8

Adam

Adam hadn’t spent much time in Texas, but he was pretty certain it shouldn’t look like this. They’d finally left the webbing behind. Little firelights had replaced it, flowers like wheels of color burning along their edges. Fields and fields of them smoldered along the roadside. The sun remained dark. Adam suspected that this was as bright as it got.

The ghosts continued their westward march, still oblivious to the Cutlass passing through them. At least they’d left the spectral car behind when they’d descended.

A bit of green neon blinked ahead.

shamrock. you should stop, it spelled out in bright letters.

They passed the sign.

Another appeared, reading, seriously, binder. we need to talk.

“What is it?” Bobby asked.

“Magic,” Vran said hungrily.

“I feel it too,” Adam said.

He didn’t blame Vran’s eagerness. It felt like a sunbeam breaking through snow clouds.

“It’s Seamus,” Adam said. “The Guardian of the Western Watchtower.”

“How do you know?” Vran asked.

Adam scoffed. “Because it’s called Shamrock. Seamus wouldn’t miss the chance for that cliché.”

“Are we going to stop?” Bobby asked.

“Yes, please,” Vran said, bouncing in his seat.

“I think we have to,” Adam said.

His gut tightened. He didn’t know whether to be relieved or troubled that someone had reached them down here.

He didn’t mention his bargain with the leprechaun, the deal he’d struck to learn that it was Death herself behind the scheme to kill Mercy.

That sort of outstanding promise was something Adam had never wanted, had never risked, not until Denver.

Now he was on a road trip through hell. Lately it felt like big risks were all he took, like he wasn’t given another option when push came to shove.

The gas station stood tall and bright against the gloom of the prairie. The distorted landscape and the dark sun didn’t affect it. It was whole, unlike the burned-out shell of the water tower in the background. It sat, cheerful and bright green against the red of the burning flowers, lending the scene a Christmas flavor.

The magic cascading off the gas station pushed back the gloom and lightened the iron weight in Adam’s chest.

“That’s a watchtower,” Vran said, dark eyes wide.

“So?” Bobby said. He squinted, and Adam wondered if his brother was remembering his one trip to the Watchtower of the East before its destruction.

“It’s like finding an iceberg in the desert,” Adam explained. “It shouldn’t be down here.”

He’d seen any number of strange things in the spirit realm, from talking houses to dragons to trains that scuttled on centipede legs.

The towers were ever-present there. You couldn’t miss them, which was the point.

Here, where Adam could feel their absence in his gut, the sight was a marvel.

“It has to be taking a lot of power to keep it here,” Vran said.

Adam nodded.

He looked north, but no, only this tower had appeared. Silver and Argent were still far away. If Adam wanted to apologize, at least for how rude he’d been, it would have to wait.

He wasn’t certain that he did. Adam had been right, but he’d also known better.

Silver had just claimed his throne. He wouldn’t risk it for Adam’s sake, and he wouldn’t risk Adam for Vic’s sake.

Adam pulled off the highway and into the parking lot.

“Be careful here,” he said. “Both of you. Leprechauns live to make deals and they like to play games.”

“I know,” Vran said.

“Both of you,” Adam repeated, eyeing Vran in the mirror as the Cutlass came to a stop.

“Leprechauns?” Bobby asked, his brown eyes wide.

“Yeah. Seamus helped me out in Denver, with Mercy, so I owe him a favor.” Adam put the Cutlass in park and turned off the engine. “You’re not going to say anything stupid about cereal mascots or stereotypes, right?”

Bobby shook his head.

“Good. Really. They’re dangerous, maybe more than the elves.”

“How could they be more dangerous?” Bobby asked.

Adam considered it. Elves liked to follow the rules. They hid their violent impulses behind titles and protocol. There had to be a reason they sat atop the immortal food chain. Adam didn’t know leprechauns nearly as well, and that worried him.

“They don’t have the same ethics, the same code,” Adam explained. “I won’t be able to protect you if you piss him off. Oh, and don’t eat or drink anything.”

“Not my first rodeo,” Bobby said.

“Yeah,” Adam conceded, but he still felt like he had two kids to watch.

Stepping out of the Cutlass, Adam felt a weight lift. Some of the exhaustion peeled away, like he’d had a cup of coffee.

Bobby exhaled.

