16

Adam

The band was, to no surprise, truly awful. They didn’t know how to use a microphone, or the mics were crap, because Adam could not make out a word of whatever they were screaming to the beat of the drums and the bass.

Man, I’m getting old, he thought. I’ve got to stop hanging out with Bobby.

Still, Adam sort of wished he’d brought his brother. Not that he expected Jodi to listen to either of them, but his misery would have liked the company, someone to share his complaints about the noise. The odor of ditch weed, cheap beer, and cigarettes was almost as bad.

The bar, Tornadoes, was housed in a double-wide trailer. They’d split it apart and filled the space in. It felt a bit like a barn. Maybe the music wouldn’t suck so bad if it had somewhere to go.

Jodi had acted like scoring tickets to the show was some accomplishment, but Adam had simply walked up to the bar and been let right in, which told him everything he needed to know about the success of Chlamydia Clown Car.

The band was on-brand at least. They looked like diseased clowns. All clowns were scary, but these wore leather jackets and jeans. They were trying for tough but the Bozo hair, white makeup, and red noses really ruined the effect.

They launched into another song as Adam scanned the crowd for Jodi. He didn’t see her.

“Backstage passes!” she’d squealed at the camera. Adam couldn’t guess what constituted backstage in a dive like this.

The part they’d built in the middle had a higher ceiling, but the trailer parts were low, trapping the noise and odors. He’d start there.

Adam inched toward the restroom, following the smell of urine as much as the glow of the red light labeled Men in white lettering.

There was a third door there, probably a closet, but it was limned in enough light that he chanced it. Adam slipped inside quick, hoping no one saw. It was a little hall, strangely soundproofed. Adam was relieved to hear the terrible music muffled.

His guess had been right. This led to a walled-off part of what had been the trailer’s living room and now doubled as a backstage and a cleaning closet.

The little room had a TV, a shelf full of bleach and other chemicals, and a mop bucket. In the middle sat a beaten leather couch and a few of those cheap folding TV tables. Graffiti tags and stickers marked everything, hiding most of the old-lady wallpaper leftover from when this had been someone’s home.

The smell of weed overpowered everything else. Its smoke hung in the air like fog.

Adam shut down his nose and willed his defenses up higher, already bracing in case a contact high weakened his barriers and brought the Other Side too close. He did not have time to freak out or deal with something crossing over.

Jodi sprawled on the couch, her eyes glassy.

“Hey, cuz,” she drawled. “You here to give me my birthright?”

“What are you talking about?” he asked.

“Sue’s cards. They weren’t in the trailer. She gave them to you, didn’t she?”

Adam’s first instinct was to say yes, to throw it in Jodi’s face, but instead he said, “I don’t know where they are.”

“Liar,” Jodi spat before leaning back onto the couch. She made a bitter sound that was something like a laugh and a shriek. “Mom’s dead you know.”

“I know. I’m sorry, Jodi.”

“Liar,” she repeated without any real venom.

“What happened?” Adam asked. “What was that thing you made with the bones?”

“She mixed it wrong. That’s what they’ll say, but it’s stupid. It wasn’t her. It was him. He wanted her dead.”

She broke off into a fit of sobs.

“Who is he, Jodi?”

Something prickly crept up the back of Adam’s neck.

“Don’t know,” she said, shaking her head. The motion was a little too much and she almost tipped over, but caught herself on the cushions. The leather squeaked.

“You summoned him,” Adam said. “That’s what the bones were for, right?”

“I thought I knew,” she said.

Adam felt something gather, a bit of power.

Jodi fixed her eyes on Adam’s and said, “Sue wasn’t the first. Mom won’t be the last. He wants something . . . us. Binders. He won’t stop.”

“We should get you out of here,” Adam said. The music outside the little room thundered, hammering at his calm. “Get you cleaned up.”

“No,” Jodi protested, snapping out of her trance. She sounded angry now. “I’m having fun. Go back to Denver, Adam. Wait your turn. Go wherever you pansies go to die.”

Adam took a deep breath and swallowed down her last remark.

“So what, you’ll just wait for him?” he asked. “Party until he comes to kill you?”

“Might as well,” Jodi said. “Can’t get away. The trees will tell him where I am.”

