Servants of the Storm (31 page)

“What
do
you want for me?” I ask, wary and hungry for something I can’t quite place.

The phone rings and rings and rings. My heart twists. I don’t know who it is, but it’s not Carly.

Isaac looks at me, his face more eloquent than words. His eyes shift from black, seeping into blue, as crystal clear as the ocean I’ve always dreamed of seeing. The ocean around Savannah is gray and thick and polluted and cold, but his eyes are warm and transparent and boundless. It’s the kind of blue where you don’t sink and get lost. You’re buoyed, and you float, and the sky meets the water with a kiss. Despite my anger I find myself smiling back at him.

“That’s better,” he murmurs, and I slap him, hard. His eyes turn black again.

I lock glares with him, focus on him like I can draw out the secrets of the universe with my eyelashes. Reflected in his black pupils, I see my own irises melt into crystal blue. “What do you really want, Isaac?”

The question is really a thousand questions, and he’s going to answer it honestly. What does he want from me, for me? What does he want to do about Kitty, about Josephine, about our dark and rotting city? What will he do with himself if we can’t find his distal? And what will he do if we
can
find it?

“Freedom,” he whispers, but it comes out unwillingly.

Something inside me withers at his willingness to settle. He just wants to be free from servitude, but I want more. I want my city back. My life back. I want to know that the people I love are safe, that Carly can’t be used anymore. I want Kitty and Josephine gone, forever. I can’t save myself without saving all the things that I love too.

He shakes his head and narrows his eyes at me. “Don’t do that to me again, Dovey.”

“Fine,” I snap. I step back from him and unclench my fist to hold my half of the necklace up to the light. “Then help me figure this out.”

It’s the same shiny gold as the day Gigi gave it to me, when it was nestled in a little blue box just like Carly’s. Carly helped me put mine on, fastening the tricky clasp behind my neck. And I helped her with hers.

“Y’all got to take care of each other,” Gigi said. “You’re sisters now, and don’t you forget it.”

My nana nodded along at Gigi’s side. “Y’all forget it, we’ll remind you.”

That was the day we sliced our thumbs open and rubbed the blood together, the day we promised we would be there for each other, no matter what the world threw at us.

“Unless there are spiders,” Carly added.

“No spiders,” I promised. They were the only thing that scared her more than water, and I knew better than to tease her about it unless I wanted to end up in a wicked game of Mercy.

The necklace itself is simple. “Friends” is engraved across the front in Victorian script. Nothing new there. But there’s some engraving I never noticed on the back, tiny and curved around the edge of the heart. I hold it up to Isaac.

“Can you read that?” I have to yell to be heard over the ringing phone.

“Dovey, about earlier. I didn’t mean—”

“Can you read it, yes or no?”

He leans in close, his head almost touching mine.

“ ‘Stanford Engravers,’ ” he says. “I think.”

“I’ve never heard of it.”

He takes the pendant from me and inspects the chain and clasp before typing furiously into his phone. I look at my dad’s gun, still sitting on the table, and ache to stop the ringing with one easy shot. Funny, how we fired off three shots, but the police aren’t here yet. Probably more demon magic at work, but it makes me want to hurry.

After a few minutes of fiddling with his phone, Isaac says, “Okay, I’ve got an address.”

We pause, standing there, close enough to touch. The kitchen phone rings and rings and rings. Voice mail should have already picked up, but it hasn’t.

“So . . . do we just go?” I yell. “Do we need an arsenal, or a holy ritual or something?”

“How the hell should I know?” he says, looking down at Mr. Hathaway. As ever, I can’t quite read all the emotions passing over
Isaac’s face, but I know I see frustration. And determination. “I always thought I would fight them with books and incantations. Magic. Or religion. A gun and a knife just never occurred to me. But I’m with you. Let’s do it.” Grendel bays, and claws scrape on wood, and Isaac adds, “But let’s do it quick. He may be dumb, but Grendel’s dangerous, and word travels fast.”

“Give me a minute,” I say, hoping we have that long.

I go to my room, close the door, and do a quick change into new undies and my favorite jeans and boots and a clean shirt, topped off with an oversized navy blue peacoat. If I’m going to die and be a demon zombie, I’m by God doing it in clean underwear. I run a hand through my hair, making it stand up and crackle with frizz. My head still tingles from Isaac’s touch. I settle for a ponytail, knowing that I can’t fight demons with hair in my eyes.