Vran perked up, looking more surly than sad as he climbed out of the car.

“That’s better,” Adam noted, watching the elf smile.

“So he’s like, recharging his battery?” Bobby asked.

Vran squinted, not liking the comparison, if he even understood it. Adam didn’t know anything about Vran’s relationship to technology. Silver and Argent liked old clothes and classic cars, though he did know Silver preferred more recent music.

They both loved Years & Years.

“We all are,” Adam said.

The exterior was quiet. A few other cars were parked, but they weren’t ancient or haunted. They could have been pulled from the mortal world, but the sky around the parking lot was bathed in emerald light, telling Adam he was right to guess that they’d stepped into a bubble of the spirit realm.

“What’s in there?” Bobby asked. “Should we bring guns?”

“That would only piss him off. Besides, he’s not an enemy.”

Bobby cocked his head to the side.

“But he’s not a friend either,” Adam waved a hand in a so-so gesture. “He’s more like a pawnbroker: kind of shady, and we don’t know what he’s got behind the counter.”

Bobby grabbed Adam’s arm.

“What deal did you make?” he demanded.

“One I had to,” Adam said, yanking free.

It had been the only way to learn who’d hired the druid to break the seal on Mercy, but for reasons Adam didn’t know, Seamus also wanted John dead.

Promising that had led Adam to the truth about Death, that she’d set everything in motion to ensure Mercy would live again, so it could be killed again and reaped.

A spirit from before the dawn of time, Mercy had lingered between life and death, violating the rules that Death held so dear. To reap it, she needed to make it corporeal, give it a body that could be killed, so she’d used the Binder family as pawns, including Adam and Bobby’s great-grandfather. Somewhere along the way, John had turned warlock. Adam still wasn’t certain what druid meant. The lore was muddled, the history mostly oral and ancient.

Adam had promised Seamus he’d end John, and there was no way this little drop-in wasn’t related to that.

Adam bit down on a sigh. There were too many players, too many variables. Maybe he could get some answers here.

The door jingled with one of those old shop bells when Adam opened it.

The last time Adam had seen Seamus he was set up in an empty ballroom, a gold-and-red affair in a theme restaurant. Now he stood on a bar stool behind the counter so he could lean over it. At first glance the space looked like any gas station. The head of a deer was mounted above the counter. Ads for cigarettes and junk food papered the wall.

Everything was a bit dated, maybe to the seventies, maybe more. The pinup calendar showed the month, October. The woman was a leprechaun, her bare arms and legs sprouting from a sexy pumpkin costume. She wore a stalk for a hat.

“Adam Binder,” Seamus said. “As I live and breathe.”

Adam narrowed his eyes.

If Seamus had been listening to his exchange with Death, then she had to have allowed it. Then again, she’d been different. The Reapers had stood idle. Perhaps not everything was right in the order of the universe.

Maybe all of this was another setup to meet some other goal Sara and Seamus shared.

Seamus wore a wool suit with a matching bowler hat, both the color of dried blood. He had a neatly trimmed beard, blond, that nearly hid the heavy sun damage on his craggy face. He had impressive eyebrows, bushy and wiry.

The glass under Seamus’s elbows was scratched from years of signed receipts and wear, obscuring the case’s contents.

The little store was filled with bags of candy, junk food, and the general kind of crap you’d expect, only much of it was alive. The gummy worms glowed, wriggling in their bags. The swirling slushy machine sparkled with something more than frozen sugar.

Bobby took it all in, eyeing everything with a mix of wonder and caution. He kept his distance from the wares. Adam approved.

“It’s good to see you,” Adam said to Seamus, meaning it.

Vran looked so much better as he eyed the snacks with a little too much interest for Adam’s comfort.

“But I’m guessing this isn’t a social call,” Adam added. He waved a hand to indicate the shop.

The leprechaun tipped his hat and said, “One last top off before you go where I can’t reach you.”

“The elves told me they couldn’t reach me at all,” Adam noted.

“The sidhe live in extremes,” Seamus said. “You can get more done if you see things in shades of gray, but you already know that, don’t you, warlock?”

It wasn’t subtle, Seamus’s reminder of his part in Adam’s transformation.

“So what’s the price today, Seamus?” Adam asked.

“Let’s just say that I’m protecting my investment,” Seamus said. “Human resources and all that.”

