“What does this mean, exactly?” Vic asked.
“It means you get to go back to work,” Sara said, her smile pleasant. “It means you get to live, be a police officer. And from time to time, when the death is extraordinary, you’ll claim a life for me.”
Vic looked from her to Adam.
“That’s it?” Vic asked. Adam squeezed his hand to send a warning.
“What else would there be?” she asked, dipping a shoulder in a graceful shrug.
“You don’t want his soul or something?” Adam asked.
Sara’s nose wrinkled, like she’d scented something unpleasant.
“I have no need for souls,” she said, sounding offended. “They aren’t trading cards.”
“Huh,” Adam said. That was twice he’d asked about souls and gotten a weird reaction from an immortal. He filed that mystery away for another day.
“So Vic’s not a part of it.”
“He is now,” she said. Her smile was sharp this time. “I wasn’t expecting you to do what you did, but I can’t complain. You’ll need backup for what’s ahead and a shoulder for the fallout, I suspect.”
“Why did you free the spirit?” Adam asked. “It’s killed a lot of people.”
Sara’s eyes narrowed.
“It was outside the rules,” she said. “It had to be corporeal again, alive again, for me to claim it.”
“Why Annie?” Adam asked. ‘What did she do to deserve this?”
“Nothing, honey,” Sara said. “Nothing at all. It wasn’t supposed to be her. I thought the spirit would possess your brother. Or you.”
“Bobby? Why?”
“It takes just the right mix, you see,” Sara said. “Just a drop of elf, diluted over eons. Genetic markers, your brother would call them. Too little and the body can’t contain the spirit. It burns out too fast. Too much and the possession isn’t complete, the possessed can fight it off. It needed to be complete, alive.”
Elf blood. Him? It sort of made sense, that practitioners would have a little immortal in them, but if that was the case why wasn’t Bobby like him?
Adam set it aside. Now wasn’t the time to obsess about the old questions.
“So you can kill it,” he said. “That’s what you want to do right?”
“No, Adam, honey, so I can claim it. Killing it is your job.”
“Why?” he spat. “Why me?”
Surely this fell to the Guardians. They were equipped to fight it.
“The markers. Pay attention. The spirit was supposed to possess your brother. Then you’d kill him. That’s why I talked him into committing you all those years ago, so you’d hate him and have no trouble pulling the trigger.”
Adam clenched his fist as she continued.
“Magic can’t stop it. Mortals can’t stop it. It takes just the right mix, the right breeding. I’ve spent centuries crafting your bloodline, then the damn thing seizes your sister-in-law.”
“But why Adam?” Vic asked.
“So he can bind it. You must seal the spirit in the flesh before you kill it. That is the only way to ensure it doesn’t escape me again.”
The recipe. The arrows. Bog iron, bone or glass. The cost to his soul.
“I won’t do it,” he said.
“Suit yourself,” she said, her smile flattening to a line. “It’s already destroyed one watchtower. Give it the chance and it will bring them all down. It will tear down all life. It doesn’t matter much to me. In the end, you’re all mine. But if you delay, well it’ll be a bumper crop this year.”
“Why did you set it free?” Adam asked. “It was safe in the ground, where the elves put it. You could have left it there.”
He saw real anger in her brown eyes. Her round features, always so pleasant pinched. Adam felt no power, no sign of force, but at her expression, he didn’t doubt there was cold steel in her, a core of something hard and unforgiving.
“It broke the rules,” she said coldly. “Evaded me, and I can’t stand for that.”
There was more to it, Adam felt certain, but he didn’t press. She wouldn’t tell him for free, and he was already shaking from what she wanted of him.
“You have everything you need,” she said, her tone sharpening. The light around them dimmed, the graveyard going dark. “Make it quick. Make it painless. But however it happens, it dies. We’ll skip the burritos this time.”
Then they were elsewhere. No doors, no rush of power or change in the air. They stood in Bobby’s basement.
Adam wanted to weep. He wanted to throw himself into Vic’s arms or face down on the floor, but they had no time. If Annie was an imperfect host, the spirit would hunt for a better fit.
“We have to get to Bobby,” he said.
37
Adam
It was like driving a refrigerator. Adam put the pedal of Annie’s white box to the ground.
“He’s still not picking up,” Vic said from the passenger seat, where he had Adam’s phone pressed to his ear.
Adam hadn’t asked if Officer Martinez would be able to get them out of a speeding ticket. At least red lights in Denver seemed to mean two or three cars went after they’d changed from yellow.
They had to get to Bobby, to the hospital. In that moment, Adam would have made any bargain to have Argent’s power, anything to reach Mercy faster, to save Bobby and Annie.
“Almost there,” Adam spat through gritted teeth. The Spanish-style building loomed ahead. “Almost—”
A boom cut him off. The car squealed to a stop, the windows shaking. Screams, car alarms, and a wave of magical force followed the blast.
Vic was making another call, using his cop voice, but Adam was out the door, on the street. He left the bow behind. What point did it have without arrowheads? Annie was here.
Across the street, the pavilion in front of the hospital, where patients were picked up and dropped off, was on fire.
