Low Midnight Read online

  Amelia did panic at this. No, he can’t have it, he wouldn’t even know what to do with it. We have to know what Milo was working on—

  Layne put out his hand. “Give it. Now.”

  “You think you’ll know what to do with it? You know anything about spell books?”

  Layne’s eyes widened, a flash of surprise, of hunger. He hadn’t known what it was, but now he did, and he wanted it.

  I want it!

  A headache started pounding behind Cormac’s ears, throbbing dully. He hadn’t had one like this since he was back in prison, when Amelia was first trying to break into his mind. This was her, fighting back.

  Layne was an idiot. He was going to get himself in trouble. Cormac decided he didn’t much care. He pulled the book out of his pocket and handed it over.

  “This means you don’t call me again. If you do, I’m not going to come running.” He walked away, back to the Jeep. Amelia grumbled at him the whole time.

  “Whatever you say.”

  Two of the henchmen came up from the house. Cormac watched from the Jeep, morbidly curious about how they were getting rid of the body. He expected Layne had a ditch somewhere, an old mine shaft or even just a cave, and that Milo wasn’t the first body to get tossed there. If it was on private property, no one would ever find it to be able to report it, and if Milo didn’t have anyone around to declare him missing—well then, he was as good as gone.

  Milo couldn’t have expected to end up that way. But you spend enough time with a guy like Layne, well …

  Which was why Cormac was driving away.

  Milo was telling us what he was doing, what killed him, it’s all in the book, I must have that book!

  Cormac didn’t want to argue. He was thinking more about how this—disappearing down some backwoods hole, dead and lost—could never happen to him. Ben wouldn’t let it. Hell, neither would Kitty. Strangely comforting, having people watching his back. He drove, glancing in the rearview mirror to see the guys hauling the body, arms slung over their shoulders, down to the woods at the back of the property.

  Ten or so miles later, when the gravel county road met asphalt, he pulled over and parked on the shoulder. The headache was pounding now, Amelia refusing to be ignored.

  “What?” he said out loud.

  We cannot walk away from this.

  “Yes, we can. I just did.”

  He leaned back against the seat, tipped his head back, closed his eyes. He could fall asleep, right here. The bruise around his eye throbbed in time with his pulse. The headache didn’t dim.

  If you won’t go back for Kuzniak’s book, the only way to learn more about Kuzniak and Crane is to go to the plateau and work the Sand Creek spell to re-create what happened, perhaps even summon Crane’s spirit—

  “No. No more summoning. No more talking to dead people.”

  One might think you were squeamish.

  “I just know better than to go sticking my head where it doesn’t belong.”

  You’re a coward.

  Almost sounded like his father saying that. Time was, he’d start a fight over those words.

  Cormac. Come and talk to me. Don’t shut me out like this, I can’t stand it.

  He caught a whiff of fear at that. She argued because she was stubborn, but while she did she worried—how precarious was her place here, really?

  Sometimes he thought about what it would take to get rid of her. If he thought hard enough, if he found the right spell or incantation—hell, if he ignored her long enough—could he eject her spirit? Just kick her out, to dissipate on the wind or astral plane or whatever happened to spirits that didn’t have bodies. Or would she find some other way to bother him. Haunting his Jeep, maybe, shorting out spark plugs whenever she disagreed with him. So yes, the situation with Amelia could be much more annoying that it was now.

  Without her, the apartment would be very quiet.

  Cormac. Please come and talk to me, face-to-face.

  He let out a breath and fell into their mental space, his memory turned real. He was standing in the middle of a damp meadow, looking around for her. The place was cold this time. A sharp, wet wind was blowing, the kind that came through the mountains in autumn, smelling of impending snow. Cormac shivered, wondering why he couldn’t just make a wish and bring back summer. This was all in his head. But the bad weather reflected his mood. Both their moods.

  The trees across the valley swayed in the wind, the trunks creaking.