“I don’t work for you,” Adam said.

“In this matter you do,” Seamus growled. “I paid in advance, remember?”

There was no contest to win here, only a job Adam had to do, even if the thought of confronting and killing John turned his stomach for a number of reasons.

“You’re right,” he conceded.

Seamus relaxed a little.

Maybe he had invested more than Adam understood. There was likely some blowback from outing Death. Adam had assumed she’d wanted it to happen, but what if that weren’t the case? And then there was the magic, the massive amount Seamus was expending for this little talk. Why was John’s demise so important?

“You went to the elves for help,” Seamus said. “You went to her. You could have come to me.”

“I didn’t think I’d like your price,” Adam admitted.

It was the truth. He’d told Silver he’d give anything for his help, whatever he asked, but hadn’t he known that Silver wouldn’t ask for anything Adam didn’t want to give? Maybe Silver had refused because in this case, for Vic, Adam would go all in.

When Silver had said no Adam had gone straight to Death, trying to bargain with the powers he knew best.

He couldn’t—and didn’t—trust her, but he trusted Seamus even less. Death was driven to protect the natural order. Adam didn’t know the leprechaun’s motivations.

“I could still help you,” Seamus said. He used a cloth to wipe the glass countertop. The scratches cleared away and Adam could make out the contents: an old rifle, a sword that looked like it had been forged from green glass, a bundle of raven feathers, and a vial of dark, glittering ink.

“You’ve barely gotten started,” Seamus said. “Things will get worse as you descend.”

From the moment Adam had entered the spirit world, spirit walking with Sue and Silver, he’d been warned that immortals would try to enslave him. It made no sense. He was worthless, had so little power, and yet they kept trying.

“Why?” Adam asked. “Why do you want me indebted to you?”

“You’re already indebted to me,” Seamus said with a tilt of his head. “I want to make certain you get it done.”

Adam didn’t believe him. It was more than that.

The elves wanted him for a page, or had, and while they’d said it was to give mortals more equality, he didn’t entirely buy that either.

Adam cast about the shop, stalling for time.

“Do you have any doubt?” Adam asked, focusing back on the rifle. It looked special, all shiny and inlaid with brass etching. He hated guns, always had since their father had made him shoot things in an attempt to “man up,” something no five-year-old should have to do.

He’d told Vic that story and Vic had clenched his jaw, the feelings coming through their link in a mess of red and jagged blue, anger at Adam’s father and sorrow that he’d put a child through that.

“This is the last time you’ll see me before you get where you’re going,” Seamus reminded Adam. “I can’t go any lower.”

He paused and Adam could feel, more than hear, the whispers around them, the beings that listened in. The door to the back of the shop was closed, and Adam could only imagine what lurked beyond it.

“It takes a lot of magic to be here,” Adam said quietly.

“It does.”

Adam might be a fool to ignore the chance for help, but he couldn’t avoid the cost.

“What do you want, Seamus, really?” he asked, hoping the direct approach would throw the immortal off.

“What I’ve always wanted,” the leprechaun said, leaning closer. “The warlock. Dead.”

“Just John, or both of us?” Adam asked.

Seamus smiled. His teeth were thick and time-stained.

“Just him for now,” he said. “You? You I want to watch.”

“As in watch me take him down?”

“That too,” Seamus said.

“He’s got a lot more magic than I do,” Adam said. It was a genuine worry. He might not be able to beat John.

“Are you sure about that?” Seamus asked. “Even if he does, it may not matter. Down here, you’re both just human.”

“He’s been alive for a century.”

“So he has more experience,” Seamus said with a shrug. “And maybe that’s the same thing. Maybe it isn’t. You should know better than anyone how immortals can get stuck in their ways.”

Adam froze, resisted the urge to lean closer. Seamus was trying to tell him something, but Adam knew it would cost him to ask for more information.

Still, Seamus was right. With magic off the table the odds were much more even between Adam and his murderous ancestor.

“I guess being trapped down here isn’t enough?” Adam asked though he already knew the answer.

“No,” Seamus said. “You found your way in. He could find his way out.”

Something flickered across his weathered face, too small and too quick for Adam to name it, but it was enough to tell him the leprechaun, a Guardian, was concerned. There was some other, unspoken danger, something tied to John being here, in the underworld.

“All right,” Adam said.