She lifted a finger to her lips and winked.

“It’s the druid,” he said. “You’re talking about the druid.”

“Yeah,” Jodi rasped. She leaned forward. “Guess so.”

“Why did you summon him?” Adam asked.

“I wanted my birthright,” she said. “He promised he’d bring it to me.”

She kept saying that, birthright, like it had real weight, but it didn’t mean anything to Adam. Magic was in the blood, but it wasn’t predictable.

“How did you even know where to get the bones?” Adam asked, trying to sort through what she was saying.

“Dreamt it. Saw it. Clear as day.” Jodi fixed her eyes on him. “I dream all the time, Adam. All the time. Sometimes they’re terrible, and sometimes they come true.”

Adam swallowed. He understood. He really did.

“Don’t call up what you can’t put down,” Jodi said quietly, her voice distant again.

Adam knew the lesson. He had no power, so he summoned nothing.

There were spirits, demons, and worse out there in the dark. They came to magic like moths hungry for light, drawn to the life of the caster.

She’d made a terrible mistake.

“Oh, Jodi,” he said. “What have you done?”

“Wanted my birthright,” she repeated. “I wanted what you have. It was mine. Mine, Adam, but she chose you. Stupid, queer, you.”

“What the hell?” a voice broke in. “This guy bugging you?”

Adam turned to see one of the band, or a roadie—he wouldn’t be able to tell the difference—looming in the doorway.

“I’m her cousin,” Adam said. “I’m worried about her.”

“He can get the eff out,” Jodi slurred.

“You heard her, pasty,” the guy said.

“Dude, you’re wearing clown makeup,” Adam said.

“Yeah, and I’ll fuck you up.”

The guy was massive, with arms as thick as Adam’s leg.

“Valid,” Adam said. “I’m not here to fight.”

He had some information. Jodi wasn’t worth it, but the druid would come for her, just like he had probably come for Sue and Noreen.

Adam didn’t understand why though.

“Get him out of here, Billy,” Jodi said. “He’s killing my high.”

“Jodi, it’s not safe,” Adam said. “I can protect you.”

“How?” She laughed. “You couldn’t even protect . . .”

She stiffened, trailing off.

At first Adam thought it was just the high talking, but then he felt it, a creeping cold at the edge of his senses, like the swamp in winter, chilled and slimy.

The music stopped suddenly, the last whine of a guitar trailing away.

Billy turned toward the thin wall dividing the room from the stage.

“What the hell?” he asked.

“Daddy’s home,” Jodi sang, low and sad.

Adam’s ears had just stopped throbbing from the music when someone on the other side of the wall screamed, piercing the silence.

“Whatever you’re on,” he said, “it would be a really good time to sober up.”

The wall between them and the stage buckled, vibrating like a hundred tiny hands were trying to tear it down. Something poked through the plaster. A thorn. Then another. They dotted the surface, breaking through, needle by needle.

The magic felt wrong, frigid and thick like old blood and mud. Adam fought a shiver even as he shrank back from the worming, wriggling plants.

Billy looked torn between running and pissing himself.

Wide-eyed and slack-jawed, Jodi stared at the scene.

“What did you do, Jodi?” Adam asked, clenching his fists.

“I wanted my birthright,” she said, voice shrill. “It was mine. Not yours!”

She had magic, but it slid around Adam, unfocused and wild. He didn’t know if it was a lack of training, the state of Jodi’s mind, or a combination of the two.

“Who is he, dammit?” Adam demanded.

“Your father. I called your father!”

It couldn’t be. He was dead. Those were his bones. Then again, Adam had no proof that the druid was truly alive.

In Denver, Adam had promised the Guardians of the West that he’d take the druid off the board. It had been a foolish bargain. Adam didn’t have the power.

The wall came down, ripped apart by the thorny, curling vines.

Adam’s warlock wound ached, a rhythm that sped up until it matched his heartbeat.

The smell of the other warlock’s magic, battery acid and rotten blackberries, wafted from everywhere.

The vines had ensnared most of the band. They bled from thorn pricks and scratches but fought on. Most of the patrons had fled. The bartender wielded a rusty machete and hacked at any bit of green that crept too close.

The branches rippled everywhere, growing impossibly, filling the space as if they’d had decades to consume it.

