19

Adam

“So was that a job offer?” Bobby asked.

They stood side by side at the sink. Bobby loaded the dishwasher while Adam scrubbed the cast iron skillet. Adam rinsed it, feeling the grit of the trailer’s well water, and set it on the stove to dry and season it.

Adam scoffed.

“So we’re not going to talk about what just happened with Vic?” Adam asked. “You know, about you confessing to a murder?”

“It had to come out sometime,” Bobby said. “I should have told him when I told you. I didn’t mean to mess things up between you.”

“It was my choice,” Adam said. He dipped a folded paper towel into the Crisco can and ran it over the heated skillet.

“Do you think you can fix it, with Vic I mean?”

“I don’t know,” Adam said, deciding that maybe he hadn’t wanted to talk about it after all.

Adam flicked the stove off. He didn’t know if Vic was still his boyfriend or whatever they’d been before the night’s confessions and their fight, their first fight.

“So yeah, sort of a job offer,” Adam said, answering Bobby’s original question and changing the subject. “I don’t really know what a page does.”

The only one he’d met, Vran, was a chaos monkey whose court had tried to kill Silver and was probably trying to kill Vic at this very moment. Adam wished he was there, even though he knew he had to be here, that this business with the druid had to end.

“But you aren’t as afraid of them as you were,” Bobby said. “Before, I mean.”

Adam knew Bobby meant before Denver. Before Annie.

“No, I’m not,” Adam admitted. “Maybe I’m just numb, been through too much.”

“Do you trust them?” Bobby asked.

That was the million-dollar question. Once, very recently, Adam would have said hell no. That was before he and Silver had made peace, and before Argent had tried to save Annie.

Now, he might actually be considering their offer. The protection alone might be worth it.

He had no idea how to stop the druid. Adam had taken him by surprise at Tornadoes. He wasn’t going to get another chance at that.

“I don’t know,” Adam said. “I want to, but there’s a price for those sorts of alliances. But I may need their help to stop the druid.”

They exchanged a look.

“Could it be him?” Bobby whispered. “Could it really be him?”

“If it is, he’s a spirit,” Adam said. “Jodi dug up his bones. He had a skull—dad’s skull.”

“How can you be sure?”

“It had the hole in it,” Adam said.

“Is it even possible?” Bobby asked. “That it’s dad’s ghost, come back for vengeance or something?”

“I don’t know that either,” Adam admitted. “Magic is weird, but there’s always a catch, a rule. Nature demands balance. I can’t imagine Death working with him back when she did if he’s some kind of ghost. She doesn’t like things that break the natural rules.”

“Can we ask her?” Bobby asked. “Could Vic?”

“Maybe,” Adam said, swallowing, ready to change the subject.

He looked to the couch, to where Jodi still hadn’t moved.

“She still breathing?” Adam asked, nodding to her.

“Yeah,” Bobby said. “Think she’ll bolt?”

“I give it fifty-fifty.” Maybe he should have asked to borrow Vic’s handcuffs.

“It’s late,” Bobby said. “Mom’s gone to bed. You should too. I’ll keep watch on Suzy Stoner over there.”

Adam opened his mouth to protest, but Bobby held up a hand.

“I’ve pulled plenty of all-nighters at the hospital,” he said. “And you fought off—well, whoever he is. Go sleep.”

Adam nodded agreement, surrendering to the exhaustion.

“Thank you,” he said.

He didn’t quite fit in the little bunk bed, but it was all they had. It was stiff, just a flat mattress on plywood. How had he ever found this comfortable?

Kids bounce, he thought, remembering a time or two when Dad had thrown him against the wall in anger.

Adam sighed. It was not good being back here, not without Vic, but especially not without Sue.

Maybe Jodi could tell him why she’d left him nothing, left the trailer to Noreen.

A heart attack.

Adam didn’t have Sue’s Sight, but he had some, and he had instincts. The druid had killed her, but surely she would have seen it coming.

Maybe she’d given Adam the tarot cards and left herself blind to the attack. Or maybe she’d known and given them to him for safekeeping.

