“At work,” his mother said. “He might be home for dinner.”
So nothing had changed. Adam’s brother still put his success, his own goals, above his family. Adam swallowed a sneer and followed his mother.
A mantel over the gas fireplace held the only hints of home, a few rose rocks and a chunk of the bog iron they’d dug up as kids. The art, prints of country sides, was thoroughly cheerful.
She stopped in a kitchen bigger than Sue’s living room. Granite and polished steel appliances gleamed with money and newness. More of the wedding cake effect. More shine and bright white trim.
“You know,” Adam muttered. “For the straight one, Bobby lives in a pretty girly house.”
His mother turned away from him, like she always did when he mentioned his orientation.
“Annie picked it,” she said. “Before.”
“When did this start, Mom?” Adam asked. He didn’t want to mention the spirit. It would only panic her or trigger the old belief that he was crazy.
“Bobby called me a month ago,” she said. “Asked me to come out and help.”
Adam put his backpack on the counter.
“Can I see her?” he asked.
With a little nod, his mother led him from the kitchen and upstairs.
The bedroom had a deadbolt that locked from the outside. His mother flipped it and cracked the door to peek before giving it a firm push.
A woman lay atop the bedspread. Adam sort of recognized Annie from the pictures she sometimes emailed, but he couldn’t imagine this pale, drained shell writing the cheery notes highlighting her life with Bobby.
Hey, Adam. I hope you’re well. Happy birthday! We’re spending Christmas in Aspen.
This Annie had a translucent quality, like a bit of soap worn too thin and close to slipping down the drain.
Adam approached quietly, wary of disturbing her, but his mother strode in.
“She can’t hear us,” his mother said, gesturing toward the bed. “Robert has her too sedated.”
“I know how that feels,” he said.
They’d diagnosed him as psychotic and fed him enough drugs to keep him sick and slow. What he felt from Annie reminded him of those days.
To see Annie, really see her, he’d have to use his Sight, risk drawing the spirit’s attention, but Adam was subtle. He hoped, if he did not focus too hard, he could avoid its gaze.
He blinked, let the Sight come.
Magic pulsed through Annie, but it wasn’t her own. The sallow sparks running through her were coming from the spirit. It had her. Lost, exhausted from trying to find her way back, she had no magic of her own, no way to fight. The spirit’s grip held fast.
Stomach roiling, Adam straightened his back, and looked to the ceiling. The veiny cord ran through it, right into Annie’s heart like a bloody, rotting stalk. He could try to cut it or force it out, but he wasn’t sure what effect that would have on Annie, not with bits of the thing running through her like copper wires through a chandelier. He needed to know what they conducted. He needed to know fast.
Careful, avoiding the thing’s attention, he took Annie’s hand.
There she was, beneath the drugs, beneath the oppressive weight of the thing inside her.
A wave of confused despair, black and deep, washed over him.
Lost.
Unable to take more, Adam stepped back. He double checked that the thing hadn’t reacted, hadn’t spotted his intrusion.
“You see it, don’t you?” his mother asked. “There is something there?”
“It’s a spirit, Ma.”
She grimaced. He knew she wouldn’t say she was sorry. She’d never been able to do that. When it had come down to it, she’d wanted him to apologize for what he was. He puffed out his frustration. He was here for Annie. This was about her.
“I’ll do what I can,” he said meaning it. “But yes, something has her. I have to look into it.”
He led her back into the hall before he continued, “I can’t solve it without a little digging.”
His mother raised her hands to indicate she didn’t want to know more, as if knowing what afflicted Annie would infect her with it. She felt about the magic the same way she did about his sex life. His mother and brother did not ask, so Adam did not tell.
Bobby had admitted to having a little Sight, which had been enough to shock Adam into coming here. Once, his brother would have put his hand in a garbage disposal before he admitted magic might be real. His mother had moments, insights that told Adam he got some of his magic from her side of the family. If he asked her about it, she retreated into her bible and told him to pray. What Adam had never understood, what they could never tell him, was why it was so scary to them.
“Got it,” he said, answering her silence. “I’ll just fix it and disappear again.”
Adam shouldn’t have expected more from this reunion. His mother didn’t answer him. She stared past him without focusing on him, like she was trying to decide if that would be best.
Following her back down to the main floor, he wondered if he’d ever stop hoping for them to see him, to really know him.
“We’ll put you in the basement,” she said as she led him through a door and down another flight of stairs, going underground.
The space was finished, nice even. Compared to the rest of the house it was toned down, a little less garish.
Adam would have a little bathroom and shower all to himself. The guestroom had a window, a light well with an escape ladder in case of fires. It was nicer than any place Adam had ever slept in, but he could already feel the acid rising in his throat. He’d have to deal with Bobby soon. Adam clenched and unclenched his fists. The sooner he got to work, the sooner he could leave.
Enjoying a longer shower than he’d ever had at Sue’s, Adam scrubbed off the funk of road sweat, grease, and red dirt. He scratched with his uneven nails, removing as much dead skin as grime. His body, lean and pale, flushed beneath water hotter than he’d felt in months. The red from his scrubbing would fade. It felt good to be so clean, to know the bill went on Bobby’s tab. Adam put most of his clothes in the washer, dressed in his clean jeans, and pulled on a faded T-shirt advertising a band that had broken up before he’d been born.
Adam took to the bed, head at the footboard, and bent his leg at the knee. Palms up, he laid his hands flat. Folded into the position of the Hanged Man, he listened to the washing machine. He let its chugging rhythm carry him down inside himself, to where his magic lay. It felt like opening a door, like stepping into an elevator. Then he was elsewhere.