10

Adam

Adam woke to find the Cutlass inside the ruins of the abandoned gas station. Seamus and the watchtower had gone.

They’d slept in the car, each wrapped in one of the blankets Adam kept in the trunk. He climbed out, folded the afghan carefully. Sue had crocheted it, and he took comfort in the memory of her deft hands working the needles and yarn.

The asphalt was old and cracked. The air smelled faintly burnt, like barbeque and pepper. It wasn’t as dry here, and Adam took that as a good sign.

The warlock wound hurt less today, which was an even better sign.

The squeal of the rusty garage door startled Bobby and Vran awake when Adam opened it.

“Everybody okay?” Adam asked, climbing back into the car.

“Yeah,” Bobby said. “Why aren’t I hungry?”

“I don’t know,” Adam said. “But I’m not either. Vran?”

“I’m good,” he said, patting his stomach as he sat upright.

He looked better. A night in the Other Side’s magic had livened him up.

Adam started the car.

“Still west?” Bobby asked.

“Yeah,” Adam said. “We’re less than two hours from Amarillo if the landscape is still the same as back home.”

“How’s the gas?” Bobby asked, leaning over to look as he started playing with the radio.

“Full,” Adam said with a shake of his head. That didn’t make any sense. He didn’t think Seamus would be courteous enough to fill the tank.

“Time is frozen here, at least sort of frozen,” Vran said. “Didn’t you notice the sun doesn’t move?”

“I hadn’t actually,” Adam said, eyeing the black ball.

It was like a permanent eclipse with red light spilling out from behind it.

Vran rolled his eyes so hard Adam could almost hear it.

Adam reached for his phone, hoping to drive back the gloom with some music, and found it dead. He shook his head.

“There’s radio,” Bobby said, playing with the dials.

He landed on an old, familiar country tune that brought back memories of the trailer, Roseanne Cash singing about a runaway train.

“Dad loved this song,” Bobby said wistfully.

Adam scoffed.

“He did,” Bobby argued. “Used to sing it when we drove into town.”

“I don’t remember him like that,” Adam said. “Singing. Laughing.”

Most days Adam only remembered the anger, the constant slam of red into his chest . . . well, that was a lie. Adam knew it hadn’t all been like that, which was what made it so much worse.

Every kind moment had been a tease, a hint that Robert Senior might love him, could be a good father. Then he’d smash it with another blow or an angry explosion that filled Adam with shrapnel that he was still trying to pick out of his heart.

Adam reached to turn off the radio.

“What would you listen to?” Bobby asked. “If your phone were working?”

“Vic’s stuff,” Adam said.

They’d put a playlist together for their drives, when they’d gone to find parts for the Cutlass.

“He likes straight boy music,” Adam said with a shrug.

“What’s straight boy music?” Bobby asked, making air quotes.

“He loves Crown the Empire,” Adam said. “Fellowcraft. Stuff like that.”

“Like you didn’t use to rock out to my old Linkin Park CDs,” Bobby said.

“I still do sometimes,” Adam confessed.

Bobby chuckled and set the phone back in the cup holder, careful not to disturb the cord Adam used to link it to the stereo.

The red haze outside deepened, but the stalks of white grass broke from shallow black waves like endless fingers. The station parking lot was like an island, the highway a bridge above the water.

Most of the ghosts kept to the road, though some ranged, sunk to their ankles, looking lost.

“At least they’re not zombies,” Bobby said.

“Yeah,” Adam agreed. “Wait, you’re a doctor. You’re afraid of zombies?”

“Think about it,” Bobby said. “You’re in the morgue late at night. Suddenly the bodies start to move and—”

“Stop. Stop,” Vran said, putting his hands over his ears.

“Elves have a complicated relationship with death,” Adam explained, though he was equally as glad for the interruption.

“It freaks us out,” Vran clarified.

“You might be on the wrong road trip then,” Bobby teased.

“Why are they wandering like that?” Adam wondered aloud.

He wanted to stop, to get a closer look, but didn’t. Finding Vic was the most important thing, and he’d learned from his time in the spirit realm that getting distracted by every shiny thing could be dangerous.

One of the ghosts, a woman, threw up an arm, looking distressed.

A serpent, massive and skeletal, burst from the ground. Clutching her in its jaws, it vanished back into the water.

All around the flooded plain, similar scenes unfolded.

Adam shuddered. Rattlesnakes were an issue back home, but water moccasins were more aggressive, a bigger danger. Adam didn’t know the difference between snake skeletons, but he didn’t see rattles, just long, spiraling spines lined in curving ribs.

“They’re demons,” Vran said, following Adam’s gaze. “Just different from the car. They have the same aura.”

“Don’t look too closely, Vran,” Adam cautioned. Sight meant that sometimes what you Saw also Saw you back.

Vran swallowed and gave a little nod.

“Let’s be sure to stay on the road,” Bobby whispered.