Remembering how much Jodi wanted them, Adam crept out of bed.

It might be a little paranoid, but it wasn’t stupid to show caution where addicts were concerned. He’d heard enough stories from Sue about how Noreen would steal anything she could, how she’d drop by for a visit and Sue would later find knickknacks missing.

Using the little screwdriver on his pocketknife, Adam took the heating vent out of the floor. He took the tarot deck from his backpack and tucked them a full arm’s length into the duct before returning the vent and making sure it was screwed on tight.

With that settled, Adam climbed back into the top bunk.

He wanted to dream of Vic, or wanted no dreams at all, but instead everything was skulls and shadows. He was driving the Cutlass through trees made of bones. Black water rose on both sides of the road as wiry branches, blackberry canes, arched overhead to seal out the red sky. It looked like blood, like when you stared at the sun through your closed eyelids. Adam knew that if they succeeded, that if he couldn’t see the sky, he’d die.

He woke with a start, nearly banging his head on the low ceiling as he sat up, but threw his hands up in time. The room was lit with gray, a typical autumn day in Oklahoma.

Panting, Adam climbed down, feeling more tired than when he’d gone to bed.

At least the ache in his chest wasn’t worse. Sleep usually eased it but it wasn’t much better this morning.

Adam rubbed his fist across it, a growing habit.

He stumbled into the little bathroom he and Bobby had shared as kids. It had been nice, having that privacy when his brother had left for college.

Water rumbled through the pipes, telling him someone was using the trailer’s only shower.

He found his mother and brother sipping coffee in the kitchen. The couch was empty.

Bobby looked tired, but not nearly as dead as Adam would have after an all-nighter, and Bobby had ten years on him.

“She’s been in there half an hour,” Bobby said.

“She’s got a lot of funk to scrub off,” Adam said. “That place was really gross, even before the attack.”

“She’ll be out in a moment,” Tilla said.

“How do you know?” Adam asked.

“I started the dishwasher,” Tilla said with a little smile.

The brothers groaned.

The trailer’s sad little hot water tank could only handle so much, and the dishwasher was closer to it. Once it kicked in, the shower water went from warm to freezing. It had been Tilla’s favorite way to interrupt special teenage boy alone time.

A shriek sounded from down the hall.

“I wonder what rich people do for entertainment,” Adam mused.

“Probably something to do with lawsuits or yachts,” Bobby answered.

Jodi emerged a few moments later wearing an old pair of sweatpants and an Oklahoma University hoodie.

“Where are my clothes?” she demanded.

“Washing machine,” Tilla said. “They stank so bad, I should have just burned them.”

Jodi stiffened, but Bobby cleared his throat.

“Everyone settle down. No one wants a fight before breakfast.”

“I kinda do,” Adam said. Anger was easier than hurting, than thinking about Sue or his fight with Vic. “What in the literal hells did you do, Jodi?”

“I told you, I think,” she said, pausing to blink. Her eyes were bloodshot, but her head seemed clear . . . well, clearer than she’d been the night before. “I summoned him. I used his bones to call him.”

“Our dad?” Bobby asked, voice steady.

“And he came to you in a dream?” Adam demanded.

“Yeah,” she said. “I recognized him. He said I needed his bones.”

“What did he look like?” Adam asked.

“Just like how I remembered him. He said he was dead, but he could come to me, teach me, if I made the charm for him.”

She said it so eagerly. Adam could believe she’d fallen for it. His own Sight and visions had overwhelmed him. If someone, some thing, had appeared in a dream with a recipe for relief, Adam would have taken any offer. He’d never been so grateful that he’d had Silver for a teacher. He’d gotten his heart broken, but Silver hadn’t taken advantage of his naivete. Jodi had lost her grandmother and her mom.

“What’s this birthright you keep talking about?” Adam asked.

“Sue told me. When I was a little girl, she said I had a birthright. I didn’t think anything of it until Mom and I took that trip to Galveston last summer. There’s a great witchcraft shop there. The psychic who read my cards said I had a birthright, that it was tied to magic.” Jodi lifted a finger, pointed it at Adam, and on a dime turned surly again. “And I think you know what it is. I think it’s those tarot cards. You took them.”