Adam recognized the canes and branches from his childhood, from the little thicket at the corner of his mother’s property. He’d crawl into them, ignoring the scratches he took. It had been a refuge, a place to hide from his father’s rages, but sometimes he’d go there just to watch the lights, hear the sounds of the Other Side. The blackberries he’d eaten there were dusty and sweet.

Seeing them here, used like this, made something red and sharp flush through him like a fever.

The warlock’s magic was similar to his own, the best evidence he had that the druid was his father, but it was also similar enough that Adam might be able to tap into it and break the spell.

One of the clowns let out a howl. The canes whipped around him, lashing and trying to bind him. The others tried to help, rushing to his aid, and found their legs tied as the curling canes snaked over them.

They wouldn’t last long. The spell was too strong. The canes grew, an endless thicket. They were overwhelming the patrons who hadn’t fled.

“Adam!” Jodi screamed as the canes raced across the floor and ceiling, darting for her like a mess of snakes toward their prey.

The spell was thick, like pea soup fog. But Adam could see into it. It wasn’t a wall. He could get inside its working, and maybe, just maybe, he could disrupt it enough to save these people.

Adam crouched and took a handful of the canes in his palm. He let them pierce his skin. He couldn’t get inside the spell, the greasy magic, without letting a little of it inside him too.

His perspective shifted. His Sight showed him enough of the Other Side for him to see the spell. It curled all around him. At its center was a ghostly figure, the spider in its web. The druid.

Another warlock? the druid mused. Interesting.

He was tall, looming in a muddy, hooded sweatshirt and filthy jeans. Adam couldn’t see his face. Leather belts were strapped across his body. Bones and feathers, bits of dead things, dangled from them. A rusty sickle was tucked into the belt at his waist. In his hand he held a skull. By the round hole in its side, Adam could guess whose it was.

Look at you, the warlock taunted. Freshly blooded. Like a baby.

“Not a baby,” Adam said, squeezing his fist, weaving more of himself into the spell. “I’m all grown-up.”

Give me the girl.

“No.”

Adam’s blood made a channel for the magic. The warlock wound beat like a drum, its rhythm synching to the spell’s.

It was a constant pain, a scar on his heart and soul. It bled, forever.

And in blood, there was power.

Adam yanked at the spell empowering the canes.

It was dark, yes, he’d expected that. But it was cold too. Magic was life, and this, this absence was something else, a kind of void he’d felt before.

Do you see now? the voice asked. What we are?

The panicked shouts faded as the canes bound and gagged, choked off the life of the bar’s patrons. The bartender went down, the thorny canes wrapped about his face. Adam hoped he kept his eyes.

“Oh, I see what you’re doing,” Adam said as his magic found the spell’s pulse.

It was a twisted sort of death magic, pushing all of the canes’ life, all of their potential, through them at once. It forced their growth and gave the druid control, but they’d die in moments.

“And I see how to stop it.”

Adam wove a little more of himself into the spell. Cold as it was, it was brittle, like ice, vulnerable to any kind of light, any kind of fire or heat, any kind of life.

He poured just a spark into it, much less than when he’d done the same trick to save Vic’s life.

It lit like a flame along the spell’s tendrils. So delicate, they burned like a spiderweb set to a match. Adam did not have the warlock’s power, but he didn’t need it to disrupt the spell and break its pattern.

The druid did not wail. He did not curse as his attack dissolved into ash.

Interesting approach, he noted. But I will have her. They are my harvest, and I will reap them all.

The druid faded. He’d never really been here. This had been a projection. He vanished, leaving the broken bar and the dying canes behind.

Adam collapsed, chest heaving. When he’d bound himself to Vic, he’d nearly killed them both. He’d been ignorant and had poured too much into the effort. Then again, Vic had been shot. His blood had been pumping out. This wasn’t on that scale, and Adam remained conscious. He’d count it as a win, even if the wound in his chest ached like he’d torn it open.

The druid had simply pushed the plants to grow unnaturally, to listen to his will. It was against their nature. Giving them a little spark of life had been enough to break his control. Still, to use them this way . . . Adam did not know any druids, but everything he understood about them was that they were supposed to serve life, not death.

