Doomsday went to the pile of books still scattered across the floor next to the table and picked one out, flipping through the pages.
“Yeah, okay. No resurrection for us,” she said. “‘Barrow: an endless spirit who stands at the gate between the living and the dead, waiting to tear it from its hinges. While capable of granting power over many things, he is most known for his ability to reverse death by imbuing the body of the dead with a piece of his soul. It is believed that if enough of his soul passes from the land of the dead into the land of the living, the gates will open. The distinction between living and dead will be forever destroyed. The living will storm heaven, the dead will storm earth.’”
“So . . .” Vulture said. “If enough people are resurrected all at once, we get some Bible-style apocalypse?”
“Basically,” Doomsday said.
“Cool,” Vulture said.
“How many resurrections, do you think?” I asked.
“No idea.”
I looked to Vasilis. “You knew about this apocalypse thing?”
“Yeah,” he said, looking down at his hands.
“And you didn’t say anything about it because . . .”
“I want to bring back Heather.”
“Holy shit,” Brynn said, “if I really could trade your sorry ass for Heather I’d do it in a second.”
“Hey, don’t be mean to him!” Vulture protested. “He’s just . . . well . . . he’s had a rough day.”
“The odds of one more piece of Barrow being the tipping point are so incredibly low,” Vasilis said. “These rituals have been performed for thousands of years and it hasn’t happened yet. We could bring Heather back, and just her, and it would almost certainly be fine.”
“Almost certainly,” Thursday mumbled.
I would bring Clay back. I realized that, all of a sudden. I would go to Denver and I would dig up the body of my old best friend and I would bring him back to life. Because the world needed someone like Clay. Because I needed Clay. I don’t know that I would kill to do it. I don’t know if I’d sacrifice myself to do it. But I might risk the apocalypse for him.
“All of this is one hundred percent beside the point,” Thursday cut in. “We don’t have the book. We can’t resurrect anyone. We probably can’t find a drone in town.”
Vulture looked sad.
“We can either try harder to recruit Isola or Gertrude or we can confront Sebastian head-on,” Thursday said. “Those are our options.”
“Or we follow Sebastian and figure out how he gets into his basement,” I said. “He’s not resurrected, not that we know of. He’s got to get in there somehow.”
“He can probably bring the barrier up and down at will,” Doomsday said. “And it will last until he’s unconscious or dead.”
“Like, asleep?” I asked.
“No, actually unconscious.”
“How do you summon a barrier like that anyway?” Thursday asked. “Can we do that, and keep ourselves safe?”
Doomsday looked to Vasilis, implying she didn’t know.
“It’s not Barrow’s work specifically. A lot of spirits can grant witch’s fire. But it’s still necromancy. The only ritual I know, it involves inflicting immense pain on an unwilling victim.”
“That’s out, then,” Vulture said.
Thursday still looked thoughtful.
“Hey,” Brynn said, from where she stood by the window. “Is there supposed to be a black SUV parked out front of the library? That a normal thing?”
“No,” Vasilis said. Instead of coming to look, though, he dropped his head in sorrow.
“I bet it’s the magic feds,” Vulture said.
“How’d they find us?” I asked.
“I dunno,” Vulture said. “Probably the tracking devices we all have in our pockets. I keep trying to get you all on burner phones and VPNs, but you never listen.”
“What do we do?” Vasilis asked. It was hard to understand him with his head buried in his hands.
“We sit tight,” I said.
“It just drove off,” Brynn reported.
“Problem solved forever,” Vulture said.
“What were the plates?” I asked.
“California.”
“Could be tourists,” Vasilis said. He still didn’t look up.
“Nah, I bet it’s the magic feds,” Vulture said.
“Doesn’t change anything,” Thursday said. “Just raises the stakes, is all. It’s never good to get caught with a body.”
“They won’t be after us,” I said. “They’ll be after the book. And fuck, if they get it . . .”
“I sure am so glad you came to town,” Vasilis said. He tried for biting sarcasm, but halfway through his sentence, his voice broke and he started to cry.
“There, there,” Vulture said, rubbing our host’s shoulders. “It’s okay.”
Then Vulture thought for a minute.
“I mean, not actually okay.”
Silence reigned in the apartment.
“But I guess you knew that.”
* * *
That night, Vasilis slept in the living room and gave Brynn and me his room. He said he wanted to keep vigil. I could think of a few reasons it was a bad idea to let him, but I wanted to sleep in a bed, so I didn’t say anything.
Vulture took off to scope out the town. That was also a bad idea—there were magicians and feds about—but I knew my opinion on the matter wouldn’t have any bearing on his actions, so I didn’t say anything.
Thursday, actually sensible, decided to keep watch from inside the library, rather than standing out front with a gun.
For a long while, I lay on my back on Vasilis’s bed. Brynn was curled up with her head on my shoulder. Wracking sobs from the living room filled the air, and I focused my attention on Brynn’s breathing.
“Today fucking sucks,” I said at last.
“Yeah, it does.”
“Being demon hunters is garbage.”
Brynn laughed a little bit at that. But it wasn’t her giggle. It was too soft, too tenuous, to be her real laugh.
“I don’t say this much,” Brynn said, “and I don’t even know where I mean by it. But . . . I want to go home.”
“God,” I said. “Me too.”
I held her tighter.
The crying in the living room hit a crescendo, and it sounded like Vasilis was trying to vomit his heart out of his chest.
“How do you think we get ourselves thrown in the same prison, if we