Adam ran for the doors as another wave broke. The hospital windows buckled, rippled, and shattered.
Glass rained down, tinkling like ice, and in the aftermath, a voice sang, “Come out. Come out.”
Annie.
Adam started forward, but lurched to a halt when Vic grabbed his arm.
“What are you going to do?” Vic demanded.
Adam pulled the seal shard from his pocket.
“What I have to.”
A gunshot sounded. Another. Security had rallied. Sirens sang in the distance.
It couldn’t be that easy, could it?
A guard flew. He landed with a wet crunch atop a parked car.
Vic rushed to check on the man, getting his phone from his pocket to call for help.
Adam watched him as if time had frozen. Commanding, concerned, and in charge.
Yeah, Adam could love him, if they lived through this.
He ran for Mercy and found her by the nimbus of magic, the sallow heat haze, pouring off her. She stood between the wrecked pavilion and the hospital’s entrance, singing her song.
Annie did not have much time. Adam’s Sight showed the spirit overlaying her body, barely contained by her too-weak flesh. It tore, then healed, then tore again. The bullet holes closed. If there were any true mercy, she wasn’t conscious. It had to be agony. Adam’s heart broke for her, this cheery woman whose only mistake had been to marry his brother and want a family. This woman he had to kill.
He ran at her. A great crack appeared in Annie’s cheek. Blood flowed. Then it closed.
Maybe he was the mercy.
Adam drew the shard from his pocket as he ran, intending to drive it into her back, as quick as he could.
Of course Bobby chose that moment to come outside. He walked out of the hospital’s main doors, his lab coat bright white.
Annie fixed on Bobby. Bloody, filthy, her mouth opened to a
nasty grin. Her jaw slid open, wrong, like Mercy wasn’t used to human teeth.
Bobby gaped, eyes wide as the whole truth of the scene settled upon him.
It was now or never.
The car closest to Adam exploded. His ears rang, like a gun had gone off nearby. Smoke and dust filled the air. He could taste burning plastic, burning gasoline.
The force had knocked him to the ground. He thought maybe a few of his bones had cracked, but worse, he’d dropped the shard.
Adam! Vic screamed silently, his worry and panic like a knife in Adam’s heart.
I’m fine, he called through their connection. Stay back, please.
If she hurt Vic—he couldn’t take that, not atop what he had to do.
Annie—the spirit—laughed. She turned, took a step toward him, the spirit tendrils erupting from her like the tentacles of an octopus.
“Adam!” Bobby called.
“Run,” Adam spat through gritted teeth.
Annie strode toward him, her face split and closed. Soon. She’d burn away soon. Her foot came down on the shard and the obsidian shattered into pieces. She lowered her eyes, full of blood and yellow, on him. The corona of tentacles undulated.
Something gray and shining fell from the hospital’s roof. Annie paused as Argent collided with the ground, making a web of cracks in the concrete. She leaked magic, glowing like a falling star.
“Hungry?” she asked, holding her empty hands open, baiting the spirit with her life.
No.
Adam forced himself to sit upright.
Mad-eyed, howling, Annie darted, propelled forward by impossible speed. Adam heard a bone snap.
Argent dodged and leapt away, leaving Annie at a distance, her leg crooked, her face twisted with rage and pain.
Annie charged again, ignoring the broken leg. Argent dodged again, but it had been close. Adam read the hunger in Annie’s jaundiced eyes. It wanted Argent. It wanted her magic.
“Don’t let her touch you!” Adam shouted, pulling himself to his feet
“Thank you, Adam!” Argent shouted back, leaping to land atop a parked car. “I got that part.”
Annie continued to chase Argent, scrambling with singular focus. Adam would never catch her, not on foot, and the shard lay in pieces, slivers—
Like glass. Like arrowheads.
Bobby reached him as he scooped up the shards.
“What are you doing?” Bobby asked, his voice torn. He looked ragged, wild-eyed as he demanded, “What about Annie?”
“Help me,” Adam said. “This is the only thing that can stop her.”
Annie blew up another car. Argent, in midleap, landed awkwardly on the ground. She only looked stunned, but it was long enough for Annie to start toward her, slowed by the broken leg, but not enough.
“You want magic?” Adam shouted. He lifted a chunk of broken sidewalk and threw it with all his might. It connected with the center of Annie’s back. She swiveled, stared at him. “How about mine, asshole?”
Annie hissed, a screeching inhuman sound. It might have been intended as a roar, but the spirit hadn’t seemed to master vocal cords. She lurched in Adam’s direction, slowed only by the broken leg.
She was almost to Adam when a voice shouted, “Annie!”
“No, Bobby!”
“Annie, please,” Bobby said. Sobbing, he took her by the shoulder before Adam could stop him.
She wrapped her empty hand around Bobby’s wrist. His eyes went white. The tendrils lashed, driving into Bobby. They began to swell, to move the spirit from the dying host to the new.
Adam reached Annie. Bobby’s lids were fluttering. Adam drove the largest of the shards into Annie’s neck.
She roared her raspy screech and batted Adam away with her free hand. The magic swirled around her, wild and pulsating. She dropped Bobby and tore out the sliver. It wasn’t enough. She had to be bound.