  Amelia appeared, just far enough away that she had to raise her voice to be heard. She stood primly, as if she were arguing her case in court. “Without Kuzniak’s book, without learning what happened to him, our options are limited.”

  “I already told you the option I pick—quit the whole thing.”

  “I think we should go back to the plateau.” She seemed unaffected by the chill, maybe because her old-fashioned gown with its thick wool and high collar kept her warm. Maybe because she didn’t have a body anymore, she couldn’t feel the cold. “I want to try my spell.”

  “No. It’s not right. The dead should stay dead. Let them lie, don’t scare them up and try to talk to them, don’t bring back the past.” He looked across the way, studying the clouds rolling in from the west, gauging what the weather was going to do next. As if it were real weather.

  Amelia moved around him, putting herself in his line of sight, trying to catch his gaze. He kept looking out to the wild, which he understood better.

  “If I didn’t know you, I’d say you were having moral qualms. What are you afraid of?”

  “I’m not afraid. It’s just wrong.”

  “Are you afraid your own dead will rise up to speak to you? To berate you? How many people have you killed, Cormac? Including the monsters. You’ve never told me that. You never let that knowledge slip out.”

  He’d never told anyone. Not even Ben knew all the hunts he’d been on, all the contracts he’d taken, the exact number of people he’d killed. He’d never asked. Amelia was the first person who had.

  He knew the number without having to stop and count. “Eighteen.”

  She didn’t seem at all horrified. Just nodded thoughtfully. “The first was the werewolf who killed your father, when you were sixteen? And the latest was the skinwalker, the one that put you in prison?”

  “There was the demon back in prison. And the werewolf in Chinatown, the one I stabbed. He’s eighteen.”

  “You count the demon as one of your kills?”

  “It was sentient. Devious. It was a hunter. Maybe it wasn’t a human being, but it wasn’t an easy kill, so why not count it?”

  She raised an eyebrow. “One might make an argument that it was my kill, not yours.”

  “All right—seventeen and a half kills, that make you happy?”

  “Fair enough. The rest of them—were they all vampires and werewolves and other monsters? Have you ever killed a mortal, normal human?”

  “Two. Two of those were human.”

  “Any regrets?”

  “No. They all deserved to die. I’m pretty sure they did.” Even the one who’d just gotten in the way had chosen to be there, had known what would happen if he stayed. That was what Cormac figured.

  “Then why do the dead haunt you? Why are you afraid of speaking to them?”

  Her questions, her pushing him, made his neck stiff. Caused an itching deep in his spine, and he wanted to swat at the bugs crawling there. He walked. Realized he was pacing, like a predator in a cage, and didn’t much care. Kept going, down the sloping hill along the creek. But this wasn’t reality, wasn’t a physical space, and Amelia appeared at his side, keeping pace with him. Studying him. He didn’t turn to look at her.

  “Cormac?”

  It wasn’t the dead that scared him. He wasn’t afraid of hearing from any of the people he’d killed. When he couldn’t sleep at night, it wasn’t any of their voices he heard, keeping him awake.

  “Cormac,” she said. “Your walls are going up again.”


  He hadn’t realized he was doing it. In prison, when she’d first tried to contact him, her spirit edging its way into his mind, he’d resisted. He’d built walls, imagined them going up stone by stone to keep her out. She’d almost driven him crazy, trying to break through. He’d finally let her in so they could stop the demon that was killing prisoners.

  The wind, the freezing snow—his mind was going cold.

  He said, then, “My father.” He stopped walking, still couldn’t look at her. But he could at least stop trying to escape.

  “If you start speaking to the dead … you’re afraid you would have to start speaking to him.”

  He didn’t even have to channel the man’s spirit. Cormac heard his voice berating him for getting caught, for going soft, for not being good enough, for not being good. Right after he was attacked and infected with lycanthropy, Ben had wanted Cormac to shoot him. Being a monster was supposed to be worse than being dead. But Kitty changed that. Cormac refused to kill Ben, and the world was better for it.

