24

Adam

“Why aren’t I dead?” Adam groaned as he opened his eyes.

“I don’t know,” Vran said, looking down at him. “Are all mortals such drama queens?”

Adam lay in a warm puddle of faintly glowing water. It was raised, like a shallow bathtub, and cushioned with damp seaweed. Maybe this is what Sea Elves used for a bed.

Vran leaned against the cavern wall, his black crown askew. The elf retained his emo prince look: jet hair, dark eyes, and slightly blue, perfect skin.

The room itself was strange, like the inside of a sandcastle, like the walls had been dripped into place.

There were things scattered around it, video game systems, an old blender, rocks, and a ball of mud with feathers stuck in it.

“Is this your room?” Adam asked, groaning as he shifted.

“No,” Vran said. “It’s somewhere I go.”

“To think?” Adam asked. “To get away?”

Vran nodded.

“I get that,” Adam said.

For him it had been the blackberry bushes. He’d liked to hide there and imagine his father’s anger would never find him.

The stupid druid had ruined blackberries for him.

Adam stretched, forced himself to sit up. He felt dry, lifeless, every nerved burned like he’d been lying in a tanning bed for a week.

“Why am I here?” Adam asked, looking around the cave.

“That’s not very nice,” Vran said, crossing his arms over his chest. “I saved your life.”

“Great. Thanks,” Adam said. Debts to immortals were his worst nightmare. He already had one and no idea how to pay it. “Where’s my brother? My cousin?”

“They were driving off as I snatched you away.”

The glowing water rushed around them in little streams, dripping from the walls. Adam could feel the life in it trying to fill the emptiness he’d created when he’d stopped the snakes.

Adam’s clothes were soaked, but he was too bone weary to care.

“I was supposed to kill you,” Vran said quietly.

Adam blinked.

“Is that what you meant when you said I had no idea what was coming?” he asked.

“That was another thing, but it’s not going to happen now,” Vran assured him.

“Okay,” Adam said. “Are you still going to kill me? If so, saving my life seems like a real waste of your time.”

Vran nibbled his lip.

“Why did you save her?” he asked. “She was your enemy.”

“Who?” Adam asked.

“The woman in the box, in the trailer.”

“Noreen?” Adam asked. “She was in trouble. She needed help.”

“I’ve been watching. She wasn’t nice. She was your enemy.”

“I wouldn’t go that far,” Adam said with a shrug that he immediately regretted. “But no, she wasn’t nice.”

“I’m supposed to kill you,” Vran repeated.

“Why exactly?” Adam asked.

“Because you’re my opposite. Because you’re human.” Vran said it like it was something shameful.

He seemed to be on the fence about the killing part.

Adam hoped this wasn’t a cat and mouse situation. Spider had caught mice and brought them to Sue from time to time. He’d treated them a bit like pets, but his method of playing with them meant that Adam had eventually had to take them outside and put them out of their misery. He’d brought a lizard in once. It had dropped its tail and run loose. Adam didn’t have a tail, so it wasn’t a trick he could manage.

“I haven’t said yes,” Adam said. “To being the Page of Swords I mean.”

“I don’t even know why we’re enemies,” Vran said, rolling his eyes. “The Winter Elves are our kin.”

“I’m not good at politics, but family is complicated,” Adam said. “And thank you, for saving my life.”

Vran nodded.

“That was an interesting trick, expending all your magic at once,” he said.

“Did it hurt the druid?” Adam asked.

“No, but I think you surprised him again. You’re two for two with him. That has to really piss him off. Plus, you broke that spell. He must have spent years setting that up.”

Vran smirked, looking impressed by Adam’s act of magical vandalism.

Adam liked this kid, not that he’d ever admit it. It would cost him any cool points he’d just earned.

“Well, he did start it,” Adam said. “Leaving me a note and all.”

He still didn’t understand that part.

There’s still time to save her, it had lied.

Any her—Sue, Noreen, or Annie—had all died. It might mean Tilla or Jodi, but why warn Adam if the druid was the one killing the Binders?

