by Hannah Marae
“Just something you deal with when your dog is a hellhound?”
“He’s like Lazarus,” Zeke piped in. “He does what he wants.”
Lazarus turned, brow raised. “Thanks.”
Unperturbed, Zeke surveyed the desert. “I’m gonna go check out the place, see if I can turn anything up.”
With a nod, Lazarus unlatched the tailgate and stepped up into the bed. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the mage linger, watching Zeke walk off toward the movie screen.
Lazarus picked his way over the backpacks and duffle bags and knelt before the toolbox that housed his ghost-hunting supplies.
The mage kicked her sneakers around in the dirt, then sighed, hopping up to sit on the open tailgate behind him. Lazarus ignored her, disarming the toolbox’s magical alarm before unlocking the padlock. Out of habit, he worked quickly, producing two shotguns and a handful of salt-loaded shells. Near the bottom of the toolbox, Lazarus found an old coffee tin half full of channeling coins. He took out a handful and stuffed them in the pocket of his jeans.
When he was finished, Lazarus turned to see the mage staring into the distance, idly swinging her feet as she sat on the tailgate. He stayed still, watching her watch the sky. Her hands loosely gripped the tailgate, fingers tapping out some unreadable rhythm.
Lazarus was no stranger to guilt. Usually, the hunt held it at bay, keeping his mind busy. If he could keep working, keep moving, and keep doing good in the world, maybe he’d be okay. It was when he stopped that the guilt came crashing in, always ready to remind Lazarus that he wasn’t supposed to be here. But he was here, on the hunt. His mind should be free, focused only on finding the spirit and bringing it to rest. The guilt was still there. Hell, it might’ve been stronger than ever.
“Are you thinking about your friend?” he asked, despite himself. Getting involved was the last thing Lazarus wanted to do, but maybe if he could explain himself, she’d understand.
The mage glanced over her shoulder. “I was watching Hades.” She indicated the wisp of black that streaked across the blue. “But yeah, Mab is never far from my mind.”
Lazarus grabbed a pair of sunglasses, then stood. The truck shifted beneath him as he climbed back to sit beside her on the tailgate. “We’ll be back on the road soon.”
“I know.” She brought her hand to the mark beneath her shirt. He’d seen her do it often, resting her fingers against her collarbone like it was the only thing that gave her comfort. It made something twinge inside him, a feeling he couldn’t pinpoint.
“She’s still alive. That’s got to be a good sign, right?” The mage turned to him, hazel eyes bright with hope. “If someone took her, why would they be keeping her alive for no reason? Isn’t that a thing in crime movies or something?”
Lazarus shrugged, their shoulders brushing. “I haven’t seen many crime movies.”
“Me neither,” Eden admitted. “But Mab is tough. Whoever’s got her, you can be sure she’s giving them hell.”
“She’s lucky to have you.” Lazarus toyed with the sunglasses in his hands. He realized he knew very little about the woman sitting beside him. She was a mage in need of help. That was all he needed to know. He wondered if she looked at him and mused over the things she didn’t know.
“It’s mostly the other way around,” the mage said. “Mab took care of me from the start, taught me about magic and everything else. I’d be nowhere without her.”
She stopped, subtly shaking her head. Lazarus had a feeling she wasn’t finished, so he sat quietly and waited.
“Mab always took care of everything, you know?” Eden sucked in a breath between her teeth, her eyes growing glassy. “One time, she spelled our way into a theater after hours, and we sat alone in front of the screen watching movie after movie until the sun came up, and we had to sneak out. And it was all because I told her I’d never been to one.” She laughed. “We must have spent a month doing stupid things like that. Bowling. A water park. A pet store. Sometimes I think it was the best time of my life. I wish it would have lasted forever, but then . . .” She hesitated, searching for the right words. “The past started catching up with us, I guess.”
“As it tends to do.” Lazarus leaned forward. “You were running from something?”
“Maybe.” Eden bit her lip. “Running from something but also running toward something. Mab’s sister. Her twin. Her name is Florence. We were looking for her for a long time. I never met her; she was missing before Mab ever found me.”