  Douglas Bennett would have killed Ben without hesitating.

  Cormac was weak, and he imagined his father’s ghost whispered to him. He was wrong. He’d been given a legacy, an inheritance to protect the world from monsters. And now, he was shirking his duties, working with the monsters instead of killing them. He was just about a monster himself. A guy with two auras and a pocketful of magic spells.

  He didn’t have to speak any of this out loud to Amelia. She sensed it pouring out of him. The walls were down.

  “That voice isn’t real, you know,” she said. “It’s your imagination. I’m sure he wouldn’t be so … so judgmental.”

  “You didn’t know him.”

  “No, I only have your memories to go on. The memories of a sixteen-year-old boy—not entirely reliable, if I may say so. If it would lay his spirit to rest in your mind, we could try to channel him. Just to see.”

  He shook his head. No. Just no. He didn’t need to do that. His father was wrong, he was moving forward, that was all.

  Amelia stepped closer, her manner oddly hesitant. “Perhaps … there are other ways of laying spirits to rest. I—I would like to see the place where he died. Have you ever been back there, since it happened?”

  “No.”

  She put a hand on his shoulder. The gesture felt strangely tangible, her touch warm and gentle. “Let’s go, why don’t we?”

  And why not? He needed to take a walk. He needed to get out of here.

  Chapter 17

  HE COULDN’T find the spot.

  With a burning desire to stay out of the whole of southern Colorado for the next few days, he drove up to Grand County, to the ranch where Douglas Bennett had died.

  They’d gotten a call from the owner that something crazy was going on—cattle slaughtered in that distinctive way by something more than wild—and crazy was what the Bennett clan did. It had been a full moon that night.

  He didn’t know anymore who owned the land at this spot bordering the Arapaho National Forest, but he found the back road he and his father had taken there, mostly by trusting instinct and memory. Along the way, with a mile or so left to go, the charred remains of a forest started. Instead of trees, blackened spikes jutted from ash-covered ground. The air smelled like a dusty fireplace. The place was wet, muddy from new snow, a soppy mess. The fire had been recent—not even the scrub oak had had a chance to grow back. The forest’s remains were skeletal.

  This must have been the edge of the Church’s Park Fire that took out around five hundred acres of forest last fall. He remembered hearing about it, wondering vaguely if the fire’s range approached the area where he and his father had spent so much time. He assumed not and never bothered looking at a map. So much for that. He hadn’t really thought about what that meant, if his father’s old territory had burned down.

  The road dwindled to a couple of pale tracks on the dark, ash-laden earth, so he parked the Jeep and started walking. He was pretty sure he was in the right spot. The shape of the hills looked familiar, but the trees and clearings he might have recognized were gone. Nothing but charcoal underfoot. He kicked and raised a cloud of ash.

  It’s rather desolate.

  “It wasn’t like this back then.”

  He walked until he thought he’d gone far enough, but didn’t trust his sense of distance. The last time he’d been here, running back after calling the cops, showing them where the whole thing had happened, he felt like he’d been running forever, sucking down breaths, on the edge of crying. Realizing he had blood spatters on him, spray from the werewolf he’d shot. If he walked for as long as he thought he’d been running that night, he’d end up on the other side of the county.

  You can’t expect to remember exactly where it was, in the middle of wilderness. It’s been over twenty years, Cormac.

  “That long, huh?”

  He remembered what the blood smelled like. He could hear his father explaining: hunting the monsters—this’ll be your job when I’m gone. How many monsters have you killed, son? More important, how many haven’t you killed?

  Kitty, Ben, their whole pack, Denver’s vampire Family, the vampire Families in D.C., San Francisco, and London, not to mention the werewolves in those cities. He’d let them all live. Hundreds of monsters he hadn’t killed. Just because they were Kitty’s friends, and Kitty had convinced him that even monsters deserved a chance.

