Somewhere in all of this was a back-from-the-dead woman and a magician who had pulled off the kind of miracles that people write bibles about. Who had also just killed Heather. Well, maybe it wasn’t fair to blame him for Heather. I wasn’t feeling fair.
Whenever I got out of this alive and not in prison, I was going to sit down and have myself a well-deserved panic attack.
Thursday had his gun held slack at his side as we moved through the graveyard. Brynn had her baton out. Mine was lost somewhere in Iowa, so I took out my knife. Vulture stopped to take a picture of a tombstone with the name HARDWOOD.
We crossed to the very back of the cemetery, where an iron fence separated lawn from forest. Several of the vertical bars were missing, and Vulture led us through the gap and into the trees.
“Not much farther,” he whispered.
He was right.
A muddy impromptu path led us through young pines to a small clearing. A red bicycle leaned against a tree near us. Ten feet away, in the light of Vulture’s phone’s flashlight, Isola stood over two unmarked, impromptu tombstones. She still wore the same black slip dress, but she’d paired it with sensible hiking shoes.
“Don’t know how you followed me,” she said, without turning around. Cut wildflowers, in blues and reds, sat at the foot of each stone. “But you shouldn’t have.”
“Yeah, let me guess,” I said, “it isn’t safe.”
“It isn’t.”
“What are you doing here?” I asked.
Her back was still to us, but she pointed at each stone in turn. “Loki, Damien.”
“What happened to them?”
“The same thing that will happen to you.”
“Sebastian Miller?” I asked.
I’d seen magic close up and personal. Still, though, it was hard to be afraid of some man while I had my friends at my side, armed and on guard.
She turned to look at me. I doubted she could see us, because we had a light on her. She nodded. Her blond hair hung loose over her black slip and alabaster skin, and just for a moment I thought we were talking to a ghost. She was real, though. She was alive. Which was scarier.
“Are you working with him?” I asked.
“Loki came to town in December,” she said, instead of answering me. “They rode in on a salt truck that had picked them up hitching, and they showed up with a whole suitcase full of stolen books and one hell of a grin across their face. Said we’d never believe it. They showed us The Book of Barrow and yeah, they were right, we didn’t believe it. Didn’t believe it was real.”
She sat cross-legged, there in the mud, resting her head against the stone she’d called Damien.
“So they said they’d prove it. Vasilis and Heather tried to talk us out of it, but you don’t talk Loki out of doing things, Loki talks you into doing things. So we went out with snow chains and snowshoes and snow boots and snow everything to a backwoods spot where Damien once saw a bear. Figured we’d catch it hibernating. Shoot it. Bring it back to life.”
“What could be easier?” I said.
“He found us the first night. We’d barely made it three miles from the trailhead. He got us while we were asleep. Tranquilizers, I think. I go to bed in a tent, and I wake up in a dark place. Warm, damp, dark. Gag in my mouth. Shooter’s muffs over my ears. Then I’m unconscious again, then I’m awake. That cycled who knows how many times.”
“Oh god,” Vulture said. “Oh god.”
“He didn’t torture me. I think he wanted us out cold the entire time. But I know that he killed me. I was so delirious, the whole time. Yet when he killed me, when he put a needle in my arm and killed me, I knew. I’ve never been more certain of anything in my life. I knew I was dying. Then I was awake, months later.”
“Why’d he let you go?” I asked.
“Movement!” Thursday shouted. His held his gun in a two-handed grip, tracking something through the trees.
Brynn dashed into the darkness. Not toward the movement, not away from it. Parallel.
A crack, not as loud as gunfire, pierced the air. Thursday fired in response and deafened us.
“Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot!”
It took a while before the words registered. But Sebastian Miller came out of the trees and into the glow of Vulture’s flashlight with his hands above his head, a rifle held loose by the barrel. He wore camo head to toe, hunter’s camo, the kind with actual pictures of trees and leaves printed on it. It had to be him. I barely recognized him from his own photo—not that he looked different, but that his face was so forgettable. It was like face camo, being as unremarkable looking as that.
I turned back to Isola. Her head lolled from side to side, then she dropped forward with a confused look in her eyes. Her face struck the mud. Two running strides and I was next to her, my hand feeling for a pulse for the second time in less than twenty-four hours.
“If she’s dead, you’re dead,” Thursday said.
“Hear me out,” Sebastian said.
“She’s alive,” I said. Her pulse was strong. Then I found the dart, a simple tranquilizer round projecting from her shoulder. He was a pretty fucking bad shot. No one aims for a shoulder . . . he was aiming center mass and hit high right. I pulled out the dart.
“Kill him anyway,” Vulture said.
“Hear me out.”
“What?!” Thursday roared.
“One of you asked why I let her go. I let her go because I’m not a monster. I won’t keep a girl prisoner in my basement forever, and I didn’t think I had it in me to kill her twice. But I should have.”
“Why’s that?” Thursday asked.
“I don’t know how much you know