“I guess that’s why he’s a dark druid,” Adam muttered. He pulled himself to his feet. His palm was bloody, but it was nothing serious.

Around him, the remaining patrons and band members lay sprawled or sat heaving amidst the withering blackberry canes. Some groaned. Some coughed. Others weren’t moving, and that was not good.

“Adam?” Jodi asked. She was still on the couch, looking terrified, her makeup a mess from the tears.

“I chased him off,” Adam said. “But he’ll be back. We have to figure out how to stop him.”

“How?” she asked, waving an unsteady hand at the chaos and damage around them. “How do you stop something like this?”

Adam didn’t really know. He knew the druid was connected to him, but the way he’d spoken wasn’t with familiarity. It couldn’t be Adam’s dad. Dead or alive, Robert Senior would have recognized him. There would have been a reaction.

“Didn’t think so,” Jodi said when he didn’t answer. She bowed her head, her earlier defiance cowed. She looked very young and fragile.

Adam didn’t blame her. The stink of terror mixed with the magic’s stench and the greasy feel of the spell. Tornadoes was closed. It should probably be burned to the ground.

“How did you find those bones?” Adam demanded without any gentleness. “You said you dreamed where they were buried?”

He was done playing, and from the look of the aftermath, neither Billy nor anyone else was in any condition to fight him. The bartender was wiping his face, but he could see.

Adam let out a breath of relief.

“Yeah. I dug them up at your mom’s.”

“You put some of your blood into the spell, didn’t you?”

Jodi nodded.

“He tricked you,” Adam said. “You gave him an in. That’s how he got past Sue’s wards.”

Jodi blinked.

“Then you brought bones to the trailer,” Adam continued. “Even if Sue hadn’t been dead you’d never have been able to keep him out.”

“I didn’t kill grandma,” she said.

“No, you didn’t,” Adam said. “But you handed him the gun.”

It meant Jodi had magic, some level of sensitivity. She might even have Sue’s Sight.

She certainly had more power than Adam had thought, maybe even more than him, but she was untrained.

Why hadn’t Sue taken Jodi under her wing? She was family. She had the power; leaving her out there, untrained, was dangerous for everyone, especially for Jodi.

Another mystery for Adam’s list.

There were other, more important questions.

The police would identify the remains. Early wasn’t stupid, and he’d already mentioned Robert Senior. Part of Adam was still wrapping his head around the final truth. His father was truly dead.

The rest of him was trying to think. He didn’t know the statute of limitations on murder, but he doubted it was seventeen years. It probably never went away.

Adam didn’t know enough about the law or forensics—any of it. He needed a lawyer, probably. He needed . . .

“I wish Vic were here,” he said aloud, never meaning anything more in his life.

“Then it’s your lucky night,” a voice said from behind him.

Adam spun to see Vic, Argent, and Silver standing at the entrance to the ruined dive bar.

The elves were arguing as Adam swallowed his heart.

“You attacked us,” Argent said. “It was you!”

“I was hoping you’d investigate,” Silver replied.

“You could have just asked,” she said.

“I really couldn’t,” Silver said, his tone apologetic. “Father insisted I go alone.”

“You owe me a car,” Argent said. “I liked that car!”

The ache in Adam’s chest eased.

“Want to try for something else, the lottery maybe?” Vic asked.

“Nope,” Adam said. “Right now, just you. You’re here? You’re really here?”

“Yeah,” Vic said, face pinched with worry as he stepped forward.

Adam practically leaped to close the distance between them. He crushed Vic in his arms, but his strength fled almost instantly and Vic was the one holding Adam upright.

“Easy,” Vic said into Adam’s hair. “You’re wobbly.”

“Big magic,” Adam gasped, nodding to the destroyed bar.

“I’m getting that.”

“We have much to talk about, and apparently, more than one problem to solve,” Argent said, eyeing the chaos. “It would be best if we were not seen. There are sirens coming.”

Adam couldn’t hear them, but he trusted Argent’s hearing over his own. He was surprised the sheriff wasn’t already there. Hell, Adam was surprised Early hadn’t found the same lead he had.

“Are there ambulances?” he asked Argent.

“Yes,” Silver answered.

Adam exhaled.

“We can go to Mom’s,” he said.