Still, Adam didn’t stay for Chinese food.
18
Adam
Adam didn’t know what to expect from a day at the hospital, so he decided on his black T-shirt with the drawing of a heart dissection that said “Bad Luck” and his best pair of jeans.
He didn’t intend to stay long, and certainly didn’t intend to perform maintenance, cleaning clogged toilets and mopping up all sorts of fluids. He’d put up with the job only as long as it took to learn what he hadn’t been able to before.
He half-expected Bobby to try dressing him. Doctor Binder probably considered it, but was still too pissed about the Audi, even if he hadn’t pieced together Adam’s involvement in its theft.
Adam emerged from the basement to a silent breakfast table where Bobby sat with a cup of coffee and another newspaper. An actual watch ticked away on his wrist. Adam wanted to ask Bobby when he’d joined the AARP, but knew his mother wouldn’t tolerate sniping at her table.
Adam’s heart wasn’t really in it anyway. That bit of time with Vic’s family had given him a taste of what having a mother and brother could be like, and what it was like put a vice around his heart and took the joy out of getting a rise out of Bobby.
The clock read six in the morning as his mother moved pans around the stove, stirring and shifting bacon to a plate with a paper towel to soak up the grease.
She’d made eggs and bacon with a side of fried potatoes. Adam smothered the potatoes in ketchup, the way he had as a kid, but now he found the taste too sweet and wished he’d held back.
Meals with Tilla Mae were a special sort of torture. She’d always insisted they eat together when they could, but she didn’t let them enjoy it. Adam didn’t remember his mom laughing or joking. His dad, though—Adam remembered his dad laughing as he played the airplane game with a spoon full of cereal or did this really dumb magic trick where he pretended to pull a paper napkin through his ears like his head was hollow.
His mother’s fork clinked against her plate. She didn’t smile. She didn’t speak. Dad had been angry a lot, but he laughed too. Their mother was just . . . there. Present but not, unless one of them disturbed the peace.
“Are you ready to go?” Bobby asked, folding the paper and setting it aside. Straightening, he pushed his chair back.
Adam considered the offer as he crunched a piece of bacon between his teeth.
“I’ll ride with you,” he said.
Their mother sat with her coffee and her own breakfast. She’d given each of them three pieces of bacon, having only taken two for herself. She’d always done that, Adam realized, put her sons first.
Adam knew he couldn’t have been easy to live with, especially in high school. He cringed at the memories. His Sight or sensitivity would overwhelm him at the worst of times. The spirit realm would catch him without warning, draw him in and trap him.
Listening to Bobby, she’d taken him to doctors who diagnosed him as narcoleptic and schizophrenic, though in truth Adam had known he was neither. He’d toss the pills they prescribed, but then midterms or upcoming dances would raise the stress level of his fellow students and their feelings and their hormone-fueled anxieties forced their way into him, became his.
Adam would have given anything to be like the other boys, whose biggest concerns were girls and sneaking their dad’s beer. Even if he’d been straight, Adam’s father had vanished, and he couldn’t drink without his Sight making him crazy.
Eventually he’d lost all ability to function or pay attention in class, and off to Liberty House he’d gone.
His mother hadn’t stopped Bobby from locking him up. Hell, she’d signed the papers. And she hadn’t listened, hadn’t stopped the drugs, the tests, or the endless counseling sessions and group therapy, which had been the worst of it. He’d absorbed the horrors of the others and he’d fled further and further into the spirit world.
Adam swallowed hard, forcing the past back down and stood to take his plate to the dishwasher.
“Thank you, Mom,” he said.
She nodded, and Adam followed Bobby to the garage, to Annie’s car, a white box geared for child safety. Adam thought it looked like a refrigerator on wheels.
“Where did you go yesterday?” Bobby asked.
“Out,” Adam said. “I had a lead to track down.”
He didn’t have to justify himself to Bobby. He didn’t mention his search for their vanished father and his complete lack of leads. And he didn’t bring up Vic. He didn’t want Bobby to know about his visit to the cop. Whatever was happening with Vic was his. He wanted it to be just his.
Almost idly, Adam wondered what Vic was doing. Sleeping probably. He could press the thread between them, know for certain, but he let it lie.
“Did you hear about the corpse flower?” Bobby asked. “I was just reading about it in the paper.”
“What?” Adam asked, some of his scattered attention drifting back to his brother.
“The Botanic Gardens has a corpse flower. It only blooms every ten years. It bloomed yesterday, years earlier than it should have.”
Adam blinked.
“It smells like rotting meat,” Bobby continued. “That’s why it’s called that.”
“Damn.”
“What?” Bobby asked.
“Symbols—portents, Aunt Sue called them that. She likes her fancy words.”
“What about them?” Bobby asked.
“They’re happening. When the normal world starts to get glimpses of the magical one, things are out of balance.”
Like black roses, he thought with a cold punch to his gut.
“But what does it mean, Adam?” Bobby asked. “How is it connected to Annie?”
Hadn’t Adam just explained it? Was Bobby being dense on purpose? He held in a sigh.