“Sue gave them to me,” Adam said. “And they’re safe in Denver.”

“Bullshit,” Jodi spat.

Adam turned to pour a cup of coffee and gather his patience.

He couldn’t argue that the cards had something of the Binder family in them. They’d been passed from witch to witch, magician to magician, then from Sue to Adam. They were all he had left of her, and he’d be damned before Jodi, or anyone else, got ahold of them.

Jodi’s smile turned wicked, sly.

“I have more power than you thought, huh?” she asked.

“Yep,” Adam said, taking a sip of his coffee. “And it’s about to get you killed. Good for you.”

“Jodi,” Bobby tried. “He’s going to come after you again, real soon. Do you want to face him alone?”

“You can’t stop him,” she said, her eyes showing some of the previous night’s desperation. “He killed Mom. He probably killed Grandma. What can you idiots do?”

“I stopped him last night, remember?” Adam said.

Jodi scoffed.

But she wasn’t wrong. Adam didn’t have the power, not on his own, but the more he knew, the more of a chance he had.

“Fine,” Adam said. “Take your clothes when they’re dry and go. We’ll settle this without you.”

Jodi looked like she was considering it.

Tilla looked like she was about to say something meaner.

“I don’t want to die,” Jodi said.

“Then help us figure this out,” Adam pleaded.

Jodi considered it. “He said he’s going to kill us all.”

“No,” Adam said. “That wasn’t it. He said they are my harvest and I will reap them all.”

Bobby and Jodi looked at him.

“Well that’s downright creepy,” Bobby said.

“I don’t think it’s Dad,” Adam said. “He didn’t recognize me.”

“You were six when he died, Adam,” Bobby said.

Adam carefully did not look at Jodi in case she was putting together why those bones had been buried behind the trailer.

“Still, I don’t think it’s him,” he said.

“This man, this druid,” Tilla said. “He has magic?”

“A lot of it,” Adam said.

“Robert didn’t,” Tilla said.

“How do you know?”

It was the closest Adam had ever come to directly asking his mother if she had any Sight herself.

“Your father would have used it,” she said, “to get money or something like that.”

“Could it have activated when he died?” Bobby asked.

“No,” Adam said. “I don’t think so. Magic tends to cling to life. Someone like that, with that much magic, would have had to be pretty powerful when they were alive.”

“Could he have stolen it?” Bobby asked.

“I don’t think so,” Adam said. “I mean, it’s tied to the person. It can’t be given away.”

Bobby’s eyes dropped to his coffee cup.

“Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, it can.”

Adam blinked.

“In the hospital, in Denver,” Bobby said. “That’s how I woke up.”

Adam squeezed his mouth shut. They’d already given Jodi enough ammunition to use against them, but Adam understood. Bobby had told him that Annie had come to him, said goodbye. He saw it now, looking at his brother with his Sight. It was like a transplant, a bit of life and power fused to Bobby’s own. Annie had put back what Mercy had stolen, and maybe, if not for that, she might have survived.

“If it can be given . . .” Bobby said.

“Then it can be stolen,” Adam finished.

“But it’s not Robert,” Tilla said, her own sorrow rising, her last hope crushed.

“No,” Adam said.

“It can skip generations,” Jodi said. “Mom didn’t have any either, or not very much.”

“What about Tommy?” Adam asked. “Sue’s other kid?”

“Other kids,” Tilla stressed. “She had another son.”

Adam blinked. “What?”

Tilla left her kitchen chair and fetched her Bible from the living room.

“I kept the family tree on your father’s side,” she said, laying it on the table and opening it. “See?”

She pointed to a branch written in her spidery handwriting as they crowded around her.

“James Jr. Jimmy.”

“I’ve never heard of him,” Adam said.

It hurt, really hurt. He was Sue’s son, and she’d never mentioned him. She hadn’t been big on photographs, but Adam couldn’t remember any hint of a Jimmy. It felt like another illusion, like Liberty House, like someone was messing with his head.

