Servants of the Storm (24 page)

We really are going to die.

The other kids can’t see it. But I can.

I wrap one hand around the harness and one around Baker’s hand and let loose the loudest, longest scream of my life, which is saying a lot, considering the past week. He squeezes my hand and whoops. My pinkie burns, and I squeeze harder and close my eyes as we plunge toward that tiny absence of metal that controls my destiny.

And for no reason that I can explain, the car swoops right over it and enters the double loop. I let go of Baker’s hand and hold on to the harness so hard that it makes my pinkie ooze between the stitches. My stomach flips, and the car coasts around a wide curve, and I have a brief moment of calm. Without lights the tracks are stark black against the moonlit sky, and I know that there must be more missing pieces, more loose screws and rusted parts. And the blood on that one car still stands out in my mind, a promise of what’s to come. But something is holding it all
together, keeping it moving. It must be more demon magic.

We’re about to head down a steep hill and into a series of corkscrews. Before I can close my eyes and start praying, I notice movement in the shadows of the overgrown field below us.

Demons.

Fox ears, lynx ears, cat ears. Deer antlers and goat horns. There are dozens of them spread out beneath us, their faces upturned, eyes closed, mouths open. Waiting, like children about to catch snowflakes on their tongues.

I only have a second to panic before we’re heading into the loop. My hands are still glued to the harness, but all the other kids, including Baker, have their hands up in the air as they scream. I want to close my eyes, but I can’t. I need to see what’s happening, so I squint against the freezing cold tears.

We get through the first loop and head into the second, and that’s when I see it.

A dark shape, falling.

I try to trace it, try to remember who it might have been. But it’s impossible in the dark. Seconds later—less than seconds later—I hear a faraway thump. We come out of the corkscrew, and I try to look back, to see what’s happening on the ground, but it’s just a big pile of moving shadows huddled together in the dark. We whip past a big tree and around a corner, and the demons are out of sight.

I spend the rest of the ride trying to glance between the trees and shadows, trying to find out what they’re doing to the kid
who fell off. But I can’t see anymore. It’s too dark. Too far away. As the carts jolt into the exit area, I school my face and hope my fear and worry and anxiousness don’t show. And I hope none of the demons are watching me. There’s no way I can hide my thudding heart, hex or no. I’m about to see Carly, and this time she can’t run.

Before the car shudders to a stop and the safety harnesses lift up, I see the empty, already lifted harness seven cars ahead of us.

When I reach over with shaky hands to undo the seat belt buckle in his lap, Baker says, “I’m getting to like riding coasters with you,” in a confident, flirty voice I’ve never heard out of him. I almost slap him, but I know he can’t help it. They drugged him. And he drugged himself, just to help me.

He steps out of the cart and offers me his hand, but I’m too busy looking ahead, trying to peg the missing kid. It’s no use; they’re all bunched up together. Anyone could have been in that seat. And now that person is just gone, as if nothing ever happened. As if they were never here. I wonder what their parents will think, if everyone will just assume a runaway situation. Will their car sit in the parking lot for weeks and be found by the cops, or will a friend just drive on home, having completely forgotten that they didn’t come here alone? Will one more flier go up at Café 616, or will that kid simply fade from memory?

Baker grabs my hand and yanks me out onto the wooden platform, and two more kids plunk into our seats from the waiting line. As I pass the seventh car up, I want to say something to
the kids sitting there, warn them away, but I’m just too scared to risk it. If something happens to me tonight, there’s nobody else who can help Carly, nobody else who’s even aware of what’s going on. And Isaac, it seems, doesn’t mean to fight at all.

As we pass by the open door of the control room, I pretend to trip and land hard on my hands and knees. Baker stops at my side but doesn’t ask me if I’m okay. I slowly pull up to kneeling and turn my head. Inside the dark booth, a hand splays over the lit buttons of a console. The skin is blue-black, and the nails are bright pink. I know that hand, and I know that shade of polish, and I know the sleeve of her favorite corduroy jacket. And I see the place where she’s missing that last bit of her pinkie finger. No one took the time to stitch it closed.

My breath catches in my throat, tears springing to my eyes.

It’s really her. I finally found my Carly.

