15

Adam

Adam had never been to Albuquerque, so he had nothing to compare to the city with the colorful streamers of pink and green lights strung between the yellow streetlamps. Their glow brightened as he drove, leading them in like a runway. The buildings beneath them stood cast in heavy shadows. The underworld’s gloom washed out the houses and storefronts, the signs and numbers, leaving only the road and its bright path.

This looked more like the spirit realm than any place they’d yet seen, but the feel of it remained the same: dead, void of magic and life. Vran’s disappearance only made it worse.

Adam missed his snark.

The ghosts had also vanished. Adam did not think the lights had driven them away. The dead weren’t here, but something lurked beyond his senses.

It wasn’t the line to Vic. That led past the city, farther west. It wasn’t a gate either, but Adam felt little tugs on his awareness, like a fishing bobber dipping every now and then.

“Is that a hotel?” Bobby asked, leaning forward to try and see the building sitting where the lights ended.

“By the look of it,” Adam said. “Wanna bet you can check out but never leave?”

“You think it’s a trap?”

“I’m not sure,” Adam said. “But there’s something here, something calling to me. Do you feel it too?”

Bobby closed his eyes, cocked an ear like he was listening to music.

“Yeah,” he said, rubbing a hand over his chest. “It’s like a song, or a low hum.”

“Yeah,” Adam agreed.

So whatever it was it wasn’t just about him. It didn’t feel like Vran. It certainly wasn’t Vic. Maybe it was Jodi or John.

“We don’t have to stop,” Bobby said.

“I think we do,” Adam said. In his chest, the warlock wound started to pulse, a rhythm like a fading heartbeat.

“It’s sad, isn’t it?” Bobby asked. “Are you getting that too?”

“Yeah,” Adam said. “Let’s bring guns.”

“You hate guns,” Bobby said.

“I really do.”

But he was a warlock now.

What Adam had done, what John did, was death magic, killed a part of himself to seal the spell that had let Vic reap Mercy. And Vic had somehow pulled on the line between them to open the portal that had brought him, Jodi, and John here, the same line Adam followed west.

Death magic was a dangerous tool. Adam could see it as a necessary evil.

Weren’t guns the same?

Adam did hate them, hated the idea of them, but a bullet might be the only way to quickly put an end to his great-grandfather.

“You think it’s him?” Bobby asked. “Great-Grandpa John? I mean if we can both hear it, and we’re both Binders . . .”

“Maybe,” Adam said. He tried to taste the air for hints of John’s magic. The flavor was like Adam’s own, but he found nothing. It could be the void, the way the underworld drank magic.

“I don’t think so, but just in case,” Adam hedged.

He brought the Cutlass to a stop in the hotel’s parking lot. Empty, it was more memory and ruin than an actual place. The painted lines were buried under dust, a brownish sand. The valet station stood unattended, the glass doors closed as if to seal out the night or to seal something inside.

Adam parked as close as he felt safe, close enough to run for the car but not so close that they wouldn’t spot anything approaching them from the hotel’s direction.

“I want to be smart about this,” Adam said, turning off the engine and climbing out. “We’ll leave a salt ring around the car.”

“Why?”

“There’s something here,” Adam said. “I don’t know what, but whether it’s John or not, I don’t want it sneaking into the back seat.”

It should keep out the dead, but Adam didn’t know how it would go if the demons showed up. His power was slight, and they weren’t made of magic as he knew or understood it.

Bobby joined Adam at the trunk. He checked two pistols and offered one to Adam.

“Safety’s on. You still remember how to shoot?” he asked.

“Yes,” Adam said.

His hand was steady as he tucked the gun into the pocket of his jacket.

It had been a lifetime ago. Their dad had made him handle a BB gun before working him up to a real pistol, though even the BBs had been fatal enough for the wounded squirrel he’d made Adam shoot over and over until it stopped jerking in pain.

“Hopefully you won’t need it,” Bobby said, putting his pistol into his jacket pocket.

“Hopefully,” Adam grumbled.

The truth was, that no matter what they found here, he had to take John down. He’d made a binding promise. He had to keep it.

Adam took a long breath to steady his nerves and center his magic. He took a cardboard can of salt from the trunk and closed it.

He usually poured his worries into his wards, his fears, what he wanted to keep out, but magic didn’t work here, not like how he was used to. Instinct said to try something else, so Adam reached for his love and joy instead. He thought of his first kiss with Vic, his first lessons with Silver, and the elf’s proud smile when Adam got something right. He poured in his gratitude to Sue, and the way he felt about Vran, friendship yes, but maybe something a little bit like how Bobby felt about Adam.