Lazarus swore inwardly. He turned the glasses over in his hands, peering down into the mirrored surface at his own reflection. “I’m guessing you never found her?”
“No,” Eden replied. “Mab would tell you “not yet.” But it’s been years. I don’t know if she’ll ever find her, but I know she’ll never stop looking. Maybe it’s all been worth it too. The night Mab was taken, she told me she’d found a lead. I never got a chance to ask her what it was. Maybe she was close.”
“Was Florence a mage too?”
Eden nodded. “A good one, too, according to Mab. Better than both of us.”
Lazarus blew out a breath. Overhead, Hades had ceased his circling and was now drifting lazily toward the ground. “Maybe it’s connected. Maybe when we find Mab, we’ll find Florence as well.”
She looked at him doubtfully. “Do you really think that?”
Did he? Lazarus stood from the tailgate, offering Eden his hand as she hopped down. He believed her friend was alive. The connection sigil was proof enough of that. The world of monsters and mages was only so big, and in Lazarus’s experience, few things could be chalked up to coincidence. “I think you’ll find Mab,” he told her. “And if she’s got a lead, you’ll at least know where to go from there.”
“Just as soon as we get back on the road,” Eden teased. Lazarus grinned and started to walk off, but the mage caught him by the arm. “Zeke’s lucky to have you, too, you know.”
Lazarus turned to watch his cousin approach from the ruins of the drive-in, hands in his pockets, lips contorted as a whistle trilled into the air. He thought of all the shit he’d put Zeke through, the close calls, and those months in Nowhere patching up Lazarus’s own pride. It was always clear that he needed Zeke far more than Zeke needed him.
“Honestly,” he told the mage with a wry smile, “it’s mostly the other way around.”
When Lazarus assured them that the job would be in and out, he failed to take one thing into account: you couldn’t count on a spirit to cooperate.
Three hours passed since they pulled up to the abandoned drive-in. After arriving, they gave the area a cursory patrol. From the ticket booth to the screen, the place was surprisingly intact. But, still, the desert pressed in, covering everything in a layer of dust and grime. The screen was in tatters, and the sign above the lot had toppled to the ground. Almost every surface was covered in graffiti—and not the good kind.
After wandering around in the hopes of baiting the ghost, the trio gradually separated. Eden sat on the ground against the concession stand, where she had been for the past hour or so. Only now, instead of sulking, she had her nose buried in that dusty old mage book she carried in her bag, pausing now and then to scrawl out a new sigil in the dirt.
Lazarus was out there somewhere—by the screen last Zeke saw him—searching for cold spots and ectoplasm. They’d been over the place at least a dozen times and hadn’t seen so much as a shred of evidence, no static figures, no strange power surges. Nothing. If there actually were a ghost here, Zeke would be shocked.
He was supposed to be helping Laz, but Zeke was starting to think that was futile. Instead, he paced the area in front of the concession stand, flipping his channeling coin over and over, catching it in his palm. Heads, he decided, meant he’d tell Lazarus to pack it up and call it a dud. Tails meant he’d keep his mouth shut and let Laz continue this fruitless search.
For the life of him, Zeke couldn’t get the coin to come up heads. It was tails every time.
<
br /> “This is pointless,” Eden groaned from behind her book. “Is he seriously going to keep us here all night just in case there’s something here?”
“He might,” Zeke replied, only half joking. Lazarus had always been the stubborn sort, but it was worse in recent years, at least when it came to the supernatural. If Ignatius said there was a job, then there was a job. Zeke knew Laz too well to believe he would think otherwise. “We once spent three days camped in Yellowstone looking for a werewolf.”
Flipping the coin, Zeke checked his palm and sighed when it came up tails.
“I wanted to leave so bad,” he continued. “It was cold and miserable, and we were dodging park rangers the whole time. But Lazarus was right. Come evening on the third day, the wolf showed itself, and that was that.”
“So what happens if the morning comes, and there’s still nothing?” Eden asked. “I can’t wait on him forever.” The implications were not subtle. What she really meant was her friend couldn’t wait forever. She was right about that. Every second that Lazarus tarried could be a second stolen from Mab. And what if one of those seconds was the one that made a difference?