It takes everything I have not to stand up and throw myself into her arms and cry, but the look on her face is enough to stop me. Her eyes aren’t Carly’s eyes. They’re dead black. And her mouth is drawn down, slack, a little open to show black-grimed teeth. If Carly’s in there, she’s hiding deep.

She doesn’t show any sign of recognition. She doesn’t move. But I have to try.

“I need to know where she hid your dybbuk box,” I say, my voice low.

Her head falls to the side, just the littlest bit. Her pinkieless hand goes to her neck and yanks clumsily. I hear a snap, and she
drops something cold into my hand and disappears back into the booth without a word, without a touch.

I step forward to follow her, but a demonic moan from the shadows stops me. I can’t risk speaking to her, and I am shaken to the core, my heart breaking all over again to see her this way.

“Come on. We should ride something else.” Baker tugs my arm gently, and I let him pull me along with the tail end of the crowd. My feet are heavy, my hands hanging numbly at my sides and aching to reach for Carly.

With a jarring clunk the coaster takes off again, sending another group of kids into shrieks and possibly one of them to their death. I don’t let myself look back; there’s nothing I can do, not with all the demons and that cambion lady here. Baker and I move into the stairwell, the last people in our group to exit. I wrap my hand around Carly’s gift and shove it deep into my pocket. I know what it is. I have one just like it at home.

But why would she give me the Best half of our Best Friends necklace?

I START WALKING TOWARD THE
park exit and my car and air that I can breathe without smelling death, but Baker stops as if he can’t follow me.

“We should ride a coaster,” he says, and with a lost look on his face, he turns and sleepwalks toward the next ride. I stand there for a moment before I notice a demon watching me from the shadows of a broken fountain. He steps into the scant light, pig nose quivering as he picks his teeth with a spur of bone, and I shudder and hurry after Baker. I feel numb, dazed, running my mitten-covered thumb over and over the gold pendant jangling against the pink bead in my pocket.

I don’t want to ride any more demon-rigged, half-broken rides, but every time I try to sneak away or sit one out or edge toward the exit, Baker acts all weird, or a demon or cambion heads me off. Again
and again I’m subtly guided into a line with the other kids. I feel like a sheep being penned in by clever sheepdogs, and I can’t find a way out. We ride the Hurricane and the Gator Tail and the Octopus. I don’t see any more splashes of blood or falling bodies or venomous reptiles or packs of hungry demons waiting like hyenas for disaster to strike right on cue. Just cambions roaming and demons moaning at every ride, skulking in the shadows like the lynx-eared man and somehow drawing creepy sustenance from the screams of the riders. I’m sleepwalking now too; all I can think about is Carly.

As we get off a wooden coaster that made my butt hurt, everyone freezes in place. Their heads turn as one, and I imitate them, although I have no idea what they’re doing or why.

“What is it?” I ask.

“Closing time,” Baker says sadly.

The crowd ambles back to the gate. What few lights were on are now out. The entire park is so dark that I can barely see where to walk without tripping on branches and trash left over from the storm. The moon is fainter now, the shadows deeper. Everything is unnaturally still, and it’s even scarier than it was before. When we pass the carousel, it turns just a little as if in a breeze, the rusted poles empty of horses. Even though I already found her, I can’t stop scanning the crowds and shadows for Carly. There’s no sign of the demons or their distal servants until we get to the front gate. Several trams are lined up, each driven by a black-eyed corpse that isn’t her.

Baker slides in, and I sit next to him, our shoulders pressed together. The tram rumbles off, and everyone is silent. A couple
of times I almost start talking, but I catch myself just in time. Instead I focus on the necklace in my pocket, slipping off my mitten to rub my thumb over the engraved word.

Best
.

When the tram stops and Baker gets up, I follow him. The parking lot is mostly dark, but he seems to know where we’re going. All the cars are spread out, and we’re parked farther away than most, near a streetlight, at least. The air is cold and sharp, and I feel small and alone and soft, like a rabbit in a field, half-blind and stupid, waiting to be picked off by a wolf lying in wait. I sidle closer to Baker, who puts his arm around me in a way that would have felt brotherly a few weeks ago but now feels almost proprietary.

As we near my car, a dark figure separates from the shadows.

