He stepped nearer. The air around the trailer whispered. In the fields, the Reapers kept up their scything, their clockwork, synchronized motions. They were men and women, old and young, every race and height. Adam did not know how Death chose its servants. He’d rather not know. It was enough that they wouldn’t harm him until his time came. They’d only attack if their work was interrupted.
“Well?” Sara asked, waving him to come closer. “Ask me.”
“Denver.”
Sara bowed her head, telling him she already knew.
“What is it?” he asked. “The thing in the sky?”
“A spirit,” she said. “But not one we know. Not one anyone knows.”
The whispers stilled. Sara’s goddesses had cocked their ears. Adam had their attention, the last thing he wanted. He looked to his feet as his heart raced.
They didn’t know. Sara didn’t know.
“So it’s something new,” he said.
“Or something extremely old.”
Neither was a good thing.
“What’s it to you?” Sara asked.
There it was, the this for that. Adam didn’t like giving up information, but he’d taken, so he had to give.
“It has my sister-in-law. I think it has lots of people,” he said, considering the other tendrils. “I need to know how to break its hold.”
Sara shook her head. “We don’t know what it is or where it came from. Only that it defies Death and nature herself. It just appeared one day.”
Adam took a step back. “That’s not possible. Someone had to summon it.”
Sara shrugged and sipped her tea. “If they did, they ain’t advertising it.”
“And the Guardians?” Adam asked. “Have they said anything? Done anything?”
“Not as yet,” Sara said. “Someone must go to them in supplication, make a case before they will intervene.”
“Surely one of the local witches has gone to the towers. One of the local practitioners. I can’t be the first one to notice this thing.”
Someone else should have already dealt with the spirit. A problem this big should have already been solved.
“Adam . . .” Sara trailed off. “I thought you knew the situation.”
“I do,” he said. “There’s a spirit over Denver, like a cloud. It’s connected to people everywhere.”
“It’s far more than that.” Sara took a long sip. She didn’t offer him any and he knew not to take it if she had. There were rules about food in the spirit realm.
“Will you tell me?” he asked.
“Are you ready to bargain?”
And there was the bee sting in the honey. She’d help him—for a price. He could get all the power he needed to free Annie, to protect himself, and banish the spirit. All it would cost him was everything.
“I don’t want power,” Adam said, crossing his arms over his chest. “Just information.”
“Well you know what they say about knowledge,” she drawled.
“Sara, please. This is serious. Tell me what you know.”
“What I can tell you, for free—” She leaned forward. Fear slid a little more southern into her tone. “Is that all of the magicians in Denver are dead.”
8
Adam
Adam woke shuddering. If Sara, with her gods and alliances, feared the thing in the sky over Denver, then he had a mosquito’s chance against an elephant. The most he could hope for was to find someone else, a greater power, to deal with it and try not to get caught in the blast. He squeezed his eyes shut at the thought of Annie lying in her bed.
Dammit.
He wanted to run back home to Sue and Spider, but he couldn’t leave Annie like this. So much of how the spirit had trapped her reminded him of Liberty House, of how he’d felt, weighed down to his bed by drugs and, once or twice, restraints.
He had to find a way to free her, and he had to know what had killed the witches and magicians in Denver.
“I know you must be tired after the drive, but napping, Adam?” a voice asked. “You just got here.”
Adam opened his eyes to find his brother glaring at him.
“Bobby,” Adam said.
“Well?” Bobby asked.
Adam swallowed a remark about Bobby getting on Adam’s case when he was the one who was still going to work when his wife was possessed.
“I wasn’t napping,” Adam said. The hangdog look on Bobby’s face kept Adam from snapping harder. He stretched, working to settle himself back into his body. Spirit walks were deadening, and he always woke more tired than when he lay down.
“Meditating. Whatever,” Bobby said.
“I was trying to find out what’s going on,” Adam said. No one had ever wound him up like Bobby.
“And did you?” Bobby asked.
Adam didn’t think Bobby would believe him about spirit walking, even if he went into it.
“Some,” he said, uncertain if he should explain that Annie was possessed.
“Can you fix it or not?” Bobby demanded. “Or are you just going to lie around?”
“You like it when your patients talk to you that way, Doctor Binder?” Adam asked.
“You’re not a doctor.”
“You called me, remember? I’m the closest thing you’ve got to an expert.”
Bobby had practically begged, and Adam barely kept himself from throwing it in his brother’s face. He choked the desire down.
He’d always hated Bobby’s “dad mode.” Maybe that’s just who Bobby had grown up to be. Maybe that’s who “Robert” was. Adam almost spat with disgust. His only real memories of their father might be rages and temper storms, but they were enough. Adam had no desire to imitate the man.
Ten years older, Bobby had always looked more like a grown man than Adam had ever felt. Deep purple ringed his eyes. Gray mixed with his muddy hair. He was even starting to look like their dad.
It fit. Bobby had never gotten it through his head that wanting Adam to be normal wasn’t the same as wanting what was best for Adam.
“I just don’t want you screwing around,” Bobby said. “Making up crap.”
“Or what, you’ll have me locked up again?” Adam asked. “Maybe you can get a two-for-one special.”