Your problem, Adam Lee,” Robert whispered to his unconscious brother. “Is that you don’t remember what Dad was really like.”
The sight of Adam lying there, close to death for no reason they could determine, unearthed so many things Robert wanted to leave buried. His limbs felt cool, even as his head felt feverish.
His little brother, not so little anymore. They’d washed and dressed him in a hospital gown, but Robert still smelled the blood that had covered Adam when they’d found him.
Robert hadn’t seen the security footage but whatever it showed, it seemed like Adam was off the hook for breaking into the records room.
“Your luck is going to run out someday,” Robert said. Body leaden, he settled into the chair beside the bed. “Dad’s did.”
Robert didn’t want to think about that right now. He wouldn’t, but other memories came unbidden.
Summer after seventh grade. He’d just turned thirteen. Mom marked the occasion with a lopsided chocolate cake she’d baked from a box. Dad wasn’t working. He hadn’t worked in a while, but he hadn’t been there. He’d been in town.
Bobby remembered Mom clipping coupons at the Formica table in the kitchen. Adam sat in front of the television, blissed out to old cartoons and occasionally holding conversations with a host of imaginary friends.
Mom looked up once when Dad jingled the keys to the truck. Bobby met her eye. She found a watered-down smile for him.
White Trash Warlock Page 7