“I’m not surprised Sue didn’t talk about him,” Tilla said, and for once she mentioned her nemesis without disapproval. “We went to high school together. All of us. He disappeared after I dropped out to have you, Bobby.”

“What do you mean ‘disappeared’?” Adam asked.

Tilla shook her head. “They say he ran away. I don’t remember anything else. Early might. They were in the same class.”

Adam was still reeling. He should have asked Sue more about her life. He’d been selfish, too preoccupied with his own things. His heart was like a rock, cold and heavy in his chest.

“We should talk to Tommy,” Bobby suggested.

“I think Jimmy used to do auto repair,” Tilla said. “You share that with him, Adam.”

“That’s not all you shared,” Jodi said. She made a rude gesture with her fist and her tongue in her cheek.

Tilla’s eyes narrowed.

“You can leave anytime, Jodi,” she said coldly. “Go back to whatever hole Adam dug you out of.”

Adam held up a hand, gesturing for peace. He wished he had decent cell service or Internet out here. It was hard to believe there were still places where you couldn’t get it.

It was even harder to believe that Sue’s son had been gay. That’s what Jodi was crudely indicating.

Sue had never mentioned that either.

There was so much family history Adam didn’t have, didn’t know, and—shit. This was exactly how Vic must feel.

I’m sorry, Adam thought along their connection, knowing it wouldn’t go through. You were so right, and I’m sorry.

Tilla had said that Jimmy disappeared. They were related, and if Jimmy were like Adam, then maybe that explained the similarity in their magic.

“Why didn’t I know about this?” Adam asked. “About him?”

“It was before you were born,” Tilla said. “We never knew what happened to him. He was Sue’s baby, her youngest. It broke her heart.”

That might explain why there’d been no pictures, no mementos. Still, Sue had hidden Jimmy from Adam completely. She’d hidden her broken heart, and it stung.

“Mom hated him,” Jodi said with a shrug. “That’s all I know.”

“Jimmy’s grandfather doted on him,” Tilla said. “I remember Robert saying that. Sue didn’t like it.”

“Why?” Adam asked.

“It was inappropriate. No, not like that,” Tilla said in response to Adam’s expression. “Sue didn’t want them spending time together, but she never really said why.”

“Sue’s Sight was really strong,” Adam said. “If her instincts were telling her something was wrong, something was wrong.”

“Then Jimmy disappeared. Sue was devastated. Tommy and Noreen had already moved out. That’s when Sue left James Senior.”

“I always thought he left her,” Adam said.

“No,” Tilla said. “She walked out. Got a divorce from that Jenkins woman. It happened, not as much as it does now, but it happened. She went from man to man after that.”

The note of distaste in his mother’s voice told Adam what Tilla thought of that. She’d only ever been with their father. Adam knew she was old-fashioned, and to be honest, he wasn’t much different. He wasn’t prone to spending time with guys he didn’t really like, not that there had been many between Silver and Vic.

Still, he smiled. Sue had been a bit wild in her day, and Adam admired that she’d done her own thing, what she’d wanted, and hadn’t tried to fit into what Guthrie thought a woman should be.

“I think she went a little crazy then,” Tilla mused. “Losing Jimmy.”

“What about great-grandpa?” Bobby asked, face pinching with thought. “I remember him. A little.”

“He died. Your dad always wanted to buy the old place, but it went to James Senior and his kids. It might be yours now, Jodi.”

“Uncle Tommy has the deed,” Jodi said. “Won’t sell it and wouldn’t give it to Mom. Said he promised his grandpa he’d keep it in the family, but he’s never done anything with it. Says he doesn’t have the money.”

The way she said it told Adam everything he needed to know about why Noreen and Jodi had been so quick to move into Sue’s trailer. They thought they deserved it, that it was owed to them.

“I think we should talk to Tommy,” Adam said. “See if he can tell us where to find Jimmy.”

“What are you thinking?” Bobby asked.

“Nothing solid, but I’m starting to think that Jodi’s right about some kind of legacy, and I’m starting to think it’s not anything good.”