  None of those people had hurt anyone, Amelia murmured to him. They’re good people, you know they are.

  Looking around, he couldn’t see it. The place his father died hadn’t looked like this. Maybe he should have come back at night, under a full moon. Maybe then it would look familiar.

  “The valley we camped in sometimes, the one I see in my mind, where we talk together—it’s near here. In the back country, maybe ten miles off.” Even if it hadn’t burned down in some wildfire, the forest might have been replaced by dead beetle-killed pines, developers might have moved in to turn the place into condos. Anything could have happened. The old scenes slipped away.

  Amelia said, That place—perhaps you shouldn’t go back there. You should keep that memory the way it is, the way it lives in your mind.

  She was right. He turned to leave.

  Wait a moment. Do we still have any sage? And a stone—that piece of slate? I think I remember there being a shard of slate, left pocket.

  She was right, of course, and he drew out the two items, feeling awkward. “I said I didn’t want to do any channeling—”

  This isn’t. It’s not even a spell, really. It’s … a ritual. A very minor ritual. Come now, light the incense.

  He lit the sprig of sage, blew to set it smoldering. “What’s this supposed to do?”

  It lays spirits to rest. It brings closure. You need to let your father go, Cormac.

  He had. A long time ago. Or, he thought he had. But at her words, something inside him loosened, as if a fist had been holding tightly to his breath and now it finally opened.

  She murmured words—phrases about releasing tension and moving on, wishing the best for someone long gone. Declaring that regrets were useless, and thus abandoning them. It wasn’t an incantation or a spell, but more like a prayer. He wondered if it would still work, given he didn’t much believe in any of the available gods. He hadn’t been in a church outside a professional capacity since he was a boy.

  You don’t have to believe in anything. It’s meant to make you feel better. That’s all this is.

  New Age crap. He didn’t have much time for it.

  Now, dig a hole. A small one will do, just knock the dirt away with your heel.

  He did as she asked, stomped a couple of times to make a crescent-shaped hole.

  Now, drop the stone in, and think about your father at peace. You have to hold the thought.

  The burning sage was filling his nose, making his sinuses itch. But he dropped the stone in, and spread the dirt back over it with his hand.

  “Good-bye, Dad,”
he murmured.

  The sage stopped burning, the embers fading and smoke vanishing. A bird was calling somewhere, probably a jay. Somehow, he felt lighter.

  Let’s go, then.

  * * *

  AMELIA WAS very quiet on the drive back. She didn’t bring up ghosts, scrying, or speaking with the dead. About getting their hands on Kuzniak’s book, or what the hell they were going to do about solving Crane’s murder for Judi and Frida. Made for a peaceful couple of hours, really. And a good night’s sleep afterward. He almost poked at her, to make sure she was still there. But he didn’t have to; she was always there, lurking.

  Morning gave him a clean perspective, on everything. Layne was an ass, and he was fucking around with things he didn’t understand. Treating magic like a fancy new automatic rifle he could buy under the table and show off to make himself a big man. A rifle just shot people up, but magic could raise the dead, summon demons. Destroy the world, if Kitty’s paranoia was right. Milo Kuzniak was only one casualty. Maybe not even the first. Mollie was staying in that house, too, and he didn’t want her caught up in this if Layne lit a fuse he couldn’t put out.

  Cormac didn’t care about the mysteries quite so much, but he was going to make sure Layne’s ambitions didn’t go any further than they were right now. Put the bastard back in his place.

  I thought a good night’s sleep might help, Amelia said innocently. If I may ask—what exactly are you planning to do?

  “We’re going to get Milo Kuzniak’s book.”

  Chapter 18

  CORMAC WASN’T going to risk the trouble he might bring down on himself by carrying a gun, but he had other options. He made sure to put an extra gas can in the Jeep and threw a bottle of lighter fluid and extra flares in his road kit. Rope, bungee cord, duct tape, paper towels, empty soda bottles, a filled canteen. A regular catalog of useful items.