He slumped to the ground beside Eden. “If midnight comes and Laz won’t leave, then we’ll steal his truck and set off by ourselves. I’ll pick him up on the way back around.”
Grinning, the mage returned to her book. “Deal.”
As evening gathered in the sky, Lazarus stalked the other side of the dirt parking lot, shotgun slung over his shoulder and Hades prancing along his path. Honestly, Zeke hoped the spirit would show. He was only joking about leaving Laz behind, and he sure as hell didn’t want Eden to hold him to that. For too long, Zeke had fought to be here, out in the world hunting monsters, and despite his own reservations and Lazarus’s resistance, he had made it happen. No matter what, Zeke would never give up on—
A scream filled the air, fuzzy like it was filtered through static.
Zeke looked up in alarm, goosebumps spreading down his arms, the hairs on the back of his neck standing on end.
“I think it’s here.”
But Eden looked past him with wide eyes, slowly raising a finger to point. Turning, Zeke saw the movie screen was lit up, a black and white image of six college kids running down a forest path and, behind them, a man in a ski mask with a bloody ax in one hand.
“Laz!” Zeke called as he climbed to his feet. His gut twisted, the feeling that something wasn’t right. Though, he guessed that much was obvious. A second scream ripped through the air, this time pouring from the drive-in’s ancient speakers.
Beside him, Eden started to rise. “Stay down,” Zeke warned her.
On the screen, the picture flashed to another scene, this time in color. A woman cried out, stumbling through a hotel corridor as another ax-wielding fiend stomped toward her. Turning a corner, she tripped, screaming as the ax came down, and the screen flipped to another picture.
Finally, Lazarus trotted up with Hades behind him. “See it?”
“Not yet.” Zeke checked the shotgun in his hands, making sure he’d remembered to load it with salt rounds. From his jacket pocket, he grabbed a pair of sunglasses and put them on. There was no way he was fucking up this time.
Lazarus put on his own sunglasses. “I’m guessing you’ll be fine?” he asked Eden.
“I’ve got a few tricks up my sleeve.”
“Just don’t—”
“Don’t let it touch me. Got it.”
Nodding his approval, Lazarus turned to Hades. “Stay with her,” he ordered the hellhound. “Zeke, let’s see if we can draw this thing out.”
Looking past him, Zeke saw the scene had changed once more. On the screen, lightning flashed, exposing a lumbering silhouette behind.
“There,” he told Lazarus, who nodded curtly, fingers clenching around his shotgun.
Now that the hunt was afoot, Zeke felt the nerves melt into excitement. They had spent all day waiting for the spirit to show, and now it was time. He was more than ready to be the one to capture it in the mirror.
Lazarus backed into the shadows behind the concession stand, leaving Zeke to take the role as bait. He drew a breath and stepped forward, turning to make eye contact with Eden. He mimed zipping his lips.
Releasing his breath, Zeke shouldered his weapon and walked away from the concession stand. A few seconds later, he whistled. It was quiet at first, drowned out by the nasty squelches coming from the speaker as a gory scene played on the theater screen. But then the image changed, the picture going to a placid lake and the speakers falling silent.
Zeke’s whistle trilled into the shadowy desert.
The figure behind the screen vanished, reappearing off to his right. The spirit was a dingy-looking man with an ax in his hand, not one of the teenagers but the killer himself. Glancing between the ghost and the movie screen, Zeke chuckled. “Really? A little on the nose, isn’t it?”
Snarling, the spirit swung his ax. Zeke laughed as he ducked low. He pushed back up, finger dancing on the trigger. “Shit!” The ghost was gone. Zeke spun and frantically searched the grounds. On his periphery, he saw Eden climb unsteadily to her feet. The air went cold, and he turned in time to catch a wild blow with the butt of the ax. Pain erupted across Zeke’s jaw as he sprawled to the ground.
Someone shouted, but Zeke couldn’t make out the words. Head swimming with stars, he watched a small figure sweep in from the shadows. Eden. She approached the spirit, her hand stretched out as it turned on her.
