7
Adam
Adam opened his eyes, and nothing looked the same.
The spirit realm echoed the mortal world, but the angles were distorted. Walls leaned. Trees stretched. Spirits great and small flitted through the air. In this place, Bobby’s house had no roof. Even the basement opened to a star-scattered twilight sky. The moon shone bigger and closer than it ever could on the mortal plane. Life glowed.
But Adam could feel the spirit, greasy and rotten. Its presence coated everything.
Adam called up his protections, barriers made of willpower and magic, armor to ward his mind. Sensitive as he was in the mortal world, in his body, he was both more vulnerable and stronger here. Something with enough power could still get through, blow through him like he was made of salt, but it had to spot him first.
He crept upstairs, the hallways twisting around him. Thick shadows gathered, filtering the starlight that pierced the walls. A swarm of green beetles coated the wall, their shells iridescent in the moonlight.
Annie lay in her bed. The spirit was more solid, more tangible than her. Its barbed tendrils ran through her body. He could see the blood moving inside her, her bones. Even if Adam could sever the connection, he wouldn’t be able to get the threads out without hurting her, maybe even killing her. Those bits of spirit would remain inside her like jellyfish barbs. This was beyond him. Adam’s blood chilled.
He needed information, to talk to someone who could tell him more. Then he could try to find a way to break the spirit’s grip. The problem was choosing the safest someone. He would not indebt himself to a power.
But someone who made such deals would have the knowledge he needed and might tip him off as to why the Guardians hadn’t acted. A spirit of that size, possessing normal people—it was exactly what they were there for.
Outside the house, Adam approached the nearest tree. It opened a pair of emerald eyes and glared at him.
“Pardon me,” he said, kneeling to touch its roots.
With a little push of his will, he flowed through the green, tossed and turned through phylum and vein until he stood in a field of sunflowers. He muttered a thank-you to the blackened tree he’d arrived at and hurried away from its crow- and noose-strewn branches.
The move had tired him, stretched him. The further he stepped from his body, the more his spirit frayed around the edges. He had never proved how far he could go, how far would be safe. There were limits. He’d tested them with Perak, but never past the point of safety.
An old Airstream trailer stood behind a split rail fence, resting on cinder blocks, the grass tickling its wheels. Time and hail had hammered its steel exterior.
He’d never seen what vehicle or beast had towed it here. It could have been a pick-up truck. It could have been a T. rex. Adam smiled to see it.
A black woman sat in front. Adam almost couldn’t see her through the light she radiated. A double-barreled shotgun lay ready across her lap. Sara had never used it in his presence, but Adam felt certain she loaded it with shells and magic enough to kill him with a glancing shot.
Adam hated guns. He remembered his father forcing him to shoot a squirrel with BBs, over and over until he stopped crying at the little thing’s jerking, final movements. He’d felt it die, and had never touched a gun since, no matter how un-Oklahoma of him that was.
Adam walked the path cutting through the field, mindful of the workers reaping among the sunflowers.
Dressed in overalls and straw hats, they looked like farmers, but they weren’t human, not entirely. The blades of their scythes, rusty steel set in hoary wood, should have swished through the stalks, but their reaping made no sound. Each wore a skull mask, pale atop their human faces.
Adam hurried past the bit of fence dividing Sara’s trailer from the fields. It marked the boundary of her wards. Inside them, he felt a little safer, but not much.
Intent on their task, the Reapers didn’t acknowledge his approach. He did not know how they’d take someone interrupting their work, and he really didn’t want to find out.
“Adam Binder,” Sara said. Pausing, she took a long sip from a tall glass—iced tea with a thick slice of lemon. “As I live and breathe.”
She had a deep southern accent. It whispered of swamps and hidden alligators. She’d always been kind to him.
“Can you turn down the light show?” he asked, shielding his eyes with a hand. He wanted to sound confident, but couldn’t afford to offend her. “I’m not a tourist.”
The multicolored glow around her dimmed until he could see her clearly. A diminutive woman with curly hair that haloed her smooth face, Sara looked at him through round, purple-tinted spectacles.
Her magic’s scent was still strong, but pleasant, like sweet tea and sunflowers in summer.
Aunt Sue had introduced Adam to Sara not long after Liberty House. Sara sold information, trading secrets when Sue had them. But Adam and Sue were small time customers. Sara brokered deals with entities far more powerful than the Binders. She had to have heard something about Denver.
That didn’t mean Adam liked visiting her. Her chosen location, the field of Reapers, put him on edge. They were a force of nature, following laws and taking only those souls Death told them to. They didn’t come for everyone. He didn’t understand them. And though he told himself he had no real reason to fear them, he never failed to notice the swishing motion in the corner of his eye.
“I haven’t seen you in a while, Adam Lee,” Sara said, rocking back into her folding lawn chair. Aunt Sue had introduced him with first and middle names, so Sara always used them both. “You’ve grown up, filled out a little.”
Time had marked her, but it was subtle. The lines weren’t deep. Years slipped off Sara, a gift from those she bargained with. But nature would win out eventually. Death and its Reapers were inevitable. Even the ancient powers bowed to that.
“You stopped dyeing your hair black,” she said, leaning toward him.
“Grew out of it,” he said. In truth he couldn’t afford it and let his hair grow back to its muddy blond. It riled him a little that she remembered him looking that way. He wasn’t a teenager anymore, but maybe he could use that. Adam lifted a hand to scratch the back of his head and tried to sound respectful as he said, “I wanted to ask you about something.”
He tried, and failed, to keep his eyes off the trailer door.
“You can come closer,” Sara said, looking at him over the tops of her glasses. She had large, deep brown eyes. “They won’t bite.”
“Guess I need to work on my poker face.”
“A little.” She gave a little snort of laughter. “How’s your aunt Sue?”
“She’s good,” Adam said.
Sue had spirit walked with him, bringing him to Sara to introduce him. The two of them traded gossip and pleasantries while Adam eyed the Reapers. The women were of a type, older, sunny. Sue hadn’t seemed afraid of Sara’s trailer.