“You won’t,” Sue said, breaking into the stream of Adam’s thoughts.
“What?” he asked as he came around the counter.
“You won’t see him again.”
Damn.
Sue’s Sight was never wrong.
Adam forced himself to take a long breath. He’d been waffling about Tanner but now that it was settled, well, he’d have liked the chance to decide for himself.
She predicted the future like most people observed the weather, and no matter how often it happened, it still creeped him out.
He opened his mouth to ask for more details, but she narrowed her eyes in his direction.
“You going to call your brother?” she asked, casually dropping another bomb.
He shouldn’t have been surprised she’d Seen that too.
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “I don’t want to.”
Sue turned to the north. Only bad news ever came from the north.
“You have to,” she said.
“All right,” Adam said. He was weaseling, and he knew it. “I’ll call him in the morning. It’s late there.”
“No, Adam Lee,” she said, shaking her head. “He’s up. He’s waiting.”
4
Adam
“Adam?” Bobby asked, sounding ragged, but it was the voice Adam remembered, soothing when their father raged, raging in his place when Adam’s grades slipped beneath passing in high school.
It was never “Adam Lee,” just like it was never “Bobby Jack.” His brother had shed whatever hick affectations he could, including the way they were called by the first and middle names.
Though Sue was never wrong, Adam had hoped Bobby wouldn’t pick up, but he had, so Adam stepped outside the trailer to better hear. Crickets sang. He felt clammy as the damp worked its way over his skin. He needed to know what was happening. He’d hoped to never hear from Bobby again.
“What do you want?” Adam asked.
“Please don’t hang up,” Bobby said. “Please.”
The pleading tone made Adam hold on. Bobby sounded almost afraid.
“I—we need your help.”
Adam felt a prickling sensation, like a spider walking up the back of his neck. His own Sight wasn’t as sharp as Sue’s, but he could not mistake the feeling. Something was at work. It mixed with the ball of feelings in his gut that had risen when he’d heard his brother’s voice. Adam gripped the porch rail, bracing for bad news.
“Is it Mom?” he asked.
“No,” Bobby said. “She’s fine. It’s—something’s happened to Annie.”
Adam didn’t really know his sister-in-law. She’d email from time to time, updating him on her life with Bobby. She never pushed Adam to reconcile with his brother, to come to Christmas or anything like that. She never seemed to mind that he didn’t write back. He liked her, from what little he knew of her, but his brother remained another matter.
“What about her?” Adam asked, kicking at the boards of the trailer’s little porch. There was a bit of rot there. One more thing he needed to fix. One more thing he couldn’t afford.
“She needs your help. Something, some thing, has her.”
That his brother would admit to something supernatural—a pressure built behind Adam’s eyes.
“What kind of thing?”
“I don’t know,” Bobby said. “I don’t know anything about this stuff, but she’s acting strange. Talking to things that aren’t there.”
“So lock her up,” Adam said. “Isn’t that your go-to?”
The memory of cinder block walls and screams through the night bubbled up. It coated the back of his throat in acid.
Bobby let out a long sigh, the way he always did when Adam got under his skin.
“I saw it too,” he confessed in a rush, quiet and quick.
They had the same blood, the same parents. Adam had always wondered why he was the only one with Sight. Perhaps his brother was more attuned to the supernatural than he’d let on. If so, Bobby had locked Adam away for seeing what he could see too.
Adam squeezed his cell phone until he thought it might crack. He couldn’t afford a new one, and he could not afford to be without, but in that moment he could have thrown it hard enough to shatter it to pieces against the trailer.
He might never have been so angry, seen so much red. Adam forced air in and out of his lungs. Annie had done nothing to him. If a spirit had latched onto her, Adam had a duty to protect her, to protect anyone asking for his help. There would be practitioners in Denver, other magicians who could look into it, but there was always a good number of con artists in the mix. Best not to outsource a possession.
“I can send you a plane ticket,” Bobby said, his tone still pleading, trying to sell it. “You can stay with us. Mom’s here. You can spend some time with her.”
That wasn’t exactly a draw. Adam’s heart tinged blue when he thought of his mother. The black and red he felt for Bobby was so much easier.
“I’ll drive,” Adam said.
“But you’ll come?” Bobby asked.
“Yeah, Bobby. I’ll leave tomorrow.”
“It’s Robert now.”
“Whatever,” Adam said. He hung up.
Adam stepped back inside and latched the storm door behind him.
“That Saurian, Bill, he mentioned Denver,” he said.
“And Bobby lives in Denver,” Sue said, nodding. “That’s two. Where’s the third?”
Magic worked in patterns. Tuning your Sight was about seeing and sensing the patterns, the flows, like wind currents building to a storm. Adam might believe in coincidences, but magic did not. He could feel something, a beginning, a change. It might be a storm on the horizon. It might blow right over him, but something was coming.
His cell phone blinked with an arriving text.
“There’s the third,” Sue said with a nod.
Adam recognized Tanner’s number. It said simply:
Hey
Adam typed back a mirrored response, eyes flicking between Sue and the keys.
I talked to my dad. About the cue. He says he got it in Denver. At a pawn shop.
Adam exhaled. He wasn’t really surprised. Adam typed back:
Does he remember which one?
No. He said it was on Federal. I hope it helps.