My last stop is my dad’s study. The .38 lives over the door, but his sawed-off double-barrel shotgun lives in the corner of the closet. I grab it and shove a box of shells and a handful of bullets into the pocket of my peacoat. To be honest, it’s pretty empowering. I feel totally badass, and as bored as I used to get going to the range with my dad, I’m glad I know my way around his guns.

“You ready?” I ask before I round the corner this time.

Isaac looks up with a grin, and I realize the phone has stopped ringing. He holds up a bouquet of cut wires. “Now I am.”

“You ever shot one of these?” I ask, holding up the shotgun.

“No, but I’ve shot one of those twice.” He points to the .38.

I pick it up, eject the spent casings, and reload before handing it back to him.

“Take it,” I say. “But don’t stick it in your pants again.”

As we leave the dining room, I take one last look back at the carnage. This used to be a comfortable, if annoyingly old-fashioned, room where a happy family ate their favorite Sunday meal. I haven’t seen my dad in days, and I’m terrified that the demons have him, like Mr. Hathaway had my mom. She’s still asleep at the table, surrounded by buzzing flies, and I know I can’t leave her behind. I’m about to pick her up when a demonic howl of triumph fills the air. The bathroom door hits the floor, and I hold up the shotgun and wait for Grendel to come at me. Instead I hear claws scramble in the opposite direction on the wood floors, followed by shattering glass. So much for the window in my room.

“He’s going to Kitty. We’ve got to hurry,” Isaac says. When I don’t move, he puts a firm hand on my shoulder. “Your mom will be fine. If they wanted to hurt her, they already would have. Come on.”

I turn my back on the scene, knowing I’ve lost something forever. Now that I know I’m a cambion, and now that I suspect that the demons murdered my grandmother, even the good memories of this room are tainted.

As for now, it’s time to get revenge.

WE RUN FOR MY CAR
and hop inside like we’ve done this a thousand times, Isaac in the driver’s seat and me in the passenger seat. I hand him the keys without complaint and look out the window for more demons, gun in hand, as he struggles to get the stubborn engine to turn over. The sun is watery in a white sky, the wind shaking the trees and rattling the leaves. Normally I love days like this. Normally I would be at school, sleepwalking, looking forward to opening night.

But not now. Even the play has become part of the demon’s darkness. The memorial, staging
The Tempest
—it’s all just another part of their plan.

And when I glance in the backseat, I notice that Caliban himself is stretched out back there under his dad’s army coat, asleep.

“Baker?” I splutter as Isaac guns the engine and squeals off down the street.

“There you are,” Baker says, sitting up and rubbing his head. “I was just about to go inside. But the car was unlocked, and I felt so sleepy.”

Isaac chuckles bitterly and says, “Oh, Scrappy-Doo. I knew we should have checked for stowaways.”

I swat Isaac’s shoulder and turn to inspect my friend. Baker looks a little dopey. He shouldn’t be here. And any friend who hears gunshots inside your house should be calling the police and freaking out, not taking a snooze in the back of your sedan.

“You okay, dude?” I ask.

“I had really weird dreams.” He shrugs. “Snakes and stuff.”

“Riverfest slushie,” Isaac murmurs to me. “Hard-core magic. We’re taking him home to sleep it off.”

“Baker, you need to go home and go back to sleep.”

“No way. I woke up thinking I wanted to hang out with you, and here I am. There’s something bugging me. Something I need to do. And I can’t remember what it is. Something about Carly. And you. I can’t let anything happen to you. Can’t let the snakes get you. Something about a gator.”

Isaac pulls the car up in front of Baker’s house, and I lean forward to put my hands on Baker’s shoulders and stare into his blueberry-shiny eyes. I concentrate hard, pouring every bit of charm and power I have into my words, hoping that the same cambion magic that worked on Isaac will now work on Baker.

“Baker, get out of the car and go home.”

He puts a hand on the door handle and shakes his head like he’s trying to get a fly off his nose. Then he turns back to me with his trademark grin and says, “You’re pretty, but the answer is still no. I’m not letting you out of my sight.”

