Adam closed his eyes, exhaled. She was right, of course, but he didn’t have to like it.
“I don’t like leaving you alone here,” he said, eyeing the other trailers through the open curtains. Most of the park’s occupants had shuffled off to work, but he could hear televisions, a wailing baby, and a couple fighting a few lots over.
“I will be here when you get back,” Sue said.
“Do you promise?” he asked.
“Where would I go?” she asked with a laugh. “Now go pack. I need a lie-down.”
Adam obeyed, digging out his backpack and loading essentials both magical and mundane. Red candles, cedar incense, and the tarot deck went in along with clean boxers and socks.
He rolled up a pair of jeans and some T-shirts. He’d been reading a couple of books, worn paperbacks from a used shop in town. He took one, a thick fantasy novel, and left the rest behind.
Pack slung over his shoulder, Adam checked on Sue. She lay napping on her queen-size bed, the nicest piece of furniture she owned. Spider lay curled between her feet. The cat lifted his head at Adam’s approach. Adam had lived with Sue for three years, but Spider always put his ears back when Adam came too near his mistress.
Her antique dresser stood with the starry mirror and her four wedding rings, four little trophies, laid out in a line. She’d taken on years since Adam had moved in, but he didn’t know her exact age, only that she was far older than his missing father.
“You’ll find him,” Sue said, her eyes still closed.
“In Denver?’ he asked, wishing she’d be less vague but knowing Sight didn’t work that way.
“You will find him,” she repeated.
Adam had a lead. Not much of one, but how many pawn shops could there be on Federal street? Boulevard? He’d find out.
“Is the warlock my father?” he asked, knowing what she’d say, because it was what she always said.
“I can’t say.”
Adam believed her. Because she loved him, and she knew how important it was to him. Sue said she didn’t know why his father had left them—him, Bobby, their mother. The need to know lay in his chest, an old ache that rose anytime he thought about his family.
The warlock’s magic tasted like Adam’s own, blackberries and iris blooms, but it was rotten, acrid, colored by evil deeds.
Adam had to know if he’d gotten his magic from his father—if whatever had twisted the warlock enough for him to torture Saurians had something to do with why he’d disappeared, if there was some chance Adam might take that road.
Warlock was an old word. Normal people cast it around without understanding the ancient slur, thinking it meant male witch, when it meant traitor. It was reserved for practitioners gone bad, those who betrayed magic’s first tenet: “do no harm.” And the warlock he was hunting had done plenty of harm. Every lead had led to a maimed magical creature, to bone bound in glass and bog iron. Most of the creatures still lived, hobbled, their agony constant. The warlock had done more than enough to earn the moniker.
Adam did not know how much of that darkness he had in him, but he swore he’d never use such power.
“Stop hovering, Adam Lee,” Sue said. “And get going.”
“I don’t think Mom hates you,” he said, remembering Sue’s words at the table. “You just remind her of him, of Dad.”
Sue would know he was fishing. She did not like to talk about her nephew or his marriage to Adam’s mother, Tilla Mae. Adam got the sense she’d disapproved, and yet, somehow, she approved of Adam, loved him even.
“Well, she hated him and never got the chance to let it out,” Sue said. “So now she hates me by proxy.”
Adam shook his head. The women in his family were as stubborn as granite. Sue liked to remind him that in frontier days it was the women and children they’d send out to clear the land of rattlesnakes.
“Will I make it to Denver without breaking down?” he asked.
“Not if you don’t change your oil,” Sue said. She opened an eye, regarding him coolly, though it didn’t pierce him like her full gaze would. “Now stop stalling and go see your brother.”
5
Adam
Adam locked the door behind him. The wind stirred the chimes and gently rocked the trailer. It had started tilting to the side. He needed to level it, adjust the jacks that kept it up off the ground. The skirt could use a hosing off. Sue would not let up if he didn’t go now, so he quickly changed the Cutlass’s oil.
The old car, a worn slate gray, ran a little quieter when he started her. He didn’t go back inside to clean up, knowing he’d smell like a mechanic and not minding it.
He’d hated high school, every class but auto shop. Set on a thick slab of concrete, the steel building had been cold year-round. It had been so loud the teachers had shouted their lectures, but it had been the one place where Adam’s Sight didn’t distract him. Sorting parts and fixing things calmed him. That had been one of the worst things about Liberty House, the best thing Bobby had taken away from Adam.
The drive out didn’t require Adam to pass through town, but he did. Guthrie was a little gem, an anachronism full of Victorian houses and red brick streets—remnants from the town’s brief stint as the state capitol.
It had magical history as well. He remembered wandering through fields with Bobby, digging up arrowheads and bones. There were fossils and bog iron, though the water had retreated eons ago. Spirits had drifted near on those walks, always watching, whispering, and tempting Adam to run away with them.
He wasn’t saying goodbye to Guthrie, not exactly. He wouldn’t miss it, but the idea of somewhere new, somewhere his brother was—Adam couldn’t name the squirming feeling low in his gut. Maybe it was time for a change. No. He’d see Sue again in no time.
Adam stopped to fill up his tank and stock up on snacks and a giant cup of over-roasted coffee. He didn’t go crazy with the junk food. Money was tight. He needed more work. He wasn’t bad with engines. He changed oil or jury-rigged repairs for most of the trailer park. It didn’t hurt that he could will an engine back to life, get a little more out of a part if he poured what little magic he had into it. It wasn’t enough to get him a job though. None of the actual shops were ever hiring, and when they were, they wanted at least a high school diploma.
Most of the side jobs Adam did were for people who had as little money as he did. He could keep their cars running without charging them more than they could afford, and the lack of a regular job had given him the freedom to search for his father.
While the Cutlass had a radio, the eight-track player had died years ago—not that he had any cassettes. Adam kept an old boom box in the back seat for when he felt like listening to a CD, but more often than not they skipped, so he just let the classic rock station handle his entertainment.