In the moment of collision, the air erupted. Clouds of light spun off across the abandoned lot, blue and gray, with bloody slashes. A chill bit into Zeke’s skin, and he looked down to see the frost gathering on the ground. Waves of nausea assaulted him, but he shoved the feeling aside. Zeke climbed to his feet as the spirit hissed and scattered. The mage toppled, and Zeke surged forward to break her fall, both of them collapsing onto the dirt.
Above him, the ghost reappeared and raised his ax above his head. Zeke held up his arm to block the blow.
Before the blade could come down, Lazarus jumped in, the tattoo on his palm blazing beneath the clouds of light. He grabbed the handle and wrenched it away mid-blow, sending the ax thumping into the dirt.
Galaxies reflected in Lazarus’s sunglasses as he reached out to make contact. But the ghost was fast, flashing out of existence before Laz could get a hold. It reappeared behind him and lashed out to grab the wrist of his tattooed hand.
The ghost wrapped his other arm around Laz’s throat, eyes flashing with manic fury. Lazarus reached up to grab at the spirit with his free hand, but he was too strong. On his open palm, the sigil blazed uselessly, rapidly draining the coin at its center.
“Shit. Shit. Shit.” Zeke scrambled to his feet, ignoring the pounding in his head. He fumbled in his pocket for the coin. Finally, he closed his palm around the disk, then raised his hand, spreading his fingers wide as the sigil ignited.
Zeke propelled himself forward and grabbed the ghost by his long, greasy hair, wrenching him around to meet his gaze. The spirit came violently undone, howling as he seeped into Zeke’s glasses.
With a flash, the galaxies burned out, and the desert went dark.
Spent, the coin detached from Zeke’s palm and fell uselessly into the dirt. He ripped off the glasses and ran to where Lazarus and Eden lay side by side, unconscious on the ground.
Mab remembered the things she had forgotten.
A dark house on a dead-end street with the cold room at its heart. She’d made that goddamned stupid deal, throwing away her soul for an answer that only led to more questions. So this was what happened after they dragged her down into the vault.
Past the shadowy canopy, the stars glittered in the spaces between the leaves.
The Good Night.
Jesus.
Mab didn’t know how the hell that bitch Laurent managed to toss her in Purgatory, but she would be damned if she wasn’t gonna find a way out.
Boots slapping on the cracked c
obbles, Mab kept walking. She followed the spirit as it floated up the path. It was utterly incognizant, winding its way through the forest as if riding some kind of fucked-up carnival ride. Mab stuffed her hands into the pockets of her leather jacket and stomped after the ghost, all the while wondering just where the hell they were going.
Honestly, she didn’t know much about the Good Night. She knew it existed, of course, but it was in that same overbearing way that Hell was there. Or Heaven. Or God, for that matter. If Mab knew one thing, it was that shit like that was bigger than her and was best ignored.
Sometime later, she looked up and realized the spirit was no longer ahead. Mab swung her head around, peering into the trees. She stood in a different stretch of forest, the path curving off into the dark unknown. Mab turned to see the spirit she had been following was now far behind.
A chill wormed its way through her. How long had she been walking, and where had her mind gone? Time was slipping away like sand between her fingers.
She kept walking.
Moving through two spirits floating side by side, Mab concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other, counting her steps so she would not lose them. Clinging to consciousness was an effort. She tried not to think about what would happen if she just gave in.
As she came around a bend, Mab stopped. Someone stood on the path ahead.
This time it was different. There was no glow, just a figure standing there looking into the forest. Mab didn’t think it was a spirit; it looked like . . . a man? A man in a suit, she realized, as absurd as that sounded. But it was something different, and no matter how she pressed them, the ghosts weren’t talking.
Mab steeled herself and forged on. As she approached, she gave the man a once-over. Shadows shrouded his profile, but she could pick out a pale face, black slicked-back hair, and a close beard. His suit was perfectly pressed, and his posture was relaxed. A lit cigarette dangled from between his fingers.
“Hey!” Mab said as she came up to him. “Think you can tell me what’s going—”