He’s so adamant, and it breaks my heart. He’s a goddamn hero. He’s been drugged, again and again, and I’m trying to use my supposed powers on him right now. But he keeps fighting it as hard as he can. For Carly, and for me. He deserves to know the truth. And he deserves a chance to fight, if he wants the chance.

“You look sleepy,” I say to Baker. “I’ve got some Red Bull in the trunk.”

Isaac shakes his head at me, but I flick him off behind my back.

“Red Bull? Awesome,” Baker says. I grab the bag from the backseat and reach across Isaac to release the trunk so we’ll have some privacy. We both get out of the car, and Baker follows me to the trunk, slinging an arm around my neck. “You’re the best, Dovey. No wonder I’ve loved you for, like, ever.”

For once I’m glad the boy’s dopey, because even if his words make my stomach flop over, I have no idea how to respond. Of course I love him as a friend. I always have. But his feelings are deeper than that, so strong that he can resist anything that stands against him. And after last night’s confusing kisses, I haven’t figured out yet how I feel about him. I need to get past the demons first to make the world safe for that kind of sweetness.

I hand him the bottle of red stuff from Isaac’s fridge. Isaac rolls down his window just a crack and yells, “Are you sure about this? What if he’s only doing this because he has a crush on you?”

“What the hell is so wrong with having a crush on me?” I yell back. “He wants in. He’s fighting it. He cared about Carly, too. And we can’t leave him like this.”

I look at Baker hard, taking in his baggy jeans and plaid flannel and puffer vest. Despite the dopey smile and wide eyes, there’s a determined set to Baker’s jaw and a vertical line between his eyebrows. He was like this when Carly and I decided to join drama club without him, thinking he wasn’t interested. But he insisted on joining too. And he surprised the hell out of us when our shy, goofy friend took to the stage like he’d been born there.

“Is there anything that boy can’t do?” Carly said at the time, watching him doing his first monologue, and I wondered, just for a minute, if she was starting to crush on him.

He’s always had one hell of a strong will. I have to accept for the first time that my childhood friend, now at seventeen, is a man on a mission. My mission.

Isaac must see it too. He gets out, shuts the trunk, and nods at the red drink, saying, “Take two big gulps of that, Scrappy-Doo. You’ll feel a lot better.”

Baker drinks, but he doesn’t stop at two gulps. Isaac has to pull the bottle forcefully away from him after the sixth swallow. Baker shakes his head hard and hops up and down a few times like a boxer getting ready for a fight.

“Where are we going?” he asks.

“I’ll tell you in a minute,” I say.

We pack into the car and head for downtown like ten Grendels are on our tail. I normally drive pretty fast, but Isaac’s going even faster, and I feel like everything is rolling downhill, building momentum. Taking care of Mr. Hathaway has got me all energized, and I’m ready to kill some more demons. Baker’s fingers tap extra fast against the bench seat in back, fueling my own anxiety.

We’re quiet until we get close to downtown. It’s afternoon, but the streets are getting crowded. Black bunting is hung on the streetlights, but the people walking under it don’t look like they’re in mourning. They look like they’re sleepwalking, all in the same direction, like the kids at Riverfest heading toward the dome. I’m glad we’re headed in the opposite direction.

“And I ask again, where are we going?” Baker drapes his arms over my seat, his chin almost on my shoulder.

I grin at him and reach back to ruffle his hair. “To a jewelry store. Right?”

Isaac pulls up to a well-lit curb and frowns. I expected us to end up in one of the darker parts of town, but we’re on a popular square where everything has been restored, brighter and prettier than ever. Isaac pulls out his phone and grows increasingly frustrated as he taps away.

“It should be here. Right there.”

But the place he’s pointing at is a smooth, recently painted brick wall. There’s a restaurant on one corner of the block and a
hotel on the other end, and in between . . . nothing.

“Looks like they rebuilt right over it,” I say, trying to look at his phone, but he scowls at me and holds it up to his ear. The distinctive sound of a disconnected number fills the car, and he puts the phone back in his pocket.

“Sorry, Mario, but your princess is in another castle,” Baker says, flopping back against his seat and rubbing his eyes like he just woke up.

Isaac gets out of the car in a huff and slams the door. He walks down the block, running a hand along the wall like maybe the door’s there but it’s just completely impossible to see. I can’t help thinking that things would be a lot easier if he would let me know what he’s thinking. Ever. But I know someone who will.