The trip to the homestead indicated that the druid was too old to be Jimmy, and that left the question of the body in the well.

My harvest, the druid kept saying. My blood.

If he was stealing magic, killing Binders to get it, why hadn’t he come after Adam? He had more than Noreen or Jodi.

Adam didn’t look like his brother or cousin Tommy. Their hair was all brown, and his was dirty blond, like his mother’s. Adam had blue eyes, but so had Robert Senior.

Maybe, just maybe, Adam’s father wasn’t really his father.

That might have been the source of Robert Senior’s hatred, why he’d beaten Adam so often and so badly.

And Adam’s magic wasn’t like Sue’s. He had Sight, but not the same.

Maybe Adam wasn’t really a Binder.

“What are you thinking about?” Vran asked.

“Bloodlines and birthrights,” Adam said. He stretched again. “So what now, am I your prisoner?”

Vran considered the question.

“No.”

“Are you sure?” Adam asked. “Your family tried to murder Silver.”

“They’re not my family,” Vran said, voice going cold. “They’re my court.”

“All right,” Adam said, lifting his hands.

Vran sighed.

“And they’re all drama queens too,” he said. “I just wanted to make certain you’re all right.”

“Why?” Adam asked.

“I don’t need a reason.”

“You’re an elf,” Adam said. “Elves are, in my usual experience, pricks. You must want something, Vran.”

“I want to understand,” Vran said. “You keep sacrificing yourself. To save the cop, to stop the spirit, and now to save people you don’t even like. Like that woman. The box was on fire, but you ran into it. It’s like you want to die.”

Adam cocked his head.

“I really don’t,” he said. And he meant it. He wanted to live, if only to see what he and Vic might become. “But I can’t let them suffer.”

“You have so little life,” Vran protested. “You should hoard it like dragons hoard shiny things, but instead you risk throwing it away for anybody.”

“Not just anybody,” Adam argued.

This was starting to sound like a conversation he’d had with Vic more than once, the idea that Adam was some kind of hero. He never planned it like that. Someone needed help, so he helped, usually without thinking it through, like when he’d saved Vic. If anything, he was more of a spontaneous idiot.

“And yeah, you can play it safe, stay home, never go outside, try to live as long as you can, but I’m not sure that’s actually living,” Adam said.

“Would you risk yourself for me?” Vran asked, his voice quiet.

Adam wondered what had happened to Vran’s family, how he’d become the Page of Cups, and why he seemed so shocked at the idea of basic kindness. It was something Adam could understand not understanding. He must be looking at Vran the way Vic looked at him sometimes, not with pity, but a sort of sympathetic confusion.

“Probably,” Adam admitted. “If the druid came for you, or something like that. If you weren’t hurting anyone. Silver said you weren’t there when they tried to kill him.”

Vran scoffed. “They want to drown the mortal world. You lot are already working on that. It’s your plane of existence. Kill it if you want.”

“That’s not very elven of you,” Adam said.

Another scoff.

“How old are you?” Adam asked.

“I’m two hundred,” Vran snapped, a little defensively.

So he was a teenager.

“I need to go back,” Adam said. “Will you let me go?”

Vran pondered it.

“Say please,” Vran teased with just an edge of seriousness.

“Please,” Adam said.

The elf nibbled his lip.

“What about the druid, are you going to try to save him too?” Vran asked.

“I don’t think I can,” Adam said. “Whoever he is, he’s pretty gone. He’s killed people. He wants to kill more. He wants to kill my family.”

Once he said it, he realized it was true. Family or not, how did you get forgiven for what the druid had done? Just becoming a warlock the way he had made the druid irredeemable in the elves’ opinion, and, he supposed, in Adam’s too. Even if Adam wasn’t sworn to take him out, the druid could not continue.

“Your family is like your court,” Vran said. “You’re stuck with them but you don’t like them.”

“Not always,” Adam said. “But that’s family. Wait—Do you know who he is?”

“Maybe,” Vran said.

