“No.”
“What does that mean, Rogue? Are there none? Or are they scared of you?”
“I’m not sure which option I like better.” Rogue rolled his neck like it was stiff, brought a hand back to massage it.
Jinx glanced at his brother, the one he’d been closest to for centuries and he wondered if anything had really changed inside of him. It didn’t appear that way, but . . . “If you want to go back. Want to keep not seeing things . . .”
“Of course that’s what I want, but I won’t go back. It’s my lot,” Rogue said. He’d tied a black bandana over his head, reminding Jinx of their Army days. For eight years, they’d worked side by side, kicking ass and saving humans. There were no trappers to worry about, nothing but pure, unadulterated battle, as they’d been trained for.
But the ghosts and the spirits on the battlefields, they’d been a bitch.
“Maybe we should’ve stayed in the military,” he said now.
“I’ve thought about that. But we already knew Seb. What would be different?”
Seb. Jinx hadn’t said his name since he’d disappeared, and now it seemed to echo across the field. “Where do you think he is?”
“I don’t give a shit, but I hope he’s in hell.”
“I think he’s been there for years,” Jinx said, although the hatred for Seb burned brighter than Rogue’s, which was difficult to do.
“Good.” Rogue stuffed his hands in the pockets of his leather jacket. They walked for another thirty feet, were too far into the cemetery for comfort when the ground started to shake.
“Salt circle?” Jinx asked and Rogue nodded. They hadn’t used one since they were kids, but Jinx figured it would make his brother feel better. He used the rock salt in a wide arc around them. It trapped them, but if need be, they could sleep safely on the ground until morning light.
The ghosts began to depart, running, yelling. If Rogue heard anything, he didn’t say, and Jinx listened for the sounds of the dogs he’d heard the other night. The hellhounds’ howl came first, and then Jinx heard them running, the earth shaking beneath his feet. And then, Rogue put his hands over his ears and closed his eyes as a shudder went through him, and Jinx figured he’d heard that.
The hellhounds ran, circling around the salt, whining unhappily that they couldn’t get closer to Jinx. Finally, they sat and waited expectantly and in that silence, Rogue took his hands away, opened his eyes.
“Aren’t you . . . worried?” Rogue asked.
“They kind of, ah, listen to me.”
Rogue’s neck practically snapped as he turned to stare at Jinx. To his credit, all he said was, “Good to know.”
And that’s when it all started. Out of the woods behind the cemetery came thick black clouds like fast- moving smoke over the graves. They rushed toward the wolves, stopping behind the hellhounds.
“Keep them back,” Jinx told the dogs, who turned and growled.
Rogue’s voice sounded strangled when he said, “I think I liked it better when I didn’t see anything.”
“I hear you.” Jinx stared at the shapeless clouds of smoke, blobs of grayish black, ready to form and take over whomever or whatever they wanted to.
“They’re fears,” Rogue confirmed what Jez had spoken of the other night.
“And they’re waiting for us to give them orders.”
“Order them to go away,” Rogue said through clenched teeth.
“That’s one thing they won’t listen to.” He’d lose control of them all together. “How bad can it be, having them protect all of us?”
“Bad, Jinx. Really, really bad.”
But in the interim, it might be all they had. “Is this all of them?” Jinx asked and the hounds howled. “I guess that’s a yes.”
“These things thrive on using people’s intentions of evil—they’re not going to hold out much longer without doing something.” Rogue rubbed the side of his head. “They’re trying to talk to me, but I can’t understand what they’re saying.”
“Hey, I’m their king.”
“Seriously? This is not the time for formality. Maybe we need a banishing ritual.”
The spirits groaned and tried to rush forward at Rogue.
“He’s kidding.” Jinx put his hands out, but the salt was what stopped them. “We’ve got a job for you. Soon.”
That seemed to make them happy.
“What are you thinking?” Rogue asked.
But Jinx had no idea. He simply sat on the ground and lay back to look at the stars, pretending none of it existed. Rogue did the same and as the hellhounds panted and the fears circled them in a tight knot, the twins lay there, protected. Hunted. Haunted.
At first, they just remained silent. Finally, Jinx rolled to his side so he could concentrate on his brother and refused to acknowledge the other shit around him. “Can you see any other spirits?”
“No—just the hellhounds and the fears,” Rogue said. “You can still see the ghosts?”
“Yep. If any were left here. These things seem to be the fastest party ender in the free world.”
“What else are you carrying around, Jinx? Any other secrets I should know?” Rogue was being sincere.
“I killed our father. And although I had nothing to do with him dying the first time, I wasn’t sorry to see him go,” Jinx confessed.
“I know you tried to shield me from the worst of the abuse,” Rogue told him.
“It never worked.”
“Doesn’t matter.”
“Yeah, trying is the story of my life,” Jinx muttered.
“Trying and failing are part of life, Jinx—you know that as well as I do. Dad always had it out for you because you were born last.”
Because he’d been born at all, Jinx knew. Six minutes younger than Rogue. He’d been told it enough times by both parents for it to echo inside his mind at the worst possible times. He’d heard the words hissed at him when things went wrong in the house, in the village, when he was being beaten for not performing the warrior ways the way his father thought they should be performed.
But he could handle it. When he heard Rogue being beaten, however, that had made him physically ill.
It’s not as if Rogue couldn’t hold his own—he was stoic in the face of pain, maybe more so than Jinx himself. But the twin thing—Jinx seemed to feel Rogue’s pain and fear more explicitly than his own. The old saying “When you get cut, I bleed” was true for them.
The entire time Rogue lay on the bed under the mare’s spell, Jinx had been in hell, a part of him cut off from the world, deadened and yet he felt the sharpened pain of the mare’s claws, the clutch of the markings from hell as they crawled up Rogue’s face and head.
He’d told no one—hadn’t even hinted it to Vice. He wouldn’t have been surprised to wake up in the morning to find matching markings on his face. But since Rogue had them, they were both connected to hell forever.
Not that they hadn’t been before. Anyone who could see ghosts and spirits had connections to heaven, hell . . . and now purgatory.
As Jez told him, this was always meant to be. “What did you see in hell?”
“I’m not talking about it.”
“I can ask Gwen.”
“Don’t bring her back into that place.” Rogue’s markings were back to normal. “It was everything you can think of and more.”
“So why were these creatures in purgatory, rather than hell? Are they not bad enough?”
“No, they’re worse. They’d corrupt hell.”
“Hell’s got to take them. Where else could they go? Hell’s going to have to buck up and grow a goddamned pair.”
“Can’t we vanquish them?”