“The spirit world is leaking into the physical,” Adam stressed. “The thing that has Annie—it’s throwing off the natural balance.”
Adam twisted to look behind them, to see the tendril marking Bobby’s house.
“What do we do?”
We?
Adam cocked his head at Bobby.
“We go to work.”
Bobby shot Adam a sideways glance.
“I have to find out what I can about the hospital,” Adam said. “The spirit is connected to Mercy, and crawling around its guts is the best idea I’ve got right now.”
He hadn’t gotten into the records, but the magical void had to be related to the situation.
He could go back to Silver, try to get more information, since his trip to Vic had only brought more mysteries.
He’d done the thing he didn’t want to do and petitioned the elves for help. They hadn’t aided him, and he was back to square one.
They parked in Bobby’s spot. The place hadn’t changed, but Adam regarded it with a wider eye. He wasn’t looking forward to whatever “maintenance” was, but he hoped it gave him the chance to least to plumb Mercy’s secrets.
They rode the elevator together.
“Behave,” Bobby mouthed when the door to his floor opened.
“Fuck off, ” Adam mouthed back.
“Ready for your first day?” Ms. Geen greeted as soon as he walked into HR.
“Uh, yes?” Adam said.
“Not too eager, are you?” she asked. She wore the same suit she had the day she’d met him. “This way.”
“It’s just, I’m not sure what I’ll be doing.”
She pushed open the door to the stairwell. The gloss vanished, replaced by worn paint and scuffed floors.
“The job description has you making rounds, checking the status of everything from light bulbs to plumbing,” Geen explained, leading him downstairs. Her heels clicked on the tiled steps. “We’ll provide you with some coveralls and an ID badge.”
“How old is this building?” Ad
am asked. He’d have to find a chance to slip away, to see if he could find an end to the void, a clue to the spirit’s origins.
“Mercy’s been here since the 1800s,” she said. “So you can imagine it needs a lot of upkeep.”
They went through a door and down a hall. The drop ceiling above was dusty, water-stained in places. Water ran through a pipe and dripped somewhere unseen. Adam could smell garbage, acrid and earthy. He cringed. At least they were paying him.
“Who will I work with?” he asked. He remembered the janitor-Reaper.
“While there’s a whole maintenance department, you’ll mostly work alone.” Geen paused at a door. She pushed it open. “In here.”
Adam expected a broom closet, or a desk with rows of light bulbs, maybe a wall of tools. Instead he found a teeming forest. The treetops vanished into the clouds. The light of a full moon broke through the leaves. Spirits raced like fireflies among the branches, leaving trails in the twilight.
“What the—” Adam fell back.
“I can’t believe you fell for that,” Geen said, closing the doors behind them.
He registered the change in her voice. Less reedy, it sounded richer, more steely and familiar.
“Argent,” he said, tensing.
She shed Geen’s form like mercury, flowing until she resolved into the Queen of Sword’s more familiar shape, though she still wore the suit and heels.
“I don’t understand,” Adam said. “You’ve been here the whole time?”
“We had to monitor the situation,” the queen said. “I came as soon as the spirit appeared.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“There are rules, Adam Binder. You had to petition us.” Argent said. “You certainly took your time. We don’t have much of it. The situation is getting worse. You need to be close to the situation, so we’ll set you up here, get you whatever access you were so clumsily plodding toward.”
“What about Bobby?”
She looked taken aback. “Everything I said is true. Your brother’s job is safe. And we are paying you—quite well, might I add.”
Adam wondered how much the elves knew. Quite a lot, probably. They were sly, as Argent had proven by insinuating herself into the hospital. He didn’t trust her, didn’t trust that her presence and his were a coincidence. Elves were experts at binding others to them through favors and gifts.
“What’s it going to cost me?” he asked, arms folded over his chest.
Argent tapped her lips with a finger. “Your soul, of course.”
19
Adam
Adam felt the color drain from his face.
“I’m kidding,” Argent said. “Of course I’m kidding.”
Adam glared at her.
“You’re teasing me.”
“Yes,” she said.
“You’re a sword-wielding being of immense power, an immortal. And you’re teasing me.”
“Yes, I am,” she said. “What use would I have for a mortal soul?”
“I don’t know,” he said.
“I’m not some sort of petty hoarder,” she said. “Not like dragons.”
Her eyes narrowed with real dislike before she focused on Adam again and said, “We need this thing stopped.”
“So stop it,” Adam said, waving a hand about them. “You have more magic than anyone.”
“We’ve tried,” she said, her voice quiet. “Magic is not what’s called for. At or least, not only what is called for. It’s not a matter of power. It killed those we sent against it.”
“The void,” Adam said. He could still feel it, the emptiness centered on the hospital. He realized its source then.
Elves had gone to fight it. The closest thing he’d met to gods, supposed to live forever—for one to die, it felt like he’d learned a species had gone extinct.
“Yes,” Argent whispered, all the light draining from her features. Her eyes dipped to the floor. “This spirit is not magic, or at least not magic as we know it. Thus it cannot be fought with magic as we know it.”