The pool Adam sat in rushed up and swallowed him. He fell through dark water, and landed in the mud outside his mom’s trailer, soaking wet and sputtering. What had been warm was quickly cold.

“Elves,” Adam muttered, though there was no bite in it.

Still, the kid had answers he wasn’t sharing.

Picking himself up, Adam glared at the mud puddle.

“Brat,” he said, hoping Vran heard it.

Bobby and Tilla leaped up when Adam stumbled through the door.

“Are you okay?” Bobby asked, wrapping Adam in a hug. “We thought you were dead.”

A mix of feelings flooded Adam, just like at the funeral, only he wasn’t so numb now. He could feel Bobby’s concern for him, his love, and it felt good, dammit.

“Yeah, a friend got me out,” he said.

Adam still wasn’t certain how he’d survived. Vran or no Vran, he’d pushed all of his magic out in one go. It should have killed him. And he wasn’t quite certain he should call Vran a friend.

He needed backup, Silver or Argent. He needed Vic—but they had their own thing to deal with and it was selfish to want them here. What they had on their plate was so much bigger.

Jodi didn’t look happy or sad to see Adam. She just looked pissed, which he decided was her usual state.

His mom didn’t rush to hug him, but she hovered nearby, nibbling her lip, a sign that she’d been worried. Adam felt a tug in his heart, a nice change from the ache of the warlock wound.

“Did you learn anything?” Tilla asked.

Adam looked to Bobby.

“We didn’t tell her,” he said. “We waited for you.”

“There’s a body in the well,” Adam said. “I don’t know who it is. We need that answer first.”

“How?” Bobby asked. “How do we find out?”

“The curse is broken,” Adam said. “We can get the sheriff out there. But first, I think we should have another look at Mom’s bible.”

Tilla reached for the book and opened the cover to the family tree.

Even Jodi leaned in as they circled the dining table.

Adam traced the line from James Jr. with his finger, following it upward.

“What do we know about great-grandpa John?” he asked.

“He died in the mid-nineties.” Tilla took a breath. “Your dad loved him. Like Jimmy, they were close. He doted on the boys. He built that house up, settled that land. He inherited it from your great-great-grandparents. It was supposed to be a farm, before the Dust Bowl came.”

“It killed the farm, didn’t it?” Adam asked.

“It killed everything,” Tilla said. “Our grandparents were kids then. A lot of people headed for California. Lots of my family did. You boys still have cousins out there, and in Oregon.”

Every kid in Oklahoma learned about the Dust Bowl, the terrible drought, an environmental catastrophe that turned the Great Plains from prairie to dry, dead land. Massive dust storms had choked out what life remained.

Tilla ran a hand over the family tree, like she was smoothing the page, not that it was wrinkled.

“But the Binders stayed,” she said. “John didn’t want to give up the land. It was worthless then. Probably still is.”

“Yeah,” Adam said distantly. “It’s not much to look at. Just snakes and grass.”

“Adam, do you think it’s him?” Bobby asked, face going pale. “Our great-grandfather?”

Adam swallowed. He took another sip of the iced tea his mom had made. It was sweet. A full pitcher in the old brown Tupperware she’d had his entire life. Five bags of Lipton, two cups of sugar. Ice.

Adam could have made it in his sleep. He took a long breath, another sip. He knew he had to say it, the thing that he’d put together during the attack.

“Yes. I think he’s been farming his family, using his descendants to keep himself alive. I think he killed Jimmy because he had no reason to let him live.”

“Why?” Tilla asked.

“Jimmy was gay. He wasn’t going to perpetuate the bloodline.”

“So my birthright . . .” Jodi said, horror creeping into her voice.

Adam nodded. “Is to provide him with more Binders.”

“You said his family,” Bobby said, voice low. “Not our family.”

“Both times I’ve faced him, he hasn’t recognized me,” Adam said. He fixed his eyes on Tilla. “He keeps saying them, not you, not me.”

“What are you saying, Adam?” Bobby asked.

Adam swallowed hard and looked his mother in the eye.

“Am I a Binder, Mom?”