“Did you see that?” I ask Baker, slowing down.

But he pulls me along with a chuckle, saying, “Don’t be such a scaredy-cat. It’s an amusement park. For being amused. Totally safe.”

“There’s someone by my car,” I whisper.

With a shrug he stops and stares ahead.

“Oh, that guy,” he says. “Not scary.”

Of course I’m not comforted by his reaction. After all, the boy had a water moccasin on his shoe a couple of hours ago. Whatever he’s seeing, whatever illusion this place is under, he’s not concerned. That doesn’t mean there’s no danger. Probably the exact opposite.

“Some people think I’m scary.”

The voice carries, low and teasing, from the puddle of darkness around my car. I recognize it instantly. And I’m annoyed.

“How’d you find us, Isaac?”

“I told you to lie low and stay away from Kitty and Josephine. Then I got home from work and found the bottles missing from my fridge, and I knew you’d be right here where Kitty said Carly would be, doing the opposite of what was good for you.” One corner of his mouth curls up and he nods at Baker. “And look! You brought Scrappy-Doo, too.”

“Shut up, geezer,” Baker says. “And when did it get so dark?”

The other cars are leaving the parking lot one after the other. The lights are blinding as they flash over us on their way out, and there’s a dirt bike behind Isaac, a black-on-black helmet sitting on the seat. So that’s how he got here. Someone’s brights flash right in my eyes, and I feel more exposed and obvious than ever despite my mittens.

“Can we go somewhere else and yell at each other?” I say.

“I’ll drive.” Isaac holds out his gloved hand for the keys.

I cock my hip and give him the drop dead stare.

“Like hell you will.”

Baker snickers.

“I want to take you somewhere off the map,” Isaac says. “I want you to see what you’re dealing with.”

“We already saw Josephine,” I say with a vicious grin. “You got something better than that?”

Anger and fear flash in Isaac’s eyes, but he just grinds his teeth and pretends I’ve said nothing.

“You wanted to meet another cambion, right? I’ll take you to someone who knows more about distal servants and dybbuk boxes, the dark stuff. Just give me the keys and let’s drop Scrappy-Doo before the demon juice fully wears off.”

“Whoa,” Baker says, shaking his head like he’s trying to wake up. “Who is this jagoff? You’re not seriously dumping me at home and going out alone with him, right?”

“You came out of that fast,” I mutter.

Isaac shrugs. “The demons are gone and the park is closed. The kids need to be more awake to drive home so they can come back next week. Some demon magic has an expiration date.”

I bite the inside of my cheek and look from one boy to the other. I want to learn whatever I can about distal servants and cambions and evil and demons and how to find Carly’s dybbuk box. But it’s been a long-ass night right after another long-ass night, and I could use some sleep. And Baker’s been here the whole time, willing to do anything to help me, even drinking the demon juice, knowing that it would make him vulnerable. It feels like a betrayal, to cut him off and go on without him. All I want to do right now is go home, shower the demon stink off me, and look more closely at the necklace Carly gave me.

“Can we go tomorrow night?” I say, and Isaac shakes his head.

“The clock is ticking. This guy is . . . Well, let’s just say you can’t count on him. And the only reason your boyfriend can’t go is that I can sneak in a hot date, but not a threesome.”

“He’s not my boyfriend,” I say weakly, and Baker snorts.

I turn to look at him. His eyes are sharp again as he looks intently at me, the dopiness long fled. He’s got a little bit of stubble on his cheeks, and he’s breathing through his nose like he wants nothing more than to tackle Isaac and punch him unconscious but is just too damn polite to do it. Baker’s still the good kid, the boy on the safe side of the fence, and for the first time I appreciate what it takes for him to stand there. It’s like I’m seeing him for the first time, as he really is. Not as a childhood friend and not as a cute guy. As a man.

“Baker, you know I have to do this, right?”

I don’t mean for it to come out as a plea, but that’s what it is.

“Dovey, this is your call. I told you I’d be there for you, and I will. I’m not sure what’s going on, what just happened. It’s like a nightmare I can’t quite remember. But I’m pretty sure that going somewhere alone with a creepy stranger at this time of night to meet someone even creepier? That’s just . . . creepy. Capital
K
.”