“Because it’s not alive,” Adam said, remembering the feel of the thing. “It’s a spirit, right? Spirits are ghosts. They were alive.”
“They are remnants, bits of living beings that cling to your world. This one is not. It is neither dead nor alive as we define it.”
“Is it Death?” Adam asked. The entity who controlled the Reapers was a great mystery, a secretive power serving creation itself.
“No,” Argent said, sounding impatient. “And we have checked.”
She led Adam to the base of a tree. A table ringed it like a counter. Atop that were scrolls, books, and the occasional tablet computer. He could not read most of the languages laid out before him.
“So what do you want with me?” Adam asked. “I don’t have any magic.”
“We need you to stop this thing, as we cannot.” She waved a hand over the books. “My brother suspects that less magic, not more, is what is needed. Of every practitioner who has faced it, you’re the only one to walk away. Coincidentally, you’re the weakest being on the spectrum to confront it.”
“No offense,” Adam said, back stiffening. He forced himself to take a breath. Argent might play games, but she remained the Queen of Swords, whether she needed his help or not. “But by that logic, won’t teaching me—giving me more magic—make the problem worse?”
“No,” she said. “The idea that knowledge is power is mostly metaphorical. You can get closer to it than someone more powerful. We need you for reconnaissance, to examine it, to learn more. We cannot even determine if it is sentient. Our guess is that it has a primal intelligence, slow and more instinctive.”
“No,” Adam said, veins icing at the memory of it looking at him, looking through him. The elves had underestimated it, but he had too good an instinct for self-preservation to say so. “That’s not right. The way it attacked me at the hospital. It tried to kill me. It’s smarter than that. It’s doing something, watching. It’s aware.”
He’d felt its magic, the sticky stain of its touch on Annie, and didn’t think it was the presence he’d sensed watching on the way to Vic’s.
Argent nodded. “Then we must watch it back.”
“I have my price,” Adam said.
“Name it,” she said.
“It has my sister-in-law possessed.”
“We shall help her,” Argent said. “However we can.”
It would be selfish to ask for more, but this might be his one chance to get assistance from the Guardians. He had to step carefully. If he told Argent, an elf, about the bone charms, the immortals might hunt the warlock down before Adam had his chance for a reunion and to ask his many, many questions.
“There is another matter,” he said. “A pawn shop on Federal was trading in magical goods a couple of years ago. I need some help tracking it down.”
Argent cocked her head to the side, pondering his request.
“This is not related to the spirit?” she asked.
“Not that I’m aware of.”
“I will make some inquiries for you, but we can agree that the spirit takes precedence?”
“Yes,” he said. “Annie, Bobby’s wife, doesn’t have much time.”
“We’ve seen some of those it has possessed. We neither know how this thing works nor how it holds them,” Argent said. “Some can resist it. Some cannot.”
“Then how can you help?”
“If we cannot give her more time.” Argent dipped her shoulder in a graceful shrug. “Then we must take her out of it.”
“That’s not possible,” Adam said. “Is it?”
The queen laughed.
“I almost forgot you are mortal,” she said. “I must speak with Silver and the Gaoler. We will bring your sister to the watchtower.”
“Why don’t we go now
?” Adam asked.
Argent made a sound like “pft” and waved at the stacks of books.
“Because your shift is starting.”
*****
Adam spent the day leafing through texts, most of them bestiaries, but none of the creatures or horrors he found matched what floated over the city. Feeling like he’d emptied his brain, Adam stumbled out of the hospital, uncertain if he should wait for Bobby or try and get a bus.
Outside, he looked for a tree or a bit of grass where he could sit and shake off the day’s tedium.
Spying a large park, Adam started that way but turned at the blare of a familiar horn and grinned.
His mother had come to get him. In the Cutlass. Adam had never been so happy to see his car. He climbed into the passenger seat, shutting the door hard and not even caring that he wasn’t driving.
They went several blocks before his mother said. “I don’t know why your brother hates this car. It’s a classic.”
“It is,” Adam agreed, running a hand over the cracked, sun-faded dash. He’d restore it if he could. He’d restore all of it.
Sure, it still needed a lot of work, from the crunched front panel to the engine. It could break down any day, and almost did. Adam often pushed his magic into it, willing it to hold together, for his luck to hold until he reached his destination. It was a beater of a car by any measurement, but the Cutlass felt like home, in a way that nothing else did.
“Bobby is too hard on it,” he said.
“And you’re too hard on him,” his mother said.
She braked for a light. The Cutlass wasn’t quick to stop, but his mother surprised him. She knew how to handle the car’s mass.
He didn’t answer her remark. She picked up speed again as the light changed.
The Cutlass was the oldest thing on the road. Adam felt a bit like the elves, a piece of history in motion, an anachronism in a crowd of glossy SUVs and urban assault vehicles. Adam finally felt the tension give. He sat up straight, pressed himself into the bucket seat.
Adam knew her tricks. Like the elves, his mother was sly. She’d circle back to the subject of Bobby soon enough. But he could be sneaky too.
“You know how to handle her,” Adam said.
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