Summer Sons(110)

But Eddie wasn’t his only company, not in this reprise of his nightmares. He pried his eyes open. The gloom of the barn wreaked havoc on his no-doubt blown pupils as he waited for the blurring to resolve. Tilting his chin allowed him to measure the length of the stalls to his side. He froze at the sight of a sprawled body at the far corner. His heart tripped. Sam wasn’t moving. His hands lay cuffed in front of him, ankles tied to one of the posts. No one would tie up a corpse. Andrew sipped minute breaths to keep himself from vomiting again.

“Sam,” he croaked.

Eddie had left him a mess of clues to follow, but he’d stepped straight into the trap with the same blind confidence that had gotten them to the caverns the first time. Except he’d been the one to drag Sam along with him, unwilling but dedicated, repeating the cycle of his inheritance. The haunt continued to paw at him, cold flecks dusting across his nape and over his throat as if begging entrance. The rolling door opened. Neither Jane nor Mark spared him a glance as they crossed the barn floor together. She laid a canvas bag a few feet from Andrew, then unfolded a nylon tailgating chair closer to Sam. Her husband sat gingerly in it, wearing a thick sweater despite the sultry heat of the evening.

With him settled, she pecked a kiss on her husband’s forehead and returned to her bag. Andrew’s attention split between the heap of Sam and the woman unzipping a tote in front of him. As she removed a bowl and a set of small, stoppered vials, she began to speak: “I’m sure it doesn’t comfort you, but I hadn’t originally intended to kill Edward, and I do regret that I’m doing this.”

“Then don’t,” Andrew managed.

Troth’s smile was grim. “You’re my one chance to keep my partner alive, and I’m finding there are few limits on what I’d do to save him.”

“Sorry,” Mark contributed with an unnecessarily chipper tone.

She gave him a sour glance and said, “If you would, please, don’t be rude.”

Silence as she mixed her ingredients in the bowl, kneeling elegantly on the packed-dirt floor. Sunset called to Andrew from a distance, as if reaching through time for him. His bones ached alongside the draining dusk while his revenant passenger whispered another phrase to him, indistinguishable though forceful, before seeping into the dirt with a pulse of communion that reverberated into the soles of his feet. The death-laden earth of the Troth estate was the revenant’s home, as much as the trunk of the Challenger and more so than the oak tree in the park. Eddie’s blood had spilled here in a corruptive consecration. Ghoul joined ground, and a taste as fetid as rot seized the base of Andrew’s tongue. If he were able to draw out another moment, another hour—

“Why did you kill him?” he asked.

“I remember the night when the curse came to life again. It woke me out of a dead sleep,” she said. “I dreamed of a black wave that rose up and up and crashed over us all. Both my daughters were crying in their rooms. I saw you two in the newspaper, and I wondered, but when your parents moved you and Edward away I thought I’d never learn the truth. Imagine my surprise when the prodigal Fulton son returned all those years later, searching for answers to his special gift. And then Mark took a turn for the worse, so I made a decision.”

“He didn’t tell you he was looking for the curse,” Andrew said.

“Of course not, but he wasn’t careful about the hints he gave me, or suspicious about the interest I showed. A very self-centered young man, Edward.”

The drugs were either wearing off or he was acclimating to the dosage, judging from the increased responsiveness of his tongue behind his teeth. He gave silent, hysterical thanks to Eddie’s bad habits and his own lack of survival instinct. Troth hadn’t planned for two of them, and she wasn’t that kind of doctor. He was willing to bet she hadn’t accounted for his and Sam’s wealth of experience functioning under the influence. She drew a knife from the bag, swirling it through the contents of the bowl. Recognition rocked him at the sight. That edge had bit through Eddie’s flesh first. He remembered its touch from his nightmares.

“His power should’ve passed to me, according to the ritual I researched. I was surprised—and upset—that it slipped through my fingers, that even death didn’t cut it loose from him,” Troth explained. “The only possible explanation was that Edward wasn’t the sole heir, that he shared custody of the gift. His portion escaped the moment I tried to take it.”

She laid her knife lengthwise across the bowl to stand, dusting off her knees. He shifted in his bonds but was pinned immobile as she drew her thumb along his tattooed bracelet. He said, “He’d have given it to you if you asked. He’d have helped.”

“No, he wouldn’t have,” she said.

“For good reason,” Mark contributed. “I’m alarmed by this whole process myself.”

“You share so much with him; I could tell the moment you stepped into my office,” Troth said. “You thought you were hunting me, but you were being herded along.”

Andrew peeled his lips from his teeth.

“I’ll need your cooperation to bond the halves of the curse he fractured, before the ritual will function. I don’t have any reservations about harming you, or your friend, more than would be necessary to ensure that I get it. Do you understand?”

“Fuck you,” he said.