31

Adam

“You want me to come?” Vic asked as they parked.

They’d taken his car.

Adam felt a little ache at the loss of the Cutlass. He probably always would, but it was an easy price to pay to know that Vran had saved Vic, Bobby, and Jodi.

He’d work for Jesse, take the bus, and find a new car, one that was his and didn’t carry his father’s baggage.

“I think we should do this, just the two of us,” Adam said, nodding to Bobby.

It wasn’t easy to leave Vic behind. They’d spent the night wound together. His mother hadn’t been wrong. The couch was narrow. Its ancient cushions were flat, but Adam had lay atop Vic, fingers laced, arms wrapped tight. They’d kept their clothes on, as much from sheer exhaustion as modesty, but at every stir, Adam had shifted to lay a kiss somewhere and Vic had kissed him back.

“Okay,” Vic said, reaching to turn up the stereo.

The sounds of rock echoed from the car as Adam and Bobby walked away.

Typical straight boy music, Adam thought, hefting the shovel over his shoulder.

Vic put his hands behind his head and leaned the seat back.

Adam had to force himself to look away.

Vic smiled. He didn’t need magic to know the effect he had on Adam. Adam hoped he sparked the same thing in Vic.

Bobby grimaced as they walked onto the property.

“I thought you broke the curse,” Bobby said.

“Me too, but he wove it into the land. It won’t be a problem now.”

“Why not?” Bobby asked.

“I spent more time in John’s head than I would have liked,” Adam said. “I know how his magic works.”

Adam wasn’t a druid. He wasn’t sworn to that path, and after meeting Life itself, couldn’t say he ever wanted to be, but magic was magic. They were both Binders, and this was a binding.

A little family history, Adam thought, remembering what he’d learned about this place and his great-great-grandparents.

Kneeling, Adam touched the line of the curse, the ward John had set. It was nasty work, made from pain, like all of John’s spells. No wonder nothing grew here.

The Dust Bowl was long gone, but land couldn’t heal, not when it was twisted up in this sort of magic.

Adam had the shape of the spell, could see it in his mind like a series of knots tied together in a pattern.

He probably couldn’t have managed this with any other caster’s work, but Adam knew John’s tricks.

He reached for the knots and untied them one by one. It took a long moment to sort out the threads. John had left booby traps, but they were easy to spot, tangles of power like barbs on wire.

This was what Silver saw in Adam, his value to the elves. Hopefully he’d do the work he always had, helping the Guardians find trouble trying to hide under their radar.

The curse snapped apart and fell away.

Bobby felt the change and exhaled.

Adam rose and dusted off his hands.

He’d admit to a bit of satisfaction at wiping a little more of John’s legacy away.

“Shouldn’t be any rattlesnakes,” Bobby said. “It’s too cold.”

Adam agreed. The day was gray, and the snakes would be sluggish in this weather.

“Still, keep your ears peeled,” Adam said, leading Bobby into the fields.

“Mixed metaphor,” Bobby corrected, though he eyed the switchgrass and mud with caution. “You know I heard about a guy cutting the rattlers off.”

“Why would anyone do that?” Adam asked.

“So they could use the snakes like weapons, not give them the chance to warn humans away.”

“That’s awful,” Adam said with a shudder. “Like something John would have done.”

“Do you hate him?” Bobby asked.

“Kind of,” Adam said. “Okay, definitely. He killed Sue. I can’t forgive that.”

“But you didn’t kill him.”

“Not my place,” Adam said again, and meaning it as much as he had before. “Not my job.”

“Will it be? I mean you dodged a bullet, but won’t working for Silver mean making some of those same choices?”

“I don’t think so,” Adam said.

They had yet to discuss terms, but Adam had meant what he’d told Vic. He trusted Silver not to put him in a situation where he’d have to betray who he was.

He also wanted the chance to apologize, to make it right between them after what he’d said in the hospital.

Adam focused on finding the marker stones. John had placed three of them in a wide triangle, each fifty paces apart.

He didn’t tell Bobby that he sort of understood John now. Adam could hate him and not want him dead. He could love his brother and not understand him.

Life and chaos were the same thing. The Greeks had been right about that.

“You know I don’t blame you for Annie, right?” Bobby asked.

It had come out of nowhere, but Adam understood. A trip to the underworld meant they’d all gotten a little direct, felt the need to say what they hadn’t had the chance or guts to before. Life was short.