Annie vanished, fleeing into the spirit realm where Adam could not chase her.
She ran away, heading for downtown and the cover of the debris cloud.
Adam rushed to Bobby. His brother lay on the ground, his eyes closed, but the slight rise and fall of his chest said he was alive.
“What did she do to him?” Vic asked, catching up, a wall of cops behind him.
“She drained the magic from him,” Argent said, reaching them at the same time. “However much he had, it’s gone now.”
*****
Vic stayed to help sort the damage. Adam and Argent watched Bobby be admitted and given a room, and then lie pale in a bed.
They’d made calls. Jesse would bring Adam’s mother. He’d stay with Bobby until she came.
“Are you all right?” Argent asked, watching the light of the monitors. Adam had opened the blinds, let the sunset light the room.
It should have been beautiful.
“No,” he said.
They said nothing for a long while. In whispers, he conveyed what Death had told them, what she’d planned for the brothers, what she’d done.
That cop with the broken back, the people terrorized and hurt by the explosions, Bobby. Annie. It was all on her, and his father. And Death was Vic’s new boss, just to twist the knife in Adam’s gut a little harder.
“We keep underestimating its intelligence,” Adam said. “It wanted a new host, but you distracted it. It wants magic more.”
“Even though it was nearly bursting,” Argent said. “Did you see?”
“Yeah,” he said. “Healing or not, Annie can’t contain it.”
“It craves its former stature, and it’s quite mad. It will not stop.”
Adam chewed his lip. He couldn’t say exactly what Argent was to him, a mentor or a friend. He settled on friend. An elf, sure, but he could be friends with elves. He did not want to consider what that made Silver. A friendly ex, maybe?
Neither would talk to him once he did what he had to do. They may even come after him.
She raised an eyebrow at him, as if to watch his thought process churn.
“Be careful, okay?” Adam asked.
“All right, Adam Binder, I shall do my best to not die,” she said.
They stood in silence for a while, watching Bobby, watching over him.
“What about the hospital?” Adam asked. “The other people?”
“It’s bad,” she said. “But not as bad as it could have been. We contained the damage. We’re telling the media it was a gas leak.”
“Will they buy that?”
She shrugged. “It’s worked before. If we must, we will change memories. It is part of the Guardians’ duties to keep the mortal world safe.”
“You can manipulate minds?” Adam asked.
“There are spells for it, though I hesitate to use them. They dip into the black.”
Adam wondered if Bobby woke, would he prefer to not remember any of this. To forget seeing Adam again or his failure to rescue Annie? Maybe he’d prefer to forget Annie herself and just start his perfect life over again. And maybe that would be easier in light of what Adam had to do.
He’d brought the bow and arrows from the car. He took the shards from his jacket pocket, laid them out on the rolling table beside Bobby’s bed.
He read the recipe one more time. Sara, Death, hadn’t lied. He had everything he needed.
“I’m sorry,” he said to his sleeping brother. It was one thing that he hadn’t been able to save her. It was quite another that he was planning to kill her.
38
Adam
At fifteen, Adam Binder sat in yet another pointless class taught by another teacher whose name he could barely remember. He’d picked a desk with a good sunbeam and dozed like a cat, eyes almost shut, letting the sights and sounds of the Other Side ease the press around him.
Who liked who? Who’d had sex? Who h
adn’t? Who likely never would? The jocks, the posturing, the ambitious, the nervous. It was a daily, eight-hour onslaught relieved only by lunch and the happy grind and clank of auto shop.
The intercom, tinny and antique, broke the spell of his happy drifting, “Adam Binder, please report to the counselor’s office.”
“Adam!” the teacher snapped.
Clearly the intercom had already sounded once or twice.
“Going,” he muttered, scooping up his backpack. He hadn’t taken anything out of it.
His grades just weren’t something he thought about. He’d drifted through the world, for a year, from school, to the bus home, to his room. All the while, the Other Side called to him. It started with a faint glow, a white nimbus outlining people. Sometimes, it felt like he was spinning inside his body, that if he could just step sideways, in the right direction, he’d be free.
He floated through school, doing his best to keep his head down, especially in gym class during shirts and skin activities. The only thing worse than being a space case was being gay. Better to drift, half-asleep—than out himself by staring too long at a guy and dealing with the consequences—until he graduated.
“Adam!” the teacher called again.
He focused, found the class on pause, staring at him, some with faces of disgust, more than one with laughter. It stabbed into him, bright and cold at the same time. Cruel, it reminded him of his dad.
He forced himself to stay in his body, in the moment. It took a lot. He was tired, always so tired, from those moments of effort.
“Stoner,” someone muttered.
He wasn’t, not that it mattered to them. Adam wiped the drool from his mouth and exited. Where—
Right. Counselor’s office.
He expected expulsion. He sort of welcomed it. He’d never belonged here, and escaping the teenage turmoil might clear his head.
What he hadn’t expected, when he pushed open the door to the office, was Bobby. Adam’s brother sat talking to the counselor, Mrs. Pearce, a pleasant black woman who always smiled at Adam like she knew him. Like anyone knew him.
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