“Can you do it?” Seamus asked. “Kill someone?”

“I’ve done it before,” Adam said, remembering Annie, remembering Mercy, and remembering Death asking him the same question.

They really wanted John off the board. Whatever their reasons were, they weren’t going to let him escape.

Adam could admit that part of him wanted John gone too.

He’d killed without remorse. He’d wanted Adam dead, then Jodi, then Bobby. He’d killed Sue and her daughter Noreen. He would not stop unless someone stopped him, and that job had fallen to Adam.

It should have made the task easier, but he wasn’t a killer. He had to do this, but no matter what John had done, Adam still didn’t know if he could pull the trigger when the time came.

And he chewed his lip to wonder how Vic would take it.

Vic had nearly broken up with Adam over not disclosing that Bobby had killed their dad fifteen years ago.

How would he react to Adam murdering someone?

“Why do you want him dead so badly?” Adam asked. He waved a hand around them. “All this magic spent just to make sure I get it done.”

“Do you know what a druid is?” Seamus asked quietly. He’d gone back to polishing the glass, though no amount of wiping was going to get those scratches out.

“Not really. I mean, I’ve been wondering, but no one does, right? They didn’t write anything down and they died out centuries ago.”

“Not completely,” Seamus said. “But mostly. They were friends of mine, back then. They worshipped life, had a way with nature. Like a lot of magic, it’s both talent and craft. You can learn their ways, but sometimes you’re born with it. Your great-grandfather was a natural—powerful, even for one of your line.”

“But he betrayed that when he became a warlock,” Adam said.

“Especially in the way he became a warlock,” Seamus said. “He betrayed life itself. And one of the people he killed to get there was one of mine.”

Seamus glanced at the calendar, at the sexy pumpkin, and his face smoothed. At that angle, he did not look so old or wizened. He looked sad and very lost, the same kind of expression Bobby wore most days.

“We weren’t Guardians then,” Seamus said. “Hadn’t earned the right, a voice on the council.”

“The elves kept you down?” Adam asked, guessing the source of Seamus’s animosity toward Silver and his kind.

“Their king said we did not belong.”

Adam could see why Seamus resented them, why he’d been so harsh with Argent when they’d gone to fetch the package John had left with Seamus as bait for Adam to come back to Oklahoma so John could take his life. That had blown up too, and John had killed Sue when he realized Adam had done what he never could have predicted, becoming a warlock by maiming himself. John couldn’t understand self-sacrifice any more than Adam could maim another being.

At least Adam understood now why Seamus wanted John dead. It was personal.

“Why me?” he asked, which was a question he seemed to be asking all the time lately. “You have all this power. Surely you’ve got bigger guns under your thumb.”

“Don’t you think there’s a nice symmetry in it?” Seamus asked. “He wanted to kill you. You surprised him. He used me to set you up. I use you to take him out. That you’re his descendant makes it sweeter.”

“You could have told me who he was,” Adam said.

“And you could have made a deal.”

There it was. Seamus wasn’t Adam’s friend. This, all of this, was business and a game, something to occupy the immortals’ time. The only way to learn the rules was to play, but Adam didn’t want to risk losing.

Bobby wandered the store. He was keeping an eye on Vran, which was just so Bobby. Vran knew what to expect from Seamus, it was Bobby who was out of his depth.

“Anything else you’ll tell me for free?” Adam asked.

Seamus stopped his polishing.

“There are demons here, but they’re not what you think, what you expect.”

“Do they maybe look like cars?” Adam asked.

“They can look like anything,” Seamus said.

“We’ve seen one then.”

“They’ll hunt you,” Seamus said, his accent a bit stronger.

The magic around them swirled with the scent of forest and old stones. A taste of wet wool snuck into the air. Adam’s gut clenched and he resisted the urge to look to the back room door.

“Do you know what they want?”

“Life,” Seamus said. “The three of you, alive and feeling, roiling with angst and issues—You’re like a feast to them, a full-course dinner after they’ve subsisted on the dregs, the scraps the dead bring. There will be more of them as you go lower.”

“I don’t suppose you could offer us some protection?” Adam asked.

“Only for the night,” Seamus said. “Like I said, this is as low as I can go.”

The garage door rolled up.

“Thank you, Seamus,” Adam said.

“Get it done, Binder,” Seamus said with another glance at the calendar.