“I know you don’t,” Adam said. “But I’m still sorry she died. I liked her. I wanted to save her, and when I couldn’t—well like I said, I don’t want to decide who lives or dies, you know? I’m not built for that.”

“I know,” Bobby said, and Adam thought that maybe he did.

“There,” Adam said, pointing to a broad crack in the ground, relieved to let the subject drop.

Things were better between them than they’d been in a long time, but Adam knew they’d never be easy. Maybe that was how family was for them.

They’d never be like the Martinez family, like Vic’s, and maybe that was okay.

Adam had called Jesse, who’d said he still had a job just so long as he brought his brother home safe. He’d also made a joke about putting a ring on it, and Adam had blushed and hung up.

Vic also had news. He was quitting the force and going back to school to pursue his dream of being a chef, but he wanted to tell his mother and brother in person.

Sunday dinner at Maria’s was going to be interesting. Adam was looking forward to seeing some other family’s drama for once.

Bobby started to walk toward the crack but Adam threw up an arm, blocking him like a soccer mom.

“There are definitely snakes,” he said, eyeing the gap and sensing the spell, the same trap John had used the last time they’d been here.

“How do we get it?”

“Same way he got it down there.” Adam knelt and closed his eyes.

Hey, he called, sending a thread of will into the ground, into the ball of sleeping rattlers.

He knew they did that, twisting together for warmth, but it was more in this case. John had compelled them to always sleep that way, to guard what he’d buried.

It was another curse, to bind them this way. John had enslaved them and all their descendants to an unnatural purpose.

Adam couldn’t compel them, wouldn’t, but he could make a suggestion, have a conversation.

This magic was different, what Johnny’s craft should have been, had his fear not twisted him toward murder. This wasn’t Death’s magic. This was Life’s, and it ran through Adam’s blood. He was a Binder. He could set bindings. He could also break them.

You can let it go now, Adam said. It’s time.

He’d never spoken with this voice before, had never known he could.

He only hoped he was doing it right.

He opened his eyes as one by one, they wriggled, shifting under their burden, pushing it upward. They hadn’t needed the shovel at all.

A black plastic garbage bag popped out of the ground. Wrapped tight with duct tape, it was covered in mud and clay. The snakes were happy to retreat back into their hole, ready to sleep through the winter. Free at last, they’d move on or nest here. Whatever they did, it would be according to their nature.

Adam took a long breath, steadying himself as Bobby looked to him for permission.

“Be careful,” Adam said.

Bobby set the shovel aside and dashed forward. He grabbed the bundle and darted away from the nest.

When he’d come back to Adam, a pair of gray figures swirled into view.

“Who are they?” Bobby asked.

“John’s parents,” Adam said. “Our great-great-grandparents, Pearl and Arville.”

He’d sensed their ghosts before, when he’d first come here with Jodi and Bobby, but they’d been too weak to materialize.

“It’s okay,” Adam told them. “We have it now. We’ll take care of it.”

Pearl smiled.

Then they were gone.

Adam and Bobby moved back toward the car. Adam laid the bundle in the trunk before taking his pocket knife to the bag.

“It smells,” Vic said.

“It’s been in a rattlesnake den for thirty years or so,” Adam said. “We’ll air out the car before we head home.”

“Man,” Bobby said, looking at the worn leather cover. The pages were uneven, from before they’d been machine cut and obviously untreated to preserve them. “How old is it?”

“A century or two,” Adam said. “Maybe more. It’s our family’s magical history.”

He wanted to open it but would wait. He’d need to be careful, make sure he didn’t damage it. He wrapped it back up.

Adam took a final look at the homestead. “Pearl and Arville thought this place would be their ticket to happiness.”

“I don’t think happiness is a place,” Bobby said. Adam could tell he was thinking of his own house, the home he’d built with Annie. “It’s the memories, the moments. It really is the little things you can’t get back.”

“That doesn’t seem like much,” Adam said.

He wasn’t mocking his brother’s grief.

It felt like so little, like maybe it wouldn’t all be worth it, if in your whole life, that was all you got. Wasn’t that what had driven John over the edge, the need for more?

Watching Vic through the car window, knowing that their relationship was finally, really starting, Adam decided that maybe it was more than enough.

“You went to hell for him,” Bobby said as he closed the hatch on the back.

“I did, and I’d do it again, though I really hope I never have to,” Adam said.

“No kidding,” Bobby agreed. “Let’s go home, little brother.”

“Yeah,” Adam said. “Let’s.”