Be safe, Adam willed.

Adam gathered it all in his palm with a heavy handful of the salt and tossed it overhead. With a bit of concentration, he willed it to fall around the Cutlass in a circle. Adam opened his eyes to see if it had worked.

“Neat trick,” Bobby said.

“Silver taught me,” Adam said. “I’ve never managed it before.”

The spell flared, brighter in his Sight than he’d expected.

“What does that mean?” Bobby asked. “That you’re getting stronger?”

“Or just learning to better use what I’ve got,” Adam said.

It wasn’t unlike what he’d done to save Bobby and Jodi from the rattlesnakes back at the homestead. He’d gathered all of his power into a warding sphere then detonated it. This time, he let it settle, sink into place.

Adam shook the last of the salt into his hand and put it in his other jacket pocket, opposite the gun. A bit of music, something with piano, drifted out from the hotel, unsettling in the perfect silence of the dead city.

Adam set the empty can outside the salt ring like a warning sign and swayed as he straightened.

“You okay?” Bobby asked.

“Yeah—this place . . . It will be good to get home.” Adam turned to the hotel entrance.

He forced a smile. They walked side by side to the double doors.

Automatic, they slid open and closed when the brothers stepped inside.

The lobby had a semblance of life, but not any kind Adam wanted to live.

Here were the dead that were missing outside.

They were mostly older, and dressed in older styles. In another place they might have been elves, but these people lacked the grace of the immortals. They lacked their beauty. Their clothes were ill-fitting, slack, like they’d shrunk inside them.

The ghosts themselves were washed out, worn down, and exhausted, like they’d partied too long, like the time Sue had washed his black clothes in detergent with bleach and then put them in the drier on high heat. These ghosts had more color than the spirits on the road, looked closer to alive, but they’d gone fuzzy at the edges. Gray softness limned their skin.

Adam had never been good at parties, never really been to one. Back home a scene like this would have had him drawing up his defenses, warding himself against the unchecked emotions of the inebriated people, but he felt nothing from the dead.

Maybe they didn’t generate any new feelings, any new emotions or memories.

Nearby, a woman whose hair ran in red strings toward her purple dress spoke with a tall Black man dressed in a brown suit and matching fedora. He had a gray beard. Like the others, they had a dragged-down appearance, like they’d washed up here.

Even the air held a little dampness, a little mold, which could not fit with Albuquerque but reminded Adam of the lake back home.

There was a little casino attached to the lobby and it exuded a cloud of cigarette smoke and more of the sad music. The old-fashioned tune should be lively, but it rang soulless and lonely in Adam’s ears, like the band in the lobby’s far corner was simply propped there. A woman stood with them, dressed in sequins. She looked poised to sing, but didn’t.

The bar was serving endless drinks, glasses full of something clear. It might be water. It might be gin. It could be straight-up poison.

Caught up in their conversations, or staring blankly into space, the ghosts ignored the brothers.

Adam followed the feeling that had led them here through the heavy door into the hotel’s guts.

“It’s like a dorm,” Bobby said, eyeing the narrow hall with its thin carpet.

The yellowing paint was thick on the walls, the ceiling spackled with dusty plaster popcorn.

Adam wouldn’t know, but didn’t say so. He was trying to get along with Bobby. Constantly jabbing him about the past, or rehashing it in his own thoughts, wouldn’t help with that.

“This place is huge,” Adam said instead, shifting so the weight of the gun wasn’t obvious in his jacket.

Carrying it put something heavy and slow in his chest. Necessary evil or not, tool or not, Adam hated that he took comfort in the gun’s weight.

The doors to the rooms were all closed. There was no music, no sounds of televisions or occupation.

Around the bend in the hall a door stood cracked open.

Number 151.

Adam and Bobby exchanged a nod.

This was it, every sense said so.

Adam reached to knock but a voice called out before his fist made contact.

“Come in.”

Adam pushed the door open to find a little room. The bed was made. Things were tidy, and their dead father sat at the little table by the sliding glass door to the balcony.

Robert Senior had a scrawny, underfed look. He was dressed the same he’d been that day, in a flannel shirt thrown over a dirty wifebeater. He’d been a hazy memory all these years, more of a feeling than a picture, something red spiked with barbed wire and broken glass.

This was the end of the line, the feeling that had called Adam and Bobby here.

Hell is personal, Adam thought, but he’d completely missed what Death had meant by that.

“Hello, sons,” Robert Binder said. He nodded to the two chairs across from him. “Won’t you have a seat?”