It was one more reason to keep going. The line between Adam and Vic grew stronger with every mile they drove.

“The ghosts aren’t the same,” Vran said, still watching the tentacles. “The ones on the road are less alive.”

“Well, yeah,” Bobby said. “They’re spirits.”

“I know that,” Vran sniped. “I mean, the ones wandering off have less light. They’re extra dead.”

Adam focused, let his Sight rise, trying to peer deeper and see what Vran was seeing.

“He’s right,” Adam said. “The ghosts on the road have less energy.”

“How do you know?” Bobby asked.

“The Sight,” Adam said. “I can turn it on and off now.”

“Could you teach me that too?” Bobby asked.

“If that’s something you want,” Adam said.

Adam’s problem had been the opposite, the inability to turn the Sight off. That’s what had landed him in Liberty House, gotten him the reputation as a stoner. It had taken Silver to teach him control, to pull his senses in and lock them down.

He’d never considered trying to teach someone the opposite, to push their Sight further.

“But this probably isn’t the best place to do it,” Adam said.

“Still, you’re saying that spirits can break down, be more or less alive,” Bobby said.

“Apparently. It makes sense, right? I mean you can see some ghosts clearly. Others are faded.”

The last one that far gone, that thin, had been out at the old Binder homestead. Adam had gone there with Bobby and Jodi to investigate. There’d been a spirit, maybe more than one. Adam wondered if it was Jimmy, James Junior, the cousin John had killed in a brutal ritual in order to extend his own life.

“It’s all magic,” Vran said. “How much of it they have or how much they don’t.”

“And magic is life,” Adam and Bobby said together.

“But they’re the soul, right?” Bobby asked, sounding kind of upset. “Just disembodied?”

“They’re part of what’s left behind,” Vran said softly. “Like another body.”

Adam considered it as the ghosts came and went in the Cutlass’s headlights.

“But is it the soul?” Bobby asked. “If it’s not, what happens to that?”

“I don’t know,” Vran said. “I don’t know if there is any difference between the spirit and the soul, the consciousness and the energy.”

“I guess they didn’t cover everything in elven kindergarten,” Bobby mused.

Adam didn’t know either. For all he dealt with spirits and the other world, he hadn’t taken the time to ask what happened to the dead.

It hadn’t seemed as important until lately, until teatime with Death had become a regular event.

Bobby stared out the window.

“You’re thinking about Annie?” Adam asked.

“And Dad,” Bobby said.

Shit, Adam thought.

He’d never thought Sue could be here. She had to be somewhere better. Annie too.

But their dad, Robert Senior . . . those years weren’t something Adam enjoyed remembering.

Once, he’d built a story for himself about their father, about how much fun he’d been.

Bobby’s confession, that he’d killed Robert to save Adam, had stripped that all away.

Now all Adam remembered were his dad’s rages, the inky, looming terror. None of the sparkly laughter or bright white joy remained.

He was big enough to admit that neither was completely true, neither was the whole story.

A shape darted into the road, crossing their path.

Adam slammed on the brakes out of instinct. The horse and rider were already splashing off into the low hills.

Another rider followed, crossing the highway in a gallop. More followed, at least a dozen of them.

“What the hell?” Bobby asked.

“They’re cowboys,” Adam said, narrowing his eyes. “And, uh, cowgirls?”

The horses and riders were spectral, washed out, but still had more color than the ghosts. Adam blinked as they steered lost, wandering ghosts back toward the road. Once there, they moved west again, rejoining the stream.

“They’re herding them,” he said aloud.

“After the demons have spit them out,” Vran said.

The cowboys looked ready to move on, traveling back the way they’d come. Green headlights bobbed into view behind the Cutlass.

“No,” Adam said.

But the car was unmistakable. The demon had caught up to them.

He tapped the gas, hoping the cowboys would stay out of the way. He had no idea what the rules were, what would pass through the Cutlass and what wouldn’t.

Adam drove, faster and faster, until the engine shook again.

Bobby and Vran looked back.

“We lost it before,” Adam said. “We can lose it again.”

“There’s more than one this time,” Vran said.

Adam glanced to the rearview. At least a dozen pairs of headlights were after them.

“Floor it!” Bobby yelled.

“I am!”

A town appeared, grain silos popping up like steel mushrooms and fading as they raced by.

The demons had fallen behind again, and Adam could breathe a little easier, though he kept his foot pressed to the floor.

The streets ahead were old-fashioned, like the historic parts of Guthrie, but—

Adam had to slow when they reached the buildings. Long passenger trains were everywhere, blocking the road.

The ghosts stopped too. These looked thinner, paler, like their journey had partially erased them.

“Why are you stopping?” Bobby asked, head twisting to look for the demon cars. “Find a way around them.”

“No,” Vran said, watching the ghosts stream onto the trains. “This is the next gate.”

“We don’t have long until they catch up,” Bobby said.

“Then we’d better find the way down,” Adam said.